If You Believe You Are a Citizen of the World, You Are A Citizen of Nowhere

Thank You Hana and welcome to this event based around the famous or infamous quote by Teresa May if you believe you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere a quick question just to kick us off who here believes they are indeed a citizen of the world excellent welcome the metropolitan elites we are still fighting on and we fight to win well done so this is a sort of rally more than a more than a debate I do have a couple of admissions just to kick us off not only do I work for that bastion of liberal elitism the BBC although of course if it is a conspiracy that would that would suggest that needs to be some form of organization behind it but that for anyone whose work there will know that's absolute rubbish but secondly I have also been to dance the the Davos man I have met and rubbed shoulders with the the capitalist megalomaniacs who basically run the world to the detriment of not this lot because we're all in that same elite but certainly the detriment of most people in Britain a slightly more serious question actually taken from David Goode has remarkable book which we will also see touch on hugely this this evening and it is a question which I would like you also to answer and this is the question put your hand up if you agree with this proposition and we can test the very representative British audience here with what people actually answered in this YouGov poll in 2011 so if you agree with this question do raise your hand Britain has changed in recent times beyond recognition it sometimes feels like a foreign country and this makes me uncomfortable who agrees with that proposition excellence I would say that's in the below 5% category the number of people in Britain who agreed with that statement was 62% so you are completely disconnected from the rest of the world and I hope you can enjoy that thought as you walk home stepping on the heads of the poor downtrodden people who live elsewhere in this great country so let me introduce the fantastic panel we have who are going to take us through this often delicates often controversial touches on interesting debates around immigration around culture of course around economics which is the area I look at most closely and it truly is an expert panel to my direct left though not politically is David good heart the head of democracy of the demography unit at the think-tank policy exchange and the founder and former editor of Prospect magazine his recent book the road to somewhere the populist revolt and the future of politics certainly one of the most influential pieces of work in this debate coming out post brexit has been rightly on The Sunday Times best seller list to his left David Landsman former diplomat who ended his Foreign and Commonwealth Office career as ambassador to Greece he also worked in what was then Yugoslavia oversaw the end of Libya's WMD programs and was ambassador to Albania apparently a model we're going to be following after we leave the European Union he is currently the European head of the Indian head quartered Tata group to his left is Elif Shafak award-winning novelists and political commentator she's the most widely read female writer in Turkey she's published 15 books ten of which are novels the most recent of which is three daughters of Eve welcome Elif and on the far left of course Simon Schama one of the UK's best-known historians at the moment presenting the new civilization series for the BBC's University he is University professor of art history in history at Columbia University in New York the latest of his many books is belonging which is the second volume of his history of Jewish people the story of the Jews welcome panel thank you so much for joining us I'm just gonna go through that first question and in brief order from David to Simon do you believe let's try an answer this in a sentence we will have further time for expositions a little later but do you believe David you are a citizen of the world in a sentence no I do not believe I'm a citizen of the world because to be a citizen you have to be a citizen of a state and I'm glad to say there is not a global state so none of you are citizens of the world I am very happily a citizen in the United Kingdom David Leslie do you know I suppose I should because I felt very at home in every country I've lived in that's quite a few I'm sure most of my friends come from well beyond a 50 mile radius of where we're sitting now but do you know I think I'd feel rather arrogant if I if I were to say I was a citizen of the world so no Ellis what's your sense about your citizenship I think metaphor from Rumi the great poet he used to talk about living like a drawing compass one leg of a drawing compass is quite stable fixed rooted in one place meanwhile the other leg draws a huge white circle around that so I have a very strong attachment to this country as well as to Turkey to Istanbul I think that's possible and at the same time I see myself as a world citizen and the global sword so you could be many different things I can be many things at the same time Simon do you believe you are a citizen of the world yes I'm also a British passport holder and in your British passport holders despite having lived in America for more than 40 years I'm also a permanent resident alien of the United States of America and a probably the most passionate tribal allegiance usually historically doomed Tottenham Hotspur Football Club I say but I do remember and I don't quite agree with this actually but it was very much in my in my memory when I said Isaac Deutsch oh the biography a biographer of Trotsky came to my Cambridge College when I was a baby dawn and someone said to me mr. Deutsch er brother aggressively what are your roots and he said I'm a Jew and trees have roots Jews don't Jews have legs very good now so David good heart kick us off just try and frame a little bit of this debate why has it become and maybe obviously touching on on your book the the people from somewhere and the people from nowhere why do you think it has become such a part of our of our discussion both culturally and economically is it linked back to the events of the financial crisis and what flowed from that or is something else going on no I think our society has become our societies have become miles more open economically and culturally in the last 30 years or so and one might say that the the people I described as the any where's the the people who support openness and autonomy we were comfortable with rapid social change basically won all the arguments in the last 30 years and we now talk about don't we we talk about how open V close has replaced the old left V right well I think that's a very self-serving way of looking at the world actually I've never met anybody who wants to live in a closed society but a lot of our fellow citizens think that the forms of openness we've had have not served them well economically culturally and so on as we saw from that opinion poll that you described earlier and I think what in her I'm afraid typically clumsy way to resume was pointing it at a very obvious truth it seems to me now of course she could have recurred and probably should have prefaced her remarks by saying it's fine to be internationally minded it's fine to be internationally connected I was going to said earlier I'm like I feel very internationally connected I lived in another European country for three and a half years I can speak the language of it Rasta Li but nonetheless she was pointing to a basic fundamental truth which is that whether it's our freedoms our welfare particularly the least well-off people in our country and indeed just a sense of belonging for all of those things we require successful strong nation states and and national social contracts and I think what she was saying was that too many people are disentangling themselves from those national social contracts particularly some of the most affluent some of the best educated some of the most influential people in our society and that diminishes our unfragmented our society and it is absolutely fine to be you know to support international openness indeed to be post national so long as you also respect the vast numbers the much greater number of people who still find national attachments extremely important to their lives and what is not fine is to believe that because you have disentangled yourself from national attachments to some tit to some extent and and think of yourself more internationally because you you it is not fine to do that and then think you're morally superior to other people it is also not fine to believe that you have transcended tribe I'm like because on the whole citizens the world I think have not transcended tribe they belong to the anti tribe tribe you know and and I live in Hampstead I know what I'm talking about it it's also I think not fine to caricature quite mainstream views quite mainstream national attachments as xenophobic I think the point that I think liberals find it very hard to take on board is you can be strongly attached to grouped nation to locality and also not fear or dislike the other now obviously the history of nationalism in the 19th and early 20th century suggests that you know that you can also there are also forms of nationalism that that have led to that but I think we know we've we've been through that we've come out the other side one of the great achievements of the European Union indeed was to kind of recreate the modern liberal open nation-state so I think we can have attachment and openness but openness can go too far and I think a lot of our fellow citizens have used the opportunity of the ballot box to to constrain what they think as the as the over internationalized elites economic and cultural they've not push a bit on this liberal group as you described maybe the elites or whatever they might be the people who become detached have won all the arguments having we been having a huge debate for decades and certainly since the large amount of European Union immigration into the UK from the a8 nations a massive debate about immigration it's rarely off the front pages of many of our newspapers even if you go back to Davy Blanca and Tony Blair and Charles Clark they spoke regularly about immigration the immigration feel is is that a what is that a it's out of one argument but don't mean that's a very good example it's one of those things that is in effect been removed from the Democratic contest I think this is another of the things that you know people like us are happy to see things removed from the Democratic contest we understand that for the world to be govern effectively things often have to move beyond the level of the nation-state you know the the kind of technocratic liberal technocratic remainer class quite comfortable with that partly because there they have a quite a lot of sovereignty in their own private and professional lives but I think a lot of people feel the loss of sovereignty when things are removed from from the Democratic contest you know whether it's is immigration immigration what exactly has not been removed as it but it has or rather politicians have simply not responded I mean we you know this is the second great wave of post-war immigration began in 1997 with the Blair government and it was then turbocharged after 2004 with a huge inflow of people from the former communist countries and I think a lot of people felt they were experiencing a kind of double whammy I mean it with people had sort got used to the idea that we lived in more open economy your factory might close and move to a lower-cost part of the world but then a whole population of people were imported to compete against you in your own labor market in the service sector jobs that you might then be doing and we discovered we could do nothing about it I mean this is clearly the single biggest not the only bits the single biggest reason for for the brexit vote and so we know we have had opinion polls have for the last 15 20 years we've had consistently about 75% of the population saying immigration is either much too high or too high and politicians have either not wanted to respond or post 2004 haven't been able to respond so I think it is one of those things but there is if it is in the basket of things that have been taken out of the Democratic contest and put in that sorry you can't decide on this you know Independence of the Bank of England much more judicial activism and some adjuvant majoritarian Human Rights judicial activism you know all of those things in their own terms may be perfectly good where they have shrunk the Democratic space and you can bet your bottom dollar when something is taken out of the Democratic contest it will be decided according to the priorities of the anywhere people Simon that the liberal elites have failed haven't they that's what they've done the people are stoke-on-trent voted brexit because of the failure of politicians well actually I want to if you'll allow me ignore your question actually I think I I respect and actually agree with a lot of what David said and I think what we're stuck with in Teresa mayor's formula it's a it's a classic example of a false dichotomy the anyway somewhere also with respect strikes me as a false dichotomy you can absolutely and I don't actually recognize whether in this room or in London the sort of sense in which actually if you feel in some philosophical sense a citizen of the world you necessarily belong to some kind of free-floating anywhere interchangeable identity most most of us who actually do have some sort of empathy with with people all over the world or who think actually ultimately it matters for example like climate change borders and barriers don't make a whole lot of sense in the long term do not for a second think that that dilutes their strong sense of British national identity and culture so I think the whole premise I think is relatively benign we put in this country but as you know Kemal I live in the United States where which is certainly not benign and there was a certain amount after the break sit vote of people being screamed at on buses who were not polish or Romanian a Bulgarian they were your color and from your origins and the scream ran go home actually two people and the issue is really what it's become and as I said it's a lot of what David says I absolutely respect and agree with but what this has become in the kind of poisonous zone of populist politics now is the sense actually that's having a devotion to your national allegiance essentially means stigmatizing and demonizing others your sense of being able to be British or American or Belgian I was talking a very angry taxi driver the other week presupposes that this will you know a world of flowing population we'll all somehow go away as the lega who've just been elected this morning into a very prominent power could only organize mass deportations so I think I think I absolutely sort of get agree with David that if we really were completely just really part of some sort of nebulous interchangeable you know nomadic liberal course that that is really but I just don't recognize that as so we live in a kind of cyber sphere really where you know that our little machines we float around and there that's actually created a stronger sense of wanting to belong to an identity which I don't really like to call tribal but I you know I don't mind calling that for the moment but so in fact all in all sorts of ways there is absolutely nothing wrong with national passion until it starts to say it starts to pick out who actually are you know can be truly of our country and our community and those who can't and one I don't agree with Tony Baird my whole lot but he actually said you know when people walk down a street in Britain and say I don't recognize my country anymore they are not talking about Romanians Simon Romanian side so I'm as I'm at the chair will ask you the question again but do you think you have you have failed to win the argument because of a lack of understanding of how some people that David speaks about feel about that the answer is very short yes yes I do believe that's true and I do believe why I think David's quite right echo bubble arrogance of the media a sense I answer it in this way a certain sway of the story as historians unfortunately do I was befriended rather wonderfully by the great Isaiah Berlin mostly to try and keep you out of trouble failed at Oxford used to gives T and he was working very very interestingly on the you know modern national identity was sort of invented in the 18th century by Johann Gottfried herder and and the very strange Johann Haman and Isaiah who was an absolute valerian who's one of his favorite people was Alexander health's and the much-traveled Alexander Hudson and I said how can you you know why do you want to do research on these people who are larger and soil or partisans who said look Simon be very nice if we all thought like the Baron de Montesquieu but the vast majority of people dead they they I seem to be getting back to football all time this is what as I said they they feel like football supporters and he meant it in a sea it not that we knew anything about football but what he meant was that nationalism actually calls to our emotional and visceral sensation that that's how humans are wired and I think it does actually approve those of us who you know imagine that the world is constructed out of thought to think about that but I also want to say and in that sense there is that there was a kind of tone deafness and there was in the election which produced Donald Trump as well I think although a lot of that a lot of that election absolutely turned on race and not on a sense of economic neglect that was much to over reported this whole issue goes back rather wonderfully a long long time the great you know against a resume I would like to put up Plutarch really there's an unfair context in day moralia there was an incredibly moving beautiful mini book on Exile and plutocracy trying to console somebody who's been banished from his home in Sardis and isn't that it's the sort of founding test and Plutarch doesn't say and he's trying to console people remember city-states and he's living in the second centuries living in the the Romana Hellenic world oh really fierce of course famously fought a bitter war no Peloponnesian wars so he's not trying to say these allegiances aren't real but they are actually a very deep but then he says something he does said we are not born into a nation out of nature his point is which is a wonderful consolation but also if you're Jewish and you know I remember my father who who could you know on Saturday morning recited passages from the Bible by heart on Sunday did the same as Shakespeare felt it was unproblematic those identities what Plutarch says he says you become part of the country by the the use it makes of you and the use you make of it in other words by residence really and what was sitting in a city where the Mayoress Sadiq Khan where I hear Michelle Hussein every morning were saved Javed is in one party and trickery muna is in the other that sort of world was something which was horrifying to Enoch Powell you know who thought it was fundamentally that the possibility that we had someone like Sally Carla's Lord Mayor was the end of Britain and it yes yes well it's not the end of breath thank you son um and if you touched on this notion of [Music] you just telephone this notion of your compass being routed in in many different places and sort of just just done made me remember you know James Baldwin's famous phrase on identity being like a flock of starlings that rests on different trees at different times when you look at this debate and as you've lived in Britain for a long long time but with your background is this a debate that is peculiar to what I've sometimes described as the worried rich it's it's the peculiarity of developed Western economies to be fearful of what it has brought or is this a debate that is had in Turkey and in other countries in a in a similar manner you know what I find interesting is the anglo-saxon media discovered populism relatively recently but in other parts of the world we have been discussing this for such a long time including in continental Europe including in prosperous relative very prosperous countries such as Sweden you know all crisis ridden countries such as Greece and of course Turkey is a very important case study in itself because so much of what's happening in Turkey in my opinion holds the important lessons for anyone who cares about the future of democracy anywhere you know because it's it's only happening in Turkey it's happening in different countries one after another in different degrees and there are similarities there are echoes but as I was listening to Simon I was thinking about this another thinker from the from the past from history the the Greek thinker durjan yoginis who saw himself as though as a world citizen he came actually from from a town in Black Sea which is an in Turkey today in in a town called Cinna so it's not we have his statue right every year in a you know every couple of months mobs of Turkish nationalists go there and they try to pull down the statue saying why do we have the statue of a Greek philosopher in the middle of town and to me the whole scene is a good example because that is what nationalism does to us first of all it makes us forget our own history Asia Minor you know Greeks take so many communities living together contributing throughout history there's no such thing as a homogeneous identity there never was but that's what they make us think that's what nationalism does to us it really shrinks our minds and I think it shrinks our hearts as well so maybe we need to make a distinction between nationalism and patriotism we can love our country what is more natural than that you know to love where you come from your cultural belongings your friends your history these are beautiful values but nationalism is something else nationalism requires an us-and-them it requires a dichotomy and whenever there is a crisis it will come with as a package with the assumption that US is eventually better than them so we need to make a distinction there just like we need to make a distinction between faith and religiosity we need to stay away from these false dichotomies this is not we don't have to choose a side between identity and non identity I don't want I don't like identity politics but what I like is belongings floral fluid flexible so when I look at myself is I'm an Istanbul light I'm quite attached to Istanbul but I'm also from the Aegean from the Mediterranean I carry in my soul so many elements from the Middle East I'm a European by choice by birth this is where I was born and the values that I uphold and I have become a Londoner and I'm very attached to this country why can't I be many things at the same time so all I'm saying is we have to be careful about this all around the world as we are speaking extremist ideologies are saying the same thing they are telling us we can't be multiples we can't be plural that's the definition of extremism it's anti floral anti multiplicity they're telling us are you Muslim you can only be a Muslim are you Dutch you can only be Dutch who says that you know our main element is water I can be much things so I think we need to start by rejecting the identity politics and the categories that they're trying to push us into all over the world can you can you recognize it I hope I I sort of phrased David's arguments correctly but can you recognize that the arguments that are made not by you but by people who make similar arguments can seem very exclusionary and can seem to ignore people who are proud of their country and have a patriotism but that doesn't mean they are therefore immediately portrayed as being extreme that they that the liberal approach to nationalism very quickly allies Patchett ISM with extremism I I disagree I just think I don't think this is true if I may come back on that I think we have to make one thing very clear not everyone who voted for breaks it is a xenophobe how can anyone say that not everyone who voted for Trump is an islamaphobe or not everyone who voted in a certain way is a racist how can we ever say that of course not that's ridiculous and to be honest I think one of the biggest mistakes that Hillary Clinton made in the in the run-up to the elections was to call half of trumps voters a basket of deplorable that was a huge mistake so we can be critical of people like Trump in my opinion we should be you know populist demagogues everywhere but it's quite something else to connect with the people to listen to people if we don't that would be our big mistake so definitely I understand and I can by no means be little the huge inequality not only economic inequality but also cultural gaps emotional gaps we never talk about emotional gaps with but we need to care about this we need to put more thought effort into that but here's where I differ the populist demagogues also are telling us that they are the spokespeople for the real people and I want us to be very careful about that dichotomy who are the real people unreal people you know what is what does that mean it's it's a shift of elites yes one elite is losing ground but let us understand that marina pan is no less elite than the people she's criticized and she is also part of the establishment so many of the figures like Viktor Orban Kaczynski one after another in every country they're also part of daily except it's a different thing it was a different world view but they are an elite and this is exactly what italian sociologist told us Pareto at the beginning of the 20th century he was talking about the shift of the elites you know it's a pendulum back and forth but by no means we shouldn't say that oh this is a war against of the real people against the corrupt elite that is another false dichotomy that they're making us believe in Thank You Elif David Landsman it's your view on why this debate has become so much part of Britain's national conversation and similar to relief you've lived many countries in the world and work there as well in Europe where do you think and North Africa where do you think this debate sits in terms of its importance in Britain and the comparison with other places you have worked I think that's an interesting question I think there's two sides to it I think it is it does seem to me more acute here it seems quite acute in the US I didn't feel it so acute in Greece for example when I lived there I don't find it so acute in India when I visit now I'm not saying I'm a great expert on either country so others can disagree but I think that there is something distinct about perhaps it's sleep that the Imperial feeling whether it's the imperial past or the Imperial quasi present of the of the US because if you've got a sense of my country as something revolutionary as something bottom-up as it were you can identify with that very much more easily my country top Dan encourages a certain liberal thinking that there's something wrong with that there's nothing wrong with being in favor of India and Indian independence the the business I work for is both very socially responsible but very nationalist in a sense it has a very strong sense of nation-building and that's a perfectly reasonable thing if you're an Indian to want to build your nation here I think there is it it's easier to distinguish between between a kind of an imperial grandeur that you wish to reject and a and the sense of patriotism and people can question patriotism when you've got so much if you like historical baggage but I think there's another dimension to this which I think goes much more widely and I think it's actually quite important to take this beyond national identity that that's what that's the presenting problem if you like but I think there's that there's there's an issue behind that we're in a we're in an age of globalization we're an age of increasing complexity technical complexity and other kinds of complexity there are more and more specialisms there are more and more experts it's a phrase we've heard quite a lot of back it's a knowledge economy we're becoming more intellectualized greater meritocracy in many ways and ain't meritocracy breeds a sense of arrogance and breeds a sense of entitlement and if you're setting the rules and we keep hearing about makers and rule takers if you're setting the rules there are some people out there who will set the rules to suit themselves and we've set the rules to suit yourselves you're perceived as skewing the society on your favor and then you show some arrogance to those idiots out they don't quite understand so we get to a situation in which people people we all depend on the people whose cultures we all depend on people who services we all do begin to think that we are somehow belittling them but we're also skewing the system in favor of ourselves and against them and then what do you do you resort to all sorts of identities in this David I think it's fair say so that his book you you have a a local identity or national identity that you that you resort to when you feel that the world is coming in on you so I think there is a sense in which those of and I'll say us because we had a poll at the beginning but I think those are from us and you've all got to be super intelligent to her wanted to come to intelligence squared the first place those of us in a privileged position part of the meritocracy some way or another have to be careful about that arrogance we have to think less about entitlement and more about accountability we have to think it's it's it's very easy to treat treat the people out there the public I hate it when I I you listen to listen to the radio people talk about the public you know they're my clients out there no they're our fellow citizens we are part of a society and I think we have to think rather more about the relationship team we definitely throw the baby out with the bathwater the citizens of the world the meritocratic we know who's going to say that meritocracy is a bad thing but we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater so the phrase that comes to my mind and it sounds very out of place what I hope is at least provocative is a nob less of leash we know we are I mean I remember being told at school don't don't be an intellectual snob you've got huge privileges you've had a hugely good education you're rather bright don't abuse that and I think it's that sense of abuse which we have to guard against because you know I think I would agree with them fine and citizen of the world a citizen of nowhere doesn't bear huge philosophical analysis it wasn't I think intended to it was a line at a party conference and full disclosure I was present in the room when it was uttered and it got a it got a lot of warm recognition around the room it wasn't a philosophical this disposition said but I do think we have to look in the mirror a bit why do you think she chose it the Prime Minister chose to say it well IIIi don't know but bazooey it went down well so presumably to that extent it just the political it was a it was a judgment which II was signaling to brexit voters when she that they would have a home in the Viktor Orban it goes down very well when he describes George Soros as a rootless cosmopolitan conspiring to subvert the will of the people in Hungary you know he probably he was very clever man started out as a liberal you know it was one of the inheritors of the post communist regime but he knows of course that is precisely the danger they destroying it in me I'm not making crass comparisons with the rise of the Nazis I'm really not but you start to smell a sense in which something you I mean it's it's an elite thing to know you're superior to the slogans you mouth and you know and then you you laugh about it actually it what a tremendous uptake it gets oh you know three hundred and fifty million pounds in other contexts on the notorious bus of course it was rubbish we knew it all the time but you know it listen don't mess up there's always dog whistle here is in the end your whistling is the noise of our contemporary politics now but I left most likely to say a little bit to you David yeah I think it's also a pattern that we see across Europe in a way it's an indirect impacts of populist movements because they are changing the language of mainstream politics and oftentimes politicians feel almost cornered we've seen this pattern in Holland like mainstream politicians all of a sudden adopting a much more nationalistic rhetoric because otherwise here it's wielders is going to occupy that voice and you don't want him to occupy that void so what happens this mainstream politicians start to speak in more tribalistic if you will tone we see similar things I mean they all feel pushed in that direction and that's the danger of populism in the long run because even when it's not in power when it is in power it's another danger but even when it's not in power it has the impact it has the ability to change the tone of politics I think what we aren't talking about is the fragility of democracy itself you know many of these parties are very happy with with with elections but they're not happy with liberal democracy with pluralism we shouldn't confuse majoritarianism with with democracy and for a proper democracy to thrive to survive we need more than the ballot box more than fair and regular elections there's too much emphasis on that but not enough emphasis on the surrounding components that make a democracy viable sustainable in the long run such as rule of law free media definitely an independent academia which is what Hungary lost Turkey lost Poland is losing right now definitely women's rights minority rights together with all these components you have a functional democracy so what I'm trying to say is we take it for granted sometimes but democracy is something we constantly need to put effort into and we can very easily lose if we only reduce it to majorities and because from majoritarianism to authoritarianism as we've seen in other parts of the world it's a very short step no time to hold on hold on David David David I mean I I do think that the citizens the world do you have to take some measure of blame for the fact that we have a crazy demagogue in the White House that we will have a clown or the friend of a clown running Italy that the EU is partially unravelling that the Middle East is on fire I mean we have had hyperglobalisation that has been supported by pretty well all the parties of centre left and center right in in this last 25 30 years of liberal domination economic and cultural liberal domination and we are seeing a rebalancing I mean some ways this is democracy working and on what I don't hear enough of is people trying to actually think hard and distinguish between what one might call legitimate populism and illegitimate populism I think quite a lot of the reader the rebalancing we've had is is completely legitimate and is actually an expression of moderate nationalism of patriotism as Elif would describe it moderate nationalism I think is generally speaking a force for good it binds different kinds of people together in national societies and and and Simon I think you know was was partly guilty of this this caricature that I was talking about earlier that we you know we're essentially seeing the masses as as kind of nascent xenophobes the whole time and I'm concentrated but you know focusing on on the blip you know the hate crime blip was a very ugly incident it lasted three months and then it disappeared again and you know if you look at the if you look at the opinion polls I didn't invent this is not an argument anyway some ways these are world views they're there in the British social attitudes surveys you know and it's if this is one of the reasons that that we do have a slightly sharper divide in this country is that we have twenty twenty five percent of the population the people I call the anyways who tend to be mobile and and highly educated the two things go together in this country which you think I think is why we have a sharper divide nobody who voted remain knew anybody who voted for brexit and vice-versa partly because of residential universities my party because of residential university brexit is well yeah I don't know very many bricks it is you're very you're very unwell maybe that respective but but i but i think that we have a sharper divide in in this country partly because of residential universities that that you join the kind of liberal professional classes and you no longer go back and and live where you came from and I think that that divide has been particularly particularly strong here actually less rather less so in America where half the students live with their parents but I do think that you know that you know the ordinary people of Europe are not on the whole xenophobes you look at the data there are people who are you know about five to seven percent of people who really do believe pretty malevolent malevolent things but the vast majority of them are not and they have seen the European Union suppressing even their own moderate nationalism I'm the very fact that you cannot you know that you cannot discriminate in favor of a British National Citizen when it comes to the labor market the welfare state social housing etc because of of the principle of free movement I mean that offends against a common sense idea of moderate nationalism Simon isn't the issue David touched on both Dave's are touched that there has been an arrogance to the arguments made by the Liberals let's just described them as Madame you might decide that description and that the the people who do not agree with some of those positions on things like free movement of people on the fact that I can be a citizen anywhere in Europe have felt themselves to be ignored well I actually think there is the discussion to I I was actually interested to have examples from David's David landsman's point that there's a kind of constant stream of condescension superior arrogance by by supporters of remain or by as if you know but people who think you you can't be citizens or belong to many different places but if it's if it's whether or not there would be a discussion about immigration and absolutely in favor of that you know but what I don't recognize is and I you know what I absolutely don't recognize this characteristic of those of us who actually have a more open attitude to immigration particularly sort of in the United States as sort of this endless sneering I mean if the accusation is that we are arguing for meritocracy and education Wow I plead guilty to that altogether and let me you know again without worrying you with too many American examples but this is where I live last week or the week before that the Immigration Service in America changed took out of its statements the the sentence that the Immigration Service was designed and instituted to help realize the dream of a nation of immigrants and subtitle of Jack Kennedy's book but it was also the substance of what made America special all the way back to Hector Santiago Africa in the 1780s who said this is the one country in the world where it doesn't matter where you come from it doesn't matter what language you speak doesn't matter what religion you profess or none as long as you subscribe to certain political democratic principles and so far from you know I think again David Landis once said well America is sort of bottom-up nature mate what's up gents and you correctly do that's or maybe I misunderstood you that you said that's why it has a very it's likely to have a strong populace that for countries with power either have ER or had power yeah there's there's likely to be a difference between the approach where you're you're looking at you're feeling of superiority and then you'll reject you're resisting that your sense of India and Britain were that different yeah but I don't think most British people have a sense of superiority no longer we have a sense of specialness no no a purity has been replaced by you know British national identities no longer as a sense of we're we are top dog nation as it might have been in the 18th thank you very much to be brief because that's an anecdote about the Immigration Service was to do with something which is front and center in American life right now and that's the status of the 800,000 children who were brought in by parents who illegally immigrated and have known no other country except the United States but they've lived in this you know legal no-man's land and the proposal really as a result of an extremely kind of suddenly nativist exclusionary search of in in the United States is to actually end up deporting them and that seems to me extraordinary have become American in the Plutarch Ian sense by living there by becoming part of the community Mike that was my grandparents were legal as far as I know one set from Turkey the other set from Lithuania they became absolutely British you know by living here by becoming British so the citizen of the world bit inside me believes in the nobility of the immigrant experience and the possibility of having had that immigrant ancestry and passionately embracing you know British culture and British patriotism and how can we bring some of these debates from those who agree with Davis position to those who agree with Simon's position how can we bring those groups together surely the challenge for leadership is not so dog-whistle for one side or the other but is to try and bring together some of these arguments do you see ways through the situation we own or do you feel belief about to the situation we're in yeah I think the first step should be recognizing the importance of emotions this is a subject that's often underestimated in mainstream political theory but I think we live in an age in which emotions very much guide and misguide politics both national and world politics of course economy is tremendously important but all of the issues that we're debating right now are very much shaped also by perceptions our fears our thoughts our perceptions our anxieties this is the age of anxiety it's stage of anger it's stage of resentment frustration and all of those emotions are incredibly important and they are understandable many people yes they do have worries about the future of their children whether they're children are going to have the same job opportunities that they had yes many people I am no I I totally understand this are worried about immigrants maybe a refugee influx maybe let's make be more blunt Muslim immigrants you know diluting their culture let's talk about all of these openly and honestly if we cannot talk about these things and if we belittle people's emotions and this is where I criticize liberals and left in general then we will be pushing these peoples with all their in you know very sincere feelings we will be pushing them towards the lap of the far-right because that is the only open space where those emotions that are recognized and let's be honest I think populist demagogues are doing a better job than other politicians in terms of connecting with people's emotions so that's one step forward I think it is our responsibility all of us we have that responsibility we need to go beyond our echo chambers we need to go beyond our digital echo chambers so yes we must have friends who have voted in different ways it is very narcissistic other way otherwise anyhow I mean if all friends if all of our friends think like us talk like us dress up like us it means we just want to be surrounded by our own mirror image that is a very narcissistic existence so all I'm saying is I'm very worried about this polarization because we have seen again in many countries demagogues benefit from that polarization that is why they're constantly stoking that you know and we have to be smart and go beyond that to duality yeah I'm gonna be coming to the audience in a couple of minutes do look for uh shoes who'll be walking around with microphones David Lance but could I come to just before we go to the audience the the question of economics and whether or not two things are being confused here that's our notion our southern notion that the citizens of nowhere the liberal elites however you might just describe them have become a huge problem it's not actually a problem of culture and society and where you belong and rootedness but is actually a problem of pretty straightforward economics people were willing to put up with the fact that there were elites in the world when every year they were slightly more wealthy they were the year before and they believed that their children would be slightly wealthier than they are when that broke down in 2008 with the financial crisis and real incomes have been falling in large parts of developed economies people then started to look for other things to possibly blame but actually isn't the fact that if we fixed the economics many of these other issues will become much less toxic well yes I think it is a bit about economics but I don't think it's about simple economics because I think people are interested in more than just money and I think there's a sense here of something really quite acute and urgent that we've got to address because of technological change that's coming along it's going to it's going to change a lot of jobs it's going to take away a lot of jobs it's gonna take away a lot of middle-class jobs to a lot of people lawyers accountants a lot of people all using those jobs going away to artificial intelligence now I think we need if we're going to if we're going to manage this what I think is a challenge from meritocracy I'm not saying meritocracy is a bad thing I think it's a challenge from it I think we have to think carefully about redefining the value of work and the value of people because what we're going to be left with is a lot fewer jobs of the kinds we've become used to process driven jobs jobs where you had to learn a lot get a lot of experience to perform various processes quite sophisticated ones over a period of time they're going to disappear they're going to go up with artificial intelligence what are we going to do what's going to be left are those jobs which either only humans can do or those jobs which we would rather humans can do sophisticated computer programming writing poetry looking after the elderly these are things we either only humans can do or we'd rather not be done by robot thank you very much and I think we're going to have to think about how we as a society reevaluate the value of work and the value of people to try to break down of these distinctions it's not just about money Natalie if you don't have a job you don't have money and you've got a problem but even if you know I'm actually rather worried about universal basic income because I think it risks just putting everything too into an economic box and saying right we'll we'll we'll put the animal in a small cage we'll give it some food it'll be happy no people aren't going to be happy without the sense of purpose and without a sense of value and it's that devaluing that I think brings along with it a lot of a lot of the unattractive side of searching for identity David how do you respond to this this idea that actually there's been a confusion of two different issues that people are quite willing to live with things like relatively large amounts of immigration with issues around whether they're rooted or not rooted but actually if the economics works that will fix many of the problems that you raised in your book no I think it is much more culture than it is economics I mean that's what most of the most of the work on on populist voting patterns will tell you although I think economics and culture are also very bad following on from what Dave was saying it I cannot some culture often very hard to disentangle from each other and I think possibly the the the single you know if I was asked to give one reason for the brexit vote leaving immigration aside I would say the declining status of non graduate employment my little joke about brexit you don't mind a brexit joke is I blow out laugh I didn't I blame brexit on the masses mass emigration and mass higher education the fact that we have as David was saying that we have created this the kind of gold standard of human esteem has become got a one form of human aptitude amongst many others cognitive ability the ability to pass exams and to think analytically and so on and we have so elevated that that we've somebody wrote me a letter who'd read my book said a good society has a balance between the three eighties the head the hand and the heart and and I think it sounds bit naff but I think that is so true in a way and that we have kind of removed status and meaning from the other that the other two h's when he said heart he met we were talking about labor markets really and what really meant was emotional intelligence and as David was saying I mean we need yeah I mean we will I think see a switch when lots of jobs to do well you require a degree of emotional intelligence no to teach children to look after all people to work in in in the health sector and we've historically undervalued of all those jobs partly because they used to be done by women in the home and they've just moved out and into the into the public realm and have historically been undervalued and I think one of the one of our great tasks in a way is to revalue those jobs and obviously we don't want to we don't want to dismiss or undervalue cognitive ability but to kind of even out the playing field a bit more so you know half of the population by definition are always in the bottom half with a cognitive ability spectrum so you know we and and I think a lot of people feel that too much and also that the the the the tradition of so many traditional lifestyles you know socially conservative views that you know you just have to listen to the radio for for a week and particularly the comedy programs to realize you know how you know that they can a metropolitan worldview does hold many you know but perhaps in the most lives in this country in a degree of contempt and and I think you know we need we need a we need an evening out of status as much as we do of money I like st. I'd like to make a little bit there yes so let's have some questions mic one here would be fantastic to start us off and then we'll go over is that might number two everyone yeah we'll go over to number number two there yeah thank you might want yes good evening thank you very much Chris Chava from Urban Land Institute I have to say I feel a little bit like a fish out of water I'm the son of a Chinese father a French mother descended by from a Sephardic Jew from India a French passport first-generation American but I am delighted to live in London proud to be a Londoner and very grateful to be a Londoner so it's an amazing discussion and I feel like I'm in London but I feel like them everywhere else but the question so far a lot of the discussion has been about maybe the failure in some ways of direct democracy and it seems like we've talked about how nationalism works because it appeals to the emotions and the alternative is maybe demagoguery but isn't really this also watershed moment about democracy itself are there models including technocratic models which seem to be working better in many parts of the world better than democracies well Ella this is something you have touched on as saying what I suggest you were saying no and beware but the fact is and after the financial crisis certainly the notion that democracy and capitalism had to go together in some manner that free markets needed democracy to operate China has surely revealed that that is not necessarily the case and the gentleman raises the point that actually are there other models that people starting to think well but a discipline maybe but frankly it's better than this mess we're in yeah and that is something I totally understand and thank you for your question but what worries me is especially as you travel throughout Middle East Turkey the discourse has changed radically in the past whether you call it an elite or not but the political establishment constantly talked about being part of Europe or somehow it was as if the direction was clear you know you never saw us as part of Europe that's another thing but there wasn't this much talk about democracy not being adequate for our part of the world and now this is the only rhetoric that you hear across the Middle East in other words they're telling us you know what democracy it comes from Western Europe it's not in our history it's not our tradition our customs we come from a different background we don't need them anyhow let's go towards Shanghai pact what is Shanghai Park China Russia Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan in the right place to be if you don't care about human rights I'm sorry so I don't I don't want that to be the direction you know and that the rhetoric is well maybe we should have technocrats led by a strong leader this emphasis on strong leader if we don't have a strong leader we will go astray and we want to revive our golden history our golden paths and that's the notion of the Empire kicks in you see how everything adds up and my fear is around the world people are losing their faith their trust in the very concept of democracy that is very dangerous Simon do you is there we can understand quite clear Delos points about the negatives around other types of models but Simon is there in history a notion that liberal democracies could take some lessons from in terms of how they operate if people are thinking to themselves I believe democracy has failed now you want to argue against the failure of democracy Viktor Orban has invented the phrase which is proudly attached to Finnish party of a liberal democracy as that a liberal democracy as there is not an oxymoron also adopted by schinsky and in Poland this is a horrifying departure an illiberal democracy would not let us have this evening here an in liberal voting range as in Russia would not make this possible so far from Democrats beating themselves up about the terrible failings that they're supposed to have not listening to the people or whatever else they need to go back and read areopagitica john milton argument for the freedom of opinion they need to breathe Jefferson's doctrine actually about the separation of church and state they need to stand up for the independence of the judiciary in particular and not the politicization of the judiciary there is a heroic tradition of defending democracy for which people have died over centuries and now is not the time to scuttle off and say Oh Deary me maybe a liberal democracy and a strong leader in the arm is the answer that way lies the neutering of freedom David is there same question it has you talked about the failure of of liberalism and David lands where you talk about the arrogance of some of the ways of the argument but David good heart is there a way that democracy can be not made illiberal but that democracy has failed as well these people because we have elections in Britain we are a democratic nation how did our democracy allow in your argument these liberal elites to get away with it for so long because people's standards of living were kind of rising slowly that and this domination I think this division the my kind of anywhere somewhere worldview division I mean it's something that's only relatively recently emerged as as powerfully as it exists now something is only going back twenty twenty-five years I think that we've had such a kind a monolithic domination of cultural and economic liberalism and people you know their traditional voting allegiances stock for quite a long time than they grant you know a lot of the for a lot of working-class people moved away from the labour party invited you Kip and you used similar changes that have much earlier as as you said earlier in continental Europe but like I say I'm Indian in some ways populism is democracy working so long as we you know so long as we can distinguish between the the legitimate and the illegitimate now man I think we're also in danger of crying wolf on this I mean with the partial exception of Simon right points to the to the dangerous developments in Hungary and Poland but in much of the rest of continental Europe what have the populist seen in what way has the open society been threatened by populism I don't think at you know the Swiss have bad minarets well so it's slight inconvenience to Swiss Muslims but I mean we had the ridiculous burqini business but I mean that was gonna laughed out of court literally racist in Swiss elections about black sheep and white sheep well I mean that's it's wrong more than a few you know no I don't know I mean there has been a rise in in nativism and possibly racism in some countries I don't think particularly in this country you know I mean it's still a tiny proportion of people believe that you have to be white to be truly British in yeah I think so eight or nine percent of British people believe that I mean I do not think that we're on a you know on you know on the verge of a wave of the rizona phobic racism there are it's using some countries but I think we've got to stop crying wolf about it and and you know and and anywhere technocratic elites have got to respond to the issues otherwise we we have we end up with with brexit and things like that you know we've unbalanced that we've unbalanced with over dhamma we've had a period of liberal overreach and there is now a reaction against it then we need to make sure that that reaction doesn't take ugly forms as it does in some places number two and then number four yep so before I offend anybody I would like to provide some information about my background so an old Yugoslavian born in Germany first five years there 17 years Turkey two years Japan one years United States and most ten years I have been a UK citizen so my question is especially under developing countries or developing countries the citizens of these countries very much are attached to their nationality and no matter how many years they spend abroad or what nationalities they have afterwards they will remain Yugoslavian they'll remain Turkish so what is your opinion about this what do you think the reasons for this is why people feel so attached to their nationality maybe in more developing wells if you think that's true David Landon well I think that was the point which I obviously inadequately tried to make earlier which is that I think for our for our intellectual elites or whatever we like to call them in countries which are very strong or have been very strong and have a long history of domination one way or another we are understandably rather wary of that and we want to aim off for it and we want to emphasize the bad as well as the good if you come I think from a country which which where you feel that you've had to fight for your independence you've had to fight against the colonialists or events the stronger powers over a period of time it's much easier to have a coherent national uniform view that you know my country is a great thing and I'm going to I'm gonna fight for it easy addresses here do you think it and that not to be as dangerous possibly as the debates are in some developed Western them I think that it depends entirely on on how what you do with that sentiment whether you then use it to be aggressive in some way against your neighbor or against someone else then maybe it can be dangerous but I think there is that sense and it's you know we've got a lot that we're going to look through our history and say was that good was that bad we're gonna have a lot that a lot of a lot of people will be ashamed of so it's easy to end up with a position where you're saying well my country right or wrong definitely not my country is often being wrong if you feel your country has more often than not being wronged then it's not surprising you're going to come away with a much stronger sense of it smells just very briefly and so I'm just very briefly with it very briefly of course every every nation states has its own official history it's the same in Israel in Turkey in France in Russia but where the difference is if it's a proper democracy you walk into a bookstore you can find many books that question or criticize or challenge official history ography nobody puts those writers in jail or or Sue's them with regards to belongings I think that's that's a beautiful thing you know you can you can as we've spoken before but feel attached to many many places at the same time and carry that in your soul I really don't see that as a as a conflict where the trouble starts is when immigrant communities close out and and become more inward looking and that is when more nationalistic religious extremist views find the fertile ground to flourish and it becomes much harder for us women overall I think when societies go backwards and when they tumble into authoritarianism nationalism or extremism women have much more to lose than men so we have to be more conscious about that I mean it's totally fine to have multiple belongings but open up you know the interaction and and the emphasis on plurality that you can have little bit on these that's why we need it thanks Ali CC hi hi Kevon T Mitchell American expat I wrote this down to make sure I don't forget any if you define citizenship is a status granted by a state you can understand rights responsibilities and the mechanisms for changing one society as emanating from the state and from a particular location what entity grants global citizenship what are the rights and responsibilities of the global citizen and what mechanisms allow a global citizen to enact change in global society thank you very much Simon apart from God a boss man who who sets the rules so these global elites and sorry can apart from Davos man who sets who sets the rules of this gentleman asks if you are a global citizen what are your rights and responsibilities and who sets them well I don't think those of us who identify it's a very good question of course actually but I don't think it's like a question in contract law or something I mean I don't think any of us are actually in some general sense are voting for empathy you know have really certainly I'm not want you to sort of produce institutional sketches or maybe you're you're serious and question will leave me to ponder this more but in a much more wider sense of course actually there are all sorts of things happening which call on our sense of mutual let's say mutualism Adam Smith's absolutely lovely phrase in the Theory of Moral Sentiments the most obvious being climate change and the Paris Accords and after all the pragmatic bashing and the withdrawing from making States absolutely formally obliged to reduce carbon emissions something was really something was really produced which suggested a degree of constructive mutuality and it was precisely because of that that Donald Trump made such a tremendous dramatic performance about walking out of the global climate Accord for him it soars as he's doing with new it mutual trade agreements the psychology really of going it alone of having your country first and not understanding that in the modern world you're necessarily need to come to sort of mutual understanding what in the common good is is really what's at stake and as I say that I know that that barely answers you have a wonderfully full military press room but I bought on the other hand if you're looking at the choices that are on Donald Trump's desk whether or not he's going to define absolutely what he needs to do exclusively an American interests even even when you know there was there was a moment last week where his own cabinet said well surely you'll think about cutting a break for your allies like Canada and this country in terms of not imposing a 25% tariff on steel and 10% aluminium and he said no not at all there not going to be any exception so it's that that sense of being in the same boat I know it's wishy-washy it may be a piece of kind of liberal elitist superiority but you know if we're not in the same boat we're gonna drown and make a wreck I think Dave you have the happen to changed the tax laws over the last ten years under the OECD shown that the global elites can get together and think something smells a bit wrong we're gonna change it yeah I mean you know the the you know any any moderate nationalist is going to be in favor of in your interdependence we live in a much more interdependent world economically in terms of climate change and so on person outside the European Union you know is still going to be involved in all in all those processes and there is no such thing as absolute sovereignty although we will be able to make you know decisions based on or not you will face the famous global bond mark it's kind of on our own terms rather than as one amongst 28 but curiously enough we haven't mentioned the that the most obvious sort of candidates for citizenship of the world are the digital giants and they're not a very good advertisement for world citizenship are they I mean in the extraordinary monopoly power you know playing tax zones off against each other and yeah and to some extent of course you know we do we need color raishin between nations in order to in order to be a countervailing force against that corporate power but we don't need to be citizens we don't all need to be citizen to the world in order that we need to be citizens of our nation state and our nation states need to get together and do sensible things together to make sure that you know Facebook pays its tax bill number three and then I'll take number one as well there yeah number three yeah so I think the panel is being rather sort of self fragile Ettore towards anywhere man or anywhere person because it seems to me that actually it's someone we should be celebrating is the sort of mindset that everyone should be moving towards it's sort of embracing wider networks there's gonna be all this technological and economic disruption as we've heard and effectively we should be going look everyone you're in anywhere and never met a real shame that we've got a prime minister who's given this quote excellent number one where's that yes sorry yes sir yes hello what would you do with the people who don't feel like they have a country to be a citizen of excellent so David Lansing what would you do with the people who don't feel that the country to be a citizen of well I think we've the the international community over the over the last 50 60 70 years has tried to set up structures and systems to find a place of refuge for people who have nowhere to go I assume you mean because they physically have nowhere to go rather than because they they think in their minds that they have their there they're not comfortable they are but and you know how is that done that is done by individual countries in the end getting together signing a convention and agreeing to take their responsibility and I think actually coming back to the previous question and the celebration of we should be celebrating liberal elites well yeah at the word we haven't we haven't heard much bellies accountability who are whether it's the tech giants whether it's any of the other that will reach are we accountable to the citizens of the world who are they accountable to as far as I can see ultimately they have to be accountable back into a nation-state somewhere because otherwise it's all out there in the ether and there is no accountability and when people feel there's no accountability that's when the trouble starts so yes by all means of course collaborate I mean I used to be a diplomat I'm not gonna say country shouldn't collaborate with one another you've got to have some accountability rooted somewhere at some point some and what about the people who feel to be not a citizen of any nation how is hell they can be supported in this debate yeah they're desperately I mean I'm so glad that question was right so desperately in search of anywhere if we you know look at the three quarters of a million row hinges who you know until quite recently assumed that they were part of me on our part of Burma and don't want to be accommodated by the Bangladeshis so they're absolutely in a terrible limbo I will say actually that like issues of climate change the other two great issues if you're looking at it with your history professors hat on there are three enormous long-term dominant problems over the next half century century one is the fate of the ecology of the earth the other is the immense and growing distance between the well-off and they're not well-off of the of the world and if we're saying well the well-off nations can actually shut their doors they're just simply that's going to be a kind of unsustainable position and thirdly there is this great tidal wave of migration which is just not you know really going to go away in over over the long term so we'll with it without being too apocalyptic and crying wolf much these are three actually profound upheavals that are going to affect long-term history so the issue of the displace the art rooted the flotsam and jetsam of humanity is profound and it's gonna get more profound as time goes number three I'll be Swift I'd like to dovetail back to the poll that she asked at the beginning and a point that David Landsman made about the intellectualization of work and I think our technology will accelerates inequality in this meritocratic space I think the crisis of brexit was as a result of undignified indecent work okay and one of the perverse outcomes of the brexit votes has been a brain drain of skilled EU migrants and a demand for non EU skilled migrants as a result of those skilled migrants leaving so when we talk about the poll looking around Britain and not wanting to see the other in our communities there's gonna be more non EU migrants as one of the perverse outcomes of the brexit freud's thank you number two over here yeah I have a practical commercial question for David good heart because I really liked your three H's division it was very persuasive but I to me and I'm a 90's kid it sounds very outdated how is the English hand going to compete with the Indian or Malaysian worker who works for less than an hour a day and does not have the same rights guaranteed how are you going to compete commercially and if you can't compete then how is your division of three H's going to function I'll come to you in a second David we're right over against it now but and it kind of start on that first point which was about that again touching I felt on it on the on the economics of these issues that people's labor was not seen as valuable to the and they have reacted in the way that the lady described by going towards this what you would describe as more populist positions but because they're very labor was not valuable to them was degrading totally I think that's quite understandable and it's something we openly need to discuss that's why I was also talking about the role of emotions and and perceptions the economic inequality is incredibly important but how we are treated in the society how your work is valued or devalued has tremendous tremendous importance all of this is not necessarily being discussed enough but I think what we need to be cautious about is when we say populism when we see it as a very innocent entity in itself populism that is when we start to make mistakes it's not true but across Europe except in Hungary and Poland populism has not brought any damage that is not true so going back to David's point I think when we observe the trends the political trends in the last decade more than the last decade what we see is including the far right and the populist rhetoric becoming more and more part of the mainstream and shaping the mainstream and increasing their votes increasing their legitimacy if I that's why I'm very cautious about terms such as moderate or mild nationalism because you might have a mild nationalism but it is to me quite arrogance to assume that well we are far beyond those tribalistic extremist ideologies because we're quite solid here in Europe no place is solid anymore we're living in liquid times so it's not it's not like the West's solid rest of the world is liquid it's not like that at all and it all depends on another financial crisis another huge wave of a refugee crisis and if you you know add to it maybe a populist demagogue you have the perfect recipe for another Oh disaster if we don't address these issues that you have raised if we don't address these economic inequalities and and also the cultural and cognitive inequalities that often Davos elite have refused to address all throughout this time David how do you specific this will be the last answer as well David how do you specifically answer the question of how does how does the the English hand that the toiling English person competes with the mass democracies of India as there's the lady described but presumably China and many other large nations where their labor will be far cheaper yeah I mean this the skilled manual jobs of the industrial here are not going to come back in any significant quantity I mean they were very decent jobs and they gave people status but there is still look at you know more than 80 percent of our economy is in the service sector I mean I know I would include it as a manual job you know being a bus driver it's actually rather a skilled manual job and it's probably harder being a bus driver in in India there are probably more things rushing across the road in front of you but you will all you know you are going to get paid you know 150th of what a bus driver gets paid in London that's just the you know the way the world currently use I mean in India is catching up but it's got a long way to go I mean it's just you know it's great to respect to those those basic jobs that that still essentially are manual which is probably 50% of the jobs in this country but I do think the I mean that the point the gentleman made about anywhere yeah we should celebrate anyways well of course we should and we have been you know because anywheres had dominated our economy in our culture and our society we have been cell where we're now living through a kind of readjustment and some sort of I think legitimate reaction against that domination and the European Union you know is a crystallization in some ways of of anywhere values celebrating openness and autonomy and liberalism and it has been a massive success for the first 50 years of its life it was a huge civilizational success but the truth is since the early nineties it has become too dominated by citizen of the world thinking you know money based post national thinking and I think most of the mistakes that is made in the last 20 years which have contributed to the brexit vote are to do with with that without mentality the the decision to go for a political rather than an economic euro which is which is caused absolutely an absolute mess for the euro eurozone economy in the last 20 years as you know better than anybody I mean the decision to to bring the East European countries in as fast as we did and this was partly a British mistake and then also opening our labor market in 2004 as we did a decision the extraordinary decision to abolish internal borders inside the European Union through Schengen and then whoops we forgot about the external border as it was revealed in the in the refugee crisis which again contributed to the BRICS vote so we have had you know we have had anywhere values running us both domestically and from Europe and we are now seeing I think a legitimate response to that we just have to make sure that it doesn't take extreme forms you know as as it has in parts of Eastern you and indeed in in Turkey Thank You Simon fight so I'm sorry that the time is completely against us are we slightly overrun just one brief summation of this debate by each of you brainy folk I mean a couple of sentences I'm going to start Simon with you I'm gonna end David with you but it must be brief because we're already over time Simon a summation are you pessimistic or optimistic about this debate about citizenship and the nationalism well I'm incredibly optimistic about the fact we were able to have polite disagreements in a liberal democracy here this evening and thank you very much for it I'm pessimistic along with a leaf I so endorse her point about being too complacent about moderate nationalism staying moderate and if it's if it's a quality of being you know it if I'm overintellectualizing instrument okay two things have really happened just in the last two weeks which were extraordinary to me in which were unthinkable have been not produced by fringe 10% parties genre depends memoir has become a best-seller in France and at the party that's going to dominate the right-wing coalition in Italy is devoted to resurrecting the memory of Benito Mussolini that's when moderate nationalism takes us it's time to fight back for citizens of openness and if very briefly pessimistic or optimistic maybe after listening to this debate I don't know which is which you feel more or less optimistic I guess I like Gramsci's approach you know he used to talk about the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the hearts and I think we need both because that is part of the problem isn't it this pendulum back and forth please remember early 2000s there was so much optimism me both in academia and media article after article predicting how we were all going to become one big global village nationalism was gonna disappear religious was gonna religion was going to become redundant and it was the triumph of the liberal order end of ideology end of history you know we've read so many articles in that the direction and now in 2018 it's the exact opposite completes the integration of liberal democracy of the word liberal suddenly became a negative thing from one end we have swung to the other end and we're in this you know wave together so I think we need to step outside this dichotomy let's be half ism stick half of the mystic we have enough reasons to be pessimistic but also we've only talked about how states are going to collaborate I'm not as interested in the collaboration of states but in the collaboration of citizens of civil societies you know the kind of collaboration and solidarity that goes beyond national among women I'm on miner among minorities among youth this is what we need right now so that kind of global solidarity and global sisterhood is something that I passionately believe in Thank You Elie David David just very where the time I'd have been off the Today program by now so David Landsman pessimistic or optimistic about the future of this debate and I'm optimistic we mustn't throw out the baby with the bathwater there are good citizens of Britain there are bad citizens of Britain there are good citizens of world there are bad citizens of the world we've got a look look in the mirror and remember you've got to be accountable to our fellow citizens so we have to make the effort to explain we mustn't treat them stupid David good odd I mean two very quick points well I mean I think the alternative to the kind of moderate nationalism that I've been talking about is not some sort of global version of the European Union it is the kind of extreme nationalism that the the YouTube fear so we you know we have got to hang on to the best things that we've got the other thing that kind of more philosophical final point I'd like to make is I do think that you know if everyone is my brother then sort of nobody is my brother we simply don't have the the come emotional and the financial resources to to spread that we have to we believe everybody believes in the civilized world now in the in the moral equality of all human beings but we don't believe we have the same obligations to all human beings and I think that is sort of the sitter's in the world fallacy I just want to end for a very short quote from Jonathan Franzen who puts his absolute brilliant in the us novelist trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor but in a funny way it keeps the focus on the self on the selfs own moral or spiritual well-being whereas to love a specific person and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own you have to surrender some of your self thank you thank you we all love each other in here that's a good thing thank you your patience thank you - Simon le David and David thank you very much as well for you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 124,622

Keywords: Citizens of the world, Theresa May, Brexit, EU, Europe, Politics, nationalism, Simon Schama, Elif Shafak, David Goodhart, David Landsman, Kamal Ahmed, somewheres, anywheres

Id: NjX8d4WeLSk

Length: 91min 39sec (5499 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 23 2018

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