WEBVTT - Brexit as Game of Thrones, with Gillian Tett 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.479 I'm Bethany McClain, and this is making a killing interviews, 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.520 exploring the headlines you thought you understood, and finding the 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.120 long term lessons we can all learn from today's business stories. 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.599 So Brexit. I'm a longtime business reporter, but I have 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:19.680 to admit that Brexit seems a bit to me like 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:24.800 tax policy or healthcare reform, A big, thorny, multifaceted issue 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.480 that you know you should understand because it's affecting our world. 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.280 But where to start? So let's start with a quick 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:36.000 recent history lesson. On June twenty third, twenty sixteen, Britain 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.800 held a public vote to decide whether the UK should 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.479 exit the European Union or remain. The vote was for 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:46.800 Britain to exit or brexit, but just to highlight the obvious, 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.680 that was more than three years ago. Since then, the 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:52.480 world has watched as the actual Brexit date has been 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:57.160 delayed twice. It turns out divorce negotiations are just as 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.320 dramatic for political unions as they are from marital ones. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:04.400 As of this episode recording, current Prime Minister Boris Johnson 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.320 has said that the UK must leave the EU on 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.760 October thirty first, twenty nineteen perhaps it's not a coincidence 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.240 that that's Halloween. Johnson says this must happen with or 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.640 without a deal. The latter is called no deal Brexit. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.640 Johnson has actually used the phrase do or die, and 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.840 while most economists believe that no deal Brexit wouldn't lead 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:30.000 to death, they do predict serious economic harm. I'm deeply 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.400 curious about what the impact of Brexit would be, as 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.480 well as the conditions and personalities that have contributed to 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:40.040 this whole affair as the Financial Times. As Jillian Tete, 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.000 today's guest on the podcast, has said, Americans used to 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:47.240 think that British politics is all like Downton Abbey, but 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.640 now it's turning into Monty Python. At the risk of 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:55.040 analogy overload, you can also think Game of Thrones. Today's 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:59.040 Brexit politicians are famous for their last minute, desperate moves, 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:04.680 playground politics, and for having no long term strategy. Chaos 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.160 and unpredictability are the order of the day. As this 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:11.720 episode goes into production, time was running out to secure 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.360 a deal or an extension, and Bloomberg reported that the 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:19.040 Bank of England was dusting off its financial crisis playbook. 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.959 While the practicalities of Brexit remain in flux. It's critical 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.960 to understand how we got here, as the fallout from 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:30.359 Brexit will impact well everything. I'm honored to sit down 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.720 today with Jillian Tete, a British author and the chairman 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.519 of the Financial Times editorial Board in the US. Among 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:39.960 many other things. Jillian has a way of looking at 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:43.680 the big picture questions and implications of Brexit. In the 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.000 US as in the UK, We're watching the political norms 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.600 and processes that we've all been used to for the 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:52.920 last few decades breaking down, which leads to the biggest 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.079 question of all is there a right level of dysfunction 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:01.360 in modern democracy? So Jillian, let's start with this. Who 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.040 are what is to blame for the chaos that is erupted? 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.919 Is this, in the end a story of personalities and egos? 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.840 Is it a story of this larger trend of nationalism? 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.920 Or is it a story of basic economics. I think 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:14.640 what you can see when you look at the data 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.600 is a populism right across the Western world has increased 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.680 dramatically since twenty ten. There's a very powerful chart which 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:26.720 Bridgewater the Hedge Funds put together looking at what proportion 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:31.760 of the vote goes to populist candidates, and it peaked 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:35.280 at about forty in nineteen twenty nine, having been a 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:37.920 lot lower earlier than the century, and then it fell 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.800 back very sharply after World War Two, and from about 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.440 twenty ten onwards it exploded again from a level of 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.920 around five percent to about forty percent. Now, it would 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:52.520 be very easy to assume that's about economics, and certainly 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.080 the two thousand and eight crisis had a very big 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:59.200 impact on the political system in that many people felt 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.480 very angry. But unlike the nineteen thirties when populism was 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:07.480 last is high. The overall economy has not been shrinking 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:10.040 in the last decade. On the contrary, America has just 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:14.480 had ten years of growth, and even Europe, including the UK, 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.760 has actually done quite well economically in the last few years. 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:20.520 Now you can say, well, in that case it's down 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.279 to income inequality, and that's certainly part of the issue. 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.120 But in my view, one of the bigger problems is 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:31.240 that our political systems are increasingly out of tune with 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.960 our consumer culture and the way that technology has reshaped 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.600 our ideas of what's normal in terms of expressing ourselves 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.360 and getting what we want. So how does that specifically 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.880 impact Brexit or how did that impact the original referendum? 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:50.160 But what's happened in the UK it's essentially we've had 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:55.360 a system based around two key political pillars. Parliamentary democracy, 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.840 which means essentially you delegate your chance to have a 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.560 say to a politician on important issues. And then secondly, 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.760 a three party political system which was dominated by the 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:11.120 Conservatives who were basically sort of free market and Labor 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.240 who were sort of blessed free market, but actually the 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:19.039 ideological differences between them ten years ago was not very significant. Ithash, 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:24.240 it's a mishmash. Yes, what's happened is that the referendum 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:28.279 essentially gave power to the people, not to parliament, and 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:32.120 in many ways that actually chimes better with modern consumer 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.040 culture because you know, in the UK, like the US, 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.800 people are constantly voting on their phones, whether it's just 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:42.240 liking or not liking someone's picture on social media, or 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.440 voting for a reality TV show or something like that, 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.960 and so having been given a taste of people power, 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.440 people seems to have really liked it. At the same time, 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.400 the political parties which were based on being pro market 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.480 or anti market have begun to fracture because the issues 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:03.000 has become increasingly important. It's not based around free or 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.359 unfree markets. It's actually based around the idea of what 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:10.080 the British nation should be and how it should dovetail 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.960 with Europe or not dovetail. So let's do the political 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.640 parties first before we get to consumer culture. Is it 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.240 right to think then, that the political parties are trapped 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:22.200 in an old paradigm of free markets versus not free markets, 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.360 where the issues of the day have shifted under them. 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.200 I think it's absolutely the case that the issue that 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.920 divided the political spectrum really during most of the twentieth century, 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.919 which was pro free market or anti free market, is 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.599 no longer the only axis on which political parties are based. 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.320 And that's true in many ways of America as well 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.000 as Europe. These days, question of whether you're a nationalist 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.880 or globalist is increasingly the key question that divides and 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:51.960 defines people. At the same time, though, there's also a 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.520 bigger problem, which is that the explosion of technology in 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:59.880 twenty first century has created a sense that people have 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:04.480 a god given right to customize everything that you the consumer, 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.800 have your iPhone and you can choose to shape the 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.440 world exactly as you want. You can order food as 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:12.560 you want, you can choose your friends as you want. 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.960 You shape your identity, you shape your news as you want. 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:21.200 And the idea of traditional twentieth century political parties is 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:25.080 a bit like vinyl records in the age of the playlist, 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:28.680 because people today assume that they choose their playlist exactly 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.360 as they like, and no one's playlist is going to 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:33.960 be the same as anyone else's. And the idea of 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:38.400 just accepting preset music packages just it isn't in tune 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.040 with consumer culture. So would you argue that increases unpredictability. 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:44.600 I think people are increasingly going for what I call 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.520 pick and mix politics, like pick and mix consumer culture. 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:53.240 They're going for shiny brands, shiny ideas, shiny people. So, 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:59.200 whether it's nationalism or Brexit or Green New Deal or 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.440 Trump the ebody politician, that's been the trend. And it's very, 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.800 very volatile and very hard to predict what's going to 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.920 happen because what you're seeing are these constant explosions of 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.800 what I call cyber flash mobs, people getting very angry 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.480 or very excited about an issue online, seemingly out of nowhere. 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.880 So is the shininess, the shiny object phenomenon, the cyber 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.120 flash mob. This seems to me to be synonymous with 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:28.560 a certain kind of short term thinking that is ruling 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.800 our world, is at the expense of a longer term, 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:35.360 more strategic thinking, or is it every bit is honest 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:39.199 and strategic in its way. Well, the good news about 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:41.000 what I call this new era of pic and mixed 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:43.840 politics and people power of you like, is that it 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:46.960 does create a sense of being empowered, and often it's empowered, 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.160 and it can sometimes be used for good because if 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.959 you think how environmental issues come out of nowhere and 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.120 suddenly coalesced around figures like Greta Tumberg, that's an example, 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.040 if you like a populism for good or even hashtag 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:05.120 met the gender battles. But the problem, of course, is 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.360 that you can't ever have a situation of long term 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.760 planning and you can't talk about trade offs very easily 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:16.040 when you're dealing with one dimensional, single issue political movements. Yes, 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:18.560 instant gratification and trade offs are kind of two different 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.600 modes of thinking, right absolutely, And if you look at 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:23.600 what's happened in Britain turned up to Brexit, you know, 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:26.600 why did Brexit happen? I do think the cultural politics 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:30.040 has changed significantly. I do think that two thousand and 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.560 eight left a group of people in England feeling quite 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:38.559 rightly angry about the way the economic structures had been formulated. 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.280 And there's certainly a sense that people were getting fed 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:46.960 up with the bureaucratic remoteness of Brusthels and European Commission 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.079 because it didn't in any way, shape or form seemed 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:52.920 to be democratic as far as people were concerned in 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.440 their everyday lives. So that all contributed this general direction. 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:00.480 But the way that the Brexit issue was aid amongst 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:03.320 the public was that people seized on it as a 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.360 reason for their discontent and tragically voted for it without 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:10.320 really having much idea what it actually was going to 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.800 be or what it was. And what's become very clear 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.720 in the intervening period of time is that even the 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.320 leaders who were championing Brexit had no idea what it 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:21.600 was going to be. So is it fair to say 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.480 that Brexit in a way masqueraded as empowerment. In other words, 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.680 it was empowerment in the guise of or it was 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.040 chaos and the guise of empowerment in the sense that 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.199 people ultimately made a choice that may not be in 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:37.280 their best interests. People votive of a Brexit for many reasons. 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:40.760 Some people had sat down and really clearly thought, yes, 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.560 I want to be free of the European Union and 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:48.240 recreate Britain in a different image. And those people who 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:51.760 had that feeling tended to split into two camps. Some 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.280 wanted to recreate a very free market Britain and make 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:56.960 it turn it into a Hong Kong or Singapore off 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.960 the edge of Europe. Others were just filled with nostalgia 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:02.840 year and what I call the Daily Mail party, who 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:07.120 wanted to go back to village greens and cricket and 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.520 all those kind of things, and that was very backward 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.920 looking and ironically quite anti free market. So you had 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.400 two very different visions of how to run the country 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.560 in a Brexited scenario for those people who wanted out. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:21.720 But what's really tragic because I think that lots of 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.360 people just voted Brexit because they wanted to kick the elite, 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.640 or they were angry, or it seemed like something which 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.520 just expressed how they felt at the time in terms 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:33.480 of we just want to shake it up. A bit. 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.760 One of the tragedies of the UK, both a blessing 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:40.200 and the tragedy, is it's kind of been quite a 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.119 secure place for many, many, if not decades and centuries, 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.240 so people in the UK don't really know how systems 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.720 can crumble and how fragile countries can be, and I 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.480 think they're probably a bit complacent and careless. I want 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:55.600 to come back to that. But something you said it 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:57.960 is super interesting because it seems to me that it's 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.920 an odd clash of the nostalgia for an old world 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.200 combined with the embrace of the shiny new object. And 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.000 so it's this odd combination of these two factors that 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.800 helped create Brexit, at least in part. There's definitely a 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.840 sense of nostalgia amongst many people in the UK, particularly 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.000 the older generation. In many many families, including my own, 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.679 the older generation voted for Brexit on some general sense 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:28.040 of frustration with how the world had become and a 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:32.640 sense of nostalgia too, and the younger generation didn't. So 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.360 that was definitely part of it, and you can see 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:39.280 that in the polling data. In an overwhelmingly Brexit was 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.760 something that older people voted for and overwhelmingly the younger 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.600 people did not, but there was also a sense of 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.480 just well, you know, stick it to them. We're fed 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.240 up with these remote, facist bureaucrats in Brussels, who are 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.000 you know, shaping our destiny in ways that we don't 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.320 don't like and don't have a saying. How much of 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:00.920 it was this sense that the European Union us bureaucracy 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:05.440 that was unanswerable to any real people. There was definitely 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.440 a sense of frustration with the bureaucracy, which was partly 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:11.240 whipped up by the media and by the Brexit campaign. 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.520 But having actually worked in Brussels myself at an early 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.160 point in my career as a journalist, ironically at the 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:20.679 same time as Boris Johnson, I can absolutely understand why 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.720 people are disgusted and furious with the Brussels bureaucracy, because 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:28.000 the reality is the European Union is very bureaucratic, and 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.320 it is very faceless, and the biggest problem of all 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.600 about the European Union is that it was dreamt up 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:38.280 by a group of unknown officials who people don't feel 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.000 much identity with. And it's very interesting because if you 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:45.000 turn over a euro note, the currency note, which of 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:47.200 course the UK doesn't have, but it's very symbolic of 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:51.319 what's happening. The Euro is the only currency in the world, 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.599 major currency which has no faces on the side of 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.880 the note. It's just got imaginary buildings and they literally 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.720 imagine new buildings because the commit couldn't decide which buildings 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:04.280 to put onto the urinoes, and they couldn't agree on 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.680 a face, because there is no one individual who acts 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.600 as a founding father or is central to the founding 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:13.440 mythology of Europe in the same way as America. And 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.760 you might say, well, that's just an accident of history. 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.480 Who cares, But the reality is that Europe's never had 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:24.080 a central pole around which the popular voters could coalesce 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:28.760 or shared mythology, and the UK certainly doesn't have any 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:33.760 sense of shared mythology or founding father sentiment for the 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:36.600 European Union, and so in the end it end up 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:38.920 literally being a sort of a bunch of faces bureaucrats 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.560 in the eyes of most British voters. Isn't that so interesting? 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.440 Because there's a modern anonymity to that that seems clean 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:49.320 and potentially empowering, and that it's not tied to a 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.720 person and yet it's the very facelessness I've been rereading 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:55.240 Joseph Campbell as well, in the lack of myth around 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.400 it that is also potentially incredibly dangerous, because these myths 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.920 in the founding they or a mother narrative is incredibly 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:04.440 important to us as people. Well, I'm trained as a 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:06.560 cultural anthropologist and I have a PhD in it, and 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.240 every single society in the world, as anthropologists, know a 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.160 some kind of founding myth or some kind of shared 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:17.200 mythology les source of the identity. And I remember being 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.040 very struck when I first started coming to America just 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:23.840 over a decade ago, that I'd go into bookstores and 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.640 to see shelf off the shelf off the shelf of 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:30.520 books on the founding fathers in America and someone's coming 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:32.880 from the UK. That was kind of weird. Yeah, And 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.200 I realized that that was a glue which defines so 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:40.000 much of the intellectual shared experience in America. I want 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.000 to come back to your point about the arrogance of 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:45.360 not recognizing fragility, because I think there's yet another link 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.880 between Brexit and the financial crisis involving that. But before 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:50.640 we go there, let's go back to the people you 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.040 mentioned working with Boris Dance and I always have a 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.040 fascination with the personalities that the hearts of stories. And 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.680 maybe I'm wrong to fixate on Boris dancing, or maybe 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.600 I'm not. You're not wrong to fixate on Bross Johnson. 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.560 I mean, you know, when he began to rise and 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.440 became Mayor of London, many of us were pretty stunned 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:11.200 and who a journalist who worked with him? And we 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.560 rolled our eyes and went, goodness me, but you know, 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:15.080 he kind of pulled it off as Mayor of London. 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:16.960 He didn't do a bad job. Why were you stunned? 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:18.800 Paused on that. There was a great line I read 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:21.400 about him about where some of his work as a 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:23.800 journalist that he had made his name. I think this 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:25.720 was from a Guardian piece that he made his name 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.320 by almost single handedly developing a compelling narrative that everything 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.920 emanating from the EO was either a lunar or a sinister. 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:34.520 Toward the end of his time in Brussels, his distorted 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.320 stories had damaged his credibility among his peers in Europe, 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.000 but back home he was becoming a household name. Does 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.280 that sound about right? I think that's entirely accurate every sense. 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.760 Does he stand for anything himself? I think, which is 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.280 very modern in a way. Yep, himself Johnny Japes. You know, 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:53.520 he's an entertaining performer. He makes people laugh, he gets 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.080 away with a lot. I mean to give him credit. 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:57.680 He did pretty good job when he was Mayor of 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:00.920 London because Mayor of London is partly at showmanship and 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.640 about promoting a city, and he had a team of 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.080 people beneath him who were actually running the place. So 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.399 you're partly acting as a cheerleader, come lightning rod for 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.360 popular sentiment about a city, and he did pretty well 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:16.520 that way. Being Prime Minister is very different. When you 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.960 said at the start of this conversation that the politicians 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.919 didn't necessarily understand what they were unleashing with unleashing with Brexit, 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:27.480 would you put Johnson in that category. Well. Johnson famously 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.200 wrote two op eds in the last few days, one 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:32.880 pro Brexit, one Andy Brexit, and he couldn't decide which 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:35.400 one to adopt, so he could have flipped either way. 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:37.960 He chose to go with the Brexit side, as much 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:41.280 to do with his positioning inside the Tory Party, it seems, 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.480 and having gone down that path. He then basically pinned 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:47.920 his color to that mast with more and more further 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:53.120 part definitional exercise. Do I think he always believed passionately 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:57.680 and campaigning against Brussels? No? Was it very convenient for him? Absolutely? Yes, 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.320 so very post Madern in a sense of defining yourself 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:04.960 according to momentary whims rather than having some deep foundational 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.600 notion of self. Perhaps a little bit similar to the 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.040 lack of a founding myth in an odd way, right, 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.600 I think that he knew how to tap into voters 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:16.280 and things, and I think that what does probably does 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:20.520 define him as a generalized belief in the UK as 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:23.560 a jolly, plucky little country that can stand up on 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:26.680 the world stage. And he likes the idea of englishness 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.240 in general and championing that. So I do think that's 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:34.960 probably his guiding instinct. What about the other politicians involved? 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.640 Are there any who you look back and say this 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.320 was admirable or did it feel like the proverbial cluster? 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:46.520 Among all politicians? There are characters who have stood up 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.520 and tried to champion reason within British political spectrum. I 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.080 am one of those who have dealt with someone like 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.520 Ken Clark for many many years. Who's a Tory, a 0:18:56.600 --> 0:19:01.960 centrist Toy, a very pragmatic, sensible Tory, who has fought 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:04.560 to try and maintain some reason inside the Tory Party 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.000 very long time. He of course one of the people 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:10.720 who got kicked out recently, but I'd say Philip Hammond 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:14.760 was always the rather boring Treasury minister finance minister under 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:16.840 Trees and May, who actually did quite a good job 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.159 of trying to keep the ship steady. And again he 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.000 got kicked out as part of the recent bloodletting and 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:26.000 purge of people who defined the no deal Brexit. So 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.040 there are people like that who've tried to stand up 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:30.960 inside the Labor Party, which in many ways is even 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.960 more tragic given what should be happening there. You know, 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.040 the Labor Party should be seizing on the madness of 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:40.080 politics and actually formulating a proper opposition, and in fact 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:44.520 they've veered wildly off to the left and become in 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:49.000 many ways so alienating they're almost unelectable. Now. Tragically, they're 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:51.199 again people there who've tried very hard to keep the 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:55.160 party tethered to some kind of viable strategy. But it's 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:59.080 been very tough. British politics a day is deeply, deeply tragic. 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.040 So is it more a tale of dysfunction than a 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:05.520 tale of functioning? And what I mean is looking at 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:08.640 it from the outside, when you see Parliament pushing back 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:11.680 against Johnson's plans for a no deal Brexit, it looks 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:14.560 like dysfunction. But then I wondered, is it function within 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:16.840 dysfunction is a way of trying to put a check 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:19.600 on a fairly someone who strikes me as having the 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:22.159 potential to be a fairly autocratic ruler. And is it 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.399 a form of functioning or is it simply dysfunction. What 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.800 what's happened is essentially the democratic structures are being stress 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.000 tested to the limit. And you know the fact that 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:35.280 the Parliament pushed back against no deal Brexit is in 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.639 my view, just common sense in saying it would be 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.000 absolute madness just to drive this country off a cliff 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.720 for the sake of making a point. Problem, of course, 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:45.960 is they pushed back against no deal Brexit. They've tried 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.920 to block it. Johnson then tried to essentially close down Parliament. 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:52.919 He got overruled by the law courts. And now your 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.960 face with the fundamental problem, which is or three problems. 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.119 One is that no one really knows today what the 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:01.960 ultimate source of democratic will is. In the UK, it 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.679 used to be parliamentary structures and people delegate their votes. 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:08.359 Then a long term the referendum and people had a 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:12.080 direct vote. The consequences of that is that the two 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.719 parliamentary democratic structures are now pitted against each other because 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:18.760 the results of a popular vote have gone against the 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:22.480 parliamentary vote. Not clear what rules. And of course the 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:24.080 old problem is that when the vote was put to 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:28.080 the British people in the original Brexit referendum, they were 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:31.240 only really given two options, which was to stay in 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:33.800 the union or out of the union. And of course 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:36.040 now on the table there are three options. Says to 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.680 stay in the union, there's to exit with a deal, 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:41.119 and there's to do a hert brexit and exit without 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:44.240 a deal. And no one actually knows where the population 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.360 stands if they're faced with those three choices, apart from 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:49.840 the two which they had initially. What do you think 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:51.919 do you have a sense of anecdotally of where the 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:54.639 population would stand, or maybe the better question is do 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:56.640 you have a sense of where at the right place 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:59.919 to stand would be? Personally speaking? If it's up to me, 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:03.359 I'd say we should basically revoke our Article fifty and 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:05.840 stay within the europeanion. And that's my own personal view. 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.040 I also recognize that many people in the UK are 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:13.200 just absolutely fed up to the back of their teeth 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:15.720 with the whole thing. And I also recognize there is 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:17.840