00:00:00
There's mention of Greenland being invaded by the United States. There's
00:00:03
the situation in Iran. Trump has snatched Maduro from Venezuela. There's talk of China taking back Taiwan. What
00:00:10
the hell is going on? >> Well, what you're seeing is the West becoming weaker and embolding our
00:00:15
enemies and the final collapse of a shared myth that we were living in a structured world where everything is
00:00:20
done according to the rules. That is now gone. And Trump is acting in recognition
00:00:26
of that reality, saying we are not going to play by the fake rules anymore that no one else is playing by. Anyway,
00:00:31
>> is there a risk with this strategy? >> Of course. And we can talk about the
00:00:34
reasons for it. I think it's really important. >> The floor is yours. >> Constantine Kissen is one of the
00:00:39
sharpest voices in political commentary right now. >> He's here to unpack the current
00:00:44
geopolitical landscape and what could be done to salvage the West before it's too
00:00:49
late. >> So, Russia invading Ukraine was not an accident. It was a consequence of the
00:00:53
fact that Putin felt this was the moment to test the waters. Can we now do the things we've always wanted to do?
00:00:59
Because the West lost its focus and sense of purpose. So, for example, I don't know if you know this, Europe is
00:01:06
12% of the world's population, 25% of the world's GDP, and 60% of the world's
00:01:10
welfare spending. Germany destroyed its nuclear facilities, thereby making itself reliant on Russian gas. And in
00:01:16
Britain, we've destroyed our manufacturing, which is now produced elsewhere. and we've run down our armed
00:01:20
forces because we have felt so safe and so comfortable because there's been no
00:01:24
consequence. Well, the consequences are here per person. We have less money today than we did 20 years ago. We have
00:01:31
the highest tax burden in peace time history. We're driving out the entrepreneurs and we've already seen a
00:01:36
decline in our power in the world and our influence in the world. That's the
00:01:39
big danger. But there is an opportunity to turn things around if we can make these big decisions. What are you
00:01:44
hopeful? >> Listen, my my team gave me a script that they asked me to read, but I'm just
00:01:55
going to ask you um in the nicest way I possibly can. Thank you first and foremost for choosing to subscribe to
00:02:00
this channel. It is um it's been one of the most incredible crazy years of my
00:02:03
life. I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams in my life, but this was
00:02:07
not one of them. And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with you and you've given me so much feedback
00:02:11
is something I will always be appreciative of. And I almost carry away a sort of burden of uh responsibility to
00:02:17
pay you back. And the favor I would like to ask from you today is to subscribe to
00:02:21
the channel if you um would be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly about 47% of you that
00:02:26
listen to this channel frequently currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one of those
00:02:30
people, please come and join us. Hit the subscribe button. It's the single free
00:02:33
thing you can do to make this channel better. And every subscriber sort of pays into this show and allows us to do
00:02:38
things bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And I will not let you down if you hit the subscribe
00:02:43
button. I promise you. And if I do, please do unsubscribe, but I promise I won't. Thank you,
00:02:50
Constantine. There is so much going on in the world right now that it is incredibly
00:02:56
confusing to somebody like me who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about geopolitics or the bigger picture.
00:03:02
I'm very very heads downstand as I imagine a lot of people in my audience are. We kind of get on with our lives.
00:03:06
But every time we look up at the news, there's Trump has snatched Maduro from
00:03:11
Venezuela. There's the war with Russia and Ukraine. There's something going on
00:03:16
with Iran. There's mention of Greenland being invaded by the United States. There's talk of China taking back
00:03:22
Taiwan. I wanted to speak to you today to understand your perspective on the bigger picture here.
00:03:29
>> What the hell is going on? Well, what you're seeing is the the final collapse of what people have
00:03:35
described as the postworld war II order, which then became the post Soviet collapse order. So, if you think about
00:03:42
1945, World War II finishes and the Cold War begins. So, you go from World War II
00:03:49
to two big major players in the world competing for dominance. And that lasts until 1991 when the Soviet Union
00:03:57
collapses at which point you get the uniolar world in which there's only one
00:04:01
hedgeimonyy, only one country that's really setting the terms of what's happening in the world. The west lost
00:04:06
its focus and its sense of purpose in 1991 because we were like, well, we we defeated our great rival, communism,
00:04:15
Soviet, Russia, etc. And then we kind of didn't really know what to do and we
00:04:20
took eye off the ball. And what's happening now is that entire framework that we have had since World War II is
00:04:27
disintegrating very rapidly. This is why you know in in light of recent events and the the Maduro situation you hear a
00:04:35
lot of people talk about international law. International law was I don't know
00:04:39
if you if you ever had you will know Harrari on your show. I have yet to wrote the book book called Sapiens in
00:04:44
which he talks about the fact that almost everything that we live in the world in in which we exist is a kind of
00:04:52
shared myth that we have and laws and money and all these things. They are agreements that we have between us to
00:04:59
make things real that are not real. Money isn't real. That piece of paper has no value in your pocket really
00:05:06
outside of the fact that other people have got together and agreed that it's
00:05:09
money. Right. Well, international law really was that, but even weaker than that. Because if you think about what a
00:05:15
law is, a law is something that has to be backed by not only the consent of the people who are involved, but also
00:05:22
ultimately it's about the use of force, the legitimate use of force. Now, for
00:05:26
international law, there's never been anything that could enforce that law other than the most powerful country in
00:05:33
the world, right? So if China invades Taiwan, no one's going to do anything about it because there is no overarching
00:05:40
authority with the military to be able to do anything about it. And so that shared fiction that we had which we were
00:05:48
living in a structured world in which everything is done according to the rules, the rules-based order. You might
00:05:54
have heard that term being used. That is now gone. And Trump is acting in recognition of that reality. and he's
00:06:02
saying, well, given that it's sort of every man for himself now, I'm going to
00:06:07
do what's in the interest of the United States. Is it in the interest of the
00:06:10
United States, for example, to have an openly hostile leader of a country close to the US, which is so destabilized that
00:06:19
7 million people have fled as refugees? >> Venezuela. >> Venezuela. Is it in our interest to have
00:06:24
this person cozying up to Russia and China? Is it in our interest to allow him to have Hezbollah training camps on
00:06:30
the island of Margarita? Is it in our interest? It's going back to the Monroy
00:06:34
doctrine, the idea that America does not allow foreign nations to meddle in its backyard, so to speak. And so what he's
00:06:41
doing now is going, "Well, look, this is the world we live in. I'm going to do
00:06:44
what's best for my country." And I think that's what you're seeing.
00:06:48
>> Is there a risk with this strategy? >> Of course, there's a risk with every
00:06:52
strategy. Of course, there's a risk with this strategy. There was a big risk
00:06:55
inevitably with this strategy and I think you know as I talked about in my book the the west becoming weaker and
00:07:02
emboldening our enemies which is what we have done for a long time now is creating an environment where we are
00:07:08
opening ourselves up to challenge from other forces. Russia invading Ukraine was not an accident. It was not an
00:07:14
accident. It was a consequence of the fact that Putin and other people in his leadership team felt this was the moment
00:07:22
to test the waters. Can we now do the things we've always wanted to do >> and they felt they could do that under
00:07:28
Biden in your view? >> Yes. But see, I wouldn't personalize it down to that level. I think far too many
00:07:34
people get carried away with, you know, Republican, Democrat, left, right, Biden, Trump. It's an ongoing process
00:07:40
that's been going on for decades. And the culmination of it was first the invasion of Ukraine, then October 7th.
00:07:47
October 7th was not an accident either. Hamas backed by Iran felt that this was their moment to act because again is the
00:07:55
West going to be able to respond morally, militarily, and in other ways powerfully to that. They felt that they
00:08:01
were able to test it. The fact that China now is openly talking about taking Taiwan is again another symptom of this
00:08:08
same thing. So the risk is there and of course the risk as well is that you know
00:08:14
the the crumbling western alliance we can talk about the reasons for it. I think it's really important to
00:08:18
particularly we're recording this in Britain and and in Europe more broadly.
00:08:22
I think that's an important conversation. The western alliance is falling apart. Um and that is always
00:08:27
going to be a risk. It's particularly big risk for Europe. I feel >> how much of this and before we go into
00:08:32
the details and just catch up on a few of the things you said there. How much of this is linked to nuclear weapons?
00:08:37
Because I was thinking I I can't really All of these superpowers are going for
00:08:41
countries that aren't armed with nuclear weapons. >> And it all it somewhat feels to me that
00:08:46
the reason why the US wouldn't get involved if China took Taiwan is because they have nukes. And the reason why
00:08:54
the US is a little bit intimidated by Russia is because they have nukes. So is it really the world is splitting into
00:09:00
nuclear powers and anyone with nukes can do what the they want because they can basically wipe out planet Earth if
00:09:06
they get angry. And that has always been the case except we've been constrained
00:09:10
by the framework of the rules-based order. But that got taken apart. And this is where I think the West and the
00:09:16
United States including needs to take responsibility because the the war in Afghanistan and Iraq even more so
00:09:23
completely undermined our moral credibility. You know, how can you say, well, Russia isn't allowed to invade
00:09:29
Ukraine if you go around invading countries on a whim, making up excuses and reasons to do that. So we have
00:09:35
eroded our moral authority and we've also eroded our military strength and the potential that we have to inflict
00:09:42
damage on people who misbehave so to speak. So both of those things have come together.
00:09:47
>> It seems so crazy to me that in my lifetime I'm I'm seeing cuz it's really
00:09:51
never happened in the 33 years that I've been alive. I'm hearing a US president
00:09:55
talk about kidnapping another president and then going in and taking the oil. And then you know what? We might take
00:10:02
Greenland as well. We might have that big country over there as well. Even though it belongs to a NATO ally in
00:10:07
Denmark, >> it it feels like something has fundamentally changed. >> It has.
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>> And I'm scared of the presidents this is going to set because do we then all just
00:10:15
get to start taking countries we want? >> Well, this is what happens when there is
00:10:20
a a a a shifting of the balance of power. This is why I always said maintaining the unipolar moment as it
00:10:27
was and not allowing the west to weaken itself was a really important thing because the moment you have a power
00:10:32
vacuum, you always have a power struggle. Mexico is a very good example of this. If you look at what's been
00:10:38
happening, there's been a a gigantic drug war in Mexico for the last 20 years
00:10:43
because there are different cartels vying for power. And the moment you take out the leader of one cartel or
00:10:49
something happens, there's a bloodbath. Because this is what happens when the
00:10:53
central authority, the central power, the the current system breaks down. You inevitably end up in a much more
00:10:59
violent, much more unstable, much more unpredictable place. And all Trump really is doing is reflecting the
00:11:06
reality that has been already there for years, except he's reflecting in American foreign policy. He's saying,
00:11:12
"Well, look, if Russia is going to do what it wants to do, and we can't stop
00:11:16
them, and if China is going to do what they want to do, and we can't stop them,
00:11:19
well, we've got to do what we've got to do, and no one's going to stop us." And
00:11:23
that's the world you've ended up in. And by the way, just on the nuclear point, I
00:11:26
think it's important to say you're 100% right. And this is one of the things
00:11:30
I've always said about not supporting Ukraine properly, which we haven't done.
00:11:35
we have not supported them enough to be able to actually fully repel the aggression from Russia is it would
00:11:40
inevitably lead to lots of other small countries pursuing nuclear weapons because it is the only guarantee of
00:11:45
security in this world. it that is a huge danger for the world in terms of nuclear proliferation because if the
00:11:52
precedent is like you say the people with nuclear weapons can do what they want and they can never be attacked and
00:11:58
the people with no nuclear weapons are vulnerable and weak what would be the most rational thing for you to do if
00:12:04
you're a smaller country that's the big danger >> cuz you know you were talking about a
00:12:09
uniolar world and a multi-polar world but I wonder if the it's going to be how
00:12:12
many nuclear powers are there there's like nine or or 10 >> if the world is going to split into
00:12:17
these 10 nuclear powers and these 10 nuclear powers can basically do what they want.
00:12:22
>> Well, nuclear powers are different. I don't I don't see Pakistan likely to be
00:12:25
rampaging through its neighbors, not at least cuz they're all they're all
00:12:29
nuclear powers themselves. Uh I think you're you're talking about Russia,
00:12:32
China, and the US primarily. I don't see Britain, you know, reinvading France,
00:12:37
although that's something obviously I'm in favor of. If Pakistan decided to take
00:12:40
a neighboring country though, >> nobody can really come for them because >> uh economic
00:12:44
>> having one nuke is not the same as having a gigantic nuclear arsenal. I
00:12:48
think Pakistan is relatively constrained in its behavior, but the big superpowers
00:12:52
are not. So, >> by the way, retaking France was a joke. I just want to make that clear.
00:12:58
>> And there's eight there's nine nuclear powers. United States, Russia, UK,
00:13:02
France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Although I don't think they admit it.
00:13:07
>> Yeah. Israel's policy on nuclear weapons is very funny. Do you know what the
00:13:10
official position is? We don't have nuclear weapons, but if the state of Israel is at risk of being destroyed, we
00:13:17
will definitely use them. >> So, how did we get here? What are what are the factors at play that brought us
00:13:24
to this particular situation? You talked about the crumbling of the Western Alliance and other things. What what do
00:13:28
we need to know about what happened for us to get to this state where it seems like it's every big power for themsel?
00:13:34
>> Well, partly we've already talked about it. So it's it's after 91 in particular
00:13:38
the west loses its not only its sense of purpose but it loses its its sense of danger and sense of risk. So we get very
00:13:46
comfortable. I don't know if you know this uh Europe is 12% of the world's
00:13:50
population, 25% of the world's GDP and 60% of the world's welfare spending.
00:13:56
>> Wow. >> So if you do that, that is a sign that you've got very comfortable. You've got
00:14:01
very lazy. You have lost the ability to realize you live in a dangerous world. It's, you know, this is a bit of a
00:14:06
sidetrack, but it is an important addendum to this conversation. This is why European countries have pursued
00:14:13
economic suicide that we call net zero as vigorously as we have because we have felt so safe and so comfortable. we've
00:14:20
engaged in all this luxury uh obsessions to the point where as you know Germany destroyed its nuclear facilities uh
00:14:28
thereby making itself reliant on Russian gas so that when Russia invaded Ukraine
00:14:33
the Germans opened the first thing that they said is oh we were going to support
00:14:36
Ukraine we're going to give them 5,000 helmets right because they were so dependent on Russian gas because they
00:14:43
refused to produce their own energy this is exactly the same thing we've done in
00:14:47
Britain Britain has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world in the developed world which means
00:14:53
we basically destroyed all our manufacturing industry which is now produced elsewhere. We're getting to the
00:14:59
point where we can't make our own virgin steel. Steel is kind of important if you
00:15:03
want to have a military etc etc etc. So in Europe in particular, this has happened because we've just felt so safe
00:15:11
and so comfortable and also so rudderless that we've been able to engage in all these looney ideas because
00:15:18
there's been no consequence. Well, the consequences are here. >> Where does Britain and Europe sit in the
00:15:26
sort of rankings of importance in the world and power? >> It's plummeting.
00:15:30
I mean, look at the the Trump's uh 12-day war in Iran, destroying Iran's
00:15:36
nuclear facilities. No one even asked the British what we thought about anymore. And that's not because, you
00:15:41
know, a lot of people like to say, "Oh, you know, the Americans, they hate the
00:15:44
British." Americans love Britain. As you know, you live in America now. You have
00:15:48
a British accent. I'm sure people come up to you all the time and talk to you
00:15:51
about their connections with our country, the shared history, all of that stuff. The problem is we have made
00:15:56
ourselves irrelevant because everything that Trump is looking at is strength. Right? Is Britain strong now in the
00:16:03
world? No. Is Europe strong now in the world? No. And so if you're not strong,
00:16:07
you will not be taken seriously. And unfortunately because of what our leaders have done over success of and
00:16:12
it's left right every political party that we have that's been in power they
00:16:16
have overseen a decline in our status in the world in our power in the world in our influence in the world to the point
00:16:23
now where the Americans are looking at Europe and they're going why would we be
00:16:27
allied with people who are not useful to us an alliance is kind of like a marriage both people have to bring
00:16:33
something to the table what do we bring to the table from an American perspective
00:16:38
>> this is a fairly new thing, isn't it? Because I remember growing up, I'd
00:16:41
repeatedly hear the prime minister of the UK talking about how he had spoken to his US counterpart and they had made
00:16:47
a decision and then in even with the Venezuela situation, I think Karma came out the next day and said like, I had no
00:16:53
idea this was happening. >> Of course, but why would you consult with people who don't matter?
00:16:57
>> Why don't we matter? >> We don't matter because we have nothing
00:17:00
to bring to the table. We don't despite the the extremely high level of professionalism, our technological
00:17:06
superiority, the courage of our soldiers and our sailors and our airmen, despite
00:17:11
the immense military tradition Britain has, we have cut I mean our debt interest repayments annually
00:17:19
1.5 times heading towards being twice our defense budget. We spent more on paying off the debt, the national debt
00:17:27
every year than we spend on defense. How did the UK get here? >> Well, our our debt to GDP is over 100%.
00:17:35
We keep borrowing money. We talked about the disproportionate amount of welfare spending and social spending and so on.
00:17:41
We got here by forgetting that we live in the real world and engaging in lots of luxury beliefs about what we ought to
00:17:48
do. Uh so we have the highest tax burden in peace time history in this country. And we do that not because we want to
00:17:55
have a robust military or to do other things like that. We do it so that we can continue to pay ourselves money we
00:18:01
don't have borrowing it from our children and our grandchildren. And this is the case across Europe really.
00:18:07
America also has a high level of debt but they have a growing economy unlike ours. Britain uh Britain's GDP per
00:18:13
capita is lower today than it was in 2006. We have per capita which is what matters per person. We have less money
00:18:21
today than we did 20 years ago. So our economy's declined. We've destroyed our
00:18:26
manufacturing. we've run down our armed forces. And also, I mean, look, President Trump, I think, is fair to
00:18:34
say, is quite sensitive about what people say about him. We have a government now that very imprudently and
00:18:41
unwisely spent the time they were in opposition on him on a daily basis. David Lambie, if you take, who's
00:18:48
our foreign secretary, if you take some of his comments about President Trump, they were just deeply irresponsible.
00:18:54
whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of what he said. A someone who has the potential to be this country's
00:18:59
foreign secretary in charge of our relationship with the United States cannot be so imprudent as to make those
00:19:06
kinds of comments. And then you're going, well, you've just been calling
00:19:10
this guy every name under the sun and now you want to you want to be relevant. You want to be taken seriously. You want
00:19:17
to be engaged with as he makes huge decisions about geopolitics. Actions have consequences and the actions we
00:19:24
have been taken have produced the consequences that we've got. Now look, I am not all doom and gloom about that. If
00:19:30
we change our strategy and if we change our behavior, we can change the pro the the the end product of that. We can do
00:19:36
that. But that's going to require a massive readjustment >> with the current direction of travel.
00:19:42
Where does the UK end up? >> We're already there. We're irrelevant.
00:19:46
We are irrelevant when these, like you said, Venezuela happens. No one cares about us. When Iran gets bombed, no one
00:19:52
cares about us. All the future big decisions about geopolitics are going to be made without Britain even being
00:19:59
considered because it's going to be made by the major powers of which Britain is
00:20:02
no longer one. >> You choose to live in the UK despite your views that the UK is a bit of a
00:20:10
sinking ship. I guess >> because of my views actually. >> Because of your views.
00:20:14
>> Yeah. Like look, you've moved to the United States, which I'm grateful for
00:20:17
cuz it's made us the biggest UK podcast in our space. I I appreciate that. But
00:20:22
as you can imagine, we get offers to do the same in all sorts of different ways,
00:20:25
and we could have done the same. I love this country. I'm very grateful to, and
00:20:29
I feel to stay and fight for it and to articulate my views and try and persuade people to my point of view so that we
00:20:35
can have a British renaissance, so that we can have a British recovery is my duty for as long as I can do that. And
00:20:41
if at some point, you know, I feel it's completely futile, which I do not. Um,
00:20:45
>> so you hopeful. >> I'm not despondent to the point of giving up is where I am.
00:20:49
>> Are you hopeful? >> No. No. But but I'm also not at the point where I feel it's futile. I think
00:20:55
there is there is an opportunity to turn things around if if everything comes together and we're very fortunate. Uh,
00:21:02
and that's what I'm hopefully trying to contribute to. through history when
00:21:06
companies pursue the strategy that the UK is currently pursuing >> where where does it end up economically?
00:21:13
>> Well, Stephen, you're the business guy. You tell me. >> No, but I don't I'm not I don't have the
00:21:16
greatest view of history and so I'm wondering if there's because you know in
00:21:19
the UK I I was born 33 years ago in Bosotswana and I moved to the UK when I was young and um I've always known the
00:21:26
UK to be important and consequential and the the economy to be, you know, much better than where I'm from in Botswana.
00:21:34
So it's it's almost inconceivable for a British person of my age to to think
00:21:38
that the UK could ever not be that. Yes. Because it's always been in my lifetime.
00:21:42
>> Yes. But that is in many ways I'm not pinning the blame on you obviously, but
00:21:45
that is in many ways how we got here. Because what we thought collectively was, well, look, no matter what we do,
00:21:52
we're always going to be Great Britain. We're going to have a great economy.
00:21:55
We're going to have a strong military. We're going to have a this. We're going
00:21:57
to have influence in the world. And then we started doing lots of stupid And that's how we've ended up in the
00:22:03
place that we've ended up. So this country has every potential to be great. The people are incredible. The level of
00:22:09
education, uh, the scientific and technological advances that this country has produced, the cultural, look at the
00:22:15
greatest bands in human history. Like half of them are British comedians. I mean, standup comedy is not a a British
00:22:22
invention. It was actually invented in America. But look at some of the greatest comedians in human history.
00:22:27
Again, lots and lots of British people. So culturally, scientifically, technologically, economically, we have
00:22:34
the potential. We have to have the correct leadership and the right strategy. And those two things have been
00:22:40
lacking for a long time. That's how we've ended up here. Can we turn it around? It's going to be very, very,
00:22:44
very difficult. But I but we've got to try. >> Why would these issues impact us on a
00:22:49
individual level? So I'm thinking about the average person listening now, whether they are in the United States or
00:22:54
here in Britain. You know, this stuff happens kind of up above us and we get on with our lives. But what are the
00:23:00
symptoms we'll begin to see >> this multipolar world or the the fall of
00:23:04
Britain? >> You are already poorer today than you were 20 years ago >> per capita
00:23:09
>> in the UK. >> In the UK, >> yeah, >> that seems to me quite important. And in
00:23:13
fact, many of our conversations about domestic issues, whether it's mass immigration and all of these other
00:23:18
things, they're really proxies for that conversation. because if we if the economy was growing and people felt
00:23:23
richer, all of this stuff would become less important, right? Well, I think we'd
00:23:28
agree with that. So, that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is, as I
00:23:32
talked about the multipolar world being by necessity more violent and unstable. We are going, you know, you we I don't
00:23:40
know when this will go out, but we're recording this in the middle of January.
00:23:43
It's been like two weeks since the year started and we've already seen crazy
00:23:47
amounts of instability geopolitically already. Is that fair to say? So, this will continue and that will bleed
00:23:54
through to domestic politics because if you have to spend more of your resources
00:23:58
worrying about things abroad, it means you can do less at home and so on and so on and so on. So the the ramifications
00:24:04
of this will be very impactful on everybody around the world more on non-western countries because they a lot
00:24:11
of them are going to be in the front line of this in in the way that I I doubt we will be. Uh but still the
00:24:16
consequences for us will be very significant. >> And we're seeing adjacent to this this
00:24:21
rise in socialism. >> Yeah. >> The conversation around socialism. Obviously Menani has been elected mayor.
00:24:27
But do you think this is at all linked to the bigger picture this rise in socialism?
00:24:30
>> Yeah. In fact, I I think you know I wrote an article a long time ago called
00:24:34
Why I Fear the Future and I did a video based on it in which I talked about something. It's interesting. I did a
00:24:39
live show um here in London just before Christmas and I did a book signing and one of the guys came up to me and he
00:24:45
said, "I've got two kids. They're both teenagers, daughter and the son and I'm
00:24:49
trying to pull the daughter in from the far left and I'm trying to pull the son
00:24:52
in from the far right." That's going to be the big challenge going forward
00:24:56
because um the amount of chaos and instability and cultural kind of cultural upheaval that we've seen has
00:25:05
produced a craving for order and on the social that's the right side you know we
00:25:10
must you know get this and on the other side it's produced a sense of injustice
00:25:17
and the pursuit of inequality. That's why you hear people talk so much about
00:25:20
the rich the rich the rich the rich and you know eat the rich we got to redistribute all of this stuff because
00:25:26
particularly in the big cities young people rightly feel that they can they can't really get on the housing ladder
00:25:30
they can't establish a family life is more difficult so they reach for these
00:25:35
very um dis disproven discredited and completely unworkable solutions of the kind Manny uh will of course deliver but
00:25:42
it's because their sense of their sense is that the future's been taken away
00:25:47
from And in many ways they're correct because as I said earlier we have been
00:25:52
borrowing from our children and our grandchildren. We've been saddling with crippling debts our entire economy that
00:25:59
will come to an end and it's going to be them that is left to foot the bill and
00:26:03
it's going to be very painful and partly they see that and already they see that
00:26:06
they just can't afford the life that they want. I do think in the United States it's a much more contained
00:26:11
phenomenon. I think Mamani and if you look at sort of the American socialists, they all tend to cluster around New York
00:26:18
and one or two other big cities. It's not like the entirety of America is going socialist. But I think housing
00:26:24
unaffordability is one. Another explanation which I think is also powerful is what's called elite over
00:26:29
production which is if you have as Tony Blair did this idea that 50% of the public should should go to university.
00:26:36
Well, they do and then it turns out there's not enough jobs for them. Particularly in the age of AI where they
00:26:41
are the jobs that are being eliminated very rapidly. You then get a lot of people whose entitlement is up here and
00:26:48
whose prospects are down here. That produces a tremendous amount of social disease as well.
00:26:53
>> I think this is a really important connected point on the subject of socialism and the rise
00:26:59
of socialism that we will see is this point of AI. And when I listen to very very smart people who are considered to
00:27:06
be the godfathers of AI or CEOs who are building these technology companies, there seems to be a consensus that
00:27:11
socialism will only increase because the job losses associated with AI are going
00:27:15
to be pretty quick and pretty extreme. And um I mean one of them that most Brits won't understand is something we
00:27:22
understand now living in America, which is my car drives itself. >> Yes. And I I've said this a few times
00:27:26
because I'm really trying to it's like the first moment Eureka moment I think
00:27:29
you have is in America when I get in my car I don't touch the steering wheel or
00:27:33
the pedals and it can drive me to Joshua Tree which is like 2 and a half three hours away uninterrupted and I say this
00:27:38
because driving is like one of the biggest employees in the world. I think it is the biggest profession in the
00:27:42
world >> and London just announced that Whimos are here and soon surely Teslas will be
00:27:48
allowed to do full self-driving here as well >> and in such a world delivery drivers,
00:27:52
taxi drivers, Uber drivers are going to be without jobs and we're seeing this um
00:27:58
huge rise in autonomous humanoid robots as well >> and Elon's pay packet says that he he
00:28:04
will make a million of these autonomous robots and get them out into the world and Jason Kakanakas who just visited
00:28:10
Elon 's factory said there'll be a billion of these and he thinks that we
00:28:14
won't even even remember Tesla for making cars will only remember them for the robots they're made because these
00:28:19
Optimus robots which are coming are going to be so consequential and the last point here is a very good friend of
00:28:24
mine who runs this big sort of innovation accelerator in San Francisco I visited the accelerator a couple of
00:28:30
weeks back and um he I said to him why why is everybody here all these young founders these 40 50 young founders in
00:28:36
your building called effing all working on robotics and he goes well you know we've had all parts for like 20, 30
00:28:41
years. But the expensive part was the intelligence. >> The brain. >> Yeah. The brain. He goes, "Now we have
00:28:46
the bra." He said, "It used to He showed me this arm, this robotic arm that had a
00:28:49
frying pan on it that would cook for you in a box. It just cooks whatever you want in a box." And he goes, "We've had
00:28:54
all these parts for the last 30 years." That they were cheap. He goes, "The the
00:28:58
intelligence part, the brain would cost 20 or $30,000 just for this little robot
00:29:03
arm." He goes, "Now it's like 2 cents." >> Yeah. >> And he say, "So you're seeing this huge
00:29:08
explosion in robotics." I don't think people understand what's coming.
00:29:11
>> No. And going to San Francisco is eyeopening on two levels. Number one is
00:29:16
like a quarter to a third of the cars on the road don't have drivers. >> Yeah.
00:29:19
>> And just visually seeing that is so striking. >> Um but the other thing is talking to
00:29:24
some of the people involved. There is a there are some people who are fairly sensible about it, fairly responsible
00:29:29
among the founders, although they will still say and I think they're right that
00:29:33
like if we don't do this, China will and so we've got to do this. But there's
00:29:36
also a lot and I I'm sure you've encountered there's a kind of you know
00:29:40
that famous Facebook mantra of move fast and break things. There's a lot of that
00:29:44
going on in the AI space and so it's going to be hugely impactful. I don't
00:29:49
claim to know the the all the little details of how that will play out other than to say it's going to be very
00:29:55
disruptive. Uh and disruptiveness has happened throughout human history. It's
00:29:59
always produced a backlash. It's always caused a lot of disease. But then humanity has managed to recover. This is
00:30:05
different level and we will see how it plays out. But yeah, of course it's going to be and yeah, a world in which
00:30:10
millions of people in which millions of people no longer have jobs and most of them are disproportionately young people
00:30:17
who are more prone to extremism anyway. Yeah, that's not a pretty picture >> and one would assume that the wealth
00:30:24
will acrude to a few. >> Yes, >> in such a scenario. >> And what's funny is I have said really
00:30:29
only half jokingly. I mean I wrote a whole book about my opposition to communism and socialism based on
00:30:33
experience. In a world in which no one has a job, I'm like 100% on board with communism.
00:30:40
>> Do you think that's the world we're heading towards? >> Possibly.
00:30:43
>> Yeah. But it makes sense. I mean, like you, if you think about it from the
00:30:47
perspective of 50 people in the world, have all the money in the world, and everyone else
00:30:53
has no job. I think a little bit of wealth redistribution is going to be unavoidable in that situation. And it
00:30:59
can either happen voluntarily or it's going to happen at the end of bayonets.
00:31:02
That's the choice. >> When you say communism would be the only choice in such a scenario, what what
00:31:07
does that mean? >> Uh it means everybody gets paid for existing, right? Well, I mean, what else is there?
00:31:14
You're going to create fake jobs for people. That's not going to work, right?
00:31:18
So if if all the wealth in the world is going to be created by robots, a world in which th the products of their labor
00:31:26
it only acrus to 50 people who had the idea or did the work 20 years ago that's
00:31:32
not going to sustain itself. And so uh it would be very very unwise of those people to attempt to hold on to all that
00:31:41
wealth and it would not end well for them in my opinion. >> On a personal level, you know, this
00:31:45
disruption is going to happen in your lifetime. >> Yeah. Are you thinking much about it or
00:31:48
planning for it at all? Did has it changed any of the decisions you you make on a a day-to-day basis or
00:31:53
month-to-month basis? >> Well, I'm very fortunate that I am probably a little harder to replace with
00:31:59
a robot just because people don't really want to hear robots opinions. I would
00:32:03
imagine we might get to that point, but I think it's unlikely. So on my my own
00:32:07
level, I'm probably, you know, the time scale I'm working to in the next 10
00:32:11
years, I imagine I'll I'll get myself to a point where I'm going to be reasonably
00:32:15
comfortable no matter what happens. For my children, >> that was us cutting forward 10 years and
00:32:19
watching. >> Yeah. Yeah. Just totally me just unemployed long. I can't believe what happened. For my
00:32:25
children, it's a very different conversation. Uh so a lot of people are like, well, you know, what should I
00:32:31
teach my children? And people are, oh yeah, they should be a plumber. I don't
00:32:34
think you're going to need plumbers 15, 20 years from now either. So I I honestly don't know what that future
00:32:39
looks like. And in many ways, that's always been the reality of life for most
00:32:44
people. We are living through one of those great transitions in human history in which all you can do is equip your
00:32:50
children with the basic skill sets of life as opposed to what might have been done 20 30 years ago where like you you
00:32:58
get you go to school to develop a skill to go to university to build a career. Now, you're going to have to show a lot
00:33:03
of flex in this modern world. So, you're going to have to be personable. You're
00:33:06
going to have to be resourceful. You're going to have to be creative. You're
00:33:09
going to have to go have a a positive go-getter mindset. You're going to have
00:33:12
to have those basics nailed down as opposed to here's the career that you've
00:33:16
been predetermined to have, unless of course you go into AI and robotics, in which case you probably won't be
00:33:21
replaced for at least 5 years. >> I think there's something to the fact
00:33:24
that there's an angst with AI. And when you know people listen to podcasts all
00:33:28
the time. Yeah. >> They everyone who has a job in a big corporate environment now is being told
00:33:33
by their CEO that you better learn AI or it's going to replace you. So we're
00:33:36
living in this moment of >> there's like aliens coming over the horizon and we've spotted them.
00:33:42
>> They're not quite here yet, >> but it's it's like saying to the general
00:33:45
public, look, there's aliens coming and they're coming for your job and everything you value. That angst in and
00:33:50
of itself I think can drive people towards ideas like socialism understandably. >> Yeah.
00:33:57
>> Because you you know it's it's a it's a deep existential angst
00:34:02
>> and also a lot of the AI people not all of them a lot of them are being but a
00:34:07
lot of them are being deeply irresponsible and very unwise with their messaging. What? Last time I was in New
00:34:12
York, I was walking through Time Square. There was this giant billboard which said, it was the name of the company,
00:34:17
which I don't remember. Stop hiring humans. The age of the AI employees here. I'm going, have you really thought
00:34:24
about this? Have you thought about putting your company's name on this poster? Do you understand the impact
00:34:29
this is going to have on a normal person looking at that? Um, but they are. So, the thing is with AI is the the positive
00:34:37
upsides of it are limitless. Literally limitless. And so a lot of the people who are in that space, that's what they
00:34:44
focus on. And they're like, we can solve cancer. We can solve medical problems.
00:34:48
We can have AI that's better than any physicist that can ever that's ever
00:34:52
lived that can give us the, you know, the eternal engine or or or whatever. We don't need energy anymore. Like there
00:34:58
are all sorts of crazy things that come out of AI that are potentially beneficial. And that is exciting. But
00:35:05
the angst that you talk about, I think, is there. And I think it's also quite
00:35:09
rational. You just reminded me of a video that came out this week from Elon where he says this. I'll play it for
00:35:16
you. I think it's this one's. So, he's talking about Elon's talking about the
00:35:20
robots that are about to be released from Tesla, which are called Optimus. And someone's asking him
00:35:26
>> how good they will be at surgery. >> What do you think Optimus will be a
00:35:29
better surgeon than the best surgeons? How long for that? >> Three years. >> Three years. Okay. Yeah. And by the way,
00:35:39
I say three years. at scale. >> Yes. >> And there will be more probably more
00:35:43
Optimus robots that are great surgeons than there are >> all surgeons on Earth.
00:35:48
>> And the cost of that but that's an important statement in 3 years time.
00:35:52
>> Yeah. >> Um because medicine I mean absolutely if it's four or five years who cares.
00:36:00
It's still an >> extreme precision. >> Yes. >> Three years. Um,
00:36:04
yes. Better than any any probably I'd say if you like put a little margin on
00:36:09
it. Better than any human in four years >> who's in plastic surgery. 5 years is not
00:36:14
even close. >> I think your point was medicine is going to be effectively free. The best
00:36:20
medicine in the world. >> Everyone will have access to medical care that is better than what the
00:36:26
president receives right now. >> So don't go to medical school. >> Yes. Pointless.
00:36:31
>> Yeah. pointless going to medical school. >> Look, he knows way more about this than
00:36:36
I do. I would also say that I think both the incentive structure and his personal
00:36:40
temperament lean towards a kind of optimism and there's a sales dimension to this as well, obviously, cuz he's one
00:36:47
of the people producing the stuff. So, his optimism may be a product of the incentive structure that he's subject
00:36:52
to. But even if it's not 3 years, I I don't think it's more than 10 years.
00:36:59
So, that's the time frame. And given how long it takes to train to become a doctor. Yeah.
00:37:04
>> I want to talk about the situation in Iran. >> We're seeing what one might call an
00:37:09
uprising at the moment where protesters are are on the street in a country where
00:37:13
it is very very dangerous um and also very brave to protest against the leadership there. Where does this fit in
00:37:20
the broader context? What what the hell is going on? >> I am not an expert on Iran, but
00:37:25
effectively what's happening in Iran is an attempted counterrevolution. So they
00:37:29
had a revolution in 1979. They overthrew the ruler, the sha, and they replaced him with a an Islamic dictatorship,
00:37:37
which is what you've had since 1979. And the people of Iran have attempted to
00:37:42
overthrow this Islamic dictatorship repeatedly. They've always been brutally
00:37:46
suppressed. And that's basically what's happening now again. >> And is does this fit somewhere into the
00:37:51
broader conflict of geopolitics in the US, the multipol? Well, only in the sense that you can see that even
00:37:57
President Trump, who's talked quite brashly about what he might do if this sort of gets out of hand, is still not
00:38:04
as we speak doing anything about it on a on a kind of kinetic level. And that's
00:38:10
partly for the reasons that we talked about earlier, which is the United States is deeply deeply the United
00:38:16
States public are deeply deeply skeptical about foreign interventions. And so the idea that we that we the West
00:38:22
would support a a regime change in Iran is not something that you can sell to the American people right now. And so he
00:38:30
has to be he has to be much more careful about what he might otherwise have done
00:38:35
in Iran. And so because of that, the leaders of Iran probably feel like they're in a better position to crack
00:38:42
down and survive versus what might have happened in the past. I mean, Trump's
00:38:48
been quite vocal in what he might do in his threats. He said that the US would come to the protesters rescue, that we
00:38:54
are locked, loaded, and ready to go. He announced that countries doing business with Iran, faced a 25% tariff on their
00:39:00
trade with the US, ramping up pressure. >> And he called for Iranians to keep
00:39:03
protesting. Um, and then more recently, he said, "I've canceled all meetings with Iranian
00:39:08
officials until the senseless killing of protest stops. Help is on the way. Mag mega,
00:39:14
>> make Iran great." Well, Iran, you know, I mean, one thing that should be said is
00:39:19
the Persian Empire and the Persian people are a great people with a very rich history. And what's interesting is
00:39:25
in attempting to over I don't know if you've ever seen pictures from Tehran
00:39:28
from before 1979, it's like women walking around in miniskirts and and all the rest of it. So, they have a very
00:39:34
long history of freedom in a way that we don't tend to think of the Middle East
00:39:39
as having today. uh and that's that's that's an example of how it's perhaps
00:39:44
different from other parts of the Middle East. But you can see the the reluctance
00:39:49
to actually do anything about it because the question is well let's say you do
00:39:52
remove the current leadership. Let's say you bring back the son of the former
00:39:57
Shah Resa he oversees a transition to some kind of democratic thing. Who is there protecting that process from being
00:40:07
disrupted by the remnants of the old regime? Who's going to do that? Is there
00:40:12
American boots on the ground? Cuz there's literally zero appetite for that in America. That's the challenge that I
00:40:18
think he faces, which is probably why he hasn't done anything. >> And how do you think the story plays
00:40:22
out? >> No idea, mate. No idea. I I I have no idea what what's going to happen here. I
00:40:27
fear unfortunately that what the regime will do I'm not saying this is what will
00:40:32
happen but my fear is and it's one of the reasons that I am I sympathize so deeply with the Iranian
00:40:41
people that are rising up against the oppression but I am wary of encouraging encouraging them unless we are willing
00:40:48
to back them fully. This is exactly in in a way that what happened with Ukraine. There was a lot of rah rah
00:40:54
rahrh and there was not nearly enough support to actually help them defend their country. My fear is there will be
00:41:01
a lot of rah. We support the Ukrainian people. We stand with them blah blah, you know, blah blah blah. But ultimately
00:41:08
the regime will kill more of them and it will kill enough of them for this to go
00:41:12
away. That's my worry. >> Well, I hope the world does come to the support of the Iranians. I really do.
00:41:18
>> Me too. because for all the reasons you've said, beautiful country,
00:41:21
beautiful people, and um it's it's horrific to see what's going on. There's
00:41:25
varying estimates. It's unfortunately we we don't have accurate numbers because I
00:41:30
mean the internet is down and it's always hard to get accurate numbers in the situation, but I've heard estimates
00:41:35
ranging from 2,000 to 18,000 people being killed. And uh it's inconceivable I think for Westerners like us to
00:41:43
understand what it is to live in an environment like that. >> Which is why they're protesting as
00:41:47
courageously as they are. I just hope that the geopolitical realities allow us to support them in the way that we keep
00:41:54
saying we would. Do you see what I'm saying? >> Yeah, of course. Yeah. And this is Yeah.
00:41:59
>> And this is my big worry. We have we have done a lot of this. We stand with
00:42:04
you. We support you. And then when push comes to shove, the realities of the thing come into
00:42:10
play and suddenly we're a lot more careful about it. >> Trump seems to walk the walk more so
00:42:14
than others. >> Absolutely. >> And he seems to It's funny because I
00:42:18
think it was Biden that said to China that if they took back Taiwan, he would get involved.
00:42:24
>> Trump didn't say that. >> He's kind of I was looking at some
00:42:26
quotes from Trump and it seems like he's basically like, well, if they take Taiwan back, I ain't going to get
00:42:30
involved. But in other instances where he warns countries that he'll bomb them
00:42:34
or take action. Yeah. >> Like Venezuela or like Iran with the the nuclear weapon situation, he does seem
00:42:40
to follow through. >> And I Marco Rubio and Hegathth were saying the other day in the interview I
00:42:45
was watching that listen when when is the world going to learn? If Trump says something, he's going to do it. And you
00:42:50
know him saying that we will come to your rescue. >> Well, hopefully they come through on
00:42:55
that, but also hopefully they have a plan for what happens after that. >> Yeah. And this is the mistake we've
00:43:02
obviously made in a number of countries, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, which is now basically headed by
00:43:11
a jihadi. >> Yeah. >> Right. Where we go, oh yeah, we've got to remove this terrible guy and yeah,
00:43:18
he's terrible guy and we're right to remove him. But then what do you end up
00:43:21
with afterwards? So if they do help the Iranian people, which I hope they have, they have the plans to do, then I hope
00:43:27
they have a plan for what happens after that and how you get Iran to a position where the people of Iran get to choose
00:43:33
their own leaders and those leaders stay in power and those leaders are the sorts
00:43:38
of people that you might want to see in charge because you know this happened in
00:43:42
Egypt. They they they have the Arab Spring. They overthrow the evil dictator and what do they do? they elect the
00:43:47
Muslim Brotherhood and then the people go no no no no we need the military back etc. So these are not easy problems to
00:43:53
solve which is why people are being careful about it. So I hope they have a a plan and a solution for what comes
00:43:58
after if they in fact act >> and Trump's also talking about taking Greenland
00:44:03
>> which is the first time I heard him say that I thought he was joking. I thought
00:44:07
this is just a funny Trump, you know, when he was talking about taking Canada. >> Yeah,
00:44:11
>> it was he was calling it the great state of Canada. I thought this was him just
00:44:14
joking. But in more recent times, in the last week, I heard him say in an interview, "We're going to do it the
00:44:19
easy way or the hard way." Words to that effect. >> What's going on?
00:44:25
>> Well, we talked about they're trying to protect their sphere of influence in
00:44:28
North America and South America, and they they want they want they want to have the military bases there that they
00:44:34
want to have there. They want to have the resources and access to that. >> Are we returning to empires?
00:44:38
>> We never left empire. This is the This is the great thing that we we've been
00:44:43
living in the dream world. We've been pretending these things haven't been
00:44:46
going on the entire time. They have. The world's always been like this. There was a brief moment after World War
00:44:53
II when it wasn't like this because we were fighting the Soviet Union. And the
00:44:57
Soviet Union, the battle in the Cold War was very similar. There was proxy wars all over the place between those two
00:45:03
great powers. Right now there's two different great powers and a third smaller power in Russia and India is
00:45:10
rising as well who are all trying to make their moves and all Trump is doing is saying well we are not going to play
00:45:16
by the fake rules anymore that no one else is playing by anyway. >> And so is Trump endeavoring to take that
00:45:24
part of the world take control of that? >> Take control. Yeah. In many ways, it's
00:45:28
what every great power seeks to do is to control its neighbors so that they don't
00:45:32
have foreign influence in their backyard so that they have the strategic advantage in that area. Um, it's the way
00:45:39
of the world. >> I mean, I didn't hear this rhetoric for the other 30 years of my life.
00:45:45
>> Yeah. >> As explicitly. >> Yeah. >> And when you say multipolar,
00:45:50
what are the polls? >> Well, it's the US and China. >> Yeah. are the two Russia wants to claim
00:45:58
it's a third one and then you will see the rise of India I think over time as
00:46:02
well India is a lot more sensible about these things about the way that they're
00:46:06
developing >> and is is the multipolar world a good thing or a bad thing or is it just
00:46:10
indifferent >> for whom >> for let's do people living in Europe >> I think it's likely to be a very bad
00:46:18
thing for people living in Europe because we become less powerful less wealthy less relevant
00:46:25
uh for the reasons we've already discussed. We could change it if we wanted to.
00:46:31
>> How >> we could uh abandon our suicidal economic policy. So we could have
00:46:36
economic growth again which would increase our share of GDP. We would make our people more prosperous. It would
00:46:43
help to quell domestic unease. >> Part of which has been created by mass immigration. People care about that more
00:46:50
because they're poorer. Right? If we were growing, then everybody's a little
00:46:55
bit happier. It's like you move to LA, the sunshine is nice, everybody's a
00:46:58
little bit happier. When you're getting richer, everybody's a little bit
00:47:01
happier. So, that's one of them. The second one is you've got to recognize
00:47:05
that the huge waves of immigration we have had uh have brought some positives. They've also brought a tremendous amount
00:47:13
of cultural instability. People feel like their country is changing. They never voted for it. In fact, they
00:47:18
repeatedly voted against it. So you have to arrest the sense that our country is
00:47:23
ceasing to be one place and instead we're becoming different communities, right? The this community, the that
00:47:29
community. Instead, we've got to go to a place where we're all British or we're
00:47:33
all American or we're all French or whatever it is, we've got to integrate
00:47:36
fully the people have already arrived. And to do that, you have to make sure you don't continue to have the same
00:47:42
scale of inflows that we've had. You have to deal with illegal immigration. You have to stop that from happening
00:47:47
because that that really affects how people feel about sense of fairness and a commitment and loyalty to their
00:47:53
country. One of the reasons if you talk to young people they they'll say they're
00:47:56
disillusioned, they won't fight for their country, etc. is they feel like well their country doesn't care about
00:48:02
them. It's bringing in people that it's paying to have a house and and so all
00:48:06
the rest of it while they can't get on the property letter. So you've got to
00:48:09
deal with immigration as a whole package. Then you have to rebuild your military. You have to rebuild your
00:48:14
military capacity. And then you have to understand the new world in which we live and really pick a
00:48:21
team and say which alliances are we going to nurture. In my opinion the best thing Britain could do is to nurture the
00:48:28
alliance with the United States to make itself relevant within that alliance for
00:48:32
in the ways that I've already talked about and then join forces with the US and recognize that we have very similar
00:48:38
interests in a lot of things and if we were prepared to act like it then we'd
00:48:42
be in a much better place. And also you got to have more kids. A lot more kids. >> Why?
00:48:51
>> Uh if you if you look at forget about the moral kind of sensibilities and
00:48:54
politically correct stuff about it, the more people you have, the more powerful you are comparative all other things
00:49:00
being equal, right? A country with more people is more powerful than a country with fewer people. Just if everything
00:49:06
else is the same. But more importantly, our dem we're in a demographic death
00:49:11
spiral. And this is one of the reasons we have had mass immigration. Politicians won't tell you the honest
00:49:16
truth of it. But the real reason is they keep bringing in hundreds of thousands of people is if they don't, we will see
00:49:22
the reality which is that we're getting poorer all the time. But if they bring
00:49:26
in a mass of people from outside, they can say that the economy is growing not because it's growing on a per capita
00:49:34
basis, but because you've simply added more people to the population. And if if
00:49:38
if this is seems abstract, think about it like this. Let's say you have uh you have a family, you, your
00:49:45
girlfriend, and you've got two kids, right? And your total household income is Ā£100,000 a year, let's say, for the
00:49:51
four of you. Now, let's say you bring in your in-laws. They live in the same
00:49:55
house, right? They don't earn anything. Let's say they own 10 grand a year each.
00:49:58
So now your household income is Ā£120,000. So you've got richer, haven't you?
00:50:04
>> No, you've now got six people to spread that money over and now you're per
00:50:08
person a lot poorer. That's what British and European leaders have done so that
00:50:15
they could pretend that we're not getting poorer all the time. That's why
00:50:19
they've done it. Uh this is what they say. We need people to come and do the
00:50:22
jobs. That that's what they mean. They mean we need to bring in more people so
00:50:26
we can tell you the economy has grown by 0.3%. While you've been getting poorer. So
00:50:32
you've got to address the economic side of this as well of the demographic thing. And the third thing actually is
00:50:39
societies with lots of kids kids are just much more dynamic than societies without them. You know, you get very
00:50:45
stale when you've got too many older people. You need that young energy, that
00:50:49
young blood. You need young people. You need children around. Uh and then they will of course be the next generation to
00:50:54
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And what do you think of Kier Starmmer and the way he's leading the UK? >> It's very tempting always. We come back
00:53:05
to the Biden Trump left right thing to put the blame on one specific person. I don't think he's doing a good job for
00:53:12
the reasons that I told you. We we've got the highest tax burden in peace time
00:53:16
history. So, he's driving business through the floor. I know that you will we you and I have never spoken about
00:53:21
this, but I bet you could name 50 people off the top of your head who've left the
00:53:26
UK to go to other places, who run businesses. You're nodding, right, for people listening. But why is that
00:53:30
happening? because the business climate here is not good. >> Mhm. >> The taxes here are very high and also
00:53:37
the quality of life here is declined. >> And generally, you know, I think maybe
00:53:41
the first point you said about climate, there's a pessimism. >> Yes. >> Why is that? Why is that?
00:53:48
>> It's self-fulfilling. >> Yes. >> It's like a self-fulfilling pessimism
00:53:52
where founders who are in my portfolio that I've invested in will come to me
00:53:55
and say, "Hi, you know, we've just sold uh 10% of the business for 20 million."
00:53:59
Yeah. >> And then the next sentence will be their escape plan. >> Mhm.
00:54:03
>> And that didn't used to happen even 10 years ago. >> And that's because of government policy.
00:54:08
That's the only way that this happens. Right? Because if the government a keeps
00:54:12
taxing you up to your eyeballs and b keeps telling you that you are evil, which is what it does, right? If you're
00:54:18
rich in Britain, you are evil. That's the that's the algorithm we have. And we
00:54:23
treat successful people. We immediately assume that they're privileged people.
00:54:27
Well, my pet theory is that this goes back to the land of gentry. The idea that in this country if you were rich,
00:54:35
there was a time when that was almost certainly because your dad was rich or at least people thought that. And so
00:54:42
this sense that if someone is successful economically, financially, it's probably
00:54:46
because they've benefited from some sort of illotten privilege. It permeates
00:54:51
everything. In America, people don't feel that way. They go, "You've been
00:54:54
successful because you've worked really hard and you've had a great idea. I'd
00:54:58
love to learn from you. I'd love to be more like you." In Britain, we go,
00:55:01
"You've been successful. You know, we got to tax you." So, if the government
00:55:06
keeps taxing you and then telling you you're a bad person while you pay the overwhelming share of the taxes in the
00:55:11
country, it's not a great place to be. You know, if I come home tonight and my
00:55:16
wife says, "Yeah, you earn all the money, but you're a dick and I don't
00:55:18
like you." And after a while, you sort of go, well, if this isn't working, I'll go somewhere
00:55:25
where I'm wanted. Do you know what I mean? And I think that's what's
00:55:28
happening to a lot of the most driven, the most talented, the most successful, the most creative people. And so, we're
00:55:34
driving out the business, we're driving out the entrepreneurs. Then on the industrial side of it, we talked about
00:55:39
it before, net zero basically means that any energyintensive business is completely unviable in Britain. And I'm
00:55:45
sure you've seen this with AI and lots of other things. you go to where you can
00:55:50
do your business. Then on top of that you add regulation particularly in in Europe which restricts your ability to
00:55:57
do things again. So there's this um you and it didn't didn't have to be like
00:56:03
that. It wasn't like that in the '9s in this country, right? There was a
00:56:07
positive go-getter business climate and you can do that again. You just have to have a leader who is willing to do that.
00:56:13
And SAM is the opposite of that. And part of the reason is that they simply can't do anything about the fact that we
00:56:21
are spending huge amounts of money uh keeping lots and lots of people trapped in welfare against in many ways against
00:56:30
their interest and actually in some ways I would argue even against their will because and I've made this point before
00:56:36
if you said to you're a very driven person. I'm a very driven person, but
00:56:40
when I was in my early 20s, if you'd said to me, "You don't need to work."
00:56:46
You know, I know you're feeling a bit depressed, as I was in my early 20s. I
00:56:49
wasn't sure what I was doing with life. You're a bit depressed. You're a bit
00:56:51
anxious. I remember going to apply for a job and just sweating buckets cuz I was
00:56:55
so anxious. Right. Well, you've got anxiety, you've got depression, you can't work. We'll give you 20 grand a
00:57:02
year and you can just, you know, we'll write you off and you just sit home, play on the PlayStation, smoke weed. I
00:57:08
would have taken that. Most people would have taken that. And that's the position
00:57:11
we have put a lot of our young people in. Uh we just ride them off. We give them benefits and we forget about them.
00:57:17
And that welfare bill has become a unsustainable, but it's also uncutable. They try the Labor government tried to
00:57:24
cut it. They tried to reform welfare and their own backbenches revolted and they
00:57:28
caved and they said, "No, no, no. We're not going to reform welfare. We're going
00:57:31
to tax the rich because the rich, you know, don't pay enough tax." when in the
00:57:34
reality I think the top you maybe look this up 10 the top 10% of taxpayers in this country pay
00:57:41
I think more than half of all the tax probably significantly more than half of all the tax but look it up I think the
00:57:48
top 1% pay 33% of all the tax fact check me on this >> okay so the top 10% of taxpayers
00:57:57
pay 60% of all income tax >> yeah and also um what's the other one the capital gains as well. If you look
00:58:04
up capital gains, it's basically the same. So if you put those two together,
00:58:07
which is basically what we pay on earning, the top 10% pay 60% of it. So what happens when you chase out those
00:58:17
people, which is what we're doing. What happens to your tax base? You get less
00:58:20
and less tax. That means you have to tax the people who haven't left yet more and
00:58:24
more in order to pay people who are not who are net consumers of tax revenues. According to HM revenue and customs data
00:58:34
in the UK, the top 1% pay 30% of all income. >> I said 33. So 30. Yeah. >> Yeah. So what happens when you say that
00:58:43
1% are evil and they must pay more? 1% pay 30% of all the tax. >> It's funny. I'm quite a torn person on
00:58:52
this subject because I I represent kind of two sides of this argument. The first
00:58:56
side of the argument, I just have this sort of visceral memory of being sat at my desk in Mosside with these like baiff
00:59:03
letters on my right, this smashed up laptop on my left, knowing that I had no way of eating that day and thinking,
00:59:08
"Oh, I you know what I need to do? There's this thing called jobsekers allowance."
00:59:13
>> And I was like messing with the do I join it cuz like right now I'm like
00:59:16
scavenging for pound coins to see if I can buy some Chinese from Young Dar Takeaway. And I printed off the forms
00:59:23
and the forms were there in front of me on the desk to apply for jobsekers allowance when I was maybe 18 years old,
00:59:27
roughly that age, 18, 19 years old. And because I got so close, I have the huge amount of empathy for people that
00:59:34
>> get to that point. And then on the other side, because I'm now in a different
00:59:38
world >> and I I'm around entrepreneurs so much who are >> so so frequently telling me their escape
00:59:45
plan from the UK that I feel the need to let the average the the normal person that's listening to this podcast that
00:59:51
maybe doesn't have the access to entrepreneurs or the inside conversations that that I have with
00:59:56
entrepreneurs know that when people come on the show and tell you that rich people will leave, it is my experience
01:00:04
that rich people leave and like because there there is an argument ongoing argument no they won't leave and there
01:00:10
people point out different things no they they leave they leave I mean we just saw Revolute which is one of the
01:00:15
the most successful companies emerge from the UK in recent times it's probably going to be worth a hundred
01:00:20
billion the founder left >> I think it's Dubai or somewhere it's gone to
01:00:24
>> and people say well Britain can't compete with a zero tax environment we
01:00:28
don't need to compete with a zero tax environment people want to live in Britain still you just have to stop
01:00:34
clobbering over them over the head and calling them evil. >> Right. >> Yeah.
01:00:38
>> Now, look, you know, I can give you a sob story as well. Like when I was at
01:00:42
university, I had no I had to stop university cuz I couldn't pay for it. I slept on the street in a park. Blah blah
01:00:48
blah blah blah. Empathy for days for people who are in that position. And there are lots of people, by the way,
01:00:54
and this is important to say, Stephen, who are not in your position. They're
01:00:58
not super talented. They're not predisposed to success. They're not as hardworking and motivated as you for
01:01:03
whatever reason. And many people are disabled. Many people have all sorts of other issues. And of course, we've got
01:01:07
to help them. But what we have done is trapped now hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who could be
01:01:14
working and have meaning and purpose in their life on welfare and we're not helping them get off it because it's
01:01:22
much easier to give them a payout and forget about them. That's what's happening. And so, you know, I've had
01:01:27
these views since before I was in any way successful. I just looked at what works. And when we talk about rich
01:01:34
people leaving, the thing is I don't care about rich people leaving. People who have a lot of money leaving is not
01:01:39
really an issue for me. What's an issue for me is people who are going to create
01:01:44
wealth leaving. So on that point, the founder of Revolute leaving the UK, Nick Strinsky, I think his name is, um,
01:01:53
estimates say, credible reports say that because he's leaving, there's going to
01:01:58
be a3 billion pound potential loss of capital gains tax that he would have paid had he not absconded to the UAE.
01:02:07
Now to put this into more stark terms what that means. I then um did some research and I was looking at how many
01:02:13
people it would take to pay that 3 billion. How many average taxpayers it would take to pay that 3 billion that we
01:02:18
that we lose by him leaving. >> And it says roughly Ā£450,000 average UK taxpayers because the average
01:02:25
UK taxpayer pays about Ā£7,000 to Ā£7,500 a year. So very simple math 3 billion divided by 7,000 equals 430,000 people.
01:02:36
Mhm. >> So in plain English, that billionaire's potential tax bill is equal to the
01:02:41
entire income tax of a midsized UK city for one year because that person decided
01:02:48
to leave. >> Congratulations, you tax the rich. Congratulations. Now half a million
01:02:53
people have to pay more tax. Well done. That's what we're doing. And because
01:03:02
it's become a moral argument because the rich are evil in our mentality, people don't hear this point at all. It
01:03:10
just totally goes over their head. They go, you know, but but the rich are evil,
01:03:13
they must pay more tax. And you go, even if I agreed with you, it still doesn't
01:03:19
work in practice. So if something is not working in practice, why would you keep doing it?
01:03:27
I think as well, you know, one of your other points was around what the UK has to offer them. And I think if the UK was
01:03:33
really growth focused and you know, the energy point you made, energy was cheaper here, then
01:03:39
>> that equation that these founders are making whether to stay or to leave would
01:03:43
tilt a little bit further in our direction. So, it's super it's so difficult.
01:03:47
>> And no, no disrespect to Dubai, but most people don't want to have to live in
01:03:52
Dubai. I think the UK is a lovely honestly I mean >> that's what I mean right and I say this
01:03:57
with there's lots of great appealing things about Dubai but if you dealt with
01:04:00
prime in the UK and you had a growth focused mindset you had a tax climate that encouraged people to start
01:04:08
businesses and employ people we wouldn't be losing these people and we shouldn't
01:04:12
be losing these people they are they are the people who will create the wealth of
01:04:15
the future and they should be doing it here they should be founding and keeping their businesses here and if you did
01:04:20
that then you start to turn the whole thing we've been talking about around because ultimately everything is about
01:04:26
economics in in this sense the military is about economics. It's about do you have the resources to
01:04:33
have a strong military? We don't. So we don't. >> So which leader do we need?
01:04:38
>> Again, I don't like getting into the personality side of things. But what you
01:04:42
need is someone who understands how the economy works. >> Why don't you like getting into the
01:04:46
personality side of things? >> Because what happens when if I give you a name?
01:04:50
>> Yeah. >> Then immediately people say, "Oh, he's one of them."
01:04:55
>> Okay. >> Right. I am not one of them of any them. I'm just telling you what the policies
01:05:00
are that I think would work for our country. If Kia Starama tomorrow came on your show and said, "Stephen, I'm here
01:05:07
to announce a great British transformation. We're going to cut business taxes. We're going to get rid
01:05:12
of net zero. We're going to make sure that we have the cheapest energy in the
01:05:15
world for our businesses to grow and thrive. We're going to have a strong, capable military. And by the way, I've
01:05:21
just hired 50,000 new police officers to deal with all the ridiculous amounts of
01:05:24
street crime we've got in London. Sign me up. I'm all K star ride or die,
01:05:31
right? But that's probably not going to happen. That's probably not going to
01:05:35
happen with any of the other leaders that we have. So, I'm here telling you what I think the right policies are. And
01:05:41
if there's a leader who advocates for those policies, that's the sort of
01:05:44
leader that I will support. >> Only 18% of Britons view Karma positively. >> Yeah.
01:05:50
>> With around 65 to 72% holding an unfavorable opinion. >> You're desperate for me to slag off
01:05:56
Karma. I'm happy to do it. >> No, no. I'm I'm actually not. I'm
01:05:59
actually not. Do you know what? Do you know what my opinion? Kiss Dharma? Probably a really nice person.
01:06:04
>> Probably >> probably a really nice person. >> Yeah. I don't really care how nice he
01:06:07
is. And that's my attitude to all politicians. I care about whether they're going to do things that are good
01:06:12
for our country. Uh from what I know, he's probably he strikes me as a very uh
01:06:17
well-intentioned, probably fairly competent person. >> Uh but what he's doing is completely
01:06:23
wrong. The only reason I don't like to go in on him is I think he I I think he's useless. I do. I also don't think
01:06:30
it's fair to lay the blame for everything that's happening at his feet. The Conservatives were useless before
01:06:36
that. The Lib Dems and the Conservatives were useless before that. The Labour Party under Blair were actually not
01:06:41
useless. They were really really good at ter doing terrible things to the country. They were very competent at
01:06:46
doing that. So what we have had for now one, two, three decades is terrible leadership that's taken us in completely
01:06:53
the wrong direction. >> I I'm I'm I have to cite the statistics around his favorability or popularity
01:07:00
because it puts everything you're saying in context, which is these ideas aren't
01:07:03
popular. >> No. Polling has shown that Stalmer's approval among the British public is the
01:07:07
weakest of any recent UK prime minister with dissatisfaction levels on some trackers showing him to be below most
01:07:15
predecessors um in even in the Labor government. So that's the the weird part
01:07:19
because it's not it's doesn't seem to be working to drive favorability either.
01:07:24
>> No, but but this is why I'm saying focusing on him individually isn't
01:07:27
helpful actually. And this is not to argue with you unnecessarily. If you put Chem Bono in his place, she'd have the
01:07:33
same favorability ratings. >> Really? Even though she has different ideas.
01:07:38
>> Does she? >> I don't know. You tell me. >> She has some different ideas. I mean,
01:07:42
the Conservative Party's gone a long way to changing their policy on things like
01:07:46
net zero, right? But while they were in power, they were doing all the same stuff. They were arresting people for
01:07:52
tweets. They were driving the economy into the ground with this green lunacy. They were the ones that oversaw the
01:07:58
decline of our military. So uh in in in some ways the personality conversation is really not that important here.
01:08:05
What's important is a gigantic paradigm shift needs to happen to our attitude to
01:08:10
everything. And one of them is dealing with unaffordable welfare. The tries didn't do that. Labor aren't doing it. I
01:08:16
actually thought Labor had a better shot because at least people wouldn't say
01:08:20
labor are evil and they hate poor people. That's what they say when the Tories tried to cut welfare. When Labor
01:08:24
tried to cut welfare, I didn't think that would happen, but they just caved to their own backbench. Maybe they had
01:08:29
to for political reasons. But you you you just have to the the shift that needs to happen in Britain is not
01:08:34
political. It's cultural. We have to change the mindset that we have as a country around these things.
01:08:40
>> Cultural transitions are very very very hard. And I say that from the perspective as a business owner. If you
01:08:46
tried to get me to change when I had a lot of people, so say you I remember in my German office back in the day in
01:08:52
social change German office, we had 150 people. Very very different culture to the UK. I thought naively as a 23 24
01:08:58
year old I could fly there >> and change the culture of the Berlin office.
01:09:05
>> How dumb was I? >> This is not how we do things. >> I could not change I could not change
01:09:10
the culture of the German the Berlin office. So I think about a country changing the culture of a country.
01:09:15
>> Yeah. That's why I'm what I call an accelerationist. >> What does that mean? It means that I
01:09:20
believe that the only thing the only way that these things will truly fundamentally get better is when they
01:09:25
get really really bad first. >> So you think it's going to get really really
01:09:29
>> the only way to change the culture is for people to understand what's actually
01:09:33
happening uh so that they can't pretend the things that are happening are not
01:09:37
happening. And that's what's happening at the moment. Most people don't yet
01:09:41
quite know that they're poorer today than they were 20 years ago. Most people
01:09:45
still think that we are saving the planet when we reduce Britain's carbon emissions from 2% to 1.9% of global
01:09:53
carbon emissions. While in fact, we're not even doing that. We're taking our
01:09:57
carbon emissions and we're sending them to India and China and then shipping
01:10:01
back the stuff they make for us in a dirtier way on big tankers which actually consume more dirty fuel and
01:10:07
we're actually ending up increasing our CO2 output, not reducing it. Most people
01:10:12
don't know that. But when they feel it in their pocket, when they feel like the
01:10:17
we're having a fiscal crisis, when they feel like they really can't afford their
01:10:20
life anymore, that's when they're going to start to ask some of these questions.
01:10:23
It's one of the reasons actually the narrative on net zero is shifting. Like
01:10:27
almost nobody other than the government in this country still believes in the idea of net zero, right? Because it's
01:10:33
moving quite quickly in that direction. Uh and on lots of other things, it will happen when things get much more
01:10:38
difficult for ordinary people. Sadly, I don't want that to happen, but I think
01:10:42
it's the only way things get better. >> But on the subject of global warming,
01:10:46
it's scientific fact that the climate is changing. >> Changing unfavorably.
01:10:51
>> Uh what do you mean by unfavorably? >> Well, if the you know, scientists talk
01:10:54
about the poles melting and how that will have big impact on you know third world nations and
01:11:00
>> um how that will be a net negative for the planet because then you'll see more
01:11:04
migration, you'll see more sort of natural disasters and those kinds of things. Well, let's let's not argue
01:11:10
about that because neither of us is a climate scientist, but let's accept that
01:11:12
for the sake of argument. >> How is outsourcing our carbon emissions to other countries
01:11:20
>> while destroying our economy? >> That's I mean >> making that better.
01:11:25
>> It's not. >> It's not right. >> And that's all I'm saying. All I'm
01:11:29
saying is we are pretending to be saving the planet when we are not saving the planet while also destroying our economy
01:11:36
while also making sure that pensioners in this country die every winter cuz they can't afford to pay the heating
01:11:43
bills that they need to pay to stay warm in in what is a first world country. That's what's happening and it's
01:11:52
happening because of government policy. So we are not saving the planet by killing pensioners. I I'm not in favor
01:12:00
of killing pensioners. >> Have you ever thought about going into politics? Are you eligible for
01:12:05
>> eligible? Yes. Have I ever thought about it? No. I I people offer me to go into
01:12:10
politics regularly, but it it's just it's not my game. >> Why? You know, you when you talked about
01:12:16
your mission, Yeah. it seems very aligned with >> going into politics. >> I feel I have way more influence doing
01:12:21
what I do now >> than being, I don't know, prime minister. Well, that's extremely
01:12:25
unlikely than being the the MP for the whatever on C who who gets one chance to ask a question of prime minister. No,
01:12:32
no, no, no, no. I get to speak to way more people and to persuade more people and to articulate ideas in a much more
01:12:40
unfiltered sense. And I think that's really important in the modern climate.
01:12:43
What happens when you become a politician is you start having to talk the party line and then you suddenly
01:12:49
don't quite follow what you actually believe. Now you have to adjust and you
01:12:52
have to say, well, you know, the party believes this. Well, I'm not interested
01:12:57
in speaking for the party. I'm interested for describing things in reality as I see them. And then if there
01:13:03
are politicians who want to take that on, that's their job, not mine. I just
01:13:06
don't have the temperament for it either. I just I'm much more interested
01:13:10
about in the truth than I am in getting along with people, coalition building, caring about potholes, you know, all of
01:13:18
this other stuff. In this multipolar world, this is how we got to the subject. I asked you who would benefit
01:13:23
and is it a good thing? Yeah. And then I asked you is is it a good thing for Europe? And you said no. Yeah.
01:13:27
>> Who is it a good thing for? >> China >> because they get to do
01:13:33
>> do what they want, whatever that is. They're much less restrained by the US.
01:13:39
It's good for India for same reasons. Uh is it good for Russia? We'll find out.
01:13:45
>> Possibly. >> Good for America. >> Yes and no. Oh, I think it's that that
01:13:49
is more complicated. I think America will be able to get what it wants in that world, but it's probably going to
01:13:56
find itself in a lot more confrontations internationally, and that will obviously
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01:15:57
>> Have we ever been in a multipolar world through history? >> Well, yeah, loads of times.
01:16:02
>> What happened next? Look, a friend of mine, very good friend of mine gave me
01:16:05
uh the the history of the English-sp speakaking peoples by Winston Churchill and it talks about the history of this
01:16:11
country of England in particular and basically you go from strong ruler and then he has no no heir. You have a
01:16:19
period of weakness and what happens there's a big power struggle over the throne over over power. This is this is
01:16:25
what's going to happen. you are going to see more instability, more violence,
01:16:30
more attempts to fight for dominance in the world. It's going to be a much more
01:16:33
unstable period of time. Unfortunately, it's one of the reasons I've been so
01:16:37
passionate about trying to say let's not let's not allow this to happen.
01:16:42
>> Instability. >> Yeah. in terms of war, in terms of >> in terms of war, in terms of conflict,
01:16:48
in terms of people to trying to redraw maps, in terms of people trying to get access to resources that otherwise would
01:16:56
have been considered unchallengeable, etc. Yeah, >> I was looking back through history and I
01:17:01
was asking the question, has there been a multipolar world before? And there's
01:17:06
these moments through history, fifth century BC with ancient Greece, um 19th centur 19th century Europe between the
01:17:14
1850s and 1914s, the wearing states of China in 475 BC. And then my next question was what happens next?
01:17:24
>> And the short answer is more friction, less restraint, higher risk. Realistically, the first thing that
01:17:32
happens is rules weaken, which I guess is kind of what we're seeing at the moment
01:17:36
>> with this whole idea of international law. >> Regional wars begin, not one big war.
01:17:41
Arms races accelerate. Some alliances harden, economic fragmentation, domestic pressure rises, so higher defense
01:17:50
spending, higher taxes, etc., um, lower growth. And the three end games history keeps
01:17:56
showing that we have managed chaos, major war, a reset, and then a new hedge hegeimon emerges.
01:18:05
>> Yes. >> What the does that mean? >> Hegeimon is the one dominant power that
01:18:09
that that sort of in the same way that the US had that moment between 91 and recently when it was the only undisputed
01:18:17
power in the world. >> Do you agree with that pattern of events? Well, I was going to say you
01:18:20
sort of make it look like I've got all my ideas from AI, but yeah. Yeah. But
01:18:25
but but the see this is the thing is like before we started I said to you, Stephen, do me one favor. Don't present
01:18:30
me as an expert cuz I'm just a guy thinking from first principles and explaining the basics as I understand
01:18:35
them. All of this is common sense because ultimately it comes back to human nature, right? We are a tribal
01:18:42
competitive species. That's what we are. So when there isn't a dominant force
01:18:48
that everyone respects and accepts as the leader, what happens every single time when you have a power vacuum, you
01:18:56
have a power struggle. That's what we are seeing and that's what you're going
01:19:00
to see. It's human nature. It's not about knowing geopolitics and having
01:19:05
studied international theory for 40 years. It's just basic human nature. When there when there is a dispute about
01:19:12
who the leader is, that always creates the thing that AI just told you. >> Well, the next step in that is a power
01:19:20
struggle. >> Yeah. But that's what you're seeing now. >> But in there's never been a nuclear,
01:19:24
>> right? And nuclear weapons have been the great force for peace. We had the the
01:19:28
great historian from the rest is history, Dominic Samrach, on the show and I asked him about this and he said,
01:19:32
"Yeah, I mean nuclear weapons is why we haven't had a major war and it's maybe
01:19:38
the one thing that will constrain our ability to have a major war." It's one
01:19:44
possibility. It's also the great risk. >> Maybe this is where the cycle ends
01:19:51
because of nuclear weapons is what you're saying. Maybe this is >> um yeah, I'm I'm I am hopeful on that
01:19:57
front actually. I I am hopeful that human beings ultimately the instinct for self-preservation is so strong that we
01:20:02
do not go there. I think that's that's by far and away the most likely scenario. But of course, it is something
01:20:08
that humans have to reckon with and we have to be very very careful as things more and by the way nuclear weapons
01:20:15
may not be the most powerful weapons that exist in the world 20 years from now. in such a world and I know you don't
01:20:22
like it being about individuals but Trump is a certain type of leader >> you know quite unapologetic in what he
01:20:29
says >> I think he's got even more unapologetic because he only has a couple of years
01:20:34
left and he can't be reelected because of the laws are you concerned that if a
01:20:38
different type of leader arrived into power in the US maybe someone who China and Russia thought was
01:20:48
less likely to send the the the jets in at nighttime and bomb nuclear bunkers or snatch a
01:20:54
president from their house. >> Would that be a risk for the West in your view?
01:20:58
>> Massive. >> So do you think >> but that's how we got here. This is why
01:21:02
that withdrawal from Afghanistan embarrassing as it was is exactly how you get everything else. It's just one
01:21:08
symptom of people thinking we talked about October 7th, we talked about the invasion of Ukraine, right? That's what
01:21:15
happens when they see weakness. This is what happens. I remember, you know, um it's kind of funny. It shows the
01:21:21
cultural differences between the Russian mindset and the Western mindset because
01:21:24
the Jungle Book that we had in the Soviet Union is very different to the one that you see that you guys had here.
01:21:30
Did you see Jungle, you know, the original Jungle Book? >> The Disney one?
01:21:33
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's all have the, you know, uh >> context you should probably say where
01:21:37
you come from because >> I'm from from the Soviet Union. I was born there. Um and
01:21:42
>> your your father, you've got mother and father that Ukrainian and Russian.
01:21:45
>> Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Um, so the Soviet Jungle Book adaptation, very different.
01:21:50
And there's this the one of the opening scenes is Akella, who is the lead wolf.
01:21:54
He's the the wolf, the leader of the wolf pack. They're on a hunt and he
01:21:59
they're hunting and he misses the he's supposed to grab the animal and he
01:22:03
misses. And suddenly the cry goes around the jungle. I ke knows what that means.
01:22:11
Everybody knows when the leader shows weakness and fails, that's the moment when everything goes to and there's
01:22:19
a power struggle for his role because he's no longer top dog. It's really as simple as that.
01:22:28
>> So, do you think Trump's a good thing for the West? >> Trump is a good thing for America.
01:22:33
>> I think what he's done by virtue of his behavior is he's exposed the weakness of
01:22:38
Europe. And there is a cleave now happening between Europe and America. And to that extent, I think it could be
01:22:45
a good thing for Europe if Europe gets its act together and says, "Actually,
01:22:49
we've got to wake up from the nightmare that we've created for ourselves and
01:22:53
start acting differently." If that happens, it will also be a good thing for the West. That is not what's
01:22:58
happening right now. It's going in the exact opposite direction. >> What would it take for you to leave the
01:23:01
UK? Um you well look I like you know everybody gets job opportunities and stuff goes
01:23:12
for a year or two somewhere that that that could happen in any circumstance. If you mean like for me to say I'm
01:23:17
leaving Britain never coming back. Um I think it would have to be clear at the next election that Britain is actually
01:23:27
going further down the path that we're on. So two or three years from now, I'd
01:23:31
have to conclude that there's actually no there's no way we're coming back.
01:23:34
It's over. And that's happened to great countries and great civilizations in
01:23:38
history. If that's what happens, then I I don't see why I should do my children
01:23:42
to living here. If we can rescue it, uh, and make this sounding like Trump, make
01:23:50
Britain great again, but you know what I mean. Um, then I I I would love to fight
01:23:55
for that and I'd love to to have my children be part of that. What is the most important thing that we
01:24:00
didn't talk about that we should have talked about? >> This point I keep coming back to,
01:24:03
Stephen, which is we can't live in a world in which we care more about how things make us feel than about the
01:24:12
consequences of the actions that we take so much. This is a Thomas Sol. Last time
01:24:18
you had me on, I mentioned to you what a great writer and thinker Thomas Soul is.
01:24:22
I don't know if you've had a chance to check out any of his work, but I recommend it thoroughly to everyone
01:24:27
watching and listening. He he talks about the fact that the last several decades have been spent replacing what
01:24:32
works with what feels good. That's the one thing we're not talking about. All
01:24:37
the policies you and I have been talking about are all about what makes us feel good as opposed to what actually works
01:24:44
in practice. And our conversation about chasing out entrepreneurs, it's exactly
01:24:49
about that. It's exactly what it's about. It's about fulfilling your
01:24:53
ideological emotional needs as opposed to doing things that practically work. If we can make that adjustment and get
01:25:01
back to reality, the world's our oyster. >> An immigrants love letter to the West,
01:25:08
the book that you wrote. It was a smash here, Sunday Times bestseller. >> Yeah. Unfortunately, it gets more
01:25:14
accurate every day, which is really worrying because I was very pessimistic about a lot of the things I said.
01:25:19
>> That is absolutely right. You wrote this, was it 2022? >> 2022, it came out.
01:25:23
>> 2022. >> Yeah. >> And it appears to be a prediction as the days go on. A prediction that is being
01:25:30
validated, unfortunately. I highly recommend everybody reads this book. I'm going to link it below for anyone that
01:25:34
hasn't read it. What's unique about you is you do appear to be very wedded to
01:25:41
objective truth as you see it versus being ideologically cap captured by either side. And I've seen you I've seen
01:25:47
you both attack the right at times and I've also seen you attack the left at
01:25:51
times which is it's a unique position to be in in a world with algorithms that
01:25:55
try and push you into a particular echo chamber. I guess on that point what is it about
01:26:01
the the right that you take most issue with at the moment? >> Oh there's a thing that I've uh other
01:26:08
people have at a similar time. So, I'm not claiming authorship of it, but there's something that I call the woke
01:26:14
right, uh, which is essentially an identitarian resentment victimhood-based movement on the right, represented by
01:26:22
the sort of extreme characters like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens in the United
01:26:26
States. You know, their worldview is that they they've been oppressed. You know, the work narrative was we are
01:26:32
oppressed. Well, now they say we we've been oppressed and uh it's all the fault
01:26:37
of various groups, the Jews, the whoevers. So, it's a kind of um there's
01:26:42
almost, you know, I think it's fair to say that there are elements of it that
01:26:45
are just openly fascistic and and and reminiscent of the Nazis that we saw in the 1930s ideologically speaking. Um,
01:26:52
and the mainstream right has utterly rejected these people, which I think is really reassuring. But there are some
01:26:58
people who who say well actually no no we need to include them and we shouldn't
01:27:03
divide the conservative movement which I think is a huge mistake from for conservatives to make because their
01:27:10
movement and their reputation with normal people will be very very badly polluted in the eyes of independents and
01:27:17
moderate people who actually represent the overwhelming majority of the public. Even in America, which is so divided and
01:27:23
so partisan, the normal average person will vote for this party or for that party depending on what they see. And in
01:27:31
Britain, that's even more the case. And so to the extent that the right, so they're basically there's a risk of the
01:27:38
right repeating the mistakes of the left. What happened on the left? Woke people came along and they said, "We're
01:27:43
the left. Our crazy work ideas is actually the left." and the sensible people on the left were terrified of
01:27:50
challenging them. And so over time, most people began to associate the left with
01:27:55
blue-haired, nose piercing, you know, Greta Tunberg kind of ideology. And they went, I don't want any of that. Well, on
01:28:02
the right, if the right allows its extremist fringe to do the same thing, then lots of people are going to
01:28:08
distance themselves from that. So, I think the right has a tremendous opportunity to, you know, we've had this
01:28:15
great tension. And I know you've had Jordan Peterson on your show and I'm
01:28:18
sure he talked about chaos and order and that relationship is a very fragile thing in society. We have had so much
01:28:25
chaos that there is a lot of craving for order now. There's a craving to deal
01:28:29
with crime. There's a craving to deal with illegal immigration. There's a
01:28:32
craving to deal with cultural uh disruption that we've had, right? There's a craving for that sense of
01:28:38
order to come back. And if the right is reasonable and sensible about addressing
01:28:43
those issues, they could be in charge for a very long time and have an opportunity to put some of their views
01:28:48
into public policy, which is they haven't had uh the opportunity to do for a long time. If they allow the
01:28:53
extremists to take over, they will be painted, the entire movement will be painted as the extremists and then they
01:28:59
will not have the opportunity to actually implement their agenda. >> Are you happy?
01:29:05
>> Very. >> What makes you happy? >> My family. What about your family makes you happy?
01:29:11
>> Having children is a blessing. It's the best thing ever. I you know I banged on
01:29:15
about this to you last time, but it is >> why >> why are children the best thing ever?
01:29:20
>> Yeah. >> Can't explain it. It's not one of the like I can find some words to give you,
01:29:25
but it's just one of those things. It's like you you don't know it until you
01:29:29
have that experience. Uh I could give you some nice sound bites. You know, one of the things I've said in the past is
01:29:35
that the future is no longer an abstraction. >> What does that mean? >> It means that
01:29:41
in the past I cared about this country or this civilization from a fairly theoretical perspective.
01:29:50
Now the future of this country is one person and maybe other people coming along, right? Little people that I have.
01:29:57
They are the future in my mind, right? So I'm much more attached. I'm much more
01:30:01
attached to the people who came before me. I have much more understanding of my when you have kids, you have a much
01:30:06
better understanding of your parents cuz you go, "Oh, wow." So, the reason they
01:30:11
did this stupid thing is a I'm also doing it now for some reason. And also, they were really dealing with all of all
01:30:18
the things that I'm now deal I've got a job and I've got a relationship and I've
01:30:21
got a this and I've got a that. So, of course, they sometimes behaved in ways
01:30:24
that I didn't understand or like or whatever. So, you have more empathy for your parents. You also have much much
01:30:30
more concern about where your country is going, your nation's going, your community is going, your immediate
01:30:35
environment cuz that's where your children live. And then there just joy. I mean, it's um there's nothing like it.
01:30:42
There's really really nothing like it. It's the most wonderful thing. It's
01:30:46
hard. >> It you don't sleep a lot and it's stressful at times, but it's the best.
01:30:52
It's absolutely the best. >> And you've got two kids. >> I've got one. Uh but maybe more on the
01:30:56
way. >> Oh, okay. Congratulations. Thank you. >> And what what is your primary concern
01:31:01
for the world they're coming into? >> Well, we've talked about all of this,
01:31:06
right? I >> there was a primary >> I think my primary concern for my kids
01:31:09
is that my wife and I do the best job we can in raising them well. And then ultimately they're going to be their own
01:31:15
people and they're going to have to deal with the world in front of them in exactly the same way that others before
01:31:19
have done. My grandfather uh my great-grandfather he was younger than me now when he was
01:31:26
sent to the Eastern Front while he had a baby son at home and he never came back.
01:31:31
Human beings have had to deal with all of this throughout history. We always have to deal with the reality of the
01:31:36
terrible world that we face at that moment in time. They're going to have to
01:31:39
do the same. I can't protect them from that. What I can do is set them up in
01:31:44
the best possible way. And that's the only thing I can do as a parent. That's
01:31:46
what I'm trying to do. We have a closing tradition where Damascus leaves a question for the next.
01:31:51
>> Yeah. >> The question that's been left for you is who was the biggest non-family member
01:31:57
influence in your life and how did they make you a better person? >> Yeah. Not fair to boil it down to one. I
01:32:05
think um I I had a teacher once who um basically made me realize that it's very
01:32:14
very important to give people an opportunity to prove themselves and he did that by giving me an opportunity
01:32:20
when I really didn't deserve it but he gave it to me and I took it. I've also
01:32:25
just intellectually Thomas Saul I I I mentioned him reading his books is just completely transformational for me and
01:32:30
it really helped me think about the world. I think on a on a on a kind of personal behavioral level I got a a huge
01:32:40
opportunity uh to to tour with Jordan Peterson for three weeks a couple of years back. Uh, and that was completely
01:32:46
transformational seeing him up close, spending time with him, seeing that this is a man who the way he is in public is
01:32:54
exactly the way that he is in in private. And so he really one of those very very rare people who preaches what
01:33:00
he practices. I remember we uh I think it was El Paso. We arrived right on the south on the on the on the border and we
01:33:07
arrived we were late from the airport starving starving. And one of the things that tends to happen is everyone who
01:33:15
goes to his live shows works out that he might be at the best steak restaurant in
01:33:20
town >> on the day. So we turn up to the steak restaurant cuz he only eats steak. We're
01:33:26
starving. We sit down. Um the the waiter brings the menus. We're the moment we
01:33:32
start looking at the menus. This group of guys comes over guy guys and girls comes over. He stands up, forgets about
01:33:39
the menu. We're starving. gives them, you know, all the attention in the world. Selfies, has a little chat, ask
01:33:44
them what they do, blah blah blah blah blah, sits down, places the order. Another group of people come over, gives
01:33:51
them the same amount of attention. And by this point, we're dying of hunger.
01:33:55
Finally, our steaks arrive, and you know they do in America, they say, "Please
01:33:58
check that it's been cooked properly." So, he cuts in, he cuts off a piece, he
01:34:02
puts it on a fork, and as he's about to place it in his mouth, a group of literally 20 people shows up saying,
01:34:09
"Dr. Peterson, I'm so sorry. He puts the fork down, stands up, and gives them all
01:34:15
the exact same amount of attention that he'd given the previous people. And just
01:34:19
in everyone that he interacted with, that's what I saw. A guy who talks about
01:34:24
living in a certain way, actually practices it. And that was, you know, incredibly inspiring for me. Really
01:34:29
educational, gave me a lot of thoughts about my relationships, how I live my life. Um, he's he's a great man.
01:34:37
>> Constantine. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Thanks for having
01:34:40
me. >> Staying in the pursuit of truth and I highly recommend people check out
01:34:42
trigonometry your podcast. I'm going to link it below. Um and also the book is
01:34:48
going to be linked below. Is there anything else? >> Yes, Stephen. When are you coming on
01:34:52
trigonometry? That's the question. >> I've just finished my book. >> Oh,
01:34:55
>> it comes out in >> UK exclusive is what I'm hearing. >> Deal. Deal.
01:35:01
>> Signed. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. >> Thanks, man. I appreciate you having me.
01:35:05
I believe that we are already at the early stages if not in World War II. >> We are one misunderstanding, one
01:35:12
miscalculation away, >> or even one AI generated viral video >> from nuclear annihilation. So, here's a
01:35:19
terrifying detail that the public does not know. So, >> wow.