Conversation with Andrew Neil at CIS

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] is in my judgment uh the world's most distinguished and experienced Prince and broadcast journalists for many years he worked for Rupert Murdoch's news Corp he was the editor of the UK Sunday times in the 80s and the 90s before becoming the executive chairman of Sky News and for the best part of a quarter of a century he was at the BBC most notably as the lead political interviewer at the beep and if anyone is interested in seeing a good quality political journalist subjecting guests whether they're Tory or labor greens or brexiteers to really rigorous intellectual and political scrutiny just go on YouTube and see Andrew Neil he is the best in the business and if I may say so as someone who does also work at the Abc there is no one like Andrew Neal at our ABC Andrews also a very prominent columnist at the Daily Mail he writes a column every Saturday it's about two thousand words it's always must reading I read it every Saturday before I read the Sydney Morning Herald among other papers and Andrew is also uh chairman of press Holdings which publishes the UK spectator the oldest English language in the world uh English-speaking language in the world and also the Australian spectator which has been around since 2008 I had the great privilege of editing The Spectator Australia from 2009 to 2014 Rowan Dean who's here tonight publishes it edits it today has been editing it since 2014 and copies are available so with all that please welcome the great man Andrew Neal thank you thank you Andrew welcome back to CIS in Australia thank you it's great to be back and thank you for that introduction my father would have believed it and my mother would have liked it so I'm grateful for that and all I can say is the checks and the post but since it's the Australian post I wouldn't hold you now last time you were here in 2018 um it was September 2018 so it was just after we knocked off a prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and a few months later you're at the BBC and you interviewed Malcolm Turnbull and he said the reason why his Liberal Party colleagues knocked him off was because they feared he'd win the next election he did say that it was in a restaurant in the heart of Westminster where we pre-recorded the interview I thought I'd miss hered it because no politicians ever said that to me before and I said you're saying that the reason they got rid of you is because they thought you'd win and he said yes they thought I'd win that's why we got ridden actually for once I was a bit stunned for Words anyway it went viral in uh in Australia and uh extraordinary it was an extraordinary answer and intriguingly or perhaps not so he's often the ABC's go-to guy when it comes to Federal politics you know whenever there's a problem with the Liberal Party the ABC go to him to talk about the problems in the federal Liberal Party it was a bit like this with Ted Heath with the Tories no not really because whatever you think of uh of Malcolm's politics I mean he's a kind of a bunker he's quite a a easy going character on television Ted Heath was always miserable right I mean you he he he he his nickname was just the the great sulk I mean he he sulked for like 30 years after Fat Joe had deposed him so although to begin with we we went because you know he's a former conservative prime minister former conservative leader replaced by Margaret Thatcher what he says was a story after a while it was so miserable interviewing him yes without just leave him alone let him sulk with his piano now when you were last here we were talking about the political churn of our prime minister yeah a short period of time so he had Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard right again Tony Abbott Malcolm Turnbull Scott Morrison and this was a talking point around the world but look at your own country since 2016. you've had five Tory Prime Ministers since 2016 David Cameron Theresa May Boris Johnson Liz truss Rishi sunak I think I've got that right yep how do you account for this dramatic churn in Westminster uh it's not just a British phenomenon I think parties of the right everywhere are going through some quite serious turmoil and Leadership it's become me particular British problem uh because of brexit which was a disruptive event the politicians lost control of the physical process that's what happens when you give people a referendum Australia take notes Mr albanesi and Mr Dutton I mean their careers either one could find their career on the line as a result of the referendum but David Cameron knew if he lost the Scottish referendum he'd have to resign uh he won the Scottish referendum he wasn't quite comfortably 15. I never said it's uh 2014 and ever since then of the Scottish have done their best to destroy the case for Scottish independence for which I thank them and uh I have to report to you tonight the union has never been stronger and for those of us who believe in the union that is very good news but brexit in particular had this huge effect it meant they unlike the Scottish referendum de David Cameron lost the brexit referendum and he had to resign I think he did The Honorable thing in resigning but it had split the governing party splitted in several ways made it in some ways dysfunctional which referenda can do particularly when this was the first referendum in which the people voted against the establishment in previous you know the establishment wanted the union to remain the people voted that way the establishment wanted to stay in the European Union when we voted to remain or stay in 1975. we establishment won that the establishment wanted us to vote to remain in 2016. we voted to leave 52-48 and that itself was hugely disruptive in British politics then of course you had the pandemic and the pandemic played to a force it was already underway which is that pandemics create an appetite for big government uh they're like Wars uh pandemics pandemics correct the condition in which government begins to intrude and do things and spend money uh to a degree and in areas that they would never dream of doing in non-pandemic times and uh that created a and Boris Johnson of course was a natural big government conservative too so he was happy to go along with this that created a lot of disruption and that created the trust Insurgency which was about as successful as Bonnie Prince Charles's Insurgency or as I call it the cluster trust as being a family event I choose my words uh caring carefully and although you could understand the motive for that it was almost like a kind of thatcherite rebellion against this move to big government it um she was useless and she hadn't prepared the ground she didn't know what she was talking about she was completely out of a depth she lasted for six weeks Chancellor to blame as well oh yes and he should have known better and then on top of the I said to you pandemics are a bit like war in terms of creating big government I mean the obvious example of that is the athlete government in Britain in 1945 in which big government had beat the Nazis so it was an easy argument say big government will beat poverty big government will create a welfare estate and the British people voted overwhelmingly in 45 for that it was like a war well lo and behold not only have we had the pandemic we now have a war we've got the biggest war in uh Europe uh since 1945 since the end of the second world war that again reinforced a big government too and so you had all these Tendencies going on a chunk of the conservative party not liking it and other chunk being big government conservatives saying No this is fine you had brexit which was disruptive you had Ukraine you had the pandemic you you had a a level of incompetence as well I mean the Tory party gene pool is pretty depleted these days I mean the cabin has got a combined IQ and single figures at the moment so you add all that together and you've got the disruption but you've seen the mess the Republican parties in in the United States yeah I don't need to tell you about the Russians the liberal party here has gone through I mean I look at the uh let's take both the center right and the center left parties the mainstream parties in France uh the Republican party which is the old Scholars party the Socialist Party which is a center left for the party they barely don't exist anymore in France you know these these are the people that that ran the fifth republic since 1958 for 95 percent of the time of the last election the Republicans got eight percent of the vote and the Socialist got six percent of the vote so there are big forces at work here that haven't yet worked their way through you look at Italy where the right-wing party in charge now is not the traditional uh um bellisconi party the traditional conservative party it's now right by Madame Maloney who is from a much more right-wing populist tradition or you take the government party the law and Justice party in Poland again that's not a traditional conservative party that is a pretty hard right conservative party there so the parties of the I mean the parties of the left have had their problems but I think the parties of the right have also had their problems in that it's a long-winded way of saying there are both short-term and longer term underlying yes Trends I just want to see if I it would seem from where things stand at the moment that Mr sunac has settled the boat a bit well Labor's Paul lead over the Tories according to a poll this morning has contracted to 14 points correct that's the best it's been since Rishi sinak's been there it hasn't it 14 points is a lot though 14 is is a lot it isn't necessarily A Lot in them in the midterm of uh a government right uh what Mr sunakers are if you were betting I think you would still have to bet the lever will fall in the next government okay prime minister yeah the car but no one's frightened of Kia Starman uh nobody's gagging for him either he's not Tony Blair he's not Tony Blair shed moment in British police won by the biggest landslides in 150 160 years but they're not frightened by him the Tories of a certain past their sell by feel about them they're as I say running out of talent running out of policies in a way too uh starma has not as they would say in Scotland set the Heather on fire I mean he hasn't even set his own window box and fire and never mind the Heather and so he's not rocking and concrete I'm a definer woman you have to ask Mr Solomon about what he does in his private life business what I would say of Mr sunak is that he's building up or I know the Prime Minister a little bit don't know well but my political letter to James Forsyth was his best friend and now it works better now works for best uh man at his wedding as Mr sunlight was best uh man James's wedding and he's building up a reputation for competence uh which the jury party under Boris Johnson and then Liz truss seriously lost and then you know if the Tories haven't got competence what else are they yeah hang on mate if the British economy is flatlining the the the economic growth is pretty sluggish why is a Tory prime minister proposing to increase company taxes you would have to ask him about that I've interviewed him many times and I've I've said to him for 10 years Tory chancellors told me that if they cut business tax revenue would rise now you telling me if we raise business stack Revenue will rise both statements cannot be right be right now one has to be wrong and I think part of the problem has been that although Britain had the lowest cooperation tax of any major economy uh they managed to get it down to 19 I think from about 28 they eventually got it down to 19. it did not produce a boom in investment but that wasn't because of the level of Taxation if you look at a private investment in Britain through from about after the great crash in 2008 it begins to recover a bit in 2009 and then it's slowly not dramatically but slowly begins to rise then the brexit referendum takes place and it just flat lines I think brexit because business which was against brexit but also saw it as a step into the unknown they just stopped investing Andrew as you know CIS is a classical liberal think tank so we believe in free markets productivity enhancing economic microform limited government sure these are dark days for classical liberals you know you just mentioned all these center-right parties embracing big government it reminds me of something I want to put this to you Jonathan Friedland from the guardian at the height of the pandemic around April May of 2020 said that just as there are no atheists on a sinking ship there are no free marketeers during a pandemic well I think that's true uh of course it's perfectly possible to take the decision that during a pandemic which is not you know the free Market's a wonderful thing it is not the solution to everything and it certainly isn't the solution to a pandemic Margaret Thatcher would have created big government during a pandemic but of course once you've done that and you've won you've conquered the pandemic you go back to where you were I I think there are no if I look around the mainstream right-wing parties at the moment they are there's no thatcherite reganite uh party that's dude that of any importance at the moment I think the Donald Trump turned the Republicans into a big government party I've explained about Britain the hard right or the the the more the non-menstream right like Madame Le Pen in France or Maloney in in Italy they are not free marketeers they believe in big government because they've got a lot of working-class Voters and they want to pump up the welfare estate they are pro protectionism they're Pro very high minimum wage so and I think that's why mistrust fell in her face because the time wasn't right for her Revolution and she hadn't done the homework if you are going to go for a a a more Mar what I would call a Jeffersonian approach decentralization yeah and and a bit smaller government and therefore lower taxis if you're going to go for that route and less regulation and the government which these days just tries to do too much and so what so much of what it does do it does very badly if you had government to try and concentrate more on what it has to do defense of the realm condition of the people and all the rest of it and try to do that well if you're going to argue for that you need to prepare the ground and in the run-up to the Thatcher Revolution which kicked it off in 1979 when she won her first election uh there a lot of groundwork have been done but I think tanks like like this The iea Institute of economic Affairs I was at the economist throughout the 1970s uh we did a lot of the groundwork the economists then a very different Magazine from now and it's now the publishing home of the Davos man and that was woman she's here did we call the editors her name yes yes which works on so many levels as a nickname in these days it was more of a center center right right we used to say we wrote from the radical Center that the center was not a place where you just split your differences you could have radical policies those thing the novel idea that you could privatize the as the Americans would call it garbage collection the novel idea that perhaps an airline did not have to be state-owned that you could do it that British Telecom didn't have to be state-owned that you could survive on less government and the trickiest of all to get across that there are some tax rates not all not the basic rate of income tax but the higher marginal rates if you cut them judiciously you will end up with more Revenue that's a countertuitive argument to get across it takes you so I'm going to cut the rate of tax but I'll get more revenue and of course with Nigel Lawson sadly departed from us and by the way there's a brilliant piece by the Prime Minister Rishi tribute to Nigel Lawson in the current issue of The Spectator which you have a copy of yeah I believe Mr Lawson did that uh in the 1980s not only did we get more revenue from the top income a bigger share of income tax revenues came from the better off yes because they were paying their income tax now they were coming back from low tax zones but it takes a lot of homework to do that you can't just spring it on the public and I guess if you want to be really miserable not only and there's always suits as Scottish Presbyterian to be miserable we we live in constant field that's somewhere in the world somebody might actually be enjoying themselves certainly is nobody propagating these ideas at the moment no one's laying the groundwork for them either Nigel Nigel once told me um he he learned a valuable lesson from Enoch Powell of all people and he had this line that I've often paraphrased which is that and I say this to a lot of younger people a lot of younger Australians and indeed younger Brits Millennials the generation Zed they're attracted to socialism they're very uh contentious of free marketing if you haven't lived through it it probably sounds quite nice yeah yeah well they they break socialism and um I say and this is Nigel's point and before him Enoch power that you don't tax a loss you tax a profit because only profit only capitalism will provide governments with the revenue you need to pay for health and education and Welfare and defense and so on and so forth simple message but they're all basic arguments that we've kind of Forgotten and that almost nobody is making now I mean as you say even Richie sunak has been the one pushing up corporate taxes he said he needs the revenue we'll see if he gets any of the Revenue taxes are always some carrying taxes or something we'll do tomorrow yeah never today and you know there's a Desiree Nigel Lawson also said you can't cut taxes on the back of debt you can't borrow yeah he didn't cut taxis by borrowing no trusted by getting control of spending I think the Western world has reached quite a dangerous phase at the moment in the throughout the Western World we have built massive welfare Estates on debt yes they're all built on debt they're not I mean the only honest people here are the Scandinavians they they have the most advanced welfare Estates but you have the highest taxes yes but they have low company tax rates well they had to do that because they all moved to London they had no choice but this is a very good point you're right because I want to just segue here to an article that my colleague Robert Carling wrote today in the financial review and this is about Victoria uh which is as John Howard says the Massachusetts of Australia and I think that's a very Massachusetts this is uh Robert Carling the headline Victoria's crippled finances are all Daniel Andrews fought the premier having resisted any appeals from the federal government for moderation in 2020 and 2021 it's a bit Rich for the Victorian Premier to look to Canberra now for help in fixing his budget black hole so Victoria's got a real debt problem here they're right there is this question I'm here is there is a cost to high levels of big government there's a cost to uh high levels of big I mean the one thing you have to be clear on these in some areas there's a case for a big government and the pandemic created a we realize that being dependent on 10 000 mile long supply lines was not necessarily a sensible thing to do the pandemic taught us that that if you want to shortened supply lines that basically means an industrial strategy which means big government so you have a choice there one thing follows this night followers day is the big government means big taxes you can only borrow so much and it catches up with you and most western governments have maxed out the credit card I mean you take Greece's uh uh national debt is now 175 of his GDP I'll say that again 175 of his GDP even a big economy like France is 113 of his GDP France is quite a good uh case study poster child for the current situation at the moment because France is this massive national debt is the second biggest economy in the EU 130 that means that next year if France devoted all of its GDP to paying off its national debt all of its GDP it still would not have paid off its national debt it's also the most tax country in Europe uh it's quite hard to see taxes going higher the previous government raise taxes on the better office governments tend to do because it's less controversial the result was that France lost 60 000 millionaires sixty thousand I didn't realize there were sixty thousand millionaires in France but they were most of them no longer there now no that's a huge chunk of its tax base because what are the features of the modern world is that the tax base now becomes more and more dependent on a small number of people the top one percent of income earners in Britain now account for 30 percent of income tax revenues wow one percent wow you lose that you've lost your tax base yeah income tax is still the secret single biggest generator so it's quite hard to put up taxis any further you put them up in the reach the rich lead there's nobody more more wild than a well-educated professional person government spending in France is now 59 of GDP I mean that's huge yeah you know your federal government here spends barely half of that that's right as a share of GDP 59 I don't think they need any encouragement uh they're just building others what was Margaret Thatcher's line about socialism oh it'd be running out of other people's money but you're not running out of other other people so where do you go I mean you've kind of you can't really borrow any more particularly the type of rising interest rates so you take the Victoria uh they are now going to be spending seven billion dollars a year on debt Finance they probably don't spend that much on schools you know that's a huge cost to the net net to the state uh treasury so that's hard to concrete to to increase taxes it's hard to spend more you reached the limit on borrowing there has to be a reckoning there and I think that's one of the things that will work out in the 2020. you say it should be a reckoning and there will be no doubt but the concern we have at CIS is that a lot of younger Generations think that this is an excuse for more government intervention yes though in my experience the younger people's views on politics I mean what they know about economics you could write on the back of a postage stamp and still re leave room for the Lord's Prayer because they don't give a monkeys about economics they've been brought up and relative affluence it's not a huge issue there isn't a post-war rebuilding going on there is a need for growth they're much more concerned about cultural identities yes yes and cultural identity issues really do suck the lifeblood out of a political system and they divide us where we should be United they make us argue about things in the grand scheme of things are I mean how this transgender business has managed to get on to National debate and become a national issue is beyond me but that's what seems to get them out of bed in the morning watch in many cases they don't bother to get out of bed um yeah so I think that the what has happened in Modern Times And of course this is basically the move of the culture of the campus into the boardrooms and the newsrooms and the business offices of the rest of society and the government agencies and so on which means I'm afraid it has a long way to go well radical cultural sea change that brings the same thing that Oxfam recently did it apologized for the English language Andrew describing it as quote the language of a colonizing Nation they also counseled against using the words mother and father this is Oxfam because they ascribe gendered roles what's going on here well I mean as you know I wrote the reason you know that is you read my comments I did my homework you passed the test and you did your homework this is happening all the time so one of the reasons that uh The Spectator in Australia is going to start a new weekly or actually bye week by week or twice Weekly Newsletter code uh uh Cafe culture uh it is going to be about these issues because they have to be taken on and they need to be beaten before we can get back to the things that matter and people I mean the the woman the the indigenous academic that I was on with a q a on Monday night I'm sure you're watching because it's got such a huge audience these days the woman I was on said that her cultural identity is the most important thing to her I strongly or even her racial identity I think she was also legit I strongly disagree with that I really in fact I I know this was a surprise I'd like to see a bit of an old-fashioned dose of Marxism come back because Marx taught us about social class yes and the social class can divide us but it could also unite us yes in a way that this cultural identity stuff does not it specifically looks for division and then aggravates them and exploits them they are never happier unless they're finding out what differentiates us and that means that economics is relegated to relevance and it means I mean for example you've got the voice coming up I will speak naturally having been here for at least six days now as a walking expert on The Voice like old journalists as you know we yes you know we think we know what we're doing I mean when I when I got on the plane from London to come here the voice was a TV show um but I like when I landed in Sydney it was a constitutional amendment but you are going to have this debate now it's not for me to take sights spectator Australia will take the side the editor will determine that but you're going to have this debate which is basically about a particular cultural identity yes elevating that above everything else uh which is going to rip you apart and is going to suck the bandwidth out of the rest of the political system at a time when the global economy is still in a relatively precarious position and I would Venter to suggest from my position of total ignorance will in the end do nothing for the indigenous community of this country uh to need things to be done but it will be brilliant for the political Elite it will create jobs a bureaucracy and power and importance I just give you a quick example of that the referendum in Scotland for Independence in 2014 was the SNP LED was in a sense the argument that the Scots should have their own voice that that it should be a separate nation with a distinctive Scottish voice now those of us uh who who uh were against that argued that Scotland already had his own voice you know it has a powerful voice within the union and I mean and if the Scots disappeared to run their own Affairs I mean Who the hell's going to run England I mean you know we've been we've been doing it for the English for 300 years they're just they're just not used to running their own Affairs anymore so that was an argument for a voice in a different way from what's Happening Here but it was for a voice and let's create a political system that will give them the voice so this is what happened it did create the the we didn't get in the independence but it did create a whole room a home rule parliament in which all domestic matters there's a no run out of Edinburgh basically foreign policy defense and macroeconomic issues are still run out of uh well the SNP laughingly called the Imperial Parliament uh in in London but here was the consequence of that Scotland got its voice of home rule in Edinburgh a parliament that they said would cost uh 80 million Australian dollars to build ended up costing 900 million just shy of a billion dollars to build a home rural Parliament 130 people became members of that Parliament earning salaries they could not dream of earning anywhere else uh and none of them had earned anything like it before they had power they had position they were the bee's knees the media there loved it because the media had its own we Parliament to cover and all gave them jobs and so on so the politically did fine so did all the quangos all the government bodies around the Scottish government bought them up you take a Rape Crisis which is uh Scotland which is meant to represent the victims of rape that is now 70 funded by the Scottish government and so never takes a critical line against the Scottish government even when the transgender gender issue when Nicholas sturgeon was trying to put a a uh twice convicted rappers doing suddenly self-identified as a woman into a woman's prison I mean how stupid can you be well stupid enough for her to lose her job yes so all that worked for the political Elite but what about the Ordinary People of Scotland who were promised that are policies the attainment Gap between poor kids and better off affluent kids in Scottish schools got wider it's never been wider than now waiting lists for the NHS are longer even than England and they're long in England they've never been longer in Scotland cancer outcomes are amongst the worst in Europe and deaths from drug addiction are the worst in Europe in Europe not just Britain by a factor of five by a ratio of five so political Elite City in Edinburgh we're fine we've got our offices we've got the power we've got all the rest uh the Ordinary People of Scotland what benefit have they seen and that may be an issue of where cultural identity and things like the voice Let Me Maybe where it leads Andrew I know that Ro and Dean ask you this question on Sky News at the weekend but I'll ask it for this audience I mean you've interviewed many prominent political figures over a long period of time if you had a moment with the Prime Minister Anthony albanazi and you could ask him a question what would it be about the voice uh I would ask him that how can the people of Australia make an informed decision on The Voice if they don't know the answers to the most important questions because I find it as a now as I said as an outsider looking in this is a very important decision it may be a right may be wrong to vote for The Voice that's a matter for you not for me but if I had a vote I would like to know who will choose the voice how will it be chosen for how long would you serve in the voice will you be paid to be in the voice how what will the overall budget for the voice be how big will the bureaucracy be is it purely advisory or would it with judicial activism actually gain more power after all Mr Albanese has said it would be a brave government that would limit The Voice or ignore the voice is it confined because the wording I think is uh is opaque is it confined to matters of direct relevance to the indigenous community or would the voice of a say over the orchest treaty would it ever say over the Reserve Bank of Australia's interest rate uh policy uh and to all these questions it seems to me so far answers have there been none no it's early days and they may come out in the campaign but before I could make up my mind on that as I understand it there's a a consensus uh it'll show you for reconciliation and for recognition of the particular I think it's a widespread view it supports indigenous constitutional recognition right question is whether this voice model and I think it's quite hard to come to a decision on that until some of these questions are answers now the prime minister is among those who says that Australia's standing in the world is at stake here and he argues that a rejection of the uh the yes campaign in the October referendum will damage Australia's international relations you followed Australia from afar for a long period of time is there any truth to that argument that Australia's standing will be diminished significantly in the world I would to use a technical uh in felicitous technical term so there's a lot of bollocks uh uh I mean first of all no one outside Australia you know there's anything about the voice you know no one's been following this has had no internet the New York Times have a great story a few months ago yeah well there you go I mean this week's uh this weekend Sunday Times of London this story was that uh an indigenous figure was going to replace uh King Charles on the one of the Australian currency bills yeah it wasn't about the the voice I think the the view in so far as people know anything about Australia from abroad and they know very little uh you know it's a country it's a long way away it's a sure a hell of a big country but it's 25 million people which is basically the population of the M25 inside the M25 in London uh it's a country that is growing in importance I think the orcas deal has made that clear and I'm very pleased that Britain is now going to be a seminal part of that as well as Australia and the United States I was saying so far what people do know about Australia and they like Australia they like Australia they like the attitude of Australians they they like the uh the lifestyle they like the prosperity that Australia seems certainly like the No Nonsense kind of egalitarian attitude of of Australians I don't think the voice has anything to do with Australia's reputation except that you might know of course created a known goal having decided you're going to have this referendum and and I see a lot on the yes side saying if you are against it you're a bunch of racists of you that if they if you do more against the rest of the world says know that but the syrians are a bunch of races but that's a known goal you brought that on yourself yes yes Andrew let's change the subject and talk about American politics you follow the United States very closely you have for many years the Trump indictment last week what do you think of the likely consequences of the Trump indictment for the American presidential political scene given that Trump is uh gaining a new lease on life well he has given a new list of life I mean I think it's very bad news uh what's happened and I think that if you were going to break the Precedence of 250 years and charge a former president with criminal charges which has never happened before even though a few previous presidents have been criminals they were never charged uh by it I just can't help feeling you would need something a lot more substantial than putting in wrong entry bookkeeping yes you know which is we all know what Donald Trump did yes um he paid hash money as the chaper uh who does Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live which I find a very unfunny show on NBC but it was funny on Saturday night I had this guy mimicking impersonating Donald Trump because it was Easter saying he was really the modern Jew Jesus and that and that like Jesus all he had done was to try and help a sex worker so I think they've made a big mistake yes uh in going for him on this my own view is the most serious potential charge against Donald Trump is his attempt to lean on the Georgia authorities Republicans uh to find find an extra 13 000 votes this was after the 2020 election after the 20. that seems to me to be a lot more serious it also means there's actual uh telephone uh evidence oh it's recorded you can hear it to him it also means that because uh misentering uh falsifying bookkeeping first of all is subject to a statue of limitations which was already run out and counts as a misdemeanor not a felony and an American or New York state law what this district attorney has to do now is is argue that the misdemeanor were used in pursuit of a bigger felony which is criminal that strikes the statue of limitations in terms of misdemeanor into a proper criminal charge the problem is he can't tell us what that felony is he's trying to make out as the breach of campaign law of Finance law yeah that's federal law he's a state judge and I don't see what the breach was it was Donald Trump's own money he didn't use campaign finances and then he said oh well there's also tax the New York state was cheated out of tax that isn't actually true what Trump did to pay back his sleaze back lawyer Mr Cohen was to double the money that had been given to the porn star so that Cohen could then afford his income taxes on the money he got so the New York State got the income tax actually got income tax and money it wasn't going to get so I don't know how you do that and what it's done though just the political Fallout is it has energized the Trump base uh it has meant funds pouring in 15 million dollars in the three days after uh he appeared in the Manhattan coat uh Court uh it has not background to Santa's the governor of Florida who is the only serious Contender for the Republican nomination he now looks like a diminished man and is running all over the place wondering what to do he even said that if New York State tried to extradite Mr Trump from Florida he would stand in their way I mean ludicrous proposition but that's how well that Santa's one in Florida he was re-elected by 19 points so his political Capital went up after those November elections whereas trumps went down because most of his candidates did very badly at the midterm elections so it's early days that a lot can happen but it has undoubtedly improved enormously Mr Trump's chances of winning again the Republican nomination it is also made it certain that Mr Biden uh will run again as well on the grounds that I may be 82 but I beat him last time yes and I can do so again and I think the prospect there is not a happy one for a country that we all depend on in various ways and you know needs as part of a guarantor of our freedoms both Australia and the United Kingdom need good and closer relations with uh America with America you've got a choice between a a narcissist in his late 70s facing a number of criminal charges uh who we know could be like a bull in a China store when it comes to foreign policy at a time when the war in Ukraine continues and the Chinese get ever more militant in their uh training exercises off the coast of Taiwan and an 82 year old with a vice president who is not uh fit for purpose but Kamala Harris but he cannot cannot get rid of her because she is ethnic and female if he had a vice president as a useless old white man you could get rid of her easily dispensable and disposable but Kamala Harris he cannot get rid of that is a terrible Choice you're suggesting that every stage All Things Considered 2024 is likely to be a repeat of 2020. stand at the moment okay well let me put this to you this is George will the legendary Washington Post columnist who's been writing a column twice a week for the Post uh since the early 70s he was a guest at CIS during the pandemic we did a zoom event about 500 000 views with George right at the height of those riots after the death of George Floyd this is what will wrote George Will wrote In The Washington Post just after the Trump indictment Maybe just maybe this is Rock Bottom for embarrassing U.S politics yeah I think it is Rock Bottom which is why I agree with that which is why I'm a little bit depressed at the choice that could emerge from it but quite often you can stay at rock bottom for quite a while yes you know it doesn't necessarily follow that when you hear rob bockham you start to bounce back up again and the danger is that the die is Now cast that uh Mr look America we all live in a world where things change quickly overnight so it's care you know I remember what was it that there was a famous football manager who says uh uh I don't make predictions and I never will hold on I think you just made a prediction uh so we have to be careful and I think we can only stake with the knowledge we have at the moment but sitting here tonight I think Mr Trump must now be regarding his favorite to get the Republican nomination I wouldn't have said that uh if we were here only a couple of them well you can run from uh jail there there was a candidate in uh 1920 ran for president from jail right uh called Eugene Debs the Socialist uh he ran from jail uh Woodrow Wilson had jailed him because he had fought against the draft for the first world war he was accused of trees treason he he ran from uh I think it was a Pennsylvania Penitentiary uh somewhere and he got a million votes uh he didn't do any kind in fact he got more of us than he got the previous time so don't don't tell Donald Trump if he's in jail okay but but I'm just a bit Biden is them yes the child no Democrat is going to challenge Biden if Biden says he's going to run yes if Biden says he's not running there will be a bloodbath in the Democrat Party because Kamala Harris will not be a shoeing indeed I don't think she would win the nomination and be entirely new but as things stand at the moment that looks like a repeat and it's not a happy Prospect given that we live in a world where the dictators are on the March and democracy is on the defensive you say these are unpredictable times but they're also dangerous times just by that point I mean the Ukraine crisis remains unresolved after a year you mentioned earlier that China and just the last few days military drills along the vibrant Island democracy of Taiwan um there's uh still tensions in the Persian Gulf and at the same time you've got a very divided polarized America that's likely to put forward at the next election these two political lightweights how can we in Australia and indeed Britain and indeed General allies of the United States have faith in U.S staying power in the world given all of these deep divisions in the United States but I always take comfort in Churchill's uh words for Nissan of America you can always be sure in the end America will do the right thing it just takes a while to get there and that's usually what happens and I think that uh I mean I think if Mr Trump was to become president again all bets are off who knows what he would do what would have happened if Mr Trump had been in the White House when Ukraine was invaded I I would suggest that Putin would be in Kiev by now he would not have stopped it he would have found some reason not well the counter argument is that Trump would have made it very clear that Ukraine would never be part of NATO and that's why he wouldn't invade but if you think if you think that the reason why Mr Putin invaded Ukraine was because he was worried to be part of NATO I've got a bridge to sell you he's he's uh it's called the Brooklyn Bridges mate he invaded Ukraine because he thinks it's part of Greater Russia that's why indeed it is strategic a geostrategic role is to recreate the near abroad not to recreate the old Soviet Empire not take back the stands uh or anything like that but but the bolting States Ukraine he's already taken the Crimea Georgia all of that up to the Polish border that's his aim Donald Trump have said nothing to stop that indeed Putin would have taken Comfort he didn't think we were going to react anyway he thought we were too weak and divided he got this shock of his life when actually the West got together and NATO which president macron had said was brain dead turned out to be pretty and one of the consequences here for China read the Taiwan I think the consequences for on one element it's a plus for China because it's forcing attention away from the indo-pacific region to an area of the world which we thought was over in terms of major geopolitical change we thought that any problems in Europe were essentially Regional problems not Global problems and yet America has been fought and America was making its famous pivot to the Pacific you know the America has taken the view from Hillary Clinton to to uh George busham so on the the 21st century is the Pacific President Obama was in the Australia 2011 as well but suddenly America has been forced back to the America now has a hundred thousand troops in Europe it's getting back to Cold War levels again it has 12 000 troops in Poland that's not a tripwire that's a defensive force uh you can't lose 12 000 troops and not forcing you know they have they have reap they have now built this massive base yes now the biggest base in Europe is in Poland and they've never had a base in Poland before and they love the polls because unlike the Germans or the French the polls are prepared to spend money on their own defense but Andrew Can America hold on you're worse than me so all that is news for China because it takes our Focus away from what is clearly going to be a much bigger problem in Ukraine in the 21st century I I think the good news on Ukraine is that it's made president Zee realize that invading a country that's prepared to fight for his freedom is not as easy as you might think and Taiwan is better equipped than Ukraine with probably with even with a better more modern military and is part of an informal defensive Alliance that America would I mean I was in the I was out of Fort Meade at the NSA uh the National Security Agency they have a lot of plans I don't think China would know what's going to hit it and Z knows Z knows that he cannot fail on this because if he fails the first thing first of all it would even if he wins it destroys the Chinese economy there is no way that the Taiwanese are going to let China have tmsc and that is the most sophisticated it makes 90 of the world's most sophisticated chips they'll blow it up rather than let uh China have it and they have moved a huge chunk of the production to Alabama yes so that so he's got to think carefully that if he fails then you remember the first impact of the Chinese Communist Party in the China people is you will have no freedom but we're going to look after you if the global economy enhance the Chinese economy is destroyed that first impact breaks um back to the first point that you made about China and the upside for China I mean and the downside for America being distracted by the Ukraine crisis I mean you know it's been more than 30 years since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet communism and that was the time of the unipolar moment called it this was the notion of American Global Leadership and a Pax Americana if you like but surely the lessons of the Iraq debacle and the debacle in Afghanistan is that there are real limits on America's power yeah can it walk and chew guns Asia and Europe at the same time let me come back to that yeah question which you rudely interrupted my previous answer uh oh no because it's a very good question and the answer is no in the long term and by that I mean through the 20s into the 2030s and Beyond even America cannot afford to defend Europe and pivot to the Pacific uh for a start the kind of military required in the Pacific is totally different from the kind of military in Europe so essentially Europe is boots on the ground as that build up in Poland shows uh overwhelming in the Pacific you need amphibious forces and that's an entirely different kind of of military there so America cannot do both or is not the political will to do both so and I think the second thing is it could be Mr Biden for all his faults he's actually done I think very well on Ukraine he could be the last atlantis's president that we get uh the last one that is regards Europe because that's his generation as the front line for America the front line will easily move I think to the Eastern Pacific which of course is of more importance to Australia so something we'll have to give and that is what it means is that at some stage Europe will have to do more of its own defense I mean Europe is the biggest welfare state spending in the world and some of the small smallest military spending and that is why the balance of power in Europe is now moving eastwards and the rising power in Europe now is Poland uh and that's the country the Americans love which is the country that Britain has very good relationships with going way back to the Battle of Britain which I doubt we would have won if it hadn't been for the contribution of the Polish Pilots Poland is now if you look at what is happening Poland got Ukraine right they said they're going to invade Berlin Empire said no they're not we can talk about over anyway macron goes and sees them sits at one end of a table that's about three miles long uh to president uh the Germans say no Poland said to Germany don't take this gas they're going to sucker you in they'll meet you depend and you lose any control or phone pause they said don't you worry we know what we're doing and if Germany was agreeing to build nordstream 2 the second gas pipeline from Russia Poland was building floating LNG stations off the coast so that it could take in gas from Qatar and from the United States Poland called every one of these things right it is now building an army which will be the biggest in Europe it's on me at the moments 115 000 strong in five years time there will be 250 000 strong 200 uh sorry 300 000 strong 250 full-time professional soldiers 50 000 highly trained reservists it is buying 35 Abraham's tanks from America but that's just in a way as a symbolic gesture for the Americans because Abraham's tanks work by turbine and they're a nightmare unless you've all the back up far more important and almost totally underreported unreported they're buying a thousand tanks from South Korea a thousand tanks from South Korea they are now if you look at and by the way there is total consensus in Poland non-doing this no one's arguing against it they are not going to be invaded again now you add in the Baltic states who are ready to fight as well and army Britain has 5 000 troops in the voting States now we Patrol their perimeter defense with our typhoon uh Fighters and our troops even at the height of the Cold War something is now happening that never happened Finland and Sweden are joining NATO yeah the Strategic significance of that is huge that part of Europe was always our weakest weakest link because Finland and Poland were not in NATO and speaking to Carol built recently former Swedish uh prime minister uh if you take Denmark Finland Sweden and Norway Norway in Denmark of course already being members but you take these four Scandinavian countries they alone can now mobilize 250 state-of-the-art fighter jets over the Baltic there's no way Russia can move against that I mean Russia militia depleted is a better chance of invading Mars than as of invading the Boating State these are a huge change and it's moving Europe East okay and that perhaps explains why to Mark the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion president yeah and you know they the degree of corporate you know the polls have taken in one and a half million Ukrainian refugees they actually took in six million and then the the some of the Six Million moved around some went back when Kiev didn't fall some were able to go back to the west but they took in one and a half million they've done this massive defense buildup all the arms that are going to the Ukrainian forces go through Poland that's the only way and the Americans had a major problem they they have this logistical operation now they're a Plane full of military equipment can leave the Eastern Seaboard of the United States at six o'clock in the evening local time and be deployed by the Ukrainian Army at three o'clock in the afternoon the next day local time they land in Poland the problem is how do you get them from Poland into Ukraine the Americans said look we can't obviously we can't put American soldiers they can we can't send this stuff unprotected it's state-of-the-art equipment but we can't have American soldiers and we we think you probably can't have police soldiers either you're a net member of nettle and the post said no we can't do that but we know what we will do and they said the embarrassed okay so what are we going to do and they said we are calling up all our retired Special Forces and we are creating an unofficial unit of these guys they are really well trained they still get some training but they're not part of the Polish Army they're not official police soldiers and they take the weapons in that's the kind of Corporation the Americans love at a time when macron is thinking he can talk put into the peace table or shoots as in the city is in Germany sort of so that the greens are now more militant about the military than the social Democrats yes so that is why just the significance of the switch of the balance of power as it moves in by the way Romania has become which is also a member of NATO is a key Black Sea State now that will allow given that for Russia that is veneer abroad that will allow uh the Americans over time to withdraw and the British despite brexit will play a major part in that because we have great relations with all of them an unknown thing that was basically we did two things that have not really been reported the polls were very worried that there would be a subject of cyber warfare assaults by the Russians and so the British the British of the best uh cyber warfare defenses in Europe we extended our defenses to the eastern border which including Poland we protect Poland from cyber warfare and in the interim period between Poland between Sweden and Finland saying they wanted to join NATO which we knew would take a time because we knew turkey would cause problems the British government extended its nuclear umbrella over Finland and Sweden these are not widely reported but I can assure you in Helsinki the political Elite noticed and I think one of the reasons why rushi Rishi sunak was able to solve the Northern Ireland protocol in the end was because Warsaw the Baltic states Helsinki and Stockholm said to Brussels look we are dependent on the British on nuclear umbrella cyber warfare troops in Estonia and you're arguing about sausages going to Northern Ireland stop it already do a deal and I think that had a huge influence in getting that deal done notwithstanding all your interesting and sound points here about Europe oh no no no no this is what apology with respect you're surely complete not surely surely a rise in China is a much greater threat to World Order than a declining Russia yeah but I mean America is still going to be focused on Europe it's still going to be part of NATO how can it still walk and chew gum well I've answered that uh okay so you want to go through all again it was quite a long answer I I've told you they're in the short term all the weapons that the Americans are giving to Ukraine isn't that depleting America in a fight um let me give you a class for slow learners hahaha the weapons that are required in Europe are very different from the weapons required in the Pacific and and we're in an interim stage where Ukraine has given us a breathing space for Europe to get his act together my argument is that getting anxiety together will happen more in the East than it will with the Germans and the French but it will mean as we rebuild along the lines I've suggested America will pivot because as I said quite clearly America in the long term cannot afford to do I get that but we've had it this CIS uh Peter Jennings one of Australia's leading defense intellectuals and he says the moment for China to strike is in the next few years when America is so focused on Europe and America is less focused on East Asia and moreover that China has huge demographic challenges and serious internal challenges which will hurt them in the next 10 to 20 years but in the short term they might be in a more agile position to strike well but they're not the more agile position to strike because they haven't got the military could do it yet you know the the the the instead of the Chinese military is nowhere near ready to take on Taiwan they have a lot more work they have to do even Z I mean privately in the public Bureau they think they won't be ready before 2027. there's a scare tactics in Washington I know the generals are talking about or it could happen in 2025 I think that's that's to get more military spending that's what that's a about and also as I said earlier if Z fails he's finished I mean it could be like the Australian referendum whoever loses whether it's Mr Dutton or Mr albinasi it could end their political career Zee knows that he can't afford to lose the Americans have not taken their eye off the ball in the Pacific my argument is in the longer term they can't afford to do both but you know they are planning one of the things they're they are planning to do which will give the Chinese quite a shock if the the Chinese strategy is still the Million Man swim that's what they call it which is it'll be an amphibious force a million strong to go to Taiwan it'll be the biggest amphibious land attempt in landing since D-Day they have a problem with that first of all there is no Normandy Beach in Taiwan a very few places where you can land and they're incredibly well defended they think that they can neutralize the American Navy the seventh fleet they can make that ineffective on what we used to call the Straits or Formosa now the Straits of Taiwan I saw what The American's going to do they're going to stand off on that they are ready and you can't build up a million strong amphibious Force without us knowing about it you know we knew Putin was going to invade Ukraine we'll certainly see a million people building up the Americans have developed a thousand sea mines controlled by artificial intelligence which they are going to seed the whole Straits of Taiwan in the event that China looks like is going to attack and these mines go to the bottom of the ocean and they just lie there but because they're controlled by and the Americans do nothing but because of control by artificial intelligence they will read if there's a major amphibious Force coming across the streets and they will rise and they will destroy the Chinese Force I mean there's a the Chinese are in for quite uh a shock if they attempt this the degree of the American Technology on this is quite huge and they are teaching the Taiwanese on cyber warfare and all the rest of it and they can position their Navy which is the ability to hit the amphibious Force but the amphibious force in the Chinese couldn't hit the American Navy so now we've got time for questions and our first question will go seg just over here thank you um Andrew I just want to ask you uh one of your most famous interviews and I've watched this multiple times it was with Alex Jones and you once said that it was one of the worst interviews that you've ever conducted has there been any interview that has almost matched the title and one of your how did you feel about it actually asking so many questions Alex Jones we should be clear is uh what right wing conspiracy theorist is yeah there's an additions here no uh I think there's a difference Alex Jones was difficult interviews because he's an idiot and uh nothing has given me more pleasure than to see him bankrupted by the parents in that mass shoot him I mean he said I forget what the name was because so many mass shootings in America yeah but he said this by shooting had been staged by by actors and that it was just the gun control Lobby I had staged this now these he said this offense who had lost 40 children and you couldn't get him to retract it so then they sort of and they won over a billion dollars and he'll be panhandling on the streets soon and I shall not be putting anything so he was just an idiot a believer in Global conspiracy it wasn't a serious uh interview uh so it was I said on here you're the worst person I've ever had to interview and and I would stick by that he was of us because he was subject to no logic okay I I was trying to say goodbye at the end of the way he was still shouting at me and it was all an act because you know the moment I finished the goodbye and the end title the end credits had stopped rolling he says oh well Andrew nice to see you and you'd go and walked away because pleasantly it was all enough shots and shouts but the camera is no longer run he was nice to see you Andrew thanks for that and walked away so nothing has come close to that but it was wholly unproductive he was wholly unnecessary to do we should never have bothered what about the interview with Ben Shapiro that's attracted something like that 12 million views well I think the the Ben Shapiro interview speaks more to a fundamental problem of media at the moment which is a Mr Shapiro lives in one of these American Echo Chambers uh and you've got them here and you can see some of them in Britain too now in which he he had never met anybody who had a different view so he's used having people on his program that say and don't you agree with the following said yes I agree with the following and don't you think that yes I agree with that and they all just scratch each other's backs you see that on Fox news on the right you see that on MSNBC on the left in America as well and we had him on I forget what the reason was but I did my usual thing which is let's find out what he stands for and I'll take the exact opposite position and we'll test them you know and here and I think abortion was one of the issues yeah he is very fundamentalist very uh I mean basically no abortion and I said aren't you that there's lots of people are very wary of abortion but the light you're taking would seem to take us back to the Dark Ages um and that's when he blew up yeah and we had no idea that was going to happen I just I was going to move on abortion is not one of my big subjects I was going to move on to other subs you talk about and he just exploded and I think it speaks to a country's the danger for democracies now and it's here it's in my country it's in America is that we're all becoming atomized and we only read the papers or watch the TV shows or listen to the radio stations that reinforce what we already think I mean I said on the Q a on Monday night I was quite surprised to give them that Mr Dutton had created the conditions now for a proper debate in Australia about the voice that they didn't have a major opponent of the voice on I mean that's what the BBC would have done yes we would have picked somebody that was taking the Dutton line and we're in someone who took the AL benazi line and the job of the anchor or the presenter was not to be popular to take sides which UBC does all the time it's to be to hold the ring and say well what do you say to that and didn't you say this and we've now gone in a world where put the counter argument to them correct yeah we know in a world in which people don't want to be challenged yes this is why he threw his toys that's right I'm the pram he ended the interview abruptly and you concluded we had no idea what was happening what's his problem and he said well I've never heard of him he said well I've never heard of humor I think he took to Twitter afterwards acknowledging that you beat him fair and square he did uh that you and his words demolished him okay next question great to see you Tom Andrew why the woke and what's the answer why the walk I think the I think the walk is uh as I said earlier the walk comes from the University campus that's where it started like all these things that started in the American universities particularly in the ivy league university that's what makes it so Insidious in a way it starts in the top universities and the top universities fill the top boardrooms they feel the New York Times The Washington Post ABC MVC all all the big companies I think it's also came out in a sense it's a it's a post-moxic uh concept as well I think it's it's a reaction to the defeat of Marxism in many ways that uh we lost the economic argument uh class war doesn't really work very well anymore and uh the the general consensus in favor of what you like broadly call a market economy is what people in the center left center right work so let's think of something different and that is cultural identity uh an ethnic identity let's go for that that'll cause more problems so you the development of critical race theory in the United States which is barely a theory I mean even Marcus had more intellectual grit than critical race Theory but people love to suck it up they love to believe it it's it's it's commandeered it's captured a generation and they are taking these ideas with them into the workplace and Beyond and because it's only just begun I think it will be a while before it can be reversed and it's dangerous because despite The History of the United States or Britain's history of slavery or whatever there are actually an Australian is one of them there are now successful multi-racial societies that would have been inconceivable even 40 or 50 years ago uh and you know if you're a black in America it's a pretty good place to be if you want to get on in the world but you're not allowed to say that you are a victim and you're done drawn and you've never escaped the legacy of uh slavery and that hangs over everything and you had this 1619 project run inevitably by the New York Times which basically tried to completely rewrite American history that to such an EXT the the key date was 1619 that's when the first slaves arrived and that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to throw off the British colonial power it was to guarantee that slavery would continue because if Britain had stayed the Imperial power slavery would have gone so you have then turned American history on its head instead of being a war of independence a war of Revolution an anti-colonial War a war against the Imperial power to create the First Republic which is what all Americans have been taught that is by the way largely true like all things is not entirely true but it's largely uh true you've now turned American independence America's funding fundamental purpose was to preserve slavery that's a big change that's not a marginal footnote rewriting of history that upends everything Americans have thought of themselves and yet it's also by the way historical nonsense uh but that's what's been done that's a huge change that has got to work its way through and so I don't think we're going to change this uh very quickly and I think if anything it will get worse before it gets better the Italian Marxist Antonio gramski about a century ago talking about the lefts marched through the institutions sure which the German young German social Democrats tried in the 60s and they were marxists but they didn't succeed no but they are succeeding yeah that kind of view is succeeding you know next question yes hi Andrew do you believe that the extremity of cultural identity politics has reached its peak and when do you suspect that it will trough uh no I don't believe it I'm afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better I find it hugely destructive uh there is this General view that we don't talk about the Dark Side of our history and that's what we need to do now I mean where I am we talk about the Dark Side of our history all the time we know that we industrialize slavery that's what Freedom we want to learn the Portuguese we're at it first then the Spanish then the French but we industrialized it in taking slaves from West Africa over to the United to what became the United the colonies we know the Dark Side of our history we know it was one of the most evil uh periods in the history of mankind but we also know that we abolish the slave trade in a wave of Christian uh evangelism will before will before us being maybe one and that uh to such an extent that even at the height of the Napoleonic War uh we deployed when Napoleon was on the brink of invading Britain we deploy the third of the royal Navy to West Africa to end the slave trade so we have that great shame which can never be wiped out but we also have something to be proud of as well in playing a role and getting rid of the slave trade and of course abolishing slavery as well which we were and we didn't have to fight a civil war to do it unlike the Americans so I think I don't think we have ignored the bad bits of our history and I'm comfortable talking about the bad bits of our history because I know them and I'm sure in Australia you you you can do the same thing but I do just as I said earlier we we have the makings of successful multi-racial societies now and you see that here you see it in Britain You See It in America we have a long way to go but we've come a long way you know the king will uh have his coronation I think in just under a month's time now I will show my great support of it by going to New York um the cable of his coronation and he would do so at a time when the first minister of Scotland is of South Asian descent when the leader of the second biggest party in Scotland the labor party is of South Asian descent the coronation will take place with a British prime minister who is Hindu who is married to an Indian whose Home Secretary responsible for the security of the coronation Home Secretary is Buddhist and the chief Rabbi will stay with the king the night before the coronation so that he doesn't have to travel on the Sabbath so you know you want to tell me about diversity I think we got diversity uh there we could do more but I think rather than concentrate on what divides us now and and make mountains out of Mall Hills I would like to build on that and because even more multiracial and more in diverse society and more our society and at ease with itself but there are forces foot who dine out on emphasizing our differences and who are frankly miserable if things are working if people are just getting along they are miserable okay next question uh hi Andrew um can I just return to brexit for a minute uh and just ask whether you think that there's a sense of disappointment in the leave camp that what they were promised hasn't really been delivered yet yeah it's a good question I think there is I've never made public my views on brexit as I'm not going to do so tonight but I think there is a sense of disappointment uh and I think that disappointment has come from a number of factors one is that they put so much effort into trying to deliver to trying to win the referendum than having won it which was against their expectations they didn't think they were going to win it having one had no idea what to do with it and they then started knifing each other in the back and so you ended up with Theresa May as prime minister who was a remainer she saw brexit as a problem to be managed as a remainder rather than an opportunity to be exploited so you're that most horrendous period in British politics with her as prime minister where nothing was happening and became very polarized and a lot of uh brexiteers thought the remained forces were now organizing to push it back to uh to to to make sure the referendum was not implemented and uh there are many problems and then of course she called the election that made it even worse she had a working majority she lost that she was dependent on the dup no one in the right mind wants to be determined on the Democratic ulcer you're the unionist party there I not only Boris broke that Log Jam with the landslide in 2019. but he had worked out how to to win he still didn't know what to do uh with it and then of course the and we had no proper bargaining position and frankly in the negotiations the Europeans ran circles around us and a lot of what we'd been told by the brexite has turned out not to be true the German car industry will make sure you get a great deal because they have to sell their cars in Britain with the single biggest market for them and all that oh Europe needs such as much as we need them we'll get everything we go all turned out to be nonsense the Europeans and particularly the Brussels commission they took the view that we did a a punishment meeting to make sure no one else tried it and it worked no one else is trying but Madam Maloney is a big year of skeptic she ain't taking Italy out uh even Le Pain has now changed their children in France she's very skeptical of Brussels she is she doesn't even want to leave the Euro anymore uh no on that so it worked and then when you thought the government might have time to do it the pandemic came along and that just sucked the lifeblood out of normal politics and they just didn't have the bandwidth I don't blame them the pandemic was Uncharted Territory they gave up on brexit and simply dealt with the pandemic so I think yeah the answer is yes it's been disappointing there are two signs of light that it might be getting a bit better what was the resolution of the Northern Ireland protocol which is a technical thing but huge and actually paves the way for a much better free trade deal between Britain and the European Union that deal comes up for you in 2025 and I think it would be much better and the second thing is that because of brexit we have been able to join the Pacific trade partnership and in the long term that's huge we are now part of a free trade Arrangement as is Australia with the fastest growing part of the world so that's not bad so there is still hope but they have definitely they got it and they didn't know what to do with it well look uh we at CIS have been fortunate uh to have hosted many prominent intellectuals and business figures and journalists over the last 50 years but I think it's really hard to beat our guest tonight please thank Andrew Neal for decades CIS has been a fiercely independent voice working hard to promote sound liberal principles to be notified of our future videos make sure you subscribe to our Channel then click the notification Bell we rely solely on the generosity of people like you for donations to advance our classical liberal cause check out the links on screen now to see how you can get involved [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 7,321

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, AusPol, Australian politics, On Liberty, Classical Liberalism, freedom of speech, Liberal Policy, Classical Liberalist, Andrew Neil, Journalism, foreign policy, Russia & Ukraine War, American Politics, Brexit

Id: EBjm6-ylQ64

Length: 84min 17sec (5057 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023