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May 17, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:03

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #655

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	Good afternoon, folks.
	Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Wednesday, the 17th of May, 2023.
	I'm joined by Charlie Downs, political commentator.
	How you doing Charlie?
	Hi Carl, I'm very well, thanks for having me on.
	My pleasure, and we are going to be talking about how Britain's Conservatives seem to actually be rallying Yeah, exciting.
	Shocking.
	How has this happened?
	Keir Starmer's Blairism on Steroids, and of course, the Eurovision Song Contest, which I hate.
	Anyway, before we begin, we'll be doing our second ERUMBLE exclusive live hangout.
	On the question, or the meme, should I say, we were never asked.
	Now, this is quite a spicy thing to say, but Beau and I are going to explore exactly why this is powerful, because it is a powerful statement.
	I'm not going to spoil any of it, but there's a lot that we're going to go through that's going to be very interesting there.
	So yeah, let's begin.
	Britain's Conservatives are currently engaged in the National Conservative Conference, the first National Conservative Conference.
	And Conor is currently there, and I'm sure that he'll be back tomorrow, and I'm sure that he's going to give us a much more in-depth look at that than I'm going to give.
	I'm just going to be talking about the sort of external reaction to it, because it's gone down, well, from my perspective very well, from the Left's perspective, some sort of apocalyptic disaster.
	And anything that the Left considers an apocalyptic disaster has got to have some values.
	Yeah, well there are those on the right who are not satisfied by this thing, saying it's containment and that it's not enough, not good enough.
	But actually anything that gets our enemies screeching in this way, surely that can be only a good thing.
	A good point's been made.
	I've seen certain rat-like scholars make the point that this is advancing the dialectic in the direction of the right, whereas normally it's the constant conservative loss of the dialectic in the direction of the left.
	And that is, in and of itself, an excellent thing.
	Yeah, it's positive movement.
	I mean, we were saying before we came on, you know, just getting all of these people in a room together is a fantastic thing.
	That's progress in and of itself.
	Towards, you know, moving, as you say, as a certain Persian scholar likes to talk about, moving the dialectic in our direction.
	Yeah, and this is unusual for a lot of conservatives, because I think a lot of conservatives are kind of committed to the loss at this point.
	Yeah, well I think there are those, I think there are actually those on our side who in a sense enjoy, I mean, they enjoy being men among the ruins, if you will.
	There is a kind of relish in it.
	But actually, you know, you and I, as we know, recognize that positive vision is what's important.
	There is a kind of nobility that they glean from this, and I don't blame them because I do understand where they're coming from, but you've got to be able to take your wins.
	Because the good thing about the Conservative conference is that Conservative values, authentic Conservative values, are what are prized there.
	So you can essentially make those arguments and start rolling things in that direction.
	But anyway, before we go on, if you want to support us, go sign up for the website, £5 a month, help us keep the light on, because of course we're demonetized everywhere else, and go and watch our podcast.
	Martin Luther King was not a conservative hero, because a lot of conservatives these days don't seem to understand that he was basically a radical leftist.
	Probably something that conservatives should be aware of.
	Anyway, Moving on.
	So, National Conservatism was trending on Twitter.
	That's how I really started paying attention to this, to be honest.
	And there's a chap on Twitter called Jack Hadfield who is at the conference at the moment.
	He's live-tweeting coverage, so if you want that sort of rolling coverage, Jack is doing the Lord's work there.
	So, it spans over multiple days, like three days long, I think it is.
	This is the final day, and last night they were at the British Museum, Natural History Museum, with the giant whale above them, which is a disappointing replacement for the Diplodocus, in my opinion.
	That's a great choice of venue, though, I thought.
	I mean, that looks spectacular.
	Beautiful choice of venue.
	And, as you can see there, Douglas Murray was giving a talk, which went down well.
	How do you think that was described by your average leftist on Twitter?
	Oh, fascist nationalists.
	Oh, there we go!
	What a surprise.
	What a surprise, what a surprise.
	Oh, climate denial alongside fascism.
	And climate denial, yeah.
	My goodness.
	What I love, well, what I don't love actually about this is that I actually think this was slightly, this particular framing from Douglas was slightly too much British understatement.
	Because they did start reacting poorly to this, but I think we'll cover that a bit later.
	But anyway, so, this was of course led to the Conservative conference being disavowed by the Natural History Museum.
	Oh, no, I didn't see this.
	Champions, diversity, equality and inclusion of all people.
	Yes, okay.
	Well, I mean, obviously a celebration of a native culture is evil, apparently.
	I mean, it's only the British Natural History Museum.
	Indeed.
	How could members of the British government be allowed Yeah.
	I mean, you speak about this sometimes, but inclusion here, stated as a kind of prime value.
	Well, I'm not being funny.
	The only thing that's worth having in life is that which is exclusive.
	This conference is being framed, at least by certain people, as a nationalist conference.
	Whether we want to look at it like that or not, it's certainly an expression of patriotism.
	And that's necessarily exclusive.
	And that's what makes it good.
	Yes, and that's why they kept up with the left-wing media.
	And the left-wing media were screeching hysterically about this.
	I did see some protesters go in.
	Yeah, we'll get to those.
	Anyway, so, it got disavowed and then it got smeared.
	Here's an anti-racist organisation speaking very kindly about a woman of colour.
	Sweller Braveman has been talking about penises at a right-wing Christian conference.
	Hmm, yeah.
	I wonder what she had to say about penises.
	Well, that's really not what was interesting about what Sweller-Braverman was saying.
	And what is interesting about Sweller-Braverman, though, is she does genuinely seem to actually be a conservator.
	Well, she does.
	I'm actually very impressed by a lot of what she says.
	I mean, she speaks like someone like you in many cases, actually.
	And I must say, right, I want to be careful how I say this.
	Go on.
	When the Tory leadership race was happening, you pointed out that Steve Baker didn't run.
	And your theory was that was because he may have held the same opinions as somebody like Sola Brafman, but he didn't fit the right identity categories.
	Quite possibly.
	And I wonder how much of that is a part of Somebody like Sweller-Braveman being able to say the things that she says, because she has a certain level of... I hesitate to use the word privilege.
	Intersectional privilege?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, there's doubtless that, and I've noticed that the leftist critiques of her have just overcome that, and they're just calling her a Nazi.
	Yeah, no doubt.
	But she said, Conservatives must always be honest with the public.
	Honest about our principles, honest about our priorities.
	In a way, we distinguish ourselves from the leader of the left, Sir Keir Starmer.
	He opposes today the things he stood for yesterday, he'll change his mind on tomorrow, and he'll campaign on next year as a great man of principle.
	Although, given his definition of woman, I can't rule him out running for Labour's first female Prime Minister.
	And she also made the point that it was an unfashionable fact that 100% of women do not have a penis, which apparently got a great round of applause.
	I mean, yes?
	I mean, yes.
	Low standard?
	Yeah, if it needs to be said, then sure.
	But it's depressing that that is what gets a standing ovation at a national conservative conference in 2023.
	It just shows how much the left controls the discourse.
	Oh, absolutely.
	When that's the hill we have to die on.
	But anyway, a giant fat man decided to interrupt her because he's a racist I assume.
	It's just kind of embarrassing that this is the quality of protester that the left has.
	I mean, what's this guy's day job?
	Why is he here?
	Why is he doing this?
	I mean, yeah, this footage is out there forever now.
	Yeah.
	I mean, yeah, very unusual.
	Anyway, so Sweller Braveman had come out and controversially said that, quote, white people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt.
	Controversial.
	Yes.
	Not racial sins of the father.
	It's literally controversial because everyone has created a giant controversy around what I think should be a fairly milquetoast statement.
	Benign.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I would say this about any group of people.
	They aren't actually guilty for what their ancestors did.
	Yeah.
	I don't even think Germans should have collective guilt.
	No.
	No.
	I lived in Germany for eight years.
	Every German I met was lovely, and every single one of them apologized to me because I was British for World War II.
	And I was like, well, it wasn't your fault, and I wasn't involved.
	Yeah, wasn't your fault.
	You know, and it's not that I don't appreciate, like, you know, we're part of the heritage.
	I can completely appreciate that the Germans have got a burden there.
	But I felt it was just my job to try and make them feel less like they were bad people, because they weren't bad people.
	They were really nice people.
	I mean, it's good.
	It's good.
	As much as this is low-hanging fruit, and as much as this shouldn't be the things that are making headlines in the way that they are, it is good that the Home Secretary is saying things like this.
	Now, that said, she is the Home Secretary, and yet she speaks as if she's the shadow Home Secretary.
	We'll get to that in a second, because it is just insufferable.
	But I don't think it's actually her fault, that's the thing.
	I get the feeling.
	We'll cover that in a minute.
	She also said that multiculturalism was a recipe for communal disaster, and doubled down on controversial remarks, again more controversial statements of truth, about grooming gangs being almost all British-Pakistani.
	Okay, but we can literally just look at the people who have been arrested and convicted for it.
	She argued you cannot have immigration without integration.
	People who come here should embrace and respect this country.
	Wild, radical statements from the Conservative Home Secretary there.
	Fascists, I hear.
	They must not commit crimes, average fascist.
	I just can't say this with a straight face.
	They may practice any faith or none, and they need to respect everyone else's right to do the same.
	They need to learn English and understand British social norms and mores, which is not to say they cannot enrich and add to our culture.
	Above all, they cannot simply turn up and say, I live here now, you have to look after me.
	I just... I don't want to have to take this seriously because it seems just like such obvious... Yeah.
	Do you know what though?
	One of those things she said in there about having to speak English when you're in England or Britain, that, for whatever reason, that particular point is always really, well, to certain people, it's always very, very offensive.
	And I've never understood that because, you know, we think about the British in Spain, for example, is the obvious example, where they go to live in Spain and they just sort of essentially set up an English colony where they only speak English or the food is English and so on.
	And that food is a bad thing.
	And the leftist always comes to you and goes, yeah, but that means that they'd have to integrate.
	And I'm like, yeah.
	Yeah, correct.
	I agree.
	Exactly.
	I completely agree.
	And if they don't, feel free to kick them out.
	Yeah.
	But the interesting thing is, I actually had a conversation with a girl in a university seminar about this because I made the case.
	I was the only person in the room to make this case.
	But I made the case that it's completely reasonable to expect people who are moving from another country to your own to speak your language.
	And like, and no conversation, no talk of like integration into the culture or anything like that, just simply speaking the language.
	And this was something that was so offensive to her and everybody else in the room that it sparked, you know, we had a heated discussion about this.
	All I had to say was, well, okay, because this girl was not from England, right?
	I said, if I was to come to your country, would you expect me to, if me and my family were to come to your country, would you expect me to speak your language or would you expect me to speak my own?
	And she obviously said, well, you know, I expect you to speak my language.
	But then she said, But my country didn't have a globe-spanning empire, you know, this that and the other.
	And I thought, ah, okay, we've touched on something there.
	So is it about revenge?
	Is it about you get to come here and speak your language because, you know, because of some collective guilt?
	Because you feel the British Empire imposed English on your culture.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And it's entirely possible.
	I mean, honestly, whenever you get at the root of any of these immigration arguments, it's always about revenge.
	They always trot that out.
	It's like, well, then I'm going to stop apologising for the British Empire, aren't I?
	Anyway, so Robert Peston was like, how could she say that white people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt?
	Did she go too far?
	Do you expect a British Home Secretary to say this?
	I replied to Robert Peston, saying she should say it often, louder.
	Bellowing it once a day in Parliament might be sufficient.
	Robert?
	At minimum.
	At minimum, yeah.
	But what I love about this is you always get the insane leftist who, for the most part, is never really on.
	And then it comes straight off.
	And Dr. Charlotte Proudman is my favourite example of this.
	Average white supremacist.
	Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, typical Aryan woman, Dr. Proudman.
	Proudman.
	Yes, Proudman.
	I mean...
	As a white person, we must recognise our privilege under white supremacy, colonialism and imperialism.
	Right, so she's admitting that she's a beneficiary and upholder of white supremacy.
	So Ella Bradman is saying, white people are not all racist, and Dr Charlotte Proudman kicks in the door and says, yes I am!
	Exactly!
	But Dr Charlotte Proudman looks like your average Aryan!
	She couldn't look more white!
	And she's just bursting in, exactly.
	No, no, we are racist and, quote, we should feel guilty and ashamed.
	I mean, okay, Charlotte, I'm not saying that you're not a racist.
	No.
	No one's going to take that away from you, Charlotte, right?
	You can be a racist if you want.
	And I'm not saying you shouldn't feel guilty and ashamed.
	I'm just saying I'm not and I'm not going to, okay?
	I actually agree with the brown lady.
	The way I agree with the white supremacist on the front of the Daily Express here.
	I just, we live in such a clown world now.
	Anyway, so, of course, we carry on.
	It wasn't racist, obviously, and as Suella Braedman continues to point out, reducing immigration is also not racist, controlling the borders, it's not xenophobic to say that mass migration is not sustainable, obviously.
	But again, from the Home Secretary.
	Well, that's exactly what I said, again.
	Don't get me wrong, I agree.
	I totally agree.
	I posted that on Twitter as well.
	I was just like, you know, this... Suella Braveman is the current Home Secretary.
	She is the person with the power to control the UK's borders.
	But, we actually found out yesterday that she's not, because she got blocked by her own cabinet.
	So ministers, she proposed five different measures to reduce the amount of immigration in the UK and only one of these was approved in a limited way.
	One limited proposal would ban foreign master's students bringing relatives with them to the UK and that is all that's been agreed by the cabinet.
	I mean, good, but... But that's going to be a tiny proportion.
	Yeah.
	How many thousands of people are coming from foreign master's students' families?
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, there's such a... Drop in the bucket.
	Yeah, it's unbelievable.
	So it's not, it appears that Sweller-Braveman is not even not trying to do the thing, but she's being blocked by Rishi Sunak, basically.
	Now is it just Rishi Sunak?
	Do we know the names of the people who are actually involved?
	We don't know the names.
	We don't know the names.
	But Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister.
	So I'm going to blame him.
	Well, fair enough.
	I mean, it seems that the buck does stop with him, right?
	Yeah.
	And as Stephen Edgington reported for The Telegraph, millions more apparently are coming.
	Millions.
	We're expecting one million net.
	Yeah, I saw that statistic.
	I mean, that's double the previous record that was set last year.
	Yeah, which was 500,000.
	And that's net.
	1.16 million came in and about 600,000 left.
	I know this doesn't need to be pointed out to viewers of this show, but, you know, it's just...
	I mean, as you say, this is net that we're talking here.
	So it's going to be probably a million and a half, nearly two million coming in.
	I mean, you can see it everywhere.
	There's nowhere in Britain that's not touched by this.
	A Home Office document, which has been seen by the Telegraph, reveals Braverman was warned last year of upward pressure on visa applications.
	Applications?
	Applications that you can say no.
	Yeah, not approved.
	Gone with your day.
	Fascist!
	Not approving something?
	Typical fascist.
	But Braveman, again, makes good points.
	We should be training our own people.
	We should be encouraging internal markets in that way.
	She's not wrong at all.
	Of course, we get LBC carrying on.
	Has Sweller Braveman gone too far, saying that multiculturalism is a recipe for communal disaster?
	I, of course, reply to this, no, she hasn't gone far enough.
	but that's all they can say, right?
	All they can say is, has she gone too far?
	Well, they can't say she's wrong.
	Yeah.
	She's just strayed too far outside the Overton window.
	That's what they're saying.
	Exactly.
	Well, we weren't supposed to say that, Sweller.
	It's like, yeah, but she's not wrong.
	No.
	I can't say she's wrong.
	It's obviously the case.
	And it's happening everywhere.
	The comment that she's made there, that multiculturalism is a recipe for communal disaster, I mean multiculturalism is is the active abandonment of integration.
	Yes.
	That's what it is.
	It's a prevention of integration.
	Yeah.
	The incentivization of the opposite which we obviously are living with the consequences now.
	And to call that a recipe for communal disaster, to anybody with a brain, it completely makes total sense.
	I mean, to me it does at least.
	Because why wouldn't it lead to, you know, disaster is a strong word, maybe we could use the words like tension, maybe.
	Why wouldn't it lead to tension, with just different sort of blocks, cultural blocks living next to each other, which might have different or opposing views on things?
	I think we can commit to disaster.
	Yeah, as do I. As do I, yeah.
	But you are completely correct, of course.
	And she's correct, Angela Merkel was correct when she said it, David Cameron has said it.
	They've all said it.
	They know that multiculturalism is failed.
	Has Blair said it?
	I'm sure Blair said it.
	I'm sure Blair said it, yeah.
	The architect.
	Yeah, exactly.
	The architect of all of this.
	And so, Sweller-Braveman is right.
	As she's been consistently, right?
	But there are people on Twitter who point out, look, it's like... Oh, sorry, I missed this one.
	Yeah, so after Sweller-Raymond said these controversially true things, she was reported to the regulatory body for barristers, because, of course, she was a barrister before she became a politician, because they want to ban her from being a barrister ever again for, quote, racist and discriminatory narratives.
	The white supremacist.
	Well, I hear white supremacy is quite diverse.
	Surprisingly inclusive.
	But anyway, as people point out on Twitter, it's like the conservatives don't even realise that they're in power, right?
	Cabinet ministers giving protest speeches seemingly against themselves.
	Now that's very interesting to me, because I think that in a way, they aren't.
	Actually.
	And this is the very reason that NatCon even exists.
	This is the very reason that GB News exists.
	You know, the National Conservative Party Conference should be the Conservative Party Conference.
	Yes.
	That should be the mainstream Conservative Party Conference.
	But instead that has LGBTQ pride stalls and things like that.
	The Tony Blair Institute.
	Exactly, the Tony Blair Institute, right?
	And I've made this point about GB News.
	The reason GB News exists is because it should be what the BBC is.
	Yes.
	the mainstream media organization, but it's not.
	It has to be a side thing.
	So what is the insurgent power that has taken over these structures?
	And this is the conservative reaction we're seeing to it, like regrouping after being ousted from their own institutions.
	I do think for a lot of people it's quite difficult to understand what it is we're talking about here because if you look at it look at things on the face of it we have a conservative party in government with a massive majority and that to most people they will the thinking stops there yes oh well then in that case to be left-wing must be to be a dissident yeah but it's actually you look a little bit deeper you come to understand that actually you know there is a there is a regime behind the conservative party the machinery of the managerial state if you want who are institutionally left-wing.
	Yes, and that's exactly what Calvin Robinson pointed out.
	He quoted a bunch of conservatives attacking the National Conservative Conference for being socialist, which I found very interesting, but these are all liberal critiques they are giving, because it's actually not socialist, it is, I guess we'll call it slightly Parental?
	Or that sort of... What's the word?
	It's not parental, it's... On the tip of my tongue?
	Paternal?
	Paternal, that's what I'm looking for.
	Yeah, it's a more paternal view of the society.
	The people at the top should be looking after the people at the bottom.
	This is a very anti-liberal view that conceives of all men created at point zero, as perfect equals and with total freedom.
	But that's just not simply how reality is, and this is what conservatives are recognising.
	The socialists also think that way.
	To the Liberals.
	But as Calvin says, they are the reason the party is in a mess.
	And he's right.
	Liberals within the Conservative Party are the enemy within.
	Who needs an opposition party?
	Completely correct.
	That's right.
	Totally undermined the Conservative Party, totally destroyed it from the inside.
	And I think a great example of this is at the National Conservative Conference, is Michael Gove.
	Now I'm not saying I dislike Michael Gove on a personal level or anything like that, but just this answer is just Yeah, I saw this.
	It's just astonishing.
	Sorry, go on.
	Yeah, so he said, ask to list the key conservative achievements of the past year, 13 years.
	Michael Gove says, universal credit, school reform, vocational education, a creative economy, more diverse parliament, science policy, Ukraine levelling up.
	So, right.
	That sounds like a Lib Dem manifesto.
	It does.
	What in there is conservative?
	What in there is Birkin?
	Yes.
	I mean strangely no mention of Brexit, which is strange actually, because you would think the Conservatives would be trying to hammer that point, but of course there are going to be lots of remainers in the Conservative Party.
	Oh yeah.
	Now I don't know Michael Gove's background, but I don't know, you know, you wonder whether somebody like him, you wonder whether this is the case for a few people in the Tory party, in fact for many people, whether they actually recognise The difference between liberalism and conservatism, because the terms have been conflated for so long, in a way you almost couldn't blame them for thinking that this is what conservatism is.
	Well, I mean, you know, when the Liberal Party essentially got subsumed by the Conservatives, I mean, that was letting the wolf in with the chickens, you know, and at the time it probably wasn't as sinister as it is now, because of course, you know, compared to the insurgent Labour Party, and they're basically communist, You know, the Liberals would have seemed very reasonable, and on board with a lot of the Conservative agenda, so it probably seemed pretty harmless.
	But we've arrived at the point now, I mean, Michael Gove was asked, you know, do you think that basically a lot of, some Tory MPs are basically Lib Dems?
	And he was like, no.
	If you go to the next one, and, sorry, no, he's wrong on this.
	Or he would say that, though, wouldn't he?
	Of course he would, because he's basically a Lib Dem, according to his own list of accomplishments of the Conservative Party.
	I do find it interesting that this phenomenon that we see of conservative parties being populated by what essentially amount to classical liberals or liberals of some other stripe, is for one thing very much a English-speaking world phenomenon.
	Now obviously it happens elsewhere, but you see it across America, you see it across Australia, Canada and so on.
	I wonder how much of that is because of something you've talked about in the past, which is Classical liberalism, in the Lockean sense, is a very English ideology, in that it's what I would call English principles, like free speech and whatever else you want to list.
	Essentially, you could summarise it as the right of Englishmen?
	Yes.
	And I think that it's no surprise that an English conservative would look at those principles and think, well, yeah, no, I agree with those.
	I mean, that's literally our ancient tradition.
	Well, exactly.
	But he agrees with those things because he's an Englishman, not for any other reason.
	And so it's no surprise that, as you say, the wolf gets let in under these auspices, because I think there is a sense, and I even feel this sense in myself, that it is kind of appropriate that we do think in a liberal way as Englishmen.
	But it's not this kind of, again, what you would call the sort of universalised ideology.
	The comprehensive liberalism.
	Comprehensive liberalism, yeah, that's right.
	I'm actually going to record a podcast this afternoon with Stelios about this, so that'll be out next week probably, talking about this problem.
	And you make a great point about the English-speaking world's problem though, because if you look at continental parties, you get a great deal of plurality.
	of a fracturing of the political landscape along stark ideological lines that basically broadly lines up in coalition.
	It's very interesting how we don't do that.
	That's a great point.
	But anyway, so one conservative MP made a good point.
	Danny Kruger was like, families are good.
	The normative family, the mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children, is the only basis for a safe and functioning society.
	Marriage is not only about you.
	it's a public act for, uh, to live for the sake of someone else.
	Did he then go on to talk about how, you know, we need to ban divorce for any reason?
	Well, I wasn't at the conference so I've only got the clips that have been put out.
	One wonders if he does, because, you know, that's the logical next step.
	But that's not a terribly controversial statement in and of itself.
	No, I mean, again, we're talking about this low-hanging fruit that we have here.
	The family is good.
	Yeah.
	But I mean, again, at the end of the day, at least they're finding their foundations.
	Oh yeah.
	I don't want to be negative because this is good.
	But it shows the dire state of the country's in, right?
	But even more dire than that, it seems that Rishi Sunak has rejected this proposition.
	Doesn't agree, right?
	A spokesman for the Prime Minister told journalists that this is not the government's view.
	The spokesman said that the government minister speaking at the conference did not mean that the government endorsed all the views there.
	When pressed on whether Sunnock agreed with Kruger about normative family being the only basis for a safe and functioning society, the spokesman simply replied, no.
	What does he think is the foundation of a safe and functioning society then?
	Is it the individual?
	What do you mean, no?
	What do you mean, no?
	Exactly, what is?
	What could be?
	Yeah, exactly, what could be?
	How do good individuals get raised?
	Are we going to move into some sort of brave new world where we get decanted out of a baby generator and then raised in state nurseries?
	Is that the foundation of a good society?
	What are you asking for?
	But just, no.
	Why?
	I mean, why?
	I just can't understand why someone like Rishi Sunak, who, I mean, he's not a particularly conservative politician.
	He's very Lib Dem-ish, isn't he?
	He is.
	But I just can't understand why he would say something like that.
	Because what, again, you have to ask the question, well, what does he think is the foundation of society then?
	Because the conservative, I would say, the conservative perspective is that the family is the fundamental unit of society, not the individual.
	I mean, this is the Lockean liberal perspective.
	Locke believed that societies first came together as what he called conjugal societies in man and woman, getting married, having children, and then these groups... And a few families get together and form a village.
	And this train of thought goes back to Aristotle, who thought exactly the same thing.
	So it far predates liberalism, because it seems to be the way that society is built.
	Nature?
	Yeah, exactly.
	It seems to be how things actually are, right?
	So I would love to know what Rishi Sennak's opinion on that is.
	But anyway, Moving on, Douglas Murray gave a speech which I don't doubt was amazing, but there was one part in the speech that he framed something in a way that really stoked the ire of the left.
	He said, I see no reason why every other country in the world should be prevented from feeling pride in itself because the Germans mucked up twice in a century.
	As a Jew, the laughter and round of applause after he says the Germans mucked up nationalism genuinely makes me physically sick.
	Let's not use euphemisms.
	Nazi's bad.
	It's like, yes, Nazi's bad.
	The reason that this got Douglas Murray in such trouble is because he put himself in the same frame, spoke within the frame that included the Nazis.
	And I don't think that we should be speaking within the frame that includes the Nazis.
	I don't think he meant that either.
	It's not helpful.
	But what he's saying is true.
	Yes, what he is saying is true, but the framing of it is obviously British irony, but it does lend you to being vulnerable from attacks from uncharitable people who will say, see, he's saying he's a Nazi and the Nazis just got it wrong.
	And that's not what he's saying, obviously.
	He's saying that, look, just because the Germans are mental doesn't mean that we can't love our country.
	Small mistake there, but again, it takes a very uncharitable reading to give that interpretation.
	Anyone who is familiar with Douglas Murray will be like, well, he's not a Nazi, so he's not in support of the Nazis.
	So anyway, one thing that I did like was Matt Goodwin's speech.
	I like how understated Matt Goodwin is, because if you actually read what he says, I read his entire subset, it was really good.
	If you actually read what he says, it's quite radical, actually, but he presents it in a very moderate and temperate way.
	Well, that has to be the strategy.
	I mean, us both here are sensible centrists, of course.
	Very much.
	That has to be the strategy.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I'll just read a quick quote from it.
	The people got a Conservative party which had failed.
	They got a party which no longer knows what it is or what it wants.
	They got a party that still thinks it's living in 1988 rather than 2023.
	They got a party so obsessed with rehashing old arguments about economic freedom that it's failed to realise that many voters are also crying out for cultural freedom.
	Freedom from mass immigration, stifling political correctness, and a dogmatic new elite.
	That's excellent.
	Now, the attacking of the economic there is what I really like.
	Because that's something that I feel very strongly about, is this monomaniacal focus on growth.
	Libertarian view.
	Exactly.
	I think that's very strong.
	Yeah, and we'll finish on this.
	This has gone on a bit, but there's a lot here, and Conor's going to go on way more about this tomorrow, but I think it's really worth it.
	David Starkey, a quick report from Conor here at the event.
	Starkey's address to the National Conservative Talk Conference was excellent.
	Each British revolution has been to preserve its institutions from contamination by progressive forces.
	Reverence for Anglo culture must not be conflated with nationalisms for other failed continental European traditions.
	Or browbeat into self-effacing apologies by activists who seek to tear our civilization asunder to build atop the ashes of their self-empowering but impossible utopian ideological projects.
	I mean, every word is symphony as far as I'm concerned.
	Really well done.
	Personally, I'm really looking forward to his coverage tomorrow because it's going to be a lot more in-depth than mine because I wasn't there.
	But generally, I view the National Conservative Congress as a win.
	Yeah, well, as we were saying, you know, we have to take our wins where we can because we are the dissidents in this political system.
	So when we see, you know, people like this all getting together in a room, I mean, we were saying, you've got Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove on stage.
	And then you've got someone like Alex Kashuta, who has interviewed people like Curtis Yarvin.
	And it's like these people are in the same room together, talking to the same crowd, you know, in the same green room, perhaps.
	And that can only be a good thing.
	Because, you know, we talk on the right so much about the importance of organisation and about how, you know, the organised 100 will always defeat the disorganised 1000.
	Well, that's what that looks like.
	This is what that looks like.
	And the reaction the left has had to this?
	Clearly shows were over the target.
	If this was something comical that they didn't feel threatened by, they're just like, pfft, look at you idiots.
	And they carry on with their day.
	Instead, they're freaking out and calling everything names.
	Yes.
	Okay, well you're over the target, so keep going.
	Anyway, let's go on to Blairism on Steroids, because... Yes, let's.
	Yeah, go on.
	So I'm going to be talking about how Keir Starmer's Labour Party seem to be replicating the strategy employed by Tony Blair and New Labour in the mid-90s.
	And this is the kind of the sort of flank from the right present themselves as conservatives strategy.
	So before we begin I would really encourage viewers to go and watch this segment from December where Karl and Martin Dordney go through some of the plans that Labour have for us as laid out in their manifesto.
	Because it is seriously, seriously radical stuff.
	Yeah, it's crazy.
	And people think that Starmer's a really boring idiot.
	And he is a really boring idiot, so they're not wrong.
	But he also has an insanely radical manifesto.
	They don't realize, because it's stuff that they've heard from America or France, they don't realize the damage that would do to Britain.
	Because we're not a social contract society.
	No.
	And see, I find it interesting you've picked up on the fact that Starmer is boring there, because he absolutely is.
	I mean, we're actually going to watch a few clips of him during this, so I'm afraid I'm going to subject you to his droning, you know, sort of school deputy head voice.
	But that sort of boring quality that he has, I think that's actually probably part of the strategy, right?
	Because the sort of flavour of the Labour that we're getting now is very different.
	As much as they're replicating the strategy of Tony Blair's new Labour, it has a different flavour to that.
	Because it feels a lot more... I mean, for one thing, Tony Blair was a young guy, a lot of it was about, you know, things can only get better, energy, excitement and so on.
	There was also a kind of, I'm old enough to remember, there was a kind of cultural zeitgeist of cool Britannia at the time.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	He was sort of hanging around with Oasis and all that sort of stuff.
	Yeah, and Blair, yeah.
	But this kind of incarnation of labour that we're seeing emerging now, it does have a different flavour to it than Blair's labour because it is a lot more dry and managerial.
	Yeah, it's kind of a post-apocalyptic flavour.
	Yeah, it is.
	It's the end of the revolution as opposed to the start.
	We're literally living in the ruins of Britain.
	And Keir Starmer's like, yeah, so we're going to finish the job.
	The ashes of civilisation, as they say.
	So I just wanted to, before we go on, I do just want to go through just a couple of the things that are mentioned in this manifesto.
	John, if you wouldn't mind just going to the Labour one first.
	But just to remind viewers of what it is that they are actually offering us here.
	Now, first of all, I just want to say this graphic on the front of you.
	Yeah, look at that.
	I mean, that's literally Britain as a geometric society.
	That's a great point.
	It could be rolling in his grave.
	Yeah, I hate it.
	It's the least aesthetic thing I've ever seen.
	It's the manager's view of Britain.
	Exactly.
	So just very briefly, so on page 67, Labour tell us that they are seeking to transform our country, seeking to turn us from essentially a traditional nation into a propositional nation, a kind of, as you say, a social contract society.
	On page 11 we have the abolition of the undemocratic House of Lords to be replaced by a second elected chamber and obviously this is a policy shared by several parties like Reform UK who are nominally the largest dissident right-wing party in the country although their local election numbers obviously don't bode too well.
	But something like, for me, something like this, something like reforming the House of Lords is so far down my list of priorities.
	Especially when the reason given is better, the reason given is better quality of government.
	And to me, expanding the quantity of government is the last thing you would do to yield that end.
	Because what that does, I mean, that kind of, in my opinion, that gives sort of these emboldened managerial busybodies just more opportunities to fiddle about with the machinery of the state and expand their remit.
	Yeah, one of the things that people fail to understand with the House of Lords is not only is it useful to have a repository of people who don't have to worry about democracy.
	Getting re-elected.
	Exactly.
	Every five years that is not their issue.
	They also don't get to tamper very much.
	They don't get to do anything to my life.
	They literally can't do anything to my life.
	So, fine.
	And beyond that, do you know what?
	From an aesthetic point of view, I like that we have our civil wars.
	Yeah, I think it's great.
	It's an ancient institution and I'm not a fan of upending ancient things for fashionable continental ideas.
	Yeah, and the carpet in there is red because they are important and regal, not green.
	But also the whole thing looks amazing.
	It looks like Harry Potter.
	Absolutely.
	That's good, I like that.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But no, it must be replaced by a rationally ordered, democratic, representative chamber.
	Well, this is the thing.
	I don't know why we can't actually argue from the perspective of aesthetics, right?
	Like, scrutonian, like, look, beauty matters.
	Yes.
	And how we feel about a country matters.
	How we feel about the thing.
	Exactly.
	And I feel that there should be a House of Lords.
	Yeah.
	I just feel that way.
	And that's enough.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's enough.
	I'm not going to justify myself.
	So, yeah, just very quickly moving on.
	So, page 46, we have an equalization of legacy, what we might call legacy British identities.
	So, English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish.
	Equalization, you say?
	Yeah, with nouveau British identities and the document lists British, Jamaican, Pakistani, Indian, Turkish and Cypriot as examples.
	Arguing that British identity is civic in nature, which is actually a position I could be won over to.
	Because at this point I do think British is to the United Kingdom as American as the United States.
	Purely, essentially a bureaucratic identity.
	Which as it happens is why I consider myself, like you first and foremost, an Englishman.
	Because that's far more difficult to peel away from the sort of spiritual and maybe ethnic roots.
	Yeah, well it is an ethnic identity.
	Yeah.
	And the document finally only contains three mentions of the word immigration despite listing data on page 48 that indicates that lowering immigration is one of the highest priorities for both England and Wales.
	Now it says it's the eighth highest priority for these places.
	I would imagine it's probably higher than that.
	Well, the Lord Ashcroft polls indicated that it was people's second highest priority in Brexit.
	Well, there we go.
	And yet the document only lists that word three times, not giving any actual substance on what Labour are going to do about it.
	Nevertheless, let's move on.
	We've also got Keir Starmer, so if you just want to open, yeah, we're just going to watch this.
	Keir Starmer talking about how he thinks that settled EU citizens should be allowed to vote in the UK.
	If someone has been here, say, 10, 20, 30 years contributing to this economy, part of our community, they ought to be able to vote.
	Let me bring it alive.
	I've obviously knocked on a lot of doors in the last few years, and you go to doors sometimes in general election and you're met with someone who says, look, I'm I'm an EU citizen.
	I've been living here for 30 years.
	I'm married to a Brit.
	My kids were raised and brought up here.
	They're now working in the UK.
	I'm even well working in lots of community projects, et cetera, but I can't vote.
	And I think that feels wrong and something ought to be done about it.
	When someone has, you know, let's just take someone who's been here for 30 years, has literally put down their roots here, as I say, married to a Brit, their kids are here.
	This is their country, this is where they live, this is where they contribute.
	I think it's very hard to say, well, you should really be voting back in your country of origin where you haven't been living for 30 years.
	That actually just doesn't pass the common sense test for me.
	Keir, they do vote in their own countries.
	They're citizens of their own countries.
	I think we should just first of all make sure viewers are still awake first.
	But no, Keir, I just feel that you're wrong, so no.
	I hate it.
	It's just, again, if we want to speak about how we feel about our country, this is totally wrong.
	Extending the franchise to foreigners, I don't agree with.
	British citizens only.
	Yeah, and on extending the franchise, Keir Starmer also, well, he's said this is not official policy, but he's spoken before about how he wants to lower the age of voting to 16 years old, which is just amazing.
	Raise it to 25.
	Yeah, raise it further.
	Abolish it altogether.
	But I mean, if we're going to stay within the frame of democracy, maybe about 40, then we'll have the country we want, trust me.
	I mean, speaking as somebody who's 21 years old, I can't help but agree with you, right?
	But no, I mean, as Count Dankula says, it's funny how a leftist party needs to admit they need to import and bribe voters from overseas or allow impressionable and completely politically illiterate 16-year-olds to vote to have any chance of winning.
	Totally true.
	Totally true.
	Like, what's your constituency, Keir?
	Why isn't it the majority of the British public?
	Yeah.
	Like, why is it literally aliens and children?
	Aliens and children.
	Yeah, so I just want to encourage viewers to keep these policies and these talking points in mind as we sort of move through the discussion, okay?
	So I now want to turn to Labour's emerging strategy now.
	So I want to start by just comparing some of Labour's social media posts.
	So I want to show you this one first.
	This was Labour's St George's Day post in 2021, right?
	Right, so John, if we could just watch this. - During this pandemic, we've seen the huge sacrifice made by those on the frontline across England, from Devon to Darlington.
	You've worked together to get us through.
	This pandemic has shown just how vital and important our key workers are.
	So this St George's Day, we're saying thank you to everyone who has kept us all fed and kept us all going during the pandemic.
	This year, across the country, we've all seen just how amazing our frontline staff are.
	You've made us all so proud.
	I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.
	This St George's Day, I want to thank the extraordinary work of our NHS and frontline workers for all you've done, and continue to do, to keep us safe.
	Right across England, our key workers have stepped up Now, did you notice anything missing from that?
	Well, I didn't see a single English flag.
	One mention of England, no images of the St George's Cross.
	- We can leave that by.
	- Now, did you notice anything missing from that?
	- Well, I didn't see a single English flag.
	- One mention of England, no images of the St. George's Cross.
	- No. - Instead, we have a celebration of NHS staff, Which, to be fair, is not entirely improper, right?
	Using a national holiday that, like St George's Day, to celebrate people that we value and that we care about.
	But when it's done in place of any semblance of, you know, celebration of our nation and our people, then it comes across as extremely cynical to me.
	No, it's just Labour's stock talking points.
	And we're doing this on St George's Day.
	We do it every other day as well.
	So it's not special or interesting or patriotic.
	It's just a dodge.
	Yeah, very diverse as well.
	I agree.
	So now I just want to compare this to the 2023 post that Labour put out for St George's Day.
	Now I'm not the first person to cover this of course, but here we have full frontal flag-shagging.
	Yes.
	Right?
	Finally.
	Well, indeed, yeah.
	But, I mean, just look at the difference in tone compared to the one just two years ago, right?
	I think that's a really, really powerful thing because it might seem like a strange place to start looking at just, you know, what amounts of social media posts and pictures, but imagery is important and symbolism is powerful.
	And so something like this, the message that this sends compared to the message that the 2021 post sends, it's worlds apart, you know.
	Yeah, so some Tony Blair Institute political strategist has definitely sat down with them and gone, no, on St George's Day you put out an England flag.
	Yes.
	Otherwise the people in England will not think you're one of them.
	Absolutely.
	So if we could just move on to the next link, John.
	So here are just some more imagery that they've put out.
	More flag-shagging, right?
	And they used this graphic every single time they won a council seat.
	Well this was at the, I can't remember if it was the 2021 or 2022 Labour Conference, I think it was the 2022 Labour Conference, where they had a giant Union Jack in the back, and all it was was Corbynistas going, oh my god, this is like a Nazi rally.
	It's like, oh my god, that's how far gone the Corbynistas are.
	I just briefly want to say as well, just as an aside, this graphic here, I think this could be you, this could be any British party.
	This could be reform, this could be Tories.
	I think it just speaks to the aesthetic deadness of our politics, where it's all this managerial minimalism.
	Yeah, well that was, yeah I was going to say, like I hate the sort of abstract nature of it, like the broken lines in it.
	GB News suffered from this as well, that kind of abstract minimalism aesthetic, and it's like no, Make yourselves look like you're in a country house, please.
	Like a country estate.
	That's what people wanted.
	Traditional.
	Not horrible and modern like this.
	Yeah, exactly.
	This kind of gross modernism.
	But you are right, it could be any party.
	You're absolutely right, it could be any party.
	So next I just want to have a look at another post that the Tories have put out.
	So it's the end of this post.
	There's a little animation that I don't know if you could just play that for us.
	I just want to show this to viewers.
	I mean, it's an accurate representation of the Conservatives.
	Well, it is.
	I actually really like this, right?
	I think it's spot on.
	But the criticism that this animation is levelling is a very interesting one.
	I think what Labour are actually saying here is the Conservatives have failed to nurture and protect the tree of Britain, if you want.
	Instead, they've abused it and neglected it and let it die.
	And that's a very, very interesting thing coming from Keir Starmer's Labour, who, as we know, have intentions to transform the country.
	You planted the poison seeds?
	Oh, exactly.
	Anyway, yeah.
	But this, again, I just find it really interesting that the criticism that's being levelled here is the Conservatives have failed in their duty as Conservatives.
	Well, I mean, Keir Starmer actually said that.
	Yes, well he did, and that's actually what we're going to go on to next.
	So we're going to have a look at this... Labour are the real Conservatives, oh God!
	So this was a day after that post was put out.
	This is what the IR reported, that Labour are going to Claim that they are the real Conservatives and they're going to protect our way of life.
	Keir Starmer gave a speech at the Progressive Britain conference.
	Promising to change his party's DNA like Tony Blair on steroids.
	Tony Blair on steroids.
	As if that's not what we've had for the last 13 years.
	Well, that's the point, though.
	That's what he's saying.
	He's like, no, look, you Conservatives, you're not doing Blairism properly.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Because Cameron was explicit that he was essentially bringing in Blairism.
	And, of course, that makes the Conservatives the arbiters of the Blair Project.
	And Kit Starmer is not wrong where he's like, no, you're screwing us up.
	Because the Conservatives are like, well, we don't feel like we should be doing this.
	We have to do this.
	So they've got no positive confidence, they can't say it with their chest, right?
	No, absolutely.
	But Keir Starmer, what he's doing now, is saying, right, so Blairism is what Conservatism is in this country.
	And it's just like, I hate everything about us.
	Well, a quote from the speech is, he says, this is about taking our party back to where we belong and where we should have always been.
	And I think that speaks to the whole, this sort of, the attitude to talk about, where it is the proper way of doing politics in this country, the only way we do politics is in this country, is Blairist.
	Yeah, so we're going to watch just a few clips of this speech just to get a flavour of the type of messaging that Labour are going with.
	So if we could just watch this first one.
	But if work doesn't pay, if living standards are falling, bills are rising, holidays start to feel out of reach, family life does feel more fragile.
	But when you look out of your window and see your community changing, high streets boarded up, fly tipping, anti-social behaviour, drugs and crime, does gnaw away at your confidence in the future.
	But if you see an economy that hoards power and potential, where the South East creates the wealth, and the only answer that's offered is redistribution, that doesn't treat our communities with the dignity or respect that they deserve.
	And most of all, that patriotism is about putting the country first.
	About serving your country, not just parading its symbols like the Tories do.
	But that working people do need to see your commitment to service, not some kind of patronising contempt for those who fly our flag.
	I mean, just listen to that language.
	But that is not the language of a leftist.
	No, that's the language that the Conservatives should have been using.
	Yeah.
	I mean, do you find anything in that to be particularly disagreeable?
	No.
	Don't misunderstand me.
	I'm not getting sucked into the Blairite, you know.
	It's a very cunning trick.
	It really is.
	But seriously, this language, family life, community, dignity, respect, patriotism, our flag.
	The way that things are changing.
	And then he speaks the boarded up town centers.
	Yeah, that's one of the problems.
	But things are changing in much more dramatic ways that you can't talk about.
	Deeply Burkean, though, I thought.
	Thick language, as you would call it.
	It's definitely what he's appealing to.
	It's a lie.
	It's a trick.
	But he's definitely appealing to that.
	Yeah, for sure.
	So we're going to watch this next clip where he really drives this point home.
	But to be honest, I don't think the language of stability comes naturally to progressive politics.
	I think too often we dismiss it as conservative.
	Obviously.
	As a barrier to change.
	Thank you.
	Don't mistake me.
	The very best of progressive politics is found in our determination to push Britain forward.
	A hunger, an ambition that we can seize the opportunities of tomorrow and make them work for working people.
	But this ambition must never become unmoored from working people's need for stability, for order, for security.
	We must understand that there are precious things in our way of life, in our environment, in our communities, that it's our responsibility to protect and preserve, to pass on to future generations.
	And look, if that sounds conservative, then let me tell you, I don't care.
	Somebody has got to stand up for the things that make this country great.
	And it isn't going to be the Tories.
	That, in the end, is one of the great failures of the last 13 years.
	A Tory party that, in generations past, saw itself as the protector of the nation and the union, has undermined both.
	Has taken an axe to the security of family life.
	Trashed Britain's reputation abroad.
	Has totally lost touch with the ordinary hope of working people.
	The Conservative Party can no longer claim to be Conservative.
	It conserves nothing of value.
	Not our rivers or seas.
	Not our NHS or BBC.
	Not our families.
	Not our nation.
	But the lesson for progressives must be that if a tide of change threatens to sweep away the stability working people need, we have to be in there, fighting for security, just as fervently as we fight against injustice.
	Now, first of all, I want to apologise for subjecting you to so much kid stuff.
	No, no, no.
	I just feel like I'm being massively gaslit.
	Yes.
	I mean, again, he literally has progressive Britain.
	We are the party of change.
	Yes.
	And he's saying the Conservatives have not conserved and therefore essentially what he's saying is the Conservatives have a duty to stop us from doing the things we want to do.
	Yeah.
	And they've not done it.
	And so now we have to stop us from doing the things we wanted to do.
	Yeah.
	Because they went ahead and bloody did them.
	Yeah.
	That's mad.
	It's just hilarious.
	God, the politics in this country are just insufferable.
	But again, do you find anything in there to be particularly disagreeable?
	Apart from the fact that he's literally saying, look, we can't help ruining everything and you were meant to restrain us, and you didn't.
	And you did more than us, if anything.
	Exactly.
	And now we've got to hold you back.
	Apart from the massive gaslighting of all of this, no, the actual substance of it, of course I agree, because it's a conservative message.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But again, you know, our this, our that, town, community, and family, respect, stability, order, security, and a responsibility to protect and preserve.
	These are words that should be coming out of the mouth of every conservative politician in this country.
	Not Michael Gove, though.
	Didn't come out of Michael Gove's mouth, did they?
	Diversity came out of Michael Gove's mouth.
	Well, indeed.
	But it's just amazing that this is what the Labour Party are transitioning into.
	Now, as you say, it is an enormous gaslighting operation, but I think it will work.
	Oh yeah.
	And the Conservatives are so weak, so deserving of a kicking at this point.
	Even Keir Starmer can't screw this up.
	No.
	And we've just been subjected to two minutes of him and it felt like a lifetime.
	It did, yeah.
	Anyway, I've got one more clip of this speech to show you and then we'll move on.
	And this, I think, this clip really reveals, I don't know, reveals what's underneath all of this gaslighting.
	Right.
	So John, if we could have that next one, please.
	Alongside dynamic government, you need that sense of collective purpose.
	It's essential for our five missions, for everything we want to achieve in government.
	It's how we make our streets safe.
	Tear down barriers to opportunity.
	Become a clean energy superpower.
	Build an NHS fit for the future.
	And push our country forward to the highest sustained growth in the G7.
	And not just any old growth.
	Growth that truly serves working people.
	That understands the need for stability.
	Raises living standards everywhere.
	Comes from the grassroots.
	Focuses on productivity in every community, not just redistribution.
	Sees secure, well-paid jobs as the litmus test of our politics.
	And puts communities in charge of their own destiny.
	A new course.
	A break not just from Labour arguments of the past, but also from the traditional Westminster model.
	This is what I mean by mission-led government.
	And it's why I'm not afraid to use the language of take-back control.
	There's no hope in these times for a stand-aside state.
	Full-on managerialism.
	I was going to say, this is just full-on managerialism.
	Anybody who's read their oak shop will recognise that what Keir Starmer is talking about here is the enterprise state, the state that has a teleology, right?
	And, you know, there's some of this language, like, you know, a collective mission, all that sort of thing, that's good, that's quite Carlyle-y.
	But then he gets into productivity.
	Yes.
	And it's all about GDP and so on.
	But it is, I mean, again, I'm not going to sit here and call Keir Starmer a fascist because that's ridiculous, but it comes from the same place.
	This need to use the machinery of the state in a way that is, again, in conformity with some rationally derived project.
	Yeah, and it's totalizing, right?
	It is totalizing.
	I mean, he says, oh, it's the entire country.
	What if I don't want you to screw with my business, for example, Keir?
	But there's no place for a stand-aside state now.
	Exactly.
	And it's not his fault, because he's not that bright, clearly.
	I mean, just look at that expression.
	The lights don't appear to be on.
	The man should be managing a cinema in Swindon.
	Yeah, literally!
	We do need a good cinema manager, actually.
	No doubt.
	But yeah, no, I'm not happy about this.
	Yeah, so, and just as a final thing, he does end the speech by saying that he's going to push the country to the highest sustained growth in the G7.
	So again, the league table wins its head.
	Yeah, the competitive GDP graph.
	Yes.
	Because that, I mean, that again, for all this talk of community and, you know, preservation, handing down to our children, rivers, seas, countryside, this and that, this is the true face of the Labour Party.
	This is what the actual priorities are.
	You can see very much that the Tony Blair advice that he has received is like, no, look, speak in these sort of patriotic terms, populist terms, yeah.
	But that's a veneer on top of the managerial engine that is running the whole thing.
	It's very clear that he still thinks this way.
	Yeah, oh, totally right.
	So I thought we'd move on to just a few reactions to this, just a few because I imagine we're running out of time.
	So we've got here Ben Harris Quinney saying not only is this Conservative government the most left-wing in UK history, more tax, more debt, more immigration, more wokery, it isn't just to the left of the last Labour government, it's the left of the current Labour party in opposition.
	Now, I agree with the first half of that, of course, that this is somebody who has been duped, as far as I'm concerned.
	Because the Labour Party is not to the right of the Conservative Party.
	As much as they might be presenting themselves as such, their actual policies are just an acceleration of what the Tories are already doing.
	Yeah.
	As far as they're concerned, essentially what they're saying is it wasn't real Blairism.
	Yeah.
	It's just, no, no, no, you've done this wrong.
	If when we're in power, we'll do it right, you know, the mission will still continue.
	Yes.
	He is right.
	They're not to the right.
	It's just that they've got a very slick presentation.
	Yeah, they do.
	And the next one, John, if you don't mind.
	Apologies for the language on that.
	But again, it's the same, the same idea here being, you know, somebody else who's been duped, you know, a right wing Labour Party.
	Can you imagine?
	One could only dream.
	And the next one, John, again, hasn't got a left to speak of right now, which to you and I is just an astonishing thing to say.
	Yeah, but that just goes to show just how far left these people are.
	Well, exactly.
	Again, it reveals the Overton window, because these people think that the Conservative Party are enacting policies the BNP campaigned on a few years ago.
	I mean, come on.
	Where?
	Point to the policies.
	The BNP were like, yes, we'd like a million immigrants.
	Classic BNP policy.
	Yeah, and these next few are essentially the same thing.
	The illusion of political left and right choice, again, correct, but this is looking at it from the opposite direction, as if the rights are in, you know, patriots in control.
	Yeah, this is literally looking at it from the most extreme communist position.
	Exactly.
	Sorry, I wanted utter anarchy.
	But there we are, neoliberal misleadership of Keir Starmer.
	Now I think neoliberal is a better framing than calling him right-wing.
	I do think the term neoliberal has kind of lost its meaning through overuse.
	Sure, but if you are to define it as essentially extreme libertarianism, then yeah, Keir Starmer is a managerial libertarian type in that mould.
	I don't know.
	Libertarian is the wrong word, really, because the Americans are going to pick up on that and say, hang on a second.
	That's a good thing.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
	But also because it implies low taxes in a small state.
	It is an extremely ideologically liberal, total managerial state that Keir Starmer is offering.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Which is in no way right wing.
	No, absolutely not.
	So I just wanted to finish up here because, as I say, I imagine we're running out of time.
	Yeah.
	You're right.
	This is exactly how I feel about it.
	Pitching Blairism on steroids as the real conservatism, right?
	And that is what's happening.
	That's what we're seeing.
	And I just want to finish off with a quote from Peter Hitchens, actually, from the Abolition of Britain, where he says, the 1997 election was a historic choice between two utterly different ideas of Britain, a choice which had little to do with economics or even politics, and everything to do with the far more important issue of what kind of people we are.
	And that's obviously correct.
	That's totally right.
	Yeah.
	But I just want to point out that despite sort of ostensibly rerunning the 1997 Labour project, In 2023, this choice that Hitchens is talking about, about what kind of people we are, we don't have that.
	We live in the post-revolution era.
	We have the nominal choice between a right-wing Conservative Party and a left-wing Labour Party, but the reality is these parties are populated by the same type of people and they all have the same, they might disagree on details, but they have the same fundamental vision of what constitutes good government and that is this kind of top-down rationally ordered it's the things you you guys always talk about the managerial state
	the attitude that the only government worth pursuing the only type of governance worth pursuing is that which can be recorded on a spreadsheet that which can be expressed in statistics whereas actually people like you and i would recognize that that is a seriously anti-human and anti-traditional way of viewing the business of government and actually it should be a kind of um you know the government ultimately should be a as oakshaw would call it a neutral umpire in in the proceedings the the The way I look at it is that essentially the government shouldn't be able to
	measure in numbers whether they're doing a good job or not, right?
	Because it should be about quality, not quantity.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It should be, you know, they walk into their constituency and are the people there happy to see them?
	You know, do the people there just look happy in their communities?
	Are we flourishing in a visual, aesthetic way?
	And if we're not then, and we're clearly not at the moment, then it doesn't matter what the numbers say.
	It just doesn't matter what the GDP is.
	Yeah, we see the reign of quantity in all areas, don't we?
	And government's no different.
	Anyway, let's move on to... The Eurovision Song Contest is not something I watch and I don't care about at all.
	But one part of it kind of pricked me the other day.
	Just a needle in the back of the head, sort of, what are you doing?
	Because the person who was chosen to represent us had tweeted out, I hate Britain.
	How is that possible?
	How is the British representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, or any walk of life, anywhere where you get to wave the national flag and you say, I am here to make present Britain, and it's a 25 year old Londoner who's like, yeah, hate Britain.
	I mean, we can only be thankful that it wasn't quite to the level of the German.
	Well, we'll get to the German Act in a minute.
	You're right, though.
	In many ways, it's not surprising.
	We see this every single day, this sort of demoralisation.
	But it's just depressing, whatever it is shown.
	And I'm sick of what are essentially Britain-hating, miserable communists.
	Being the people that others get to see from us.
	But before we go on, if you want to support us, go to locies.com, sign up, watch The Concept of Representation, which I think is a deeply important book.
	And I don't know how I came across this, it was just, everyone always talks about representation, and no one ever explores what it actually means, and that was the only deep dive by a philosopher that I could find about it.
	And it's really, really useful.
	To summarise though, the most important thing is just think about what is being made present which is otherwise absent, right?
	In the thing that is representing and what is being represented.
	This is why Rishi Sunak has Dilwale in number 10 and India erupts in celebrations.
	It's like, yes, that's weird, isn't it?
	But it's actually not weird because if you think what's being made present from the perspective of the Indians, well, As you can see, Diwali's not a British holiday, is it?
	Anyway, moving on.
	This is just before the Eurovision Song Contest, and this was just an article because I was learning about it, basically.
	But I'm just going to read out some things from it, because like I said, I'm not an expert.
	I don't watch the Eurovision Song Contest, but I just found this interesting.
	So this May Muller, 25-year-old Londoner, We'll hope to continue the UK's wild uptick in Eurovision fortune with her cheetah dissing pop anthem I Wrote a Song.
	Just think about that.
	That represents Britain.
	Yeah.
	I wrote a song, right?
	And the whole thing, I'm not going to subject you to any of it, for copyright reasons, but also for your own sanity.
	It's literally just a song about her being dumped by a boyfriend and writing a song about it.
	Very postmodern.
	Very.
	It's just the most atomized individual.
	Like, I'm thinking of me.
	I'm ostensibly representing your entire country.
	It's just me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I'm not saying you have to write a song about Britain or anything like that.
	I'm saying that the tenor and the content of the song that you choose does say a lot about this country.
	Or at least says a lot about London.
	Wow, indeed.
	And she's got the worst accent.
	Just the worst London accent.
	I'm sure she's a lovely person, I'm not saying she's done anything wrong here necessarily, but it's just, this is very revealing about what kind of country we are, right?
	Yes.
	But like I said, we'll get to the German one, it is very revealing about what kind of country the Germans are.
	Very quickly as well, we were talking about the concept of representation there.
	I mean, the constituency that she is representing clearly is 25-year-old, atomised, you know, anywhere people Londoners.
	And it's no wonder that these people are kind of like, I hate Britain.
	Well, if you feel like you're essentially not connected emotionally, spiritually to anyone or anywhere, and you're living in the concrete hellscape that is London, and you don't... You almost can't blame them.
	Exactly, right?
	If that's your experience of Britain, I'm not surprised you hate this country.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And it will have been people like that that will have selected This lady as the representative.
	And she is their representative in that way.
	And so in a way, she is an accurate representation of that thing that currently wears the face of Britain.
	Yes, yes.
	But anyway, at the time she was 10th favourite to win, and this year's conference took place in Liverpool because it was supposed to take place in Ukraine, but of course they couldn't because of the war.
	Understandable.
	And so, you know, she was quite, you know, generous about Ukraine, right?
	We're excited to be hosting this year.
	Everyone knows it's Ukraine's party.
	It's just at our house, you know?
	Okay, fine.
	That's fine.
	And I can totally, like, you know, I'm not a supporter of Ukraine or Russia, really.
	But, you know, I can understand why people would be.
	I hear that makes you a fascist.
	I hear that makes me all sorts of things.
	But I'm not pro either way, basically.
	But I'm sympathetic.
	You know, the Ukrainians alone is being invaded.
	It would be nice if they could win.
	So anyway, we'll get to the song itself.
	We'll get to the next one.
	So I'm not going to play in a bit.
	And it's not my sort of music.
	It's very much modern London music.
	You know, not my kind of music at all.
	But I went to the comments and had a look to see how this was being received.
	Like to dislike ratio.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I actually couldn't see that while I was making it, because I didn't have the add-on.
	I didn't even know that it was massively downvoted compared.
	Seriously, this vocal performance was no better than the sub-part X Factor audition.
	I mean, her singing was okay, but her London accent did come out a lot in it, right?
	I don't know what happened.
	She danced like my drunk auntie and her voices sounded like Trisha Paytas.
	I don't know.
	Next time I go to Primark, I'm going to hear this playing.
	The BBC literally said they wanted a female singer with a banger this year.
	When you choose according to identity rather than merit, this is what happens.
	It still baffled me that no one checked to see if she could sing live before choosing this song.
	Brutal.
	Rough.
	Like I said, I don't think she's a bad person or anything.
	I think that she has been chosen as a representative of a certain kind of culture that is identity-driven, as this person points out.
	And this has reaped the expected results, because Britain came second to last.
	Yeah.
	Germany was the only nation to finish lower than us.
	So suck it, Germany.
	As always.
	As always.
	But really, it's not too much to gloat over.
	But anyway, so a bunch of people accused the BBC of sabotaging her because of their technical difficulties.
	Viewers claimed that they could barely hear her over the backing music.
	And the set generally wasn't amazing.
	And I do genuinely feel bad for her, right?
	Because she would have been in an environment where everyone around her would have been like, no, you're brilliant, you're the best.
	Just yes-men.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Just constant yes-men.
	Very little constructive criticism, right?
	And this undoubtedly was devastating for this young woman who isn't responsible for this, in a way.
	Well, this is the culture of these industries, isn't it?
	The music industry, the film industry, and so on.
	These people never... it's actually a cruelty, in a way, for these people to be just told from all sides that they're amazing and perfect and all that.
	And then the brick wall of reality hits them in the face, as we've seen here.
	And, you know, again, I'm sure this lady is not a bad person.
	She must be feeling miserable right now, devastated.
	I mean, look at that picture.
	Just absolutely heartbroken.
	It's like, right, so this industry... I mean, like, The turn of the song, right?
	They all tell you, you know, writing a song about how you wrote a song because you broke up with your ex-boyfriend, that'll go down brilliantly, right?
	And then, you know, I just feel that she was completely set up for failure.
	And no one warned her that this was going to happen.
	So it's like the highest high and then devastating crash.
	You know, if it was slightly different, you know, and if she was a different person, maybe I'd feel less sympathetic.
	But like, I did genuinely feel bad for her, right?
	And so no wonder a lot of her fans were like, well, they set her up to fail, and it's like, kind of, but not in the way you're saying.
	Yeah, not in the literal, materialistic way that they think.
	Exactly.
	It's more like a spiritual setting up for failure.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And she's not the author of, well, frankly, the kind of person that she is, the environment that she's in, the culture that has done this to her.
	She's not the author of any of this, right?
	And the thing is, this is especially disappointing, because last year, a British person, Sam Ryder, came second with a song called Spaceman.
	Now, he likely would have come first, but of course the Ukrainians won, because of Rushmore, which is totally understandable, totally laudable, actually, and honourable.
	And if I were Sam Ryder and I'd come first and the Ukrainians would come second, you'd probably have been like, well, I'd like to give to the Ukrainians.
	I think it's worth pointing out, that is an exercise in propaganda.
	A value-free judgement.
	It is an exercise in propaganda, but you can understand it.
	But it's also an exercise in kind of propriety as well.
	Yeah, deference.
	Yeah, exactly, and respect and decency.
	And so it's not that the Europeans are instinctively going to vote against Britain just because it's Britain, because of Brexit, which probably in previous eras they may have done.
	But, you know, so it's not like they were being prejudiced or anything, right?
	They are just not deferential.
	And, I mean, if you go to the next one, sorry, no, that previous one, sorry, the video.
	This was a guy's song, again, I'm not going to play it.
	To be honest with you, I thought this was worse than her song.
	Really?
	Yeah, I did not enjoy the guy.
	He's got a very falsetto tone of voice, and I personally didn't enjoy it.
	But you notice that it's not this, Dramatically solipsistic thing, right?
	He's talking about slightly loftier concerns, but anyway.
	But this wasn't the reason I found myself bothered by this, because it was just how May Miller was able to represent Britain after having tweeted, and it was only like, you know, in 2020.
	It's not like she tweeted this 10 years ago or something, you know, that she literally said, I hate Britain, I hate this country, and she decided that she wasn't going to take that back.
	Name them.
	but right.
	Okay.
	Uh, in 2020, uh, her social media highlights included as Boris Johnson lay in hospital with COVID.
	I don't feel sorry for him.
	Hundreds have died due to Tory policies.
	Name them.
	Yeah.
	Name them.
	Nurses are literally dying because of you.
	No, if they were dying of anything, it would have been Covid, surely.
	Boris Johnson wasn't the architect of Covid, and he actually did everything that you wanted him to do on Covid, which is not what I wanted him to do on Covid, right?
	Yeah, no doubt.
	When she says that Tory policy has killed millions of people, whatever she said, that's because they didn't lock down hard enough.
	Presumably, this sort of culture, that will be the perspective.
	And she'll never in any way look at what happened as a consequence of lockdowns, but anyway.
	And she had also posted, quote, I hate this country.
	Yep.
	And that person represents Britain to the rest of Europe.
	Did she regret the tweets?
	Quote, no, because that's how I felt.
	Why should I support you as the representative of Britain if you're literally, I hate this country and I'm not taking it back?
	Again, you know, Think about what this, again, think about representation and what this country actually is, you know, at this point.
	The way that we are perceived on the global stage, you know, do you know what, I actually wonder, she probably does represent us.
	Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	You know, that's the thing.
	Self-hating.
	It speaks to the sickness that is destroying this country.
	That's the right word.
	That we can't seem to get better from.
	Yeah.
	It really does.
	She carries on to justify herself, because she's not just like, I hate Britain, always, forever.
	She says, I hate this country.
	It's not ideal as I am representing this country, but I love where I'm from.
	Do you, though?
	You know, it's a privilege to be born here, and that's why I felt strongly.
	We deserve the best.
	And at this time, this amazing country wasn't getting the best.
	We're being let down.
	OK, well, when was it amazing?
	You give me the date.
	Right?
	Because really, I think what you're saying is, I've been promised a bunch of very progressive things that don't exist anywhere, and now I'm looking around and they certainly don't exist here, and now I'm annoyed that I've been, as she literally says, you know, we're being let down.
	Yeah, been lied to.
	By who?
	By the progressive people in the milieu in which you exist, you know?
	And so you find yourself hating Britain because you've been promised utopia.
	Yeah, by the sort of Rousseauian Marvel merchants.
	Absolutely, that's exactly it.
	You know, the Marvel Merchants, that's a great phrase.
	But the thing is, the BBC didn't, like, make or delete these or anything.
	Did you get a call from them?
	They're like, no, they didn't make me scrub my personality.
	They were just like, yeah, it's fine if you hate Britain, you can represent Britain.
	Of course, why would that be a problem?
	I mean, it's no surprise because the BBC's populated by the same type of people.
	Of course it is.
	Of course it is.
	Populated by friends of hers.
	Yeah.
	But anyway, yeah, so a lot of people who did have a problem with what I said were from the UK.
	Obviously a lot of the Europeans didn't care.
	They said, you've lost my vote.
	And she's like, well, you can't vote for me anyway.
	Well, I mean, can you not vote in the European Song Contest?
	I must admit, I'm not an expert on Eurovision.
	No, I'm not.
	I'm sure there was some.
	There's got to be.
	There is a voting process.
	Maybe it's delegates there asking you to do the voting.
	But again, the spirit of what's being said though, you've lost my vote.
	Like, she should look at that for what they're actually saying.
	She should think, okay, these people feel... I mean, it's the most literal way of saying, you do not represent me.
	In a democracy, you don't have my vote.
	That's you saying, I don't feel that you represent me.
	And if this is about representation, then she should look at that and think, well, okay, that's not great.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And she's literally like, I don't care.
	The attitude is, well, do one then.
	Yeah, exactly.
	She says, a lot of young women follow me and it's important that they see that they can have a voice.
	Where is that coming from?
	What are you talking about?
	How many female prime ministers?
	We were just reigned over for 70 years by a queen.
	But that's just not an issue in this country.
	And a voice to say what?
	To say, I wrote a song?
	A voice to say, I matter, me, me, me, me, and I don't care about your opinion.
	Don't vote for me.
	You know, I just, I can't, I can't take it, man.
	But they say, like, you know, Eurovision is officially a non-political event.
	It's like, really?
	Well. - Yeah.
	But anyway, she gets to be political, right, and she gets to say that she hates all these things.
	Sorry, just very quickly, it's the kind of obscuring of the political that someone like Paul Gottfried would talk about, right?
	It's this kind of, this attitude that what, you know, this thing, statements and positions and events that actually are, do have a political character.
	Like Eurovision, are presented as being mere neutral platforms that don't have any bearing on politics at all.
	That's clearly not the case.
	I mean, from this story alone.
	The liberal fiction that there are non-political political spaces.
	Exactly.
	But what I find interesting is the way that she conceives of the country And her background, I think, is interesting.
	Because I would have thought, if I were the one with that background, I'd have a different opinion on this country, right?
	So, they say in this, she was born in the UK in 1997.
	Her surname is from her grandfather, yeah.
	She's a child of Blair, right?
	As am I. Yeah, exactly.
	As are many young people now, or all young people now, really.
	But her surname is from her grandfather Robert, a Jew who fled Germany for Britain, and thanks to Germany's reconciliatory process of giving citizenship to descendants of Nazi persecution, the UK's Eurovision entrant will soon have a German passport.
	Isn't that weird?
	Well again, it's this kind of, I said it just now, this sort of anywhere person, what Scruton would call an anywhere person.
	You can just pluck them out of any metropolitan city, be it London, Berlin, New York, and so on, and you can just place them wherever and they feel just as at home, because home to them is not an attachment to a particular place or particular people, it's an attachment to a kind of again, this soulless, you know, glass and steel jungle.
	When she says, I love where I'm from, but then can say, I hate Britain.
	Yeah.
	She's saying she's not from Britain.
	She's saying she's from London, which is the international city, which is like, so it could be Kuala Lumpur.
	It could be anywhere.
	Right.
	So it very, I find this very interesting.
	Right.
	But, and she says, it means we can live in Spain.
	It also means we can tour the EU with minimal paperwork.
	It's like, How British does that feel?
	Just internationalist that is, right?
	And so again, an internationalist is representing Britain, talking about herself, saying that she hates this country.
	And I'm just like, God, all of these things just show that we are essentially an occupied country at this point.
	Occupied by the international order.
	And again, the Jewish Chronicle put an article about this, and I found this really interesting, right?
	Because, uh, in July 2020, responding to antisemitism in the music industry, Muller posted to Instagram, to all my Jewish friends and followers, I love you.
	There is no place for antisemitism in this world.
	I am very proud of my Jewish roots and so should you.
	I've never even heard of antisemitism in the music industry, but okay, fair enough.
	Um, my granddad fled from Nazi Germany to the UK when he was 12 on his own.
	I always find myself trying to imagine how scared he must have been.
	So F, Wiley, and F anyone who shares those views.
	I stand with all my Jewish friends, family, supporters as well.
	Okay.
	Right.
	So, you love your grandad, you empathise with his plight, fleeing from the Nazis to Britain.
	Grandad sets up a new life in Britain, must have liked the place, probably eternally grateful.
	I mean, I've seen, on LBC, a while ago, there was a Holocaust survivor, an old chap, who was like, oh, I loved England when I came here.
	This was a magical place, not like that now.
	And they were like, what do you mean?
	And he knew what he was thinking.
	But the point is, these people, genuinely had a love of this country, and she has a love for her grandfather, hates Britain.
	How can you get to that point?
	You know, the reason you exist, because your family was saved by Britain, you think you'd have some sort of emotional attachment to the ancestral aid that Britain has given you.
	Absolutely.
	And this happens to a lot of people.
	Yeah.
	A lot of them do, you know, and so it's like Afro-Hirsch is the same.
	Yeah, oh yeah.
	Her grandfather and grandmother fled Ghana and Nazi Germany from persecution, comes here, hates Britain.
	Yeah, I mean, she's one of the worst.
	She is one of the worst!
	She hates this country.
	I just can't get over it.
	So anyway, I just, I really get annoyed with the people who have to represent us, who are allowed to represent us.
	And I wish they would just think about themselves a little bit more.
	Because actually, you know, you're trapped in a system that you don't like, clearly.
	But anyway- Perhaps reflect on themselves a little bit more, because they clearly think about themselves far too much, as it is.
	Good point, I should have framed it that way.
	But it could be worse, we could be Germany.
	God.
	Do you want to just play this without music, John?
	Everything going alright, Germany?
	That looks like a healthy civilization.
	You sent Lord of the Lost to play Blood and Glitter.
	Really?
	Really?
	Got anything you want to tell us?
	Decided that Christianity not your thing?
	Getting strong Weimar vibes.
	That's literally what was going through my head just now.
	I'm glad this came last.
	I'm really glad this came last.
	Like punk rock aesthetics have always had a certain amount of this.
	But there's a time and a place, right?
	And again, we're talking about representation.
	We're complaining about how somebody who says, oh, I hate this country is representing us.
	This is what Germany are being represented by.
	What constituency is this representing?
	The average German represented.
	I mean, at least our woman is...
	Like, just kind of lost and set adrift in a current of forces she doesn't understand and doesn't control, right?
	There's a sadness to it.
	Yeah, it's melancholic, right?
	It's not humiliating.
	No, it's not humiliating.
	If I were a German, I'd be looking at this going, God, what must they think of us?
	Because honestly, this is just embarrassing.
	And no wonder you came last.
	But I mean, the Germans do have a strain of this in them, actually.
	Well, I was going to say, there is a sort of distinctly German flavour to this, it has to be said.
	Again, once you adopt a sort of new set of principles, the Germans do have a habit of taking that to the most extreme.
	And this is very German, I have to say.
	I lived down in Germany for eight years, man.
	Like, most Germans are actually, you know, nice.
	Yeah.
	Like, socially conservative.
	Traditional people.
	Yeah, they dress well, they're well-spoken, they're very polite.
	But then they get into this sort of excitable mode, which ends up promoting extreme degeneracy.
	There's some German phrase, it's the drive towards the absolute.
	Yeah, Douglas Murray uses it in Strange Death of You.
	This is that made flesh.
	Yeah, it's like, is there anything wrong with this happening?
	Well, no, not technically, there's nothing wrong.
	Well, then it's good in every case.
	It's like, no, actually, when it's supposed to be representing the country in the world stage, it's deeply embarrassing.
	Everyone's like, no, I'm voting against that.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, just a quick thing.
	Representation does matter and we need to think about what's representing us.
	Have we got any video comments today?
	Let's go and watch the video comments.
	So after yesterday's humorous conversation about changing skin color, I thought it's time to finally talk about this because there are actually substances, one that will inhibit melanin production and one that will increase melanin production.
	I've tried the one that inhibits it because it has pro-cognitive effects, and the one that produces more actually has negative cognitive effects I would never touch.
	So it's a little bit of food for thought for you there.
	And no, I won't tell you what they are.
	I don't think we're allowed to think about that.
	I don't quite know what to say to that.
	Moving on.
	Good afternoon, Lotus Eaters.
	Good to be back.
	Just a quick shout out today.
	There's a couple of us going down to a march on Saturday, the 20th of May.
	We're protesting against Cardiff City Council's plans to impose a 15-minute city.
	If any of you can get to Cardiff for one o'clock on Saturday, it'd be great to see you there.
	We're meeting at City Hall.
	There's going to be a demonstration and I hope to see you all there.
	Wonderful.
	Excellent.
	Yeah, I'm from Kent, very near Canterbury, actually, and that's one of the cities that's been transformed.
	Are they actually doing it?
	Yeah.
	And it's really, really upsetting to see.
	And I actually do think that that sort of thing, the kind of, again, this sort of technocratic managerialism, that is the true goal of what we might call the regime.
	I thought you were going to say face of evil.
	Well, that too.
	That as well.
	But, you know, we see all the woke stuff and we see all the, you know, the talk of, you know, whether or not women have penises and all that sort of thing.
	But as far as I'm concerned, you may agree with this, you may not, but that is basically all just, it's just distraction, essentially.
	It's window dressing.
	Yeah, window dressing.
	Self-evidently ridiculous and history will report it as such.
	History, you know, people of the future will look back on the woke stuff specifically and they will, I mean, obviously, you've used the example of Was it like, you know, lobotomy?
	Yeah.
	This sort of thing, right?
	Look back at it like that was just a mental thing that happened.
	Yeah.
	That sort of thing though.
	The 15-minute cities, digital IDs, central bank digital currencies and so on.
	Those are the actual goals, I think, of the regime because those are the things that actually confer power and control.
	These are... Yeah, it's worse, isn't it?
	Because, I mean, don't get me wrong, on an individual level, the trans stuff is very important, right?
	To an individual person, to a young person in particular.
	Keeping them out of the clutches of these crazy people.
	Oh, yeah, of course, yeah.
	On an individual level, you know.
	But that's... If you know someone who's going through that, if you don't know someone who's going through that, then it's abstract.
	Or if you have a child going through the education system.
	Yeah, exactly, right.
	But the...
	But that's something you can personally do.
	But these 15-minute cities, man, this is the blueprint of the new global civilization essentially sinking itself in to the civilization it's conquered, and transforming the citizenry from countrymen into citizens.
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's perfect.
	And that will be inescapable.
	They'll be taking something away from them in a generation that took a thousand years to build up.
	Literally.
	Literally a thousand years.
	Yeah, I'm not even over-egging this at all.
	And that is the genuine concern.
	I mean, again, I used the example of Canterbury because it's just near where I'm from.
	But think of what Canterbury represents.
	It's a pilgrimage site.
	Exactly.
	Chaucer.
	The city of Chaucer.
	It's the heart, or should have been the heart, of English religiosity for a thousand years.
	It's literally where saints are buried, where people would pilgrimage to, to commune with God.
	And now it's a 15-minute global city, just like every other, who cares.
	But again, thinking about representation, when Justin Welby is the embodiment of the Christian faith in England, then we've seriously gone astray.
	One day, Calvin Robinson.
	We can only hope.
	Anyway, let's get some comments.
	Lord Nerevar says, it's good that our small-c conservatives are finally figuring the game out, but it's a bit late now.
	The institutions are captured, the main parties are identical and there's not enough time to set up a real alternative for the next general election.
	We've still got some really dark times ahead of us.
	Unfortunately, just keep banging the drum.
	Well, it's never too late.
	The Normans, the Normans, the Danes controlled two thirds of England before they were defeated.
	So it's never too late.
	History called forth the great man in that circumstance.
	We have to wonder whether that's going to happen in England of today.
	What I love about Alfred as an example is he was not naturally inclined to do what he had to do.
	He was a scholar, he wasn't a soldier, and yet he spent his entire life fighting.
	Taffy says, Conservatives finally coming out and saying basic common sense is not the beginning of a rally, it's the cold spectre of electoral defeat following the council elections.
	It's too little, too late.
	You are right that that is the case, but it's also, there is the embers of a genuine conservative movement beginning to brew that is becoming self-aware, self-conscious.
	It's opening its own eyes and saying, hang on a second, I've been asleep for far too long, right?
	And we need this kind of conscious conservatism to be able to actually say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, As Desert Rat says, a good functional family is the best thing for growing children.
	Developmental psychology knows this, ancient societies knew this, why are modern people having a hard time with it?
	Because of liberalism, actually, which we'll talk about after this podcast.
	Just very quickly on that, I know I keep interrupting, but Miriam Cates gave an excellent speech at the NatCon.
	I say she gave an excellent speech, I haven't actually watched it, I've just seen... You've seen clips of it?
	Yeah, and I've seen quotes taken from it, and I've actually met Miriam Cates.
	I met her once after she delivered quite a similar speech to the one she gave at the National Conservative Conference, and she said, you know, we have all this talk of our enemies being the neo-Marxists and, you know, the globalists and so on, but actually The liberal dream has failed to deliver one thing, and that's babies.
	And that's totally right.
	And I think that angle of attack from a conservative MP is fantastic, because she's attacking not the spectre of communism, if you want, but liberalism, the actual cause of all of these things that we look at now and see as just tremendous tragedies, basically.
	No, I think that's absolutely right.
	And the problem that a lot of liberals will have will say, well, look, Liberalism does contain some public goods.
	It does.
	It does contain some public goods.
	And 300 years ago, these seemed a lot more valuable than they are now.
	But it's freedom, really, what you're lacking.
	What you're lacking is belonging and decency and family and harmony.
	Ironically, the things Keir Starmer was appealing to.
	Liberalism can't provide these.
	And so now it's just time to stop and think about something else, recenter ourselves, move forward on something else.
	As Desert Rat says, those all seem like reasonable expectations for immigrants.
	Suela Braveman's expectations.
	I don't want any kind of radicalism coming to the USA.
	I don't see why Brits shouldn't have the same expectations.
	Omar says, the only allowable net increase in immigration under a conservative government should be the number used to catch illegals.
	If there are enough counter forces in your own party acting to prevent you from doing what you were voted in for.
	The only answer is to purge those elements.
	They deliberately rake leaves strewn on the ground to remain cartoonishly ineffective when they take steps to resolve an issue but smack themselves in the face instead.
	Completely true.
	But right, we're out of time there, so where can people find you, Charlie?
	So I've got a website, cfdowns.uk, and that has all of my work on it, all of my TV appearances, radio, writing and so on.
	And I've also got a Twitter, which I post my unsolicited, half-baked, political, 21-year-old opinions on.
	That's the best thing for Twitter, though, isn't it?
	Oh yeah.
	That's the best reason to have a Twitter.
	Absolutely.
	But yeah, Carl, seriously, thank you for having me on.
	This has been an absolute pleasure.
	I've really enjoyed it.
	I've really enjoyed it as well.
	I was saying to Carl before we came on that he's been a tremendous influence on me, actually, over the years, and I've followed Lotus Eater since it started.
	So it's just a real privilege and pleasure to be here.
	So thank you very much.
	We'll see you tomorrow, folks.

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