Britain Is Headed For A Financial Meltdown - Allister Heath

25:06And you've ended up in a very bad fiscal place. I blame Labour for that. It's Labour's fault. Now, they're preparing a new budget where they're going to put up taxes again by another massive amount of money. And I can guarantee you we are already on the wrong side of this so-called Laffer curve. Basically, we're at a place where when you put up taxes, you get very little extra money. Sometimes you can even get less money than you would have had you actually cut the taxes. This is where we are in this country. We are in a very dangerous place where you can't really just put up taxes and put up taxes and put up taxes and hope to just collect more and more money.

25:41The economy is at breaking point. We are reaching the maximum amount of taxation that you can extract from a very, very weak private sector. So what you're saying sounds, and this is pretty much what I've thought, and I've got no, I don't have any training in economics, in business or whatever it is. But to me, what you're saying is common sense. Eventually, there's only so much juice you can get from the squeeze in the orange, pretty much. So then I look at Rachel Reeves and I look at the Labour Party and I think to myself, why don't they understand this? Is this incompetence? Is this ideology?

26:17Or is it a mixture of the two? It's a mixture of the two. So when they arrived, they were incredibly arrogant. They thought they were morally righteous people. They were holier than thou. They were better people. So therefore, by definition, everything was going to work much better. They just walk into the government and they just tell the civil service and the civil service was cheer, hooray, finally some good people and we all work together and the economy will start booming and we suddenly start building all these new houses and all that sort of stuff, you know? Obviously, completely delusional nonsense.

26:46So that's the first problem. Secondly, ideology. The current ideology, the current dominant ideology in this country just does not deliver growth, right? So what do you have? You've got net zero. Net zero is a complete disaster, complete disaster. We are producing, we're shutting down all our oil and gas fields you know we're producing less and less electricity we are burning ourselves with this obsessive desire to reduce carbon emissions at any cost and the cost is vast and this is crippling the economy so that's the first problem you can't return to proper growth without ditching net zero right first thing second regulation everything is regulated there's far too much regulation far too much red tape on every aspect of life third tax You can't be waging war on the so-called rich when it is the rich that basically deliver all the innovation, all the new companies, the growth, and so much, such a disproportionate share of tax revenues.

27:42The Tories and Labour have been chasing away the so-called non-doms, which are these rich people who base themselves in the UK. They've been chasing away entrepreneurs. They've been discouraging risk-taking and entrepreneurship. You know, where's Elon Musk? Where's the British Elon Musk? You know, every day almost you hear of another company that's decided not to invest in Britain or another British company that's decided to move to America to list on the New York stock market, not on the London Stock Exchange. This is a complete disaster. And this is ideology. And then it's this generalized climate in this country, right?

28:14There's too much crime. There's too much disorder. Everything's messy. Prices are too high. You know, nothing works. The public sector doesn't work. Why do you want to live here under all these circumstances? is. Yes, obviously, Britain remains quite a civilised place and parts of the UK are still beautiful and people enjoy the arts and the culture and all that sort of stuff. But there comes a time when these sorts of advantages pale in comparison with the hard reality, which is, why do you want to come here and pay so much tax? It makes no sense. Well, and you mentioned, Francis, and you both mentioned ideology and incompetence, but I think there is a much more powerful third force that you alluded to earlier, which is, I believe, the reason the Labour government is only using one of the levers, which is trying to increase taxes, the other levers are not available to them.

29:00They know they cannot reduce public spending because for them that's electoral suicide. And so when they even attempt to do any of that, or even hint at attempting, or even talk about attempting any of that, the entire left wing of the Labour Party comes out and says, you know, you're going to kill the poor, you're going to do this, you're going to do that. And so the fact that you say we're living beyond our means, they can't go to let's reduce spending, which, you know, if you think about it on a household level, if you come home to your wife tonight and say, you know, sweetheart, my salary has been cut in half.

29:36So we're going to have to tighten our belts. You might not be happy, but she probably understand. And you'd work together to work things out. But if you came home tonight and said, my salary has been cut in half and she went, I'm entitled to the lifestyle that you've provided to me to this point, you've got a problem. And that's where I think the Labour Party is. The person that they've got at home does not want to recognise the consequences of the salary being cut in half. Yes. I mean, that's, I'd say, a combination of ideology and self-interest and political self-interest. And you saw that the current Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was trying to cut taxes.

30:10Sorry, was trying to cut spending. I mean, obviously, she was not trying to cut wishful thinking creeping in here. So she was trying to cut a bit of public spending and she was defeated by the Labour MPs who just rebelled, basically. They just said, no, sorry, we're never doing that. And now they're going to try again, by the way. They're going to have another go at trimming some forms of public spending. But the reality is, there's going to be a fiscal crisis and suddenly they're going to have to do this. And their base is going to loathe them for it, right? And the public is going to hate them because they've been lying and saying you don't have to do it.

30:41But you're right, yes. electoral self-interest is a major problem for the Labour Party if your voting base is basically people who are net tax consumers. You can divide the country into two groups. Net tax contributors, people who pay more tax than they take out in other benefits or services, and net tax consumers. And the problem in Britain is there's too many consumers. Too many people are taking out more than they put in. It's that simple. And the mathematics of that is toxic. It basically means that both the centre-right and the centre-left end up becoming a proponent for an ever larger welfare state.

31:18Which is what we've got. Which is what we've got. So the question then is, I mean, I don't know your politics exactly, but I imagine based on what you've said, you're not a fan of Labour, you're not a fan of the Conservatives. That only leaves for someone with... Well, I supported Conservatives at the last election and previous elections. We forgive you. Yes. Well, I supported them because I... Repent. So, well, I spent my whole time criticising them. And then I supported them. And the reason I was criticising them was not because I disliked them. I liked a lot of them individually, but because I thought they were going terribly wrong because they were turning their back on free market principles and on genuine conservative philosophy.

31:55And I thought that was a catastrophe. And I was convinced the Labour government would be a complete disaster. I wasn't one of those people who claimed totally wrongly, in my view, there's no difference in Conservatives and Labour. There is a big difference. And I think these Labour governments have been a catastrophe. I understand. But I think part of the way you framed it there is interesting because of the question I was about to ask you. Abandoning free market principles. And yes, there's a difference between Labour and Conservatives. But a lot of people would say the difference between Labour and Conservatives is the speed at which they arrive at the same destination.

32:27That's exactly what happened in recent years, yes, after the Conservative Party embraced Blairism and basically gave up on its previous belief system. Okay, so we are now where we are. If your projections are correct, which I have no reason to think they're not, we are going to arrive in a fairly radical moment. And as you say, there are two possibilities. There is the rise of the far left, you know, the fringes of the labor movement, the Green Party, you know, Jezbelah, whatever you want to call it. And then on the other side, you've got reform. Now, my looking at reform's commitments at this point, those free market principles, which I know Nigel Farage holds very dear, they don't seem to be super present either.

33:11I mean, there is a lot of old things to old men going on in reform as well, don't you think? I think a few weeks ago, reform started putting out some left-wing policies to try and outgun labor to try and grab more of the old working class electric. I think that was probably a mistake. On balance, though, they are talking now about cutting welfare spending quite heavily. They've just announced they're going to be working on a project to look at that. And they're also generally speaking about cutting public spending. I think they are now much more aware of this possibility of a fiscal crisis, which is why they are now, for example, preparing for an election in 2027, which would be two years earlier than the date at which it has to happen.

33:50So I do think they are aware that they need to have another rethink and get back to basics, I think, on all of that stuff. But look, the bottom line is this. Reform are massively ahead in the polls at the moment, right? On current trends, reform is the most likely to win the next general election, which obviously would be an earthquake in British and in world politics. But I think we mustn't underestimate the chance of the left somehow managing to pull a rabbit out of a hat. You know, Jeremy Corbyn is going to eventually launch a new party. And it doesn't matter how chaotic it is and how contradictory and whether they have a name or whatever.

34:29That doesn't really matter. They've got at least 15 % of the population that are immediately going to back a sort of Corbyn-Green alliance. That could grow to 20%. But isn't that good for reform? In the short term, that's excellent for reform because it's basically destroying the Labour Party. So the Labour Party is just sinking and fragmenting the left. And it's fragmenting the left, yes. Completely fragmenting the left because the Liberal Democrats are also gradually growing. There's a high chance that the Liberal Democrats become the official opposition after the next election. You know, you might have a reform government, a Liberal Democrat opposition.

35:03On current polling, that's what it would be. But this is where I think things get slightly more exciting. I think the Corbyn party could yet have a higher share of the vote than the Liberal Democrats at the next election. So I think the left is fragmenting. The right fragmented massively, which meant that Labour won the last election. But now, paradoxically, the right is less fragmented than the left because reform is so dominant. But the Conservatives are still at about 18 % or so in the polls. So that's a question. Let me introduce you to the people I work with to protect my family against financial instability, inflation, and turmoil.

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36:54That's pure-gold.co slash And how much of this, which we see with people supporting hard left parties, is ideological? You've always had your socialist, socialist workers parties. And how much of this is just economic illiteracy? People don't understand what it means to run a country or how you effectively have to balance the books. Yes. I mean, the far left support the omnicores nowadays. So they're no longer purely economic. The old Marxist parties were very kind of materialistic. It was only bad economics, really. In a way, it was a nice message. It was, you know, we're going to make sure the poor become rich.

37:36That's quite nice. In reality, it led to catastrophe, death, dictatorship, and so on. Everyone was equally poor. That's what happened, yes. And equally unfree. But the left now has mutated. It's woke. It's got all sorts of hatreds. And it embraces what I call the omnicourse. Other people call the omnicourse, which is this ever-changing set of left-wing beliefs. Right now, it's hatred of Israel. But before that, it was hatred of bankers. It was BLM. You know, it just changes depending on the moment. As you can see, Greta Thunberg basically switching from being a net zero advocate to being an anti-Israel activist.

38:14So they are kind of fueled and fired up by quite a lot of stuff. And those people genuinely believe that there's no difference between the Tories and Labour, which is why they're willing to vote for a far-left party, regardless of what that means as a general election. Of course, they'd hate the Reform Party. But they really don't care if Labour win or not anymore because they've become so left-wing, so disengaged. By the way, there are, of course, lots of economic reasons for the growth of the far-left. So it's part a cultural thing, but it's partly an economic thing. the cultural thing has also got to do with changing belief system among younger people when it comes to to the environment which they prioritize above everything else you know even they say they don't have children for example because they care so much about the environment but also you've got the whole cultural rejection of nation states so these people are believe in open borders they believe that you know you should have unlimited immigration that citizenship's meaningless.

39:09So all those sorts of things. But then you've got the economics. The economics is probably largely about two things. One, housing availability. There's just not enough homes built in this country, given the explosion in the size of the population, and also other forms of social change, like people living longer or people living as singles and stuff like that. And secondly, wages. Wages have just not kept up. So because these people see that, and they don't really have an economic theory of how the world works. They just assume capitalism has failed, or lost in late-stage capitalism, or something like that, or they assume that the rich are taking all the money.

39:46I was going to say, it's worse than what you say. It's what they assume is they've been robbed. And there are a lot of commentators who will tell them that. The reason you are poor is the rich, the rich, the rich. And I do think that inequality is a massive problem in this country. We can't deny that. Yeah. So I don't call it inequality because I don't have a problem with inequality. I think inequality is normal. I think inequality is good even when it emerges. Why is it good? It's good if it emerges spontaneously from differential contributions. If you're an incredibly successful sports star and tens of millions of people are willing to pay, you know, your YouTube channel or whatever it is to watch you, then I have no problem with that person being very, very rich, much, much richer than somebody else.

40:34So that form of inequality doesn't bother me. But there's an artificial kind of inequality that's created via fake policy, and that's what I object to. And that artificial malign form of inequality comes from terrible education systems that drag down the poor in this country, in the UK, especially the white working class, which is terrible at school. So therefore, their future prospects are massively limited. You've got a welfare state that's basically a trap. The welfare state encourages people not to work in many cases, encourages people to exaggerate their lack of health, for example, especially mental health.

41:08So that's creating poverty. There's monetary policy, i.e. what central banks do. So you've had years and years and years of monetary manipulation by central banks. Central bankers think they're like this new elite class. They're almost godlike in their beliefs. They think that they can just stop, that they can create perpetual economic growth just by fiddling with interest rates or printing money, quantitative easing, that sort of stuff. I think that's been hugely disruptive to the economy over the last 20, 30 years. It's put up the price of certain assets. It's put up the price of housing. It's made it much less likely for young people to be able to afford to buy their own homes.

41:43So that's another reason, another policy creating the wrong kind of inequality. You've got another, the wrong kind of inequality simply caused by lack of economic opportunity, right? If there's a lot of economic opportunity, social mobility can be maximized so people can climb. if there's not much social mobility because there's not much opportunity. If there's barriers to entry, there's closed shops, there's laws that prevent you from entering a particular business area. Well, clearly that's going to also maximize inequality. It's going to freeze a society in that aspect. And again, that will hurt the poor.

42:17So there's good inequality, which is the byproduct of a real free market. If you work hard, you can make money. If you're lazy, you don't make money. But there's bad inequality that's caused by stupid public policy, flawed ideology, flawed economics, that kind of thing. And that is a problem here. And that is clearly one of the things fuelling the rise of the anti-capitalist far left, fuelling the omni-cause, is fuelling malcontent and social chaos. Imagine, so let's do a little thought experiment, Alistair. Let's say reform get in, a sizable majority, and then we have 20 % your party, Jezbel, whatever you want to call them.

42:56How much of an impact can they make? How much of an impact can they make on reform, on public policy, on spending, etc.? It all depends on the professionalism and organisation of a reformed government, if that were to be what materialises at the next election. Because for a reformed government to succeed, there's two very big challenges for Nigel Farage. right? First challenge, win the election. I mean, an astonishing thing for him to win the general election. People are starting to speak about it as if it's normal, obvious. It's not normal, it's not obvious. It's a massive challenge for him. The moment it looks like he might be able to pull it off.

43:34But the second massive challenge is that he'd have to seize control of the British state and actually impose the sort of change, you know, once in a generation, frankly, once in the 100-year level of change, the kind of stuff you saw in the 1940s, a more radical, more compressed period of change than even the 1980s under Thatcher. You'd have to change everything, right? Scrap tons of laws, restructure the constitution, complete a change of civil service, which is completely broken, get rid of the Human Rights Act, quit the ECHR, quit all these international treaties, right? And you'd be declaring total ideological war on the blob, on the ruling dominant ideology of this country.

44:19And that's going to be very, very tough. So that is Farage's massive challenge. Prepare. How can you prepare? How can you find lots of very talented people outside of politics to bring them in so that they can effectively launch a hostile takeover of the British state after the general election and actually push through change rather than be defeated. Like Liz Truss came along and she was crushed. She was gone within weeks. How do you avoid that sort of scenario? Trump won in America, was largely defeated by the blob, by the civil service and so on. And Trump too, on the other hand, has seized control of the machinery of state.

44:54He was very well prepared in advance. He had orders, he was just ready to sign on day one, day two, day three and so on. That's how you do it. But you need quality people. And there's not enough quality people currently in British politics. There's some quality people in the Conservative Party. We must hope that everyone on the right kind of unites in some sort of way so that at least there's enough. You talk to a lot of people in both reform and the Conservatives. It's my, I think about these things logically, which usually fails me because a lot of the human behaviour is not very logical. But logically, I would think if reform continues to do well and the Conservatives continue to struggle, you would imagine that many of the people within the Conservative Party would jump ship because it would be the logical thing to do.

45:40Do you sense that that is what will happen? I think it will happen, but it's not really happened in any major way yet. No. The reason is they're just biding their time. I mean, their strategy is that they think there's no need for them to move fast. They don't think there's a first move of advantage in doing that, they think there's a first move of cost because, you know, everyone will hate you, your old friends will hate you, that sort of stuff. It's better to wait until other people do it first. There's a danger there because Farage is trying to bring in people from outside politics. So if you're not careful, he's going to found new people before those Tories actually join him.

46:15But I think on balance, his big challenge now is to further expand his share of the vote. And that now means further shrinking the Tory share of the vote, which remains still quite high at about 18%. So I think, yes, more Tories will probably join reform. The problem with the Conservative Party is, basically, one-third of the Conservative Party are real Conservatives. You know, free mortis, Conservatives, Libertarians, whatever. Coalition of those kinds of people. A third are centrists. They're basically careerists. They do whatever the party leader tells them to do. And a third are basically Liberal Democrats, Social Democrats, who basically are not Conservative, who are against Brexit, who like international human rights treaties, who like all that sort of stuff.

46:58So that party was always a complete unstable coalition, which has basically ruined the last few years of their government. But, I mean, every party is an unstable coalition in some form or another, surely. I mean, Labour is an unstable coalition. Yes, no, you're right about that. But I think there was really, really striking ideological differences within the Conservative Party on essential questions. If you go to the Labour Party, they all believe that the state is good, that the NHS is good, the government needs to grow, paying taxes is a good thing, right? But they disagree about the details.

47:32In the Conservative Party, they literally disagreed about everything. They disagreed about first principles. They disagreed about philosophy. You know, do you join the EU? Do you leave the EU? Should you have a wealth tax? Yes, some Tories believe in a wealth tax. Or do you not have a wealth tax? Should you cut tax? Should you put up tax? I mean, these are hugely consequential differences. I think they're non-reconcilable differences, which I think if reform want to have any chance of succeeding, they need to make sure that they are united on all the basic principles, at least. But, you know, you look at reform.

48:01Is it Jake Berry who has transitioned over to reform? And you go, this guy's a proponent of net zero. You know, he's a big fan. You go, what's happening here? Surely that's fundamentally incompatible. You've got to hope that he was in the second category, the centrist careerist category. Isn't that worse? Right, well, look, that is, well, reform face two problems. Reform face a number of possible risks. One of the risks is that they become another concerted party, you know, and so they better not do that. Another risk, of course, is they don't find enough competent people, you know, and there's other risks, or that they inadvertently attract some dodgy people, which Farage is obviously very keen not to happen.

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49:22It's one of the few places where we know we'll find proper debate, lively discussion, and people unafraid to speak their minds. If you believe in free debate and want to explore the toughest issues facing society, this festival is for you. Put your tickets at battleofideas.org.uk and use code TRIGGER25 for a 20 % discount on all tickets. That's battleofideas.org.uk. Let's go back to my original question, which is a 20 % your party, Jez Balaar. How much of an impact and effect can they have on UK politics and the way we run this country? They can have a very large effect on British politics, but not necessarily on what happens in terms of public policy and in terms of the government.

50:04If you've got a strong, well-organised majority government, then government could ignore those people, fight them on the airwaves in terms of argument, set the debate, shift sentiment in a more right-wing direction, that kind of thing. But if you've got a far-left party at 20%, clearly it will make a big impact in terms of grassroots movements and in terms of the long-term political structure of this country, yes. So let's... I love your articles, Alistair. I really do. Yeah, I think they're really well written. They're a little bit spicy, slightly provocative at times, which I like. That's great.

50:44Which I very much enjoy. There was one article in particular that stood out, which was you used the phrase anarcho-tyranny, and you were saying this country is descending or is in the process of descending into a state of anarcho-tyranny. James O 'Brien was frothing at the mouth, which personally made us all very happy. Yeah, no, I was quite happy about that. So explain what you mean to me. what you mean by that because when i read the article i was like oh this is a bit far and then the more i read the more my blood started to chill slightly obviously i was tongue in cheek slightly yeah uh but the the the serious point is this country is a weird mix of chaos lawlessness um hard-working law-abiding people being criminalized because of some dumb tweet that they might have put out or something they've said that sort of stuff you know massive amount of shoplifting, people getting their mobile phones stolen, that sort of thing, graffiti, litter, nothing's working.

51:39So that's the chaos bit, the anarchy bit. And the tyranny bit is basically this kind of increasing oppression in certain areas. And obviously, the war on free speech is a very important part of that. In other words, the government can't keep the peace and can't put criminals in jail, but it can put you in jail if you're Graham Linehan. Yeah, well, that is exactly right. And that is a tragic situation. It's a study in contrasts, and it's not one that I like. I don't think that's the direction this country should go in. I think it's very, very dangerous. I think the free speech thing isn't a joke.

52:13I think it's very serious. I think it's a travesty that so many people are being prosecuted for what they're saying. I think the whole world is noticing. Things have gone wrong over the last 20 years, basically. Some of this stuff was originally well-intentioned, blah, blah, right? Clearly. But I think, unfortunately, it's gone terribly wrong. And I think the only solution is to adopt a US-style protection for free speech, by which I mean the kinds of rules. I don't mean the First Amendment, because you can't do that in Britain. We don't have a written constitution. You can pass a law, but it's never going to be part of the constitution.

52:48But you should pass a law protecting free speech. should basically copy the rulings of the US Supreme Court, their guidance when it comes to what should be legal and what should not be legal. Because obviously in America, yeah, even in America, some forms of speech, if they're inciting immediate and likely violence, obviously you can't do that. You can't shout fire in a crowded theatre, that sort of thing. But other than that, all speech should be permissible. But what's really worrying is talking about free speech. We saw Zach Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, on, I think it was Newsnight, and they were talking about the arrest of Graham Linehan, and he said he's supporting it.

53:28Now, I accept proportionality of police response is a conversation we need to have. Well, do you think this was proportionate? I think it was proportionate to arrest him. I think there's a pattern here. Five armed police officers turning up. Well, that's the bit that I don't understand why they were armed. And again, I'd need to hear about the police response. And why there were five, presumably. I mean, this is a new phenomenon, which is left-wing political operators openly being authoritarian, openly calling for the arrests of people who say things they don't like. And let's be clear, Graham Linden said nothing wrong.

53:57It was not offensive. There's absolutely nothing wrong in what he said, right? That was a case of persecution that was entirely unfair. It was entirely wrong. There's no defense for this. And obviously in America, you'd be laughed out of court, right? Obviously that would never be prosecuted. And I think it's very worrying that the far left is becoming so authoritarian. but it is, right? What starts with speech goes on with other things I mean, the far left wants to shut down private schools, they don't want to allow people to educate their children the way they want, they want to tax them, expropriate their property they want, you know, a wealth confiscate their wealth, that sort of stuff and they don't want them to be allowed to say what they want that is not a liberal movement, right?

54:35The woke, infused far left is a very dangerous is a very dangerous set of people and a very dangerous set of parties I mean, don't forget, on free speech The woke believe that speech is basically violence, and they believe on an inherently racist and oppressive society, and that the only people who've got the ability to say anything are actually oppressors. And this is a very, very twisted way of looking at the world, and it's a total rejection of Western values. The far left is anti-Western. Now, by the way, there's the growth of fascism on certain fringes in America, for example. I totally get that also.

55:10That's also very, very dangerous. I agree with you completely. And I think one of the things that's in stark relief for us all today, because we're recording this the day after Charlie Kirk was murdered in America, and we don't yet know, and we may know by the time this episode is released, who it was that killed him, what they were motivated by. But the one thing that I think is we've all given this linguistic shenanigans a pass. We've all said, oh, you know what? Some students are saying words of violence, but they don't really mean it. And they're calling these people Nazis or those people Nazis.

55:47They don't really mean it. But I think we're now through the looking glass. And we now have to actually recognize the reality of where we are, which is when people say that someone is a Nazi. or when people say that language is violence and therefore logically you are entitled to defend yourself against that language with violence, we are in a very, very bad place. And I think it's time where I really, really agree with what you've said today is it's time to stop pretending that these words don't mean what the words mean. I'm a journalist. I can tell you words mean what they mean. Words matter, right?

56:26It's all in the words. And the far-left ideology that is generally known as wokeism or whatever you want to call it, is a very bad set of beliefs. It's a belief that completely demolishes every single foundation of Western society, and it was designed to do so, right? Marxism only destroyed part of society. This is a comprehensive destruction of all aspects of Western society, everything. And it needs to be fought. It needs to be taken very, very seriously. The idea that the war on woke has been won is wrong. Yes, Donald Trump is in the White House, but that doesn't mean that the war on woke has been won.

57:03In Britain, woke is still a very dominant ideology. It's still the official ideology of the public sector. The police are arresting people for having said something that someone thinks isn't very nice. This is very dangerous. Let me challenge you a little bit on that, though, Alistair. Do you not think, though, the way I was just on with my very good friend James Orr and his new podcast, which everyone should check out, and we talked about this and he was asking me about this. My sense, though, is that the wokeness was metastatic. It was a metastatic cancer. There was a central tumor and then you've got all these other tumors that have spread into other parts of the body politic.

57:40but I do think the central tumor has been removed more or less which is the ideology is bankrupt is discredited which is why when Graham is arrested by the police you have the police coming out saying to the politicians you need to change the law and you've got labor politicians saying yeah I think we need to change the law because the power of the central tumor is no longer there these other tumors are starting to fall out one by one do you not think that's true So I think that's slightly too optimistic for me. Okay. I'll tell you why I agree and why I disagree. So I think the anti-workforces have won a massive victory when it comes to gender ideology.

58:17Yes. And I think, by the way, that only happens because of the sensible left. So it's not the right that won it. It's a left. It's J.K. Rowling. She's a hero, in my view. Rosie Duffield. Yes, and all these people. We can go down. They got together, the few people on the right, and they managed to defeat gender ideology. In America, Trump has really pushed that. And gender ideology, when normal people actually understood it, was hated because people realized how demented it was, anti-natural and all the rest. So that aspect of the woke revolution is in retreat. On speech, I think Britain is just a crazy outlier.

58:53So the restrictions on speech in Britain are so ridiculous that they've overreached. So there is going to be a backlash. But I don't really think that the overall ideology has been properly damaged. Because when you look at the arguments, people say, OK, fine, in this particular case, we shouldn't have arrested this person. But nonetheless, in all these other cases, it's still valid. And I don't think that's a proper defense of free speech. That's just a sort of recalibration. It's the work overreach, so now they are kind of slightly moving back. And then I think there's other areas where the work ideology is still completely out of control.

59:28For example, this whole idea of colonialism and settler states and exploitation and paying reparations for slavery and all that sort of stuff, that is still growing. That has not been defeated. And the entire left-wing hatred of Israel, for example, is based specifically on that ideology. That ideology defines Israel as a settler state, which by definition, axiomatically, is committing a genocide. You don't have to prove it. You don't have to show any evidence. It's just happening by definition. And those people also think that America and Australia and New Zealand and Canada are invalid constructs.

1:00:05And that stuff's gaining ground. And so, you know, I look at the world and I see, OK, the woke are not winning every battle. And they're being pushed back in some areas, even defeated when it comes to woke ideology. But they're not one that we outside is not winning on everything. And also bother on economics. Right. I think more and more young people in America, in this country, elsewhere, are describing themselves as socialists. And that's, of course, Marxism, traditional Marxism is basically the economic wing of the woke movement. That's how it all started, but that still remains essential.

1:00:37In New York, you've got that socialist candidate who's probably going to win. Zoram Amdani. Indeed, yes. And he's a woke revolutionary, basically, and he's now going to launch it on economics. on crime, even on crime, you know, of course, there's been pushback and, you know, everybody realizes it. Many people now realize that defunding the police is literally utter idiocy. I mean, madness. But nonetheless, you know, there's a lot, there's still a lot of work to be had, I think. So, yeah, I think it's a mixed picture. It's a mixed picture. Before Alistair answers the final question at the end of the interview, make sure to go to triggerpod.co.uk to hear him answer your questions and see this.

1:01:16What's the most high-impact reform the UK could make today that we'd still thank ourselves for in 10 to 20 years? Do you think it would be viable for the UK to create a sovereign wealth fund using shale gas and why do you think that net zero energy and security has taken over the West? Alistair, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Last question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I think we're not talking enough as a society about the return of anti-Semitism in Britain and the West. I think that's an incredibly dangerous, toxic, hateful belief that a lot of us thought had been vanquished.

1:01:55But in fact, it turns out hasn't been vanquished. There's a recent poll, a YouGov poll in the UK, which shows that 21 % of the population now are basically anti-Semites in the sense that they believe in at least four anti-Semitic tropes. 45 % of the population believe that Israel is treating Palestinians in the same way as the Nazis treated the Jews, which is obviously completely absurd. And, you know, there's more and more acts of violence, more and more criminal anti-Semitic acts that barely go reported anymore. They've been normalized. And there's been this normalization across the middle class and across the elites.

1:02:32And I think there's no country ever that has survived unscathed from allowing anti-Semitism to grow in this country. And by the way, this is not just anti-Semitism. Any country that turns against successful, integrated, patriotic minorities is a country that's going down the drain, basically. Do you think this is an Israel-specific phenomenon, though? Or do you think it's more to do with the economic realities that people are struggling and so they're looking for an explanation? I think Israel is a lightning rod, but I think it has lit up underlying beliefs that hadn't really gone away. And I think what we see is very ugly.

1:03:15And, of course, you can criticise any country. I criticise Britain all the time, right? I criticise the British Prime Minister all the time. It doesn't mean I hate Britain. I love Britain. But the criticism of Israel we see is not fair. You know, it's not grounded in reality. It's hysterical. It's incredibly biased. There's incredible double, triple, quadruple standards. It's almost demented. And that form of hysteria is prejudice. It's not the rational criticism of a particular set of policies. And that's all feeding into ancient hatreds, both traditional ancient hatreds that have always existed in Britain.

1:03:53Britain invented the blood libel 800 years ago or 900 years ago in Norwich. and of course also more recent arrivals that are sometimes anti-Semitic. So you've got that combination of things. And what's most scary, I think, is the levels of prejudice that have crept into, I think, the upper middle class again and the ruling elites. And I'm very, very worried about that. I think there's a red light flashing here. And I used to be an optimist. I used to be, like Matt Ridley, a rational optimist, but I now consider myself a rational pessimist. I think there's a lot of things going terribly wrong in this country and in the world.

1:04:32And I think human nature tends to revert to the mean, and that's not a particularly good place to end up. Well, there you go. That's your positive message for the day. Head on over to Substack, where we ask Alistair your questions. As an experienced editor of a non-French media publication, could Mr. Heath offer an honest opinion of the political landscape in France, how we got here, and what to expect in the near future? We'll be right back.