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The grim rise of Islamic sectarianism, with Darren Grimes
2.4k Plays2 months ago
Talking about Islam is a dangerous business, but talk about it we must. The West is facing a civilisational moment, and tensions between Islamism and Western liberal democracy may well determine its future.
Joining Will in these murky waters is GB News Presenter and the founder of the online video platform Reasoned, Darren Grimes.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
Subscribe to Reasoned here.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Fire at Will'
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. If for some reason you are not already following the show on a streaming service, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcasts to YouTube. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five star review. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything.
Controversy at Batley Grammar School
00:00:46
Speaker
Three years ago, a teacher from Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire was forced into hiding after a religious studies class he gave led to protests from Muslim parents and to death threats. His crime?
00:00:59
Speaker
showing a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, ironically in a lesson that was designed to consider appropriate ways of responding to religious disagreements. Two years ago, Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times after decades of living under a fatwa issued by the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Countless others have avoided physical violence, but still been smeared as racist, suffering the professional and personal consequences of that label for daring to speak out against Islamism.
00:01:29
Speaker
Talking about Islam is a dangerous business, but talk about it we must. The UK is facing a civilizational moment and tensions between Islamism and Western liberal democracy may well determine its future.
Introducing Darren Grimes
00:01:42
Speaker
Joining me in these murky waters is GBNews presenter and the founder of the online video platform Reason, Darren Grimes.
00:01:49
Speaker
Darren, welcome to Fire at Will. Will, an absolute pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having me. You ah yourself had a brush with Islamic extremism quite recently. Tell me about that. Well, I was having a pint in ah Soho, as I sometimes do, when after a show at work, and I was accosted by some fella with Grissy Longhair, who said, ah ah you work for GB News. You work for GB News. And I thought, oh, I can see where this is going. So I said, I think you've got the wrong fellow mate. And he persisted. I haven't, I haven't, I haven't. And he said, look, if you continue talking about Islam, I will make the streets, make sure the streets are unsafe for you.
00:02:32
Speaker
Now, that to me was as clear as day, right? As crystal as can be. And that so far, the police are yet to do anything about it. You know, i had I, as an old pensioner, did on the streets during one of the protests, one of the riots, if I had shouted obscenities about Allah, you know, I would have been, wreck he's been banged up for two years, this old man. And yet you can walk up to someone on the streets and tell them if they talk about your religion,
00:03:00
Speaker
in any way, shape or form, but what I would argue is pretty justifiable criticism. That is, ah gives you grounds to threaten someone's safety on the streets of their capital city.
Media and Political Challenges
00:03:14
Speaker
So I find it an extraordinary state of affairs, and it's one which I think goes to the very heart of why so many in the media and political class are so very reticent to actually address the issues, whether it's going back to the Grumman gang scandal that of course was in places like Telford and Rockdale and all these other parts of of England, whether it's up in in Scotland, which has its own problems in parts of Glasgow, for example. And there are, of course, pockets of the country now which are being force-fed a diet of mass migration of illegals now, a two, which they can do absolutely nothing about. They are rendered powerless thanks to central government.
00:03:53
Speaker
So all of these things would be the kinds of issues that I've been discussing around Islam. And, you know, as a gay man will as well, I hate when people say that, these sort of identity things, it but like I think it's relevant in this context. People like that that accosted me on the street, they don't actually think that gay rights and women's rights and all these other things are laudable things worthy of a liberal democracy. They hate liberal democracy, right? They were quite like a liberal theocracy. So I am reticent to accept more of of this kind of migration because I don't want more of the threats, the liberalism and the authoritarian means that we've seen recently ah being dragged out into public policy throughout the whole country. So that's my position, which I think is a
00:04:41
Speaker
pretty reasonable one. I don't think I've said anything that ah you know is derogatory towards any ethnic group or or religion and and as such, but actually just says, hold on a minute, should we think about the ramifications about what British policy has been over the last, well, couple of decades at least?
00:05:02
Speaker
a bit to unpack there. We will get to mass migration specifically, but I want to dig deeper on Islam, which is, of course, a related question. You mentioned there you haven't said anything specifically that you think is wrong about ethnic or religious groups. Now, I think one of the problems in this whole conversation is that ethnicity and religion have been conflated. I think it is unacceptable to smear someone on the grounds of ethnicity. I think every right-minded person would agree with that.
00:05:30
Speaker
What I think we've forgotten is that it's completely acceptable to question religion. In fact, the whole new atheism movement of the early 2000s had a field day doing that, not just for Islam, but for Christianity and for Judaism as well. Religion is a choice. You can choose to believe in something or not. You can't choose the color of your skin. And I think one of the big problems here is you are smeared as racist and conflating that word racist. If you dare to question Islam when they are entirely different concepts.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. i think that's I think that's absolutely correct. And the the the
Criticism and Religious Sensitivity
00:06:05
Speaker
conflation is deliberate, right? It's deliberate to ensure that you are rendered completely unable to actually criticize and discuss and debate. Whereas um when it comes to Christians, because they associate, and this is entirely incorrect, it if you you just take into consideration the Anglican Communion for one, a number of black people who are coming into the Anglican Church far outweighs the number of white people who are going into it. So the idea that you can pigeonhole Christianity as being one single ethnicity is entirely incorrect, but you're allowed to criticise Christianity in a way in which you're not Islam because they associate Islam with one group, one ethnic group, and therefore you they are beyond reproach because that is racism.
00:06:50
Speaker
But it's not, as you've just outlined, you know if you want to take the Michael out of Christianity, which they've been doing all the way back to John Cleese in Monty Python, then hallelujah, happy days. Well, hallelujah, choice word, but you see what I mean. ah I am a Christian. I'm an Anglican, right? i i ah I believe in God and all the rest of it. are And I'm ah a long suffering member of the Church of England. But I don't think that you shouldn't be able to criticize that religion. Quite the opposite. I criticize the Church of England pretty often myself. But I do think you should be able to actually criticize it when it starts to
00:07:29
Speaker
pair into public policy decisions. I mean, a good example would be it in the context of Islam, what we've just seen in the United Kingdom with the vote for banning certain arms being sold from the United Kingdom to the state of Israel. Now, the the Gaza question has really come to the fore and was really present in the most recent general election that we had earlier in July of this year. And ah David Lamy, the foreign secretary, clearly saw a drop in his own share of the vote. And and indeed that of his colleagues, some of them lost their seats outright. And and on an election year, which was supposed to be a complete wipeout of the Tories and a complete win for the Labour Party.
Political Decision-Making and Bias
00:08:14
Speaker
But many a good few number of them lost their seats to politicians who I would argue are of certainly an Islamist bent. And Jeremy Corbyn, of course, has teamed up with them most recently, which I think ought to tell you everything you need to know. But I think they did that. the The arms embargo on Israel, I think they did that to appease their Muslim vote. They don't want to lose that vote. It's growing. It's getting more significant for that party. And they are becoming more fearful of it.
00:08:44
Speaker
You know, Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, was videoed in a room exclusively full of men, begging them for their votes. And sort of ah on almost on bended knee, which of course she did during the Black Lives Matter protests, to beg them to forgive the Labour Party for not being more forthright when it comes to the Gaza question. And then most extraordinarily, Jess Phillips, who was a junior minister in the home office,
00:09:13
Speaker
She said that she was in accident and emergency within an NHS hospital in her part of the world, Birmingham, which does have a high population of of mo Muslims in that part of the world. And she said that she was she received a, well, a more expedited service within the National Health Service because of her stand on the Gaza question. And the doctor, she says, was a Palestinian.
00:09:39
Speaker
Now, that to me, that's really scary, right? Because if I go in there as a Zionist or someone goes in wearing a kippah and they are quite clearly Jewish, are they going to be marked down?
00:09:55
Speaker
by NHS doctors in in parts of the country which have high population rates of Muslims. So it starts to eat in to the public policy realm and have ah really quite serious consequences for ah the whole country here at large. And I can't talk about that really.
00:10:13
Speaker
That's the position we're in.
Sectarian Identity Politics
00:10:14
Speaker
What this speaks to is a very troubling rise in sectarian identity politics in the UK. Yeah, it does. It does. A country which, like every Western liberal democracy, has long believed in the separation of church and state. Now, I think Kemi Badenoch recently did something very brave, and she came out and explicitly said this out loud in a way which most politicians are too afraid to. And I'll quote Kemi. She said, when everyone was talking about the five new MPs for reform,
00:10:39
Speaker
I was far, far more worried about the five new MPs elected on the back of sectarian Islamist politics, alien ideas that have no place here to the sort of politics we need to defeat quickly. Just the follow up question to that is, can we? Yeah, I think we can actually. I think we can. I mean, we absolutely have to.
00:11:00
Speaker
Well, um but I was about to say, yes, I have absolutely believe we can, but I think this is going to become more prevalent and it's going to get worse. That's actually one area where I would agree with Sekir Starmer. He said things are going to get worse before they get better. It's just that I think in the way in which I would argue the country is going to get worse is something he would never dare say, right? Because as I said earlier, the Labour Party is increasingly captured by these kinds of elements of British politics and British life coming to the fore. I mean, you know, I go back to the Jess Phillips point, she had activists of hers during her election campaign having their tires slashed, she very nearly lost her seat and during the acceptance of victory in her election she was howled down by men shouting at her.
00:11:43
Speaker
Now, she said ah that wasn't to do with Islam, that was to do with the fact that they're men. Well, yes, Jess, why are those particular men so vociferously angry with you over a particular stance that you've taken on some part of the world that is, you know, it it ain't Glasgow, it's Gaza.
00:12:03
Speaker
So it's going to get worse and more MPs like this are going to be elected. I think the Labour party is going to suffer particularly, but I think that there will be a ah ah cry for more politicians of the Kemi Badnock mold who are willing to actually talk about these issues and be able to be seen to be
Migration and National Impact
00:12:22
Speaker
credible on them in a way in which I think Kemi can.
00:12:25
Speaker
ah which is is patronizing in and of itself, but ah that's that's the view, right? Because of the color of her skin, to be absolutely clear, right? I think that there is this narrative that because of the color of Kemi's skin, she's able to say things that other politicians aren't. But we need more politicians to be brave, to stand up and so and and make their voices heard, because I mean, ultimately, what what kind of future do you want to be able to look back on and say, I'm i'm pleased of the direction in which things have turned in this country? Do you want it to be one which is based on religious sectarianism of the kind that we've never seen in this country before? I mean, you can go back what well do we go back to the Reformation and start talking about you know Catholics being burned or monasteries being sacked and all these other things, these cathedrals
00:13:15
Speaker
given to the ah Church of England or for the Catholic Church, which by the way, we probably ought to give them back because they'd probably do a better job than we are doing of them right now. But we've never seen it, certainly not in living memory. And I look back at videos and and video reels of the the way in which we used to be united under the banner of the Union Jack in my grandfather's era. And he was very, very happy to fulfill his national service.
00:13:45
Speaker
That bull, you know? Not many men would be grateful for that opportunity. But I think we're losing that bond of nationhood. And I think that mass migration and this religious sectarianism really risks tearing the social fabric of the country for good. So, one, I would stop i would stop immigration outright right now, to be honest, from from now, if I were in charge, until we get a handle on asylum and migration, which we don't, we've lost control.
00:14:16
Speaker
I think that makes sense as a cultural response. People may say in response to that though that the UK economy is now reliant on cheap foreign labor. It hasn't really thought about improving productivity in any meaningful way, like most Western countries. So they're cheating growth by increasing population numbers. How do you overcome that problem if you were to say reduce or or completely eliminate foreign migration over the next, I don't know, two to five years?
00:14:44
Speaker
Well, listen, to be perfectly frank, I think that's a load of bollocks, if I can be so blunt, because of the fact that if you look at how the economic growth has been so paltry and we've we've never seen migration this high, right? We've never seen migration to this country be at these numbers before, where you're talking over the last few years, a population half the size of the whole of Scotland, the whole country of Scotland coming to the United Kingdom.
00:15:10
Speaker
over a period of one term in government, one term in office. And Boris Johnson being the Brexit blonde bombshell and was the one that allowed all of that to happen. And it hasn't but we haven't reaped the rewards or spoils of mass migration. I remember a study from the Bank of England that said that people like my siblings, who are one of them in particular, is in and out of factory work, competing with those who are willing to work for less ah from other parts of the world.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I look at someone like him and I think, how has mass migration benefited someone like that? Do you think he's watching ah the GDP growth of this country and thinking, oh yeah, 0.1% growth this quarter. That's really going to benefit me. I can't wait to get that in my pocket. Of course not, because yeah as you've just rightly outlined, business has had this free lunch of mass migration for most of my lifetime, certainly, expedited by membership of the European Union, but then really fire rocketed in a way in which no one voted Brexit for since 2016. And that I think is a democratic outreach, because in 2010, in 2015, well, even in the 2014 European elections, and then 2017, 2019, twice in 2019, because there were European elections then too, and then the general election in the December of that year,
00:16:36
Speaker
In every single one of those examples, there was an electoral mandate for this country to massively cut migration and we haven't done it. So business of course have not made any productivity changes. Why should they? They know that the politicians are just going to arrogantly ignore the public.
00:16:54
Speaker
Can I follow up on that democratic mandate? My understanding is every ruling politician from Gordon Brown onwards has said that they will cut immigration. The Tories continuously said they will cut immigration, listening to the pleas from their base. No one has done it despite electoral mandates, despite it appearing to be electorally popular.
Political Parties and Immigration Stance
00:17:18
Speaker
Why not?
00:17:19
Speaker
it it Well, it is. It very much is electrically popular. You know, poll after poll says that. Why not? Because I think that the Labour Party don't want to be seen to be the R-word, right? They don't want to be seen to be racist. And they care more about that, their penchant for being popular around international dining tables than they do yeah around the, ah well,
00:17:40
Speaker
pubs, the dog and duck down the road, at which their voters continually ah go to frequent talking about immigration, all of these other issues, saying, I wish these people would listen to us. What a damn outrage. And until we actually vote against the uni party, right, then I'm afraid that it ain't going to change because the uni party have protected this consensus on immigration for, as I say, my entire lifetime.
00:18:06
Speaker
that's just spiralled completely out of control. And I think, you know, i i I'll be honest, I voted reform it in ah the last election. and And in fact, all of my family did, really.
00:18:20
Speaker
And there is a desire to be heard. And Brexit was supposed to be the sort of, I guess, the panacea to to the to that democratic deficit that we speak of, where actually it was a way in which you could actually influence change at the ballot box because it was a ah binary question, in or out, yes or no, leave or stay.
00:18:44
Speaker
and We voted leave and the consequences of voting leave were around sovereignty. Well, the British parliament is now sovereign. The British parliament can enact laws that actually say that the British public can get what they want. But the Labour party ain't ever going to do it. The Tory party is in hock to big business who don't want to do this because it's going to cost them a few pennies, right?
00:19:06
Speaker
It might affect their sanding on the FTSE 100 or whatever else because they'll have to spend some bobs actually putting in place productivity gains and machinery and all the rest of it and upskilling the British public already here. So that's why that's why they're continuously ignored because they can continuously get away with it well this. Well, there's possibly two paths. One is a reformed Tory party that is actually conservative, perhaps under someone like a Kemi Badenok.
00:19:34
Speaker
The alternative is the erosion of what is the most successful political party anywhere in the world in modern history and a challenger like reform to take its place on the right of politics in the UK. I'll ask two questions. What do you think is more likely and what would you like to see?
00:19:54
Speaker
Okay, so on the first point, I think that the Conservative Party don't stand a chance in the so-called red wall. I think that the brand is now so toxic because people feel so utterly betrayed by them that they they won't countenance voting for them at the next general election. I i genuinely feel that the anger is so, so vociferous that they're going to struggle to actually win those parts of the world back in a generation. I think reform will ultimately end up doing very well out of the red wall. Though perhaps we might see ourselves, we are living in a country that basically acts as if it already has proportional representation. you know we are We are living in a country in which voters are voting for who with their heart and not with their
00:20:42
Speaker
bald, calculated heads that says, well, this party stands a better chance of getting out this party in this constituency under first-past-the-poll, so I'm going to have to vote for them. They are now just saying to hell with that, and they're voting for who they actually want. So I think reform could actually end up ultimately doing quite well in the red wall, and that the Tories will win back some of their southern seats, because the Conservative Party already is basically a coalition.
00:21:10
Speaker
where you have your Redwall, you know, Lee Anderson types, who obviously has now gone to reform UK, but was in the Conservative Party. And then you've got your Jeremy Hunts in Southern constituencies in England, that is. so And then Scotland, I would say, are more on the liberal wing of the party as well. So despite the fact, by the way, I would i would argue and Scotland is not less of a conservative nation than England. I don't think any polling actually backs that up. This S and&P narrative propaganda that's been around allowed rather to to be passed around like gospel just isn't true. They would quite like to reduce immigration themselves. And I think they'd be pretty upset if Humsey Yousef had moved in a garrison next door.
00:21:55
Speaker
So all of these things, I think, add up to a pretty exciting, I would argue, opportunity for for the Reform Party, if they can get this right, to actually change British politics and defeat both Labour and the Conservatives in in red wall areas. No, I don't think they're going to be winning in Surrey anytime soon, but you never know.
00:22:20
Speaker
And stranger things have happened, but Clackton, you know, Clackton was the biggest swing to any candidate that the conservatives have ever seen. And that was Nigel Farage. So. And the other thing is that the Nigel Farage question is how long can he go on for, right? Because he's 61 now. I mean, and are we going to keep him in for the next 20 years like a sort of Joe Biden figure? I hope Nigel Farage does not go the same way as poor Biden did or has. But, to you know, those questions are there to be answered too. I agree with you what you said earlier that what Kemi said
00:22:54
Speaker
during her launch speech was was robust. It was invigorating. I and enjoyed it enormously. I shared it myself. Good for her. But I'm not quite ready to forgive the Conservative Party. I know I'm pretty active in reading the news and and updates and all the rest of it. But why would someone who just feels completely betrayed by them and doesn't read the news be so willing to forget they feel utterly betrayed by the Tory Party?
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's a deeper fissure here, which you pointed to. And I think this is a fissure which cuts through all of the right leaning political parties in the West today. And that is that fissure between the liberal, small L liberal right wingers and the more socially conservative right wingers. The former Australian prime minister, John Howard, called this the broad church. You've got to try and pull together the broad church on the right.
00:23:51
Speaker
And it feels increasingly like those two groups are just getting harder and harder to get together as a right wing party. And I wonder from an electoral perspective, does that just spell disaster for the right in the UK? Because whilst you said people are voting as if it is proportional representation, it's not proportional representation. And so if you have the votes split between reform and the conservatives,
00:24:16
Speaker
That could be potentially a disastrous recipe and a recipe for key establish staying power for some time. Oh, it it will be a ah coalition in which the you know the conservatives have to actually listen to their reform coalition partners you know and and actually pass some policies and and be able to blame it on the reform laws. It might give them license to not be liberal, which of which is the current predicament they're in because they want to win back places like Chesham and Amisham, which have become more, which have faulted liberal democrat, but are places, parts of the world that you would walk around and feel that these are your stereotypical conservative party constituencies.
Impact of Social Media on Politics
00:24:56
Speaker
But i don't think you know I don't think in Australia it's you've got the teals, right the more liberal, I don't know why I'm speaking to you, like you don't know that, but you know what I mean. and ah i don't think i think Well, I do think we're facing the same conundrum in this country, but it's just because democracy has not delivered for people. And i'm I'm not calling for, you know, King Charles to be, to me made ah ah a divine ruler who were ah basically ah tells parliament that they've had a good run at it, but Cromwell was wrong and it's time to undo the damage. But I would say that people are more aware of the fact, alive to the fact that they have been taken for granted time and again. And
00:25:44
Speaker
they ain't going to put up with it any longer. So I don't think they can be fobbed off as easily anymore. I don't know if that's the advent of social media, you know, maybe more revolutionary than printing page press in some respects, because people are actually able to access information and and activism in a way in which they simply weren't in the past. Like, I don't think, I think that's probably, Will, a reason why people like Sakya Stama want to clamp down on platforms like X,
00:26:12
Speaker
because people are able to access information in real time about the kinds of stories that Sekir Stama would rather keep a lid on that aren't good for him and his party. So I think you're going to see more of a clamor for a clampdown on so-called disinformation, but which in my opinion, who on earth is the ultimate arbiter of of what is and isn't disinformation. I ah happen to believe that net zero being a necessary prerequisite of the the modern British economy is disinformation because it's going to make people very very poor very very quickly i think i would say the same in australia for the mining industry why the hell should australia give up its mining industry for the benefit of the chinese communist party like that is insane the problem is. How do you how do you actually make them listen.
00:26:58
Speaker
And I think they don't have any policy response to that at all. So I think the answer is going to be just to try and shut us up and not enable us to actually have the debate on what is the de facto public square of X and actually to treat ah Elon Musk like he's some kind of bulky man figure ah who has allowed people to actually have untrammeled freedom of expression.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, it ain't going to be good, Will. Well, let's go to Starmer's vacuous authoritarianism. Oh, must we? Must we? Which is a line that that Toby Young used with me last week. I thought it was a pretty good way to explain Starmer. I'm finding him a morbidly fascinating figure. Not him being personally fascinating, he's not an interesting person, but he is not what
Keir Starmer's Leadership Critique
00:27:44
Speaker
I expected. I expected, and maybe I wasn't looking closely enough, but I expected a boring technocrat. What we've got is something far more sinister. I'll ask the same question that I asked of of both Toby and then Nick Dixon a couple of weeks before that. What's your assessment of Stama the man?
00:28:00
Speaker
Well, my assessment of the man actually is that he's a thoroughly weak man that doesn't have it. He's not driven by any you know reformist zeal or ideology. He's driven by a desire to actually, one, get into power, do hold on to power,
00:28:15
Speaker
And three, actually express that power in a way in which you can quell or quash voices of dissent. He turned on, he was the architect of Labour's second referendum campaign. He now says he doesn't want to reverse Brexit, but he's signing us up to new deals and treaties with European nations, which could ah eat into the realm of migration, because why on earth wouldn't they want that as a bargaining chip? They've expressed that pretty frankly in the past.
00:28:43
Speaker
And still, there is absolutely no, you would argue that he he is saying one thing whilst doing another, and I think that's going to become pretty clear on the Brexit question. ah Secondly, around what he said in the past about speech, about the law, there shouldn't actually be a deterrent to freedom of expression, because once you start censoring voices, but like for example, if you'd censored voices during the Grumengang scandal and you know said,
00:29:11
Speaker
We can't have that kind of racism on X if someone had done a whistleblower report on young girls being systemically raped, for example. And the key assignment said X must censor this from the platform. Well, that freedom of expression would have turned out to be absolutely right and ultimately vindicated.
00:29:28
Speaker
So I deeply worry about that authoritarian streak that does silence voices and would certainly preclude people like me. You know, I remember whether back in the day banning voices for saying that basically women don't have cocks, which which I think should should be a pretty non-controversial statement. Apologies for using the word cock on your podcast. And ah yeah I worry that we're going to go back there. We're going to end back up in that position because you he will gang up with these European technocrats. There's a reason he loved Brussels so much, right? It's because it actually removes the demos from the equation. ah it it's It's the technocrat that's in charge, this unelected, and unaccountable, unremovable body. so i what What do I think of him? Nothing good.
00:30:19
Speaker
put it that way. I'm worried about what Britain is going to look like after five years of him. To be honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't last five years. I wouldn't be surprised if they do turn on each other like rats in a sack because he He's going to have to choose what he does on issues like he's already facing a massive load of ah dissent from his backbench party on putting the winter fuel allowance whilst he's sending 11 billion quid abroad in climate change aid. you know So pensioners are thinking, why are international countries around the globe
00:30:59
Speaker
been prioritised over pensioners who you are making colder and poorer through your net zero policy. The two think threads don't marry up and there are a lot of pissed off pensioners in this country right now. So I don't think it's going to get any easier for the Labour Party to keep that coalition together because you've got some of them actually wanting to go over to the green position of being more openly anti-Israel and more fervently net zero and all these other positions.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah, we talked about the fissure on the right, but you're spot on that there is equally a growing fissure on the left. And again, this isn't just limited to the UK between their traditional working class constituencies and the unions and your more liberal, well-educated city elites. Just as I asked can the right square their circle, can the left in the UK square that circle or do you think again they just become more and more divided along those lines?
00:32:03
Speaker
The left are a lot better at comrades in arms at actually hiding this and making it all go behind the scenes, right? Communists are traditionally a lot better at that. But, well, I mean, if you go back to the Russian Revolution, act how probably some communist voices would argue from up high or down low that i That ain't true as
Net Zero Policies and Trade Unions
00:32:25
Speaker
far as it goes. Now, I'm not certainly not suggesting that we're going to end up in that kind of scenario, like an October Revolution. But I would say, though, that the even in the trade union movement, there is a clamor for change because you've got some of our trade unions, some of the the biggest in the country, saying, well, I'm really worried about what are energy policies. mean for steel manufacturers, for example, or even any any ah manufacturing part of this country that is energy intensive, which manufacturing is de de facto. That's just the way ah these factories work.
00:33:04
Speaker
So they're a bit more reticent to get on board with the net zero push. Let's not forget that it's a really, really radical proposal to decarbonize the entire energy grid by 2030. 2030 ain't that long away.
00:33:20
Speaker
just it's it Well, no, of course it's not. So you've you've got the trade union squabbling over that. You've got trade union members who are saying, well, hang on, I don't like all of this. I didn't like your anti-Brexit sort of stance and attempt to overturn that vote. And then the, as I say earlier, the Green Party is starting to do better, but even the workers ah Workers' Party of Britain, which is the George Galloway outfit,
00:33:46
Speaker
them doing really well in parts of the country with larger Muslim populations. So how do Labour actually beat the the green problem, the Muslim problem, and ultimately ah the whole host of even the Brexit issue because there are some red-walled Labour MPs who don't want Labour to move too far on migration and these kinds of issues as well?
00:34:11
Speaker
So, <unk>t ah there aren't a nest of singing birds, put it that way, and I don't think Sakya Stama is a motivator and someone that can unite either the country or the party. His response after the riots was absolutely appalling. I thought that the man might as well have poured petrol on the nation, lit it on fire, and then danced around the bonfire that he'd just unleashed.
00:34:31
Speaker
I genuinely thought it was one of the most inflammatory things I'd ever heard, and yet he accuses people on my side of the political fence of being the ultimate inflamer of of ah politics in this country. So don't expect things to be plain sailing for them. I wouldn't be surprised if they were a one-term government, actually.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, I initially didn't think so, but having seen the response to the riots and the plummeting of his approval ratings, then I think that's very possible. And this is almost the fool's gold of that election victory. I saw the other day, he got less votes than Corbyn in 2019. Yeah, he did. yeah This is not a popular government.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly right. This is just a very unpopular or was a very unpopular Tory government. And that's it. I think you're right. I think this is a very, very shallow level of support, which is a very, very, very. Look at Australia as well. I keep going back to Australia and it's not just because I'm speaking to an Australian, but I am genuinely interested in what goes on in Australia. And, you know, the whole life won't be easy under Albanese. Well, life ain't been easy under Albanese. And now the Australian people are saying, well, actually, you might you might be out slinging your hook as well. He's just had to cancel his wedding because his polling numbers are doing so poorly. So I wouldn't be so so surprised if the same thing happened to Sakiya Stama. There might be an element of sort of panglossian levels of optimism, but I would be delighted, obviously, But I also wouldn't be surprised because I don't think Sakya Starmer is a very good Prime Minister. Even after what? It's been what, 60 days? Yeah, that's right. Well, I think this is also, you're right to so but to to put this in a global context because I think global politics is going to get more fractured in Western countries and that's going to lead to more one-term governments. And for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because
00:36:12
Speaker
Politics moves much more quickly now in the age of social media and yeah mass information that used to. And the age of loyalty to political parties is dying incredibly quickly. oo I haven't seen the numbers in the UK, but I imagine both for Labor and for for the Tories, just not the numbers of party members would have fallen off a cliff since, say, 1960.
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, under Sir Keir Starmer's leadership, it's down by, what, like 100,000 from the Corbyn age. I mean, Corbyn was very good at getting people together in a mass membership movement, the sort of momentum movement. But that I mean, the Tory membership is is dwindling like you wouldn't believe. it's so It's so small, reform doing well. But still, you go back to immediately post-war United Kingdom and they they were off the scale, millions. So ah that's not going to come back. You've got to enthuse people in different ways. And and the game is now entirely built around social media, I would argue, probably why they want to c senses censor it against conservative voices as much as they possibly can.
Brexit's Consequences and Opportunities
00:37:12
Speaker
You mentioned Brexit a few times and I want to go to Brexit. In my view, I was pro-Brexit. I think it was absolutely the right thing for the United Kingdom to do. I think it's fair to say that the execution from the Tories was shocking. Double optimal.
00:37:27
Speaker
So suboptimal. I'm almost so paraphrasing Russell Crowe and Gladiator. There was a dream that was Rome. There was a dream that was Brexit. Can it be salvaged? Yeah, I think it can actually, because I think no longer can politicians turn around and point to Brussels and say, blame them. And that for me is the the the ultimate prize of Brexit.
00:37:47
Speaker
of being able to actually have politicians accountable to us. We're having this entire debate about migration with an understanding that the the British parliament is actually sovereign and is able to to make the most of of these opportunities around sovereignty actually acting in a way But you know we had the fastest vaccine rollout in the whole of Europe. You were able to act more nimbly as a nation state. I think we're entering an a era of of the nation state. I think the the idea of these massive blocks of trading blocks, almost Soviet-like, of itlike ah these kinds of entities is is is on the way out.
00:38:27
Speaker
So I am optimistic that eventually we will get someone in that recognises that there is ah a real prize to be extracted here. But it was always going to be a medium to long term project. right I remember that the official referendum campaign, ah Vote Leave, were pretty hear about this because they even used a Nike tick as the economy like to show that this you know this sort of you can visualize the Nike swish. and m ah It dips, dips, dips, and then goes up.
00:38:59
Speaker
and i think that that even counts for the opportunities and being extracted to Brexit. So, Keir Starmer is going to do the absolute best he can to balls it all up and water it down as much as possible. But for example, like we're joining the CPTPP in ah December of this year alongside, you know, the Australians, New Zealand and other countries, Canada and other countries. But he if he he would have to be open and honest about us losing access to those kinds of markets, which are the growth markets of the world, and instead hitching our wagon to a declining market of the world. And I don't think he's going to want to be as open and honest, because that would be a complete reverse step of anything he's ever said in his political career. You know, he's taken so many U-turns, it's a wonder he's not in the U-bend and more positions, frankly, than the Kama Sutra. So the idea
00:39:49
Speaker
that he's going to be honest with the public and say, I'm going to get us back in the customs union and forego these opportunities that the nasty Tory signed us up to. I just don't think that's going to happen.
00:40:01
Speaker
So I think it ah a new leader can come in and make the most of it. And I i look forward with with relish to that day. And I think ultimately Brexit years will be vindicated. I don't think that the the EU, especially actually, you're probably going to find that there will be more of these progressive remainers who come around to the idea of Brexit because somewhat hilariously, the entire continent almost is moving dramatically to the right of politics.
00:40:28
Speaker
So all these progressive remainers are thinking, oh my God, and they're clutching their
Right-Wing Ideologies in Europe
00:40:33
Speaker
pearls. And, you know, this is a club that I wore an EU gold star beret for. And they're voting for these right wing bigots, these extremists. How could they possibly? This is a betrayal. So, you know, you might find out that I've got more in common than other European nations after the the next set of elections.
00:40:54
Speaker
Well, Euroscepticism used to be a left wing value. Corbyn was a Eurosceptic. Not out of the question that turns. The Brexit vote was driven from the North. You are a boy from the North. This is a part of the United Kingdom where we've heard grand promises about levelling up. Give me a feel for the North today, for its psyche, for its state, and for for what the future holds for that part of the United Kingdom.
00:41:22
Speaker
Well, it's completely not a bollocks because, ah you know, that there is no way that you can actually level up parts of the world like this. ah One, whilst you have mass migration and people have to compete with those who can work for less and not upscale your own people, because why would you, why business doesn't need to do that if it's got access to the whole world. And net zero is fundamentally and and incompatible with an idea of this, this, we were told there was going to be this green revolution. where there would be green jobs aplenty and that this is going to happen. How? How how can you power an economy? were We're being told that we need to upgrade the grid, the national grid, to actually enable us to use all of this new electricity that's going to be needed. But no one's willing to do that because they don't want new pylons and all these other things in their constituencies. So how the hell are we going to manage that? Where's this going to come from?
00:42:16
Speaker
The idea that you can level up, I know it's in Scotland, but would you know what it the context, the argument works there too. The idea that you can level up parts of the country whilst cutting off access to North Sea oil and gas and saying, normal more but no way, whilst the Americans pull out and say, well, I'm not i'm going to actually cancel current.
00:42:37
Speaker
projects that we've got in the pipeline in North Sea oil and gas. That has a knock-on effect on the wider supply chain because obviously there is a wider supply chain connected to North Sea oil and gas. All of these things suggest to me that there is not a commitment to leveling up but a uni-party commitment to leveling down. Though I don't accept that. and i Will I'm someone that campaigned heart and soul for Boris Johnson? When in my seat, I i was born in a place called Consit, which is an ex-steel working town. And the one next to it, my grandfather was a miner in County Durham. And I i cried when Labour lost. they they' had never There had never ever been a Conservative MP in that seat. And that Conservative MP went on to be the chairman of the Conservative Party. He then jumped like a little political frog straight into a nice little leafy safe seat in the south.
00:43:33
Speaker
And you you ask me you and what do voters think of levelling up in the Tories? Well, absolutely not all, because it hasn't happened. I mean, Ben Howchin's done quite a good job in Teesside, I'll give him that. But I don't think in in other play parts of of the north-eastern where I'm from and where I go to like County Durham and and Newcastle and all these other places. I don't think there has been like, there are clean air zones in Newcastle, for example, where people are being penalized for driving their cars. I just read this morning that if you've got a petrol motor ordered, you've got to wait for it because these car manufacturers are worried about being penalized through the government's quotas on petrol and diesel cars that they can actually sell over electric vehicles.
00:44:20
Speaker
No one wants bloody electric vehicles. Where are you going to charge it in the northeast? you know So there is a multitude of things. The northeast is or were also pretty rural. County Durham is absolutely huge. The idea that you can rely on an electric car in somewhere like this is for the birds.
00:44:36
Speaker
So leveling up is a fantasy until we actually get real and put forward an agenda in which one, energy is cheap because energy is at the root, the heart of absolutely everything.
Education and Social Mobility Concerns
00:44:48
Speaker
And two, an industrial policy actually says to working class people, you are going to be prioritized, upskilled, retrained because business is going to have no other opportunity not to do that. And then thirdly, I think there's a problem I haven't been here my entire life. There's a problem with kids in this part of the world simply aren't told well that they can actually do things, they can actually achieve things. you know Kids in the south in their nice schools are told, well, actually
00:45:21
Speaker
you're going achieve If you put your mind to it, in Britain is a country in which you can achieve great things. People up here are told, don't bother. ri And they're not told about opportunities that they might have in apprenticeship schemes. in well war because I guess these these manufacturing companies now can't afford to do that because Labour are putting their taxes up. and ah They are making energy just far too expensive. But apprenticeships, plumbing, ah whatever else it might be, really good jobs, like good pay as well, that you can go into that don't require a university degree. But these kids are made to feel like failures if they don't get grades that enable them to go to university.
00:46:01
Speaker
And I look at those kids you know that were arrested and and jailed for years in some cases, that rioted. And I genuinely think that there is a white underclass in this country that is is lied to, is smeared, and simply ignored by the political class. And I i mean this with every fibre of my being, that my heart breaks to the film. I didn't look at those kids and think,
00:46:24
Speaker
I have hatred in my heart for them. I looked at them and I thought, you know what must what must your life have been? ah you know You're more statistically more likely to have a mum and dad that are either dependent on alcohol or or or drugs or whatever else. Unemployed as well. Statistically more likely to have got lower grades at school. What opportunities have you had handed to you in life?
00:46:47
Speaker
Now that's not an excuse to be clear before someone clips this up, not an excuse for someone to go burn and loot or whatever else. But I do worry that people like Sakya Stama and politicians of his ilk simply smear the ride over actually seeking to to understand and assist and help.
00:47:10
Speaker
which is what level or not was always meant to do. But I think the political class look at people like that and think of them as white scum. you know And that's it. And so ethnic ethnic relations and ethnic politics is going to it's going to grow. It will. And I don't think that's a good thing. I don't say that with any happiness, going for one hell of a ride, put it that way.
00:47:31
Speaker
I had another couple of questions in mind, but I want to leave those for next time because I think that's an incredibly powerful sentiment to leave listeners with and one that is well worth pondering. Darren, you are one of the great voices for common sense in the United Kingdom. I strongly recommend listeners in the UK.
00:47:50
Speaker
Catch Darren on GB News for global listeners. Catch the Reasoned platform on YouTube. Subscribe now.
Conclusion and Promotion
00:47:58
Speaker
Mate, keep doing what you're doing because I think there aren't enough people like you who are saying the right things and and thank you for coming on the show today. today and Thank you very much, Will. I'll see you soon in Cancellation Tower.
00:48:09
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of Far It Will. If you enjoyed the show, why not consider a subscription to The Spectator Australia. The magazine is home to wonderful writing, and insightful analysis, and unrivalled books and arts reviews. A subscription gets you all of the content from the British edition of the magazine, as well as the best Australian political commentary Subscribe today for just $2 a week for a year. No, I'm not joking. $2 a week for an entire year. A link is in the show notes. so