00:01:03.820I see you on British television all the time.
00:01:06.500And obviously, you're huge on Twitter, which is how you and I met, which is such an amazing platform to connect just similar thinkers all over the world, which is incredible.
00:01:20.460So, Femi, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:01:43.940And then we're going to talk a little bit about human rights and sort of make connections with what's going on when it comes to Brexit,
00:01:51.700what's going on when it comes to the United Kingdom, the United States, and obviously even Canada, the world at large.
00:01:59.300But I think, you know, that sphere of influence is probably a great place to start.
00:02:03.300So for those listening and who have no idea what Brexit is, because they've just heard it or seen it and kind of understand it, can you give us sort of a general description, definition of what it is, why it went through and sort of your perception on that?
00:02:19.980okay so brexit is a shortened version of saying british exit so the british exit from the
00:02:27.580european union the european union is 28 well it was 28 countries in europe and they basically
00:02:34.520work together to um make laws together they have they have easy trade between each other
00:02:40.580no tariffs no no taxes on products that cross between the different borders and they also make
00:02:45.460laws together in the European Parliament, which means that, for example, if those 28
00:02:50.360countries had to make their own laws separately, if you wanted to sell, let's say, beer to
00:02:56.42020 different countries, but they all made their own laws separately, then you'd have
00:03:00.120to make your beer compatible with 28 different sets of rules.
00:03:04.020So because they make laws together, it lowers the prices for those manufacturers, which
00:03:07.980therefore lowers the prices for consumers, and just basically makes life cheaper and
00:03:17.420We don't want to have our laws made in Belgium and Brussels.
00:03:20.720We want to make our own laws separately.
00:03:22.420Now, the problem with that is you, therefore, create that barrier in terms of having to make different products for different places, and it adds to the cost.
00:03:30.680And we're starting to see some of those problems coming out now.
00:03:33.320Now, when we talk about, like, let's say, because let's get out of the way, because they're going to have maybe some people on here, A, confused, or B, very much fundamentally against sort of the foundation of the European Union.
00:03:46.480So if I was advocating against it, let's say I would say something like, okay, fine, we have a European Union, we have a European Parliament, who chooses those parliamentarians?
00:03:58.760So how is the European Parliament chosen who's going to make supranational laws?
00:04:05.160So on the European Parliament, there are a bunch of different bodies that make up the main institutions of the European Union.
00:04:11.560One of them is the European Parliament, but that's made up of 750 members of the European Parliament.
00:04:18.420And they are elected directly by the people of Europe in European elections every five years.
00:04:23.860and so they're the ones that are ultimately the ones who end up passing the law but the origin
00:04:29.620of those laws comes from first of all you have the european council which is basically all the
00:04:35.520different heads of government of different countries so uh the uk it was the uk prime
00:04:39.560minister the french prime minister etc and they'd all meet together and decide the general direction
00:04:43.900of the eu every six months then that would therefore get taken by the um the commission
00:04:49.320and the commission will then come up with laws that match up with what their general policy
00:04:54.180direction was. And once those laws are made, they then get sent to the parliament. The parliament
00:04:58.860will change them, edit them a little bit, and then decide whether or not they get passed to
00:05:04.300become law at the end of that. Right. So there is a democratic tie coming from each European nation
00:05:12.260to elect those individuals every five years. So for those saying, look, we've just chucked
00:05:17.600democracy out of the window. That's just not true. No. In fact, one of the weird things is
00:05:22.720because the European Parliament ultimately has the yes or no say on all the laws that the European
00:05:27.780Union makes, and because the European Parliament is elected proportionally, so by a proportional
00:05:32.760system, so there's no like electoral college, it's just you get a proportional share for each
00:05:37.540party based on the number of people that have to vote for each party, unlike the UK, which is a lot
00:05:42.140more like the system in the States, we actually have more democracy at the European level than
00:05:46.400we have at the UK level. And unfortunately, things have gotten even worse.
00:05:51.020Right, right. And I think therein lies, like, I think we just hit the head of the problem is the
00:05:59.660idea that a proportional system allows for a more democratic, more comprehensive form of democracy,0.53
00:06:06.740which means, Femi, all of those people that used to be in charge, that used to steer the ship,
00:06:12.780that still do, depending on how they fix, let's say, riding associations or whatever in the UK,
00:06:20.520in the United States, even in Canada, because the same thing happens.
00:06:24.120Those people are getting, is it fair to say, those people are getting pushed out.
00:06:28.740Those people are getting less control.
00:06:31.880Do you think that's a big push for Brexit, like coming from a governmental standpoint?
00:06:38.980um i think that the where we are now i think the people definitely feel that they have less power
00:06:45.520and less control over over politics than they did before um largely because well where we are
00:06:51.220now we have a government in the uk that has a majority of um 80 mps roughly um and that's
00:06:59.940despite getting only a minority of the votes so for example in the uk the conservative party got
00:07:05.96044 percent of the votes last election and yet they ended up with 56 percent of the seats in
00:07:10.960parliament and if you've got 56 seats you can pass any law you like without having to even
00:07:16.380argue with the other parties which means that those the votes for all those other parties which
00:07:21.200represent 50 56 percent of voters don't count the vast majority of votes do not mean a thing
00:07:28.520in the uk in the uk politics right now so just for our listeners again a lot of americans are
00:07:35.180probably going to be listening to this the uk and canada are both parliamentary democracies which
00:07:40.440is different than the united states the united states is a republic now i don't know how a quick
00:07:46.440way to explain this but there's a difference between obviously a majority of votes and a
00:07:52.220plurality of votes so how many parties do you have in the uk oh there's there's about i'd say
00:07:58.840i think that if you look on the list it's about a hundred in total um okay how many let's say how
00:08:04.780many um competitive parties competitive parties so you've got if we take it down to vote parties
00:08:11.740that have more than two percent of the votes i think that down the bottom you've got the greens
00:08:16.280you've got uh the dup which is a northern irish party in northern ireland um you've got applied
00:08:22.480Cambridge was a party in Wales, the SNP, Lib Dems, Labour, and the Conservatives. So about
00:08:28.280seven or so. All right. So in Canada, we have four or five, given where we are. So what ends
00:08:36.140up happening, and I'm going to try to explain this, but what ends up happening, and everybody
00:08:40.040can kind of, I mean, see this, how this could happen. If there's 100 votes and you have seven
00:08:45.100parties not a single party may ever take the majority of votes but just because they don't
00:08:52.980take the majority of the votes doesn't mean we don't allocate and we don't assign a party that
00:08:59.340wins the most votes and then their leader becomes you know prime minister leader of the government
00:09:05.080so that's basically what's happening in in britain and it's it's definitely what's happened
00:09:12.260in Canada. I mean, we have an Ontario government that got elected with a majority of power, Femi,
00:09:17.10017% of the vote. Jesus Christ, that's worse than me. That's the appropriate response.0.78
00:09:23.640Jesus Christ, there's no other response other than that. But that's what happens when A,
00:09:29.800a chunk doesn't vote. So you have that. And that's what happens when you have such a significant
00:09:36.840split and a riding system that's sort of taking advantage of that, right? So in England, how would
00:09:45.260you say, or in the UK, how would you say it was framed? How do you, how was Brexit framed? Because
00:09:53.960it was voted upon, right? How was it framed to the general population of people living their everyday
00:10:00.140lives so there's two ways of of in terms of how it was framed there's how was it framed in terms of
00:10:07.400ideology and what people wanted to get from it and there was how was it framed uh as an actual
00:10:12.400technical concept of leaving the eu as far as the technical concept of leaving the eu goes
00:10:17.200that was the that was that was one just major con um because ultimately when you say leave the
00:10:24.560european union international we're talking about international relations here so an international
00:10:28.840relations runs on treaties between different countries and so our relationship with the 20s
00:10:34.680other 27 other countries of the eu was defined by the treaty of the european union that's what set
00:10:41.240out the rules and obligations and how the eu worked and if you say leave the eu you have to
00:10:47.080have a different relationship with the eu afterwards you need a new treaty and that's what we spent
00:10:51.240three years after the referendum negotiating but that wasn't known at the time of the referendum
00:10:57.400so it was like saying um i want we 48 want the the status quo the relationship we currently have
00:11:05.400and 52 want something else and that something else hadn't been negotiated so i often say that it's
00:11:11.560like signing a contract that says leave the european union and then letting the other side
00:11:16.200of that contract add a thousand pages of extra terms and conditions to the what you signed three
00:11:22.280years later and say we already got your consent which is why what happened at the end of those
00:11:27.160three years is that you have the literal brexit party led by nigel farage who's like our far-right
00:11:34.160populist over here um saying that in a referendum between remain and boris johnson's deal remain
00:11:40.920would win every single time so even boris even nigel farage rejected the end end product so
00:11:45.680the dup and even boris johnson has called his his own deal unfair after the election
00:11:51.280so you ended up with an end product that nobody actually wanted even on the winning side
00:11:55.320and so that's why that from a technical standpoint it was a con it was a bait and switch
00:12:00.380we vote leave the eu and we give you something that you don't actually end up liking
00:12:03.380from a ideological standpoint brexit was framed as giving power and prosperity and well-being
00:12:13.680back to ordinary people and and if you often when i see people in london who voted heavily to stay
00:12:21.060the eu and they don't understand how anybody could possibly have voted leave and so i have to tell
00:12:27.080them look imagine if you live somewhere in the north of england you live in an area that has had
00:12:32.540no investment for generations when you were 11 your dad lost his job because margaret thatcher
00:12:39.500closed the shipyard exactly on coal mines exactly and so you've always hated the tories because of
00:12:45.460margaret thatcher um and so and so you've always voted labor because of how much you hate the
00:12:51.160conservatives but in your area labor always wins the conservatives always lose so neither party
00:12:57.380actually has any incentive to make your life better you're completely forgotten your vote
00:13:02.100doesn't actually mean anything because everybody knows which way you're going to vote either way
00:13:05.740and so you've watched london get more investment every year millennium dome london eye underground
00:13:11.620tube system, train system, but nothing for your area. And the one time that your vote might make
00:13:17.280a difference is the EU referendum, the Brexit referendum. And in that referendum, the person
00:13:22.200telling you to vote for things to say the same for status quo is David Cameron, our prime minister
00:13:26.840at the time, who had just put you and your family through six years of austerity. So cuts to
00:13:32.320financial, cuts to welfare, cuts to benefits, cuts to health services for six years after the
00:13:38.640financial crash of 2008 and he's the one telling you to vote for things to stay the same under
00:13:43.580those circumstances unless you're an expert in how the eu works i can very much understand how
00:13:49.440anybody in those situations would want to vote for change and want to vote for things to get better
00:13:53.380unfortunately we can all see that it's only made things worse right i mean god i feel like that's
00:14:00.660just the underpinning of politics in general isn't it i mean you you we have a very similar i don't
00:14:06.700know how much you know about Canada, but we have a similar internal struggle where we have one
00:14:11.280province, Quebec, who's wanted to separate for some time. And funnily enough, we had a referendum
00:14:15.180on that back in the nineties. Now, the funny part is that when I explain the Quebec referendum and
00:14:20.080I explain it, I explain it just like you did, you know, they voted, should Quebec separate?
00:14:26.220That was the question. Go ahead and vote. But nobody said when you separate, this is going to
00:14:32.780happen. This is going to happen. This, right? Nobody said that. Nope. And I, and I, when I'm
00:14:37.440teaching this concept to the kids, I'm like, guys, it's like saying, do you want to move out of your
00:14:41.240house? You know, you're 16. Do you want to move out? And you're like, yeah, I want to move out.
00:14:46.860Well, in one condition that you fashioned in your head, your parents are going to buy you a condo,
00:14:52.200give you an allowance, have somebody come over and cook and do your laundry. That sounds nice
00:14:57.980under those conditions you want to separate. But if it's the actual conditions where you're going
00:15:02.240to live in the back of your car that you had to buy. I'm not too interested in moving out under
00:15:07.820those conditions. So it's the same thing. Here's my question. What is the motivation? Because I've
00:15:15.580really tried to understand this other than garnering the perception of power, because
00:15:21.940that's the only thing I can come down to. What do you think the genuine, not the public, because
00:15:29.680the public, in my opinion, was misled. What do you think the genuine drive of the politicians
00:15:36.520that stood on side of Brexit, what was their motivation, do you think?
00:15:42.680So there are some politicians who genuinely believed in Brexit and wanted Brexit because
00:15:49.980of their, for ideological reasons. So Nigel Farage would be one of those people. Jacob
00:15:55.940one of those people who genuinely believe because of their sense of nationalism because of their
00:16:00.360sense of british superiority that britain sounding on its own was always going to be a good thing
00:16:06.020that brexit must be a good thing because we're so special however for the majority of politicians
00:16:11.380if you look at boris johnson himself who was the poster boy for brexit in 2000 what are we talking
00:16:17.920with 2011 he said in front of a stage he said that that london owed its economic success to
00:16:23.960membership of the eu single market and he said that he conceived no circumstances in my view
00:16:29.240why any any future prime minister would ever change that position so he then became the prime
00:16:34.760minister that took us out of the eu uh in 2013 he said i'd vote to stay in the single market i'm in
00:16:41.000favor of the single market i think we should be able to trade freely with our european friends
00:16:44.280and partners so this is somebody who is who is documented as knowing that leaving the eu leaving
00:16:50.120in the EU single market would damage the UK and in 2016 he actually wrote two separate articles
00:16:58.040um one in favor of leaving the EU one in favor of staying in the EU and basically weighed them up
00:17:03.820in fact you can actually find the original article in favor of staying which makes all the stuff that
00:17:08.420we all knew would come true and has come true and he chose the one that would end up getting him into
00:17:14.240into number 10 into downing street becoming prime minister so it was pure self-interest ambition
00:17:19.840the desire to gain power i i i i find that so insane i can barely you know comprehend it but
00:17:31.040you said two very well i mean one very important word and i think um and this is the concept that
00:17:37.380i'm going to draw back to the united states i'm going to draw back to canada because this is the
00:17:41.540word that I've never liked a day in my life. And right now it's being only used to propagate and
00:17:48.440push and, and hold up fascist principles. And the, and the word is nationalism. I think,
00:17:56.400I think this word is, I've never liked it. Anybody says, are you a patriot in that aggressive kind
00:18:02.180of way? I'm like, Oh God, no, no, no. And anybody who says, well, we want Britain to stand on their
00:18:09.280own. We want Britain out of the EU. My answer to them is, where do you think that's happening?
00:18:16.540In what world is any country right now, besides maybe North Korea, and let's be honest,0.66
00:18:22.940they're not doing it so well, standing on their own. In what world is any country,0.69
00:18:28.580an isolationist, independent country who doesn't have to take anybody else into account when making
00:18:34.940you know uh national choices and i find that hilarious and the more that i hear
00:18:42.720guys like trump or people in the in canada speak about this nationalist platform and we have to0.62
00:18:49.000take power and it's all within i'm like who are you you're obviously a lying you know you're lying
00:18:55.820um but but you're also convincing people that somehow you have the authority or the power
00:19:04.380the all-encompassing power to control what goes on in your country and i think that's what boris
00:19:11.900sold the people am i wrong yeah like he sold that yeah and so it was a what he sold them was an
00:19:20.960outdated notion of countries standing on their own like i mean back if we talked about the clocks
00:19:26.660hundreds of years and every country was in it for themselves there's very little trade trade between
00:19:30.280and it was like every other country is an enemy and that's that's the sort of mentality we're
00:19:34.100talking about but if you look at the where the world is now if you look at canada if you look
00:19:39.180at america they have a relationship they have a and the um nafta or i'm not sure what the new name
00:19:43.400for it is now but yeah and then mexico we ignore what trump renamed it because he's just we always
00:19:49.040okay nafta because you need to trade properly with your closest friend closest neighbors
00:19:54.920geographically because all countries trade most of the countries that are physically closest to
00:19:58.540them if you look at you've got the african union if you look at the association of southeast asian
00:20:03.300nations look at the fact that um australia gets about a quarter of its food from china
00:20:08.620people always trade geographically and given that the biggest barrier to trade is having
00:20:14.620different regulations having different laws it makes sense to have similar laws with the rest
00:20:19.220of europe and now we are the only country well roughly the only country in western europe that
00:20:24.980doesn't have the ability to trade with the other countries in europe um without any of those
00:20:30.660restrictions which essentially gives us a competitive disadvantage in the region that
00:20:35.120we trade the most the most in and that is the the core problem and you mentioned nationalism
00:20:41.600and that and that is very much what it is because the narrative that was sold people in 2016 was
00:20:47.180we can leave the eu but we'll still have the ability to trade just as freely with the eu
00:20:52.460because we'll be able to set the terms of our new relationship
00:20:54.480because the EU need us more than we need them.
00:20:58.020Now, just break down that concept for a second.
00:21:01.540The EU, which at that time would be 27 other countries,
00:21:06.000need our one country more than the other way around,
00:21:09.700which implies that, I mean, just the idea that one country losing trade
00:21:14.340with 27 countries would hurt them more than those 27 countries
00:21:21.560it's mathematically insane and implies that british people are inherently better than
00:21:27.640european country countries by a factor of 27
00:21:31.200i'm better than everybody by a fact i like that0.98
00:21:36.960we should make those sell them everywhere um it's asinine and not only is it asinine
00:21:47.480But what it does, and this is the thing that I think is so interesting, because we've seen this time and time again, right? We've seen this, you mentioned Margaret Thatcher. Well, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of Britain, you had Reagan in the United States, you had Brian Mulroney in Canada, and you had this trifecta of these very conservative slash social programs, trickle down economics, right?0.80
00:22:11.780You see, you don't just see waves of politics affect country A. You see waves of politics affect world countries, especially when they're very closely interconnected. And they use the same mechanisms, because we see it right now, heaven help us.
00:22:31.180You use the same mechanisms to get at the same type of population in your country. You mentioned all the disaffected people of northern, let's say, more northern England, right? Places that haven't seen investment, places where manufacturing's gone, whether it's as old as coal and steel or just straight up manufacturing.
00:22:52.060Well, God, I can't help but hear the ringings of truth when you talk about Trump saying make America great again. He reopened coal mines. The dude just wanted to pretend, and that's the reality, to say places like Michigan or places where we're heavily dependent on manufacturing that went away because of trade agreements with other countries, I'm going to somehow bring them back.
00:23:22.060Knowing full well there was no hope of that ever happening because you can no longer, when you have an international economy, your manufacturing in a developed high economy nation is not going to be able to compete with, let's say, manufacturing in China.
00:23:49.840But nonetheless, you're right. It's interesting because a lot of people get really angry at the
00:23:57.640right. They get really angry at conservatives. And I'm assuming the same is true there. I get
00:24:03.140mad. But what I try to remember is this, or what I'm trying to remember. I remember where they sat
00:24:11.380and the desperation they must feel, number one. And then I remember how much education,
00:24:17.440Because we're talking about concepts and about economic theory and about interconnectivity and globalization that a lot of people are like, I worked in a GM factory for 25 years, you know, not because they're not intelligent, but because they were never given those kind of educational, inclusive terminology.
00:24:40.560So they don't, they can't connect to it.0.75
00:24:42.480And then you have somebody coming along saying your life sucks, your life sucks, and I'm0.98
00:24:57.120We're missing the final point, which is your life sucks.0.99
00:25:01.240I'm going to fix it, but I got to have somebody to blame.0.99
00:25:04.380so in trump's u.s he blames mexico which is hysterical um but he does it well he he does it
00:25:15.440and any and it to those people they're like he must he's gonna he wants to take care of me
00:25:22.240and he says it's their fault so we need to handle them because i think a big element of brexit and
00:25:27.620please correct me if I'm wrong, was culturally, racially isolationist, was driven by the fact
00:25:39.420that we want Britain to look a certain way. And it no longer looks a certain way. Now,
00:25:46.620because of the EU, you have free migration of all of these people, right? Do you think that
00:25:52.380that that kind of prejudice and that kind of discrimination was at that underpinning of the
00:25:59.840driving uh you know driving that ideology um it was definitely the case for a lot of people i just
00:26:08.940want to circle back um quick to what you said about how uh the nationalism was interconnected
00:26:13.560and it happens with a lot of countries that are that have close ties there was a point i think
00:26:18.580about 2017, 2018, where in the Netherlands, in the United States, in the UK, even in France,0.95
00:26:30.540you had a blonde, ultra-racist fascist trying to get power. It was Kurt Wilders in the Netherlands,0.77
00:26:39.180it was Marine Le Pen in France, it was Donald Trump in America, it was Boris Johnson here,
00:26:44.720and all with the same rhetoric preaching to the people that have been left behind and you're right0.67
00:26:50.600they're not stupid i mean i i've often and often they use the accusate the the claimed accusation0.97
00:26:57.220that people are calling them stupid as a sort of tool like anybody who questions um why did you0.99
00:27:03.520vote brexit or this isn't going to be good automatically you're calling them stupid and i0.99
00:27:07.420make the point look i studied eu law in two universities in two languages i worked in brussels0.98
00:27:13.300for in the EU institutions for three years in inside some of the institutions. And even I
00:27:19.580didn't understand how Brexit would affect, say, Northern Ireland. I was embarrassingly and
00:27:25.240shamefully clueless on on how that would affect the peace process there. And so it's not about
00:27:30.140stupidity. It's about have you been exposed to this? I happen to get lucky on the study.1.00
00:27:34.980Hold on one second. I don't know why I can't hear you.
00:27:37.080position and welcome back do i think that we got shut down by pro brexit forces in the uk just then
00:27:49.680there was a whole bunch of technical difficulties i think we touched a nerve sammy i think we
00:27:55.380touched a nerve i think i think i think that's it i think that boris johnson basically got
00:28:01.400angry with what we were saying and cut the wire he did he did i think he called zencaster and i'll
00:28:07.260be talking to zen i'll be having some words later um but hopefully i've inserted an appropriate
00:28:13.520and i'm gonna hopefully i did this so if i didn't i apologize but um i'm going to insert a commercial
00:28:19.420right in the middle there and i'm going to make it really funny so hopefully everybody's paying
00:28:23.420it might it may or may not be directed directly at boris johnson we'll see
00:28:28.080so uh where were we um yes isolationism and and how nationalism is spread across the globe
00:28:37.000yeah so um uh as i was saying it's it's weird there was a moment in between like 2016 and0.92
00:28:45.7402018 whereby it was it looked like you're going to get um a blonde crazy racist in america0.97
00:28:54.620a blonde crazy racist in in in the uk a blonde crazy racist in the netherlands under kirk0.97
00:29:02.220wilders and in france via marine le pen um and so it was crazy how they all seem to be syncing up0.98
00:29:09.160all tapping into the anger of people who've been left behind by the system all tapping into poverty
00:29:14.200all promising a better life all promising to change the system even though they are the elites0.95
00:29:18.480they claim to be against um and then you mentioned how um people who buy into this they're not stupid
00:29:25.760um they've just been left behind and i often often you'll hear the accusation oh they're calling you0.94
00:29:32.380stupid whenever you um try and criticize their ideology but that's just it's it's it's the thing0.63
00:29:40.120is often remainers felt remains were painted as thinking they were more intelligent and they're1.00
00:29:43.960educated ones but the fact is if you haven't studied eu law then you don't understand brexit
00:29:50.360because it is a very complicated issue i've studied eu law in two universities in two languages
00:29:56.280in two countries i worked in brussels in the eu institutions for three years and even i it was
00:30:01.720shamefully ignorant about how brexit would affect northern ireland it just didn't come up so there's0.99
00:30:06.600loads of stuff that you might not know which doesn't make you stupid and you also mentioned0.99
00:30:11.640how these populists, they'll try and blame certain parts of society in order to further0.99
00:30:17.760their narrative. And that is very much what happens. And that's how the racism creeps
00:30:22.460into it. You'll have the most deprived areas of a country and you'll have these foreign
00:30:28.120people going to those areas saying, hey, the reason why you're not getting what you need
00:30:32.700is because that person is taking your job. That person is living off benefits. And they'll
00:30:37.820try and point the anger at anybody except the fat cats who are actually running the show
00:30:43.640anybody except the fact that you've got these people i mean right now we're having a um
00:30:49.040a uh a leadership election to decide the future prime minister of the uk and it's being decided
00:30:56.280by conservative party members and the polling of those conservative party members shows that
00:31:01.48063% of them are ideologically against redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor.
00:31:10.620They don't want to solve the problems that their party was elected to solve.
00:31:17.420I think that it's interesting and painful, I think, at the same time, because I look at, you know, this, the narrative where it's like, we're here to help you.
00:31:30.140we're here and and then the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of parallels right which
00:31:36.440goes across conservative governments all over the place i also think it's interesting i mean that's
00:31:42.260the conservatives have never been about that so you know i would say that reaganomics i mean i
00:31:49.640don't know how much i don't know how much margaret thatcher i i know some about margaret thatcher
00:31:56.820I don't know how much her sort of economic policy mimicked Reaganomics in that whole trickle down, you know, the trickle down economy kind of kind of way.
00:32:11.560Brian Mulroney did it to some degree around that time, but not as much because he was more of a social.
00:32:17.540We had Brian Mulroney, even though he was with those people, was more of a social conservative than we have right now.
00:32:23.260Because what we see right now are people advocating this notion of freedom. I also believe, which it's not even the word freedom, doesn't even mean freedom anymore. It means just anarchy, which is different. Anarchy, which is no rule, actually will impose less freedom on people because it allows people more insanity in their day.
00:32:49.400But what I find interesting, we're talking about a group of people that aren't educated enough. And I like to define between two kinds of people. Ignorant, which I'm ignorant of a lot of things. Boatloads of things. Economics, not my forte. I had a very lovely prof ask me never to take an economics class again because I just, I kept challenging the human factor in economics and he didn't want to, he's like, I can't with you.
00:33:16.320I'm like, yeah, but you can't with me because you refuse to admit that this game we've created, we've created it.
00:33:25.360So you keep saying it's the money, it's the system, it's this, it's that.
00:33:29.260We don't have. I'm like, no, dude, you drew up the rules.
00:33:33.040Like what I find interesting in the United States, and I wonder if this is going on in Britain right now, too.
00:33:39.240And it's going on in Canada to some degree.
00:33:40.740Is this notion, because back when Reagan was around, you had the increase of tuition, exponentially increase of higher education tuition, because they needed to find out a way to not allow so much of the population to get educated.
00:33:59.280And now what I'm seeing in the United States is the dismissal of higher education as a liberal goal to indoctrinate and brainwash, you don't need any of that education.0.89
00:34:17.400they're actually telling people education's garbage universities are garbage they're0.88
00:34:24.840liberal machines don't bother so rather than making it economically you know inaccessible0.98
00:34:31.600they're now trying to make it ideologically inaccessible and what is their goal their goal0.98
00:34:38.200is to keep people a vast majority ignorant because when i say stupid femi i believe there are people1.00
00:34:46.520on this planet and i can't have conversation with them that choose to remain ignorant the1.00
00:34:51.240day you choose you're presented with the information and you're like nah now you're1.00
00:34:57.000stupid now and i say that with all of the venom i can possibly now you're stupid now you've chosen1.00
00:35:04.680right but i think the government especially conservative governments who are looking to1.00
00:35:11.480conserve keep things the way they were are looking to keep people ignorant do you do you have the same
00:35:17.480vibe over there yeah absolutely and what you said about trickle down economics and that that that
00:35:24.280hit me a lot because boris johnson as i said the idea was to work for the areas of the country that
00:35:30.040have been left behind and yet boris johnson supposedly the champion of this of this movement
00:35:34.680and yet he's on record as saying a pound spent in croydon which is a part of london is worth
00:35:40.520more to the country uh by um by sheer utilitarian calculus than a pound spent in strathclyde
00:35:47.560which is it which is a which is a much more rural part of the uk up in scotland
00:35:51.720now can he says that he says in fact a pound spent in cordon will actually end up helping
00:35:58.600um strathclyde so it was trickle it was it was trickle north economics geography economics
00:36:06.600We're going to spend more money in Florida, and it's going to help Michigan.
00:36:15.440And yet he's supposedly the champion of leveling up those parts of the countries that have been left behind,
00:36:20.320when he's one of the reasons why things are this bad.
00:36:24.100And you talked about, sorry, what did you finish on?
00:36:30.220Just how we're undervaluing education.
00:36:32.800Initially, I think Reagan tried to make it economically inaccessible.
00:36:35.860Now we're making it ideologically unwanted, really.
00:36:40.520Yes. So there's been a huge attack on academia via this particular populist conservative movement.
00:36:48.020For starters, you've got, I remember Nigel Farage, who was our biggest populist racist in the UK.
00:36:55.140He was actually celebrating that if we left the EU, we would lose the funding that we get via the EU for universities.
00:37:04.040Yes, we're no longer free of the influence of the EU and the big money, blah, blah, blah.
00:37:09.840And then now you've got the government, the Tory government, trying to assign, quote unquote, free speech champions.
00:37:16.500And when you look at the document that they used to support this, they said that one of the problems in universities is this, quote unquote, chilling effect on different ideas.
00:37:26.400It says that four out of ten leave voters in university felt uncomfortable airing those views.
00:37:36.100Now, given that Brexit has objectively hurt the UK, the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, which is basically the economic brain of the UK government,
00:37:45.500the thing that the experts of government use to make their analysis, says that Brexit has damaged the UK economy twice as badly as COVID long term.
00:37:53.740so it is objectively a bad thing and yet they're using the fact that four out of ten it's not even
00:37:59.920the majority of um of people who voted leave feel uncomfortable saying they support something
00:38:05.840that is objectively bad and yet they're using that as an argument to say oh clearly universities are
00:38:11.780biased with this liberal agenda therefore we're going to have some we're going to put push things
00:38:15.920more in the other direction so the acknowledgement of reality is seen as a bad thing right
00:38:22.200like and it blows it it blows my mind you know what i'm i'm i'm i love tv i love movies and i'm
00:38:31.580i don't know if you've ever seen the show um newsroom have you ever seen that show i think
00:38:36.300it was out it was out for a hint like not a very many seasons why because i think it's talking
00:38:41.420about exactly what we're talking about right here but they did it quite a few years ago and that the
00:38:46.620basis is there is a difference between equality of ideas and healthy ideas being implemented into a
00:38:57.980system, whether you're talking about news or academia, and the same amount. So the idea in
00:39:06.280newsroom was that, well, if you're a news station, you should agree with the Republicans 50% of the
00:39:12.640time. And you should agree with the Democrats 50% of the time. That's somehow unbiased. It's
00:39:19.800irrespective of the issue, irrespective of whatever issues either side are talking about.
00:39:26.220When in actuality, that's the opposite of, I don't believe in objectivity, but that's the
00:39:33.140opposite of getting closer to objectivity. Because objectivity looks at the issue, looks at the facts,
00:39:38.420makes a determination and if it happens to follow more on the democratic ideological side
00:39:45.420that's the way the cookie crumbles we're not here to say the ideas have equal value
00:39:52.940we're i d we're here in academia especially to analyze criticize put pick apart and then
00:40:02.100decide which ideas actually have merit and value which one should rise to the top right
00:40:09.640so that's i mean and that's going on here we have a guy named jordan peterson
00:40:14.060yeah sorry look canada has some lovely exports he's just not one of them yeah um but he's losing
00:40:24.040his mind right because people are are you know making him respect their pronouns and this is
00:40:31.100this is the hill this man wants to die on but it's not the hill he wants to die on what because
00:40:36.200he's using it as that caveat just like trump just like boris has he's using it as that wedge issue
00:40:43.000to get at people who don't understand the argument he simplifies it makes it about freedom
00:40:51.060and somehow sells it back to the people.
00:40:57.200And I, this is the part where I sit here and I sweat
00:41:04.360not at different perspectives, not at different ideas.
00:41:08.640I get so frustrated at the inability to have intellectual conversations
00:41:13.920that are drawn out, that aren't simplified.
00:41:17.100Because when I look at the right, the alt-right,
00:41:19.080Not all people on the right-hand side of the aisle. What they do, and they do it horrifically well, is they simplify complexed, important political, economic, and social issues to the bare minimum, weaponize them to incite people to support them,
00:41:45.480and usually weaponize it with words like
00:47:14.600how do we combat that i think it's because people tend to view the economy from just their own
00:47:25.320perspective yeah so when they hear things like we're going to raise taxes even if they are at
00:47:31.940the economic bottom of society earning say 12 000 pounds um and they hear someone like our
00:47:38.500potential new prime minister saying we're going to cut taxes oh they're going to cut our taxes
00:47:42.340cool what no wait no no they're not going to cut taxes for you they're going to cut taxes for the
00:47:46.440corporations and so when you don't worry you'll get some eventually exactly and when they hear
00:47:52.360that labor is going to raise taxes they hear oh they're going to raise taxes on the working class
00:47:57.020no no they're going to raise taxes on the corporations they're the ones who can actually
00:48:01.820afford to pay pay the extra so that you can fund your public services and so people i think there's
00:48:07.680just a failure of messaging from the top as to being specific about who's actually going to
00:48:12.740benefit from what who's going to pay the burdens of what that sort of thing i just i'm trying to
00:48:18.120think so i'm trying to think of the disaffected i'm trying to think of the person who doesn't
00:48:22.460know economies never studied politics and to be honest let's be on like could care less
00:48:27.000you know what i mean like they're like i don't care about there's so many people who say i don't
00:48:31.460care about politics they do they just don't care about government because they're trying to be
00:48:34.800lie to. How do we get at them in a relatively simplistic but honest way? So when I have
00:48:45.540somebody promising, I'm going to wipe away this tax because you don't deserve to pay it because
00:48:50.160that's brutal. How am I supposed to combat that simplicity of messaging with, I only got 140
00:48:58.080characters for me i only got 30 seconds on tick tock how do i combat that equally simplistically
00:49:06.080but somehow be actually honest about it um so i don't know how else to get at those people
00:49:16.320so in terms of just the the issue about i don't care about politics when i was going around uh
00:49:22.560the country during the brexit campaign years um i'd go into schools and i speak to 16 17 year olds
00:49:28.720and i'd ask them who here cares about politics and i get maybe one one hand go up out of 20.
00:49:35.040and so my next question is okay who here cares whether or not you can get a job when you leave
00:49:39.920school who cares how much stuff costs from the shops who here cares whether or not you get
00:49:43.280treated in the in the national health service and every single hand will go up and i'll say that's
00:49:47.280politics now yeah these kids were arguably more politically aware than i was at their age
00:49:54.460because i did not for me i was born up in the north of england politics was essentially old
00:50:01.040white rich men shouting each other hundreds of miles away down in london i did not see the
00:50:05.380connection between that and my life and many people don't they and especially given how toxic
00:50:09.620politics has gotten over recent years politics has to a large extent unless you're willing to
00:50:14.440really stick with it and sift through all the muck it's just a big shouting match right now
00:50:19.260with lots and lots of big insults you need to make sure people see no this affects you and so
00:50:24.300you need to say all right we have um some people call it the politics of envy but make the point
00:50:31.680that the money is there we do have the money in this country to make sure that everybody can get
00:50:36.840by the uk is the fourth most financially unequal country in europe the money is there to fix this
00:50:42.600problem and to make sure that you aren't for example this winster freezing in your home because
00:50:47.420the energy price is going through the roof so um and and i think labor in the uk is making quite a
00:50:53.540good um a good um go of it with the phrase a windfall tax on energy companies everybody can
00:50:59.860know them everybody knows they're making loads of profit everybody knows that the energy prices are
00:51:03.380too much a windfall tax on energy companies to help you with your bills stuff like that simple
00:51:07.980messaging saying here's your problem the bills we're going to tax people who actually have loads
00:51:12.360of money to deal with that stuff like that well i mean that's what biden just did right uh he's
00:51:18.440taxing anybody who makes over four hundred thousand dollars and somehow the republicans
00:51:22.260have switched it to be oh my god it's a tax on the middle class and i'm like i don't think
00:51:27.900anybody can be more simple than if you make more than four hundred thousand dollars a year
00:51:33.160this is your new tax bracket and then there's new ones as you go up if you were making fifty
00:51:38.520thousand dollars nobody's talking to you nobody's raising taxes on you but somehow the republicans
00:51:46.200are able to manipulate it and talk something weird about the irs agents coming and not
00:51:52.140no irs agent is wasting their time at a guy's door who makes 50 grand a year not one
00:51:59.340what are they doing that's what I want to know it's like nobody's coming to rob your house like
00:52:07.240but it's just it's a mentality that I that has been so incredibly indoctrinated
00:52:14.260that now I don't even know how to get around it you know what I mean like in the United States
00:52:19.320you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene heaven help us uh Matt Getz you have Lauren
00:52:24.000bobert who lauren bobert didn't even finish high school yet now she's sitting up and quoting
00:52:31.760economic theory she doesn't understand but people are buying it do you have people in england
00:52:40.480and united kingdom who are equally what's the word i'm looking for conspiratorial let's say0.77
00:52:50.160You know, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene saying things like, the Jewish population made space lasers, and that's what started the forest fires in California.0.76
01:02:23.620And so you can hopefully get somebody better next time.
01:02:27.200However, I often, because obviously things aren't going so well in the UK,
01:02:32.280our people struggle to keep hope and not get too depressed by this not turn off but i remind people
01:02:38.280this is why you need to have hope and it's because in the uk and we talked about the voting system
01:02:43.800in um at the start um the majority always votes for parties to the left of the conservatives
01:02:49.500so we are compared to the conservatives a progressive voting country and yet um we keep
01:02:55.720having conservatives they've been in power for 47 in the last 100 47 of the last 77 years so they
01:03:01.980get the majority of of power but even though the majority doesn't want them and at some point it
01:03:09.320has to happen that the parties on the left of the tories will at some point work together when they
01:03:14.340realize that if they want the votes to actually count properly they need to work together because
01:03:19.220as it currently stands as i said the tory's got 56 percent of the seats based off only 44 percent
01:03:23.880of the votes between the tory votes conservative votes actually count 18 times more than green
01:03:29.100votes and so of course greens don't get a large vote share because people know their votes won't
01:03:33.500count and so you'll have to get better politics when we want to change the system and when that
01:03:38.300happens we we want to change the voting system to a proportional system of voting the tories
01:03:43.300the conservatives will be effectively locked out of absolute power for good and so i often quote
01:03:48.940martin luther king who said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice
01:03:54.060We will ultimately get to what he would call a promised land, but it's going to take some time and it's going to need proper leadership from the parties in opposition who currently see opposing each other as more important.
01:04:06.460And we need people that actually care about representing the progressive majority in the UK.
01:04:11.580You know what? I'm not even going to give my opinion because I think that was a perfect answer.
01:04:15.780I think that was a plus you had the Martin Luther King quote. I can't follow that.
01:04:20.380But I think that's the perfect answer. And I think that the more people that get involved and social media, everything is this horrible, can be this horrible thing. But holy crap, I'm sitting here talking to an incredibly influential, amazing activist, you know, thousands of kilometers away in another country. And we're this close to each other.
01:04:42.140And hopefully, the more people like that, that connect in this world, forget just where you live and the town you live in, the country you live in, right? We have an interconnectivity now where, and I truly, truly believe this, there are more amazing, caring, empathetic, rational people on this planet than not. The people that aren't just seem to have the microphone right now.
01:05:08.480yeah exactly and i've been so inspired by the number of people who have been inspired to get
01:05:15.220involved since since 2016 everybody's realized that the guy at the wheel is drunk everybody in
01:05:21.860the uk and so you've seen so many creators just come out of the woodworks and become activists0.68
01:05:26.340because they realize oh shit if we don't do something nobody will and so you've and so you've0.95
01:05:30.920had a lot of people come out and and say um and make their platforms and push back against it and0.70
01:05:36.460it's really inspiring to the number of people um who come onto the stage because of this i mean i
01:05:41.260got created because of the absence of um of of leadership of facts of objectivity um in this in
01:05:49.540the brexit discussion because if you think about where i was at the start 2016 i had 20 followers
01:05:54.100on twitter i was living 400 miles away in brussels i barely knew anything about you about uk politics
01:05:59.220i was working on human rights at the eu level that's what my career is i have a law degree
01:06:03.020I was working on human rights in the EU institutions, and it was only because I realized that Brexit was a threat to the human rights of the UK, which clearly has been because of all the stuff that Boris Johnson has done since, that I started to pay attention and realize, hang on, nobody's explaining this stuff properly.
01:06:18.540And so despite having 20 followers on Twitter back then, I've got now close on 400,000 now because people realize that the mainstream media was not telling us what we needed to hear because of that problem of them believing they have to show both sides as if they're equal, as if they have equal value.
01:06:37.480I often say the BBC's definition of balance is presenting the pros and cons of drinking arsenic as if they're equal.
01:06:43.000Femi you're amazing can you please come back on I know we were going to talk about media
01:06:49.960initially but I think this was a super important conversation can you please come back on another
01:06:55.280time and so we can talk about we can give all of our attention to the media because I think it's
01:06:59.800incredibly important to talk about where it is where it sits the difference between public and
01:07:05.480private media how much it relies on advertising how much money plays into the equation I would
01:07:11.620love to have you come back so we can have that discussion absolutely thank you and i thank you
01:07:16.980for i want you to stick around though when i stop recording i want you to stick around because i
01:07:19.940have a couple of off-camera things i need to say um but i want to thank you so much for coming
01:07:25.860everybody i will put femi's contact stuff all in the bio here so you can go find them on twitter
01:07:31.700and anywhere else that you that you tell me you would like to be found maybe you want to give a
01:07:35.300shout out to the people right now and let them know where they can find me i'm femi underscore
01:07:39.540sorry on everything tiktok instagram twitter uh youtube um and um sorry on facebook because
01:07:47.460it was already amazing i thank you so much and thank my listeners and my watchers for watching
01:07:53.860i will see you next tuesday same bat time same bat station dismissed