Douglas Murray And Roger Scruton On The Future Of Conservatism & Debate | The Spectator

[Applause] well thank you very much for that ladies and gentlemen it's a huge pleasure for both of us to see you all some months ago the spectator said to me that they would like me to do an event and who would I like to do it with and I said I'm very used to doing events with my enemies and spend rather too much time with them and would like to spend the evening with a friend and they said anyone in particular I said first choice Roger Scruton and a lot of things have happened since we agreed to get together with you all so Roger and I've known each other for almost 20 years now and we have a lot of things in common a lot of common interests a lot of common loves and pursuits and some common enemies and we could shoot the breeze for the whole evening but we don't want to do that because this is an incredibly serious time for our country for the culture and specifically for conservatism and so we want to cover as much ground as possible tonight and I'll say at the beginning that in this conversation we'll there'll be three things in particular that I wanted to get to at least at some point before will hopefully come to you for some questions I wanted us to discuss the meaning of conservatives and what it is now what it is we're conserving I wanted us to get on to one of the things which is on all of our minds of the moment which is how we can find a way to have meaningful discussions about things we need to talk about in an age of Twitter and thirdly if we can get there to the question that I think one might sum up has this prevailing ethos in our time where harmlessness has been elevated into the greatest virtue anyone should seek to attain so let's start with conservatism who's gonna say that we should start with the last of those because harmlessness is something that neither you nor I have any hope of attaining however yes conservatism I I suppose that I've made my career out of the futile attempt to define it and to make it into an intellectually respectable cause I was brought up of course in the post-war period when ideas were in fairly short supply in the conservative movement and where socialism was being propagated as the natural philosophy of the human condition so I set my mind to trying to define it and of constantly come back to it even though as you would know conservatism is more an instinct than an idea but it's the instinct that I think we all ultimately share at least if we are happy in this world it's the instinct to hold on to what we love to protect it from degradation and violence and to build our lives around it and what that thing is you know it's very varied but it's for us now in in this country it is at least the heritage of political order and our way of doing things the natural way of being in this country where we belong and defending it as our home and I think that is the ultimate root of the conservative position and we all want the Conservative Party I think to represent that and the fact is less and less seems to although I think there most of the members of parliament would like it too and we have to ask ourselves why this is why has it always seemed to be the losing side I think it's the losing side in the world of of intellectuals and and perhaps in the media - because instincts are hard to discuss and even harder to defend you know if you're in the business of repudiating things throwing things away declaring your your emancipation from your past you get an audience pretty quickly and you easily find things to say but if you're in the business of trying to defend what is your basic sense of belonging in this world words quickly run out and you don't know how to do it but nevertheless when it comes to voting or making decisions for the family and whatever the instinct prevails and this is why in the intellectual world the left is always in the ascendant whereas in the real world which I occasionally glimpse there at the right is always the solid basis on which people stand there's also things that the everywhere you go the left's always demanding exactly the same things in lockstep I mean every country I go to every continent in the world there's always the same thing the left is after the same set of demands in the same order and conservatives are always conserving something slightly different in each place yes well obviously different things that they are threatened in different places I mean you can't understand conservatism in France if you don't understand the extraordinary idea of the nation which they have left horse as the object of a kind of idolatry which is the thing that steps in when everything else has failed and even the left have to pretend to adore it what's the explanation for the situation we've always had in Britain at least have had for a long time that where conservatives parliamentary that said people in the parliamentary party they seem to find it incredibly difficult to sustain their position in public quite often in Prior they're quite bullish and then in public they can do free market hmm and then you see them starting to worry yes it's true and I've always often asked myself this and I suppose I felt that I was failing them by not providing them those clinching crisp arguments that they could come out with on the political stage and take the people with them but the fact is it's very hard for people who are rooted in instincts to be gripped by ideas and they are so that they will never take the people with them and a suspicion of ideas there's a suspicion of them too and you have to acknowledge that the left are very belligerent you know I acknowledge that it's very hard to stand up and say that actually I don't agree with you you know because that's not the language of political debate that's acknowledged on the left and this is this connects with of course what you were referring to earlier the the difficulty of installing a custom or a culture of discussion in the place of one of mob violence like not exactly violence but a but hysterical unity around around slogans you know that and I think you don't get yeah I've often thought this that the left is very good at slogans you know march forward into the future you know and if you think what a slogan would be on the conservative side it would be something like hesitate and it doesn't work there it comes no I I once saw an example of that that were the only protests I've turned up to I remember years ago and I was with a friend of mine from Long Island few of us and I can't even produce was but at some point we sort all chanted something and then we stopped we did it once and I said to one of the friends when we're not very good at this are we and she said well Douglas we are view is if you send something once that's quite enough and and and that's the difference of the difference of habit I mean I don't want to keep saying the same thing any more than you do it's also though it goes to the heart of what we think communication is you know if you think of communication as a an exercise in respect for the other you don't repeat yourself repeating yourself suggest that you're either demented or all that you you just don't care about the other person's response you're prepared to override it and say the same thing again and again there's no there's no way in which a chanted slogan invites an answer no and I think that's there's a whole politics of that kind which grows out of the mass movements on the left but also invades the language of the left both of us at different times in different ways have come across this problem of the fact that it seems to have become at least increasingly difficult to hold on to truths in public to defend them I've often thought this is something to do with V suddenly it's been exacerbated by the modern media where everything is everything is one person away all the time so that the consequence of every statement can be put right before you and so that people can hold on to very abstract ideas often but find it hard hard to hold onto concrete ones in public and then hardest of all riskiest of all to be at all involved in the pursuit of truth for its own sake yes that's of course as we know various people have argued that we live in a post truth society and point to obviously quite vivid examples like President Trump has as it as illustrating this but you know there is no such thing actually as post true thinking truth is fundamental to out that so the idea of thought that that's what thinking is at the attempt to get the true answer to something so if you if you discard truth there is nothing left except the pursuit of power which means shouting as far high as in a high as tone as you can and and I think this is one thing that University students have to confront in in the humanities this this idea that truth is some doubt how marginal or negotiable there isn't an absolute standard but it's simply what you can something that you use to embarrass your arguments is that you put flowers around their necks you know that that is something that is preached by many of the gurus whom people study in particular Michel Foucault who was so influential still is in forming the new curriculum the new curriculum is not about finding out the truth of what people have written but finding the power that advances behind it so that you can confront it and be a hero of the left I have to say I'm I'm amazed by the the move that's been done on this for the post truth thing because the people who complain about Donald Trump and others as being post truth and they've got a point of course but they are the very people themselves who pulled down the whole concept of truth every philosopher they admire deconstructed the idea of truth for decades yes and at the very least they enjoyed it or went along with it they never opposed it and this is one of the things in your book the thinkers of the new left you expose yes that's that's absolutely true and of course exposing that doesn't do much good because there isn't any way of exposing the fraud fraudulence of someone if he really is fraudulent but he's lost the capacity to perceive that you know and I think the institutionalized fraudulence is part of what we encounter in universities if you see these denunciations such as we've seen recently of the that statistician in in Cambridge who claimed who came up with the wrong research of you know Noah Karl he's called you know that these and these denunciations are not founded upon any respect for truth they are founded on the associations of people with up with the wrong thing yes adjacency it now all right it's not enough you have bad views you were standing adjacent to something manifestation of adjacency who comes off West but it's by the way I was your instigation for something I'm writing at the moment I was I finally went back and read some of the texts that I felt I should have done many years ago I write finally red food color last you know and I have to say I I'm so appalled still I mean I'm a bit of a pub or on this actually because I had I I'd read about it I'd heard about it I'd always known I sort of instinctively sighted disliked it but the catastrophe of what he does the sort of perversion of all life it's brilliant of course and filled with resonant phrases and so on but this perversion of of life as being solely about power yes and the ignoring of every other human insincerity total ignoring of love the total ignoring of forgiveness power only power and you need to find where it is squeeze it out of those people and drink up some of the juice yourself and that this has been imbibed by now a couple of generations of students absolutely it fuels all the causes of the day because yes whatever the cause is feminism or or transgenderism or whatever it is about emancipating an oppressed group from the domination of the oppressor and this might be exactly the wrong way of looking at it you know I personally the emancipation of women in the political sphere is obviously a great benefit to them but to think that they should be emancipated from man as such you know and to undermine that the relation between the sexes in that way is as you say putting power in the place of love and we it's one of the hard things again for going back to your original question about defining and defending conservatism it's very hard to propose a philosophy that is based on love rather than on resentment or hatred because love is a personal thing that you don't want to talk about you don't want to put it on display and if you do so it sounds you know Kitsch sentimental it doesn't have the right political feel where as hatred and resentment there's the sense that that things are being that you're being excluded from things that things are oppressing you and must be must be torn down that is an easy thing to form into a political movement then either and I suspect this is part of what makes it so difficult to express conservatism in public some forms of love I mean I agreed nobody wants people to get to a key in in public but but some forms of love people have I think very welcoming to at least some people are two people expressing it love of country it's it's tricky there's definitely places youyou wouldn't do it not in a university no no no but I mean I I've wondered often about this with thee I mean resentment is is you say such an incredibly strong tool yeah it's an unbelievably strong strong weapon to bring to the fight and one of the things just returning them quickly to this issue with conservatism it always strikes me is that is that we do have equal weapons hmm it's just that nobody wants to wield them I think an example I've given to you in private before is that I've often thought that there's almost as if both political sides have as it were a box of dangerous things that that they know they can call upon they know they can open it and use if needed with a hammer break this in case of political emergency and the left have obviously resentment class hatred and many other forms of resentment and they are pulling it out they're letting things off that seeing flares go off sometimes they go and take somebody out and they don't apologize and then then some and they have got total run of their box and on the right there is a box of useful things which again can go wrong but but may also be the thing you need most if you're going to win any political fight and it's it's chained it's covered in a rug we pretend it isn't there and yet it would seem to me that the thing most obviously in that box is this is precisely this love of country love of society love of the things you have not wanting to change them unrecognizably or carrying out a political experiment for a Nirvana you haven't quite imagined yet and and and we do have that and just a final thought on that I may which is it you know I might be breaking a confidence now but he'll why not but I mean I was at I was recently at something with a Conservative MP and somebody asks a very good question of this conservative they pointed to somebody in the room who was it was a dinner and somebody was serving some wine and somebody pointed to this young man said how old are you he said 24 and this person said do you own a house said no do you think you'll ever own a house said no and into your tenses politicians said so what do you say to him very good question very pertinent question for everyone the response was fine it was brownfield sites folk featured prominently in the answer and I just could have wept because as I said to this person afterwards you know the left is coming at us with everything they have and you're giving us brownfield sites that's not going to do it the left is promising him everything if he votes for them and you're offering him this possibility of a huge mortgage at some point in the future way out of town who's gonna win but we do have things yes oh the particular issue in question is one about which I'm quite an expert now yes I would say that there is a clear answer to the housing crisis which is to build more beautifully so that people cease to object and then you can build anywhere nobody would object if you builds bath again in the middle of the countryside but that would require first of all [Applause] it would require an ongoing battle against the architects volume builders and all the vested interests that align themselves behind them but if that could be done and let's face it it was being done and until this fatal discovery that there was a conservative in the midst of it if before we get on to the nature of that fatal discovery and what is the problem with the house building on this because you spent many months looking into it you spent a lifetime thinking about architecture and aesthetics but what were the main things that struck you in the months you had dedicated solely to this well the first of all that because we have an adversarial planning system in which all people can take part and raise their objections which is a very healthy thing democratically it we also have the consequence that those who have most to lose from a new development or think they have most to lose will get gang up against the developers and so we have a massive resistance to the building of new housing schemes from people whose amenities and environment will be taken away by them because so much of what is built now on especially in the centers of our towns you know the the square cube the cubes of glass that are dropping everywhere these things not just hateful to people but they are destructive of their sense of home they make real places into non places and that's what's happening in all our developments and the reason being that things are not designed as places there's there are economic reasons for this there are stylistic reasons and there's a general growth of ignorance about what architecture really is architecture is means the building of a genuine home a place where you can belong and and you can't belong in a place if others don't there too so so the solution is to make places and not drop little boxes everywhere or glass cubes in the towns and we have so many examples of places all our old towns are lovely places where people want to be there's no reason why they couldn't be it couldn't be done again and that's that would be the answer people would after LC yes of course we can't object and more and more people recognize that the that we shouldn't object to providing housing for the people who haven't got it so there is a solution and but it requires confrontation with vested interests like everything else and an awful lot of those vested interests connected to the conservative conservative party it has to be said individuals or the parties well that's a great question I hadn't my investigations were cut peremptorily short because you could you continue in a minute independent is something that might be the right solution sort of brings us naturally on by the way to I think it's the first time you've done anything in public since this all broke can I just ask I mean both of us are pretty private people in all sorts of ways but what was it like having them or they actually just come right at you well it was horrible I mean because there's no holds barred you know it's I was reminded actually of of the theory that Juha Rene Johar the French philosopher an anthropologist produces to explain the the scapegoat phenomenon his view is that in the heart of every society there are these huge tensions caused by the fact that others have what you want essentially and that you've been excluded from from what you deserve etc these tensions build up and they've been building up in our society as we know radically recently because of the remain lever conflicts and all that and there is a need for the victim to persecute when that happens you single him out and it's necessary that he should be innocent if he's actually guilty of something then you can't pour all your venom into him so here he is the the lamb led to the slaughter and of course we have the great example in Christ whose crucifixion would have meant nothing if he weren't actually innocent and the pursuit of the scapegoat of juha is the way in which a society relieves itself of this burden of mutual resentment growing within it and you feel that I mean I'm not going to compare myself with that obviously with Christ and all the great people who and all the real scapegoats of the past but if you look back at it you can see in a small way how this process emerges if it has to single out a victim I have singled myself out by having the impertinence to defend the conservative worldview you know that makes me a natural victim and most of the people who who who want to attack me would not have had the the patience to read anything that I've written all the ability probably but nevertheless social media provide them the these people who ought not to have a voice with a voice and there they are at it I don't look at the social media but but unfortunately politicians do and this is a new thing to me you know every every school teacher knows that that we that children ought to be told to leave their phones outside the classroom yeah but nobody tells the politicians to leave their phones outside Parliament and but so they're in there attached to these screens and which only soundbite some words of passing and the great thing about the Twittersphere is that that he's it's words that have picked out most of the people who are attacking me is he from what I heard we're attacking words I've reused and I didn't you use this word and of course that's what happens when people are incapable of formulating a whole sentence there was a there was a moment when when the mob first came through unsuccessfully last was a doctor when your appointment was announced and there's a very forgettable labor front bencher called actually it's gone it's he's called and drew something like this anyhow he's low-grade even for the talent on the bench that he's on and he said at one point he said somebody had put to him a few things that you said and he said that somebody with your views I think he said had no place in modern society and I thought this was an overreach even for them and pointed out that in future we're gonna have to go to the labor front bench for its views on Hegel and Kant and Spinoza and we're gonna be in trouble but but but there is this there is this extraordinary thing had happened with the unfortunate young who is your interviewer for the New Statesman on that hit job piece and it happened with the labor front bench and others which is instead of regard instead of regarding books as being a very good way for instance to work out what their author thinks you can skip that stage and go straight to thee you don't even have to get to the word it's worse than the word now now you have the dog whistle you know there are words which used to mean one thing but now I mean a different thing if you hear them in a particular tone that everyone else can't hear but I'm going to interpret to you by hearing it in a particular way of course if you do hear the whistle you're the dog but they haven't worked that bit out yet so it's it's a shortcut to everything but one of the things around we get onto this is I mean this is causing the deracinated of public thought as well as public life it's why we have people in politics like this eminently forgettable labor front bencher and I might say I'm sure you wouldn't the conservative minister who dispense with your services without bothering to read what you'd said it's it's it's it's what it's why we've got them but I'm I'm less concerned about them than the fact that the thing that has produced them is still going on this this bit and I mean it was I think it was we were both in Cambridge the other month with John Peterson and I think it was Jordan who mentioned then this this issue about harmlessness because this does seem to be in politics and in everyone's life the great aspiration to live your life as a harmless individual to harm nothing and no one to say nothing with the language you use to express no ideas and to die having harmed nothing and it's just it seems to me an extraordinary aspiration yes well to me you are completely harmless does this I you know I've always thought so yes I I can't but the point is it's not just harmlessness that's being recommended but the advertisement of your harmlessness and now that's something you would never do you know so showing confronting the world with this self-consciously harmless posture is actually a form of narcissism yes it's a it's saying love me I'm you know I'm you have nothing to lose and keep your distance don't aggress you know etc so it's a it's it's a way of proceeding through the world surrounded by a cocoon of self love and that's an easy way forward but of course it involves renouncing the things on which the value of life really depends namely giving to others going out to others taking risks in order to in order to engage with them with real in real ways of which love is won and indignation another and so on it's a so as a complete corruption of the relationship between I and you you know everybody becomes a neutral it and this harmless thing drifting through the this the sphere of mists and I that is all it has a deep cultural significance it's not for you or for me to do anything to change this except to set an example you know to say look that life can be quite different from that it can be interesting and exciting it can involve the giving of your things to others and if you give to others you receive from them you know there's a whole world out there and all you have to do is turn away from that dark corner where your red lone with your screen and look out of the window you know and I think this is one of one of the problems that people are forgetting that that there is a real meaning to life and that is in the relations with others I think going back to what you were worrying about there the collapse of public discourse I remember the time when people on the Left wrote books and we criticized them and we wrote books and they criticize them and sometimes we have meetings together where we discuss them it was wonderful and you know actually this it still goes on one member of parliament John cratis they remember has written a very interesting book from a sort of revised William Morris Marxist viewpoint on our society in the old labor way and I attended all the meetings where we discussed this because he was the kind of mind which it should reflect some things which recognizes that opposition is not a negative thing it's the it's the positive thing from which further understanding grows and if all our MPs were like that and I think some of the Conservatives like that Jesse Norman is like down for instance we would be able to revive the culture of public discussion but as I say it means they should leave their phones outside Parliament you can't have it you can't the think it seems to me if anyone's ever tried it even though even in a room of three people if if there's one person who will not allow thought to go in a particular direction even if it's true then the others can't do it either yes and if you live in a society where one person in the wild can claim that right then which may be where we are it becomes even it becomes him almost impossible that is true but I think one should also remember that that there are many historical precedents for this you know look back to the 17th century and the Puritan sort of revivals in our country you'll realize that those were times when the wrong word meant death and there's plenty of parts of the world where that still is the case and the default position of human beings is orthodoxy because orthodoxy is safe you know you have to ask yourself why are heretics so so fiercely punished you know it's not that the real opponent who is followed who's punished the person from some other religion or somehow outside them the tribe so to speak it's the person who agrees with you about everything it's set to one little detail you know whether the sign of the Cross should be made with two fingers or three it's in there Russian Old Believers catastrophe you know these these things go deep in our social nature and as just the the scapegoating phenomenon and we should always remember that and be aware of it we must find a way not to provoke it but still to create that sphere of free discussion which is which is protected from it that's what we had in this country since and that's what the Enlightenment gave to Europe as a whole that's ability to create a sphere of free discussion in which we could actually consider our ABAB problems rationally and find a solution to them but as you know there's so many of our problems today where one side has monopolized the language so so a heretical thought becomes inexpressible and this was beautifully caricature advice by all well in 1984 but you know I was just reading an Oscar in a French Journal about the way in which macarons speeches all conformed to the to the syntax of 1984 part of this of course you've just will come out the ordered set up in a minute but a part of this is what you've just described though the legacy that we have had in this country which some of us are very proud of this legacy of free thought free expression allowing certain amount of heresy these are these are parts of tradition you can be proud of or you can wish to repudiate and you you coined the term some time ago the culture of repudiation and elegantly sums up precisely this thing where everything everything you've inherited is what you are against it was put to me a few days ago by a young woman in Germany I was speaking in Berlin who said this is a nice way of putting it she said everyone of my generation travels to the Far East to see lots of temples but I never see them at our cathedrals and I said of course this is it's an oddity this this desire to go all the way around the world but never never to pay attention to what's yours in front of you right on your doorstep you never see people doing holidays around the cathedrals of Europe in their gap years which is odd when you think about it because why wouldn't they I mean I'm not saying it's an either/or but it's strange to go to Siem Reap if you've never been to Chartres yes III think though there is obviously this culture of repudiation all around us and if that's all there was we would feel despair but I actually think that there is also an empathic impulse to renew which is in everybody you see this with young people who go to for instance to study in Oxford or Cambridge how keen they are to join the College Choir how they actually enjoyed the atmosphere of the hall and the formalities and the sense of belonging to a continuous tradition and adding to it I think there are many such institutions in our country still they are denigrated of obviously by a lot of people but people are instinctively drawn to them and I think those are the sort of things which should provide the Conservatives with their major causes and if you ask why young people join the military for example is partly for this sort of reason the desire to affirm something and to belong to something we should just make that more available than it is that feeling and you find this in America that feeling is widely available of course as you know it's not available in universities but there is some hope that universities will close down soon rival forms of education will be blown in there in their place you know if there were a little college in the center of London which I was master and you Dean you know fine yes we were very soon have a you know a little assembly of somewhat bewildered people whom we were taking the hand and you know and it would grow and it would not be a university it would be something which as was founded in the Middle Ages when the monasteries first got going you know people need those communities outside the family but inside society which take on the business of education the business of passing on our culture the business of creating art music poetry so it was wonderful what happened then not everything was good of but it was a spontaneous birth of something which made a civilization and there's no reason why it shouldn't happen again no and there are as you said the there are positive signs in American Academy where I think of the three main universities in America which had major scandals over what might now call woken us familiar with this term now they're all suffering admissions problems as a result Brett Weinstein's former University evergreen ever since they chased him and his family off campus for doing nothing wrong they they've they've got terrible admissions problems Middlebury College since Charles Murray it was meant to speak and the female professor who was with him was physically assaulted and hospitalized Middlebury's gotta have having to having to accept it's got fewer people applying this year than before and so I said I would say the these were the harsh bit of this but which must be pushed is that these people must realize that there is a price to pay for not educating people yes and that there is no reason why an American family should remortgage their house to send their son or daughter away to become stupider and but as you say the positive bit of that is that we have it's not as if we're starting from year zero no but this is a very important point though we need the freedom to create new institutions and that's where the danger lies you know that for instance in this imaginary college that you and I could set up tomorrow we could produce a degree course in Western culture which everybody would love to take and we could and we could then go on to to give degrees but those degrees would not be ratified you know they would we would need a Royal Charter to provide them and the Royal Charter would have to come through all the apparatus of ignorant lefties who control these things so you wouldn't only if so there's a freedom that we wouldn't have and I say this because I'm part of Buckingham University which has of course had a huge difficulty in getting off the ground precisely because there was a pressure political prejudice against it such a place could not be educational if it was not teaching the standard Marxist doctrines so one of the one of the worst things about about this case you just mentioned in Cambridge in recent days with this young researcher who's been dispensed with by the college was the fact that the justification that the students had for wanting him to go was that they found his research offensive and I mean my own research is of course the truth is often offensive usually and the idea but I thought that the the idea that the first time a university had thought that offending somebody was a reason to therefore ruin somebody's career and get rid of them was an unbelievably ominous I mean this remember though that there's this great distinction between giving offense and taking offense and we're living in a culture where people become experts in taking offense even when it hasn't been given you know and that that's what is taught in Gender Studies yes it teaches young women to take offense at every remark a man might make or even his being there you know and it's a it's a wonderful theatrical thing to change offense but it doesn't lead any lasting relationships at the Scouten Murray College it will be illegal to take Gender Studies because this is the problem with a lot of these so-called social sciences they're not Sciences they're not they're not actually a discipline it's just a political indoctrination to make people bitter they were when they went in however now we are going to have to go to the audience at some point but it can I just before we do suggest that we if the people with microphones are available with the microphones already what I suggest we do is that I point to people and we take maybe two or three and ago yes carry on talking yeah and the strength of that yes exactly so we don't need the lights up but just vaguely make sure use of a wave meaningfully and I'll maybe we'll take some there since there's a microphone near there anyway and could I just remind you I'm not saying this just to be offensive but I always like to stress that questions and not autobiographies and they're usually one sentence with a question mark at the end thanks very much for your talk I feel like I've quite a good idea of what a conservative domestic policy is but I'd like to hear your thoughts because I think the two of you might possibly even differ on what you'd consider a conservative foreign policy to be good and near that gentleman maybe some hi there good to see you again Roger I know you're going to Brazil in maximun wonder will you want kind of message or you bring into a zoo as you know we all axes and I'm sorry I'm I'm Brazilian but it was not my fault you know that we elected the first conservative president ever so what what kind of message do you bring into Brazil thank you it's the important question but maybe we'll have one other thread to this makes a gentleman behind with a piece of paper in the air I was once a Conservative member of parliament I was also an army officer I'd like to ask whether you've had any apology from James broken shower or mr. Mercer or mr. Chouhan - you must now understand that they fired you on a completely full steer but behave quite disgracefully have you heard anything from anybody what a good question [Applause] well I might as well take that last question leaving Brazil to me I think white seems fair no I have had a very nice letter from from Tom two gunas yes he has written yes which was apologetic and I replied to it in the same friendly spirit I was I'd ever read what he said because I don't look at that stuff obviously I've had no apology from mr. Mercer and the my relations with broken sharra complex to say the least I say there has been no apology there's been a letter explaining in some way but but you know I wrote back to that and said no that's not really adequate so I would like I wait for an apology but I don't expect to get one because apologies are very costly they require you to see yourself from outside and cast judgment on yourself and most people find that very difficult so I've given up on and you know I'm putting any pressure but I think it is it would have been right to apologize because it would have helped me but for one thing I would have survived very much more more readily if that that was publicly known and they would then be clear that he did that extraordinary modern political move of saying that he thought things could have been done better I can never understand why why they don't rise there's a difference between that and saying sorry well they've had been shot that would have been much more effective yes yes I did think of sorry I'm a buttock I think Peter Hitchens made a fantastic point in the mail on Sunday a couple weeks ago and writing about your case when he said about mr. took and how to mess he said that neither of them neither then pass up an opportunity to remind us of their military service aviv Hitchens said I've met braver pacifists well I don't think Brazil this platform to any great people no no the message I'll be taking you're so much nicer than I am do it all night I I've lived longer than you this is the message I our take to Brazil is some make sure I get on that plane to get back in and meanwhile see a bit of the country and not saying a thing that can be miss reported on social media and and just be myself now whether I can be myself in that climate I don't know we'll see I know that that I have a lot of fans in Brazil all my books get translated into Portuguese and you know that suggests that it's not a very normal place and that there must be some deep existential crisis going on but whether I can satisfy that crisis I don't know and foreign policy yes you're right myself and we it would be hard to know where the difference might be unless we thought of a sort of concrete example it's hard to say what a conservative foreign policy would be at the moment my own view is that it wouldn't be for instance ring-fencing international aid spending and not the military budget it seems a very strange thing to do but it has to be a sort of case-by-case basis I'd have thought and on intervention well again it depends where yeah I would say that that our foreign policy towards Europe is misguided that it's it is taking Germany and France as the principal parties to be appeased and negotiated with whereas our friends are in Eastern Europe I think we have a we need a much more positive approach to to those countries in order to help them to build themselves up for our own good too because after all they're all fleeing to us and we can't cope with the with the overweight of population in our country and I think many would want to go back and build up those countries Poland especially and Hungary these are places which are essentially deeply friendly to us in the way that Germany and France never will be and they are the way of balancing the European Union's centrist policy making it more friendly to the cause of national identity let's let's go over this side a lot of hands and where's the microphone yes just grab the first person what he's given mic for in any way hi I'd imagine most of our MPs are most of our Conservative MPs and the Prime Minister would disagree with very little of what's been said tonight so while they trying to achieve by pretending that there's a difference between themselves and and the TV up there good and nearby just somebody on the other side of the aisle maybe or a few roads back yeah hello I'm interested in the future of conservatism I have a 17 year old son who is not left thinking and what do you say to him who could be your future our future about standing up to ideology and well his rock stars to bring forward in front of his friends good question and whoever you see hi I'm a 16 year old student and I like to say that I'd be the first to join your scrutiny college fasting is there is there any hope that you could offer me if I would like to go to university to study the humanities or is there no hope whatsoever right dolly do you want to do with these firstly maybe I'll leave em peas to you I think that their aim is is to get by in office without anyone noticing they're conservatives and and I have to say let me give you one very concrete example of that I think I wrote this in spectator the other week but you know when Labour were in power they put people who were left-wing in every single public body in this country they're still there they're still there like if not even like snipers up the trees after a treating army it's just they are still holding on to the terrain and by comparison after will soon be nine years of majority conservative rule in this country some people point to the success of William Shawcross having been twice appointed to the Charity Commission and then there was a second success with Roger Scruton being appointed to the building beautiful Commission and and that's sort of what they've got to show for public appointments after nine years in office and I think that tells you an awful lot that they tend to say oh well conservatives don't put themselves forward for these appointments well they should make it easier for conservatives to put themselves forward for such appointments it should not be the case still that if you go to almost any public institution in this country you find someone who once wrote speeches for Tony Blair or Robin Cook leading it and I'm afraid that is still the case and that tells you an awful lot about the actual lack of ideological commitment of some of the MPs very quickly I mean I mean the two questions on that there is hope absolutely and there are all the things we've said about them some extraordinary universities in this country still with extraordinary portions and departments within great individual lecturers and I think that here as in America you have to find them out and just research beforehand whether you're going to find somebody who's really going to inspire you and give you access to this whole world I mean Alan bloom I think once said your university years are your Charmed years they stand between the years of ignorance and the intellectual wasteland most people go into an adulthood and and so you don't want to waste these years you tick you don't have waste them being political you want to have the best opportunity that culture will ever have to get to you or you to it and it is there you just have to choose and see your way through carefully which goes the same question the lady asked about her son I mean he probably will if he's not left-wing now he probably will be for a bit but he may like me spend a matter of hours on the left and be over it by lunchtime so and there are lots of - I mean it's not as if just now about living and dead so many people to read to look up to to absorb this number leave of inheritance of things to know about and it's not repudiated I totally agree with that and one shouldn't disparage all the universities just because the vociferous part of them is so difficult but obviously you have to look around both my children are at Oxford and loving it and and it doesn't seem to be taking away the fragments of knowledge that I sent them there with and it might even be adding to them so you know I'm pretty I'm content with that maybe the middle bit oh no maybe we'll go to the back you okay huh and there's an audience uprising at the back yeah I'm gonna be seeing Bogle a conservative MEP candidate for Northern Ireland Sir Roger first for me I may I add I think was absolutely disgraceful the way you were hounded out off government off your position by literally a Twitter mob talking up Twitter I get a stream of abuse literally every day on Twitter calling me things from house negro to Tory houseboy to variety of other things from from leftists engaged in identity politics now I came to this country as a nature as an immigrant and I made it my own and it made me her own what do you have to say about politics of identity question maybe somebody else at the back or two other people at the back maybe one of the people there's a lady with a yellow thing on waving vociferously and right at the bag yes thank you a man but it's yellow I got the color ID I'm I'm reassured by your recognition of my voice thank you if I said yes madam a you spoke indeed indeed and I'm not saying hasn't happened before but anyway so Roger I just want to ask you one question why why did you call Douglas harmless gosh that one person else nearby there yeah teach I teach as a music college in London my students I love them but they are all terribly woke and left-wing now they get their news feed not from newspapers or the spectator but from their Google newsfeed most of this is the BBC and the Guardian the right wing news media if I I hardly like to call the spectator right-wing is it's just sensible and the good thing about the spectator you have opposing points of view it has a paywall and this seems to me I wonder whether you'd agree this is a problem they just never hear an opposing view and they've learnt their dogma their catechism of woken us off by heart yes I can feel the obviously there's a great agreement about with that let me just take these questions one after so they're obviously addressed to me I'm question about identity and actually politics I agree that there is a there is something wrong with identity politics as we now perceive it what seems to be wrong is that people sees an oppositional identity always say I am this thing whatever it might be transgender woman anything with which I oppose the rest of you you know I'm standing for that against you all and they don't they don't take hold of the the identity that would reconcile them with others as you have done beautifully as an immigrant said I'm adopting the identity of this country that has taken me in and which I warm towards and that is what we should be putting in the place of identity politics the real identity the identity that we share rather than the one that puts it at lager us at loggerheads with each other and I think there again it goes back to what we were talking about earlier resentment is so much easier than love you know love requires you to forgive the faults of the other to be giving and forgiving whereas hatred has no cost at all and that's what we see on me in these Twitter storms and so on and that's why I say that Douglas is harmless because you know however much he is an edge on poverty he's actual nature as I know it's one that is founded on this respect for others and this desire to belong with others and to negotiate and discuss with with them it's a so you have a ultimately a conciliatory nature which has been as it were bullied into aggression by people who don't share that with you so that's why I say Douglas is harmless of course I don't want him to be harmless all the time in fact he's being great in fighting on my behalf on the woke students in the music college this is a real problem because of course one of the things that that that sparked off in me the real sense of belonging to a civilization and a culture to which I owed everything was music and the same was true for Douglas I'm sure and my music master at school and my piano teacher and all those that were immersed in this culture and it was a form of of belonging which again was harmless because it was part of the this the culture all around which embraced everyone and it it changed my mind and my emotions and everything to be immersed in our musical tradition in the way that I have been and unfortunately young people today however musical they may be are not brought up with that sense of immersion in a in a public musical culture that has endured down the centuries it's much more the the slightly the aggressive backdrop of the pop song which has been standard standard fare so I think that that doesn't help them to find an an identity of belonging to the larger community it's not that that's not the whole story of course and it but and this is one of the things I'm sure ever in this room is worried by how do we bring young people generally to recognize that the world is greater than the narrow and and ever more narrow little sphere which wish their screens aren't shepherding them into just add to that I mean bring two of those together that the site what I said the young lady at the front that of course if if young people aren't introduced that to this in school if they don't for instance know what the greatness of the musical cannon is or literary can and then it's highly unlikely they are going to of their own volition discover it in adulthood it's the best it might not be the only chance but it's certainly the best and of course they can discover a lot of the other things including the pop culture that that's gonna come anyway which is why it's always so soul destroying when you discover a music teacher teaching the pop songs the children because that means they're not gonna get to bar and they're gonna miss everything that will come from it and I think one of the saddest things for me at anyway it's what I describe as the you know the politicization of everything is the politicization almost increasingly of yards if you if you'd listen to Radio 3 now everything everything is being played through the feminist lens at the moment they keep stressing you know the this this this soprano role is sung by a woman it's all it's a woman's role and a strong woman has to say and so on I said wasn't yes no we get it we get it and then you have these strange intrusions of woken us into into into the arts you know the the problems insisting on a 50/50 gender equality of composers by I think 2021 or something and and then the Guardian running a piece the other day about their terrible whiteness of the British poetry scene you think the British poetry seems not like such a dominant patriarchal rampaging or entity that it deserves this additional decimation by identity politics anyhow maybe if we have any sonnet ears they can speak up now maybe this roughly this Bank here I was wondering to what extent do you think conservatives can make common cause with those on the left to emphasize more well they might call communitarian instincts who value localism community civil society people have the sort of blue labor movement if you want to call it that and therefore see conservatism as something which isn't just a left-right issue but can be sold across that traditional divide very good question somebody else nearby yeah the the title of this conversation is the future of conservatism do you think that the future of conservatism in the UK now is outside of the so-called Conservative Party and a-one more equally terrible question there's a gentleman there waving I have been out a great problem and finding any conservative policy in this conservative government could you think of anyone item that they have actually passed or proposed to do which is actually conservative to me it all seems to be left of Blair I would like to respond to the first question if I may because that I think this is terribly important I entirely agree that there is a at the heart of conservatism is this idea of belonging to a community and as it were responding to that community with gratitude and a sense of membership and a sense of duty and this is of course what blue labor wants to put at the forefront of its thinking obviously someone like Maurice Glasman has made a very impressive start in doing that so I think I am very much drawn to that and also drawn to the idea that that that aspect of the political Enterprise is can be separated to a great extent from any commitment to particular kind of economy although I'm very much in favor of the free market I'm very suspicious of the globalized form of it and the way in which it it does not respond to the demands of the local of local communities and local forms of value so and this is a problem for real conservatism to develop an economic doctrine that does not Menace with the local communities on which we all depend so and I think blue labor is doing a great job here and it is a very much a conservative movement within the Labour Party and and they hate it so it must be good the conservative policies any my world of I would leave the real questions about the future of the party to you I have I think that there are its there are no conservative policies that I can immediately call to mind but except that for the brief time when Michael Gove was Minister of Education when he set up the free schools and and trying to recapture education from the educationists which is essentially what needs to be done to return it to the parents that so those who really have a sense of responsibility towards the children I think actually Michael Gove wherever he tends to be does perform a radical conservative shake-up so I think we should not dismiss them all by any means and of course much of conservatism on my view is not about having policies but about avoiding them you know our greatest prime minister in my view Lord Salisbury was in office for 20 years and nobody can remember him you know that surely is that the archetype of the conservative politician this does play against the natural instinct of politicians of course I mean just tie a couple of those together the I mean it seems to me that there is already an extraordinary Association forming mainly you might say in the north of England but between natural labour voters or people who were for long time labour voters and an element of the Conservative Party or a breakaway element of it I mean I've been quietly rejoicing in recent days that the video is of the change meetings which look like a sort of carriage clock makers meeting in a Travelodge hotel which the various people who are running that party have to pretend the rallies where they're not small congregations and comparing those with these extraordinary valleys of the brexit party in the north of England which are genuinely and seem to be impulsive sort of ground up or rebellions now I don't know myself I mean this this will this will be something we'll all be thinking about in the months and so on ahead I mean I desperately like most people want this country to heal from the brexit debate and cannot bare us having the brexit debate for the rest of our lives but if two parties pretend to offer brexit and don't then obviously people will go elsewhere and I think there's an interesting thing happening which is that both the main parties are at a position where they could split in some significant way over this I don't know what I feel about that in a way other than that it is to some extent exciting that the Conservative Party might not be able to blackmail us with Jeremy Corbyn and just say you have to vote for us or Jeremy Corbyn because I think that the vote has to matter more than that it can't just be that the key people I mean one of the central insights of conservatism seems to me that people are loyal to institutions that are loyal to them that it's a reciprocal arrangement and the Conservative Party demands loyalty of people to whom it shows no loyalty itself [Applause] we've probably got time for one more Bank of questions they say I've sort of ignored people in the front of the latest reasons or anti Lucas reason doing something maybe there's a gentleman here as well there's a couple there and I ask a question to Roger Scruton about isn't the the public body that he was fired from fundamentally a social socialist entity and why would he want to be part of nationalizing the concept of beauty outflanking Scruton from the right the other person here and then somebody yes lady there and then the gentleman at the front there's a promise though the great slogans for conservatism are probably to be found in the New Testament do you think that conservatism or enlightened classical liberalism is fatally wounded without Christianity so Douglass best leader of the Conservative Party treasom a or Roger Scruton question Roger I'm not making this up my next event tonight is being addressed by James Brokaw any message for him do you want to take them in I think the first one I would deal with this isn't it the whole idea of taking taking hold of the housing market and turning it in the direction of beauty isn't that like nationalizing the idea of beauty and imposing the dictatorship of the state from above I think many people have felt that shouldn't we open open this to the people and let people build what they want where they want and how they want I'm this is this connects very closely with the question about the communitarians and blue labor you can't defend communities simply by letting the market loosed upon them I think this has been this is part of the story of Europe in the modern world that we've inherited a very complex civilization which is to a great extent dependent upon legislation from above and dependent upon a culture of of knowledge and expertise which isn't necessarily well available to everyone you travel around France and you you visit these beautiful towns and villages and you ask yourself a question you know how wonderful that these things exist how did it happen it didn't happen just because people builds like that it happened because people believed in the place they were building and also believed in controlling each other to make sure that individuals didn't spoil those places and that is was the spirit of our planning law that it came into full flight after the second world war we are we have inherited something beautiful work a wonderful beautiful country and beautiful towns within it and we must pass on this inheritance not spoil it and that means building in the right way and our planning laws were designed to achieve that the problem is there's money to be made out of ugliness and indeed ugliness is more remunerative than beauty or has been in recent times partly because of the collapse of Education in the architecture schools the the relentless indeed socialist propaganda of architectural modernists saying that you know we must build for the people and build without all these fancy ornaments and all these luxuries at the that the middle class are looking for building concrete and steel and glass in straight lines and then shove the buggers into it and that was the post-war policy and that's how I see socialism in this market not as a not as a gesture of freedom but the wrong kind of control question is to get the right kind of control and and one is harmonious with the free the free market in individual properties very hard that was what I was thinking about but there we are I think we should finish on the Christianity question but I may be the gentle at the front obviously Roger Scruton over trees are may for Prime Minister although I would ask for portfolio in the cabinet and I was at something with Andrew Roberts the other day where a politician sort of said to Andrew Roberts well of course let's say that and Roberts is Prime Minister and Andrew very generously said the first thing I do is make Douglas Minister for culture and public enlightenment and I said and war we agreed this is a very good new portfolio which I would also I'd also asked him the first part of the Scruton administration the lady raises an incredibly important question we actually haven't got around to this evening the role of Christianity in our culture we're obviously coming apart from it or away from it but we don't know what we're going to what's well it can't we're we have inherited from the Enlightenment the idea that that religion is essentially a private affair even if we do have this formal official religion in this country it is not imposed upon us in any particularly emphatic way but it's the legacy of thinking of feeling and of moral being it's still there with us and it's inherited by all our institutions and the attempt to dispense with it does hollow out those institutions leave them spiritually vacant and it's up to people of faith to try and fill them again and you can only do that from your own heart you can't do that by asking a minister to impose it for you and my view is that Christians are called to do this and the more Christians they are there are the more likely it is that it will happen and that's why I think one shouldn't do spare you know we're in the same situation as the Christians in the catacombs and we have to keep the light burning down there TS Eliot is somebody who's always mattered a great deal to both of us I think we've both credited him with a lot of our own spark perhaps one might say I always think of that that passage in the four quartets what did he tells us that what there is left to discover by strength and Submission has already been discovered once or twice or several times by men whom one cannot hope to emulate mmm but there is no competition there is only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again and now under conditions that seem unpropitious but perhaps neither gain nor loss for us there is only the trying the rest is not our business I think probably the the clock tells us it's 8:30 which point women to finish speaking but is there anything that's on your mind that we haven't covered or no not really just everything else but thank you to the audience for being so sympathetic yes I think I don't say just thank you to you because there are quite a lot of things you can do in London on Wednesday choose evening will choose evening yeah mmm Tuesday and for us at any rate to see you all here it means an enormous amount and I think in itself is a sign of great hope because it shows how many people care about ideas and about conservatism and about the culture and so I had any rate would like to finish by thanking you and wish you all a very good night [Applause] you

Channel: The Spectator

Views: 515,695

Keywords: The Spectator, Spectator, Politics, News, Opinion

Id: uu5T3sWAg0w

Length: 85min 21sec (5121 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2019