TRIGGERnometry - "It's Not As Bad As You Think" - Simon Jenkins

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist, broadcaster and author of several books including Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals and A Short History of England. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ 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

I think there's absolutely one universal characteristic of getting older is you don't think things are quite as bad as younger people think they are. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is an author and guardian journalist. Simon Jenkins, welcome to Trigonometry. It's great to have you on the show. Before we get into the conversation self,

tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how are you where you are? What has been your journey through life? How long have you got? We've got an hour, so far away. No, I left university. I think I wanted to be an academic and I wanted to use academia as a way into politics because I was interested in politics. Sort of mildly left to centre then.

I didn't like academia. I disliked universities very much. I spent a year and a half in one after graduating and chucked that in. I became very interested in politics because to me it's the sign of a living person they're interested in politics but I was a journalist from student days and I always love journalism

and I still do and I've done it ever since in that time I've done other jobs I've done other sorts of I've been editing as well as writing in journalism I believe journalists should do other jobs as well because it gives them a taste of what the rest of life is like and written books and architecture, history and so on. But journalism, I can't stop having an opinion.

Great. And look, you've had a distinguished career, of course. One of the things we were talking about before we started is Francis, you know, the depressive character that he is was giving you all doom and gloom about where we are and talking about how we're in a political crisis. And you were sort of going, well, yes, but. So give us the but. Give us a historical but to that perspective.

I think there's absolutely one universal characteristic of getting older is you don't think things are quite as bad as younger people think they are. I mean, you think everything's bad, because that's what old people do. But there is a sense in which you've seen it before. And I always remember my parents saying to me, no one could understand the interwar years in Britain who knew about the Second World War. You had to know or experience the pattern of events to judge the past.

and this business at the moment of endlessly judging the past or re-judging the past I just find very offensive because we aren't there, we're here we're not in a position to judge we're in a position to record and see what's happening but it's easy to say every I mean when I as a student we thought our politicians

were rubbish absolutely rubbish and looking back on them we think they were titans these are great men and I'm sure it's the same today I genuinely think that the present generation of politicians in Britain are the worst ever You couldn't disagree with that.

Certainly the worst in the 20th century. But I then stopped and think to myself, you know, I was a student in the Heath government. We thought they were useless. The Labour government, the country was a terrible mess in the mid to late 70s. A real mess. Thatcher was hated.

I think she was actually a very interesting prime minister, but she was hated. It's a part of the duty of Democrats to hate their government. The sign of a good democratic democracy is it votes its government out of office regularly. So I'm fairly sanguine about the state of the world. And I do think that I've always thought democracy was never necessarily going to triumph. I mean, dictatorship is a much more popular form of government, really.

But at the same time, things do get better. I'm with Stephen Pinker. Fewer people get killed every year. More people survive and don't die of starvation. There's a genuine sense that mankind progresses. I don't get hysterical about global warming. I think it exists. I'm a little denier.

But I suppose I'm a mild optimist in my general outlook on the world. That's very interesting. It's very rare to have a mild optimist in the chair, Simon. And why are you a mild optimist? What is there to be optimistic about at the moment, do you think? Well, it does you go to, you read about the 14th century occasionally. You know, I mean, there's often people who say, What year would you most like to have lived in?

I mean, I can choose a few. Certainly 1492. I'd love to have been around then, discovering America and Christianity was triumphing in a brutal way. Everything was going on in 1492. And then 1868 when they're building railways everywhere, a very exciting time. There are periods like that. But I just do think, statistically, I believe in facts,

things do get better each year. I mean, not everything gets better, for God's sake, but things do get better each year. And when something happens like Afghanistan, you think, hold on a minute. Afghanistan's had 20 years of sort of joy. And now it's gone wrong. Which is the normal?

I just don't know which is the normal. Much of the Muslim world is in a terrible state now. Well, that's their business, not mine. And at least I'm not bombing everyone still as I was 10 years ago. It's an interesting point. I think I would disagree with you that things get better every year. I mean, they get better every century.

But within that century, there's a lot of fluctuations. And I would argue we're living through one. But let's come back to your point about politicians, because I take your point, and I'm sure as I get older, I will be the same. But the BBC recently put out this drama, documentary, not drama, with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I don't know if you saw that. I thought it was very good and actually what the BBC should be doing. And I couldn't help watching that and think, look, I disagree with a lot of what Tony Blair did, Iraq and, you know, mass immigration policy, etc.

But the caliber of people that were in that documentary seems to me to be completely off the charts compared to the people that we have now, who've been media trained out of their brains, who will never say anything that you can actually. convert into actual coherent thought, who are not people of, you know, significance or talent, in my opinion. I don't know most of them, and I am interested in politics, very interested. So wouldn't, is it not fair to say that the sort of caliber of politicians has declined? I don't think so. I don't think I don't, I don't, I mean, it is, it is.

You don't think Keistama versus Tony Blair is, there's a big difference there. It's a genuine generational fallacy that you've ad embrated, I think. I mean the famous parliament of 1918 when someone looked across the House of Commons all they could see were fat cats who'd done well out of the war the famous phrase they produced everybody was corrupt everybody was with second rate

and yet they got us through the mid-war period they got us into the Second World War I suppose but it was you know you've just got to try and put your perception of the present in terms of the past if that's the judgment you're making You can say, look, this is not a useless, and we've got the hell ahead of us, and then all up to it. That's a different judgment.

But looking to the past and saying they're worse than the past, I'm just reluctant to form those judgments. But Simon, come on. You've got a leader of the Labour Party, and by the way, Boris Johnson's no better, who they don't know what a woman is anymore, right? I mean, we didn't have those sort of people 20 years ago. We just didn't. You didn't know who what a woman was? Yeah. Kier Starmor was asked, do women have cervixes anyway?

That was his... No, he was trapped by the present hysteria. You're quite right. I'm not like you with you there. But no, I think Kirstam is perfectly adequate in comparison with most other politicians since the war. I really do. Boris Johnson's an eccentric. He's a real oddball that's put it that way.

Rishishis Shunegh is not. Michael Gove is not. These are people who could have served in a Thatcher government or a Macmillan government or where it was. I just don't leap to conclusions about people's character and personality. until they're put to the real test. And let's face it, the last 18 months has been a real test. I mean, I don't know where Blair would have been in that.

And Blair was a remarkable politician, let me say. So in a sense, comparing him to Stalin. He had charm. Politicians who have charm have it all made for them, as Boris Johnson has been showing in the past. So, I mean, the qualities that make a great leader are very difficult to pin down. I mean, someone like Alex Douglas Hume,

he was a fantastically popular man. He was a useless Prime Minister. He was popular. And he almost won an election. I mean, he was extraordinary. So I'm just reluctant to rush to those sorts of conclusions. I want to judge them by their outcome, by what happens. We do tend to have a very weird relationship with the past, don't we?

Where we either romanticise it or want to tear down figures from it. It seems to be a very binary approach to the past. I think it's a fault of political conversation generally, the binary approach. I don't know. I mean, I was kind of brought up school studying classics, and my teacher has one obsession with Socrates. And we spent a whole time studying bloody Socrates. But the thing I learned from it was the dialectic method,

the concept of polarization. What are you saying? What are you saying? Can we have an argument? Don't pretend you agree. Let's see if you disagree. Let's fight it out. And I passionately believe in debate.

That's why I believe that the media must be polarized in some sense, with all the reservations you might have about that. But I mean, I just, I do think that the concept of there being differences, the concept of there being different points of view is embedded in political conversation. And if you smother it, even if you say, well, can't we find a compromise, you're running a risk. You're running a risk, you come to the wrong conclusion in something.

But we don't seem to have debate as much anymore, do we? where people, and again, push back on this, it seems that we're more polarised than ever. We're in our little silos, and society seems to be that we don't want to talk to somebody who disagrees with us. Is that me looking at society now and romanticising the past again? Or is there a truth behind what I'm saying?

No, you're romanticising the past. Okay, great. Thanks. I mean, I go back to it. All right, we're hopeless, my generation, always I go back to I go back to the 60s when I sort of had my political education and I go back to a time

when every play in London was censored gays were sent to prison divorce was exceptionally difficult abortion was banned and I can't think of the list of activities that were and the church was immensely powerful and no one challenged it

I mean, you make the point I mean, no one challenged it. Somehow that was acceptable. Let's not push out, let's mess around the boat. I mean, immigrants are all I mean, it was looking back, we sort of said, well, that's how we live. And it's how people in Muslim countries now live. So I'm familiar with that syndrome.

But it exists in Britain. I mean, the taboos that exist now have mostly gone. But they've mostly gone. We have new ones now. We've got new ones that, They're to do with personal identity, they're to do with race,

they're to do with, for some reason, drugs which fascinate me. But, I mean, there are taboos, so you're absolutely right. Paying for health is still a taboo. Every other country, you pay, you get paid back if you do, but you pay.

So I just don't think is that different. I really don't. And as you said, they're new taboos. Well, that's what I mean. I think what people I may feel is I admired people and watched comedians, for example, who pushed back against that religious dogma. And I thought that was important in order to liberate individuals from the oppressive

ideology of state-sanctioned religiosity or whatever that might be. And having gone through that, I sort of thought, well, we've got somewhere. We've made progress here. But what I feel like has happened more recently is instead of stopping there, we've gone to a new form of progress, which has now become a new religion that is imposing its own taboos on society. I think, I mean, I agree. I mean, I found the whole concept of cultural wars, odious and up to a point worrying. If I thought that more than 17% of people agreed with them, I'd be more worried. The question is, what's gone wrong with the other 87%? And that's a, different conversation.

But no, I mean, I think what I'm saying is I think we push so many boundaries back to what might call almost a liberal extreme. It's almost inevitable. There's a pushback on that. Well, obviously, yeah. And it's to be expected. I mean, you know, in America now where the education system appears to be trapped by a sort of ethos, dogmatism, you know, they lose the election.

People won't put up with it. No. And I, because I just believe that most Western societies, lucky enough to be blessed with the European liberal ethic, do have within them pushbacks. The American I used to see whenever I went over there to report whatever I was doing. He was an elderly philosopher, I can't even remember his name.

And he always said to me, whenever I was saying, how can you put up with this man, Nixon? How can you tolerate Reagan? I mean, what's going on? He always said that the American Constitution is not built the way yours is with an ongoing conversation within a civilised parliament. We go right to the boundary. We go to the edge of the cliff.

We're about to fall over the cliff. And the elastic in the Constitution pulls us back at the last minute. And interestingly, I wish he'd been alive when Trump was around because I'd like to say, you've almost been over the cliff. But he would have said, but we pulled back. Now, you pull back to Joe Biden. There's quite some pullback. Not just that, but I mean, if Trump comes back, it's a very interesting article in the

statesman saying, I mean, what literally happens if Trump comes back? What literally happens if he wins? I mean, this is going to be the ultimate test for the American Constitution. And I do believe I can see that as a plausible scenario. I can't quite believe it's going to happen, but there we are. Johnson going to stay there 10 years, then what? Dear God. But hey, Constantine, do you love trigonometry?

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Join our community by hitting the link in the description and the pin comments below. See you there, guys. Looking at Trump and looking at Johnson absolutely decimating the opposition and being a person of the left, as I am, do you not think, Simon, that the left needs to take responsibility for these victories and actually say that they're not appealing to the ordinary working person? They're not making that connection. Well, hold on.

I mean, the left, or chunk of the left, a critical chunk of the left, deserted Labour voted for Johnson. Now those same people appear from the polls to be revolting against him because they didn't like much in his form of government. That's the system hitting back. I do think that the British Constitution has his ability to bite back and I like it. That sort of works. By the same token, I was desperately disappointed during the Brexit argument without getting involved in the actual argument itself. But it was clear that Parliament was very upset by not just Brexit, but hard Brexit,

by the approach the government was taking, intransigent hostility, all these things were bred into it. And Parliament had an opportunity when May was in real trouble to seize control of the executive from the government. government and say we want these following things to be done. And the Labour Party then and the Liberal Democrats and Scott Nats, the various opposition parties in Parliament, could have got together and never did.

And I remember thinking that's the, I thought that was the death of Parliament. The Parliament is now just an electoral college and nothing else. When offered the chance to take a lead, he couldn't do it. And quite a few quite senior Labour figures, I know, thought, do we seize control in some sense? and just couldn't find it in them to do so. Party discipline being what it was.

So, you know, we do go near the edge occasionally, and we sometimes fail, and I think in that case it failed. I don't think Johnson's victory was all that surprising. I don't actually think it's a catastrophe. I think he's a very odd man. I know him a bit. He's a very old man. And my wife was at university with him and knew much better. But no, I mean, politics is fascinating.

It's always changing. It's always different. And I'm just not a catastrophist. And do you think the left is going to actually capitalize now on Johnson's fallibilities, the sleigh scandals that are hitting the Conservative Party? Do you think they're actually going to be able to make Inrose into that? into the red wall, as it were, and reclaim those heartlines? I haven't the foggis notion.

Okay. I think, I think, I think, I think the answer is probably yes. Really? I don't think Starmer's finished. I think he's, I think he'd be regarded as a decent man, honest man. He's got a long, lot of thought to learn. I mean, don't try and play Johnson's game. I would have just stood aloof from Johnson

and just appeared to be a respectable potential leader. He's got a big problem with talent. the Labour Party is not getting good people into Parliament. The Liberal Democrats to me are the Tory Party in disguise. I mean, the Tory Party is useful idiots. They're always sitting there, taking votes away from Labour just at the crucial moment when Labour most needs left to centre support. And the Liberal Party are Tories in the sense that they do not want Labour to win.

because if they wound up what did deals and seats with labour never to contest a potential labour victory Labour Party would win as with Scotland Scotland's a hot I'm doing a book about the Celts at the moment

I mean it's just phenomenal to me that the Scots haven't gotten to pay with Labour or Labour with the Scots because that's 50 seats it's completely crazy you genuinely think the Labour Party as it now, obsessed with identity politics, unable to speak to ordinary people about the things

that actually matter to them, economic, inequality, housing, all of this. They don't talk about it. They talk about all this other sort of metropolitan liberal stuff that we love to talk about here in London. You think they're going to make a comeback? Well, yes, I do, because they always have. I mean, the early 1980s in this country, the Labour Party was completely finished. Yes.

I mean, in the late 50s, it was finished. Mark Abrams wrote a book for Why Must Labor Always Lose? These books have been written for 50 years. Everybody starts new parties on the right and on the left. Nigel Farrow is still mucking around with some party called UKIP or whatever. The SDP is trying to refound itself. Liberal Democrats refuse to shut up. And yet, the Labour Party does come back.

Now, it does need a blur. Well, that's my point. need someone who can talk the language of not the extremes, be those extremes, those of industrialised labour or of identity politics. I'm assuming that Kirsteimber at some stage or in some sense can capture that particular initiative. You don't do it with an hour and a half speech at your party conference, that's for sure. But the system has built into it, the reaction. the reaction to superiority. So I'm just assuming that will happen.

I may be completely wrong, but it's always happened before. So your argument is not so much that you see in the current Labour Party the seeds of recovery, but rather that historically this is what always happens. Parties go through downfalls, they lose a lot, and people get fed up of losing, and then Blair comes along. Francis and I had an argument about this the other day on camera, and it's very much what I was saying, actually. So I'm challenging from a devil's advocate point of view more or less

But it strikes me that I mean I'm not saying this to flatter you But you do seem to have very sensible views About a lot of these issues The culture war issues particularly I was told I'd never be on television Well that's why Because they can't

So we don't know where you're coming from Yeah Coming from here, you know Well quite I'm sorry about being sensible And go on anyway And that's what we tried to do on the show Much the same as you

So forgive me for this question, but I have to ask it. You work at The Guardian. How do you manage to do that? Well, the Guardian publishes what I write. They pay me to write it and they publish it. I've got no problem. Yeah. But next to that is an article about how skyscrapers are signs of toxic masculinity spewing male,

whatever, into the atmosphere. Actually, I rather agree with that point. I go along with that one, for sure. I hate skyscrapers. I like little Georgian houses Yeah, that's fine I'm not sure there's signs of toxic masculinity spewing male

whatever into the atmosphere I did once write an article said exactly that well they're pro-apic politicians with an erectile dysfunction or something I mean they are a feature of male planning in some key architects not a planning

architects who plans a different matter no I mean be that it made No, I mean, the dear old Guardian's fine. I mean, the Guardian needs to be there. I'm proud of a country that publishes of the Guardian, and that that paper is now second or third, most widely read quality paper on Earth, and that's thanks to online.

I've got no problem with it at all. It's not monotheistic or monolingual. It has many points of view reflected in its pages. It's broadly speaking left of centre. That's true. I wouldn't say I'm broadly speaking left-of-cent. to the centre because I cannot place myself anywhere on the spectrum. On almost every issue, I find I'm on the opposite position

with someone else I thought I agreed with is on. But, no, I mean, I, there was a time, I remember it well, I wrote a book about the press ownership back in 19, late 70, I think, in which of the seven British newspapers, first thing about newspapers I may say is, when I entered newspapers, everyone thought, you're mad. The future is broadcasting, as they're now. say the future is podcasting and so on.

Newspapers are dead. They're made of dead trees, dead ink, the dying people, they're finished. There were seven newspapers, daily newspapers in Britain then. There was room for two or three,

we were told. You know, pundits in the industry. They're eight today. They have a longevity that defies everything. But there was a time then when the only papers of the left were the Daily Herald, the Guardian and the Daily Mirror.

Daily Mirror was up for sale. Daily Herald had gone bankrupt and bought by Murdoch or became the son. And the Guardian was stuck in Manchester. If the Daily Mirror had gone to a right-wing owner, they would not have been

a liberal voice or left-wing voice in British press. I really thought at that point the government had to act. Now, the system for no reason to do with public policy at all, the system has nonetheless delivered a diversity of opinion throughout my life. But my whole life is extraordinary. And the Daryl BBC keeps it going against all knocks to its pride and so on.

And it behaves idiotically and yet it's still there and yet it's still diverse. And we're terribly lucky in this country. My son is in California. He just, I hardly bear, you know, he gets the BBC online in all sorts of ways. But the American press, when I go to America, I feel quite frightened. But I guess the reason I was asking about how you feel at The Guardian is I think, look, I don't want you to be throwing your colleagues under the bus at all. It's not what I'm trying to do.

But it has changed. They throw me quicker than that. It has changed. Hasn't it? Oh, yes, it has. I mean, all papers do change. No, it has changed. Okay, let me rephrase.

It's changed in the direction that I personally think is wrong. Well, you disagree with it? No, no, no, no, no, no. I, like you, think it's very important that the Guardian exist. I just think it ought to do sensible articles of the centre-left, which I happily read and enjoy and sometimes agree with. All of this moronic cultural stuff, I think, is very off-putting, and it undermines the reputation of the paper as a whole for me.

Well, I'm sorry you feel that. There we are. I mean, what I just do think is very important for there to be a public voice for all points of view, even in a polarized political environment. I mean, the Guardian, the Guardian used to be, the Manchester Guardian, it was a liberal paper, it was not a Labor paper, and I remember it as being almost intolerably compromising on every issue. It's not that anymore, you're quite right. It's a champion, a banner waiver for the left of the political spectrum. It is not of one voice any more than the left of the spectrums of one voice, to put it mildly. And I think the Guardian does struggle to represent all points of view within what might be called the broad left of the spectrum.

And a number of articles there drive me up the wall, they drive lots of people at the wall. I'm not surprised they probably drive you up the wall. But I'm glad they're there. And I do think that the most important thing is the guardianship of diversity in the press and in the media. And if the Guardian wasn't there, there would be a very very important thing. If the Guardian wasn't there, there would be a very severe lack of diversity, and I feel that quite strongly. You mean diversity of thought? Yes.

We often use the terms diversity, but they tend to mean different things now, don't they? We don't tend to talk as much about diversity of thought, and I'm really glad you brought that up. Why do you think that is, Simon? Well, the word diversity has been hijacked by identity politics, and that's so much at the moment. I could discuss whether I'm as a, you're kind of as about that as I am about other things because I think there are dangers in that. But I mean, I've always used the word diversity of the press

as representing diversity across the left-right spectrum. That spectrum is now corrupted to such a degree that it's often difficult to define what it really means. But I just want different points of view expressed, that's what I'm really saying. We were having a conversation before the camera started rolling, about Margaret Thatcher. And in this country, even though she died a few years ago, she still is a fantastically divisive figure. And you are actually saying that there were

certain qualities of hers and things that she did that you found quite admirable. And I'll be honest with you, coming from a Guardian journalist, I found that quite shocking. What is it about Maggie that was, that you thought was good and necessary at the time? Well, she met, made decisions and approached issues of the day in a way that had not been confronted for the previous, the previous 10, 20 years and needed confronting. And now had the guts to do it. She did it often crudely, she did it often haphazardly,

and she did it with a lack of sympathy in charm, which caused a great damage, no question about that. But I mean, it's been like the interwar years. I mean, you've got to go back to the 1970s, 1970s. The 1970 to 1976, 789,

you really thought Britain was finished. You actually thought, I mean, quite apart from winters of discontent and rubbish piling in the streets and so on,

which was quite so toxic to the political life of the country. Every other country thought we were dead. The British disease was, I mean, the British disease

must not infect Europe as an obsession. We were members of the European community and people said, how can we stop the British disease infecting Europe? And that disease,

was over powerful trade unions, monopolies, state monopolies, state-hand half the what now is the private sector, it was extraordinary. And no one in the Callahan-Wilson governments then had the guts to confront it. Ted Heath did for two years and then puncted it and did this great U-turn. Politics in the 70s was Britain at his most desperate. And in the 1970s, the 1980 party conference season, I remember well, everybody said Mrs. Thatcher's finished. She's been so unpopular.

I mean, no one's going to vote for Mrs. Thatcher. And I remember I was in the political lobby there. Everyone was taking bets on this. And I just, I'm like I am now. I said, she's fine. She'll come around. She won't be gone by Christmas. I remember five or six senior political editors

betting me, you know, 10 quid. She'll be gone by Christmas. I collected from half of them. As political editors, never pay up. But the fact is, by the late 80s, Britain was on a role. And it was on a role largely because of things done by Mrs. Thatcher, or her government. And it was the star of Europe. Now, that transformation took place under that woman.

And it's the fact. By the 90s, you know, we were actually creaming ahead. But that was almost inconceivable in the 70s. And so why is that being the case? Why is she so divisive then? Why does she instill with such rage and anger, even now, 30 years after her government? I think we're sitting in the east end of London saying that. I mean, I'm not quite sure people feel quite that strongly about it elsewhere.

They do in Scotland, where I lived for many years. They do in some parts of the north, some people. Okay, well, the reason is that she traumatized them. No question about it. She traumatized them. I mean, she, mining, which was a great sort of cultural sweep of England, was buying. She ended it. Steel collapsed onto her.

British cars were useless. She said so. She privatized great swathes of industry, which would heavily protect shipbuilding by the state. All those interest groups suffered. And at the same time, she was not showing any great charm or sympathy with the NHS or for those things. No, she was unpopular. No question about that. And on top of that, God, does anyone interview her new?

She had no personal sympathy with these people. The famous stories about her going off to work in the morning. And the children would wave at her from the upstairs room. She'd never turned back, whereas her husband turned back and waved. I mean, she was a difficult person. And I just think that, you know, one has to set these things to one side. I mean, one's criticising Boris Johnson for being Boris Johnson. People criticise Mrs Thatcher for being Mrs Thatcher.

You've got a certain point in the argument to set this to one side and say, are they doing the right thing? And I think on the whole she did the right thing, a necessary thing, not the right thing. It's curious as you're talking, it makes me think, and, you know, I said when Kirstama became the leader of the Labour Party, I said he needs to pick a fight with the extremist in his own party, get them out and do the right thing. He hasn't done that in my opinion. But do you think it's an inevitable part of strong and good political leadership that you're going to do things that work for the country but maybe really don't work for some people?

And that's the price you have to pay if you're actually going to get things done. But clearly the answer is yes. And I think, I mean, Blair's most impressive period was the two years before he became Prime Minister. Absolutely. And I remember interviewing him then. And I think this is, this is, I mean, he took on the party constitution. He took on the National Executive.

He confronted all these pressure groups within his own party. I talked to him about electoral mayors, elected mayors. And the great sales pitch for elected mayors for Tony Blair was they might smash local Labour parties. That's what he saw as the opportunity, told me to my face. So you're right. He understood, and he had a group around him who understood, that he had to transform the Labour Party.

Now, I think it's more difficult at the moment because I don't think the Labour Party is institutionally anything like Blair was handling. Its problem is it's got a lot of rather weak leaders who talk the wrong language at the moment because of the nature of the groups within the Labour Party support them. I do think the red wall thing is significant. I mean, I do think that the Labour Party is going to realize he's got to win these people back and it will not win them back

with identity politics. It just won't. It's not the way to do it. What's wrong with identity politics, Simon? I think it's really damaging. I think identity, I think identity politics is the, I mean, the essence of democracy to me is one man, one, one woman, one vote, one person, one vote. And if you, if you And the differences that arise within a well-organized democracy are differences of opinion on policy. How do we want our country to be run? How do we want to live? How do we want to treat people?

Can we bring ourselves, given the fact that not everyone's the same, but we're treating them as the same for democratic purposes? They got one vote. We have to pretend, in a sense, that we are all equal. if you start saying I regard you as privileged and myself as underprivileged so I want positive discrimination in my favour or I want to organise my politics

around my group, not what we think I just think you undermine democracy I really do and I think if you move down the route of people voting as groups this is what happens in Iraq you vote with your family or group whatever it might be

You do not vote for anything other than that. And your interest there is your interest. You're voting for your pocketbook or your job or whatever it is you're going to be up to grip. And the idea of equality of opportunity, of equality of treatment, equality of approach, goes out of the window if you go too far down that particular route. One of the problems has certainly been that certain groups in British society historically, the poor, the Celts, immigrants, where it might be, have not been treated equally.

And now they've found a way of mobilizing that sense of discrimination or sense of failure to their advantage. And a large chunk of the community feels guilty in responding to that. And it's that guilt that leads them to either make wrong decisions or not to get in the way of people who are making wrong decisions, which is the ultimate danger in democracy. It's not enough for evil to try and try. just for good people to stay silent. I mean, if you stay silent in the face of some of these things that are happening,

then they will go on happening. And it's mobilizing the silent majority, which has always been the great cliche of democracy. It's mobilizing the silent majority that holds the way out of this. And I think we will get out of it. It's a sort of temporary hysteria, but it's certainly very vivid if you're a victim of it. And that's, do you think that's a question?

controversial opinion to have if you were a member of the Labour Party on the left, this critique of identity politics? I don't think so. I mean, I think, because everyone talks about it all the time. Would you write something like this in The Guardian? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I've never felt I can't write on the Guardian.

I mean, they print right twice a week, I mean, or they put it online. No, I mean, I... It's partly the way you express it. I mean, I do think that, I mean, I was spent a year at Sussex University, you know, and I've decided to dissociate myself completely from it because of what they did down there. I thought it was just outrageous. Kathleen starts while she was in this chair yesterday.

Oh, really? I'm thinking of returning my honorary degree. But, I mean, I, I don't think you can't continue like this. I mean, you can see what's happened in America. America has this wonderful. America goes right to the extreme and then Virginia votes out. The Democrat votes.

Would rather have Trump than this rubbish you're teaching us. California, sane on drugs. America is both the most retarded country and also the most advanced and it's fascinating for that reason. I don't know how it's going to act out. But all I just do know is that,

I'm sure you had them this chair. I mean, thousands of people, if not millions of people, don't go along with it. And almost all the people I talk to agree with me and knew on the subject. So I just think we'll get over it. I wish. Francis is having a meltdown here because, for one, someone is being positive about the future and he can't handle it. Go on, mate. Go on. Tell us about how depressed you are. Go on. It's what the people want to hear. This is what they come for with Trigonometry and Francis Foster. Go on, mate.

I'm a rabid pessimist, Simon. And look, there's a part of me. I'm like all pessimists. I enjoy my pessimism. I enjoy it. I revel in it. I roll around in it every day. I wear it. But my problem, and joking aside, is I don't see a way out. And when I don't see a way out of a problem, that's when the panic starts to arise. And I look. at the Labour Party and I look at the figures, I don't see someone with conviction. I don't see someone with passion. I don't see someone who can galvanize.

I don't see anyone who can challenge. If I'm going to be blunt, I don't think I see many people with a backbone. And that's what worries me, even if they disagreed with me, if they had a backbone and go, no, this is what I think. I'd be far more likely to vote for that person. Well, I saw the list.

You've had plenty of people in this chair who say that or who got backpone I think and I mean many of them are friends of mine and I admire their outspokenness but I mean you're asking me

very specific questions about the past and the relationship between the past and the present and I try to set the present in the context of the past because as the cliche goes you won't know the future if you don't so we have an obligation people of intelligence or whatever

have an obligation to look to the past to learn from it and and I I, that things happen in Britain always, which have distressed me no end, and the things happening now which distress me. And when it, when, when, when I see people behaving towards other people in a way that, that used to happen in totalitarian countries, I mean, some people, some people, not many people today,

treat other people they disagree with, much as the pre-Reformation church teach, treated heretics. I mean, and, and I think to myself, Gosh, if these people were there, then they'd be doing the burning at the stake. Yeah. And I just think, are they aware of that? I mean, I remember my family. I may say a young, practical recently student who says, you'll not get there.

They're always in television. You've got your voice out. So you know, let us have a go. I mean, we have this sort of unconstructive conversation. But, I mean, I sort of take a point. I mean, if I genuinely thought that the right-wing press is being shut down by the cultural warriors, then I would worry. There's not the slightest sign of that happening.

There's not the slightest sign of their critics not appearing on the BBC, not appearing on your show and so on. So I just don't think things as catastrophic as they're implying. Okay. But if you're asking me, could I please give you the roadmap out, then that's much more difficult. I grant you. Okay.

So let me help France. It's unusual of me because I try to be the positive one. You talk about rewriting of history, for example. I mean, what happened last year to me, and I'm from Russia, I'm from a Jewish background, so all this white guilt nonsense doesn't apply to me. It's nothing to do with me. My ancestors didn't enslave anyone. My ancestors were slaves, right?

So I don't buy into any of this crap. To me, what happened in this country last year when you had police officers being told don't shoot when they don't carry firearms, kneeling to an organization that wants to defund them? and the entirety of the media class, entirety of the political class, all virtually bowing the head, bending the knee, whatever you want to say, to this absolute garbage that's come over from America. It's nothing to do with the history of Britain. We don't have black people being shot by police in this country.

This absurdity. And yet very, very few people had the backbone of Francis as to stand up against it. And now you're seeing, you talk about CRT in America, it is being taught in this country as well. Right. And we've had people in that chair, Simon, who go, I don't agree with it. It's completely wrong. But my kids go to a school where this happens and I'm afraid to challenge it. Tell me that is not the path to ruin. It's a path to ruin, if it would to be the generality of what's happening in this country, as it was in Virginia. I mean, there are schools in the United Kingdom, which I came across at least 10 years ago, where they still teach. Croatianism. They're places in the United Kingdom,

and I'm talking about Northern Ireland here, you know, where abortion is passionately opposed, where the most rabid conservative opinions still rule, and we don't do anything about it. It's the liberal United Kingdom. Peace walls dividing our cities in the United Kingdom. I can't get anyone excited about that. I'm bloody Northern Irish, you know.

Now, I'm not defending it. I'm not attacking it. But I just try to keep these things in perspective. The things that you were referring to last year, the reaction to it was instantaneous and fierce. I mean, you know, the Home Secretary, the police, they all said this is a mistake. It's like people who stopped the traffic getting onto the roads.

I mean, just enraised everybody. Your strength of feeling, I imagine, is shared by 60, 70% of the population. And I just don't think it has any chance becoming what might be called the light motif of British education policy or social policy. I just don't. Yeah, there's some crazies about. There's always been some crazies about. I mean, when I as a student, everything was Vietnam.

Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, why don't you do more about Vietnam? Nothing to do with me, Vietnam? It's going to the world. Oh, well, what's wrong with you? You've got some problem? Come on, come on this march. You're going to smash something down. Okay, let me try again on a different subject now.

You mentioned Muslim countries, and you mentioned, that. We've had a number of terrorist attacks in this country in recent days, which have been happening for a long time and statistically speaking, extremely unlikely to affect anyone watching this, listen to this, the tiny, tiny issue in terms of the number of people killed, in terms of the number of people physically affected. But again, the reaction, you know, this Liverpool bomber that was talked about as a Christian convert. And we all just buy, like the telegraph, the telegraph or writing an article going, Christian convert bombs. Really? Are we buying into this idea that this guy was actually a Christian convert? We're going to just run with that? Do you know what I mean?

So there's a cowardice about naming the problem on that issue, don't you think? I think quite a question. I was just you're referring to. I mean, I got quite sure about terrorism. Terrorism is a crime. Yeah. It should not be treated as political at all. Most of these people are mad in some degree. They've got problems. They shouldn't be in this country or they should be locked up or whatever. I'm quite tough on that. Yeah. But what I refuse to do is to recast my society because politicians and the media so exaggerate the threat.

I mean, the threat from drug gangs is far worse than the thing. We just live with it. Agreed. We just live with it. I mean, we live with these terrorist outrages. And I... My point is more about the fact that we refuse to be honest about the issue. When Sir David Ames was killed,

the politicians started talking about online anonymity, as if that had anything to do with this guy stabbing him, right? The same with the... So my point is, we refuse to talk about the issue, and I take a point about drug gangs. We've had Tony Sol on the show to talk about the impact in that community. But my worry is that we are no longer having an honest conversation, honest conversation about so many issues.

To me, that is the path to ruin as well. So I'm just trying to help Francis out. Well, free speech is an absolute, except, of course, it isn't. So you say, well, when I'm having an argument with the Home Secretary once about this cause of causing offence as a crime. How do you define offence if someone feels offended? You mean the person who's the victim defines the crime? Well, that's where we are at the moment, she knows.

Well, I mean, this is crazy. Agreed. I mean, this was 20 years ago. Now, if anything, not quite as crazy now as it was then, but other forms of craziness have taken over, and I imagine they always will. If people haven't got big things to worry about, they'll find smaller things to worry about,

and they'll make the smaller things big. And that's what's happening with free speech at the moment. To my mind, it's absolutely absurd that you try and institutionalize a reaction to, people who say unfortunate words or whatever it might be, and this business in cricket and so on. It's no good. I mean, I'm not defending it.

I'm just saying there has to be a sense of proportion in our response to it. And we've lost that sense of proportion, partly because enough people have got a vested interest in keeping this ball rolling. To every single paper when you open the page, there's another story about it. I mean, I just don't think it's going to, I don't think it's something else to take its place. I mean, terrorism. The word terrorism was on every page of every newspaper, every day, more or less. and as a one of a cover of private eye,

I said, we mustn't be terrorized into fear what it was on other pages, panics. It was a very good thing. I'm coming back to this rather relentless theme about in political debate, although the debater like Socrates

is a vested interest in bigging up his or her side of the argument, the important thing in the outcome, which is why you have judges who aren't decided, so to speak, is to put it in proportion. And getting it into proportion is the most difficult political task of all political tasks.

It's easier to say what the problem is. It's easy to say what the solution is. Getting it into proportion, that's much more difficult. Simon, were Constantine's from Russia, my family, one half of them are Venezuelan. And over COVID, alarm bells started to ring more and more in my head, particularly when it came to journalistic freedoms, particularly after what happened. Matt Hancock, he was deservedly fired for what he did, breaking the COVID regulations.

And then Pretty Patel trying to pass the bill. I lost track of it. I don't know if it was passed, where if the journalists would seem to humiliate the government, they could spend 14 years in jail maximum sentence. Where do you see journalistic freedoms now? Do you think there as free as they've ever been, or do you think there's been an effort by the government

in order to try and restrict them? Well, there's always the latter. If you listen to the spy catcher, I can't remember the dates of spy catcher. It was amazing. The government simply said, you aren't allowed to say or do anything that we don't let you. I mean, it was almost at that level about areas of government. I'm a great support of index on censorship and other groups like that into news. I mean, they're important groups that champion journalism around the world.

I went to speaking Colombia once under the old regime. I mean, a quarter at least of the people I was talking to are now dead. I mean, to be a journalist in these countries is to be brave. I don't think you're going to be very brave in this country. I really don't. And I also think it's a little booming profession. People who say that it's dead. It's not dead.

More journalists are being employed every year than the year before, I think. Most of them in social media and all these sorts of activities, but they're in employment. And investigative journalism has never been so vigorous. Panama papers, I mean, all these things and the WikiLeaks and things the Guardian was doing are major, major disclosures of secret areas of the state and of the private sector, which were completely hidden before.

And it's worth going back and looking at a newspaper. We were having this argument at someone. I said, right, let's get every copy of the daily papers from 1955, 1960, 1965. You sit down and read them. They are beyond belief dull. I mean, 90% of it was just reporting what happened in Parliament or the courts. And there was nothing revelatory or sensational.

Tabboys were slightly different. But the quality of the journalism was appalling by comparison today. And I just do think that, I mean, you've just seen it with sleaze. These guys weren't killing people. I mean, they were doing dodgy things, which they shouldn't be doing. All right, I'm not defending it. But, I mean, they're killed. I mean, the savagery of the press response to them.

I just, I think he's over the top. I really do. And I got some sympathy with Boris Johnson in some of his respects. Okay, I'll push back. I'm afraid. I agree with you. I'll push back on that. So, like I said, my mother's from Venezuela.

I saw what corruption does. If you don't challenge corruption, if you don't root out corruption, corruption is like a cancer. It will spread its tentacles into every aspect of society. and ultimately the society will crumble as a result. I've seen it with my own eyes. I think you need, when a corruption happens or when you see it, it needs to be ripped out,

and it needs to be attacked. Otherwise, what will happen is, like I just said. And that's a doomsday scenario, but I've seen it. Would you not agree with that? I would very strongly. I mean, it's one of the reasons when I get a Venzaader a few times, and it's a lovely country. when I was an absolutely marvelous place.

Rich too. Yeah. But, you know, it went wrong. And the question then is, what do I do about it? I mean, I can say that. I can commiserate. Is it my business? I'm not so sure.

I'm in a country, which is probably any country in the world, where you can go into the public marketplace and buy yourself a seat in Parliament. There's a peer. You can actually buy yourself a seat in Parliament. I find that staggering. I find no country that tolerates that is entitled to criticise any other country

for the quality of their democracy, as long as that's the case in this country. And yet, people shrug and they smile, and they do the things they're doing in Turkey and they do in Brazil and so on, oh, well, you know, it's life. It's not life. As long as you're selling seats in Parliament,

it's not life, it's corrupt. British politics, I had to tell around the BBC because I said it was, corrupt in some news program. You can't use that word of... You've got to be able to prove it. Oh, should be over court case?

Let's discuss it in court, you know. This poor presenter has obviously been told in a little word corrupt to be applied to the Conservative government. I can't believe it. But I mean, I think... I'm really saying it's a complicated message. The terms of the debate matter. If you want other people who disagree with you to be persuaded by,

you've got to go, in a sense, some way into the conversation to establish the rules of the game. When Kenneth Clark was doing his great series on civilization, he was asked in the very last program, what are the defining qualities of a civilized country? And he said very interestingly, he said, I think actually it's the courtesy of public debate. Interesting word, courtesy.

And it's rather what I'm discussing here now. It's the terms in which you conduct this debate. Do you hold your head in your hands and scrimands, and scream or burst into tears or shout or whatever. Or do you say, why do you think that? I mean, why do you, you know, I'm trying to say to my niece, why do you think that? All right, you think it's true.

But, I mean, do you, first, you do respect my not agreeing with you? Do you use the word respect at all in terms of this conversation? But having established respect, we then have rules in which we conduct this. And those rules are governed by what I call courtesy. I think I'm at your point about freedom of speech. I think these are the essential qualities of freedom of speech, not just being allowed to shout louder than the other guy. No, absolutely right.

But I think France's point, I hear what you're saying is, and I agree, to me, I'll be honest with you, maybe this is my Russian background, but it's like politicians being corrupt, I saw the black government, they were exactly the same, exactly the same, in the same way that these guys are doing, what they're doing, those people were taking cash for questions and all of that stuff, right?

This was all happening. And I kind of see it as a sort of should be condemned, should someone somewhere should do something about it really, but it's kind of the price of doing business, isn't it? Well, I mean, and you've seen with these, we have not heard the end of this yet. 38 billion pounds was swilling around Whitehall for about six months over test and trace and PPE,

the beginning of the pandemic. And it was as if you were suddenly in, in, Russia in 1990. Yep. I mean, everybody thinks, Jesus, God, I can make a fortune. Well, you're sure? I can make a fortune. Well, it's not right.

I can make a fortune. I mean, people were just into that trough, in a brace of shakes, and the system helped them. And we don't know where 30, probably more like 20 now, but we don't know where 20 billion went. I don't know if the National Audit Office will ever find out. This was a deeply corrupt period. There were reasons for it. for it. Governments were panicking, but nonetheless, when you suspend the rules of the game,

you get corruption. And I'll push back once more, Simon. So we have a housing crisis in this country, which is having a huge untold impact on the lives of young people, on birth rates, on society. And no government, whether Labour or Conservative, has done a lot to change that. They haven't done a lot to solve the problem. The problem has continually got worse. Johnson, when he got elected, one of his pledges was that he was going to do something about it. Michael Gove gets 120 grand from housing companies. All of a sudden, it's been shelved to the back. Now, are those two things connected? I'm not sure. But once again, we kick a huge societal problem. We kick the can

further down the road. Well, I don't agree. We have no housing crisis. We have a housing market. The housing market houses most British people perfectly satisfactorily, apart from the homeless, who I do worry about. The place where the housing crisis is supposed to be worst is London. London has the youngest labour force

and the youngest population in Britain. They live somewhere. The tradition that everyone who should have their own own house at the age of 30 is absurd. It applies to no other country. It was started by Thatcher, my friend, not yours.

You said everyone has a right to a house, to own a house, and she's sold off public housing stock to these people who immediately rented it out for profit. But I just don't see this housing. I mean, every country in the world, we're the economist every week, has house prices going up by faster than inflation. The biggest problem is we underuse houses.

That's the crisis. In London in particular, London has the lowest house occupancy of any city in Europe. We've got two bedrooms for every person. And the reason for that is the taxation system does not tax properties it should. And we tax housing transfers through stamp duty, which means that no one has invested in any interest in selling their large house and getting into a smaller one. So all housing policy is crazy. But I just don't see a crisis. The only crisis is homelessness. And that is what we're pouring

money into first time buying, which immediately increases the price. So the taxpayers increasing house prices. Yes. I agree with that. But Simon, come. That money ought to go on a homeless. But come on. You say there's no housing crisis. You've got young people who are living five to a flat. What that means is they're not going to get, they're not going to be getting married. They're not going to be having children. That affects their outlook on life. It means they act in less mature ways, frankly. We see it with our generation. The percentage of your of your income that is spent on housing is rising rapidly for young people in particular. It's what I paid.

Percentage-wise. Yeah. I paid 35% of my income when I was young. my house. It was crazy. I was buying a flat. I shouldn't be. I should have been renting. I hadn't settled. In Germany, you buy a house and you settle. You rent otherwise. We're now back to the renting levels that we had quite some time ago before the house buying boom, went out of hand, which never did in Germany, incidentally. It's quite interesting how different places are. This word crisis goes with the word housing, as if it's one phrase. I mean, there's not a transport crisis or a food crisis or anything. There's a housing

crisis because we're so used to reason the phrase that the housing house building lobby always use. No, I just think I can government ought to be in housing except for very, very poor people. But the problem is the government isn't housing and it's messing everything up.

It's messing it up by effectively subsidising house prices and the house prices and the house prices go up. But people still buy houses and people still live in London. I mean, there's scandals. Scandals as empty property. Scandals is foreigners buying houses and not living in them. That I deal with.

But all I can say is you walk the streets of London. I mean, you can then walk the streets of Manchester. It's as if there are two age groups. London is just so young now. I live five to have flat ones. Come on. But do you not think that it's a problem where people can't see a way out of a rental situation, where they have no hope in being able to afford to buy a,

place because house prices have increased a huge amount and wages haven't kept up. Surely that's a problem, Simon. It's not a problem. It's a fact. If it is a fact, I mean, all the younger people I know seem somehow to find somewhere to live, all I can say. It may not be where they want to live. People always want a better house. So the demand always exceeds supply. So the concept of housing need is meaningless. It's used by the government still. It's an old Marxist concept. The end of Marxism in British government is the concept of housing need. As if there's a fixed number of people

and a fixed number of houses, there aren't. There's a highly fluid market. I can get the streets in suburban Manchester. You can walk along empty street after empty street after empty street after empty street. You can find that in parts of the West Midlands. Empty street after empty street. There's plenty of houses.

Not only that, but they're all carbon sinks. I mean, the last thing we should be is demolishing them and building blocks of flats, which we're continuing to do. But people want to live in the southeast. House prices go up in the southeast as they go up in, Sydney and Melbourne, San Francisco and Los Angeles, around New York.

Britain is in the lower half of world capitals in terms of house price inflation. Just look at the facts. It's one of my jobs to do occasionally. It is not a problem. It's a need. People want better houses. There's no question about that.

And they all want to live in the countryside. And they want to drive to work. They want to not have to sweat on the commuter trains. It may well be that's going to be the new pattern now after lockdown. I don't think so, but it may be. But I mean, you can literally do what everyone wants and you can simply build houses over the whole of Kent and East Anglia. And that's what people will want.

That's what people they will demand. And I'll keep on saying there's a crisis because I can't get what I want. But people starting out on life often have trouble living in the space. living in the space they can afford. It's not, I knew about that. Housing standards in Britain are better than they've ever been in history. So there's not, there wasn't some golden age when everybody has exactly the house they wanted

and possibly between the wars, which is sort of golden age. But no, I just, I just don't recognize this word crisis. I just don't. All right. Simon, it's been... Sorry. No, it's fine. It's fine.

This is the nature of the show. Everything is fine. And as a result, Francis is going to get more depressed than he usually is. But Simon, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. We've got a couple of questions for our local supporters.

But before we wrap up the interview, where we end with one final question, which is, of course, what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? I'm always fascinated by taboos.

Given what we've been talking about, as are we as you can tell, they're mercifully slightly fewer than they were, but there's always a new taboo bubbling along. And because of my past interest in the subject, I've always felt that there's a curious taboo about pleasures that other people have but we don't have,

of which a classic one is taking soft drugs or taking drugs in general. I regard drugs as a menace and serious drugs as a series of menace. But the handling of drugs fascinates me because over the whole Western world, not so much the Eastern world,

we simply don't know what to do about it. We reckon we can handle alcohol, which is a very serious drug. We can handle obesity, we think, which is a serious drug, or the result of a serious drug. We handle smoking well successfully. We didn't handle it by banning smoking.

We handled it by regulating smoking. But recreational drugs, as they're called, in some sense, rightly so, absolutely defeat us. The United Nations went along with Nixon in declaring war on drugs. It's ruined half a dozen Latin American countries. including maybe Venezuela.

I mean, I was in Peru. I couldn't believe the wreckage the American drugs market has caused on these countries in which Mexico is the most devastating. Entirely by drugs. The entire criminal class is built on drugs. The same is true in large parts of Europe.

It's true in a number of English cities. The County Lions phenomenon has brought an extraordinary degree of criminal activity, and we just can't handle it. We just can't handle it. And the result is, that we, and I was on the committee,

it was reviewing the 1973 Drugs Act, it has been changed. It's half a century of this problem. We haven't begun to tackle it. And I just find it so depressing that the government, which now has examples around the world of all sorts of different ways of tackling it,

in this country is one of the most backward and unreconstructed. And I almost give up. Well, Germany is about to decriminalize cannabis. Do you think decriminalization is the solution for those types of drugs? I decriminalise all drugs. I would de-criminalise all things.

There's no point in criminalising a market. It's like going to the Gulf and criminalising oil. It's like that. Everybody's in this business. All right, we'll have to do it under the counter. I think you decriminalise it, yes. But you regulate it. You just regulate.

Like you regulate tobacco. You regulate drink. All these things are regulated. There's no reason why this shouldn't be regulated. And what's so fascinating now is there are about six states in America are all doing it differently. Some it's working, Colorado it's working,

some it's not. California is not working very well. But they're all at least taking a great chunk of, quote,'s criminal activity out of the criminal sphere. And sooner or later, prison population will come down. Police will be less worried

about this one particular crime. Mental health can, get into operation to tackle people with drug problems, which is a huge issue. We underestimate how massive the consequence is of criminalising drugs. Couldn't agree with you more on that one. Simon, been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find your work you write for The Guardian, obviously?

Is there anything else people should go and see any books they should check out? Any good bookshop? Fantastic. Look up Simon Jenkins. Thank you for watching and listening at home or wherever you. been and we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your Trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast.

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