The Future Of Left Politics | Ash Sarkar

0:00You're bored of hearing about Nigel Farage? Me too. I am so sick of hearing about so-called right-wing populism. Why does no one understand what populism means? It means the 99 % versus the 1%. Those lot are literally the 1%. So it's time for a podcast that stands out for the 99%. Welcome to Bold Politics. I'm Zack Polanski. As a leader, I really want to serve the 99 % and this podcast is going to reflect that. I'm going to speak to people I really respect and people I disagree with as well. I'm delighted that my very first guest on the show is someone I really respect and I have some disagreements with.

0:38Ash Sarkar has been a really important voice on the left for over a decade now. Incredibly opinionated, incredibly smart. Let's get into it.

0:54Ash, I want to start with a secret. Oh God. Out of everyone that interviewed me during the general election, you were the interview that made me most nervous. And that's because... Was it the gun held at your head? That partly made the heartbeat go up. But you're so smart, you're so articulate, your analysis of politics is incredible, and I knew I wasn't going to get away with any crap. And more than anything, you're very funny. And when you're a politician and you're in serious mode and someone is being funny, it's really hard to do that tightrope between, I've got to be taken seriously and have credibility, but also be a human being that kind of laughs at your jokes and gets them?

1:27I think I don't envy politicians at all, because I think the thing that you have to do is really, really hard. And it's easy for me as somebody who doesn't have to represent a political party, doesn't have to represent a membership to just go out and be like, OK, this is a version of myself, because I'm not having to put it through any sort of prism of purpose or an agreement of what I'm trying to get out of it. whereas for you guys it's like a be a human being be charming be real be authentic remember all of the policy lines uh remember all your weak points and sort of triangulate around them um don't forget to be serious but also you know a bit of a laugh at the same time it's all of these contradictory things at once and so while when i'm watching politicians i go oh like don't do that thing or like, ah, you're doing that.

2:17I also realise that you do have to train yourself into, you have to create a little bit of a persona because if you didn't, I'm not sure if you could survive the psychological toll of the media around. So I have pre-planned questions. I'm already going off script because this is really interesting. I've heard you say several times on podcasts and interviews, you know, I'd never run to be an MP. I've either got skeletons in my closet or, but I just think you have such incredible authenticity about you that I think it's really sad if someone like you goes, oh, I think if you don't want to get into politics, that's a different conversation.

2:49But if it's, oh, I feel too restricted by my past, I think that's really sad. I don't know. I think there's a few things. One is that I think there's a contradiction at the heart of my politics, which is on the one hand, I want to be part of essentially a movement that advances the cause of communism in this country. On the other, the freedom to write whatever it is I want and to say whatever it is I happen to think I mean that's the height of bourgeois individualism and so these two things are quite contradictory I really want to write and I want to say the things that feel honest but I also want this cause to be successful so I realize that there is something there which doesn't quite fit together I think there's another part which is already I find the pressure to give everybody a good experience of me a bit much and I need spaces that I can retreat to and just be a complete idiot or like really reckless and not have to think about how am I being perceived and already I feel that space getting too small and I don't No, right now it just doesn't feel like I could, like I've got it in me to give it all up completely and go straight into like you are 100 % a public figure and that's all you are.

4:09I'm taking that as a win though because you said right now and previously you said no, which looks ahead to the future. Another thing you say that I think relates is you say that anyone can be left-wing or anyone can be a socialist or indeed a communist up until the point of foreign policy and that's when the media will go no. What do you mean by that? Well, it wasn't until that long ago. I mean, I think it was up until the 80s that every staff member being hired by the BBC had to be vetted by the security services. And you can see it with the prescription of Palestine action and what's been coming out about all the different figures who've been lobbying the government to crack down on Palestine action, including arms manufacturer lobbyists.

4:51and, you know, forgive me if I'm getting this wrong because I don't want to get you in trouble with Ofcom, but I believe there was some lobbying done by Lord Dannet as well. You've got all these figures who sort of come out of the woodwork when it's time to look at Britain's role in the world and its role in destabilizing other countries in the global south. There are wonderful books about this for your listeners who are interested. Vincent Bevins' The Jakarta Method, which looks at the ways in which the US basically backed death squads around the world to crack down on socialism and communism.

5:26So there are examples that your listeners might be really familiar with. So the US backed coup in Chile, which resulted in Allende being deposed. That was a big US warship off the coast of Santiago when all this was going down. But also other examples which are less well known. So, you know, the scale of the devastation in Indonesia, for example. And Britain is a former imperial power. And in the 20th century, having to work out what's our what's our new status in the world. We did some fucked up shit. Like we really did. When it comes to domestic policy, yes, there's a huge disciplining force in the media.

6:01And you've experienced that yourself. With foreign policy, it's something else. So I do say this half jokingly. I was like, we wanted Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister 2015, 2019. What we weren't prepared for is what happens if he wins. Right. Because they're not just going to let him have access to, you know, everything that the foreign office has ever done. And I realise this isn't your problem. That's maybe my problem or other people's problem. But we've seen it in Chile. We've seen it with Yanis Varoufakis. We've seen it with Jeremy Corbyn. Does this just mean we can never have a left wing prime minister?

6:34No, never say never. I mean, I think this is part of the history of the left, which is everything seems impossible until it happens. My mom was an anti-apartheid activist and she told me that she did all of those sit-ins and she got arrested all those times. And she, you know, telling people to boycott Barclays. She never thought she'd see a free South Africa. And then she did. You know, I'm sure that Lenin was looking at Imperial Russia going, oh, this seems uphill. but they did it so absolutely never say never but be strategic and clear-eyed about what's in your way. And that does lead me to what was going to be my first question which is you've survived the Corbyn years and you say you bear the scars of the Corbyn years what do you think we should be learning from that and what do you think we need to have in terms of eyes on the future?

7:25So many things and I've got you know I've got things to say I've got things for the Green Party and also things for you know this new you know jeremy corbyn's our sultana party but here's the thing for the greens specifically one is that i think people were really unprepared including myself for what the scale of the assault was going to be like and particularly when it came to the weaponization of anti-semitism we really tied ourselves in knots and i think there are good reasons for that one of the reasons why we tied ourselves in knots so much is because when someone's coming to and saying i'm in pain and i'm in fear and i'm in a state of distress you can't really be like oh fuck off like you can't right that's a that's a really unempathetic thing to do but we didn't know how to manage the fact that perceived risk and actual risk were two really different things and we'd say things because it sounded good like our one anti-seemite in the movement is too many but imagine i said that about misogyny right one misogynist in the movement is too many or one islamophobe is too many there are loads of misogynists and islamophobes and so if you say well every single one that's here is our failure you've made a rod for your own back because every movement reflects the society that produced it that doesn't mean that it's open season on slurs and everyone can say you know their their preferred horrible thing but it's realizing that whenever you start advancing a prefigurative form of politics like we've got to get it right internally before we can do anything guess what you're not going to do anything so that's I think part of the reason for why we found that so so difficult to deal with um second thing and this is something which I am really implicated in is between 2017 and 2019 I thought the job of the left was to make sure that the 2019 manifesto was as socialist and as radical as possible.

9:32So we wanted the four-day week in there we wanted some kind of universal basic income we wanted abolished private schools and Boris Johnson's manifesto by contrast was get Brexit it done on the back of a fag packet and that was it like that was it and he won so there's a temptation to go for the proximate objective or you know the the proximate opponent so this would have been opponents within the Labour Party but this is what James Butler calls the father Dougal problem this cow is close but really small and this one's far away and massive go for the cow that's far away and massive and I think that's something for the Greens to think about as well is a healthy internal democratic culture is one thing but it can suck you into looking inwards too much and then there's the the last thing I made a real mistake around the Brexit time which is when it when it reached this impasse didn't feel like there was leadership coming from the top and everyone had to say what they thought should happen um I said oh second referendum because I was in London surrounded by people like me and everyone was a Remainer so that put me not just on the losing side of 48 % but on the side which was much more liberal and technocratic rather than populist and it was populism from which Corbynism drew its strength so the thing I was advocating for was taking us away from where we were strongest and there will be things like that for the Greens to have to contend with where it's not a fun choice and it's not a good choice and you don't want to have to make it but that's the situation you're in And how do you think you balance that?

11:07So we're talking on a day when I was on GMB this morning with three people shouting at me about a wealth tax. And someone texted me whose opinion I really respect. He said, that was amazing. By the way, though, you could have reassured Middle England first before you got into the fight. And my response, other than thanking them for the feedback, was, you know, it's not it doesn't feel like my job to reassure Middle England. It feels like my job to present a policy that I think is pretty popular around the country. And actually, we just need to fight for it. But also, if I do take a deep breath, it is my job to reassure people.

11:34That's a politician's job to convince as many people as possible. It's so hard to bear everything in mind at the same time. And that's what I mean by I don't envy politicians. But I think there are ways in which you can do that without diluting your politics. Because, look, the difference between me and someone who lives in middle England and has a nice detached house and, you know, a dog that's better nourished and better groomed than I am. You know, the difference between me and them is a lot smaller than the difference between them and Elon Musk. Right. And so I think it's about finding a way to tell that story.

12:09One way in which I talk about it in the book, which is I sort of invite people like add up the value of everything you own and minus your debts. Could you live on that for the rest of your life? Right. If not, you're part of the big we. Right. You're part of the movement. You're the 99 percent. If you can live a fit for the rest of your life, we're coming for you. That's the way in which you can do it. And this links to your first point, which you referred to Palestine action. It's something I've really observed being elected in the London Assembly, is I often have to sit through conversations where Sadiq Khan and Susan Hall, both of which aren't Jewish, talk over me literally while I'm in the middle about how Jewish people feel.

12:48And Sadiq Khan, who, you know, to be fair, I'm not coming for him on this. He's in a difficult place. Leave Uncle Sadiq alone. I know. But he often says, you know, he's learned recently about the difference between perceived threat and actual threat. And he's been actually talking up perceived threats, saying if Jewish communities feel a perceived threat he has something to do about it now i think there's something there as a mayor of london that if people feel worried of course as you said you don't just tell them to piss off but also this is dangerous right because anyone can feel a perceived threat at any time that might not be based on anything and that's the thing is that people really do feel it and i remembered this because this was 2015 something like that so i was still working behind a bar and i was wearing a jeremy corbyn t-shirt because it was free and i didn't mind spilling beer on it because it was like it was a Friday night payday so it's a busy busy night and I remember there was a guy who came to the bar and he was shaking with rage because he was like that man is an anti-semite so this was really you know fairly early on and I'll never forget like the look in his eyes and how obviously distressed he was and I felt like we were living on two different planets because I was like what it is you're perceiving what you're feeling and what what my reality is is just so far apart right now and I think it takes really sensitive emotionally engaged work to meet somebody and you know for their nervous system to sort of you know quieten down the alarms and stuff like that a politician can't always do that sometimes it's the job of of other political actors to be able to do that or people close to a politician to do it so Zoran Mamdani very very smart guy has had you know very pro-palestine very progressive jewish people around him for quite a long time to sort of be like okay how can you as a bds supporting socialist muslim um advance your politics within an electoral realm so i think that that's something something that can be done but sometimes and and this isn't just to do with anti-semitism this is also something which i've seen play out on the left a million times people get so caught up in their own sense of victimhood and i think because of the many defeats that the left has experienced getting people's attention feels like an adequate compensation for social change or at least the next best thing so people get so into i feel really unsafe i feel really unsafe and you know the cia psyop manual would literally say behave this way in a meeting and we created a politics which which made it okay and acceptable for people to behave that way and sometimes we have to say i'm really sorry you feel that way but that's not the purpose of this space like we're here to to enact a strategy and maybe enacting that strategy will make you feel better and more agentic and more powerful than the desire to return to all the ways in which you feel unsafe and what would you say to people who have read minority rules and go I agree with huge amounts of this but there are minority groups such as trans people being the most obvious who go we get what you're saying class is really important and should be centered but actually we need politicians right now standing up for our rights because we are literally under threat this isn't a perceived threat we have politicians and the right-wing media are coming for us absolutely and one of the things which I talk about in the book is that the transphobic moral panic is also a way of I think trying to undo many of the gains made by cis women as well through feminism and you have to link those things together how you advance the cause of trans rights here's the here's the nub because i think that one um the transphobes were supremely well organized and very very well funded right you know your opponent is formidable um and two i think some of the strategies maybe weren't weren't quite right um so you saw this with Kamala Harris and the ACLU pledge.

16:43So, you know, I support this. I support that. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. She did that so she could make it through, you know, a primary where she was having to succeed in a very progressive state, California. When it came to the presidential primaries, well, not the primaries, because she skipped the primary process this time around, of course. I wonder why she was such a shit candidate. But it got her in trouble. It got her in loads of trouble. And then she neither stood up for it and she couldn't adequately ever distance herself enough from it to make the attacks go away. So the thing I would say, perhaps somewhat provocatively, is that to, you know, whether it's LGBT people or anyone else who's going around with these pledges being like, we're going to make the politicians sign up to it.

17:26What's the value in it? What's the value in it? Because when Pushkin... Keir Starmer signed lots of pledges. He signed more pledges than I've had hot dinners and he's not been held to a single one. So I think that something about the strategy has to change. And, you know, again, I don't want to talk about Zoran Mamdani all the time, but he's such a charming guy. He talks about policing a lot less than, say, Bill de Blasio did, who was much more of a centrist figure within the Democratic Party. Do you think that Zoran Mamdani is more right wing on policing than Bill de Blasio? No, probably not.

18:03Probably not. But you can sort of, because you know his politics and where he's coming from, and you can understand, all right, he wins by driving up the issue salience of cost of living and rent controls and free bus travel and universal childcare. If he's driving up the salience of maybe some of these other things, he's not going to win. We can give him a bit of that space. so if you want to advance the cause of trans rights do you do it via a politician who's like right i'm going to run into this fight headlong or do you do it with a politician who's like i'm going to be really really good at driving up the salience of issues that i know 60 70 percent of people are with us on thanks ash stay right there please don't run off we're going to go for a break welcome back to bold politics with me zach polanski i don't necessarily endorse any of the messages you just heard unless there was something there that was great for the planet in which case go buy it if you want it the point here though is podcasts are not free to make they're quite expensive so we do need sponsorship we're as diligent as we can be about the people who advertise on the show but we are not in full control of it and i just want to be really transparent about that with that back to the show

19:14you said you had tips for the green party that was fascinating you also said you had tips for your party i'm really interested in what those are too so the the thing with your party is that it doesn't exist yet right so it's it's all to play for what is it who's it for um and because keir starmer is um spectacularly shit at politics i mean i mean he's really he's really bad at it i thought i was kind to be honest i mean come on um they don't have to do very well to inflict quite a lot of damage on the Labour Party, which is a good place to start if you're a new party. The things that I would say for your party, one is I think that having primary processes for candidate selection is really important and make those primaries as open as possible because then you're only going to get better candidates.

20:06One of the problems with British politics is that we have methods of candidate selection which reward people for being able to sit in really boring meetings and that's it right that's it their strategy their communication skills you know who it is they're bringing with them all those things matter less than can you sit through this really shit meeting particularly in the labor party so lots of people who are going to be in your party will have come through the labor party there are aspects of laborism that they've got to get rid of um i think there's a temptation to call it something like the left party you know that's our sultana suggested it and i understand why she's like these are our politics we're really open about it let's just call ourselves the left party most people don't think of themselves in terms of left and right um so why people the same way everyone knows that the greens are going to be shit hot on environmental policy you don't have to tell people that again and again because they know this about you people know you're going to be a left-wing party you know you could be called you know i can't believe it's not corbinism you could be called anything and people are going to know that you're left wing so i would say go for a different name um and then i think there is an interesting line to walk which is um i i was something i'm trying to work out for myself politically at the moment and i don't know what i think about it is can you have big consultative policy making while still being strategically effective i don't know how possible that is but clearly you sort of need both some people who are empowered to set a strategy and a membership who can hold that those people accountable right you need some balance of both and I don't want it to be all top down but I think it's really hard to get hundreds of thousands of people involved in policy making.

22:00Yeah something James Snyder said to me on Novara Media says nice cross-versalization here was often you have a very small group of people who make the strategy which is the wrong way around and then lots of people try and execute it whereas what does it look like actually if lots of people are involved with the initial stage and then just a few people are executing and it's certainly in the green party a continuing conversation we're having because as you said we can get very insular we can have arguments on the conference floor about hyphens you have two leadership you have every two years leadership elections right that's crazy we might have one next year as well that's i'm sorry that's cuckoo bananas i'm with you You need, you know, I think, again, the principle of going just because you're our leader and you might be doing really well in the polls or doing great in the media doesn't mean you've got a job for life.

22:44Great, great principle. Every two years, especially with the length of your leadership campaigns, that's a lot of time where you're just turned inwards. and I think that a membership that has expectations of you, political expectations of you you might think you're doing right by them because you're giving them a say of who the leader is every two years but I actually think in the longer run it's doing a disservice I'm not a member of the Green Party, I'm not a member of your party, I'm not a member of any party what I'd say is every two years is too much I almost took it to heart twice there, I thought you were saying I'm not a member of the Green Party and I'm not a member of your party No, I thought it was in your party She made the point you've been i was about to say involved in politics for a while now that makes you sound old i don't really mean it like that um have you seen the dynamics change dramatically or do you feel like it's the same fight that's just happening over and over and over again it's really hard to say um because yes i've been doing this for a while now but also the older you get the more you realize you didn't know at the start so i can't tell is the situation changing or is my perception just getting a little bit better.

23:51It does feel like there is a space for populism that didn't exist before. I think the collapse of the Conservative Party is a very big reason for that. And the loveless majority that Labour have is the other part of it. So Conservative Party's completely collapsed. Whatever fire it had in its belly through the Brexit process has just been snuffed out. And on the other hand, you've got Labour, who under Kistama, just the party of computer says no. Please, can we have some high-speed rail? Can we have some investment in this? Can we have some council housing? Computer says no. These two powerhouses in British political history seem to be, no fossil fuel pun to a green, but out of gas.

24:41They just seem to be out of juice. and in the absence of a Green Party that was really really competing and in the absence of a Jeremy Corbyn party because you know still doesn't exist yet reform have been able to go all right we're going to go hard right on immigration and crime it's what you'd expect them to do but also pivot to the left on nationalization of certain industries they've been able to sort of gobble up votes on both sides of populism so that does seem to me to be something that's different Nigel Farage saying oh I want to be a friend to the trade union movement you didn't hear him saying that five years ago and I'm not saying oh and we should take this man in good faith but I think that he's one of the most impactful political figures who's been active during my lifetime I used to call him a specialist in failure because he couldn't couldn't win a constituency seat but that was a gross underestimation of him and his impact on British politics.

25:42So I think if he's saying, right, I want to get some left-wing voters, take that really, really seriously. And how do you think parties on the left, the Green Party and whatever might appear, should deal with the kind of question of vote for that party and you're going to get Nigel Farage? Because those Labour leaflets are probably already printing as we speak. I love that I'm going to ask you this. Yeah, what should we do about it? no one likes being held hostage or being blackmailed and there was a really interesting interview that a colleague of mine did in the states during the presidential election where he was in pennsylvania he was interviewing people on election night and there was this woman who said i voted trump before i've been a lifelong democrat and the reason why i voted for trump is because of roe versus wade and we're like wait hang on and she said the democrats could have codified Roe versus Wade right they could have protected my abortion rights but they didn't want to do it because they wanted a gun to my head every election cycle to drive me to the ballot box and so that's why I voted for Trump which you know counter you know counterintuitive and all the rest of it and I think that she'd had a little bit to drink as well not blaming her but I think she did but I think people are sick of being told don't do the thing you really want because you might get something worse because i'm sorry we've got a government which is um diplomatically and politically and materially given cover to an ongoing genocide a government which cannot seem to get to grips with the real material inequalities which are choking this country and choking the the life and the sort of, you know, vibrancy out of this country.

27:30And a government which can't even get the most basic political calls, right? Like, don't go for pensioners. They vote in big blocks. So, you know, you're telling me how terrible it's going to be. You, crap. You know, you seem to be going, we might be rubbish, but keep rewarding us with your vote. And I think people can see through it. People can see through it. So it's not, nothing in politics is cost free. Nothing in politics is cost free. But we know what happens if you keep voting Labour. Totally. You might hear me give that answer word for word, by the way, on the media, without a swearing.

28:04I'll be invoicing you. Palestine. So I was asked by a journalist the other day, I feel like this is just free consultancy, by the way. Hard questions I've been asked in the last few weeks. Ash, how would you answer this? but I was at a Palestine Solidarity campaign march and feeling kind of the vibrancy of the crowd and people feeling that community and solidarity but a journalist just said to me it's not working is it Zach like you've been out here this is your I think it was the 29th one and the genocide is still going on and I did give an answer but I'm just curious like how important are those marches or are they not doing a huge amount I think it's really important to Palestinians people in Gaza talk about seeing the turnout and people in Gaza talk about seeing the solidarity and I think that that does matter I also think that where the media coverage is now has shifted a lot since where it was about 18 months ago you know the Guardian I'm sure many of your listeners are Guardian readers I too am a Guardian reader you know at the start of this genocidal war um was a lot more sympathetic to israel gave a lot more prominence to the israeli experience now i think their editorial positioning has shifted i also heard a rumor uh i can't confirm this but i heard a rumor that a certain star columnist at the guardian was restricted from writing about gaza for a long time because of the internal politics of the organization um and that's changed that's changed so and i think that the you know the presence on the streets and the protesters made a difference to that palestine action the the purpose of their tactic was to make it prohibitively expensive for elbert to function here and i think that's really why they've been prescribed because it was working because it was working and because you You know, the British government was being lobbied by, you know, arms lobbyists and, you know, people representing different shadowy bits of, you know, the British security apparatus and also directly by the Israeli embassy as well.

30:13I think that's why they prescribed them. You know, it makes a difference if you can't afford to manufacture your weapons. I don't know what the tactic is or what should be done differently here. And maybe there's nothing that can be done differently from here. Maybe what needs to happen is what's happening. And that's the best that we can do. All I know is that the same way, you know, when you're at school and you're learning about what happened during the Holocaust or you're learning about, you know, what happened during the Armenian genocide or any other attempt to wipe out an entire peoples is that when you're at school and you're learning about it, you think, how could anyone get on with their day during that period of history?

30:59You know, how could they just go to the shops and like get butter or do something normal? It feels obscene to think about normal life when a genocide is happening. And I think that all of us, all of us have that moral capacity. And I think that is the deepest expression of our humanity not to ignore it. Absolutely. And without getting too personal, you've been reporting on this every day for years now. How do you protect yourself with that? um that's the worst possible question to ask me because i don't look i think it really helps that i'm working as part of an organization so there's 25 of us at navara media the video team especially um and colleagues behind the scenes uh you know like alex and darius and steven people who are involved in putting the show together navara live every single day they're the ones who are going through the unredacted footage um and we've got an employee assistance program you know to make forms of therapy available and i don't know if people have taken that up or not but but it's there um i think all of us even if we didn't work for navarra and even if we weren't involved in journalism would be engaging with this anyway and the fact that we have a show to produce every day it gives the experience of the horror some structure and so I think it in a strange way makes it emotionally a bit more manageable whereas if there was no shape to it and I just had a normal job and I was scrolling on my phone I think I would find that overwhelming whereas when I'm going okay you can't feel things emotionally that deeply because you've got to write the script or you've got to present this segment you've got to write this article it has a distancing effect which I think makes it sustainable.

32:46That's my experience too actually people always say must be so depressing working politics. Actually, if every day you feel like you're doing something, it's giving some motivation to what you're doing. And it's also, it's a bit plug and play, right? You go like, okay, like I know I've got to do this amount of work and it's got to fill this amount of time. Like, you know, it makes it manageable. That makes sense. And then to finish off on domestic politics, I don't know to describe you as an optimist or a pessimist, you're probably different things on different days. Where's the future of British politics going?

33:13What's going to happen? No idea. I love that, just simply no idea. No, no idea. what do you hope will happen i think that there is a recognition at the moment that technology and platforms designed by psychopaths in silicon valley that these things aren't making our lives better and this might be this might sound so stupid because it's so small scale take dating apps no one on the dating apps is happy about being on a dating app whereas you know if you You catch someone like in a pub or a club or somewhere else. They want to be in that space. And it's just also nice that they can meet people. And more and more people are saying, I don't want to be on here anymore.

33:56I don't want to do it anymore. And I think that you are going to see that sort of thing of going, well, you're saying this is for my benefit, but I actually feel worse than I ever have about myself. I want to take a step back. And I think that it's not just going to be with dating apps. I think that there are all sorts of areas of our digital lives where you're going to see more and more of that. You're going to see people trying to return to, you know, the commons, right? That which is generated by the free association and interaction of human beings. So that makes me feel a bit optimistic. You know, Gramsci very famously said, I'm a pessimist because of intellect and I'm an optimist because of will.

34:39I don't think it's possible to look at the history of the left without feeling optimistic because the one thing the left has always done is overcome seemingly insurmountable odds it's an amazing place to end I look forward to being grilled by you again thank you very much