Brexit was a waste of time! David Starkey

[Music] but I mean in all seriousness I wanted someone to close this conference uh that could give us an historical perspective and also someone who has been cancelled or they've attempted to to cancel him uh and I couldn't really think of anyone better than Dr David starky who I really don't think needs any further introduction I'm sure that you've seen him on TV interviews I'm sure you've seen his television programs that he that he made and I have to say it brought history to Life by living it through the characters and I thought they were excellent programs I just wish there were more of them to come so please put your hands together for Dr David star yes uh I'm afraid this is a very kind of Nigel farad remark I need this because I had a very good lunch right thank you I was cancelled I survived I was listening very carefully to the two previous speakers and the key element ladies and gentlemen is in you it's simply called courage it is the most unfashionable virtues once upon a time we were a country built on it if you don't believe me go and look in Westminster Abbey for political courage and go and look in St Paul's for physical courage why did we win the wars against France we won them because courage heroism was deliberately encouraged the very concept of the hero by the way it takes a German to say this is a wonderful article by my friend Professor Ronald Ash on the invention of the idea of the hero in 18th century England when Nelson dies on the deck of victory exclaiming I've done my duty effectively he was not unique not particularly rare he was only the very greatest of a type do you know from 1794 onwards Parliament set up a special fund to honor Reckless courage boys 2526 my favorite example is a chat called Richard Faulkner he did two extraordinary things he led an assault on a French for it's always a French of course and isn't it appropriate as woke is essentially French all bad ideas are French It Is by it is a term of absolute uncertainly definition anyway this is the physical attack on France he led an attack on French fort fort San Louie on martinque uh they scrambled up this thing M with their bare hands and bamboo ladders he was shot and should of course have been killed by grap shot but by an extraordinary coincidence it hit his cartouch his cartridge box which didn't explode it shattered continued captured the fort he comes down he's immediately gazed Captain he's Lieutenant he's immediately GA at Captain and as he comes down what does the band play from Judas macabus think what's going on in Israel the book of mccabes are the warrior kings of Egypt from the great oratorio Judas macabus written when 1746 to celebrate kodin we believed in winning battles in those days not apologizing from them he's hailed with the great See the Conquering Hero Comes sound the trumpets beat the drum and then the FL year this lad now of course a captain he's got his own frig and he captures a full French man of war by the simple expedient of catching hold of one of the cables of the man of war um lashing it to his capston and locking the stern of his ship where all his guns are on the broad side of the French ship and of course taking it out he's killed and therefore you can go into St Paul's you see This Magnificent statue of course rather improbably naked for an 18th century gentleman but for not for the disposed bit of chiffon hanging down and victory crowning him and falling back into the arms of of Neptune that's when we believed in Courage we have lost it dare I say and any woman here can of take me by the neck we've elevated female virtues woke is primarily female woke is essentially remember of version parody of The Magnificat he has cast down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree it's the worship of the victim we need desperately to reject I'm sorry so much there's a great fashion now I'm here to tell hard truths there's a great fashion that we can reconstruct our politics the whole of that column whatever is on an attempt at doing so through Christianity it will not work our civilization depends essentially on the recreation of the warrior virtues the mental Warrior virtues the struggling virtues of Greece and Rome it's why it starts not at the beginning not with St Augustine it's why it starts with the Renaissance and that rediscovery of the proper intellectual and physical virtues of the Roman world now where does that connect us to our circumstance ances now I heard Nigel after he too had talked of Courage which of course he's displayed in abundance in his own C career with a little degree of rashness like me with a bit of humor and a bit of alcohol and fundamentally naughtiness the essential boyish quality of naughtiness of Daring not to say the same thing that desperate desire to do something rude in church and seriously it is this is this remember all progress is heresy all progress is dissent it's doing something different what there is an attempt at imposing on us and I came up with the phrase when I was still writing for the critic get a Chinese virus finish with a Chinese Society the point about China the point about ancient Egypt is they were fossilized societies that continue for hundred hundreds or in the case of Egypt thousands of years essentially just doing the same thing and the terrifying point about China is do you know when the moment of fossilization comes we haven't talked about it enough it's when it becomes a bureaucracy it's under the Ming Empire when you in when you invent the Mandarin and that greatest of conservative Prime Ministers Benjamin Disraeli understands that completely and passionately opposes the north cut travelan reforms it is no accident that the thing that has fundamentally gone wrong is that since the second world war we became a bureaucracy we replaced parliamentary limited government with bureaucratic Rule and every profession everybody as every I mean body in the sense of institution has been taken over by a by a bureaucratic structure and woke grows in bureaucracy as its natural element it is like a fungus in this damp turpitude of bureaucracy it grows it flourishes it penetrates everywhere so what am I really saying is we need to understand if we just look at the terrible crisis of our politics again uh I was very interested I'm fond of Nigel but Nigel of course represents the great murn in English politics I'm sorry I'm going to say it brexit was simply a waste of time no we can now see it is a waste of time I voted for it I campaign for it I believe in it but sorry Jesus was right about one thing know them by their fruits what has it delivered nothing because the real issue was not Europe the thing that destroyed parliamentary sovereignty is at home and we need to understand this Parliament the mother of parliaments has virtually no power do we all comprehend this every important decision is taken by a quango quango bureaucratic body monetary policy in interest rates are set by the monetary policy Committee of the bank of England the absolutely key issue of climate change is determined by a scandalous quasi independent committee half of whose members and its late chairman absolutely up to their necks in in investment in the green economy English nature controls effectively town planning this extraordinary fact that the camp you Boris thank God bearing in mind his flirtation with this stuff um stopped from building what he wants by nutes um the the the uh the the disgrace of course of an effective pan an extraordinary veto uh because of the emission of nitrates um which which completely overrides any other form of planning control through English nature and what you do you put Fanatics in the charge of these things some like Tony Juniper is a fanatic and a conservative government has put him in charge but what is wrong with all of that and by the way every single area you look at students now there's going there's a special office for students the whole of media is dealt with by ofcom you know which includes this extraordinary woman who was who was exposed um even only she had been uh by by by by the gido by the gido for's website as a passionate supporter of Black's lives matter what do they all have in common they are single issue committees as we learned or even only we had learned from covid the worst possible form of government is a single isue expert committee this is the rule of Plato it's the rule of the expert the great Greek thinker is of course Aristotle and Aristotle is very although he's of course a great philosopher is very doubtful about the role of the expert in politics and he has this wonderful line which I always use to make sure my students actually understood the judge of a meal is not the cook the expert but the eater politics is about should be about the consumer and ladies and gentlemen until 60 or 70 years ago we pioneered a political structure which enabled that to happen and what we have done systematically both on left and right is to destroy that structure so when Nigel says we need new ideas I say we don't need new ideas we need go to go back to old and proved ones we had something very similar to the terrible events that we've been through in the last few decades in the 17 century when we had a revolution we are can I remind you the only country in the world that has ever self reversed a revolution hence the need for the article on Cromwell in the book on monarchs there we are and but the but the what we did in 1660 is an extraordinary process when the French Revolution was reversed it was the result of military defeat when the horrors of ISM and the horrors of fascism were were reversed it was the result of military defeat and I don't count minor powers like Spain a long time afterwards there is but there is this extraordinary fact that we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and what did we go back to well this is where the freedom Association comes in you call yourselves liberal the world word liberal divides absolutely like the Red Sea in two completely different ways and what we need to start to understand is good liberalism and bad poisonous destructive liberalism the good liberalism is the liberalism which you in your better moments when you elevate Magna Carta the rule of law the life Liberty and what everybody has forgotten property the catastrophic again Nigel was talking about this the difference between capitalism and corporatism it depends upon a proper attitude to property we have lost that and where do these go back to where does the idea of the rule of law where does the idea of open Justice where does the idea of representative government where does the idea of Elections come from they do not not come from the abstract they do not come from the enlightened they do not come from progress they do not come from the 18th century they come from deep in our past they come from the Middle Ages now this is of course to stand the constant the conventional way in which we understand history absolutely on its head the victorians of course understood this fact why do you suppose that when the Palace of Westminster burnt down in 1834 it was regarded as being a little providential they just uh carried out that extraordinary transformation of the the ancient Constitution uh with the with with the first parliamentary reformat In 1832 the actual rules for rebuilding it specify it has to be in the gothic or the Cuda you will find gothic in Canada you will find a form of Gothic in austral Australia you will find gothic in budapes for the simple reason these countries are all saying we are not a creation of a moment in time a written Constitution we're not a creation of novelty our freedom is a Birthright it is something that is entrenched in us now the bad kind of Freedom I'm afraid and it was fascinating listening to the sense of paradox um of of the case officer of the SFU saying with visible horror I've actually got to use um uh was it the equality is not it's it's the human rights legislation is it but he's got to got to use the the chap to protecting belief in human rights legislation this is entirely alien to English law the notion of universal human rights is a Preposterous absurdity they cannot exist they're wonderfully described by Jeremy bentam the greatest legislative theorist in in English History and as nonsense on stills and what is clear ladies and gentlemen is human rights have been used to drive a coach and horse through our freedoms we all need to start understanding the enemy the enemy is the enemy as it was understood by Edmund Burke at the time of the French Revolution it's the notion that inherited structures are bad and newly fangled products of mere abstract reason are good the liberalism the new liberalism the liberalism of pain and I'm afraid the liberalism of Jeff I mean think about it has there ever been a sillier statement than that all men are born free and equal would any woman here tell me what a born man looks like I shall site um Augustine it's a little vulgar before we've had a drink but you all know that that human beings are born how can I put this as politely as possible amid solid and liquid excrement which is absolutely right the notion freedom is not a Birthright in the sense of you're born with it freedom is an achievement it's an achievement of a culture and of an individual we must start to learn that of course the Israeli understands it completely he talks and again we need to discover ReDiscover this sense after the horrible formless um conservatism light of the last 15 years we need to Discover It Israeli absolutely wedded to that notion of a parliamentary Constitution but he says something interesting Israeli is a conservative he not at this point a Tory what he says is we are a progressive country this is the conservative prime minister in his greatest speech by the way which took two hours and involved the consumption of two bottles of Brandy they did things differently in those days and they had a degree of robustness uh which we all like Israeli says we are a conservative country sorry we are we are a progressive country therefore there will be change the question is how it's brought about is it brought about in a fashion which is compa with the inherited traditions of a country or do you use the abstract general rules of liberalism if the latter it's a disaster and because I'm a historian I believe in producing evidence the catastrophe that we are now facing and what would be the absolute obvious open goal if we had a conservative prime minister with any sense of Politics as well as anything else is our disasters go by directly to the most outrageous example of changing the English Constitution according to the abstract principles of universal liberalism that is to say the new labor government everything that we inherit now goes back absolutely directly to them why can we not understand it why can we not resolve to change it is is simply for me you there's no mystery about what's happened the rocketing of immigration the deliberate attack on the notion of native britishness the attack on the idea of the nation state the undermining of the of of of the deliberate undermining of the Union the the fre indeed the the the the the the creation of the Independent Bank of England the catastrophe of the importation of foreign law uh with the European convention on human rights the destruction of the central office of the English State the possession of Lord Chancellor why are we looking at the chaos and dis dysfunction of Justice now because the office of Lord Chancellor think would der Irving labor would uh MF Clash Fern conservative tolerated the notion that we have to let people out of prison because we don't have enough room for them this spectacular maladministration goes back directly to that until we recognize what happened until we recognize what we've got to do about it until we recognize finally that the good liberalism its central idea was exactly what you're about it was the idea of freedom as a free society as free individuals as free political institutions as freedom of property it was the central feature of England along with that other essential feature of England and englishness individuality ity and eccentricity and that would be my Trinity Freedom individuality and eccentricity thank you [Music]

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 133,890

Keywords: David Starkey, History

Id: qyHda1EcqqE

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023