TRIGGERnometry - Why I'm Voting Against Labour - Peter Hitchens

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Peter Hitchens is an English conservative author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington DC. His books include The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory. Previously a Trotskyist and supporter of the Labour Party, Hitchens became more conservative during the 1990s. He joined the Conservative Party in 1997 and left in 2003, and has since been deeply critical of the party, which he views as the biggest obstacle to true conservatism in the UK. SPONSORS: Manscaped. Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code TRIGGER at https://manscaped.com Start earning A Yield on Silver, Paid in Silver with Monetary Metals. Click here to find out more: https://bit.ly/3Rs8Rv2 Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist 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

What you're talking about is the destruction of British society, really? Yes, civil society, yes. Voting is not a sacrament, it's not even a civic duty, and it's certainly not an emotional spasm. It's a practical act with a measurable effect. Work out what it is you don't want, most of all, and vote against it. And I said, the thing you really don't want most of all is the second half of the Blair Revolution. I think that he's a man of the pretty strong... hard left, probably wealth of left of Charlie Corbyn.

And why have the right-wing newspapers and media not exposed those? Because they don't understand it. But if you are an ex-Troskiist, you do know, because you can read the signs and you understand the code. It's all there. Peter Hitchens, welcome back to Trigonometry. Now, Peter, I have to say you have outdone yourself, because what I think about you, I think of you as a contrarian, you've got to the point where you're so contrarian,

you're actually disagreeing with yourself, because you're famous for telling people, A, to not vote conservative and be to leave the country if they still can. And here you are in this country telling people to vote for the conservative. No, I'm not saying anybody to vote for the conservatives. I'm telling to vote against labor. No, no, it's completely different thing. People have to learn to vote against. I mean, what I strove against for 20 long years was the determination of conservative

patriotic people in this country to continue to vote for a party that hated them. Now I have to strive against the determination of conservative, patriotic, people in this country, to vote for a party which hates them even more and not to be able to see the difference between bad and worse. My position remains the same. I loathe the Conservative Party, and I always offer to do this if you'd care to join me in a chorus of if you hate the Tory Party, clap your hands, the song I learned in Glasgow in 1972. I'm happy to join you. I still hate the Tory Party.

I still think the wisest course for anyone who could start a new life in a new country has to leave this country, but the many who cannot leave, and therefore I have to act where I can to try and avert catastrophe. A Labour government in this country would make the past 14 years of Tory government seem quite civilised and intelligent, and therefore it has to be avoided at all costs. Yet I'm surrounded by people who either by actually voting Labour or voting for reform UK, are determined to install a Labour government and I have to argue against it. I will not wake up on July 5th thinking that was anything I could not have done, which

I, that anything I could have done that I didn't do to prevent that from happening because it would be so catastrophic. So? Everything I've said remains absolutely same. I have to shift it from any of it. By the way, I have to tell you that I regard the same contrary and it's an insult. Well, you do? It absolutely assumes that I take positions.

for effect. All my positions are taken on principle and after considerable thought. Well, I certainly didn't... The problem is that in a largely irrational uneducated society, rational and educated positions annoy people. I certainly didn't mean I was annoyed by your position.

I know you don't mean it to be, but as I think Cardinal Newman said, no gentleman ever unintentionally insults anybody. So you... Are we going to recover from us, either way. I'm just telling you, don't bleeping well call me a contrarian and expect me to like it.

I hear you. So in terms of the Conservative Party, I mean, you say you're not telling people to vote for it, but in effect you are. No, I couldn't. I couldn't considerably tell you to have to vote for it. The crucial step people have to, would generally, in many cases, that would involve voting conservative, not invariably. In my own seat, it's pointless, for instance. I shan't vote because the Labour Party has a majority of nearly 20,000, and it's unassailable, and why should I vote conservative in the face of that? Pointless. So I won't, and it was the only you won't vote.

I'm only saying voting I'm trying to extract voting from the strange sanctified urn in which people keep it Voting is not a sacrament it's not even a civic duty and it's certainly non-emotional spasm It's a practical act with a measurable effect and in modern Britain the intelligent and reasoned person knows Because he ceased long ago to believe in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy that voting for things is a waste of time You won't get what you vote for but there are definitely occasions when you you can effectively vote against things. And this is an occasion where you can effectively vote against the Labour Party and against Kirstama and prevent them from coming to office.

It's still possible. The opinion polls don't dictate the result of the election. You don't have to be told what to do by propaganda. You can actually use your own mind and your own will to vote. Oh, well, the opinion polls say that Labour have won, therefore I won't vote against them. It's such a moronic position, isn't it? Peter, the only point I'm making... And so I have to make people think, and this is the huge, one of the most difficult things in modern Britain, because people have been educated, not to think.

But so I start by saying, if you want to vote, learn to vote against, work out what it is you don't want, most of all, and vote against it. And I said, the thing you really don't want most of all is the second half of the Blair Revolution, which is what you're going to get if you get a Labour government. Is this you coming out as a Liberal Democrat then, Peter? You still don't get it to you. I'm not for anybody. I'm against Labor. I'm saying there are a few years left to us in this country where life might remain relatively civilized and where the downward careering of the country down the slope of Averness is not complete. And those years would be taken from us if we had a Labor government now. So I kind of... I'm personal stake in this. I'm still alive. So my own amazement. Here I am. I'm the major thing you. I don't. I don't. I don't want to spend the declining years of my old age under the government headed by someone like Keir Stama, Keir Rodney Stama, we should learn.

So what is it that you object to about this Labour government? Why is it that you're so fearful of it? What is the havoc that they are going to read? It's partly a huge sense of regret that I was so powerless in 1997. I had a column in the Daily Express. It's true, but I had no, anti-social media had barely developed and there was no, I had no other platform. Very little access to broadcasting and I simply didn't have the reach which I think I now possess And I've always regretted that because I knew not in detail, I didn't fully understand it, but from friends of mine who were in the new labor project and from my own deductions

That a Blair government would be deeply and irreversibly damaging to the country in many ways and I couldn't do anything to stop it and again we had the same myasma of moronic self-indulgence Oh, well, the Tories deserve a period in opposition. The Tories deserve to be punished. John Major is awful. That's only, but he looks all right. We don't know what he's going to do, but he says he's in favour of education and things like that. He says he's in favour of being tough on crime.

So let's give him a go. And they gave him a go. And he smashed out the United Kingdom. He raped the Constitution. He raped the economy. He destroyed huge numbers of personal pension, for instance. and he unleashed a wave of social, moral, and cultural revolution, which still sweeps through the country with very damaging effects. And all of that was avoidable if people only said, well, yes, OK, John Major isn't that good, is he?

But good heavens. It has to be better having him there than having this. A government basically run by Lester Campbell, which is what we got. So now we have this exactly the same dilemma again. The Labour Party in the intervening period has been a fairly poor, lifeless thing without any serious leadership or purpose. but under Kirstama, you now have a serious leadership or purpose, and that purpose is the completion of the Blair Revolution and also constitutional change to make that completion irreversible.

So I think people should realize that, oh, well, in five years time, all right, it doesn't matter if we get a Labour government. As long as the Tories are smashed, that'll be fine. In 2009, we'll be able to get the Labour out and go back to normal. You won't. Once these guys move in, they're not going. So what do you mean by this Blair? revolution. Let's actually dig down. Let's look at the components. What does that actually mean?

What is it that they want to achieve? How are they going to achieve it? Well, you see the huge pillars of it, which people were largely unaware of in 1997, and which in many cases only came into real force in the second Blair term, were the Equality Act, which fundamentally altered the whole moral and social nature of the country and change the way in which people think and speak. Peter, can you flesh that out a little bit? The enormous redistribution of the... Peter, just flesh that point out a little bit.

I agree with you, but it would be interesting for viewers and listeners to get a little bit more detail on why it changed the way people think and speak. Here's one very simple way that this country had been, you might say, officially Christian since before the Norman conquest. The Equality Act, by making Christianity, one among many religions, remove the privacy of Christianity from public life and from law in a way which continues to have profound effects on the way

in which people live the contracts which they make between themselves for personal life. And the sexual revolution which accompanied their government has been enormous. Whether you like it or not, no one could deny that that has changed. so has the general predisposition towards equality of outcome in the whole social and welfare system, which again formed part of Gordon Brown's enormous splurge in the second term, which was a huge trance of redistribution. And those things are just the obvious and in some way superficial aspects of what then turns into a complete social, economic and political revolution.

You must also bear in mind that this is, the people have forgotten this now, because it's now so far in the past and appears irreversible. When Labor came into office in 1997, this was the United Kingdom. The Weno Parliaments in Edinburgh or Caliph, and that's now happened. And what's also happened is that there's been a breakup

of the English part of the United Kingdom with the formation of these mayors, which are almost many republics. The London is actually now the only republic in the United Kingdom. It has an elected head of state. It's an interesting piece of test-bed politics. But it's also pretty much, it was designed to be a left-wing policy, and it will always be one.

And then you look at the constitutional changes which Gordon Brown put forward in 2022 in the Leeds announcement with Kirstama at his side, with a new chamber of the regions and the nations, which will make this permanent, And the other thing, of course, which lies alongside and beneath this, this is partly because New Labor was a project conceived mainly by lawyers, was the creation of the Supreme Court.

It was a constitutional nonsense in a country with parliamentary supremacy, where they created it and it continues to accrue power to itself. And one of the main effects of the constitutional changes, which were put forward in 2022, would be more powers for the Supreme Court, more powers taken away from Parliament, and particularly from the House of Commons so that it simply ceases to be sovereign. David Stark is very good on this, if you want to ask him about it, but it is an extraordinary, astonishing document which very few people have read, and it lies there waiting to be implemented.

I think probably given the way it's referred to in the Labour Manifesto, which is, as I've said, a bikini in that it covers, what it reveals is much less interesting than what it conceals, but the reference The reference to constitution in the Labor Manifesto, which I have actually read, suggests that the, unless they get very lucky with a huge majority, they'll probably wait until the second term to implement the Chamber of the Regents and all the other changes which are in it. It's well worth reading in the interim because it's extremely cleverly drawn. These people are not fools.

They understand very well how the British Constitution works and they understand that if they arrange it in the way that they wish to do so, then any future government will be unable to undo what they've done. This has been a preoccupation in Labour since the 1930s. I think John Strachey was the first person to raise it. Nye Bevan again raised it in 1945. Labor have always felt that it was unfair that a conservative government could come into office and undo what they'd done. They wanted to have some kind of ratchet by which it was agreed that their key reforms would be irreversible. And now with this constitutional plan, they've got it. And so what do you think when, if Stama wins, what do you think of the first?

first things that he is going to try and do when he gets in. What do you think is going to be the main target? So here's the thing we cannot know. In 1997, nobody knew, for instance, that Gordon Brown would abolish the government control over the Bank of England and make of the independent. It was amazing, in my view, extremely bad development. Nobody knew that he was going to make this tremendous raid upon private pension funds. And nobody knew that there was going to be the constitutional putch, which placed Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell in charge of civil servants although they were not in any way responsible to any chamber of parliament. Astonishing development which was considered outrageous at times.

None of these things were in the manifesto. None of them had even been rumoured before though in fact Alex Brummer had discovered about the pension plan when he was working for the Guardian in the period before the election and the Guardian disgracefully cooperated with Gordon Brown and suppressing the news. So we don't know what Starramara is suppressing about his major plans. plans, but all the major things which Labour did in the aftermath of its victory in 1997 were things it hadn't told anybody about. And what makes you... So I don't know what they might do, but I don't think any of them will be nice. Interesting.

And what makes you suspect of Keir Stama personally? Stama himself is a man of very interesting background. I think his struggles over... Well, I find actually the rather dull, sorry for transgender issue, are interesting. The reason why he struggles over it is because he is by inclination and politics for a long time, the person of the very, very far left. He was mixed up with a tendency called Pabloism in his 20s, which is an outward branch for Trotskyism, named after a man whose non-de-gare was Pablo, who's really Greek revolutionary he called Michaelis Raptist, who decided that the old

form of revolutionary socialism was clapped out in which he was absolutely right, not the seizure of the post office in the barracks by the working class, that wasn't going to happen. But the revolution should concentrate on two things, the red and the green, the red being, the red being the cultural, moral and revolution, sort of Gramschen takeover of society in every corner. And the green bit, of course, the fanatical and zealous pursuit of net zero and similar targets. And the red bit is, of course, sexual politics and much other things. And Stammer, I think, recognises and has had difficulty over this because he really believes

this stuff. Do you? I think... People... In that first debate said he was asked whether if a relative was suffering on the NHS waiting list would he go private? He said no. People thought he was making it up or pretending.

I absolutely believe him. That's terrifying. He's an extremely dogmatic person. The other interesting thing was when he was finally asked a political question interview a week or so ago. Nick Ferrari asked him when he kept on referring to working people and they wouldn't face any more taxes, who did he mean by working people? And he said, in effect, I went sure and quote exactly, but the effect of what he said was

the people he does not regard as working people, the people with savings. Now there are many, many people in this country are not particularly well off who do have savings and who have managed to accumulate assets. They will all, I think, face very strong egalitarian taxation in one form or another under this government. There are other things about Starnsworth's which are fascinating. The Daily Mail the other day revealed that he'd been on a trip, a work cap, trip to Czechoslovakia deep in the deep frozen years of communism in 1986.

This is in the period when people like Vastav Havel were being thrown into jail, when Charter 77 supporters were trying very hard to draw attention to the complete lack of freedom of speech when anybody who opposed the communist regime in Czechslovakia was either put into prison or driven from his profession and made to work in menial tasks. It was a miserable Cold War time, and yet he went on this work camp. He was also when he was a lawyer, a young lawyer in 1980s, secretary of a body called the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. Now there are lots of things I could say about that, but I won't say any more than this.

The Haldane Society was the result of a split among left-wing lawyers in London in the 1940s, split largely between sympathizers of the Soviet Union and non-s sympathizers of the Soviet Union, in which the Haldane Society was the society of choice for those who were more inclined towards sympathy for the Soviet Union and the Society of Labor Lawyers was the Society of Labor Lawyers of normal Labor Party members who were also lawyers. No one who was a left-wing lawyer in London in 1980s could not have known about this distinction. I have particular reasons for knowing about it, but no one, Sequeer Starma could not have been unaware that there was this distinction, yet he was Secretary of the Holden Society rather

than a member of the Society for Labor Lawyers. You have to ask why. I think that he's a man of the pretty strong, hard left, probably wealth of the left of Jeremy Corbyn in a modern and, as said, partly Grammshian way, which is incomprehensible to most people who write about politics in this country because most people who write about politics in this country are politically illiterate, particularly about the left and don't understand its language. Well, perhaps I'm certain that we are two of them.

So explain it to us. because the public perception is that Kier Stama is the centrist figure who's taken on the extremes of his own party, who's got rid of Jeremy Corbyn, he's got rid of Diannabber, who's got rid of all this far left progressive fringe, and he is the center-left moderate, centrist dad. Why is that wrong? Well, because there is an old, almost sentimentally lovable old left,

steam-powered old Trotskyist like Jeremy Corbyn and an open, rather noisy, very sincere leftists like Diane Abbott, people of that kind, who had no threat to anybody because you can see them coming about 30 miles off. And there is the subtle, smooth left, which became Blairism, the left of Eurocommunism, the crucial year in all this being 1968, when two things happened. One Soviet Union and its allies invaded Czechoslovakia and horrified almost everybody on the serious left who had up till then had any sympathy with the Soviet Union and broke probably forever that connection.

So there was particularly in the Italian Communist Party a movement towards some form of serious leftism which was no longer Soviet, no longer believed in the complete takeover of industry in the economy by the state, which looked back to Antonio Grisdom. Gramsci who was in Italian comics you'd seen in the 20s that Soviet socialism wouldn't work. And at the same time you had this in the 1968 events in Paris, which were largely about sex. They began with a quarrel about male access to female dauntary at the Northa Abrax of the University of Paris. And that's what they were about, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

And if you go and look at all the museums of all those posters that were stuck about the time, it's quite clear. That's what it about. Those two channels of thought came together into a current called Euro-Communism, which took over the theoretical journal of the British Communist Party, Marxism today, which became actually the theoretical journal of New Labour. And if you look at New Labour's front ranks, and this is only because you're limited in knowing anything about this because all you know is what's come out much more may well

exists which doesn't come out. An extraordinary number of Blair's cabinet colleagues had been Marxists as one kind or another during 1960s and 1970s. Blair himself, and this was concealed during his entire time as leader of the Labour Party, Blair himself as there was a Trotsky's Addoxia University. And people don't necessarily stop being revolutionists because they stop running around, going on demonstrations or believing the working class is about to take over. What happened to the revolutionists of the 60s was they refined and, and they refined and, and they

and sophisticated their politics and sought a, as I say, a moral, cultural and social revolution by other means and began a long march through the institutions which bore fruit in the 1990s and is still with us. Peter, do you not think...

I understand this because I was so very nearly in it. No, of course. I was there. I was myself a revolutionary marchist in the late 60s and 90s and 70s and I broke quite bitterly with my former comrades and I make it public anyone who asked me, I'll tell them all about it. When I join, where I joined, what I did and all the rest of it, they don't.

Not one of these people, not one of these people who rose to cabinet rank in the black government has ever sat down and discussed in detail what it was that they did. And why have the right-wing newspapers and media not exposed this? Because they don't understand it. And I do. Actually, if you don't have any understanding of Marxism and socialism, you're completed a loss from understanding modern European policy. So...

A lot of, for instance, someone like Daniel Cairn Bandit, who ended up as a Euro MP, the currents which began in 1968 Paris, the main events of people throwing cobblestones at the gendarmerie ended up in many cases deep in the institutions of the European Union. One of the main founders of the European project was an Italian communist school, Artiero Spinelli. I know this. But if you are an extroskiist, you do know, because you can read the signs and you understand the code.

These things are, this is a left-wing project which we face. You looked somewhat inexplicably excited about this. This is funny. It's become, I used to make me absolutely furious standing there saying, look, people saying, what are you talking about? And now I just, I've given up that and I know no one's ever going to pay any attention to anything I say. So I have to learn to enjoy the role of Cassandra.

The original Cassandra had a terrible time, poor thing, because she continued to. to believe that one day somebody might listen to her. Look, that horse is full of soldiers. No. But I've learned that it only makes me unhappy worrying about that. So it makes me laugh, watching people who think they know about politics, who don't.

Peter, is her a part of you that thinks that this particular Labour project is doomed to failure because there's too many different types of leftist under one particular umbrella? He sounds like he's saying is doomed to succeed. No, no, euphopian project ever succeeds, but that's axiomatic. But in the course of failing, it doesn't mean it isn't going to roll over civil society and any opposition to it, like a steamroller.

So what you're effectively saying is that this is going to destroy our society. Yeah, this is it a bit channel for, isn't it, what you're really saying? No, no, no, I would never do that. But. Kathy Newman, Liz. I think both Cathy Newman and I are offended by that comparison. But what you're talking about is the destruction of British society, really? Civil society, yes.

Of course. Well, the Blairites did a lot of that anyway. Look how almost none of the professions, almost none of the institutions remains independent. And the real triumph, the stealth triumph of their transformation of the courts and the legal system, is astounding. the Hardini was even heard of the Judicial Appointments Commission, which revolutionized the appointments to the judge's bench. Very few people understand the nature and extent of the powers of the Supreme Court. It's gigantic changes, but because they bore people, as the most serious left-wing change,

does, because they bore people, they can't bother to concentrate on them or think about them. And there isn't, there isn't, somebody hasn't been in British Conservatives and any inter- capable of understanding what they're up against for a very long time. So what do you think of now what we're seeing, which is a populist revolution sweeping through Europe? Oh, I don't think there is such a thing. I think there's an increase in the vote in certain disreputable parties, but most of the countries involved have electoral system which contain that.

And we make a lot of fuss when the ex-fascist party in Transylvania moves up from 11% 16% in a proportional representation in the European election. I don't myself think the moment for panic as he had arrived. Emmanuel Macron has a bit of a problem in France, but that's because he destroyed the French Tory party to get into office in the first place. And so he now hasn't got any defence against a complete left-right split. And also that Marie-Lepelle has been quite clever, but that's the only really serious problem that any of the major European countries have.

Gert Wilders in Holland? Well, what's his percentage? Look, he was, his party was the biggest party. Yeah, but what was his percentage? I don't remember. Well, look it up. It's not that big. I mean, this is being the biggest party in the Netherlands doesn't mean you're very big.

But invariably mean, that means... That's like being the biggest strong man in Lilliput. It really isn't very big. He hasn't got a parliamentary majority. He has to be... If he forms a government, you have to form it with people who just... agree with him and we'll get in his way. And that and in a coalition which is formed after the election.

So Peter, coming, bringing this back to home then, the one party you mentioned that a lot of people who are frustrated with the state of the Conservative Party as you are, the one party that they are keen to vote for is reform. What are your thoughts on Nigel for Russian reform? Well, I get it. I'm sorry. I'm suffering from election fever at the moment. I thought that was an allergic reaction, Peter.

It may have been, but we're in the realm of the subconscious here, as we also always are when dealing with Nigel Farage. I mean, I don't regard Nigel Farage as conservative. I regard him as a sort of watered down. It's Britain's Tyser to America's Coca-Cola, Britain's Farage to America's Trump. It's a sort of, he is a... a rightish populist, whatever that means, but he isn't a conservative.

For instance, he has said, he's now sort of scrabbling backwards on it because I keep drawing attention to it. He has spoken out in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana, for instance, which no intelligent person and no conservative could conceivably support. So he gave himself away twice on that. I don't think he's got a developed set of positions on social and cultural and cultural matters at all or understands basically what he's up against in new labour and in many ways I think my description of whatever his party is called this week as a Thatcher

tribute band isn't far out that's who it really appeals to is thatcher nostalgia for an era which has definitively gone so I don't think all that much of him but the other point about it is in fact there is a less famous than it should be encounter between him and me on GV News, which I recommend you all to watch, which seems to me to end rather abruptly, because he was in control of it. Anybody can watch it. It's still there on the internet. It pints with Nigel Farage on me.

Watch it. You'll get an idea of what I think of Nigel Farage from there better than I can give you in our short encounter now. But in terms of voting, the British voting system is very simple. There are two parties which can win general election in 2024, and neither of them is reform. And if you do vote for reform, if you were going to vote for, what should I say, another party which was more likely to defeat Labour, then you are effectively voting Labor. There isn't any getting out of this.

I mean, the reform spokesman of the debate I attended last night had unheard, admitted it. Admitted it. They can't win at this time. It's not possible. And they will go on on about how there's going to be some catastrophe. now. They sound actually remarkably like Trotskyists. They're going to have a catastrophe out of which will come the revolution in 2029 after five years in Kyrgyzana. Then it'll be all right. Well, that is the argument.

On our northern shores, Nigel Farage will appear and sweep the country. Well, I don't think this is very likely, practically or politically, not at least because it seems to me that Labor and Kirstama have no intention of relinquishing what they gain. The incredible cynicism, And it is in the manifesto of giving votes to 16-year-olds. And no, it's indefensible. He knows it's indefensible. There's only a couple of years since Labour MPs voted to ban people from getting married at the age of 16.

And you can't, and also they ban them from buying cigarettes at the age of 16. You can't buy fireworks. You can't be put in a combat unit in the army at 16, and yet suddenly voting's okay. It is boundlessly cynical. And it comes from a man who has... has in recent years said that he would like to give EU citizens living in Britain the vote. He now says he doesn't want to do that, but how valuable is that as a pledge? He makes a weathercock look like a signpost.

He swivels around so much on things that don't matter to him. This is, I think probably because his deep, profound, dogmatic left-wing principles never alter. He feels quite happy about swiveling around wildly on superficial issues. But I think that the idea that this, this Labour Party, if it gains power, will relinquish you to gain, is fanciful. They won't. They're not proposing to give up.

You get at least 20 years of them. By that time, they will pretty much have finished their project. So you think that we're going to get 20 years? I actually think so. Do you, because we've spoken to a lot of people. They've always wanted 20 years. Oh, I mean, every political party wants 20 years. But there's a particular thing.

If you're transferring wealth from one group of people to another, any form of people's taxation has to be slow acting on this. You can't do it quickly. It has to be done slowly. This is the point that Nye Bevan made in this very dangerous speech in 1945 to do what they needed a really long period of government, which they felt cheated of, of course, in 51 when they were kicked out after only six years. If the 45 government had lasted, as it was intended to do, probably until 1960, the country would be through a much more profound social and economic revolution than it actually suffered. Because they finished in 51, and what they left behind was in many cases quite popular. They hadn't, they hadn't gone on to the bad

bits. But I guess when it comes to that point about the 20 years, every person on the left, let's be fair, the lefters are always in this purity spiral where they've always going, nobody, you're not really on the left because of X, you're not really on the left because of Y. I haven't spoken to somebody on the left or in Labour who is actually enthused by Kirstama at all, which makes me think, is he actually going to be able to last? in a term. Don't you remember the same about Blair? No, when I remember when Blair came to... Oh, yes, they were always saying, oh, we can't stand him, he's really a Tory and all this

stuff. It's half the... Half the Labor Party membership say that the whole time. Well, then they can't understand it either. And you have to have... You had two groups of people who didn't understand Blair. One were the Kevin's and the Working Man clubs, who thought Blair was a Tory, and the other were the Nigels in the golf clubs who also thought Blair was a Tory. They were both equally wrong. But to reveal to to the Labor supporters how radical labor was, would have been to reveal to the golf club goers how radical that they were. They didn't want to do that.

So they were left in ignorance. It doesn't do any harm. They still vote labor when it comes to it. Labor vote is still pretty loyal. Peter, I think the point for Hans-Macon, I do think it's a fair one, is the level of enthusiasm that we saw in 1997 is simply not there for the... Well, thank heaven for that, at least. Right.

But I mean, they can manage without enthusiasm, provided their organization. Who needs enthusiasm? When you have had this amazing business of the opinion polls trumpeting from the moment the election began the Tories have already lost the Tories have already lost The Tories have already lost night and day into the earphones the Tories already lost the Tories have lost The Tories have lost every day every afternoon every morning every evening every night the Tories have lost the Tories have lost People believe it That's what you need is the best form of propaganda if you've got it if you've got an enemy army bottled up You fly over with your planes of

dropping the propaganda leaf that's pointing out that you've lost, you've lost, you've lost, surrender, it's what you do. You tell people they've already lost. No, that's fair enough. They believe it. It's been incredible. Who needs a manifesto? Who needs any speak? Who needs even to win a debate? Who needs to have a personality which Kirstama appears to lack? Who needs to have any presence which Kiyostham has to like? Who needs to have any posters? Have you seen an election van? Who needs to have any activity? If you've got that going for you, then what does it matter? And so enthusiasm is not necessary. No, we were talking about enthusiasm. as in there is a lack of enthusiasm at the moment, which will translate into where in a difficult

situation, economically as a country. I don't think many of the things that people are concerned about at the moment are going to get any better over the next five years. They're probably going to get worse. And so the argument is after five years, people are going to be the way that they're currently annoyed with a Conservative Party. They're going to be just as annoyed, if not more, with the Labour Party, which is perhaps the reform opportunity.

But in five years, quite a lot of the existing. conservative vote will have gone to their award and 16-year-olds will be able to vote. And the number of people, the number of loyal conservatives in this country goes down all the time because they're not making them anymore. Very few people are growing up conservative. It just doesn't happen. So the simple passage of time reduces to conservative vote. And if you enfranchise 16-year-olds and if you enfranchise EU citizens living in this country,

there are quite a few, then what does it matter whether you have in food? enthusiasm is not necessary where you have organization and effective propaganda. But Peter as well, it's not just, it's also the incompetence of the Conservative Party and the fact that they have failed to deliver on key election pledges including immigration. Of course it is. But I mean, this is a given, like the fact that the sun rises in the east and the morning comes before the afternoon. We know this. It's not what's disgusting. That's all that's so, but it doesn't affect the here we have. probably the biggest political, economic and social change which this country has undergone

in its modern history and an election campaign of total vacuity in which no major issue has ever discussed. How's that come about? That is the important thing and people trotting, bleating towards the, towards the pens where they're assured that they can strike a blow at the Conservative Party and that's what they're going to vote for. That's no, what we're going to vote for, we're going to punish the Tories. In fact, we can punish ourselves. Everybody who votes to put a Labor government in will be punishing himself or herself for decades to come. But for one brief shining moment, lasting perhaps 45 seconds,

then, gosh, I've punished the Tories. Great. I've really given a hard time to lose trust. I've voted Labor. Well, I haven't really, I've voted reform, but I've actually voted Labor. That'll show Liz Truss. Won't, you know?

Nothing will show Liz Truss, actually. It's just ludicrous. It is to say it's mistaking a political act for an emotional spasm or the other way around. It's always great to get you on because you really cheer us up. That's my job. There's nothing. Look at me. It's being so pessimistic, accepting that we're all doom that keeps me so cheerful.

And I remind you of my watchword in between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well have a glass of champagne. It's my view. I can't live any other way. If I actually believe that I had influenced events and that I wasn't doing enough to do it, I would go mad with grief. So I just cease to do that. There's no point in making yourself deliberately unhappy.

Which I don't think there is. I mean, there are people, obviously, who have all kinds of weird proclivities. And this is my other point. If you don't like the Conservative government, and you're going to substitute to labor government for it, you're like someone who's living with a masochist,

who doesn't like all those whips and chains and handcuffs and stuff, and chucks out the masochist and goes and moves in with the sadist. It's a ludicrous reaction to the problem. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

So what should the ordinary... It's preaching you. What should the ordinary person do, Peter? Vote against Labor. Give yourself another five years before the heavens fall. Vote against Labor. It won't be as bad if you do that and succeed in keeping them out as it will be if they get in. Maybe some miracle.

Maybe we'll discover another vast bubble of gas and oil. Maybe some other fantastic thing will happen to the country between now and the next election, during which we can rescue ourselves economically and on the basis of that politically and socially as well. It's highly unlikely, but who knows, stranger things that happen. Maybe, but whatever, you'll at least give yourself a five-year reprieve from the worst imaginable government in modern times. Why would you possibly not take that chance offered a reprieve?

Why not take it? Yeah. I mean, look, your argument sounds more and more rational as I become determined to leave this country imminently based on your excellent. advice? Well, as you can. If you are able to make a living somewhere else, as things are, I've never seen a country more wrecked than this one and more determined to pursue a path of wreckage.

I mean, look, add to what we have now, our economic problems that we have now, add fanatical pursuit of net zero over the next 10 years. The idea that labor, while it pursues net zero, can somewhere on the mastermind any kind recovery is comically impossible and I would like to remind you that racial Reeves the supposedly moderate and responsible chancellor has a favorite guru in the world of economists you know who she is it's the late Joan Robinson do you know anything about her no no well she was very clever woman but she did have a bit of a tendency to admire first of all Mautsitton

and then after that North Korea. Excellent. She is the proclaimed favorite economist guru. Well, they've tackled the carbon problem in North Korea. Very well. So you're not here dealing with unideological people. And so what did this economist want? I mean, you've alluded to it.

Well, Joan Robinson. Yes. Well, she had a particular, I can't even remember the name of her post-Kane's theory, but you can find, and I have published, works in which she loads praise upon the Matsui Tsung regime during some of its stupidest action. And that's quite stupid. And also a particular article in which she becomes extremely lyrical about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Now.

And this is the named guru of a prospective chancellor to the exchequer. I wish you joy of it. Again, I shall be laughing. Now, if we look at the Conservative Party, what do they need to do in order to regain the trust of the British people? Well, if they were, if they were to remain in government and keep out labour, the best thing they could do, because they won't do it, because they'd choose, would be to continue to govern the country, not as new labour as they have been, but with a certain amount of conservatism, while the rest of us borrowed away to replace them with a proper Conservative Party. By which I do not mean in the former UK, I mean a party which understands the nature and principles of conservatism. It would give us a five-year interval in which we could do that.

All I would ask for them to do is not make things any worse. So what are your predictions for the election, Peter? I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. I mistrust polls. I've lived through many occasions when polls have been wrong. To this level though? To this level?

I mean, for the Labour Party not to be elected now. Polls are not what they were when Mr. Dot Gallup, invented opinion polls before the Second World War, people lived in houses and you would go and knock on their doors and they answer the doors and they were working from home so they were times and you'd catch them in and people answered their telephones. And now you have a completely different society.

I would be fascinated to know how in a country where people rarely answer the door unless they think it's Amazon and how in a society where no Nobody under the age of 40 seems to answer the telephone ever anymore, opinion polls are conducted. And the other thing that I do know, particularly from the 2010 election, which I looked at very closely, because I simply did not believe the constant reports that David Cameron was on course for a smashing victory. What happened was that huge numbers people were either not saying how they were going to vote or saying they didn't know. And they were excluded from the tallies, which the newspapers then published as if they were a

tallies of 100%. So the newspaper would say that the Tories had gained 5 or 7% in the poll. In fact, they've gained 5 or 7% of about 40% of the votes, so much, much less than that. So quite small movements were portrayed as big. It can be very misleading.

My view is that the opinion of poll organizations, the work they do to the extent that they can in the circumstances they do it is good. It has to be because their basic job is market research. If they fail in elections, then their market research customers won't come to them anymore. But those are the raw figures. The way in which those raw figures

are then projected by the media is a totally different thing. You have to be aware of that. So I don't know. I remember very well when I was atroski in 1970. It was also 18 and just benefited from Harold Wilson's cynical granting of the vote to 18-year-olds. Standing outside Oxford Town Hall at midnight because polls closed earlier in those days, waiting for the result which I seem to be a labor victory and out onto the balcony of Oxford Town Hall on that warm June 9th, night came came the newly elected Tory MP the right honourable Monty Woodhouse formerly of MI6 and it was a great surprise to all and that was the first inclination I and

anybody else had that night of a complete failure of the opinion polls together they predicted 75 majority for Harold Wilson and he was thrown out of office and they the famously the the swing omissor and the BBC students videos, which was then painted on a piece of plywood, wasn't big enough to express the swings. They had to get a painter in to paint a longer curve on the swingometer because the polls were so wrong. I also remember in 1992 when everybody thought Neil Kenneth would win.

And recently, elections abroad in India and in Australia and in Norway, the polls have been completely wrong. The polling organisations constantly strive to keep up and changing. society. So nothing needs to surprise you. Well, I think people should be very careful of. Don't let polls rob you of your mind and will. Do you in any important action you have to look over your shoulder before you decide what to do? Or do you as a self-respecting person make your own mind up? Letting your vote be influenced by the opinion polls is being the pathetic directionless person, the nowhere man who can't make up his own mind. Why be that person? The election hasn't taken place.

White people are still going around all the time acting and speaking and thinking as if it has. Big mistake. Even from the simple point of view of self-respect, it's big mistake. And Peter, I really want to focus on conservatism. What do you mean by conservatism? Because we talk to a lot of people, everybody seems to have a different view of it. Oh, love of God, love of country, love beauty, love of the family. and of your fellow man and expressed in lasting fair institutions an absolute attachment of

freedom and the rule of law and unwillings to change where it's not necessary and the willingness to change where it is and the ability to tell change from progress and progress from change. One could go on, but you obviously don't want the long definition, I'd have to give you a book. And why is this Conservative government, in your opinion, not conservative? Well, it never has been. The Conservative Party has always been an organisation for obtaining office for the Sons of Gentlemen.

The name has always been misleading. And its history is not particularly conservative. And indeed, it absorbed what was left to the Liberal Party. With St. Churchill, if you remember, spent a lot of his political life as a liberal one point. It's never been a conservative party. So it would be unfair to accuse it of being a Conservative Party. And indeed, especially since David Cameron, explicitly took it over and turned it into a Blairite formation,

that he didn't understand Blairism. He knew what he had to do. Since then, anybody who's voted a conservative has got what they deserved. People who say, well, I voted conservative in whenever the last election was. I've lost count of them. And I didn't get a conservative government. I said, well, what did you expect? there isn't the conservative be seen anywhere in the front bench of the party or any

conservative sentiment to be found in Tory manifestos. Why would you expect that? Especially after you voted to ratify David Cameron's Blairite takeover at the Conservative Party in 2010, you've got what you asked for. So now is to turn around in 2024 and say, oh gosh, the Tories aren't very conservative. What's wrong with you? This presumably people who wander around in the rain for three-quarters an hour and after they become soaking wet Start complaining about the weather forecast

It's just people don't think about potty So I can't help them either The Peter Hitchens they get angry and call me a contrarian Well, I certainly didn't get angry. I just called you a contrarian to wind you up which has worked out very well because we've had a great conversation But the thing that I guess this boils down to is the Peter Hitchens recommendation is you should vote against Labour, which most of the time will mean voting for the Conservative Party while knowing you're voting for simply a slightly less playwright version

of the same thing? Not, I don't think so. I think this is a, I think the, the Starma government would be a major step. Previous, since really the washed out old Gordon Brown government that tried to stay in office in 2010, which I would have no objection in many ways, Gordon Ram's to the right of David Cameron, particularly on European matters, I think, and the European currency. He was exhausted and played out and had run out of ideas and to have left him in office in 2010 wouldn't have been a big problem.

The other leaders that Labour's have groped for in the intervening period had not really been convincing or likely winners. Starmer is the first real attempt to bring together the full force of Blairism again, politics. And you'll note that it's attracted to support and help of prominent veterans of the of the Blair Revolution in 1997, it's a much, much more powerful thing than the Tories faced for a very long time or indeed than the country has faced. And it's not just a minor difference. The Tories have been caretaking Blairism since 2010, as I say, without understanding it and therefore without having the initiative to pursue it, and sometimes even very slightly

restraining and diminishing it, nothing like as much as they should have done. But the What a Starma government do would be to bring the full force of will and enthusiasm and dogma and power. And if what we're told is true, the very big and unassailable majority back into the Blairite locomotive. And it would be capable of pulling immense loads and attaining immense speeds that which will make. If people don't like the Conservative government to say it, then they really wouldn't like Starved government. And what do you think Starman's stance is going to be on immigration? Because he's alluded to the fact that he wants to tackle illegal immigration, or do you think it's going to be very much an open border policy?

It's a so I think it's a site which is in some ways largely over. Mass of immigration has happened in this country and irreversibly, and a lot of the problems which we face now are going to have to be with how civilised people would cope with it. I don't think he has any particular policy. and I think any attempts to get him to set one out failed because he doesn't, I don't think he has in his deep heart's core any particular objection to large-scale aggression. He probably realizes as a political issue is possibly one of the things most dangerous to his party in the long term.

Well, I don't think he really has one. When he talks about, and Stama, it's been said by clever people, Not by me, but it's true. That Stama approaches every problem as a lawyer. He strives to prosecute it out of existence. And when he makes these speeches about he's going to have these special squads and prosecutors he's going to catch the people smugglers. I think he genuinely believes that he can do something by that method.

But I don't think he has any profound idea because I don't think he really knows what to do any more than the Tories have known what to do. Well, Peter, there you go. It's a pleasure having you back on to, as I say, cheer everybody up. right before the election. Well, I'd like to feel them. I bring happiness. Every home.

In a manner of speaking. Indeed. The key to happiness is pessimism. Optimism is absolutely the road to misery. Peter Hitchens, the last question before we go to locals and ask you questions from our audience, last question we always ask in the main section is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Actually, probably the standing of this country and the world, our fantasy that we are still

a great power, our fantasy that we're still very rich. And these two fantasies prevent us from actually being, in my view, are far more prosperous and far happier society because we constantly strain to be what we once definitely were and are no longer. And by straining to do that, by continuing to make these pretenses of being a great power, we fail to discuss how, in fact, we could be a smaller, happier, more prosperous, more contented, and more successful country. I wish we could discuss that, but it seems to be largely undiscussable.

Peter Hitchens, thank you very much. Follow us over to locals where we ask Peter your questions. If we want to change, how will we get that by continuing to reverse. for one of the two parties when neither of them have the policies we actually want.