#157 - Neema Parvini - Who Runs the World: The Mechanics of Elite Power

Summary

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The Peter McCormack Show #157: "Who Runs the World: The Mechanics of Elite Power"

Guest: Neema Parvini | Host: Peter McCormack
Date: March 17, 2026

Episode Overview

In this probing and wide-ranging episode, Peter McCormack sits down with Neema Parvini (author of Applied Elite Theory and Populist Delusion) to dissect the hidden mechanics of elite power, the iron law of oligarchy, and why anti-establishment movements so often disappoint. The conversation traverses UK and global politics, focusing on the persistent failure of populist and reformist parties to enact the radical change voters seek, the subtle (and not so subtle) operations of entrenched power, the failures of both left and right, and the pressing need for common sense, cross-spectrum alliances in an increasingly disillusioned and divided West.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Iron Law of Oligarchy and Systemic Betrayal

(Timestamps: 00:00–03:00, 19:27–24:16, 41:05–41:28)

• Definition: The iron law is that "you don't change the system, the system changes you." (A, 19:27)
• Anti-establishment parties, once gaining momentum, moderate until they're "just the system already." Reform UK, Trump, Boris Johnson, and historic parties like the German Social Democrats serve as recurring examples.
• Quote: "It's your anger, their agenda... They use that energy almost like vampires, and try to translate it into something that's the polar opposite."
  — Neema Parvini [00:00]
• Systemic pressure, incentives, and establishment advantages (media, funding, networks) explain why even radical leaders succumb or are sidelined.
• Populist leaders are often "deluded, but also... active charlatans." (A, 03:00) They exploit genuine anger for establishment ends.
• Quote: "You'd never employ the same person who made the mess to then clean up the mess. It just seems so ridiculous."
  — Neema Parvini [07:05]

2. The Delusion of Voters and False Hope

(07:13–11:24)

• Voters repeatedly "step on the same rakes," placing false hope in rebranded or supposedly anti-establishment parties, even as betrayals are "not subtle, it is active and in your face." (A, 07:20)
• The Greens, despite "lunatic ideas," are seen as more anti-system than Reform, winning on anti-establishment energy (example: Hannah Spencer's by-election win in Gorton and Denton).
• The key to populist victory is "turning out people who don't usually vote" (A, 10:09).

3. Cross-Spectrum Common Ground & Anti-Establishment Energy

(11:24–15:43, 73:48–78:22)

• Peter finds unexpected agreement with voices as disparate as Marxists (Grace Blakeley) because "80% of their complaints are the same" (B, 10:41).
• Neema argues for "moving beyond the false dichotomy of left versus right," focusing on shared anti-establishment demands.
• Quote: "If left and right were able to start doing something like this [classical imitatio],... there are fruitful conversations to be had."
  — Neema Parvini [11:24]
• Issues like war, foreign policy, and state control offer surprising overlaps for coalition-building.
• Pop culture, social media, and independent media are now vital spaces for expressing and organizing dissent outside the mainstream.

4. The Culture War and Distraction

(15:43–18:29, 55:17–62:31, 69:33–77:08)

• Culture war issues (e.g. gender, ethnicity) are increasingly "trivial" compared to systemic crises (war, economic collapse).
• The elite class benefits from division: "They love to keep people arguing over nonsense... If we all just stepped over it, that trick wouldn't work anymore." (A, 15:43)
• Debates on British identity and ethnicity, though fraught, should be normalized with "less hysteria" (A, 71:21), not weaponized for division.

5. Nature and Structure of Elite Power

(23:06–25:47, 41:05–43:49)

• Elite control is both structural (incentives, resources, know-how) and conspiratorial (explicit networks, coordinated attacks on dissent).
• Even "when it feels organic... there are people who have explicit plans," lobbying, and attacking insurgent movements (A, 23:15).
• Examples include coordinated media attacks on figures like Rupert Lowe or outsider parties like Restore.

6. Prospects for Breaking the Elite Mold

(25:35–32:39, 37:42–41:28)

• True breaks with establishment power have historically been revolutionary (Lenin, Bolsheviks, Mussolini), but often come at high social cost.
• Current yearning is for a new elite of "normal, regular people" with real-world experience ("not career politicians").
• System pushes back with bans, vetting (e.g. MI5 vetting Reform UK candidates), or character assassination.

7. The Futility and Risks of Mainstream Reform

(57:10–62:31, 82:04–84:49)

• Neema criticizes Reform UK and other center-right parties as "the exact same enemy as the Conservative Party"—populist in form, but establishment in function.
• Being serious about change would require "nuking" Blair-era legislation, bureaucratic quangos, and centralizing reforms, but no party is proposing this concretely.
• The right panders to "Boomer" concerns, ignoring the large, disaffected younger demographic.

8. Young People and the Future of Politics

(81:00–84:49)

• Peter laments that young people have been "sacrificed" economically for the benefit of older generations.
• The right has no equivalent to successful youth organizers like Charlie Kirk. Reform "runs it like an old people's home" and risks losing young, right-leaning voters to the Greens.

9. Globalized Oligarchy and Lobbying

(43:23–49:18)

• The modern challenge is that the oligarchy is "global," with transnational money flows and lobbying groups influencing domestic policy.
• Privatization in Thatcher/Blair eras was often just changing public monopolies to state-backed private ones, failing to introduce real competition or efficiency.

10. Media, Narrative, and the Role of Independent Voices

(34:09–35:22, 78:21–79:56)

• Mainstream media is portrayed as a tool of the elite class, with independent media (podcasts, social media) providing a rare counterpoint.
• UK lacks an ecosystem like US independent media—influencers such as Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan shape consensus far more than broadcast channels.
• Social media and direct conversation offer a way to build new anti-establishment coalitions.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "You don't change the system, the system changes you."
  — Neema Parvini [19:27]
• "It's your anger, their agenda."
  — Neema Parvini [00:00]
• "We don't accept this even in the world of cleaning floors. So why do we accept it in our government?"
  — Neema Parvini [31:03]
• "If left and right could start making each other's arguments, like Shakespeare, we might have fruitful conversations."
  — Neema Parvini [11:24]
• "The right has advantages. You just have to appeal to common sense. You don't have to persuade them into some mental position."
  — Neema Parvini [63:05]
• "Are you truly independent, or are you a paid shill?"
  — Neema Parvini [86:51]

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Significant Timestamps

• [00:00–03:00] – "It's your anger, their agenda": how establishment co-opts populist movements.
• [07:13–10:41] – Voter delusion, betrayal by "anti-establishment" parties, and the importance of activating non-voters.
• [11:24] – Cross-spectrum empathy and learning from Shakespeare.
• [19:27] – Plain explanation of the iron law of oligarchy.
• [23:06–24:16] – Organic vs. organized elite power; explicit networks.
• [25:35–32:39] – Why truly anti-system leaders are rare, dangers of only ever replacing elite faces.
• [41:05] – Even revolution only changes the members of the ruling class.
• [43:23–49:18] – Globalized elite power; privatization under Thatcher/Blair as state-backed monopolization.
• [57:10–62:31] – Critique of Reform/Conservative "moderate right" strategies; why the electorate is not the center.
• [78:21–79:56] – Media critique; growth of independent alternatives in US and slow progress in UK.
• [81:00–84:49] – Young people's exclusion; the "boomer-coded" nature of reform politics.

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Closing Insights

• Both guest and host are deeply skeptical of all major UK parties, seeing the current anti-establishment energies as continually channeled back into safe, regime-compliant territory.
• Neema is "strangely optimistic" that exposure and convergence of rational left and right voices could finally break some establishment control, provided culture war distractions are set aside and common sense prevails.
• Peter stresses the urgent need to energize young people, reorient politics to serve their future, and ensure truly independent voices gain the loudest platforms, not just the "terminally Westminster" types.

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Further Reading

• Neema Parvini: Applied Elite Theory (2026), Populist Delusion
• Related Authors: John Gray (False Dawn), Curtis Yarvin
• Noted Podcast Moments: Calls for more cross-silo dialogue, greater youth engagement, and establishing genuine anti-establishment alternatives.

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Transcript

[A]

I've got a phrase that I like to use called it's your anger, their agenda, your anger, their agenda. So I think some of these people are actively, they know people are angry and people have a right to be angry, but they use that energy almost like vampires and try to translate it into something that's the polar opposite. You don't change the system, the system changes you. That's over time. In order to get into power in our radical party needs to moderate so much that it ends up just being the system already. But with our politicians, what we're expected to give them, a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance. I mean, you'd never employ the same person who made the mess to then clean up the mess to anyone who voted for maga. And then of course, the ultimate portrayal. He literally talked for 10 years plus about not only would he not start a forever war, but specifically this one with Iran. He basically said this is a presidency for my donors and not for my voters.

[B]

The iron law of the oligarchy aiming for a 40% regime change is doomed to fail because it leaves the old establishment lives to regroup. He says you have to go for 100%. You have to go for 100% and change the whole thing.

[A]

I think it has to be the shot, like the shot has to be at the moment against the establishment. That's the main thing. The urgent thing is to sweep aside and to get in a new set of politicians.

[B]

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[A]

Good.

[B]

So our world is obviously very crazy right now and I think people across the west sense everything is broken. We're starting to have it kind of rubbed in our face a little bit by the elites. Trump to me has been a bit of a failure. A man who was not going to get into any wars has now attacked Iran. Reform were meant to be the anti establishment party and now turning into the UNI party with their defections from conservatives. And the real issues that people care about, immigration, economic policy and and culture are not, they're not shifting towards what it feels like grassroots public want. And so from the perspective of yourself and elite Theory. Is it because voters are failing to change the system, or is it because the system itself cannot be changed?

[A]

Yeah, well, I mean, last time I talked to you, Peter, I said back then, reform is going to conform to the iron law of oligarchy. And I said, trump is going to keep on betraying based on the iron law of oligarchy. And I remember distinctly so many comments, said, oh, you know, you can't be so pessimistic about reform, and so on and so forth. And in the fullness of time, these predictions, I think, have proved to be correct. And I've always thought that the tell for what is the most establishment coded thing, the thing that they really care about is always for, is always foreign policy. You can always tell, you know, if, if a party suddenly starts, you know, shilling for the forever wars, you know, that they've already succumb to some of these structures that we're talking about. Robert Michelles, who wrote the book Political Parties, one of the original elite theorists, that was actually what started him on the journey. He was, he was part of a party called the, the German, I think the German Social Democrats in the, you know, this was before World War I and they were an anti war party. And then on the cusp of them kind of, you know, being in power, they suddenly became a pro war party. And he's like, what's, what's going on? None of the members wanted this, none of the public wanted this. I mean, in an exact parallel to what we're seeing now and what we have been seeing. So, yeah, I, I actually think that at the moment, and this may sound counterintuitive, but the right written writ large as represented by people like Trump and Farage and populists, who I've always maintained are not only deluded, but also, you know, we have to say, active charlatans, actively actually trying to. I've got a phrase that I like to use called it's your anger, their agenda, your anger, their agenda. So I think some of these people are actively, they know people are angry and people have a right to be angry, but they use that energy almost like vampires, and try to translate it into something that's the polar opposite. And in British politics, we've already seen it a number of times. I mean, Boris Johnson, you know, ran on a populist platform, then did the largest increase of immigration in British history. Nigel Farage has established this party called Reform. You know, remember we wanted to destroy the Tory party. Zero seats. You know, a campaign spearheaded by myself and various other people we actively wanted to destroy the Tory party. Now Reform are just recruiting Boris Johnson's government. I mean, literally the same people, the guy who is in charge of it, Robert Jendrick, is now back saying, oh, I tell you what, I've changed my mind. And when people say, oh, well, you've got to give him the benefit of the doubt, you've got to believe him. I mean, we weren't built. I mean, the exact same person has had a Road to Damascus conversion. And I, the way I put it, right, imagine you were, you hired a cleaner, a janitor, right? And every day you came back and the floor just had mud all over it, you know, you know, muck smeared all over the walls. Be like, what. What have you done here? Right, you're obviously fired. And also I'm going to tell the company that hired you never employ this person to do cleaning because they're rubbish at their job. They should actually be blackballed from the world of janeting, if that is such a thing. Right? But with our politicians, what we're expected to give them a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance. I mean, you'd never employ the same person who made the mess to then clean up the mess. It just seems so ridiculous that they're asking us to. To believe that.

[B]

Well, alongside, when you talk about the delusion of the populist, there is the delusion of the voter.

[A]

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I've, and I think slowly but surely it is happening, one of the things I've tried to impress on people is that we don't need to step on these rakes, us, the plebs, right? We don't need to continually fall for the new false hope. The new false hope, especially when they keep on. I mean, the betrayal is not subtle, it is active and in your face. One of the things I worry about, Peter, which is what I was starting to say here, is that because of these betrayals, at the moment we are at risk of the left as represented by the Green Party and somebody like Hannah Spencer. Now, I know, okay, from your perspective and from my perspective also, the Greens probably going to crash the economy if they ever got into power. They have some lunatic ideas, yet they have captured the anti establishment energy they feel to a lot of people, more against the system as it is than reform. And I will go to that by election in Gorton and Denton, where Hannah Spencer stood up there and she, you know, I hesitate to use my pro wrestling analogies, but she cut a promo sounding like Dusty Rhodes, you know, I'm the son of a plumber, damn it. And you don't know, hard times, you know, I mean, she basically gave that speech, you know, in her victory and she said, you know, people are suffering out here. Nobody can buy a house. We used to be rewarded for hard work in this country. And her opponent, Matt Goodwin, who ran, in my opinion, the worst campaign I've ever seen anybody run, ever. I mean, you know, not only did he seem and look like Alan Partridge, but he went up there, got on a bus and he was just shouting kind of slogans that sounded like they were concocted in a Tory think tank down the road in Westminster. So he sounded like an elite. He sounded like somebody caught up, you know, in a, in a Westminster bubble. And, you know, if you're a local there, you know, he should have been able to win that. I know people say, oh well, it's difficult. It's a left wing area. The way that a kind of insurgent, counter elite, anti establishment party can win and in fact the way that Donald Trump did it before he betrayed Everybody back in 2016. Okay. Is by turning out people who don't usually vote, people who have people who have written the system off, people who've checked out.

[B]

And 50% of Gord Denton wasn't it, that didn't vote.

[A]

Yeah. And I mean, okay, it's a by election. Okay. But if you had somebody who really felt like they were fighting for the people, quote, unquote, he could have turned out more than that and won that. And he should have the reform. If they were genuine, if they weren't coming across like Tory think tank wonks. Right. If they were coming across like normal, regular people who cared about sorting the problems out of this country, they know they should be winning those sorts of things.

[B]

I've been reading some of the left wing blogs I've mentioned on the show a couple of times. There's a girl called Grace Blakely. Who's that, She's a Marxist. But I would say 80% of what of her complaints are the same as mine. It's the same, same anti establishment rhetoric. It's the same feelings I have. Obviously our divert. We, we have a divergent point where we think about solutions whereby they think socialism, I think free market, but there, I think there is an anti establishment demand across the entire country. Yes, the split is left wing solutions versus right wing solutions.

[A]

I mean, I was actually at this event last night talking about one of my new books, Foundations of Shakespeare, and somebody asked me what could we learn from Shakespeare, okay. Specifically as regards politics. And one of the things Shakespeare was brilliant at doing was putting himself in somebody else's shoes. Okay. In, in the Elizabethan era, they had something called classical imitatio. If you're a schoolboy, schoolboy of 11 12, you had to do this exercise where you put yourself in somebody else's shoes and make their argument better than they could make them themselves. Okay? So that is right. Let's pretend you, Peter, put yourself in Hannah Spencer shoes and make her green left wing Marxist argument better than she can. Okay? And Shakespeare was obviously brilliant at this, but I think this is something that people have lost. People have lost this ability to inhabit somebody else's mind space and be able to think through their eyes. If left and right were able to start doing something like this, I think there, I actually think there are fruitful conversations to be had. You know, a few weeks back, I met a very well known Bart. He runs a very big Marxist channel. I won't say who it was. Right. But you know, I've noticed that on the, on the anti war side of things, there is, I mean, like you said, there's 80% of the way, and we just disagree on that.

[B]

20, you know, so I'm against this Iran war. I've been called out too many times in the past. Listen to the rhetoric. I'm completely against it. And I think we're all being proven correct now, the chaos that's ensued with that. But I remember when I first tweeted about it, people were saying, oh, well, you're on Zach Polanski's side now. And I was thinking about. So I said, well, on this issue I am.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

I agree with him. I agreed with him on Gaza, disagree with him on economics, disagree with him on immigration, but I agree with him on this. That's okay.

[A]

Yeah. And see, this is the thing I would love, I would actually love to move beyond the false dichotomy of left versus right, because the energy, you know, when we talk about anti establishment, that's going to come from people from all, all across, all across the spectrum. And you're never going to get it by reheating Thatcherism, I'm afraid. And you're never going to get it by, you know, reconstructing the Tory party as it is, as it was and as it has been and, you know, trying to get us back into all of those old frames. Because, let's face it, that got us here. That got us here. I mean, Tory party have been in power for most of the time. Of that I've been alive. And many of the things that we lament aren't, you know, you can't just say, well, it's all socialism. It's not. I mean, some of the things, some of the problems that we have in this country came as a result of policies that, I mean, let's try to. Try to find some common ground. Okay? Why did they sell off all our assets? Why. Why is Britain. Why is Britain sold off its national assets to foreign companies? Something that we could agree on. You know, a proper socialist does want to control the borders. Why? Because, I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, we would say, well, Milton Friedman said, welfare, you can't have wealth, open borders. Right. But also, if you think about it from a, from a kind of big government point of view, the big government always has to budget, it always has to limit things. So I mean, I've got. I've kind of got into a head space where it's like you can kind of use some of the constraints of government control almost against itself, you know, which is counterintuitive. I mean, for example, I'd love to see them renationalize the universities. Okay, now you could sell that to the left because, you know, some kind of. They don't like tuition fees and markets, mechanics and so on. I just think about it from a different way. It would reduce the total amount of students.

[B]

Good.

[A]

It would reduce the total, therefore, the total amount of left wingers. It would reduce the total amount of just annoying activists and so on. And you can actually see that this has happened up in Scotland where they made university places, you know, where they are already paid for, where they're free, that is where the government is paying for them. They had to ration the places, and they have to ration the places because the government has a budget, whereas the market has no cap on the amount of money that can be made. So, I mean, I do think there's, you know, it's a little bit counterintuitive, but there's ways that you can end up in similar places to, you know, not on all issues, but I would like to see more of that happening and stepping over because, I mean, one of the things you have to realize is that these, you know, let's just say moneyed interests that like to lobby for war and like to, you know, and it's not just, I mean, everybody's thinking of one lobby, but there are many others. You know, the military, industrial complex, arms manufacturers, you know, there's lots of people who have interests in keeping these sorts of things going. And one of the things they love to do is to keep people divided, to keep people arguing over nonsense. At the end of the day, think of how much time was spent over, like, transgender bathrooms. It now seems trivial. When we're faced with catastrophe, possibly, I mean, our entire way of life, basically, if that straight to Hormuz is closed for much longer, it's going to start affecting everything. You know, we're going to start seeing real inflation, we're going to may start seeing shortages. So, you know, what I'm saying is those kind of culture war issues from a few years ago start to look like a luxury. And I would just like to see people grow up a bit and get beyond them. I would also like to see, you know, the quote, unquote, right, stop reacting to every little thing they see. And I call it slop, right? But if you're constantly reacting, okay, to like, how it usually works, the left does something, something crazy, and then the right reacts to it, and then you're just locked in this dialectic of nonsense all the time. And over time, because the right is always reactive, things just, things do end up moving leftwards just because of the. Just because of the reaction. They're looking for that reaction. They want it. They want the attention they feed off it. It gives them a reason to exist. If we all just stepped over it, that trick wouldn't work anymore.

[B]

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[A]

Yeah, sure. The iron Oligarchy in a nutshell is. I mean, you could say it in a different way. You could say you don't change the system, the system changes you. That's over time, in order to get into power in our radical party, needs to moderate so much that it ends up just being the system already. You can see it. I mean, reform is a perfect example. Started out making out all these promises, but over time they've, you know, they've become, they've moderated more and more and more to the center. And now it just looks like yet another flavor of Blairism or something like this. Whereas ideally, most people, I think, would want them to deconstruct the Blairite state. They don't, they don't talk like that. They just sound like any other politician. Now, so that, I mean, there, I mean, if it depends on how much detail you want to go into, there's quite. I mean, Robert Michelle, who was the person who came up with this idea, said that power, by which he means the center, the, you know, it's not the state, it's like the overall ruling class, if you want to put it that way, have absolute advantages over the ruled. The rulers have an absolute advantage over the ruled. And those advantages aren't just resources, but know how and technical expertise and advantages in things like communications, advantages in things like so, and, and this is why so many little parties just don't get anywhere. You know, like somebody sets, somebody tries to run and they end up with like a couple of hundred votes. Well, it's obvious why. They don't have media amplification, they don't have budget, they don't have, you know, they don't have the knowledge of how to campaign and how to canvas. They don't have the network in place. I mean, all of these things are absolute advantages when you are the incumbent. Okay? And then even on top of that, if you are in power, there are all sorts of levers that you can pull that the person who's not in power cannot pull. You know, I mean, one of the examples I always look at is the AOC over in America, you know, this radical Democrat, the, the squad and all this nonsense. And over time, she has been disciplined by the Democrat Party machine. And on key votes where you'd expect her to vote one way, she ends up voting the other way because she's been disciplined. So over time, you know, does the Democrat Party look more like, you know, AOC or does AOC end up looking more like Nancy Pelosi? And this, this kind of happens over and over and over again with all sorts of. With all sorts of people. And I mean, at the minute, the Greens are insurgent from the left, but if they actually start getting closer to power, they too will start to have to moderate and start to have to, you know, tone things down, or the system will find a way to sideline them, as it has with Jeremy Corbyn. You know, there's an argument to say, well, who's this? Maybe Z Polanski's there because they want to crowd out Corbyn and Sultana. They're too radical. So, you know, as a system of containment, let's have these Greens there instead. That's possible. That's happening.

[B]

Is this just structural, though? Is it just basically based on incentives or. Or is there a secret group of lizard people

[A]

put in the levers? I do think a lot of it does happen. A lot of it does happen kind of by itself. Right. It's almost like on autopilot. It's just organic through incentives and constraints. But there are. Who says organization, says oligarchy. There are people who have explicit plans, who have explicit patronage networks, who explicitly lobby, who do coordinate with each other and launch attacks on specific individuals. And, you know, as the Trump presidency has gone on, this has become like uber visible in America. Okay. I mean, you, you can choose your own examples, but it's also increasingly visible here. I mean, look, just in the past couple of weeks, you know, one of the. One of the. The new great hopes is Rupert Lowe. Okay, I like Rupert Lowe. I don't know if you like.

[B]

Yeah, I like Rupert.

[A]

Yeah, so he, he came out against the war, and in the past couple of weeks, all sorts of people have started attacking the store. Right? There's been a. And it's. And it's been. If you know where to look, it's co. It's obviously being coordinated because all of these disparate organs start going all at the same time. Now, it could be something as simple as they're all in the same group chat, okay, but that is still organization, Right? Even if. Even if it's just a slap chat or a WhatsApp or something, they're still coordinating and they're still doing it for a specific agenda. That agenda being Rupert. And Restore, as it's constituted now, is not regime compliant, whereas Reform are regime compliant. I mean, what's been interesting about that is that Reform decided to come out guns blazing for the war, and it's proven so unpopular that they've had to

[B]

u turn generic led the. The 180.

[A]

Yeah, the. I mean, yeah, the reverse ferret, as James o' Brien calls it. And you see, I mean, I hate James o', Brien, and yet on this issue, he has been one of the more sensible people in the room. So. Yeah.

[B]

Are there examples of insurgent parties, leaders who have managed to break the iron law of the oligarchy, go against this and be successful?

[A]

Yeah. Well, I mean, historically, the ones who truly do break it end up leading revolutions. Okay, so like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, something like this, or they end up leading, you know, kind of hostile takeovers. You know, Mussolini, that man in Germany in the mid-30s and so on. And. And this is one of the reasons why the system is so acutely aware of anything truly falling outside of its control. Because the, you know, the ruling class kind of wants to maintain itself. It doesn't really want people who aren't part of them circulating in. Okay. So it's going to do what it can to stop that, to stop that happening. So the. So the times where you. The times where it does happen, you know, it tends to be quite a big event, like an actual happening, as opposed to, you know, I mean, let's say Keir Starmer is replaced with Umburn Angela. Right. I mean, it doesn't. Yeah. You know, everybody knows that's not a true change, but I think that the country knee. I think that the country does need. And I hope it happens peacefully. I hope it happens. You know, I hope the system is actually wise enough to allow it to happen through democratic norms. Okay. But, you know, one of the things Rupert Lowe said that I thought was good, and again, it can happen from the left. I mean, Hannah Spencer is not your normal politician. This plumber. You know, people can debate that, but she's clearly not from the normal background of, of the politician. One of the things Rupa Lowe said is that I would love to see. I would love to have like 600 MPs who aren't Korea. They haven't done the normal, you know, go to Oxbridge, do your ppe. You know, and whether it's David Cameron or Ed Miliband or these people have never had normal jobs or lived in the real world. They're pure creatures of politics who pursue politics as a career rather than wanting to help the country. And I think. I mean, we all talk about incentives. I think that's like a rotten situation. How can you have wise government when you have a character like Rishi Sunak, who's treating being the Prime Minister almost as a gap year, almost as a kind of job he's doing between. What's he doing now, like working for Microsoft, you know what I mean? Or Nick Clagg, you know, you know, then he went and worked to face when he went and worked for Facebook. And now I think he's like involved in regulating social media or something like this. Okay. And so you can, you can also see by the way, by the fact that they move so seamlessly, you know, from government into working for a big corporation into, you know, maybe editing a newspaper or so on, that it's like, you know, the ruling class is a class and it's not just the people in the government, it's an identifiable class of people. And I would just love to see some effort to smash it to pieces. Well, just change the type of people who were there. And this is, I think one of the reasons why somebody like a Rupert Lowe is appealing to people at the minute because he has run businesses, he's had a long successful career in a

[B]

different field, doesn't take his salary, donates

[A]

it, all of this sort of stuff, you know, or, or even, dare I say, people like yourself, you know, you've, you've, you've not been, you know, you don't have that background of being the career politician who, you know, works in some think tank down the road dreaming of being a spad and things like this. You just, like, you're a successful guy, but you're also kind of like a normal guy.

[B]

I've considered it. So have you.

[A]

Well, I mean, I've said I will never.

[B]

I said I will never.

[A]

Now I will. I think academic should ever. I think Goodwin shows that academics should never be politicians.

[B]

But you don't have to be a politician to support what it is.

[A]

You can, you can support it. But I'm talking about like actually being, I'm talking about people actually in government.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And I would like to see like a different stripe of person because the country is crying out for it.

[B]

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think it has to be replaced by people who have no experience of being an mp. I struggle to get to my second hand when I think of MPs I think are credible, they're unimpressive people. And if you have unimpressive people, they're going to do unimpressive things.

[A]

Yeah. And see, this is one of the things that I really don't understand about reform's argument at the moment. They keep on saying, oh, well, the thing is we need these people because they have experience. And I'm like, look, if you, if you have been part of the government for the past 20 years. That is not a qualification. That is a dis. That is a disqualification. You have literally done the worst job. I mean, it's like. I mean, a football term. It's like you've got a manager who's taking you down, got you relegated, and then got you relegated again. Oh, let's give it. Let's give him the Manchester United job. It's just nonsense.

[B]

It's the Tottenham manager at the moment.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, we don't accept this in any other field. We don't accept it even in the world of cleaning floors. So why do we accept it in our government

[B]

ideologies? A large reason. I think it's fear of the opposition more than it is being able to critically think the capabilities of who you would vote for.

[A]

But this is the trap, you see, that I would love to break. This is why I'm talking about. This is why I'm talking about Rep. Left and right, in some way, for the time being, putting aside certain differences.

[B]

Katie said this.

[A]

And getting beyond this, this. This kind of false, false dichotomy. Because the way the system always wins. Think of why. Why do people vote for Johnson, okay. In 2019. Well, okay, we know that Johnson was a liar. We know that he's a. He's probably, you know, gonna betray us. But Corbyn was worse.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So we were scared into voting for Johnson because of Corbyn, and now they'll try to do the same thing. In fact, both sides do it. Both sides were like, oh, vote for Labor, I. E. The Uni Party. Again, be. Because, you know, the alternative, Farage is even worse. Okay. Fascism, it's. Yeah, then you'll get the fascist. Or vote for reform to keep the Greens out. Something like that. And I think that we will never get anywhere if we allow ourselves to be scared by the other person is worse. Okay.

[B]

Yeah. We treat them always like the opposition is a Them win is an existential crisis for the country.

[A]

And I, If I remember the 2024 election in America, I was one of the people who had a feeling that Trump 2.0 would be the disappointment that it has been. Because I track some of these people behind the scenes. And also it was just becoming more and more obvious that, you know, he would betray the base for special interest, let's put it that way. And there were some. I mean, there were some people at that time, some very famous people who were saying things like, look, we gotta get out of this, okay? The argument is, well, as bad as Trump is, Kamala will be even worse. And he was saying, like, look, we just got to get beyond this. Like just punish, punish the Republicans by not don't just either don't vote or even just actively vote for, for Kamala to get out of that nonsense to punish so that they can't get away with it anymore because otherwise they'll keep on doing it as well as they'll keep on doing it forever. Unfortunately, people have very short term memories. It's like you remember it now but like come to, I mean guarantee you come 2029 people will be back in that mode. Oh, it's the most important election ever. You know, if we don't put a reform in now, the country will be ruined. If we put the greens in and things like that, you know, you've got to break the dialectic or the dichotomy.

[B]

And look, I mean it is breaking to an extent. I mean it broke in Argentina and I don't think Malaya is perfect. But he has offered something different to break something. But it's breaking to some extent. I, I mean if you see the, the polling on confidence in politicians and belief in the state, it's all time lows. And I think in some ways it's, this isn't a. Just below my trumpet because my show isn't that big. But like the independent media now has in some ways a larger voice than the mainstream.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you, you, I see the mainstream media as a tool of that elite class and it's important for conversations like this to be as loud and wide as possible so people realize they can do something different. Because what's been really sad for me with reform, and you've probably felt the same, is that for me there was a point I was like, you know what? These are anti establishment. They're going to do something different. And obviously they failed. And when Restore announced, there's a lot of people on the reform side who are like, you're gonna split the vote on the right. You've gotta stick with reform. I'm like, how have you been co opted into this establishment again? Where's the anti establishment energy gone? I don't know.

[A]

No, I mean, I would liken it to T1000 in Terminator 2. Right. Remember, zero seats. We wanted to destroy the toy party. And I said, mark my words, if we don't, you know, cover T1000 in liquid nitrogen, split, you know, blast it, stick it in the lava so it never comes back, it will somehow try to reform reformulate itself. And now it's literally done it in broad daylight in reform. And if the country falls for it again, you know, everybody talks about the fell for it again awards. If we don't start learning these lessons from the past, we're going to be stuck in this loop forever. And I have to say, on the subject of the Iran war, I have been, I have seen the kind of extremely rare white pill, which is that the country as a whole and even Keir Starmer seem determined to learn the lesson from the Iraq war. And I mean, not only in public opinion, but in terms of the actual decisions the government has made. And the fact that reformer made a U turn and people like Andrew Neal, who pushed for it in the first couple of days, then turned to 180 and actually said, oh, this is a disaster, and so on. But not only on, like how it's gone, but also just the determination of the country was like, look, we saw how this went last time, we're not going to do it again. That happens so rarely. I feel that people like actually learn from history actually don't repeat the same mistake. So if we can do it on that, maybe we might get there in politics as well.

[B]

Yeah, well, look, you won't find many people who dislike Keir Starmer as much as me, but when he came out and didn't immediately join Americas, I was like, right, about the first thing you've done, I've agreed with, but I do wonder if he'd have came out and immediately taken the call from Trump, said, yes, we'll support you. You know, we'll, we'll maintain the special relationship. You can use our bases, you know, we'll even support your bombing campaigns. Whatever, whatever he would have done, I am, I'm firmly of the belief that reform would come out and said, why are we getting involved in another stupid war?

[A]

Yeah, maybe, maybe they, maybe they would have done that.

[B]

I just can't see them coming out and saying, he's done the right thing here. And that's why I've got so little confidence in all these parties. It's reactionary bollocks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And which is why in some ways, you know, I do see Rupert Lowe as something different. But how does he not succumb to the iron ore of the.

[A]

And this is, this is really the huge challenge because, I mean, the truth is he will only be able to do it by keeping a very tight knit group of people around him who make themselves almost like a kind of Roman shield wall against all attempts to infiltrate all attempts I mean, I guess you could call it a vanguard. Right? This is what the, the Bolsheviks did, you know, Lenin. This is what any successful counter elite has to do, because the system will do everything possible. It will do smears, it will try infiltrations, it will offer money and bribes, it will do anything possible to get that party back on the reservation. And I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that if it's actually going to be, like, come to power or, you know, be allowed into the system, they will have to make some compromises or they'll. I think in the, you know, in the last, in the final analysis, the system will just go, well, you're not allowed to run. We'll just ban the party. And I think they would just come out and do that, or they'd say it's a skewed.

[B]

Who has that authority?

[A]

The government? State?

[B]

The electoral commission? Is it the state?

[A]

I mean, just, just, just before we, just, just this morning, Reform UK have come out and said that they're going to allow MI5 to vet their members. Okay. As a matter of security, I think ostensibly on making sure they're not Russian agents and things like that, because they've had a lot of scrutiny on taking Russian money. Okay. So if Reform are coming out and saying that, they're basically saying that anybody in any of the parties that's actually going to be anywhere near power is going to have to be vetted in that way. Now, if it's MI5 doing it, and MI5 say, well, this party is, this party is extreme. This party is far right. This party, you know, represents a threat to democracy. All that stuff they've said in, in other countries. I mean, let's not forget they, in Romania, they literally banned a guy from running.

[B]

They're doing it across Europe.

[A]

They put Le Pen. They banned Le Pen from running, didn't they? Did they put her in jail in, in France and put it on trial? There was talk of the AfD being banned in Germany. So, I mean, that's, you know, how many thousands of people have gone to jail just for sending a tweet or just for sending tweets? So the notion that the, I guess the security stake wouldn't intervene at some point. You know, I mean, I'm still convinced that if Corbyn had won against Johnson, they wouldn't have just done the foreign policy stuff alone. I don't think they would have let him in personally.

[B]

I mean, I mean, so how they stopped Bernie. They stopped Bernie Sanders, he would have won that election.

[A]

Yeah, I Mean, look at, and look at all the resources and effort that was gone that went into that. So yeah, those are really significant hurdles and I don't know, I mean they're gonna have to like cross all those bridges when they come.

[B]

There is a, there is a reality with this. Even with a, you know, an energy behind a restore. If they were successful, if they did manage to find 650 people to run and win an election, it based on your elite theory as I understand it, what you've written about is that it will be, it is a replacement with a new elite. You will always have an oligarchy.

[A]

Oh yeah, you'll never get, you'll never get outside of having a ruling class.

[B]

But, but can you have a benevolent oligarchy?

[A]

Well, I mean if you don't believe that you can have a benevolent ruler. We're saying that in the entire history of humanity there's never been good and wise government.

[B]

You might be right there, by the way.

[A]

I'm not necessarily. There must have been, there were some good kings, there were some wise. That there have been relatively benign and benevolent ruling classes in the past, not necessarily perfect ones. But nobody's perfect. But we could do better than now. I mean, I always say ultimately what people ask me what I want, I just want a sensible and centered government, which, I mean one that's not going to do crazy, crazy things like letting in 6 million people at a time where public opinion is massively against mass immigration, for example, and where all of our public services are creaking. You know, the actual infrastructure of the country is creaking under the weight of all of this excess population. So why are you doing that? And then no, you know, you know, they're saying now, oh well, we've learned, we've learned. I don't, I, I don't, I, you know, I don't trust any of them. That's what we need. So I would love to see them replaced. I mean maybe it, maybe it has to be that inexperience, like inexperienced people who have, you know, have to experience these things, you know, they have to go in green eyed and naive. But if we had a lot of people like that, they could, you know, they could hardly do worse than the current one.

[B]

Yeah. Is one of the biggest challenges with this compared to maybe 100, couple hundred, 300, 400 years ago that the global nature of money, the global nature of institutions, in that Larry Fink can come and get a meeting whenever he wants with whoever leads whichever country. Is that one of the biggest challenges is that the oligarchy is really a global oligarchy controlling the flow of money.

[A]

I think that, I do think that is part of it. I also think that the ease with which money is allowed, I mean in America it's crazy. The, the way that people can lobby in America is so open and blatant and corrupt that clearly something should be done. I mean I'd love to see an American president run on anti corruption and run on just like banning, banning any sort of money, foreign or domestic and having place caps and all sorts of other robust rules around it. But in this country as well, I mean it's just so obvious why does every government embark on these massive housing projects? They justify it in all sorts of ways. But the fact is one of the biggest lobbies in the country is the construction industry. You get a massive payday from a state backed contract. You know, I mean this is the, what, what was it called? Kind of iron triangle of, you know, was it you? I mean the unions have been kind of blast off the map. It was conventionally unions, business and government all make a little deal together and then you get these kind of little rotten state back contracts and paydays and gravy trains, management, consultancy fees. And you see this I think is if you really look into what happened under Thatcher and then under the Blair, it was really this people talk about oh well, Thatcher privatized this, she privatized that. A lot of it wasn't truly privatization, it was get it off the government books and make it into a system where companies bid on a state backed monopoly. That's what the rail system is, you know, and there's very little real competition that goes on in some of these things because once you've got the contract, you've got the contract. And I think that's been a really bad system and I think it's led to all sorts of problems. I mean you can look at, I mean I hate to bring up things like Grenfell, but look into the way that was managed. You know, it's, it's, it's across the board. You know, I don't, is it necessarily a very efficient system to say because you know you can have your free market but the free, the free market in theory works through competition and incentives and know you have to be better than your compet, your competitor. But if you have a state back, if you have a state contract, that means you don't have a competitor. You, you have guaranteed income for the term of the deal and you haven't in Fact introduced good incentives. You've simply reproduced a bureaucracy. And you know, there's a lot of this, you know, they call them private public partnerships. Tony Blair special. But really it was Thatcher that started a lot of that. And yeah, the author I always recommend and I'd love to see you have him on is a guy called John Gray who's a, who's a philosopher, who writes for the New Statesman. He wrote a. He actually used to be a libertarian, like a hardcore Thatcherite, but then he saw how it all went and he wrote a book called False dawn where he said, where he said, look, the way you have to really understand what happened there is. Is that actually what Thatcher did was she more efficiently centralized government and took out what he calls intermediary institutions, I. E. Buffers between the state and the people. You know, things like working men's clubs and unions and so on, which kind of existed as a layer in between where it wasn't quite. She just took those off the map and then introduced all of these kind of state back. Monopolies I would call them. So I'm not convinced that that is. Has done well for the country. I think it's, I mean, clearly the country doesn't seem like it's. You know, I mean, in my lifetime I was what, 1982 to now? I wouldn't say we've been onwards and upwards for that whole time. It doesn't feel like that at all.

[B]

So I'm 78. I'm from 78. And I agree it seems particularly bad now though. Things feel particularly. Yeah, country feels depressed.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

The energy is low, business is very hard, lots of people are struggling. The, the inflationary pressures that of the last few years are really starting to hit now and I feel that's going to get a lot worse, which is why I kind of, I mean we had Curtis Yarvin in a few weeks ago and he was arguing against this kind of like reform style incremental right wing politics. He said aiming for a 40 regime change is doomed to fail because it leaves the old establishment lives to regroup. He says you have to go for 100%. You have to go for 100 and change the whole thing.

[A]

Yeah, well, I mean that, that Yavin with kind of revolutionary, radical, revolutionary talk. Yeah. The thing is, is that people have to understand how much they're up against it. I mean, I remember I was in an event with Yavin many years ago and he said something like, look, you have to, you have to think of yourselves as being in Stalin's Russia. And your position is that you're against Stalin. Okay. But, you know, there's a lot of. Okay, it may, let's face it, the government's not going to like round you up and kill you or put you in the Gulag or something, but.

[B]

Well, they are rounding people up, but you asked.

[A]

But it is still the right frame to think of that. You know, they're only going to allow you to get away with so much. And the prospect of that actually happening, what Yavin's talking about, you know, it's kind of, it's remote. People are just nowhere near being organized enough or having a kind of coherent understanding of what's happened or, you know, it's, it. We're just nowhere near those sorts of scenarios. So at the minute, the best, I think the best we can hope for is for the system to do what I call competent containment.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it is possible. It is actually possible in, in Canada, Mark Carney. Now you might think all sorts of things about Mark Carney.

[B]

I do.

[A]

Right. But quietly and under the hood, he has got Canada into a situation of negative net migration from the insane highs of Justin Trudeau and he's been doing deportations. And what's fascinating in Canada is that because there's no Canadian, right. Nigel Farage, there's no Canadian Trump, there's no slop, populist, right. Taking up all the energy. It's just Mark Carney quietly going. And they didn't, you know, they didn't make a song and dance about it. They didn't, you know, there weren't massive headlines on it. You know, his headlines were all talking like Donald Trump or whatever, but quietly, under the hood, that efficiently. They were doing that. And I would love, I mean, I, my genuine hope was that Keir Starmer would be a bit like that. Trouble with Starmer is that he's very flaky. You know, 14, 13, 14 U turns in 12, 18 months now he can't see any course through. He always does the halfway house and fudges and, you know, acquiesces to the radicals in his party. He's not a very strong leader. But it, Carney is showing that it can be done without, without even a song or a dance.

[B]

But did he have to, did Carney have to do that? Because Pierre Poyet was close. He had the energy, he had the momentum. And if Trudeau hadn't of quit, then I think Pierre would have won that election.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

Is this the containment?

[A]

So, so this is containment. But the, the key, the key is the competent containment. Right. So it's no good. Containment's no good if it doesn't actually produce the result. Result we want.

[B]

And Carney is competent.

[A]

Whereas, and. And for me, I don't care how we get there. I don't care if we get there through Starmer just doing it through his kind of legalistic management style. I don't care if we get there through. I don't know, like the green shrinking the economy so much that we actually get flight of people going out or. I don't care if we get there through, you know, one of the. One of the right parties coming in and doing it. It's just that my current assessment is that they are actually the least likely people to do it. The current Reform Party feel like they're the least likely people to do it. 1. Because if they try to do anything, they'll get a huge amount of pushback, unlike Carney. Or. Because the thing is, with. With the. If this left doing it, what are you going to do? Call them fascists? You're going to call Kiyosama a fascist or you're going to call Mark Carney? You know, these. This is like the system doing it. You know what I mean?

[B]

But ironically. Ironically, it's the left who are acting most fascist at times.

[A]

Yeah, well, yeah, yes, but what I'm saying is, is that that attack's not going to land on, you know, a party like labor in the same way that, you know, it will energize, like, in a way, when the right act does stuff, it energizes the left because they think they're fighting, you know, they think the fascia is coming, whereas when it. When it's done in the quiet managerial way of Carney, they don't really care. And this is how you ended up with, you know, Barack Obama, with the kids in the cages. Do you know what I mean? Because, you know, Left. Left aren't going to be animated by that because they don't really care. So, you know, and I think we have to think outside the box a bit and not go for the same, same old mechanism. I mean, let's not forget, you know, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and so on, they've been at this game for about 80 years, the exact same 80 years that this country has declined. You know, it's failed. That style of conservatism is just a failed strategy. I mean, it may win elections, but in terms of getting results, it's obviously just got up. So I. I like to focus a lot of my Energy attacking, I guess this fake opposition or center right, whatever you want to call them. They are the great. I mean, what have they conserved ever? Ever? So we have to just stop going, stop falling for their tricks. So.

[B]

So the reform is the exact same enemy. Enemy as the Conservative Party.

[A]

Exact same. Almost exact same people. Exact same people. Yeah. Until. Unless they want to get serious. Unless reform come out and show that they're properly serious. What would being serious look like? Yes, right. They'd have to say, look, day one, we come in, repeal Tony Blair act. Okay. Communications Act 2003, Section 127 gone. Okay. All the way down. You know, line by line. We're going to decommission ofcom. We're going to get rid of that Supreme Court that was imposed on the country that is completely alien to British tradition, British legal precedent and all of that. Get rid of it. Get rid of all of that. We're gonna get. We're gonna basically nuke every quango that was set up. All of these independent bodies that were set up. We're gonna remove independence with bank of England, which is another thing that government did. We're going to. I mean you can see that just line by line all the way down to the Equality Act 2010. But also I would go even further. I would look at some of the. Because if you actually have a look at when people actually get into trouble and why they're put into jail and so on, some of the acts are older. You know, there's the Public order Act of 1986 under Thatcher. I think that's the basis of hate speech law in the country. It's the Public Order Act 1986. And I'd have a look at all of that. Now obviously you need competent people, legally minded people. And you know, I've seen, I mean, I've spoken to some Reform MPs and they just don't. They're not thinking on that level.

[B]

Well, they're thinking 5p off a pint of beer and the, the thing they did at the petrol station yesterday, it's all gimmicks.

[A]

Yeah, G. Like cheap. What they come across as is like a kind of pier side bingo hall. You know, it's like Bruce Forsyth's Britain carnival barker nonsense all the time. And I, I just don't think it captures the mood of the, the true mood of the country. And it's like they want to win an election appealing purely to people who just watch like, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. You know, which is, I mean, There are a section of the public who do that, but it's like they're writing every, everybody else off, you know, and they're, they're deliberately saying, like, look, okay, you may be getting hundreds of thousands of views on your channel, Peter, but you know, we're not going to listen to you. We write you or you guys are terminally online. Okay? This is completely like Boomer brained, okay? The people terminally online, what does that even mean? In the current year, everybody's got an iPhone, okay? Everybody watches YouTube, everybody's on social media. So what that is is just normal people.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Expressing their opinions. I'm a normal person, you're a normal person. Okay? We're not terminally online. We're just normal people. I'm a dad, you're a dad. We're fed up, right? We're in our 40s, you know, and we've seen the country's not turned out in the, in the way that we wanted it to and we're expressing our discontent. The reason I've got an audience and the reason you've got an audience is because thousands and thousands of people agree with us, okay? So it's not that we're terminally online, it's that they, you reform are terminally M, like within the M25 terminally Westminster. They are terminally Tory wonk think tank. And this is the way we have to turn it around and be like, look, you have to get outside of your bubble because there's all sorts of nonsense that percolate in these, in these kind of small circles. One of the things that really irritates me, Peter, is this, is this notion that the right need to triangulate to the center like the left do. Okay? The left, like Tony Blair, okay? Tony Blair's whole thing is that for labor to win elections, they have to pretend to love the country. They have to pretend to be patriots. They have to pretend to care about law and order. And that's how he won three elections, by appealing to conservatives. And the thing that kept Tony Blair up at night wasn't the Guardian, it was the Daily Mail because he wanted to get Daily Mail readers and Telegraph readers to vote for him. And he did. That's how he won three elections. But the reason the left have to do that is because if they went out now naked with all of their mental ideas, most of the country or most normal people don't support crazy left wing ideas. I don't actually mean on economics. A lot of the country do support big government and welfare and Things like that. What I mean is on, you know, woke or whatever, the stupid ideas, social liberal ideas, things like this, university bollocks, right? And so most people, I mean, there's data to show this that the average Conservative mp, the average Tory MP is, is way further to the left on social issues than the average member of the public. In fact, they're further to the left than the average labor voter on social issues. So what that tells me is that this notion that the right need to moderate to the center in order to be appealing on social issues and on things like immigration, on many other things just isn't true. How do we know this? How do we know this? Because in America, Ben Shapiro spent 10 years making this argument about Trump, okay? Every stage of the way. Obviously he loves Trump now because Trump is bombing Iran for him. But back in 2016 and in 2020 and in 2020, every step of the way, he was saying, like, Trump is going too far. He needs to moderate to the center. We're going to lose the middle voter. That middle voter does not exist, okay? And Trump proved it. Trump went way. I mean, he got elected by saying that Haitians are eating dogs, okay? Which is okay, you could say, well, maybe he went a bit far. But the fact is, is that he won. He increased his vote from 2016 to 2020 by 14 million. That's a huge increase after four years of the media calling him literally Hitler. So this proves that that idea, the David Cameron idea, that the right need to pretend to be wet and left wing and hug a hoodie and all of that is just nonsense. It's just nonsense. There's good. I mean, a book was written years ago by Jonathan Haidt called the Righteous Mind.

[B]

I've read it.

[A]

Right. If you remember, his thesis in that book is that the right have, or conservatives have a permanent advantage in elections because they appeal to all six moral foundations. All the right need to do is activate what people already think. They don't have to persuade them into some mental position that men are, you know, a man can be a woman or wherever else. They just have to. I mean, people already think. What people already think is basically the quote, unquote, right?

[B]

It's normal.

[A]

Normal, Right.

[B]

Can you find those moral foundations, Connor?

[A]

So all they need to do then is activate enough people. Okay? And this is how. This is, is how Trump won so much of the country, okay? He's betrayed them. Now, I'm just talking about election strategy here, but unfortunately in Westminster, they took the lesson of Blair to be, oh, well, we need to do. In order to win elections, we need to pretend to be Tony Blair, too. But that, that was the wrong. That was the wrong lesson. Because the left and the right is an asymmetrical situation. They're not mirrors of each other. The right has advantages that the left don't have. Don't forget. The left have to persuade huge numbers of people of ideas that have not come into fruition yet. They're always trying to bring in utopia. If you're on the right, you don't have to. You don't have to appeal to utopia. You just have to appeal to common sense.

[B]

Common sense and normality.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

So that's why there's so many disenfranchised voters. I mean, I'm voted in the last three elections. I know so many people just say, what's the point? What are some. I mean, was, what was it, 60% turnout of the last election, one of the. The lowest since Post World War II? You got to get those people out and vote again. You got to energize them.

[A]

And if you, yeah, if you got those people out and if, if you were saying, I mean, and this is, this is. I mean, I don't agree with all of Rupert Lowe's policy choices and Israelism and things like that. Okay, you might, but I, I'm kind of. I. I feel like they, if tested, may become a liability, you know, because, like I said, the public tends to be like, socially right, but economically left, you know, but why I like him is because he, when he talks, he sounds like he's sensible, just talks a lot of common sense. And if the public were just given that choice, if it was put in front of them, I think it was sweet. I really do think it would, you know, or other advantages and disadvantages, you know, on an equal footing. If, let's say, if it was pumped by the media, if, you know, if it had the ground game, if it had all of those other advantages that the system has, you know, if the public were actually given it as a choice, I think they'd go for it. The thing is, they always make sure it's not on the menu. Always.

[B]

Well, it's going to be very interesting with restore. So I think they can build up the ground network. I think that can happen. I think there's enough people who are so desperate for something better and normal and rational that they will come out and support this. You can observe it from distance. I don't think they will get the media support. I don't know if Rupert Lowe gets On Question Time, I don't even know if they even just, just ignore them. But there is a, a larger and growing independent media which does have a voice and social media, which does have a voice, and that's going to be very interesting is if they can get that message across to enough people. I, I wonder if the. I find the ethnicity conversation complex and distracting and I don't know if you can build a big enough tent. I think you can do on immigration. I don't know if you can build a big enough tent having, Try and have a nuanced conversation about ethnicity. Even if you're right. I mean, like, I think there's a fair argument to discuss what English ethnicity is in, like, Nigerian, like Japanese. But I just don't think it's, I don't think it's an important enough issue.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, talking on the common, I would like, I would just like to see more common sense on things like that. Look at me, right? I'm half Welsh and half Iranian. My dad is Iranian, mother's Welsh. I grew up in Wales. You know, culturally, I'm Welsh. Right now you can't.

[B]

I mean, Steve Laws is going to kick you out.

[A]

I mean, I mean, but it's pointless to talk about that. Steve Laws is just not going to be in power at any point. So that's a waste of time. That is a waste of time to have that conversation. But also, at the same time, I don't understand why there's such a queasiness to say, well, you know, culturally and so on. I'm, I'm, I'm British. I, you know, everything I know is from this country, but by blood, I'm half and half. And I just, like, why would you deny that? I mean, you'd never deny that. You know, the. I mean, my dad's ancestors go back to the Zagros Mountains like 3,000 years ago. Why would you deny it? It's just, it's just a fact. Yet if people start talking about that for the other half, like, you know, if I said, well, my mother, my mother's people, they would probably go back to the Druids. They've been there for a very long time, probably the original Britons. Why can't we say that as well? And it's, And I, and I. And the thing is, that shouldn't be radical. That shouldn't be. And I think the reason that the conversation goes down all these weird rabbit holes is because there are people who are just. It's like they don't want to Admit that there's such a thing as, like the British who, who do have history and they go back, you know, I mean, I, I remember last time I went back to, to Wales, I went to a place called Dannaragoff Caves. And they've got this. There are three caves there, and up in the, up in the third cave, the bone cave, they call it, they've got this exhibition where there are these cavemen there. Okay. I mean, obviously they're not, but, you know, those people. Those people were there and, you know, then the Romans came and then the Vikings came. I mean, we all know our history, so why would you deny that that's a real thing?

[B]

Well, we haven't been allowed to have it as a conversation in the country because any attempt to discuss race, ethnicity, skin color, just by having the conversation, oh, you're a racist. And there's social consequences. So, like, there's been a lot of bending the knee. I think, I think times change. I think people already have the conversation. I just don't know if it's a. Has any. Bears any benefit to look at it as something that might drive policy, I think. Right, right.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, but you see, even on that, there are lots of countries, and again, this is where people just aren't, Aren't sensible. They're too hysterical when it comes to this topic. Even on that, in many countries, there is a kind of, you know, a kind of birthright component, of course, to citizenship. Okay. And, and, and by that they also mean, like, you know, having a grandparent or having a parent or also. And I think even in this country, you know, to an extent, that's there already as well. But, and, but what I'm saying is the countries that have, that aren't kind of like evil, weird, fascist countries, they're normal countries. Countries in Europe, countries in East Asia. Well, I'm like, we don't think of them as kind of crazy ethno nationalist countries. They just have it as a component because it's just a, it's just kind of like a normal part of life. I don't see why. I mean, even Suella Braverman, I seem to recall, came out and said, well, look, you know, yeah, you, you cannot sit there and pretend that ethnically I'm. I'm the same as. I'm the same as someone whose ancestors have been. That clearly my parents arrived at a certain point. So it's, you know, once people just get over that, we can get, we can get on with normal. We can get on with every other policy I don't know why.

[B]

It's just a new conversation for the country. It's like, it makes some people feel uncomfortable. It's a new conversation we haven't had. And I think because the media and the left always want to find a way to attack by having the conversation. Like a Charlie Downs will try and have a conversation and then they'll come out in like an attack dog just for having it. So it's a new thing to try for people try and get their heads around. It's not that it's wrong.

[A]

Yeah, I, I would just like, I would just like to see less hysteria around it because the, the more the, the. I mean, it's just a fact of life. I just don't know why you'd, why anybody. It's just obvious. And it's not even something that, you know, new, new arrivals, the countries or somebody, somebody who comes from an immigrant background. It's like that's also part of their story as well. Why would you ever deny your own, your own and your own ancestry? You wouldn't, you wouldn't want to do that. So, yeah, I really do think people need to, like, because it, it gets in the way of just normal conversation. You know, back, back a few years ago, 20, 30 years ago, you'd go traveling and you'd meet someone or you'd say, well, where are you from then? You know, or they hear my, I got a funny name or where you're from then, you know, and it's just like, it's just part of life. I just don't know why. And yet some people wanna problematize it or they wanna, they wanna get offensive or funny about it. The, the more people have conversations like that, the easier it will become. You just got to take the taboos off it because it's not. I mean, the reason why the left get funny is because they, they're trapped in this mindset that any step you have towards that, you know, immediately go to Hitler. Don't pass. You know, don't pass, go. It's just like we've gotta, we've got to stop being childish like this, you know, kind of cartoon world. And slowly but surely I think we'll get there. And I, and I do think the, you know, the. Oh, well, you know, does that mean you're going to be deported and so on. That's just, that's just a nonsense. That's just a silly, silly distraction that they will use, you know, as a, as a kind of beating, you know, they'll try to Use that against a Charlie Downs or against Rupert or something. But it's just a, you know, step over that nonsense.

[B]

I mean, Malay said, don't give the left an inch. He said, they'll kill you. They will try and destroy you. But the weird thing is there's almost like two lefts. I quite like the William Clouston old school left. It's this new mental lunatic left.

[A]

Well, like we were saying earlier on, I would like to get, I would try to like. Because the thing is, right, let's pretend you get your, your, your kind of Curtis Yvin revolution, okay?

[B]

And you, we get a dictator, you

[A]

get, you get based world. Okay, let's put it that way. You still have to govern Hannah Spencer. Yes, right. Even if you got the magic scenario where 25 million people are deported, you still have to govern Hannah Spencer and Zach Polinsky and all these, they're still going to be there. So we have, we. I think we have to find a way somehow to get, to get out of like culture war mode, get out of, you know, they're the enemy mode. And, and everybody think about how can we make this a better country together? Even if, even if we have some really difficult conversations and, you know, some of these things that have been taboo, we just need to kind of get over them and get. Because otherwise, I mean, look, Carl Schmidt, who's one of the people I talk about, quite, quite often had this idea of the friend enemy distinction. Okay? But this is often misunderstood. The friend enemy distinction. What Carl Schmidt was talking about is he said, look, if you have an internal friend enemy distinction, this is a real problem for a state because friend, enemy distinction is prelude to war. So in the ideal scenario, your enemies would be external, that is external to the nation. They would not be internal. And the trouble is is that once you start seeing your political opponents internally as enemies. In that sense, in that political Schmittian sense, this is, these are preludes to civil breakdown, civil disorder, civil war.

[B]

But isn't that what we're already living through?

[A]

Well, I mean, if people carry on going down that path and insist on going down that path, that's where it will lead up. But that's not going to make the country a better place. That'll be an absolute nightmare to live through. You know, civil wars are one of the worst things that no talked about. Shakespeare, he was living at a time just after the War of the Roses, after, you know, one of the worst civil wars in the country's history. And that was the doomsday scenario. Civil disorder like disorder is the doomsday scenario in Shakespeare. So it's like, well, how do you make an order social? How do you promote social cohesion? And you can't do it by continually dividing people. You have to find some place to come together. And, you know, it could be small morsels like you and Zach Polanski or me and Aaron Bastani agreeing on being anti war, for example. But once you find that one bit of common ground, you might be able to start having other conversations. You know, maybe the conversation I just had about, you know, ethnicity with you, maybe one day, you know, you could have it with Ash Sakar and she. I mean, she might actually, you know, end up being more sensible on some of these things as well.

[B]

Not sure on that one.

[A]

I mean, I talk about utopia.

[B]

Yeah. I've been trying to get Aaron Bastani in here because actually, he disagree with him a lot, but he also says some very. He has some very sensible observations of the right and mistakes they're making, which I always find kind of interesting.

[A]

And see, the thing is, I do think that what we're talking about organically, almost is happening over. Over things like anti war. Okay. I mean, you say, have a look in America, like, now you've got a situation where Tucker Carlson and the Young Turks are on friendly terms, okay. And they're kind of agreeing more than they're disagreeing, or somebody like Dave Smith, who's a libertarian, okay. With the Young Turks, who are kind of radical leftists, and Tucker Carlson, who's kind of somewhere else, but they're all kind of converging together against the establishment and, and uniting on issues like, you know, like the war and various other things. It's. It's kind of happening over there, over in America more rapidly than you than you'd thought. We feel like we're on a little

[B]

lag here, but again, I think they've got a. A more developed independent media network.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Tucker Carlson is. I mean, he's one of the loudest voices in America. Joe Rogan to some extent, has these people on. He has Dave Smith regularly on the show. Dave Smith himself's getting invited on Megyn Kelly's independent show. I. I feel like, you know, out in the US it's really the boomers who are sticking to CNN and Fox News and, yeah, Gen X zoomers are finding their content in the independent networks. It's a lot smaller here. What do we really have, like, Piers Morgan? He's his establishment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

With the wind.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Trigonometry guys do a good job you know, Winston's doing a good job. Stephen Bartlett is more self help. Chris Williamson has gone to America. So. But. But they've got a really developed independent network of media personalities who are out there actually going against what the establishment is saying. I mean, Tucker Carlson. I mean, was it Tucker Carlson the other day or might have been. Dave Smith was talking about the shift to. From pro Israel to pro Gaza in America has been rapid. And so they've got that development. We don't have that developed network here. People are still going to. The rest is politics. And they're. I mean they're establishment bollocks. Michael Gove's establishment bollocks. The BBC's kind of. We don't have that. We need a much. Basically this show needs to be massive and tell everyone to off.

[A]

Yeah, it's happening slow but I think we're starting to get there. We're starting to. You're seeing all sorts of weird like, you know, me getting retweeted by George Galloway and just weird things that you wouldn't have seen a few years ago. So it's slowly but surely something is developing, something's happening and you know, but. But it can't lead anywhere positive if we. If we're still all divided by nonsense issue like nonsense culture wars stuff unite against the establishment. And I think it has to be the shot, like the shot has to be at the moment against the establishment. That's the main thing you put. And lots of people have actually been calling for this increasingly in the past few weeks that put aside all your other differences at the minute. The urgent thing is to. To sweep aside and to get in a new set of politicians essentially.

[B]

How do you get the young people. That's one of my big worries. Firstly, I'm disgusted what we've done to the country for young people. It's just grossly unfair. The way I position it is that the way we are so addicted to debt in the country is that for the stuff we. I say collectively we. But the stuff we want now we're asking Connor and his mates to pay for by having less in the future. Now you wouldn't do that to your kids. You sacrifice for your kids but collectively we're telling our kids you sacrifice for us. It's kind of. It's really fucking selfish.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I can see why so many young people are going towards the Greens because it's. It's a really restore reform are both really tough sells to someone who's 18, 19, 20.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We don't have a Charlie Kirk, who's out there convincing young people of good ideas, good conservative ideas, debating it in public and making it kind of cool to be a conservative. We don't have that. And so my worry is, like, how do we get the young?

[A]

I think. Well, I mean, I mean, I. I think that. The trouble. The trouble with our party, or trouble, Reform in particular, is that they increasingly do things that are Boomer. Boomer coded. They. They're still trying to appeal to that. I mean, you have a look at reform, you know those weird bingo halls they. They're always in, and it looks like an old people's home a lot of the time.

[B]

One of them looked like, oh, can't see. If you can find Nigel Farage's event this week, there's a photo, it's from the back of the room. And you can see the. You can see the back of the people's heads. And you see they're kind of like turquoise screens. If you can find that. I want to see. If you see what I saw, I nearly tweeted out and I held back, but fuck it, I'll talk about it now. But to me, it looked like 1984, you know, have you, have you seen the film?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of it.

[B]

Yeah. You know that moment where they're all in the room and you look from the back and you. Yeah, it's just. It just looked like that. And I was like, no, I need the back view. No, the back view where it's all dark. It might be on Nigel's Twitter. See if you find, if you. Connor finds it, we'll have a look.

[A]

See that? The thing is, there is quite. There is quite. You know, I mean, there's data on this to show that there are a lot of young people who are fed up with the way things have gone. And not all of them are left wing. There's a. There's widespread right wing discontent among young men in particular.

[B]

It's not that one.

[A]

And. But it seems like reform are just writing those people off or saying that they are terminally online or saying that they're fringe or something, but actually they exist in very, in very large numbers. And I think you're right, Peter, that those people will be lost.

[B]

Is it that to the left it's really dark. And from the back, if you go to his timeline,

[A]

I think there are a large amount of young people who would, you know, vote in the right direction. But at the moment, over issues like the war, over issues like, I mean, you know, recently I'm trying to remember what the policy was that reform came up with, but it was just like another kick in the balls for the young, another kind of boon, a boon for the old. They are at risk of just loot writing off anybody under the age of. I mean, I would say even 50, definitely under the age of 40 there.

[B]

Look at that right now. Because they don't even look like real people now. Connor, go. Go and search and just Google the top 1984 film.

[A]

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

[B]

Yeah, Put film and put crowd finds it. Go images. Yeah, yeah, Go to that first one. Cod.

[A]

That's the one. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Look at those two next to each other. It's immediately what I thought. As soon as I saw it, I was like, this is weird.

[A]

I think, you know, there's been stories from some of those reform events that it is really like they run it like, you know, like when you go to a game show and you go and see and there's the applause, applause.

[B]

They hold up the side.

[A]

Yeah. Some people have said that it's really tightly controlled at some of those events. Yeah. Something very strange about reform. Yeah.

[B]

Are you optimistic?

[A]

In a strange way, I am. Because regardless of what happens in electoral politics, I think there's a lot of energy. I think some of these new converge, the left right convergences that we're seeing shows that the old tricks of the system aren't working anymore. You know, there's still some ways to go, but in a strange way, I'm more optimistic now than I was last time I was here because of many of the developments and because so much of the system is being exposed in front of our eyes. You know, the way these weird niche journals and, you know, people funded by shadowy networks are going after Restore and going after Rupert Low this week. They think they're doing damage, but actually what they're doing is just exposing. They're exposing the fact that they're some part of the establishment. They're exposing the fact that, you know, there are paid shills, when I put it that way, because this is increasingly what it's about. Are you truly independent or are you a page, A page shill?

[B]

It's so funny. So I've increasingly seen comments on my Twitter or my comments on YouTube, like occasionally popping up saying, oh, yeah, but who's he paid by? Who's he funded by? I'm literally funded by no one.

[A]

But there are tells, see? I mean, and one of the tells when it comes to this is when the Iran war, when The Iran war started, right, the start. Who came out straight away in support of it and who was like, oh, here we go again, or this is not a good idea, or I'm against it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That is one of the immediate tells of whether you're. Because almost nobody supports these things, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like. And so in order to do it, you probably, you probably, you know, representing some interest somewhere. It's not even hidden anymore. It's now like, so it's so in your face that almost nobody can ignore it.

[B]

That's funny. One is on the Trump thing, because there was an energy when he won that election and there was hope. A lot of people I spoke to in America said, no, this is great, this is brilliant. He's going to, you know, he's learned Trump won, learned that, you know how the swamp works. He's going to drain it, he's going to close the border, he's going to get the economy going. And there was that initial energy with the Doge and Elon Musk. Something. Something's going to happen here. And then it's just gone to absolute shit. The. I mean, I wonder how much of it is like, something to do with the Epstein files. But the Epstein files, they said they would release them, they didn't. And now with this war, it's so unpopular, it's going to destroy him. There's no chance. He's got no chance in the midterms and the Republicans will lose the next election.

[A]

But also, I mean, the thing is, the Epstein files, it's like, okay, yes, the abuse and the salacious details and so on, but nobody's talking about what they actually revealed, the network that was revealed by it. And the level, I mean, that was a shocking thing to me. Just the level of, like, this guy's sitting in jail and he's still having people going to him for sage advice about really quite important decisions. And, you know, in this country, we've had, you know, the Peter Mandelsta scandal. You mean, he's still not in jail, by the way. He was let out without, without bail, I think it was.

[B]

So will Starmer survive this? I mean, how can he survive what came out yesterday? But it's. Well, what was it? Was it George Khan? It's a big club. We're not in it. I'm fucking glad I'm not in this club.

[A]

But. Well, I guess what I'm saying is the extent, like, the extent of whatever network that is, this has really been the problem of the Trump, the second Trump presidency, is that he has sold. I mean, let's just put it in really frank terms. He sold out his base. He betrayed them on pretty much every single issue. Just in the past week, he came out and said, yeah, you know, you can have trend. You can have trend. You can transgender your kids if you have parental consent. Well, I mean, that was literally the position. Like that was already. That was the position under Joe Biden. Yeah, you know, they edited the tweet, didn't they? And then he, and then he, and then he said, oh, look, guys, you know, we're just going to go after the criminals. You guys are going to have to get over the illegal migrants because they're picking the fruit in the farms. What? You know, I mean, these are, these aren't just betrayals. It's like a kick in the balls for anyone who voted for maga. And then, of course, the ultimate betrayal. He literally talked for 10 years plus about not only would he not start a forever war, but specifically this one with Iran. Yeah, specifically. He promised not to do the Iran one and then he did the Iran

[B]

one and now he's saying, you know, what did he say about the dead soldiers coming back? That's the cost of war or something.

[A]

There will be, you know, now he's dancing with Jake Paul. I mean, it's just. It's just awful. It's just so bad.

[B]

He's dancing with Jake Paul?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He endorsed him to run and he's dancing like I literally. As soldiers are coming back in the body bags. He's doing the Trump dance with Jake Paul. Just so awful.

[B]

But the thing is, it's like he, he thinks he's the greatest president of all time. Obviously he isn't, but actually he could have been, could have, could have been a great president easily. And now his reputation is dead. And it's like, I can't understand why. I just can't understand why.

[A]

He basically said this is a presidency for my donors and not for my voters.

[B]

The iron law of the oligarchy. Oh, man. Well, listen, Nemo, great to see you. I've got your books at home. When I finish Bastiat, I'll be. I'll be onto it and I'll look forward to reading it. Do you want to mention your other book?

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, I've just had two new books out. One's called Applied Elite Theory.

[B]

That's the one I got.

[A]

And that's like a follow up to Populist Delusion where I actually take what you learned there and just apply it to everyday Politics in Britain and in America, where I actually predicted many of the things that we're seeing play out now. I saw it pretty early that Trump had. Trump had sold out, basically at some point between 20. I mean, maybe he'd always sold out. We can debate that. But I kind of saw it coming, which was very unpopular at the time. Now it's kind of been vindicated. And if you want to see all of that analysis in real detail, it's all there.

[B]

That's a great warning to reform voters, because you're seeing the same.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you know, and see, what's tragic to me is that if reform with a genuine article in this country, we don't have the checks and balances that they have in America, right. I. E. The divine right of Parliament is a real thing. If you have a majority, you can basically do anything, which is really frustrating because it means if we actually got super majority for a party like Reform, they could really do something. And yet we're getting more of this. You know, in wrestling there's this chant, same old shit, same old shit. And it's like. It's like, come on, guys, you know, give us something else. And I. And I. And coming out on the 18th of March, I have a book called Foundations of Shakespeare, which is a beautiful kind of prestige edition. I actually gave a talk about it last night. And so if you, you know, as well as talking about politics, I. I'm a Shakespeare scholar as well. If you want to learn about our greatest writer, the world's greatest writer, you know, pick up that and it'd look lovely on your shelf as well.

[B]

I just bought the Complete Works of Shakespeare because that was listed in the book of the books where the government warned you about far right influence. Did you see that list of books?

[A]

Yeah, I did, yeah.

[B]

Look, man, great to see you. I'll be interested to see what we talk about when I see you next. At some point, I really want to get you and Curtis Yarvin together. That'd be an interesting chat. But anyway, look, good luck with it and, yeah, I'll see you soon, man. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you soon.