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May 4, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
09:53
#Bridgwater： How Do We Get Through To Remainers？
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Time Text
Right, hello.
What's your name, sir?
Liam.
Liam, nice to meet you, Liam.
Nice to meet you.
Right.
Yeah, that's it.
So I've been discussing back and forth with my family and with some people on university campuses, professors, and they've brought up some good points.
And I say professors, they're not necessarily ones that disagree with you.
I spoke to this one particular guy for about an hour at least, and we were discussing things back and forth, and he agreed with some points.
He did say that there was an economics professor who actually did feel that he was able to speak up and say, yes, leaving the EU is the correct economic decision.
But then he also said that other things he wouldn't be comfortable saying on the university campus.
And my thought is whether or not he agrees with you, he said he'd looked into you and similar to what's said in Rules for Radicals, the difference between a rhetorical radical and a pragmatic radical.
And it's are you, you know, we have these just leave, you know, to remain is to betray.
Is that not similar to, you know, pigs in blankets or whatever, or just shouting fascists?
Is that not just rhetorical statement that won't actually get anywhere?
Well, I think it's more of a statement of intent than anything else.
I mean, shouting fascists at someone is just a way of insulting them.
But I do think we're at the point where we really do just have to leave.
The European Union is not going to give us a half-decent deal.
There's no question of it.
They've agreed to Theresa May's deal, which everyone else hates.
And literally, it's a bipartisan question on that, isn't it?
Sorry, you've got to.
But for us to actually get this to the point where we are actually going to leave, if we want to make any ground, sure, it's a statement of intent, but is it actually going to get anywhere?
Are we actually going to achieve anything?
Well, I mean, we're not the party in government at the moment, are we?
So regardless of what we think, I mean, unless we start taking seats, there's really very little we can do about it.
And that's something that's not going to happen for years because when are they going to call another general election?
But if you've got, you know, we have people who don't necessarily disagree with us politically still saying they can't openly support or vote for us.
I mean, it's only been a couple of weeks since I've been kind of firmly saying, I said to my family, yes, I will vote UKIP.
And it was a weird thing to do.
I didn't even feel comfortable saying it myself.
And so how...
It took me a long time too.
And it really just came to the point where I was just sick of it.
I was just like, you know what?
I don't even care.
Because the whole way that they tend to control people, and I think the way they've just generally tried to lock UKIP out of any kind of dialogue, is through this kind of social shaming.
But it's got to the point now where I'm just so dissatisfied with the way things are being run.
I don't care what they call me and I don't care what they think because I know what I stand for.
Do you have any ideas for how to get people who are still on the other side to actually say that they don't care anymore?
Well, I think that really you've just got to see the state of the world and the way things are going and the way that politics is happening at the moment.
I mean, nobody can be pleased with the constant media smears.
And this is not just against UKIP either.
This is against every single party that isn't the Conservatives.
And the establishment seems to be trying to desperately protect the Conservatives from any real solid criticism.
But I mean, like, look at what happens to Jeremy Corbyn.
You know, I don't think that Jeremy Corbyn hates Jewish people.
You know, I think that's a really unfair thing.
And doubtless, he's got like a tiny fringe amount of radicals within his party who do genuinely hold those opinions.
But it's unfair to target every Labour voter with them.
Well, yeah, as much as I dislike his politics.
Of course.
I don't think that he's trying to do anything mean or evil necessarily.
I'm sure that he's not.
I think John McDonnell absolutely is.
But yeah, the thing is, for Jeremy Corbyn, it's more like, why does he have to support every terrorist group under the sun?
Why does he phone up dictators and congratulate them on the tremendous revolution they're running in Venezuela?
Why does he call Castro a champion of social justice?
These are all his own words.
And yet they go, oh, well, he hates Jews.
It's like, oh, come on.
Come on.
That's just smearing.
Why do I have to defend Jeremy Corbyn from smears?
There's so much he's actually said that's just totally awful that he genuinely stands by.
And I think we should go for that.
As a second question.
Yeah.
So my father is a staunch remainer, and there's, in his opinion, good reason for it.
And it's a legitimate reason.
Now, you aren't running as an MP, you're running as an MEP.
And so there is the potential for you to be an MEP and for us to remain.
Yes.
If that is the case, why should someone who is a staunch remainer still vote for you if we never leave?
What can you give to someone like my dad who doesn't want to leave?
Well, I mean, honestly, I would suggest that on the principle of democracy, it really is incumbent on British people now to vote for leavers for the European Parliament in particular, obviously for our own Parliament, in order to send them a message in order to let them know, look, we are not happy with the way this has been handled.
And it really is, I mean, it's not even their fault necessarily, but Guy Verhofstadt is over here now campaigning with the Liberal Democrats to try and overturn the referendum.
And I mean, how is that not foreign meddling when the ex-Belgian prime minister comes over to start trying to persuade people one way or the other?
So at the end of the day, I mean, I believe that UKIP are really the only party that are actually going to look out for the interests of the regular person.
Because all of the other parties are very much based in Westminster.
I mean, they're not going to come out to your streets.
They're not going to come and talk to you.
They're not going to come and hear your concerns.
But we will because we genuinely think that we are for the people themselves.
I'm going to push you on that.
because I don't think that actually gets to the crux of it.
You have given a leave answer to that.
You have said someone who wants to remain should vote me because it's the principle thing.
My dad currently is interested in the economics of that.
I need to hear his argument, really, don't I, to be able to address his argument directly.
in his opinion leaving the eu will absolutely demolish the uk economy whether it's for a short period of time or a long period of time he's he's getting to the age where he's looking to retire and at that point it's going to be he doesn't want it to screw him over for the rest of his life Okay, and that's a great point.
And it really depends on the aggressiveness of the government that we have in charge when it comes to the economy.
Because, I mean, a Labour government is obviously going to handle this badly because Labour always handle economics badly.
But I spoke to an international economist called Jared Lyons about this.
And he was very clear.
He was just like, look, once we are a sovereign country, we can make our own decisions.
For example, we can sit there and we can cut corporation tax.
Now, that's not a popular opinion if you're a Labour voter because you obviously don't understand how these things work.
But what the devaluation of the pound and the cutting of corporation tax would do was encourage foreign investment.
And obviously, we want foreign investment.
We don't want to cut ourselves off from the world and build a big wall around the country or anything.
What we want is for people to actually come here and start putting money into the economy, start creating jobs, actually start building the economy up.
It is true that there will be a hit if we leave, and it'll be somewhere between 6 and 12% of the economy that will be directly affected by that.
But that will have massive knock-on effects for other economies.
For example, like the Irish Times believe that the meat and cheese in Britain will become cheaper because we get most of our meat and cheese from Ireland.
Their agricultural economy is deeply tied to ours.
Well, we'll actually end up buying from South America.
We can put whatever standards we want on it, of course, but the imports themselves will become cheaper and more available.
So it's one of those things where you're only ever given the sort of one side of the economic argument.
And yes, there will be a short-term hit.
There's no denying that.
But from the point of being sovereign, we can pivot in any direction we want and actually build up a lot quicker, I think, than if being trapped in the European Union.
And this is actually something that Greece should have done a long time ago, but they're not going to, and now they're trapped in this perpetual decline where they can't out-compete Germany.
So is the argument you're giving to my father if we leave, we get cheaper cheese?
Well, yes, that's true.
But that will probably sway him.
That wasn't the only reason.
That was just an example.
But yes, we can build our own economy once we are free from the fetters of the European Union.
There's no doubt about it.
We'll be able to set our own standards, set our own trade policies, which again we don't do at the moment, and set our own tax rates to be competitive with the wider world.
We can do this.
We've got a lot of human capital in this country.
And I'm surprised that, frankly, it is the sort of remain bubble in Westminster that's so afraid of letting people actually succeed.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Super.
Cheers.
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