All Episodes
Previous Next
April 4, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
51:28
Delingpod 14: Chloe Westley
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
and my very special guest back for a second time the lovely, fantastic Chloe Wesley Chloe.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
That's a much nicer intro than the BBC. Evil, evil Jack Spayers Alliance girl.
Is that what they say?
No, no, but it's a different tone, you can tell.
It's all about the tone with the BBC, isn't it?
They pretend that they are the nation's respected broadcaster and that they are required by their charter to be fair and balanced and neutral and they observe this to the letter.
And it's just bollocks.
They're a communist indoctrination organisation.
I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not, because I've spoken with a lot of producers who are really nice, really interesting, and just kind of surprised that there are some people that aren't on their political spectrum.
So they sometimes speak to me as a bit of an oddity.
A young person who's conservative-leaning, who's pro-Brexit.
It's almost, not necessarily vindictive, but sometimes just one of surprise.
Like, oh, there are young people who voted to leave?
How peculiar.
And, you know, do you feel comfortable with that?
Yeah.
A lot of people did.
A lot of people feel the same way as me, but...
They don't speak up because they're afraid of what will happen and the abuse you get.
It's so much easier to be left-wing, to believe in all the things that the left, all its shibboleths, and to believe in anti-racism and anti-whatever, all the things that they claim the moral high ground on.
It requires real courage, I think, too.
I mean, a sort of cussed, contramundum spirit to do what you've done.
Even just to question.
So to say, is socialism the best way of alleviating poverty?
Even asking the question.
Is met with disgust and surprise.
And so when we don't have these very frank conversations about, okay, how can we live in a society where everyone is free to live the best life, where everyone's safe, where we're making sure that we have good discourse, it's almost as though there's this lack of being allowed to question.
So you don't even have to be conservative to be shunned.
If you ask the wrong questions, or even like Brett Weinstein, who is a progressive professor, I was listening to his Rubin interview, he just questioned the idea of, actually, should we be telling white students to stay away from campus?
Is that a good thing to do?
He just questioned the methods, and by doing so, it was completely vilified.
And so there is this environment, but I think it's changing a little bit.
Oh, please say it is.
I think it is, because if there's one thing young people don't like, it's being told what to think.
And when all of your teachers and authority figures are saying, you know, orange man, bad, you must be left-wing, it might...
I've heard from students getting in touch with me, make them go, hang on, is there a different side of the story?
Where's the other side of the story?
And they go on YouTube or Twitter or whatever, and they find...
Young conservators or young libertarians who think the same way.
And I think there is a real movement growing, but at the moment it's very, it's a little bit hidden.
It's a little bit, okay, I'll listen to the Darling Pole podcast, but I probably won't ever tell my friends that I think this way or that I feel conservative.
Well, do you know, I had a letter, because people contact me via the Dellingpole World website, and that's how they respond to the podcast.
And I got an email from the Muslim, my Muslim special friend.
And my Muslim special friend said, I'm kind of pleased that it's independent now, it's not a Breitbart production, because it's slightly easier for me to recommend to my Muslim friends.
And I thought, yeah, that's nice, isn't it?
But...
But for every special moment like that which makes you really happy, and I get other special moments, I get accosted all the time as you know.
Did I mention that last time?
Anyway, I do.
I get accosted by weird and wonderful looking, weird people but who are wonderful.
And they tell me that often they are ex-leftists who I helped red pill.
Which is a really...
I mean, it's like converting a lesbian, isn't it?
I mean, it's that kind of male...
We all want to be able to do this.
So those moments make me happy.
And at the same time, I think our work is...
There is so much work to be done.
And I'm not sure...
Look, Oxford and Cambridge have fallen.
They really have.
The orcs have swarmed through.
They've undermined Helm's Deep.
They're over the ramparts.
They're everywhere.
It's gone.
So that's quite a big deal.
Do you not think?
I don't know.
So I think Cambridge was wrong to rescind their offer to Jordan Peterson.
But there are still those brilliant Oxford debates where they interview interesting people from all sides of politics.
I think if those continue...
Which debates?
The Oxford Union debates.
The Oxford Union debates.
I think they're still hoping that there are enough students at these universities who won't put up with not being exposed to different ideas.
And I think it was either Oxford or Cambridge where Steve Bannon, there was a lot of pressure to stop him speaking, but they hosted the speech.
So I hope that, because I do think that if you disagree with someone, the best way to convince others that their ideas are wrong is to challenge them, to debate them.
If you try to ban them or disassociate them from debate and discourse, people wonder, what are you so afraid of?
I agree with you, but actually your point doesn't quite stand, because I think it was the Cambridge Union.
Cambridge Union is a separate body from the university, and same with the Oxford Union.
They're not part of the university technically.
Mm-hmm.
And the guy at Cambridge Union, I know, because I have chats with him on the rare occasions where I go and speak at the union, he makes a point of how they really pride themselves on free speech and not banning people, and they resist it when the university tries to make it difficult for them by saying there's going to be trouble or whatever.
He will then hire security to make sure that the debate goes ahead, rather than banning the Speaker for health and safety reasons.
What a legend.
He's an absolute legend.
I can't remember his name, otherwise I'd praise him.
Maybe he wants to be anonymous anyway, but he does a good job at the Cambridge Union.
But I think generally...
I mean, you saw how the university authorities, rather than being embarrassed by the...
What was it?
The theology department, I think it was?
Divinity.
Divinity department.
Rather than feel embarrassed about it and say, well, look, it's a divinity department's decision.
It's not the university.
The university doubled down by saying, yeah, we approve of this because he wants to appear with somebody wearing a...
A T-shirt.
I heart his number phobia T-shirt.
Well, how can you police...
If we're going to be judged on people we stood next to in a selfie, we're all going to be in deep, deep trouble, aren't we?
Yeah, well, it's a tough one because if I saw someone wearing that t-shirt, I probably wouldn't want to get a photo taken.
Oh, but that's career safety and that's caution rather than...
But also, yeah, who knows?
Was Dr.
Peterson given an opportunity to explain at all?
I don't think so.
And I don't think...
Yeah, I don't think this has done a lot of good for Cambridge's PR as an institution.
I had a couple of people get in touch with me and say, quite young in high school, that I thought Cambridge was the be-all and end-all.
I might not even apply now because I'm a young person interested in ideas and if they're behaving in this way...
Is that right?
Yeah, I had a couple of people.
I don't want to mention their name because of the environment it's like to be a young conservative.
But that was fascinating.
Yeah.
So I also think that because students are paying for tuition fees back, basically a graduate tax after they graduate, there is a bit of a consumer mentality.
And I wonder if we have a bit more of a free market with universities.
And there could be some universities that pop up that are dedicated to free speech that say, we are the free speech university.
I think you'll get a lot of young people wanting to apply there and avoid the ones that are shutting down debates.
It might take a very long time though.
So in the meantime, I think the best way forward is for young Conservatives to hold debates, hold events.
I think Turning Point UK is really, really exciting.
I'm excited about Turning Point UK.
Isn't it interesting how much flack they got when the news started coming out?
Not only do they get some very nasty flack from the left and people posting fake Twitter posts from different alleged branches of Turning Point, which didn't exist, but I was also interested to see that some of our number, some people of our persuasion, started kind of distancing themselves some people of our persuasion, started kind of distancing themselves slightly from Turning Point.
They were slightly embarrassed or they didn't feel it was a good...
A bit like you saying you wouldn't stand next to somebody wearing...
It would be photographs of somebody wearing...
Everyone wants to show that they're not the bad right-wing person that the left talks about.
And I think this is cowardly and unhealthy.
I think it's also a bit of a challenge though, isn't it?
Because there is a gap in the conservative side of things when it comes to mobilising young people.
And I think that there is almost a bit of a hesitance to support Turning Point because they're like a challenger bank.
They're not a normal political organisation.
They're not one of your established campaigns or think tanks.
They're not run by Westminster.
It is very punchy.
It is run by young people.
The memes are brilliant.
The content is...
Punchy and interesting.
Not afraid to say Corbyn's a terrorist sympathiser.
Whereas if you look at the conservative youth...
Kind of social media accounts.
They're very, very boring.
So I think some of it might also be about territory.
Like, no, we're the conservative voice.
And who are these challengers coming in to try and take our people?
Look, I think that actually a youth movement shouldn't be run by a political party.
Totally.
I agree.
Then you have to support like a party line.
And I think it's a positive thing for the conservative party long term if they become conservative.
To have a group like Turning Point, going to universities, challenging the left-wing group thing, having debates, exposing young people to these ideas, that's how you're going to sway people, not by...
You know, there's kind of pint in politics, like, come out leafleting with us kiddos and we'll buy you a drink afterwards.
Yeah, it's really patronising, isn't it?
Quite patronising.
And you're absolutely right about...
I liked your line about if the Conservative Party ever becomes Conservative.
Because at the moment, that's looking pretty unlikely, isn't it?
Yeah, it's interesting, yeah.
How would you...
This is a problem, isn't it?
That...
Any youth movement affiliated with the Conservative Party is going to be bound by the current ideological status of the Conservative Party, which is currently squish, or even worse than squish, actually.
I mean, what really depresses me about the Conservative Party, apart from Brexit, which we're going to talk about in a moment, is that it seems to have embraced all the All the ideas of the left on gender, so-called gender, on diversity.
You see female Conservative MPs playing the same feminist cards that Jess Phillips plays.
Jess Phillips being a Labour MP. And you're thinking, hang on a second.
I don't believe in this identity politics game.
Conservatives should not be doing this at all.
Not at all.
Well, I don't think you are helping women by perpetuating myths like the gender pay gap.
I actually think that's incredibly damaging because you're actually limiting people's vision about what they can achieve.
I mean, I was told as a young person that I'd find it really difficult that I'd face discrimination, that the world was kind of pitched against me.
And if you're telling young women this, maybe they won't apply for that promotion.
Maybe they won't apply for that job.
You know, I would have loved to have heard someone say, you know what, you are living in the best possible time in human history to be a human being, to be a woman with all the freedoms that you have, unlike other countries right now.
You have the biggest opportunity to make something of your life.
You have opportunities that your grandparents didn't have, that your parents didn't have.
This is what really fascinates me about young people being very left-wing, is that we have it better than any other group In human history.
If you look at all the societies in human history and all societies today, you know, Western countries like Britain, like Australia where I was born, these are the best countries to be in.
The opportunities are endless and there's so much exciting stuff happening.
Why try and tear it down and pitch yourself to ideas which are going to actually regress and take us back massively?
I don't understand it, but Once again, is it because young people aren't exposed to the other side of the story?
Or is it because they're only hearing one side of the argument?
I really don't know.
But I'm excited.
I want to do a bit more, actually, of just speaking to fellow young people who aren't stupid, but who have predominantly been reading and taught to write essays about things.
In a way that's, you know, a declinism.
So they're being taught that the world's declining and things are getting worse.
And I loved Matt Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist, and people like Steven Pinker who explain, on all of these metrics, life is getting better.
So maybe you should tell young people that they're lucky and that they should be excited, not depressed and afraid about the future.
I totally agree with you.
And I think, particularly with young women, that they need somebody like you.
Basically, Chloe, you need to be the role model for your generation.
That is a very heavy burden.
Yeah, but Chloe, if not you, who?
I think there's many of us that can do this.
Are there?
Yeah.
Because I can't tell you what a joy it is meeting somebody of your generation.
How old are you?
24.
You're 24?
You really are a child?
Second stage millennial.
They call us the iGen because we're the generation that had iPhones in high school.
Very different psychology apparently to the other millennials who didn't have social media in high school.
You see, if I were your age group, I would be so grateful to meet a Chloe Wesley where I could just have banter and conversation without any worries that you were about to report me as a kind of rapist.
Well, you've actually committed 10 hate crimes already for this podcast.
Yeah, I've been taking notes.
Several microaggressions.
But do you know what I mean?
You see, I really worry that...
What I hear, correct me if I'm wrong, that in some universities it is now so bad that men frankly would rather stay at home and have a wank than jeopardise their security by attempting to have sexual relations with a woman.
Well, they do say that people of my generation are having less sex and drinking less and smoking less and all these things.
I'm not sure why that is.
Because you're straight-edged.
I hadn't heard of this concept of straight-edge.
Yeah, well, I guess it's a bit of a rebellion from our parents' generation who were doing lots of drinking and really excited to be free.
Look, I think this is a really difficult topic because no one wants to talk about it.
I worry that, I read, so with the Me Too movement, some of the stories I read and I thought, this is quite shocking.
Like, oh my goodness, stop behaving like animals.
If you're in a position of power, maybe don't be such an animal and prey on young people.
Then on the other side, I read all these stories of accounts which just were described as like assault or something like that, but just sounded to me like men being quite awkward and not knowing what to do, and at the end of the date, you know, kissing the cheek, like, oh no, I don't like you that way.
And it sounded...
Some of the descriptions just seemed like awkward dating.
Yeah.
And I think we have to draw a line between, you know, predatory behaviour and just the awkwardness of dating, where sometimes...
Men and women will make a move on each other because they get their own signal and then someone says no and that's the end of it.
That is the problem, isn't it?
There are no rules for sexual relations and one occasion's pass can result in a score and a happy situation for both parties and the other pass can lead to upset and I mean, what are we going to do?
Are we going to change the rules where you can't make embarrassing passes anymore, and so people aren't going to get those random moments of sex that brighten up one's life and one's youth?
I think if you ask a lot of people whether they'd rather meet someone, have a conversation and flirt, and then find out that they like each other, or if they'd rather scroll through an application of faces and meet someone that way, then the natural way, I think, is there's something a bit nicer about it.
I think two things need to happen.
First of all, you know, teaching young boys, you know, here's how to date.
Here's some really good pointers about how to date, how to pick up on signals when he or she likes you, and the best way to go about that.
Is it playing with your hair and your earrings?
Is that what it...
Maybe, although that can just be sometimes if you're in a nervous situation.
I do that in job interviews sometimes, or like TV interviews.
If you're nervous, sometimes you...
So maybe if they're nervous on a date, they might like you.
But also teaching young women, like, here's how you deal with a situation.
If someone says something to you and you don't like it, perhaps instead of tweeting about it or going to the school principal or the school administrator, you tell them to their face, don't talk to me like that.
Or...
I'm not interested.
And resolve it when you can, one-to-one, as opposed to immediately seeking someone external or in a position of authority to reprimand someone for a mistake.
But we couldn't have this conversation in many other forums, and I'd be afraid to have this conversation on, for example, Sky News or something like that, because you just don't want to offend anyone.
Yeah.
You don't want to be seen to be belittling sexual assault or anything like that.
And I think we've become a little bit more prudish as a culture as well, maybe, publicly, not wanting to talk about dating or sex as much.
We had this revolution where everyone was just excited that they could talk about sex and watch it in movies and stuff.
And now maybe my generation are a bit more prudish and don't want to talk about it in public.
Although, I'll tell you what's weird.
I have actually given up watching the BBC generally because I think it's just evil.
And that includes actually, almost worse than the news is the drama because the news, it's pretty overt what they're doing.
The whole decision about how they curate the news and it's always about bigging up public services and bigging up bigger government and slagging off anything that's to do with free markets or free speech or whatever.
But the drama and the comedy and things like that I think are much more insidious.
And I've noticed quite a lot of...
I say I don't watch it.
I obviously have to watch a bit because I'm a TV reviewer.
But there are quite a lot of things celebrating women's sexuality and all kind of, yes, we women can do whatever we like because we're free and independent spirits.
You know, Fleabag, for example.
So you've got this sort of...
This celebration of sexualised women's culture, at the same time, this prudery.
In fact, somebody told me that they had this problem with a girl at work who was really, really flirty and kind of huggy and, you know, sort of like...
Signalling availability.
And talking about her sex life and stuff.
And yet at the same time, really politically correct.
There seems to be this dangerous mix with your generation.
Not you, but a lot of women.
They want it both ways.
They want Me Too, but they want Fleabag.
Interesting, isn't it?
I can't remember who I heard it from, but someone said...
I don't need election morality from Hollywood in reference to all these speeches and everything.
And I think what they were referring to was all of the kind of sexual imagery in movies and in the music industry as well.
But then this also movement for respecting women and not sexualizing women.
Yeah, I don't know the answer.
I have friends who are a bit more socially conservative and say that they think that maybe the sexual revolution has gone a little bit too far.
People are having too many sexual partners and that's making them unhappy.
And also I have libertarian friends who say that everything should be free and open and we should have nudity on TV all the time.
So there's got to be a happy medium in society where...
Women and men are free to express themselves.
The LGBT community are free to express themselves.
Western countries are some of the only societies where it's not illegal to love someone of the same sex or even marry them.
I know there are some people that aren't happy about that, but I think it's a good thing.
I think that we've reached a point in time where you can choose who you love.
You know with free markets?
We talk about free markets and free speech, but one freedom that is very modern and very recent that isn't In other countries is the freedom to choose who you love.
If I was born in a different country, my dad would decide who I married and had sex with my whole life.
That's been the norm in human societies.
Now we're a bit more free, but we have all these other problems, don't we?
I don't know.
Speaking as a father of a daughter, Chloe, I think actually I'd like to maintain that tradition that the father decides...
Oh, really?
I'm dreading the creatures that she's going to bring home one day.
It's appalling.
They're going to be really annoying, aren't they?
And I'll know that they're only after one thing.
Because I've been there myself.
Well, you've got to hope that you've raised her well enough to be a good judge of character.
That's the best thing you can do.
Yeah, well, I suppose it's true, isn't it, that girls tend to want to marry their fathers one way or another.
So I suppose that she's going to end up with a very fine young man.
We should talk, shouldn't we, about the bad shit that's going down today.
This is, you called it Brexit Betrayal Day.
Yeah, that's what it is, isn't it?
This is the day for special friends who are not aware.
Actually, how would you be aware?
You don't know when this is recorded.
We're recording this on Friday...
The 29th of March, the day that Britain was supposed to leave the European Union.
Yeah.
But we're not, are we?
No.
Give me your analysis of why we're not leaving.
Why we're not leaving.
Well, there's a majority of voters who want out of the EU who don't want Britain to join a European super-state because the majority of voters have common sense.
And then all of the politicians said, okay, we'll implement the referendum results.
And then they went to a general election and said to their constituents and their voters, vote for me, I'll deliver Brexit.
80% of people voted for political parties campaigning for Brexit.
Labour was committed to Brexit.
And so then you have this bizarre situation where you look at the Parliament today and MPs are saying, we need to delay Brexit.
We need to have a second referendum.
We need to have a softer Brexit.
I mean, what are they doing?
Who do they think they are?
There's been two votes on this now.
People are clear about what they want to happen.
And I just don't know at this point if the political establishment will let Britain leave the EU. Well, I don't think they will.
Short, if they can possibly stop it, they will.
But I've been reading Twitter, as I do, to get my information.
And I've been seeing this morning, for example, various think tankers, people pretty sound on Brexit, who are saying things like, look, no one wants Brexit more than I do, but regretfully, I'm going to have to say that we really should...
The MPs really should vote for Theresa May's dog turd rolled in glitter withdrawal agreement because it's the only way we're going to get even a semblance of Brexit.
And I'm not with them.
I don't buy into that argument.
Do you?
I don't.
I'm not an MP, so I don't have to make this difficult decision about whether to vote for the deal or not.
No, but you are a think tanker.
But I'm a think tanker.
I just think this deal is terrible.
And this is not the final agreement.
This is an agreement to start the next stage of negotiations.
And this agreement means that at the next stage we are placing all of the cards in the EU's hands.
We're essentially entering the negotiations from a position of great weakness where the UK will be forced to sign up to any kind of agreement to avoid this backstop, which is essentially the EU keeping Britain in the customs union and deciding on a lot of rules and regulations which is essentially the EU keeping Britain in the customs union and deciding on a lot Keeping Britain in the customs union via Northern Ireland.
Exactly, exactly.
So a separate part of the United Kingdom will be disunited and essentially an ongoing member of the European Union's customs union.
Exactly.
Which is, I can see why people who believe in Great Britain, in the United Kingdom, find this very annoying.
But it seems to me that there are many more faults than that with the withdrawal agreement.
There's so many.
The one that's not talking about enough is all of the agreements on defence and cooperation on defence.
The European Army.
The European Army.
It's essentially the EU... European countries aren't meeting their NATO spending requirements.
Trump came over and said, you should meet your NATO spending requirements.
Instead of...
I think they have put in more money into NATO, but instead of investing in NATO, the leaders of the EU have this ridiculous fantasy project dream to have their own European army, which essentially...
It would be a duplication of NATO, but at the exclusion of America.
Now, I thought NATO was a very important organisation because it showed, particularly Russia, that America and Europe were united.
There was an agreement there.
I'm really concerned about this European Defence Force because it's a duplication of resources, which is unnecessary.
We've already got NATO. But also, it really is a kick in the teeth to America.
American taxpayers have been funding European Defence for a very long time.
And there is absolutely no gratitude.
There's no recognition of the important part that not just Americans played, but also Commonwealth soldiers played in achieving peace in Europe.
Yeah, we gave you all the shit jobs, didn't we?
Yeah.
I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry about the Dieppe landings.
It's very kind of you to say.
Thank you.
But it's really shocking.
It's really shocking.
And nobody's talking about defence.
It's gone by the radar.
So it's got all these agreements in defence that we don't want to be a part of that she's signed us up to.
There's several things wrong with the deal.
It's £40 billion of taxpayers' money that she's offered for permission to continue to negotiate.
That's extraordinary, isn't it?
It's extraordinary.
To put that in context, that's more than the UK's defence budget.
Yeah.
Extraordinary.
It is extraordinary.
And it's depressing when you see even...
Ardent Brexiteers and articulate, intelligent Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg reluctantly acceding to this idea that the withdrawal agreement is...
I think what it is is that...
And I understand this.
There is a fear that if this doesn't get through, that the establishment will just stop this Brexit altogether.
And I don't think...
I think that we should get Brexit.
There should be a clean break from the EU. And I think that Britain could leave without a deal very successfully.
But the MPs won't vote for it.
And so it's a difficult situation because it's like, well...
Do I vote for this deal, which is going to mean we have a really crap deal when we Brexit, just to get a little bit of divergence from the EU? Or do I risk total convergence with the EU forever?
I think that's what the government is telling MPs.
You need to either vote for this deal or there'll be no Brexit at all.
And it's really shocking.
It's really shocking because this manifesto, the Conservative manifesto, which the government are now supposed to deliver, Yes.
The analogy I used was it's a bit like you're playing a game of chess with the other side and you're winning.
And suddenly the other player upturns the board and throws the pieces on the floor.
And what the people on our side of the argument are doing, these think tankers and politicians, they're saying, right, let's put the pieces back on the board where they were and carry on playing chess to show them that we're going to win this game.
Or some of them are saying, well, we've lost, haven't we?
I mean, the board's been overturned.
All the pieces have flown around the room.
We can't do anything about it.
But it seems to me that if the other side are playing dirty, cheaty games, you cannot go on playing by the rules anymore, by the old rules.
This is a declaration of war by the political establishment against the people.
And for me, this is a Magna Carta moment.
This is a situation where the political elite has so betrayed the trust of the electorate that the British constitutional system is no longer fit for purpose.
I mean, I can't think of how many erudite articles explaining patiently why it is that we have no choice but to accept withdrawal agreement because numbers, because this and that.
But then I go and speak to the people in the streets, the people who actually voted for Brexit, not the political class, people who don't watch the BBC anymore because they're sick of it, people who don't read the mainstream media anymore because it's just full of lies.
And they haven't changed their view.
They haven't suddenly gone, well, if the grown-ups are telling us that we can't have our Brexit, then I guess we just have to accept the verdict.
They're not thinking that.
They're thinking, no, we voted for it.
We've got to have it.
Absolutely.
And a lot of the coverage has been journalists speaking about the process, about the votes, procedural.
It's all about procedural.
And also, almost a comical way, like, oh, isn't it hilarious that John Bercow did this, what a lad.
Yeah.
Do you realise how serious this is?
This country voted for independence and some politicians are trying to stop it.
That's a very serious time in British history.
This is not about procedure.
This is not about memes and isn't it funny, although I do love memes.
But the coverage I don't think has represented fully this monumental moment in this history and how serious it is for a group of MPs to come together and And completely betray the main promise they put to people at an election and a referendum.
I mean, it's extraordinary.
And they keep on saying, well, people need to vote again to confirm their decision.
They voted again in the 2017 election, and it's not their fault that MPs lied about their intentions to respect the result.
People have made it clear to politicians what they want to happen.
And I don't know what's going to happen from here.
Will the deal pass today?
Maybe it will.
Then we might have a new leader.
Yes.
ties Britain's hands and weakens the position.
Whereas leaving without a deal means that Britain's a third country.
So negotiating as a third country with the European Union as opposed to tied into this withdrawal agreement, I think that would be a much stronger position.
Well, I didn't know actually, or I wasn't sure what your position was before I came to speak to you.
Why are you so sound?
I think it's easy to be...
I don't have to worry about my seat or my pension or anything like that or my position within a party.
I can be on the outside ideologically pure.
And as well I don't think that everyone who is saying we have to vote for the deal now It's just a careerist.
I think there are some who are just careerists, but there are also others who I know really genuinely believe that, look, this is the best we're going to get and I'd rather we can, you know, leave the EU a little bit than not at all.
So I think there are some people who are good people who, you know, agree with us and want a no deal, but they have come to a different conclusion to me.
And that's disappointing.
Yeah.
I have a theory on this, which is that...
I used to be on the staff of the Telegraph in the years when it was a decent newspaper, when it was a conservative newspaper, which it's really not anymore.
I mean, it's bought into all that SJW stuff.
There are a few sound ones.
Well, Alistair Heath.
I mean, Alistair Heath is God.
There's no question about that.
And Charles Moore, always worth reading.
Alison Pearson, wish I could get her on the podcast.
Ditto Alistair Heath.
Yeah, I mean, there are pockets of sounds, I agree.
But what I was there saying, yeah, when I was on the telegraph, I used to really, really hate what's technically known as page one.
It would always be led by a political story, which is government to roll out this or that initiative.
And it was all about what you mentioned earlier.
It was all about process.
It was all about the political class taking their statements as news in themselves, just what they say.
That, it seemed to me at the time, already buys into the idea that whatever government does is important and good and necessary.
Which I don't believe at all.
But I think that people who report on Westminster, particularly, get...
They go native.
They too start to believe in the system and the importance of the system.
Which is why you get think tankers who, after all, are based in Westminster and they hang out with MPs a lot and they like to think that politicians listen to what they say.
They too get...
Tainted by the idea that we have this constitutional system, an unwritten constitution, we have traditions which work and which make Britain great.
And I don't think they've made the imaginative or intellectual leap to understanding the situation now, where you've got...
More than 17.4 million very angry people who are real and they're out there.
And they're looking at the shenanigans in Westminster and in the newspapers and they're thinking, well, I'm not buying into this shit.
I voted Brexit.
Where is it?
Sorry, that was a bit of a long...
No, it was spot on.
And today of all days, I was speaking to Marc Francois who...
We like him, don't we?
We like him.
Well, he's very funny and he's one of us and he did this brilliant interview where he was talking about I was in the army and I don't quit or something like that about May's deal and changing his mind.
And he said something really, really interesting, which was that a lot of Brexiteers might not have been tuning in to all of the procedural stuff, all the votes and everything, but they know that March 29th was the date.
And if they look at the newspapers on March 29th, and we haven't left yet, that's when you see a really big problem starting to happen.
That's when you see a lot of anger.
And I feel the need to speak to the voters on this podcast and elsewhere and say, you know, we need a peaceful revolution.
We need to make this happen.
Yes, they might get away with stopping this this time around, but I don't think ideas as important as universal suffrage just go away.
The fact that one group of MPs Vote to stop this happening doesn't mean that we are wrong in our ideals or that the ideals are going to go away.
I think this is going to happen one way or another.
I watched the Suffragettes movie recently.
It was pretty good.
And what was interesting was hearing the MP's speeches made about women shouldn't have the vote.
So they're not of sound judgment.
They are easily misled by propaganda.
And I thought...
To be fair though, sorry.
LAUGHTER Come on, I mean...
Behave, behave.
But I thought, oh my goodness, that's exactly what they're saying about Leave voters.
They're not of sound judgement.
They are easily misled.
They don't understand matters of state.
I think people in this country, outside of Westminster, have a lot of common sense.
And I don't think a university degree is a pretty good indicator of wisdom and intelligence.
Actually...
At this point, if I was smarter, I would have done an apprenticeship because then I would be earning while I'm learning.
But also there's different kinds of intelligence.
If you're running a business or you're self-employed or you're raising a family and a low income, you're making decisions every day about risk and reward and about budgets and the risks are very, very real.
And you probably are better placed to make risk judgements than some, you know, Cambridge grad guardian columnist on 40k who's never really had to worry about not being able to pay their rent.
I'm very glad you said that because I've been getting a lot of hate on Twitter recently.
I mean, not that's exactly news, newsflash.
And one of the things that the Remainers...
And the left.
They're pretty much the same thing.
It's surprising.
There are some sound Lexiteers, but they're not heard from enough, I think.
No.
I met some Lexiteers on the...
That's Labour voting Brexiteers.
Yeah, I met some of them on the march.
And I consider...
The best thing for me about Brexit is the way that it has broken down the old divides.
That it's not really about...
Quite about left and right or any more.
What I mean is one finds oneself in alliance with people that hitherto might have rejected one as a kind of, you know...
People in Sunderland might have looked at me as a kind of metropolitan, what they see as a toff, and thought that we weren't on the same side.
But we have been united by this.
But...
Going back to my point, what I find is that the hatred is very much about how dare you, how dare you from your privileged background say that things are going to have to get worse before they get better.
You can afford the austerity and misery caused by Brexit.
In other words, they're trying to say that they speak on behalf of the poor.
But actually the poor voted for Brexit and they knew what they were going to get when they voted for Brexit.
They knew they were possibly going to take an economic hit, although I don't think it's as big as the Remain propagandists made out.
But they're trying to claim the mantle of ordinary poor working folk when ordinary poor working folk just hate Remainers.
Well, it's very Marxist because a lot of Marxist thought is about the poor proletariats who are too stupid to rise up.
They need us elite bureaucrats to come in, order society because we know best, essentially.
There's a lot of writing.
I think it was Lenin or Stalin wrote a lot of passages which are very similar to the Remainer arguments about It's a very pessimistic way of looking at humanity, first of all, because it means that you think that someone's economic position determines...
How wise or brilliant they are.
I just disagree with that.
I wasn't born into a great family.
I didn't get eaten or anything.
I had a pretty good upbringing because it was in Australia or Western country.
But just because we didn't have a lot of money doesn't mean that we weren't...
Smart or brilliant.
And I hate this because they're really picking on people as well who have no right of reply.
Some of these people, they have these TV shows, like comedians, or these radio shows, or they're politicians and they go out there and they talk about Leave voters being stupid or ignorant or biggisit or whatever.
And how can people respond to that?
They're sitting on the couch.
The only thing they can do is tweet at them and say, how dare you call me that?
And then they complain that they're getting a ton of abuse online and how dare voters express their displeasure.
So I really don't know how we fix this.
I don't know how we reconnect people to Parliament.
I'm really, really angry and I'm really, really scared.
Well, I think you're right to be both.
I don't think that we can restore people's faith in Parliament until Parliament is genuinely representative of the people, which is why I go back.
I think this is a Magna Carta moment.
Certainly never in my lifetime has there been as big a gulf between the electorate and the people who are supposedly representing them.
And by that I mean not just the political class, but the The other members of the Westminster bubble, so the big city firms, the law firms, the BBC, the mainstream media, they seem to be completely out of touch with what's happening in the country.
And that's not a...
I mean, we haven't got into a Gilets Jaunes situation yet.
Not yet.
But I'm not sure I buy into the analysis that in Britain we don't do revolutions.
We had a civil war, and I'm not advocating for a civil war, but we have been there.
Well, this is a country, this is an ideas revolution country.
I mean, I was really drawn to reading British history when I was young because I was fascinated by just the intellectual history as well.
This was one of the sparks, the flame for the Enlightenment was lit in the United Kingdom and across Europe.
Mainly by the Scots.
Yeah, mainly by the Scots.
Love Scots.
Well, they're bloody useless now, aren't they?
We've got some good ones.
Okay, Mark Miller.
Who else is there apart from Mark Miller?
I definitely know some Scots.
I can't think of any now.
No, there are some.
Of course, they're all going to hate me.
I love you, Scotland.
No, there are some great...
Look, I love Michael Gove for whatever, you know, and Andrew Neil's great.
Oh, Andrew Neil's fantastic.
There are some amazing Scots.
Fraser Nelson, my spectator editor.
But I suppose what I mean is Scotland ain't quite the intellectual powerhouse that it was at the time of Hume and all these great...
But isn't it sad that from...
Europe was where it was all happening, the Ideas Revolution, especially in Britain.
And now look at the decline, these ideals about individualism and freedom and liberty.
All of these ideals seem to have been completely lost and now...
The intellectual class are pushing us into this European super state which is very bureaucratic and doesn't respect enlightenment ideals or freedom of individuals at all.
It's communism by the back door.
It's just communism without the supermarket.
I think that's how they've won this time.
They've bought off people with abundance.
They've bought them off with holidays, easy jet flights and stuff, and white goods.
But actually, our freedoms have declined markedly, I think, in the last 10 or 20 years.
We're being sucked into this socialistic, politically correct entity.
I I think that even if there hadn't been a thing called the European Union that we'd been part of, we would have come to a similar crisis that we're experiencing now.
The people who voted for Brexit are not just voting about the European Union, they're voting about all the attached values.
So they're voting about identity politics, which is very much built into the...
They're voting against political correctness.
They're voting against having their memes banned by EU fiat.
They're voting against all these things.
It's not just about the EU. It's about how we live our lives, isn't it?
Well, it's about freedom and control.
And I was at a Conservative Policy Forum event, and the questions were, how do we restore faith in public institutions?
And I said, at the moment, public institutions don't look like they're there to serve individuals that pay for them.
They're there to serve the bureaucrats that work in them.
And that's not right.
And if you want people to trust the political system, give them more control over their lives.
A lot of the resentment is very high levels of taxation, very high levels of intervention.
They want to ban meal deals and sweets at supermarket counters.
It's so weird.
And if you take away people's freedoms...
This much and then expect them to as well be okay with you ignoring their votes.
You've got another thing coming.
People want more control over their lives because they're not stupid.
They can run their lives perfectly well.
They can run their businesses perfectly well without the government saying they need a worker on the board.
And this distrust in ordinary people is very interesting to me because it goes against everything I believe in.
And I do think that human beings in general are quite remarkable and I don't think that you can disregard huge sections of the population as being ignorant or stupid or whatever.
I think everyone's capable of flourishing in their own way, whatever that is.
And the current...
Kind of zeitgeist in public debate is less about empowering individuals to flourish and more about how can we grow the state because people need our help.
Yeah, yeah.
You're going now to go to some SOAS students with some searching questions which they're going to be incapable of answering.
And you're going to hope that they're not going to egg you or anything like that.
I hope not.
I think it'll be really interesting because I like speaking to socialists and young lefties because sometimes I learn something, first of all, about how they've come to that, what they've read.
But also, it often surprises them that a fellow kind of young person wearing boots and leather jacket considers themselves to be conservative.
What are you going to say to them?
What kind of political books do you read at the moment?
Do you read the news or do you listen to podcasts?
Because I have a feeling that more young people are listening to podcasts.
Oh, please let it be said.
Well, not just yours.
People like Russell Brand and that kind of thing.
Oh, fuck Russell Brand.
He's very popular though.
I know.
We don't really have the conservative podcasts down pat yet.
Like in America they've got Joe Rogan, Ruben, all these amazing podcasts.
Yeah, I am it.
You are, at the moment, you are our sole podcast.
I don't know how to get the word out, though, because I'm only on Twitter.
I mean, I don't really use...
How do I tell people where my podcast is?
Good question.
Well, I think you've got to get on YouTube.
I'm on YouTube.
Yeah, I think as well film them.
If you film them as a video.
Do you think so?
I think that would be really fun for people to watch.
Yeah.
Because then they can see our facial expressions when we're making jokes.
That's true.
That's true.
Actually, I think I might do that.
The next podcast you and I do together.
Because it would be a shame not to.
I mean, look, people like hot chicks.
I mean, let's be honest.
That is how the world works, I think.
Well, I hope they like my ideas too.
Yeah, yeah, obviously.
It's nice with packaging, isn't it?
I think people like to see that you're interested and passionate and smiling.
I'm very smiley, which might not come across in the audio.
No, no, I like the way you do Twitter.
You are very good at passive aggression.
You are very good.
People come and say, yeah, fuck off Australian bitch, we hate you, Nazi.
And you go, thank you.
Have a nice day.
Have a nice day.
Nothing annoys them more.
I think it does.
So well done, Chloe.
Thank you.
Right, you can annoy some SOA students.
And yeah, thank you for appearing on the podcast.
Thanks for having me.
And next time we'll have visuals.
Yes, let's do it.
Okay, cool.
This was the Delling Pod with me, James Delling Pod, and my very special guest, Chloe Wesley of the Taxpayers Alliance for Australia.
▲
Export Selection