Speaker 1: I'm Bethany McClain, and this is making a killing interviews,
Speaker 1: exploring the headlines you thought you understood, and finding the
Speaker 1: long term lessons we can all learn from today's business stories.
Speaker 1: So Brexit. I'm a longtime business reporter, but I have
Speaker 1: to admit that Brexit seems a bit to me like
Speaker 1: tax policy or healthcare reform, A big, thorny, multifaceted issue
Speaker 1: that you know you should understand because it's affecting our world.
Speaker 1: But where to start? So let's start with a quick
Speaker 1: recent history lesson. On June twenty third, twenty sixteen, Britain
Speaker 1: held a public vote to decide whether the UK should
Speaker 1: exit the European Union or remain. The vote was for
Speaker 1: Britain to exit or brexit, but just to highlight the obvious,
Speaker 1: that was more than three years ago. Since then, the
Speaker 1: world has watched as the actual Brexit date has been
Speaker 1: delayed twice. It turns out divorce negotiations are just as
Speaker 1: dramatic for political unions as they are from marital ones.
Speaker 1: As of this episode recording, current Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Speaker 1: has said that the UK must leave the EU on
Speaker 1: October thirty first, twenty nineteen perhaps it's not a coincidence
Speaker 1: that that's Halloween. Johnson says this must happen with or
Speaker 1: without a deal. The latter is called no deal Brexit.
Speaker 1: Johnson has actually used the phrase do or die, and
Speaker 1: while most economists believe that no deal Brexit wouldn't lead
Speaker 1: to death, they do predict serious economic harm. I'm deeply
Speaker 1: curious about what the impact of Brexit would be, as
Speaker 1: well as the conditions and personalities that have contributed to
Speaker 1: this whole affair as the Financial Times. As Jillian Tete,
Speaker 1: today's guest on the podcast, has said, Americans used to
Speaker 1: think that British politics is all like Downton Abbey, but
Speaker 1: now it's turning into Monty Python. At the risk of
Speaker 1: analogy overload, you can also think Game of Thrones. Today's
Speaker 1: Brexit politicians are famous for their last minute, desperate moves,
Speaker 1: playground politics, and for having no long term strategy. Chaos
Speaker 1: and unpredictability are the order of the day. As this
Speaker 1: episode goes into production, time was running out to secure
Speaker 1: a deal or an extension, and Bloomberg reported that the
Speaker 1: Bank of England was dusting off its financial crisis playbook.
Speaker 1: While the practicalities of Brexit remain in flux. It's critical
Speaker 1: to understand how we got here, as the fallout from
Speaker 1: Brexit will impact well everything. I'm honored to sit down
Speaker 1: today with Jillian Tete, a British author and the chairman
Speaker 1: of the Financial Times editorial Board in the US. Among
Speaker 1: many other things. Jillian has a way of looking at
Speaker 1: the big picture questions and implications of Brexit. In the
Speaker 1: US as in the UK, We're watching the political norms
Speaker 1: and processes that we've all been used to for the
Speaker 1: last few decades breaking down, which leads to the biggest
Speaker 1: question of all is there a right level of dysfunction
Speaker 1: in modern democracy? So Jillian, let's start with this. Who
Speaker 1: are what is to blame for the chaos that is erupted?
Speaker 1: Is this, in the end a story of personalities and egos?
Speaker 1: Is it a story of this larger trend of nationalism?
Speaker 1: Or is it a story of basic economics. I think
Speaker 1: what you can see when you look at the data
Speaker 1: is a populism right across the Western world has increased
Speaker 1: dramatically since twenty ten. There's a very powerful chart which
Speaker 1: Bridgewater the Hedge Funds put together looking at what proportion
Speaker 1: of the vote goes to populist candidates, and it peaked
Speaker 1: at about forty in nineteen twenty nine, having been a
Speaker 1: lot lower earlier than the century, and then it fell
Speaker 1: back very sharply after World War Two, and from about
Speaker 1: twenty ten onwards it exploded again from a level of
Speaker 1: around five percent to about forty percent. Now, it would
Speaker 1: be very easy to assume that's about economics, and certainly
Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight crisis had a very big
Speaker 1: impact on the political system in that many people felt
Speaker 1: very angry. But unlike the nineteen thirties when populism was
Speaker 1: last is high. The overall economy has not been shrinking
Speaker 1: in the last decade. On the contrary, America has just
Speaker 1: had ten years of growth, and even Europe, including the UK,
Speaker 1: has actually done quite well economically in the last few years.
Speaker 1: Now you can say, well, in that case it's down
Speaker 1: to income inequality, and that's certainly part of the issue.
Speaker 1: But in my view, one of the bigger problems is
Speaker 1: that our political systems are increasingly out of tune with
Speaker 1: our consumer culture and the way that technology has reshaped
Speaker 1: our ideas of what's normal in terms of expressing ourselves
Speaker 1: and getting what we want. So how does that specifically
Speaker 1: impact Brexit or how did that impact the original referendum?
Speaker 1: But what's happened in the UK it's essentially we've had
Speaker 1: a system based around two key political pillars. Parliamentary democracy,
Speaker 1: which means essentially you delegate your chance to have a
Speaker 1: say to a politician on important issues. And then secondly,
Speaker 1: a three party political system which was dominated by the
Speaker 1: Conservatives who were basically sort of free market and Labor
Speaker 1: who were sort of blessed free market, but actually the
Speaker 1: ideological differences between them ten years ago was not very significant. Ithash,
Speaker 1: it's a mishmash. Yes, what's happened is that the referendum
Speaker 1: essentially gave power to the people, not to parliament, and
Speaker 1: in many ways that actually chimes better with modern consumer
Speaker 1: culture because you know, in the UK, like the US,
Speaker 1: people are constantly voting on their phones, whether it's just
Speaker 1: liking or not liking someone's picture on social media, or
Speaker 1: voting for a reality TV show or something like that,
Speaker 1: and so having been given a taste of people power,
Speaker 1: people seems to have really liked it. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the political parties which were based on being pro market
Speaker 1: or anti market have begun to fracture because the issues
Speaker 1: has become increasingly important. It's not based around free or
Speaker 1: unfree markets. It's actually based around the idea of what
Speaker 1: the British nation should be and how it should dovetail
Speaker 1: with Europe or not dovetail. So let's do the political
Speaker 1: parties first before we get to consumer culture. Is it
Speaker 1: right to think then, that the political parties are trapped
Speaker 1: in an old paradigm of free markets versus not free markets,
Speaker 1: where the issues of the day have shifted under them.
Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely the case that the issue that
Speaker 1: divided the political spectrum really during most of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: which was pro free market or anti free market, is
Speaker 1: no longer the only axis on which political parties are based.
Speaker 1: And that's true in many ways of America as well
Speaker 1: as Europe. These days, question of whether you're a nationalist
Speaker 1: or globalist is increasingly the key question that divides and
Speaker 1: defines people. At the same time, though, there's also a
Speaker 1: bigger problem, which is that the explosion of technology in
Speaker 1: twenty first century has created a sense that people have
Speaker 1: a god given right to customize everything that you the consumer,
Speaker 1: have your iPhone and you can choose to shape the
Speaker 1: world exactly as you want. You can order food as
Speaker 1: you want, you can choose your friends as you want.
Speaker 1: You shape your identity, you shape your news as you want.
Speaker 1: And the idea of traditional twentieth century political parties is
Speaker 1: a bit like vinyl records in the age of the playlist,
Speaker 1: because people today assume that they choose their playlist exactly
Speaker 1: as they like, and no one's playlist is going to
Speaker 1: be the same as anyone else's. And the idea of
Speaker 1: just accepting preset music packages just it isn't in tune
Speaker 1: with consumer culture. So would you argue that increases unpredictability.
Speaker 1: I think people are increasingly going for what I call
Speaker 1: pick and mix politics, like pick and mix consumer culture.
Speaker 1: They're going for shiny brands, shiny ideas, shiny people. So,
Speaker 1: whether it's nationalism or Brexit or Green New Deal or
Speaker 1: Trump the ebody politician, that's been the trend. And it's very,
Speaker 1: very volatile and very hard to predict what's going to
Speaker 1: happen because what you're seeing are these constant explosions of
Speaker 1: what I call cyber flash mobs, people getting very angry
Speaker 1: or very excited about an issue online, seemingly out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: So is the shininess, the shiny object phenomenon, the cyber
Speaker 1: flash mob. This seems to me to be synonymous with
Speaker 1: a certain kind of short term thinking that is ruling
Speaker 1: our world, is at the expense of a longer term,
Speaker 1: more strategic thinking, or is it every bit is honest
Speaker 1: and strategic in its way. Well, the good news about
Speaker 1: what I call this new era of pic and mixed
Speaker 1: politics and people power of you like, is that it
Speaker 1: does create a sense of being empowered, and often it's empowered,
Speaker 1: and it can sometimes be used for good because if
Speaker 1: you think how environmental issues come out of nowhere and
Speaker 1: suddenly coalesced around figures like Greta Tumberg, that's an example,
Speaker 1: if you like a populism for good or even hashtag
Speaker 1: met the gender battles. But the problem, of course, is
Speaker 1: that you can't ever have a situation of long term
Speaker 1: planning and you can't talk about trade offs very easily
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with one dimensional, single issue political movements. Yes,
Speaker 1: instant gratification and trade offs are kind of two different
Speaker 1: modes of thinking, right absolutely, And if you look at
Speaker 1: what's happened in Britain turned up to Brexit, you know,
Speaker 1: why did Brexit happen? I do think the cultural politics
Speaker 1: has changed significantly. I do think that two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight left a group of people in England feeling quite
Speaker 1: rightly angry about the way the economic structures had been formulated.
Speaker 1: And there's certainly a sense that people were getting fed
Speaker 1: up with the bureaucratic remoteness of Brusthels and European Commission
Speaker 1: because it didn't in any way, shape or form seemed
Speaker 1: to be democratic as far as people were concerned in
Speaker 1: their everyday lives. So that all contributed this general direction.
Speaker 1: But the way that the Brexit issue was aid amongst
Speaker 1: the public was that people seized on it as a
Speaker 1: reason for their discontent and tragically voted for it without
Speaker 1: really having much idea what it actually was going to
Speaker 1: be or what it was. And what's become very clear
Speaker 1: in the intervening period of time is that even the
Speaker 1: leaders who were championing Brexit had no idea what it
Speaker 1: was going to be. So is it fair to say
Speaker 1: that Brexit in a way masqueraded as empowerment. In other words,
Speaker 1: it was empowerment in the guise of or it was
Speaker 1: chaos and the guise of empowerment in the sense that
Speaker 1: people ultimately made a choice that may not be in
Speaker 1: their best interests. People votive of a Brexit for many reasons.
Speaker 1: Some people had sat down and really clearly thought, yes,
Speaker 1: I want to be free of the European Union and
Speaker 1: recreate Britain in a different image. And those people who
Speaker 1: had that feeling tended to split into two camps. Some
Speaker 1: wanted to recreate a very free market Britain and make
Speaker 1: it turn it into a Hong Kong or Singapore off
Speaker 1: the edge of Europe. Others were just filled with nostalgia
Speaker 1: year and what I call the Daily Mail party, who
Speaker 1: wanted to go back to village greens and cricket and
Speaker 1: all those kind of things, and that was very backward
Speaker 1: looking and ironically quite anti free market. So you had
Speaker 1: two very different visions of how to run the country
Speaker 1: in a Brexited scenario for those people who wanted out.
Speaker 1: But what's really tragic because I think that lots of
Speaker 1: people just voted Brexit because they wanted to kick the elite,
Speaker 1: or they were angry, or it seemed like something which
Speaker 1: just expressed how they felt at the time in terms
Speaker 1: of we just want to shake it up. A bit.
Speaker 1: One of the tragedies of the UK, both a blessing
Speaker 1: and the tragedy, is it's kind of been quite a
Speaker 1: secure place for many, many, if not decades and centuries,
Speaker 1: so people in the UK don't really know how systems
Speaker 1: can crumble and how fragile countries can be, and I
Speaker 1: think they're probably a bit complacent and careless. I want
Speaker 1: to come back to that. But something you said it
Speaker 1: is super interesting because it seems to me that it's
Speaker 1: an odd clash of the nostalgia for an old world
Speaker 1: combined with the embrace of the shiny new object. And
Speaker 1: so it's this odd combination of these two factors that
Speaker 1: helped create Brexit, at least in part. There's definitely a
Speaker 1: sense of nostalgia amongst many people in the UK, particularly
Speaker 1: the older generation. In many many families, including my own,
Speaker 1: the older generation voted for Brexit on some general sense
Speaker 1: of frustration with how the world had become and a
Speaker 1: sense of nostalgia too, and the younger generation didn't. So
Speaker 1: that was definitely part of it, and you can see
Speaker 1: that in the polling data. In an overwhelmingly Brexit was
Speaker 1: something that older people voted for and overwhelmingly the younger
Speaker 1: people did not, but there was also a sense of
Speaker 1: just well, you know, stick it to them. We're fed
Speaker 1: up with these remote, facist bureaucrats in Brussels, who are
Speaker 1: you know, shaping our destiny in ways that we don't
Speaker 1: don't like and don't have a saying. How much of
Speaker 1: it was this sense that the European Union us bureaucracy
Speaker 1: that was unanswerable to any real people. There was definitely
Speaker 1: a sense of frustration with the bureaucracy, which was partly
Speaker 1: whipped up by the media and by the Brexit campaign.
Speaker 1: But having actually worked in Brussels myself at an early
Speaker 1: point in my career as a journalist, ironically at the
Speaker 1: same time as Boris Johnson, I can absolutely understand why
Speaker 1: people are disgusted and furious with the Brussels bureaucracy, because
Speaker 1: the reality is the European Union is very bureaucratic, and
Speaker 1: it is very faceless, and the biggest problem of all
Speaker 1: about the European Union is that it was dreamt up
Speaker 1: by a group of unknown officials who people don't feel
Speaker 1: much identity with. And it's very interesting because if you
Speaker 1: turn over a euro note, the currency note, which of
Speaker 1: course the UK doesn't have, but it's very symbolic of
Speaker 1: what's happening. The Euro is the only currency in the world,
Speaker 1: major currency which has no faces on the side of
Speaker 1: the note. It's just got imaginary buildings and they literally
Speaker 1: imagine new buildings because the commit couldn't decide which buildings
Speaker 1: to put onto the urinoes, and they couldn't agree on
Speaker 1: a face, because there is no one individual who acts
Speaker 1: as a founding father or is central to the founding
Speaker 1: mythology of Europe in the same way as America. And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, that's just an accident of history.
Speaker 1: Who cares, But the reality is that Europe's never had
Speaker 1: a central pole around which the popular voters could coalesce
Speaker 1: or shared mythology, and the UK certainly doesn't have any
Speaker 1: sense of shared mythology or founding father sentiment for the
Speaker 1: European Union, and so in the end it end up
Speaker 1: literally being a sort of a bunch of faces bureaucrats
Speaker 1: in the eyes of most British voters. Isn't that so interesting?
Speaker 1: Because there's a modern anonymity to that that seems clean
Speaker 1: and potentially empowering, and that it's not tied to a
Speaker 1: person and yet it's the very facelessness I've been rereading
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell as well, in the lack of myth around
Speaker 1: it that is also potentially incredibly dangerous, because these myths
Speaker 1: in the founding they or a mother narrative is incredibly
Speaker 1: important to us as people. Well, I'm trained as a
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologist and I have a PhD in it, and
Speaker 1: every single society in the world, as anthropologists, know a
Speaker 1: some kind of founding myth or some kind of shared
Speaker 1: mythology les source of the identity. And I remember being
Speaker 1: very struck when I first started coming to America just
Speaker 1: over a decade ago, that I'd go into bookstores and
Speaker 1: to see shelf off the shelf off the shelf of
Speaker 1: books on the founding fathers in America and someone's coming
Speaker 1: from the UK. That was kind of weird. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I realized that that was a glue which defines so
Speaker 1: much of the intellectual shared experience in America. I want
Speaker 1: to come back to your point about the arrogance of
Speaker 1: not recognizing fragility, because I think there's yet another link
Speaker 1: between Brexit and the financial crisis involving that. But before
Speaker 1: we go there, let's go back to the people you
Speaker 1: mentioned working with Boris Dance and I always have a
Speaker 1: fascination with the personalities that the hearts of stories. And
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong to fixate on Boris dancing, or maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not. You're not wrong to fixate on Bross Johnson.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when he began to rise and
Speaker 1: became Mayor of London, many of us were pretty stunned
Speaker 1: and who a journalist who worked with him? And we
Speaker 1: rolled our eyes and went, goodness me, but you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of pulled it off as Mayor of London.
Speaker 1: He didn't do a bad job. Why were you stunned?
Speaker 1: Paused on that. There was a great line I read
Speaker 1: about him about where some of his work as a
Speaker 1: journalist that he had made his name. I think this
Speaker 1: was from a Guardian piece that he made his name
Speaker 1: by almost single handedly developing a compelling narrative that everything
Speaker 1: emanating from the EO was either a lunar or a sinister.
Speaker 1: Toward the end of his time in Brussels, his distorted
Speaker 1: stories had damaged his credibility among his peers in Europe,
Speaker 1: but back home he was becoming a household name. Does
Speaker 1: that sound about right? I think that's entirely accurate every sense.
Speaker 1: Does he stand for anything himself? I think, which is
Speaker 1: very modern in a way. Yep, himself Johnny Japes. You know,
Speaker 1: he's an entertaining performer. He makes people laugh, he gets
Speaker 1: away with a lot. I mean to give him credit.
Speaker 1: He did pretty good job when he was Mayor of
Speaker 1: London because Mayor of London is partly at showmanship and
Speaker 1: about promoting a city, and he had a team of
Speaker 1: people beneath him who were actually running the place. So
Speaker 1: you're partly acting as a cheerleader, come lightning rod for
Speaker 1: popular sentiment about a city, and he did pretty well
Speaker 1: that way. Being Prime Minister is very different. When you
Speaker 1: said at the start of this conversation that the politicians
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily understand what they were unleashing with unleashing with Brexit,
Speaker 1: would you put Johnson in that category. Well. Johnson famously
Speaker 1: wrote two op eds in the last few days, one
Speaker 1: pro Brexit, one Andy Brexit, and he couldn't decide which
Speaker 1: one to adopt, so he could have flipped either way.
Speaker 1: He chose to go with the Brexit side, as much
Speaker 1: to do with his positioning inside the Tory Party, it seems,
Speaker 1: and having gone down that path. He then basically pinned
Speaker 1: his color to that mast with more and more further
Speaker 1: part definitional exercise. Do I think he always believed passionately
Speaker 1: and campaigning against Brussels? No? Was it very convenient for him? Absolutely? Yes,
Speaker 1: so very post Madern in a sense of defining yourself
Speaker 1: according to momentary whims rather than having some deep foundational
Speaker 1: notion of self. Perhaps a little bit similar to the
Speaker 1: lack of a founding myth in an odd way, right,
Speaker 1: I think that he knew how to tap into voters
Speaker 1: and things, and I think that what does probably does
Speaker 1: define him as a generalized belief in the UK as
Speaker 1: a jolly, plucky little country that can stand up on
Speaker 1: the world stage. And he likes the idea of englishness
Speaker 1: in general and championing that. So I do think that's
Speaker 1: probably his guiding instinct. What about the other politicians involved?
Speaker 1: Are there any who you look back and say this
Speaker 1: was admirable or did it feel like the proverbial cluster?
Speaker 1: Among all politicians? There are characters who have stood up
Speaker 1: and tried to champion reason within British political spectrum. I
Speaker 1: am one of those who have dealt with someone like
Speaker 1: Ken Clark for many many years. Who's a Tory, a
Speaker 1: centrist Toy, a very pragmatic, sensible Tory, who has fought
Speaker 1: to try and maintain some reason inside the Tory Party
Speaker 1: very long time. He of course one of the people
Speaker 1: who got kicked out recently, but I'd say Philip Hammond
Speaker 1: was always the rather boring Treasury minister finance minister under
Speaker 1: Trees and May, who actually did quite a good job
Speaker 1: of trying to keep the ship steady. And again he
Speaker 1: got kicked out as part of the recent bloodletting and
Speaker 1: purge of people who defined the no deal Brexit. So
Speaker 1: there are people like that who've tried to stand up
Speaker 1: inside the Labor Party, which in many ways is even
Speaker 1: more tragic given what should be happening there. You know,
Speaker 1: the Labor Party should be seizing on the madness of
Speaker 1: politics and actually formulating a proper opposition, and in fact
Speaker 1: they've veered wildly off to the left and become in
Speaker 1: many ways so alienating they're almost unelectable. Now. Tragically, they're
Speaker 1: again people there who've tried very hard to keep the
Speaker 1: party tethered to some kind of viable strategy. But it's
Speaker 1: been very tough. British politics a day is deeply, deeply tragic.
Speaker 1: So is it more a tale of dysfunction than a
Speaker 1: tale of functioning? And what I mean is looking at
Speaker 1: it from the outside, when you see Parliament pushing back
Speaker 1: against Johnson's plans for a no deal Brexit, it looks
Speaker 1: like dysfunction. But then I wondered, is it function within
Speaker 1: dysfunction is a way of trying to put a check
Speaker 1: on a fairly someone who strikes me as having the
Speaker 1: potential to be a fairly autocratic ruler. And is it
Speaker 1: a form of functioning or is it simply dysfunction. What
Speaker 1: what's happened is essentially the democratic structures are being stress
Speaker 1: tested to the limit. And you know the fact that
Speaker 1: the Parliament pushed back against no deal Brexit is in
Speaker 1: my view, just common sense in saying it would be
Speaker 1: absolute madness just to drive this country off a cliff
Speaker 1: for the sake of making a point. Problem, of course,
Speaker 1: is they pushed back against no deal Brexit. They've tried
Speaker 1: to block it. Johnson then tried to essentially close down Parliament.
Speaker 1: He got overruled by the law courts. And now your
Speaker 1: face with the fundamental problem, which is or three problems.
Speaker 1: One is that no one really knows today what the
Speaker 1: ultimate source of democratic will is. In the UK, it
Speaker 1: used to be parliamentary structures and people delegate their votes.
Speaker 1: Then a long term the referendum and people had a
Speaker 1: direct vote. The consequences of that is that the two
Speaker 1: parliamentary democratic structures are now pitted against each other because
Speaker 1: the results of a popular vote have gone against the
Speaker 1: parliamentary vote. Not clear what rules. And of course the
Speaker 1: old problem is that when the vote was put to
Speaker 1: the British people in the original Brexit referendum, they were
Speaker 1: only really given two options, which was to stay in
Speaker 1: the union or out of the union. And of course
Speaker 1: now on the table there are three options. Says to
Speaker 1: stay in the union, there's to exit with a deal,
Speaker 1: and there's to do a hert brexit and exit without
Speaker 1: a deal. And no one actually knows where the population
Speaker 1: stands if they're faced with those three choices, apart from
Speaker 1: the two which they had initially. What do you think
Speaker 1: do you have a sense of anecdotally of where the
Speaker 1: population would stand, or maybe the better question is do
Speaker 1: you have a sense of where at the right place
Speaker 1: to stand would be? Personally speaking? If it's up to me,
Speaker 1: I'd say we should basically revoke our Article fifty and
Speaker 1: stay within the europeanion. And that's my own personal view.
Speaker 1: I also recognize that many people in the UK are
Speaker 1: just absolutely fed up to the back of their teeth
Speaker 1: with the whole thing. And I also recognize there is
Speaker 1: a chunk of people who generally do you want to leave?
Speaker 1: So my best guess is if you give the population
Speaker 1: those three options today, you'd probably get a majority, slight majority,
Speaker 1: who'd say let's leave with a deal just to get
Speaker 1: it over and done with. But they don't want to
Speaker 1: have a complete hard break because of the economic consequences.
Speaker 1: But it's not clear and why is it in Johnson's
Speaker 1: interest his self interest to push for foreign no deal brexit.
Speaker 1: Johnson's pushing for a no deal brexit partly for internal
Speaker 1: political reasons to keep control of the Tory Party, because
Speaker 1: the majority of the Tory membership, not the parliamentarians, but
Speaker 1: the membership are strongly in favor of Brexit and in
Speaker 1: favor of a no deal, so he's trying to tap
Speaker 1: into the bigger political party. He's also doing that because
Speaker 1: he wants to distance himself from the opposition parties for again,
Speaker 1: for political reasons, and I think there's also a sense
Speaker 1: of him just being absolutely frustrated that he can't get
Speaker 1: what he wants from the European Union because they're refusing
Speaker 1: to do anything. And of course if he does try
Speaker 1: and can keep negotiating with the European Union to get
Speaker 1: a deal, there's a very well danger that the thing
Speaker 1: will just get delayed and delayed and delayed indefinitely. So
Speaker 1: do you understand where the European Union is coming from. Oh,
Speaker 1: they are absolutely fed up with the UK and cannot
Speaker 1: face having to renegotiate anymore. I mean, the awful thing
Speaker 1: about the Breakxit story is that you mentioned earlier it's
Speaker 1: like a divorce in that it's complicated trying to separate
Speaker 1: a married couple, and that's true. But there's something else
Speaker 1: about the Brexitt story makes it like a divorce, which
Speaker 1: is that anyone who's been to a divorce or had
Speaker 1: close friends who've gone through a divorce knows that, you know,
Speaker 1: the fighting goes on and on and on, and people
Speaker 1: obsess about ridiculous things that they care about and no
Speaker 1: one else does, and they get a point where, no
Speaker 1: matter how polite their best friends are, they just can't
Speaker 1: bear to hear about it again anymore. It feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're trapped in groundhog Day. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what's happened with Brexit, is it. On the continent,
Speaker 1: everyone's kind of moved on. They're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you're still arguing about this stuff. It's like, we're not
Speaker 1: going to go back and talk about this anymore. We
Speaker 1: just don't want to hear these prop stories anymore. Even
Speaker 1: in the UK, there's this really bizarre mentality whenever I
Speaker 1: go back now, which is that no matter how bad
Speaker 1: things keep getting, and they keep getting worse and worse,
Speaker 1: at the moment, everyone's almost a new to it and
Speaker 1: they almost don't want to think about it or talk
Speaker 1: about it. It's like this willful mass, you know, blindness
Speaker 1: and sickness. They just can't even bear thinking about it anymore,
Speaker 1: exactly like a couple who's in the middle of the
Speaker 1: most horrific divorce you can imagine. That's really interesting. It
Speaker 1: makes me think about that tragedy and life when the
Speaker 1: fading becomes about the fading rather than about the substance
Speaker 1: underlying it, And that seems to be one element of
Speaker 1: what you're saying that the fading has become about the fading.
Speaker 1: I think for the Tory Party, the fighting has in
Speaker 1: deep come about the fighting, and for the European Union
Speaker 1: they just think we're just not going to open that
Speaker 1: can of worms again. We can't bear it. And then
Speaker 1: the other similarity, oddly enough, that lapped in my mind
Speaker 1: when you were talking about that, is this idea of
Speaker 1: big problems being so big that it's easier to ignore
Speaker 1: them than it is to confront them. And it's a
Speaker 1: little bit analogous perhaps to the pension problem in the US,
Speaker 1: big frightening thorny, and it becomes almost unbearably tiresome to
Speaker 1: look at it, and so you just rather ignore it,
Speaker 1: even though this is something that arguably is going to
Speaker 1: affect everyone's lives, their children's lives, their grandchildren's lives, but
Speaker 1: it's somehow easier to look away. Why is that, Well,
Speaker 1: it's partly a question of tragedy of the horizons. We
Speaker 1: as human beings are not very good at dealing with
Speaker 1: what I call boshomless problems. Problems are just need to
Speaker 1: go on and on, none which have no resolution, which
Speaker 1: abstract we're not very good at dealing with problems that
Speaker 1: don't develop instep changes dramatic births, but slow moving elliptical
Speaker 1: problems are build slowly over long period of time. And
Speaker 1: in the case of engines crisis, we're very bad at
Speaker 1: thinking about problems that are abstract and we shown't have
Speaker 1: people that we can coalesce around as we try and
Speaker 1: imagine a narrative. Going back to what you said at
Speaker 1: the beginning, that there's this very modern component to what
Speaker 1: happened with Brexit, which is this such shiny object fascination
Speaker 1: in this people empowerment. But yet there's also this very
Speaker 1: long term, sort of universal human truth to it in
Speaker 1: the bottomless problem issue, and it's really these things colliding,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. I was also thinking about your
Speaker 1: comment about this putting democratic process in the UK under
Speaker 1: incredible stress, and it's putting it under an incredible stress
Speaker 1: in a time when everything is in flux. Right, is
Speaker 1: there an understanding of the magnitude of the instability this
Speaker 1: could review. I spent the early part of my life
Speaker 1: in parts of Asia which had been scarred by horrific
Speaker 1: upheavals or in the case of China, cultural revolution, and
Speaker 1: then I did a PhD in based called Tajikistan on
Speaker 1: the Afghan border when it was in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: and then when the Soviet Union broke up, I watched
Speaker 1: that society, which I knew pretty well by then, completely
Speaker 1: implode into killing and utter chaos. So I've seen society's
Speaker 1: implode with my own eyes, and having had that experience,
Speaker 1: I was always very struck that going to the UK
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties and naughties it was like going
Speaker 1: into a warm bath where everything kind of seemed fine
Speaker 1: and soothing and gentle, and there were different political parties
Speaker 1: but you could really not see that much difference between them.
Speaker 1: And I think people have become incredibly complacent about maybe
Speaker 1: how precious and arrogant, how precious democracy is, and how
Speaker 1: precious stability is, and how you don't actually want to
Speaker 1: gamble with it too dramatically. People take it for granted.
Speaker 1: My parents' generation, my grandbrand's generation, were shaped by World
Speaker 1: War Two and a sense of shared sacrifice and unity.
Speaker 1: But people younger than that have grown up in seeming endless,
Speaker 1: if not prosperity, then stability, the tragedy of people in
Speaker 1: so many ways, right that the very thing that you
Speaker 1: crave so desperately. You begin to take it for granted
Speaker 1: when you've had it for a long time, and in
Speaker 1: so doing you begin to put it at risk. That
Speaker 1: is absolutely the truth. And if there are some good
Speaker 1: things that have come out of this mess of Brexit,
Speaker 1: one is a fact that you've actually got a generation
Speaker 1: of people who are newly engagement politics. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the Brexit vote went through was because the
Speaker 1: vast majority of millennials and students just didn't bother to vote.
Speaker 1: They took over granted and then they saw what happened.
Speaker 1: What happened, and all the surveys show, every single polit
Speaker 1: survey shows that if they had bothered to vote, the
Speaker 1: Brexit vote would have been resoundly defeated. So you do
Speaker 1: have younger patrol now who are getting more engaged in politics.
Speaker 1: That's good. You do have people who are beginning to
Speaker 1: think about the constitution for the first time ever, and
Speaker 1: their decision by the Supreme Court to insist that Boris
Speaker 1: Johnson did not have the right to dissolve Parliament has
Speaker 1: really taken the first step to creating some kind of
Speaker 1: constitutional structure in the UK, and heavens knows we need
Speaker 1: that because the third point is that this crazy, crazy
Speaker 1: situation has at least made some people think about the
Speaker 1: dangers of instability and what is at stake. And I
Speaker 1: would say the level of complacency is certainly ebbing today
Speaker 1: and that's a good thing for sure. That of course
Speaker 1: makes me think about the United States, because it's so
Speaker 1: interesting that our two countries are running in parallel in
Speaker 1: some ways. Would you say the parallel is between the
Speaker 1: character of Boris Johnson and the character of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: or as the right analogy between Brexit and the election
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, or is it both. I think it's
Speaker 1: both in the sense of their characters are indeed similar,
Speaker 1: and their postsonas that they play and the role they
Speaker 1: occupy in politics is very similar. It's two brands of
Speaker 1: celebrity politics or celebrity politicians. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I also think that the vote for Donald Trump with
Speaker 1: a squeal of rage against the elite and a desire
Speaker 1: for change something different, and that certainly was one factor
Speaker 1: driving Brexit too. It's very striking that both Boris Johnson
Speaker 1: and Trump in a sense have become bigger than their
Speaker 1: own parties, or rather they're redefining their parties around a
Speaker 1: nationalist agenda rather than just economics, because it's very hard
Speaker 1: to say whether Donald Trump is a right wing or
Speaker 1: left wing, or Democrat or Republican in economic terms, and
Speaker 1: ditto Bris Johnson. But it's also very striking that the
Speaker 1: only politician in Europe who've managed to campaign and win
Speaker 1: on a centrist technocratic platform recently has done so by
Speaker 1: essentially jettisoning the old parties in creating his own shiny party,
Speaker 1: and that was Macro in France. And he did it
Speaker 1: by literally kicking out all the old parties in creating
Speaker 1: his own party from scratch. That's kind of pick a
Speaker 1: mixed politics taken to a new level. Nowhere else is
Speaker 1: a technocratic center actually won over. And so in that sense,
Speaker 1: both Boris Johnson and Trump are very much part of
Speaker 1: the same phenomenon. And what do you make of the
Speaker 1: fact that this is happening in tandem in our two
Speaker 1: countries in the UK and the US. Is there a
Speaker 1: broader lesson in that? I think what's happening right now
Speaker 1: as we're seeing today, just as we saw in the
Speaker 1: financial crisis, that we are living in an era or
Speaker 1: great contagion and globalization have delivered the ability of contagion
Speaker 1: to enlabel ideas and panics to spread very fast. And
Speaker 1: the great irony is that nationalism and antiglobalization have been
Speaker 1: fueled by the channels and platform the globalization. That's actually
Speaker 1: a fascinating comparison if you think about the channels through
Speaker 1: which the financial crisis spread, these subterranean aspects of the
Speaker 1: financial markets, very wonky financial markets, and then the channels
Speaker 1: through which this political uproar has spread, which are very
Speaker 1: human channels, and it's interesting to think about them existing
Speaker 1: in tandem. But you can't, of course ignore the that
Speaker 1: also there's been deliberate attempts to spread negative ideas and
Speaker 1: anger and polarizing concepts by the Russians and others. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating those parallels. So back to this notion of it
Speaker 1: being in France where a technocratic centers candidate did emerge.
Speaker 1: Do you see the potential for that coming out of
Speaker 1: this in the UK? Well, I think almost every Western
Speaker 1: country right now wants to know how to clone Macron
Speaker 1: and get them to speak their local language. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: kind of conditions and the political constitution that allowed France
Speaker 1: to create a new party quickly, which Macron did don't
Speaker 1: exist really in the UK or the US. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to create another party in the US, we know,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty tough in the UK as well. So
Speaker 1: will there be a shiny new party with a shiny
Speaker 1: new leader. Not easily, but it's not impossible in the UK.
Speaker 1: I mean, if there is a big political realignment and rupture,
Speaker 1: then you know, never say never. If we do end
Speaker 1: up with even more of a crisis, never say never.
Speaker 1: There are people who could come back into the fray,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, David Miliban is a name that's
Speaker 1: often mentioned as somebody who's a former labor leader who's charismatic,
Speaker 1: and it's somebody who people could rally around. Who's current
Speaker 1: city in America? So who knows. I suppose it's just
Speaker 1: another interesting parallel that unpredictability is part of the ban
Speaker 1: of mader and existence, and yet it might be the
Speaker 1: salvation as well, just as unpredictability as part of the
Speaker 1: ban of moder and financial markets, but in some ways
Speaker 1: the source of progress as well. If you want to
Speaker 1: be optimistic, one way to understand what's going on is
Speaker 1: to say, okay, so we're seeing an explosion in populism,
Speaker 1: but in many ways. It chafed in politics. It's really
Speaker 1: recognizing that twenty century political structures look as outdated today
Speaker 1: as twenty century shops on the high Street. People are
Speaker 1: expecting something new because that's what they experienced in the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives, So they're looking something new from politics,
Speaker 1: and you could say, actually, what you're seeing is a
Speaker 1: rise of a newly empowered political generation who are used
Speaker 1: to voting on issues that they care about passionately. And
Speaker 1: it can be used for good hashtag me too, the
Speaker 1: green movements, these kinds of popular howls of outrage could
Speaker 1: be channeled for a much more positive outcome and rating
Speaker 1: social movements that we can all approve of. But I
Speaker 1: think back to where we started. It's the idea of
Speaker 1: long term thinking that has to be associated with that
Speaker 1: something other than this concept of instant gratification and lurching
Speaker 1: for the new shiny object. There has to be a
Speaker 1: sense of something other than instant gratification at work if
Speaker 1: we're going to be optimistic about this right, well, the
Speaker 1: question is how you tap into the fact the millennials
Speaker 1: appear at the moment to be more idealistic in some
Speaker 1: ways in the sense of believing in community and having
Speaker 1: less attachment due to materialist things than their parents. Many
Speaker 1: of them do care abo sustainability issues, and they often
Speaker 1: have a more egalitarian sense than their parents in terms
Speaker 1: of in America and the UK, how do you tap
Speaker 1: into those trends and sentiments while also creating a government
Speaker 1: that can work, right, It's actually interesting how you get
Speaker 1: millennials to take their concern about sustainability, which is a
Speaker 1: narrow concern about environmental sustainability, and how you get that
Speaker 1: to expand into a broader question of economic stability and
Speaker 1: economic sustainability. Right, How you take a narrow focus on
Speaker 1: sustainability and make it a big focus on sustainability for
Speaker 1: all aspects of human life and human processes. But in
Speaker 1: many ways, the whole climate change debate has been the
Speaker 1: trigger that sparked a lot of interest and sustainability. But
Speaker 1: it's going well beyond that now, yes, it really already Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look at how these issues are rolling together
Speaker 1: in terms of income, inequality, gender, things like that, it's
Speaker 1: unclear where it's going to go. But you know, anyone
Speaker 1: who thinks that's sustainability or the kind of ESG and
Speaker 1: run metal social governance issues are just a short term
Speaker 1: flash in the pan. Should have a look at what's
Speaker 1: happening inside companies or even financial markets, where increasingly executive
Speaker 1: of feely under pressure to do things. And again, if
Speaker 1: you like, that's a sign of populism with a different face,
Speaker 1: but perhaps a less scary face than the way we
Speaker 1: normally associate the world with nationalism, perhaps a positive one.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the EU. If Brexit
Speaker 1: does happen, does this have broader implications for the EU?
Speaker 1: And I think back to the whole just the mammoth
Speaker 1: effort to keep Greece in deside the EU for fear
Speaker 1: that it would spread to Italy and for fear that
Speaker 1: there's some kind of contagion in this world of contagion.
Speaker 1: If there's Brexit, does the whole EU file apart well.
Speaker 1: The good news from the point of the Union needs
Speaker 1: is that the sheer horrors that Britain's going through in
Speaker 1: a political sense and the pain it could suffer economically
Speaker 1: has been the perfect way to inoculate the rest of
Speaker 1: the European Union against the danger of European Union fever spreading.
Speaker 1: Don't try this at home exactly, and so all the
Speaker 1: surveys suggest that actually support for the European unions go
Speaker 1: up sharply when people look at what's happened to the UK.
Speaker 1: So I don't expect to see the European Union fall
Speaker 1: apart in the short term. If the UK does leave,
Speaker 1: there will be an economic below. The bigger question, though,
Speaker 1: is that the economy is seem to be slowing down
Speaker 1: at the moment, we're heading back into deflation. There's a
Speaker 1: fight around the European Central Bank about how much more
Speaker 1: it could or should actually provide monetary policy stimulus. And
Speaker 1: there's even a bigger fight about whether it's time for
Speaker 1: the European governments to create a pool budget and some
Speaker 1: shared fiscal policy, as say the US has. Mario Draggie
Speaker 1: gave a bigger interview to The Financial Times recently where
Speaker 1: he said it's really down to fiscal policy now, i e.
Speaker 1: Governments in Europe have to act together to create tax
Speaker 1: and spending plans, and so the big question for the
Speaker 1: medium to long term future of the European Union, which
Speaker 1: surely has enough thing to do with the UK. But
Speaker 1: if will the European governments agree to do that, or
Speaker 1: if they don't, can they survive the next economic or
Speaker 1: global recession. What do you think is that something they
Speaker 1: must do or is that something that will exacerbate the
Speaker 1: nationalist tendencies that are already at work in the UK
Speaker 1: by asserting yet more outside bureaucratic perceived bureaucratic control over
Speaker 1: people's lives. Well, that indeed is a big, big question,
Speaker 1: because my best guess is that they will have to
Speaker 1: do at some point to stave off a nasty downturn.
Speaker 1: But as you say, the question is can they do
Speaker 1: it in a way that actually ensures a buying of
Speaker 1: the population rather than further alienation insofar as shared fiscal
Speaker 1: support or budgets are used to try and keep more
Speaker 1: vulnerable populations who feel angry about sort of being dispossessed.
Speaker 1: If you can use it to actually keep them on board,
Speaker 1: then it will actually increase support for the European Union.
Speaker 1: But it's going to be tough. Well, I guess I
Speaker 1: like the idea that they're no easy answers to this,
Speaker 1: because the easy answers are not very appealing in this case.
Speaker 1: So I think I'm glad that there's some potential for optimism. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there definitely is potential for optimism. And if
Speaker 1: you want to feel optimistic, take note of the fact
Speaker 1: that grease is still in the European Union and it's
Speaker 1: actually turned a corner eventually and doing slightly better. Take
Speaker 1: notice the fact that Ireland has really been a remarkable
Speaker 1: success story in terms of adapting to economic dislocation and
Speaker 1: is now not only very strongly pro EU but also
Speaker 1: dealing thus far with tremendous grace about the horrific problems
Speaker 1: being quoted by the Brexit saga for Ireland. So amid
Speaker 1: all this horror show of British politics, there are reasons
Speaker 1: for optimism. And as I say, if nothing else, when
Speaker 1: all is said and done with Brexit, it will at
Speaker 1: least teach all the new voters in the UK to
Speaker 1: not take democracy likely, to not take their systems and
Speaker 1: structures for granted, and above full else to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we do need a constitution, and if we do
Speaker 1: want a constitution, what kind of country do we really
Speaker 1: want to be and how do we actually want to
Speaker 1: have a proper national debate about it in a way
Speaker 1: that frankly we fail to do so for the last
Speaker 1: few decades. So well said, and on that note, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. For coming. Thank you. I expected my
Speaker 1: conversation with Jillian to be wide ranging, but wow, It's
Speaker 1: not often we get to discuss mythmaking and Joseph Campbell
Speaker 1: on a business podcast. But in truth, this all makes
Speaker 1: me think about how obviously entwined the worlds of business, economics, politics,
Speaker 1: and yes, philosophy are. Right now, we're accustomed to thinking
Speaker 1: of all of these as separate worlds, but as with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's election in the US, both the vote for
Speaker 1: Brexit and the implications of it are deeply economic. Indeed,
Speaker 1: there may be no place where the connection between these
Speaker 1: worlds is as obvious as it is with Brexit. But
Speaker 1: if Jillian is right, the silver lining is that it's
Speaker 1: making us all care and think, and that has to
Speaker 1: lead to a better world, doesn't it. Makia Killing is
Speaker 1: a co production of Pushkin Industries and Chalkin Blade. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Ruth Barnes and Laura Hyde. My executive producers
Speaker 1: are Alison mcclein No Relation and Making Casey. The executive
Speaker 1: producer at Pushkin is Mia Loebell. Engineering by Jason Rastkowski.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Jed Flood. Special thanks to Jacob
Speaker 1: Weisberg at Pushkin and everyone on the show. I'm Bethany McLain.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. Find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Bethany mac twelve and let me know which episodes you've
Speaker 1: most enjoyed.