TRIGGERnometry - George Galloway - "Capitalism Isn’t Working"

Episode Date: October 25, 2020

Left-wing firebrand George Galloway joins us in the studio for a chat. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is the show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a left-wing firebrand, an MP for two different parties, one of which he was a leader. And most important, Man United fan, George Gallow. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm a big fan of your work, really. And you're a broadcaster, which I forgot to add. Yeah, you were on my show. It was a very popular segment. actually.

Was it? Yeah, yeah. Very popular. Well, we're both surprised about that. But thank you for having me. And actually, one of the things that we wanted to talk to you about is something you and I very much talked about at the time, which was this, and you and I had a lot of agreement, but this maybe was an error where we were trying to work out what each other was saying,

which is I was talking about cancel culture and you yourself have been attacked physically when speaking on university campus by trans activists. And we were sort of trying to find common language about what seems to have happened on what I perceive as the left. There seems to have become this sort of intolerance almost that's crept in. The idea, which is very counter to your values as I perceive them, which is if you don't agree with people, you debate. You express it in strong, confident terms, and that is how you conduct that conversation.

So what is it that's happened in this area of debate, conversation, language, everything seems to be sort of, you've got to be very careful, you can't offend people. What's your take on that? Well, I think we, in feeling towards common language on this, we had a disagreement, which we're about to have again now. I don't regard these people as being on the left. Or, or if that's the left, I'm not on it. Which would make them very happy to hear.

There's a difference between what I call liberalism with a small L, and the left, or at least there ought to be. And that ranges from the philosophical, through the economic, political, and also on social values. So, for example, I am socially conservative in every respect. I don't drink, I hate drugs, I believe in marriage, I believe in the country, I'm patriotic,

I believe in the armed forces and so on. None of these are liberal traits. And they ought to be a difference between the left and the liberals, who don't like the family much generally, think it's old hat, although most of them live in monogamous relationships. They don't want to theorize that as being a good thing. They would attack you if you tried to theorize that. They seem to believe in the stupefication of the masses

where everyone takes a drag and drops out, which is the very antithesis of the kind of political activism that I think is needed in the country. But you're right, they have become identified as the left. They identify themselves as the left. The media identifies them as the left, and ergo, the left is really unpopular amongst the mass of the people in the country who don't look like them, live like them, think like them, talk like them.

And that's a problem. It means that someone like me has to explicitly say, well, if that's the left, I'm not in it, or the more difficult thing to do, to attack the idea that they are the left. Now, as you rightly identified right at the beginning, the cancel culture has enveloped, not just denying someone like you platforms,

but someone like me. Or on the women's front, someone like my old friend Jermaine Greer. She is persona non-gratous. She is not allowed to appear on any university campus, although probably like me, her reaction to that has been, well, stick your university campuses. I would no longer, maybe the Oxford Union because the security is good, but I wouldn't go to any other university meeting, and I'm invited to them all the time, at least every week.

But I wouldn't go, because once cancelled, twice shy, or in my case, once physically attacked, twice shy. Jacob Rees-Mogg ran into similar difficulties. He's on the right of politics, though I agree with them on quite a few things. I'm on the left of politics, and we're both effectively not welcome in Britain's universities. Now, that's bad for me,

because I don't get the chance to proselytize for my beliefs amongst whom will be people who will be journalists and politicians and opinion makers and formers in the future. But it's also bad for them because it means that the bandwidth of the ideas that they are being exposed to is incredibly narrow. And that means we get another generation then that are inculcated with these ideas which are coming from liberals, but are, of course, entirely illiberal in any normal definition of the world. So I believe in freedom of speech, not just because I think the people hearing it will be the better for it, but because if we don't have freedom of speech, even someone like me gets cancelled. And that's, I think,

where we are in this country. Now, I blame the Americans. You may say where did all this come from. You may think it emerged in the 21st century or even in the latter part of the 20th century. But actually, I was there when it emerged. I saw it because I'm older than I look. I saw it coming across the sea.

From the 1960-eighters, their ideas throughout the 70s began to seep across the ocean and change the nature of left-wing politics in Britain. And I presume elsewhere, though I don't have direct evidence of that, but I presume that in other European countries, this seepage also occurred. And I always joke about it. I knew that the British Labour movement would go into decline when at our weekend schools and summer schools, we ceased to sit in rows and listen to leaders and began to sit in circles

where Big Tom of Facebook's views were as important as Tony Benz. And Tony had no right to speak more than Big Tom from Facebook. I knew that this would lead to no good, and it has. And George, we've talked about the left. We've talked about you say that these people aren't on the left, but yet everybody seems to identify them as being part of the left. Do you think that the left is therefore in crisis as a result of these people? Totally.

The left as defined and largely perceived, though we're trying to change that. is in the existential crisis of being regarded by the people it hopes to lead as alien, as foreign, as repulsive, actually. So I don't know that you can do it entirely geographically because there are many parts of London even, never mind the South, that are in that bag. but the farther generally speaking the farther north you go in the country the more alien these people seem and it seems to me sine qua non of seeking to lead people seeking to get their votes obtain their trust and then lead them in a certain direction it's quite important that they are that you are not seen by them as someone who hates them who hates them who hates that who

their country hates its history hates its culture because well at the very least I'm not going to vote for you if they think that's what you think of them and worst it produces a recoil a backlash in which other populists from the far right can win an audience and traction amongst the people people that have been repelled by you. So crisis, absolute crisis. And do you therefore think that if you look at the Labour Party as it is now, where you've got these activists on one side, you've got Kyr Stama on another, don't you look at the Labour Party and think this isn't viable long term as a political party? You can't, you simply can't hold these two types of people and

everybody else within one political organisation. And then throw a blue labour into the mix as well. Yeah, I've thought that for a very long time. And electorally, that is proving to be the case. My problem is I'm not with either. I'm not with Starmer and I'm not with Corbyn. I'm not with the ragged, unwashed successor generations to the 1968ers. Neither am I with the centrists. I was thinking over, because this is the death anniversary of Che Guevara, I was thinking over,

the centrists have no heroes. I pity that. I pity them for that. Who's your hero? Kirst Armour. A block of wood. So wooden, the birds are trying to nest in him. Or is it a guy that looks like, acts like, lives like, just emerged from a student squat.

And that is the dichotidot. me that the traditional left now possesses or is in the grip of. And for someone like me who's not with either of these trends, it's a lonely furrow. It's not lonely in that a lot of people agree with me, but it's lonely in the sense that in an organized way, most of what is thought of as the left is alien to me. that's not where I expected to find myself when I started out in the 1960s. Well, one of the things this obviously creates in terms of certainly British politics is that we've had a conservative government for 10 years.

I've been very, in terms of voting, I've been very politically promiscuous in my life. I voted everything from Lib Dem to for you when I was living in this area to voting for the conservatives for the first time in my life at the last election. And you look at the conservatives now, you have to say that they're completely useless, but you don't see them being credibly challenged at the next election even now because we don't have a credible opposition. Where does that leave the country? Up the creek without a paddle. We have not faced a potentially existential crisis like this since the summer of 1940 when Hitler was at the Channel ports, when the Soviet Union, hadn't entered the war and where any day the fascist hordes could have landed on the southern coast we really have not faced a crisis like this not just the public health crisis but the economic crisis which accompanies it and we have a government that is to continue the water a metaphor lost at sea

and we have an opposition which is probably not not even a scintilla better than the government that's lost at sea. And that is a very difficult place to find yourself. In 1940, Churchill stepped forward. The ineffectual, inept throwback to a previous century of the Chamberlain clique was overthrown and the rest is history. But there's no Churchill in this picture. There's no Churchill in the House of Commons.

There's not even an athlete in the House of Commons. There's nothing that you could say. We could get behind this person, this people, this plan. Not at all. On the contrary, I think we're heading, again, to continue the watery metaphor into very turbulent times indeed, turbulent waters. And you've just mentioned that we don't have a church,

we don't even have an atli. In fact, we were talking with Peter Hitchie. and he was saying that there was no big beasts of politics left anymore. Why do you think that is, George? Why do you think that we don't have, even Thatcher, who you would probably ardently, not probably disagree with, you can't deny that she was a force of nature. And not only was she,

there was 100 or 150 such big beasts when I entered Parliament, just over 30 years ago, 33 years ago. you could look around and your mouth would open that's Michael Heseltang going past that's Tony Ben that's Dennis Healy Peter Shore and so on and that's not ancient history that's only 1987 so thatcher of course was a big beast a formidable figure and now there are no Thatchers no bends no shores so what's happened I've it down to the death of ideology, the belief in an alternative society died with the Soviet collapse.

Not that the left in Britain was pro-Soviet, but the existence of the Soviet Union at least implied that there was another way that you could run things. That died. The left, the labor movement, movement completely lost confidence lost hope turned to the EU turned to Jacques de laur from from Lenin to Jacques de laur is a long way they they sought a kind of corporatist protection from the from the EU and the with the the the death of thatcher is not really dead but with the passing from power of Mrs. Thatcher and her replacement by a desiccated calculating machine called John Major, but one whose batteries were running out.

The whole thing went downhill from there. Labour's conclusion was that they needed to find a Taylor's dummy that could talk, and they came up with Tony Blair. I was there. I was on John Prescott's leadership team. That's how bad the choice was. And Tony Blair romped home and with predictable results. So Labor marched across the political terrain.

The Tories followed them. The Tories are Blairites, really. So Thatcherism has very much been succeeded by Blas. the Labour brand and the Tory brand. What was David Cameron, if not a kind of Tony Blair without the laughs? He was Ersatz Blair. And I had some hope that Boris Johnson would prove different. He hasn't really.

I mean, Boris Johnson, despite all the epithets, that are hurled at him, is actually quite a liberal figure. Yep. With liberal ideas on the economy and society, and he certainly lived the high liberal life. He's a party, man. Not that kind of party. Right.

But hasn't proven to be competent, which, look, maybe if we didn't have a global pandemic and a massive economic crisis to deal with, he would have been the sort of cheerleader, that sort of saw the country through Brexit and minor obstacles in its part. But it's the time, as you say, for Churchill's and Thatcher's, and we don't have any at the moment,

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What do you make of how we're dealing with it now? Being half an Irishman, I'm entitled to say, as the apocryphal Irishman, asked the road and distance to Dublin, I wouldn't have started from here. And so we're in a big mess now because we didn't start where we ought to. have started I was opining just yesterday has proved quite a successful tweet that there are more coronavirus cases in the White House than there are in New Zealand Taiwan and South Korea put together there's China and South Korea and Vietnam and New Zealand disparate ideological social political

systems. There's virtually no coronavirus. It's been vanquished. And yet we are in a state of panic. The United States still more so, although only marginally more so, considering the difference in the size of the countries. And that's because we didn't do what South Korea did at the very beginning, which was to absolutely go to war, immediately mobilize their population, their public health system, and their economy to fight this thing. And they have done it so successfully that you can get a test for the coronavirus at the bus stop, literally on the bus stop. I don't know if you blow into it or suck it or what you do, but it's there on the bus stop.

I, at 66, could not get, for love nor money, a test about four-werect. weeks ago when I had a cough and thought, I probably better get a test. I could not get one. I couldn't get through on the website. I couldn't get through on the emergency number. I couldn't find anybody even that would take my money to give me one. That's how far away from South Korea we are on this. New Zealand, of course, a bit of a special case because of the sparse day of the population and so on, although Scotland is comparable to New Zealand in many such respects, and Scotland is worse than England. Glasgow is the worst place in the country. So we've gone about this entirely the wrong way, and that's partly a consequence of the rundown in the public health system

over the last 20 or more years. But it's also about this failure of leaders. We live in a country as many other countries where nobody believes the leaders even when they're telling the truth. And nobody gets, there's no mobilization. There's no sense of us and always that we are a people, a country, a state with leaders, warts and all. We must follow them. There's no sense of that in Britain. So we had a substantial number, a weird left-right crossover of deniers that stretched from libertarians who'd rather die than wear a mask to left-wing idiots who thought it was all a conspiracy

by Bill Gates, the hapless, Bill Gates, who became the new Rothschild. You just had to say his name and nod and wink. That weird crossover existed. And it was noisy on social media. But if we'd had a strong leadership and a strong state, then we would have been able to rally everyone behind us. And we would have been able to count on people.

See, it would be far better. could count on 65 million people to do the right thing, you wouldn't need fines. You wouldn't need, you didn't have to find people in the Second World War in the east end of London to make sure they had blackout in their windows, that they weren't showing light to the bombers coming. Not a mile from here, this place was all on fire, completely on fire. So there was no need because the people believed in the country's leadership. They believed in the concept of a country and us. We have lost that.

So where we go from here, I've really got no idea. Nothing that they are doing is working. They're throwing money around like the magic money tree was in every street. I saw figures the other day on testing, tracking and tracing. Ireland has spent £733,000. And we have spent 12 billion, billion pounds. And where is it? Where's the tests?

Where's the tracking? Where's the tracing? This has been either a gigantic, organized scam to make a few people exceedingly rich. or it is the most incompetent shit show ever seen in these islands. Because how you manage to spend 12 billion pounds on a system that is practically invisible, it's very difficult to compute. And yet it goes back to Constantine's point as well,

that you look over at the opposition, and they don't seem to have any ideas either. No. In fact, when Kirstama is asked, what he'd do, pretty much do the same as Boris. carte blanche. He's given them carte blanche. And then worse, as Boris points out quite effectively, actually, what are you complaining about? You supported it last week. You gave us your full support on this. Two weeks ago, I saw him yesterday, or in the House Wednesday. He said, but this complaint you're making

is about the very thing you supported not two weeks ago. And so for me, armor is worse in the sense that you've got the opportunity as an opposition, because you don't have responsibility, to explore different ways, in all directions, by the way. I'm ready to listen to an argument that says, now that we are where we are, we might as well stop trying to fight it. We might as well face it because the situation is so bad. I'm ready to hear that argument. And an opposition is in a position to explore these things. But Stammer seems to me like a guy who strapped himself into a straight jacket and is merely going through the motions of opposition. And I see he's sliding again in the polls.

Boris, despite everything, has risen in the latest poll by two points. But I think the feeling in the country is, by God, both of these are jokers. Neither of these. You wouldn't, as we say in Glasgow, you wouldn't send them out for a loaf. You wouldn't ask them to go to the shop for a loaf of bread and have any real confidence that they come back with the right bread, the right change, or even the bread. And you said that we don't have this idea of a country,

this idea of, you know, as a big society. Do you think the roots of that line Thatcherism, that famous quote from Margaret Thatcher, there's no such thing as society? Well, she crystallized it with that address to, of all places, the Church of Scotland, the most Tweed Presbyterian Assembly anywhere on these islands. and she effectively attacked a central tenet of Christianity there.

She had balls. She crystallized it, but I don't think it begins with her. I think that after the Second World War, Britain felt and was depleted, and there was the long period of, after a short period of post-war, construction. There was the long period of what we called Butskillism, which was Rab Butler and Hugh Gateskill, two sides of the same coin, where nobody really argued much about the central tenets of how society should be organized, even though it was increasingly liberal through the 60s. Nobody really argued. It wasn't until Thatcher came along that there was any sharp

rupture ideologically in Britain but undoubtedly if you privatize everything if you exalt individualism over collectivism if public becomes bad private becomes good if that dichotomy sets in then you're you're going to be in less good shape to face it so take a look at these places I mentioned that have done well South Korea, never mind North Korea. South Korea is a capitalist country, an American ally, but it is an extremely cohesive place. It's a place that marches as one when necessary. It's a place that moves as one. And of course, China is very much the ultimate expression of that in the world today. And they went, I mean, they fought the coronavirus like it was World War III.

and now they're living totally normal life, even in Wuhan. And we are scared to go out the door. Our businesses are shutting down. Scotland, this evening at 6 o'clock, will become a ghost town. And I'm told that Boris is planning the same thing here in England. even alcohol's been banned in Scotland That's not going to end well, is it? That cannot end well.

So we are, this is a dog's breakfast and I don't have the resources to know exactly where we are and what we should now do, but I'm ready to listen to offers. I'm ready to listen to any idea from credible people about where we go from now

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what we really mean is get cancelled. Well, I mean, one of the arguments we've heard on our show from doctors, like Dr. Carol Secora, for example, is actually that the average age of death for someone with COVID in this country is 82, average life expectancy is 82 and a half. So the people who are dying are mostly people who were either very ill or very old. And what you do is you protect those people and let everybody else get on with their lives. And then you don't ruin the economy. I mean, that's one of the options that maybe Kyrs Thama should explore

as someone who's an opposition has more leeway. Yes. Of course, those numbers, I don't know how long ago you spoke to him, are coming down the big spike now is among young people We don't but that's cases not some deaths right? Yeah, I'm coming back. We don't yet know where those cases will go If they pass with a couple of weeks of misery for the thousands of students who appear to be Infected by the way bringing students back to university was a major league disaster and whoever's responsible for that really should be up against the wall and shot It's the old pro-Soviet instincts coming out there too.

Because, hey, we can communicate with each other quite well without being in the same room. This has led to, I mean, in the University of Northumbria, they did a mass test. 775 people tested positive. In the University of Glasgow, again, many hundreds leading to a situation where students have gone to university and are now locked in what, is effectively a cell and not allowed to go out. And no point now because even the alcohol is banned at six o'clock for everybody, never mind you, and so on. So the numbers of cases has dramatically spiked amongst young people,

and we don't yet know at the time of recording quite how serious they will be. neither do we know what level of immunity and for how long having caught it will provide you. I'm waiting for my Sputnik v. Sputnik 5 vaccine, which I've requested from the Kremlin. But they seem to be a bit slow in getting it to me. Maybe they... There's a bit in your cup of tea that I made earlier there, George. Maybe they're worried it might not work and they'll lose a major asset. but the the the the vaccine process here seems extremely slow

Cuba has a vaccine, China has one, Russia has one will not buy them for ideological reasons so there is still a case for quarantining certain sections of the most vulnerable people But it's not foolproof that, Constantine, because you can lock up your granny, but you can't lock her up forever. And one grandchild is going to get through. And nobody wants to lose their granny, even if they are 82. Of course.

So I'm not with the, if you like, with the libertarians on that. But I'm ready for fresh ideas. but there are few and far between. Yeah, it does appear that we're hitting crisis point. We're not hitting, we've hit crisis point with the pandemic. The thing that I really wanted to talk to you about, George, is socialism. Because it seems that we're seeing a bit of a resurgent in people who identify our socialism. We've seen it in America with politicians like AOC.

What does socialism mean to you for a start, and then we'll go on and discuss it further? Yeah, I'm glad. you brought that up because I started out by explaining what I think is a dichotomy between liberalism and socialism and I'm not a liberal, but I am a socialist. I think it's partly because capitalism isn't working, to paraphrase Mrs. Thatcher, if you were to do a poster today like hers when she said socialism wasn't working, it would be a much longer queue. There's far more people now unemployed under the capitalist system than there possibly has ever been the American unemployment rate is now as high as it was in the 1930s in the Great Depression.

There's a wave of evictions on top of that because banks are foreclosing on landlords, landlords can't get the rent out of the people and result misery. If the United States economy doesn't pick up, I don't believe it will. then we will very shortly, in this winter, have greater levels of unemployment in the US than we did in the Great Depression. Our bounce back seems to have stalled. Our growth rate for August was 2.1% despite the most gigantic handout from the state that there has ever been in, eat out to help out, which may have spread the virus.

and may have stalled the recovery, helped to stall the recovery. So it's quite likely that by this winter, our levels of unemployment will be over 10%. If you think, well, you're too young to know, but when UB40, clue being in the name, we're talking about the one in 10, they were talking about the one in 10 unemployed.

People thought it was something else, but that's where it was. they're friends of mine. So it's quite likely that this winter will be right back in the depths of depression. And therefore, the famous Thatcher Q is now much bigger. So capitalism isn't working. And therefore, people are looking for an alternative.

And the only feasible alternative for me in developed societies with huge populations, which like ours, 65 million is a big population, a piece of land this size, is to organize ourselves in a wholly different way, with the state playing a decisive role in the organization of society and the economy, by which I don't mean the nationalization of everything. or even necessarily anything. I mean the state with a decisive, directing role

in what happens. So I'm not in favour. As I always put it, anyone that's ever seen a Bulgarian Communist Party official's suit knows that they're not good at tailoring. Anyone who's ever been in an Eastern European Soviet-era restaurant knows that they're not good

restaurant. There are some things that are too specialists, too small, too need to be too flexible to be organized by the state, art, culture, and so on, among them. But there are some things that are too important to be left to a private sector that is manifestly failing. So I believe, I've only been in China a couple of times, I don't know it well, but I would say that the Chinese model of synthesizing private enterprise, free enterprise, capitalism, with a strong central role for the state, it's not a surprise to me that the Chinese economy is the most successful economy in the world, that it will very shortly be the biggest. It's been the most transformative in the numbers of people that it has lifted out of poverty. In fact, it's lifted the greatest

number of people out of poverty of any system any country ever in history and it is now I was seeing I did a piece yesterday about the demands of the international financial community for China to be more easy on its debtors that's how far they've come that the World Bank is asking China to forgive debts and rescheduled debts for the poor countries that they have lent money to. That's how rich and powerful and successful China now is. So I would, if I was designing the economy, that is roughly the kind of economy that I would favor. It wouldn't be communism. I'm not a communist. It wouldn't be the Soviet Union, which was a failure. it would be something new.

And I think the Chinese synthesis is, if I can borrow a phrase from Tony Blair, is the third way. It's interesting. I mean, you talk about the statistics of unemployment, the economy failing. Obviously, prior to coronavirus,

the economy in the United States was ostensibly doing well here the same. But nonetheless, I think the rise of that sort of thinking actually predates the coronavirus. the unemployment that we're seeing and are going to see. And when we talk about capitalism not working, I would say certainly people of our generation and below, it's not so much about the unemployment that results from COVID that caused

that, but perhaps the situation with housing in this country, which for young people is absolutely atrocious. And also the feeling that perhaps for the first time in living memory, your children will do worse than you are doing than you did, that their living standards will be lower, that their access to good jobs, despite half of them now attempting to go to university and racking up massive deaths. Despite all of that, their life outcomes are going to be worse. So I would argue that, and I'm not a fan of socialism, but I would argue the reason that people are drawn to it is that we've had these systemic problems that predate the current crisis

in a very big way. Would you agree with that? And I don't agree that the US and British economies were doing well before the virus. As a matter of fact, the recession began before the virus, a month or two before the virus, but it had been coming. Effectively, we slump every seven, eight years. And therefore, this slump would have happened anyway, was overdue and had begun before the virus. the virus has proved that our vitals are not capable of withstanding shocks like slump, like recession, like viruses, all of which, by the way, were entirely predictable and predicted. This government, the conservative government, did, how would you call it, an exercise some three

years ago, I forget what it was called now, in which was predicated on a coronavirus and quickly had to cover up the exercise because the model basically collapsed under the weight. So if you live in a society that regularly slumps, that cannot withstand any existential jolt, then that society is not fit for purpose needs to be changed. The reason why we have a housing crisis is because of capitalism. Again, sorry to play the age card, but I was there. I opposed Mrs. Thatcher's drive to sell off council houses because I knew it would need to what it has led. And I was one. I was the Labour Party leader in Dundee. We were one of only two or three, two. places in the country that refused to sell council houses.

The government sent in the bailiffs and a high court judge, who was later found to be up to unfortunate things in a public lavatory somewhere. We hated them, not for that reason, but because he'd been sent in by Mrs. Thatcher to sell our houses. What we need in Britain is a mass construction, should be an economic multiplier for a start,

of good quality, affordable, council housing. Council housing is the best form of housing because you elect your landlord. Your landlord cannot afford to ignore you in a way that a private landlord can. Your landlord has to listen because you've got to vote

and you can vote them out or you can vote their boss out in the local authority. a mass drive of millions of council houses would transform the situation in Britain. I'm not saying because I grew up in one that the council house estate of the 1960s is the Acme, it isn't.

I always favored Titoism over Stalinism. And Yugoslavia had many more innovative ways. of practicing socialism and I like that so capitalism so capitalism isn't working for young people 50% of our people are going to university but a very small number of them end up doing anything commensurate with the investment that's been made in their education we are when I was the MP for this very street the London Olympic stadium was being built, I stormed in to the minister, the late Tessa Jowell, demanding to know why none of my constituents could get jobs on the site, why everybody that was building it was from

Poland or Bulgaria. And she halted me in my tracks by saying that there are no tradesmen unemployed in your constituency. They're just not many tradesmen in your constituency. And that's why we're having to employ them from Poland. This is madness. We've got thousands of unemployed journalism graduates, but we can't build our own Olympic stadium because we don't have enough joiners, glaziers, electricians, plumbers. That's not a functioning society, a properly functioning society. So on all levels, unemployment, increasing poverty, food insecurity, the housing crisis, capitalism isn't working. So to go back to your question, why would socialism not be something that people were now looking at? Of course, socialism had many failures.

I don't need to tell you that. Or him, his mother's from Venezuela. Okay. Socialism has many failures. But so does capitalism. And therefore, we need to find a better way. And I think that people are increasingly searching for that better way. They just won't find it in Kier Starrman or Jeremy Corbyn for that matter. And what do you think about the growing inequality between rich and poor?

Because it seems that the gap is now bigger than ever. Constantine and I were in Trafalgar Square about a month ago. And we were shocked to see hundreds of people. people lining up on Trafalgar Square for a food bank. And these were traditionally people that you wouldn't think would have to queue up to get food handed to them. Well, yesterday I was shooting a film. I wasn't in it, but directing it in Hyde Park, the site of the great exhibition. It was about Charles Dickens. I can't tell you much more than that. But the gap between rich and poor in Britain today is wider than it was when Charles Dickens was writing Oliver Twist.

And that's 140 years ago. So if in 140 years you've gone backwards in terms of equality, then you're not doing it right. And what you just described, and that's in the heart of London, the heart of the empire, I could take you places in the north of England and in some parts of Scotland where life expectancy itself is going backwards where people will not just live lives less good than their parents

but they'll live less long than their parents that's a crisis and it's one that nobody is yet addressing but which the discerning can see is a fundamental crisis And we haven't yet, as Ronald Reagan would say, we ain't seen nothing yet. If that's Trafalgar Square in the autumn of 2020, wait to February 2021. There could be serious problems. It could be disruption to social peace in this country because of mass unemployment and poverty.

It's a very important point, the inequality, because we have a lot of guests on the show from all over the political spectrum. People on the right, people on the left. I sort of think of myself somewhere in the center. But it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum. The objective fact is, and the evidence shows us very clearly, the more inequality there is in a Western democracy, the worst that is for everybody, including the rich people.

Of course. Even for billionaires, it's worse. How many gates can you put on your community? Exactly. And how effective can they? If you live in a crime-ridden society where people don't have any food, like you say, it doesn't matter how many gates. or doors or whatever, you're not going to have a good life.

And that's something that we're just going to have to address and finding some way of doing that is going to be essential. But George, we wanted to talk to you about one other thing. Can I just ask one question before we do, which is how much blame does globalization have to take for this? A very great deal. Globalization is a deeply flawed idea, and it's at the heart of this crisis,

We can't get PPE. Why? Because it comes 10,000 miles from China. Why? Why can't we make masks, rubber gloves? This was the workshop of the world. At the time of the great exhibition and Dickens that I was filming yesterday,

this was the workshop of the world. We sailed the seven seas in ships of steel, laden with our manufacturers, and now we can't make rubber gloves, we've got to buy them from 10,000 miles away. This is a cataclysmic failure, and the British capitalist class has to take a share of the responsibility for that. But the decline of national control and direction is not just an economic. problem. It's a sociopolitical one. It's the reason why we voted for Brexit, because we correctly

identified that we were no longer in control of anything meaningful in our lives. Not just we weren't, but our government wasn't. Our state wasn't. And that meant that not just the supply lines were too long, but the political command lines were too long. And we couldn't affect them. And so globalization is hated by people. They don't put it that way, most people. Most people probably never utter the word globalization. But they know it's like the camel, difficult to define, easy to recognize. The people know that far too much of what we buy and consume and eat is coming from somewhere else.

And the things that we used to do ourselves are now done. by someone else, and for the profit of a few. I mean, U.S. capital didn't relocate to China because they love chop suey. They relocated to China because they could make more money manufacturing in China, leading to the closure of the rust belt. And we've got our own rust belt here in Britain, roughly co-terminous with the red wall, which is why Brexit happens, why I knew it would happen, why I advocated that it should happen,

and why I was entirely unsurprised when it happened, unlike the liberal elite of people who benefit from globalization here. If you live beside me, I'm in the process of moving to Scotland, which is less true there. But in my part of London, why would you not be in favour of the EU? Why would you not be in favour of globalisation? You're luxuriating, not just benefiting from it, you're luxurating in it.

But of course, the farther away from that bubble you go, the less attractive the consequences of globalisation are. You don't have money for a machiatto. And so it doesn't matter that an attractive barista from slowly, Slovenia is serving it to you and historically low price. Because you don't even know what Machiaato is. You don't go to, you don't have a barista, you don't have an opair, you don't have the money to pay for a Polish electrician to build your basement or your extension and so on.

And that's the tale, to continue the Dickens point, it's the tale of two cities that we are living in within one country. globalization is to blame it's an issue we've talked a lot about on the show and brexit is something we've explored even though we both voted to remain because we're good people that always used to be the thing we used to do for a joke but we've had many pro-brexit guests on to explore that very point and it's undeniable george it's been a great interview but there's one other thing that we before we get to our final question itself that we really wanted to talk to you about that we don't really see discussed anymore.

And I actually think it is a very important point, which is Julian Assange. For anyone who doesn't know anything about it whatsoever, you're a man with very clear thinking who understands that particular situation very well. So just explain to someone who doesn't know anything at all, what is that all about? And why is he in the position that he's in now?

Well, full disclosure, Julian Assange is a personal friend of mine. And when I could no longer go into the embassy to see him, I stood outside, and sang Frank Sinatra songs to him through the window. I'm actually not a bad singer, and Julian likes Frank Sinatra. Julian Assange is a world historic figure. Whatever happens in this court case. He has developed an entirely new model of journalism,

one which facilitates the exposure of material, and information that the powerful don't want to see disclosed. And that is the very definition of journalism. If nobody doesn't want you to say what you're saying and doing, then what you're saying and doing probably isn't worth a row of beans. Because if it's not hurting someone somewhere amongst the powerful of what you are revealing, then it's probably not worth revealing. And so Julian, during the time that I have been his friend, has revealed some of the most sensational material ever, only some of which he's on trial for.

He's essentially on trial now for revealing war crimes committed by the United States and others in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, which when I started out opposing it, was a deeply unpopular stance mine i could show him my scars but you can now not find a sentient being in the land and who any longer thinks that invading and occupying iraq was a good idea but julian during that period when things were different revealed big crimes systemic crimes the war logs which showed mass killing of civilians of journalists a totally cavalier attitude to wiping people out whether they were men women or children whether they were reuters reporters whether they were prisoners being forced to commit indecent acts upon each other in the abograib prison and be photographed for the the entertainment of the torturers afterwards, videotaped and so on. Julian broke all these

stories. He also broke a lot of stories. This is why I'm a bit surprised that Donald Trump is pursuing him with the gusto that he is. I still live, by the way, in hope that Donald Trump will pardon him. He also revealed, although he's not on trial for this, the absolute venality of the Clinton crime gang and the so-called Democratic Party in the United States of America. And sure, that benefited Trump, but it benefited all of us to know that Hillary Clinton was a crook and that the Clinton crime family were up to their neck in all kinds of vice, venality, and corruption. We all needed to know that, not least because they were secular saints in Western society, Julian revealed many stories which cast these people in a new life,

for which he now faces 175 years in a supermax prison in the United States. So this story is important and yet entirely ignored by the very liberal class of journalists and broadcasters that feasted on the dripping roast of his revelations. And so if you were going to ask me, who do I hate most? In the whole world, I'd tell you the Guardian. The Guardian newspaper personifies everything that I hate in society. And one of the reasons is the Guardian feasted on Julian's stories, ran them over and over again on the front page of their newspaper, and have remained utterly silent while he's persecuted, prosecuted, and banished forever into the bowels of a supermax prison,

even though that very process may one day be used against them. And could be, I mean, if Julian has committed an offense in publishing these stories, so have they in publishing these stories. their editor could now be on trial, maybe one day will be. And if we get to a situation where a country, it's America today, it could be Saudi Arabia tomorrow. Saudi Arabia could, for example, I was a good friend of Adnan Khashoggi, who was murdered by the Saudi dictatorship and literally cut into pieces and flushed into a drain. but when he was living here in London and in fact he was living in Washington

when that happened to him the Saudis could have sought his extradition to Saudi Arabia now you might say it's fanciful that any British court would send someone to Saudi Arabia it's not that fanciful if you could send someone to 175 years in a supermax in America if the Saudis had said we won't cut his head off we'll only put him in prison for 175

five years. They could have extradited Adnan Khashoggi. It might have been better than the end that he had. But it could happen to anybody. It could happen to you. Could happen to you. You're seditious out here. Seditious to somebody. You know, that would make a lot of people very happy to it. I tell you. It could well lead to some foreign power, extraditing you and destroying you. Now, when this unequal extradition treaty was concluded, in secret, in summer, when the house was not sitting, by David Blunkett, Tony Blair's Home Secretary, you may say I'm a sooth, sir. I personally raised with David Blunkett. A notional, because I didn't know Julian at that time, a notional case.

whereby a journalist whistleblower could be extradited without just cause being needed to be shown, could be extradited to the United States under this extradition treaty. David Blanket gave me a personal assurance that it was on the face of the bill that no one could be extradited for a political crime in his secret extradition treaty that was signed before we even knew it existed. How was that for parliamentary democracy? I was an MP at the time. For here, actually, this very street.

And he said to me, showed me the declaration on the face of the bill, on the face of the treaty, that this could not happen. My fear could never come to pass. But it has come to part. And the get-out is, well, he's not being extradited for a political crime. It's being extradited for, effectively, espionage,

even though he's not a citizen of the United States, and never set foot there, never committed any crime there. And so the promises, sick, transit, Gloria, David Blunkett, where is he now? what were his promises worth they were not worth the paper that they were written on and so if you believe in freedom of speech if you believe in journalism

if you believe in the right of the public to know what is being done in their name on their dollar you need to be concerned about what's happening to julina asange and lastly you call me old-fashioned I believed, still to some extent, believe that the last uncorrupted institution in Great Britain was the judiciary. I know the social caste from which they come. I know they're not elected and cannot be removed. But when I look at how all our institutions have failed one after the other, the civil service, the media, even the police, they've all failed us, one after the other.

I thought the one that was left was the judiciary. I always used to say, and my father before me, actually, long before these institutions failed, I'd rather take my chances in front of a British judge than in front of a British politician or a British journalist or any of a British police officer and so on. And therefore, the abuse of process on view openly, if you care enough to look at it,

in this case has been so gargantuan. I'll give you just one example because time is running. If I told you that you could be extradited, even though it is established fact, that all of your meetings with your lawyers were filmed by the prosecuting authority in the United States or their agents, so they know all of what you,

your defenses, a speaker's one who was secretly filmed in the embassy. Having a pee, talking, everything I said was filmed. I can live with that. But Julian's lawyers were secretly filmed, talking to him, preparing him, and he preparing them for his defense in a court case that might one day have to take place in London. You would say such a case would have to be thrown at. Even if it was a traffic offence, it would have to be thrown at.

If the police were filming you and your discussions with your lawyers, but that happened. Nobody disputes that it happened. All the evidence has been laid in front of this court in London at the old Bailey, the old lady of British justice. But it will not make a blind bit of difference. the fact that such an abuse of process, and I could give you 500 other abuses of process that have happened,

has not made any impact on this case, means that we have to fear for the justice system in our own country itself. And we, not you, me, someone wholly British, were led to believe and did believe that British justice was really, really something, that it was justice, that that statue at top of the old Bailey of the lady with the scales really was something. Turns out it wasn't. Turns out it seems, unless in the

appeal process, this is overturned that Julian is going to be sent to 175 years in prison for the crime of telling the truth. That's a terrible story. And one of the things that I always think about is we really should be incentivizing people to whistleblow, to reveal these things. That should be something that's encouraged. You should be celebrated, paid money, whatever it is. It's a vital part of any democratic process. And yet here we are allowing this man to be extradited to another country to face injustice, not justice, but injustice. I'm glad we got a chance to talk to you about that. Me too, me too. It's an issue that you don't see covered and frankly very few people know about,

really. But George, with that in mind, we've got one more question for you. Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? That's a curveball. How Manchester United managed to spend one billion pounds and produce what we produced against Tottenham Hotspurdle last weekend. That's something that's occupying quite a few of my brain cell. One billion to assemble a squad of misfits, misfiring disasters is something. Football is a national religion in Britain. We're quite good at it. We invented it. Manchester United has been my team since 1965. I've never been more miserable about that. I feel guilty that my children are decked out in Manchester United here. And my six-year-old son, who's

the protege and remember his name, Toron Galloway. You'll still be around when he's a top player. He turned to me and said, how could Manchester United Blue 6'1 to Tottenham Hotspur or to anybody? So that is something that we should be talking about, but it may be off your beaten track. Did you want a more serious?

No, that's fine, but I've all said this as a West Ham fan, I think it's something that should be celebrated. David Moyes, that's all I'm going to say. Toron Galloway will be playing up front for Everton when we win the league. Well, I'd be honored if he was. There was an iconic player called Jimmy Gabriel

who came from Dundee, my town, to Everton and became in the 1960s an iconic Everton player. So I was brought up always to look for the Everton score. I've got a soft spot for the Everton. But I never thought they'd ever assemble it. team like they appear to have assembled now. They are dark horses for the league this year. Remember you had it. And you at home watching, you cannot see Anton's face, but I've never seen

him this happy. George, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure. I hope the viewers think so. I mean, to speak for so long and not be bored for a second is, I think, an achievement. So thanks. Thank you. And if people want to hear you speak for a lot longer, they can tune in, of course, to the mother-wold talk shows, which is normally on Sundays. Still on Sundays. It's free to air every Sunday. And you can watch on Twitter, on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, multiple platforms, even something called Twitch. For gaming, yeah.

And a million people a week are now watching it. Well, in fact, a million people are watching it on the night, close to a million. and a half over the course of a week. But we've started a midweek mother of all talk shows, which only costs $1.70 pence. And that's George Galloway, bare knuckle. So you know what I'm like on a Sunday night? Imagine what I'm like bare knuckle.

So I hope people can do it. It's on Patreon and on Facebook. Make sure you go and find that. And of course, follow George on Twitter as well. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you very soon. Absolutely, guys, for a live stream, which goes out on Tuesday, Thursday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7pm UK time,

and our episodes which go out on Wednesday and Sunday again at 7pm UK time. Take care and see you soon.