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March 12, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:26:41
Delingpod 60: Brian Robinson
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Welcome to the Delling Pod.
Before I announce this week's thrilling special guest, I just wanted to have a brief word to you, my very special and only listening friend.
All good things must come to an end, and the same is true of this podcast.
No, I'm just teasing you.
I'm not going to end the podcast.
I think it's kind of an addiction for me, and I hope it's become an addiction for you as well.
But I think we're going to have to put it on a different footing.
I've been trying to come up with ideas.
Of how to monetize the podcast.
Now obviously the special friend badges are a fun thing and I really appreciate those avatars of you who have bought your special friend badges and supported the podcast.
But it's really not enough to put it on a solid financial footing and I'll tell you why I need to think of other ways of monetizing the podcast.
Number one, I need to free my arse.
And I think a lot of you understand what I'm talking about.
This is an increasingly hostile culture to people on the right side of the argument.
And all...
All the forces of the left are arrayed against us and even the forces of the centre, I'm afraid, naming no names, are starting to become arrayed against us.
They're chickening out.
And I need, I suppose, what you might call F-off money.
I need protection so that I am beholden to nobody.
That way I can carry on doing what I'm doing and just stick it to the man and not live in fear that I'm going to get cancelled any moment.
So, number one, you're trying to protect me from our many enemies on the left, enabling me to do what I do better.
The second thing is, I think, again, it's in your interest, the more, the freer I am, the better product I can offer to you.
I mean, I'm thinking of all manner of specials.
I think in the future, I really want to do Dick and James Go to Israel.
I also want to do, I haven't told Loza this, I mean this would have to be financed separately, but I would like to do Lawrence Fox and James Dullingpole go riding over the Andes on exciting horses, because Lawrence is a rider and so am I, and that would be fun.
I mean obviously we're talking more money there.
But anyway, I would like to ask your views on how I'm going to do this.
Here is an idea.
This is my idea so far.
I think what I'm going to do is offer one half of the podcast free so that people can get a free taste of it every week so that they're not totally deprived.
But B, obviously, as bait to lure people in and make them think, well, if I listen to the first half, I don't want to miss out on the second half.
And my plan is, tell me if I'm going wrong here, I want to paywall the second half.
I know other podcasters have done this, but I think that if I paywalled the second part of the podcast, I like to hope that lots of you will think, well, James is worth supporting.
And also, I'd find it really annoying not being able to hear the second half of his podcast.
So, I'm going to have a survey on the website, delingpoleworld.com, but I would really welcome any emails you want to send me before then to the delingpoleworld.com website.
And I'd like to hear from you things like, what would be a reasonable amount for me to charge per month?
I mean, I'm thinking about $8 per month.
That's what other podcasters...
Well, I've looked at one who charges that.
I think that sounds a pretty reasonable amount.
Also, what perks you'd like as a reward for your generosity?
For example, I would definitely do once a month that thing where you can talk to me on the internet and I answer all your questions.
I don't know what those are called, but I'd live cast or something.
I do those.
I'm thinking of special events.
Obviously, you'd get access, reduced ticket prices and advance notice of special events.
I'm thinking of a much higher tier where I know some of you, for example, are hedge fund managers.
I know you're quite tight, but at the same time, you would fork out for, I don't know, maybe you could use me to entertain your clients.
So, you know, how much do I need to charge not to underprice myself?
You see what I mean?
What's a...
What's a good price for me to ask for that, for say, you know, if I come to dinner with you or something?
Things like that.
I'm just thinking of ways of making it work.
What kind of things would you like dicta design in form of merchandising?
I'll make sure, obviously, that whatever the system I decide on, that those of you who've already got special friend badges don't miss out.
Sorry this is long and I'm thinking aloud here, but I think it's really important we get this right.
I don't want to alienate you.
I really love...
Every time I go to London now, it's absolutely amazing.
Almost every time I go to London, I get on the tube or get off at the station, off the mainline train, and somebody says, love the podcast, or somebody removes an ear thing from their ear and says, just listening to your podcast, and And it's really...
I love that.
I mean, of all the things I've done in my journalistic career, I think my relation with you, my special listening friends, has been the most satisfying thing that's ever happened to me.
And I want it to continue, but I think that...
I hope you'll agree that if you support me and make me more free, it'll be good for all of us.
Obviously, make me more rich as well.
I'd like to be able to buy Magnifico or The Hunter one day.
I'd like to be able to replace my 4Motion V... What is it?
V6? You know, my golf that died recently.
Stuff like that.
You know, I want to be free.
I want to go and make good stuff for you and make you happy and we can all love each other and live happily ever after.
So please tell me how I can do this better.
Thank you very much.
Now over to my this week's special guest.
Thank you.
Welcome to the Delipod with me, James Delipod.
And I know I say I'm excited about this week's special guest.
And this week's special guest knows I always say that because he's a regular listener.
He's a very kind and generous helper of the podcast.
He gives me tips on how to speak proper.
And stuff like that.
And, well, you do, Brian, don't you?
Do I? His name is Brian Robinson, and he's been on the podcast before.
And you're a speaking coach, aren't you?
I'm a speaking coach, yes.
Yeah, exactly.
And you're an ex...
An ex...
Actor.
Lovie, yeah.
Yes, very...
In terms of lovineness, very ex, yes.
Yeah.
But you...
But I imagine...
Did you ever play the Dane...
Yes, I did.
Did you?
Did you really?
How dare you ask me that!
Yes, I did, but it was a bit of a cheat.
That was a hell of a cheat.
What, it was an abridged version?
No, it wasn't the play of Hamlet.
Oh, I see.
It was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Oh, okay.
I was very young.
To this day, the youngest actor ever to have played Hamlet at the Old Vic and at the National.
Really?
Because they were both in the same place at the time.
But it wasn't in Hamlet, it was in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
That is a good claim to fame.
I imagine that you are...
You belong to that generation of actors that did rep and stuff and learned how to speak a diverse.
Yes, speak a diverse, yes.
Did you ever get tuition?
You didn't get taught by Cicely Berry or anything like that, did you?
Well, in terms of speaking verse...
Yeah, speaking...
As such, or...
Not specifically, although the voice coach at the National in my time, a wonderful woman called Kate Fleming.
Yeah.
I owe a huge amount to her.
In fact, a lot of the things that really irritate me about speakers on my blog, you know, I critique speeches.
Yeah, yeah, you're good at that.
Am I? No, I enjoy...
I actually...
People, anyone remotely interested in speaking should, public speaking, should check out your blogs.
I like the way you go through various speeches that you found on the internet and you analyse them and you explain whether they're any good or not and why they're good, why they work.
And it's often counterintuitive.
Like earlier on, we were talking about Brendan O'Neill.
Yes.
And we both love Brendan.
That's a given.
But you were saying that one of the things that annoys you about Brendan's...
Tell us the annoying thing about Brendan's podcast.
Well, annoying is stretching it a bit.
But when he...
I can always tell on his podcast...
Yeah.
When he is reading a script, which he tends, I mean, there are always scripted bits about, you know, if you're enjoying this, tune in or subscribe, all this sort of stuff.
But you can tell he's reading it because he over-enunciates.
Every word comes individually wrapped.
So if you are listening to this, then do come and subscribe to this.
And he doesn't speak like that.
When he speaks normally, he speaks like this.
He doesn't speak in that loveyish way, to be fair.
Like this.
He speaks more like Brendan.
Please don't dwell on the voice.
That's another thing.
That is another thing that you try and teach people.
Not to become obsessed with their own voices.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Oh yes, the last thing you should be obsessed with, if you're making a speech or anything else at all, is anything to do with yourself.
You're the least important person there.
It's the audience and it's the message.
That's all you should concentrate on.
And incidentally, if you are nervous, it's because you're thinking about yourself.
My ex-boss, a nasty bit of name-dropping here, a guy by the name of Olivia, used to say that nerves were a sign of vanity.
You are far too concerned with what the audience was thinking of you.
He actually said that?
Lawrence Olivier said that.
You can't do a Lawrence Olivier impersonation?
I wouldn't dream of it.
Anyone who's worked in one of his companies, which I did, does an Olivier.
Do they?
And they're normally pretty naff, and mine is as naff as any is.
Okay.
Well, I quite like naff impersonations.
I'm sorry to disappoint us by not giving us your naff Olivier.
Are you sure I can't tempt you?
Has anyone ever told you what he used to call people in the company?
Thank you.
No.
If he didn't know your name, he called you Baby.
Did he?
And if he did know you, he just stuck your name in front.
So if it was, I don't know, Derek Jacoby, it'd be Derek Baby.
And so if you just pass him the corridor, he'd say, Morning, Sir Lawrence.
Good morning, Baby.
You called him Sir Lawrence, did you?
Yes.
Not Larry or...
No, I was not on Larry terms.
But do you know what...
I wonder...
I mean, I'm a bit younger than you, but I'm of a generation where the name Laurence Olivier meant something.
But I'm wondering how many of our younger avatars, special friend avatars, even give a toss about Laurence Olivier.
It's a bit like we were talking the other week about cars and about the cars that you like tend to be the cars that you aspired to owning when you were in your 20s.
And the same applies to very much, we were just talking a moment ago, to music.
I mean, like, when I was growing up, people obsessed about Elvis.
No one gives a toss about Elvis anymore, or at least they're all dying off.
People who cared about Elvis Presley are really, really dying off.
He's just like...
It's interesting that there was...
For a while.
Yeah, he was gigantic.
But I've got two sons who are 41 and 38.
The older one went through an Elvis period.
I just happened to an album.
I played it.
He went crazy for him.
So he's not a kid exactly, but a generation down, suddenly, I mean, these things sort of tend to have another go.
Who was it that came up on Twitter the other day?
Buddy Holly.
Oh, but Buddy Holly's great.
Oh, absolutely brilliant, yeah.
Hey, hey.
Absolutely.
Every day.
No, I can't do a Buddy Holly impersonation.
But luckily, most of the listeners won't even have heard of Buddy Holly, so they won't know how shit my impersonation is.
Anyway, Brian, we should talk.
We were rambling, but maybe the rambling is a good thing.
But I'm sure there's important shit we need to talk about.
Well, yes.
Someone around here is making a documentary I saw on Twitter.
Oh yeah, we're going to talk about it here first, I guess.
Yeah, I am.
And this has been bubbling under for ages.
I'm making a climate change documentary with the great Martin Durkin.
Oh, wow.
A name to reckon with.
No, it's good.
So you're not messing around, are you?
Martin Durkin, who made The Great Global Warming, Swindle.
But that was a while ago.
And although there have been a few sceptical movies, I mean, Mark Murano has made.
He's just about to release another one.
You know, Mark Murano, who runs the Climate Depot website in the U.S., But I think that the time is ripe for a...
Well, I mean...
How would you put it?
What's even riper than ripe?
I mean, we're reaching the stage where the fruit's falling off the tree and being eaten by wasps.
That's because the wasps are already on it.
It's beyond ripe.
But will it work?
I mean, the thing is...
It's like that Terminator...
Every time you think it's dead, it comes alive.
I mean, how the hell did it, A, survive Climategate?
How the hell did it survive every single projection that has been made in Alderman Goresville?
Not a single one of those things.
If we were talking science...
If you say, if we do this, that will happen, and it doesn't happen, and then the next one doesn't happen, and the next one doesn't happen, the next one...
Sooner or later you say, we've got to go back to the drawing board, but they don't.
And that's the evidence as far as I'm concerned.
It's not scientific, but political.
You've got a hundred...
Prince Charles, no less, said that we had a hundred months left to save the planet.
And the hundred months elapsed and lo!
The planet was still here.
And they keep doing this.
And in a way, it's a sign of their arrogance that they go on making these time-specific predictions.
Knowing that no one is ever going to hold them to account because that's how far advanced the scam is and how it has permeated an entire culture.
I honestly think that my movie will be more watched in America.
Well, that's good because that's where the money is anyway.
More watched in America than it is in the UK. And I think probably we'll be pitching it at that because...
I'll tell you a sad story, actually, in a moment.
That dog is annoying me.
That's my special friend.
All those special...
Yeah, all those bloody canine special friends.
It's been a real pain.
That's Daisy.
She's gorgeous.
It's been...
You can hear its whopping tail early on, ruining the sound.
Now it's just thrown the microphone box on the...
Yeah.
When I wrote my book Watermelons, which is quite a while ago now, 2012 I think I published it.
In fact, before that, Climategate.
Climategate, I thought, was...
It's so damning of so-called climate science.
I mean, it's not really science.
It's not a hard science.
It's a social science, if that.
One of your guests has got science and the name is not science.
That was Will Happer.
That's right.
He was quoting John Nash, I think?
Correct.
I remember.
That's right.
If you called it a science, it's not a science.
I thought at the time, wow, that's so true.
It was just brilliant.
So physics is a science.
It's like studies.
Any university course that has studies in it is not worth looking at.
Yeah.
So when I made...
When the Climategate scandal broke, I thought...
Really, it's over for the Greenies and for the climate-industrial complex, because how can they possibly go on when they have been exposed as torturing the data till it screams, going on these massive climate junkets to exotic destinations while preaching hair-shirt ideology?
They were exposed in so many different ways, from so many different angles, that I thought, they're never going to be able to show their faces again.
The emperor is wearing no clothes.
And instead, what happens?
They double down.
It's astonishing how they've survived.
It's like Terminator.
This thing won't die.
It totally is.
And it's a function of the amount of money that is being made, the number of snouts in the trough.
And unfortunately, the financial sector, which was always kind of pretty complicit anyway, is now totally in.
They've gone...
Mark Carney, for example, the happily no longer governor of the Bank of England...
Yes, the late lamented or unlamented.
He's now in charge of some kind of climate boondoggle which is designed to discourage city firms from investing in companies which aren't sustainable.
It's just...
It's extraordinary.
Who has the sort of reach that can persuade internationally the money to move in the wrong direction where anyone who's even looked below the surface of the subject knows that it's a boondoggle?
Well, you'd think.
I think at this stage there's only one person who can save us.
And that, of course, is me.
Which is why I'm making this documentary with the mighty Martin.
Well, we're all behind you, James.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Of course you're behind me, so I get shot first.
So, yeah, we're going to make this documentary.
And the sad thing I was going to tell you was that when I wrote Watermelons, I thought that this would make a good documentary.
And I talked with various people, including David Giler.
The guy who...
The guy who produced or co-produced Alien.
So he was...
Yeah.
And he wanted to...
He liked the whole idea.
And he wanted to turn it into a kind of...
Maybe a sort of...
A movie movie.
Not a documentary.
But a...
You know, a sort of...
A Crichton type...
Type movie.
Michael Crichton type movie.
But he went to Hollywood with a script.
And he realised that...
That it was so in bed with the Green Movement that there was no chance of getting that made.
So I then approached this producer.
I won't mention his name.
He was really keen.
He was very much on board with my climate skepticism.
Anyway, initially I approached him, not Durkin, to engage in this project.
And he wouldn't even reply to my emails.
And I found out that he's gone to the...
It's a bit like their final scene in Body Snatchers, you know, with...
Sorry, I'm going blank here.
Don Sutherland.
All right.
You don't know this moment.
It's a key.
It's a sort of meme.
It's a trope of every discussion by a right-wing person like me.
Everything tends towards the body snatchers.
Where, yeah, everyone has been subsumed into these alien creatures' worlds.
No one is left.
That's what it comes down to.
Oh, right.
It's ringing bells.
Yeah, yeah.
And this is what's happening.
The whole of...
Even...
Look at the Telegraph.
The Telegraph, the paper of Christopher Booker.
He's now...
The paper, actually, that, via me, broke the Climategate story.
I mean, admittedly online rather than in the print, you know, in the days of Telegraph blogs.
Even Telegraph, even the Mail, they've all been frightened off.
They've all been frightened off by a combination of bullying by people like Bob Ward, the Grantham Institute-funded...
He was once described on Twitter as a climate scientist.
My comment that I put in was, that's what I call lousy research.
Yeah, he's not a climate scientist.
And even if he were a climate scientist, he'd still be talking bollocks.
So he bullies newspaper editors.
He frightens them.
None of these people...
I mean, Al Gore isn't a climate scientist?
No.
David Attenborough isn't a climate scientist?
Yeah, but I always think that that's a dangerous game to play because that's the appeal to authority.
It's as if to say, if...
science degree therefore we could take his bullshit seriously well we don't that's credentialism it's just yeah ultimately what matters is the quality of the arguments and if they can be backed up with with with science and evidence then fine and if they're not doesn't really matter whether the person is a professor of of doctorology genius you know for with a with but if it's two dozen phds up and if all the projections collapse as everyone has over 20 something years the whole thing should have collapsed yeah
Yeah, well, that's why I keep saying it's got nothing to do with science.
And one of the annoyances...
There will be lots of people out there who are keen to appear on this documentary explaining why their science is going to explain away the climate change problem.
And it's not.
Because the whole global warming argument theory has been rigged in such a way as to be unfalsifiable.
So it's not really science.
It's politics.
You can never prove it wrong because they've arranged it that way.
So there will never be a killer fact or a pivotal moment where we suddenly realise that actually the science is all wrong.
I've got a few friends working on interesting theories, but...
It's not going to slay the beast.
It's also a global drug.
It is a global drug.
Trying to cure a drug addiction can be extremely unpleasant for the patient.
It's what Matt Ridley calls chemotherapy to cure a cold.
Although I would dispute the cold part.
Where is the cold?
I think that people like Matt fight a very good fight.
But people like Matt also, they have to play this, they call themselves lukewarmers.
And they have to call themselves lukewarmers to show that they don't deny the anthropogenic influence on climate change.
Well, I mean, I don't deny that.
The anthropogenic influence on climate change insofar as, for example, the urban heat island effect, which is clearly an anthropogenic phenomenon, probably has an effect on at least local temperatures and may even have a kind of climatological effect.
But that's by the by.
The bigger picture is that Trillions of pounds and dollars of taxpayers' money are being squandered to no useful purpose whatsoever.
In fact, they're actually causing real damage, this expenditure.
And dealing with a problem that doesn't exist.
I mean, it really does not...
There is not a...
Catastrophic man-made climate change does not exist.
It's just...
And even if it did, there's not a damn thing we could do about it.
Well, you see, there were so many levels of defence that we have in our argument.
And, of course, the other side, being devious, uses this as their...
Well, which is it?
Are you saying that temperatures haven't risen dramatically since the Little Ice...
Well, actually, they wouldn't mention the Little Ice Age.
They'd say...
In the 20th century, have temperatures not risen to alarming degrees?
Or are you saying that the methods we're using to deal with this problem are inadequate or what?
Well, actually, I'm saying all those things because it's not that simple.
It's a device to control the populace.
It totally is.
One of the things that annoys me, Brian, one of the many things that annoys me...
Brian, it's one of the things that annoys you.
No, you don't annoy me.
The...
Is that...
I went through this naive phase, well I suppose we all do, when I was growing up, where I sort of thought that the world we lived in now was more intelligent and sophisticated To any world that existed before.
That we'd somehow...
Almost a sort of Francis Fukuyama type thing where I believed in this thing called progress.
Where human beings...
We'd sort of eliminated most of the bad things in the world.
And that the people in power were basically good.
And just...
None of this is true.
We are Aztecs capturing prisoners and beating their heads in at the top of ziggurats or whatever, pyramids.
And we're cutting out their still-beating hearts and drinking the blood.
In order to appease some god.
Yeah.
We're really not much better.
Okay, so...
But now, you see, a couple of podcasts ago, Douglas Murray was saying that he was optimistic.
I know what he means.
You see, I believe in people.
It's the people.
The people voted the right way in the referendum.
The people put Boris in, whether it was a good idea.
We can come to that in a moment.
But the people...
Have a lot more sense that it's...
I, no, I do, I do, I'm with you.
I do believe that there is, in the wisdom of crowds, I do believe that actually, still, even now, probably the majority of people in this country think that, and we're talking about Britain, but it's certainly the case in the US, and Australia, I imagine, and wherever else there's special friends, abatars, They can see through all this bullshit.
I mean, look, I was talking to Lawrence Fox today and he was talking about all the people, all the people who stop him in the street and congratulate him on saying, yeah, mate, I'm totally with you.
Thank you for saying what I believe.
And this is why, by the way, this is the real reason I do this podcast.
I mean, obviously, it would be nice if I could monetize it properly one day.
I mean, it would be great.
Imagine if I could earn a living out of it.
And it's great that people have been buying special friend badges and that's good.
But if I sat down, well I've mentioned this before, if I sat down with my accountant and I tried to justify the podcast, he wouldn't be very impressed.
But I do it because...
I know there was a hunger out there.
There were lots of people who listen to it and go, finally, somebody who understands what I'm thinking and who thinks like us and makes me feel normal rather than a freak.
Actually, my God, if I could reach out to all those people, the podcast would have about...
30 million viewers.
I'd be coining it in.
Well, I have to say, I'm going to blow some smoke up your arse.
Oh, do.
I love that.
Is it coloured?
Is it scented smoke?
It won't be after.
Anyway.
I'll tell you what you do right with your podcast.
Is that you have this natural little boy inquisitiveness.
You just want to find out and you ask very good questions of your guests.
And barely a podcast goes by without my going, oh, from something someone said.
And quite often it's questions that other people wouldn't dream of saying.
Because, as I said, you have no filter.
You're always saying that you have no filter.
And you have a style of asking questions that brings stuff out of people.
That's good.
That's good.
That's probably why I ended up in the shit profession of, shit trade rather, of journalism because of this curiosity.
I'm always asking questions.
I just always...
I'm actually really, really interested in people.
Whenever I meet somebody, I mean, unless they're boring as fuck, I suppose, but most people are.
Most people are interesting and I just want to find out the most interesting things about that person at any given moment and who they are and what's bothering them.
I think I get it.
Actually, both my parents are like that.
Mother is always striking up conversations with strangers.
And Pa is sort of very intellectually curious.
I think partly born of the fact that he didn't go to university.
Well, I mean, he studied Chinese in the RAF at one of the London universities, so he could listen to the Chinese fighter pilots communicating with one another around the Korean War.
Yeah, he was based on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong and did that.
Anyway, but yeah, so I was quite lucky with my parents, and they've given me this curiosity about people.
And that's so...
It's a skill I've got completely naturally.
And, you know, I'm of the view increasingly as I get old.
You know, I look at my life and my career, which I consider a bit of a failure.
You know, I look at my little brother Charlie, for example, and I look at he's built a business worth 100 million or something, you know, and that's just the start.
And I think, wow, if only I could have done that.
And he works all hours.
His whole life is dedicated towards building businesses.
But at the same time, I think you've really got to work with the material you've been given.
And I wonder, actually, maybe this is the wrong thing to say, but I wonder whether all these people who can say, all these sort of self-help courses where they tell you, you can be who you want to be and you can make yourself a better person.
I don't think I can make myself a better person.
Play to your strength.
And your strength is asking good questions.
All I can do is really just arse around being me.
I'm not going to be like, look at Toby Young.
I love Toby.
I mean, obviously he's a cuck.
But Toby has played a blinder with his free speech union.
I think that's a really clever move.
And Toby's the kind of, he's always looking out for new stuff to do.
You know, his free schools and stuff.
But the reason I haven't done that is because I don't have the inclination to do that kind of shit.
In the same way that Toby could never really do...
He wouldn't be as good at me as this.
And I think you have to just accept your limitations.
Somebody listening to the podcast said that they knew what my Myers-Briggs thing was.
I mean, I've never taken a Mars Briggs test.
All right, but I only vaguely know what it's about.
But I'll tell you, when I listen to your podcast, there are several moments where I think, oh, yes, only James would have asked that question.
Oh, well, good.
And that's when the thing comes alive.
Well, I've just done one with...
This podcast will go out afterwards.
I've done one with David Starkey.
Have you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Obviously, your excitement won't be...
It will be misplaced by the time this goes out because you'll have already heard it.
So you've got to pretend now, oh, yeah, I've heard that one.
Oh, yes, I heard that.
Oh, it was very good, yes.
I love the question that you are...
Yes, right.
But I... I don't know how that one went.
I'm not even sure I want to talk about it.
Okay, well don't, because it needs to be held in abeyance for the listener.
Okay, supposing that the Prime Minister was sitting here, what would you ask him?
Oh, God.
Boris, how can you have fucked up so majorly?
How can you...
Why did you blow it?
That's the question, isn't it?
Why?
Why?
What's happened?
Because...
Did he sign some sort of false shield pact?
Why...
What the hell is he up to?
Did you ever...
Did you ever really understand Brexit except as a means towards advancing your political career?
That would be...
That is really looking like...
And he wouldn't...
Do you know what the thing about Boris is Boris is so bluff and opaque you would never get an answer out of him.
I wonder whether he even knows his own mind actually.
I wonder whether...
I mean, Boris has got lots of admirable qualities.
He thinks very quickly, even as he's talking very slowly.
And what he does is he uses his slow talking and his ums and ahs...
As a way of...
His brain is probably working at twice or three times the speed of yours.
And yet you imagine, you're lulled into a full sense of security.
You imagine that because he's talking so slowly, that he's probably a bit slow.
And he's not.
He's processing.
He's got very quick processing speed, which I suppose is a mark of super intelligence.
Well, since he's not here...
What is the answer to that question?
Well, I come to that.
But he's got many qualities and he's very jolly and stuff, but I think he thinks like a Wickhamist.
And I don't mean that as a compliment.
He doesn't think like a Newtonian.
He thinks like...
He believes in nothing.
He can see both sides of the argument.
And when people said, you know, well, Boris was never a real Brexiteer, he...
He famously wrote arguments for and arguments against, and they were about the same length, and I can't remember what the circumstances were, but it was as though most of us, I think, you and I, for example, and I think probably most of our listeners, felt in our bones, in our guts, in our hearts, everything, that Brexit was the only thing.
I mean, the logic was implacable, that Brexit was the only right and proper thing.
You know, duh.
Duh, absolutely.
But Boris, you look at the Johnson family.
I mean, they're a bunch of...
They're certainly not really conservatives.
They're not really...
They're not even classical liberals.
I mean, Stanley is a greeny Europhile.
Rachel's, you know, at least as bad, if not worse.
And the apple hasn't fallen that far from the tree.
I feel slightly frustrated and annoyed about this because I wasted quite a lot of personal capital defending, not just defending Boris, but bigging him up.
In that time, during that awful period where he probably was our only hope, I think, of getting us out of the Brexit mess.
I think people who criticise a lot of Breitbart readers, well, there's probably about five or six trolls who lurk in the comments below, and they're quite unpleasant.
They keep banging on about, well, you said that Boris was going to be great.
Well, I think a lot of us rather hoped that Boris was going to be great, because in those times he was our only hope.
People forget what an impasse we were stuck in with the awful Bercow.
Treating the House of Commons like his personal fiefdom.
I mean, he really was the most powerful.
You look back at the back end of last year and it was just like a nightmare in retrospect.
It was a nightmare at the time.
It was.
It was extraordinary.
The way that the Supreme Court, this creation of Tony Blair, only existed for 10 years, Baroness Hale, was effectively rewriting Britain's constitution.
Insofar as we don't really have a written constitution.
I bet David Starkey will have some things to say about that.
You see, the problem with...
Don't let us preempt that.
No, but actually, I'll tell you one thing about the David Starkey thing.
I wish I'd interviewed him in that period where he would have been more angry about the kind of constitutional rape that was taking place.
Because he'd have had very firm things to say.
He was more measured when I interviewed him.
But you've just touched something that is very interesting.
Have you noticed how the whole subject has gone totally off the boil?
How the whole Brexit matter is now...
Yesterday is news and no one could give a damn because it's happened, but except it hasn't.
And that's what bothers me.
It hasn't happened yet.
Yeah, you see, I'm...
Okay, this could be the same complacency which led me to think that Boris was going to be the answer to all our prayers.
It seems to me...
That Brexit was never the complicated thing that the deep state and the EU made it out to be.
Well, David Frost is saying all the right things.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
We've given the job to one man, David Frost...
A Led Zeppelin fan, by all accounts.
Really?
I mean, I can't think of a higher recommendation.
This guy...
They were a huge combo, weren't they, in your day?
They were a huge combo.
He totally...
Actually, not before my day, but...
He totally gets Brexit.
He totally gets the point of it.
And that's fine.
I'm fairly confident that we are going to...
We might end up with a no deal.
We're going to teach those euro weenies.
We're going to put them in their place and that's going to be fine.
But for me, Brexit was never really about Brexit.
Brexit was about...
The reason that people were so emotionally drawn to Brexit and why households were divided, why people lost friends.
You've probably lost friends.
I've certainly lost friends without Brexit.
Well, I just refuse to talk about it after a bit.
Because it wasn't really about Britain's relationship with the European Union.
It was about what that relationship symbolised.
It was about things like Everything from sovereignty to an Englishman's right to banter freely and not be chased after by the tone police, Gestapo.
It was about...
Just about risk-taking, a sense of identity, a bloody-mindedness.
Which is all good British characteristics.
The things that make us British, that make us special.
Everyone's entitled to self-determination, and that's what we were hoping to get back into.
We just about have got back.
So that's fine, but look at what Boris is...
You mentioned earlier that it's almost as though we've been given a pact with the devil.
You may have your Brexit pretty much as you want it.
But the devil will take you up the arse in any number of horrible, hideous and painful ways.
And they're coming thick and fast.
We are going to sell out your telecommunication system to the Chinese who will use it to spy on you and to rupture the relationship that you have, rupture the special relationship with America and Australia, the Five Eyes.
You're going to And there can be no justification for this.
How can it be right that a hostile foreign power is allowed effectively to bribe its way into our telecommunication system by offering us cheap technology?
Why are they giving it as cheap?
Because they want access to our communication system.
So you've got Huawei.
You've got the real deal-breaker for me, which was HS2, where you've got Boris completely surrendering to the blob, to the deep state, to the vested interests of the construction industry.
The Chinese are trying to muscle in on that as well.
Indeed.
And I heard that Boris hadn't made up his mind on HS2 until the day before he made the announcement.
And the day before he made the announcement, he was...
Visited by a deputation, the lobbying group from the various engineering companies responsible for putting out HS2 and they said, look, if you don't give the go ahead to HS2, a lot of these companies are going to go bust or have a really hard time.
And what he should have said was, it's not the job of governments to pick winners.
It's not the job of government to take money from the pockets of taxpayers and spend it on projects which are not worth the money.
That is irresponsible government.
Instead, Boris surrenders to these lobby groups, these special interest groups.
That seems to me to be...
Outrageous.
You'd expect it of a Labour government, but not of a Conservative government worth the name.
So you've got Huawei, you've got HS2, and then of course the thing that we haven't...
It's so incomprehensibly awful and wrong that...
I find it almost painful to talk about, this net zero by 2050.
We're back where we started, the whole climate thing, the derivatives from that, the net zero thing, which is hideously expensive, probably unaffordable, probably impossible to achieve.
Well, it's going to cost, just according to some costings by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, it's going to cost three trillion.
Well, I remember when a billion was a lot of money, but a trillion, And it's going to hit the poorest hardest.
It will hit the poorest hardest.
The very people who lent Boris their vote, lent the Conservatives their vote, and whom Boris has promised to honour by taking care of their interests.
And he's not doing so.
He's just the creature of...
He's obviously the creature of...
His bird obviously has an influence on this, you know.
Yeah, I've heard that.
I can't believe he's as shallow as that.
Hello, Brian.
You're a man.
You know how shallow we are.
What we'll do for...
He gets through the women.
He could get through this one if he chose to.
Yeah, okay.
He's also that Smoothie Chops, Zach Goldsmith.
Zach Goldsmith is very influential.
I've met Zach a couple of times and he's very, very charming.
He's got a sort of...
He's sort of got a James Bond villain charm to him, but he's charming nevertheless.
And you can see...
He's very plausible.
You think somebody that elegant and rich and plausible and Etonian...
Just good at kind of...
They're good at that shit.
They're good at getting their way.
Gove has got the green bug.
Gove completely surrendered all his intellectual faculties where the whole climate change thing is concerned.
Who's pulling their strings?
That's what I want to know.
Well, it's not like there's some kind of...
Sinister organisation.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a concatenation of interests.
Involving even...
Look at the statements made by the CEOs of Shell and BP. They've all surrendered the past.
They've all...
Needlessly, I would say, accepted the terms of the enemy, which are that fossil fuels are stranded assets, or in danger of becoming stranded assets, that they should be left in the ground.
You occasionally get a few...
The odd brave voice, like the bursa of whatever, Cambridge Oxford College, who said to the students, well, I'm sorry, but I can't divest all our fossil fuel holdings.
It's not within my immediate power, but I can turn off the heating, if you like, in the college, which is a fantastic response.
Why aren't people more robust?
Why indeed?
We have a massive institutional failing.
You quoted Douglas earlier, being optimistic about people.
And funnily enough, David Starkey said something similar to me about that he was optimistic.
I'm optimistic about people.
Definitely...
One of the best things about doing this podcast and my sort of latter-day career, ever since I've been cast further and further adrift from the mainstream media, like losing my spectator column, you know, just it's...
I can see that I'm being pushed away from the mainstream media because this is what happens.
It's a sort of form of cancel culture.
You've seen it look at Lawrence Fox.
It's marginalized indeed.
See, but...
One of the great consolations is realizing that I am actually in tune with where real, ordinary people are.
And I've made some great friends.
People like you.
People have given me all manner of support and encouragement.
And that's really good.
It's like...
I hate using the Star Wars analogy because I think Star Wars is basically shit, but...
I do feel like I'm part of the Rebel Alliance against the Death Star and, you know, we have got X-Wings and Y-Wing fighters and that's quite nice against the TIE fighters of the Evil Empire.
Is the Force with us?
Yeah!
Yeah, of course it is.
Yeah, of course the Force is with us.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
And I wonder whether...
Look, go back to...
Go back to Salamis...
The Persians versus the Greek city-states when democracy barely existed.
Somehow the force was with the Greeks, wasn't it, rather than with the Persian tyranny?
Well, the thing is that political theory appears to persuade all these people That if you keep people poor, you can control them better.
Doesn't it look like that to you?
Yeah, I suppose people, but do you, are you saying that the establishment, the elite deliberately do this stuff in order to grind down the rest of us and make us malleable and biddable.
Do you think they constantly set out to do this?
Or do you think it's wrong that they don't really think about it, they just do it?
I'd love to think it was the latter.
Some of them aren't terribly bright.
I have to say, when you hear them speaking.
That's the thing.
But then you think, well, it can't be that stupid.
So, I mean, some of the things that they're talking, I mean, the zero thing by 2050, it's just lunacy.
It just can't be done.
And the attempt is going to bankrupt the country.
Yeah.
And as I said, the poorest will pay.
They will, yes.
But this same creed has been keeping Africa poor for years as well.
I mean, I don't know, is there something that bothers me?
There's strings being pulled from somewhere.
It's not Soros.
Soros has got a lot of money, but he hasn't got that sort of reach, I don't think.
I would love, for example, to go and find out what it was that happened to George Osborne on Oleg Deripaska's yacht that time with...
Who was the other financier guy?
I forget.
I remember the story.
I can't remember the names either.
Nat Rothschild.
Just...
I don't know whether it was Compromat or whether it was that finally...
The rules were laid out to Osborne in a way that he finally understands that this is how the world works and these are the people you've got to completely shaft and this is what you have to do.
But it's as if when people...
When people join the establishment, they go over to the dark side.
Dan Hannan, Hannan's Law, no Prime Minister ever continues his Euroscepticism having got into office.
That was Hannan's Law from years ago.
And it was extraordinary.
Something happens when you get...
Now, it sounds like we're sitting here indulging in the mother of all conspiracy theories.
But I'm just trying to make sense of what just doesn't seem to make sense.
Well, you see, this is why I so like Trump, and I'm mystified why more people over this side of the pond don't get him.
Well, that's what they needed.
They needed a son of a bitch.
He's an extremely unpleasant man, I gather, etc., etc., etc., and he's boorish and all the rest of it, but that's what was required.
They needed someone who could go in there and be prepared to exercise muscle and do what needs to be done.
And he's turned the country around.
He's made the world safer.
He's made the country safer.
He's made the country's economy safer.
And, having jumped out of the Paris Accord, it's about the only country in the entire planet whose carbon emissions have been going down.
Yeah, yeah.
Because of shale, which Boris won't let us have.
You see, there you've mentioned another really culpable thing about this government.
And it's not as though Boris hasn't written articles in the past about things like the shale gas miracle.
He's actually recognised that the Boland shale, for example, I think is deeper than any of the shales in America.
So who's bringing the arm on him?
It's the kind of...
It's the blob.
It's the green blob, which extends from the city to...
Look at how he's caved to all these pressure groups like Extinction Rebellion.
Look at how Cambridge police...
Absolutely.
Just down the road from me, Cambridge is an absolute mess at the moment.
How can Cambridge police allow this protest group to dig up the lawns in front of Trinity College, the grandest college in Cambridge?
Well, partly it's because that idiot woman is now the master of Trinity, Sally Davis, just absolutely useless.
That...
It's ultimately about the subornment of our institutions, isn't it?
Yeah.
And the police as well.
So the police...
I mean, I'm looking forward to talking to Peter Hitchens about this stuff.
I'm sure he'll be very black pill about the whole...
I'm sure he will.
I'm sure he will.
But...
Contra Douglas.
Douglas is optimism.
And Contra Stark is optimism.
At the same time, you look around and you think, we are living in end times where the police are more interested in painting their BMWs in the rainbow flag and dressing up and dancing at gay parades than they are investigating burglaries, let alone stabbings.
Or controlling the traffic in Cambridge and stopping people from...
Because they've been infiltrated by people who've, with probably social sciences, probably sociology degrees, which say that all crime and society's fault and criminals aren't really to blame.
Sociology, the study of people who don't need studying, exercised by people who do.
Yeah, exactly.
So, the police.
And you could go across the board here.
I mean, doctors, for example.
Of my many objections to the National Health Service, I think one of my greatest is this, that it effectively turns people who ought to be doctors and nurses into communists.
They conflate medical care with socialistic healthcare systems.
And they're not the same thing.
You can believe in healthcare as a good thing, and the work doctors and nurses do as a good thing, without having to subscribe to socialistic ideology.
And yet, so many doctors and nurses think that if you don't believe...
That socialism is the only way.
It politicizes them.
It radicalizes them.
And you only have to look on Twitter to realize this.
The things that they say.
and to criticize they make it impossible to criticize uh the the socialistic ideology because they pretend you're criticizing health care and they're completely different things quite so um so so we could go on we go on making a list of all the institutions i mean one of my hobby horses oxford and cambridge colleges for example but i mean that applies pretty much across the board to all universities um yeah
and uh more and more occupations require degrees and one wonders why i I mean, is it in order that they, I mean, it's all part of the Elinsky plot to get them indoctrinated in the lecture halls?
So how do we get it back?
I mean, I can make a few more podcasts if that helps.
I can make my climate change documentary.
But I tell you, I keep trying to persuade the wife that actually there is no future in this country.
I mean, okay, so...
It might get in the way of my putative fox hunting comeback, which I keep planning to sneak past the radar once enough time has elapsed.
You can't because there's no grass in Texas.
You need grass to hunt on.
And there are only a few states in America where they have real grass.
Most of them have not real grass.
So you can do it in Virginia.
Argentina.
They have hunts.
But you see, again, American fox hunting, I think, a lot of them don't drink alcohol, for example.
It's all manicured.
You've got to have your syrup cup.
Yeah.
But I just think...
I don't want to live in a country where the government is quite this oppressive.
And it's weird.
I've never felt that before about a government of any hue.
But now I look at this one being run by people who were supposed to be my friends, my ideological allies, Boris, you know, university contemporary, Gove, university mate, and they're shitting all over my country.
And I just think...
Well, and all the people who ought to be supporting me, or the institutions, are not supporting me because they've all been turned, a la evasion of the body snatchers.
So I'm quite bleak.
I must say, you put it that way, it is very depressing.
I'm in a depression at the moment as well, so that doesn't help, particularly with the loss of my car.
Yeah, that's very sad.
You went over some rubble and it took out the sump.
I went over some rubble and took out the sump, yeah.
I mean, it was my favourite ever car.
It was like, I mean, okay, so cars are inanimate objects, but it did feel like losing a favourite pet or a hunter somehow.
Particularly after James Ruppert's been talking to you.
Exactly, yeah.
Exactly.
Good old James.
James is advising me on what new car to get.
Oh, you're in good hands there.
Yes, the main problem is lack of money.
Lots of people have been sort of coming up with helpful suggestions on Twitter as to the car I can get next.
They seem to be not factoring in the fact that I have no bloody money.
I don't know where.
It's just like...
Journalism is not...
It's not a great...
Well, particularly not...
Modern journalism is not a great...
I mean, it's not a sob story, but I just wonder...
That's the bit where I do wish I'd fought against my personality type and gone for it.
Gone and been a merchant banker?
Yeah.
Or a commodity broker?
Yeah.
You see, that would have appealed to my risk-taking.
Whether I'd been any good at it or not, I don't know.
Anyway, so we can...
Have we solved the world?
I don't think we have, but we might have identified a few problems with it.
We're actually, we're up, we're 55 at the moment, so we can talk a bit more.
Is there anything else you, you're quite good at making me, provoking me.
No way.
Well, no, I don't like provoke.
You're good at sort of making me digress and trust in me.
Well, I mean, your digressions are so interesting.
Well, yeah, are they?
I mean, I... Somebody...
That's right.
I got so kept away with my digression, I forgot to mention the point of it, which was the guy who told me that the Myers-Briggs...
What letters or thingies I am on the Myers-Briggs...
said that one of the ways he knew that I was that particular Myers-Briggs is that I always think aloud that I'm becoming you can hear me cogitating and I suppose that is what I do I just think it's really important to show your workings and and Well, now, you asked me if I could provoke you.
I'm having a wonderful time snuggling here with Daisy on my head.
With the dog, yeah.
Yeah, she's liking it too, actually.
Next time you've got Dick here, you're playing the yes-no game, which is brilliant.
Yeah.
It's what we all do all the time, but just, you might sort of make it a routine.
When you get a really juicy no, the next question should be, knave or fool?
It's always the issue.
When someone is a no, why?
Are they just stupid or are they villainous?
Oh, right.
Okay.
If I said to you, Theresa May, fool or knave?
Oh.
Yeah, I can see...
You know what the problem with this game is?
There's going to be...
And you as an ex-radio producer will know this.
There's too much silence.
Because I'm not sure...
Maybe you've picked a particularly hard one.
Okay.
Theresa May, knave or fool.
I think...
Yeah, she's a fool.
David Attenborough.
She's a fool.
Fool.
I'd love to think so.
I want to think so.
Okay.
I do want to think so.
Because if otherwise, he's a very nasty piece of work indeed.
Well, yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
He's just misguided.
He's listening to the wrong people.
One of my many problems, Brian, and I do have lots of them.
I mean, just like a fuck ton of problems I have.
One of them is that I'm really quite keen to give people the benefit of the doubt.
People think I'm going to be very spiky because my prose is quite spiky.
Yes, it is.
When I was with you before, I interviewed you because I wanted your listener to know more about the real James Dillingpole.
And actually, you've been telling us in your interviews ever since.
But I wanted you to expose that sort of vulnerable side of yourself, which the spikiness tends to camouflage.
Yes, well, I don't understand that.
I don't understand...
Why there is this kind of disjunct between some of my prose and what I'm actually like?
Is it perhaps just that...
My kind of righteous rage, if you like, is that I see quite clearly people behaving badly.
Yeah, people behaving badly.
And you rule up your sleeves and wade in.
And you're so funny with it also that that's actually...
Kind of humiliating to your victim.
And I think that's why you sometimes get some fairly hefty stuff back on Twitter.
Not as bad as Toby Young.
No.
So, yes, I hadn't really thought about people being...
Really hurt by my...
Maybe that's naive of me as well, but I always think that the kind of people I get at are impervious to criticism.
So really, all my...
So naive.
Yeah.
So maybe that's the case.
So that...
It really doesn't matter how rude I am about them, because I'm only really doing it for the fanbase, for them to feel better about the awfulness that this person is doing.
Yeah.
I mean, okay, Lord Devon.
I'd say he's a knave.
So would I. Definitely.
I think he's one of the worst people.
So would I. Carnie.
Carnie knave, I would say.
Knave, which is only a kind of ex-Goldman Sachs banker can be.
I think there's a sort of...
You do sell your soul when you join the institutions.
I think that's part of the deal.
I think one of the ugly secrets about the financial sector is that what they do is essentially not about creating value.
It is about, on some level, raping somebody somewhere, exploiting them.
It's not about...
It's not like doing what entrepreneurs do, which is finding something the market needs and then providing it more cheaply and efficiently than anybody else.
Which enriches the whole society.
There may be some collateral damage, but...
I think the great secret, the dirty, whacking, great, ugly secret of people in the financial sector, and I think somebody once said this to me, somebody who'd actually made his money in the city or had been in the city, and this person said to me, look...
These people really are no better talent wise than somebody who is repairing your phone or something or probably less talented actually or selling you pet insurance maybe and yet they are in a sector which because of an anomaly of history or economics or whatever Find themselves
being paid eye-watering sums of money for doing actually not very much.
And I think that if you enter that world, and maybe my city avatars would dispute this, but I wonder...
So that in itself is a first impact.
Yeah, well, that's what I mean.
The first rule of Fight Club is not to talk about Fight Club.
The first rule of City Club is not to tell anyone what a racket is.
Not even to admit it to yourself, actually.
Do you not think?
I think you're probably right.
Yes, I think you're probably right.
Let's do some more Fools and Knaves.
Oh yeah, okay.
My mind's gone blank.
Okay, I say Bob Ward.
He's just ineffably low-grade.
Just really, really, really low-grade.
In fact, again, this is why I think this Naven Fall game isn't really going to work with me, because actually, I think that in most cases, it's really third-rate people with fourth-rate minds.
But there are people out there who are good and kind and well-meaning, but thoroughly misguided.
Yes, but also...
Oh, there's a cat outside.
The...
I think that people who are not very clever or talented compensate very successfully with pushiness, a sort of dogged ability to worm their way through the system and end up promoted well above their pay grade.
What's it called?
The Peter Principle, isn't it?
Yeah.
And I think this happens an awful lot.
And you look at politics particularly.
I mean, look at the cabinet.
Look at George Eustace.
George Useless.
Why?
How can somebody that talentless ever be given a job, seen a job in...
That's on the postcard, please.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think this is going to be the sort of depressing...
Because the thing is, you have caught me in a kind of low, pessimistic mood...
All right, let's cheer up a bit.
So, wave a magic wand.
If the Brexit Party is now becoming the Reform Party, ought it to get up its loins and we have no opposition at the moment.
I mean, the Liberal Party at the moment is such a mess that something the country really needs is an opposition, a proper opposition.
The Reform Party, if that's what it's going to be called...
Has to have...
Has to become the anti-Green party.
Yeah.
Because there is no party doing that at the moment.
And I was very disappointed with the way the Brexit party...
I talked to...
I had an argument with Richard Tice about this.
And he was not...
He did not emerge from it very well.
Because I'm not sure how...
I'm not sure how much...
It's one of the principles of politics.
If everyone...
If all the parties are agreeing on something, you should treat it with the utmost suspicion.
Yeah, exactly.
Also because you can't vote it out.
So they were sort of, they were hedging their bets because I think they were thinking, well, we've got the Brexit to win and we don't want to frighten the horses.
But actually, if you drew a, am I going to mention the Venn diagram?
No.
Put it this way.
Most people who voted Brexit are also climate sceptical.
I think you're probably right.
And it's fairly obvious why.
Because the things that make you sceptical about the corrupt sclerotic institution that is the European Union are also things that make you sceptical.
You're fighting back against people who don't argue, just call your names.
Yes.
Well, that's certainly true.
In both cases.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So, I think that the Reform Party needs to be more robust in addressing...
It needs to represent all of us who think we're being sold apart.
And, you know, three trillion is a lot of money.
Three trillion is a lot of money.
Three trillion here, three trillion there.
Before it was too long, you're talking about...
Serious money.
I think it's probably an underestimate as well, because it's essentially...
They've just added up the costs of using renewable energy as opposed to gas, which is what we should be using, and also to insulating homes.
But it's going to be much more than that.
It's going to be much more all-pervasive.
I mean, what about cars?
You know, this move to electric vehicles.
It's going to be...
And people say, oh, well, of course.
This is what really annoys me on Twitter at the moment.
People say, oh, well, of course, it's all going to come unstuck.
They're going to find that they won't be able to afford to go ahead with it.
Yeah, that's not the point.
It's how far they'll get down the road before they discover this.
And how much everything's going to cost us in the meantime.
Yeah.
So, I want to flee the country.
I don't know where I'm going to go.
But at least if it's some other government messing up the country, at least it won't be my government.
It'll be my borrowed government.
And I think that's somehow less offensive.
I have a friend, well, an acquaintance, who is a serious Europhile and was a Remainer, all the rest of it, and still is, etc.
Ages ago, long before the referendum, I remember saying to him that the EU was corrupt and incompetent, etc.
He said, do you think Westminster is any better?
I said, actually, no, I don't.
But at least once we got out of Europe, we could do something about it.
Now the question is, will we?
Well you won't, I don't think.
When I appeared in Durkin's, to bring the wheel full circle, when I appeared in Martin Durkin's Brexit the movie, what I liked about that film was the optimistic vision it sold of a dynamic Britain outside the European Union.
And I thought that was, I thought the message was going to be fulfilled by the outcome of Brexit.
And Boris's speech at Greenwich was extremely promising, except for one or two nasty little, I've just done a blog posting on that.
Do you think, is he a good speech?
It's a good speech.
What worried me at the beginning was, this is what needs to happen.
We need to unleash all this.
All these right things.
And so what we need is the politicians to provide a proper lead.
I came in and said, no.
Because he'd been quoting Bastiat, he'd been quoting Mill, he'd been quoting...
Mises, Hayek.
All of them.
Ricardo, the rest of them.
And I said, they don't say you should supply a lead, they say you should get the hell out of the way.
Ibn Khaldin.
Did you mention Ibn Khaldin?
I didn't, nor did he.
And also, there was a section in there where we started talking about zero carbon and all that sort of thing, and there's a paragraph that I got really quite hefty, I'm afraid.
Well, yeah.
Just tell me, so I don't have to go and do some research.
Read the bloody thing.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Read the bloody thing.
Is he good, Boris?
He's a good speaker.
Yes, he is a good speaker.
Why?
What you mentioned earlier is interesting.
He waffles and appears on occasions to be looting the thread, and then he comes out slap on the second.
I mean, it's amazing.
Oh, he's a very good speaker.
A very good speaker.
And, yes.
Have you heard Gove speak?
Michael Gove?
Yes, I have.
Actually, I want to go back and retrospectively look at that one that he did where he had a go at Corbyn in Parliament, the last, previous Parliament.
Oh, God, the overrated one.
Was it?
Well, I've...
I think Gabe is a brilliant speaker, and he's at his best when speaking off the cuff.
Everyone always is.
He can give an impromptu oration, which just takes the breath away.
He's really, really funny.
He's really funny, really clever, naughty.
Which is why it's so disappointing the way he's gone politically.
Seeing such talent, frankly, wasted.
One of my things is I tear the paper out of people's hands.
You don't need that.
Actually, anyone listening to this, if they want to get anything other than kind of an hour and a bit's rambling...
I mean, I'm not accusing you of the hour and the bits of rambling.
I mean, that's from me.
But the bit they're going to take from you is that.
And it's really important, isn't it?
Don't use...
Don't read out your speech.
Absolutely.
Never.
I mean, the most important...
That's where I came in earlier on.
You're the least important person in the room.
The most important people are the audience.
So think about them and address them.
And if you start thinking about yourself, and if you've got a piece of paper, you've got a screen between you and them.
Actually, I was going to end it, and I suddenly remembered, I wish you'd been at the last debate I was in at Durham.
And...
I mean, it wasn't, you know, you wouldn't add it to your list of ten great speeches that you've ever analysed.
This is on YouTube.
No, it's not.
No, no, it's annoying.
I know, it's very annoying.
But so I was in a debate on this house believes that patriotism tends towards the good or something like that.
And obviously I was speaking for the motion.
But...
I hadn't prepared on the way up.
I walked from the train station to this pub where my son was with some of his mates.
He doesn't normally go to the debate, but as an act of generosity towards his old man, he was going to turn up later and see me.
He said, Dad, you better be good.
You better be good.
And I said, well, you know, I'm just going to be me.
He said, no, you've got to prepare.
You've got to prepare.
I don't want you embarrassing me.
And I said, well, what do you want me to say?
He said, well, you've got to think about the premise.
You've got to think about, you know, patriotism...
You've got to think about what the enemy are going to do, what the other side are going to do.
They're going to talk about nationalism.
They're going to try and paint nationalism as the same as patriotism, and you've got to anticipate this, and you've got to come up with a counter, otherwise you're going to lose.
He was, of course, absolutely right.
I mean, he was...
So I got back to my hotel room and I just googled quickly sort of patriotism, nationalism, and I saw that George Orwell had written the last word on this.
So I read the George Orwell lesson.
I thought, yeah, I'm made.
But basically my speech was, I was completely winging it most of the time.
In fact, I talked mainly about tea.
And the importance of a good cup of tea and about how properly made and stuff.
And luckily the audience at Durham that night was quite generous and quite up for my digressions.
But we won by the way.
We won massively.
Somebody explained to me afterwards, somebody had been at school with my son and he said, the difference between you and your son is that he is an Etonian and all Etonians want to do is win.
They're trained to win.
That's their goal.
Whereas you were more interested in just kind of larking about and taking the piss.
There were indeed moments in the evening where I went for jokes that were in danger of losing me the audience.
But, you know, for example, there was a kind of...
There was a girl, it was rather cruel, she said that, she berated me for my, she said, you know, you say that your remarks are harmless, that English patriotism is harmless and a good thing,
but actually I heard in your tone some disparaging remarks about other countries and she said, when I was growing up in Europe and, you know, Blah, blah, blah.
And I couldn't resist saying, well, maybe the fact that you were brought up on the continent is why you don't get English banter and humour.
And I thought, well, fair game.
She provoked me and she must be destroyed.
But it was mentioned to me afterwards that perhaps actually I was in danger of losing the kind of the middle ground of the audience who might think that I was unfairly picking on her.
Now, if I were thinking like a cynical Etonian, you know, born to train from the age of, what, 13 to rule the country, I would have played a more diplomatic game.
Like Boris.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, maybe that's it.
It's Newtonian.
Yeah, well, exactly.
That's it.
This is the thing.
I wonder whether I've created a monster by educating my son there.
Well, it's too late to worry about that.
But yes...
It's made me realise, actually, that I used to have a hang-up about not having been to Eton, but actually, I'm really happy about being a Malvernian and just, not that this is a characteristic of Malvern, by the way, but it's just like being my own man and just being sui generis and going for the piss-taking and the frivolity rather than always trying to play the winning game.
Now, we're almost back to where we started.
Trump, you see, doesn't play the...
Well, he does play the winning game.
But he actually doesn't seem to give a shit who likes him.
He just goes ahead and does what he needs to do.
Yeah, well, up to a point.
I mean, I think he got a lot of pushback from certain sections of the White House, not least from Ivanka, over the climate change thing.
You know, there's...
There's a definite faction in the White House, led by Jared Kushner and Ivanka, who have bought into the Green narrative and they go to their Democrat dinner parties and they don't like the idea that there's going to have a red team, blue team, as advocated by Will Happer.
That's...
That would have been wonderful.
There never has been a debate.
There's never been a proper debate of any sort.
If anyone's going to make it happen, it's going to be Trump.
I hope that in his second term he does two things.
At least two things.
One is he totally destroys the swamp.
Comey, all the corrupt CIA people, all the Department of Justice, all the Hillary cronies.
I mean, Hillary should be behind bars.
She won't be behind bars.
But I think there's a lot of people who really should.
I don't know what Roger Stone is doing behind bars.
I really don't.
I worry sometimes about America...
For all its kind of veneer of civilization that it is actually a banana republic, some of the kind of injustices that go on there.
But I do hope that he really does drain the swamp and punish the wrongdoers from the Obama era.
I mean, that was disgraceful.
And the second thing is that I hope he takes on the green blob.
He needs to demonstrate that actually there are serious scientists who are sceptical about climate change.
If he could make a proper debate happen.
I mean, one of the things that started me getting suspicious all those years ago, the debate is over.
I said, what debate?
When was there a debate?
I don't remember.
I like that line.
That's good.
And if he could just have a debate, not say, I am going to steamroll all of this and da-da-da-da-da, which is kind of the way he's operated in the past, but say, OK, let's have a really good, well-organized debate.
And we'll have speeches from you lot and speeches from you lot because they won't.
I mean, Tony Heller has offered to debate anyone.
They won't come forward.
No, I wouldn't want to debate Tony Heller.
I mean, he's good.
He really knows his stuff.
He does, yeah.
So, I mean, Trump doesn't actually have to do much other than just facilitate that, make that happen.
Yeah, yeah.
Would it help?
God knows.
No.
Right.
Well, I think we've had a good innings.
I think we have, yes.
Okay.
I think we've got to stop by.
You're listening to The Delling Pod with me, James Delling Pod, and my very special guest, Brian Robinson, aka Brian Retor, because he trains in rhetorical skills.
What's your assessment of my rhetorical skills in this?
Stunning.
Thank you.
I'm sitting here, wrapped in awe.
Good, that's what I like.
I like wrapped in awe.
Yeah, good.
All right.
Bye.
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