Owen Jones vs. TRIGGERnometry

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For more, visit simplisafe.com. I think the real disagreement here is I don't think you understand how the market works. So how could those things that happened in 1984 and 85 cause a recession in 1980? It says these policies helped plunge Britain and the U.S. into dire recession in the early 80s. But the policies happened five years later. No, that's not true. Deregulation begins immediately. People feel they're competing for scarce resources. Immigration has actually, without immigration, our economy is going to be a mess. Our economy is going to be a mess. Our economy is going to be poorer. My policy is that we are much more selective about who we let into this country. Do you understand the word selective? No, I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying. But it doesn't, I'm saying what does that mean in practice? I'm trying to tell you. Tell me. It's funny talking about economic insanity and problematic economy. It's one of the most insane economic ideas I've ever heard. Well, the market. Are you interviewing me here? Well, it feels like I am now, yeah. Yeah, well, maybe you should stop. Are you too popular? Is life too easy? Then head over to. Head over to our merch store and change your life forever by telling the world you watch Trigonometry. You'll be able to buy hoodies, T-shirts, caps, stickers, posters, and, of course, the world-famous Trigonometry mug. Go to shop.triggerpod.co.uk. That's shop.triggerpod.co.uk and become part of the show. Owen Jones, welcome to Trigonometry. Here I am in the heart of the beast. Beautiful studio. It's a really beautiful studio, by the way. Of course. Thank you very much. We open with a compliment. Who says people who disagree can't. Can't disagree. Exactly. Let's keep it up. Let's keep it up. I don't think we're. Looking very dapper. Thank you. You also, not as dapper, but still, you know, presentable. I'm in a brown shirt, so keep him with the character. He said it. But anyway, it's so good to have you on. Thank you very much for coming on. And look, really enjoyed the book. And one of the things you talk about a lot is neoliberalism. And I think it's really important before we delve into all the issues, could you just define what you mean by it? Because it's a word we hear all the time. I don't think a lot of people know what it means. No, yeah, that's totally fair enough. I think neoliberalism is it's privatisation of state assets. It's slashing taxes on those with assets and with wealth. It's curtailing organised labour. It's promoting marketisation. It's, in practice, it's financialisation. It's about rewarding assets and finance over the productive economy. It means an economy which is geared towards finance. I mean, 80% of finance is recirculated through finance, insurance and real estate, rather than going to the productive economy. So it's the financialisation of everything. Everything becomes a financial product. Companies don't invest anymore in the way they should in their own company. It goes to share buybacks. It goes to share dividends. So, yeah, I think it's marketisation, privatisation. It's financialisation. It's the kind of gist, I guess. Right, OK. And so what are your issues with that? Let's just pick this apart. So what it's done in practice is less growth, which is less equitably distributed. So the average growth in the 1970s was almost the same as it was in the 1980s. The 1970s is portrayed as Britain is in a catastrophic meltdown. It's a sick man of Europe. It's stagflation, all the rest of it. And no question, Britain. And the West were in a bit of a mess in the 70s, mainly because of the oil shock of the early 70s. You know, a bit of deja vu, because we're kind of going through that again, because of conflicts in the Middle East. 1973 onwards, you get the Arab states imposing an oil embargo. And later, as well, with the Iranian revolution, you get another oil shock. So you get massive inflation, but it's also caused by the Vietnam War, because the Americans didn't print money. Or, sorry, they did print money. They didn't raise taxes. They didn't pay for the war. They printed money. So you get this inflationary wage. The international financial framework, Bretton Woods, collapses under Richard Nixon. So the West is in this mess in the 1970s because of that. But Thatcher and Reagan spun a story. This is because of the state. It's because of the unions. But what you get in the 80s is the same amount of growth on average in Britain. In the 90s, the growth is less. In the noughties, it's lower. In the 10s, it's about the same. And in the 20s, again, it's very weak growth. So what you've had since Thatcherism is 80s, the same growth as the 70s, less equity distributed. Every decade after that, it's lower growth than the 1970s. You get the privatization of utilities, shit in our water, railways, which are obviously a rip-off, inefficient mess, which are subsidized by the public, even though they're privatized. You get a housing crisis. Four in 10 of the homes flogged off by right to buy are now rented out by private landlords charging twice their rent. You get, because of the smashing of the unions, you get stagnating wages. And even before the crash, they were stagnating for millions of workers. But the average British worker now, their wages are pretty similar to what they were in 2008. You've got the financial crisis, which was all about, that was what financialization led to. So we've ended up with an economic model, which is, again, a crisis. Again, it's all about assets rather than productive industry. It's about complex financial products rather than making things. And which is why even the likes of Donald Trump talk about that legacy. They talk about deindustrialization. They don't talk about the reasons why. But we've ended up with an economic model, which works very well for a certain elite. But for actually for millions of workers in America, again, wages in America have been stagnant for decades. And for British workers and for workers. Across the Western world, this is an economic model, which has led to insecurity, stagnation, a public realm, which is underfunded and crumbling. So I think neoliberalism is it's obviously failed. I don't see I don't even see what the defense is, because by definition, if you look back to the even the 60s, when you have high tax public ownership and strong trade unions, that's the decade with the highest growth that Britain has and is more equitably distributed. You get sustained rises in living standards. We're constantly improving public services, but that's all gone. We do have stagnation and decline. That's economic stagnation and decline. Social progress has come to an end. Technology improves. You get more advanced phones. We've got A.I. But in terms of how people's people's lived experience, it's it's insecurity and stagnation, except for the people at the top. I don't know. What's the I don't know what the defense of the economic model is. I don't I don't see just any the stats speak for themselves. I think, well, and this is the central thesis of your book that neoliberalism. At home, as you call it, all of the things that you described, plus adventurism or militarism or imperialism, whatever you might want to call it abroad. These two things combined are the reason where the West is and you do a fairly good summation. Actually, I'd say 90 percent. There's 10 percent where we can talk about later, perhaps, but 90 percent. You do a very good summation of the kind of mainstream alternative arguments for the position the West finds itself in. Today, and the kind of central right wing arguments, you explain what they are faithfully, actually, which is to your credit, and then you explain what you've just explained. And so the central thesis is neoliberalism at home, the way you've described it, combined with militarism abroad, let's say, is that a fair summation? Exactly. So they collide together. So you get this economic model which just factually speaking doesn't deliver the growth it did, and it's less equitably distributed. And it's going to all these financial products and the financial sector rather than making things. At the same time, we've had military adventurism. I mean, how many wars, how many wars is the West supposed to suffer a strategic defeat in before Western elites face a reckoning? There was the war in Afghanistan, which was a two decade long occupation, following, as I detail in the book, the West arming and supporting. Do you mind if we just stick with the neoliberalism part? I have more questions about that. I mean, look, as long as we come to military adventurism. We may, depending on how much time we have. Oh, oh, come on. No, I'm not, the reason it's not interesting to me personally is we actually agree on that completely. We were both completely opposed to it. Okay, but the way they fuse, though, the way they fuse, because obviously Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Iran are all absolute catastrophes which have disgraced. And we disagree with all those wars, so that's why it's not that interesting to talk about. No, okay, fair enough. But the reason they collide with the economic model in part is you get destabilization and population growth. movements as a result. i mean libya is a really striking example that's a failed state it's collapsed into catastrophe um and uh what that what that meant a population movement arriving in europe seven years after the financial crash in particular where you get uh stagnating wages and that insecurity i spoke about and then you get this population movement who are then scapegoated for the economic model and the way muslims are portrayed i think is very important we will get to this part we will definitely get no but do you mind if we just yeah just for the economics but the reason that's then the problem i get the argument yeah and i think everybody watching will understand what you're saying we will talk about this the problem with the economic model though is because after the crash you get a great reverse yeah because in with the end of the cold war the west goes we've won this is where i want to get to yeah exactly we've won we've almost got do you mind but with the economic model people feel sorry that they feel they're competing for scarce resources i understand because there's no growth i get it and then they and then when the when the far right as i would describe it say it's because of migrants that you're you're struggling i promise you there's no alternative then they feel they're competing i totally get it i promise you we will get to all this the only reason i was interjecting is i want to talk about the neoliberalism part first okay we will definitely talk about mass immigration and all of that in a second so the central thesis the one thing that i missed out in my summation of your central thesis is that you say uh the reason that people thought neoliberalism was a great economic vision and economic set of policies was that it was dominant and suprem in supreme at the time the cold war ended yeah and so you've basically got a victory i'm using your inverted commas let's say for for the purposes of this uh the west wins the cold war with neoliberalism therefore neoliberalism good fair summation yes so if you've got the cold war ending during the 60s for example we wouldn't then get you down social democracy's dominant at the time so that form of capitalism would be the one that would be seen as triumphant and in the introduction i just want to bring this quote up because it's kind of uh it sums up your point of view and this is what i wanted to talk about so you say the soviet union's demise came at the very high point of what is variously known as thatcherism reaganism or neoliberalism the selling off of state assets slashing taxes on big business the wealthy and the wealthy deregulation subordinating the real economy to financial institutions and hobbling organized labor all the stuff we talked about and you say such policies helped plunge britain and the us into diet recession in the 1980s uh and but later in the 1990s the economies were booming so in the late 1980s in the early 1990s you get another another recession because you get now because of this you get these endemic big recessions which cause massive but the first recessions that were that this these policies caused were in the early 80s early 80s so exactly so i went back to sheffield where i was born and saw that that's the city that was devastated you get industries that just disappear immediately so entire communities have their hearts ripped out these are places where people have you know they're they're often male dominated their father their grandfather the great-grandfathers worked their entire communities based around them they just disappear overnight and you get this i mean those many of those communities never recovered you get you know it's and and this was done deliberately because what what thatcherism did is hike up interest rates to a very high level um but also uh you frittered oil in in our case rather than norway which invested in a in a sovereign wealth fund um and what it did is it made our exports very very uncompetitive artificially which then just wiped out industries which could no longer compete okay so the reason i bring this up is this is the first point in the book where i was like maybe i'm misunderstanding this so i went i we used venice to fact check stuff so i went and looked at it and this way it didn't make sense to me because the privatizations that you talk about the bt and other british companies they were sold in 1984. yeah the recession was in 1980. uh the deregulation of the city when you talk about financialization the big bang deregulation that was 1986. yeah but hold on so the tax cuts the data so i don't understand the criticism so you need to i'm going to spell it out yeah you just got to let me make the point so deregulation of the financial services 1986 the tax cuts happened in at the very beginning of the downturn by the time 1981 1981 exactly two years recession started in 1980 uh and the mine the showdown with the miners that thatcher had happened in 19 mid-90s 1984 1985 right so how could those things cause a risk that happened in 1984 and 85 caused a recession in 1980. well firstly which is what you say it says these policies helped plunge britain and the us into dire recession in the early 80s but the policies happened five years later no that's not true obviously what factor factor like monetarism which is what you get from the early 80s onwards is you know as i said what they did is they they they make british exports less competitive yeah but what happens is you get in the 80s in the early 80s you get that rapid de-industrialization which takes place and then what that does is suck growth pertinently out of the economy so you get this artificial boom in the late 80s which then ends in a crash it ends in the early 90s but oh and i'm talking about you say that these policies so i just want to read this in the night so so you say selling off of state assets that's privatization right yeah something slashing taxes deregulation and financial reform right these things you say and hobbling organized labor yeah these things caused the recession in britain and the us in the early 80s but all of these things happened later they happened after the recession no but well firstly deregulation begins immediately so in 1980 for example yeah you get that's when for example right to buy they start announcing privatization then and you get the uh removal of uh import controls and and so on so you suddenly allow at the time when monetarism is being introduced in britain you suddenly get the ability to uh so capital can leave and inflows and outflows at the same time when their impact their hiking interest rates and well they're hiking interest rates to deal with the inflationary pressures of the finance or the oil shocks but i'm not trying no because the oil shocks not because they're okay but let's park that for a second owen i'm not trying to like catch you in a in a quote that you've kind of got wrong or whatever the reason i'm picking this bit out specifically is it challenges the entire thread of your argument you're right hold on but let me explain my argument before you challenge i'm you i really welcome you pushing back i'm just trying to stress as we do with everybody trying to stress test your argument so your central thesis as we established is thatcher and reagan come in they do privatization they break up trade unions they do all the stuff that you mentioned and that causes the economic stagnation and problems which which then we have permanently right because in the night you you that what they do but what they do is they introduce this boom and ball you've got to let me finish yeah of course yeah sorry so you say all these things cause a recession but what i'm saying to you is the things you say cause the recession happened five years after the recession just say privatization does begin in the 1980s in the year in the first term of the night so when was bt privatized bc was 84 84 and all of these other big companies that were privatized they only really got going in 84 but the recession happened three years before that so is it possible that your argument sort of breaks down on that basis because what the counter argument to your argument is you have these two oil shocks 73 and 79 and the reason that thatch and this is kind of the established narrative let me lay it out you can then argue with it is that the reason that we had a recession in 1980 was not because of neoliberalism but because the decision was made we either choose inflation or unemployment hold on let me just finish the argument and then you can answer it and we either choose inflation or we choose unemployment and the decision was made to hike interest rates to prevent inflation so what happens privatization is a process which begins in the first term because what they do with these state-owned firms is they prepare them for privatization so what they do is they remove the state subsidies from those state-owned industries and the removal of those of that which is part of preparing for the privatization which they did of mining for example so mining is a really striking example you get the private side the beginning of the privatization which takes place in the first term of thatcher's government what that means is market discipline is imposed on british coal now british coal is british coal privatized in in the in the first time of that of the factory government no but is the state subsidies removed from these state-owned industries in preparation for privatization yes does that then cause in in part because what happened in the early 80s and this is part of the deregulation i talk about is state subsidies are removed from various industries on the basis of the states this was that argument at the time was picking winners and losers so their view the argument of thatcherism was we are going to remove these this state intervention the state support in preparation for privatization we're going to impose market discipline and that happened at the very moment they'd hiked interest rates and allowed the in the the outflow and inflow of capital without state intervention so that is deregulation and that is the policy of privatization because it's the beginning it's the it's the removal of state support deregulation yes the people who watch this show have generally done more thinking about how governments operate the most but there's a difference between understanding the problem and having actually built insulation against it that's the world mikhail thorpe operates in he's been living as an expat for over 25 years visiting more than 110 countries and calling nine of them home. He founded Expat Money nearly a decade ago to help others do the same. When he helped someone build an international plan B, the knowledge he brings is entirely first-hand. Every recommendation comes from something he has already done himself. Expat Money works specifically with freedom-minded families and investors who want to reduce their exposure on any one government or any one system. Second residencies, second citizenships, offshore banking, international real estate, legal structures that spread your life across borders. Mikel has put together a free report called Plan B Residencies and Instant Citizenships. It covers five routes to a second passport, including one that almost never gets discussed: how a foreign residency functions as genuine political insurance, which countries actually make sense depending on what you're trying to protect, and what it realistically costs. Go to expatmoney.com/trigger or click the link in the description of this episode to download the report. There's no charge, no catch. That's expatmoney.com/trigger. Now, deregulation is when you remove regulations. What you're talking about is removing state subsidies. Yeah, well, it's the withdrawal of the state. That's what I'm talking about. What Thatcherism does is roll back the frontiers of the state. As soon as she comes to power, it comes to power with the imposition of market discipline, as she would describe it, on state industries, which she regards and argues are bloated, and inefficient, and therefore state support needs to be withdrawn. And it happened at the very worst moment possible, because interest rates had been hyped to such a high degree, and North Sea oil was also discovered, which also then made those exports uncompetitive. Did she privatize all those industries, including mining? Mining came significantly later, actually. No. But she imposed those policies of withdrawing the state from the economy at that time, and that is what caused the massive recession. So, of course, there's a lot more to be said about that. But I'm not going to go into too much detail on privatization, because I stand by what I said. Privatization is a process. But what the state did, I mean, you can see this with the railways, what Thatcherism did is starve the railways of resources. And then the argument was, well, the railways aren't properly, look at them, they're disintegrating the state ownership, and they need private investment, and so on. But it's wrong to look at privatization as this happened in, for example, on this particular day, without looking at how she removed the state support for those industries in preparation for privatization. It's a process, of course it is. But the same is true in the United States, where the recession was in 1981 and 1982. And again, all of the things that you talk about, breaking up unions and all that, happened in 1986. That's false. What's false? That's completely false. When is the first bus stop between Ronald Reagan and the organized labor movement? It's not about the first bus stop. When they actually did the labor bus thing was 1986. That's not true in America. And what's the big turning point with the labor and movement? You must know this. Tell us. It's the air traffic controllers. Okay. 1981, immediately. But that doesn't cause a recession, right? No, what it does, what that did is unleash a massive spate of union busting all across the United States of America. And what that did is remove the organizing, the power of organized labor to sustain the living standards of workers. That sucks demand out the economy. Of course, that's what happens. But at the same time, I mean, under Reaganism, again, you get the withdrawal of, they didn't have the same levels of state interventionism that the social democratic consensus existed in America. And yet they also had a recession. Wouldn't that be more likely because by the Old Spice? No, because what they did is they started, they immediately introduced cuts to public expenses. I mean, this is, sorry, the other point which was completely missing here is the cuts, because this is what I was talking about, it's the withdrawal of the state. That's what we're talking about. So what Thatcher does in the early '80s, as soon as he comes to power, is impose sweeping cuts, not just on the subsidies I'm talking about, but on state, from state investment. Ronald Reagan does the exact same thing. And that's that rolling back of the states, which is what they all did. And they did it on the basis of the let the market let rip and that will raise prosperity. But the cutting of state expenditure under Reagan and Thatcher during a recession, unlike the Keynesian argument is you invest at this time. Because then that will, it's countercyclical and so on. What they both did is they were ideologically committed to rolling back the state. And that is what made those recessions in America and Britain so profound. And they did it at the time where they disciplined organized labor, which is what obviously Reagan did, reducing the bargaining power of unions in order to raise the wages of the workers. So of course, yes, everyone knows Reaganism and Thatcherism at the beginning of the recession. But what they did is they rolled back the state. And I'm not disputing that. No one questioned that then caused a huge recession. The argument was- The recessions lasted about a year. There was a double dip recession in the US and in the UK, it lasted from the, I think, Q1 1980 to Q2 1981. So they weren't that long. They were about a year long. And what's interesting to me would be how do you explain the rapid recovery you see after that? Well, I mean, just firstly on that, what they all did is inflict lasting catastrophic damage. Recessions do, sure. No, but that's not fair or reasonable. Actually, I'm kind of surprised at the argument, given the way Trumpism has particularly postured in defense of the Rust Belt communities, for example. Because in all of these cases, you get a rapid fall, particularly in Britain. And Britain is the worst case where you get deindustrialization in a really rapid scale. And those communities then never actually recover. And then you get a, you get a boom, which is, because as I've said, in the 1980s, the average growth is the same as the 1970s. But what you get is a, the way to explain that is because you get a boom and bust. And what the boom does is it's based partly on the inflation of asset prices. You get the, and of big finance. You obviously don't get the big bang for several years in Britain, but that is such a misnomer in terms of how people think of financialization. I mean, financialization actually started in the early '70s with, under the Ted Heath government, when they basically liberalized cheap credit. But in the early '80s, after the abolishing, the abolition of exchange controls, that obviously has a huge impact in the financialization of the British economy. So you get a boom, which, which becomes about inflating asset prices and big finance. And then you get a boom, which, which becomes about inflating asset prices and big prices. And, and obviously some prices. And, and obviously some people do very well out of that. And some people do very well out of that. And some people did very well, not least in, in, people did very well, not least in, in, in, in the Southeast, but at the same time, industry was falling apart in the North. You get a, you get then an economic recovery, which is extremely weighted and it's weighted in favor of people who are affluent. And you do get, for example, people, I mean, you know, short-term sugar rushes, people, for example, right to buy. Did some people, working class people benefit from that? Yes. The question is what happens to their children and their grandchildren when four in 10 of the properties rented out to right to buy now rented out by private landlords charging twice the rent. So the issue is you get, you know, when you get growth and no one questions you, you got growth in, for example, you've got a boom and you get an actual boom in the late eighties in particular, that boom actually helps build the economic model, which I would argue is one that delivers overall less improvements to living standards and wages. And that's what happens. I mean, you get a boom in the, in the eighties, which cements financial, the financial sector as, as the epicenter of the British economy. And, and then in the, in the nineties and the noughties wages in America and Britain stagnate. And the only way that's compensated for where people don't feel that actually getting poorer is because of cheap credit. But what happens then with the financial crash? So, yes, I mean, you could say did, did Reaganism and Thatcherism by rolling back the state and withdrawing the state from the economy, which is what happened immediately, which was my point. Did that cause a recession? Yes. Did their policies also cause a sugar rush, which causes a big boom in the late eighties, which benefits some sections of society at the expense of others? Yes. Does that build an economic model? And that's true of everything. Is that an economic model then, which overall produces less rises in living standards? I understand what you're saying, but that's true of any policy, a policy of subsidizing industry to the tune that we're the tune that Britain was subsidizing industry. It also benefits some section of society at the expense of others. So all policies create these trade-offs. Yeah. Yes. But so South Korea was an example that I look at in the book because South Korea is cited by Thatcher and Reagan as a vindication of capitalism. Now that's because you could go, well, there's North Korea, a self-declared communist state, and then the South Korea, a capitalist state. South Korea, North Korea originally is more industrialized and better off than South Korea. South Korea then leapfrogs it and does much better. Hey, presto. That shows capitalism is innately superior to communism. Now, Stalinism doesn't work. The Stalinist undemocratic command economy doesn't work. It can industrialize the country quite quickly, often at great cost. So we do agree on some things. There we go. Can it deal with a complex consumer economy? It absolutely cannot do that. No. And you need, I mean, it's one reason, without democracy, how can you allocate resources properly? Full stop. If you just have bureaucrats controlling everything from the center, you can't do that. but south korea is you know if people advocated for the policy south korea has in this country they would be called not just communists they'd be called extreme communists because in south korea the whole policy was based on the nationalization of the entire financial sector pretty much as well as the commanding heights of the economy and the point there that winners and losers is what they did is they strategically invested the money in the industries that they wanted to grow and they wanted to expand i'm in favor of that and that's but that but ah but you see what that's it then you can't support factors i don't support that tourism i'm just asking you questions about your book no oh fair enough but that's my job but yeah true i'm sorry i didn't know politically i thought you would have supported that but the problem is but that's in the opposite direction that's the problem but oh and this is very black and white it's like i support some things that you did without supporting all of it what i'm saying is my view has always been that the government borrowing money to invest in the right thing is that i think are the right things is perfectly valid and a reasonable thing to do at certain points in the economic cycle so it's not black and white conversation but in this conversation i'm really interested in stress testing the arguments that you're making that's it okay so so let's leave that there just on south korea just made your point no you're fair enough though but that that is why if you look at the policy of the early well i think we should invest way more money in nuclear energy for example in this country and should make it way easier to build nuclear power plants was a good example you want an industrial active policy fair enough but the only thing we're going to have to do is we're going to have to do is we're going to have to do is abdicate responsibility to the market you let the market but south korea which they venerated did the exact opposite and actually if you look at all those sorts of economies in in asia that's what they did and they didn't have the you know we we pursued economic policies which led to decline an economic model which doesn't deliver rising living standards improve public services and improve security that ended in the 80s and so we're talking about alternatives what are the countries that you thought really worked at the time when you were talking about alternatives you said it was an inspiration to the world show that there was an alternative and somebody and everybody would know this on the show they can drink my mother's from venezuela i saw in real time what happened when venezuela literally descended into basically let's be honest about it a form of hell 78 poverty 38 extreme poverty that means you effectively can't eat 75 of venezuelans lost 19 pounds on average and obviously the poorest lost a lot more inflation 10 000 and it just skyrocketed caracas was a murder capital of the world the kidnapped capital of the world i mean it doesn't give me any pleasure to say this it's it's a failed state isn't it no i know that that's a completely reasonable point and you know when i wrote about that in 2012 that wasn't the case in in the 20 what happened under chavez from 1998 to 2012 was poverty objectively fell very very steeply um you did get public investment in public services and so on i went there in 2012 i went and you know and you know there was certainly the big issue that came up in 2012 when i went there was there was the question of violent crime that i would argue that that wasn't specific to chavez i mean venezuela in the 1980s also had very high levels of violent crime and equally i would know in the in the 1980s under what i would term neoliberal rate administration in venezuela you had as well you had hyperinflation in in the 1980s not to the same extent not to the same extent but it was really hot it was it was very high inflation and the reason i think you know the because you know there were other examples in latin america which didn't end up in that catastrophe which pursued like bolivia for example which which again um reduced poverty to a large to a huge degree expanded public services and which didn't end up like venezuela and the the big mistake of venezuela um and which you know which which i should have obviously thought of at the time and definitely was something that i guess i've learned from is the you know they they they made fossil fuels they made oil their absolute centerpiece and 98 percent of our economy was dependent well of course and and what you know the that that was a disastrous policy as as we saw i do think u.s sanctions have obviously played a role like that's obviously throttled the economy so i wouldn't you know that is a contributing factor it was basically a siege on venezuela um but nonetheless the model the kind of petro-socialist model is not a model which works and that is a model we can see from 2013 2014 just collapsed and you can see it collapsing u.s sanctions did obviously play their role but in 2012 venezuela wasn't i mean as i said violent crime is definitely a big problem i don't think that was specific to that period and but you know poverty had objectively collapsed in venezuela and it was also civil rights abuses let's be fair to chavez was an authoritarian regime i had family members who were i'll tell you a story one of my one of my family members who were the ones who were the ones who were the members was literally he was the president of the bank of venezuela he had a meeting with chavez 2004 2005 chavez demanded he hand over the gold reserves to him my relative refused he went on hola presidente which was the show where he took over all of the tv channels said the words diego luis fuera and put him under house arrest until he handed over the gold reserves my cousins were journalists i mean they were pretty much told from 2005 onwards if you criticize the government you were going to be in very serious i think i think the what i'd push back there i mean obviously i'm not i'm not denying the experiences that that your family had there at all and i don't know the specifics and and so on is i i met the opposition while i was there and i spoke to the opposition and they were obviously very you know denunciatory of chavez and opposed him but they didn't when i asked them specifically as a dictator they said no but we it's our job to stop him creating a dictatorship and they spoke to what they regarded as his demagogic tendencies and all the way through that period the then israeli media was not just bitterly overwhelmingly opposed to chavez but kind of beyond parody opposed and what happened in the early to be fair just quickly in the early in the early 2000s there was a pinnish a style coup against the who what no one chavez led a coup before that yeah well i'm not a cute guy and obviously you know he uh he he should but but but but this was an attempt to overthrow yeah a democratically elected government and which uh which no one questioned chavez won those elections in the noughties no one claims that that he didn't win those elections there was a coup uh which overthrew him and a lot of governments after a coup against them would actually probably end up doing a far more authoritarian crackdown than that government ended up doing actually i mean what would i mean you know my parents took in as they were in the book chilean refugees who fled augusto pinochet's regime who was obviously put in power partly by the west uh to overthrow a democratically socialist uh government and i think that's what happened in venezuela in the in the 80s you had a western-backed government which massacred in the late 80s hundreds if not more people it was like no but it was like tiananmen square so i would argue the human we can talk definitely maduro and what happened then which you know i'm not going to defend but actually the human rights abuses in venezuela and i'm not denying you know that there weren't examples but you had a coup against them the media was you could literally the the almost the entire media right owen if it happened in the united states and look there are many people on the american right who said what the press what the press have done against president donald trump is disgraceful disgusting if trump had done that i would and the the crackdown shutting down 32 media outlets well i don't i don't i don't i don't support shutting down any media outlets but okay let's just do a hypothetical here shall we let's do a hypothetical donald trump is overthrown in a coup and the entire american media incite the coup support the coup how did that how did the venezuela media incite the coup because they supported it the vast majority of the media outlets supported that you know that come on you know that i know i mean i've read i saw look they were literally broadcasting and inciting people to come and join the coup i mean it was and did they all get arrested afterwards no in america if cnn and ms mbc and all the rest of it literally called for people to overthrow the government and succeeded in in a in a military coup or whatever against donald trump what would happen to those media outlets afterwards just genuinely what would happen what would happen there would be a risk yes but that didn't happen in venezuela actually so i do so you're saying he was not an authoritarian i don't think chavez was a dictator no i think he was a democrat oh and come on there was a very famous case in 2009 i met the opposition they didn't think he was they didn't think he was a dictator when i literally live there perhaps okay so in 2009 it's a very famous case you can look this up there was a chavez put a venezuelan dissident in prison it went to the supreme court the judge let this person go chavez on national tv called her a bandita the un spoke the un published a report on this and said it was completely egregious and we can bring it up on venice ai she then let him go she was then put in prison chavez said he wanted her to go to prison for 30 years she went to prison in the end for one year in one of the most notorious prisons in venezuela i honestly don't know the circumstances of that all i'd say is i i just do not think in even in in britain or anywhere else that if you've had a coup against an elected government that there would that i i would argue the government that was then restored you don't end up with a dictator no but i hold on i don't think no but i don't think you argue actually he was a dictator i think you'd argue he was authoritarian i think he i think he was so you don't think he won those elections i think he won the first election fair and square just like live in mcputin won the first no no no i was i was 2012, and I went round from polling station to polling station. and every polling station had an observer from the opposition and from the government to look over the process. They had a double lock on voting where people voted on paper and then voted electronically and then those different votes were then separately checked to make sure that there wasn't any disparities. No one's arguing with you that he won the first election. What we're arguing about is whether he then became a dictator after that. That was 2012. That's just before he died. And at the time, the Venezuelan media was largely opposed to him. It's not the same as Russia where you have media outlets which you don't get dissident media in Russia. It doesn't exist. No, yeah, it does. It does. They just have to say we're a foreign agent. Dissident journalists, dissident media outlets are. Oh, and I'm Russian. I know about Russian media. You do not have mass media in Russia. No, not mass media. Okay, but that's what we're talking about. In Venezuela, you have mass media, including. TV channels, which were very against and opposed to Chavez in 2012. Does that change? Yes. And obviously, Venezuela descends into outright overt authoritarianism, which I would not in any way deny under Maduro. There's no question about that whatsoever. But did. was. You know, if you go to a government. If you go to a country at the time, which I did, and you see media outlets largely opposed to the president, you meet opposition leaders who are obviously very angry and denunciatory about the government. Most of the things at the time they were talking about was a violent disorder, I would just note, who themselves said, we don't regard him as a dictator. They did see him as demagogic. They said that. I totally accept all that kind of stuff. In the context where you had a coup d'etat to overthrow him and install a Pinochet-style dictatorship of the sort that the Americans in the West backed in Latin America, which slaughtered thousands of people. Do I. I mean, again, I just. You know, I don't see that as a dictatorship. I do. The economic model at the time did reduce population, obviously, but it wasn't sustainable because it was based on oil. I'm glad you said that. But that's what I accept. Let's talk about this. If you own gold, you probably bought it for the same reason I did, because you looked at what central banks are doing to currencies and decided you wanted something they can't print. Good reasoning. But here's the thing nobody talks about after you make that decision. Your gold is just sitting there. It's not doing anything. You're paying to store it. You're paying to insure it. And in the meantime, it earns precisely nothing. Until now. What you're about. What you're about to hear is not a normal gold advert. Today's sponsor is Monetary Metals. They've figured out something that once you hear it, seems obvious. But almost nobody in the gold world is doing it. 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I mean, there are people who've experienced socialism like myself and Francis, too, who would argue that very often what tends to happen, particularly with Western leftists who see socialism as the answer and as the alternative, as you said, Venezuela was at the time, they have a very short-term vision because it's like saying, you know, well, you know, in the 1930s, the Soviet Union really did great. And there were lots of people in the West, by the way, at the time who were saying, it's wonderful to look at the reindustrialization, look at the order, look at this, look at the grand buildings that were being built, et cetera. And they look at a very short term picture, they draw conclusions from it because it fits their priors and they don't think about the long-term consequences. And if you speak to people in many countries which have gone through these experiments, what they would say is the reason socialism doesn't work, you mentioned earlier that you thought, you know, you need democracy even in a communist country because otherwise you've got bureaucrats. I don't support any of those Stalinists. Sorry. No, no, not Stalinists. But they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be, well, they wouldn't be. No, I wasn't saying you support them. No, I wasn't saying you support Stalinists. I'm making a point about the structure of a society. You were saying you need democracy because otherwise you've got bureaucrats doing everything. It's not democracy that prevents bureaucrats from doing everything. It's the market that prevents bureaucrats from doing everything. Even if you elect bureaucrats, they still end up running the country. And what then happens is this is a structural argument about these types of societies not working. And we saw this in the Soviet Union is when instead of having the market being the power that decides that makes these decisions, when you have people with this much power, money doesn't matter as much as the power does. And then you get a very corrupt society, which is exactly what Venezuela became. And all of these societies eventually become where people will use bribes and influence, et cetera, to make these decisions instead of the market, making them just financial points. And so you end up with a very corrupt society, which is why these societies eventually break. Just on that, because I mean, firstly in Venezuela, I mean, Venezuela in 2012, the Hugo Chavez had a smaller state sector than Britain has now. Are you saying he wasn't a socialist? Well, I mean, what he did is use actually the proceeds from oil revenues to invest in social services and in poverty reduction. And you did get nationalization in oil. Did he do widespread nationalization? But I'm asking you, are you saying he was not a socialist because you supported him and you said, well, I'm calling it, I'm calling it. Well, I mean, you know, I said it's a form of petro-socialism. I mean, I'm a democratic socialist and I believe in, you know, am I arguing for, you know, the abolition of all market relations? No, I'm not arguing that. I mean, I've never argued for that. But in terms of Venezuela, did you have a government which was a progressive government? It doesn't matter what label you put to it. It was a government that in that period I thought was using oil revenues to benefit people who were struggling in a way that I thought improved their lives, which it did until it all fell apart. But that's what I'm saying is these societies fall apart. You're only looking at the short term picture because you like their ideas. No, I'm not because it didn't fall apart in the other Latin American countries. It didn't fall apart in Bolivia. It didn't fall apart in Ecuador. I mean, Ecuador, then you end up with a right wing government, partly because a member of the ruling party when he was elected then shifted dramatically off to the right. But actually in Ecuador, in Bolivia, in these other Latin American countries where you had left wing governments, none of these left wing governments abolished capitalism. None of them did that. But this was called the pink revolution at the time. It wasn't called the red revolution at the time. But what they did is they were all different sorts of governments, but they used progressive policies to improve people's lives. Venezuela was the one that fell apart. Bolivia didn't fall apart. Ecuador didn't fall apart. So I don't accept that premise. Which premise? Well, because what you're doing is you're basically saying all of these governments and regimes are all in the same bracket. I didn't say anything about those regimes. You said Venezuela and the Soviet bloc, but Venezuela did not introduce a Soviet-style system at all. No one claims that. The vast majority of the country was privately run. What I'm asking is, do you not think that. Francis, is it fair to say that Venezuela became incredibly corrupt? Yes, the corruption. That's what I'm asking. These systems create the incentives for corruption, which is what you saw in Venezuela. But then again, this is where I think it's quite interesting. When I went to Venezuela, just it was like it was a very capitalist society in lots of ways. It was like adverts everywhere, shops everywhere. They also seized private property, Armin. You have to accept that. They seized private property from farmers. The state sector was smaller than it is now. I mean, as in Britain, sorry, so it wasn't a state-run society. South Korea, which I've noted, South Korea had far. South Korea nationalized all their banks. They nationalized the top tiers of their economy. South Korea didn't. Oh, you know what this experience is like? It's like boxing jello, as the Americans would say. Yeah, but this is what I don't accept. I'm asking you. What am I supposed to say when it's a case of I don't accept the argument that you're making? Because factually, Venezuela didn't become a state-run society. A society that has an authoritarian dictatorship. You don't agree. It's an authoritarian system in which people seize private property and under popular demagoguery, take from the rich and give to the masses. Is that a socialist society? You clearly thought it was a good society. I didn't think it was a socialist society. I thought it was a progressive government, which was reducing prices. And just to clarify, Chávez, in multiple speeches, identified that as socialism. Yeah, but Chávez was really quite a complex political character. Because when he came to power, he called his policies the third way and said he was emulating Tony Blair. I mean, he went on all sorts of fascinating political journeys, obviously. And obviously, they called it 21st century socialism. In practice, did any of those Latin American countries enact mass nationalization of the economy? None of them did, including Venezuela. That just did not happen. They did seize private property. Well, the vast majority of Venezuela remained in private hands. No one can dispute that. That's factually what happened. After World War II, when Britain nationalized the railways and a fifth of the industrial economy, do you regard that as. But they didn't seize it. No, I don't support seizures. I support public ownership. But that's what they did in Venezuela. Well, again, they didn't, largely, because they didn't. No, no, they did. They just didn't seize everything. They didn't seize the vast majority of the economy. That's exactly what I just said. They didn't seize the vast majority of the. But I support nationalization. Okay, pause. That means you transfer assets from the private sector into the public sector. Just pause. Okay. We've got into this argumentative back and forth, so we can't actually talk about this stuff. What Francis is saying is, and what I'm saying is, there's a massive difference between nationalization as in, I am the government, I will give you money for this thing that you own, and now it comes into private property. Andy Burnham, for example, has talked about nationalizing potentially water and rail, etc. I don't imagine he will do it by taking it against the will of its current owners. He'll have to pay for it. Yeah, I mean, that's what I advocate. But what happened in Venezuela, which you supported at the time, was people were seizing property without paying anyone a thing. Again, I mean, list what you're talking about. Which aspects of the economy are you talking about? Francis, I have to tell you what was seized, or we can look it up. So it's farmlands, potentially. What percentage of the farmland was seized? That I do not know. Why does that matter? Well, I mean, I just, I don't know about that. If 100 farms were seized, which is not a lot by the scale of. No, but I'm interested. Is that okay? I guess the question. So you didn't know? No, I didn't know about that. That's fine. That's fine. You didn't know. So I'd be interested to know what. Because I'd have to know what the context is and all the rest of it. I just don't know about agricultural policy in Venezuela and the Chavez. That's what I was. At the time, you know, what I thought was a big success was the massive reduction of poverty by using oil revenues to invest in social programs. That did succeed. It didn't succeed, obviously, when. So what did you learn from getting that one wrong? That I think you can, just because a model which you can see is working in terms of reducing poverty for, you know, at the time, 15 years, that's how long it reduced poverty for, that you should look under the bonnet. How is it working? And I think, you know, just using, in this case, fossil fuels in order to, you know, to bet the house on that, to invest in your social programs is not a good idea. And that's what Ecuador. And Bolivia didn't do because they didn't depend on oil. Oil, you know, that is something which, obviously, I think all of us who thought Venezuela was working in that sense should have thought about. I mean, when you say, you know, I'm saying Petro. It doesn't matter, Petro. So you think if Venezuela didn't have oil, it would have been fine? Well, they wouldn't have been. They would have had to do something else, which is what Ecuador and Bolivia did. And so you wouldn't have had what you've had? Well, you can. Again, you can just compare the neighboring countries. But that's what. I don't support, obviously, the Soviet system. I don't support that at all. No one's accusing you of that. I would have been locked up in the Soviet system. Well, no, because you started talking about that then. You brought that in while I was talking about Venezuela. And I don't think they're comparable because one is an overwhelmingly privately run economy in which state intervention is actually less than it is in Britain. Do you accept that there's a spectrum of political systems? Like, at one end, you have fascism. At the other end, you have communism, let's say. I mean, I personally think it's a bit of a circle, but it doesn't really matter. Right? So would Venezuela be towards the. Communist side or towards the fascist side? I mean. Probably towards the communist side. Can we agree on that? Well, I mean, you could say we're closer to communism in Britain than we are to fascism. If we're going to go. I mean, I don't know where you're going. We are, but it doesn't matter. I don't know how helpful that is. Because their taxes on the rich were lower than ours, for example. They didn't hike taxes on the rich either. Communism is not just about taxes on the rich. But what made it communist then? Seizure of private property on authoritarian government. So if they hadn't. I don't know what farmland or how much of that farmland we're talking about. The rhetoric of Hugo Chavez about. The rhetoric. I think there's rhetoric and substance, but I don't. You're making the pro-Donald Trump argument there. That's true. Interesting. Well, that's. Well, that is true, because Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 are very different politically. But Trump rhetoric and Trump practice is also different. No, I just. No, I don't. I mean, the big problem I would argue with Venezuela, actually, is. One of the big problems is they did reduce poverty, but they didn't actually redistribute wealth, particularly. There wasn't. There wasn't some redistribution of wealth. They didn't hike taxes. They were also highly corrupt. Well, there's no question that you got. I mean, I don't think that's specific to Venezuela, by the way. No, no, no. Lots of poorer countries have endemic corruption in them. And I don't think, you know. I mean, we could look across various poorer countries. Poorer countries and corruption, that often goes together. And it particularly happens when you have, you know, a big, for example, rich resource. That's susceptible to corruption. But Venezuela, you know, I think. Looking back, you know, I think just saying, well, they're reducing poverty to a large degree, which they did. Therefore, that this is a successful model. First, you can't export it because it's oil dependent. And secondly, they didn't actually change Venezuelan society. They didn't redistribute the wealth. You still got the big oligarchs in Venezuela. They didn't end up having. That's what always happens in socialist societies. No, it doesn't. That's the point. That's the point. I don't understand. The people at the top always seize a lot of the wealth and keep it for themselves. Yeah, but under a Stalinist system. No, not under Stalinist system. Well, under. I mean, under a Soviet system, whatever you want to call it. No, no, no. In societies that have this level of disparity between the power of different people at the top. But Venezuela always had that. That's the problem. Latin America is full of very unequal societies. That's not caused by Hugo Chavez. He came to power because Venezuela was such an unequal society. And kept it exactly the same. But he didn't. Well, yes, I agree. Just like the communists did in Russia, just like they do in every country that they take over. That's really. Are you saying the people at the top of the Chinese Communist Party aren't the super rich? No, I'm not disputing that. But that's obviously. Are you saying the people at the top of the North Korean Communist Party? Yeah, but this is what I don't understand as well. Sorry, sorry. Hold on a minute. Hold on. Let's pause this. In those countries, what they did is they expropriated the rich, the bourgeoisie, if you like, the capitalist class, and the major landlords. They confiscated. They did. I mean, you've got expropriation on a large scale. Those people then didn't become the top of the Communist Party. These are different people altogether. In Venezuela, he came to power. He didn't challenge the existing oligarchs. What he did is use oil revenues to put into social programs which reduce poverty. That's not. There's no. I don't see what the comparison is because he didn't hike taxes on the rich and he didn't engage in mass nationalization of the economy. There is actually no comparison. Did it work in the end? Absolutely not. Should they have bet the house on fossil fuels? Clearly not. But there isn't actually a parallel because they didn't hike the taxes and they didn't engage in mass nationalization. And they ended up with lower taxes. And less state intervention in the economy than we have in this country. So they weren't socialist enough. All right. Obviously, they were less state interventionist than we are. That's just a fact. So Venezuela and Hugo Chavez was more right-wing. Did they have. No. Did they have a lower. Did they have a lower state sex? You made your point. Let's move on. To come closer to home, we spent a lot of time talking about this fairly abstract thing. I fear no one's watching at this point. Maybe not. Well, let's talk about Europe and the UK. And the argument you started to make at the beginning about the fact that, effectively, we've got these two decades now of stagnation, which you do after the financial crisis in 2008. And the reason people are upset about mass immigration and illegal immigration, we can bundle them together for this purpose. People are upset about both because their wages are stagnating. Not just. That gives it the intensity. The intensity or more intensity? I think the reason you get such an intense anger and fury, in my opinion, is people feel they're competing for scarce resources. Factually speaking, if you look at Britain, Germany, people don't think in terms of studies and statistics. We've gone through that. But immigration has actually. Without immigration, our economies would be poorer. I mean, with. Our GDP will be smaller, yes. Well, no. Our GDP per capita would be higher. We'd have to look at the tax revenues, and the tax revenues would be lower. And also, migrants, on average, tend to be younger, so that means they're less dependent on public services, so they are net overall, tend to be net contributors to the exchequer. Well, right now, they are. 20 years from now, when they get older and need healthcare and pupil places and schools and all of that. What was the argument there, given our birth rates collapsing? I mean, without them, we'd be in an even worse situation because we'd have a smaller working population and we'd have a bigger ageing population. I'll tell you what the argument is. So, the argument is that people make, which is accurate, when you bring bodies in, you increase your GDP and some of them will work, therefore you increase your tax revenues, right? But if you divide your GDP or your tax revenues by the number of people who are now in the country, and include the cost of all the infrastructure that you then have to create, hold on, all the infrastructure that you're going to have to build, when you do it on a per capita basis, our per capita GDP, despite these massive waves of immigration, is going to be lower. So, the argument is that people make, which is accurate, when you bring bodies in, you increase your tax revenues, right? But if you divide your GDP or your tax revenues, our per capita GDP, despite these massive waves of immigration, is going to be lower. Okay. This is a zero-sum fallacy. It's just very bad. It's a very popular fallacy on the left, yeah. No, it's a really bad, it's just really bad economics. Because? Because migrants expand the cake beyond their own needs. So what you meet, you end up, because of migration, people who are less dependent on public services, they're less likely to use their health services, for example, and what they do is they create economic output. They bring tax revenues, but they also increase economic activity. So what they do is they expand the economy in a way that means other people become better off as a consequence, because there's more taxes going into, they are spending more in terms of the exchequer than they are receiving from the state. But in order for that to be true, they would have to earn more than the average British person in income and pay more tax than the average person. Well, no, I mean, study after study shows, it's just, I mean, this is just arguing over facts. But it's just basic logic. But every, every, every, if there's 10 pieces of cake. Studies show that the net contributes to the exchequer. Oh, and hold on a second. Just let's use basic logic instead of studies, because there are studies that show otherwise too. But it doesn't show that, by the way, because they're less dependent on the state in terms of what they receive. Well, they are right now, right. But what do you mean? I don't understand what you mean by that. Okay, I'm an immigrant to this country. Yes. Okay, 20 years ago, I was making less than the average, the average person in this country, but I was also consuming less than the average person in NHS services and whatever. I am now in my mid-40s. I have two children. I am now probably going to use all of the services that the state has to pay for more. I've remained an immigrant. And if I wasn't earning more than the average person, I would now be a net drain. And my children would be, and their children would be, and this carries on, right. So my basic argument is very simple. When you have a large wave of low skill, badly paid immigration, which is what we've had, by the way, under the Tories, just the same as we did under Labour, that reduces your GDP per capita instead of increasing it, which is exactly what the statistics show. No, it doesn't. Our GDP. Every study shows that economic growth. Hold on, hold on. May I finish my point? Okay, go on. You've had plenty of time to talk, have you not? We are sixth in GDP in the world. People say we're the sixth largest economy in the world. We're 29th, depending on, or 27th, depending on how you measure it, in GDP per capita. But it's a bad statistic. It's a bad statistic, but GDP per capita. Despite the wave of immigration that we've had, we are not seeing people getting prosperous in the way that you describe. No, no, I know, I know. You're absolutely right. No, but that's because of the economic model. What the evidence, what the research shows over and over again, and I cite the evidence, I cite the studies into this, is that we have had weak economic growth, which we agree on, but without immigration, it would be even weaker. That's the problem, okay? So it's not. No one is saying immigration has solved the problem of the economic model. I wouldn't. Why would that be? I'm a socialist. I would go, well, we don't need to get rid of the economic model. We'll just have mass immigration. That will solve the problem. Who's arguing that? No one's arguing this. Well, you want both. I just. I believe that immigration has enriched this country factually, economically and socially, compared to what it would have done. But these two things. But also, I mean, what would happen with the care sector? What would happen to the care sector? Hold on, hold on. So this is where it's actually really important to have this discussion, because you say immigration has enriched this country. I agree. Immigration has also damaged this country. These two things can be true at the same time, and I'll explain why. Not only. All immigrants are the same. Some immigrants contribute more. Some immigrants contribute less. Some immigrants are conducive to the cohesion of society, and they start businesses, and they create jobs. And some immigrants commit crime, right? Immigration is a word, but what it hides underneath it is millions of people who have different behavioral patterns, different cultural attitudes, different ways of being, different rates of committing certain crimes. Some of them are way more likely to sexually assault women, and others less so, right? So when you talk about immigration has enriched this country, that includes people who've come here and opened a restaurant that we all go to and enjoy and have a chat in, and also people who commit grooming gangs offenses, right? So when you talk about immigration, it's not a catch-all. You could be more selective about it, which is what I believe in, this selective immigration system where you get the best of the world, and you don't get the worst of the world. And we've had pretty much the reverse. Here's something I've noticed about how people actually behave. When you ring a business and nobody answers, you don't leave a message, and you don't try. You don't try again tomorrow. You ring the next one on the list. Your customers do exactly the same to you. They aren't loyal to you. They're loyal to whoever picks up. Today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you will never miss a call. What Quo actually does is straightforward. 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You're absolutely right that migrants are people like anyone else. There was a whole breadth of experiences, of attitudes, and all the rest. Factually speaking, we would have been in a far worse state because entire sectors of the economy would have collapsed. The NHS would have collapsed. The care service would collapse. You know, whole swathes of industry wouldn't exist. And we would have a smaller working age population supporting an increasingly aging population in a 10-year period between, you know, in 2014 and 2024. The number of people over the age of 65 increased by 1.5 million. Our birth rate at the same time is collapsing, partly because the government, under our economic order, people cannot afford childcare and they can't afford the cost of kids because of the housing crisis and how expensive childcare is. So just factually speaking, if you end up with a low birth rate and an expanding aging population and you don't deal with that, you end up in a massive crisis. And you can see a demographic crisis in the places like Japan where they haven't had mass immigration. And their economy has now been stagnant for about 30 to 40 years. So we can see that experiment in real time. In terms of migrants, you know, I mean, in terms of criminal offences, the percentage overall of migrants who commit offences is roughly the same. It's proportionate to the British population. Hold on. But again, you're pooling people together in order to do this. So yes, it's true. If you take Swedes and you take Russians and you take Ukrainians and you take Russians, you take people from the Indian subcontinent and you take people from Eritrea and you take people from Somalia and then you average all of them out, yes, you will get the same rate of offending average as the British public. But that is not true when you drill down into the statistics. People from parts of the world where women are treated as second-class citizens, where, like in Afghanistan, they're effectively not allowed to go outside without a chaperone. People from those parts of the world. So people fleeing the Taliban. Hold on. Hold on. People from those parts of the world, we know this in the same studies that you talk about. And if the government allowed us to look into this and measure these things properly, we would see even more so. People from these parts of the world commit sexual offences, for example, at a way higher rate than the average British person. Way higher rate. And so the average British person might be saying, why are we bringing them in? I think, I mean, Afghanistan's got an interesting example. I've met Afghan refugees. You like studies, so talk about the stats that I'm giving you. People from certain parts of the world commit sexual offences at a much higher rate than the average British person. Why would we bring them here? Well, I mean, in terms of Afghanistan, for example, because, I mean, firstly, as I've said, overall, there is no disparity. I mean, you said it's about averaging out. Yes, it is. You said it's about averaging out. I'm saying people from parts of the world who are women are not treated as equal citizens. No, I'll give you an example. No, OK, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. No, I think it's a really good example. Take, because this comes up in terms of the grooming scandals and so on, because you mentioned that. You mentioned that. What is the rate of child sex offences amongst Pakistani British men? Tell me, what's the, what percentage, no, what percentage? Can you just come back to, No, I am, I am. I'm getting, no, but that's, no, no, you're not. Owen. Yes, I am. Just come, no, you're not. You're saying people from, you brought up grooming guys, which I mentioned half an hour ago. Just come back to the question. No, no, I am though. Owen, could you just come? I'm giving an example. Owen, everyone watching can see that you're dodging. No, I'm not dodging. Just come back. Do you think Pakistan is an example? Is it, is Pakistan, no. Can you come back? Is Pakistan one of those places? Can you come back to, is Pakistan one of those places? Just come back to the argument I made. I am. People commit sexual offences at different rates depending on where they come from. Is Pakistan an example of a place you regard as a place? I don't have the stat that you're asking. Okay, I'm not, I don't, you don't need to answer the stat. You answer this question instead, please. Do you regard Pakistan as a country in the world where there are problematic attitudes towards women? Do you? Which I think. Do you? Yeah, I think Pakistan is a place where there's a need for struggle, obviously, like lots of countries against misogyny and so on. But I'm asking. So it's a place where there's a need for struggle against misogyny and so on. Is it a place where people treat women badly? Is it? The role of women in Pakistan is, well, I mean, they've had, they've had a female leader unlike the United States of America. Is there, is there a huge problems of misogyny and so on in Pakistan? Yes. Okay, so we agree then. So what's your point? Because if you look at sex offenses committed by British Pakistani men, they are completely. I'm not talking about British Pakistani men. I'm talking about immigrants. Okay, talking Pakistani full stop. People of Pakistani origin. These are British people. Would you agree that they're British? Yes, but I'm saying. So maybe different. No, this includes people who were born here or who have moved here from Pakistan. That's not who I'm talking about. Who are you talking about then? This is ridiculous. Immigrants. We were talking about immigrants. So you consider British Pakistanis immigrants? No. You're saying that people from other parts of the world, when they come here, some commit sexual offenses more than others because of where they're from. And then you brought up British Pakistanis who are British and therefore not immigrants. The statistics include people who were born in Pakistan and are migrants and people who were born in this country who are British. The official statistics. I'm talking about first-generation immigrants who are not British. People who are quote-unquote fresh off the boat from Somalia and Eritrea commit sexual offenses at a higher rate than the British population. But that would lean in the case. For example, of those who are of Pakistani heritage in this country, that would mean they would have had an outsized impact on those offenses. But they don't. They're not immigrants. They're British. No, the statistics include people born in Pakistan and people who were born. Not the statistics. Which statistics then? Which ones are you talking about? You're talking about such small sample sizes. You can't talk about them and you can't extrapolate them. Which ones? There are studies from all over Europe where you're actually allowed to measure this. We can bring them up on the screen for people watching, which show. You shouldn't do that because you need to know. You're not allowed to bring the studies to me. You can't just say. Okay, no worries. Dean, could you get my phone, please? We'll get Vanessa out to show us this. So Owen, we took a little break to look this up. I just want to remind you where we paused this, okay? I made the very simple argument, which is people from certain countries around the world, particularly countries where treatment of women is not what we would all like it to be, are more likely to commit sexual offenses. And I think a lot of people are reasonably going to ask in that situation, why would we not be more selective about. Is that a fair summation of where we parted? Yeah, yes, I was going there. Cool. And I said there are studies that show this, and we argued, you tried to bring up British Pakistanis, and I made the point, well, I'm talking about immigrants because British Pakistanis are British, blah, blah, blah. So here are the studies from Europe that I'm talking about. Finland, there was a study in 2017, 2018, that found that foreign-born offenders represented 27.2% of suspects versus 7% of the population. So there's several times more likely than native Finns to commit that offense. In particular, Iraqi men are 12.8 times more likely to be suspected of a sexual offense. And for specifically, I think it's 1.31 per thousand people versus 0.08 for Finnish men. These studies are replicated in Germany, in Sweden, and in Europe. And by the way, we're not allowed, the government does not collect these statistics deliberately in this country. And many people would argue that's to conceal the reality to, quote, protect community cohesion. So if. Do you accept that this is, I'm reading out here, this is from Venice AI, all these studies that you asked for. Do you accept this? I don't know those particular figures, but I will take the figures that you just said. So we can accept them for a second. Okay, cool. So hold on. So if it's the case that foreign-born people from certain parts of the world are way, way more likely to commit rape, and we all, I think, agree rape is bad, wouldn't we be reasonable to be more selective about allowing people from that part of the world to come here? So the problem is. Because it's not controlling for age in particular. No, these studies do control for age, and it reduces some of the effect. I've got, I mean, okay, because I'm looking here. So it says, for example, and. It reduces some of the effect, but you. Germany is a really striking example, for example, because that, it dramatically reduces it. But it's still significantly different to the native population. That's, I mean, for example, a 2026 peer-reviewed study looked at all 23, 33 countries from 2008 to 23, obviously 2015 being the big. And it found there was no statistically significant relationship between immigration inflows and recorded sexual crime. But that's not what I'm talking about. But you are, because we're talking about the increase in. No, no, no. We're talking. You're backing your own point up. But I'm not, because you're talking. You're not, you're. I've got to be able to answer what you're saying. The figures that I'm talking here, so, for example, it says. I accept what you said, and let me answer it. But we're talking here particularly about. Let me answer it. places with higher levels of immigration. No, no, you just said immigration doesn't seem to increase the number of sexual offences. That matches your earlier statement that overall, immigrants don't commit sexual crimes at a high rate. But it was looking at asylum specifically as well. Well, fine. But that still doesn't change the argument. My argument is not all immigration is the same. And the evidence clearly bears that out. Now, you say, if you include the fact that these people are younger. Young men. Young men. Yeah, because that's what. Yeah, and those are the groups that are more likely to commit sexual offences. Then it's not as skewed. It's still skewed, but it's not as skewed. But that's the same argument you made about the NHS. You say these people are great to have because they're young. And I'm saying. Yeah, but they're young also means they commit at a higher rate. So wouldn't we be more selective? And particularly the point I'm trying to get you to accept is that not all people from all parts of the world are the same. They have different cultural values. And some of those cultural values we might not want here. Well, again, I mean, what you're arguing there is partly about assimilation. No, it's not. It's about. No, it's not about assimilation. With all due respect, it is. Because again, I don't know why we keep dismissing, not least because it keeps coming up in this whole discussion, which is the main discussion. We've had in this country about this whole issue, which is about the issue of grooming gangs, is that. I'm not talking about grooming gangs. Yeah. I'm not. We're talking about sex offences. We're talking about those who commit sex offences. Yeah. Okay. We've accepted, all of us, that in Pakistan, the position of women is significantly worse than it is in this country. We have a large, settled Pakistani population, but we also have large numbers of people arriving from Pakistan. The evidence shows. that they are not more likely to commit sex offences than the overall population. And we've had, obviously, an assimilation of. despite people claiming that Muslims are not assimilated in this country. I know you said they're not assimilated in this country, but you can see. I've said they're not assimilated. When did I say that? You said previously, I looked up, you said about British Muslims not being assimilated. When did I say that? I can look it up if you want. You can if you want. The one stat I've always. Whenever I've talked about this, that I've always given, is I've said that. I quoted The Guardian, which I imagine you're a fan of. Which said that more Muslims have joined ISIS and al-Nusra than have joined the British Army. Right. So I don't think that's evidence of assimilation. But a large number of Muslims are very well assimilated in this country. A large number are not. But I think that part. We have a huge Pakistani population of British Pakistani origin, and we have large migrant flows from Pakistan to Britain, that you don't have, despite what we said about within Pakistan, in terms of problems that women face, not that women don't face problems in this country, you don't see that. And that is to do, obviously, with the fact that you obviously can bring people in from different parts of the world and people can assimilate. The point you make about Afghanistan, I just really have to just make this point, because I think it is absolutely key, is this country helped destroy Afghanistan. We funded the jihadis, the mujahideen, in the 1980s. I don't know if you support that or not. Do you support the West's support of jihadis in the '80s in Afghanistan? I was about. No, but do you? Come on, same, but I oppose it. Look, I'm a geriatric millennial, I don't know how old you are. Yeah, I'm similar age. Okay, we don't need to play around, we don't need to piss around there, come on. You either support it or you don't, in hindsight. I think the West should not. Do I, in hindsight, support the West giving money to the mujahideen? Yes. No. Good, we agree. But so we. No, but we agree. Well, no, that's not a. That's got. Because lots of people still defend that, and they defend that on the basis of bringing down the Soviet Union and all the rest. So that, I mean. But it's not. I don't know. I don't. That's your argument. We helped destroy Afghanistan, therefore we have to accept their rapists. And then, we committed heinous war crimes in Afghanistan. Do you know what we did to Afghanistan? I do. Do you know about the war crimes we committed? I do. Right. So we have to bring in the rapists now. We helped bring in the. No, because the vast majority of Afghan refugees are not rapists. No, they're not. No. And what we have, in my view, is an obligation to people in countries we've helped, in my opinion, destroy. And if you don't want to bring in refugees from those countries, then you should have loudly marched into. I did. I did. Did you march against the war in Afghanistan? I marched the war in Iraq. Against the war in Iraq. Afghanistan was a bit. I'm talking about. Did you support the war in Afghanistan? Do you think we should have gone in. At the time, look, don't do that. I was young. Did you support going into Afghanistan? I didn't have a strong opinion at the time because I was very young, but my view on it was always it would have been better to go in and take out Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda with special forces and surgical strikes. So did you vocally oppose the occupation when it was happening at any point? I was probably, what, 16 at the time. No, no, no. No, you weren't. It ended in 2021. Did you oppose the occupation? I pretty much said. I said on. One time I appeared on GB News. It was a catastrophic mistake. Well, we didn't. Did you. No, no. I'm not saying after it happened. I'm saying during the occupation. Yeah. Did you say any. Did you. What did you do to oppose it? What did you say about it? I was against it. What did. No. Can you. Come on. Can you cite an example of you publicly? Did you protest about it? Did you write articles denouncing it? Did you do videos about the West's occupation of Afghanistan? Did you do any of those things? Oh, and I became a public figure about six years ago. It doesn't. Well, six. Six years ago. Yeah. Since the time I've said it was a mistake. Since I became a public figure, I became a. You were a citizen of this country. Yeah. And you could have used your position to speak out about this. You could have protested. What position? You could have. You could have. So I. Look, I encourage people to use social media as part of activism. There wasn't social media when the war in Afghanistan started. There was social media in 2021. There was social media in 2020. There was social media in 2019. Don't be silly. You're being ridiculous. And I've always said I opposed what happened in Afghanistan. So what did you. Did you post. Did you. Did you use whatever limited position you have in British society? Did you post a posing? Did you say anything opposing it? This is ridiculous, aren't you? It isn't because it isn't. Do you think everyone in this country who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan is tweeted about it? Is that what you think? No, but I think that if you're someone who's vocally now speaking out about taking refugees in from Afghanistan, then you should, in my opinion, have taken a position against what we did to that country. Hold on. And we committed heinous atrocities against people. We shot innocent people. I hear you. What war crimes did we commit? Did you hear about the war crimes? No, no, we're not going to play this game. It's not a game. It's not a game. Just stop. We helped. You're just talking over me now. You're talking over me. I am not. We helped wreck Afghanistan. I accept that. We've got to take responsibility. I agree with you. So take responsibility. I am taking responsibility. So what I'm saying to you is I can only take responsibility for my actions. My actions on this, I opposed it when I became a public figure, and I've always said so. However, I do not. Look that up. Owen, just stop talking. However, I do not think we should not take any refugees from Afghanistan. I've never said so. So what's the argument? I have never said so. What's the argument? I said very clearly in language, and people can go back and watch it, we should be more selective about accepting people from certain parts of the world where we clearly see, as we do in the studies which you challenged, right, we see clearly in the studies that people from certain countries, hold on, hold on, from Iraq, for example, in the study that I quoted you, are 13 times more likely to commit sexual offenses in that study. Should we not be a little bit more selective before letting people in from that part of the world? Look, as I spoke about in that book, as I spoke about that book, I went to Iraq, I went to Baghdad, and when people found out I was British, they said to me, you destroyed this country. Our forces in that country include the Americans predominantly, but also the British, I'm afraid to say. You're dodging the argument. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not at all. I'm saying we have a responsibility. You're saying we should be more- Selective. Selective. Yeah, but what do you mean by selective? I can tell you. If you're interested, I can tell you. How are you screening for people who are potentially rapists or not? I don't understand. There's an argument here. What's your argument? Well, one of the arguments is you might be more careful about who you're learning. That means you do extra checks. That means that you don't let in people with certain criminal convictions, which we currently do. That means that we don't- How do you do that? How do you do what? Sorry, I'm really, I'm interested in what you're arguing. If you are right- Because you don't disagree, as far as I can tell. I'm trying to work out the disagreement, actually. You don't disagree- If you let me talk, you'll find it out. But you're dragging this out. I am. You support Afghan refugees and people from Iraq. No, I don't. So you don't support any of them coming in? No, that's not what I said. Well, then what are we disagreeing on? What we're disagreeing on is instead of listening, you keep interrupting me and talking over me. Tell me what your policy is. But it doesn't, I'm saying, what does that mean in practice? Tell me. So first and foremost, I think anyone who comes into this country illegally, that is on a small boat, on a lorry, et cetera, is to me immediately far more suspect than anybody else. What's your evidence? What's your evidence for that? I'm telling you my opinion. No, but I'm not interested in opinions. I thought we were doing empirical practice. You've got to let me explain what I'm saying. Why is an Afghan. Oh, and this is just degenerated and you interrupting me all the time. No, it's just you doing. You asked me to explain. I'm trying to explain. So just be quiet for a moment and I'll explain. Calm down, though. Chill out. If you are coming into this country by the first act that you do is you violate the laws of this country, right? You are coming in here deliberately to avoid our immigration system because you can apply for asylum, right? I have friends from. I have friends from all over the world who've come here by applying for asylum. If you don't do that and you come here on a small boat or you come here on a lorry by breaking the laws of this country, it's clear to me that you should be subjected to a far higher standard of scrutiny because you are, in my opinion, far more likely to be doing so in order to get around the immigration system, which would never have let you in in the first place. Before we just talk about applying for asylum, look, am I allowed to ask or is it just going to be just. Okay. So is your argument, first of all, there, that your argument isn't even a blanket rejection of people who arrive on boats? It is a blanket rejection of people who arrive on boats. So is that Afghan. So anyone who's. If they were an Afghan woman, for example, would you reject them? I'm saying you should. Would you? Would you? No, honestly, I'm not trying to trick you. I'm just trying to work out what you're trying to say. Okay, fine. I would definitely not reject an Afghan woman who applied for asylum and is entitled to asylum. No, no, if she arrived on a small boat. How are Afghans supposed to apply for asylum? What we should do is create refugee process. We should create refugee process. Here we go. Great. Look, it sounds to me. When you let me finish, we find out that we actually agree on more, but you keep interrupting and misrepresenting. I'm not trying to misrepresent. It's not. Because originally what you were saying is we need to do extra checks. I said we need to be selective. We'll just ring up the Afghan police and ask if they've got in trouble with the authorities. I don't think that's going to work, obviously. Obviously, the problem we've got is we shut down safe and legal routes. That's why you've got a massive increase in people arriving by small boats. In the early 2000s, the rate of people arriving in this country as asylum seekers is not actually that different. It's at its peak from the level of today, for example, that they weren't arriving on small boats. What we did is we closed down safe and legal routes. So when I met Afghan refugees. I don't know if you've met these people who arrived on these boats. Have you ever spoke to an Afghan refugee? The guy who runs the taxi company that I use all the time in my local city is an Afghan refugee. Who arrived on a small boat, I'm asking. I don't think he arrived on a small boat, which is why I. But have you spoke to any. Okay. Okay, fair enough. Look, I went to Calais in 2015 and I spoke to people who were there. The reason they were arriving they're moving to Britain is they speak English, almost all of them. I mean, they spoke English very fluently. They don't speak French. People from the Democratic Republic of Congo stay in France because they speak French. That, you know, is a fairly straightforward explanation for that one. And, you know, in one case, I met a 15-year-old boy whose father had been murdered by the Taliban. In another case, I met someone who'd lived in Britain for. He came here as a kid. And then he was deported from the country because he was classed as an illegal migrant. And he went back to Afghanistan and then he was jailed by the Taliban. And then he fled. And then he. Sorry, he wasn't jailed by the Taliban. He was captured and tortured by the Taliban, I believe, at the time, because this was before the Taliban took over the whole of Afghanistan. Then they took over parts of Afghanistan, not the big cities. These were, you know, we destabilized a country. We both agree, as far as I can tell, that we need to say, you know, we need to say, you and legal routes which would then reduce the number of people arriving by small boats so i don't know i don't really know what the discreet i can explain to you what the disagreement is i believe those numbers should be far smaller than they are so an example uh just for so for people understanding the context of this when i came to britain in 1995 uh 96 actually is probably more accurate there was about 55 000 people coming here legally every year legally so we say again 1996 total net immigration into britain was about 55 000. we now have hundreds of thousands of people coming legally and we also have tens of thousands maybe more than 55 000 a year coming illegally yeah it's a very small proportion of overall immigration but yeah that's true overall levels of immigration have massively increased yeah my view is we have society we wouldn't be able to afford public services they wouldn't function just our economy would collapse we wouldn't support a raging population if they didn't but not what not what's happening i'm having flashbacks to different the giant here um fair enough 55 000 people a year were coming totally legally yeah when i came 30 years ago right now that's the number of people who come here legally now you can say it's a small proportion of the total immigration but that's only because overall immigration has shut up and the point i'm making to you is we now have more people coming illegally than were coming legally 30 years ago and don't you think that that is a far better explanation of why people are upset about immigration than your argument i i think we shut down legal and safe routes which had consequences and we then helped destabilize the middle east and also central asia we we we shouldn't have we shouldn't have done what we did in afghanistan sure we shouldn't have invaded iraq and slaughtered huge numbers of people i agree um and if we hadn't have done that then we wouldn't have large numbers and libya where huge numbers of people i mean without libya people wouldn't even be passing that that route is obviously absolutely essential to people crossing the mediterranean my view is that if we don't do that we're not going to be able to do a lot of the things that we should be able to do we're going to be able to do a lot of the things that we should be able to do and that is you know if you if you break it you own it and you shouldn't go around launching wars which slaughter hundreds of thousands of people more i mean in iraq alone the excess death toll is about 400 000 uh that was back in 2013. uh you shouldn't commit uh terrible crimes destabilize entire countries and then when people from those countries arrive then demonize them and i would know i'm not demonizing anyone well you're i'm not i haven't when have i demonized anyone well i mean we're saying is that all afghan men should be seen as potential rapists i think that is what i said you are because that's not what that is i said do you understand what per capita that's the de facto i said we should be more selective well look i look i believe we should have safe legal routes and that those safe and legal routes should judge cases based on their merits so i don't i don't disagree with you on that i don't see what the disagreement is in that sense um i don't think a lot of your supporters would support opening safe and legal routes the reason we we had safe and legal routes for ukraine for hong kong for the vast majority of the world's days were all gone you can't apply for asylum in the vast majority of the world to britain you just cannot do that so people should just break our the only way you can do that is it's not breaking the law well it's not it's you know it's they're breaking into our country you don't have to you don't have to claim asylum under international law in the first country you end up but they are breaking our laws they're crossing our borders without we shouldn't have we shouldn't have broken international and invaded iraq we literally broke into that entire week sorry into afghanistan yeah we broke into iraq and we slaughtered well not very vocally but i found things but we slaughtered huge numbers of people right we destabilized those countries and that entitles them now to break into our country. What I find so offensive about what you're saying is millions of people were displaced because of those wars, and the vast majority of them stayed either internally displaced or in their poorer neighboring countries. Your argument, your argument in practice is the countries surrounding the nations we destabilized, they should bear the brunt. They're the ones who should carry the burden of what we did. Why? Why should Pakistan, which opposed the war in Iraq, and for example, well, sorry, Pakistan, Afghanistan, why should Pakistan, why should that be the place where millions of Afghan refugees, although the Pakistani regime has been driving them back to Afghanistan, why should they take in millions of Afghan refugees when we're the ones who invaded and occupied Afghanistan? Why in the case of Iraq, why should its neighboring countries take in all those refugees when they didn't invade Iraq? Why? What's your argument is, we did the displacing, you accept that, but you're saying that we should take in all those refugees when we didn't invade Iraq. It's the poorest, the poorer countries surrounding those nations, which do take almost the vast majority, the tiny percentage of Afghan refugees and Iraqi refugees come here. There were millions of Afghan refugees, although were in Iran and Afghanistan, sorry, in Pakistan. There were millions of Iraqi refugees, which fled into the neighboring countries. A tiny percentage, a tiny percentage came to this country. And you think that's a huge, a huge outrage and they're breaking into this country. But they are. Well, again, we shouldn't have broken into their countries. I just want you to talk uninterrupted for a very long time. I am perfectly happy for us to accept, you know, Afghan translators and other people who helped coalition forces. And there will be other people who are at particular risk, et cetera, et cetera, particularly if they care fully vetted. But what I'm saying to you is, just because the West did this or did that, does not entitle people to break into our country against, Owen. Against the will of the people of this country. Offer them safe and legal rights, then. The people of this country have, you believe in democracy, I think, right? The people, hold on. See, the moment I say anything, you begin interrupting. The people of this country have voted over and over and over and over. Okay. To reduce immigration and to get illegal immigration to zero. Why is it right to allow, you clearly support these people breaking into our country. Who are you to overrule the wishes of the British people? I've said that I support safe and legal routes. I don't want people across the challenge. Dangerous for them, for a start. I don't want that. So they shouldn't be coming. Open safe and legal routes, and then you reduce the number of people arriving. I'm happy to open a refugee processing center. The problem is, it wouldn't let in 90% of the people who are coming. Well, I don't know how you're plucking those, where you're plucking those statistics from. Because most of the people who are breaking into this country are not coming from war zones. Why was it under the. They're economic migrants. Most of them are economic migrants. Huge number. Well, we've already gone through, actually, you know, the numbers of people arriving from. Afghanistan and Iraq are two of the great sources of people arriving in this country. I don't think they're economic migrants. I don't think anyone would say that's a reasonable way of describing. I said the majority of the people who are breaking into this country are economic migrants. Most of them are not. They're mostly coming from places, actually, of. places which have huge conflict, all dictatorships, some of which supported by the West, I would know. What about Soweto, when you saw hundreds, tens of thousands of people breaking into Spanish territory in North Africa? Are they fleeing Morocco the way over through? No, they're just economic migrants. They want to come to Europe because it's a better quality of life. No one is arguing that you should. Well, I'm not, because I think the caricature you're making is that I just. we should abolish borders. In the world in which we live, we have abolished borders. You can't do. Well, we haven't, because otherwise, as I've noted, you wouldn't have the vast majority of the world's refugee population in the poorest or poorer countries. Because they can't get here. They're not willing to pay people smugglers tens of thousands of euros to get here. Well, I mean, yes, they tend to be better off people who end up coming here, actually. Yes, you're right. And actually. You know, the issue is that the vast majority of refugees fleeing our wars end up in other countries which didn't cause the wars. You've made that point. Fine. No, I know, but that's why I think it's just. I think it's an absurdity because your view is we should just trash these countries and then we shouldn't. That's not my point. My point is we should never have trashed these countries. We should have shoulder the responsibility. No, that's not my point. My point is we should. And it is in practice. My point. Oh, and my. Well, in the same way, I could say your point is that people should be allowed to break into Spanish territory. It is. Oh, and my. No, I've said safe and legal routes would stop that from happening. I don't want people crossing the Channel. It's really dangerous for them for a start, as I've said. But when people arrive here, I think their case has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. And I'd note, under a Conservative government, why. Why are you pointing me out? I'm not a Conservative. No, no, no, no, no. But, ah, no, this is. No, this is the point I was going to make. A Conservative government which wanted to reduce immigration, it did. Why didn't they? What happened? Why was there a massive gap, I'm asking? Oh, the same economic argument you made earlier. I mean, we've had senior Conservative politicians, like Shrella Brahman, she was in the studio last week, making this very same point. The reason the last Conservative government refused to cut mass immigration is they didn't want to have to accept that total GDP would fall. No, they knew the economic consequences would be severe. They wanted to reduce immigration. That was their whole. That became the whole thing. They knew that because we measure economic activity with GDP and not GDP per capita. I'm telling you what they said. Can I finish? Can I finish telling you what they said? They knew those economic sectors and those public services would collapse without them. Can I just tell you what they told us? Is that okay? Who are you talking about? Shrella Brahman. Oh, God. She was the Home Secretary. Yeah, I know. She's now a reformed politician. Yeah, yeah, but she was the Home Secretary at the time. We had Liz Truss on the show. We've had Boris Johnson on the show. We've had all these people on the show and we've asked them all these questions, so I'm telling you what they said. Is that okay? Can I do that? Yeah, that's totally fine, but these are all self-serving comments by them. Well, you said, "What did they tell you?" I'm trying to tell you, right? What they all said was, "The reason that you can't cut mass immigration is that the treasury doesn't want you to because then the headline economic figure of GDP goes down and then people get upset because the media will be able to say you tanked the economy." Can I say why I think they didn't, face-to-face? Oh, so you didn't want to know why they said it. You just wanted to express your- You see, I studied history and what we were always told to do is not to take a source at face value. You look at the context. You look at the context and their purpose, and particularly self-justification by historical figures. You don't just accept what they say. We accept the headline polling figure that most people in this country want immigration to do. We accept that, don't we? Yes. Yeah. What happens when you start polling people about the main chunks of immigration? What happens? I don't know what you're talking about. The main subsets of immigration, for example, foreign students, that is a massive subset of immigration. When you get 40 billion pounds a year into this country, you poll people about foreign students. They go, "Do you want to get rid of them?" "No, I don't want to get rid of them." Then you keep going. You go, "What about people from Ukraine and Hong Kong?" "No, no, no, no." That's again, we've already got here, by the way, that is a vast chunk of people arriving in this country already. And then you start asking people about health care workers, nurses. When you poll people about the actual subsets of immigration, people, by large margin, say, "No, I don't want to get rid of them." "No, I don't want to get rid of them." They say they don't want to remove those migrants. But you end up with the vast majority of immigration. And that's the problem. I can tell you exactly the immigration I'd want to reduce. It's very simple. It's a tiny proportion of immigration. Whatever you say will be a tiny proportion of immigration. It's not a tiny. Well, Owen, you've got to understand, a lot of people from your position try to paint the opposition to immigration in this country as an extreme position, an extreme view. I haven't said that. You haven't said that here, but I think you have said that in the past. No, no, I just. I haven't. I object to the scapegoats, to give migrants problems they cause. I object to that. So do I. So do I. Okay, well. And I've said so repeatedly. I just have a video out last week saying immigration debates become too white and white. The problem is, if the Conservative government had massively reduced the number of foreign students, then they would have lost tens of billions. They would have lost billions of pounds, which they then wouldn't have. But this is why I say, I can tell you the sensible immigration that should be reduced. First of all, yes, it's true that a lot of those foreign students are paying high university fees. A lot of them were not going to legitimate universities. And the evidence is very clear on this. There were all sorts of fake schemes to get people into this country under fake student visas who are not actually studying. The same thing is true with some key workers. We've seen restaurants in parts of the country which have had 30 people come in under sort of key worker visa, all of this stuff. But really, it's very simple. The way I would reduce it, I would stop all illegal immigration because it's illegal. People shouldn't be coming. You're talking about tiny percentage. Let me just finish. Tiny percentage of people. Well, it's more people than were coming here when I came here a year. That's quite a lot. Okay, fair enough. Can I just finish? I know, but I thought it was an interview. Well, an interview requires that you listen to me and I listen to you. I am. I have listened to you for a long time and I'm just trying to make one point and you interrupt, okay? So I would reduce fake students. I would reduce the number of people who are coming here illegally to zero because they shouldn't be coming. I would also reduce the number of people, in fact, not reduce. I would just say there shouldn't be any benefits for foreign nationals in this country. There's no reason. Let me finish and you can argue with it if you want. When I came to this country and I was a student, I had a stamp in my visa which said no recourse to public funds. That should be the case. If you can't support yourself in this country, you shouldn't be here. It's just difficult. If you do these long. It's just such an important point you've raised, but. They're not that long. Okay, go. Keep going because that's really. Go for it. Go on. Right. At the same time, I would make sure that people who come here who are net contributors, i.e., they're paying more in tax than they're taking, if they are compatible and et cetera, et cetera, we take those people. So, that's the point. That would be a pretty sensible immigration policy, in my view, that wouldn't reduce the good students and all the rest. So, you're going to take tax credits off all those care workers for you and drive them all into poverty? Is that what you're going to do? No. away all benefits from foreign nationals yes so you're now gonna if you're foreign national in this country so unless you're part of a very specific sectoral program where we are really okay yeah so no well i'd be fascinated to know what you mean by that so foreign national so people who work in the care sector have very very low wages we most benefits in this you know it's not unemployment benefits that make up the working age bill it's for example tax credits which cost vast sums of money where the government steps in because the gap between people's income and their ability to live is too big because they're not paid enough the care sector depends on foreign nationals so it does at the moment yeah well it does depend on it at the moment fair enough until we suddenly have this massive army of british-born care workers which we have a million young people and they could be doing those low-paid jobs it doesn't get invaluable life that's a separate discussion it's not it is a separate discussion because it hasn't happened you yeah i'm talking about the here and now okay i'm saying would you strip away tax credits and all other in-work benefits for care workers who literally the whole country what in an already underfunded understaffed care sector if you're a foreign national i'm not saying you do it all overnight but a phased in policy absolutely so that so then they will all leave the country and then we won't have any care that's correct well who's going to look after all those elderly people now then who's going to look after no tell me i'm about to if you let me say it okay so what i'm saying is first of all of course like with every sector of the economy you have certain carve-outs for certain groups that you are okay with but on the broad sweep of things i'm perfectly fine so are we saying so i'm finished for god's sake do care workers keep their in-work benefits or not i'm asking oh i'm asking are you interviewing me here well it feels like i am now yeah yeah well maybe you should stop well it's because these long long discursive talks i don't know i'm just asking it doesn't i'm saying i got about a sentence okay my answer okay i'm perfectly happy to have a policy that foreign nationals in this country do not have access to the benefit system there may be some temporary carve-outs for certain industries where that transition will take some time but in a country in which we have a million young people who are neither in employment nor in education the idea that we can't find uh you know people make this argument about the hospitality sector oh it's completely dependent on foreign labor it is it is you can't go into a restaurant in this country without encountering someone who's foreign however those jobs when i when i was uh first when i first came here were being done by british people and yes they've all now been replaced by people from other countries who are happy to work in worse conditions for less money it's true but the moment you prevent the system from topping up the wages of those foreign people who are here british people will do those jobs and the prices by the way will go up and so we'll work in conditions is your genuine argument i just really want to absorb what you're saying here yeah are you saying that you're going to take away in work benefits from migrant workers in the care service hospitality retail which will leave there's no question them unable to live in and support pay their rent and and look after their kids they will the vast majority of them almost certainly leave the country they will no longer that's the purpose of the policy yeah and then you're saying that all of a sudden this now all these sectors with millions in some case if you put top them together of of migrant low-paid workers who are propping up these sectors which are often we are probably which are governments which are understat no we're subsidizing them because their wages are too large we're subsidizing the bosses who aren't paying them properly but all of a sudden you're saying these sectors will suddenly there'll be all these people in this country to just start looking after elderly people uh keeping hospitality running they will just that all of that will happen and those industries won't just collapse are you serious if you do it overnight oh and just hold on you're misrepresenting the argument saying you do it overnight i said phased in how long how long a period because you're betting the house on on on all these sectors being able to get care workers retail workers hospitality workers to fill in what you're saying will be i mean we're talking a you know potentially millions of people migrant workers i don't know how many on in-work benefits do you notice that i think the real disagreement here is i don't think you understand how the market works which is maybe why the basis of your entire world view do you know how the market works if there's a shortage of labour in a particular sector particularly a low-skilled sector like hospitality it's not i've been a waiter it's not that hard let's be honest right what happens is if you can't find enough staff what do you do why are they understaffed can i just finish this argument yeah what happens is when there's not enough staff for a particular job what do you do as an employer you put the wages up so that you attract more people and when that is the case you make it a more appealing job for people to do so is your genuine argument because it may be the care service you'd accept as understaffed we don't have enough care workers even though we have obviously so your argument is that what will happen is when these foreign care workers at the moment literally including i'm sure people watching looking after their elderly parents and grandparents and doing an incredibly difficult arduous job for the very little wages they will now be made literally unwelcome in the country because they won't be able to live they won't be unwelcome they will be welcome because you can't afford if you take away from if you take away people on that low pay if you take away in-work benefits not least when they have families they won't be able to afford to live here um then you're you're arguing that there will be a massive hike in wages and there will be this army of british-born people who will start doing care work retail and hospitality including in companies with very little profit margins if we're going to be really honest about it is that honestly your view that's going to happen and these sectors aren't just going to collapse well if you do it overnight they'll collapse but if you do over time of course that will happen this is i think it's funny talking about economic insanity and problematic it's one of the most insane economic ideas i've ever heard with the market the market if the market works then you wouldn't oh and we run a small business i'm telling you my experience as a business why is the care service onto staff then why aren't they because the wages are too low that's why yeah but if you pay why aren't they improving why aren't they increasing the wages now in order to attack more care workers why isn't that happened for a very simple reason because you are you are getting the government to give poor people from the third world money to come and fill those jobs that's why if you so why aren't they why aren't we getting enough to do it then why isn't the wages are still too low so why yeah but i'm asking if clearly immigration is not filling we do we have all these industries where you still have vacancies yeah so why hasn't they then they increase the wages to increase the number of people working based on the fact that they aren't getting people from these poorer countries to fill these they're getting lots and lots of people from poor countries yes because there's such a massive opposition to immigration you can't bring in people who are going to work for five quid an hour so then then they should improve the wages but they're not but they haven't done that they won't as long as you have cheap foreign labor they will go around yes you're saying if if there are vacancies the market will adjust for that by improving wages I'm saying that is not happening because there are vacancies and they're not improving the way because there's massive downward pressure on wages by having we're going around circles because foreign labor but then that's not enough to deal with the staffing problem we can leave it there I think but all I'm saying is you would you would you would you would our points are crashed the economy in a economy in a most devastating fashion you are not obviously going to get people to suddenly fill all these people can't do those jobs I'm not I'm saying that million people million young people who are not in educational training they can't serve a plate it depends I mean it depends on the circumstances they've got too much ADHD or anxiety well some of them actually are people who are disabled yes some of them are not all of them but also it's not a static population this is the problem as well you don't seem to offer this one million is not these are people who are going in and out of course they're going out of often low so let's get them more jobs that are better paid they're often in low paid insecure jobs or zero hour contracts which is what I don't want fine but the reason they want to build a socialist state like Comrade but the fact is they're an insecure work which is often transient right which is that that's the nature of the service sector in the hospitality sector and all the rest of it sectors and the wages were higher they'd be well no because you're reducing firstly the demand in the economy because there will be less people paying there will be less people paying in the economy that's what you'll do you withdraw from the economy demand by by huge numbers of people leaving the country yeah but that you said yourself they need subsidies just to be able to live yes their wages are too low we are paying them the government circulated in their business that's then circulating the local community people give to foreigners so they spend money here that's what you want I I'm saying those sectors I'm saying no I'm saying those sectors would collapse without subsidies those subsidies are for British people and it doesn't matter where you're from if you're in these low-paid jobs yeah British people most in work benefits are going to British people and it's because wages are too low I want to increase wages which is why I support a strong trade Union movement and that's why I want collective bargaining this is what you should support you should support collective bargaining in the care sector the point about care sector about care bargaining so the point about collective bargaining is it enables workers to use their collective power to improve their wages on the basis the market will not do that that's why it exists and in place like Finland you mentioned it before they have collective bargaining and they have higher wages and so on but what you're arguing in practice would be um it would literally mean millions of people potentially a vast number of people would leave sexes dependent on migrant workers without some huge army of people waiting to fill that's your that's the economy let me say this final thing on it and then we'll move on because we've got to let you go soon uh what I'm saying is over time I would like to replace people who come into this country who can't even earn enough money to pay enough tax to be next to me as contributors with British people doing those jobs my you don't agree I know but can I you don't no no you don't agree I think that's perfectly possible that's our disagreement just quickly lastly just lastly though you do accept because there's lots of costs to that, and one of them is that the working age population will shrink relative to pensioners. You must accept that. It will reduce, yes. Do you not see that imposes really quite steep costs at the same time that you've just collapsed all these industries, by the way? I haven't collapsed any industries. You have, but do you not see that you have let. Which industries have I collapsed? What are you talking about? Care, retail, hospitality, huge numbers of huge. I mean, you have low-paid cleaners. I mean, you suddenly get. We're going back around the circles. Fine. You've said your piece. You accept you get a smaller working age population, and that imposes costs because you have an aging population? Sure. Okay. Okay, fair enough. Owen, thank you so much for coming on the show. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Male suicide. Biggest killer of men under 50 is suicide, and suicide, for anyone who's been touched by it, is just like a nuclear bomb going off in people's lives. And even though the rate of depression and mental distress is higher amongst women, the suicide rate is much higher amongst men. And that's often to do with it being seen as unmanly to talk about people's feelings and problems. There's a stigma attached to it. One thing I've written about before, which I don't think might sound a bit surprising, is homophobia against straight men, because most straight men get homophobic diabetes at some point if they're seen as not manly enough, not aggressive enough, not getting into fights, not talking about women in a degrading way. And, you know, I interviewed straight men who were homophobically bullied throughout their childhood, beaten up, attacked, and all the rest of it, in a way that I wasn't as a gay man. But that has a wider impact because homophobia is used, I think, to enforce gender norms. And one of the ways straight men suffer is talking about feelings and problems is seen as unmanly and gay. So I just, for me, it's about the stigma there, and it's about mental health, and it's about making sure that men who need help and need support get it and feel able to get support. So, Owen, thank you so much for coming on the show. You know, the fact to have someone on from a different point of view, having discussions has been really, really heartening. Thank you so much. Yeah, bless you. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on, mate. Cheers, thank you. Cheers, cheers. And your book is out now, "Owen Jones: The Fall of the West." And, well, we got into such a- How they really lost it. How they really lost it. And we got into such a conversation that we don't have time for substat, but we'll see you again next time. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you again next time on "Owen Jones: The Fall of the West." Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. 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