TRIGGERnometry - "The Left Must Stop Despising Working People" - Paul Embery

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

A special thank you to Ground News for supporting this episode.  Download the Ground News app for free ▶️ https://check.ground.news/trigger  to join the fight against media bias.  Paul Embery (@PaulEmbery) is the author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class. Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR you can support TRIGGERnometry here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. A wonderful returning for the third time now. Guest today is a firefighter, trade unionist, unheard columnist, blue labor guy. Paul Embry, welcome back to Trichonometry. Lovely to be back. And one thing I didn't mention the introduction, but I really should, is the fact that you're the author of Despised, which is this great book here, which is one of the reasons we really wanted to talk with you again.

Last time we talked about I was pushing you to run for Parliament, if you remember that. That hasn't happened yet. Are you happy that centrist dad, Kirstama, is now leader and is going to reform the Labour Party in the direction that you want? He wouldn't have been my choice. He's not the leader of choice for me. Having said that, I don't think it was a particularly appealing field. and I think there's

an issue around look, Kirstarmer at the end of the day is a North London liberal lawyer I think instinctively he doesn't necessarily understand the working classes the people that the Labour Party needs to win back

if they're ever going to win power again he comes from that wing of the party which now dominates the party that is completely obsessed with promoting cosmopolitan liberalism and, you know, I think he's got a real mountain to climb. That said, I think he's done okay.

I think he's at a steady start. I think he's got some good people around him. I think the Director of Policy, a woman called Claire Ainsley, who's written some good stuff over recent years about the need to connect with the working class and how to do it. I think some of his early speeches have been good. I think his conference speech was good in terms of pressing the buttons of, patriotism, national security, family, etc. But like I said, there's a massive way to go. But is that a reasonable start, to be fair? I guess the reason I brought up, and maybe in a

slightly sort of spuriously cheap way, but I guess my point is, and this is not like you, mate. It's very unlike me, mate. This is something that you talk about it in the book quite a bit, because you're juxtaposing what you believe with people like Tony Blair, who, et cetera, et cetera. And there seems to be this sort of thing. When we think about the labor. Party and look back to when was a successful period in its history, a lot of people certainly our age and younger would look towards Blair, but that isn't a position that you particularly advocate for the Labour Party. So where does it go? Well, I think Blair did right in the sense that he was able to build that coalition which Labor always needs if it's going to win power, which

is hanging on to its traditional working class base, if you like, but also reaching out to a layer of more middle-class people, you know, people perhaps part of the professes. and managerial classes who are sympathetic to Labor because they want a fairer society, fairer economy, etc. I think Blair was able to do that. And historically, actually, Labor has always been, when it's been, it's most successful, it's been an electoral compromise between those two elements. I describe it as, you know, mainly heartypool, but with a dash of Hampstead. I think that's when Labor has been at its best. And Labor can't really win just with one part of that equation. I think the problem with Blair is, you know,

just squandered a golden opportunity to really kind of reform the economy and to shape it in such a way where it was delivering more in favour of working class people to confront vested interest to take on the rich and powerful when it was necessary to do so. I think he embraced neoliberalism too much, Thatcherite ideology too much. And in doing so, I think he combined that with a very sort of relaxed approach to immigration. You know, Labor at that time had embraced both economic liberalism and social liberalism. And that just began, I think, to alienate working class people. And, you know, I think particularly over the last 15 or 20 years, that process has just intensified and laborers hemorrhaged votes in working class communities, in places that were once

It's absolute bedrock in provincial Britain, small town Britain, and that ended up with Labour being annihilated, as we know, in December. So that was a process that began under Tony Blair, however successfully was electorally, I think he has to recognise that actually, you know, the ideology that he drove through alienated millions of working class people in this country. Don't you think part of the problem now that Labor faces with itself is the fact that the party, dare I say, is unsustainable?

sustainable? Can they really hold all these people together under one coalition? Well, this is the problem. They haven't done that, and they've alienated that heartiful side of the equation in large numbers, and unless they can build that coalition again, so to appeal again to those working class communities who they've alienated, which will mean that more kind of middle-class liberal element of the party will have to make sacrifices, just as the working-class element did when Blair was so obsessed with bringing more middle-class people on board. But unless it does that, then, no, frankly, it's finished, or it will just become a protest group.

You know, it needs radical change. The ideology of the party needs to change, the language of the party needs to change. It needs to stop obsessing about what many people see as secondary issues. in their lives, fringe issues. I'm not saying that those issues are not important, but they're not the issues that working class people are talking about. So, you know, you would hear, I know this as a Labor Party member for 26 years, you will hear people constantly in the movement talking about things like climate change and LGBT rights and migrant rights and that kind of thing, human rights, etc. And those things are important. I'm not dismissing

them. But actually, when you go on the doorstep, when you go to working class, communities, what people are talking about are, you know, jobs and the threat of unemployment and low wages and housing, but also, you know, what many labour people would dismiss as Tory issues, you know, law and order. You know, there's, for example, you know, there's a drug dealer dealing on my estate outside the front door. How can I deal with that as a working class person? Or issues around immigration, you know, people seeing pressure on public services and perhaps their wages suffering downward pressure as a result of immigration into their communities or large-scale immigration.

These are, you know, people talking about family and perhaps traditional values. These are issues that Labour activists will, when they're raised on the doorstep or in conversation, will look down at the ground and shuffle their feet in embarrassment because they're not comfortable about talking about those issues. And the problem is people out there are people who, once upon a time were Labor, felt instinctively tribally labour, and the Labor Party was welcoming to those people and knew that it had to reflect the concerns of those people and speak about the issues, as Labour over the last 20 or 30 years has become more middle class, more focused on or set in the

cities, particularly London-centric, quite bourgeois in its outlook, more cosmopolitan, more liberal. it just doesn't want to talk about those issues anymore. It's no coincidence that working-class people have just gravitated away from the party as the party no longer reflects their everyday concerns. But Paul, I would go even deeper to say that there's a large swave of the Labour Party who feel complete and absolute contempt for white working-class people in particular, dare I say it. They do. And, I mean, the book is called Despised Why the Modern Left Loads the Working Class.

And there is undoubtedly an element who, who do go further than just kind of sneering at working class values, but actually hate the people who espouse those values and treat them as I've, as I described it in the book, treat them like some sort of embarrassing elderly relative. You know, they want their votes at election time, so they know they've kind of got to try and keep them on board, not alienate them too much,

but they don't want to be seen in public with them because, you know, these people are embarrassing. They've got old-fashioned working class values. It's like you and you're incredibly right-wing mum. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, there is a contempt. And, you know, when I was a guest on the show before, I talked about things like the Gordon Brown incident with Gillian Duffy,

and I talked about Emily Thornberry with the St. George's flag. Well, you've got the white van on the cover of the book, which I think I'm imagining is a reference to that very common, because it's such a visceral thing, isn't it? Yeah, and, you know, the thing about Emily Thornberry is she obviously, She's part of that middle-class liberal Islingtonian set who really don't understand. I don't think people in communities where they do fly St. George's flags and drive white bands and saw what she saw her and thought it was so noteworthy that it was worth tweeting about.

But there's no question there is a significant disconnect between large parts of the left and the working class because parts of the left do actively despise the working class and those values. and their own values are completely out of sync with the working class. And I've seen that develop, particularly, as I said, the last 15 or 20 years, from my vantage point as somebody on the left, somebody inside the Labour Party, active in the Labour movement, who has seen the labour movement itself change quite radically over that period. And as it's done so, the contempt in which parts of it hold working class communities has just increased. Paul, we've touched on the disconnect, we've touched on working-class people being despised,

and we've touched on Tony Blair. And if we connect all those three things together, I would argue that Tony Blair would likely have been perceived as very, very successful had it not been number one for the Iraq War and number two for mass immigration, the impact of which was starting to be felt by the time he'd already gone. But, you know, when we talk about people being despised for their views, I think there is no bigger issue than immigration. on which the disconnect is as bad and as fierce.

So what should a healthy left-wing position on immigration be in our society? Well, I believe that there's nothing incompatible on the left about believing in regulation of the labour supplier. And in fact, until fairly recently, that was a mainstream position on the left. You know, you knew that the labour supply was a market dynamic which, like all market dynamics, needed to be regulated so as to provide the best possible outcome for workers. That wasn't particularly a controversial position on the left.

Now it is. If you say you're in favour of regulating immigration, you're a bigot and you're a xenophob and all of this sort of stuff. And people would just hit you with, you know, old slogans about migrants are not to blame. As if you're blaming migrants personally, which of course most people, when they argue in favour of regulation of the labour supply, are not doing that. So that position has changed fundamentally. and, you know, I think the idea that anyone on the left should campaign in favour of unrestricted immigration, bearing in mind the impact that it can have on wages. I mean, broadly overall, the impact is negligible in this country, but it can have more

significant impacts on things like wage distribution and the wages of people at the lower end of the scale. And it shouldn't be controversial to say that actually, you know, also. So when it comes to things around planning for a government, you know, you've got a plan around welfare and housing and employment and things like that. You need to know the numbers of people that are coming into your country. And, you know, I argue in the book that you can look at a country like Japan, for example. And Japan has fairly tight immigration policy. I mean, it doesn't close its borders completely, but it does manage numbers and numbers are modest.

and it will say, you know, there's a culture in Japan that says if you come to Japan, we're Japan and we expect you to assimilate. We like being Japan. We don't particularly want to be anything different. Japan, no one could seriously argue that Japan is anything other than a highly advanced, civilized, safe, clean, modern democracy. and the fact that it manages its immigration levels doesn't mean that it's somehow uncivilised or uncultured or all its people are xenophobic. And that's the sort of thing that I would like to see in Britain. I'm pro-immigration. I've always been pro-immigration. I think it's brought benefits to our country. But like anything, you can have too much of a good thing sometimes.

You know, I like a glass of wine, but I know too much wine can sometimes cause problems. I like exercising. I know if you exercise to an extreme, it can cause problems. So, you know, I think good things in moderation is the approach that we should take. And I think the really sad thing is actually I think that's the view probably of most people in this country. Most people are uncertain, and I quote some statistics in the book, I think most people see immigration as a good thing, but they don't particularly want porous borders. They don't want unrestricted immigration.

Neither do they want to put the barriers up completely. I think the problem is where the policy has been so relaxed and people in them, those working-class communities which have to deal with the impacts more than any other communities of large-scale immigration. And I saw it in, as I described in the book, in the community where I grew up in Barking and Dagenham, it poisoned the whole debate. And what you had, and what you've seen in this country now, is a country that was pretty tolerant towards immigration, and by and large, I think, still is. Because their trust has been abused, and because have been dismissed as bigots and xenophobes for saying, actually, look, can we slow this down?

Can we have a properly managed regulated system? That has toxified the whole debate and has caused, in many respects, a culture war over the whole issue. And frankly, until the left gets to grips with it, I guess Brexit allows us to do it to a certain degree, but until the left gets to grip with that issue and its impact on working class communities and stops just simply sloganising and dismissing working class concerns as being driven by bigotry and xenophobia, then they will never win back the people that they need to win back. And part of the problem, isn't it also as well,

the people advocating open borders, freedom of movement, blah, blah, blah, their jobs aren't a threat, their wages aren't being impacted by them. So by them advocating that position, they've got no skin in the game, really, have that? No, that's exactly the point. And it tends to be the very people who, you know, whose wages and, as you say, jobs won't necessarily be under threat, who, of course, are the most relaxed about it. I read something recent.

I mean, obviously, I'm in the trade union movement, and every trade union leader you could meet, would probably disagree with me vehemently on this. And as someone said, you know, if there was competition for jobs as general secretaries of trade union movements as a result of an oversupply of labor from abroad, then all of a sudden, you know, you might see a different approach. So it's certainly true.

And again, you know, it's individuals who are not affected by it and, you know, don't always live in the communities that are affected by it. And I guess from the book's point of view, I described this in quite graphic detail. You know, I lived for 35 years. I grew up in Barking and Dagenham. And that was very much what you would call a red wall seat in Barking and Dagnum, two separate constituencies, but both what you would call red wall seats. traditionally labour, very sort of blue-collar, very working class. And at the turn of the century was really caught in the eye of the storm in the debate over globalisation and immigration.

I mean, there were, and I'm sorry myself, large numbers of people coming in, mainly very decent, nice law-abiding people, but often competing for jobs with local people, often not much in common culturally with local people. There were language barriers, etc. the whole area went through a process of very, very rapid change. And people were uneasy about it, and not because their sense of race had been violated, but because their sense of order had been violated. A very kind of settled and stable community was suddenly undergoing very rapid demographic

and to a certain degree economic change. And when they looked to politicians and said, look, actually, can you address this? Can you maybe slow things down? They were told that they were bigots and that they were xenophobes. And tragically, what that meant embarking and Dagenham is in the council elections in 2006. The BMP won 12 seats on the local council. Their best ever performance in local government came out of nowhere.

I mean, they had a foothold in other parts of East London prior to that. But all of a sudden, they're the official opposition on my local council. And, you know, it's then that I started to realize, actually, I think the left has got this debate completely and utterly wrong and simply going to people in communities like this as I was doing as somebody, you know, a young activist on the left at the time and preaching to them about, you know, well, it's good for your GDP, you'll probably be a few people better off at the end of the month. You know, as if that's the only thing that mattered. It's actually a Thatcherite argument, you know, it's all about the economy and not quality of life.

Or, you know, telling people like, I remember having a conversation with my old man who had lived there for about 60 years, and she was now in her 80s, and his place was, her old street was changing around her and trying to convince her that, you know, the benefits of vibrant cosmopolitanism was really in her interests.

You know, you can look back on some of that stuff and cringe now. But, you know, the truth is that's the sort of thing that people were told in communities like that and told by people on the left and told by Labour politicians. And so, you know, the challenge now,

first of all, is to recognise that the left has got that debate completely wrong. And the challenge now is to, yes, to develop a policy where you resolutely oppose prejudice and, you know, you absolutely defend the rights of migrants and you oppose racism, of course. But equally, to build a system and a policy where you have a managed system where people, you know, we need to do much better assimilating people. We need to do much better at making sure that numbers are dismalining. dispersed more fairly and we need to regulate it so that there isn't the impact on people's wages, there isn't the impact on communities the like of which I saw embarking and daglam.

And I think then if we do that, we can get back to a stage where immigration becomes much less of a debate in the national discourse because we're managing it properly and we don't have the problems that we've faced over the last 15, 20 years. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right. sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing and most people have no idea what's actually in it.

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and you'll get a randomly allocated free share worth between three and two hundred pounds. Could be in a great company like Right Move Apple, even Gregs. Greg's. Greg's sold. When you invest your capital is at risk, the value of your investments can go up as well as down and you may receive back less than you originally invested. He knew that bit off by heart. Paul, do you think we've been sold an even bigger lie than the one that you've just described yourself as trying to sell to your granny, which is that Margaret Thatcher tried to convince us there's no such thing as society.

But the people who came after us, I feel, is almost like they've tried to convince us there's no such thing as community. Or if there is, it's not important. It doesn't matter if you know the people who live left and right. and up and down of you. It doesn't matter if you know them. It doesn't matter if you have anything in common. It doesn't matter if you have the same values living in one country. All that doesn't matter because we're just all, you know, free-flowing individuals and, you know, as long as we've got latte macchiatoes down the road, then that's fine, right? There's a sort of bigger lie when really

human beings don't live like that. And I know this for myself. You know, I live just outside of London and the fact that I get to speak to my neighbors and I know the people around me. and we've solved problems together, whatever else it might be. That's a thing that adds to my life. And living as an atomized individual in a big city really doesn't feel right to me. I think that's absolutely right.

And the truth is that we are, as humans, we are social and parochial beings with an attachment to place and an attachment to a particular culture or the particular community. And, I mean, one speech, our site from Tony Blair in the book, book, I think a speech he gave, I think, at the Labour Party Conference in 2005, where he was

extolling the virtues of globalisation and, you know, essentially saying, look, globalisation is no respecter of tradition and history, basically get on board with it, you know, shape up or ship out. And it was another way essentially of saying, look, there's no such thing as community, there's just money and there's just trade. And this is how the way. world is now. And somebody I spoke on a panel with once made, I think a very insightful point. She said that, you know, that layer of politician, the Blair rights, you know, the more middle-class people, people who embrace cosmopolitan liberalism, are more inclined to see the nation as a shop, you know, which is there, you know, it's just a, they just have a functional relationship with it.

It's there for transactions. It's about trade, etc. Whereas working class people who are often more rooted and with a great sense of community are more inclined to see it as a home. So you have the transactional versus the relational. I think the Blair rights of this world would see it as a transactional thing, whereas working class people exactly in the way that you've just expressed, see it as a relational thing.

and until we understand that working class people do see things in that way, then I think, you know, the Labour Party and the people who lead it are really not going to get back in touch with them. And they do well to read the book by David Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere, which I think actually describes it very well, that, you know, there's a split, if you like, between the Somewheres and the Anywheres. And the Anywheres, you tend to earn more money, tend to be part of the professional classes, probably graduates have broader horizons in terms of work opportunities and travel, much more mobile. And because of that, they don't necessarily

have, not necessarily their fault on one level. It's just how they've lived their life. Don't necessarily have that sense of community, that sense of being rooted, that sense of belonging, don't particularly yearn for it. Whereas people who are paid much less and whose horizons are much more narrow and don't have those opportunities to travel and go and do a gap year in Italy or something. The whole sense of community and belonging takes on so much more meaning to them. And, you know, somewheres, as David Goodhart describes it, make up about 50% of the population. The Anywheres make up about 25% with the other 25% what he calls in between us. But the problem, as he describes it, is that actually the Anywheres pretty much dominate the culture of the

country and the politics of the country. And that means that they often, you know, make decisions which they think are in the national interest, whereas actually they're just in the anywhere interest. And until we, as I said, until we start to get what it is that drives working class people, what their values are, what their everyday concerns are, what their motivations are, what they want, then these divisions are just going to continue. So we were talking about community, but one thing we haven't touched on is the nation state. Now, before this idea of the nation state, important, you know, was supported by Conservative and by Labour. But now it seems that we're kind of addressing the fact that actually a lot of people are

proud to come from this country. They feel a sense of connection with this country. Do you think that's what Labour needs to do in order to actually win hearts and minds? Yes, and I think Labor, you know, shouldn't be ashamed to start talking about patriotism and it needs to understand, you know, national self-identity as people see it. they have a sense of awareness and that that doesn't necessarily have to be hostile to other countries just because, you know, you fill in affinity with your own country. It doesn't mean that you're xenophobic towards other other countries. And actually, it's ultimate level.

It's just an extension, really, of the affinity that people feel with other things, other institutions, other, you know, their street, for example, their town, their school, their county, their football team. The nation state in many respects is just an extension of that. And also, you know, I think the Labor Party needs to understand the importance of the nation state in terms of if there's going to be some sort of challenge to the dominance of international capital, globalisation, then the nation state has got to play a role in that. And the people, as I identify in the book, there's two groups of people really who would like the nation state to wither away. First of all, what you would call the financial globalises, the people who don't like the idea of nation-states and elected national governments being able to intervene and stop the free movement of labour or the free movement of capital, want access all areas, want as little regulation and barriers in the way as possible, particularly the multinationals so that they can outsource, you know, and they can open up new plants, factories, offices, etc., around the world, and see the, the,

the national, see the nation state and national governments as an obstacle to that. And of course, you know, it should be frankly automatic for people on the left to say, we want to challenge that, actually. You know, we don't like the idea that we can just have multinational companies dictate what national governments should do, which of course they do. It's a form of blackmail, essentially, where huge companies can say, look, unless you as a national government give us what we want in terms of, you know, low taxation and low regulation and whatever other demands that we make, then we'll just, we'll just sort of divest from

your country and open up elsewhere. And, you know, national governments often fill the pressure and give them what they want. And the other group of people are, if you like, the sort of political globalisers, if you like, the cultural globalisers, the people who, for reasons we've already touched on hate the idea of a nation state because they think it divides people and they think that it gives rise to feelings of extreme nationalism and xenophobia and anyone who feels any degree of patriotism must, you know, by definition, hate Johnny Foreigner. And they want to live in some sort of John Lennon imagined society where there are no such thing as national borders and we're all part of an international community, what some people have kind of called the

the citizens of nowhere where they feel no affinity to their immediate community. And the problem is that's actually quite a small number of people who feel that way, but they just have significant influence in terms of the politics and culture of the country, particularly on the left. I mean, that particular mindset is quite dominant on the left. And it's part of the reason, particularly in terms of England as well. I mean, these people will be more sympathetic to the idea of Scottish nationalism or Irish nationalism because they see that as more progressive,

whereas any sort of display of English nationalism can only come from a yearning for the old days of empire. You know, Britain or England rather, wants to rule the waves again. And actually, for most people, it's just a sense of, look, I'm English, I feel attached to England, I quite like being part of this country. I don't want my politicians or people in public life to keep running it down or suggesting that I'm filled with some sort of xenophobia, xenophobia or hatred to all other nations. Do you think the mainstream media are biased?

Yes. That's why you watch Trigonometry. But we all still read the news. And the thing you really want to be doing is comparing how different publications cover the same story. That's where ground news come in. Drawing from 40,000 media outlets around the world and over 30,000 news stories per day, they empower you to arrive at the truth yourself. Don't do that, just watch Trigonometry.

Everyone here at Trigonometry loves ground news because they've got so many brilliant features, but there's one feature in particular that we all find incredibly useful. It's the blind spot feature. It is the news blind spot, and what this allows you to see is what your particular media

that you're consuming, whether you're right or left, is not covering. There are certain issues that the right wing media will never cover, and therefore if you only watch the right wing, you won't know. Equally, on the left, it's the same thing. And what the news blind spot allows you to do is to get the information that the people who you're getting your media

from are not telling you. And they've also got an amazing website, which is ground.com. For those of us who live in the 21st century, unlike France, and have phones, just download the app from wherever you get your own. It's a very interesting point you make, Paul, because you can be proud of being a man you fan, you can be proud of being from Scotland, you can be proud of being from, I don't know, Brighton, whatever. You can be proud of being from a city. You can be proud of being from South London. But the moment, for some reason, you get to the nation state level, suddenly that's

like, rebutton, right? And I don't know how we recover that necessarily, because there just is this meme now out there in a culture that to be, you know, you say to an ordinary person what are British values, they'll think you're trying to stitch them up to get them to say something racist. And yeah, that's certainly true. And I think also not just from the kind of cultural or social side of that argument, but also in terms of democracy as well. I mean, the truth is, as I argue in the book, the nation state has proved to be the best form of government at its upper level, wherever people have tried to corral citizens and nation states into something above that,

to supranational institutions, you find much lower levels of support for it. And the European Union is, I guess, a good example of that. The nation state is the unit within which people are prepared to give, to be more generous, if you like. And an example I'll give in the book is if you're a taxpayer in Hampshire and you're part of the same political, stroke economic, stroke social unit as somebody in Lancashire in a deprived post-industrial town. You're more likely to be prepared to pay through your taxes in order to help regeneration in that town than somebody in Bratislava, for example.

And that's not because the person in Hampshire sees the person in Bratislava as anything less that a human being, but they just believe, look, we're not part of the same political, economic unit, and actually, you know, my first priority is here. And I think the problem, you see it now in the, you know, with the rows that broke out between Germany and Greece over the euro, where, you know, when Greece needed its bailout, and there was a lot of hostility amongst people in Germany who was Greece's main creditor at the time, of bailing out the Greeks, who many people kind of saw us, and they're not part of the same community as us and why should we bow them out effectively.

And that's always the danger. If you try to force communities and countries and citizens of countries into an arrangement that they're not comfortable with at a political and economic level, then you do risk igniting or reigniting in some cases old conflicts. And Paul, it seems to me, and it will probably seem to you, the government after government have failed the working class. They haven't represented them. They, for a long time, they took their votes, did nothing with them.

The Conservative government came in last year, promised big. I mean, they've had COVID, which has obviously been disastrous, but chances are they're not going to do a lot for them. Do you ever worry that there's going to be a figure who's going to come in, more nefarious, there I say, on the right, who will go, no one's listening to you. I will. I think that's the danger.

I mean, I think we need to be careful of predicting, not that you were predicting it, I know, but we need to be careful about predicting, you know, some resurgence of the far right, because actually I don't necessarily sense that. You will always have people on the far right who are racist and who will be rabble-rous and who will try to stir up hatreds between people. But actually, we haven't necessarily had that tradition in Britain, certainly not as much as they did on the comments. But let me interrupt you, because let's just take that sinister element of Francis introduced out of it.

I mean, we've seen, God knows how many new parties formed in the last few weeks, or reform, reclaim, rebuild, whatever, heritage. Like, there seems to be a gap there, I guess, is what we're getting at. And it seems that it hasn't quite been filled yet. And I guess what maybe Francis is maybe more useful to talk about is that gap is going to get filled one way or another. Do you see what I'm saying? There's a vacuum and politics hates a vacuum as the old saying goes. So it's possible.

I mean, what I think is that if there was a, it's always difficult in Britain because effectively we're a two-party state and it's, you know, parties have come and gone and, you know, the success rate of people who try to create parties to challenge the big two is, you know, not great, frankly. What about liberal Democrats? Well, do you know what? I've been active in politics all my adult life, and I can honestly say I still have no idea

what the Liberal Democrats exist for, genuinely. I have no idea what they're for. I'm sure there's some good people involved. I voted for them twice. Oh, you were the one, were you? Yeah, I was it? So, no, I do think there is a gap for... There are millions,

and as I describe it in the book, there are millions of people who are a bit to the left on economics and want a fairer economy, and want the rich to pay a bit more, and don't believe in a galloping gap between rich and poor, want that closed, want to tackle ballroom excesses, want to tackle regional inequalities, happy with an increased minimum wage and all of that sort of thing. But equally, are a bit to the right on culture,

and don't particularly want to see cosmopolitan liberalism dominate in this country. don't want an open borders philosophy, don't want it to be all about the personal autonomy of the individual, actually yearn for something a bit more meaningful than that, a sense of community, sense of belonging, a sense of being part of something. And also on other kind of everyday issues, you know, want to see crime tackled and the Labour Party shouldn't be afraid to address those sorts of issues, believe in a welfare state and believe it should be generous where people are in genuine need but think it should be a safety net and not a comfort blanket. And the problem is on the left is that when you raise this stuff on the left, people will instantly dismiss you and say their Tory values.

Those are Tory issues that you're talking about. Well, okay, that's fine. You don't discuss them, but realize that millions of people out there in working class communities are discussing them. And if a party and, you know, as a Labour Party member, I'd like to see it, happen from a Labour Party point of view. I'd like it to be a Labor Party, well, I'm not particularly predicting it any time soon. If the, if the Labour Party was to marry that policy of economic justice, great, with a more communitarian policy, which understood working class people's instincts and culture

and desire for belonging, then I think that party would do really, really well, because there's an audience for it out there. But, you know, trying to, and, you know, you mentioned the Conservative Party. I don't frankly have much faith in the Conservative Party to deliver some of this stuff. I mean, it's certainly made overtures to the working class at the election, which is why it won. You know, it said we'd get Brexit delivered. And it talked about, you know, it's talked about ending austerity. It's talked about regional investment. But it's not part of their nature. It's not part of their instinct. And frankly, if you look at Boris Johnson, I think he's very much a classical liberal. If you see, you know, whenever the story,

has come out about the madness of wokeery and someone else has been silenced or someone else has been sacked. You never see Tories coming out and challenging that and saying, actually, this is nonsense. We do need to stand up against this. You do see some, to be fair, but none of them are anywhere near actual government. No high-profile people. So, and it's why, you know, working-class people, I think, just still feel alienated and still feel that there isn't a party that is really speaking for them. Do you think there'll be a big backlash, sorry for us, just continuing the Tory point? Do you think, I mean, God knows what's going to happen by 2024 given the year that we've had.

But do you think that, let's say, COVID sort of gets sorted out and things just continues as they've been going, where we are now? Do you really, I mean, I don't see people in the red wall voting Tory again after the sort of things that we've seen, whether that's BLM, the reaction to COVID, any of that. Do you? I think the danger for the Tories is they've got one chance of delivering, frankly. And if they don't take it, not that I particularly want to see the Tories win those seats again. In fact, I don't at all want to see the Tories win those seats again.

But if I was sitting here as a Tory, I'd be thinking, right, we've got one chance of delivering. These people took a lot for these people to vote for us for the first time. You know, we heard the stories, you know, people hearing their ancestors whisper in their ear as they were in the ballot box. You know, you're voting in Tories, just not something we do in these places. And unless the Tories return that show of faith and deliver, you. then no, I think you're right. I don't think they will vote for them again. And if you look at some of the stuff that's been going on around COVID and places like

Manchester, for example, where there's now a real feeling of antipathy towards the Tories because of what they've done, then I think the Tories have got a real problem. But does that mean Labour will win the seats? No, it doesn't. Professor Matthew Goodwin, a previous guest on your show I know, has explained actually if the Labour Party thinks that things can't get any worse, it should think again, Yes, it lost a hell of a lot of seats in the Red Wall constituencies, but the ones it held onto in some places, the majorities were quite narrow, actually.

And unless Labor can win those people back, then those seats could flip as well. We could see something that I think we started to see during the Blair years and afterwards, which is where millions of working class people previously, Labor will just abstain completely, or we'll be driven into the arms of UKIP or, you know, another sort of reincarnated Nigel Farage-type party, as they did with the Brexit party. And, you know, at the extreme, what you talked about, the possibility is slim, but nonetheless you can't rule it out of a, you know, more far-right figure or party emerging and saying, look, you know, we will speak for you.

And as I say in the book, that's pretty much what happened in Barking and Agonam when I was living there where I grew up, the BMP, tapped into people's concerns. You know, of course, they hid their murky past and the fact that many of their leading lights were complete thugs and complete racists and Holocaust deniers in some cases. But what they did is they went to people and said that these two parties, they're not on your side. They've let you down. They're not interested in your concerns over immigration.

You know, we are the Labor Party that your grandparents hoped for. We're the ones who are going to. protect your identity and, you know, look after your community. And they did extremely well. And, you know, writ large, there's always a danger at a party like that. I mean, thank God they've imploded at a national level, but another party like that could come along and do the same sort of thing at some point. But we touched on the madness of wokeery.

And to me, the peak madness of wokeery was the BLM movement in, I think it was June, when everybody was on marches for that poor unfortunate George Floyd who was murdered. but at the same time, it was the third anniversary of Grenfell. No one talked about it. No one mentioned it. That was actually something that we need to discuss. If you're on the left, that should be one of the things that you're passionate about. The fact that over 100 people died in that tower as a result of the cladding,

and it just got forgotten about. Yes, and I think that's probably a reflection of priorities on the left in terms of anything. that smacks of identity politics, then it's a bandwagon that needs to be jumped on. But Grenfell was you could, you make, if you want, do all that play, the identity policy, all you want with it, right? Because it was mostly people from ethnic minority background. So even that, as an explanation, doesn't make sense. You could do all the identity politics. What is it? Is there something else? I just, I just think parts of the left are completely obsessed about, you know, what they see

as explicit identity politics causes, which is why, you know, so many of them were comfortable. about the BLM movement, we're not interested in the fact that actually, you know, it was even if you go on their website and look at what they believe in, it's pretty clear they're, you know, Marxist movement really. They believe in defunding the police. They believe in abolishing the nuclear family. I argued at the time, look, I believe Black Lives Matter, lowercase, BLM. I don't support uppercase, black lives matter, trademark. And there's a clear distinction between the two things. How did that go for you, mate? Well, how'd you think it went for me?

Yeah, I did that. And now we've got a new studio. Look how great that worked out. And less friends. And that's a don the tin hat. But you do have to make these points. I think some of the stuff, I mean, you know, what happened to George Floyd was, of course, appalling and barbaric.

And, you know, you need to challenge racism wherever it rears its head, but you need to do it in a way where you take people with you. And frankly, I don't think you do that by tearing down statues. I think all you do is alienate people. I think you have to try and build a coalition of people if you're trying to win people to a particular cause. And, you know, the whole thing, I think, with the left's embrace of identity politics,

it just fragments the working class. You know, the left doesn't really talk about the issue of class anymore. It talks less and less about issues, you know, some of the issues that we've touched on and, you know, issues around jobs and wages and housing, etc. And he's much more comfortable about, talking about identitarian issues. And I think the problem is it's a viper's nest. And, you know, if you look at someone like Martin Luther King, who talks about the need to judge people on

the content of their character and not the color of their skin, I think what's going on at the moment is a complete inversion of that. And, you know, where people are suffering discrimination, that needs to be challenged. But I think what we're doing now on the left is just dividing people into discrete groups and emphasizing their separateness and treating their individual kind of biological or other characteristics, almost as if they're virtuous in themselves. And all that does, I think, is divide people. And I think, you know, there's a whole fragmentation now of the working class

and the left has been a big part of bringing that about. And it's also made, dare I say, at Labour unelectable, because once you push forward a narrative that if you are white, doesn't matter if you're working class, doesn't matter if you grow up in poverty, doesn't matter what your circumstances are, whatever they may be, you have got privilege. Immediately, people aren't going to want to listen to that. And it's just, it's completely unhelpful because, I mean, at base level, I guess there's some logic to say, look, if you take two people whose circumstances literally are exactly the same, I mean, you know, the chance of two people's circumstances being literally the same, probably quite slim. But if you did, then the chances are that the white person probably had some degree of privilege over the black person in terms of getting a job or whatever.

But it's unhelpful because, you know, the truth is life is much more complicated than that. And people's circumstances are much more complex than that. And actually, there are people from the black and minority ethnic community who do far better than many people living in white working class communities. You know, if you take somebody, take an Asian person living in London, for example, who might come from a bit of a middle class background whose parents might be reasonably well off, might have gone to university, got a good job, go to a working class place like Wigan and say to a young white person who's struggling to get on the housing ladder and can't get a decent job, that actually they benefit from some form of privilege.

I mean, how on earth does that actually advance the cause of the working class as a whole? That sort of stuff, that divisive stuff just needs to be challenged head on. Well, that stuff comes from America. I want to talk to you briefly about America before we wrap up, because at the time of recording, it seems we don't know that the legal challenges haven't happened, but it looks like Joe Biden has won. So, I mean, some people on the left are triumphant. You know, the left has succeeded, defeated the right.

right, the Trumpism is done. And I find it very strange because certainly in my mind, if there's no COVID, Trump wins probably a landslide. That's my take on it. Maybe I'm wrong, but certainly he wins. He wins by a clear majority. So if it's not for this once in a century aberration, the economy continues to do well, you would likely see a continuation. And to see that even in these circumstances, the margin of victory, if it is indeed a victory,

this close? I mean, I don't think that's a convincing victory for the left, is it? No, and the danger is that the left interprets that as some sort of, you know, victory whereby it can now just return to normal. And in fact, I've seen Democrat politicians and liberal commentators in America who have argued that very case that said, you know, and they will say this is now a return to normal. Normacy, and we say normality, they say normalcy. Actually, it was that normalcy that gave rise to Trump in the first place. It was that normalcy that led to the last four years. And the idea that working class people in the Rust Belt and blue-collar America,

who were drawn to Trump because actually he said, yeah, you know, we're going to put America first. Yeah, you know, we're not woke. And, you know, we're going to challenge China. And we don't like the impacts of globalization in your communities. And we're going to repatriate. American jobs back into America and industries back into America. Sort of thing that really resonated with those communities. Those issues and those sentiments haven't disappeared.

You know, those sentiments are still there. So, you know, if the Democrats interpret it as some of them are doing as, you know, we're out of the dark age now, as they describe it. You know, we're back on to the road to the Sunlit uplands of cosmopolitan liberalism, then I think they're in for a nasty shock, and I think you're probably right, that if it hadn't been for COVID, I think Trump certainly would have stood a much better chance of winning. So no, America's problems, I think, is far from resolved. I mean, I'll shed no tears for Trump. I mean, I'm on the left. I would have voted Democrat

if I was in America. Not that I've got much faith, particularly in Biden. I think in many respects, Trump was the worst possible advocate for millions of decent people who actually deserved a decent advocate and had genuine and legitimate grievances. I mean, as a human being, I think he left a lot to be desired in terms of, you know, obviously quite an obnoxious individual in the way that he treated people and the way he referred to women, etc. But, you know, in... The debate to be had there, Paul, would be whether a less obnoxious person could

have got through, given the stick that's thrown at anyone who tries to address that agenda. But I share your view broadly. I'm just saying that particular issue is always one I think about whether somebody, for example, the reason I ask you about America is I'm thinking, what do the left learn in this country from that, right? And I think what you see and you know this better than anyone is anyone who tries to address some of these issues, immigration, community, etc., is immediately attacked on personal grounds and whether you can be a Paul Embry and get through, or do you have to be someone like Donald Trump to make it in the current? and climate. That's it. I don't some million-dollar questions.

Well, I think Trump, I mean, he obviously presented himself, didn't he, as an outsider, you know, I mean, in some respects, he's as much part of the establishment as anyone else. I mean, he's a multi-billionaire, for Christ's sake. Allegedly. Allegedly, yeah. You know, so he wasn't, he wasn't, he didn't sort of come from a working-class community. You know, I'm going to take on the establishment. He was part of the establishment. But what he did do is he pushed the buttons of working-class people.

people and kind of said, look, when they're attacking me, they're really attacking you. When they say they don't like me, what they're saying is they don't like you. They think you're white trash. You know, they think you're kind of backward and they don't like your values. They think your values are bigoted. And yes, if the left in Britain, which I suspect some of them will do, conclude that all we have to do is, you know, do what the Democrats did. We just, we don't really have to change very much. And next time, we'll get over the line when the Tories prove themselves to have not delivered to be unpopular in certain parts of the country. We'll get across the line. I think that's dangerous because, hey, I don't think they will. I don't think Labor can win

without its working class base. I'm not suggesting for a second that we should seat to alienate middle class, more liberal people. I think that group of people have always been involved in the Labour Party. And the Labor Party has been the best. for that since existence. But as I touched on, the pendulum has swung too far towards that group of people. It's gone too much Hampstead and not enough Hartlepool. So if they conclude from America that, yeah, you know, we can stay focused on Hampstead. We don't really have to worry about Hartlepool.

We'll just get over the line. I think they're in for a nasty shot. And what do you say to those people who say, and there's quite a few of them, particularly in the Labour Party, that the reason Corbyn was elected is because the media against him, you know, everybody was trying to smear him, blah, blah, blah, all the rest of it. I mean, it's just, it's just nonsense. People have tried to find, on the left, all sorts of reasons for why we weren't elected from, and some of them are genuine. I mean, Brexit obviously was a big thing. Corby's unpopularity had an effect on the doorstep. There's no doubt about

that. I mean, the media was hostile and probably had an effect on on some voters at least, but the idea that any single one of those explanations can just be pulled out the bag and cited as the real reason we lost, you know, so, you know, Brexit, for example, well, that's gone now, so we don't really have to change. Brexit's over. We'll just, we'll just carry on down the same road. No, that's completely wrong. And as I argue in the book, Labor's problems and the disconnect from the working class predates Jeremy Corbyn by several years. anyone who thinks Labor only became unpopular with working-class communities when Jeremy Corbyn took over, I think he's completely misread the situation. I mean, as I say in the book, Labor hasn't won the popular vote in England since 2001.

At the turn of the century, as the impacts of globalisation, a relaxed immigration policy, de-industrialisation started to be felt much more acutely in working-class communities, that really kind of coincides with Labour, starting to lose working class votes and thousands, perhaps millions of working class people deciding to abstain in elections or flock towards UKIP and others. So these problems actually are very, very deep-seated and as I say, predate Jeremy Corbyn. Since Labor has become much more of a metropolitan, liberal, city-based studenty type party, so it has lost millions of working class votes, that didn't begin with Jeremy Corbyn. Paul, as we wrap up, I want to ask you two quick questions. The first of which, just coming back to America briefly, is there was this calculation on

some sections of the left that demography is on our side, right? We're becoming, let's say, more darker as a society, right? There are more people of color now in society. Minority groups, women, et cetera, are finding more and more their voice in politics. And all we need to do is just sit for. a little bit and hold the line and wait until there's enough people of foreign descent and until we can build that great coalition and then we will be in power forever. And I would put it to you that the election just now in America has shown the futility

of that strategy because huge numbers of new people actually voted for Donald Trump after four years of him being obnoxious, of him being called races, of him being talked about as literally supporting white nationalism. yet he doubled his 35% of Muslims voted for, I didn't know that, you know, doubled his vote with gay and other sexual minorities, black people, Latinos massively came out. In fact, in some states, the more mixed the demographics of the county, the more likely was to vote for Donald Trump. So this idea that you can just hold on and wait until all the, all the so brown and black people just turn up and vote, that doesn't seem to be working. And it's completely patronising for people on the left to just assume that every black or brown person is going to be in favour of what they're arguing. You know, and the people on the left do just automatically assume that and can't comprehend that anyone could disagree with them.

And yeah, we sit in this country. The idea that, you know, for example, minority ethnic communities in this country, whether it's first generation immigrants, second generation immigrants, themselves because they're immigrants, you know, people assume that they are in favour of open borders. Well, actually, many of them are not. Many of them, having settled down with their families, had children themselves, don't necessarily want a world of constant churn, don't necessarily themselves like the effect of globalisation. And on Brexit, for example, large numbers of minority ethnic people voted for Brexit. And some of the statistics I cite in the book where, you know, many immigrants in this country were not necessarily involved.

favor of the free movement laws, for example. So people, you know, from India and Pakistan and Africa, many of whom years ago had to fight hard to get here and really fill a sense of belonging in the country now. I didn't necessarily think it was fair that mainly white people from the European Union would get an automatic right just to come in. And people from the communities where they originally came from had to still jump through hurdles. So, So we shouldn't let people get away on the left. We're just claiming to speak for minority ethnic people because they often don't.

And, you know, in America, that was proved with the election result. Another question I want to ask is electoral. You mentioned that the Labour Party has not won the popular vote in England since 2001. That was a period of time when Labor had a firm hold of Scotland, which has now been lost. So you put those two things together. let's say we hear Trigonometry, wave the magic wand, you are leader of the opposition tomorrow. How do you solve that problem?

I think Scotland's a massive problem. I mean, Labour was dominant in Scotland once upon a time, or certainly have a large presence in Scotland once upon a time. Huge number of Labour MPs from Scotland. Some of them led the party, people like Gordon Brown, also people like Donald Dure and Robin Cook and others who came from that Scottish tradition. Labor has been wiped out in Scotland. I don't sense that there's any quick way back for labour. The SMP seem to have things wrapped up. When you combine that, as you say, with Labour's lack of success in English working class,

stroke, small town, provincial, post-industrial communities, it's a perfect storm in many respects for labour. And I think the danger is that some people within the Labour Party think, well, okay, we're never going to win those people back. We're not going to win Scotland back. And we're not going to win post-industrial England back. And in fact, I have heard some people in the Labour Party argue this that what we need to do, therefore, is just pitch ourselves to that new constituency, if you like, the young students, graduates, the professional managerial middle classes, the metropolitan liberals, the people living in the university cities. fashionable cities within the UK. The Frappuccino vote.

Yes, and just, you know, effectively just accept that we're never going to win the working class back in provincial Britain. I think actually that's just completely wrongheaded. I don't think they would win it anyway. I don't think they would get the numbers to get over the line just with that constituency. And B, I think you would have to ask what on earth is the Labour Party for if it doesn't go out to try to win. the votes and the support and the affection of ordinary working class people, people on low wages, people living in the grittier parts of the UK, people living in substandard housing or people struggling to get their foot on the housing ladder, people who have very little

in the way of wealth, other than perhaps their own modest property, people who have got no savings, people who constantly go into work and are told what to do by their boss because they've got no authority themselves in the workplace. If Labour isn't first of foremost about attracting those people and saying you're the people we would create to represent and we're going to move heaven and earth to win you back, then frankly, it's not a Labour Party worth having as far as I'm concerned. And Paul, isn't the problem as well? I mean, we've been, we've talked about it a lot, but I look at that Labour cabinet. How many of them are working class? How are they going to represent the working class if they're not working class and they've got

no idea who these people are, what they're like and they've never spoken to one? It's a real problem. And it's something that Gloria DiPiero, the Labour MP who stood down at the most recent election, as written about quite powerfully, just the absence of any real working class representation on the Labour benches in the parliamentary Labour Party. I mean, you can go back, I talk in the book about, you know, how you can go back 20, 30 years. And, you know, the Labour party, the Green Benches in the Commons on the Labour side would be filled with people on the labour side who actually had had had proper jobs. You know, some of them had come up through the trade union movement,

they'd worked in mines, in still works and docks and stuff. Now, obviously, part of the reason those people are not around anymore is to do with de-industrialisation. We don't necessarily have that sort of heavy industry anymore. But we do have call centres, you know, which are like the modern-day equivalents, if you like, of the cotton mills and the sort of warehouses and the gig economy. but you don't see many of those people actually coming through the ranks in the Labour movement, partly because the trade union movement doesn't organise anywhere near as well as it ought to do in some of those sorts of industries.

And it's a problem if you're a working class of Oster and you see the main politicians of what you think should be your political party looking and sounding nothing like you. You know, most of them have come through university. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing if people can go to university. But actually, if you're a party of Labor, you do need a good number of people who have worked in proper jobs in blue-collar industries, for example. But those people have become less and less apparent in the Labour Party as the Labour Party has gone on this road to becoming itself more kind of middle-class and cosmopolitan over recent years. Paul, thanks for coming back.

We thoroughly recommend despise to everybody. and the last question we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about that really should be? Well, it's something that Francis touched on actually. It's the issue around Grenfell and, you know, the public inquiry is still ongoing and it's actually, you know, if people did trouble to look it at the moment, there's some really interesting and disturbing stuff coming out of it. You know, the people who were responsible for installing the cladding, the companies involved, the individuals involved, people at the local council who signed it off. Some of the things that have gone on are shocking

and the kind of revolving door relationship as well between some of these different sections and people hopping from one to the other is pretty chilling. So I would urge people not necessarily to get dominated. I mean, one of the stories today that I ran on the way here was the fact that the director of communications at number 10 has resigned. Now, the whole of the media theory is talking about that. Most people out there couldn't give a stuff about whether the director of communications has resigned. So we need to look beyond that sort of stuff and look at stories like Grenfell where 70 or people lost their lives and they shouldn't have done. So I would urge people to dig into some of that stuff coming out of the inquiry. Fantastic, Paul. Thanks for coming

back and thank you for watching. We will see you 7 p.m. almost every day of the week except Monday with a live stream or an interview. Take care and have a good day. See you soon, guys. Bye-bye.