'Careful to defame Royals without facts' Steve Baker MP on Meghan Markle, racism & white privilege

taking unnecessary offense and condemning and cancelling people only worsens the problem hello i'm mercy maroki and welcome to the first show of society and censored a new show where we'll be talking about some controversial issues going on in society today i'll be having conversations with politicians academics and cultural figures from the uk and abroad and today we'll be starting with tory mp steve baker so welcome steve mercy thanks very much indeed for having me on really appreciate it well thanks for coming on um as my first guest uh so let's kick off with some of the difficult topics that have been going on this week some of the more controversial ones which is probably the biggest one is the royal family and all the stuff that's been going on uh with megan so on monday and on on sunday we saw megan and harry do a big interview where they basically accused the royal family of being racist or they accused somebody in the royal family of making some racialized remarks about their sonati about how dark they will be i mean what did you think when you you heard this i think it the whole business is extremely sad i remember rejoicing when they got married i think the whole country rejoiced when they got married i i i remember thinking what a wonderful statement it was about our society in our country that they were getting married and i thought it was maybe even the beginning of a new era where we were much more comfortable with who we are and how welcoming we are as a nation so i found the whole business very very uh sad and dispiriting and um i note the queen's response and i know what's been said i thought david aranovich was very good in the times today about it um is that really we we to really get to the bottom of this you need to know who said what when how what kind of what their motivation was what were they trying to get out but if meghan markle feels she has suffered racism that's extremely seriously and um needs to be engaged with properly do you think it's a problem that they have really just kind of thrown this landmine and then sort of ran off by saying well these comments were made by somebody in the royal family but we won't reveal the conversation we won't you know say who it was don't you think that distinction really matters because on one hand it could have just been a kind of throwaway comment a sort of somebody curious probably a bit clumsy just wondering what color skin their baby would have and on the other hand it could have been out and out racism surely you know we really need to know know what was said so we can uh make that distinction and so that it can be investigated if it needs to be well that is uh but that's a very interesting subject i think the truth is that the only fact we know is that we don't know what was said and by whom and all those questions you've just asked which are very reasonable i think as a member of parliament it's very difficult for me to get into conversations which seem to judge the royal family i mean the queen is head of state um i you know every other member of parliament have sworn sworn an oath of allegiance to the to the crown to the queen to her heirs and successors and i wish to uphold that oath but i also wish to stand against racism so you know we've all been put in an extremely difficult position i think the whole situation is incredibly sad i think it does serve as a stark warning in our society to anyone who is tempted to engage in racism that doesn't matter who you are in this country you you can't get away with it but i really hope that the royal family finds a way to heal divisions even from this point um do you think it uh you know this idea that the royal family could be racist i mean of course there will be so many people who think such an archaic institution some people would call it is bound to be speech and racism and you know for me personally i just i mean will um prince william has come out today and said they're definitely not a racist family and of course um the palace has said recollections may vary um i mean it will be so hard for many people in britain who are there's so much support for the royal family they just won't see it as a credible kind of claim that the royal family is steeped in this kind of racism well that's it's very i think it's very important to say that people need facts to make judgments and it the last thing anyone should be doing is is um effectively defaming the royal family without full information so yeah i don't think very many people will want to believe it i don't think but that that doesn't that's not proof right so this is a very tricky situation it's certainly the case that in the past old-fashioned things best have been said by one or two figures but the monarchy is a very important institution in this country you know it's a great the monarchy is a great way of avoiding having presidential elections you know i quite like our constitution and the monarchy is a feature of our constitution which works in practice even though maybe it doesn't work in principle for some people so i i want the monarchy to survive and flourish i think that's the view of the public overwhelmingly um and whatever was said whether it was well in a well-intentioned inquiry on a sensitive subject or whether it was something worse i definitely can't get to the bottom of it in this conversation but i just hope that the royal family finds a way to move beyond what has now been a global phenomenon because as i say if you rewind back to when they got married how wonderful it was that meghan markle was marrying into the royal family yeah yeah and uh you know as somebody who originally comes from a commonwealth country that i know the queen enjoys massive and the royal family enjoy massive support across the commonwealth so this claim that you know they might be this racist institution does really really matter not just for the uk but for kind of the hot the entire commonwealth and off the back of that um as you'll very well know uh piers morgan made some comments didn't he um on good morning britain and was resigned or was forced to resign who knows yeah what did you think about that because you know on one hand that's been called council culture you know you can't criticize anybody especially if they're an ethnic minority without being kind of cancelled or do you think you know that was a legitimate a grievance that people had with him well piers is a controversial figure he chooses to be controversial and uh he made some very bold statements and then has ended up leaving the the job um but i don't think he's been cancelled i mean i think he has a very very loud voice and we're talking about him now and he will continue uh to be heard he also chooses to mount a very strident defense of the royal family um but it's too far it's going too far to say you don't believe someone when they've said they've suffered racism and i'm i'm the parliamentary chairman of the advisory board of conservatives against racism for equality and they asked me to to take that position on because of some of the speeches i've made because i want to get alongside people who who have suffered racism and actually say i you know i do care about it and this is a common theme that's coming up now empathy and there's a narrow path to be trod here on a wide range of subjects we want to avoid setting up a grievance culture where everyone's a victim and there's this hierarchy of privilege and conflict because that is not a healthy basis on which to construct a society and right relationships you can't be wandering through life wondering about your privilege all the time but on the other hand if somebody says they've suffered racism it's incumbent on all of us and i have to say incumbent on people like me have never suffered racism for the obvious reason to take seriously what people have said so i think the path to virtue here is quite a narrow one and it's it it goes back to that old rule treat other people as you would wish to be treated so let's avoid a grievance culture but let's take seriously what people say so i think piers went too far in without any evidence saying he didn't believe her i i thought that was going too far yeah i think that speaks to a lot of what's going on with the the race debate at the moment is that um we're kind of people are having to tread on eggshells because on one hand when they want to kind of when when claims are made against racism and it's so it's the case these days that so many things are um said to be racist so people almost feel like they can't say certain things and when they see somebody kind of being quite unquote cancelled um for potentially get to the bottom but then it just it does make people nervous about what they can and can't say and surely that's not a good environment to be operating in because we should be able to speak openly about racism when we should scrutinize racism but you know perhaps it's just about doing that in a bit of a more considerable way but um mercy i couldn't agree more you've absolutely hit the nail on the head being more considerate to one another so when i talk to people who are you know a generation older than me they occasionally use words which these days you would not use i mean there's some obvious words which everyone knows not to use but um like some people miss the memo and they miss the memo because cultures just moved on and we can't be um crawled it's cruel to people to take offense where none was intended sometimes um so talking about these issues is extremely difficult it's extremely difficult for me but one of the things i've learned by listening to people and there's no getting away from it i think that that black people need white people to call out racism and i'm very happy to call out racism but i also want to call out grievance cultures and cancer cultures where unnecessary offences taken because actually i think taking unnecessary offense and condemning and cancelling people only worsens the problem because then the person who's got been cancelled has also got a grievance and on and on the cycle of unforgiveness and condemnation goes so you know there's an old there's an old idea that justice and mercy go hand in hand and it's great to be speaking to you actually but yeah justice and mercy right yeah so we should be merciful to each other and forgive one another where we can bear what bear with one another patiently you you talked about privilege and i think um you know a few months ago now you did go on one of these politics shows and i think you yourself said you acknowledged that you have this white privilege you can correct me that's not exactly what you said but you know do you think these terms like white privilege are helpful or to what extent are they helpful because you know i'm obviously a black woman and i have a lot of privilege myself i have privilege because i went to a good university um because i'm gonna have a master's degree um i have privilege because i have a job um you know i don't live in poverty sort of thing and there are so many people who aren't my skin color who who won't be enjoying those things that i'm enjoying so when i kind of look at um people who want to say that it's only white people you have privileges or white privilege trumps everything yeah and if that doesn't kind of chime with my own experience because i don't necessarily feel like my ethnicity has stopped me from doing anything there are so many people in this country who won't have that experience but is it um is it a good idea to talk about kind of white privilege as the privilege that trumps all things no it's not a good idea to talk about it and i particularly learned it on that day we'd have to both go back to the tape to see exactly what i said but that's not really the point the point i was trying to make is that i recognize that i have never suffered racism for the obvious reason that i am white and i was trying to explain that that was what i understood by this term of white privilege that by being white you have the privilege you don't suffer racism but what i've discovered is that to talk about it at all had an enormous backlash people hated hearing about it not least because so many people in this country who are white are suffering poverty and they're suffering injustice of one kind or another so i am absolutely clear in my own mind that to talk about white privilege is extremely unhelpful closes down the debate and actually um yeah while i acknowledge that not suffering um racism because i'm white is in a sense a privilege to talk about it it is not helpful and i i would encourage people of all sides of this argument who want to make progress to just turn away from establishing these hierarchies of grievance about who's got what privilege far better to treat people equally as individuals and say you are we you and i we are morally and legally and politically equal we should be treated equally before the law we should have equal opportunities and then go forward together being considerate with one another far better than establishing all these grievances yeah sure and there'll be a lot of you have um been somebody who has not shied away from being in the eye of the storm um when it comes to the big issues that have been going on in britain of course you were chairman of the european research group one of the most vocal advocates for brexit and brexit was you know there was a lot of racial issues that were going on around brexit whether it was brexit being called racist and um do you kind of there's this kind of demographic within the country this poor white working class as um people like to call them and those were a lot of disaffected people um that felt that they were kind of being offered this new deal and again when we had the 2019 election they were being offered a new deal they were being offered to level up and you know i always like to point out when i talk about brexit that you know a bird of ethnic minorities also voted brexit so it wasn't just white people and um i i was one of those people um but do you think we're at risk now you know you you've been leading the um issue of lockdown and trying to highlight the harms of lockdown do you think all these disaffected people who saw brexit as an opportunity to have a new deal for britain and um who in the 2019 general election again were offered um you know a new deal do you think we've now let those people down by locking the country down so many times by not paying attention to the harms being done by lockdown are these not the same people who will be failed by what we've done and you know i saw um something this morning about the that populism might be on the rise in these communities who have been worst affected so are we not really just undoing so much of the work that has been done for to to get these communities on board and tell them that we care about them well we might be undoing some of that work and you know i had a very interesting conversation like this with professor paul dolan of the lsc who's a professor of i think it's behavioral economics and he and i talked about a checklist of 20 different things which i won't go through all of right now but you know i it's fair i think it's fair to say the government acknowledges that it's women and ethnic minorities and poorer people who've been hardest hit by lockdown and it's people frankly like me people in their 50s in secure public sector employment who've been taking the decisions about lockdown and there is a great danger that is situational blindness is what professor dolan calls it but people just focus very very much on covid and mortality from covid and there has been i think a sense that people haven't considered all of the other consequences so for example if you one that obviously there's a problem with company directors being excluded and freelancers and self-employed over 50 000 pounds a year but one which really resonated with me was a young man who's with a new baby who discovered when he was furloughed that he was only going to get 40 of his usual pay not 80 because half his income is through tips something called tron well what a thing to have had to live all this time furloughed on not 80 of your income but 40 and presumably locked down in a small home with a new baby terrible thing to do to somebody really terrible and the sooner it ends the better but you also raised by me you raised the issue of race and brexit that was extremely painful to me i'm an old english classical liberal and i wanted to leave the eu to get back political control of power democratic control of power so that we could make our own decisions i just come to the conclusion that the eu settlement wasn't sustainable right but people have called us all sorts of things one person i don't want to repeat it boom called us all sorts of things and it's just not on and it's just not fair and it's deepened people's fears that's what's worst about it not for my sake but calling brexiteers like me names and alleging things which are untrue has deepened fears in sections of the population which deserve better so so you know things are worse in this country divisions are worse in this country because people have sought to smear brexiteers over race and it's wrong not least because one of the things that the european union does is make available free movement for european people who are overwhelmingly white um whilst leaving nations uh free to have their own policies on the rest of the world well what we're actually doing is moving towards a policy which doesn't systematically discriminate in favor of europeans yeah and and i'm afraid i think that's a good thing i think we should we should look at the rest of the world much more equally although that's very difficult because some countries are so poor but we should be looking at people and treating them equally and not systematically discriminating in favor of europeans so do you think brexit you know we before kind of lockdown happened before coronavirus happened we would have if it hadn't happened supposedly been enjoying the benefits of brexit now that we've left is what has happened is it going to undo those benefits and you know or will brexiteers be vindicated and we will have this you know incredible future outside or will we just not see that anymore because of the damage that we've done from lockdown where where where is the country going to go for the next few years well i'm very clear that in the medium and long term we're going to have a fantastic future of course we are because the long story of human progress is that things get better you know if anybody's interest is a wonderful website humanprogress.org and a twitter feed by the same name human progress and it shows that over the centuries life just gets transformationally better for people poverty globally has been plummeting you know on almost any measure things get better for people and it's because markets and science work and make our lives better so i'm really clear that we're gonna have a great future but we're just gonna have a tricky few years what i do think is going to happen is there there's going to be a transitional period with the eu there are going to be some adjustments some business models won't work the obvious one is that there was sandwiches being made in london for sale in paris at lunchtime that obviously isn't going to work now um but there will be more serious examples including in my constituency so there are going to be some adjustments i'm afraid but any economic damage from brexit in the short run um is going to be completely wiped out by the recession that's coming over over coronavirus um and what the government needs to do and i think has been making a good fist of of trying to do is make sure we have the absolute minimum of pain and the fastest possible recovery but look at the free trade agreements that are being struck by liz truss the truth is that this country is catalyzing a transformation in the way that free trade works globally and if we get this right in in five years time i don't think we'll be looking back we'll be saying why didn't the world move this way years ago and and so i i think we're gonna have a great future but i think we're gonna have a difficult year or two do you think that um the eu has been showing its true colors and actually there'll be a lot of people looking at how the eu's behaving now and you know in particular what they're doing around vaccines and the kind of lives they've been peddling around that and also their poor performance on rolling out the vaccine um you know we're miles ahead of them i mean do you think uh and are you secretly kind of glad that they're showing their true colors because it kind of vindicates your position um i would never i hope i would never put my own vindication ahead of human welfare that it's always human welfare first but i think we have to observe that at times the eu has put european solidarity ahead of getting people vaccinated and that's not in the public interest that's not that's not pro-human welfare and i don't think there's any denying that us leaving the eu has made it better to put the british people's welfare further ahead through vaccination it's just a practical reality that that that that has served us well but i think um we've got to be careful we're talking about being considerate to one another i i do not want to be gloating over a matter so fundamental to human well-being but i do observe that leaving the eu has really benefited the british people on vaccines there's no doubt about that um but and definitely the eu you know you use such political language such political language in alleging that we were somehow blockading sending vaccines to europe just not true but we we signed the contract first you know and i want us to have a society that is based on keeping our promises including our contracts so it was unfair of the eu and wrong of them to suggest we were blocking uh vaccine exports we've got you know people astrazeneca have contractual obligations to us and they should be fulfilled um but we are going to be contributing vaccines to the world i did i mean do you think the eu's kind of trying to you know almost i don't want to use the word smear in britain but do you think they're almost kind of doing all this acting in bad faith to hide their own failures at the moment around uh well this is such an interesting thing so i'd love to give you a really strong newsline but the truth is i meet some of these european ambassadors and the italian ambassador and the german ambassador they're such great people they really want the best for our country and their country together and they're people who are seeking to reconcile and build up but if you look at some other comments from others around the european institutions they are afraid seek to divide so you know people being very critical of the prime minister you know it's it's not it doesn't help people should ask themselves when they speak is this true is it necessary is it beneficial is it rightly motivated and where necessary do they have permission and a great deal of what's said isn't beneficial and and i feel acutely the weight of that at a difficult time like this what we say should we should seek to be beneficial so we've got to talk about difficult issues we've got to get some things out there but we should try to say things which are beneficial to society instead of always seeking to inflame tensions that's not doing anybody any good yeah absolutely and um in terms of you know just going back to lockdown you mentioned all these groups that are um have been disproportionately affected and one of these groups is young people and whether that's young people in school who have lost hundreds of millions of days of schooling or um young people who have been disproportionately affected in terms of losing their jobs um you know these are young people who've been let down by i feel by what we're doing in terms of lockdown and then these are the same young people who pretty much said no we didn't want to lead the european union so where does this leave young people in the country at the moment because it's a kind of double whammy firstly um you know they're almost getting this brexit deal that they didn't want in the first place so there's that and then now with lockdown they've they've kind of had it worse and of course um the fact that um young people haven't had many deaths has been great and there are greeks that have been affected more in terms of coronavirus deaths and coronavirus illnesses but in terms of the longer term impact on people's lives do you agree that young people have had it worse and we're really not focusing on the effects that um locks downs have had on young people yeah i think i do agree with you that young people have had a raw deal out of lockdown there's no doubt about that i put out a video this week making the point that older people who have now been vaccinated wanting their freedom early should now stand in solidarity with the young young people who were not especially vulnerable to the disease have had to be locked down to protect older people so it's just really really wrong to keep young people locked down while releasing people who've been vaccinated when they're older and that shouldn't happen that should not happen and people who are older should stick by the rules because i'm quite confident that most people in their 70s and 80s when they weren't vaccinated would have wanted young people to stay at home and abide by the rules so now the boots on the other foot i mean we need older people to stay at home and obey the rules and be fair to young people and then all come out of lockdown together and actually as the data improves the government should be driven by the data not the dates and that means partly getting young people out of lockdown sooner along with everybody else so um yeah i do agree that young people have had a raw deal on lockdown of course they have and they've also of course not wanted to leave the european union i really regret not persuading young people that they should leave but what i would say to them is democracy really matters and within the european union it doesn't matter who you vote for to sit in this parliament this parliament here it doesn't matter who you elect to sit in this parliament if you're in the eu you still get the european union as your ultimate government and that can't be right and that's that's why i wanted to leave and what i think we've done is preserve democracy for future generations and i wouldn't ask for people's gratitude i just would hope that over the years young people will perhaps get over their disappointment of believing the eu because they'll see that actually we've still got a great future with the whole world and that's one that's more democratic and responsive to them i mean i think that that future has to materialize for them to to be hopeful about that and at the moment there doesn't seem to be much hope and you know it's opening up in in june i mean even that feels like a world away and i think young people are going to be looking at that and thinking we're lost to be vaccinated we've lost all this education we've kind of lost so much of our youth um and then even after that we'll be out of the european union of course i i've voted to leave so i'm not part of that young cohort who wanted to stay um but yeah young people have had a rough deal and you know on that point what is britain going to look like after all this stuff that's happened and not just lockdown not just brexit all the stuff we've been talking about today whether that's the kind of monarchy potentially being in this crisis with racism the stuff that's going on around um race and council culture and all that that kind of thing what is britain going to look like this time next year this time in in two years time i mean is it going to be something to be proud of yes the united kingdom is going to be a country to be proud of we are one of the wealthiest most open most tolerant and liberal societies in the world and we will continue to be and i know people are having a terrible tough time especially during lockdown but we've got to be realistic about who we are this is a fantastic country it's near the top of any relevant league table it's it is a wonderful place to live and that's why so many people from around the world want to come here so yeah of course we got our troubles and young people of course they're worried about their futures i was worried about my future when i i was young and and that and there's no room for complacency we've got to create the future we want but that's the amazing thing about democracy and society we can create the future we want so when you ask what's our country going to be like it's going to be like we choose it to be like together so any young people watching this i really hope that they'll educate themselves about our political ideas and society there's a great book called principles for a free society people can find it through my website about tolerance and civic society and freedom and responsibility and all sorts of the rule of law ultimate free markets all the issues that really matter to constructing a future worth having and we can build that future worth having together um but we can't what we can't allow ourselves to do is to slip into despair we are going to come out of lockdown more slowly than i would like and that's why mark harper and i and my colleagues is writing to the prime minister we said we as the vaccination proceeds and people are protected by vaccination that we should open up proportionately and we believe that means opening up hospitality at easter which helps young people because of course lots of young people get their first jobs in hospitality and then get once all of the top nine groups are vaccinated and their vaccination their protections bedded in then open up all of society because once you've broken the link between cases hospitalizations and death then you should be able to get society opened up now of course the prime minister wants to be cautious but we're saying to him you've got to be cautious about all the other harms too so think about young people think about people who aren't going to hospital because they want to protect the nhs yeah think about loneliness that really harms people so there are all these other harms and the government should be thinking about those too and if they think about those other harms they'll end lock down sooner and that would be good for young people yeah well i um i hope your optimism materializes steve baker thank you so much for joining it's been great to talk to you have a good day thank you very much for having me on mercy i really appreciate it you

Channel: The Sun

Views: 369,153

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Keywords: The Sun, news, breaking news, meghan markle, racism, woke, meghan markle interview, meghan markle oprah, prince harry, meghan markle oprah interview, prince harry and meghan markle, oprah winfrey, royal family, meghan markle and prince harry, woke culture, steve baker, boris johnson, brexit, steve baker covid, politics, lockdown

Id: iuPxJrHIedI

Length: 32min 21sec (1941 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021