WHO’S AFRAID OF POPULISM?

[Music] welcome to the first session of the Sunday afternoon of Battle of ideas 2023 I'm Alistar Donalds I'm the associate director at the Academy of ideas and the co-convenor uh of this the Festival this year this session is called who who's afraid of populism and for 20 years we've seen populist upsurge setbacks lots of people perhaps fearful of what populism means some embracing it all sorts of discussions about what it means in terms of the values that it carries and it often raises questions as well of its relationship to democracy some think that uh it's a challenge to democracy others see it as the very essence of a a kind of populist upsurge and a democratic uh intervention so this session is an opportunity to uh explore some of the issues of populism it's not really set up as a black and white debate but just a chance to delve into some of the issues we could ask for example is is it something that's worth embracing does it or is it capable of providing a genuine alternative to some of the politics that we've got today is it too focused on the culture wars at the expense of economic issues is it an ally or a foe of established conservative parties and conservative movement so this these are just some of the issues uh that we might want to look at so let me introduce uh my panel in the order that they're going to speak so on my immediate right we've got David Frost conservative party member of the House of Lords he was Chief negotiator for exiting the European union he left the government in December 2021 rather than support another lockdown which you know indication of some of the tensions in in in this issue and he's [Music] a and he's a former Diplomat a senior fellow at policy exchange and his weekly columns in the Daily Telegraph I think are really not to be missed they're always interesting and raise interesting issues so welcome to you uh David secondly on my far right we'll hear from Sabina Beal she's the chairman of the German liberal Think Tank frck Institute and organizes the Berlin salons including I should say each year partnering with this F esal to host some of our events in Germany she's uh uh the author of off center how uh party her party consensus undermines our democracy and she's the Germany correspondent of spikes uh and I'd very much uh advise you to visit Spite and read some of sabina's Articles especially some of the ones that have looked at the recent emergence of anti-Semitism in in in in Germany which are uh very important articles I think so welcome to you Saina third thirdly far left we'll be hearing from Freddy sers he's the editor in chiefa unheard the fastest growing media platform dedicated challenging mainstream thinking across politics philosophy and culture he presents unheard interview series on YouTube uh is a former Editor in Chief of yugov and is a regular on sort of lots of lots of the broadcast media media welcome to you Freddy fourthly we'll hear from my immediate left Jacob Reynolds he's the head of policy at MCC Brussels an organization that was founded to shake up the Brussels bubble by exploring the challenges facing Europe he's a writer and a commentator spe specializing in culture wars literature and geopolitics he's an associate fellow at the Academy of ideas and finally uh Tim Montgomery he conservative journalist founder of conservative home which he launched as a vehicle to give a voice to Grassroots party members he was also founder of unheard and Center for social justice and he's another face that you'll probably recognize from various appearances in the media so welcome to you can we give them a very warm [Applause] welcome so you probably know the format by now they're going to give short five six minute introductions then we'll come straight out to you and the audience get some questions and points and get a conversation going that way so David your thoughts please great thank you very much uh aliser um there's so much to say on this subject so I will just make a few remarks I suppose um who's afraid of populism uh I'm not sure I like the word populism uh for reasons I'll come on to but I like the thing and how we organize populism because I guess we have to use the word and um what we do with it seems to me the the important question now let's look back first of all over the last 30 years we've been more and more governed by people who think they know best and have tried to remove Choice from politics and as a result the country's got in meshed in a web of international obligations the nation states been run down borders devalued we've allowed central banks to run monetary policy badly so there's vast amounts of debt we've got a terrible version of Net Zero destroying the productive capacity of Western economies and we've got this sort of control freak government that um I I don't just mean the current one I mean generally um intruding on more and more aspects of your own life on the basis of more and more freakish sociological theories and of course we saw the apotheosis of that in in lockdowns so over the last 20 30 years we've got this collectivist system where the government's responsible for more and more uh and yet seems to be able to do less and less so it's not surprising that we have seen the reaction that we have seen in recent years and I certainly think it is the job of everybody who thinks Western Civilization is important and worth preserving to join the reaction against the way we've been governed over the last 30 years and brexit was the first sign of that now that's where we are obviously the people are responsible for this mess uh don't like people pointing it out they don't like people protesting and the word they have chosen to stigmatize the protest movement is populism and it's a way in my view of avoiding debate um stigmatizing things they think they think might be popular but without really having to explain themselves and in my experience when someone describes something as populist is nearly always code for I'm angry that this idea is popular because I disagree with it but I don't want want to admit why or I Can't Tell You Why and so in this context you hear people describing as populist ideas like cutting taxes cutting immigration scrapping the Human Rights Act uh scaling back Net Zero and so on and these are all described as populist because there people are scared of what voters might say if they get a chance to vote on these things uh they're fearful and D trust voters so I think if we describe ourselves as populists we are kind of playing the game of the people who want to stigmatize us we're taking somebody else's label and helping them blame us rather than Point responsibility where it should sit which are the people who are responsible for how we are now governed so in my view we need the thing energy for change that's connected to popular opinion Reviving democracy but we don't need the word and we should instead talk about politics against the consensus politics for radical change politics for ordinary voters something other that puts us in this stigmatized box that means we need to bring genuine Choice back into to politics and just to finish up I think there are two big choices that we face one is the choice between sort of woke progressivism and the genuine return to values that made the West Strong real democracy the nation state free speech border controls family not the latest freakish Theory traditions and history and so on that is one choice and I know which side of that argument I'm on the more difficult one is the choice between a a free economy uh and more more control and I don't agree with those who say the populist sweet spot is left on economics and right on culture I think we've gone far too left already on economics with the huge tax burden regulation huge constraints on personal autonomy and so on we can't build anything we can't generate energy and so on and so forth so if our so-called populist solution is more and more of this and more government control it will fail um I'm not going to support a party that asks me to pay the price of making the country even more socialist economically uh for the sake of getting immigration down so I worry that we're drifting slightly in that direction in my view to finish up the Real Change option in this country is right on culture and right on economics building rebuilding the nation the state doing its core job properly rolling back collectivism cutting tax and spend and crucially freeing up the productive powers of the country and I'm sorry the conservative party at the moment seems reluctant to do that but but I do think in the end it's probably the only vehicle that can do it so I'm going to spend the next year doing everything I can to get the conservative party out of this Frozen hesitant Crouch and arguing for real change instead and I hope persuading the country too thank you okay thank you very much I think you rais a very important issue with the the way that populism is a label that's inherited and chosen by someone else rather than the when nor one actually says I'm a populist so that's maybe something that we can come back to but Saina uh your remarks please okay so who's afraid of populism well I would say probably everyone in the German commentariat and establishment is very afraid of populism um there's a lot of nervousness too about especially the success of the right populist afd which is doing very well not just in polls it's been polling consistently at 20% making it the second strongest party but it's also actually done well in actual elections so we had elections earlier this month in two important Regional regions um Bavaria and H Hessa uh and in both States the afd became the biggest opposition party and um Hess it's the second strongest party and this comes of course as a shock uh to a country which for a long long time was seen as a model country of anti-populist so it was always seen Germany as a bul workk against populism when populist parties began popping up in other countries like the Netherlands France and fact even Britain ukip um there was a lot of Illusions about Germany um just to give you an example just one of many I came across an old essay written in the European political science review uh in 2012 so 11 years ago and the title was why a right-wing populist party emerged in France but not in Germany was a nicely academically written article but of course completely wrong because a year later the afd was founded um there's always a lot of hope that populism would then do away with it itself um mael famously always said the afd is going to fade in 2021 the afd did relatively badly and the general election got only 10 point uh just above 10% and they thought that's it but we know that re reality has caught up with us again uh and I would say populism is stronger than ever and it's here to stay and it's kind of fascinating that whenever the afd um celebrates a special um success there are you know you could fill libraries with articles and commentaries about how terrible the afd is we all know how terrible the afd is you might there might be a good cause for saying that but I think these articles themselves are symptomatic of the problem because these comment commentators just don't seem to understand that people are voting for The afd at least that's what I'd argue not because the they find the party so particularly good but because they find every other party the established parties so very bad um so populism is in fact an indictment um of the failure of the established politics um to address people's concerns and to actually um have a meaningful relationship with with u large sectors of the establishment and the fact that this is the case we can see that also by um the flexibility of populism so the afd might be the most famous populist party in Germany the best known at least probably in Britain but it's certainly not the only populist Movement we have so we have other populist parties in Germany too we had in Bavaria the election I mentioned at the beginning um we had uh another group called fra free voters um it's it's like a like an initiative of Voters which got together also to challenge The Establishment which did very very well they got um nearly 177% together with the afd they're now 30% of the Bavarian voters we have yet another populist party which was established just last week um a left-wing populist party um by a very kind of uh colorful figure of the kind I would call it the kind of stalinist left the equivalent of the French uh Jean luk Mong um her name is Sarah venes she's also announced she's going to shake up the upcoming European EU elections um and again her party um seems to be quite successful uh survey that 25% of the Germans say they could consider voting for her so I think um so I think populism is quite flexible um how do us our establishment react well they always react in the same way they have dire warnings they say we shouldn't support any of these parties that they are a threat to our democracy and by doing that so they are shielding themselves up further I find from the people uh and from the electorate from the people who are voting or thinking of voting for these uh populist parties and by doing so they're actually confirming um the image and actually confirming of um the image of what they actually have become which is uh interest groups groups which represent the interest of certain minorities within our society we can see this very clearly in the kind of identity politics they promote the migration politics they promote and in Germany's case especially in the energy policy which is a complete disaster 70% of the Germans now say they think the exit from nuclear was a big mistake and yet our government is pursuing it with a great support showing that they are isolating themselves more and more so to sum up who's afraid of populists well it's our establishment but they have created the populists and they are making them stronger thank [Applause] you thanks uh Sabina so Freddy your thoughts so just to zoom out for a moment why do we think we are debating populism why after Decades of relative political stability in the past few years have there been so many ructions and so much turbulence across the world from The Establishment point of view this is because nefarious actors certain political individuals have come out and spread all sorts of nonsense which the glibal populace has believed and led them down the Garden Path that is The Narrative of I suppose The Establishment I guess the best way for me to explain my perspective is to tell a little bit of my own story because prior to around about 2016 I was part of said establishment yes I was a true signed up believer in the Centrist blob um I suppose I became radicalized first of all in 2016 and subsequent ly in 2020 um the twin and I think that's probably true of many people in this room the the twin events in 2016 of brexit and Trump I had a strange vantage point to that because I was working at Yuga of the Polster at the time um and so I saw the whole sort of production of evidence around it and actually the polls prior to the brexit referendum we we're showing a very close race it was either 49 51 or 48 52 and yet the the global narrative remained that brexit was never going to happen and it was just the most extraordinary thing to witness that Bankers commentar across the world these are some of the most highly paid Highly Educated people managed through motivated reasoning to completely convince themselves that it was not going to happen even though the evidence was right there in front of them so I really lost confidence in that kind of establishment to just assess the facts in that year and then of course when Trump won uh it was amazing how uninterested American Democrats were in the experience we had just been through in brexit and they not only during the campaign with endless evidence and polls and all sorts of sort of technocratic detail were convinced that it wouldn't happen but then after it happened this this same group of Highly Educated supposedly principal people gave an alternative narrative which was all about Russia and James Comey and various sort of conspiracy theories which managed to avoid the obvious diagnosis which is that these events came out of something not being right in the way the world was run by them fast forward to 2020 this is when I lost my last vestiges of confidence in this establishment because what I witnessed as we were conducting our interviews and trying to understand the Rights and Wrongs of lockdowns and and all the rest of it was a kind of willful ignoring of what ordinary Common Sense would require to be asked as questions and this was more willful and more to my mind dangerous the higher up you went the social scale the most educated people were the most dangerous and it was a really frightening uh thing to realize I'm just a couple of examples don't know if you remember the Omicron wave this was a every we were we were told to get very excited about this this happened all the way in the end of 2021 into 2022 lots of people were trying to get lockdowns back on the evidence of the Omicron wave this was it was in South Africa and basically everybody in South Africa had it and nobody was dying of it but according to the extremely well educated and clever journalists in places like the financial times this was absolutely not evidence for anything and were it to come to these Shores it would still potentially be incredibly dangerous I remember having a a long discussion with one of those FG journalists and just the the kind of elaborate rationale that they he managed to construct to reach this completely illogical conclusion just was proof to me that yeah that that with position in the establishment with the tools of Education comes the ability to delude yourself so actually if the def one definition of populist might be whether it's left or right representing a kind of gruff Common Sense against received wisdom I certainly in the past few years have a lot greater respect for Gruff common sense and the people who carry it and I have greatly diminished respect for the establishment so that's my opening position thanks Jacob yeah so I should apologize I wasn't going to open with Donald Trump but something that David said in saying that uh populism is a word that's so derided maybe we should avoid it I could only think of how after years of people being smeared as uneducated voters the brilliant rejoinder of Donald Trump was to say I love the uneducated and similarly populist might be split but I love populism and the reason I'll explain is because I've always found it very very strange that people in my generation are so instinctively anti-populist because the three kind of central political experiences uh of my life have given I think more than enough uh suggestion that populism is vital and necessary the global financial crisis of 20078 revealed that our economic Elites are both clueless and dangerous the brexit referendum and the subsequent war on Democracy revealed that our political Elites are desperately out of touch and contemptuous of ordinary people and the ever intensifying culture wars uh demonstrate Beyond any doubt that our cultural elit are determined to wage a war on all the values held dear by Ordinary People and to colonize our most private space Earth spaces and as if to kind of demonstrate in a way we saw in Ukraine how ordinary people from all walks of life and Against All Odds and amidst a corrupt often system uh can unite and do incredible things and so in other words we see with perhaps unrivaled Clarity that the major problem of our times is our Elites and that a wholesale Revolt of the masses is both necessary and possible to put politics back on a correct course this in a nutshell is the case for populism but populism remains much derided and this is true I think interestingly both on the side uh of the elites and also many of those who are kind of seem to be set against them you can hear cases against populism both from conservative intellectuals and from Davos man so I wish to contest three ideas that represent if you like like the case against populism the first is that populism is not a political alternative the second is that populism is kind of irrational or doesn't make sense and the third is that populism is over so those who say that populism is not an alternative these people are often sometimes sympathetic to populism they agree that our Elites are hopeless and dangerous they agree that power should be returned to the people and they agree that the identity obsessions of our Institution are damaging but their problem with populism is it it doesn't conform to anything that they read about in their political science textbooks they these people usually academics usually from the traditional left um populists don't have party organizations they don't make alternative institutions they rarely have plans and programs and when like Boris or Trump did they found themselves in power they don't seem to know how to exercise it or for what ends so for our kind of academic perfectionists this is unforgivable because historic opport OPP unities were squandered and so populism practically and intellectually is a dead end it's no alternative and indeed I mean that we we hand it to these critics populists like those in Greece under CA or Boris under lockdown ended up being the most effective implementat of the status quo I started with this critique because it is somewhat compelling but it is wrong and it's wrong in the simple sense that it's like criticizing an egg for not yet being a chicken or an acorn for not yet being an oak tree sure populism doesn't represent the final picture it's not kind of the final determinative Judgment of History it doesn't conform to plans and programs laid out in academic textbooks but each and every populist eruption is the necessary first step to shaking out of the confines of Our Moment those who would criticize populists for being incomplete or incompetent those people seem very happy to sit on the sidelines and criticize populist by contrast thrust elves into the political moment you can't criticize the embryo of populism for not being a full person that's our job our Char the second criticism that populism is irrational which probably very familiar to us from our Elites populists they say are demagogues they're purveyors of fake news and fake promises they claim to represent the people but people are diverse there's no true it's single people to represent and Elites no no they they're just guys like you and me right they might be a bit more powerful and maybe have a higher I you but they're not essentially a kind of separate class well this criticism betrays its hatred of the masses and its hatred of democracy if there is no answer to the question what do people want well then there's no democracy contrary to anti-populist Elites democracy just is that process of working out what we're going to do messy angry sometimes contradictory often but that's kind of how I like my democracy those stuck in the past era of technocracy and consensus can't understand that there'd be anything like a big conflict of values or ideas or a conflict between Elites and people they don't understand how politics rests on competing claims to represent people and they don't understand that the question who rules and why that's the essence of democracy the third and final criticism and with which I'll end is that populism is dead and that can seem appealing on a cold Tuesday when you reflect on how EU technocrats like Donald Tusk come to power in Poland or how Boris slouched off defeated or what have you but you only need to cast your eye around to see this is not true farmers parties across Europe threaten to overturn traditional parties the afd as Saina said May sweeped bar in Germany that Heartland of the stodgy consensus Trump speaks to packed out crowds in forgotten cities Across America UL cameras are destroyed heat pumps are laughed at and in the wake of Terror sympathizing protests in Europe voters no longer longer have to whisper that true populist calling card there's been too much immigration too much multiculturalism too much diversity and we can only expect more the revolt against Net Zero is growing the tables have turned against Council culture and the wards against the p and against the family are being contested so populism is not dead it's only getting started and I'll be lending my energy to it and so should [Applause] you [Applause] okay a call to Arms um Tim uh who's afraid of um populism uh we've already had a few answers to that question from my fellow panelists and I think we could say vested interests uh accumulated vested interests at the heart of the state or the heart of economies they're afraid of populism I think Elites are often mentioned but drawing a few things a few strings together what already been said one of the things that may one of the groups that may be against populism are the educated that's something that uh sort of flowing through what we've heard particularly from what Freddy's just said and my brief contribution I think is going to say perhaps we shouldn't refer to them as the educated but the miseducated and we know from people like canes we are often the slaves to outdated inaccurate uh mispro ideologies and I if you do anything after today and I would encourage you because I'm only able to speak briefly go and look up The Works of Michael Novak a Catholic Theologian who had more influence on me than any other uh thinker in my life and his contribution was really simple but incredibly profound rather than leaving in a world which is essentially what every social science every political ideology believes that there is a choice between the market and the state and that's nearly how all of our debates are divided up think actually of the world as a world where there is a balance to be struck between an economic Market sphere of entrepreneurial capitalist wealth creating entities a world of State Vehicles tax welfare state provision of Public Services but then there's this other sphere the moral cultural sphere where the family exists where Community lives where people freely choose to cooperate with one another who live the sort of lives that you want to be remembered in your eulogy as David Brooks once wrote rather than the sort of values that would be uh characterized on your resume your CV that moral cultural sphere of social legal voluntary uh mechanisms all of our political parties all of our ideologies basically completely forget that sphere of life our sphere and our debates are dominated by focus on the state the power of the state and the power of the market and David would quarrel slightly with this because um it's a a simplification but you could have have the left always chling the state and you have the right always chling the market I think David would probably wish that was more the case and there's plenty of status championing on the right but in that failure I think for anyone to Champ in the moral cultural sphere we have essentially the roots of why it's not just in Britain not just in Germany not just in small parts of the west but the West has stopped working the West has stopped working because it only sees Solutions coming from the state and the market when actually the tender 3D personal Community or civilizational care is actually comes from voluntary organizations that we're born to from family to State and until somehow we go from a world where political parties political movement seed us essentially as individuals either as individuals that the state recognizes as taxpayers or benefit claimants or National Insurance numbers or the market sees us as consumers or uh workers or investors to actually a world where we are seen as neighbors Faith me members of Faith communities brothers sisters volunteers active citizens uh until we get get to that world there is something fundamentally flawed in our whole model and populism will rise and rise and Rise because the state and the market cannot scratch where we itch most they cannot provide the 3D care that we all need that recognizes as peoples rather than as um States or Market subjects and I don't think we even close to beginning to address that question but until we do we are lost [Applause] okay thanks to everyone that's so much in five contributions and I think there's a lot to unpick in this discussion I mean whether we're nervous uh about the label uh David or or whether we embrace it uh how we make it be something Beyond uh the bloody nose that you describes to being the bloody giving a bloody nose go to The Establishment I mean is that enough uh I personally think that you know there's a question in it here as to are we being too Blas about some of the ideas of populists but some of them are not particularly uh worth embracing to my mind but someone might want to raise uh some questions about that and and I thought Freddy's uh wisdom of the masses point and and kind of how we should take account of that was very useful but it's over to you now you're free free to raise anything you want and it's perfectly okay actually to have a quarrel on the panel as well uh Tim so let's not worry about that so I'm just despite the whitewash of mainstream media how can we continue to support the first pass the post when the only two viable Front Runners are both lame David acts from from together um so this is a little bit off off the subject but I'd be really interested to hear what the panel thinks about uh the connection between the kind of anti-populist move and this idea that there's a Perma crisis and that the elite are now governing through succession of Crisis um and I think there I think there's there is definitely something in that because in both cases if it's the kind of the populist sneer that says that the electorate are too stupid to govern things for themselves um or it's the permac crisis idea that it's a crisis so we're going to uh suspend Democratic relations with with the people as happened during lockdown um and govern you know by decree because it's an emergency I think there's a there's a connection there I'd be very interested to hear what the panel think about that yes lots of people talked about a left-wing populist moment when Corbin was leader of the labor party and the kind of Glen moment Etc given what we've seen in the last two weeks how would you now characterize the social movement that seems to maybe have come out of that moment is education a kind of brainwashing then because if education has got so many problems and for example I'd give that I'm I am indian born under British India and I am constantly told that I have to hate the East India Company and I don't hate it who do we think the elite are um increasingly there seems to be evidence emerging that it's not the politicians per se it's the Civil Service who seem to want to frustrate what the government wants to do all the time I wonder if Lord Frost might have something to say about that thank you my question is like all the retoric about populism has been ra positive and I think populism is positive but there's also you know history Nazi Germany so our question is how do we know that populism isn't turning ugly into what obviously for history it has been okay should we start there Saina do you want to say anything on that President I I knew that uh that was going to come well I mean I think that's really quite an interesting question because we've always heard about the dangers of of populism and of the right populist afd and um you know Germany is a country which has been very much involved in this kind of culture of atonement our politicians have used every opportunity to say um sorry for the past and at the same time in the last years I've always used that opportunity to also have a go at the against the populist so you w won't find any kind of speech in these last years which doesn't also warn you of the dangers of the afd and now we suddenly have a situation where we see people demonstrating on our streets in Germany again um demanding the um end of Israel and and the death of Jews and we see that these are not the afd people we see that a lot of them are and I have to say it unfortunately are uh uh um you know that's that's kind of like immigrants Muslim immigrants in in in certain city areas this is putting them under a great is it's a great embarrassment I think for our establishment but it shows to say that they've always been telling us that the danger comes from the side of the people when in fact we're now seeing that the danger comes from quite a different side it comes from a certain immigrant group and it also comes from the left which has been supporting um the Palestinian cause in a very negative way supporting Hamas and it it just proved to our our establishment um you know hasn't realized or hasn't hasn't wanted to see any of these problems they've actually strengthened strengthened these groups so I think that whole talk of anti-fascism is um a load of nonsense to be honest and if you want to have a a real opposition against right-wing thinking I do think we have to strengthen the population and I could say something about brexit because I think that one of the most wonderful expressions of populism I found was actually the brexit vote and it's kind of interesting that you have this um expression of populism and it coming from a country which has been much much more open I find to free speech than Germany has so Germany has always had these kind of controls on open uh uh Speech we've never been allowed to have any kind of referendum in the way you've had it here in Britain um and I and I think that kind of you know that that kind of Narrows the scope of of debates and as soon as we open the scope of debates I do think it's a very very positive thing okay David I mean answer the question on the elite if you want but perhaps a a a sister question to that is what is the relationship between the conservative party and the wider mass of society because it does seem to me that if if one of the things that you're you want to build is support for cultural conservatism then the perfect opportunity has existed to do that over the past four or five years since since brexit but the conservative party is you know you argue back against me if you want but has consistently refused to fight the culture wars and consistently I suppose refused to embrace uh the mass of the population and and bring that in and help it fight the culture of War so kind of how does that relationship work yeah so um they are kind of connected the two questions I guess um I don't think I don't take the view that the civil service is kind of inherently a Blocker on what um conserv governments I guess are trying to do I'm sure there are I mean there definitely are a small number of people within the Civil Service who like to block these things and I I when I was a minister I used to have a senior civil servant who every time I suggested we didn't agree with the French or the commission on something would sit there and look at me like I was some jeng genis Khan some sort of Barbarian um but I do think that it's a small minority I think the civil service is obviously sort of grown to be culturally Center leftist because Society has grown to be culturally Center leftist very broadly I think the problem we've got in government is that the mechanisms for ministers to exert control are out of date they're still basically the mechanisms of the Victorian era ministers don't have control over their staff they don't have control over their budgets they don't have abil the ability to get things done in the way they should and I think government reform and change the ability to bring people in and out um would make a big difference here so I don't think you've got to dismantle the entire civil service to deliver the kind of politics I want you just got to be serious about making sure the government is in charge of the government um on your on the conservative party point I I agree I think you know the conservative party has drifted over the last 20 plus years I suppose um you know so that there's kind of no opinion I think that cannot be found somewhere within the modern conservative party and that's the the root of the the difficulty um we we don't have a coherent view on culture we don't have a coherent view on economics there are in the Parliamentary party people on the left who probably shouldn't be in the party at all uh in my view um we need to kind of centered down on meaningful conservatism and then activists and others will come back to the party we've just not been serious that's basically the problem okay we can come back to some of these issues Jacob I mean pick up on anything you want but the educa it's of this education brainwashing point is is often thrown around but presumably you're more in agreement with uh given what You' said in your opening REM marks perhaps more agreement with Freddy about the wisdom of the masses um yeah I I'll come to education just a sec cuz I wanted to pick up this idea of the the Perma crisis cuz it gets lots of fellow populists as it were banding this ter around and I see it slightly differently and it reveals something interesting I think that our Elites like talking that we live in an age of Crisis or a permac crisis and that's not I think to justify a state of acception or government by crisis it's more it's the form that there is no alternative takes nowadays to say oh we got all these crisis there's an energy crisis a crisis of this crisis of the economy it's oh what can we do there's nothing to be done and the reason why I think that's revealing is cuz it demonstrates the degree to which there's a massive void at the heart of our political institutions lay themselves don't know what to do with any of the power that's been um entrusted to them this was uh in a weird way this was illustrated by the otherwise really fical uh uh the the the so-call interaction of the capital where these protesters stormed what was supposedly the seat of US government and they found just these like politicians kind of hiding under the table like that these were not this is not really where kind of power is at and instead populists I think would do much better to kind of return to some of the places where we do actually exercise power we should kick politicians out of our families we should kick them out of our like private lives we should reclaim education parents should get more involved in uh on to the education Point parents should spend more time thinking about what their kids are being taught and demanding as some people have begun to do to see the curriculums to expose the ridiculous kind of gender nonsense that people are Tau cuz to the point is kind of right there is so much um there is so much propaganda there and so I think that's the kind of task for populist is to realize that the peculiar crisis of our time is that the politicians themselves the seats of power nobody has any idea what to do or how to exercise power and it's up to us to start answering those questions kind of at the ground level first that's our task okay Tim anything that you want to pick up out on out of that round of questions um what David talks about the um different sort of breadth of opinion inside the conservative party one of the favorite games I play with conservatives at the moment is which three Tory Ms would you most like to kick out of the party and people get very enthusiastic playing it Caroline noes is nearly always mentioned at the top of the list um but there is this problem I think I think in what David says sort of um I don't think don't this characterize it throw away moment but there is this problem is that the main two parties partly because of the first part of the post system which I've always supported um they very flexible in their views at the moment and it's very hard therefore to hold them accountable um for anything and it means and I think it's a really dangerous moment when you have parties that are so broad they're basically there's a professional politician who's sort of taken over politics they they live by opinion polls they've basically come from the same walks of life and they're not really got the hint land of the postwar generation have come from very diverse backgrounds and it's a real problem because there's not much there to be honest and it means that uh they will for a for a year or two pay lip service to something that really is on a nation's Consciousness but they don't they're not really you know immersed in it themselves somehow and as a sort of if it was a sort of a long-term listening to a public opinion maybe it would work but it's like a shortterm uh listening that's sort of Knocked around by the kind of media that the gentleman over there we're talking about the Perma crisis the the latest thing dominates and so we're in a terrible position really where the conservative party that if it had at all reflected on the lessons of brexit would have controlled immigration but we now have higher levels of immigration in Britain now than under the Blair years and that what somehow we need is a single-mindedness and a a rootedness in our politicians that just is absent Fredy pick up on anything you want but one thing I I I wanted to ask you about was that the question on the shakeup of the electoral system and whether that might prove a promising route because I always I look at the the sort of proportional representation uh uh systems on offer in Europe and almost think there's a kind of everything just seems to then merge in a sort of modg in the middle because there's so many compromises go go go on but in Britain where there has been such a historically dominant two-party system is there something to be said for that idea just as a means of almost breaking the Log Jam and getting I don't know if if we want it then the sort of leftwing populism that's was put forward at the back uh I am actually a convert to proportional representation some in some form I I think it I think it will um uh although I don't think it will be a silver bullet it will present yeah as you say many of similar problems but I want to come back to that I think we need to give David Frost a bit of a harder time on this um panel because we've been talking about Reit a little bit um I think sine referred to as the golden example of populism in action um nobody seems very happy with how it's gone uh you know we recently did an opinion poll unheard and it by our evidence 600 31 out of 632 constituencies in Great Britain now regret brexit so this wonderful populist moment where the majority having their will against the elites exactly as we've been talking about as we want happened and it hasn't gone very well the the true believing brexiteers will say rather like the marxists do about communism that it hasn't been done properly um hasn't been tried properly and we need to enact it better and meanwhile the remainers are smugly saying that they were right all along and it didn't work out so what lesson can we draw from that I think you actually get a really important generalizable lesson from what happened in brexit which is that these kind of populist forces are quite often carried by groups of people who can't actually enact the policies they want to do quite often they're not up to it and therefore the ideal scenario actually having spoken in favor of populism the ideal scenario is that when these forces arrive on the left or the right wherever they're from the center The Establishment The Blob whatever we're calling it if it is wise needs to listen to it and adapt and try to implement in a practical way what it sees the people are expressing through these populist forces otherwise you get what we had in brexit which is where the establishment thwarts it and almost gleefully wants it to fail and the kind of rag tag of of True Believers couldn't even agree what it meant and did not manage to executed in a way that any of them seem to find satisfactory so I think paradoxically even though yes we're in favor of listening to those populist voices when they emerge in a well-functioning democracy actually you don't want as Jacob said the wholesale Revolt of the masses normally that ends badly what you want is the establishment to actually listen and to adapt the example I think is if we're looking for an example of where this has worked you can look at Denmark um I'm half Swedish Denmark is actually this tiny quite successful country they had these social Democrats who've been in charge for quite a long time pretty straightforward center-left party and they were booted out of power there was a lot of populism there were the Danish people party saying they wanted less immigration they were quite hardcore on immigration social Democrats listened changed their policy became basically quite anti-immigration and have been in power ever since so there there are mechanisms if the if the if the centrists and the establishment are wiser they can still win by listening to the populist instead of handing over to them David I'll let you come back and reply to Freddy in in the when we come back in the next round of questions but um there's someone with a microphone at the back well I think we should go much further than what Freddy's suggesting which is just and just is very important to put enormous pressure on MPS and the establishment and local authorities and that's why together that's been our core plan over the last two years and to encourage as much of the public We the People the gruff common sense that you talk about Freddy very important Thomas Payne reminded us about it didn't he in common sense uh the transformatory role of uh the masses actually challenging uh authoritarianism and creating a new Democratic Republic that gave that to the world uh and actually it's the only way you keep honesty you have the uh masses with all the problems that can arise with that it's messy insisting on the Democratic moment and that is the thing that we have lacking now we have a contempt uh for uh the public and to David's point I think that manifests itself in in the question about the economy should it either be the state or should it be all private and I think that also reflects a sense of uh anti-humanism we can do big large scale things we can have huge productivity wealth creation for all and we can actually intervene in the state we can exercise our judgment and the way we get to do these things is we bring our friends and our neighbors and the people that we love they're not gammons we don't have contempt for them Tim's point and we get us to make these decisions we get us to work it out we bring ourselves at the center of politics and not rely on the old parties create some things new it's going to take some time but we should do it together and anyone who's interested should get involved come and see us at the together together desk we'd love to have you involved this is a project for everyone together oh hi yes I'm going to address what Freddy said as well I mean it's difficult to disagree with any of you because you're all such good speakers but um Freddy yeah I think I forgotten how I was going to begin now but I think um it was along the lines of you say that brexit's failed and I agree with you it hasn't turned out like anybody would have wanted uh whatever side they were on I don't think well apart from the really smug ones um did I vote for it yes I did um do I regret voting for it no I don't and I still don't regret voting why why because it exposed the soft and nasty underbelly of our establishment and I think we needed to see it and yes I think we need to actually develop some way of making the establishment sit up and take notice of it and take us seriously instead of just dismissing us all the time as they keep doing I think I sorry I forgot how I was going to begin was that I think the conservative party did try to do what you were suggesting in that they did try to listen to the people and pretend to go along with it I just don't think that anybody was really convinced yeah same question for Tim and Lord Frost there's been a lot of talk about the conservatives need to kind of refined their identity how well do you think a period in opposition is needed to almost kind of refind that conservatism and get some agreed policies that all the party can get behind so I think there seems to be have been a lot of wishful thinking on behalf of the panel and how we should integrate populism into the current structures of existing political parties and how they should sort of um adapt themselves to to promote the views of of this popular majority right but um as has been said in the in the past few years we've seen populism sort of failing I mean you've only got to look at the response that this country has had to brexit you you can only look at you know Italy with Georgia Maloney so having said this my question is what does the panel think the future of populism looks like especially in um party competition politics um I come from Scotland and in my country my uh government has um introduced policies that nobody asks for so um the hate crime bill um criminalizing people for speaking in their own homes of of maybe controversial ideas they've been criminalized for that um if you smack your child um you are a criminal and um the gender recognition act um I can tell you that in each of these the government put out a consultation to the public and uh every time the majority the vast majority said no but they ignored it so therefore what we've got is a government uh which basically doesn't really care about what the people think uh but is just there to tell them what they should think it seems to me that you LW and the the panel are actually wanting populism to prop up parliamentary democracy that is what you want you want uh the public to force the politicians to to make their system good to make parliamentary democracy go on you know to to when when an actual fact you don't really want the parliament democracy is dead basically uh Elites are not going to listen to the people so you know what's your response to that I mean do you want populism just to reenact the old system again or should it be for something new should we we not bother about parliamentary democracy anymore with respect to Tim's opening speech is populism then just a sort of a means for people to vent their frustration and then when they finally take power they'll figure out whatever populism really means then um as you know whatever comes next hi um I'd like to see the panel differentiate between populism a bit more as far as I see I'm interested the panel agrees you get two types of populism you get ideological populism such as Donald Trump pushing all these slogans but never actually stopping illegal immigration or Johnson and brexit although I think we were being a bit hard to Lord Frost I think there were a lot of obstacles in the way of trying to get the perfect brexit deal and then you see people like for those following Canadian politics people like Pierre POV putting practical policies forward but doing it in ideological language or Georgia Maloney who stood on quite strong ideological language and actually been quite a moderate Center Right leader since she got into power so do the panel agree that there is a differentiation between ideological and pragmatic populism and if so which kind of populism would the panel rather see Freddy anything that you want to pick up on out of that lot I'm actually going to let Tim go first go on then he's neatly passed the ball there Tim well I'll try and wrap up some of what's been said in and partly the disputes between David and Freddy on whatever happened to brexit lots of us voted for brexit for all sorts of different reasons um I voted for brexit fundamentally because I wanted my country to decide its own laws I'm not entirely sure that was the majority of Hawaii people voted for brexit people were voting for a variety of reason but a lot of it was anger at the status quo and they wanted change in the way they were governed full stop and they didn't just want the same sort of thing happening at Westminster and I think the conservative failure and the gentleman who asked you know should the conservative want a period of opposition well we may not want it we're about to get it whenever we may think it's coming very quickly at us is you want it I I want it yeah because I think the Kaza party needs to be fundamentally rebuked for failing to do what it said it would do wow new story news story alert founder of conservative home one stories to lose election I've said it many times before um Freddy but thanks for paying attention um set up a website and they don't even listen to my own views um but you know what should have happened um when after brexit was we should have done a whole range of things like we should have built homes for people who didn't have them and we should have made the proximity to the extended family the key Criterion decision so that we were brought people back together in a social sense back to what I began with we should have decided that sending far too many people to University learning things that are basically anical to Western civiliz while not educating people in The Vocational skills we needed which meant that we had to you know import huge numbers of people unsettling the fabric of our country none of this made sense we didn't control immigration we didn't invest in vocational education on the scale we needed we didn't build homes and allocate them according to we just basically failed comprehensively to understand that desire for revolutionary change coming from voters and that's why we deserve to lose but that's what we need to regroup around in opposition okay give it give them wrong on this I'm going to come to you David and you know you can respond to anyone that's been having a pop at you that you want on brexit look um brexit is I mean in a way it's incredible we're still debating it uh what what brexit was about was fundamentally a constitutional project it was about do we govern ourselves in this country or are part of our laws set outside this country that was the kind of fundamental choice that was before people at the referendum and we settled it and a a self-governing nation state is the norm everywhere else in the world only in Europe do we think that this is something that we need to be constantly kind of talking about and the nation stays unable to deal with its own problems the sooner we can put ourselves behind it uh that's behind us the better it is a great pity that the government and you know the opposition is not um telling people a bit more clearly certainly from the government's point of view that that brexit is not failing they're allowing it to get established that brexit is failing when it is not we have taken back control back in the country constitutionally Britain has been the fastest growing big European economy in 21 and 22 we've T changed the entire economic model of the country in the last two three years and you can't even see it in the growth figures you know this we really need to have a bit more confidence about what has been done now I agree with Tim that brexit was also about change brexit was a gate to go through to give us the powers to run the country in a better way and we have not tapped into that feeling of change um the mainstream has got back in control and we have gone about things far too tentatively but that's not a problem of the brexit project it's a problem of the the people who are in control at the the moment and that's why it's so important to keep up the pressure but don't go back go forward that's how we're going to succeed Jacob yeah I feel like I have to challenge this uh well is not just a not just the things we've heard but a growing mood where people think that the there's this kind of soft Nostalgia for a time where uh the people the populism is like a kind of release valve where oh there's a little bit of dis there's like a little bit of anger disenchantment then the politicians come back and listen and they don't out a few immigration reforms here or a few benefit Cuts there and it's it's like this kind of nostalgia for almost a kind of Social Democratic period where instead of genuine workingclass radicalism you just had like a negotiated wage rise here or there was a kind of new project over there or you kept a Factory open here and that this I mean not only is was is this kind of deathly conformist but it's is also as was proved in in that period it's a dead end and more to that point we have to recognize that there's no kind of sensible Center coming to save us right not only do those sensible like the not they don't exist but if they did exist they're incompetent if they did exist they hate you and if they did exist they will deceive you so we have there is little alternative for us other than to affect a wholesale change of the political institutions which was started with brexit and is as everyone has noted incomplete and the what one thing I will say about brexit is we can debate the economics we can debate the kind of the other Ambitions that are embod it we can debate immigration all the rest of it but I spend this might be too impressionistic for you but I spend a lot of my time now in Europe all across Europe and I just tell you the air feels different in Britain because of brexit like people are in this room here in a way that feel free to speak that just doesn't happen in lots of European countries the main benefit of brexit is it showed people that it was possible to stick two fingers up to the establishment and to begin to Take Back Control and that that doesn't go away P so since since it was um me who mentioned brexit I want to tell you there's a famous German writer called Hans Magnus ensenberger he wrote a very nice book about um the EU it's called um the soft monster Brussels and he wrote in it that it is very hard to convince people who are used to democracy that they're not able to take control over their own laws their own borders and that's why I thought brexit was such a wonderful example because that's exactly what I how I understood what it was about taking back control it was a nice slogan it's not directed against immigrants it's not you know it's it's is a very positive expression and I can tell you there is a bit of Envy in Germany that you were allowed to do this because the Germans are the only people uh the only country in Europe which has never ever been able to have any vote at all any referendum at all on anything to do with the EU so our uh late Chancellor Cole famously said when he introduced the Euro he said I acted as a dictator because he knew exactly had there been a popular vote Germans would not have agreed to it so and yet the Germans have to live with the consequences so I think this is a really really important point to make um I don't agree with the point back there that popular uh populism has failed I don't think so at all because populism has opened up the debate has made our countries uh M much more exciting I I kind of went back as a preparation for this talk to a book which I even Kev wrote I think he was here as a speaker and it was called uh democracy disrupted a very good book which he wrote about 10 years ago and in it he said that our European Democracies suffer um from a um a lack of stakes he says you people are getting really really bored with democracy there's nothing to vote about at all and that's why we have such low turnouts in elections well that's certainly changed I mean one thing populism has done is has gotten people out into the voting booths and onto the streets and talking about politics and Alternatives not only given our establishment a bloody nose but it's actually also raised the topics we need to talk about so I would say no it hasn't failed at all it's it's actually a wonderful thing yes so I'm coming back to Freddy now and then I'm coming back out to you again so yes so where this is actually really relevant we're going have a en election in the next probably 12 months and there is this big debate raging within the conservative party as to how populist they should be uh by report Rishi sunak is about to unveil a whole load of kind of anti-et zero measures that he considers to be kind of red meat to the right of the party and it's going to make him feel more populist and do better probably they're not they have no chance and they're not going to win anyway but that is the discussion and I guess I want to just Express skepticism about this sort of purely 100% gung-ho attitude to the Revolutionary fervor because there's no evidence that a political party in the UK can win a general election on what is perceived to be a kind of extreme platform we are a very moderate people and historically that's why we don't have revolutions like as as often as they do in Continental Europe that is surely true and I I I guess if David Frost had his way or Liz truss or even soar braan or pretty Patel and suddenly there was this robust conservative platform put to the PO population do they really think that will win at the moment you've got K sta the absolute opposite of anything populist if you took a sort of hologram inversion of populism you'd get K stama and he's currently on you know what is it 60% or something in the PSE he's headed for a huge Victory so I think the the the SE secret surely is to listen to the that energy make policies that people can then sell to themselves as reasonable there was a great example of it recently with this business of the European Court of Human Rights and whether the UK should leave it or not when you hear it from suel Bran's lips it sounds like this cruel mean thing oh we're going to we don't believe in human rights it's what we don't want to be that kind of country and people will recoil from it we had Lord sumption into unheard the other day his account is a very different one unbelievably reasonable sounding where the stasbor court is overreaching and in fact we're pro human rights but we don't like the court listen to The Assumption I think they would vote for it so my pitch is absorb that populous energy and then translate it into something that sounds reasonable to your normal non-political person and that's where Victory will lie okay so we're going to get some more questions so populism really relies on successful communication and Lord Frost was just saying that oh the panel was saying well brexit has been seen as a failure but I somehow feel that it actually has been a success it has G us given us our own um political life and I feel that even Lord Frost has not really communicated how well or how successful brexit has been and the conservative party has failed in that explosion in fact I have no idea what the conservative party stands for today except what the focus group probably said last night so I I just think we need a clear identity and direction for the whole country and that's what Margaret thater was really good at giving direction whether you liked it or not so um you say that when populists get into power then they don't know what to do about it so apart from say Denmark so slight change my question can you name one party or one non-populist party that's got into power and been on unqualified success thanks very much I find it really interesting and really refreshing I think it was Jacob said that he's all for populism um and as di fruss said is so often used as a term of derision um but I I think I'm quite excited as well I I voted rexit I think it's the best thing we ever did I think it was a necessary First Step but I also think we need to keep on WE Pol politics is too important to be left to politicians and I'm going to do a Shameless plug just like Alan Miller I'm part of a group called politics in pubs so we're encouraging people just to meet locally in their area and we we are finding a real appetite from people who want to talk about politics we haven't finished it we haven't got it all worked out but that's the start and that's the exciting bit I think okay at the back hello hello um just thank the panel um I uh the issue of populism has been on my mind since 2016 and I generated a slogan as far back as then which I hope um will find favor with Saina which is that populism is politics and I hope that crystallizes the issue I've I I just registered a website populism is politics you can find it on wig site as you speaking hi yeah if I can just preface my remarks by saying I think I was one of the last people to be out pushing Pro brexit Le through letter boxes at 10:00 in the night before the referendum maybe I made the difference I don't know um but I I arrived just a little bit late so I don't know whether this this debate started with a definition of popularism a simple definition of what it is because uh it strikes me that too too much of our politics now is about labels popularism progressivism and then then the the the V do curse words bigot hate all these things uh but if populism just means a a widespread Grassroots set of opinions and and beliefs that take organizational form there's actually nothing new about that I mean that that's that's where the labor party came from arguably it's what the conservative party did with itself way back in the 1870s when Israeli uh passed to the Reform Act nothing nothing new new new about that at all the difference now as as Freddy said is that we've got a a ruling Elite who are unable to to to to cope with that and and and and change things so perhaps I could just finish by quoting a bit of graffiti from 50 years ago on the wall of my students union in University College London as which said which said the upper crust is made up of crumbs that stick together okay yes hi um there used to be an intellectual training for public figures and that used to be the classics and the classics has an idea of Inu which is an adversarial put both sides of the argument but during the pandemic no politicians stood up and made the case for informed consent you don't get any politicians saying the days of the NHS are over you don't get anybody saying the war in Ukraine must stop and we can't fund it anymore that's the problem in politics why can't we hear both sides of every argument okay we're going to leave the room in a minute and I actually still don't know exactly what populism is I've heard if if my gut feel is that it's something like culturally and economically right wing that seem like as Lord Frost said something like that or it's the rough Common Sense thing that Freddy said which may or may not be culturally economically right-wing we had a question over here was is was momentum actually populist because now we've seen the consequences of Corbin ISM in the kind of you know Jihadi stuff that's been going on so is that is that now by definition not populist is populism like does it have to be a simple majority if 51% of the populists thinks a certain way is that populism lockdowns were seen as you anti-lockdown ism is seen as populist but lots of people most people actually seem to support lockdowns so yeah where do we stand on that and even with this the Israel Palestine stuff people people you know opposing the war know the isra you know like war in Gaza like isn't that also you know that's people expressing their opinions Against The Establishment the government is not supporting um you know the idea of Hamas so if people are supporting himass is that populism I don't understand like the exact definition okay so maybe someone can just respond to that quickly actually happily the the populism has always an everywhere been a revolt against the elites colonization of Our Lives that's the fundamental essence of populism whether it's a revolt against the colonization of Family Life by the state and the social sector whether it's a revolt against the colonization of Education by indoctrination whether it's a revolt against the economy being colonized by managerialism and the oboss whether it's a revolt against the justice system being colonized by a foreign Court whatever it is is when Ordinary People decide we our lives are subject to something that we don't control and we've had enough of it that's populism for you okay I mean we can you know dispute this but uh I think that's a reasonable a reasonable comeback I mean I I I think the thing is not to get too hung up on definitions I mean the whole thing about populism is that it's largely being defined by those who oppose it rather than uh being asserted by those who in some way would think of themselves as populists and that's one of perhaps one of the things that populism needs to deal with in the coming period is how it is that uh identity is given to those who want to be populists yeah brexit's come up a number of times and uh it was a divisive issue it still seems to be divisive as to whether it's actually worked or not but it was an example of a popular sentiment being fulfilled as it were however none of the current parties including the smaller ones have expressed any appetite whatsoever for any referendum um should they would referenda uh Lance the populist boil or would it merely encourage it to Fester I take Freddy to task because he knows like at allim owners the cost of everything and the value of nothing I voted for brexit to take back control of the country sadly the conservative party have left me I didn't leave it because they fail in that opportunity and like you said I want them to be demolished the next election and to rebuild the country we should have I'm going to defend soel braan because I work with her in a constituency she's an honest woman she can't do anything because the blob are against her thank you I'd like to ask something explicitly that some other questioners seem to hint at do we not now have different and even competing populisms the populism of brexit is not rent with the populism that we see at GL glenbury when Corbin is there or the populism of pro Palestinian marches and do we not also need to think about what might be constructive well-informed populisms and destructive ill-informed populisms um so Freddy when you talk about moderate policies and reasonable ones I have to say you sound like those who after brexit talked about uh you know brexit being an extreme position and we need to water it down a sort of brexit in name only so what do you mean by it so a in a couple of minutes just give us pick up on anything you want but mainly just give us something to take away yeah thanks so I this this question of what is populism and you know where is it taking us I think the reason um the populist mood is rightly so strong in my view is that uh people can see we've reached the end of the line of how we did things in this country for the last 30 years or so they can sense the cycle is coming to an end and they want something to replace it and in my view the replacement is going to require pretty dramatic reform and change to the way the country works and brexit it was a necessary prerequisite to give us the powers to do that now the problem with Freddy's version of you know take the populist policies and kind of make them sound reasonable um is that it's not really apt for the times it could be apt for sometimes but it isn't apt for this time and there's no point in us advocating things as politicians there's no point in US advocating things that are politically possible but won't solve the country's problems the requirement is to persuade people of the things that will solve the country's problems and get voters to vote for it and so that's why I think Clarity is important um you know what what one person will regard as sort of Extreme as on the and On The Fringe I will say is what is necessary to deal with the situation that we now find ourselves in and I believe that people will respond to politicians who say that nowadays who tell it like it is and say this is the situation it's difficult but these are the things we need to do to turn things around and move forward now just to finish on that there is a left-wing form of populism absolutely where you give more powers to the state more directive sort of industrial policy more tax and spend that that could be a response to this problem I think personally it will be a terrible response I think it will make things worse rather than better but it is intellectually a possible response and it's the the job of people I me to to explain why the varities of Freedom Free Speech free markets letting people get on with their lives getting politics out of people's Liv that is the way forward and that's the way we're going to make the country better okay thanks David Saina your final thoughts um well I think it's important to make a distinction between populism and protest groups so some of the things which were mentioned here I think are just simple protest groups but populism for me is actually um a revolt against um mainstream politics becoming more and more the politics of certain interests so as I said at the beginning we've got parties which are just sort of representing not majority opinion anymore and not even you know Common Sense opinions anymore but very very narrow interest and identity politics language we've got a huge problem with language we've got this kind of strange gender language which we're all supposed to use in in Germany now and you know again and again people are saying and Paul's show people rejected they don't like it they don't want it and yet our politicians are pushing it through for their own narrow interest for their own kind of support groups and I think that that populism is a revolt against all of that energy polit politics take what you want um I think we need a much more bottom up politics again and then uh you know we wouldn't have popularism but I'm actually a bit more pessimistic about than than you are Freddy about our parties I think Denmark is an interesting example that's the Social Democratic party but for example Germany's Social Democratic party I would argue is pretty finished because there are so many different strands in it it's it's gone so much for identity politics that it's very hard to imagine it could ever reform and so I think populism is something quite new which has come up I don't I'm I'm not really concerned about that left right debate because I think it's a bit of a diversion from the actual problem I think you know I think it's more people saying we want our voices heard and giving populists also the chance to yeah as as long as soon as you expose it to popular opinion and they have to show what they can really do I think it'll go in the right direction because people do know what they want and mostly you know it's been pretty good have they made mistakes populists yes they have but if you look at our mainstream poit politics I mean the amount of mistakes they've made in the last years is just tremendous so um you know it can only get better thank you okay thanks Freddy so I I got the impression from some of the questions that I'm now the the advocate of kind of anti- this was an important Fisher that opened and I'm afraid it's still open it's not clear how the cards will fall when all of this discussion has ended and so I I suppose my position that I'm going to try and leave you with is that to the lady who said what about if we've come to the end of parliamentary democracy I've got to ask what else are we going to install in its place you know I think we should be passionately in favor of free debate I think to the gentleman who said why are more opinions on Ukraine not allowed why are more opinions on Gaza Etc not allowed I completely agree we should have events like this we should have a completely robust debate there shouldn't be a narrow technocratic Overton window and that should be shifting depending on what opinions and arguments win the day so that's why we should have this noisy and impolite politics but all I mean is let's try to agree that the end point is still to live in a single Society to still a li liberal democracy to still have some kind of negotiated settlement where we can after the argument is over still live peacefully with people we fundamentally disagree with because if we reject that the alternative is very dark indeed thank [Music] you Jacob yeah Freddy made a point earlier about the about rishy sunak trying out some kind of red meat policies and in one sense the answer to that is simple because I think no amount of red meat policies could fool you into believing that rishy sunak kind of Goldman Sachs Banker is married to a billionaire what is is really like the kind of populist leader of our moment right so so it requires something deeper and I think that people will never understand populism unless and the need for a veritable kind of earthquake or revolution you won't understand that need until you understand how big of a task we have before ourselves because we have a huge task and the scale of the all presented to our and other Western societies is enormous we have an economy that is a broken model of debt and risk aversion that's comfy for both the state and for the so-called free market we have a society and a culture that is a kind of raft of Institutions wholly taken over by an ideology of social engineering that wants to remake you and your family and everything you hold dear and we have a political system that's essentially a grift of professional politicians present company excluded who are bereft of ideas and of competence and so what do we do well when the chips are down we have very little place other to turn than to each other and we have to turn each other each other because we're set against the elite that presides over this broken political social uh and economic system and they'll do everything they can to conserve it because it's very comfortable for them but it's not for us and it's a huge task ahead of us but there's no one else than us to take it on okay Sim final word to you thank you for all your questions I'm sorry and the panel we've only better a skirt some of the answers to them but they certainly provoked thoughts to me I'm going to leave a sort of a final thought I'm going to go back to my home territory of the conservative party and just say the other thing I began by saying that a big thing I thought the political party needed to focus on was society that gap between the individual and the state the other thing I would say was just basic seriousness understanding what's going right and what's gone wrong in public policy and if you want an example of basically for me sums up how detached the elites have been from the people and have been unserious I give you hs2 hs2 is a project people someone mentioned about left wi interests is populism just rightwing the left can take can teach us a lot about how projects can be captured by vested interest big manufacturing prop y indust basically bought government on hs2 it's a project that's gone massively over budget it was only ever really going to benefit Elite people who could afford those train fairs from Manchester to London and it's a casebook example of how not to do politics and if I was studying anyone if I inviting anyone to study the future of populism Begin by looking at hs2 learn how it came into being do the opposite in every single [Applause] w

Channel: worldwrite

Views: 2,538

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Id: yz01nOlbfHs

Length: 87min 5sec (5225 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023