00:00:00.000 Okay, so David, you're best known as a physicist and an author, and that's certainly how I first
00:00:05.280 came across to you, but it was back in 2016. I first noticed you had this unexpected connection
00:00:10.240 to Brexit. I remember in the middle of one of those pre-referenned and BBC debates, Michael
00:00:16.240 Gove making use of your name. No one was more surprised than I am. Right? Well, but he was
00:00:23.120 citing you as a prominent British scientist that agreed with his position. And I've since learned
00:00:29.440 that dominant coming, leader of the vote leave campaign, and now adviser to Boris Johnson,
00:00:34.240 has credited to you in this spectator, I think, with making the best argument for a Brexit,
00:00:39.360 namely this argument, from error correction, which we'll talk about. Yeah, by the way,
00:00:43.600 that's very nice of him, but he also said that that had absolutely no effect on the campaign.
00:00:49.200 Okay. Well, very enough. Maybe we'll have some effect now if we can get the word out as it works.
00:00:54.560 Yeah. But before we get to the argument itself, how did you get wrapped up in all this?
00:01:00.720 Well, for many years, I didn't think the issue was at all important. In fact,
00:01:06.400 I voted for staying in the common market during the first referendum, although that was because
00:01:13.040 I believed what we were promised, that there was no intention to make this into a European
00:01:18.800 superstate, and it was a purely economic arrangement. And the chronic problems that existed even
00:01:26.400 at that time, like with the common agricultural policy, we were told that those were being reformed.
00:01:32.800 Oh, and I was also reassured because people started talking about a two-track Europe,
00:01:37.680 where one track would be Britain and some other countries that would not have ever closer union,
00:01:42.800 and then the others would have ever closer union. There'd be two groups of countries in
00:01:47.520 friendly economic relation with each other. And even in this referendum, I could easily have voted
00:01:54.240 remain if Mr. Cameron's proposals had been taken seriously and if they hadn't sent him home in
00:02:00.400 humiliation. What were the long-term problems in your mind that were occurring every time?
00:02:07.040 So there was the common agricultural policy and also for Britain, the fisheries policy was
00:02:12.800 correct. It's only a small thing economically, but it's significant of the kind of problems that
00:02:19.120 arise and normally within the British system would get solved. And then there were issues like
00:02:24.480 freedom of movement, I'm actually in favor of greater immigration, but the freedom of movement
00:02:30.320 in the sense that it was up to the Europeans whom the British government could deport.
00:02:37.280 Right. And you might say this was only a handful of people in the end, but again, it was a
00:02:44.400 niggling problem that was thought important by a lot of people and which the British political
00:02:48.880 system had no purchase on. So an even smaller one, I suppose, is we couldn't remove the tampon
00:02:54.560 tax and we found it difficult to forbid the export of live animals. And people will say,
00:03:01.280 well, we could have done that. There would have been a way of doing that, but this is another
00:03:06.000 example of the fact that in Britain, there's a clear path. If you have a grievance,
00:03:10.160 you can join a pressure group, the pressure group will pressure the government or you can
00:03:14.160 see your MP and the MP will see the grievance building up and so on. Whereas Europe is structured
00:03:20.480 in such a way that it's very difficult to know whom to address your grievance to or what they could
00:03:28.480 Well, this brings us to this concept of error correction, which sounds like a harmless bit of jargon,
00:03:36.720 but for you, it's a very deep fundamental principle. Can you lay that out for us? And where are
00:03:42.480 So this is the political theory of Karl Popper, whom I follow in this and other matters.
00:03:49.440 In his political philosophy, he had a definition of democracy, which famously does not include
00:03:57.040 anything about elections. Elections are simply a way, the best known way, of achieving what Popper
00:04:06.400 said was the essence of democracy, the criterion for democracy, which is that governments and policies
00:04:13.840 can be removed without violence. So the more a system is conducive to removing rulers and policies
00:04:22.720 without violence and early in the game, the more it is democratic according to Popper. And that is
00:04:32.000 the most important criterion in politics, more important than choosing the right rulers in the
00:04:38.080 first place. And that's because of fallibleism. Any system that purports to know in advance
00:04:45.680 what the consequences of a ruler or a policy are going to be is based on a fundamental error
00:04:51.440 of infallibleism. And systems which try to do that clamped down on progress because they
00:05:05.200 So it's your view that UK institutions, traditions, culture, does a better job of
00:05:13.120 error correction and has done historically than the EU? What is it about the UK and the EU
00:05:18.000 that makes them so different? Well, there are many aspects to this. One thing that obviously
00:05:22.960 goes in that direction is the first part of the post-electral system. Although I must say that
00:05:29.280 systems, formal systems are really not what it's all about. It's really about how individuals
00:05:36.480 think of their relationship with the government, with the state and with other individuals.
00:05:42.240 That goes very deep and it is because of that that certain institutions have certain properties.
00:05:50.480 Now a property of first part of the post that I particularly favour and the proper favourite
00:05:55.280 is that the government is maximally vulnerable to changes in opinion in the electorate. It only
00:06:01.040 takes a few percentage points change in the electorate to make a large change in Parliament and
00:06:09.280 possibly remove the government and replace it by another government. So in the British system
00:06:15.200 with first part of the post, the Prime Minister wakes up every morning afraid that something
00:06:22.480 might happen that day that will shake his hold on power and that if people change their minds,
00:06:30.320 he will lose at the next election or the election could come early if it hadn't been for
00:06:35.760 these constitutional changes that messed some of this stuff up, that he could be removed and if he
00:06:42.320 was, the opposition would get into power and they would be in charge. Now any other system dilutes
00:06:49.600 this feature because if a government under for example a proportional representation system loses a
00:06:58.000 few percentage points of support, the first thing they will try to do is form a new coalition
00:07:04.160 because they will already be in a coalition, this will change the electoral logic of the
00:07:10.080 coalition so they will form a different coalition. So it can easily happen that a swing in the
00:07:15.760 population in the electorate in one direction let's say to the right causes the government to
00:07:23.840 move to the left because the left wing government will ally with an even more left wing party
00:07:30.800 which they previously been able to rule without. And this isn't just a theoretical thing,
00:07:37.200 it happens all the time in non-first past the post electoral systems. In fact we've seen in the
00:07:43.600 last few elections that even the first past the post system is not immune to this, it can happen
00:07:50.640 but we've had coalitions but it's much rarer in first past the post systems and when it does happen
00:07:58.080 the logic of the system is to go back to evenly balanced. I mean it seems to me what you're talking
00:08:07.600 about is preserving both the leadership and accountability. If it's the case that a third party
00:08:15.840 like the Lib Dems or UKIP gained in popularity gained in seats through advocating a particular
00:08:20.640 policy like Brexit then one would hope that one of the major parties would then think well if
00:08:27.840 I want to stay as the leader then I need to suck up that policy in order to prevent the
00:08:34.240 opposition getting in. Yes and what they will generally do if they're in power, if they're the
00:08:39.840 party in power, they will do it in such a way as to make it more palatable to them and to their
00:08:45.920 voters, to their constituents as well and if they're in opposition they will do the same and then
00:08:52.320 who wins depends on who has the best arguments about how to accommodate this new problem and if
00:08:59.200 they're wrong they will get to implement their wrong policy. That is crucial and that's why
00:09:08.400 power and responsibility go together. If you have a system that allows those in power to
00:09:15.920 do what they think is right then it will be clear whose fault it is when it goes wrong and it
00:09:21.840 will also be clear that it was the opposition's fault for opposing it if it goes right.
00:09:26.320 Right and hence you can learn and you can make progress and you can improve how society works.
00:09:32.640 This is how political knowledge is created as opposed to sort of persisting in a
00:09:37.680 perpetual state of argument about what would be right if only we had our way but never really
00:09:43.440 that's exactly it and no one ever gets proved wrong.
00:09:46.720 You've built that idea up in a kind of UK context. I'm imagining the Conservatives later,
00:09:55.600 the Lib Dems, you get. But what is it about the EU that fails these tests of
00:10:02.800 fallibleism and error correction? It seems to have been designed to make it difficult
00:10:09.440 to know who is responsible for a policy. So policy gets decided by consensus,
00:10:15.120 avoiding confrontation, trying to accommodate different strands of opinion within the policy and
00:10:22.640 therefore no great changes of policy ever happen, only tweaks to the policy and this is the case
00:10:29.440 even when there are huge problems perceived by the electorate. For example immigration,
00:10:35.920 waves of immigrants and it's not that the wrong policy was implemented and then it would
00:10:44.960 now be corrected and replaced by a better policy. It's that no policy was implemented
00:10:50.240 and the EU is just unable to formulate one because there is no party and power in the EU.
00:10:57.760 There is no prime minister or president who is in charge, who is the leader of something that has
00:11:03.920 an ideology that could be proved wrong. I remember being quite struck by something that you said
00:11:09.440 to me in private a few months ago about how the UK Parliament sits opposite each other. I actually
00:11:15.120 was sat in the balcony a few months ago watching it like a great theatre set with the speaker in
00:11:18.960 the middle. Whereas the EU sits in a circle and there are sort of symbolises the difference
00:11:24.320 between a kind of disputational culture where you can point at the person who is responsible
00:11:27.920 and shout at them and force them to take responsibility for what they are doing and this system
00:11:33.520 where it's all about sort of consensus but an artificial consensus and a sort of soft consensus
00:11:40.000 that nobody can really change our aim to make the policy in a closed room where the voters who voted
00:11:49.120 for one way or another are just represented by the number of delegates that they make and those
00:11:54.480 conform into a coalition that maybe wasn't even envisaged before the election and that coalition
00:11:59.920 forms policies that weren't envisaged before the election whenever voted on can't be voted on again
00:12:05.920 because if you vote one way or another a different coalition will form that you can't predict.
00:12:12.800 This fact that the legislature sits in a circle and the British one sits facing each other
00:12:20.560 at two swords lengths apparently is indeed emblematic or although I had to keep saying that
00:12:27.360 the real nature of institutions is in culture they are in human minds they are ideas
00:12:35.360 how they are implemented in terms of buildings and laws and and constitutions and so on is a
00:12:43.920 secondary thing but it is in this case emblematic and another another instance of the same thing
00:12:50.000 is the British legal system which is also adversarial and is in contrast to to I think all
00:12:57.200 or maybe just most European countries where it's not where the idea is that everybody is there
00:13:04.000 to find the truth and and you can't find the truth that way you've got to have advocacy
00:13:10.800 of something and confronting the opposing arguments with each other. Yes yes I'm very
00:13:16.800 and I'm a Jonathan Heit. No he's sort of a social scientist who says that reasoning is not a
00:13:27.120 solo process you almost can't do it the fact of confirmation bias means that everybody no matter
00:13:32.800 how rational they believe they are really wants their theory to be true and will fight and fight for
00:13:36.800 it and a person on their own can't do science they have to be immersed in a culture of criticism
00:13:43.280 where you know they're terrified of peer review and the review will rip their paper to shreds if
00:13:48.160 they make a mistake you know and truth is approached in a social way as opposed to a pure rational
00:13:53.680 way. Papa also said this that science is a social process and there too the emphasis is on
00:14:00.960 facilitating the removal of bad ideas or the modification of bad ideas in the light of experiment
00:14:07.600 and also in the light of criticism. Do you think it's these mechanisms of error correction
00:14:16.160 that explain the relative political stability of Britain through the centuries compared to Europe
00:14:20.640 which tends to kind of go for these massive projects, communism, fascism, the EU systems that seek
00:14:29.200 total control but then are vulnerable to a tipping point when suddenly 51% of the forces
00:14:34.160 are against them and can collapse occurs. Well it's certainly true that Britain is famous for
00:14:38.880 political stability over over decades and centuries and if you don't think it's due to that you
00:14:45.440 I think if you don't think it's due to the political culture of Britain you have a hard time
00:14:50.800 explaining this blatant difference between Britain and the rest of Europe and also other countries.
00:14:57.920 Now I think it is not an accident that say in the 20th century which was the high tide of
00:15:05.920 both totalitarianism that is fascism and Nazism and communism and also nationalism and where this
00:15:15.520 sort of engulfed Europe and even in the places where it didn't get into power it affected the
00:15:21.280 political system and influenced everything and yet in Britain it never even got close to power and
00:15:28.640 this was the same over a longer time scale as well political philosophers in Europe simply held
00:15:35.760 it as uncontroversial that the British political system was very stable and that this was
00:15:40.960 something they wanted to emulate. The only explanation that makes sense to me is exactly what you
00:15:46.400 said that the institutions that correct errors and therefore build consent before grievances rise
00:15:53.360 to the level of people wanting to use violence thereby creates stability and its stability
00:16:00.480 despite rapid change that's the difficult thing you can have stability for for decades and
00:16:06.880 sometimes even centuries if you keep things the same but stability under rapid change is very
00:16:14.560 difficult to achieve and it requires these institutions of criticism. Well I guess you might say that
00:16:21.200 the situation with facing in the UK at the moment in terms of this complete political deadlock
00:16:26.640 is as a result of the referendum suddenly springing Brexit upon us as opposed to it
00:16:35.120 emerging naturally by the political first-past-opposed process. Absolutely. I think the referendum
00:16:41.840 is very alien to the British way of doing politics. It arose as a sort of desperate measure
00:16:48.240 because other problems were building up and were not being solved and the politicians were getting
00:16:55.840 used to dissipating responsibility. They were used to saying oh it's EU rules or we can't do this
00:17:02.640 or we're going to negotiate this or whatever rather than saying we think this is right
00:17:08.560 and it's going to have good effects and you'll see and we got in therefore we're in charge now
00:17:14.800 and we will implement that and we're now sticking our necks out because if it's deemed to be not true
00:17:20.480 we know the other party is going to come in that that is what should have happened now with the EU
00:17:26.960 I think what I would have expected to happen would be that the grievance or the grievances
00:17:33.920 of the levers and the ones who felt passionately about it would be putting pressure on the existing
00:17:40.880 parties to accommodate that in their policies and eventually it might have led to a party adopting
00:17:49.040 leave as it's a party policy. Yeah or forcing through the kind of tier one tier two we want to
00:17:55.520 stay on tier one exactly exactly at the same time parties policies on relations with the EU would
00:18:02.800 have had that pressure on and it was happening it was you know the ukip was rising and the
00:18:10.080 tensions within both the major parties were rising and normally this would have led to creative
00:18:17.680 thinking about other policies and it since that didn't happen or at least didn't happen fast
00:18:23.760 enough. Mr Cameron decided to risk a referendum which if it had gone his way would have been
00:18:30.160 able to just say it wasn't me it was the people and the people can't be removed from office
00:18:38.160 so there are people there are people with a capital T and P and they have spoken and therefore
00:18:45.680 we're going to do what they say and they had to say that well if they say the other thing they
00:18:50.880 will do what they say and that clashed with all the other institutions of government because it
00:18:56.800 meant that the suddenly parliament was being told to implement something they don't believe in the
00:19:03.200 whole the whole structure of the British parliamentary system is that people implement what they
00:19:08.960 believe in and only then is their responsibility. How deep and how far back do you think there's
00:19:18.320 distinction between the UK way of life and European way of life goes English individualism,
00:19:24.160 European collectivism, all that? Although I think it is true that that one notable difference in
00:19:31.680 culture between Britain and the rest of Europe is the British greater emphasis on individualism.
00:19:38.080 I think that is not really the heart of the matter because Britain has had periods of
00:19:43.120 collectivism too after World War II, Labour government came in and instituted a regime that is more
00:19:51.520 left-wing than any regime instituted elsewhere in Western Europe and yet unlike everywhere else
00:19:58.560 where highly left-wing regimes were instituted Britain embarked on it seriously tried it out
00:20:06.640 and then eventually rejected most of it but kept some of it. We still have the NHS, we're still
00:20:12.160 proud of that, we still have all sorts of reforms regarding education, some of which were disasters,
00:20:18.560 some of which were good and all of them were implemented by people who believed in them
00:20:26.080 and who were therefore either proved right or wrong by events. This is funny that I've
00:20:31.040 come to ask you about Brexit but now you're giving soccer to the socialists. Perhaps Britain
00:20:38.800 is the one place where socialism has worked and could work again. I think socialism,
00:20:44.640 choir, economic theory hasn't ever worked anywhere but Britain is certainly one of the few places
00:20:49.920 where a full-blown socialism was tried and did not cause permanent damage, it did not degenerate
00:20:57.440 into communism or totalitarianism or authoritarianism and so where which is what it normally has
00:21:04.880 a tendency to do but it showed no such tendency in Britain. So what is the distinction between
00:21:12.400 the UK model and the European model and your own mind, if not individualism versus
00:21:16.320 collectivism? Yes, I think it is institutions of criticism, of error correction and therefore
00:21:22.720 of consent so that they become institutions of consent when they're working. That's why
00:21:28.080 you just used consent is the big one as far as I concern. I do not like forcing other people to do
00:21:36.160 anything they don't want to do and if I want them to do something that they don't want to do,
00:21:39.680 I make it my business to persuade them or give up. I never want to go beyond that.
00:21:43.920 Yes, I couldn't agree more. There's a very nice quote by Popper at some point where he says
00:21:48.880 something like a rationalist is a person who would rather not get his way because he's failed to
00:21:54.800 persuade other people than to get his way by force, forcing other people. I entirely agree with that
00:22:02.800 and there are many issues where I think the country is going the wrong way but if I were
00:22:09.360 magically given the power to get my way, I certainly would not use it. That would destroy everything.
00:22:17.840 Okay, well, so in this spirit of Paparian criticism, conjecture,
00:22:23.600 refutations, I feel I should put to you some of the best kind of remain arguments if I can.
00:22:28.800 I put out a call on my Facebook page a few days ago to just ask people what in their minds
00:22:34.240 is the most important reason to stay in the EU and the first and foremost was the prevention of war.
00:22:39.440 I mean, isn't it the case, the economic integration has fostered this unprecedented period of
00:22:46.880 peace and stability in Europe and as important, error correction might be, isn't the
00:22:52.960 prevention of war more important than that? I think it isn't factually true that it is the EU or
00:22:59.040 the common market as it was that has prevented war. There was a theory even before World War I
00:23:06.080 that the economics of different countries were becoming so integrated that war would be impossible
00:23:11.920 and it simply wasn't true. When political forces made countries aggressive,
00:23:18.480 they naturally thought that that was more important than they can like well-being. If you're
00:23:23.440 going to have a war, you know that it's not going to promote economic well-being at least in the
00:23:27.280 shore wrong. You don't think that if Hitler had been tied into the European Union, he wouldn't
00:23:31.600 have been Hitler or Hitler, wouldn't have been merged. Yes, if you put it like that, it's obviously absurd.
00:23:37.440 Is it obviously absurd? I mean, Germany had was in a position of sort of humiliation after World
00:23:43.600 War I and had felt belittled by the rest of the European powers. That's what made not
00:23:50.320 as an attractive known and if they'd been in a kind of positive fruitful trading relationship with
00:23:54.720 that. Emotional impetus for fascism has been there. That was the emotional impetus and I think
00:24:02.320 that being subordinated to France would not have helped in that respect. That is not the change
00:24:10.000 that happened after World War II. Germany had set itself on a new course. In 1945, by being defeated
00:24:18.320 in war, the Nazi ideology had been tested to destruction. It simply wasn't true that if one has
00:24:28.160 a strong enough will, one can conquer and the racial superiority would give them the good things
00:24:35.920 in life and they nationally changed their opinion of what it is that gives you the good things
00:24:42.640 in life to the right one and they made a national policy of pursuing that and they have been successful
00:24:50.080 and the reason that Germany is not dangerous now is that change of mind which happened before
00:24:57.440 they joined the EU and was perhaps a reason they joined it. I mean, the common market,
00:25:01.680 but perhaps a reason why they joined it, not vice versa.
00:25:04.320 All right, I suppose the second most important argument is the economic argument. I think
00:25:12.800 it was Nick Klag that put this most clearly in my mind, Europe will always be our closest geographical
00:25:19.840 neighbour so if we're going to be involved in a kind of monogamous trading relationship with somebody,
00:25:24.480 shouldn't it be Europe? It's much easier to just ship things over the channel than it is across
00:25:27.920 the Atlantic or to India. Do we really have more sovereignty involved in trading relationship with America
00:25:33.520 than with Europe? I have heard that argument many times in many different forms. I think the
00:25:38.640 thing that misses is that trade is mutually beneficial. Of course, we should trade with our neighbours,
00:25:45.920 we should trade with everyone and by the way, long-range trade is easier than it ever was before
00:25:51.200 and an increasing proportion of our trade is much longer-range than with the EU. But that doesn't
00:25:58.000 matter. The distance doesn't matter. We should trade with everyone and I'm also in favour of reducing
00:26:03.120 tariffs so that tariff harmonisation and so on should become less and less a thing. It should
00:26:09.360 become less and less important. Now, it is true that sometimes political considerations
00:26:14.640 override economic welfare considerations and governments do do unwise things,
00:26:21.760 like at the moment there's a big thing about increasing tariffs, having trade wars. This is a
00:26:26.720 terrible idea and it has been tried again and again but I don't think that belonging to a
00:26:35.520 monopolistic trade entity is the solution to this and even if it were, subordinating one's
00:26:42.160 political system to that entity is not advocated by anyone. No one in Canada advocates that they
00:26:49.920 should become the 51st state in order to get a couple of percentage points on their on their GNP
00:26:57.360 which if those percentage points are available, they're available through trade not through
00:27:04.160 subordinating Canada to the federal government in the US.
00:27:12.240 When I voted remain in the referendum, one of my thoughts was,
00:27:15.680 I think it would be good if power could be concentrated at many levels appropriate to the
00:27:20.800 problems itself. It's like quite like local government in the UK, English, Welsh, Scottish, or
00:27:25.680 Irish. But I recognise that at the higher level there are problems like climate change or
00:27:31.760 international terrorism or the power of international corporations which are much more powerful
00:27:37.040 than individual states in a way and I quite like a super national institution that was capable
00:27:43.280 of standing up to them. How do you react? I think that that objection or that argument for
00:27:50.240 remain mixes two very different things. One is the issue of international cooperation
00:27:57.360 and the other is the issue of what political systems should be subordinated to which other ones.
00:28:03.280 Now we have international cooperation of many different kinds. NATO is an international
00:28:08.880 organization and it's actually an international organisation for the control and direction of
00:28:14.560 violence and even so it never purports to override the sovereignty of its members.
00:28:23.440 So international cooperation is a good and necessary thing and in regard to the environment too
00:28:30.080 we have long standing international agreements that work very well on Antarctica and on
00:28:35.680 the law of the sea and on the ozone layer and all sorts of things and countries which participate
00:28:41.600 in these things do not usually demand political control of other countries.
00:28:46.640 Well this point is going to sound absurd as soon as I sort of say it out loud but I think a lot of
00:28:51.440 people at the back of their minds do think aren't that advanced just to top down control.
00:28:56.800 I mean an argument that's often made to me came up on my on my Facebook thread
00:29:02.080 is that I don't really trust British democracy to deliver the right result. We have to
00:29:07.680 deliver patriotism and I hate patriotism. You know I have friends who used to work in the post office
00:29:13.360 and know which EU regulation it was that prevented them having to do unlimited over time
00:29:18.960 and they see that the EU was a sort of beneficent provider of rights that British democracy
00:29:24.880 wouldn't provide to its own accord. I mean what would you say to them all like that?
00:29:28.160 Well I think that even if it were true that the current stunt political stance which
00:29:35.120 is nobody's idea let me repeat this is nobody's idea of what is right it's just something
00:29:39.680 that emerges from the mists. Even if you thought that that happened to be best for Britain now
00:29:48.880 it is still something that is preventing change, Britain from making changes for the better.
00:29:55.200 We were talking earlier about the benefits of socialism to Britain.
00:30:00.400 Those things could not have been tried if Britain had been a member of the EU at the time.
00:30:08.480 The oldest business of you know we have to protect the NHS by staying in the EU.
00:30:13.840 Well you do not have an NHS but certainly the whole point of harmonisation and ever closer union
00:30:22.720 is that individual countries experimentation is limited. The thing about the British experiment
00:30:30.400 with socialism is that it had good effects and bad effects and the good effects were retained
00:30:36.560 and the bad effects were abandoned and the EU has never done anything like that in its entire
00:30:42.640 history and it's structured in such a way that it shouldn't be able to. Perhaps I should
00:30:48.800 mention that systems that are good at error correction make more errors.
00:30:56.000 It sounds paradoxical but they make more errors than systems which are bad at error correction
00:31:01.280 until the catastrophe happens. So systems which are bad at error correction fudge and fudge
00:31:07.920 and fudge until at some point everything breaks and they're forced to do something new
00:31:14.320 usually at random usually it's the the devils of change places and the lash goes on sort of thing.
00:31:25.520 Well let me take that opportunity to hit you with another counter argument which would be
00:31:30.640 since you don't think referendums are a good idea wasn't the first one illegitimate I mean we
00:31:36.080 didn't know what leave and men should we have another one to specify what leave means if people
00:31:39.520 want that do you think a 4% difference between the sides was really enough to justify the
00:31:46.640 dramatic change of policy now should be remain now and then as you say have Brexit in the future
00:31:51.920 through the schedule process. I think that if there's anything worse than having a referendum
00:31:57.040 to decide a national issue it's having one and not implementing the results that is what has
00:32:03.120 caused lack of confidence in the legitimacy of the whole system not just the referendum
00:32:08.560 and if there were a second referendum people would know that the arguments for the illegitimacy
00:32:14.640 of the first one would apply double in the case of the second one because people would then want
00:32:19.360 the third one so long as the outcome of the referendum isn't implemented nobody is proved wrong
00:32:25.680 one can say okay now we know what would happen we don't know what would happen all we know
00:32:30.000 what happened after the referendum not what happened as the result of implementing it now if the
00:32:37.040 remainers had taken my view about what politics should be about then as soon as they lost the
00:32:44.320 referendum they should have transformed themselves into a rejoined movement not a movement to
00:32:50.480 delegitimize the national vote and if they're right then leaving would be a disaster by the way
00:32:58.800 we would have left ages ago this would be over by now leaving would be a disaster and they would
00:33:04.800 have swept into power with plans to rejoin and those plans would have been endorsed by a general
00:33:12.400 election not by a referendum that one can say we don't know anything we we everything we say
00:33:19.680 we know at the moment is prophecy and that is a curse word in the popular in the steam of things
00:33:28.800 prediction comes from explanatory theories and we can't have an explanatory theory about the growth
00:33:34.080 of knowledge I think some people listening to that would say it's all very well having the
00:33:42.320 scientific mindset that we should have an experiment to decide the outcome but isn't there so
00:33:48.480 much at stake you know won't there be EU nationals in this country who might face deportation I mean
00:33:54.080 probably not on purpose but through bureaucratic wake-ups won't the economic hit hit the poorest
00:34:01.120 harder you know like is taking a risk worth it um there is a general answer to that question
00:34:11.120 which is also why it is more important than any specific policy it is that making a policy of
00:34:19.360 not experimenting which means not implementing what anyone thinks is the right thing to do
00:34:24.960 but implementing something else that no one thinks is right thing to do is a recipe for stasis
00:34:31.520 and stasis in politics is hell on earth mistakes will always be made that that's another aspect
00:34:39.440 of populist philosophy that that we have to recognize that we're fallible and that there is
00:34:45.120 a no way of choosing a ruler or choosing a policy that knows what the outcome of that will be
00:34:53.200 that can guarantee it will be good or that it will probably be good or anything like that
00:34:59.120 creativity is needed to do good things and creativity is in response to problems now it is
00:35:05.920 self-deception to think that the status quo is going to be satisfactory for everyone forever
00:35:13.440 it's already not satisfactory for a lot of people we take it for granted that the whole political
00:35:18.400 system is about grievances ancient declarations talk about the right of the people to petition
00:35:25.360 for redress of grievances and that doesn't mean that there are 37 grievances and once they've
00:35:30.640 all been met we won't have grievances anymore uh quite the contrary grievances are always coming
00:35:36.880 up disagreements about what is right are always coming up and the paramount consideration is how to
00:35:45.120 resolve those not just without violence but long before violence is even on anyone's mind
00:35:51.760 as soon as they become serious enough to affect one or two percent of the vote in an election
00:35:58.960 politicians and think tanks and intellectuals and academics and and the whole country
00:36:06.480 will be thinking about how to solve it and how to persuade people that one's idea is the right
00:36:14.240 one to solve it that's obviously more important than getting any one thing right once and for all
00:36:21.520 because once and for all will never happen one last remain argument i'd like to put to you
00:36:29.120 um which i think is kind of the most profound argument and the one that speaks to people most
00:36:34.800 deeply is the argument about racism i know i tried to kind of be rational when i was listening to
00:36:40.400 to the referendum debates and to be honest i found myself more stupid by the end of it than at
00:36:45.520 the beginning i learned almost nothing from watching weeks of question time episodes um but what
00:36:50.240 really swam it for me was the day that breaking point Nigel Farage posted came out and and Joe
00:36:56.160 Cox was shot and i just thought there's absolutely no way i'm voting with those guys you know i
00:37:01.600 and i think that feeling is pretty ubiquitous in this country and and and how do you speak to that
00:37:07.040 instinct well interestingly the vote leave campaign thought that that poster and the yukip
00:37:13.520 side of the leave argument cost them votes and almost cost them the referendum that is their opinion
00:37:20.400 i don't think anyone hates yukip more than vote leave them they thought that this tendency
00:37:27.200 almost cost them the referendum because of the fact that tiny numbers of people are actually
00:37:34.240 it's a nasty racist a radically racist yes a larger number of people are inclined to be
00:37:40.320 persuadable by arguments with the tinge of racism because perfectly legitimate considerations
00:37:48.000 sometimes overlap with arguments that have a tinge of racism and they find themselves
00:37:52.960 allies with people whom they might not agree with but those groups together do not amount to
00:38:00.640 anything like a majority thank goodness and connectedness and therefore no matter how much you fire
00:38:07.600 up those people to vote for you you're not going to win the referendum hmm quite aside from the
00:38:13.760 fact that many of the major players in vote leave are like me constitutionally and emotionally
00:38:20.800 in favor of more immigration so i mean i myself can't get my head round the idea that i shouldn't
00:38:29.040 be in favor of leave because it's racist because that that's kind of the opposite way to the way
00:38:35.440 it looks to me yeah yeah yeah the argument should not be about who is in favor you know if it turns
00:38:43.600 out that mr. Putin is in favor of one or the other or mr. Trump is in favor of one or the other
00:38:49.440 that doesn't alter who is right no it's an ad hominem thing and one should not make that a
00:38:57.040 consideration i i completely agree with you in my head but my heart is so disciplined by this sort
00:39:03.200 of fear of being anywhere near to racism that you know i feel nervous about filming and broadcasting
00:39:09.600 as conversation with you you know because to to advocate for Brexit is to be on that side and i
00:39:14.640 think a lot of people feel that i it runs very deep which in a way is a wonderful thing people
00:39:19.280 should feel deeply opposed racism and yes but um yes well i mean i i too have have found that
00:39:26.400 people have put this argument to me not in the way that you just did but in the form
00:39:31.280 will you make a reasonable argument but most of the people who are on your side in this
00:39:37.200 are not reasonable now i think that isn't true i basically i can't remember anyone whom i've
00:39:44.320 spoken to on the leave side making a racist argument maybe some of them are in their hearts racist
00:39:52.080 but they know that that won't speak to other levers and by the way it's also a fact that in all
00:39:57.680 the surveys you see Britain is one of the least bigoted countries in the EU that that's another
00:40:06.960 sort of ironic thing about this argument from racism so you've just given a list of pro remain
00:40:14.000 arguments and you haven't mentioned the argument you are a racist which one often hears as well
00:40:21.840 and in fact i think it is very unfair to the British people to characterize large scale
00:40:26.880 political movements as being motivated by racism in any way people just don't think like that
00:40:32.080 in this country which is related to the fact we were talking about earlier that nationalism
00:40:37.600 which was the scourge of Europe from say the mid 19th century up to the mid 20th century
00:40:45.120 never got a hold in Britain yeah yeah it's something to be very proud about
00:40:51.040 i have to say speaking to you i i've discovered a kind of hitter to hit and streak of
00:40:57.520 patriotism just because i always thought patriotism in Britain was about the flag and the army
00:41:03.680 and the old dogs and you know there's a lot of war but you make me realize that the UK is
00:41:11.200 about the things that i do care personally about namely consent, humility, discourse, discussion,
00:41:17.680 tolerance, moderation i entirely agree and know that i am an immigrant and it is often immigrants
00:41:26.480 who appreciate what is best about Britain i'm reminded of quotation which George Mikesh made in
00:41:33.360 his book How to Be an Alien which is the quintessential book on Britishness by an immigrant
00:41:39.360 written just after a world or two he was a refugee and he quotes poem by Alice Dure Miller who's
00:41:46.880 an American poet and the line he quotes is i've seen much to hate here much to forgive
00:41:54.960 but in a world where England is finished and dead i do not wish to live
00:41:59.840 oh that's lovely and i think that is precisely true as well as rather painfully sentimental
00:42:07.920 yes yes thank you for watching if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to see more
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