TRIGGERnometry - Matthew Syed on Cousin Marriage, Immigration and Diversity

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Matthew Syed is the author of Rebel Ideas, Columnist for The Times & The Sunday Times, as well as a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Sideways. | Follow Matthew on X: https://x.com/matthewsyed SPONSOR. We��re honoured to partner with Hillsdale College. Go to https://hillsdale.edu/trigger to enroll for free. SPONSOR. Shopify! Sign up for a £1 per month trial at https://www.shopify.co.uk/trigger/ SPONSOR. ShipStation. Go to https://shipstation.com and use code TRIGGER to sign up for your FREE trial. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] 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. 00:00 Introduction 05:59 The Broader Conversation Around Islam 11:34 Dealing With A Subset Of The Muslim Population That Wants To Destroy Us 18:06 Hillsdale College Advert 19:18 Cousin Marriage Results In Serious Genetic Disorders 22:16 Why Are Facts Racist? 26:14 The Weakness Of Liberals 31:37 Should Cousin Marriage Be Banned? 34:25 Grooming Gangs 44:47 Shopify Advert 46:04 Why Has This Failure Happened? 55:20 The Gold Standard 59:38 Bond Crisis 01:04:50 Changing The Tax System 01:07:56 How Do We End The Complacency? 01:13:12 ShipStation Advert 01:14:40 Diversity Debate 01:31:29 What's The Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I took a sabbatical to research cousin marriage. Now this is something that is prevalent across the world, but we didn't do it. We married each other. We were the first Mongol nation. We dissolved the tribes. And that created a national identity. It correlates very profoundly, not just with nepotism and corruption, but economic growth, GDP per capita around the world.

The prevalence of low-wage immigration is part of a wider phenomenon in Western societies. of electorates, voters effectively, who are unable to deal with reality. The greatest discrimination happening in the Western civilization today by far is a discrimination against the future. We need to be far more robust as liberals. Matthew Seed, we've both been admirers of your column for many, many years. So it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm not sure if I detected the merest hint of irony when he described yourself as a fan of the column. But that might me being too modest. Maybe you really mean this. You really are very British. And whenever you're given a compliment, you immediately get embarrassed. Exactly.

That's too much. It's too much. You are one of the voices in British commentary that I think is prepared to be honest about difficult things while not being captured by the desire to say difficult things all the time. And it's a very fine line to tread. A lot of people get addicted to the sort of outrage commentary and get run away with that. people shy away from difficult truths and you don't do either which we both really admire. So for those of us, for those of our viewers rather who don't know who you are, you don't do

that many interviews, you're mostly right. Who are you and how are you here? Well, it's a good question. I could take a while to answer it properly, but I'm half Pakistani, half Welsh. My father was born in India, moved to Pakistan after petition, came to England to study law in the 1960s. He was a Shia Muslim, but he had a very unusual and almost unique experience. He was in a bed sit in southeast London, student bed sit, and he had a vision of Jesus Christ. And highly unusually, his life turned on a six-pence, and from a sheer Muslim background, he became a born-again evangelical Christian.

So he started going to church in Bromley, in Kent, and he met my mum. who's a born again Christian, part of the kind of Welsh evangelical tradition. She grew up in a Welsh farming community, came to London with her parents, went to this church and probably fell in love with my dad. Both families were massively against the marriage, the family back in Pakistan, as you can imagine. And what my mum used to tell us growing up and said, don't do it because you can't do it to your kids, they'll be mixed race. Fortunately, for me and my siblings, they rejected this advice, had three months. mixed-race children were married until my father.

Great man, fantastic person, passed away in 2021. He was a born-again, Christine, all the way through his life. So I had quite an unusual upbringing as the only kind of brown-skinned boy growing up in suburban Reading in the 70s and 80s, quite a lot of racism. But I also had the cultural influence of my father and his background and my mother. And I think that's given me kind of quite a useful. set of experiences to try and understand and interpret what I think is one of the most interesting, if I may say so, periods in modern human history. I think this is one of the reasons why

podcasts like yours are so popular. My mum's a big admirer. Well, I said, I've been invited on this, but she went, do it, do it. And then with instructions coming through on WhatsApp. So I'm really looking forward to the chat. I admire very much what you do. And as I said beforehand, I might challenge a couple of your views too. Please do. We are very big in the evangelical community. as you can imagine. I should say I'm an atheist. So I grew up as a born-again Christian. I went to church all the way through my youth.

And then I started getting skeptical, I think, in my early teens. I probably had doubts even before that. And then I did something which evangelicals think is awful. I was a backslider. And I became an atheist. And now I'm an atheist. My mum did actually, too. My father was born again all the way.

Well, this is the interesting thing, because you say evangelicals look down on people who leave the faith. But from what I know, so do Shia Muslims quite a lot. And your dad's apostasy and conversion to the opposite, frankly, that must have been quite difficult. That was massive. So he was effectively an outcast. And there is a strand of Islamic thinking

that apostasy is punishable on earth by death. You don't wait until... So I mean, I hope my father went, well, he's gone now. I don't think my mom would mind. But there was one very fundamentalist member of the extended family who married one of my father's nieces. And my father was a strong Christian, and he never would step back from articulating his faith.

You know, an evangelical, you try and describe your faith. You try and convert through your faith. But this person came to, when we're living in London, and I noticed there was a plaque on our wall that said, Christ is the head of this house, the unseen listener at every conversation in Sol. and so forth, quite a famous Christian phrase, and it disappeared. I said, Dad, where's...

Dad, where's the plaque? He said, oh, this person, Shabbat, Shabbat's coming. I don't want to get into a big debate and argument about it. So he actually withdrew it for that little period. But on the family, he was an outcast for a period from his dearly beloved family in Pakistan, but in the end, they accepted him. They were relatively moderate Muslims.

You know, it's really interesting the way that you talk about that, because we're now having a broader conversation about Islam in this country and it's particularly the extreme end of that religion. As someone who's grown up seeing your father's experience, but also seeing your own experience as well with, you know, let's shall we say, you know, quite staunch religious views. What are your opinions and views on it? Well, it's a be a nuanced answer, really.

I think there's unquestion. I apologize. I apologize. They're all horrible. No, I think, I worry about two different things. I certainly think that statistically, there's a worrying number of Muslims who tend towards a more extreme interpretation of the Quran

than I'm comfortable with. And I think you see that having cultural effects that I think are quite damaging. So think about, I don't know if you've seen the musical, the Book of Mormon. Yes, brilliant. It's a wonderful piece of religious satire. And I think I'm right in saying that the Mormons have not threatened the people who created that attempt to ridicule what is very precious to them. They haven't.

It's not just that. They've also, there have been instances where they've been outside and they've been handing out leaflets to the theatre goers saying, oh, you went. I hope you enjoyed it. By the way, if you're interested in being a Mormon, Here's a leaf. Exactly. And I think I'm even right in saying that they took out an ad in the program saying, look, if you think this is a bit unfair, do pop a lot to our church and we'll tell you what Mormonism is really like.

In other words, they felt that the people who created that show had a right to do so and that they had a right to try and persuade people to disagree with what was being said in that show. That's a perfectly reasonable way to approach controversial issues in a liberal society. I don't think that kind of a musical could be made about Islam. I think people would be scared of the ramifications. Think about what a bit of Salman Rushdie and others. Charlie Hebda. Charlie Hebda.

I mean, there's dozens and dozens of examples. In other words, that statistical base of fundamentalist Muslims who feel that they can hound and attack people or put a fatwa on them because they disagree with the truth of Islam, that I think has had something of a chilling effect on free speech and I worry about that a great deal. But on the other hand, I think there are many moderate Muslims

who are perfectly willing to listen to criticism and not to attack people as a consequence of it. I met some of them in Southport last week, some people who were in my family of that ilk. And I worry a lot about this idea. Tommy Robinson would be an example of somebody who has made public comments of this kind that all Muslims are suspect.

That, it seems to me, is ad hominem, unfair. It's tarnishing people according to a singular label and not taking into account the variety of opinions within that label. Yeah, it's a reductive way to approach, which is actually a quite difficult subject. But you said a few words that I found very interesting. You said the truth about Islam. What do you mean by that, Matthew? You mean, what is religious truth? Yeah. Well, religious truth is an interesting concept because there are many different interpretations of the Quran, as there are many different interpretations of the Bible. I know this from my Christian upbringing

because the church that I went to split six times on quite arcane pieces of theology. Should women be able to lead services? Some thought that this was unbiblical, others thought that it was absolutely okay. What was the attitude towards homosexuality? There was even a debate about whether women should be able to wear, should ought to wear head coverings in church.

So I see that, I mean, there are many different types of Christianity and there are many different types of Islam. But what is the truth? Well, if you ask a fundamentalist Christian, they will say they have the truth as a consequence of divine revelation and therefore there is no evidence that could persuade them of the alternative. Now that it seems to me is deeply problematic if they take that as justification for imposing their views on other people. It was very interesting when Tony Blair was in power that he kept saying that certain Muslims have a false interpretation of the Quran. What is the criterion of falsity?

In science, I'm simplifying a little. I think science is more complicated than this. But the general idea is you perform an experiment. And this provides the adjudication between two alternative theories. So you might remember in the mid-20s, a bit earlier, Eddington went to the equator to check who was right between Newton and Einstein about whether or not light was bent. or curved by gravity.

And he performed an experiment and it turned out that Einstein was right. And a very wonderful philosopher called Carl Popper, who's written wonderfully about open societies, by the way, fantastic book, The Open Society and its enemies, notice that most scientists sided with Einstein off the basis of what the evidence said.

But there is no evidence that will persuade fundamentalists that what they think is untrue. And so there's no real opportunity for discord in debate. and I find it particularly irritating when someone like Tony Blair, who doesn't believe in any of the variants of Islam

to be adjudicating between which is in which is not a true interpretation of a book that he doesn't believe in anyway. But this is what... Did you see the point I'm making? No, I see exactly the point you're making, but I think what I was about to say is it's political linguistic manipulation

to fail to acknowledge what you acknowledged, which is there is a subset of the Muslim population that, as you said, feels very, strongly about this and is willing to use violence to suppress other people's right to express themselves. And so if you're a politician in the West, you have to say that those people have a false interpretation of Islam in order to address the other caveat that you made, which is that most Muslims are moderate and reasonable and don't feel that way. But what that has done, I would

say, is it's prevented us having a discussion, a genuine discussion, which is how do we maintain open societies in which we have a subset of the population that is perfectly happy to kill people who they disagree with? Well, I think there's two things I'd say. One, we need to be far more robust as liberals in defending free speech and standing up in a sinuous way against its enemies. I can't remember the quote of Popper, but he has a lovely one about how tolerance taken too far allows the intolerant to win and that kills all tolerance. That's, I think, a mistake we've moved into. But I think it's also worth understanding the structure of the fundamentalism in Western societies. And I know this might seem like a bit of a segue, but it's often held together by a

marriage custom, first cousin marriage. If you, if you, so I know a bit about this, because I, my father, half jokingly, but not completely, when we went to Pakistan the first time, said, oh, you might be able to meet your future wife, one of your cousins. I was like, eh? Because the marriage is a big custom. Yes, yeah. And you marry with, now why is first cousin marriage so prevalent?

Around much of the world, by the way, including in this country until about 1,500 years ago. The reason is... It's enough about the royal family. Right, and it is still amongst certain elites. You're right about that. And the reason is, if you think about tribes and clans and kindreds and other groups, which dominated the early evolution of our species for many thousands of years,

because you need to cooperate in order to be successful in intergroup competition. If you're an agriculturalist and you're cultivating land, you need to be able to defend it. Otherwise, what's the point of putting all that work in energy in? So communal defense requires critical mass of people to defend successfully. So you start trying to scale up from these nomadic hunter-gatherers, and this happens after the agricultural revolution. But you scale up based on kin, kinship. This is quite a strong evolutionary mechanism to hold groups together, if that makes sense.

It does. But how do you make sure that you can hold it within the group and a clear demarcation with outsiders marry within the group? Marry within the clan, within the kindred? And that means marrying cousins. Now, this is something that is prevalent across the world, and as I say, it was in this country. So you might remember, we were a tribal nation. Absolutely.

You know, think of the Ithini and the Angles and the Saxons. And then the Vikings came. There were many indigenous Britannic tribes. It wasn't really a nation state. But then there was a ban on cousin marriage. Somebody called Augustine of Canterbury came to Anglo-Saxon Kent in the 5th century AD. And he converted Ethelbert to Christianity. And at that time, there was a ban on cousin marriage

from the Catholic Church. And it extended up to six cousins by the 10th century. This was a fundamental moment in human history because it effectively forced people to marry outside the tribe. Where did the tribes go in this country? They didn't duke it out. They didn't fight it out. There wasn't a genocide.

As in many other parts of the world where you have a nation state, there has been some kind of ethnic cleansing. Think of the hand. dominance in China after the Chin unification, the warring states period. They duped it out. But we didn't do it. We married each other. We were the first Mongol nation. We dissolved the tribes. And that created a national identity. Common weights and measures, an emergent rule of law. It created Western psychology. We're more individualistic. We have a slightly different moral

psychology. This is measurable. We're less nepotistic. Nepotism is absolutely fundamental. to a tribal society. You give a job to somebody in your tribe. Absolutely you do. You're not going to give it to an outsider. Corruption is endemic in tribal societies. Why? Because you extort a bung from a stranger to share it with your faction. If you don't do it, that's morally unacceptable. But can you see how that place have it with democratic nation states? Because what happens? All the people in the tribe vote for their person. They get hands on power. They loot the coffers and share it with their people. It's and rule of law doesn't work. The judge will side with whoever, not on the basis of the facts, but whether that person is in my my faction.

Now, that bound was fundamental, but, so it disappeared from these islands in the 5th century. It dissolved slowly over the course of the later Middle Ages, but it came back when Henry the 8th wanted to marry a cousin. And that's not really a big problem because it had effectively been taken out of society. But now we have had in the era of mass uncontrolled immigration, many people coming from parts of the world where first cousin marriage is common and prevalent. And they're still marrying cousins in communities

that are cut off from the wider British society. Cozen marriage is a way of sequestering communities from the wider. My father came in here married a Welsh-English woman. It was a bridge into a different life. And that, I think, is one of our problems. I think cousin marriage has been a disaster for these communities, for the patriots that control it, the oppression of women. So it's a long, forgive me for a long answer,

but I think that cousin would help people to build bridges into the wider society and understand that maybe you can be a Muslim and somebody who believes in liberal values are the kind that has led to great prosperity here. At trigonometry, we value intellectual curiosity and the lessons of history, which is why we're thrilled to work, with Hillsdale College, an institution dedicated to offering free world-class education for everyone.

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Genetically, it's a disaster. That's right. I used to teach in Newham, and you could see where people who were cousins who had children, the outcomes a lot of the time were suboptimal, to put it mildly. Yeah, you're right. When you look at disabilities, when you look at things like low IQ, low cognitive ability, it wasn't good. That's right. That's absolutely right.

In fact, it's interesting. I gave that whole answer about cousin marriage without mentioning the recessive genetic disorders. It's an interesting thing this, in the context of this podcast, because I took a sabbatical to research cousin marriage. I think it's a really big deal. It correlates very profoundly,

not just with nepotism and corruption, but strength of institutions, economic growth, GDP per capita around the world. What a big deal. I never had heard this before I started reading the really brilliant anthropological work that has been done in the last 10 or 15 years. So I thought, why not write a book on this?

Took a sabbatical from the Sunday Times and the Times. And I called researchers to talk more about what I think is a big issue, much in the public interest. And one of the things that struck me is this prevalence of congenital disorders that you described. So I phoned geneticists.

But because I'd written a column in the Sunday time is coming out against cousin marriage, even though I think it's much to the benefit of the communities themselves and the wider country, isn't this a criticism of a cultural tradition? Won't that be thought of as racist to question cousin marriage?

I didn't get any calls back. I called and called and called and called. Later, I found evidence that the level of incest, This is, could be father, daughter, siblings. You can't, but from the UK Biobank was very high in the British Pakistani community. That worried me a lot. This isn't cousin marriage.

This is illegal today, incest. But the person who had tweeted out that incest was very high on the basis of the biobank, very rapidly deleted the tweet. And that claim was retracted from the paper that this person was a co-author on. So I thought, this is curious. Have they, as it were, withdrawn something again in the public intro? We need to know that, right? Very important for safeguarding, social services, to know if there's, but 30, not two times or five times or 10, or 30 times higher.

This is an astonishing finding. And this person wasn't prepared to go on the record. I couldn't get anybody to talk about it. And ethics committees, I think, are just not willing to talk about. issues that might negatively impact on the perception of certain communities. I think that's a scandal too. I'm going to ask you a question that we all know the answer to, but I think it's worth asking so that you express it.

Why is that? Because they're afraid of appearing racist. And why are facts racist? I think that's quite a deep question. I mean, it depends how you define racism. My own feeling is that science should look for truth, and then we as a society benefit from hearing the truth. because it enables us to construct societies in a way that can be as good as possible for all of us.

And that it is therefore not racist to say anything that is factual. I think of racism as unfairly or arbitrarily discriminating against somebody on the basis of their race rather than the qualities that they have. So I don't think it is. But I think if you were to ask me what they would answer, they would say in a society where people of brown skin have been unfairly treated for, a long time. If you say that there's something in that community that isn't absolutely perfect, it may give latitude for a true racist to be nasty. But that's true. We all know that's true. But the problem I have with that argument is, so that means that a Pakistani girl has to get raped

by her father? Because we're afraid? It's awful. It's absolutely awful. Plato wrote about something called the noble lie where it's absolutely okay to be deceptive and I like you think that the truth sets us free that to the extent that people are

lying, knowing to be lying, it undermines faith in what I think is the most important of our institutions which is science. I think science has been corrupted. I say that as somebody with great admiration for science and scientific method, what it's done for the world

But I think that this bias within the institutions that one could analyze sociologically has not just obfuscated the ability of scientists to openly express truth that actually would liberate people often in these communities. I mean, one of the things that annoys me the most is you might have noticed when there was a proposal quite recently

from a conservative MP to ban cousin marriage. One of the people who spoke against it was one of the five independent so-called Gaza MP, say, no, this is not fair to the community. Who do you think that person is talking on behalf of? The patriarchs who control these clans and often oppress the women, tell them who they will marry. In other words, benefiting that person

at the expense of the wider clan community. And I agree with you. I think truth is something that we've lost sight of its overwhelming beauty and power. Do you think we've just, it's a beautiful thing that you said, and I'm half agreeing with you, the other half of me is going, that's really lovely what you said, but aren't we just really talking about cowardice, Matthew? Cowardous.

Yeah, moral cowardice. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. It's interesting, though, isn't it? That, you know, this tyranny of the minority, it is one of the most interesting phenomena over the course of, I guess, the second half of my life, how quite small groups of activists. have been willing to escalate and cancel and make the consequences of saying something

that went against their ultra-progressive ideology so stark that it wasn't just academics who started to buckle, it was corporations as well. And I think that dynamic of that willingness to escalate and escalate far, look at the small number of Islamic fundamentalists who have chilled free speech in this country. Something that has worried me about liberals, weak, cowardly, in a way, betrayers of the true liberal tradition. I couldn't agree with you more.

I mean, it was only in November as part of Islamophobia awareness month that I think his name is, yeah, his name is Tahir Ali, stood up in MP in this country and was saying that we need blasphemy laws. And Kyr Stama seemed mildly receptive, if not positive to it. which I find absolutely horrifying. Yeah, that is horrifying. And I think the context, I think it's worth saying the context here for people, because there will be some people listening who are on the progressive left, I guess.

Do you do any data on that by? It's probably difficult to establish. There are some people, there's quite a few people on the left to listen to us, and it's because we really, like, you talk about the weakness of liberals, we are liberals saying, guys, what the hell, why are we doing this?

Yeah, yeah, okay, so I'm with you. But it's worth saying, I don't know if you feel this way, I do. But because my father was such a big influence and he told me what it was like to grow up in different part of the world and he was very aware of what was happening in different parts of the world. People think, I know a lot of ultra-progressives think of the West as a terribly racist helmet.

It's a really awful place where discrimination exists and your colour is determining your life. Now I should say it would be interesting to see you. I do think when I was growing up, so I mentioned I'm suburban ready. And I was the only mixed race boy in my school. And I definitely experienced racer. No doubt about it. It was difficult. It was difficult.

My father struggled to get promoted in the civil service. Fantastic, but hardworking. That's the one thing, by the way, associated with him more than anything else, is his work ending. I've never lost that. You know, that influence on me was so profound. I find it difficult to take holidays. even now. So hard work, but couldn't get promoted.

And I remember talking to him and saying, Dad, you know, what's going on? I could see it was affecting him. You know, he would go to work and people would be having a chat on the corridor and he would go to have a conversation with them and it would just disperse. We'd go to work the next day

and they'll have gone for a dinner or a drink and he wouldn't have been invited. And at the beginning he thought, that's obviously racism. But none of them actually used the P word. So it wasn't 100% Sure, is it me? Is there something wrong with me?

And there's a concept in psychology. It's an interesting one called attritional ambiguity. The attrition you feel. If they'd use the P word, it would have been easier. They're racist. But he started to question himself and it had a real impact on his psychology. Interestingly, I met some of the people he worked with a few years later

and they were unaware that they had, I think it just happened almost unconsciously. I thought, you know, I'm not sure if that person, you know, quite a lot darker than me, my father. You know, wouldn't want to be involved. and I'll come for a drink with us, but it was really horrible for him. And for me at school, he actually left the civil service in the end, worked and got a postgraduate degree and ended up as a professor at a university.

So it worked out in the end. But it was very tough for him. I think it's worth acknowledging there. Racism isn't nice. And it's not fair. Wasn't being judged on his ability. And so I went to school, got the P-word a lot. The first girl I asked out, can I say her name, Yvonne.

She said, pick on someone your own country. And I was like, oh no, you know, have I ever going to get late? No, I didn't think that. I was too young. I was too young. But anyway, anyway, so it was tough. And walking out of school, there was a, on the back door of the bakery, that everybody at the school, 50% who walked out at the entrance rather than the back entrance,

kick peas out of this effing country vote NF. So this is the National Front. First football match I went to. Viv Anderson, first black player playing for England, 1978 against Czechos. of Arta, I was young, me, my mum and my brother. The Edward was used at Anderson by the English fans. I mean, it was just, it was tough. The story of my life is seeing that kind of racism decline

in a remarkable and I think wonderful way. I'm not that conscious of my colour anymore. And I think that most people in this country think that racism is a terrible thing. Now you compare what has become in this country, tremendous, which is corroborated by every research report, tolerant and objective and fair-minded. That's why my father ended up having a fantastic life here. I'm having a fantastic life here.

But you go to India, you look at the iniquities of the caste system. Go to Syria. Go to sub-Saharan Africa, where ethnic and tribal discrimination is endemic. And then you look at this country and you look at the wider west. got a tremendous story to tell on racism. And I think it's worth throwing that into the mix because to go back to what we were talking about earlier, liberals are like, oh, we're really worried about racism.

It's creating a kind of a reverse kind of racism. And that, I think, we need to call out and put an end to. See this country, our history, our institutions, what we've achieved as an incredibly positive story. And a minor part of that, people like me who have grown up here have had an absolutely fantastic life. We need to get that message across because there's a deeply negative perception

of what this nation stands for. I think that's damaging. I think that's why we all laughed when you, all three of us laughed when you were talking about how the West is the most racist place in the world because all three of us have experiences either directly or by proxy of other parts of the world. But I think you're right

that this obsession with racism was a created false perceptions, And then I would say that those false perceptions, as you alluded to, have created a very difficult environment in which to discuss important truths that make people uncomfortable. So on cousin marriage, you think it should be banned? First cousin marriage should be banned. And is it going to be banned? There is a proposal going through Parliament at the moment. I'm very much hoping that the Conservative leadership will back it.

Richard Holden gave a very good speech in Parliament. He's really pushing this. I'm slightly involved, just as an observer. I think it could happen. And how's it going to be enforced? That was the question that I always had in my mind. How do you work out whose cousin and prevent it from happening? So most American states just say no, ban cousin marriage.

Norway has just introduced a ban. Sweden and Denmark are proposing it. Other US states are doing so. We're looking at some of the technical details. Things like genetic screening would be able to tell you. And the problem with... But Matthew, this is where the issue comes in. Are you going to screen every marriage genetically in the country?

Well, at the moment, we have a ban on fathers marrying their daughters. And we have a ban on brothers marrying their sisters. If it was made illegal, then there would be a sanction if it was subsequently found out that someone had done it. And it would also send an incredibly powerful signal that we were not going to allow it anymore. I don't think it would require universal genetic testing, but it would, I think, lay down a marker of the...

As I say, they've done in other countries with very positive effects, not just Constantine, on the social side that I've described, but also this genetic risk, which is, you know, the scientific paper say twice as high, the risk of congenital abnormalities with first cousin Mary. I just don't believe it anymore. Because if you have multiple repeats cousin marrying within a group over many generate, think of the buildup of recessive genes. Look at the prevalence of these disorders in precisely the communities I'm describing.

I don't think you need to go anything like as far as doing universal genetic testing to put that into law and to show to the society that we think that this change is wise and will be beneficial. Okay, we've had a disgusting amount of agreement so far. So you said the stuff you want to disagree with. I like that. He pointed the finger. I would like to say, I want to actually for you to talk to us about things that you disagree with this on. But just exploring this clannishness, which is the result of these kind of tightly knit blood-based communities. One issue that's obviously been discussed a lot, and rightly so, because it's a horrific issue, is the grooming gangs.

which I can't imagine that that isn't a contributing factor. I would love to see more evidence on. One of the difficulties, as you probably know, is that data was not often recorded. Because I were worried that if we record that the person who is accused of this crime is Pakistani, then that might appear racist. So we don't, I don't think, have the data that we need. I did say in a column that I think it is not coincidental.

Forgive me, that I think that it wouldn't prove coincidental. if the child rape scandal tended to be more concentrated amongst certain clans, where there's incredible fierce loyalty, a willingness to cover up for each other, where solidarity within the group trumps everything else, even reporting somebody for rape. Wouldn't surprise me, but I can't prove it

because we don't have the data. I was actually having dinner as somebody who was very senior in the home office and working in anti-terrorism, who was actually saying that there is data, that shows that it's, I can't remember the name of the people, but a lot of the people who engage in these type of horrific crimes are from the mountain region of Pakistan.

Right. It is their mountain people. That was his assertion. And then he went on to explain that the reasons why they do it and so on and so forth. So there is apparently, I wouldn't be able to, you know. No, that's right. That's right. And many from the Kashmir, this is correct. But it goes to show that when we talk about immigration,

I think one of the things, I know that you're interested in immigration, we talk about immigration, and you will have seen this, you'll know this as well as anybody else, that we talk about it as this broad category. Totally. But even Pakistani immigrants, massive variation amongst people from, what we really should be thinking about is culture, the skills that these people can bring to this country,

the likelihood of integration, do we have the planning laws that enable us to flex infrastructure in order to accommodate them, The lack of joined up thinking in our policy over recently is shocking. We should be thinking about inviting people to our country in exactly the way we think about inviting people around for dinner. You choose the people carefully. You want to make sure that there's a good fit,

not only with you but with the other people who are coming. You invite them in manageable numbers that correspond to the size of the table and the ability to provide food. You think about letting people into your home very, very carefully. well, this is our harm, and we should be thinking about it just as careful. Or perhaps a different metaphor. Imagine you have a business.

You will bring people in that will increase your profitability. Yes. And you do so sensibly and wisely, as you say, do we have enough desks and all the rest of it. We haven't used that lens at all. And I think, okay, so this is the thing that worries me. I don't know if you feel this. So we agreed a lot and we should. Go on.

And we go. Okay. So I definitely take. take very seriously the comments of the readers at the Times newspaper. I think they're broadly, very similar to the way I think about the world. There has definitely been an uptick in the willingness to

indiscriminately go after all Muslims and certain degree of sympathy for Tommy Robinson. And I do work... So this wonderful story of progress on race in this country I think there's a not insignificant possibility that because of these terrible liberal failings, don't get me wrong,

I can understand why it's happening, there may be a slight reversal. That's why we should stop the liberal failings. Yeah, that's right. But we should also not stop. We also must, I think, call out Robinson, Musk, the very far right, forgive me.

Come on, Musk is not fun. Let me rephrase that. No, I paused. I paused. I admire him enormously. I don't know if you've gone and looked at his story. I mean, it's an experience. It's an extraordinary story. Incredible.

Incredible. And you listen to the podcast. He's across all of the technologies in the various companies. I listen to a very long one on Neurrelink, which is extremely interesting. But Tesla, of course, and SpaceX, the AI startups, you know, that empirical rigor that he must apply. All engineers must apply empirical rigor, otherwise their devices will not work. But in the political space, he does seem to be to be making comments without having done the necessary research. and I do worry about him promoting people like Tommy Robinson.

Now, somebody might say, yeah, but you need to have, you know, a massive backlash in order to get back to the equilibrium. I don't think that's right. I think liberals should be strong and rational and objective. But they aren't. They've not been enough. But they aren't. And so to me, when people, like people say,

what do you think about Andrew Taye? I think he's a toxic figure. But I don't care about Andrew Tay. I don't blame him for being Andrew Tay. The Andrew Tates of the world exist and will always exist. And I see them like Tommy Robinson as a symptom of the failure of liberals to actually do the things that need to be doing. So for us to sit there and pontificate about Tommy Robinson, I just don't see the value in that. But what about, say for example, Tommy Robinson or the alternative for Deutsche Land or others,

make very indiscriminate remarks about immigrants tarnishing all people. Now, I think, I think the sensible thing is say, no, that's not right. And at the same time to say to the liberals who are not publishing data on the relevance of incest and reocity, that is a disgrace. Why not be, I think we need to be strong and trenchant towards both of these. Because what we are trying to do is solve the problem. The problem, I don't see Tommy Robinson as the problem. The problem is liberal failings for decades that allowed mass rape on an industrial scale, across cities up and down this country.

I see uncontrolled mass immigration. I see illegal immigration. So I came to this country in 1995, 96. In 1996, net immigration into Britain was 55,000 a year. That's a number of people who now come here illegally, right? So we have seen a catastrophe. It's incredible. More people have come into this country in the last two,

not in the last two parliaments, but basically since Blair came in, then it comes since 1066. 1066 to 1950. In terms of the numbers, that's right. That's right. So that's not Tommy Robinson's fault. No.

And the fact that he may speak in a way that's overly generalizing is a bad thing. And people who do that are wrong to do so. And people who burn down asylum seeker hotels are morons who should go to prison. We can say all those things. It's not going to fix the problem. What's going to fix the problem is forcing the politicians to take this issue seriously. And they don't. And they don't until people are on the streets.

Matthew, can I just, I'm going to push back. I'm going to push back. Yeah, yeah. This is going to get it. Because I think there may be, go on. So here's a story for you. Probably around 2018, 2019, I was gigging in Manchester. And I was in a coffee shop.

And I noticed this girl had a tattoo of a bee on her shoulder. And I was looking around in Manchester. And I could see all these bees being tattooed on people. And I said to her, excuse me, why have you got a bee tattooed on your shoulder? And she goes, it's a mark of remembrance for the Manchester bombings. And I noticed how tolerant people were being around that, around what was quite frankly a heinous crime, heinous and evil.

But then you look after terrorist attack, after terrorist attack, after, and we're not talking honestly. For instance, the murder of Sir David Amos. We weren't talking honestly about that. We were talking about, oh, people, you know, online hate, when it was obviously something very, very different. And there comes a point, Matthew, where people stop wanting to get tattoos

and they stop wanting to have calm discussions and they become very, very angry, understandably so. And what I see in this country is the anger is palpable. And so when you see people like Robinson, the reason Robinson exists, is because our politicians, our cultural leaders, our journalists have created a vacuum where they do not want to talk about these difficult issues and where, as we all know, nature of pores a vacuum and where people like Robinson can come in and flourish.

Yeah, so I agree with almost all of that. So let me just throw in a couple. So let's just get two issues. One is the combustibility in society is unquestionably a consequence of decades of liberal failure. The immigration thing is remarkable, isn't it? Totally. So from 1066, so obviously we had a much smaller population back then. I mean, I think our population was only 2 million in the 19th century

before the Industrial Revolution, or in its early stages, I suppose. But that's still astonishing. And what's even worse is the consistent and serial deceit. Yes, yes. Right. So there's two questions that arise. Why did it happen? Why did it happen?

And why is it not being dealt with? Now, you're going to say, and you kind of said, that you need sometimes to have people who are going to be very trenchant and perhaps go too far in their comments in order to get the road back. No, no, no, that's not obvious. That's not.

That's not. I'm merely pointing out, is that... It's the inevitable consequence. It's a consequence. I don't think it's inevitable, but it's a question to be a consequence. So here's a question for you. Okay. Why has this failure happened? Why have conservatives promise to cut to cut immigration?

Well, very easily. Okay, and then fail to do so. Very easily. We'll get you back to the interview in a minute. But first. That, my friends, is the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. I know that building a business takes work.

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which they're not, it's still like 0.5 whatever percent or sometimes negative growth, is to bring more bodies in so you can say to people, well, the economy is grown by 0.1%. How did that happen? you brought in a bunch of people who work for 18 grand a year, so your GDP is higher. I don't think that can possibly be the explanation. That's what the politicians themselves will tell you. The Treasury cares more about growth figures than it does about the country. I don't think they're telling the truth. And I'll tell you why.

I don't think. I mean, because politicians make the policies and they care about something a lot. They don't care about what growth. They want to be re-elected. They want to be re-elected. Yeah. And low-wage mass immigration makes life easier for people in the short term, in the short term. Because it means that you have low, relatively cheap people to work in the care home,

as to do all the jobs that need to be done. You cut it. It's going to be very painful in the short term. The problem with these people isn't that it reduces GDP per capita instantly. The problem is it's long-term fiscal effect that these people, over the course of their lifetimes, who are coming here, on low wages. I'd like me to take more in pensions and health care and everything else and they pay into the exchequer. I don't even think that's the problem.

Well, but let me ask you a question. Let's say that we agree that there would be a short-term pain associated with it. I think the politicians are probably right that they might not get it re-elected if they suddenly found that they were cutting it. So what? Well, then somebody else would get it. So let me present you with a hypothesis. Okay.

The prevalence of low-wage immigration is part of a wider phenomenon in Western societies of electorates, voters effectively, who are unable to deal with reality. The reality being... The reality being, the fundamental way to enjoy prosperity and growth and higher living standards is to defer gratification. You have to do it.

All investment is deferred consumption. Yes. We could, if we liked, eat and make merry with the money we earn, but we'd never be able to save or invest. And therefore we'd never be able to increase our income. What is true? If you want to be a good podcast, you have to practice.

You have to, if you want to be a good podcast, I didn't mention that I was a sportsman for a long time. Did you know that? No. I was a table tennis. I was a British table tennis number one for 10 years, played in two Olympic games. That was my life till about 33.

And you practice in order to be able to compete well, or you do your homework, you have to put the iPad away. The deferring of gratification is the fundamental fundamental ingredient of growth. Of success of any kind. Success of all kinds, with a couple of caveats for the pedants. But that's basically.

Now, our ancestors were willing to defer gratification to create growth in a remarkable way. And if you look at, I mean, it's quite technical, but if you look over the course of the Middle Ages, the interest rate in England fell. If the interest rate needs to be very high for people to save, they're a pretty impatient by. Do you see what I mean? As it drops, you're really seeing a more patient society, a willingness to wait, and of course you benefit from that during your own life. It's rational.

Just to make it really obvious to people, I could have chocolate here and eat it and scoff it. Fantastic. I've optimized my enjoyment for that period. I could do the same every day, optimizing for the moment, but my life would be a disaster. Short-term optimization is a destroyer of long-term value.

The interest rate is dropping, dropped to 5% in England by 1,500. This is a society unique in the world. And this is partly the Protestant work ethic, the Borghmer values of prudence, and this is laying the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution, the greatest economic singularity in our species history. I think this starts to go into reverse

in Western civilization in about 1970. In 1971, there's the abandonment of the gold standard, which creates certain types of constraints on what governments can do. And what happens from then on? Fiscal deficits. Isn't a deficit wonderful in the here and now? Spend more than your earning as a government, right?

And you can have more consumption in the here and now. But you do that every year. What happens to the debt? It keeps going up. And then you have to start paying interest on the debt. This is where we've got to. Between, I don't know, 300 years up to 1970, the British state did not run a deficit outside a major war.

since 1970 we've run deficits every year bar four America every year bar five France has run a deficit every year since 1974 this is a civilizational shift of massive significance not just that monetary discipline has gone out of the window QE1 2 3 4 this is printing money to sustain consumption in the here and now with big long term negative consequences for capital misallocation

asset price inflation it's at the heart of inequality but why are they doing it? Or mass immigration. Have all of these people come in now? It's kind of like an opium in the hearing out, but massive long-term problems. You think about the uptick in mental health diagnosis. It might be lovely to get a diagnosis now to make sense.

But you do it too often. And first of all, it means people with real problems don't get access to treatment. But that inflationary phenomenon devalues the terminology that we used to describe mental health in the same way, that printing money creates problems for the things that are denominated in fiat currency. My pushback to you is, you say it's a liberal failure, as if they did it in a kind of a fit of

absence of mind. It is part of a series of phenomena that I ask you to try and articulate to an electorate and win an election when people are not willing to vote for the cuts and expenditure that we need to get on top of debt. They're not even willing to spend on defence. Yeah, I think in Western society, the idea that we are going to cut, like, look at what the Tories tried, they tried to do austerity. They cut spending by the normal point, whatever percent, and everyone went and the Tories are killing people. Correct. Obama, it was called austerity and the Tories when they were running deficits. You do realize that across this whole period, we were adding to the debt. Yes, that's why it's over 100% of GDP now. So the only way

to get out of it is to grow, and your argument is that's why they're bringing lots of people in. No, it's not helping our growth. But it's the only way that they can pretend, is what I'm saying. What it does, you spend more than you earn now, it means that you can push it a bit further. But you keep doing it, and the problems are eating us now. Our problem is that all this mass immigration has led to the backlash, our infrastructure is overwhelmed, we haven't invested in nuclear power. Electricity is expensive.

We're now paying more on servicing our debt than we do on education. America is in an interesting position because it's still quite. growing. It has that wonderful dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit. But its debt is very, very high and growing. Trump will add, according to one estimate, it'd be very, this is a very, the most interesting part of the Trump second term is what happens to the debt. The Congressional, independent congressional budget office says an extra $7.5 trillion added to the debt. This is an enormous, this is a tax cuts. He also added to the debt in his first term. This is again on the never, never. It's pushed. Our ancestors, made sacrifices to make sure their lives were better when they got older, and they bequeathed to their children fantastic opportunities. We are doing the opposite. You talk about racism. The greatest discrimination happening in the Western civilization today

by far is a discrimination against the future. And to me, a large part of this is because we don't want to be uncomfortable. Our entire society now, now is about seeking comfort. That's right. Seeking comfort in the moment. Right. And not caring or not thinking about what happens 5, 10, 20, 30 years down the line

as long as I am not experiencing discomfort at this particular instance. That's right. Everything. Every problem is like this. I think that's right. Look at the opium epidemic. You know, giving these opioids for back pain. Brilliant in the here and now. What about the long-term consequences?

What about these drugs for mental? health we're giving to children. I don't know what the long-term consequence is going to be of some of this. Almost all decisions we make, even the empirical ones, have a long and short-term component. You know, will giving you the headache tablet now and every day for your headache, will that have an effect on your liver in 10 years? If the focus of society, as you say, is honed in on comfort in the here and now, it has seismic implications across time. And this is something that is neglected in economic, political and sociological analysis, I think much to our detriment. And why has this happened?

This shift? Yes. Well, I've got a number of thoughts. So one, it's very difficult to establish the mechanism. So some might say that the abandonment of the gold standard was very important. The gold standard, I'm not an expert on monetary economics, but effectively the convertibility of a currency to gold means you can't, as it were, print money. You can't magic more of it.

You can't magic. Exactly. It's kind of like a discipline. It has certain downsides. So that might be part of it. Another explanation, credit cards started coming in. The first access credit card, do you know what its slogan was? Access takes the waiting out of wanting.

You don't have to wait anymore. Have it now. And that may have been part of, I think this is more a symptom. My fundamental explanation is the same as well. what caused the fall of many ancient civilizations, which is complacency. You start to feel entitled to what you have and you stop working to sustain its trajectory. Happened in Rome. Rome was hungry and disciplined in its early period. And it conquered most of the Mediterranean base and most of the continent, big and successful empire.

And then it wanted to have all the blessings of success. without incurring some of the costs. And it started debasing the currency. So it used to be the denarius, for example, 100% silver. They just kept cutting it. And they thought, fantastic, it's keeping the party going, bread in circuses. The doll started to include olive oil and wine, trying to keep people happy in the here and now.

So we don't have, but it completely destroys chips away at the civilization. we are in this period. I've tried to write this. It's difficult. I've tried to get this across it. And what's interesting, I mean, you look at some of the historical presence, I think the opposite Caliphate, at the very moment that it was going bankrupt,

its citizens demanded the shorter working week. And we're getting this year. Quiet quitting. Have you heard of this phenomenon? Yes. Doing the bare minimum. Yep. I mean, what do we think the consequences of that is you scale it through a society?

We get out-competed. Competition is a fundamental part of all life. And to the extent that the West gets out-competed by people are willing to work harder and have a longer horizon, you know, it happened to Rome. They collapsed. It's very much like addiction, because addicts talk about rock bottom, which is the moment where you realize that this way of living is fundamentally unsustainable and that you will die. But if you're constantly keeping people afloat and never, and they never have to face the consequences of their actions and they can just coast along,

then you're never going to allow them to reach rock bottom. They're never going to have that moment where they actually wake up and realize that things need to change, and this is existential. So they'll just bumble along until the end. I saw it in sport. So when I was at Sports Day, there were winners and losers.

At my son's primary school, they all seem to win. So, of course, you'd never learn what it means to lose and you don't develop resilience and recognise that if you want to get better, you need to work a bit harder. Grade inflation. Think about that. It's a very pervasive phenomenon

across the Western world. In other words, you give kids, give them all a, I'm simplifying a bit, give them all an A, fantastic. They're going to feel really wonderful self-esteem. That's a disaster in the long term. It totally devalues the certificate for somebody really gone an A, but where are people going to hit the realization

that it's by failing that I learned that I needed to do something different, to get better. This is, I think you've nailed it. Suffering, I don't want to, a bit of suffering, taking a bit of a habit, not eating the chocolate, is that suffering a bit? But my God, if you're willing to do bits of suffering, you have an expanded in large capacity as a human being. And we have, we have lost that wisdom. We're a bit too nice in a very destructive way. Agreed. So what's your prescription, Dr. Seed? So I think, um, One thing that might hit us is a bond crisis.

In other words, the government debt that is sold into the markets. I mean, it's already going up in this country, as you know. And that could be something that really focuses our minds. That's effectively when lenders don't believe that you're actually going to pay back to that. That's right. They don't think you're credit worthy. What I would... What should we do is what I'm asking.

As a civilization. It's a free... If you become complacent, what do we do? So I'll ask you the question. Do you think in Rome with the bread and circuses, the expanded doll, effectively money printing,

it's keeping the party going, but effectively it's going to end, it's going to collapse, and it's going to be terrible? Who is going to get this message across? I think the only way is to articulate and to convince enough people in a democracy.

I say I've written a few columns on this theme, and I definitely sense, people agree, you, I think, agree with the analysis. This is why, so would you accept that it's a bit, you may disagree with it, but it's a bit unfair to say the politicians were lazy on immigration when they were also, their laziness reflected the democratic wishes of the population. Well, actually, that's not quite fair, is it?

You must speak to a lot of politicians, as I sometimes do. I don't think what I said was right, actually. No, I think that's not quite right. I think people were clearly saying we want immigration to come down. They were less keen on some of the other things. I think the politicians... It depends which politicians were talking about. So the Blair government talked about rubbing the right's nose and diversity.

You remember that? The Andrew Nether memo that got leaked. They wanted immigration for ideological reasons as well as economic reasons. Is this the one that the civil servant? Yes. Is that been very... Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that's been corroborated.

Look, it doesn't mean that it was Blair's policy. But generally speaking, on the centre left at that time, there was the view that more, you know, just... Let's have more people. That's great, isn't it? You know, people are great. Everyone's the same. Everyone's equal.

There's no difference between cultures. So if we have more people, we can grow faster. We can boost our economy, blah, blah, blah. But the point I was going to make to you is that when I speak to politicians, as I'm sure you do, I'm always shocked by how well-meaning most of them are and how well-intentioned most of them actually are. And most of them will say, well, actually, I'm in this to try and improve my country. And I actually genuinely believe them when I talk to them. because I can see that they mean it.

The problem is that too many politicians care about being reelected and not enough about the reason they say they got into politics. And I said this in a speech that I gave last year at a conference. They didn't get into politics to get reelected. They got into politics to do things, right? And so if enough people went out

and actually, yes, you might end up falling on your sword, but did something to actually move the country in a certain direction and said, the things that you were saying about, you know, this... But would they get elected? I think in the current climate, they definitely would. They definitely would. If you talked about the fact that we're living way beyond our means,

way beyond our means, you think most British people don't know that? They do, but remember what the other side will say, no, you're wrong. They'll say something like this. No, no, no. What will happen is if we just spend more money, growth will pay for it. Trump said during the campaign, don't worry, our tax cuts will pay for themselves, because we're going to go gangbusters. He didn't use that word.

He said the same in his first time. Since 1970, all politicians have made an empirical claim that we can borrow more and reduce the debt. Because growth will pay for it. And they've effectively been wrong for 50 years. But electorates are still buying this nonsense. Look at when Gore went against Bush, who was the last president to run a circus in America?

Clinton. That's partly because of the dot-com boom. Yeah. And Gore, I'm going to simplify a bit, went to the electorate saying, yeah, we're going to pay that down into our debt, reduce it. And Bush said, no, no, no, we're going to spend it. Bush won. That was a very big message to democratic politicians. Very different. My goodness, happened every election.

Who went on a manifesto to borrow more? If you look at each American election, the Congressional Budget Office, it's often the one that's willing to say, we're going to go even further into debt that wins. At this last election, Sunnap was going from a time. triple to a quadruple lock to bribe the country. But that's the two mainstream parties. This is why reform, according to SunPulse, is now number one, because they're saying, let's cut net zero, let's end net zero, let's actually take the handbrake off the economy without necessarily borrowing more money.

You don't necessarily have to increase debt. You could just stop our energy prices are four times what they are in America. But how would we, in order to deal with that, we have to spend? I do think we need to invest, by the way. So do I. Nuclear power. But I would love to see the reform. My own view, I tell you another thing that could help us a lot.

Okay. Is to change the basis of taxation. At the moment, we tax largely income and productive capital. I think we should shift our tax system to land. Why not? You can't offshore land. Can't take it out of the country. You start, I think the value of the,

the unimproved value of land in this country is over seven, billion pounds. You start putting a tax, sometimes called a land value tax, we'll be able to cut taxes on capital and income. I think that would be a big game change for us. We do. You know, again, I'm going to use the addiction metaphor. There comes a point where you have to wake up. And you talk to the vast majority of people like I do and people who come up to me when I'm walking around in a coffee shop, wherever it is, and they want to have a chat. Every single person that I speak to, regardless of background, race, jazz. whatever it may be. They all know that this country isn't working and this country is on the

downward path. They wouldn't be able to articulate maybe the reasons why, but we can all feel it. No one is looking around London now or the UK going, you know what, this was much better than 20 years ago. But I think they would say the same in France. Yeah. I think a lot of people would say it in America because a lot of the growth that they still have is quite unequally distributed. but we haven't talked about some of the other problems. One of the other problems capitalism working is because the regulators have captured the parts, forgive me, the corporations have captured the politicians.

The regulators as well. And they want to have regulations that protect their market positions. That's meaning that capitalism is not doing what it need. Capitalism works when companies are going bankrupt. These failures are what leaves space. That shows competition is working. But that's not happening so much anymore.

The big companies are staying ever. longer in the market indices. Most of the politicians go from the, you know, from the Senate or the House of Representatives into the companies that funded their campaigns. You know, that's a big issue. Another big issue that we haven't talked about. I don't know if you've talked about it. Maybe the biggest of all is existential risk.

Politicians, you say, are ignoring immigration. We have democratized the capacity to destroy our species by bacteriological warfare. You know, the Spanish flu coding has been published on the internet. Six-formers can create microbes through synthetic biology. Nuclear war, I think, is a risk. But AI, that will democratize the capacity for fanatics, a small minority, to potentially blow us all up. You ask a politician about that.

They won't have thought about it at all. Yes. The Bacteriological Weapons Convention has a staff of two in an annual budget, less than an average McDonald's. You talked about denial. We're in denial about the fate of our civilization in the sense that we have described. But we're in denial about so many big issues

that I scarcely see discussed at all. And when I write columns on them, I've done two on existential risks, no hits, no clicks. People don't want to hear about it. Come back with me to the complacency point because I see that as being at the root of all the things that we're talking about. What is your prescription on that?

How do we... Look, one of the missions we've had on trigonometry is to try and articulate from, you know, my outsider and France is sort of semi-outider perspective, why the West is actually great, right? To talk about its history in a positive way, to have historians on to, you can talk about the realities of slavery

and who practice slavery and who actually ended and all of this stuff, right? So to put across the idea that some of the things you're being told on TV or whatever, not true and actually reflect very wrongly on your society. But how do we end the complacency? That sense of, to me, I always feel, since I became a father,

that our greatest debt is to the future. That's our job, right? Ultimately, even at a genetic level, this is what Richard Dawkins explains so beautifully in the selfish gene. Our genes that make us up are trying to reproduce into the future. And so even biologically,

our debt is to our children and to our grandchildren. And we are people, as a society, who are putting our hand into the pockets of our unborn grandchildren and saying, oh, let me have another X, Y, Z. I'd like another bit of chocolate, thank you. I don't care about all my grandchildren. How do we end that?

Yeah, and by the way, it's even harder now not to continue to take because this has happened for so long. We're actually much poorer than we expected that we would be. The way that complacency is eliminated in market competition is the complacent companies go bust.

Yeah. And then the new ones come along. The problem in our terms as if the West goes, the likely successor is totalitarian China. And that might mean competition that is eliminated because they just won't allow that to happen. You'll be interested to know, the psychological literature on complacency is very immature. I don't think that it's been a lens sufficiently applied to the historical trajectory of civilizations. I think we need more of it. I have spoke to a number of cultural evolution visionary theorists and they I mean effectively if you think about it if you're living in a you're a company you dominate the marketplace people you get prestige people think you're wonderful it is I think just to psychologically so easy to think you're worth it we've become a laurel do you remember that ad yeah society but you're saying my answer is in a democracy you have to persuade enough people yes and would I

be willing to go into a party where they're trying to get this across in a way that might be convincing to people. It's a tough sell, I think, because I think people don't want to hear a lot of this stuff. But they're going to have to hear it at some point. Or collapse, or just get out flanked by the competition. This is not impossible. I don't know if you saw the story recently about yesterday the AI Chinese startup, which is already managing to, as it were, provide the same computational sophistication of a large language model at a much lower levels of competition. computational power and electricity. I mean, we are in a massive competition with a society dominated by a totalitarian clique

called the Chinese Communist Party, which by the way I know pretty well because I played a lot of table tennis in China. And it's mass starvations, the cultural revolution, the genocide, the re-education programs, they could use AI to completely dominate their society. and the wider world. There's a small group of people in the CCP. And so if we don't, my fear is if we don't wake up, we could lose this competition.

So how do we wake up? Well, I will write. Writing columns. I don't think it will do it on its own. That sounded sarcastic. No, you're right. Because it is. How else before we get the bond market correction

or some other disaster? Not easy. You know, everybody wakes up at their own time. And there are people who are waking up. Some people will wake up in time and some people won't. And you just have to hope that there is enough people waking up at the moment to have a change. And also as well, it comes back to the word I used early on in the conversation. We need courage.

We need people who are actually going to be brave. You talked about deceit. I don't think it's deceit, Matthew. I think it's gaslighting. The politicians have been gaslighting for a long time. people have gaslit themselves. And we need to wake up and actually realize that if we're going to turn this round, if we're actually going to save our civilization,

if we are actually going to progress and thrive, we need to start accepting some pretty hard, desperate and uncomfortable truths. No, I agree with that. By the way, I'm sensing we're running. I didn't get a chance to push you on. We do it next time. No, we can do it now. And it can bleed into the substack questions.

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Oh, actually, actually, no, you're going to say too much cultural diversity. People are different... That's not what I'm going to say. What I'm going to say is what do you mean by diversity? Well, I think that's worth defining. I think that diversity is a tremendous strength within certain parameters. What do you mean by diversity? cognitive diversity. In other words... Oh, right, so not what the rest of society means by diversity.

Yeah, so if society means... If what you mean by diversity is not what we keep being told about, then I agree with it. Okay, let me see what you think. So let's say the society thinks of diversity is in demographic terms, race, gender, so... The society thinks there's not enough black people on TV, let's shove some black people in there, that's diversity. Is that our greatest strength? Well, I think it can have some very positive implications. So cognitive diversity... diversity. What I mean by that is different insights, perspectives, information that can be brought to bear on solving problems that no one perspective has a monopoly of good ideas on. Okay.

But demographic differences do provide that kind of diversity. Depends how they're managed and how they're created. If you just randomly start picking people because on their skin color basis, no, it doesn't. Okay, let me see. And there's also another facet of it, which is you get somebody, they go, look at this person who's diverse, we've brought through at the BBC. You went, yeah, but they're privately educated, they went to Oxford, they have exactly the same opinions on you, on everything, from economics to Brexit to whatever, to populism. That's not diversity.

That's just you with just a little bit more melanin. All I would say is that colour still now won't always be this way, is still a proxy. For culture. For tacit knowledge. Yeah, sure. Of a very significant kind in almost all of the problems we face. I remember, I'm going to simplify it.

bit but Blair gave a speech on how to crack down on antisocial behavior. They said what we need to do is empower the police to see someone engage in antisocial behavior, march them to a cash point, get them to withdraw a hundred pounds and issue an on the spot, 100 pound fine. And all the upper middle class journalists thought it was a brilliant policy. But it took someone from a different social class to see the problem, which is a lot of these people didn't have bank accounts and almost none had a hundred pound bank balance. In other words, if you think of intelligence as sort of conceptual flair, you detach it from

granular cultural understanding and it takes you in the wrong direction. Our politicians have come from too narrow a social class for example. And I think that, you know, if you've got a group of people, white male Oxbridge graduates running a company which is trying to appeal to a broad demographic, you could have a massive problem. And bringing people from different background because what you want is merit. All the big decisions high value in the world are taken by teams. Right? Because the world's too complex for one person to have all the information. You have a group of people in a team who come from a very similar background. They're adding nothing to each other. What you want is meritocracy at the level of the team. And then you bring people with different perspectives and different cultural backgrounds where relevant to the problems we're trying to solve. The CIA in the post-war period, 95% of its analysts, were white male, middle class, privately educated, liberal arts graduates.

Protestant, and I mentioned. It was a very narrow group of people, all of whom passed a test, better than anyone else. Reason it, they were a disaster in anticipating threats because they couldn't see. Emerging tribal problem. You need people with perspectives that are relevant. And that is often, color, gender is bringing a whole load of tacit collateral to these. This is why Amazon, Microsoft, MI6, CIA, today, they might not say it in the Trump era, but they are focused fundamentally on bringing diverse perspectives

to solve complex interconnected problems. That's fine. But that's not what most people understand by that, mean or understand by diversity. You are here talking to us because we love your column and also because there have been a number of issues that have been raised recently on which we feel, based on your column but also on your background,

your family background, you would have a unique perspective. And you make us look less racist. Exactly. I'm better looking. I wouldn't go that far, man. That's why you're here. You're not here because you're a brown guy. That's the difference.

That's the difference between what you're talking about, which is someone having a unique perspective that's valuable, and what I'm talking about, which is box ticking. And we've had way too much box ticking. That's right. I agree with that. Went too far. Way too much box. But do you agree that meritocracy at the level of an individual,

say you had a test that could hire for the best graduate to go into the analytical function, of the CIA. Yeah. Would you agree with me that applying that test to recruit the hundred people you need will definitely

lead to disaster? Not necessarily. What I would say is if those people are smart enough to go, we're about to overthrow a government in Latin America, maybe we should chat to somebody who's been to South America.

Do you see what I'm saying? Well, in other words, you, yeah, but there's a problem, no, that doesn't work. That doesn't work. That's what people used to say in marketing. They'd say, right, what we do,

we don't have any diversity in our group, but what we'll do is we'll ask questions to the market. But you know why it doesn't work? Why? What questions are asked in order to elicit what kinds of answers? E.O. Wilson said, you test a trivial hypothesis, you get a trivial answer. You need to ask rich questions. Sure.

You need diversity within the team that is asking the questions, market researchers and analysts. Because if you look at the FBI in the era of Guantanamo Bay, they couldn't see what was before them. which was a clan-based population. Because they didn't understand. These are deeply complex cultural traditions that requires within the analytical function.

What I'm saying is... All I'm saying to you is, it seems to me that Trump, Musk, Musk is very bright, but this is something that happens to a lot of bright people. They think meritocracy at the level of the individual will give you meritocracy at the level of the team. It is conceptually incoherent. Depending on the mission of the team.

agree. So long as it's complex. What I am saying to you is the issue of the FBI being insufficiently capable of understanding the Islamist extremism issue is not going to get solved by having more trans people with rainbow landyards in the FBI. Correct. And I think that's the issue that people are concerned about, number one. Number two, the code, the idea that diversities are greater strength has been discredited somewhat

by the fact that it has to be wheeled out every time there's a terrorist attack, which is what Sadiq Khan and all these other people do. Every time there's a terrorist attack, diversities are great to strength. Maybe not now, mate. Maybe not right in this moment. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, so I think we're, you know, but so all of that we've agreed on. And I think most of it, most of you have. And there's a third point, which is the other thing is diversities are greater strength. There's been this mantra that's been used to justify mass immigration. As if bringing in law,

of people is automatically making a stronger. And it's absolutely not. Of course it's not. I agree with all of that. By the way, by the way, here's why, you know, well, but, but, but it's a lot of, but I do want to, I do. There's another part of it. Just one more part. But there's a class element to this, which is they go, right, we don't, and I saw it in

comedy, which is like, we need less white people. But you know what? All the posh boys who've got all the connections, they're still going to get in. So who are the white people who are not? Oh, it's people who think a little bit differently. Maybe have a different accent and maybe didn't. go to the right school. Those are the people, which shall we just say as well, is the majority of people in this country. Yeah. And that's really eager at. I agree with that, but I don't want to

land the point that this idea of meritocracy hiring the best person for the job. Yes. You need the best team for the team's job. That's what you're saying. And this is really important, but it's missed. I've got to tell you, I have a business that works. You'll be amazed at how often you go. This happens in both ways, by the way. Sometimes you'll have a senior leadership. team who look diverse, you know, white, brown, but they've been there so long, they think in the same way, they bring the same historical precedence to, they use the same metaphors, they're just going to get beaten in competition. It's those organisations that rationally optimise for team diversity, and it's not easy to do, it's suffle. Yes. The ones that are doing this well, let me tell you,

they are completely winning in this age. And I do worry, I'm hearing again and again, people say, we just need the best person for the job, as if you can have a single, test that can tell you who the best person is to populate a team. It's a disaster. You can't. No, I disagree. It depends on the team and it depends on the mission. In any complex of that. I'll give you an example. We have 10 people working for us, right? We just hired the new person to make thumbnails for our YouTube videos, right? The only thing that matters is, is that person able to do the thumbnails that look good and get attention in the way that we want? We don't care who he is. We don't care where he's from. It doesn't matter, right?

there are some jobs and some teams where what you're talking about is not necessary. However, when you have a situation when the government says, as it does in America, in some departments or used to at least until Trump came in, well, actually, you need 10% of this demographic population, 5% of this, and you don't have enough women, and you don't have enough this, you don't have enough that. That is artificially influencing the situation, not in a good way at all. It's not fundamental to making the success of the mission more likely. It's fundamental to ticking boxes.

And that's when people like Elon or us or whoever says, when we push back against the idea of diversities are greater strength, what we're pushing back against is box ticking. And to be fair, Elon in his companies, I think, is very focused on the right kind of diversity. But you said, you know, thumbnails. That's right. Brick layers. The productivity is how many bricks each individual can lay.

The overall productivity is some of the individual members. That's not true of most of the very high value work that's done in the world. today. Okay, give you a different example, right? We get comments from women all the time regularly. Well, this show would be so much better if it was hosted by women. And I'm like, who stopped women from starting a YouTube channel? The Patriarch. Like, we started this channel in a room above a comedy club with no money, no connections, no social media, nothing. And we built it up, right? If two women want to do that, no one's standing in their way, right?

But the way the people have been trained to think is, oh, let's just switch these things around and then everything will be so much better. Okay, let me ask you, okay. Obviously, we're agreeing almost all of it, but I do think I haven't allowed. Let me, if you walked into a senior team in a government, all hugely talented individuals,

massively brilliant at the earth. And remember, running a government isn't just running their own departments. They have to come together and discuss issues. that pertain to all of them and the synergies and strategic trade-offs between them. And they were all Oxbridge graduates, white, male, middle class.

I think that's likely to make profound mistakes. And in fact, if you disagree, look at the blunders of our governments by Ivor King and Anthony crew. They say that almost all of it was because they just didn't have sufficient diversity in the room. Honestly, I'll give you, I've written a book on this subject,

and I can see you're looking skeptical. I used to sit on an advisory group for the England football manager. The England football manager, tell me if you think this is a good advisory team to the England football men's manager. What would traditionally be is lots of other England football managers who know a lot about football. If you were to test, we want people with knowledge about football to come and advise on football. These have the 10 most knowledgeable people, they're going to advise Southgate. That's meritocracy and it's a disaster. Why? Because Southgate already knows what they know.

They were socialised into the same assumptions about football. They're not telling it. It's an echo chamber. So what do they need? What they need? Well, the team that I join, me with my background in interest in psychology and culture and performance. Most of my life I've been interested in high performance. Somebody in the background in AI.

Dave Brailsford. He knows very little about football. He's a cycling coach. But think of what a cycling coach might bring to that ecosystem with knowledge on cardiovascular endurance, recovery, data, performance, selection. Fantastic. Lucy Giles worked at the Army. The Army's world class on logistics. Now, it takes a strategic lens to say you don't want to be meritocratic. We want people who know a lot about football and advise on football. I think this is a language issue in that case. In none of those people's cases, have you mentioned their class, the race, the sex, the sexual orientation, the transgenderism or lack thereof? You talked about their skills. Is diversity of skills useful, in a team that's choosing an England manager. God, yes. But do I care

if those people are green aliens or transsexual black people or whatever? God no. Would class matter in a political decision-making? I think so, yes. Yes, I do. But again, I wouldn't be picking people based on class. What I would do is make sure that the obstacles are removed

from working class people's ability to advance within our society. That's what I would do. It's a hell of a long-term program. But what you really want to think... But that's what we want, isn't it? Well, of course. But you want people, now in the cabinet, people who both have knowledge of the relevant kind, and you want some class diversity too. Wasn't John Prescott a perfect example of that?

Yeah. Right. So if we're capable of doing it in 1997. But there has been over the people who study these things, so there's been a very significant deficit of diversity. And we've got fewer people becoming MPs from the army background and also trade union. Everyone's now going through university. Right. But that's not because of a lack of DEI is my point. It's not because we didn't have a government program to say,

you need one more of these. Yeah. Right? Yeah. No, I agree. I agree with myself. But, you know. Constance and Kissin destroys diversity with facts.

No, no. I don't think. I don't think. I do not proceed defeat. By the way, there's a point that I want to make as well. I'm just messing with you, that's a clip. There's a point that I want to make, which I don't think people make enough, and that diversity is bad for the people who get promoted,

because there are people who are very, very talented, who are black, brown, gay, whatever it is. And they come into a room and people like, they may not say it, but they're like, right, there's a box sticker. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's why I don't like quotas. Yeah.

What I want, what I think people need, you know, anyone from a private sector background, take a step back. What's the problem we're trying to solve? What are the array of insights that we need tacit and formal? And how do we do that rationally, populate that team, in order to really win in a competitive marketplace?

I don't think people realize the incredible... You talked about Dawkins. Evolution requires diversity. He may have told you that genetic mutation, evolution needs something to harness onto. Diversity is absolutely central. But you need to get it right and in the right way. And I totally agree that on immigration and some of DEI,

it's gone completely crazy. But that's the only thing anyone's pushing. No one's pushing against having someone from an army background advising on the football management. I have seen people saying. And I think I do worry it might go too far the other way. But no, I don't think we're far away from each other. All right.

Let's explore, stop exploring the narcissism of small differences. We're going to go to Substack where we're going to ask you questions. Who said that? Who was the first person to say that? I don't know. Ernest Qualley, a British anthropologist. I think it's one of the great phrases. Yes.

But actually, I said mockingly, but actually I think it's a very valuable discussion we've had because I think it just shows that, first and foremost, different people mean different things by the word diversity. And I guess what I mean by the word diversity is DEI, and what you mean diversity is variance and skills and background, which correspond to knowledge.

and nobody certainly here would argue against that. With that said, we're going to go to Substack where we're going to ask you questions from our supporters, including your mother, I'm sure, who's probably put in the question. Before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Well, I alluded to it earlier, existential risk.

Have you done a program on that? I wouldn't say we've done a program on it. We've had small bits on it. Because we talked about learning from our mistakes. The problem with existential risk is if you wipe out the species, there's nothing. to build back from. Nuclear war could do it, and it is a risk to us.

Proliferation, just mistakes. I mean, there's many examples in the post-war period where there's been a blip on a radar screen and, you know, Boris Yeltsin's been given a briefcase, do we escalate in retaliation? It's turned out to be a blip and not a missile. This could happen to us, and we don't think about it, I think sufficiently.

But bacteriological warfare, AI, and all of the others that are coming down the pipeline, I don't think we talk or think about this anything like enough. And this is one Musk who I, as I say, I admire in some ways. That's why he wants us to get to Mars. If there's a meteor strike or some other disaster that afflicts Earth. But Demis Hussarbis of Deep Mind said, got to make sure the AI doesn't get to Mars with us.

And apparently Musk was flawed by that insight. But it's true. We need to think more about that. Fantastic. Well, join us on Substack, where you'll be able to ask your questions to Matthew. Do you believe some countries are better than others at integrating new immigrants?

If so, which countries are and what explains their success?