TRIGGERnometry - William Clouston on the SDP, Community and Social Justice Mania

Episode Date: June 2, 2019

William Clouston (@WilliamClouston) is the leader of the Social Democratic Party https://sdp.org.uk. In this episode we discuss: 01:04 Immigration, Integration and Social Justice Mania 21:05 Community and the Future of the Two-Party System 43:42 Brexit Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kiss. And this is a show if you're bored of people. arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our brilliant guest this week is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, William Pleusten, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me, kind of you to ask me.

Thanks for coming. Our first question always is, what is the story of your life, how are you where you are, what's been your journey through life that takes you here to this chair? Right, well, I was born in the northeast of England, mothers from Edinburgh, fathers from Liverpool. a red nose. My father was involved in politics a little bit in the Labor Party in and out. When 1980 came along and the big split from the Labor Party, the Social Democratic Party is an offshoot of the Labor Party. My dad left the Labor Party and joined. And it was a very

exciting time for us as a family and also just to see the launch of a new thing. It was also quite hostile. I mean, they had open meetings in the Northeast and, you know, the lights of David came up to speak and there'd be a lot of Labor people in there heckling, but you've seen the videos in the 70s politics, 80s policies, quite raucous. But it was interesting and it captivated me, I joined and we went through the period of seeing that blossom into the alliance and 83, the big election for us, where we got with the Liberals 25 and a half percent of the vote. That was the biggest, the SDP represents the biggest attempt to date for a hundred years

basically to break the political model to change the two-party system. That's what it was set up to do and I have to say it failed. And that's one of the reasons we're still here plugging away. So yeah, that was my initial background and involvement. Well let's talk about something that we've discussed at length on the show with many guests in the past is we've talked about the fact that there seems to be a gap in the market, so to speak, for a party that is socially conservative, but left wing. So one of the arguments John Curtis made, for example, is that UKIP under Nigel Farage.

It was a party that was trying to be socially conservative, but it was also right-wing in terms of many of its policies. And its voters were not, right? So there's potentially a gap in the market for a party that is socially conservative, that wants to control immigration, that wants to be, you know, expressing the socially conservative values while being left-wing. Is that you? It's exactly us and no one else is doing it.

And one of the reasons, I think, people ask us why, after the, I mean, because to finish off the sort of history lesson on the STP, you had the Oenite STP, which I was involved in, that was when the liberals, you know, they had a deal to put the two parties together. Some of 42% of us voted against that because we're social democrats. And the reason for that is that social democracy and liberalism is different, philosophically, very different actually. first-order preference in liberalism to

the individual, but we think that society and the community exists and at least as important. And so Owen's STP went there and then in 1980 he clears off and the party gets kicked back to the grassroots. But it exists

and you have very strong pockets in East Yorkshire and South Wales, Glasgow and Midlands. I think it's a bit like a bird species where you have total coverage when the when the species is strong and then it gets not back and then you end up in pockets and that's where we were. So this gap in the, the political gap in the market, I think partly explains why the enduring

SDP has just sprung up from the grassroots. Because people look at the political landscape and they say, well, you know, what have we? Who can we vote for positively? And they look and there are problems. I mean, I guess the remainder parliament is an example of a problem where, you know, a widely held view is not well represented in parliament, so you have a misalignment there. But there's a lot of it, and I think the two-party system is seen to fail now because, you know,

its biggest selling point was it created stability. Well, there's no stability. I don't think we're well governed either. So there is a, there is a, but on the particular type of politics, the sort of red and blue politics that you're talking about, yeah, there isn't another entity but us that's doing it, which it explains why we've got thousands of members joining and while we're growing all around the country, because we're the only people that are doing it. Now, obviously you have think tanks and academics,

and even movements like Blue Labor, Morris Glassman's thing, which I like a lot. I think there's very, very little difference. There are tiny little differences between us and them, I guess. But as a project, Blue Labor, inside the Labour Party full of, you know, half a million momentum middle-class trots, it's not going to work.

They're not going to get a blue Labor platform. So it's a small group. And then you had Philip Blonde's project, which is Red Tory, again, which we like aspects of it. There are differences, but there are relatively small differences. But again, Tories flirt with it. But the modern Tory is basically some sort of free market liberal, you know. So if you were going to out. who you are to a potential voter, how would you describe your party?

We're sort of red and blue pluralists, really. You know when you meet, I'm going to do this slowly, you know, you ask me to do it quickly. But it's, you know when you meet people at a party, you might meet someone, and people's political views tend to cluster. But many, many people don't fall into that category. You know, when you meet someone, you know, they'll say one, they'll say something. Like, if you're in the States, they'll say, you know, for gun control. And then you can derive all their other views from it.

Yeah. And the same happens here. Well, actually, that's probably about half the country are satisfied with, I'm a red or I'm a blue. But actually, about half the country isn't. And half of the country have views which cut across those things in different domains. And so, and that's legitimate. But it's not something our political system can represent well. And it doesn't represent well because we've got a red party and a blue party.

I mean, nowadays, they're both types of liberals, actually, which is another problem. But so this idea, if I was going to explain it quickly, centre left on economics and public services, centre-right or small-sea conservative on social and cultural issues, that's it. And so, I mean, we touched on what happened with UKIP. How much of a danger is a Brexit party to your potential vote? Base? The Nigel Farage is Brexit Party now?

Yes. Well that's a sort of, that's an immediate question because this project is about convening people who agree with us. We had a look at the philosophy of the party last year and wrote this thing called the New Declaration, which is our sort of philosophical platform. And we urge people to read it if you like it, join us and if you don't, don't join us. It's as much about, you know, say don't. You know, because actually there's a lot of Kippers who are, you know, a sort of free market

liberals, no thanks. It's not what we do. So, you know, we agree with them on Brexit, but that's it. So on on on on on the Brexit party thing, that's that's going to play out over the next three months, six months or whatever. But actually it's it's another single issue Nigel Farage vehicle. And the problem with UKIP historically always was there was a ceiling. There was a ceiling on how far they could go because it was basically about, you know, Euro skepticism. And inside that group you had, I mean, there were centrist economic left, even, individuals like Patrick O' Flynn, who came and joined our party, who were in the tent because they were good Eurosceptics. But Nigel will always have the problem that it's a single issue. I mean,

even the name, you know, it's a single issue thing. You know, the SDP is very Eurosceptic, but if you read the new declarations, there's about four little paragraphs on Nation and World and Euroscepticism and the rest of it is about all sorts of other stuff. And I don't think, I think Nigel Farage will do very well in this election. I mean, they could win the Euro election if it happens. But remember, as soon as there's a deal, if there's a deal, over. I mean, that's as a political entity, what we can do then? You have to change the name anyway.

So I don't know. I mean, we sort of left. And also tactically, it was very unfair for the government to spring an election. the Euro elections on a small party. I mean, all small parties are going to suffer this. We looked at it, and our National Committee looked at it and came to a decision. A, I mean, instinctively, I wasn't happy with the, you know, electing MPs to the Europol. We voted out what we're doing.

So I was against that anyway. And then to spring an election on us, we could have, we could, we had the resources to have candidates all over the country, but we'd get a couple of percent. and what's the point? So we just said, no, we're going to sit this one out. And I think a lot of our voters will probably vote Brexit Party actually. But I haven't, I mean, I'm not directing them to do that. They can do that if they like. Many will. So that's the voice that you represent. This is, as you said, small C, conservative. So let's look at some of the principles that you talk about liberalism being the dominant strain of thought in Parliament and maybe in society in general. What is your issue with liberalism? To go back to what I said before, I think the basic problem is philosophically it just privileges individual rights too much. I mean, we're all for me. We are liberal, but we're not liberals. I mean, a lot of SDP positions are quite nuanced, so we're very pro-European, culturally, very, but we're not very keen on the EU.

We're liberal, but we're not to liberals. And I think the problem with the project, the whole sort of emancipation, grand liberalization project that we've had since the 60s, is that we've ended up with a society, and many fellow citizens agree with this, where me, me, me, I come first. So the economic liberalism, it's all about getting as much money as I can, and getting ahead, as far ahead as other people as I can. And the social liberalism is about individual emancipation. What are my rights? How am I going to prosecute those rights against the whole of the rest of the society and demand, I want this, I want that? Now, all of those things up to a point, I mean, I think David Good.

heart's right about this. I think in looking about liberalism, looking at liberalism in terms of overreach, have we got to a stage where there is simply too much me, me, me, and not enough us? And I think we're there. Honestly, I think we're there. I think the appeal of communitarian parties now, not in the elites, you see, and there is a very big gap between what academics, you know, basically what the academy business, the media think is basically full-on liberalism. And as much as possible, as much as possible, you know, with both barrels. And David, again, David Goodhart is a great thinker on this idea of double-dose liberalism.

So society's had, you know, 30 years of socialism, liberalism, bang, bang. So anyone that speaks up with a family is, you can't do that, we're not really comfortable with that. It's individualism all the time. And then at the same time, you've got the free market liberals of the right who hammer basically, public services have to be contracted out. So everything becomes marketized, literally everywhere. And at the same time, the state has lost confidence to actually just directly provide services and retain what should be its domain. I mean, A key, an absolutely key, I'd say the cornerstone social and economic idea and the SDP is the social market economy, which is something that we introduced in British

politics in the 80s. And it's still there. Absolutely, that is the cornerstone idea. And that's the idea that the state and the market are not opponents. 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,

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But the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made. manufactured and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Do you think we've reached this point now where you sort of alluded to it where the pendulum is swinging

back against liberalism? Yeah. Yeah. I think it is. I think it is. And I think, well, you can certainly see that. I mean, if you take immigration, you know, we're pro-immigration, but I don't think we're pro-mass immigration. I think, and again... But what does that mean? A lot of people will not even make the distinction between the two. Well, magnitude matters. So an academic called Paul Molland came out of the book about migration very recently. And he made a point that at the peak of the new labor immigration expansion, more people came to settle in the UK than had ever arrived.

between 1066 and 1950. You know, it could be a million, million people. And that's very high immigration. Now, again, if you look at what the general public think, general public, and even leave voters, by the way, 85% of them are quite pro-immigration, they're happy with it as long as it's basically of the right scale. Now, again, in the southeast, we're sitting here in Islington,

to fail, to have that much immigration and fail to do the other side of the tennis net, which is to build enough council houses, and yes, council houses, not to be sold off. The state actually doing something to help young people, you know, pair up and start thinking about raising a family. Again, the economic liberals, oh, we don't do that. It's all left to the market. Well, actually, they're just misaligned with the public. The public want the state to help in housing. And any millennial in the southeast is completely in favor of the state doing.

How are you going to get anywhere to live? So a lot of these things into lockdown, so you can have, what I'm saying is you can have massive, you can have very, very high rates of immigration. And you might get away if the state picks the other side of it up and assists it, but they haven't done that either. But the thing, I just want to clarify this thing of how someone can be, because I think I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure that everybody will. You say you're pro-immigration and what does that mean? Like, you're not against immigrants.

Oh, no, no, yeah. I mean, that's a distinction anyway. I mean, we live in an open and tolerant society. And all the data across Europe is one of the most tolerant societies, thank goodness. You're not allowed to say that anymore. I said that on TV recently, but I got slam for it. Immigrants understand it, you know. They do because it is a nice place to live and people are cool and people we get on.

And that's the reality. No, on the magnitude, you've just got to get your immigration rate right. The other side on immigration, which I think probably liberals have slightly overstepped, is... So I think liberalism has been too enthusiastic for very high levels of immigration. And I think it's been too indifferent to integration. Again, I think that is a mainstream view. I'd like to talk about centrism later. What is centrism?

So we, what we're representing and very, very mainstream views on the data. You know, so most people, most British people are comfortable with a degree of multiculturalism, but they don't like separatist multiculturalism very much. And they do think people, we ought to have common values which bind us together in some way. And if we don't, actually, as a society, we simply won't succeed. I mean, what you're saying to me sounds eminently reasonable. I agree with it. And I think, yeah, we're making a lot of sense here.

However, there is the other side to it, sort of the David Lamey left, who says that, you know, that this, you know, talking about immigration in this way is akin to, you know, Nazism or whatever else and all this. I'm not sure what's going on with that at the moment. No, genuinely, it's quite strange. Because this has bubbled up recently. And I mean the rhetoric the after the 2016 vote The establishment hammered the vote

You know I mean it literally killed it Disparaged it said lots of nasty things which weren't true You know or all levers I mean remember what a broad coalition this was 52% of the public And to say it's a racist vote is absurd you you run out of racist really quickly on the data I mean it's true about there about 4% of the society society's racist and bigoted, on the figures, four or five, depending on what question you ask. But you can't say that half of the public that voted on democracy voted on that basis.

It's nonsense. So the rhetoric has gone a little crazy. I don't know, and I don't think it's helpful either because I think it's another thing in the SEP that we're against. We're for tolerance, but we, the sort of identity politics, intersectional stuff, and we're that is hammered by the far left, or even the Corbyn left, actually, which isn't really far left, but very left. Hammering differences, literally 24 hours, constantly hammering differences. I'm different.

That is going to lead to division. And I think instead, politicians ought to think about what unites people. Most people, no matter what your background or your religion is, want the same things. It's interesting that you say that, this division, because I've just been away for a couple of weeks to form a part of the Soviet Union. And it's amazing to me just coming back and starting to, because I tried to switch off from the media and stuff like that, coming back and just going, wait, someone's just being called white or someone's being called a man or someone's being, like, as if that's a legitimate argument. And I think that's where we've, we've kind of come to. It's crazy. Yeah. And it's, I think it, I think it is actually a type of, what we're witnessing is a type of mania, literally, among some commentators and some social justice. I think it's a type of mania. People are going crazy.

And people need a little bit of perspective. Most people get on, you know, out there in the real world we get on. And it's not to try and constantly see everything as a sort of rights violation. It's a odd, very old frame of mind. It's not, it's certainly not healthy. But it's not accurate either. That's the odd thing about it. It's funny in philosophy, you get these waves, waves of movements in thought and, you know,

communism or you know what but in philosophy there was a movement logical positivism in the in the 30s a j a wrote a book and and a vienna circle and it was all about um scientific rationalism being able to sort of put the put the ground floor to to justify any any any any view had to be had to be grounded you know and in filled departments around uh particularly in the anglo world in america and and here undergraduates have been running around anyone that said anything you know, an undergraduate pinning someone against the walls out, well, how are you going to verify that? And, and this is, of course, the movement just went through

and actually they discovered, I mean, Popper demonstrated, you can't verify anything anyways. The whole thing was clapped out and it's quite discredited. I mean, it did have, I quite liked parts of it. But it's just one of these movements that just sort of started and then became very intense and then it just faded away. And I think probably, again, there's been, There's been liberally overreach, but there's been sort of parity mania, social justice

overreach and craziness. And I think we just have to go to ride it out, I guess, because you can't, we can't, like any movement of that kind, it'll have its time and it'll fade away, hopefully. One of the things you talk about is community. Yeah. And I think it's undeniable that we have lost a sense of community in this country. This is probably happening all around the world. Families are becoming smaller, more atomized.

We're living more separately from each other. We feel less connected to each other. We don't talk to our neighbors, all over the rest of it. And anyone can diagnose that. We may have reasons not to talk to our neighbors. This is actually a point I made in an article once. The reason we don't talk to our neighbors is not because we hate them. It's just we're British.

That's what we do. But if we take all of that and we kind of diagnose it and we say, this is a problem. And we know it's a problem. It is wrong. in terms of our mental health, for all sorts of reasons. This is a big, big problem. How do we fix that?

I think by switching culturally from me, me, me to us and to the community. And I think this is where political leadership does matter. How we think about what we do and what we do. So community is massively important. People, I mean, a lot of liberal left politicians just forget about it. They're just completely not interested. Not all of them, but many do. And so the basic building blocks, family, which is the first place that you do something for other people.

You learn that in the home. I'm going to help, you know, your mother will help you, your father will help you. And that's the first place that we learn it. And then going on from that, our neighbourhood, knowing people getting involved, running sports clubs and things sense. I mean, this is actually a sort of civic society stuff that Philip Blonde talked about. you know I mentioned the red Tory combination and Phillips idea was that the civic society does have the greatest role in sort of cultural or a new year that's right the problem is where it's needed most civic society is weakest and actually where it's maybe

not needed so much it's it's at its strongest you know so you go to sort of a very strong relatively affluent village and you know people will be involved in the curriculum they all know each other and it's very very strong civic societies And some other areas in urban areas where you've got a, perhaps a less stable population, more people coming and going and things, it's not a strong. But either way, we've got to think about communitarian impulses and think about doing, you know, working together. You make that point. I mean, Labor at its core is communitarian. Was.

Was. Yes. But was, it was. It was. It was all about unions. It was about representing the people. And you look at the modern labor. I mean, it's just demented, number one.

And number two, it's, like you said, is it all about divisions. I am this, this, this and this. You are this, this and this. So destructive. It's actually poisonous. I mean, it is, looking at society led that is poisonous. A philosopher I like a lot, John Gray,

you know, people consider him a little bit bleak. And he can be bleak at times. But he's also, he's a great viewer and commentator on liberalism. And, you know, he's great on this. You know, how far do you? you go with individualism before the whole of society just unravels? And on that, how far do you go in identity politics before you end up with what he describes as a sort of low intensity civil war? And that's, you know, people want that. You know, and I think, you know, you can

talk in slogans, but we, we, the SDP idea is a social future. And it must be. It's either that or gated communities. Yeah. What do you want, you know? But how we get and get there? Because as I sit here during this interview, I'm enjoying it. And he's Russian, he enjoys nothing. Yeah, I enjoy very few things. That's great. But as I'm sitting here... Apart from the destruction of the Ukraine.

Yeah. My wife's Ukrainian. She's very independent. Anyway, I sit here and I'm thinking, I really like this guy. He's a nice guy. He has interesting ideas, right? He's persuasive.

He says interesting things. But would I vote for him? Is there a thing that I kind of go, oh, that gets me? Yeah, I think it, I mean, all, any, any, any program is a, is a balanced program. You know, if you read the new declaration, not everyone is going to agree with absolutely everything. But the important thing about the SDP is that were there any people doing this? So again, I mean, you know, red, Tory, blue labor, their intellectual movements, really.

But this is, this is a proper political party. Grassroots are, we've got several thousand members now. And it's happening. And it's happening for the right reasons. and you can you can you know stay at home or whatever or you could get involved or you don't have to but um it's actually happening and it's a real entity in that it will be it's contesting real elections and we're trying to beat the labor party and the conservatives and you give and the others and contest for seats to get proper representation and i but it will take time people when you

when you when you were involved in a sort of upsurge like this everyone thinks you know why aren't you on question time yet why anyway you know what and it does take time You know, if you look at UKIP's and I mean the top down SDP was was just like that It literally you know foreign secretary You know film star looks Yeah David Owen was a dominant politician wonderful politician Roy Jenkins home secretary and these were big figures and instantly they got sort of Instant you know I mean at one point in 82 we were at

50% in the polls But it went up like a rocket but it came down like the stick That was the problem and actually this time it's grassroots So it's normal participants Many who haven't been in parties Before we got a lot of people From the Labor Party

We've recently we've got more Conservatives joining the things We've got Greens joining Lib Dems You're a skeptic Liam dab Weird Yeah There's not many of them Yeah

So yeah so that's I think it'll take time But it'll work And I think the thing that I'm really Really confident about Is that is that Matthew Goodwin And the others That do the work on the gaps

Have There is a gap I mean there's no one else And you know, you do the political compass thing, and the whole of the southwest or the, you know, sort of the bottom corner is, is where we are. But my challenge to you isn't that you're too slow in getting there. My challenge is that I don't hear anything concrete. I don't hear policies that are going to grab my attention or things that. Well, build, build council housing to house a million people. Does that, how does that grab you? And by the way, we're going to, we think it's too small. I think the next policy around will increase that. And those council houses won't be for sale.

I mean, that already grabs me. Because to me, one of the one of the, one of the same. of the biggest failures of the Conservative government is that I'm willingness to deal with the housing crisis, especially in London. Well, Labour as well, they didn't do it. They didn't do them. They didn't. And it's, it's what the really strange thing about, particularly on conservatives, I'm not, conservatives are good drinking pals.

They are. They're really are. And bless them if you, you know, and I, you know, I think they, they're less judgmental in the pub and things, you know, get so much in your ear. But they, that the problem with the modern conservative, it's not conservative. It's not, I mean, they say. you know theoretically if they've got the guts to back the family as an idea now which they don't really do now but if they do have the guts to say that they haven't

connected that you can't have the state just literally depart from the field they're not going to do it we're not going to help at all you're on your own bye bye that's what the Conservatives have done and they on on housing and if you do that it means that people can't when they meet they can't get a flat they can't possibly get a house and they went have kids and the Conservatives theoretically a conservative is meant to support couples that want to do that So I would say you're just not conservative

What you've become is Free Market Liberal Maniacs That's what you are Because you want to marketize everything Literally everything even the stuff that the state should do So they go So another policy, railway Nationalization

Yeah, it's gonna happen anyway Do you think? Yeah, because you get fewer and fewer I mean it was a crazy You know, confected privatization anyway. I mean, no, it's a credit. I mean, the state does the heavy lifting anyway with the infrastructure. About four billion goes into that a year. And then they let, and then they let a few different colored trains run up and down. It's not really private

say. You can't, and no state railway system runs at a profit. It's got to be efficient, but it shouldn't. I mean, it's a public service, really, to get people around. And when you think about it that way, the whole project, I think Major did it because he'd run out of sort of thatcher credibility. Honestly, if you read about it, I think that's what happened. It's crazy. And what's happened is that the franchisees can't make money out of it. So there are fewer bidding for it.

So it's just going down. And then they screw it up like the, I'll be going back to Northumber tonight, well, this afternoon, on a nationalized LNER train. Hurrah! But that's what happens, you see. When the market fails, the state comes in and picks it up. So that's, it is a logical thing and it will happen. It's just a matter of time.

Give us more. Give us more. Can I ask one question, which I think is very important. No. This isn't Russia, mate. Chill out. But this is, and I think this is very, very important, and it's a crisis that we have now in London

and all our major cities, which is knife crime. Yeah. And for me, because I'm hopefully, I'm going to get married with in the next couple of years, we want to have kids, all the rest of it. I can't see myself living in a city because I don't want my children to be around that. How would you appeal to,

you know, the young people and people about to have families, they're going to be able to bring up their children in safety. It seems that every day I open the paper and it's another kid getting stabbed and murdered. It's desperate, yeah. I think what we've got to do is actually be a little bit more honest about when politicians are interviewed about knife crime, they'll talk, left and right, actually,

talk about police tactics or police numbers. You know, you got the map. It used to be at 33,000. We're at 28 now, and there aren't enough resources. And they'll talk about other things like that. They won't talk about any fundamentals. And I would say, how about the crisis in the family? Are we going to be honest about that?

You can't, and actually, it's a bit like the housing thing. The sad thing on housing is that you can't, I can't say to any millennial vote for me because I'll solve it, because it would take 20 years to solve. You understand this. Yeah. I mean, there just isn't, you can't, you can't get the public housing stock up in five years, 10 years, or even 15, it's a whole generation. But knife crime and all these other things.

You have to go back to parenting and community. Unfortunately, that is the reality. And I think if people have strong role models and the societies with them, back to the community area of the thing, in the long run, then knife crime would reduce. It would. But that's not something that a politician can say, I can solve now by shoving this amount of money on it or doing that. I mean, the left, particularly one of the criticisms which the SDP has of the current Labour Party, is that it views cultural issues, cultural problems, just through the lens of money.

I mean, it's a bore. You listen to them interviewed, and they just say, cuts, cuts, cuts. Well, not all our problems are caused by, you know, Tory cuts. I mean, the SB is in favor of a strong and active state. You need, you know, state spending about 41% of GDP. And that's much higher than the Tories would want it,

but it's not as high as what calling it were. But you can't, they have a tendency to bring blame cultural problems on money. And actually, a lot of the solutions are not to do with money either. One of my favorite things is another policy is the Daily Mile. You know the Daily Mile? Have you heard of that? No, no.

So there's a school in Sterling in Scotland and the health metrics for the kids was not brilliant. Weren't fit, weren't concentrated. And the head teacher there said, right, we're going to do a communitarian thing, every kid, And all the staff, all the teachers were going to run a mile every day. All of us together, no excuses, no opt-outs, we're all going to do it. Different speeds, but, you know, they're going to do it. And they did that. They started off doing it.

It was a cost, it cost nothing. To be fair, they had, you know, and there are issues with where could you do it. But they did it. And all, literally the education outcomes increased, the health outcomes increased. All the data, you know, it was fantastic. And that didn't cost anything. And that's a cultural solution To a health and education issue

So it's a voluntary thing We were a bit And I can't remember what the pickup is It's something like 40 40% of primary schools do this now And it's a sort of team building and community building thing We were a little bit scared of saying right You know the Social Democrats will mandate this when you mandate stuff It all goes wrong

But it's an example of something where Honestly culture is I mean we're all aware of of the fact that politics has taken a cultural turn in the last 10 years, 20 years, you know, and the left and right thing about economics, which is just about who gets what and what the state should do. I think that's still important, actually. I really do. I think that's very important.

But culture is number one. No, that's it. And I think so cultural solutions to cultural problems is what I would say, but long term. It's just interesting, such a good point, isn't it? Yeah. One of the things I hear as I listen to you, and then I compare that with a lot of the things that a politician might say on question time or wherever else is we no longer seem to have any understanding that some problems take time to solve. Exactly. And we've become so impatient at the society that we don't want to hear your answer there.

We do not want to hear that. We don't want to be told this isn't going to get solved in 15 years. Yeah. It's the same as the undergraduate Phil student, penning some. someone down about verificating, tell me now, tell me now what you're going to do. Well, no, some of the things do take. I mean, it will take a long time. And, you know, that, that is the way it is. And I think the people, people are ready for that, aren't they? It's also to do with our parliamentary system that you get elected for four years.

Yeah. If you actually stay up and go, well, look, I'm not going to solve this in four years. And everyone thinks, well, why am I going to vote for you then? I'm going to vote for, you know, whoever it is over here saying that you can solve it in two. Yeah, no, I agree with that. But on the other hand, you know, the public has much more switched on than politicians imagine. And actually the whole Brexit vote and the, you know, the coining of phrases, hard Brexit, soft Brexit crash, and all the, you know, the public are aware of what's going on. They know these are slogans.

I mean, they're not daff, really. You spend a bit of time on the doorsteps. People know what's happening. So yeah, and I think people would be ready for a longer term thing, but I think that, the short-termism of British politics is partly to do with another thing, which you've talked about to other participants, which is for the duopoly, and the first past the post voting system, which is, it's finished, it's cooked. It needs, I mean, I think, one of the consequences, we are living through a political crisis

now, no doubt. Strangely, not really an economic one, really, you know, full employment, you know, it's an odd this, I mean, you know, in the world outside, things continue and the country's doing reasonably well, but there's a political crisis. And I think what are the going to be the consequences of that?

And I think I would put money on the consequence being the duopoly in first past the post it's going to go. Because I don't think people are going to put up

with the status quo politics as usual. They're not going to put up with that. And that's what you're going to get if the voting system doesn't change. So when do you think

it's going to change? Do you think it's going to be, I know it's impossible to make predictions all the rest of it. I think within 10 years we'll have a new voting system. That would be amazing.

Yeah. I think with it and that's and that's being optimistic but I think it would happen because I just don't think people I think within I by the way I don't think there's going to be an election anytime soon I think you're going to go the three years from now because they I mean we're in sort of late 70s you know Wilson Callahan Lib Lab Pack Zone now we we we they won't a government won't call an election it'll lose or it thinks it'll lose so I just think we're just going to go to the bitter end but I don't know if it's that election or the election after but what you need to have to have to break it is actually a grand alliance of every single party that wants PR for one election. Greens, you know, Communist Party of Britain, Braggis Marxist, Leninist. You know the whole, literally the whole thing. You're really scraping the barrel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just you get 150 votes.

No, you need a one election, we've had enough thing. Because I think people have had enough enough. You look at the future, more of the same, really. I mean, the thing about first past the post was, it used to, they used to say it delivered strong government and stability and also firm decisions. I mean, you know, firm election results. Well, it hasn't done that. I mean, it doesn't, literally, it is clapped out.

It really, I mean, the whole constitutional thing leads to looking at, but I don't think that's going to survive. And I think the number of people that are pulling away from the main parties and their allegiances are pulling away, I mean, you know, working class. voters with the modern Labor Party, it's not a good fit. And people started voting UKIP, and they'll vote. I mean, it's very interesting actually at the last election, 2017, was the first time that the Tories had as many working class votes as the Labor Party. Did you know that? No. No. Yeah. So they used to be class, very class-based voting. If you go back to the 50s,

very, very, you know, working class block. And you always got some working class stories. I love the way you point to the year. I'll change that. That's good. So they used to vote in great big. Middle class box. I'll take it. I'm Russian.

We have no classes. So you had that. And then there's been a sort of gradual realignment from that. But it's quickened. And actually, the next election, I would predict, I think the stories will probably do terribly. But they'll have quite a strong working class vote. And it's one of these realignments where, you know, like if you look at American politics now and you know, the southern states are Republican and you say to your kids, well, you know,

there used to be Democrat. What? Really? I mean, they were quite racist Democrats, actually, which is one of the reasons. But there was a problem. But a proper realignment happened in the 60s under Leonard Johnson. And you can't imagine that now. And people can't say, well, what?

There's Southern States revurning Democrat. Democrat. Yeah, they were solid. Absolutely solid. And when you're going through it, you sort of don't notice it, but it's happening. And I think, so I think it's very odd. The conservatives, how they've played Brexit, they, the conservative party, they say is the most successful political party in the world. And it is because it changes. You know, it used to be protectionist, then it's free trading and it's free, you know, throughout the years, it just changes and morphs, became the business party, used to be the Aristotist Party and so on. And they have a massive opportunity right now to pick up the ball, own Brexit, do no deal,

and convene a totally new conservative thing. And actually, if they were socially conservative, they'd storm it. They're not doing it. Well, they're afraid of losing half the party. Oh, terrified. Yeah, but the misalignment there isn't the parliamentarians. It's not with the membership or their voters, actually. It's weird.

Because I think the parliamentarians and the bigwigs have actually played this. wrong. But I'm not going to coach the Tory party, except what they do, but they, they've missed a massive opportunity for a, for a full on realignment, because they'd have taken the leave working class vote. They wouldn't. How dangerous is it, do you think that essentially the conservatives and labor have turned their back on traditional working class heartlands? And essentially, what you have now is a large swathes of those people who are unrepresented. I think it's very dangerous. It's not a good thing for not only a social class, but a viewpoint actually to be persistently ignored,

to be persistently ignored, your saw-out problems. It's like a pressure cookie. You've got to come out in other ways. And actually, Peter Shaw, who's probably my favorite, my political hero, wrote very well on this. If you ignore, if you don't allow participation and democracy to deal with these things, you'll get disobedience in the end. Or outright. or worse, basically.

Well, there's no issue. There is no issue that is divided, I think, the country more on that basis where people haven't been represented and their views haven't been taken into account than immigration. I don't think there's a single issue than that. We were never asked. That's what they all say. Right. Yeah.

So what is your view on how we move forward? What is your party policy on immigration? Just to have caps that will work. So the Theresa May's immigration policy is net. They've tried to implement it. They just haven't basically gone hard enough at it. You just need to reduce immigration. You need to reduce net migration and gross.

The gross figure is the figure they don't want to go near. Because the whole of business and the cultural media is lined up to be pro. And so if you put any limits on it, you've got massive kickback. But that's what is required. You've got to have sufficient but not too much. Right. Well, that is just out to do you as a racist to everybody watching this. that's the way this story goes.

Well, fine, yeah. As an immigrant, that makes no sense to me, but somehow talking about what you just said, which is we have to reduce immigration, bang, race is done. You've got to detoxify some of these things. I think you can't, I mean, Eric Kaufman's very good on this.

I mean, these are normal, talking about this, ought to be detoxified as much as you want to talk about transport policy or something. It's a legitimate thing to talk about. Make it boring. Oh, that would. That would be a political project.

But then that's part of it. to David Lamney. He just, you know, said quite inflammatory comments. Crazy. No, I don't know. I'm a little bit worried about that. I think it's, I think that's not helpful. Yeah. But again, I, can't we, can't we, I wanted to talk about centrism and I'll try and get it in here. Look. So here we go. So, so. Can you hear the gift? Yeah. No, so what, what is, what is, what is, what is, what is, what is centrism? It's representing a mainstream view. Which is all we're doing, by the way. Now, if the things that we talk about on the family, community, immigration, or the European Union are mainstream opinions, I would say they're centrist opinions. And I would say that if, you know, cultural elites think differently, well, that's not a centrist opinion. I mean, that's okay, you can have that opinion, but it ain't centrist.

It's not, you can't. And actually, you know, Chuckers group and, you know, the change UK people are going around and obviously the BBC love them and everything. They're going around saying they're centrist. I don't know. I'm not sure. You know, what you're saying, you're saying you want to dishonor the biggest democratic vote in British history. Is that centrist?

It's weird. I mean, that's like, to me, that's a mask slipping. And it's like, you know, it's not a good moment. It's not, and I reject that. This is why people say, you know, the STP is a centrist party. It is. It is. But I'm not wanting Macron or Tony Blair or,

or, you know, chukka to join our party. Well, they're hyper-liberals. Exactly. Total liberals, yeah. Yeah. Not necessarily personally anything wrong with liberals, but they are hyper-liberals. That's what they are. They're not centrist.

I mean, the counter-argument, and it's something I've been thinking about recently, the counter-argument to the idea that we must always do what the people want would be, you know, hanging or, you know, getting rid of nuclear power stations because people are afraid of them blowing, stuff like that. So what do you say to someone who goes, look, the people know broadly what they want, But it is the job of experts to come in and, you know, take care of things and make decisions. Yeah, the expertise thing is a really, really interesting thing because obviously Gove made that point and he was slammed. And it became a sort of Brexit, Romana Romano, because obviously all leave voters are stupid.

You know, we don't listen to experts and so on. But there are some really interesting, fine-grained philosophical ideas to be had on that. there's a difference between macro expertise and micro so on micro an engineer or someone flying a plane or a cook or something

that's micro expertise and it exists and the reason it's expertise you can rely on it you can rely on it macro no I don't think so macro economics is in crisis

literally they're all over the place I mean it's a wonderful discipline to my kids you know one did an economic's agreement one's doing one now and but it's in crisis it is not you can't say that you have macro expertise that could that could say where we are with predictive um accuracy you know six months they're quite good at three months actually but as long as no crisis happens but they're very they're very poor they're really really poor on on predicting anything further out and actually

gove bless him was it was just making that point because he's talking about the IMFs and you know OECD predictions which was a legitimate thing to say so you know critic you know does it mean you're ignoring expert of what no not generally Talib Nasim Talab makes great great points on this and he's you know he's an odd figure culturally but he's I like him don't go on his Twitter that no I stay away from that yeah no I occasionally look at it I have following B occasionally look at it But his contribution to intellectual life is great. About two months ago, I was walking down Victorian Bankment,

and I saw him walking down, and I stopped him and said, hello. And said I was a big fan, and he was there with his agent. I spoke for a few minutes. And I didn't get a selfie. And I walked up, why? Why didn't I get a selfie? But anyway, yeah, so the expertise, yeah. In its proper realm, it's reliable.

But take my point about hanging, which I think is a good example, where it's not so much about expertise, but it's a sense that maybe we need someone in a position in a cool, calm and collected place where cool, calm and collected people come together. Well, that's Theresa May. I don't know. The people who are wise heads sitting in parliament,

deliberating on these great matters, come together and ignore our worst instincts, in a sense. Because hanging is, an issue where the majority of the British public perfectly support that, right? Or have done for a while. It's, I think it's below 50% now. It used to be higher. But let's say, let's say it's around 50% or a small majority, maybe it's not hanging. Maybe it's just the death penalty. Maybe if you phrase it like that, most people would support it, right? And maybe that's an issue on which we just need someone to go, no, come on, guys, we don't need to go that far, right? So my point is, do we always have to do

what the people want in everything? No, I don't think, I, I don't think, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'd concede on that point, actually. I think some people, when we're sort of reputing the philosophical base of the SDP together, some people are quite keen on direct democracy. I'm not, actually. I think if you have, if you're, if votes match seats, which they don't. If votes match seat, you don't need that. And particularly if you have seats that are connected to a physical, you know, a geography

to have to keep the link between voters. So am I in favor of having, you know, votes on the death penalty? No. And I couldn't, I mean, I'm totally and utterly against the idea of the death penalty. So I would have to say even if, and I'll be honest, even if 55% of people wanted it, I wouldn't be voting for it. Right. And so that's Brexit, isn't it? Some people would make that point that? Yeah, they could do. They could do. But the difference is that on a, on a tiny micro, but lethal question for an individual. Is that equivalent to asking how your state is governed?

I mean, Brexit is the biggest question of our political lives now because it is the biggest question. I mean, we haven't, we talked about, you know, the nation state as an idea is diminished, very, very diminished. If you speak to a new graduate at a modern university in Britain, they'll disparage nationalism. They will do it. 90% of them, probably.

They will disparage it. What they're not seeing is the positive side of, the positive side of convening national solidarity to do stuff together. You know, so we're in it together. And they also don't see the phony side of the EU not having that. Now, let's, so I love it that we've got 50 minutes, and it's only really now that we've touched on Brexit. I was keeping an eye to see how long it would take.

What we are now is, I think, is in a position, like we said, political crisis. Yeah. If you were the Prime Minister, how would you deal with Brexit? It's an awful question because you wouldn't have wanted to get here. But that aside,

I would say leave without a deal. Why? Because I think it's the only thing that respects it. I think personally, her actual deal, the deal that she has, the Barnier-May deal, is worse than staying in. I'm eosceptic.

I want to leave. But I would sooner stay in than vote for that deal. That is a dreadful. Dreadful deal. You can't, there are some advantages to staying in, but you can't give those advantages up without having the advantages of leaving. And so her deal has none of the advantages of leaving.

You don't get your own trade policy. You don't know how you'll ever get out of the customs union if you can. Dreadful. So the only option actually where we are, we wouldn't have wanted to get here, but the only option is actually leaving without a deal. But by the way, I don't think that's going to happen. I really, I think, I think the establishment of putting Brexit into a sort of killing zone now. And I think this is why I objected to the European election so much, because it's a slow, wear the public down, get the sort of, you know, the soft Brexit hard Brexit narrative, wear them down, don't honour it.

Put it into a, you know, negotiate a terrible deal that, which the commons, everyone knows, couldn't because the various, on the, on the mass. couldn't support, then, you know, to get to the next stage by having European parl elections, then get the EU to give you a longer delay, which they'll do. I mean, actually, there's a busted flush now. They'll give you only delay you want now. As long as you stay in and, you know, continue the state of square, they'll just give us as much time. Because every single vote the European Union's had on the treaties previously, you know, Greece, well, actually, that was about austerity, but Holland, France, Denmark, to.

twice, Ireland, twice. The standard way of doing it is to say, sorry, wrong result, vote again. And I thought we were different. I thought, and that's been the real, the real tragedy, the real realisation is that we thought we were different to any, we're not. The elite here are doing it to us exactly the same. That's the proper way of doing it. He just eventually make us vote again. And the only question is, are they going to have to do that? Or do you get some sort of false Brexit that gets through? But incident, if they do that, I don't think they're public going to be convinced. But if you get the worst referendum they could have is May's deal or stay in. So it's like stay in, crap or stay in proper. That would be even worse, according to what

you're saying. You see, Francis and I both voted Remain. Because we're good people. There we go. It's a running joke on the show. We have people saying, when are you going to start selling t-shirts with that slogan? We don't actually think that way. In fact, both of us have a lot of reservations about what's happened since Brexit. And I particularly feel like

if we got to a point where we had a second referendum and it was either leave with no deal or remain, I would vote to leave with no deal. My only concern with that is how damaging is that going to be? Because I'll be honest with you, I think democracy is much more important than economics. Yeah, I do as well.

So if we were to leave and suffer some economic disruption in the short term, I'm comfortable with that. But I'm not so comfortable with the idea that we leave and destroy our economy for 20 years. That would be... Yeah, I don't think that's... I mean, I just genuinely don't believe that's in the offing. I mean, a modern economy that wants things with its own currency will end up getting them. I mean, you will end up getting suppliers.

I mean, there might not be that supplier, but they will be a supplier in the world will supply your stuff. I don't buy, I think there will be a transition and there will be some turbulence and no doubt about it. You wouldn't want to have got to a situation where you've had to do no deal, but we're here. And if it happens, I think the country would, you know, it would have sort of probably 12 months of readjustment. Certain industries will suffer. I mean, I think certain manufacturing industries along supply lines, there's going to be turbulence there. And the economics of that could change.

But that's an adaptation. And as opposed on the other side of the balance sheet, destroying people's faith in democracy for a generation. Is that worth? Is that worth it for theoretically, you know, quarter percent of GDP for a few years? I don't buy it. And so that's, yeah, that's where we are. I think the case, I mean, it's the point we're making the New Decker, the case for rejecting the European Union as it's structured. on democratic grounds, it's incredibly strong.

I mean, it's really, really strong. If you're a fully integrated Eurozone state, like Portugal or Holland, there are five major important policy areas which your voters can't touch. So if you say, if I can remember the monetary policy, fiscal policy, trade policy, immigration and industrial policy. That's pretty major areas right there. That's not little. Those are big things, okay?

You're a normal Portuguese. You can't elect a politician that can touch that. You can't. And that's a desperate situation. Now the usual trade-off is that if things are going so well economically and you know, bellies are so full, we'll put up with that. It's a bit like in China people talk about, you know,

why isn't there more pressure for democracy in China? Well, the theory is that that if China grows at 8% people, their mind, you know, and that's the sort of deal. Trouble with the Eurozone, it doesn't. I mean, you've got mass unemployment. You've got mass unemployment in the South. Eurozone isn't growing. A lot of large economies like Italy have gone as a decline.

So it isn't working economically. And yet, voters don't have a purchase, can't get a handle on any of these things. And in pub discussions, I'll try and, because I drink with a couple of remainers every Friday, they're nice remains, they're Democrats. It's like you, Democratic Remainers, who I think if they were pushed governor shove would probably honor a future referendum. But the best point I could ever make to them is just line up beer glasses or cups and call them monetary policy and just try and touch them. If you're a normal voter in the year, you can't touch it. And what that means is it means that those are really, really massive things have been decided pre-politically.

That's devastating. That means that it's all been wrapped up You know It's all been wrapped up before you even get anywhere near it And that can't happen by accident It's a deliberate thing I mean it's structured like that And it's very sad that it's like that

But it is like that and I don't you know I don't want the Eurozone to crash in flames and things But it won't last forever because it can't it's not a good system So I think it's a bit like your railways You know when when the way And the people with the little trains, you know, running up and down getting trouble, the state has to pick up the pieces. And actually in Europe, when the Euro project, which is a utopian 1950s project, when it falls down, the nation states will be there to, as the only entities that can pick up and reconvene stuff and do stuff, that will happen. All right. Well, we've got time for one last question.

And the question that we always ask is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should. be? I'm going to say civilized tolerance or civilized toleration of differences. I refuse to hear this. Well, here we go. So we hear it first. So there's a sort of, I talked about the sort of social justice mania that we're going through. And part of that you have, you have sort of parity maniacs. We'll look at any domain, whether it's sandwich shops in Soho or I'm joking, but, you know, footsie boards, any category, they go crazy if there's not equal, absolute proportionality between every group you can think of,

you know, men, women, or different ethnic minorities or whatever, or different classes. And they just go crazy, you know. So as if the end game of the project they're doing will be that we will get absolute 50-50 parity across all domains. And I would say a social democratic ethic would be in an open and tolerant society, there will be some differences, you know, there will be.

And we're going to have to live with them, and we're going to have to live with them instead of civilized toleration. You won't get total, you want equality. And some of the, you know, social justice is an important value. But the idea that you're going to get total parity is juvenile. And I don't think it's actually even desirable in the people make different choices in life. And that's fine. And I think if we have this civilized toleration, we will be better, better off for it.

Fantastic. Well, if anyone wants to follow you on Twitter, you're at, you don't remember. No, I'm so bad. William Cluison. You'll find me, William Cluiston, SDP. And how can, if people really enjoy this conversation and I thought this is the party for me, how can they get involved? SDP.org, have a look.

And I think the biggest thing I would urge people to do is to read the new declaration because that's the philosophical side. And if you like it, think about joining and get part of it. And if you don't, don't. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for coming on. It's been a pleasure.

Absolute pleasure. As always, follow us at TriggerPod on all the social media. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can listen to this as a podcast, as many of you will know. And the thing that Francis has been pointing out, and we've been hearing a lot of is on YouTube,

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