Fact, Fiction and Brexit

all right hello welcome back from your quick break and I really hope everyone's been having a truly fantastic and interesting day the parts I've managed to catch have been really fancy fabulous and thank you so much for having us my name's Amanda and one of the cofounders of for our futures sake or ffs aptly named one of the youth groups that kind of makes up the people's vote campaign and I know you've heard from a couple of our campaigners and activists throughout the day so kind of wanted to just quickly reflect on today a little bit and actually focus on not only has it been great and genuinely truly fabulous but that it's been slightly different it's featured lots of young people lots of women lots of people from outside London members of parliament non-members of parliament and I think that's one thing well hopefully or maybe touched in a little bit when we're looking at how this whole debate goes forward it's something that we should really keep trying to reflect in every aspect of what all of us are discussing and any campaigning that we're doing so very lucky today to be joined by two very well-known and very very wonderful people and both of their aspects and I will allow them both to introduce themselves briefly and first we're gonna start with Jonathan Coates so hoping that Jonathan will obviously introduce yourself and kind of reflect on how you've come here today but also maybe a bit on why your book middle England is actually viewed the way it is in our current situation as a society but we'll just send the mics on first just so uh there we go better everyone hear me now yeah well how did I come to be here and how did I come to write this novel middle England I've been doing quite a lot of public events recently too - more or less - to promote this book this this is by far the most terrifying an intimidating event I've I've been to I have to say the the kind of throb of political expertise in this in this room is is overpowering so really I came here to listen this they sent me a rough outline of who was going to be on the program and I thought you know Carol have all the dearth Caroline Lucas Nick Coe and Peter joke Dukes all these people who have been reading on brexit for the last two and a half years and in some cases listened to but the opportunity to to meet these people to hear them to to kind of take in a bit of their energy was was just too tempting to resist and I feel in I feel very out of my depth because I'm not really a public speaker and the some of the some of the speaking today I think has been incredible and tremendously energizing the offense are no tool for instance I mean this this is a man who this is a mannequin just seem to kiss the Blarney Stone but had full penetrative sex with anyway turning to turning to fiction yeah another speaker who really inspired these inspired me this morning was Stella Creasy and and she was she very directly and specifically answered one of the questions from the floor about what how a second referendum campaign if such a thing were to happen was it be conducted and she said very rightly I think that the way to the way to sway floating voters was was not to tell them they were wrong the first time not the way to tell them they were stupid the first time but to try and find common ground and try not to be condescending and my novel middle England had many many different starting points which all came together into this book but I'm just because I'm not so good at speaking but I can read I'm going to I'm going to read just half a page from the book which is germane to this here we have a character a married couple called Sophie and Ian who are having a birthday dinner with Ian's mother Helena and Ian has just had a meeting at work where he's had to report to his superior who is an Asian woman whose job he feels he should be doing his wife asks him how did it go he says oh it was fantastic if you like being patronized and talked down to by someone who used to be your colleague and who's sitting behind the desk you should be sitting behind it was just great and that's why you're in such a nasty mood isn't about time you got over that blows your male ego and moved on my male ego there you go why not just my ego now you have to make it about me being a man you'll be talking about my white privilige next go on tell me how privileged I am tell me that people like me haven't become victims in our own country Sophie glanced across at Helena who was staring up and horrified most of the food uneaten on her plate she felt suddenly ashamed now you're being stupid she said and we shouldn't be talking like this on your mother's birthday I'm sorry Helena no you shouldn't Helena put down her knife and fork would you excuse me for a moment I'm going to find the ladies she pushed back her chair and made her way slowly to the back of the restaurant Ian and Sophie aged in silence for a while don't you think you could dial it down a bit Sophie asked eventually for her sake tonight at least she agrees with me you know she's on my side when did it become about sides Ian looked at her directly and said bitterly you have no idea have you no idea about what about how angry it makes us feel this air of moral superiority you lot project all the time Sophie interrupts him I'm sorry but who are these people who's us who's you lot instead of answering this question Ian posed another one which way do you think the referendums going to go don't change the subject I'm not which way do you think it's gonna go so if we could see that he meant to persist with this line of inquiry she blew out her cheeks and said I don't know remain probably Ian gave a satisfied smile and shook his head wrong he said leave is gonna win do you know why Sophie shook her head people like you he said with a note of quiet triumph and then he repeated with a jab of his finger people like you just to give you a little bit of background to that passage I had a conversation after the referendum shortly after the referendum with a friend of mine a working-class guy academic who lives in Enfield in East London and he used to be a Labour supporter voted you Kip in the last couple of elections and I was surprised by the referendum results I told him that he said I wasn't surprised and he said everybody around where I live was going to vote leave that was obvious and I said to him why is that do you think and he looked at me and said people like you and that was the moment when the idea of writing a book about the referendum which had been bubbling away in me for for a few months came to the surface and I thought yes I have to find out what he meant by that comment and what this is all about [Applause] so someone who runs a youth campaign I can definitely affiliate a feeling of people pointing at us and saying it's because of people like you and I think somebody else who can probably relate to that quite a lot is my other guest James from LBC one of the kind of ever-growing top finisher proves my point slightly and kind of the same hopefully from James kind of introduce yourself and explain how you came to where you are and also reflects slightly on your very interesting book and why you think maybe that is seen in the way it is in today's current situation you can tell though the proper author is on this stage and who is the the newcomer because I haven't brought a copy of my own public way my first mistake obviously this goes badly I'll read a bit of yours as well um I I have this odd position which I didn't realize really was a was was odd or arguably even unique in that I spent a significant period of not just the last two and a half years but but prior to that as well speaking to precisely the people that that people like as are often accused of ignoring and it's why I'm slightly uncomfortable with the suggestion that we shouldn't become descending or we shouldn't call people stupid because you will be accused of doing that however you treat a lot of these people they will tell you that you're condescending and sneering because you have had the audacity to prove them wrong about something and make them feel stupid it doesn't mean that you think they asked you but it means they have just done a stupid thing in my case in public on the radio in front of a million listeners a week yeah and then of course the clips go viral and that's yet more evidence of the sneering metropolitan condescending elite because I don't know the internet and what has been astonishing to me is is how from a relatively inarticulate caller to a radio station right up to the big beasts of grexit and one thinks not not just of the sort of pretend politicians like farts but the cabinet-level politicians like like David Davis Boris Johnson I think is unique in the sense that he doesn't actually believe anything but David Davis genuinely don't quite accepting the wonderfulness of Boris Johnson and his god-given right to be Prime Minister but David Davis I did believe that this could somehow have gone well and so this issue of condescension and sneering is fascinating to me because David Davis is stupid [Laughter] [Applause] and I think if we're to learn lessons for a possible second vote then then pick on the really big stupid people but don't don't pick upon the the inarticulate call us to radio stations or posit the notion that everybody who voted a certain way must be intellectually deficient we're quite a deferential nation I've discovered in the last few years it's come as a big surprise to me I thought everyone was raised like my mom and dad raised me which is to believe you're as good as anyone and you've got as much right to go anywhere as anybody else house but when you see a pantomime tough like Jacob Riis MOG treated as a form of sort of aristocratic second coming you realize that a significant a significant swath of the population does actually want to doff its cap and tug its forelock at its betters and that is okay as a system for society as long as the person that you're doffing your cap at and tugging your forelock at is not a liar unfortunately they all are and again it's neither condescending nor sneering nor arrogant to say so the lies have become so utterly part of the modern conversation that you sometimes even forget yourself it's like Donald Trump but on a on a curiously British scale so when they claim that the reason just off the top of my head very recently Rhys mug will claim that the problems regarding the Irish border have been caused by the obdurate Irish government he will of course claim in the space of a week that Theresa Mays position has become so untenable that he's decided to launch the world's crap his COO and then a week later he feels he has no choice but to offer up his unalloyed support to her and she's not changed one iota in the intervening week so the man is literally arguing that black is black on Monday and that black is white a week later and and it's not being called out David Davis within days of the referendum result coming in said he would be in Berlin negotiating a trade deal not in Brussels now that demonstrates in England and Teresa may then appointed him Secretary of State for leaving the European Union it's not condescending to point that out its history and of course what that what that comment demonstrated was a profound ignorance of how the single market worked it was something I made this simple fact that you cannot negotiate as an individual market or as an individual entity you can only negotiate that collectively it's something that's so easy to understand Angela Merkel only had to explain it to Donald Trump 13 times and that seems to me to be a big part of the problems that we've unasked it is that the people like you line is only echoes around the country but but that's a what it's not a why why is it the problem of people like you or like me or like ours ask them why and that's when the truths start to emerge and the truth sadly are built largely on prejudice and ignorance so I'll give you an example of something that the prime minister says now but which used to be confined to the to the corners of the country occupied exclusively by by you Kipp and their sympathizers this phrase we can't control our money our borders and our laws now I hear that on the Today program most mornings the flagship political program or current affairs program in this country for all of my lifetime and it goes on challenge just break it down very very briefly in a way that no presenter of the today program has ever bothered to do because and that's I mean there's a criticism implicit in what I just said but I briefly explained in a moment why it's it's a criticism I actually understand so we can't control our money what money no one ever says that what money do you mean the what is it naught point 7 percent of national expenditure that is sent to the European Union as the result of a decision taken and continued by several successive governments of different political hues is that the money because it sounds like you're suggesting we can't control any of our money what you're talking about is 47 pence per person per day in a smaller part of our national expenditure than when you see the pie chart of where your tax take goes is that is that what you'll talk about money that's the money we can't control all right what do you mean when we say we can't control it so you've asked them what money means now you ask them what control means because it gets sent to Brussels so we can't control it does that mean the money we sent to NATO is that money we can't control as well these are not these are not complicated questions and I still don't fully understand why they never get asked but the reason why they get repeated and trotted out all the time is because they're so powerful it's the British equivalent or the brexit equivalent of make America great again we can't control our money our borders and our laws well we've established what money you're actually talking about and what a fractious comment that is to make Prime Minister where we're concerned about precisely what it is you mean by control so let's take the word control and apply it to borders I didn't know to my shame before that referendum was conducted about the relevant I think these fehmi's on later isn't he families coming in well I went to femi Allah willing for bringing me up to speed with what the charters govern in terms of immigration and the fact that we could have had much more stringent regulations in if you really wanted them which I don't but if you really wanted them you could have had them so we can't control our borders more than we currently do we do control our money and then of course laws which is the real reason why I'm here today because I discovered about four years ago that when someone is screaming at you about how awful the European Union is and how they impose their laws upon us from without and have robbed us of autonomy and sovereignty and independence there is one very simple question you can ask every single one of them which is this what is the law you did you detest so much that you can't wait to wake up on the morning after breakfast it and no longer have to obey it [Applause] very interesting I think I think everybody will agree and we'll come back in a second James's opinion on journalism throughout the kind of brexit debate that we've been having but firstly quite timely all this with the brexit film kind of coming out a few days ago very well timed film some could say but I just wanted to go to Jonathan's and just wonder if you could have a think and maybe just chat through what you think how the arts actually going to respond to brexit when it's been such a mash of facts presented as fiction and fiction as facts in all over the place already and that film has been both praised and criticized already and what do you think is going to happen in the next five to ten years in relation to the arts and brexit what if BRICS it affects it goes ahead and we leave the European Union or even if even if we don't actually what I mean whichever way it goes we're going to be a bitterly divided nation for the next decade or two I would say and you know looked at purely from the writers selfish point of view this is the this is a good thing I mean division and conflict is is good for for narrative and you know the last last real resurgence some people might argue in the in the in the English novel maybe the British novel was was in the 1980s when Rice's like Salman Rushdie and Alistair krei networks and Angela cotton others started reacting to Thatcherism and Thatcherism was an it was a profound creative spur on the arts so I predict a lot I mean mine isn't even the first novel that deals with British and and several others have come out at around the same time and I predict there will be many more I remember when the Rev when the referendum was first when the campaign was first kicking off I was asked by a French journalist you know are you going to be campaigning himself you can be writing articles for the papers and this kinda thing and I said well I will do what I'm us to do but writers aren't aren't asked to do this kind of thing very much in the UK and the political views of writers Terry Eagleton famously sent a few years ago that the political opinions of a writer of no more interest than the political opinions of a window cleaner and although Terry Eagleton his is Irish that's a very English way of looking at writers I think where as when you go abroad to France or Germany or Italy you feel an immediate CJC change and people come to you expecting a kind of political wisdom the writer is a kind of guru figure in in some countries but I did so I said to the journalist well I don't expect to be asked very much but writers should be actually because I think that this campaign is going to be fought on emotions and writers and artists are more used to to dealing with the inner life the emotional life which is where a lot of this movement and persuasion is actually going to have to take place then than you know journalists or possibly politicians and that's why I found what James was saying so interesting cuz I remember a clip of your show which also went viral where you know you'd done this fantastic thing that you do have pointing out to people you know which asking them putting them on the spot which particular law is it that you don't that you want to shake off and and that kind of thing and you had a caller who said yes but brick sees as a feeling and you know I thought that was a really interesting statement and you know Aaron Banks famously said that they leave the remain campaign lost because they dealt in facts and figures and arguments and leave one because it appealed to people's emotions so I can't remember what it was you said to him about that actually in in response [Laughter] I mean the the shift from political to psychological happened almost immediately after after the vote but it's rare for people to admit it like that because it's how it's how I feel yeah and I think I said something pithy and brilliant and memorable clearly very memorable also my well I'm going to try and remember probably asked him what else he felt we should legislate on according to people's feelings and that would have been a moment that's what I do now anyway I said yeah and that that would hopefully have highlighted to him what an unsatisfactory rationale it was for the single most important political project of of our lifetimes just I just feel bad about stuff yes but but that you can't this is why I'm so uncomfortable with the condescension conversation I don't know where to go on it because do you condescend to him do you treat him the same as I I had to pull nurse in the studio not long ago who's head of the Royal Academy isn't it more importantly he's won a Nobel Prize for science that's quite a good qualification for science and he was explaining the impact that brexit would have upon research in the context of science for which he's won a Nobel Prize and the caller like the one Jonathan refers to within 2-3 minutes of support leaving the studio I have people on the phone claiming that they knew more about science than support us in the same way that Andrew Bridgend knows more about manufacturing cars than the head of Jaguar Land Rover Jacob Riis MOG knows more about the Irish border than everybody in Ireland and Nadine Tori's knows more about everything than everyone and that thing that Michael Gove said yes that we've had enough of experts completely stupid statement but actually one of the defining moments of the campaign he called struck an incredible chord yes he did I mean I think in his if he would argue that what he actually said was they've had we've had a lot of experts from organizations with funny acronyms or something like that but but it's it's like that Thatcher quote about society and it seemed to speak to a deeper truth yeah than anyone acknowledged as it was a kind of echo of what John Major said all those years ago John Major who can paradoxically is now a superhero of of remained and someone we would all love to have as our prime minister again but but didn't he say on some on some social issue that we should try to understand a little less and condemn a little more that rings a bell yeah which is which is speaking to the same kind of stir but I wonder what this was at the time in British political history when Calvin McKenzie was boasting about how he would phone up John Major and tell him that he was going to empty a bucket of manure over his metaphorical desk the next morning and I think that was Christ it shows how messy British politics has become that we're seeing a feeling nostalgic for the combs hotline and defending John Major I I suspect that that was the kind of comment that John Major would make in the hope of keeping Kelvin Mackenzie right out bay and and in many ways trying to keep these people at bay these ferocious populist right-wingers is a big mistake and it's part of the mistake that breaks it was which we shouldn't have been trying to keep them at bay we should we should have been fighting them on their islands of territory and calling them out all the time and and we didn't talk about you talk about bringing bringing people up on things and in particular I think when they're spreading fiction but they're presenting it as fact and I was just thinking what what do you see as some of the biggest journalistic failings but after the referendum when suddenly we do we do start finding out things that we just weren't told pre-ordering 2016 I've touched already on the importance of making sure that people define the words that they use themselves so now and I think you can do that in a very polite way and it's not an unreasonable request to our somebody who has used a word which is nuanced and complicated to explain precisely what they mean by that words the most obvious examples being control money borders and laws a little more controversially I think that I think that actions should have consequences so I can make you all laugh by reminiscing about the greatest hits of David Davis or Andrew Britons recently stated belief that because he's English he's entitled to an Irish passport I told you I could make you laugh but he was back on the telly the next day he was back on the radio a week later I mean how gross does your discrepancy have to be before you are sufficiently discredited not to get invited on to news night tomorrow or the Today program [Music] and and it seems to me that if you are in public life particularly as a politician and you have both stated and refused to withdraw something that is demonstrably untrue Jacob Riis MOG tweeted something about World Trade Organisation tariffs that was I'm positively poached in ignorance but had been lifted from the Sun the Sun of course because they are to a degree responsible and regulated a very small degree but compared to Jacob Riis MOG they're practically in a straightjacket um the Sun withdrew the Sun withdrew and apologized for that article but Jacob Riis MOG never did and he's never off the telly despite having been proved wrong about a myriad of things so I don't know how you would do it but I think that if it was me if they come into my studio I would ask them to either apologize for or on the record withdraw their last falsehood and wrongdoing now obviously with some of them you'd need an hour before before you could get on with the reason they turned out for today's interview but this this shouldn't be funny it still makes me giggle but Britain was a particularly egregious example just before Christmas when you would have thought wouldn't you in a rational universe that someone who displays a level of ignorance so utterly profound as to believe you're entitled to an Irish passport by dint of being English that should probably be the last time he gets asked what he thinks about breakfast completely now I do want to go out to the audience and see if people have got questions for preferably not myself but either of the panelists so if anybody had a question to raise their hands some racket yet right in the middle sir I've no idea if there's a roving mic or if you just have to be really loud I'll be honest not there is a mic that's lucky Nicholas mcclain please can come the panel comment on fact fact checkers because there was a very good moment when the today program had someone called Chris who was a reliable fact checker and he then got roasted because he was pulling someone and showing up too much truth and he doesn't seem to be in heard of for the last few months could could the panel shed some light on that way of telling the truth I think probably be in broad agreement I think it was redwood was it who started arguing with the fact checker I thought that was a beautiful moment that for me was the very essence of brexit which was a fact checker who who was it Peter Lilly so easy to get them mixed up isn't it and that was it for me that was the point at which you thought you might as well pack up and go home because they're now going to actually argue with the fact checkers they've denied the fact is the bloke who's policing the facts and you think he's having an argument with you it was and no one's ever heard of him since I I mean I don't want to be self referential but I've and it's a tiny little protest like at the time i boycotted Woolworths um I I won't go on panel programs unless they're a fact checkers there which means I don't go on panel programs because I'm not the presenter and if the presenter isn't going to pick up these people for the nonsense that they're talking or the ludicrous slogans that they're parroting you're going to look like the most insufferable prig on the planet if you take it upon yourself to police the panel that you're part of so I think question time the Today program anyone who still buys into this ludicrous notion of equivalents so if you've got Neil Armstrong here to talk about the moon landings you should have someone here who denies that they ever happened if you're if you're if you're going to persist in this model which I think Trump and brexit have broken but if you're going to persist in it then there should be a fact checker in every studio on the planet you know just I just add in a more general way that that I've been here since about 12 o'clock and and listen to about five of the panels and and the two themes that I'm picking up most strongly in terms of the disillusionment in the room is the disillusionment with Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party's position or non position on brexit generally but also and what its kind of more problematic and Moore's a turning is always is people's feeling towards the BBC or the what the BBC has become in the last couple of years and of course the the curious thing about this is that both sides of furious with the BBC you know followed follow any directors Twitter feed and it's full of people railing about the British BBC for its Pro remain bias which you know which I know maybe it depends what program you're watching or what you're listening to but listening to the Today programme or or that thing that and renewal presents on it on a Thursday night then it's very very hard to see that indeed I think but there is seems to be very clear that there is a cultural problem at the BBC at the moment which I qualify that slightly for me in the it's the it's the programs that manufactured debates that are the problem it's not the news coverage in the new sourcing so III don't think and and the brexit is who complain at the BBC a biased a complaining if the BBC reports for example that the head of Toyota has said that breaks it's a really bad idea that's what the bracelet is called bias and the rest was call it news yeah yeah and with any other questions I want to get a couple more ins if we can maybe have very quick Oh somebody just called yeah they do that yep just sir yeah you look surprised but you see there we are yeah yeah I just wanted to ask James O'Brien why do you think you are the only person that's having this rational argument about brexit nobody else on your channel nobody on the BBC The Guardian some of the time but that's about it what's happened I will accept the premise of your question for the purposes of ask answering it okay I think I know I think it's because I don't socialize with politicians of any hue I haven't spent 20 or 30 years chlorine my way up the ladder of the lobby I don't seek the patronage of a politician I don't need to interview them on my program I don't need to keep them sweet this week in case they won't come back next week and this isn't a self aggrandizing actually but I think that very I think the journalists that should know better have a almost existential problem with what's happened in the last two and a half years I've been very good friends for all of my life with sir bill cash his youngest son and I really like Bill but I would never want to interview him about brexit because he's so wrong and I like him so I won't interview him but if I was interviewing these people that I'd known for twenty or thirty years and they dedicated their lives and careers to the notion that the European Union is a malevolent force dedicated to the detriment of the United Kingdom which they believe and persist in believing and I've treated it as a balanced argument it has been plausible it's been a thing of theory it's been feasible the idea that it is a flush now so completely busted means they can't conduct the conversations in the way that I do because they're friends with Peter lily and John redwood might be there might have you know helped their daughter get into Oxford or they might be looking for a quote on the back cover of their next book from David Davis or Liam Fox or so that you've got entire lives not just the professional lives but journalists and politicians whose entire careers have been built upon a forgivable belief that the European Union was some awful project dedicated to the erosion of Britain it categorically isn't but I don't think the journalists have quite got to the point where they can turn around to all their friends and contacts in Kali eggs and tell them honestly just how horribly wrong they've had things they'll think about what it says to you if you spent 30 years as a euro skeptic a decent honorable one like cash not a racist clown like Faraj but a decent honorable man like bill cash his entire career has been built on sand and I don't think they're ready to process that yet and I don't think the journalists are either because they're in the same boat that's my theory but thank you for your very flattering question [Applause] I so that is actually the end of this conversation let's hope everyone would join me in thanking both Jonathan James for everything and I would of course encourage everyone to buy the books even if James didn't bring it with him today please do buy both of their books and that's us

Channel: The Convention

Views: 240,310

Keywords: James O’Brien, Jonathan Coe, brexit, peoples vote, UK

Id: cuRv751x4Jo

Length: 37min 2sec (2222 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2019