TRIGGERnometry - "Labour Abandoned the Working Class": Paul Embery

Episode Date: February 9, 2020

Paul Embery (@paulembery) is a firefighter, trade unionist and columnist for UnHerd. 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 (@failinghuman) 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

and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you, if you want, honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest this week is a firefighter, trade unionist, and a columnist for the unheard website. Paul Embry, welcome back to Trigonometry. Nice to be back. Yeah, you're back faster than most of our other guests, because a lot of things have happened, not least with your career. You've had a bit of a change since the last time we spoke to you. So, Tell us a little bit about the situation with you and your union. Yeah, I had a bit of an enforced change. It wasn't something that I was particularly asking for.

But the last time I was on the show, I was sitting on the National Executive of the Fire Brigade's Union, a firefighter by trade. I was also a senior official in the Fire Brigade's Union. But I made the fatal error of speaking at a pro-Brexit rally on the 29th of. March last year, which was the date we were originally supposed to leave the European Union. And I spoke at a cross-party rally. And within the speech that I gave, I was specifically critical of leaders of the Labor movement over their position on Brexit. And I expressed some degree of criticism.

And that was it. That was the impetus for the fire brigade union to take me. through an internal discipline process and to find that even though I'd given that speech in my own time on a Friday evening, even though I hadn't spoken on behalf of the fire brigade union, there was no mention of the fire brigade union. I was speaking on behalf of trade unionists against the EU, which is a group I've been involved with through a long time. I had acted in a way prejudicial to the interests of the union and I was kicked out of office and banned from holding office again for two years. So despite the fact that there's historically been a really

rich tradition within the Firegauge Union of open debate and people being allowed to express their view, particularly when they're doing it in a personal capacity. This was pretty much an unprecedented move and disappointing because I've been an FPU official for 20 years. But that was that. I don't think it's quite over yet because I'm pursuing it through other revenues. But yeah, there was some fallout from that. And I think it's fair to to say that it's backfired to a certain degree on the people responsible for it. But there we go. Well, let's see what we can do more to make it backfire more.

But essentially what you're talking about is being punished for expressing your political views in a private capacity. So you're just sure of Harry Miller, who have recently had on the show. You didn't have the police call you up and check your thinking on Brexit. No, not quite, but I'm sure some people might have wanted to put the police on to me if they could have got away with it. But yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, obviously, if you are an official for a trade union, particularly when you're in a senior capacity, then when you're acting in your capacity as a union official,

you have to represent the union's position, or at least to explain what the union's position is. But as I say, it's a rich tradition, not just within the FPU, but in the trade union movement generally, that if you're not acting in your union capacity, you're free to express your own view. you in your own personal time. So, for example, when there are trade union meetings, it's not uncommon to see flyers for that meeting where trade union officials are speaking, but they're not

necessarily putting the union views. So you'll have in brackets after their name personal capacity, in a personal capacity. That's very, very common in the trade union movement. And as I say, it's always been very much a feature of my trade union previously that we had the freedom to do that. but on this occasion, they decided that no criticising leaders of the Labour movement for their position on Brexit was wrong and worthy of being kicked out of office. So that's what happened. And that strikes me as incredible. So essentially, they fired you for having a political opinion.

How did they justify it? Was there any justification or was it a simple... Well, the interesting thing is that since it happened and there was, as I said, quite a a fierce backlash. There's been coverage in national newspapers. The Daily Mirror ran an investigation in their investigations column. There was a big backlash on social media from members of the Fibergauge Union. And even from people who are not members of the Fibergauge Union,

there were Labour MPs who wrote blogs about it saying they were shot and concerned at the implications of it. And since the decision, no, they haven't actually really even tried to justify it. Now, I think probably because they suspect it's gone badly wrong and it looks very, looks very poor for the union. And no one, the general secretary who submitted the original complaint which led to the investigation against me, nor anybody else within the sort of senior echelons of the union has ever really come out and sort to publicly defend it.

They've sort of gone into the bunker over it, really, even though, you know, it's garnered quite a lot of coverage. And I think that's probably an indication of the fact that, as I said, they realize it hasn't turned out the way they expected. Well, hopefully, through the other avenues that you're pursuing, you get, you get some, what you might call justice. We'll see. We'll see.

He's got that little devil look in his eye like he's going to get his own, which is great. But coming back to the broader reason we wanted to get you back so soon is we looked at our former guest who we just felt had been massively vindicated by the election outcome a month ago, as we record this. And you were absolutely at the top of the list because you've been talking about labor's abandonment of the working class and the potential for losing whole swathes of the country,

which had traditionally voted for the Labour Party. And that is exactly what happened in December 2019. It must be a bittersweet moment for you personally because you're a lifelong labor person. So I'm guessing you were happy to be right, but also very probably despondent about the election results for your party. Yeah, and I wouldn't have chosen the result that we got. I would have liked genuinely to have been proved wrong.

But it's been clear to me for a long time that that schism between Labor Heartlands and the Labor Party was going to play out in a general election where we lost a number of traditional Labour seats. It's something that I'd been predicting for a long time. A few other people had been predicting it within the party for quite some time. And you don't take any pleasure in saying, I told you so. You know, I think you're probably justified in saying, I told you so, particularly when... You take a little bit of pleasure, come on. You take a little bit of pleasure, maybe.

And particularly when, you know, opponents within the party have, you know, given your bucket loads of criticism and abuse over the years for arguing what you've been arguing. And I don't mind that. I mean, it's water off the ducks back, but it would be nice to think that some of these people are a little bit contrite about their position and what they've been arguing and how spectacularly wrong they've been proved to be. I suspect they won't be particularly contrite. I suspect there won't be much self-reflection. And partly, I think, because some of these people are just so certain that they're right. And even now, when you look at the scale of the defeat, there are people within the party who just think,

it can be explained away by hostile media, or just simply the issue of Brexit. I mean, that was a significant issue, no doubt. It wasn't the only issue in the election. Or, you know, the worst one, particularly people who come from the far left, it's false consciousness. You know, these millions of working class people who voted Tory, they really are in favor of our manifesto. They really are in favor of our worldview of society.

They really are secret, you know. cosmopolitan globalists. They just don't know it yet. And, you know, as long as, as we just need the one more heave mentality. We just need to, I'll tweet you something recently. It reminds me of, you know, it's slightly stereotypical, I guess, but you know when an English tourist goes into a shop in Spain or something, speaks English to the assistant.

And when it's clear that the assistant doesn't speak English, they just start talking louder. Yeah. And they think suddenly, you know, the assistant's going to understand. And that strikes me as, you know, what lots of people in the Labour Party are doing at the moment, that they think they got it right. The working class got it wrong. And that all they have to do is shout a little bit louder at the working class.

And all of a sudden the working class will go, oh, suddenly I understand. You're absolutely right. So this is genuinely, yes, it's a bit of cliche to say. It's a crossroads moment. But I think it genuinely is for the Labour Party. we've suffered our worst defeat since 1935. The list of places that we have lost, places that have been Labour since the 1920s in some cases.

Bolsover. Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, you know, mining community, Blythe Valley, Bassetlaw, Grimsby, Don Valley, Wrexham, Don Valley, Redcar, Lee, all of these places. Hotbeds of racism now, man. Some people will have us believe that. And, you know, it's the old saying that, you know, these were places that didn't count the Labor votes. They weighed the Labor votes.

And what you've got to consider as well is this is after a decade of a Tory government, which is imposed austerity on the country, with all of the, you know, the detrimental consequences of that for so many working class communities and working class people. after three and a half years of absolute political chaos that this government has presided over. I mean, I'm obviously pro-Brexit, but nonetheless, I think the way it's been handled has been pretty chaotic. And Labor didn't even tread water.

They got absolutely smashed. We got absolutely smashed by an Old Etonian who is winning some of those places that we listed. And you know, you look at some of the other figures the sort of C2 DEs, which is regarded broadly as the sort of occupational working class. And I know that's not a perfect sort of categorisation because it also includes pensioners, but nonetheless, it's as close to what we can get really to define working class people when it comes to elections.

They broke 48% for the Tories and 33% for labour. And you've got to start as a labour person, you have to ask yourself, why, after 10 years of austerity as a Tory party led by an old Etonian after three and a half years of political chaos absolutely wiped us out in some of our traditional working class artlands. And it's because of the fact that the Labour Party increasingly, and I've argued that it's not just a Jeremy Corbyn thing. I think this is a phenomenon that predates Jeremy Corbyn's time in power. This is something that's been going on for years. The Labour Party has slowly been hemorrhaging votes in those communities over. the years and was really losing a cultural war that it didn't even realize that it was fighting.

And you saw with the Brexit vote in 2016 and how that broke and how some of these traditional working class areas and Labor heartlands were sort of, you know, voting for leave as a means to hit back at the dominant sort of liberal agenda that Labor was completely signed up to. You saw it in the 2017 election where large parts of the Labour Party were triumphalist almost after that election, you know, because we and the party did better than anyone thought. It wasn't quite the catastrophe people expected. It was treated as a victory. And in some respects, that was the worst outcome for Labor.

Because what it meant is the party didn't examine seriously why it was so removed and was losing so many votes in its working class heartlands. 2017 election masked, if you like, what the real problem was. And then I think, you know, the failure to honour the referendum result, and it was a key thing that in 2017, the Labour manifesto said we would honour the referendum result in 2019. Clearly, Labour wasn't prepared to do that. And I think that was also a significant factor. So I think Brexit was important. I think Corbyn, to a certain degree, clearly wasn't popular on the doorstep, but these problems have been germinating inside the Labour Party for years and years.

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Well, I mean, I'm not somebody who says that we should be sectarian about it. We should seek to drum these people out of the party. You know, in some respects, I wasn't particularly anti-Corpon, to be honest. I mean, I think on the question of austerity, he was absolutely right, but austerity was a political choice and not an economic necessity. I think previous Labour leaderships had sighed away. shied away from making that case. And in fact, he was in terms of the economics of it,

which was sort of demonized as sort of hard left Marxist sort of Soviet-style economics, actually it was just broadly a Keynesian sort of philosophy, which you see really in some of the social democratic countries in Scandinavia, for example. So on that side of things, I don't think necessarily he was wrong at all. momentum, I think, in some respects, of, you know, brought a lot of energy to the party, brought a lot of campaigning ideas to the party, brought a lot of enthusiasm to the party.

I don't think we need a civil war or a sectarian war. I just ask politely that these people realize that they got it fundamentally wrong and that their prescriptions for leading us to power have been proven to be disastrous, the strategies they employ it. have absolutely crashed and burned. And actually to show a little bit of respect to those of us on the other side of the argument who have called it right and said this was going to happen when everyone was telling us in the party, no, you're exaggerating, you've got an outdated view of the working class,

you're just peddling a sort of nativist reactionary line. And I remember standing up at Labour Party fringe meetings, for example, and in trade union meetings within the Labour movement and saying to people, I'm telling you that we are correct. creating a huge schism with our heartlands, and it's going to cause a calamity and a massive rupture at a future general election sometime soon. People looking bewildered that anyone could even argue that because they mistook the sort of internal enthusiasm in the party and the fact that we were now at mass membership party with half a million members, and there was this

vibrancy and energy within the party as, you know, almost like a microcosm of what was going on in the country. And it really wasn't, you know, and that's the danger of all the political parties, you end up speaking to your own membership and looking at your own membership as a reflection of broader society. And the failure on that has been absolutely huge and people have got to start recognizing it in the party. And where does the Labour Party go from here? I mean, we've talked about kind of how we are, where we are with Matt Goodwin, with Eric Kauffman, and you've just spent a good chunk of time laying it out. Where does the Labour Party go from here because it seems to me that one of the difficulties is creating a coalition between this

kind of metropolitan degree-educated elite and the traditional working-class heartlands is very difficult because culturally the value systems are so different. So does the Labour Party now have to make a choice? Does it become a party of the liberal metropolitan elite or a party of the traditional working class? Is there a way to bring those two groups together? How does the Labor Party survive, I mean, frankly, at this point? I think there is a way to bring them together. And in fact, whenever Labor has won power in the past,

it's generally been by doing that. So my view is, for any political party, you have to start with your base, your core vote, and then build outwards. And for Labor, if you look at the history of the Labor Party, its core vote is working class people. That's who it was set up to represent in those, you know,

some of those constituencies we listed that have now gone Tory. That's where you start as a Labour Party. Now, Labour will only succeed electorally in my view and has historically only succeeded electorally when it's been able to maintain the trust of its core vote at the same time as appealing to a sufficient layer of, if you like, more middle class, more liberal, less tribal voters.

And I'm certainly not somebody who says that the path to victory in the future for the Labor Party is just to appeal exclusively to the old industrial working class. What we've got to do is appeal to the people in the Don valleys and the bolsovers and that's it. We're back on the path to victory. Actually, you know, I think it's good that we can win other places like Canterbury and Kensington and places like that. I think the problem has been, certainly more recently, is that we have won some of those other places at the expense, if you like, the traditional working class areas. And that's because as a party, we have become so obsessed with one part of that equation, which is the sort of middle class liberal part of the equation, whilst almost ignoring the sort of more traditional working class part of the equation. And I think that that, a big reason for that is because the party itself, the composition of the party, the demographic of the party has changed so significantly over recent years. I've been in the party for 25 years.

And actually, in my time, the party's changed hugely. I mean, there was a time where, you know, you go to Labour Party conferences, for example, and there would be, you know, strong working class voices there, people who had come up through the trade union movement, manual workers, blue-collar workers who are now trade unionists and ordinary grassroots members of constituency Labour parties. Going to Labour Party Conference over the years, those voices have become fewer and fewer, and the more dominant voices have become those sort of middle class, like woke, sort of liberal, cosmopolitan voices to the degree now where you go to Labour Party conferences and you just realise that it really isn't a reflection of the country at large.

77% of the party come from the sort of ABC1 middle class social grade. The party has got hardly any roots now in many of those constituencies, those sort of working class constituencies. So unless the party can find a way of shifting the emphasis, if you like, from the sort of middle class liberal globalist cosmopolitan. city-based element of it, back to the traditional working class areas and trying to build a coalition, as I say, build from your base and work out rather than look to that sort of new constituency and hope that the working class stays with you, which it didn't, then unless

the Labour Party can do that, then I think, frankly, it could be out of power for at least 10 years. I think there's a question over the future of the Labor Party as a party of government at all. I think there's a danger. It becomes a permanent protest. movement. And the signs since the election are not good. You know, if you look at some of the front runners for the Labor leadership, I think they're, you know, they've got nothing against them personally, but I think they're everything that's wrong with the Labor Party to a certain degree. You know, I've pitched it as we've become all Hampstead and not enough Hartlepool over recent years. And I think if you look at people like Kirstama and Emily Thornbury

and Clive Lewis, those people are not going to win back some of those constituencies that we need to win back. What about Rebecca Long Bailey? Because she thought that Corbyn's leadership was 10 out of 10. Yeah, she's the one more heave candidate. That's the truth of it. And again, nothing personal. I'm sure she's, I'm sure she's a very decent principled woman. But the idea that, you know, we just, we just didn't try hard enough and we didn't sort of push hard enough. And these people really are on board with what we're arguing. We just need. you know, one more heave, we just need to redouble our efforts, I think is delusional. There needs to be a fundamental rethinking of what the party is about and what it stands for.

There needs to be a change in emphasis. There needs to be a change in language. We've got to stop going to places and speaking about issues that are not what I would call sort of solar plexus issues. And they're not issues that hit voters in the gut when you talk about them because they really resonate with them. So, for example, labour activists will obsess and talk incessantly about things like climate change and human rights and gender fluidity and LGBT issues and migrant rights and stuff like that. I'm not saying those things don't have their place. Of course, those things need to be discussed. But for many labour activists, it seems to be all they want to talk about.

If you go to some of those communities where we lost, the things that people want to talk about are the things that actually really matter to them. They want to talk about work. They want to talk about family. They want to talk about law and order. They want to talk about immigration and the impacts of immigration. They want to talk about having a welfare system that is based more around the principle of reciprocity, you know, something for something rather than universal entitlement, which issues actually that once upon a time were the Labour movement broadly was entirely comfortable speaking about

because these were working class issues and the Labour Party represented working class people. but when you speak to labour activists about those issues now, they'll ever sort of look down and shuffle their shoes in embarrassment or they just dismiss you as some sort of bigger. And it's a huge problem in the part. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I would love, please record that. A labour activist talking about gender fluidity in Hartlebone. Plenty of examples.

That would be a good YouTube show for sure. You should go to Labour Conference. But as you're listing all those things, you know, law and order, right? What was some of the other things you said? You said law and order, work, family, immigration, immigration, society, right? There was a party in the last election that spoke about all of those things, the Conservative Party. And that's why they, presumably, they won those seats and they won those people over because they're actually speaking the language of that group of people. They got it. They got it. Dominic Cummins and Boris Johnson got it totally,

and it pains me to say it. I am a bitter opponent of Boris Johnson. I'm a firefighter and Boris Johnson closed 10 of our fire stations in London a few years ago when he was mayor of London and we fought and campaigned against him. And Boris Johnson has got no time for trade unions. Boris Johnson is somebody who sits on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum to me. But he understood and I think more pertinently Dominic Cummings behind the scenes understood that actually there was Matthew Goodwin, one of your former guests, described it as a sweet spot in British politics, and I think he's right, which is a place where

millions of people are. And until now, most mainstream parties just weren't getting it, which is where people, yes, sit on the left economically. So they're very happy to have a party that says, actually, the gap between rich and poor is too wide. We need to close it. Actually, there's a lack of investment in some of our regions, and we need to have a government that intervenes and invests in infrastructure, you know, government that sort of raises the minimum wage, for example. Government that addresses those regional inequalities, a government that is tough on some of the ballroom scandals and corporate fat cats. And some of that stuff's been described as Corbinonics, and I think some of that stuff

really did resonate with working class people. That's where they were. What the Tory's got this time around and what Labor hasn't got for years is that those people are also, if you like, cultural traditionalists and want not just economic security and fairness, but cultural security, cultural stability as well. Not in a, which some people would describe as some sort of xenophobic, nativist, white supremacist sort of way. That's the level of debate with some people. But actually, just the type of politics where their sense of place is respected, their sense of belonging is respected, they don't like the negative effects

of globalisation in the way that, you know, it can uproot communities, it can deracinate communities and families and it just leaves them, you know, leaves them scattered to the four winds and they, you know, they like stability and tradition and custom. So if you like, you know, people are left when it comes to economics and a bit right when it comes to culture and social policy. And the Tories, I think, exploited that perfectly. And that's why I, you know, You know, after 10 years of Tory austerity, they were still able to go into those communities and win and win Labor votes. Now, I think the problem for the Labour Party is that there are so few people, first who understand that analysis and second are actually prepared to do something about it. So, you know, I talked about the leadership election.

I mean, so far as some of the candidates are talking about, at least Anandie is one, for example, articulating some of these ideas. You get the feeling that it doesn't really come from the gut, that actually it's just really a hard-headed assessment of where we need to be to get Labor back to power. Now, okay, at least she's talking about it, but we need people in the party at the top level of the party and at the grassroots of the party who get this from the gut, if you like.

And the only way to do that is to have a much greater sort of influence within the party from those working class communities. The truth is people, traditional labour voters, tribal labour voters are once upon a time tribal labour voters in these communities now look at the party more and more and say actually the leadership of the party, the membership of the party doesn't look like me, doesn't speak like me, doesn't work in jobs like me, doesn't understand my priorities, why should I vote for them? And that chasm is going to be very, very difficult to close. And do you think in many ways, so when we were talking about the Labour Party, it just occurred

to me now. I mean, what we're really talking about is the Lib Dems, aren't we? That's what they've sort of turned into with a slightly more left-of-centre economic policy. I mean, I've sort of been involved in politics pretty much all my adult life, and I've never quite understood what the Lib Dems existed for me. I'll try to work it out over the years. There's one viewer in Twickenham who's now switched off. No loss.

But presumably then it's a big problem that Labour seems like it's moving towards that direction, where they increasingly talking to a small and smallest liver of society. Yeah, I think there are people in the Labour Party who would be comfortable with just being a protest movement, to be honest. It's a very unappealing mix now, the Labour Party of what I would sort of describe as on the one hand, a sort of very middle-class, woke, liberal contingent, liberal cosmopolitan contingent on the one hand and on the other through momentum and other sort of organisations, a more sort of far left, I would call a bit of a Toy Town revolutionary group of people.

And I've sort of described it as a party of Lennon and Lenin, John Lennon and Vladimir Lenin, which really, you know, doesn't resonate with ordinary working class people at all in many respects. and there are people, particularly from the sort of second part of that equation, the sort of far left revolutionary type of that equation. You know, lots of students, for example, who are in their early years of political activity and are quite enthused by going out and shouting at Tory MPs

and protesting on the streets. And we've all been there and done it. But actually, if you're serious about it, you have to recognize that if you're serious about winning power, it's about compromise, it's about recognizing that sometimes you might be wrong on stuff and being prepared to reflect on stuff, not just trying to dismiss the fact that working class people don't agree with you as false consciousness and being prepared to sort of take the hard decisions and make the tough ideological leap sometimes to realize what it needs to take power.

But, you know, that element of the party, there are lots of people. who, I mean, I had a debate with one of them on Twitter recently, and he said something like, you know, he started the new year as he left the old year, getting pissed, defending free movement and denouncing Paul Embry. And I think he was a Labour Party member or certainly, you know, someone active on the fringes of the Labour Party. Someone's got life goals, haven't they? Yeah, it's great, you know, you can make yourself feel good in that way. But actually, there are people out there who need a Labour government, and the Labour Party was set up to win. power to represent those people. And if you, having just been absolutely annihilated in an election, respond to that by saying, I'm not going to change my thinking. I was right. The voters were wrong.

We've been virtually wiped out. But I'm just going to get drunk and have a laugh about it. You know, you're not a serious, you're not a serious political player. And you're actually letting down the people you claim to be speaking for. Isn't the problem here, Paul, that we had a busy day, as you know, we interviewed Eric Kaufman earlier today and Luke Kittas as well. I mean, one of the things that Eric was talking about is essentially it's very difficult for someone like yourself or the views that you represent to be, to get to a high prominent position now in the Labor Party because the woke fringe and also that momentum fringe essentially would immediately destroy anyone who moves to the right on culture and talks about immigration and family and all that kind

of stuff as racist, nativist, et cetera. So if the solution, which the consensus seemed to be the solution to Labor's problems is a centre-left person who's maybe culturally on the socially conservative side of things economically could be quite far left, actually, depending on how you look at it. That person cannot succeed in the Labour Party as it's constituted because they would never get anywhere with those views. I think that's a fair assessment. I mean, and that's why I've said that I think the Labor Party could be out of power for at least 10 years and may not actually ever be a party of government again, because I'm I'm not convinced that within the party, you know, lie enough people who understand this and are willing to do something about it.

Now, in truth, there's no real alternative at the moment. I mean, I certainly would never recommend that working class people vote Tory, and I certainly would never recommend that we all go up and join the Tory party, because that's not, in my view, the answer to the problems of working class people and the economic inequalities and social injustices in society. But no, we need to find ways within the party, A, to develop the argument and to win the argument and to bring people into the party or back into the party

who have abandoned the party to support that argument. I mean, my view is that for the moment, the movement is still supporting the Labour Party. So the trade union movement, which is ostensibly, at least, the voice of workers in this country. still supports the Labour Party and for as long as the movement is there and for as long as the workers see the Labour Party

or at least the trade unions see the Labour Party as their party rather than any other party that's where the argument is going to be political parties that have been set up with the idea of storm into power have not traditionally had much success in this country I'm, you know, it's been tried with the SDP and other organisations over the years, but we're still pretty much a two-party state in that way.

So out of the two, I much prefer a Labour government than a Tory government. I think part of the problem as well around what you talked about is the lack of MPs who come from that working class background now. I mean, if you went back 20 or 30 years ago, you would see on the Labor side of the House a significant number of people who can genuinely claim to come from working class backgrounds would have done ordinary jobs. You know, some of the older working class MPs would have, you know, worked in the shipyards or down the mines or in the steelworks and things like that.

Now, obviously, we've gone through de-industrialisation, so a lot of those jobs don't exist anymore. But even so, the proportion of MPs who come through on what I've called that conveyor belt, if you like, where they go to university and then they get a job in a think tank or a charity and then as a research assistant to an MP and then they're parachuted into a safe

seat themselves and consequently had no real understanding of the lives of ordinary working class people that has become a problem because as I said working class people look at those people who say we just don't share the same background, we don't share the same priorities. I mean there are still

people in the party who do get it. You know, I mean, involved with the Blue Labor group within the party. It's small, but it punches above its weight, and it's been completely vindicated by recent events. You know, within Blue Labor, we've been arguing for some time now that this was, that this was going to happen. And, you know, Blue Labor has been talking the language of family, the language of patriotism,

the language of community, isn't afraid to discuss issues around immigration. So, you know, hopefully some of that stuff can break through. But even with that, you see the response to, you know, since the election, Blue Labor's taken off to a certain degree. I mean, he's got thousands more followers on social media and people are starting to take an interest in its ideas. But even around that, you see some people in the party saying, you know, we don't hand a party over to these racists and these figures, you know, and you realize, you know, what distance there is to travel. But what else can you do, but have a go? But so you're saying Blue Labor. Now that is a term that I've heard used

and explain what Blue Labor is, what your modus operandi is essentially and how you differ from the modern day Labour Party. I heard someone say once, he was very good description that Blue Labor is socialism with a small C. And I think it's a pretty good way of describing it. So some people call it Blairism.

Absolutely not. Blue Labor were amongst Blair's strongest critics because of his infatuation with the market. So it's certainly not Blair-Rite in that respects, but it's not in that respect, but it's not particularly Corbynite either, although it's expressed a lot of sympathy quite rightly,

in my view, with some of the sort of economics around Corbinism and the need to tackle austerity and stuff. But it's a group of people who actually understand that we are social and parochial beings with an attachment to community and to country and to family, and that if you violate that, whether it's through having an unfettered market where vast movements of capital,

which can leave destruction in its wake, where money can just fly abroad and you see de-industrialisation, etc. On the one hand, or vast movements of people, on the other, which are brought about through an unregulated market and through the philosophy of open borders and liberal cosmopolitanism. That can also violate people's sense of community and sense of stability and that if you're going to do these things, if you're going to bring on changing communities, and change will always happen in communities, no community is ever going to stay the same. And if that's what anyone's arguing for, then they're in for a nasty surprise. Change

will happen. People will move on. Capitalism is a system where you're not going to stop that change to a certain degree. But what you can do is have measures to ameliorate it. And what you can do is make sure it's done in such a way where, you know, people's sense of place and belonging is not violated. And that's something that, you know, people within the Labor Party and beyond just have not understood. So Blue Labor is trying to articulate some of those arguments that, you know, we don't want an unregulated, all-domin market on the one hand. We don't particularly want an overbearing state, on the other hand. We want politics to be much more about community,

much more democratic rooted in our local democratic institutions. And also you've got to respect people's place and belonging and community. I'm going to ask you quite a grim question now, Paul. I listen to that. And as a voter, if you put that forward to me, I would vote for it in a heartbeat. That's essentially what I believe in. However, do you not think, and you look at the Labour Party the way it is now,

the range of candidates, and just think, you're fighting a losing battle here? I think it's a tough challenge. That's a politician. Yeah, that's probably the most optimistic way I can describe it. It's pretty tough. But no, I mean, I'm not claiming that the Labor Party is going to sort of change in the way that I want to see it change anytime soon

and that we're going to win power on that basis. I think we are, we're in for a real. long slog in the Labour Party and I'm not completely optimistic that we're going to win that battle. You know, because I think, because as I said, the party is so dominated by people who are so entrenched in their own ideology, you know, on the one hand, the sort of liberal cosmopolitan globalist open borders, middle class, woke liberal view. And on the other, the sort of far left revolutionary view that it's very difficult to do. And even what's happened with this election is not shifting many of those people. Even showing them the stats of the election and saying, look, these are the places we lost. The working class voted this way for a Tory government and they are not coming to us.

And these are the reasons. And some of them refuse to accept it. And it's difficult for people, to be honest, you know, you can't expect people to change their minds overnight when they've been, wedded to a particular principle or ideology or philosophy for so long. It's difficult for people to sort of shift their position. And so you do have to be a little bit sensitive with people around that. But at the moment, I've seen no real signs among lots of people that there's even any willingness to accept what the electorate has just told them. So it's a, you know, we're in for a battle. Well, it sounds like the Labour Party doesn't represent your views anymore very much. Why are you still

the Labour Party? Well, I mean, first of all, I mean, I've been in the Labour Party for 25 years. I'm not, you know, particularly keen to just give up the fight and to hand it over to people. In some cases who have only been in the Labour Party five minutes, I don't mean that in a disparaging way. Because I'm happy for people to come into the party and to argue their case. But, yeah, I don't believe that because the party has shifted its stance, even though that shift has been pretty significant, you just give up the fight. And actually, if you look at the history of the Labour Party, it has swung from left to right

and, you know, all manner of things in between in that sort of hundred years or so, 14 years that the party as a party has been in existence. And to be honest, before 2015, who would have predicted Corbynism? You know, who would have thought for a moment that Corbyn had been, you know, fairly sort of obscure backbencher for 20 or 30 odd years was going to come out of nowhere and storm to victory and completely changed the party. Not completely changed the party because I think it had been certainly in terms of the liberal globalism had been going in that way for some time.

But nonetheless had quite a significant impact on it. So, you know, if you'd have said to someone in momentum pre-2015, you know, do you ever think you can win the party away from Blairism, Brownism, Ed Miliband. They'd have probably gone, well, cool snop, but it happened. So, yeah, you know, it's not impossible. It's difficult, but it's not impossible. Now, we were talking in a previous interview to Lord Adonis, who's obviously a Labour peer.

I'm sure you're a big fan of his. Block me on Twitter along with the rest of the moment. Did he? But he was a bit waxing, lyrical and getting very nostalgic about Blair, saying that that's when the Labour Party was at its peak. that's when they were winning elections. That's when they were winning heart and minds and maybe we need to go back to that.

Do you know? I think that's a disastrous route. I think if you look at, and I think the thing that proves that, if you look at the Change UK or whatever they called themselves in the end because they kept changing their name, but you look at the was it 11 defectors who came from the Tories and Labour and set up

Change UK and they said, and that was frankly a Blair Wright project in terms of its philosophy. It was all about a century It was all about being pro-EU, being open borders, being liberal, etc. And they died a death. It was completely stillborn, as some of us predicted, because I really don't think there is any desire among people to, certainly not the mass of people, to go back to that.

And I think it's probably fair to say that if you look at Blairism, it contributed in many ways to what we saw in 2016 with Brexit. and what we've seen since. I mean, my assessment is when you... I'm not someone who completely rubbish is that Labour government, by the way. I think Blair did some good things. I think that Labor government did some good things. I think we have to recognise that.

But, A, there was such a desire to get rid of the Tories in 97 that a donkey could have stood as a Labour Party leader and become Prime Minister, frankly. And I think for a number of years after that, the Tories were such a shambles that, you know, It was pretty easy for Labour to carry on winning victories. But even if you look at that period, that sort of 10 years of Blairism and three years of Gordon Brown, you saw that's proved that actually there was a drip-drip away of votes from Labor.

I mean, fair enough, it started from a high water market in 1997 when it had a huge landslide. But nonetheless, it shed millions of voters, including working-class voters up until 2010, when Cameron came to power with the coalition. And that was, I think, because some of this stuff around their philosophy of being pro-EU, being sort of uber liberal, becoming a party of the cities and the middle-class metropolitan elite, the Hampstead rather than Hartlepool, had started to kick in during that period. And I think what happened in 2016 didn't come out of a clear blue sky. It had been brewing for years and some of that stuff can be

trace back to Blair. So the idea that, you know, you just set up a new change UK or you, you try and push the Labour Party back in that direction, I think he's a non-starter. And the SDP, would you join them? Because I'm looking at it on the surface, Paul, and you seem completely aligned with their viewpoint. No, I've no intention to do. I know some people involved with this new SDP and they're good people and I respect them, but no, I've got no intention of joining. As I said, as I said before, I mean, there's not a great record. of new parties coming out of nowhere and trying to challenge the two main parties. You know, much of its philosophy is good around, you know, much more focus on the community

and stuff. But, and part of the difficulty is, frankly, is that if you speak to people in the Labour Party like me, the name SDP is pretty toxic. You go back to the 1980s when the old SDP with a gang of four split away from the Labour party in the early 80s and contribute it to 10 years of factory. but I split in the left vote, then there's a lot of that baggage as well. So, no, I wish them well, but I'm a Labour Party. But you don't like the name.

I'm super fissure in anyway. Well, Paul, it's been a great chatting to you again. The last question we normally ask is what's the one thing no one's talking about that we should be talking about. But actually, the question I want to ask you is, I mean, I have to say the most common comment on our previous interview with you, other than all our female viewers saying how much they like you, was the fact that a lot of people were saying, well, if this guy represented the Labour Party, I'd vote for him. And frankly, I don't agree with you on economics on probably

most of things, but I'd vote for you. So are you planning to stand at any point for Parliament? That's Constantin flirting with you, by the way. Yeah. I'm just doing the same thing as the ladies. That's all. Fluttering, I'll get you everywhere. That's a yes. I've got a plan to it. Frankly, genuinely, I don't think the Labour Party would have me in part of people like me. You know, there are a few people like me around, and there's lots of very good people,

you know, within Blue Labor, for example, we're articulating these arguments. I don't think that large parts of the party want people like me, whether it's me or someone else putting these ideas at the higher levels of the party or in parliament because I think they are just so uncomfortable with them and it just you know it just runs completely up against their own philosophy that they would that they would hate the idea of Paul Embry being in parliament speaking on behalf of the Labour Party so I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon to me that's a huge problem to me Paul the fact that that is the case is a huge problem for the Labour Party.

I mean, as you say, until someone like you can stand for the Labor Party and be elected as an MP or even Prime Minister, frankly, I don't see how they're ever going to win back the country. I just don't see that as possible because what you represent is the views of millions of people up and down the country. And if they can't have someone like you even present as part of a broader conversation, they're not going to win the country back. It's just not going to happen. well, as I said before, it's a tough challenge.

Not only is he going to run, he's already got the politician's answers for you. Yeah, yeah, it's true. I mean, that could be your campaign slogan. It's a tough challenge. Well, he wouldn't do any worse than we just started. Let's be honest about it. Let's be honest.

You know what was interesting is when you were talking about blue labor. Isn't that what just Corbyn represented if he was just being honest? Really? Corbyn a Blue Labor at? Yeah. Corbyn was certainly a Brexiteer and he's still in his heart a

Brexiteer but as someone said I think it was a good way of putting it he was placed under ideological house arrest by the rest of the Labour Party but he's a Brexiteer no I don't think he would be Blue Labor I think certainly on some of the economic stuff he would have Blue Labor

and Corbyn would have a lot of sympathy with each other I don't think Corbyn gets the sort of cultural side of it at all I think partly because he's embedded in his Lington constituency and he's got very much that North London world view where he, you know, what's been called citizens of nowhere, that view of the world should be open borders and that, you know, there should be this constant churn in society and we should all be sort of very liberal, that sort of

John Lennon approach to society. And I don't think he, I think he's a nice guy by the way, I've got to say that. I mean, the firefighter at his Linton Fire Station for many years. He was a local MP. He'd come and stand on our picket lines when we were on strike. I think some of the treatment met him has been pretty disgraceful. So on a personal level, I think he's a nice guy. But no, I don't think he understands the Blue Labor argument very much.

I just think he got beaten up by Ash Sarko every day. I think he started out as a, you know, bringing Probrecht and Ash slowly. Well, that's one of the problems. the Ash Sarkas and the O'in Joneses and the Paul Masons, I think, whose ideology got us into this mess are now trying to tell us how to get out of it. I respect them, but they're not the answer. They've got it so spectacularly wrong that actually people need to think hard before invest in any faith in their strategy for putting things right.

Well, I do hope that we at some point live in a world where people like you can represent the Labour Party because I think that would be a much better world than the one we live in today. But it's going to be a tough challenge. All right, well, Paul, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's been a pleasure. Is there anything else you want to say before we go? Because we haven't asked you our final questions. Any issue that's been burning at the back of your mind other than the Labor Party? The issue that's always burning away, that never really gets much coverage. I may have mentioned this on the previous edition, if I did, I apologize, but I'll say it again anyway.

is the issue of cuts to the fire and rescue service in this country. I'm a firefighter by trade, have been a firefighter for 23 years or whatever it is now. We have seen huge attacks to the fire and rescue service. Very few media organisations report it. We've seen a reduction in the number of firefighters over the last 10 years of something like 12,000. The quarter of all firefighters, firefighter posts have gone. We've seen scores of fire stations up and down the country shut, all in the name of austerity. We're seeing response times getting longer.

We're seeing a rise in the number of deaths by fire in some places. And firefighters who constantly put their lives on the line, as we saw with tragic incidents like Grenfell Tower, are not being given the tools to do the job. They're not particularly paid well, but they just simply ask that they get the tools to do the job that they're brave enough to do. And more and more those resources are being taken away from them.

And it's a huge issue, and it deserves to get more attention than it does. I apologize for my insensitive question of saying, is there usually burning at the back of your mind? But you brought up well. And we did talk about it last time. I made it is a very important issue. So thank you for raising it.

Thank you for coming back. As always, I will put Paul's social media details in the video and make sure you read his columns on Unheard. He's always really, really interesting. Thank you for watching. And we'll see you in the week's time with another brilliant episode. Take care. See you next week, guys.