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Full Measure After Hours
After Hours: The Epic Global Battle Between Populists and The Establishment
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Cheryl Akison
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Hi everybody, Cheryl Ekison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure. After Hours today, a fascinating look at the epic global battle between populists and the establishment around the globe. And it might be said right here in the US there is an epic battle underway between establishment political parties and those trying to wrest control away from them and return it to the people. One name for that is populism. But when analysts and establishment figures use the word populism, they usually mean it in a derogatory fashion. It's interesting to hear those who are against populism say that the populists are anti democratic and prey on fear. But at that very moment, those who are criticizing populism are, it could be argued, being anti democratic and preying upon fear. In today's podcast you will hear from two members of the British Parliament on this topic. One Conservative and one Liberal. First Neil Coyle of the Labour Party, which is considered more liberal, and then Marc Francois from the Conservative Party. First Neil Coyle.
- [01:50]
Neil Coyle
I'm the Labour Member of Parliament for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, which is central London.
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Interviewer
For an American audience. What is the Labour Party?
- [01:56]
Neil Coyle
The Labour Party is the centre left mainstream political party in the UK and we've just won a fantastic general election here with a whopping majority.
- [02:05]
Interviewer
Can you sort of set the stage because it's a little bit confused European politics, if anyone's watching them at all. There was this giant election. I happened to be in Greece and I was hearing on the news that Conservatives picked up seats everywhere and then there was a second round and all of a sudden I heard, well, nothing that that didn't happen after all. Can you explain in simple terms?
- [02:24]
Neil Coyle
Yeah, we had some sloppy polls. I think there's some we need to look at why some of that went wrong. Not we as in the Labour Party, we as in the uk, but the Labour Party had a fantastic election result. The In 2019 the Conservatives had an 80 seat majority and they have now fallen to their worst defeat in modern times, more than 100 years. The Labour Party has almost 2/3 of all the MPs in the House of this is again, this is the Labour Party doesn't have a long history in office. This is an incredible result from a really low bar back in 2019. Keir Starmer, our leader, has transformed the Labour Party and I hope will now get round the tougher job of improving the country.
- [03:07]
Interviewer
What do you think were the big driving issues?
- [03:10]
Neil Coyle
So people felt that things were getting worse under the Conservatives and that they were paying more whilst their services dropped. That cost of living hit, as well as seeing increased waited lists for the NHS for healthcare was a real factor. And I had people, even those who were considering not voting, we do a lot of door knocking. My local team is a big campaign team. If people said, oh, things don't change, I would challenge them and say, have they got worse? And uniformly, people would say, yes, they. Things have got worse. They recognised that the Conservatives were not improving services, were charging them more, the corruption was high, that we were seeing the misuse of office and people were angry and they took that out. There was also a massive amount of tactical voting here, so we saw very significant seat by seat swings. So there wasn't a uniform national picture.
- [04:06]
Interviewer
Do you sense, not just here in the United Kingdom, but in Europe, there is fatigue with the politicians who have been running things. In other words, we've seen swings like this. They're not always right to left, sometimes they're left to right. And this is happening in South America and throughout Europe and different places.
- [04:25]
Neil Coyle
I think if you have a narrative about how you are trying to improve things, you'll get air time, you'll get people to listen. If people have felt their taxes go up but their services diminish or their country's economy get worse, then they will look for change. And that's understandable.
- [04:45]
Interviewer
What do you. What are your views on populist trends? We've actually interviewed some people who are called populists, who don't consider themselves populists and they think they're the ones that are truly listening to the people. And then you talk to people who are not populists, who say the populace or the danger. Like, have you engaged in that discussion at all or thought about it?
- [05:05]
Neil Coyle
I get people sometimes. So a couple of weeks ago, I had a bloke, and almost invariably blokes, who came into one of my outreach sessions and said, you know, the laypai weren't listening. We'd been in government two weeks, having won a significant majority, but he felt that we weren't listening already. And his anger was partly about immigration, amongst other issues, but he was also a climate change denier. He had a whole litany of problems. But I think some people in this country have got used to not being challenged about how we do politics. I think certainly under the last government there was a soft touch applied even when we had, you know, people doing Nazi salutes and with Nazi swastika tattoos and things outside parliament protesting. The last government would not condemn that as far right. And I found that deeply uncomfortable. We can't, you know, if you're not prepared to challenge those who we fought and beat at huge cost to this country in the Second World War, then who will you challenge? And I think that that's part of the problem with what some call populism. And also there's a, I find with those who claim to be populist, there's analysis of where problems are, but there aren't solutions. And that's difficult to handle. As a politician. We need to engage people in arguments and fight over the solutions to what we accept as national problems. These people don't have solutions, they have division and it can only end badly. And some of us have been saying since, in particular since the Brexit referendum, the people who said all our problems were the fault of Europe, they haven't turned around and said they were right. They haven't turned around and said, actually that's cost our economy and now there are problems. They've shifted their fight onto migration and non white Brits. And this is a very dangerous path. The UK is in a tough spot in some ways. The Prime Minister is standing on ground and making clear that violence won't be tolerated. But there are some in this country who still don't accept you can be British and not white. And that is a fundamental problem with populists who they just don't understand what modern Britain looks like.
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Interviewer
I want to talk more about immigration in a moment, but first, does the popularity, the relative popularity of some populists teach anything to the establishment parties? Does it make you have to listen or take a turn or consider your own positions?
- [07:45]
Neil Coyle
You have to consider your strategy. And the most successful populist in British politics in recent history was Boris Johnson, who tacked to the far right to draw out that 80 seat majority in 2019. But it was built on sand. You know, he had no foundations he couldn't deliver because there aren't solutions for these people. They are angry about immigration issues that cannot be resolved because they see immigration as anyone who's non white. And I'm afraid modern Britain is multicultural and that is where they have a problem. And you have to face up to that. You have to stand up to that. And Boris Johnson couldn't. And he failed to deliver on a whole heap of promises because populism is false promise. It's not. It can't deliver. And so the Labour Party explained what we could do, was realistic about what we could do, set out an agenda that was deliverable. Our manifesto was criticized for not being ambitious enough. That's purposeful because we don't want to go to the next election and have people say, well, you didn't deliver. We've put in already in traction policies that will deliver before the next election so that we can say to people, look, this is what we promised, this is what we've delivered. Trust us to continue.
- [09:06]
Interviewer
When we've asked people about immigration and illegal immigration, here's what I'm getting and you can tell me where this differs with your feelings. Most people are accepting and welcoming of the Ukrainian immigrants that have come here. Are the refugees on refugee status? Even some on the left, however, think something needs to be done about uncontrolled or uninvited immigration. Is the United Kingdom at a point where it needs to take some action or are the arms just open and there's an endless, sort of an endless welcome mat?
- [09:40]
Neil Coyle
We are taking action. And the Border Command Force is part, part of that. Scrapping the money wasted, sending no one to Rwanda. £700 million that instead of sending money to deliver nothing, some of that money is funding extra officers to work in partnership with other countries, including Turkey, not just frontline France and neighbours further upstream. But look, some of us also think that the UK has a significant international role to play. And some of avoiding people coming here is upstream. It's trying to prevent the problems that result in people fleeing their countries, be they conflict or be they environmental catastrophe that causes people to leave. We have to own and shoulder our responsibility in a way that the last government shirked, frankly, the response to the UK and the US chose to quit Afghanistan. I think that was a mistake, but that decision was made. And instead of supporting those who'd been our allies and trained and worked with us and protected our embassy staff, for example, a lot of those who are abandoned, some of those are coming over the English Channel by boat. They're taking very dangerous routes to get here, even though we owe them. And I find that unpalatable. And the government will change on that front, and it's right that we do.
- [10:57]
Interviewer
Okay. We've been reporting for some years, gosh, for me, decades actually, on immigration, when I worked for CBS News and CNN and now I have this independent show here in the, in the US and over here in Europe. In fact, in 2019, we were on boats in Greece when these poor people are being sent over on boats. We were at the coast guard. They're pulling them out of the, coming over from Turkey, pulling them out of the sea. For people who don't know, there's an immigration issue here as well, what would you say is the status? For someone who knows nothing about European immigration and illegal immigration, what would you say is the status? How would you give them the. What's been happening the past 10, 15 years?
- [11:35]
Neil Coyle
I just think that there is, there's international law that governs these issues. And when you see countries like Cairo, which Egypt rather, which has a, you know, struggling economy, taking millions over the border from Sudan, when you have Bangladesh taking a million Rohingya, Rohingya Muslims, despite being a very poor economy, look at Jordan with more than half its population being Palestinian. There are countries that are not as wealthy, do not have the resources of the US or the UK who are shouldering a disproportionate amount of the burden. And we need to look at ourselves and work out where we stand in global politics, where we stand. Do we want to allow other countries to go under because they can't maintain the demands that are put on them, or do we want to be more supportive and do we want to prevent conflict and environmental catastrophe? We have big roles to play because we have stronger economies and an international history and reputation to uphold. And we can be the bastions of democracy and we can continue standing for our values or we can walk away and I would rather we didn't do that. Look at what's happened in Hong Kong, in Afghanistan. Democracy is disappearing because we are not standing up for our values sufficiently. That worries me and I think the US and UK have bigger roles to play, not less.
- [12:59]
Interviewer
Can you name a couple specific things? You indicated that there is upstream work to do in the countries themselves so that people don't want to flee. Do you have any specific proposals now that your party has is going to have a lot of control that you would advocate happening here in Great Britain?
- [13:17]
Neil Coyle
There are some that make privately around to support Ukraine, for example, but some of that discussion needs to be had privately. There was some around Sudan where we need to be more interventionist, frankly. And we need to be looking at countries like Sierra Leone where an election was genuinely stolen, not the, not the nonsense we see in the United States. We see a man holding onto the presidential office who doesn't deserve to be there and needs to have a runoff with his main opponent. If we do not make clear that we will intervene, be it sanctions, different levels of intervention, these difficulties will result in broader conflict or potentially for people feeling the need to leave countries and arrive here. And if that's what people are saying they don't want, then we need to work out how to help up. And the last government cut our army and cut our aid budget. Well, that doesn't help either.
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Interviewer
Have you been hearing from constituents in the past five to 10 years that they want more control over the immigration situation?
- [14:18]
Neil Coyle
My constituency varies and there are some who say they want to see controls and they want to see the point system that Labour is retaining and strengthening. There are others who recognise that. Look at Labour's house building agenda. We want to build 1.5 million homes. The workforce to do that is not here. Now, we can train some Brits, we can deliver a bigger UK domestic workforce, but we have to be. I think we have to be honest about where the workforce comes from. Same as health and social care. If we want to fix the problems, the NHS, we're sat opposite St. Thomas Hospital. If we want that hospital to continue to be global class, then we need to make sure it's got the workforce to deliver the service it needs. That includes some international workers. And I think that most people want our economy to do well and they want the services to improve and they want the shops to be full of goods and they want their pockets as full as possible to do that. We need to be more robust about defending the benefits of immigration. Universities are another good example. They're businesses in the UK and they do well. They are internationally renowned and I have universities and university accommodation in my consistency. I want those universities to succeed. That means being robust in saying, well, we want those people to come here, spend money at university and spend money having a great time at university, enjoying everything that London and the UK has to offer. I think we need to try and shift the debate and unfortunately, the incidents across the country in the last few days allow some space to do that. You know, the people who have shown their true colors, which is that they don't accept any level of immigration. Some of the it's outright racism and Islamophobia that we're seeing in the UK right now in different pockets, in different bits of the country. Thankfully, these people are a tiny minority and they will be dealt with, they'll be imprisoned.
- [16:06]
Interviewer
Do you see a difference between. My last question on immigration. Do you see a difference between controlled and invited immigration for the purpose you described and then the uninvited immigration.
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Neil Coyle
So, well, control, as the university places, is the economy that we know where there are gaps. And in the uk we have the Migration Advisory Committee that Labour will be strengthening. This is the body that tells the government, the Home Office in particular, which sectors of the British economy need more workers and need a more generous system of invitation and fast tracking. Home Office visas, for example. We just need to get on with that. I want service to improve. This election was about people saying services weren't good enough. So if we want them to improve, we need to be honest about how to fix that. And that includes what you term invited immigration. Uninvited could be family members of those who are invited. So it gets murky quite quickly when you use that kind of language. I think that the public difference where the public have a problem is illegal. An unlawful entry into the uk, that's where the public have a bigger problem. There are different ways of fixing that, including, for example, coming back to Afghanistan. The biggest group of people crossing the English Channel in the boats unlawfully. They shouldn't be doing it. Nobody thinks they should be doing it. The way to fix that in part is to respect the fact that some of them fought for us and allow them to either join family here or come through our asylum process and arrive by flights and safely, rather than sailing up in a boat.
- [17:39]
Cheryl Akison
Next up, Marc Francois from the British Conservative Party.
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Marc Francois
And I'm the Member of Parliament for Rayleigh and Wickford in Essex, out by the Essex coast.
- [18:56]
Interviewer
For people who don't know what's been happening in politics in the last month or two here in the uk, or how long ago was that? Can you give an overview level, in very simple terms, of what just happened?
- [19:06]
Marc Francois
Well, we had a. We had a general election which took place on the 4th of July, and my party, the Conservative Party, suffered a heavy defeat. And the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer, won with a very large majority by British standards, of 172 seats. So of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, they now have over 400, and so they recently formed an incoming administration.
- [19:38]
Interviewer
What would you say are the driving issues that caused your party to lose so many seats?
- [19:44]
Marc Francois
There are several, I think. Firstly, people felt that we hadn't delivered on our promises. We'd been in government for 14 years, we'd promised a number of things, some of which we certainly achieved. We promised that we get Brexit done and leave the European Union. We did. We legally left the eu, but there are some other areas, particularly in relation to immigration and stopping illegal migrants coming across the channel. The Prime Minister promised that he would stop the boats, was the slogan, and we didn't stop them. And a lot of people were very angry about that and they took it out on us in the general election.
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Interviewer
How does this dynamic play into the issues of what we call populism? There are trends, I think, around the world where people are expressing discontent or fatigue with whoever's the party, the ruling politicians and making changes. What are your thoughts about that?
- [20:45]
Marc Francois
Well, I used to have a lot to do with the eu. I was a big critic of the European Union and often the EU establishment would use the term populist as a term of derision. It meant they would use it to insult other politicians they didn't agree with, often because those politicians were recommending a course of action that the EU establishment didn't want to do. So, in a European context at least, the term populist is often used by people in the establishment to deride people who've got radical ideas with which they don't agree.
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Interviewer
Do you agree with that characterization? What are your thoughts about populism and any trends?
- [21:27]
Marc Francois
Well, you would hope that politicians would do things which might be popular. So I don't think that it's right to deride people just because they say something that the common man or woman might well agree with, even if to some people in the metropolitan elite, those suggestions are politically incorrect. I think using that term usually means that the people in the establishment haven't always got an answer to the problem.
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Interviewer
Would you say your party is an establishment party?
- [22:05]
Marc Francois
Not always. Under Margaret Thatcher, famously, we won three general elections in a row by being radical. But perhaps over the last 14 years, we got too comfortable. We ducked a number of difficult decisions, we fell black, perhaps in some cases on platitudes. And when it came to the general election, people gave their opinion on that. And if I'm honest, we didn't run the. The best general election campaign we've ever ran. We had a campaign with a number of big errors in it.
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Interviewer
From what you described, it sounds like you're hearing that constituents and voters were tired of giving a chance to who was in charge, which was your party, and not feeling like they were being listened to.
- [22:54]
Marc Francois
Someone once wrote that the most precious quality in politics is the benefit of the doubt. And by the time we got to this general election, people were no longer giving us the benefit of the doubt. That that was very evident when you, when you went door knocking on the.
- [23:07]
Interviewer
Doorsteps, what kinds of things did people say to you?
- [23:11]
Marc Francois
They were. They were frustrated, not just about not stopping the boats, but there were some economic measures that we promised, not all of which we'd managed to, to bring in. There were some things in the field of law and order that we hadn't quite carried through. So there was a sense of frustration on the doorsteps. And because of that, people weren't giving us the benefit of the doubt and they were giving it to Labour. We have our budget on 30 October. Now, when the government set out their fiscal and tax plans for the year ahead, I suspect on that day the Labour government's honeymoon will end because it looks like there are going to be some serious tax rises which they tried to hide in the election. On the 30th of October, they'll probably all come out into the open. That won't be very popular either.
- [24:04]
Interviewer
Considering what's been going on here in terms of illegal immigration in the past decade, you might be surprised if I tell you I think most Americans don't even know that there is an immigration issue in Europe. When I talk to them, how would you explain in very simple terms what's been happening here to an American who hasn't kept up on it?
- [24:22]
Marc Francois
Well, it's not entirely dissimilar to your situation with the southern border. And the last time I was in Washington meeting With congressmen lobbying them to support Ukraine. I should add, this issue of the southern border came up again and again. So it's a very big issue in American politics. In our case, it's illegal migrants getting on boats coming across the English Channel into Britain. And it's an equally evocative issue here. You've had a debate about whether or not to carry on building a wall. We've had a debate about what we should do about those people coming over in small boats. And the Conservative Party had a method of dealing with that. In the end, the electorate didn't seem completely convinced we lost the general election. But now labor don't seem to have much of an answer either. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. But it's is as big an issue in Britain as it is in America.
- [25:18]
Interviewer
In 2016 or that time period. I think the last many Americans heard was that Germany and Europe was opening its arms to as many who wanted to come over. Please come, we'll take you, we love you. And not so much coverage was given.
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To sort of a radical shift when.
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I think there were culture clashes, there were some terrorist attacks in Germany. There have been some economic realities that have happened since. Since then. What is the mood now when we interviewed people, even some both on left and right, including the left, I mean, say they now want to control or think that's a big issue about controlling the uninvited immigration?
- [25:55]
Marc Francois
Well, the world is changing. We now have these mass migration flows partly for economic reasons. And so you're getting millions of people on the move. And in this country, we have a generous tradition of providing asylum to people who were genuinely in fear of their lives. But within that context, many people who you and I might call economic migrants have attempted to exploit that system to the point where a lot of the public sympathy for the old system has gone. So one of the debates that we're having in Europe is how do we update our rules and regulations, particularly something called the European Convention on Human Rights, which was written in the aftermath of the Second World War. How do we update those kind of rules and regulations in order to try and prevent these sorts of migration flows? In other words, we're trying to deal with a 21st century problem with legislation that was written in the mid 20th.
- [27:01]
Interviewer
The people on the side of, even again, those on the left seem to have sentiment and support for instituting some kind of control for the illegal immigration. But in the same breath, people who support mass migration to date accuse those on the other side of all pretty much being Islamophobic or hateful or racist. What are your thoughts about that?
- [27:26]
Marc Francois
I don't agree with characterizing anyone that is opposed to mass migration as a racist. I think it's important that we debate these matters sensibly and democratically because our populations have to feel that their politicians don't lack the courage to talk about this issue. If those politicians, because they're worried about being criticized in a progressive media, don't talk about those issues, then they're providing space to real, genuine extremists, not populists as extremists who will exploit that vacuum in a way that ultimately leads to serious violence.
- [28:15]
Cheryl Akison
Populism and this epic battle that I'm talking about is the topic of my cover story on Sunday, October 27th. To find out how to watch Full Measure every Sunday on television, go to cherylakisson.com and click the Full Measure tab. I have a list of stations and times or you can watch anytime at Fullmeasure News. We post the replay of the TV show every Sunday by about noon Eastern time, and you can watch replays there right now at Fullmeasure News. If you haven't done it already, please check out my new bestseller, Follow the Science How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. Some of the five star feedback that I'm getting says that people are picking up the book and reading it cover to cover. They're so enthralled, if not somewhat disgusted, by these anecdotes with documentation and citations explaining how our medical establishment has become so corrupted and how this is leading to compromised health, even as we've never spent more money on pills and potions and doctors and hospitals and insurance. And there's helpful information in there about how to take back control of your health. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that if you did, you'll leave us a terrific review and share it with your friends. And check out my other podcast, the Cheryl atkison Podcast. Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.