The Two Matts Q&A: Is Farage finished? And where are all the women?

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0:33What people hate when they're hard up is the sight of these blummy besuited red-faced men in clubs taking money from shady sources. He's very dodgy. He smells, looks and feels and sounds dodgy. I've always thought in the same way that Trump would destroy Trump, that Farage would destroy Farage. If there's a cohort of people in the country who don't question his judgment, and that cohort's big enough to put them into power, then this country is terminally fucked. Hello and happy Sunday, everybody. Happy Sunday, one and all. Hope you're all having a great weekend. If I sound a little gravelly, my apologies.

1:19It's because I have some sort of throat that feels like I've swallowed barbed wire overnight. But anyway, I will struggle on manfully. You will struggle on. Because nothing gets in the way of our dear listeners. The defeat of populism. Exactly, exactly. To that end, the first question comes from Lou in Margate. And Lou asks, surely Nigel Farage is finished. What do you think? Well, at minimum, that question is absolutely worth asking. And, you know, I would put it like this, which is I don't think he's been weaker or as close to being finished since 1992 when he started this whole malarkey. You know, he's bang in trouble.

2:01And we're recording this at a time when the Electoral Commission has started to investigate this really remarkable piece of journalistic investigation by Channel 4, which we'll get into. The Electoral Commission is looking into it and has notified the Met. So, you know, we're in the foothills of criminality now, alleged criminality. And I think, you know, look, Farage had an absolutely dire summer with the humiliation of Binface and the by-election. He wanted to use this conference that's just ended on Saturday with a sort of concentration on the first hundred days of government, national emergency, parading his alliance with Jordan Bardet, who would be the French PM if Marine Le Pen became French president next year.

2:54But this has just compounded the other narrative, which, you know, he's already under investigation from the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. There's a police investigation into reforms donations with he's looking down the barrel of a possible second by-election. And now there's this. And I think before we get into the weeds of what the investigation found, what this really entrenches for me is a sense that has sort of been developing in my mind for a while, which is that the Achilles, that while the bigotry of the populist right is the thing that obviously presents itself front and centre as the most objectionable aspect to them, and indeed it is, the Achilles heel electorally will be their venality.

3:40If you look at Peter Magyar beating Auburn, that's what did it. If you look at Trump's unravelling in America, what people hate when they're hard up is the sight of these blummy, besuited, red-faced men in clubs taking money from shady sources. And I don't think that necessarily the details of this story will cut through. But I don't think that matters because I think that this is really taking the edge off, well, more than that, off Farad's always ridiculous claim that he was a tribune of the people. I think you're absolutely right, Matt. And I think the key thing that you've identified is the cumulative nature of the attacks that are stacking up against him.

4:29He's very dodgy. He smells, looks and feels and sounds dodgy. and of course that's always been part of his appeal is the fact that he he's a bit of a chancer he's a fly by night he takes risks and that that is a double-edged sword and it's coming back to bite him and I think it would take a very irrational person not to question deeply and you know absolutely best case not to question deeply this man's judgment at the very moment that they're presenting themselves as a government in waiting and yes you know i have to say if if there are if there's a cohort of people in the country who don't question his judgment um and that cohort's big enough to put them into power then this country is terminally fucked you know i've got no no doubt about that a hundred percent and i think that there's a misunderstanding in reform's ranks over the symmetries between themselves and Trump.

5:29So it's been a sort of internal narrative in reform all the way since, because they were expecting people to come after them, obviously. And one of the things they argued was, look, you know, Trump has, and he won the presidency, won back the presidency by sort of posing as a persecuted tribune of the people, Right. Martyr to the cause and managing to turn all the litigation and attacks on him to his advantage. And indeed, the legal cases against Trump became the campaign that got him back into the White House. But he'd already been president. He had a huge infrastructure in MAGA. And frankly, Farage is not as good as him in fronting out these things.

6:17He looks evasive. He sounds, you know, he's very brittle. Yeah. And one of the things I think is really worth spelling out in this is that the two advisers who now appears at the time of recording, it's not clear whether they've been suspended pending investigation or fired. James Orr who is the head of policy reform at Reform absolutely crucial convener and network runner in Cambridge close to Vance, J.D. Vance who describes him as my British Sherpa and Dan Dukes who's a very close aide to Farage all of which is a way of saying that one of the problems that Farage has actually admitted publicly is that they don't have strength and depth so you know when when people have fallen by the wayside in the MAGA story there's always been someone to you know move in reform doesn't have that I mean the loss of James Orr and Dan Jukes is a really you know it's not something they're going to talk down the pub about but if you're looking at the kind of critical mass you need for reform to implode that is a big deal you know that That in itself, I mean, Farage is obviously what we want.

7:34You know, that's the scalp. But this alone is a very bad, that's very bad news for a form. I think that's absolutely right. I do want to sound a note of caution in that you look at all the front pages this morning, and I think I'm right in saying only one or two of the papers have got this story on their front page. The rest have ignored it. The Daily Mirror had some bloody story about the fact that the water bottles they were selling at the reform conference were made in China. Now, so if the Daily Mirror thought that that was a more important story. I mean, honestly, what a lack of editorial judgment on their part.

8:12But put that to one side, the most important story or the most the story that contradicts the worldview we've just espoused is on the front page of the FT, which was of a£75 ,000 donation coming in from legitimately, it would seem, from a US-based company. but for some reason there was no uh illegitimacy about this donation but within that story was the fact that they've raked in five million quid already this year in yeah so the money is still coming in towards them yeah and you know it was on channel four news um it obviously it's been leading the bbc on uh on the day when was it on friday when the story came out nick robinson interviewed Richard Tice.

9:00I thought it was funny. Nick Robinson didn't really land a solid punch on Richard Tice over a story that I felt was a clear knockout. And Richard Tice ended up talking about the semantics and the technicalities of whether they'd broken the law or not and then moved on to policy. And the point I'm rambling towards is that on the front pages of many of the papers that morning were a load of reform policy things. So I do think they will carry, they'll still get a fair wind from a lot of the media. I agree with that, although I think that we've often bemoaned the declining impact of what was the print media.

9:49And I think it's, oddly enough, that's one of the reasons why I'm not quite as worried as you are. Right. Because, you know, one of the reasons that, by the way, that this has got so much less coverage than you'd expect is that the Times and the Telegraph. Yes. Ran the polls that were paid for by these brilliant journalists doing one of the one of the great stings I can remember. They were journalists posing as an American donor and his son to get round, you know, get round the ban on foreign donations. so the Times and the Telegraph want to keep away from it but it is running like a train on social now but where you're right and I think the Tice interview with Nick Robinson is interesting there's another American strategy that reformers always like to borrow which is the big tobacco merchants of doubt strategy which is look you're always going to get attacked you know they know who they are they know what they do how do you make sure that the public don't form the settled opinion yes that reform are a bunch of crooks and the way you do that and i guess it's up to us in the media to make sure they don't get away with it is by saying yeah but this clause of the uh elections act 1920 uh 2022 yes but you know the group that was was um leading this investigation is, which is perfectly true, is a climate-based group, which I don't think matters, by the way.

11:24I think it's, you know, all that matters is is it true? And, you know, clearly Channel 4. And the other defence they've thrown out, it's entrapment. It's entrapment. Well. You know, I mean, maybe it is. Well, it obviously is. Well, I would say it is entrapment, but I would say so bloody what? Yeah, but not, I mean, maybe, but maybe in sort of our understanding of the word entrapment, but legally, Tice mentioned section 61, and it's not, that is not about donations, it's about voting. He's missing the point of the law there. But I still think, Matt, the point about entrapment, it's like, you know, they used to say that about, I remember Merseyside Police used to leave cars with the Dora jar, and would then arrest people for trying to steal the handbag on the front seat, and I would think, good, you know.

12:10Look, I mean, every journalistic sting, You know, one thinks of another Channel 4 scoop, which was the Cambridge Analytica scoop back in 2018. You know, of course, it involves entrapment technically, but that's, you know, so what? You're right. You're right. So I think you framed it brilliantly, which is the question is now, does this have legs of the story? I think it does. and I think that the likelihood is that at minimum, you know, he ought to be questioned under caution, at minimum, because he was... The crucial thing is that Farage is in the... And I do recommend people go back and watch the whole thing because it's really good.

12:56Yeah, it is a great watch besides anything else. It is amazing. It's a superb piece of investigative journalism. It sort of warmed my heart because, you know, It reminded me of Alan Rusbridge's brilliant GB News thing. It's like investigative journalism is really worth it. You know, it's hard pounding, but boy, when it works, it works. And so I think it will be hard for the cops and the Electoral Commission not to take some action over this. I mean, obviously, the law is technical, but they did take money. Some of the things that they were saying on Friday, that there'd be no exchange of money.

13:36there was you know they took an initial sum to pay for these polls with the promise of 500 grand to come and one thing the law is absolutely clear on and this is this goes back to the the crucial and actually now rather antiquated law the political parties elections and referendums act of 2000 is absolutely clear that using a cutout to get foreign donations which was what they were proposing this guy from the uh what's it called verbatim is that right verbatim um posing as the son of an american uh you can't get around the foreign donor thing by uh by you know by just involving a third party you know if i'm if i'm from um russia and i give you matt kelly a million quid to give to the labor party right that won't do right um so and also it's incumbent upon the recipient party to to do due diligence so i can't see how they're not banging trouble yeah but i i do understand and share your you know it i hope it really blows up because this is this is a properly big story listen at least at the very least they've made andy burnham's life a little bit easier by just giving him a whole ammunition dump to fire at them you know and i think that the other thing is that I've always thought in the same way that Trump would destroy Trump, that Farage would destroy Farage.

15:06And what's really astonishing is, you know, we're only in September 2026, which is barely two years since, you know, Farage electrified the political scene by, it was June 2024, came out, I'm going to lead reform again, I'm going to stand in Clacton, you know, and he had it almost a year, year and a half of really dominating the political scene. But what's interesting is that he's now become victim of the kind of pace of politics that has been his stock in trade. So in a funny way, he's gone from the startup party in June, 2024 to what looks very similar to the dog days of Tory sleaze in 1994.

15:48That's right. And huge speed. Yeah. in two years you know and um yeah you know he is now i think what will destroy farage is the very tools that he employs that's that's what i i i think your line about farage will destroy farage is absolutely perfect and i might my only hope is that farage destroys farage before farage destroys britain that's that's what it's all about you know and what what what what is very important and reassuring and i do feel confident about this and as you know i'm i'm often mr apocalypse and Cassandra and all the rest of it. But I do think that reform without Farage is nothing to worry about.

16:28I mean, let's just try and imagine Richard Tice as prime minister and have a laugh at that. Tice as reform leader would really, I would be very happy with that. Right, so shall we do the next question? Yes, please. From Jane in Shropshire. Burnham has taken VAT off energy bills, cut rates for pubs and promised to rewire the state. But John Healy's budget in five weeks at a time, which tax pledge inherited from Starmer should he break first? And would voters actually forgive honesty about it? What do you think, Matt? Well, I'm very clear on it. And I think the way to... Income tax is the tax I would break the pledge on.

17:12And I would explain to people that this is only a preliminary rebalancing of of what the state requires to to service the expectations of its people and we've all got to pay more and i know we're already the most heavily taxed but i just think there's a there's a kind of grinding deathliness about the workarounds to avoid the obvious which is that we've got to pay more income tax and whether or not you're hypothecated and say I want a penny or tuppence to pay for welfare, for social care, then fine. I know the Treasury hates hypothecation because... Yeah, say what? Well, exactly, exactly. I think the honesty would be forgiven if Andy Burnham could make the case to say, look, you know, this is affecting every single person in this country, directly or indirectly.

18:10We can't afford to fix it with the thing with the state of the economy as it is now. I need you to put in more. But the upside will be in 10 years, I promise you a completely holistically changed state of social care in this country. And people won't face these awful dilemmas about giving away everything they've put their life towards. But what we'll do is we'll have to pay for it on the drip as we go on. And you look at other countries with enormously high tax bills, Scandinavian countries, these are some of the most functional, happy, satisfied, contented European nations there are. And I don't see why that model can't be applied to the UK.

19:00I think you put your finger on it when you outlined the pitch rolling, because we all focus on the question of should he break the manifesto or should he not? Well, I think the more important question is if he can frame the sort of the reason why, then the manifesto breach is is the least of his worries, really. I mean, the question is, can he can he make it politically sellable? And I think everything you said is 100 percent right. I would add, I think it's way past time that capital gains tax was brought into line with the rates of income tax. And I think that, you know, there are various costings that have been worked out, but it would raise at least 12 billion a year.

19:47Of course, there's the whole question with capital of mobility of capital, and there's no easy, glib answer to that. But I think, you know, across the board, what we need is a prime minister who's based. I mean, the first thing is and in a way, the only thing is what you said, Matt, which is, look, what kind of a society do you want? You know, do you want one where there's social care that works for your parents, your grandparents and eventually you? Right. And can defend itself in a way that meets the geopolitical instability of the world and all the other things we discussed, like climate emergency and so on?

20:24Or do you want to live in a country that pretends that we can have the tax system we had in the 1980s and get by, which is not really... I mean, he talks about neoliberalism, but I think it's actually just about the times we're living in. I mean, you know, the 2020s are not the 1980s. I mean, it's a very strange thing that we've become captive to this idea that we have to stick basically basically, with the fiscal system that Nigel Lawson introduced, right? I mean, it would be like Thatcher having said, yeah, I can't change Stanley Baldwin's system, right? That's right. You know, it's sort of ridiculous, right?

21:04That's right. And I think one of the things is that we've become sort of locked into that 1980s mentality, which, because New Labour had to sort of clear away all the potential negatives in order to end the 18 years of opposition that was necessary in 1997 but it's it's nearly 30 years since then and i think that one of the opportunities burnham has and especially in the light of what we just discussed about farage there is now a big open goal which is to say right reset okay yeah and he's i mean we saw last week he had a statement and then his first pmqs and i have to say for a guy for whom you know hadn't been at the dispatch box for a very long time what was it 19 years or 16 years yeah um very impressive you know he has an ease he'll he'll improve but he's at ease in his skin and he should use that capacity to make big arguments to the people of this country i think 100 well said okay let's move on the last question for this half of the show comes from Billy, is Michael Gove right when he says Andy Burnham is bringing back stupid?

22:14Well, this, I think, was a rather ungracious caricature of what Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary, said. She promised to end the over-focus on academic outcomes. Now, I think what Michael Gove is implying is that what Lucy Powell was saying is we don't care about academic outcomes anymore. She wasn't. What she was saying is that it's really important. And God knows we've heard this so often that one has to kind of put a kind of public service announcement health warning on this. But, you know, it is really important, especially now in the age of AI and so on, that we steer those children that want to and are suited towards vocational training, not as a second class option, but really as a parity of steam.

23:08Now, as long as I've been a journalist, politicians have been promising this. Right. And so I'm always wary of it. But it is undoubtedly the right thing. And it is more right now than it has ever been. But she wasn't. And Burnham certainly isn't saying, you know, who cares about academic standards? Universities are rubbish. I mean, that's silliness. Yeah. And I felt that it was a kind of it was a lazy response to a complex and undoubtedly challenging strategy. But no one is proposing to bring back stupid. No one. I just thought it was it just reeked of condescension and also like a real ignorant approach to what qualifies as stupid or clever.

23:54Well, exactly. You know, I mean, I don't mean to be condescending in this response, but there's nothing stupid about the plumber who shows up and fixes your central heating in the middle of the winter. No, that's a really good point. And so the whole characterization of people who aren't striving for academic success fall into the bracket of stupidity, I think is just appalling. And just, you know, it's what's in the DNA of these people. And, you know, I think if anything, you know, even so let's accept that his definition of not stupid is high academic achievement. Well, equally, forcing a bunch of kids who aren't set up for success in an academic world into that world is that's not a clever thing to do either.

24:39No, it's not. I think, you know, let people play to their strengths and and there's nothing stupid about it. And I don't think that's there's anything stupid about somebody opening up that conversation, which Burnham and Lucy Powell have done. And, you know, I mean, actually, what you say is, is I think a point that we should perhaps return to in the podcast or in the magazine, which is what in 2026 constitutes cleverness? Yeah, right. Because I remember, you know, 10 years ago, loads of middle class parents forcing their children on a Saturday morning to go to coding classes. Right. Because that's where the future was.

25:17And here we are in 2026. You know, how many coders realistically are we going to need? And as you say, you know, I don't feel too clever at three o 'clock in the morning in the winter when I can't get my central heating to work. And a bloke turns up and works what I regard as magic. right you know it's a great episode of south park isn't it where yeah the trillion the trillionaires are the plumbers and the landscape gardeners and it's actually one of the things that that has gone really really wrong and i say this as someone you know who i live in my head i you know i'm not i'm not you know you'll all be amazed to learn i'm not handed around the house right i know this will come as a shock to a lot of our listeners right so but you know that's me right but but But the world needs – there's been this – one of the phrases I hate more than anything is knowledge workers, right?

26:13Come the revolution, right? That has to go. Knowledge – it implies that you're so clever if you're a knowledge worker, maybe. But you're also bloody clever if you can mend a bike, right? or you know uh make make a generator work yeah or you know uh or or be a nurse you know cleverness comes in many varieties and the idea that the only people who are clever are people who can recite long passages of ovid not true right right it's a very good point to to take a very quick break and we'll be back with more of your wonderful questions dear listeners in just a moment

27:20We'll see you next time. First order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com code fitness.

27:31Welcome back, dear listeners. This is the Two Matt Q &A brought to you by the wonderful subscribers of the New World magazine. From Carl, I enjoyed your podcast with Paul Mason and the discussion around his book Reds. I holidayed in China last year and I can confirm that it completely defies whatever stereotypes our generation might harbor about the country. they are light years ahead of us in many ways isn't it time we dropped our institutional sinophobia and consider what we can instead learn from them matt i think this is a fascinating question because i know exactly what cole means about institutional sinophobia but and i and to explain i think he means and i suspect and i don't know carl you might be 15 but i suspect you're probably more 50 plus like we are because when we were growing up we had very kind of ideas of china very clear ideas of china being slightly backward being autonomous you know automatons all marching with their little red books um being a nation that really felt rural you know like a rural uh nation not a nation ahead of anything really um and yet of course the reality now is that China is way ahead of the West in so many different ways in terms of the cities the urbanization the technologies they're focused on and Paul spoke at length on these uh these things you know talking about for instance AI brain interfaces and stuff like this that they are working out how how you know human society will will evolve literally and they're way ahead in fact a friend of mine came back from a trip to the far east and said you know in china they are living a future we will never get to and you know it was that stark the institutional cyanophobia i think is possibly generational though and i suspect as we discussed and in fact lucy reed uh wrote a really good piece about yeah younger people in in the west to look at China as altogether preferable to what they're experiencing here in the West.

29:42And I think that's the problem, is that it's a double problem. One is for older people like us to realize that China has leapt forward, sorry to borrow that phrase from Chinese history, but has made this great leap forward and has overtaken us in so many ways. But for the younger generation to look at that and to realize what underpins it, which is basically a totalitarian state where freedom of thought is not encouraged or even permitted. So, yeah, we should we should drop our institutional xenophobia. I'll tell you, we should pay a lot more attention to it. We try and run stories all the time in the new world about what's going on in China.

30:29But look elsewhere in the media. Look on the BBC News. you don't really see the real China. If you want to see the real China, you get more of a view of that on TikTok than you do on mainstream broadcasting. And then, of course, you've got to realize that a lot of the stuff you see on TikTok is funded by, encouraged by, promoted by the Chinese Communist Party. So the perception of China is a bit of a mess. One thing I'd say, I've been to China, I went 25 years ago, had a wonderful, incredibly mind-blowing holiday in China. If you can afford it, go there and have a look for yourselves, you know.

31:08Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. The generational point you make, I think, is absolutely right. And it does come in waves, by the way, because the generation before us was full of what were called old China hands at the Foreign Office, who were very deferential towards China and wanted us to, you know, make friends with them, partly because of the sort of Kissinger argument about China as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. But I think our generation, the sort of Gen X types, were very profoundly influenced by the Tiananmen Square massacre. And I think that there's no getting around that. You know, it kind of it's in our DNA, isn't it?

31:46You know, one can never forget that. And then, as you say, the younger people now are much more receptive to what they see, understandably as a kind of humming super modern society that gets things done and i think that the lessons one can i mean first of all yes carl's right institutional xenophobia is is silly um the the lessons we can learn if we are pursuing a sort of ezra klein derrick thompson abundance agenda the speed with which the chinese can get things done and constructed is amazing but it's not just about rules that they actually ascribe value to infrastructure and energy supply in a way that you know we don't we gave up on HS2 when the going got tough right and I think the the final is that they have a kind of long-termism which western liberal democracy is just completely lacking at the moment so they when they're looking at the big problems that face them They do have 30 year horizons.

32:46We just we just don't. But I think I also think that it's, you know, without going back to the sort of institutional xenophobia, which is just not an option anymore. I don't think we should forget that, you know, all of this is a massive global challenge to liberal democracy, which, let's face it, is on its upper trades. And we should not lose sight of the fact that, you know, there are 12 million Uyghurs who are essentially leading lives of unspeakable oppression. Yes. And people living in, you know, millions of people living in conditions of modern slavery. I saw one statistic the other day that suggested that there are more people in China now living in modern slavery than whatever African-American enslaved people in the history of the United States.

33:37Now, admittedly, that's partly because of the scale of the populations in there, but still, it's an arresting statistic. And so I think the yes, absolutely. Learn from it. Go there. we're going to live with China come what may, you know, whatever, but don't be starry-eyed. You know, as you said at the top, all this efficiency and gleaming modernity rests on a bed of brutal totalitarianism. Yeah, very well said. Okay. And by the way, folks, just if you want to, if you did enjoy Paul's discussion about his book Reds, you can get a free copy of Reds signed by Paul when you subscribe to The New World if you haven't subscribed.

34:21And it's a brilliant book and it's quite an expensive book. It's 30 quid RRP so that's what you'll be saving. And you can get that by going to thenewworld.co.uk forward slash 2mats number 2mats. Next question and it's one for you Matt from Susan Hemming. Thank you Matt Dancona for such a wonderfully enlightening article on the bio tapestry in this week's magazine. I found it enthralling. I wanted to hear more about what enamours you so with the Middle Ages, something I'd never previously considered as warranting such enthusiasm. Will you please expound? Expound away, Matt. Well, thank you, Susan, for the kind words.

35:00Very, very thoughtful. I mean, I partly inherited it from my dad, who was absolutely crazy about the Middle Ages and had done his dissertation on the French theologian Peter Abelard, who famously had an affair with Eloise. And, you know, it was his passion. And I remember how much he loved Jonathan Sumption's multi-multi-volume History of the Hundred Years' War. And sadly, he didn't live to see the final volume come out, but he read the others. And I suppose there was that. And then I sort of fell in love with it myself when I was studying history at school and at university And I got involved looking, finally researching, in fact, doing sort of primary text research into the sacrament of confessional Jubilee.

35:53But I think there were lots of bits, really. I mean, partly the amazing beauty of the Middle Ages, the Shark's Cathedral and Dante's Divine Comedy and Giotto's Fresco. But the thing that really stuck with me was the intensity of belief in the Middle Ages. and the importance of what we would call the arachnol and the realization that in many ways, and to this day, people are driven not exclusively by economic statistics and rational action. And that understanding of the power of belief has actually served me very well as a journalist, because when 9-11 happened, for example, I wasn't perhaps as surprised as some colleagues were by the idea that people were so motivated by an ideology that they would fly planes into two skyscrapers in the pentagon um and then only last week we had jd vance in a podcast talking about how he is uh sensed demonic presences at meetings with foreign dignitaries and is quite open to the idea that we are living in the end times so the there's a sort of a slight contradiction which is a it's very um it's very good for your brain to look at a world like the middle ages like we see in the buyer tapestry that is completely other and alien that's a good exercise but also what's surprising at the end of it is what that which has survived you know and it's a good corrective to the idea that all human beings are in the end always on a highway towards secular liberal democratic progress um well you know i mean uh that is indeed the last stitching and the last panel exactly yeah well that's the missing panel at the end you know it says now folks um so so so i i guess that's that's why and it and it i mean just final thought was that i remember when uh new labor came in 97 and i suddenly realized oh this is a medieval court you know that was how it was operating and to try and understand it in that way was extremely helpful so i yeah it is it has it has uh been a great you know it's been a great joy to me yeah great well listen um obviously you know i'm a fan of your work but um uh that was a spectacular success oh thank you thank you very much and i found i like susan i found it enthralling and and totally enlightening in the way that the middle ages according to its reputation are not meant to be but it wasn't it was an enlightening thing what i really hope is loads of i mean it is you know the tickets are going to be are hard to come by but i really hope that lots of lot you know that they really do get a million people through as they're planning to at the museum good stuff so next question um so you matt i was disappointed to read matt k having a will self on the new world website whatever one thinks of self he is an extraordinary this is from georgina by the way he is an extraordinary talent and multicultural man his old column is what got me into reading the new european in the first place don't you think a dignified silence would have been a better response to will's criticism that's the sound of dignified silence um it's It's quite a brief one, isn't it?

39:19Sort of, maybe. I don't know. I mean, look, it's hard with Will because there's so many cohorts of people who either love him or hate him for all sorts of different reasons. And I'm a fan. You know, I think he's a brilliant writer and a good thinker. But I think he sort of lost the plot a little bit about this Jacuzze stuff he was coming out over, over the terrible death of Jason Arde, Will lashing out and calling for named journalists to be arrested and, you know, for the CPS to consider prosecution and stuff like this, I just thought was batshit crazy, to be honest. And then he had this go, Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber did a podcast about the whole media reaction to Jason Arde and included a point about Will saying pretty much, what I've just said.

40:15And, and then Will wrote this long, long, um, uh, attack on them. Um, but it took this little detour to have an attack at me and Steve Anglesey, the editor of the new world, um, about a column we didn't want to publish, um, of his, one of his multicultural man columns, which by the way, I still miss that column. I thought it was, it was absolutely great while it ran. And, and, you know, I was very sad that we couldn't carry on with it but um he wrote a column i thought was gratuitous gratuitously offensive and we fell out and that was that and we haven't really spoken so when he made this attack i thought i mean when someone attacks you you can respond with dignified silence and or you can choose to answer back and you know when i i think a dignified silence is appropriate when the attack is so blatantly unwarranted that everybody reading it will form their own opinion but Will Self's a serious guy and you know I felt we should defend ourselves and I tried to do it in a kind of human way and make clear that I'm still a fan of Will's writing but that on this occasion I thought what he was saying was paradoxical which was you know these people these journalists should be prosecuted for saying for for their journalism um and yet he had the right to cry like a baby over a column that we didn't want to publish because it offended our subscribers or we thought it would yeah you can't have it both ways neither position is correct probably but um je ne regret rien miss yourself um over to you absolutely well exactly i mean you of all people should know that dignified silences are not among my strong points straight um well it's a bit of it's a bit of a weakness in a columnist i would say or a podcast i'm not answering that i'm not you know on you go um look they you're right they do have their uses and sometimes you know you don't want to stoop to conquer but i do think that when the gauntlet is thrown down as egregiously and arbitrarily as it was in that case um it would have been odd not to respond um because it was absurd and especially the stuff about you and steve look will is a brilliant exceptional writer one of the greats of his generation but i also think that he can use language and argument as sort of shock and awe to leave his uh targets in a in kind of a daze and i think in those situations it's important to stand your ground and not to just nod deferentially and leave him the intellectual higher ground on challenge.

43:05And I think, going back to what we were saying about cleverness in part one, I think clever people need to be taken down a peg or two sometimes. You know, it's good for them. Will is great, but he doesn't have a hall pass in the public square marked fucking clever on his lanyard, you know, which means, you know, you can say whatever he likes about anyone and we all have to nod gravely and say, you're so right will how very brilliant you are that didn't work that way you know so no i was delighted that you did it and it was a great piece thank you thank you very much all right we've got time for one more question which which is kind of grounded in in a little criticism as well i think maybe maybe not it comes from stephanie i enjoyed your pod the other week where you listed out all your great novels and novellas you'd read then i went back and listened to the other people you singled out for praise in that episode all were men who were the women heroes in your lives a bit of a fair cop here i fear matt yeah no i think hands you know it is a fair cop i'm going to turn myself into the feds on this one um so i i mean look women heroes so many i mean my late mum was my hero um but sort of in the public space uh well let's stick with books because i you know could be all day really but yeah um i'll stick with books anyway um two people that i just would name one was the great tony morrison who i was very very privileged to meet in oxford in 2005 won the 93 nobel prize winner and the great book to read if listeners haven't is beloved which i think is truly one of the great post-war novels full stop and it really um i mean to say it launched a new wave of Afro-American writing is, is, it's too small.

44:58It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it totally changed the Republic of Letters. It's, it's, it remains an incredible book. So that would be number one. I think she was a complete genius and she'll be read a hundred, 200 years from now. And the other one, just briefly because i think that she um was just amazingly prophetic about what we are all now dealing with and the world that the new world deals with is margaret atwood because i think that the handmaid's tale which came out in 1985 um basically saw the rise of the theocratic right Now, it did so as speculative fiction. You know, I don't think she was saying at that point that this is going to happen in America, but it kind of did.

45:45Yeah. And, you know, we've reached the point now. And I said this, I think, before, certainly in the New World, which is that when students or sixth formers or whatever asked me, you know, what should I read? I always used to say, read 1984. That's the manual. yeah but i kind of also now say read the handmaid's tale because that will tell you how these guys think and you know that was more than 40 years ago and she's written loads of other fantastic books she's she's a genius brilliant brilliant so i was i gave this some thought looked along my bookshelves and found the books that i absolutely adore by women and joan didion appears oh more you know i've got everything i've read everything she's written uh absolutely love her work one of the great writers of our time um and just an extraordinary uh personality as well and if you if you want to see her there's an amazing documentary i can't remember what it's called but if you if you google it's on netflix isn't it i think it's on netflix and her talking about her life um just an extraordinary extraordinary person flawed like the rest of us but a genius no doubt do you have a favorite match you have a favorite of her books or the uh The Year of Magical Thinking, I think, is absolutely stunning, stunning work.

47:06But no, I mean, everything she writes, I think, is touched with absolute genius. Lillian Ross, great journalist. I mean, like she I think she's possibly my favorite ever interviewer, feature writer. Yeah. But people are now going to say, ah, but this is because of Hemingway, isn't it? and it is because she and people i think it's available online she wrote the best uh characterization the best profile of hemingway ever anyone's ever written and just really got to him um and um so she she she was an absolute genius but in daphne du maurier absolutely you know i mean the list is is endless but i have to say i think on balance and i think this is what touches to the question is in truth I think I do favor male I've got or put it this way I've got more male favorites in the canon than I have females and I don't know why that is I'm just being honest I think um maybe it's just something to do with men reading the work of men um I yeah I honestly don't know but I'm being honest and saying it's probably 70 30 something like that Yeah.

48:26Again, I think, you know, I increasingly think the older I get, that the generations and what they were going through at a particular time are more formative. I mean, you know, it's not so much prejudice, it's what was going on. So a lot of my, I've got a lot of Virago's because, you know, Virago was a big thing when we were in our, I guess, our, what, 20s, you know? Yeah. Those green spines, you know, in the bookshops, They were very appealing Stevie Smith and, you know, Angela Carter and God knows what. But the fact is, for me anyway, you know, the literary brat pack were blokes. You know, it was Martin Amis.

49:07It was Julian Barnes. It was Ian McEwen. It was Salman Rushdie. It was James Fenton, you know, and then Kashish Shigeru. And, you know, they were guys and, you know, they all knew each other in a way that I don't think today's novelists do. And so it would, you know, it would be idle to deny that as I was coming up, those were the people that, you know, you know, especially McEwan and Amis for me. And then I got to know Hitch, you know, these were the people who wasn't a novelist, you know, they were the people I would kind of wanted to be reading and reading everything of. And they were and also they were a gateway to writers.

49:45You know, I don't think I'd have got as much into Saul Bellow without Martin Amis, you know, or Nabokov or whatever. so and that was then and and i don't think that cohort of of writers are have the same purchase on people in their 20s and early 30s today at all and that's fine you know but you you are you are your upbringing aren't you you know you are the way you you can't help it i think my my favorite i mean for what it's worth my favorite painter uh contemporary painter right now now that the great david hockney has passed into the yes great um studio upstairs is is a woman cecily brown um oh that's a great one she is absolutely magical and i hope it's still on but there's a there's a great free exhibition of her work at the serpentine right now if i really be in london and i went to see it it's breathtakingly good um uh so yeah she and she's sort of our age you know um yeah works in new york she's a brit um but just a wonderful wonderful half abstract half realist um painter magic stuff.

50:50Go and see Cecily Brown at the Serpentine. Very good shout. Right, dear listeners, that's it for this week's Q &A. Sorry if I sounded a little bit rough, but hopefully normal service will be resumed next Thursday. We'll be back. Don't forget your special subs offer with a free signed copy of Reds by Paul Mason, which is an absolute blockbuster. And if you're not already a subscriber of the New World, You can pick that up when you go to thenewworld.co.uk forward slash 2mats. That's the number 2, M-A-T-T-S. Send in your questions, please, for next week's Q &A to 2mats at tnepublishing.com. That's the number 2, M-A-T-T-S, tnepublishing.com.

51:38Thank you to Ruby Mitchell for stepping into Matt Withershoes this week and producing the show. Thank you, Ruby. oh by the way folks just something I'm sorting out the rest of my day will be spent sorting out the logistics on this but we're going to have a great event with Mr Alistair Campbell and another star guest towards the end of October so and we'll be opening up tickets for that to two Matt's listeners and subscribers of the New World in the next week or two so stand by for that stand by and apart from that have a great weekend have a great week

52:44We'll see you next time. protein, fiber, grains, and more. Embrace your salty side. Go to cachava.com and use code fitness for 15 % off your first order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com code fitness.