Where Shall We Meet
Explorations of topics about society, culture, arts, technology and science with your hosts Natascha McElhone and Omid Ashtari.
The spirit of this podcast is to interview people from all walks of life on different subjects. Our hope is to talk about ideas, divorced from our identities - listening, learning and maybe meeting somewhere in the middle. The perfect audio diet for shallow polymaths!
Natascha McElhone is an actor and producer.
Omid Ashtari is a tech entrepreneur and angel investor.
Where Shall We Meet
On Democracy with Alastair Campbell
Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message!
In this episode we talk to Alastair Campbell about Democracy. Alastair Campbell, who doesn’t really need an introduction if you already listen to his podcast The Rest is Politics. Alastair served under Tony Blair as Downing Street Press Secretary from 1997–2000 and then became Downing Street's director of communications and spokesman for the Labour Party 2000–2003 playing a pivotal role in shaping the New Labour. He's an accomplished author, publishing both best selling novels and non-fiction books about mental health, the media, the environment and most recently two books for kids 'Why Politics Matters’ and ‘How Politics Works’.
Can modern democracy keep up with the pace of change in today's world? On this episode of "Where Shall We Meet," we try to tackle this critical question. Alistair offers his unique insights draw comparisons between Western democracies and city-states like Singapore, and even monarchies like the UAE, to examine the pressing need for renewed civic engagement and political accountability.
Join us for a stimulating conversation that underscores the crucial need for political reform and early political education.
Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet
I want to apologize in advance for saturating the market with yet another podcast.
Speaker 2:Natasha, it's a bit too late. We've already done it. No, we need more rehearsal time. Launch and iterate is our mantra in the tech world. I told you, only actors get to rehearse.
Speaker 1:Our podcast is called when Shall we Meet, and you can probably hear why In upcoming episodes you'll hear from a doctor about psychedelic therapy. A polar explorer, a deep mind researcher, a journalist, author, a media commentator.
Speaker 2:A futurist. A composer and musician extraordinaire an entrepreneur building the first gen AI dating app Sounds frightening and a lot more. We're still newbies and started off with some suboptimal recording equipment, so we have to apologise for the sound quality and creaking chairs in some of the initial episodes. We have now cleaned up our act, so don't worry.
Speaker 1:Our guest today is Alistair Campbell, who doesn't really need an introduction if you already listened to his podcast. The Rest Is Politics. Alistair served under Tony Blair as Downing Street Press Secretary from 97 till 2000, and then became Downing Street's Director of Communications and Strategy from 2000 till 2003, playing a pivotal role in shaping the new Labour. He's an accomplished author, publishing both best-selling novels and non-fiction books about mental health, the media, the environment and, most recently, two books for kids why Politics Matters and Alastair Campbell Talks Politics, which I can't wait to buy for all the youngsters in my life. Today, we'll be speaking to him about democracy.
Speaker 2:Quick housekeeping. When we recorded this episode, the date for our general election hadn't been announced yet.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, neither had the election results in India come through. Don't worry, we're just catching up now. We'll be up to date from here on out.
Speaker 1:Hello, my name is Natasha McElhone.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm omid ashtari, and we are here with do I have to say my name?
Speaker 3:you have to my name is alistair campbell thanks for taking the time, alistair, pleasure.
Speaker 2:We talk about innovating democracy today. I know you do, so I thought, as a starting off point, I wanted to set the scene and say that, from an outsider's perspective, if you have city-states like Singapore that seem to have it very much together, that you have autocracies like you know, the UAE, that built skyscrapers up into the sky and are a little bit more competent in building infrastructure, and while I don't want to dwell too much on the premise of that, I wanted to maybe go on a little bit of a tour of exploring different models as a launchpad and then get back, maybe, to the premise after we've had this tour.
Speaker 3:I think Singapore would reject being included in the same paragraph as China.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Democratic systems go. Yes, I think democracy is in a bit of a state for all sorts of reasons is in a bit of a state for all sorts of reasons and it's not. I don't think it's that people suddenly say to themselves we don't want democracy, we don't need democracy although some people are saying that in the democracies. I think it's more that the demands and expectations upon the democracies have weighed them down, and I think part of that is the political electoral model that a lot of the democracies use, which is to say, vote for me and I will make sure you've got a job, I will make sure your health services are good, I will make sure your kids get a good education, I will pretty much make your life easy and comfortable and fine and everything's going to be dandy. And what's happened in the current generation is that two things have collided. The first is that it's the kids growing up today, the first generation in a lot of the democracies, who are unable to say they're going to be better off than their parents. Right, that's a massive thing Alongside a generation of politicians represented by people like Trump and people like Johnson, people like Modi and people like Erdogan, who are populist in nature and therefore, instead of challenging that model, vote for me and I'll give you everything, vote for the other guy and your life's going to be in utter misery. They absolutely play into that, right, and so I think that, of course, the other thing and your life's going to be in utter misery. They absolutely play into that, right, and so I think that, of course, the other thing that's happened. There's no point.
Speaker 3:You mentioned the UAE there, and likewise China. I can remember the very, very first time I saw a piece of paper in Downing Street about the arguments for and against the third runway at Heathrow Airport. Right, it was 1998. For and against. The third runway at Heathrow Airport was 1998. So here we are now, 26 years later, still having that argument. How many airports have the Chinese built in that time? Yeah, exactly. How much of an infrastructure has been built in some of the Gulf states, where they've got both the money and the systems that allow them to do pretty much what they want.
Speaker 3:So I think that is all combining to lead people to question whether we should be so cocky and so arrogant about the fact that we have these supposedly great systems of democracy, and then throw in the fact that, you know I wrote a book last year called but what Can I Do, which is about trying to get more people engaged in democracy and politics and citizenship and so forth, and one of the points I made is that, you know, just take, we're sitting here in London. Just take Britain, the stuff that has happened in our politics in recent years, that would have been unthinkable even 20, 30 years ago, unthinkable Somebody like Johnson becoming prime minister, Brexit happening and then no accountability for the lies on which it was fought and won, no accountability for the fact that the Brexit that's been delivered has nothing to do with the Brexit that was promised.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And now no debate about it. The corruption that we saw during COVID Mm-hmm, the normalisation of lying in politics these are things that I don't think growing up I ever thought would come to Britain, and they have. So I think that democracies have now got these massive strains within them and I don't think that, as democracies, that we're really facing up to the consequences.
Speaker 1:Can I just push back on two things. Firstly, kids today, or a new generation, will, for the first time, not be better off than their parents. What metric are you just talking economically, or I would say that people today have so much opportunity to innovate, to create, to make things. It's a much, much more exciting landscape in terms of work and changing your job through life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1:Access to education. You know whether it's online.
Speaker 3:I think, look, the metric is economic, yeah, but I think within that, you know, we've got in here in the UK. We've got levels of poverty now that I just thought were never going to come back and they're almost. It's almost like they're not even involved or part of the debate.
Speaker 2:You're referring to the child poverty report recently.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also you've got within education. I don't agree that there's. The kids today are confronted with massive opportunities. Some are, but I think it's become a very, very uneven, unequal society.
Speaker 3:But I guess I just mean the internet gives access in a way that we never, ever, ever had it before and there's been good to that and there's been bad to that, but my point is that throughout our lifetime there's just been this expectation that you're going to do better than your parents did. My point is that I don't think that can be taken for granted by a majority and that puts massive pressure on a democratic structure, Because democracy has to be about progress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the point is when the hope for the future is no longer there, to buy a house and we can no longer afford. I don't know how useful that is, because I feel society has changed so much yes, not just to do with the technological revolution, but the way that we communicate, the way that we meet the I mean everything.
Speaker 2:I'd like to take us back, maybe, so acknowledging all the things that you're saying, and I think that is how I anchored it as well initially. But I'd like to take us back, maybe, so acknowledging all the things that you're saying, and I think that is how I anchored it as well initially. But I'd like us to be a little bit more pragmatic and think about things that we could actually do to improve by looking at other models. To start off with, maybe right, you talked about corruption. When we look at Singapore, they have much higher standards in terms of ministerial conduct.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about that how you feel about what we could learn from the Singapore model. And also, are people being held to account, and people in the public eye and politicians and so forth much, much more rigorously today than they ever were before?
Speaker 3:But I'm just curious about Are they being held to account? No, I don't believe they are.
Speaker 1:By us and by the media. I mean no, definitely not by us and by the media.
Speaker 3:I mean no, definitely not. Standards have fallen substantially. But I would argue that our media large parts of our media, certainly in the UK, but I think to some extent in America have given up the role of holding to account anybody who shares their basic worldview. So at the moment, take the situation regarding Labour's deputy leader, angela Rayner, over a story. Did she or didn't she fill in this form, fill in that form, sums of money that to most of these Tories are literally peanuts? Over the sale of a council house before she was even an MP, over the sale of a council house before she was even an MP, which gets more debate and more coverage than multi-million pound frauds, than Sunak putting people into the House of Lords who've given 15 million quid? You mentioned Singapore. As I was on the train coming here, I got an email from a minister in Singapore who thought I would be interested in a post that he just put on his Facebook page, which was about an article that the Economist has run about Singapore. Okay, and it's not that long, but let me just see if you. I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 3:The Economist cannot resist sneering at us. It's an instinct lodged deep in the unconscious of the British commentariat class. They can't stand that a people they were accustomed to lecturing are now doing better than they are across the board. Take governments. Dpm Lawrence that's their current deputy prime minister, who's about to become the prime minister will be our fourth prime minister in 59 years. In the UK, mr Rishi Sunak is their fourth prime minister in 4.9 years. Mr Boris Johnson, when he was prime minister, accepted a holiday worth £15,000 and £50,000 for renovation of his residence from donors In Singapore. Anyone who did what Mr Johnson did would have been charged in court.
Speaker 3:On the economy, we started as a British colony with per capita GDP of 500 US dollars. Now it's more than 80,000. According to a recent Forbes report, we have the fifth highest GDP per capita in the world by purchasing power parity terms, well ahead of the UK. On our media, the Economist refers to our docile press. It obviously prefers a situation like in the UK where one person can control major media outlets, have politicians pay court to him and where media owners can influence who gets elected and who becomes PM. A similar situation in Australia was described by a former Australian prime minister as a cancer on democracy. We provide our people of all classes and races with better health care, housing and education Law and order. Situation in London is well documented. It then goes through the stats education law. Nor situation in london is well documented. It then goes through the stats. Uh, situation like this, not that he talks about in 100 neighborhoods naught percent of reported car thefts were solved.
Speaker 1:A situation like that would be unthinkable in singapore yeah, but, but you are talking about rights versus security though, aren't you? Let me?
Speaker 3:give you the final one. Or in social cohesion. In the uk, a tory party donor recently said of a black MP that looking at her makes him want to hate all black women. His party said all should just move on from the comments and that's it. In Singapore, anyone who made such a comment would be charged in court. What price your sneer?
Speaker 1:So there you are. That's a very good letter. It's a great letter. I would say so too. Thanks for reading it out.
Speaker 2:So what do you think we can take away from the model there and adopt here? Obviously, you have allegiances in this upcoming general election I assume right, I do and there's a new government maybe coming in right. I hope so. So what can they run on that would borrow from the Singaporean model?
Speaker 3:I don't know how to borrow from the Singaporean model. There are things in policy I think it's very interesting, for example, to give you another example from Singapore. In education, they have been absolutely at the forefront of you know. It's about results, results, results, and they're always very high up in the kind of global league table and so forth. They're now changing. They're now moving to a much more. You know seeing education as a Less hothouse no developing people as citizens.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, yeah, yeah, and I'd like us to do more of that. Look, I think, generally on politics, the first thing is to accept that our politics is in a very unhealthy state and then to try to work out the reasons why that has happened, and some of them we've already talked about and others, no doubt, we'll come on to. So I think we've got a massive problem related to political education Right Exacerbated by the sort of politics I talked about earlier, this very old fashioned model of what politics is and what a politician is, exacerbated by a media that, as I say, no longer sees itself as a service of public information and education, but actually a political, an expression of a different form of political power, particularly the print media, social media now making it like a cesspit a lot of the time. And then if you get somebody like Musk and the sort of games he plays with Twitter, then it makes it worse. So I think, on political education, that's where I start on this, and I think it's a generational thing. I don't think we're going to fix this very, very quickly. It's a generational thing. We've got to revive a sense of people's general understanding of the importance of politics.
Speaker 3:So, on that, I would have political education in schools, from primary schools. In fact, my next book is a children's book explaining what politics is one for primary schools, one for senior schools? I would have. I would lower the voting age. I would lower the voting age and probably have. This is something I talked to Sadiq Khan about recently. You know that a lot of the polling stations are in schools. Have them in schools and kids can vote and you don't get the day off school.
Speaker 1:You get the day off to talk about the election and the issues and that's great yeah, I would have.
Speaker 3:I would favor compulsory voting. I think those yeah, that was the other thing, yeah you know, I was in Australia a few weeks ago and it's really interesting. We you talk to Australian politicians, including the ones who were against it when the change was made. They say it's had several effects. One is that it's much harder for extremists to gain traction in a system where they know that it's not just going to be two-thirds of people who vote?
Speaker 3:but everybody's going to vote Right Because the centre of gravity develops in a different place. The second thing they said is that it does improve the level of public debate.
Speaker 1:And of engagement, presumably.
Speaker 3:Yeah, people just feel oh even if they grumble about it oh God, I've got to vote, you know, at least they'll think about it a bit more than they do. So that? And then the other thing they say is that they're just they. They feel that once a government is elected, even on a system where they haven't necessarily got a majority of the vote, at least it's. It's come through a process in which everybody has been involved. Yeah, so I would definitely go for for uh compulsory voting.
Speaker 3:And I think then the other thing is I think we have to, we have to revisit how we have got to this place where the book. I talk about three Ps populism, polarisation and post-truth. How have those three things been allowed to take such a hold in our politics and our culture and how do we reverse those?
Speaker 1:Just to go back to mandatory voting. How would you then penalise people who didn't Small fine? How would you then penalise people who didn't Small fine? What happens if a lot of the people that didn't vote are people who are perhaps overwhelmed, who don't have a permanent address?
Speaker 3:who aren't able to administer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're hitting the same.
Speaker 3:You might, but I think that put it this way, the numbers who don't vote in the countries that have compulsory voting are tiny, right, and there will always be people like that and you'll always find. And actually, as long as there's a kind of understanding that there will be people who are ill, there will be people who are dying and all that, yeah. But I think in general, as long as you have, as long as you surround it with a kind of proper public information campaigning I noticed walking through the cemetery, on the lamppost at the bottom there's an advert for voter ID, the fact that you need voter ID for elections in the UK. As long as people are informed, you know, postal voting is pretty much universal now in most countries, most democracies in the world, you do a postal vote, so I don't think that's an insurmountable problem.
Speaker 2:This reminds me of something you guys were discussing on Trip. The rest is politics. You were talking about switzerland and the fact that the referenda there, that the federal state infrastructure is relatively devolved to the local government, yeah, and, but that is paired and I think this goes back to what you're saying right now with a very docile media that is very informative and takes it upon themselves to make sure that people are armed with knowledge to participate in that referendum and referenda and that's that's a cultural issue yes, now that's how do we address that well, I don't know, uh, that that
Speaker 1:is.
Speaker 3:I mean you're doing your part I kind of am trying to, but it's a small part because you know I'm one person and there are lots of people. But so I think that, look, I'm very desperate for Labour to win the election here. But I am actually quite disappointed that they've dropped any interest in the whole Leveson inquiry, the process about our press. I understand politically why they just think let sleeping dogs lie, leave it. But I don't think you'll necessarily change this political culture until that culture has changed. Now it is changing of itself because of the technological changes, forcing them to revisit different models. The sales are declining, but it's not being replaced by anything better. That's the problem.
Speaker 3:You know lots of talking to Sadiq Khan last night and he was saying you know, something like TikTok comes along, everybody thinks, oh, whiz-bang, exciting, you know, connect with the youth and all this stuff. But it's become a real problem that that is now such a major source of people's information. Which could be true, might not be true, but we're all being algorithmized out of hell. At the moment I cannot go on social media without seeing Liz Truss or Nigel Farage. Well, don't tell me that's because I want to, because I don't.
Speaker 2:What have you been searching for?
Speaker 3:It's like that guy. Do you remember that guy, the Tory MP who stood up in the House of Commons and said we've got to do something about this internet thing because every time I turn on my phone I'm being bombarded with pornographic?
Speaker 2:images yeah what is this a search history is the question there.
Speaker 1:There's also again I think it's called the news movement on TikTok who are trying to change.
Speaker 3:Or BookTok is great. Yeah, BookTok is great. Oh yeah, listen, there's loads of good stuff.
Speaker 1:With all of this, there's good innovation as well, Correct?
Speaker 3:correct and I think that you know I mentioned Musk. I think Musk has been a bit of a disaster for social media.
Speaker 3:But at the same time it seems to have spawned all sorts of responses to the changes that he's made. So it's that you, you know, and when you see something and it's just when you see that thing below it that says you know, fact check, you kind of know it's only there because it's wrong. So you kind of move on and so you know we're all adapting and we're all evolving. But I think we'd be hard-pressed to say that we have a healthier media debate than we did. I think it's got worse. And the other thing I'd say is we have more media space than ever, but I'm not sure we have more debate than ever and I'm not sure we have more understanding than ever. And where we do have greater understanding, I think it's often sort of pocketed. Now I think there's loads of lessons, there's loads of sort of messages of hope around the place. I mean, you mentioned our podcast. I've been sort of genuinely taken aback by how many young people listen to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, two blokes. I'm 67. Rory's in his early 50s, both out of politics, front line, as it were. And yet when we did the Albert Hall first of all, 6,000 people paying to come in here to talk about politics yeah, over 30% of the audience was under 30. Wow, which says to me there is a hunger and a desire for something more than TikTok, something more than the papers give them.
Speaker 1:When you said your book was a response to so much of the correspondence and letters that you'd had, that's where you wrote it, Absolutely yeah, that's so heartening.
Speaker 3:That's really really exciting. No, the title, but what Can I Do? Came from people saying that what?
Speaker 2:can I do? I'm desperate. I think it was a great title actually and we had to look at it as well, and we have Citizen Journal Bellingcat.
Speaker 1:There's some great stuff.
Speaker 3:You know, I think some of the new kids on the media block have been good. You know I've worked for the New European. I think there's some great journalism. Byline Times has some great journalism.
Speaker 2:But so with all of this movement to go back to the idea of changing the structures, models like how do we start that?
Speaker 1:How do we? Because I know your argument. By and large, at least what I've heard of it is that you engage in the system that we're in and you get involved in politics, and so many of these movements are outside of that. Whether it's the Extinction Rebellion movement, whether it's Bellingcat Group, they're not using legacy models are they? They're trying to break and hack them and come up with new ways of doing things, which I'm very interested in.
Speaker 3:I would argue they are part of the political. They are part of politics, because they're trying to change politics in the way that they do politics. I don't think they're.
Speaker 1:But they're campaigning outside.
Speaker 3:They're campaigning, yeah, but they're campaigning in order to have influence and in order to make change, right and influence and in order to make change, and I would argue that they are making change, but they don't want to get inveigled in the system.
Speaker 1:What I mean is they've lost faith in the system, haven't they? Which is why.
Speaker 3:They might have lost faith in the system, but they also know that to get what they want they're going to have to influence the system, and they do influence the system. I think one of the difficulties with being in and out campaigning organisations is that you never quite know where and when the change is coming. You know I write a lot about Greta Thunberg in the book and I think she has moved the dial on the debate.
Speaker 2:No doubt about it as an individual, as one person she's moved the dial.
Speaker 3:Now, has she achieved everything she set out to? No. Has she ended climate change as a threat? No. Has she persuaded every politician as a threat? No, has she persuaded every politician in the world they should do more? Absolutely not. But has she, as a campaigner, shown that campaigning can change politics? I've got no doubt about it, I would agree.
Speaker 2:Let me give you maybe my perspective as somebody who's in tech and maybe actually let me anchor this to Dominic Cummings. He's been doing the rounds on podcasts and he Number 10 and the PM are obsessed with headlines and they're the flag on the wind, depending on what the press is saying on the day. The civil service is purporting its own bureaucracy and therefore resisting any change, because that's how the infrastructure will remain. The people in power will remain in power.
Speaker 3:I agree with the first part of that. I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't entirely, and I don't even know any of the whether any of that is true and I'd love to hear your opinion.
Speaker 2:But he's been going on these tech podcasts and a lot of people in tech are excited about hearing this. Now I'll tell you why. That is because my perspective is I can start a company tomorrow and change and impact this world in ways that are orders of magnitude faster, more direct, more exciting, seemingly, than if I'd want to go into politics For sure. Right, yeah, and so what I'm saying is the competitive landscape of the political system and engaging with it needs to look sexier and has competition now right. Compared to other ways, you can now very quickly have impact on this world through social media followers, right, and like creating an alternative channel like Greta Thunberg, or to become an entrepreneur and build that. So the system of engaging with politics by saying, hey, you know, we have models you can engage with, just go and do that Feels a little bit out of touch with the competition of other ways people can have an impact in this world. I get that.
Speaker 3:I get that, but you see, but I think we've got to be careful about this, because I think one of the things that's going on in our politics which is really weakening us as a democracy is the fact that the politicians have become too kind of. I guess a symbol of it was when Sunak had the Artificial Intelligence Summit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Bletchley Park.
Speaker 3:And he sat down with Elon Musk and you know he's the prime minister of one of the most important countries in the world and he looked like a fanboy of this guy who's kind of just a bit of a sort of cavalier buccaneer, and I think that's bad for politics because I think that some I'm obsessed with this book and I think that's bad for politics because I think that some, the the I I'm obsessed with this book the sovereign individual which is this is Rhys Mark's dad yeah, rhys Mark's dad who basically had this vision of taking the wealthy and the powerful out of any democratic control. I think that's what Sunak's father-in-law is all about, I think what it is about, what these free ports are about and these special economic zones and so forth it's about taking people out of any kind of democratic oversize. I worry about that. However, where I think Cummings has got a point, I think he's loathing of the civil service. He's way off kilter. Civil service, in my experience, is a pretty good not brilliant, but pretty good provided it's given clear and honest and straightforward direction. Right, if you have somebody like Johnson in charge of it and Cummings alongside him, don't be surprised if it's all going to go tits up, but I think actually. So where he was right is in saying that you had somebody like Johnson and, to a lesser extent, somebody like Sunak.
Speaker 3:Now we're talking on a day that Sunak Now you're seeing this we're talking on a day that Sunak is making a sort of yet another back of the fag packet speech about the future of, I don't know, the health service.
Speaker 3:I mean just like day after day, thinking of something new to say just for the sake of, as you say, getting a headline that's just defunct, just defunct. It's finished as a kind of political model and yet they're still addicted to it. So I would say that he's got a point about the politicians, less of a point about the civil service, and I think that if you're so, if you're a young person thinking about how am I going to make a difference in the world, absolutely right, you can do it through business, you can do it through culture. There's lots of different ways you can do it, but ultimately, every single thing that you do is going to have, at some stage, contact with the political process somewhere in the world, exactly. So therefore, we still have to have good people who are going to become our politicians. Yes, and my worry is that politics has become so unfashionable, so derided, so low, that we're ever narrowing the gene pool of the people who even think about doing it.
Speaker 2:Should I throw the job thing in there? Yeah, I'll throw the job thing in.
Speaker 1:I mean the job thing, and also, what I really want to get to is a mindset change, and I guess the story change around. When did we get to the place, or was it ever thus? I don't think it was Taxation.
Speaker 3:let's just say, for example, you're talking about you know the sort of 1% who seem to be exempt. I pay tax because it helps me.
Speaker 1:It's an insurance, of all kinds of things. If my neighbour is, you know, more equal to me, or if I'm more equal to my neighbour, there's going to be less conflict. I don't understand how we've got to the place where tax is considered a punishment. That's where we are right now and no one sees it as a benefit. How do we change that? How do we tip that back to a place of citizenship and caring for how other people are managing?
Speaker 3:Well, you say everyone thinks like that. I mean, you and I think alike on that. We've only just met, but I'm imagining you think like that, but there doesn't seem to be a correlation between, there's a disconnect.
Speaker 1:Everyone wants a better health service. Everyone wants better education for their kids. When it comes to paying a large part of your salary towards that, if you're lucky enough to earn more than enough, there's a problem yeah, but I think the the answer to the question, how do we get to this?
Speaker 3:is that we've.
Speaker 3:I mean, politics goes through waves and there and there are certain periods political history that really, really matter, and you get big change that lasts, and one of the one of those periods of big change that last in our lifetime was the whole kind of thatcher reagan period, where the sense of um you know, to put it derogatively, yeah, selfishness, yeah no such thing as society, which she never actually said, but that's became the sort of label for her, her philosophy, where it takes on a grip and it takes a hold and then alongside it you do have this sense of a sort of a more buccaneering approach to the economy and entrepreneurs and so forth, and it takes a long time for something like that to shift.
Speaker 3:I would argue. In government, for example, I did this event with Will Hutton I mentioned, and Will Hutton has just written a book where he's saying that he actually thinks Thatcher has been the cause of most of our problems and he was sort of praiseworthy of what we did as the government the Labour government in some aspects, but said actually he felt our big failure was not to challenge those basic orthodoxies we kind of accepted some you, I would say imbibed them instead of reframed them, I think we remodelled some and we challenged some and we rejected some, but that sort of taking as a base for both political and economic reasons, and you can put them in whichever you want, because you've got to win to make change.
Speaker 3:So I think we did make a lot of change that I can defend as somebody who can say I'm sort of you know very much on the left of politics but I accept we did it, accepting quite a lot of a base that we spent a lot of our time when she was doing it absolutely raging against. So I think that. So I think that's the honest answer.
Speaker 1:I think that that we are, I think we're I don't know whether we've- always been selfish, but I think we've become more selfish as people, I think the nation state, which, on the one hand, is a kind of, and yet lockdown happens and all you see is a proliferation of kindness and neighbourliness and volunteering and doing things for free, for absolutely nothing in return. So, and that's what I have faith in, as a model.
Speaker 3:That's good, and I think that's right, and I think that's right.
Speaker 1:But how do we?
Speaker 3:what I want to know is how Natasha in democracies, we have to elect governments that are more likely to be imbibing those values and the values that we've just been talking about, and it's such a complicated narrative around that.
Speaker 1:If we're in a system, which you've just cited, where people and even in your podcast, when you were talking about when Rory was talking about running for mayor that he became obsessed with what the polls were saying or what the media was reporting back, so he started playing to that rather than his truth or his integrity, right, and what happened?
Speaker 2:He didn't win Exactly, yeah, so that's what I mean about the old model.
Speaker 3:How did somebody like Macron come along and do what he did?
Speaker 1:Now he's not as popular as he was. But France, I think, is so different to here.
Speaker 2:It may be different.
Speaker 3:Every country is different.
Speaker 2:He alienated both sides. That's what he does.
Speaker 3:En to here. Well, it may be different, every country's different. He alienated both sides. That's what he does on memtong. But in terms of how he got there or I'll give you give an example that's maybe quite uncomfortable how has nigel farage become such?
Speaker 3:yeah, exactly, it's probably more interesting is is is by essentially by having whether they're real or manufactured I think it's a bit of both but having a worldview and specific views that he just never, ever, ever, ever tires of putting over and eventually builds support because he speaks to something, because he looks strong, because he communicates clarity, because he's very effective at not being challenged. He uses the media incredibly well. Um, so my point is when you say, how do we, how do we get these changes, get people to move to a different kind of mindset, we, whoever we are, have to do it by having that mindset ourselves. So I can go in some days I wake up and, like, next week, I'm going to a couple of schools, and if I wake up in a good mood, I'm thinking, great, I'm going to do that. If I wake up in a bad mood, I think, oh fuck, why am I doing this again? What is the point? This is getting nowhere. This is never going to change.
Speaker 2:Once you've got to, anybody who believes in anything has to just fight for those beliefs all the time and never stop yeah I think, firstly, I would say the problem I would have if I wanted to go into politics right now is that I have two parties and they both have set menus and I have to somehow subscribe to most of the set menu to be successful. It's very hard to have your own way. And you see, I think Farage, for all his faults and whatever we think about him, he seems fairly authentic for some reason. He's at least seems authentic and he's completely doing his own thing. Quote unquote right, I think that when you are trying to come into a two-party system, you have to assimilate a little bit, and that, in a very individualistic society that we've created now, is unbecoming to many people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but listen, I accept a lot of that. Just go through the history of the Labour Party in the time that. I've been involved in it, right? So let's start with Michael Foote in 1983. Okay, okay, so there's Michael Foote very serious guy, very intelligent guy, but up against Thatcher very, very difficult. Loses Neil Kinnock. Takes over. Neil Kinnock probably more left-wing than John Smith and more left-wing than Tony Blair.
Speaker 2:And if I may interrupt you, when people say now is the most polarised time ever, then I would point to that time to say no, that's not true you say that all the time, and yet I look back to my young childhood.
Speaker 1:The parties were so polarised. They were so completely different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think when I talk about, I think there's a difference between having parties that are wide apart and a political culture that thrives on polarisation.
Speaker 2:I see yeah.
Speaker 3:Slightly different things. I put the polarisation stuff more into the culture. War space, right, yeah, which I don't think we had in the same way then. But the point I'm making is that michael foote, neil kinnick, john smith, tony blair, gordon brown, ed milliband, jeremy corbin, now kia starmer, yes, that's not being the same labor. No, you're right, in various stages it changes all the time. So you're right that an individual is never, even if you're the leader, you're never going to have the whole menu that you want, but you will change according to who's winning and losing the argument and that may be a very good thing, by the way, absolutely.
Speaker 2:There are checks and balances, but the level of variance obviously is not much, and that's okay, because you know, when we say we can't just throw all historical knowledge and learning, that we have away out of the window, and also one of the reasons, I think the Conservatives are in such a mess is because actually Johnson in particular, and then Truss and now Sunak to a lesser extent, they're sort of operating like they're Farage.
Speaker 3:Farage can say what the hell he wants, and he does say what the hell he wants because he's not actually in a position of authority. Exactly, he's a one-man band leading his own party essentially, even though he's not technically the leader, and that's a totally different. Farage would be dreadful in government.
Speaker 2:Oh, of course, and he knows that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, right, but so what you have? So the point you made about Rory Stewart is very, very interesting, because I said to him on that podcast I said I think you were right and they were wrong. You know you're obsessed about planting trees and that is a good thing to say. If it's the only thing you say, yeah, then you've got a problem. But don't be driven by some pollster telling you oh, we tested that, it didn't work. Yeah, that's soon. That's problem at the moment. I can spot it every time he goes out. He's delivering rehearsed lines in these awful sort of you know, stand-up pooled clips and they've been tested to death. And when you talk about authenticity, yes, people know that.
Speaker 1:But we've become yeah, it's become more and more generic. Yeah, the whole message.
Speaker 2:But go back to your structure, let me actually tie it up to a point that you made earlier. You asked me, you know, am I happy with paying taxes? I am very happy with paying taxes, I am happy with paying more taxes even. But when I see corruption, when I see PPE scandals, when I see all this stuff, then I have a problem with paying more taxes.
Speaker 3:I can see why.
Speaker 2:Let's take this a step further. I saw a job posting recently for the deputy director AI International. This person is supposed to be the key liaison.
Speaker 3:Government job yeah, government UK yeah.
Speaker 2:UK exactly the key liaison for the UK to the world, talking about AI safety and providing thought leadership. Now to G7, g20.
Speaker 3:I know what you're going to tell me.
Speaker 2:This job pays 75K.
Speaker 3:Okay, I was going to go 63. There we go 75K.
Speaker 2:So what this suggests to me? One is you're either independently wealthy, taking this job on. Two, it means that you're a complete idealist taking on this job. Or three, it means that you're using this job as a means to end up in a private sector job, greasing the wheels of government once you're out of it. Or four or four, you're a committed public servant who believes in public, private sector job greasing the wheels of government once you're out of it, or for or for you.
Speaker 3:You're a committed public servant who believes in public service. That's probably idealism, I think. Okay, that's idealism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say, or. Or you're not qualified to do this job, yeah, right, entirely possible. So my point is I am willing to pay more and I'm also willing for us to pay more for these jobs.
Speaker 3:To recruit the best yeah.
Speaker 2:This is technocrats, you know, elitist type of approach to government. But we have the most complex structures that civilization has created, our governments, and they're probably coordinating the most important problems that we're supposed to solve as civilization and societies and we're not putting the most capable, or we're not at least incentivizing quote, unquote the most capable people to take these jobs and hold them really accountable.
Speaker 1:I know we need to say specific but just in case we lose the thread of this incompetence, I want to go to NHS. I remember Martin, my late husband husband, who was a surgeon and worked in the nhs. One of his biggest criticisms was this sort of constant clarion call for more and more money and his view was that that was a sort of smoke and mirror screen to not actually organizing it and not getting better administrators, that all of the people who would be most competent running the and I know it's changed hugely in the last 16 years and now we're in computerised systems and back then it was still. What he couldn't understand is it was still a fountain pen and a bit of paper.
Speaker 2:So more money for competence rather than for money for money.
Speaker 1:And actually then to your point about going to McKinsey or whoever it is, and trying to ask for solutions and paying huge fees to the private sector.
Speaker 2:Why not get those people and recruit them?
Speaker 1:into the service in the first place and you would be saving billions.
Speaker 3:I know I mean this is a. I think this goes back to the point we were making earlier about people's general motivations, and I think it's also a consequence of having pretty constant denigration of the values of public service Right. So we see that in politics itself with the politicians. We also see it with the civil service. They get kicked about by everybody. You mean the. Media does.
Speaker 3:I also mean the politicians. Everybody you mean the media does I know. I also mean the politicians. I think that one of the worst things that this government has done is the constant denigration, blaming yeah, this thing about you know whitehall blob it was coming to gov. Who invented that? The blob you know it's the swamp.
Speaker 3:Yeah, drain the swamp it's like anybody who's there, is only there. Essentially, that's trump. When he talks about drain the swamp, he's putting his own motivations in public life upon every single person who works in the public service. I know loads of people who work in public service who probably could get. I think of Jeremy Haywood who was cabinet secretary under us and he was Tony's advisor. He worked for several John Major. He worked for several prime ministers. He went off for a couple of years in the middle, made a load of money in the bank, hated it made a lot of money.
Speaker 3:What did he do? He came back because he had a genuine passion.
Speaker 2:He then was independently wealthy at that point. Yeah, that is the point, and I worry that politics is going to go down, that road. Yeah exactly, I totally agree, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:You know you can only because of the way politics is portrayed and derided. Imagine if let's get back to Singapore. Singapore has the best paid politicians in the world. They go out and recruit people and say we'd like you to come as a politician and get in the cabinet. They pay them over a million dollars. Yes, exactly, they're not even the best paid people in government. Yeah, I know there are civil servants who get more because they go out and hire them from other places. Now, so that, in a sense, is bringing the market into the system.
Speaker 1:But tell me what you think about that.
Speaker 3:I don't know what I think, but I think that it works for them. I think here, in our current politics, it would be impossible, because you'd have to get Parliament to vote to give ministers a massive pay rise and people would just be on the streets.
Speaker 2:So you have to you can't just do that without you know you can only do that with a new system. Yeah, well, that's a good conversation, but what I would also say alistair is you can only do that if you give something back at the same time, and that is we are going to get these people, but then these are things that we are now going to adhere to.
Speaker 2:These are targets that we're publicly putting on the website that we're going to measure against, and these people are going to have to live up to these expectations that are very specific and they will be devotional and not take second jobs.
Speaker 3:These things aren't straightforward. I just think we've what I'd really like Labour to do. I don't think they're going to do it, but what I'd really like them to do is to get in say that they've had to get elected under the system that we have. But there is a growing sense in the country that the current system doesn't work. We're going to have a fundamental review of the entirety of our political system. I'd love that. I'd love that Now I'll give you an example of where the politics of that become.
Speaker 1:But then you're not being transparent, are you? We go back to.
Speaker 3:No, you are being transparent. I'd like them to say you mean that's?
Speaker 1:part of their manifesto. Yeah, they say we're going to have a fundamental review of our political system.
Speaker 3:Now let me give you an example of where that would be incredibly difficult in practical terms. So let's say they put in the manifesto. We're going to have a royal commission on the future of our political system with a view to changing A, b, c, d.
Speaker 1:E. It's in the manifesto and examples are like abolition of the House of Lords or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Fundamental reform of the. Second Chamber greater devolution to towns and cities and regions, compulsory voting, political education, lowering the voting age the sort of stuff we were talking about. Funding of parties, powers of the Electoral Commission.
Speaker 2:Proportional representation yeah.
Speaker 3:I've just come back from Australia where the guy the Premier of South Australia is bringing forward legislation to ban all political donations.
Speaker 1:Lovely.
Speaker 3:That's brilliant, that's great, and there's a debate going on in Australia on that now. But then what does that mean? It means you're going to say to the public oh, by the way, we have to have campaigns, we have to have public information. Do you mind paying for it? You have to donate.
Speaker 1:And they might.
Speaker 3:I feel we would be keen on that. So let's say Labour win an election. On that basis, okay, they then have to get every piece of legislation through the system that we have right, including the House of Lords. So how can they do that in the House of Lords? Answer by sticking in another load.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of Labour peers, of Labour peers At which point people say hold on a minute you're the guy who's about to change it. It's so hard to do.
Speaker 3:But I think you can only do that kind of thing if you signal it, you flag it, you say you're going to do it and you then get a big mandate.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, if it fails at the House of Lords, at that point then you bring the media in and then you make us think about it, or do you dare do another referendum? Or you dare so the, the.
Speaker 3:This is where the, the. You talk about idealism. Yes, you know, the idealist is somebody who believes and can see clearly progress that can be made through big change. At some point it has to confront a political reality. The reason why and here's an interesting fact for you Well, a fact. It's appalling. In every continent in the world, the decile of the population that is most attracted to authoritarianism is the lower educated, the young, the young, oh, wow, the young, yeah, gotcha. So on the one hand, we like to think, you know, kids are idealistic. They're quite attracted to authoritarianism. They look at Putin getting away with it, gets away with it. They look at Xi Jinping in China. They look at Modi away with it, gets away with it. They look at Xi Jinping in China. They look at Modi.
Speaker 1:But is it because they see maverick? They see maverick, they see strong, they see leader, they see get stuff done, but smashing the system on some level no, and they're disruptors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, and our system, of which we're so proud, mother of all parliaments and all that. The process goes back to your earlier point. The processes are so slow in a world where everything moves so quickly.
Speaker 2:That makes politics harder Now.
Speaker 3:So you probably do at some point have to smash up the system. But you can't just smash up the system without… or you get some entrepreneurial. You pay people better and you get some entrepreneurial minds that come in and reconceive. But your point. That tends to be people of independent wealth who are looking to put something back at the end of a career, and I've seen so many people who no, but it won't be.
Speaker 1:If people are paid properly, then you can have someone To pay them properly.
Speaker 3:I'm saying you have to go through a lot of political pain because of the negativity that surrounds politics and government. And also just to say to you that I've seen very, very clever people who've come in from a business background, from an entrepreneurial background, taken up positions and are frustrated. They just can't do it. They can't do politics. The one that I always think was a standout we brought in David Sainsbury as a science minister, and you talk to anybody in the science sector, he was brilliant, he was absolutely brilliant. But there are other people. I remember when David Simon came in from BP and he was in the Treasury and you think, well, there's a guy, he's run big companies, he knows the world inside out. He suddenly found that every single decision he'd been made, every piece of money that he'd ever been made, was being put through the kind of you know, the Sunday Times Insight ringer and he was like what's this about?
Speaker 1:I'm trying to help, but also getting early education in politics and an investment. You know, unless you study politics a level you don't get it you don't get it, which is a tiny, tiny minority of people. So where are people getting?
Speaker 3:their, their. They're getting their through the media, from the media, from their parents from tiktok, from whatever it might be, or they're just opting out of the system completely. Because I knew what we were going to talk about when I was on the train this this morning. I was doing a little sort of human being observation, as I often do on the train, so I was in a carriage. There were 11 people in the carriage, on the overground.
Speaker 2:Nine were on their phones. One was reading a book, but of the nine who were on the phone at one point, I got up to have a look well, I'd say five on Instagram yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying, just doing the thumb the rest, I'd say, were on what I would call practical.
Speaker 3:Practical they were on calendar or gmail.
Speaker 2:Can I throw just a sentence in? That was an epiphany I had the other day and that is yes epiphany, I would say loss of trust in institutions is directly proportional to increase in bandwidth. What do you think?
Speaker 3:about that loss of trust in institutions yes.
Speaker 2:So what I'm trying to say obviously this is like a roundabout way of saying it is that the problem is obviously that a lot of the media landscape has shifted.
Speaker 3:So it's going to change to something better. It could change to something better.
Speaker 2:Yes, it could. However, what has happened so far is that it's worse. It's gotten worse.
Speaker 3:I think that's right. Right, so it could have got better.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it still might, and it still might, and it still might and there was a time when I thought it was yes I remember when social media first came along yes, I was a bit of a sort of slow to catch up to.
Speaker 3:I had this guy who worked for me called mark bennett, who's sadly dead now, but he I remember him saying to me. He said you do, this twitter thing's made for you. You'd love it, you'd love it. And so then I got into it and I thought you became addicted not addicted but, but I can see the benefits in so many ways, but I think as a whole in terms of its impact particularly on young people, mental health, also their engagement understanding concentration I think it's become terrible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it could have been good. It could have been good and it still might be good. What follows might be good, but I do think that whole world has become a something of a sewer, um, and I'm not sure how we unpick and undo it. Something better has to replace it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess that's down to you guys well, the hope was always in my mind that technology would be a force to increase empathy.
Speaker 2:You know the technology should not be built for maximizing engagement. The actual measure that we should be tracking is increase empathy between people and you realize that if you just have sometimes that happens, it happens exactly and and you know when it actually happens. The most when you hear somebody else's voice, and that's why I like the podcast model so much, because I feel like we're one-way friends, because I'm hearing your voice and I'm feeling empathy cues that kick in, because I'm hearing you and your intonation and your emotional like valence of the things that you're saying, etc. But if I just read the same on text, I lose so much fidelity and that could be misinterpreted by my brain so thoroughly right, and that's why I think all these models that are very text-based end up like very quickly to lowest common denominator kind of reactions by people's brains oh, you hate me or you said this. You said that because there's a level of fidelity that's missing, which you get through voice, which you get video, which you get through these type of medium.
Speaker 3:You've never been on social media, have you?
Speaker 1:No, I do have a Twitter. I have a Twitter but, it's really to do with filtering news sources.
Speaker 3:I'm getting close to giving it up? I probably won't, because I sort of well the arrogant in me thinks my voice matters and I sort of well the arrogant in me thinks my voice matters, but actually it's also when you're doing things like flogging tickets for the.
Speaker 2:O2 or flogging books and stuff. No, that's great.
Speaker 3:It still is a really, really good thing to have on your side. But I find now that when I go on and just am doing the thing that the people on the train were doing, just sort of using my thumb to kind of see the world, I just think this is not what I want to be in. Yeah, it's horrible, so so something better can come. Yes, and and if you think about, if you think about the time span historically in which all of these things have have come, oh, it's part of the continuum.
Speaker 1:It's just yeah minuscule, which is why I'm saying let's be patient.
Speaker 3:I feel like we've lost so much patience around building new models of things because we live in a we live in a fast world, that world, everything can be there for us.
Speaker 1:I think it is where we want it, or so we think, but we shouldn't revert back to something that's old and that we've outgrown and is a skin that we should lose for fear of the next thing not coming.
Speaker 1:It's not going to come unless we try new ways of doing things and some kind of devolution and experimenting in smaller areas, rather than the entire country and just the admin involved in trying to implement something new on that scale. Do it on a smaller scale and let it fail or not fail, and then learn from that, like the two things one in education, where we have this good development which is a lot more inclusive of kids who learn differently, and neurodiversity and a lot more support for that, and the messaging being it's good to try new ways of doing things and it's okay to fail because that's how you learn. And yet what we see in the public arena or through the media or through our leaders is you cannot fail and if you do, you sort of have to lie about it, that there can be no failure, that we can't learn or that we can't collaborate in the two-party system. If one party did something that's actually quite good and successful, it can't really be harnessed by the incoming. How do we?
Speaker 3:get those things to work. It just doesn't make sense, I agree. But you're never going to take out difference in politics, because it's through the differences that things emerge.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, but through those differences and disagreements and discussion, a new collaborative way can then?
Speaker 3:Well, I do the other thing. I do hope, if there is a new Labour government, they do start to kind of refashion the way that policy is made as well. Right, I do think there have been some amazing examples of good citizens assemblies.
Speaker 2:The one in Ireland on abortion was incredible. Yes, we were talking about that yesterday. There's one going on in France at the moment about assisted dying.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm and these are like… oh yeah, yes, yes, yes, I forgot about that, they're always selected like juries.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly, and you say are you prepared to give up five weekends or whatever it might be, and they go away and they put them up in a nice hotel and they have presentations of all the facts and different points of view and then they sit around and talk about it.
Speaker 3:And you know, I just think that's more interesting than the way we do. I mean, rory Stewart was this week in the podcast. He's very funny talking about it, but it's just not funny because she became the prime minister, but talking about the way that Liz Truss kind of threw ideas out and just sort of literally random ideas to try and get in the papers with something new and edgy and interesting. And you know, before you know it, that's law and it's policy. It's mad. So I think there is that kind of thing will only happen if the politicians who are already there get a sense that the public want that kind of thing to happen yes, it's all the message the politicians get is oh, you're all the same, oh, you're all in it for yourself and all that stuff which they do get a lot of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't be surprised if they're just retreating on themselves and their own processes to come out of england for a second, and this is going to be very contentious, I suppose. But talking about, I have a south american friend from el salvador who says to me that okay, yeah, people have responded to his government and or rather the criticism that america has had around that. That 90 percent yeah oh and but, but his um, his win. What was it? Was it?
Speaker 1:I can't remember anyway that that there's no way that that was viable, and a lot of people got incredibly angry about so-called you know advanced democracies, commenting on systems that may not suit that country but do suit their country, and we do have this idea that everywhere should be a democracy. And how flexible are you on that and what do you think about, as you said, a lot of young people voting.
Speaker 3:I mean, look, I think the first thing is there's no such thing as a perfect political system, there's no such thing as a perfect political leader, and I think there is a bit of a.
Speaker 3:You know to go to go back to the, the letter from from our friend in singapore yeah um, he's basically saying that the great colonial powers, yeah, um, always think that they did it best, and I I would say that I think there is. I think the the john major actually made a very, very good speech a while back and it was called In Democracy, we Trust, question mark. The question mark was incredibly telling because he then went on to say look, we've got to watch this. We're a bit, we're taking it for granted. You can't take this stuff for granted. I think that we, somebody like well, let's take Modi, the election's happening there now he's clearly going to win it.
Speaker 3:Now somebody like, well, let's take Modi the election's happening there now. He's clearly going to win it. Now we can sit here and say well, the guy's polarising, does the Hindu versus Muslim?
Speaker 2:thing, he's.
Speaker 3:You know, they've made the judges less independent, they've made the media less independent, They've given the big TV stations to all his mates, et cetera.
Speaker 1:He's like a Bollywood star as well. He's completely manipulated. He's like a Bollywood star as well. He's completely manipulated. He's incredible, right. That's all true.
Speaker 3:That's all true, but he also does seem to be remarkably popular. Popular, yeah, that's true. You don't get to be that popular, even within a kind of rigged system, unless you are the country's up and up. You're speaking to something within people I don't know enough about El Salvador, but they don't have the facts.
Speaker 1:I know that, but I'm simply saying to you oh, because you go back to El Salvador, I'm going back to El Salvador, but that was a human right, so his human rights I can see and they balance it.
Speaker 3:They say okay yeah, I get, you don't like it the fact that he's just throwing people in jails, but you know, we feel safer. So it's a very. Within any country, within any culture. Getting the balance right is always going to be very, very difficult, and we do have to be careful of looking. You know this whole thing between the global north and the global south at the moment, Right, the global south looks at some of the military interventions that we did, some of which I was very, very closely involved in and then they say, well, hold a minute, why should we feel the same way as you do about Ukraine? It's inevitable, because none of this stuff is happening in a vacuum, so all you can do is over time. This is why values actually have become more important or less important. The values at the heart of policymaking have to speak to something enduring, and that's the worry. Is that I, that's what I think we've we've lost from our politics two quick remarks.
Speaker 2:One is on modi. I think goes back to a point that you were making, and that is the next generation of indians is going to be richer than the previous one, absolutely, and it's easy to then be very popular as a prime minister whatever flaws you may have, right If you're continuing to be the person that is delivering. That you know. So let's put all the media stuff aside and all the other you know legislative things that he's doing and judiciary things that he's doing. That may play into his hand.
Speaker 3:But I think that's the story, the story and also the other part of that story is that which he plays brilliantly through his own personality is.
Speaker 1:It's almost like he's saying look if, if I, the t-boy, can become imagine what we as a country could be, but that even trump managed to do that given, which was extraordinary given he came with so much money yeah.
Speaker 3:Modi's on a different level. Have you seen some of these rallies? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But isn't that the consistent thing around the populist leader? That they all manage to convince people that they are the everyman or the everywoman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a people's cult.
Speaker 1:And yet it's quite the opposite they end up being self-serving.
Speaker 3:Absolutely People of the elite, telling the populace that they are there for them against the elite. It's just, it's a classic old car. Why do we fall for it?
Speaker 1:because we look for strongly, we look for clarity, we look for people that we think we can identify but you see, I think this is the crux of the issue is that actually, we give away our power to strong leadership rather than getting involved, becoming citizens who participate in policy, who make decisions together, who want to pay taxes. This is to our benefit.
Speaker 2:And it's a mindset thing that, I feel, but I'd love to kind of pick up on that because I wanted to go back and say this is assemblies. We went over that too quickly, I feel, because it is an important element rather than being a subject.
Speaker 1:Remember that thing around being the subject and that's whether it's to the capitalist cow or whether it's to an authoritarian leader and to come to this stage where we go back to something really ancient, which is collaborative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, collaborative, participatory and.
Speaker 1:Non-nuclear family, all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:The beauty of the Citizens' Assembly model, if you do it right, is that it can create serendipity, a bottom-up serendipity. The discussion around abortion would have not come out in that extent and there would have been nobody in government in Ireland that would have picked that topic up again if it hadn't come bottom-up through citizens' assemblies right. So it allows another path that is outside of the two-party system to create serendipity for discussion around topics that actually matter to people who feel dejected by the actual you know model.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, and so I think the only thing that happens in those situations is that the arguments emerge through people that the media find a lot harder to attack right exactly that's such a good point.
Speaker 1:That's such a good point, exactly yeah they don't have anything to lose.
Speaker 2:Also, it feels like the conversation is more radical.
Speaker 3:They're not there to get rich.
Speaker 2:It's radical candor it's radical candor, right and cognitive safety at the same time, so it allows for a much more uh, honest conversation. So how would you enshrine that here? You can now have your pick. You have your wish list, alistair. Okay, you can change anything you want tomorrow? You already alluded to some things that you're saying earlier. I think it would be a great place to maybe and to tell us a little bit about your wish list and what you'd like to see look my wish.
Speaker 3:You took my wish list. Yeah, I think the country is in a real mess. It's going to take more than a change of government to get us out of it and, insofar as we have a new government, if we get it, it's going to take more than a term. So the first thing I hope for is I hope they're in for quite a long time.
Speaker 1:I hope they have the boldness to be able to be honest about the extent of the mess that we're in in politics, in democracy, and bring forward but they will just blame the Conservatives for a very long period of time about the mess that we're in, for a very long period of time about the mess that we're in. Well, they might do, and that's what happens every time.
Speaker 3:They probably won't have to do that. They can do that for a bit. It doesn't take you very far. You have to set in train a process of real radical change and I hope the change does include a fundamental review of the way we do politics, bringing in some of the things that I talked about. Yes, definitely, citizens' assemblies being pretty, he's been pretty careful about which subjects you might go for, but there's some pretty obvious ones to me you might decide. The future of the health service is one you might Listen, all of that stuff you can. I don't detect a hunger within the Labour Party for it unfortunately.
Speaker 3:Why? Why? Because I think they're going to have so much of a mess to sort out on the stuff that people really care about economy, cost of living, health service, schools, et cetera. So I think that, but when I say I don't detect a hunger, I guess the reason I say that is on the podcast we bang on about citizens' assemblies the whole time. Yes, we do, and I don't get the feeling from when I'm talking to politicians they slightly roll their eyes when, and then you know we haven't even touched on the planet stuff.
Speaker 1:That might be another one, actually. And how do we hold to account these promises around? You know, hitting the 20. We've already missed that the 2030 interim.
Speaker 3:I know Well how do you hold. There's only one way of holding politicians to account Elections unfortunately it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's just not good enough, but it becomes meaningless, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:No, it's not meaningless.
Speaker 1:No, no, those become meaningless, those targets if they're then not met.
Speaker 3:No, they don't.
Speaker 1:I don't think they do so ie the dream or the promise or the target is motivational rather than a destination.
Speaker 3:No, but also, I think we have been through an utterly abnormal period of politics. You know, we had Brexit. We've had five prime ministers in, as the Singaporean guy said five prime ministers in a matter of no time at all 4.9 years. Yeah, we've had Johnson.
Speaker 1:We've had the pandemic.
Speaker 3:We've had Johnson, for whom the manifesto did not mean a thing. That's unusual, you know.
Speaker 1:Thatcher. Let's be honest. He was dealing with something unprecedented in the middle. I'm not buying that, but you have to put that in there otherwise you're just not being realistic about how anyone would have dealt with that.
Speaker 3:No, I'm simply saying that he didn't give a damn about his own manifesto. He didn't give a damn about delivering on the promises made for Brexit. It's all a game. Then we've had trust utter aberration, and now we've got Sunak. I think having, hopefully, keir Starmer, somebody who's pretty serious, pretty hardworking, pretty diligent, does actually believe in public service. I think that would be a big change. God agrees, god agrees or doesn't agree. What was God saying there? That's the climate saying please, that thunderclap. What was he saying? It's not even raining, please, let's stick to the targets. The timing was immaculate. Now, listen.
Speaker 2:I've got to run. Okay, thank you so much. It was great to have you on, and you nicely.
Speaker 3:I hope some of it made sense.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you.
