'The establishment doesn't want to talk about left-wing violence': Will Kingston and Carl Benjamin

Hello and welcome to Fire at Will. I'm Will Kingston. I'm delighted to be joined by the

founder of Lotus Eaters Media, Carl Benjamin. Carl, welcome to the show

Hello, thanks for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on. I had a little chuckle. We were talking about

this off air I saw you recently you made a star appearance in the now backbench MP David

Lammy's viral video clip on the Manosphere. Apparently an example of the Manosphere. How do you feel about seeing yourself here

I mean it's a bit weird. I've been married for 10 years. I've got four kids and a business

So I don't really feel like part of the Manosphere but I'm not a woke progressive feminist

So I suppose I am a part of the Manosphere. How would you describe yourself? Just a traditional man

Just a traditional Englishman. Just a normal guy. I remember you. In some respects, that sounds like a very simple description

I remember you had a great conversation with former Australian Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson recently

and you were talking about that description. I think you put it in your Twitter bio, and you said it actually had taken you some time to get to that very simple description

So what was the thinking that goes behind that? Yeah. It's very easy to describe yourself in ideological terms, to introduce yourself

This probably isn't the answer I gave John Anson, I can't remember what I said to him on that

But a large part of it is I wanted to avoid using ideologically loaded terms

as in terms that fit into propositional language through which you can derive definite and necessary conclusions

Because if I would say, well, I'm a libertarian, then people would say, ah, right, well, I know what you think on all these other issues

or if I would say I was a socialist, I know what you think on all of these other issues

and in contradiction to the libertarian position and therefore I'm already engaged in an ideological dispute

without even saying a word to any of the people that I'm having a conversation with

and that's just not how I think I actually don't think that most people's politics is actually very ideological

and I think that a large part of the problem with the discourse that we have

is it's trapped in an ideological frame that it doesn't even realize that it's in

Even though the people who are having these conversations, I mean, for example, with Andy

Burnham now, we're now talking about socialism again. And Andy Burnham's talking about Margaret

Thatcher. And so we're returning to the debates of the late 70s and the 1980s. And these feel

deeply archaic. The question of whether the state can do things has been roundly and soundly answered

The answer is yes, but it often does things badly. However, there are also answers that have been generated from those debates

which the neoliberals have also failed to, the libertarian side, has also failed to come to a good answer with as well

As in, is it wise to privatise essential infrastructure for your country

And the answer is no. I mean, the train to get here just from Swindon, an hour on the train

cost me nearly £100. I've been to Spain, I went to Spain recently, I've been to Italy recently

It costs about 15 euros to go about the same distance, and that was a return ticket

And it's because our train lines are largely monopolized by the state owned companies for

the national rails of their countries. So the Dutch, the Italians, I think the Spanish own some as well

they have got major investments, or not just outright owners, of our train companies

So did this get privatized or did it get outsourced to foreign countries

So the answer of should we privatize everything? No. The answer of should we nationalize everything

Also no. Should we privatize those things that are beneficial when they're privatized and nationalize those

things which are beneficial when they're nationalized? Probably yes. But that's not a hard or fast answer

changes depending on the context. This is one of the reasons I'm trying to get away from ideological discourse

Ideological discourse is the same in all times and places. If you go to the 19th century or you go to now, what's the libertarian answer to should

we privatize the rails? You know what it is. It's no, of course not

The situation has changed. The world has changed. We can see the negative effects of these actions

This is a very roundabout way of saying, my opinions are not fixed in amber like a lot

of ideological discourse is comfortable with opinions being fixed in because then the discourse

becomes entirely abstract and it's like well you've got a series of propositions and now we're just

deriving conclusions from them that's not anything to do with what's actually happening in the real

world and that's where i think politics actually takes place counter-argument to that though would

be that if you don't have a firm set of convictions rooted in a particular ideological foundation you

end up standing for nothing and then you have this class of politicians which are there just

for the sake of power itself and if you look at the last 15 years of British politics that's pretty

much what you've seen how do you respond to that particular line of argument yeah I think that this

is a way of people who don't know what they're doing or talking about interjecting themselves

into a place where they don't really belong someone who doesn't have conviction who doesn't

have any convictions. Even Andy Burnham has convictions and everyone says well I can never

pin down what he is. No Andy Burnham is a man who is socially connected to the people of

Manchester and so his convictions are I'm going to do whatever I can for the people of Manchester

and the people of the north. I mean that's great I'm a man of the southwest so great I don't want

Manchesterism in the southwest but I'm going to get it anyway because 25,000 people in Mayfield

voted for it um but that but Andy Burnham doesn't need to be heavily ideological because he's

actually done the job he's been an MP he's been in government and he's been the mayor of Manchester

for a decade and now he's the prime minister so he doesn't need an excessively ideological platform

because ideologies really are um kind of like uh political programming for people who have never

had any experience of the system of the situation and so they need to know it tells basically people

who are inexperienced in advance, something that they ought to be doing. But if you actually

notice, very few of the people who actually gain power in any particular system are actually

very ideological people. Very few of them actually come in with a sort of libertarian

manifesto. I mean Margaret Thatcher was probably the last person who had a deeply ideological

view and that's because she was in the height of the Cold War and it was directly after

and Labour would wreck the country. So it was a deeply ideological time

But in most times and places, the person is someone who is something of a kind of political

wheeler and dealer, someone who has actually had experience and contact with all of the

numerous compromises you have to make in politics. And Keir Starmer is another one

Keir Starmer has an ideology, but honestly, I'm not even sure Keir Starmer is like compus

mentis enough to know that he has an ideology. But again he went through the system of the Labour Party to get to the position he in He didn just say I have an ideology and therefore And so I just I find this ideological discussion essentially it kind of a cope for those people

who are outside of politics and don't know really what they ought to be doing. Well, interestingly, the last person who had an ideology

I agree with you, was probably Margaret Thatcher. And you said that came after a period

where they wrecked the country. Now we're about to enter, you know, in 2029, I think a very similar situation

Except I think you can extend that out to the conservatives, you can send out to the so-called uni party, a period now where the country is in a very, very dark place

Your answer to that isn't ideology necessarily or an ideologically positioned party. What is the answer

Well, you've got to ask yourself whose interests are you advancing in politics

And at the moment, I think that everyone feels that it's every interest other than our own

And this was, in fact, the argument that underpinned Danny Burnham's campaign in Makerfield

I'm going to make the Labour Party work for us, the people of Manchester and Makerfield in the north

And this essentially his argument was I'm going to restore Labour. I'm going to hark back to a golden era of Labour politics where at least if nothing else, it might not have been like a national success

but at least felt like it represented a certain kind of person in a certain kind of area

and made their voice and interest present in politics. And I think you've used that word restore quite deliberately there

I have, yeah. It was actually a deeply conservative campaign that he ran for Labour voters in the Labour heartland

in an area that's always voted Labour. It's the same message, honestly, Rupert Lowe is putting out to the rest of the country

and saying, well, actually, I mean, that's a good start, but what about the rest of us

You know, I would like Swindon to be restored to what it was like 30 years ago

when I first moved there after university. That would be lovely. It was a well-to-do, like, it's kind of a boom town

But it was just a normal English town. And now it feels it's just people from everywhere

And they've just arrived. It was just since COVID that they've arrived. And you just look at the situation and you're like

this is just not what I wanted for my future, for my children. And that's what Andy Burnham's message to Maconfield was

Yeah. I think people are past the hurting words. They're past that sort of thing

And they can just say this stuff for themselves. how do you reflect on how the discourse has changed in the country over the last five years

potentially even the last three years i think that essentially all of the ideological words

that the left uses to prevent normal people from recognizing the actual changes in their country

can only survive as long as for most people the changes are not manifestly in their face

and ruining the places in which they live. And until that distance, while that distance remains

then the words racist, xenophobe, fascist, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of the ideologically loaded you are a bad person words have an effect

because people say, oh, you know, I've got my comfortable bourgeois life

that I want to protect. But as soon as that starts disappearing and you're actually worried about walking down the street

suddenly all of the concerns about your moral standing with your neighbours disappear

because everyone's worried about their physical safety and the physical safety of the people they love

And so these words, I think the natural power that they contained was a social power

whereas the actual threat now is a real and present physical threat

And so these words can't overcome that. We'll get back to that

But I diverted us from what I think is a really interesting take on Burnham, which I hadn't heard anywhere else, which is effectively that this is not a progressive in the way that we now understand modern left wing politicians who have taken over social democratic left wing parties of the past

in many ways this is the most self-consciously backwards looking politician of modern times

even including conservatives and that's something which is quite unusual from what we've seen from left wing parties

and from Labour in the recent past You wouldn't know that mass immigration and woke ideology

had even happened if you just listened to what Andy Burnham says he never brings it up

and that's very smart however, because it's very unpopular nobody wants woke politics

and nobody wants mass immigration. It's only about a quarter of the country

the city-dwelling progressive liberal types, who are enchanted by that. Keir Starmer happens to be one of those people

So the second anything happens that refers to a minority group in any way

he's out there pounding his chest and saying, oh, brilliant, I can virtue signal as a good man

Andy Burnham isn't thinking like that. And he's thinking, okay, what do people actually want

And so he belongs to, I guess, what we call the post-woke left, where it's not that he challenges any of these things

he doesn't challenge any of these presuppositions. They're just not his particular focus. He's

concerned about the economic status of the people of the North. And that's not an unreasonable

thing to be concerned about. It's just it's a very particular historical confluence that

has produced what we think of as the North and the post-industrial North

And not only do I think that can't just be revived artificially

it's, as I said earlier, very conservative. Angela Rayner has just been made the housing minister

because they seem to have this deep longing in their souls to put northerners in little terraced houses like their grandparents lived in

But their grandparents lived in these little terraced houses for a reason. It was a step up from living in the countryside and being impoverished wherever they were prior to the Industrial Revolution

And then they were there because the factories were there and this was a community and way of life that they had

Well, the factories are no longer there. So the generative engine of economic prosperity for this community is gone

And unless we're going to take some really drastic, really drastic actions to force us to be the workshop of the world again

that's not coming back and so this looks like a dewy-eyed romantic

nostalgia trip government and I mean I watched Andy Burnham's first cabinet meeting and there was

a weird kind of laughter of the damned in it right the kind of the ship of fools

heading towards a whirlpool or something where they just they acted like

we can just think about these issues that come from the 1980s

we can beat the ghost of Thatcher and then our job is done

and so okay well let's assume that you do that and we don't get any of the problems that were created

economically from the Labour government in the 1970s we're still left with the rape gangs

we're still left with the insane house prices because the country is just so dramatically overpopulated

we're still left with that general feeling of fear we're still left with the inevitability

of the white British becoming a demographic minority in their own country

what can you do about any of this and Andy Burnham will say nothing this is not on my

radar at all and in fact I'm a bit afraid of going into that direction because I'm worried

that my left is going to call me a fascist over it and I'm going to lose them to the

Greens so I can do nothing and so the problems that we have again and this is assuming we don get any of the left wing economic problems which I think is inevitable that we will get from an Andy Burnham government

This is going to be compounded by a growing issue that grows out of his sight that he's not prepared to look at and he's constantly ignoring

and so when the inevitable right wing backlash comes and it's clearly coming

Nigel Farage may have slipped in the polls recently but Nigel Farage is just an avatar of this

and has taken the space of a right wing nativist backlash and if he fails, okay that's fine

but someone else will come along after him the motives, the forces that are driving the right wing backlash

are not going away and in fact they seem to be getting stronger and so the

liberal establishment really the kind of tail end of the entire Blairite experiment

that Andy Burnham is Keir Starmer was trying to save and fail

and Andy Burnham is trying to essentially ignore the end of that's coming to an end

and so it's one of those things where there's a dramatic tension whenever you see

them laughing that you know there's chaos outside of whatever small space they have that feels safe to them

And you've said before, I've heard you say on record, you think the Labour Party is effectively done as a political force

and you still stand by that. I wonder how many of them actually, in their heart of hearts

probably agree with you, know that they've got three years left to fulfil whatever agenda they have

and to enjoy the Westminster cocktail parties. There's a reason that Burnham didn't call an election

He's not going to win it. So let's look at what happens after that. Let's assume that this project goes to its inevitable conclusion

and see, you know, what slash who replaces it. I'm always like, you know, there is the assertion that GV uses

you know, Farage News, and I think Nigel's in the next room at the moment. You're a reluctant supporter of Nigel for a period of time

You no longer are. Why not? Well Nigel Farage Doesn't Realise that he is also the tail end of Blairism He's

Promising to fix Their mess The name of his party is literally reform

You don't reform something You intend to get rid of You reform something you intend to keep

And so he's looking at the current paradigm Which he is a product of

He's been in politics all the way through the Blair era As an MEP

and now as an MP and he is constantly saying and if you look at the

if you listen to the actual rhetoric he uses he uses the same kind of

abstract non-particular determinants that Keir Starmer Tony Blair or whoever else would

have agreed with in we need to look after our values we need to look at

look at the institutions the institutions are failing oh look at our high streets

It's like, okay, but what if these were all in really good condition, but there were no British people around

Would that be acceptable? And he would have to say, well, yeah. And he said this on many occasions, that he's not concerned about demographic change

He's not concerned about mass immigration. He's concerned about communities getting along with one another

He's concerned about our values. It's like, okay, but the values are not separate to the people that hold them

There's a reason that foreigners don't hold British values, and there's a reason that we do

and the appeal to the values in the abstract is a really weird thing to make

because it's like, well, if these values end up destroying our communities

of what use were the values? Why were we holding to them? Why weren't we using values that actually serve us

Why were we giving up our civilization in the name of a set of values

that I don't even really agree with? I don't agree with tolerance

and whatever the five British values are. I don't really agree with these things

So this is a conversation which both Restore, Lotus Eders, yourself, have been associated with in recent times, which is this civic nationalism, the ethno-nationalism debate, the relative importance of nativism

And I think a lot of the time these words are thrown around in online discourse, and a lot of people don't really understand what they mean

And if they do hear a word like ethno-nationalism, a lot of the time they'll hear, oh, well, you just want to throw non-white people out of the country

and i think um there is more nuance to it than that can you give me the the four dummies explanation

of what we're talking about here sure um so nationalism as a concept emerged in the french

revolution and i'm not a nationalist because it's a product of the french revolution um but a a

generous uh characterization of nationalism would be a political philosophy that i'm sorry i just had

the flu so I'm coughing a bit a political philosophy that concerned itself with the

character and quality of the nation and concerns and the interests of the nation

and this is a series of things that are predicated on the bedrock which is the people of the nation

and then their institutions their customs their habits their accomplishments their history all of

these things bound together and so when you try and separate out ethnic and civic nationalism

What you're doing is you're looking at the nation as a unitary whole and choosing one

layer of it. I like the civic life of the British people

I'd like to extract that out, turn that into an ideology and then essentially give it to

anyone else. And the ethnic component, which is what the nation is built on, all nations are, I mean

the natio literally is the Latin for race. It's a nation is the people that it's comprised of

And when we look at the, I like the culture of Britain, I like the civic life of Britain

I like the history of Britain, well these are all built on the people themselves acting

in their interests in the way that they think is best for their own country

And that's what the history of the British Empire is. And so when you take one of those things out and you say, right, I don't need to worry

about the rest of it, that's a very strange thing to do because you're kind of stealing

the effluence of a people from them and saying, I claim that away from you

And this is obviously an ideological, sorry to keep harking back to this, but this is an

ideological discourse that we have that hasn't really got any bearing on real life. Because when we are engaging in our politics, it's usually on a sort of personal basis

like the the american politics of rabidly attacking your opponents um i guess might make

good television but it's very inappropriate in breton it feels very strange and alien here

and this is why um we we expect to be able to sit down with someone who politically is opposed to us

and talk to them reasonably because at the end of the day they're still our countrymen

they're still part of the same ethnos the natio that underpins all of these things and that

in itself implies a certain level of acceptance whereas in America it's a very ideological I mean expressly ideological country

it's built on a constitution set propositions you have to agree with

whereas in Britain you don't you your British because your ancestry and so this

ethnic versus civic nationalism is kind of a falsehood the there is no such thing as civic nationalism Because if you saying look I just going to take one group of people civic life

and give it to anyone in the world, well, that's just another form of globalism. This is not a thing that belongs to everyone else in the world

They have their own political traditions, and I'm not judging them. I mean, maybe they're good, maybe they're bad

But they're not ours. And so when you say, well, this is now a nation for everyone

you're trying to turn us into a propositional nation like the United States which we're not

so it's quite deceitful really well the logical problem that I have when I hear these sorts of arguments is

you will hear effectively ethno-nationalist cases for countries like Japan or Israel

but when it is applied to England it becomes racist or far right

why is there that distinction? false distinction? I think ultimately it's because

The term racist will eventually Boil down after all of the arguments

Have been made to someone Who believes that people belong to races

I think that's what racist At its bottom really means So if you recognize

For example in Nolan's Odyssey film When the Indian Canadian man Says I am a Greek from Ithaca

If you recognize that actually He belongs to a race which is not greek a separate race or an ethnicity should we say um then that is itself a form of

racism because i'm recognizing a distinction between races i think that's what it all boils

down to and so this is why the left is constantly going on going on about zionism as a form of

racism well if zionism is a form of recognizing the difference between jews and non-jews or being

a japanese nationalist is a form of racism as a different recognizing difference between japanese

people and non-Japanese people then yes I suppose you can say that all nationalism whether

you call it ethno-nationalism or just the holistic view of the nation it is a form of

racism in that framing but that just shows you the paucity and uselessness of the term

racism because it's just not reasonable to ask groups of people to give up their collective

claims to their ancestral lands. That's just not a reasonable thing to do. And the left recognizes this in Palestine or in Ukraine, for example

They completely concede that, no, the Palestinians have a collective right to Palestine

The Ukrainians have a collective right to Ukraine. Well, therefore, we have a collective right to England, to Australia, to wherever we are

from because these are our lands and at the end of the day they will call that a form of racism

and it's just got to be well unfortunately for you that's not a very persuasive case to give up

our countries so this is where this is where i think the nuance comes in because i think now we're

at a point where most reasonable people would accept that but then it is how does that actually

manifest itself in immigration policies in policies towards welfare for citizens being non-citizens

Let's use immigration policy as an example. Sorry. I do apologize. No, no worries

Let's get me over a flip. Yeah, yeah, no, I know the feeling. Let's use immigration policy as an example

You have someone like Steve Laws, for example, who would say, basically

if you're not born in this country, bugger off. You then, on the other side of the spectrum

have someone like Zach Polanski say, everyone is welcome, you know, open the door

where is the sensible where maybe don't use to where where does a sensible uh nativist position

sit on that spectrum um well there there again i don't want to arrive in a specific ideological

spot to say this is the case in all places in all times um it depends on the position that

you're beginning with so for us i mean i think a sensible nativist policy would just be

end immigration if immigration were the solution to our problems is 20 million immigrants not

enough of a solution and if not what number are you asking for you know is it 30 million is it 40

million and if the answer is no that's still not enough then i can't help but feel that we might

be throwing good money off the bad here and saying well immigration maybe it's not the answer to

whatever our problems are um that doesn't mean we have to uh take punitive action against immigrants

although there are definitely immigrants we probably should take punitive action against we've got all sorts of ridiculous i mean we don't know how many foreigners are using the nhs for

benefits tourism because they just don't record the numbers so okay well these are these are all

things that we probably shouldn't tolerate and are doubtless making us poorer but there's there's no

need to go in a particular one direction of the the hard line we have to just get rid of every

foreigner or we have to bring in every foreigner on the other side. There's no reason

we have to choose and be committed to any hardline position. Well you do when you're actually

getting down to the needy grid and determining a policy. A policy

doesn't have to be eternal. The problem that we have with these

two extreme positions is that they are abstract propositional and eternal. We should have infinite immigrants

we should have no immigrants and these policies don't change regarding the situation

like Zach Polanski isn't like oh yeah we have got bit too many. Or Steve Law's like, okay, you're kicking out one too many doctors on the NHS

or something. They don't moderate their positions at all. We can choose the policy for the here

and now that we think is useful in the here and now. And we can be as discriminatory as

we want about this. Okay, well, if we need doctors for the NHS, okay, don't kick out any doctors. But you can kick out all of the welfare dependents because we don't need welfare

dependents. So we can just look at the situation with ClearEyes and say, what is actually in

interests what is actually harming the country and what steps can we take appropriate to improve

the situation yeah you talked about and so another term which again would have been seen as a

you know a dirty word even two or three years ago remigration i think is now becoming a more

normalized part of political debate there is the term of voluntary remigration you had a good

conversation, I don't know, maybe three months ago on this, on particular measures that you

think should be implemented, which would address the very obvious problem that for the last

20 years, this country has let in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who

despise the history, in inverted commas, in the broadest possible sense, the values, the

culture of the country, who hate Britain. What does that mean and what does that look

I think targeting people because of their opinions is probably more difficult than people expect

you'd have to spend a lot of man hours scouring the social media

or checking various histories of theirs to discover their opinions of the country

I think actually just doing it on revealed preference is best is a person here because they want

to be here or are they here because they think we're a frontier they can exploit. And you can look at lots of things

I mean, benefit system is obviously a great one. The sort of, I guess what we call the sort of

The Deliveroo economy, the temporary jobs, the easy-to-get jobs, Uber driving, things like that

And then remittances. What money do they send home? How can we possibly claim integration if they're sending money home

I don't send money to any other countries because I don't feel any other loyalty to any other countries

But these people still do. So they're not joining in the liberal dream of integration

I mean, we don't even talk about integration anymore. you know with 20 million foreigners in and we don't even bother talking about integration

because it's obviously not going to happen um and so there are and i think rupert lowe is

absolutely right when he says well look anyone involved in the rape gangs and knew about the

rape gangs those people can all go because there's an intrinsic betrayal of the british people in

there and i mean one thing that people don't really understand or seem to want to understand

I think on a natural level, people understand that there is a burden of guilt when you do something wrong to someone else

Like, if I stole your car and I was sat here now, you'd be quite annoyed at me

And I'd say, but I returned your car yesterday. What's the problem? He'd say, yeah, but I still acted against you

I still hurt you. Even if I've made restitution, you've still got a right to be angry at me

And I should be at least contrite about this. But we've seen very little contrition from this community

What was the answer? I don't think we're in a position to talk about answers yet

Well, to the extent that there are people who are looking for answers, you have aligned yourself with Rupert Lowe and Restore

Why do you believe that they are currently the best possible option

amongst now the range of parties on the right of politics in this country

They're the most devoured nativist party. Rupert Lowe isn't some sort of hardline online Twitter FNAT

but he is a nativist who recognises the claim of the British people to Britain

and thinks that the government should be working in our interests for once

Have you been concerned about his recent comments around supporting or comments on multiculturalism which would appear to be in tension with that

No, I think that's been taken out of context I think it's not even a slip of the tongue

And I think, I don't think he's wrong. I think, you know, if, say, you know, a man or a woman, a British man or a woman gets a foreign wife and they marry them and bring them, that's fine

That's totally normal. This isn't, I mean, he was specifically using that in the context of integration

So he wasn't arguing for multicultural, separated communities at all. but moreover Rupert Lowe and Russell Britain

recognise the primacy of the claim of the British people to their own politics

as in politics should be serving our interests and if foreign groups are not happy with that

well then they've got other places they can go I can't go anywhere else and see my politics

and my interests served I've only got one government and there's no particular reason that

the British government shouldn't be serving my interests I can't even imagine what the argument

as to why it shouldn't would be how would you make that argument which is why they never do they never argue you know your

interest shouldn't be i mean you're australian this maybe not you but like so my you know my

interest as i'm married i pay a huge amount of tax i've got kids i've got business i can't be

more invested in this country i can't do the right thing any more than i already do why shouldn't the

government be constantly talking to me rather than sidelining me and talking to muslims talking to

immigrants, talking to the LGBT community, talking to government interests like the NHS

or the civil service. You know, Keir Starmer wrote the civil service all handwritten notes to say thank you

It's like, but they're ruining our country. Like, sorry. You know, but for me, what do I get

I get the cold hand. I get the cold face. I get the edge of the knife

I get to pay more taxes. I get to feel unsafe in my town. I get less prospects in future

my children have fewer prospects as they go forward in their lives

and I'm just like this is just wrong and that's the thing that Restore Britain fundamentally

is addressing whatever the issues are is actually incidental, we can cross those bridges when we come

to them the first thing to do is make sure the locus of

concern for British politics is within the British people themselves and moving outwards rather than

outside of us and pushing against us And that's the primary thing. And that's the thing that Nigel Farage himself has never been able to capture. He's always been afraid of being called a racist, being seen as xenophobic, being seen as a nativist or a populist. He doesn't like those terms. And so he desperately tries to evade saying, no, the people in this country who actually matter first, above all others, are the native British people

He'll never say it, he's never said it And it why reform are basically a busted flush Even if they were to form a government tomorrow which doesn even look likely at this point Well let look at so I broadly agree with that you know on a principled level

In terms of some of the practical considerations we're still now need to think about, and there are a few

Number one, some people have raised concern that there is a divide between the leader of the party, Rupert

who is a 1980s kind of old style. He's a very right-wing boomer

Yeah. And by the way, I love that sort of politics. Yeah, yeah. I'm all for that

And the younger, more energetic wing of the party who represents a new type of right-wing politics

that in some respects, whilst not being incompatible with that older style of conservatism

is perhaps in tension with it. How do you reconcile that given that the younger guys are the ones

who are controlling the social media accounts, the younger guys are the ones who are writing policy papers

but ultimately Rupert Lowe is the guy who is the front and centre face of the party

There's not that much of a distinction. I think this has been dramatically overplayed

I mean, Rupert Lowe endorses everything that's in his policy papers and he goes around promoting them as often as he can

And if you read them, they don't represent Twitter discourse, which I think people involved in politics really enjoy Twitter

because it gives them an outlet to express what they think ought to be done

gather lots of information and have heated debates, which are always fun to engage in with the opposition or people who even maybe

slight right deviationists or something like this. And so it feels like a cauldron out of which anything could come

But actually it's much more of a silo than people realize. And so when you actually read through these policy papers, they're just very sensible

They're very, very well executed. And they identify problems with the system, problems with the state of the country

and reasonable propositions on how to fix these. And they're not even sort of hardline or ideological

in the way they formulate their solutions. They essentially indicate that if we do these steps

then we can reasonably expect a certain set of results. And this certain set of results will be in the best interest of the British people

And that is a great start. And so Rupert Lowe can endorse that

You know, the most hardline right-wing Twitter account can endorse that and everyone in between

Because at the end of the day, it might not be the exemplar position that someone who's got a hard right and not a Twitter account would want

But it's still a step in that direction. And it's a reasonable step. It's not a step that is unthinking

It's not a step that is malevolent. It's not going to hurt anyone. It's just going to do the right thing for the right reasons

And so it's very easy to see how Rupert Lowe can absolutely stand behind that, as well as anyone further to the right, because this is just travelling in the right direction

Travelling in the right direction is an interesting term, because I would suggest, at least when you look at it relative to the Polanskys and Burnhams of this world, the three right-wing political parties in this country are travelling in, if not the right direction, a better direction than those alternatives

When you can get them to, yeah. When you can get them to, sure. Where does this end on the right? So at the moment, I would suggest that there are, and again, online discourse can distort your view of reality, but it is still made up of people

And often the people who are more politically engaged and motivated and likely to knock on doors and likely to actually push parties in a particular direction

And many restore supporters hate reform more than the Greens and vice versa

But in a system which is fundamentally a two to two and a half party system, there is going to need to be some accommodation at some point in the future between people who are supporting Kemi Badenoch and supporting Nigel Farage and supporting Rupert Lowe, or else you end up potentially with some Frankenstein, Lib Dem, Greens, Labour coalition, and this country is totally stuffed

Where does this end on the right? I honestly don't know. We're in pretty uncharted territory. So for the last hundred years, you've

had essentially either the Liberals and the Conservatives or the Labour and the Conservatives

as being the two essentially only parties, the only games in town. This has been honestly

I think terrible actually, because what this has done is allowed them to ignore the general

expression of the will of the people loathes i am to use that kind of language um just ignore

people's concerns and just do whatever they like knowing that this can i mean this is why

burnham chose makerfield it's always voted labor he knew it was going to vote for him and so he

went with a conservative message to the labor voting like dynasties of makerfield and said look

i'm just going to do whatever you want put me in charge and they did it you know this is the

political agreement they made And so it may well be that we end up with essentially regional parties It looking like the Conservatives will be the regional party of the sort of the southeast The Lib Dems the regional party of the southwest

Literally, if you look at it on the map, that's where the constituency is. It looks like Labour will be the regional party of the post-industrial north

It looks like Reform will be the regional party of the sort of the bits that are left out of that

right it looks honestly like we're gonna end up in nothing but coalition governments going forward

but that sounds to me like a recipe for nothing getting done in politics and nothing changing and

that would be a disaster but everything's a disaster i mean it's not it's not what i want

but you know at the end of the day i i don't i don't see anyone on the right who can actually

act as a unitary figure because everyone on the right is afraid of the left and for some reason

and I just cannot understand for the life of me why they all desperately want acceptance from the Labour Party

They're desperate for it. And you saw this the other day in Keir Starmer's last PMQs

where they were all being so pally with him. Even Richard Tice got up and asked him a pally question

He said, oh, can we expect a bank holiday if England win? it's like didn't one of your

former speaker just get bludgeoned to death with a hammer and you're just going to be pally

because you're worried about her even Kemmi Badenock ended up being soft with Keir Starmer as if this was some

big team they were all on and until the right the parties of the right realise they don't need the moral

approval of the left and they actually just need to fix the country

I don't think there is going to be unity on the right and even if there was what good would it be

because it would still be morally in hock to the left it would still be oh yeah no we're not racist

sorry we're not going to deport a bunch of foreign criminals sorry we're not going to put the british

people first and until they can bring themselves say no our commitment is actually to the native

people of this country then there's nothing will ever get better for us nothing will ever get better

and it doesn't matter who's in charge left-wing violence is on the minds of a lot of people at

the moment speaking more generally about what is on the minds of many people it is interesting

that there is not a outrage a widespread social conversation about left-wing violence in this

country at the moment why aren't we talking about it nobody's really interested in talking about it

because the they know they control the government they control the courts they control the media

the left-wing paradigm is the dominant paradigm in all of these spaces

the civil servants if I recall correctly something like 95% of the civil service

voted against Brexit so you can't look at institutions that are that captured

and expect any kind of neutrality from them they serve their own interests

their own political ideological interests they will always side with their own

against Nigel Farage who's desperately trying to get into the club and will never be accepted

and somehow failed to realize this they don't care in effect the silence is a form of sanction

if the murder of Wayne Broadhurst can be downgraded to manslaughter even though we all watched the video

of him chasing him around when he was on the floor going for him if that's an accidental murder

an accidental killing then just be aware of what side of the blade that you're on

you're on the cutting edge you're not the one holding the handle they're holding the handle and the cutting edge only goes

one way you're going to be on the rough side of whatever happens and you're going to you're going

to get i mean you know you're not a national figure like amokim was you know none of us are

and so when something terrible happens to us i mean you might even see them celebrating it like

charlie kirk i want to finish with uh referring to the ideological capture of the institutions

that you just mentioned. And I think this is, you know, arguably the biggest problem

of the challenge facing the country because in some respects, it doesn't matter whether it is restored

It doesn't matter whether it's virage. It doesn't matter whether it's even, you know, the Conservatives

after the mother of all come to Jesus moments, which is, I think, improbable

but not outside the realms of possibility. It won't matter if you still have

those institutions that are staffed by people who are not on board

staffed by people who still have that same worldview so the question is how do you go about that project if you do have you know the

leaves of powers again you know of actually going about fighting against the institutions that will

try and stop you at every turn well I mean I think purging them wouldn't be sufficient you just have

to reconstitute new institutions you would like there would be no point purging the home office

in its current state You just need to construct a new institution that fulfilled the functions of the Home Office with a completely different culture in it That what you have to do If we want to do anything good in this country there is such a monumental task ahead of us

that to suggest that Nigel Farage could be the person to do it is laughable

And I'm sorry, and I don't even dislike Nigel Farage, right? But Nigel Farage is a kind of British archetype

that is a sort of popular, cheeky, chappy, wheeler and dealer archetype

He's charismatic, he's a great speaker, but he isn't the kind of man who has actually needed to fix this problem

What is needed to fix this problem is the kind of man who is actually attentive to detail, but just doggedly determined to do whatever needs to be done

regardless of the critiques that he's going to suffer. And unfortunately, the kind of Arthur Daly, Del Boyce, or wheeler and dealer type

he actually relies on the opinions of others for his business. He relies on the goodwill of other people for him to get his deals done

That's not the kind of person who can solve these problems. And unfortunately, that just means Nigel Farage is just frankly wasting everyone's time

And I'm not saying this because I dislike Nigel Farage, because I don't. In many parts, I can probably credit Nigel Farage for my journey from being a liberal to being a right winger

because I remember back in probably 2014, 2015 before Brexit even happened

when he was talking about problems of the left, I was finding myself going

yeah, these are very reasonable points I very much agree with these things

but Nigel Farage decided not to continue his journey to the right

and he seems to have in fact tried to make a journey towards the left

and so I just I think it's in his character to want the attention

but not want to actually do the job. And I think a lot of people are seeing that as well

And that's not even talking about the kind of more seedy nature of it being a business venture for him

and getting, you know, five million pounds in donations for no particular reason. I mean, that doesn't even bother me, right

I'm not particularly bothered by that. Like, people giving gifts, large gifts to

I guess what we call political influencers, like Nigel Farage of his stature

that's actually not terribly surprising. but I think it is just a part of

the nature of what the kind of archetype that Nigel Farage is

represents and how it acts and he's not acted outside of this at all and it's actually

really weird there's this kind of sort of tone deaf tin-eared sound whenever he says something

like oh I'm for family, community and country no you're not you are

a womanizer you are a guy who likes going out drinking you're a guy like a jack the lad you

know you're not like some staunch respectable conservative i can't be bought and then people

just juxtapose that with the cameo clip sorry if i'm going a bit too fire but like it's just

everyone can see your character nigel and you're not that guy and so you claiming to be that guy

just feels inauthentic and it just shows that we're not going to get what is needed to be done

I want to finish, when this is a question I often ask to finish conversations like this

which take a generally dim view of where the country sits at the moment which I think is a realist view of where the country sits, are there any reasons for optimism

Yeah, I mean things that can't go on forever won't go on forever, so at the end of the

I don't think that the current status quo, the current system as it is, has got that many more years left in it before things just stop working

And if Andy Burnham wants to accelerate that process and take us genuinely back to the 1970s where literally systems just ground to a halt

and the bins didn't get collected and we only had, you know, you got the electricity turned off for a couple of days and people just didn't work

didn't work then yeah I mean that's that's actually not a terrible I mean

that's a place we're gonna have to get to eventually before people realize these

systems will not do what they claim that they will do so we can actually have a

solid and irrefutable mandate for change they're a few people mandate know the

systems themselves are the problems they're in fact destroying us and now

they've themselves collapsed so we've got to do something different so I'm I'm

I'm an optimist by nature to be honest and maybe I'm looking at this too optimistically

because it's going to be rough when all this stuff stops but at some point it has to stop

It can't carry on like this. So at some point in hopefully not the too distant future, it'd be better to just pull

the plaster off and get on with it. Take the pain as quickly as possible, get it over and done with, just make the changes

we have to make and we'll try and rebuild from the collapse

Karl, thanks for coming in, Geoff. My pleasure. Thank you