 Hello. Thank you all for coming. It's a big crowd. Owen Jones is meant to be the chair tonight, but thanks to a diary mix up, he's not here. I am Owen Jones' standing, a phrase that ordinarily would cause me great hurt, but I'm okay with it. My name is John Harris. I write for The Guardian. I make films for The Guardian as well. Most of the time, if not all the time at the moment, they're about Brexit. That's my life really at the moment, even on a Friday fucking night. The title of this event, as you all know, is Brexit and an Orthodox view. By normal British standards, contemporary British standards, this conversation, I guess, is going to be an Orthodox in two ways. I think it's fair to say that the national conversation about Brexit, right, left and centre, tends to be quite parochial. Certainly in line with the kind of British exceptionalism that sat at the heart of the Leave campaign, people are encouraged to believe by rival newspapers, ho, ho, ho, that Brexit is somehow a uniquely British event down to uniquely British factors with a uniquely British story running under it. Clearly that isn't true. It reflects economic, social and political tensions that are happening all across Europe. Paradoxically, Brexit is a deeply European story and the conversation tonight will reflect that. I think as well as that, on the left there is a kind of dejection, a very understandable dejection, which a lot of us feel. I'll ask later whether we've got any Leave voters in. It's always an interesting question. Maybe one or two. On the left there's a dejection about it, I think. In certain quarters may be a resignation. Certainly a resignation is in the Labour Party at the moment. Hopefully for at least some of this conversation we're going to be talking in slightly more optimistic, positive, proactive, forward thinking terms. We're going to talk about what to do, about the situation we find ourselves in, what to do really to take politics in a very different direction from where it's headed at the moment, which clearly causes a lot of us a great deal of worry and concern and anger. Tonight reflects the progress of a campaign, a movement that most of you I'm sure will have heard of, DM25, the Democracy in Europe movement 2025, which aims at a radically different vision, version of the EU and of Europe. They're hosting a big grassroots event in London tomorrow, which is happening at a famous location of sedition and creative thinking in the Conway Hall, where I think the Sex Pistols played once. That starts at 10am, and if you rock up there, I think you'll be allowed in within reason, so the conversation I think will hint at some of that and look ahead to what's going on tomorrow. The plan really is for me to talk to the panellists for maybe 45 minutes or an hour or so, and then because the venue is so big, we're not able to take questions on the floor, but people who I think are here have sent in questions in advance, so we will then tackle the questions that they have sent in. I'm going to introduce you to the panel now. Books by each of whom are available in the foyer. That's actually true. Over on my far left, perhaps suitably, Yanisferyffakis, you will know him. He's an economist, writer, politician, the former Greek finance minister, the author of several books, the latest of which, which I've just completed reading, is an absolute must read. It's called, and the weak suffer what they must, Europe's crisis and America's economic future. Yanisferyffakis, ladies and gentlemen. Next to him is Elif Shafak. She's a Turkish author and writer with a beautiful serendipity. She was born in Strasbourg. She was then raised in Madrid. She's lived all over the world. She now splits her time between London and Istanbul. Of Brexit, she recently wrote, it will have far-reaching ripple effects, more populism, more jingoism. Paradoxically, the art of storytelling will be even more important from now on. That's Elif Shafak. Next to me is Srećko Horvat. He's a philosopher, writer, political activist. He was born in Croatia. It's a common theme emerging here. Shouldn't mention, incidentally, that Yanisferyffakis was telling me earlier on that he saw the Sex Pistols play in 1977, so he's been around the European bloc as well. Srećko was born in Croatia. He spent the first eight years of his life in Germany. He's now regarded as one of the key voices of the new left in the former Yugoslavia. He's the author or co-author of Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism. That's you alone? Is that right? Yes. No, with Igor Sticks, another Balkan guy. Subtitle Radical Politics after Yugoslavia and the co-author with the great Slavozizek of What Does Europe Want? The Union and Its Discontents, which is essentially the question we're going to be discussing this evening. That's Srećko Horvat. So let's start with Srećko going that direction. Srećko, tell me, tell us for five minutes about Brexit Europe, perhaps in the context of the country you call home. Yeah, well, good evening everyone. It's really a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be with Yanis and with Elif and with you. First of all, I have to give a correction. I was born in Croatia, but it was part of a country, of a state which doesn't exist anymore. It is Yugoslavia. Well, in this introductory note, I want to speak precisely from the perspective of Yugoslavia and the collapse of Yugoslavia, which I think might be a very good lesson for the collapse of the European Union, which in my opinion is coming very soon. Brexit is just one of the symptoms in that direction. So what are the commonalities? What is the analogy between the collapse of Yugoslavia and the possible collapse of the European Union? First of all, both European Union and Yugoslavia were formed as peace projects. They came out of the Second World War and similar to the European Union, where at least on paper they wanted to prevent war between France, Germany and then other European countries. Yugoslavia was born out of the big anti-fashist partisan movement. Also one of your guys, Fitzroy McLean, came there because Churchill sent him to kill more Nazis than the partisans killed already. So thanks to Churchill and Fitzroy McLean for helping us. And well, Yugoslavia started also as a peace project and it prevented until the collapse of Yugoslavia war between the Croats, between the Serbs, between the Muslim Bosnians and so on. This is the first analogy. The second analogy and here we come to more interesting stuff is that already in Yugoslavia we had something which is now one of the biggest problems of the European Union, which is the difference between the censure and the periphery. So at the very beginning of this project, of the Yugoslav project, for instance Slovenia was three times more developed than Kosovo. And then in 1989, just before the collapse of Yugoslavia, Slovenia was eight times more developed than Kosovo. It was a very similar situation between the periphery and the censure. The surplus value was going to the censure. Kosovo and from Bosnia were considered gastrobithers who worked in Slovenia. And well, this is one of the other commonalities. There's also another commonality which is the fact that the problems which started on the periphery, which is on the one hand nationalism, on the other hand labour reforms, very soon came to the censure, which is Serbia and Croatia, mainly in Slovenia, which is something what is happening now in Europe as well. You've seen what is happening in Greece. You had first the rise of the extreme right-wing party, Golden Dawn. And then what we can face today in Europe is that you have the rise of extreme right-wing parties all over Europe or something what we might call the rise of the extreme centre. The same with labour reforms, as Janis knows very well. What was being experimented in Greece with the labour reforms is now coming back to the censure as a boomerang to the censure of the European Union. It is enough I just came from Paris to look what allans labour reforms tried to do. On the other hand, the good part of Yugoslavia was of course multiculturalism. We had free religions, Christianity, Islam and Orthodox. We had several languages, although in my opinion it's one in the same language, but we can discuss this later. And of course, the same as the European Union, we had stereotypes. So, as today in the European Union, Germans are considered the ones who work the most. All the statistics shows the opposite. And Greeks, no really, Janis can talk about it later as well. I've lived all the economics and statistics to Janis so I can speak about philosophy and give some dirty jokes. And a dirty joke is coming. So the Greeks were considered to be lazy and you had a very similar situation in Yugoslavia. The Slovenians, the Croats were considered to be the hard workers and the Montenegrin people were considered to be lazy. So I'm warning you, I'm sorry for my French. There is a dirty joke about the Montenegrins. Do you know how the Montenegrin masturbates? He digs up a hole in the earth and he waits for an earthquake. Because they are considered to be so lazy. But well, so as you can see we had the same problems but to come because I think I have only two minutes left. I think what is important to say and I think this is the most important jokes aside, the most important lesson of the collapse of Yugoslavia is the following one. Usually it's regarded and that's why I think this book which you mentioned is important because it gives another perspective on the collapse of Yugoslavia. Welcome to the digit of post socialism. Usually it's considered that Yugoslavia collapsed because of nationalism. But I think it's time to turn it upside down precisely because it's a good lesson for the potential collapse of the European Union. My thesis and not only my thesis but some scholars who are dealing with Yugoslavia now is that actually nationalism was a consequence of the disintegration of Yugoslavia which already happened. In what sense? In the 80s this is not really known and I'm really glad to talk about it in front of a British audience. Yugoslavia from 79 to 88 took six stand by arrangements loans from the International Monetary Fund. The first one was taken when Tito was still alive. The second one in May 1980 when Tito died and it is considered to be the biggest loan the IMF gave to a country to that date. Why is that important? It is important because at that time austerity measures were imposed. The deindustrialisation was imposed. The process of so-called transition from real existing socialism to capitalism which includes privatisation, mass unemployment also started and what you can follow then and here I'm finishing and I think this is the most important lesson for Britain, for Trump and what we are facing with upcoming elections in Holland, in France and in Germany this year. In the 80s there were 200 worker strikes in Croatia with 12,000 people involved. You can say that's nothing. Already the next year the number is double. The next year the number is double. In 87, which is the year of the sixth loan of the IMF you have more than 1,700 worker strikes and 300,000 people involved. So imagine this situation in Britain or in the European Union today that you have almost 2,000 worker strikes happening on an annual basis. So what you can see here and here we come to Trump as well because a guy who was a former banker returns from the US and he turns, and I'm finishing, this is an important point because it brings us directly to the future to Trump and also to Farash and the other guys. A guy comes back and this guy was a former banker he's called Slobodan Milosevic and he turns all these worker strikes where Bosnian people, Muslims, Orthodox people Serb Scrotts were fighting together against austerity measures and he turns it into happenings of the people. And to finish with it, I think the category of the people today you have seen Trump's inauguration speech is the most important category today and what we have to speak today is precisely about the working class especially in the context of Britain. This was very short, we can continue in the discussion. Thank you, Seratsko. In some ways history repeats itself in different ways over and over again. Elif, from your perspective, Turkey is your home country a country which in the worst possible way loom large in the so-called debate around Brexit. Tell me about Brexit from your perspective. Yes, as a Turkish writer I'm very used to defending the EU against nationalists and isolationists in Turkey for many years I had to do that but to be honest I would have never thought that there would come a day when I would have to defend the EU here in the United Kingdom or across the continent, across the European continent. Many people don't seem to understand that the EU is not only about getting the best trade deals. I think it's also about shared ideals, shared values and it is about shared memory, the memory of a past that's so turbulent and so recent that its ghosts are still with us, they're still here. I think the Turkish case is very important. As a country it's very complicated, it's very multi-layered and many times it has been regarded as a buffer zone between the Middle East and the Balkans and recently of course between the Syrian war and the European shores. It's worth taking a very close look at Turkey's trajectory because it holds incredibly important lessons for all of us around the world, especially in Europe. In other words I think it's important to understand how liberals and democrats and secularists in Turkey have been defeated because that's how we feel today. We feel very abundant, we feel very forsaken. As you know Turkey was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious empire that lasted for more than 600 years and then came the nation state. One of the cement, the ideologies of the nation state was nationalism, the idea that we were all of us same. The story of Turkey's recent political history in some ways is the story of the loss of cosmopolitanism, the loss of diversity. I have observed that this comes at a huge cost and I'm not talking about a financial cost but I think it's a cost that also leaves a big impact on our souls never to appreciate diversity, never to see cosmopolitanism as a value in itself. But more recently when we look at Turkey's dealings with the EU this is a country that has been waiting in EU's waiting room for the longest time possible. It's quite interesting because among all the candidate states it was in Turkey that the public enthusiasm for EU was the highest. In 2004 it was more than 70%. People were eager, people were willing to be part of EU. Today after so many years, after so many zigzags that percentage has fallen dramatically. It's around like 20%. Of course as you know Turkey is going through a very turbulent time. It's a country that has witnessed in the last one and a half years over 35 terror attacks. So much is happening in Turkey so fast that there's barely any time to stop and digest and analyse. It feels as if the next week something else happens then the next day something else happens. So time runs very fast in Turkey. But I think there are particular lessons in the Turkish case. The first is the fragility of democracy because we have had a party that came to power by using the means of democracy and then used its own power in order to suppress all the other voices within democracy. So this so-called pattern of illiberal democracy which we also see in Hungary, in Poland and which is a warning for many other countries across Europe started in Turkey. Democracy is a very fragile system and it's very easy to confuse it with majoritarianism. The Turkish case has also shown us that. You can have a ballot box. You can have the majority in free elections but that in itself doesn't make a system a democracy. For a proper democracy to exist you need other things. You need rule of law, separation of powers, you need women's rights, you need LGBT rights. You definitely need a free and independent media. So without having all these things what we ended up in Turkey with is majoritarianism rather than democracy. In this journey the relationship and the collapse of the relationship with EU has been incredibly important. For that collapse you will remember there was almost a golden moment around 2005 when it seemed possible that Turkey was going to become a member of EU and that golden moment, for me it was a golden moment, is gone, is lost. I am criticising the Turkish government to fulfil the EU criteria but I am also criticising at the same time populist politicians in Europe particularly you will remember in France at the time for using Turkey as a fear card in their elections. This is a pattern that we have seen again and again even with the leave campaign before the referendum and during the referendum. I never forget driving along the road and this big sign you will remember the Turks are coming, 80 million of them, the Turks are coming, they are going to join the EU so it's time for us to leave. So Turkey has always been used as the other in that regard but what the populist politicians don't realise is when Turkey was distanced from Europe this directly worked to the benefit of the isolationists in Turkey and who are they, the nationalists, the Islamists and those who are more benefit from authoritarianism. So I guess what I'm trying to say is isolationism never works, never contributes to democracy. We might be very critical of governments but we must not push the civil society away because now we have these authoritarian elites telling to the Turkish youth you see Europe doesn't want you, Europe doesn't want you and you are Muslims because this is a Christian club and we have to join Shanghai Pact. This is a very dangerous polarization. Just as a last comment, I am very concerned about the surge in populism. I see lots of similarities. Turkey has been a prime example of this but to be honest we will have time to talk about Trump too. To be honest I'm more worried about populism and nationalism in this continent, in the European continent and in America because here it has a longer and a much darker past. Just very briefly there have been several researches but the Pew survey is very interesting. When asked what they thought about diversity many citizens in particularly five European countries and I'm sorry Yannis, Greece is among them so there's Hungary, Poland, Greece, Netherlands, Italy. I'm more sorry than you are. A very high percentage of citizens in this country said because of diversity my country became a worse place and across the European continent a third of Europeans said diversity is not a good thing. So in conclusion all I can say is I come from a country that has lost its diversity and I wouldn't want Europe to make the same mistake. Thank you, Yannis. In the course of the referendum campaign sometimes meet very zealous, remain people the kind who drew the European stars on their face and all kinds of stuff. Maybe it's a bit more complicated than that and the country that always came up first in those conversations that my behest really was Greece. So in this thing that you're saluting is this idyllic, perfect political institution that may have downsides. Imagine if you were Greek from your perspective tell me about Brexit and how from the perspective of Greece and what's happened there in recent years. Well, just for the benefits of full disclosure prior to the referendum in this country I gave speeches in more than 10 cities here in Britain and the DM line, our movements line is in the EU against the EU. It was not very easy message to sell especially in Doncaster. But it was fun trying. Very good people would come to me and say look, we really like you. But why are you asking us to stay in this terribly EU? And I agree with you that Greece is a very good source of insights but allow me to tell my story about this by means of a tale that takes us to a different era. Which is consistent with the format of what we're doing tonight which is effectively, you know, you have a bunch of people from the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire coming to talk to you here in the centre of London about Brexit. Why not? Okay, once upon a time there was this seafaring nation, proud seafaring nation, living under the thumb of a class system, a ruling class that was intimately connected to a cosmopolitan global elite. This is Greece in the early 19th century, not Britain today. And the result of course was nationalism and the Greek Revolution of 1821 which led to a lift in me not being citizens of the same state with the establishment of the modern Greek state, countless wars between Greece and Turkey, and even more wars between Greeks because we are very good at the civil war. Like us. And it is very interesting to compare and contrast that experience of Greece then with Britain today. Because again today what you have in Britain is you have especially the people in the rural areas of England feeling that they live under the thumb of a ruling class which is intimately connected to a cosmopolitan elite which doesn't give a damn about them, treats them like discarded people, and nationalism is yet again the outcome. But there is a profound difference between the two periods. The 19th century was a period during which nationalism was essential for the evolution of capitalism. Without nationalism there would have been no German reunification, there would have been no rule of law that capital needs to accumulate for modernity to come into being. Of course nationalism always comes attached with major human cost. The ethnic cleansing, ethnic cleansing begun in the Balkans in the former Ottoman Empire as a result of nationalism. The creation of the nation state meant that the population had to be cleansed. The Turks from Greeks had to be torn out and returned, returned. There had never been to what is today Turkey, taken to Turkey, and the Greeks from the Asia Minor coast had to be pushed to Greece. So nationalism always comes up with has costs, but at least back then there was a historical process which one can associate with some progress. Liberalism, for instance, was also the result of the same process. Today, however, Nehru, remember once said that this earlier phase of nationalism can be described by saying that nationalism is good in its place back then it was, but it is an unreliable friend and unsafe historian. Well, today nationalism is profoundly more worrisome. And the reason is that the process of capital accumulation, what makes capitalism energetic, and I'm saying this as a left-winger who is extremely critical of capital, but nevertheless, when you live in capitalism and capitalism loses its energy, you end up with a depression, with deflationary forces, with all those elements which contributed to Brexit, because I can't see my clock. You've got about two minutes. Okay. Why did Brexit really happen? It's got nothing to do with the European Union. It happened because of two reasons. In voluntary underemployment in large parts of Britain, of England, which is the bitter price for austerity, and involuntary migration, both internal and from outside. People from the north of England do not come to London for the theatre scene, and Bulgarians do not come to Britain or Greeks or Portuguese or Turks because of the weather. They come because they must, because there is a capitalist crisis, there is a crisis of European capitalism creating the lowest level of investment in the history of the post-war era. In Britain. In Germany. You only need to state this to realise how serious things are in Germany. Interest rates in Germany are negative. Do you know what this means? People pay the government to have their money, and the government is not using it to invest. And the private sector is not using it to invest. So investment is the lowest that there has ever been. The reason why we have such a low quality of jobs, such a low quality of social housing, of education, of health is because of the lowest level of investment since 1945. And that, I'm afraid, is a little bit like climate change. It is not a problem that can be dealt with within Britain, within Germany, within France. In the same way that if we are going to be successful in addressing climate change, we have to coordinate our actions along the lines of a progressive, from an ecological point of view agenda, the same thing applies in the context of creating the circumstances that will allow people to live in Doncaster in dignity without having to migrate to London, or to live in Bulgaria, in Turkey, in Greece. In other words, we are in this together. It's a joint responsibility project. This is why we are saying, in this EU, against the establishment which is making the EU disintegrate with human costs all over the place. Thank you. I want to say that I'm from the north of England and I moved to London partly for the theatre scene. Can we just have that on the record? There are some weird people who do that. Granted. There is culture in the north. The day after the referendum, the 24th, when I woke up and I cried, as guardian writers are contractively obliged to do, there was a certain ambivalence in my mind at the same time because I felt this was a reckoning. It was the wrong reckoning, it was an awful reckoning, but there was something righteous at the core of it perhaps that was inescapable as much as I was very sad and frightened by it, which was that people who had been ignored for years and years and years had said stop ignoring us and that's what... They weren't the whole of the Brexit vote by any means, but that's what took it over the line. Stretchco, did you have any sort of similar feelings about that? Can you see what I mean when I talk about that? Well, I don't think it's a specific British problem. You can see this all over Europe. You can see it with Trump in the US and there's someone who has also left this. I have to say it's a consequence of the failure of the left, of the liberals and the social democrats because it's precisely the left, the liberals and the social democrats who abandoned the working class and also the millennials and the young people. And I think it's a big task in the near future because it might be too late if you think about the long future and as Cain said in the long term, we are all anyhow dead. So it's a task we have to do in the near future. How to approach the working class? I mean these people here, all of us here, we belong to a specific class. We belong to frequent flyer activists class. Some of you also go to theatre or to concerts and so on. I go to punk hardcore concerts as well. I don't listen so much classic music at Yanis. So we are a bit different, but still I think the problem is and I think that that's also one problem. I also travel around UK, so I went to Port Talbot to film a documentary for Al Jazeera about the problems of the European Union and what I really despised during all these, you know, Daily Sun and all the big yellow papers in Britain speaking about Independence Day and so on was the demonization of the working class. So when I went to Port Talbot, I expected demons, vampires there, people who are racists who will kill me because I'm from Croatia, and I sat down in a pub with them and they were mentioning Cain's. People who are workers who are trade unionists and these people voted Brexit as well. So this is something interesting and I think we have to analyse this and I think the task for political activists is precisely to bring the working class back. But to finish, it's a failure of the left, go to France as just came from France, look at the social democrats. How can Oland be called a socialist if he's doing a labour reform which is austerity labour reform? You had that in Britain with the third wave with Blair as well, you have it all over and unfortunately some so-called radical left parties in Europe are also turning into social democrats. So I think this is the biggest task to anyone who wants to consider himself as a progressive and what we are trying to do in DM is not only to bring radical left in this nest but also to bring honest conservatives if you want, social democrats, liberals because what I think from my experience of Yugoslavia, you know, when the siege of Sarajevo was happening it was happening one hour away with a flight from Vienna, from Rome from the metropolis of Europe and no one believed it could happen well we had the longest siege of a city since the Second World War which lasted more than three years and I think something similar because we are in the state of something what in psychoanalysis would be called fetishes disavowal something similar could be happening in Europe already this year and I would call it war I mean just to give one fact, one month ago there was the biggest import of arms to Germany from the US which is now being dispersed in Poland and the Ukrainian-Russian border since the collapse of the Berlin Wall so I think this should scare us and as Jani said, ecological crisis potential of war, refugee crisis this is not something which can be handled on the national level it can be only handled on the international level I've been told to finish on an optimistic note this is going to take some manoeuvre in I fear but um... OK I'll cut you in a minute Elef, how did you feel about Brexit in its immediate aftermath as somebody who's not from Britain, England who lives here did you feel different about the country the morning after the vote happened? You know if we take a step back and think about all the events the chain of events that caught many journalists scholars, foreign experts international experts and economic experts by surprise you will remember Arab Spring how it started with a lot of optimism what were the expectations and how quickly it turned into Arab winter you will remember how the financial crisis caught so many people by surprise interestingly the refugee crisis was also regarded by shock and surprise even though it took years in the making I mean the Syrian war it was boiling and brewing in front of our eyes year after year and there came a tipping point and then we had the refugee crisis but again it took us by surprise then came Brexit it wasn't expected by many people many intellectual people many educated people then came Trump again it wasn't expected so I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe there's something a little bit wrong with the way we approach things maybe we are all very much in our own little islands in our own little mental ghettos and we need to break these echo chambers that somehow do not communicate I find it very important that we pay more attention to culture not only to economy because when you look at the factors for instance in Poland it became a big issue of immigration Poland is not a country where there are lots of immigrants we are talking about a country that has 97% white Catholic population it's not like immigrants are their number one problem but it was a big issue in their national election campaigns it does tell me that it's not only about the facts it's also about the perceptions it's also about people's feelings it's also about people's emotions and I am very well aware that emotion is a subject that is underestimated and belittled in mainstream political theory but in general we on the left liberal democrat progressive circles I don't think we have done a very good job in terms of connecting with people's emotions we have to understand that this is the age of anxiety this is the age of angst and fear and many people yes they are worried about whether their children will be able to find a job in two or three decades yes they are worried about refugees or immigrants or about losing their own social fabric as writers we are very anxious creatures I can never belittle someone else's anxiety and I think it is a mistake to belittle emotions what we need to do because we also should be talking about and focusing on what can be done from now on we need to put more emotional intelligence on the table I think and for me emotional intelligence is not the opposite of rational intelligence it's an intersection of both so we need to talk to people's heads and hearts at the same time because this is not only about economy this is not only about statistics or facts it is very much about identity politics about emotions and perceptions and feelings I mean as always happens the best example was the American election of I forget because I blanked it out 2004 whenever John Kerry was the Democratic candidate that the right has all the emotion and the left speaks in desiccated numbers and the left loses which is kind of the liberal left is kind of partly the story of the referendum campaign I mean if we want to stop these populist demagogues we have to speak the language of emotions better that's clear Yanis, A what do you think of that and B the idea that something had to give and it was this you mean Brexit absolutely look speaking of emotions if you really want to understand Brexit just go and watch a Ken Loach movie I mean the facts and figures may help but you really do not understand the hard economic and social reality that gives rise to outcomes like Brexit like you know a good movie or if you really want to understand the great depression before you read Keynes read John Steinbeck the great of wrath and if you do that then you will understand that in a seat somewhere in some constituency where Labour used to represent people and after the years of Blair and Brown it made absolutely no difference whether they elected Labour member or Tory member to their lives suddenly they had an opportunity to annoy the establishment it's really very simple when I was standing in front of them arguing the case for what I'd like to refer to us and Dean refers to as the policy of constructive disobedience in other words, lead with ideas lead with moderate proposals of how the world could be different tomorrow morning not nothing pie in the sky and if the establishment says no disobey just go into a campaign of civil disobedience or in my case when I was a minister governmental disobedience and they would look at me and they liked everything I said but you know what they thought in their minds they didn't tell me because they were very nice to me but I'm sure that this is what they thought that's all very nice but if we vote for remain nothing is going to change but that was right wasn't it? completely right because we folks we speak to audiences like this one and like the ones in Leeds and York and so on and so forth but these people have to live with a particularly brutish and nasty insurgency that has taken over government some decades ago and treats them like fodder and we are too useless politically as the left as the progressives to threaten the Tory establishment and to have any chance of being elected and as long as we remain unelectable they will only have the opportunity of rubbing the face of the establishment into some dirt by voting for Brexit so I completely understand it and the demonization of those who try to be agents historical agents by voting for Brexit is is a major sinister sin on behalf of people that like to call themselves progressives now we're in a situation in which up this is a specifically British question maybe the last specifically British question I ask but thanks God we have a party system which is an archaic old-fashioned party system which is now sitting on top arguably of this 4852 divide this pro-EU anti-EU divide and the Labour Party which still sits there supposedly as the receptacle of all our hopes but there it is it's conflicted about this it's tearing itself apart it seems what do we do because it bugs me we don't want to say goodbye to the traditional working class which sits at the heart of our politics and yet that is perceived to sit on the 52 end of things our liberal instincts tell us we should be with the 48 and we're tearing ourselves in two well I think that the simple answer is twofold answer firstly we should be Democrats in other words what does this mean what does it translate to firstly accept the referendum we didn't like the outcome but we have to accept Brexit now the idea that we are going to do that which the European Union did to the Irish in 2000 when was it 2004 when the Irish voted in the referendum against some treaty the Lisbon treaty to vote again until they got it right but even if we played we lost but even if this government is now pursuing a vision of Brexit which it didn't present at the time of the referendum so what do we do next we oppose the particular form of Brexit that there is a maze pushing forward on the false assumption that this is what people voted for on the 23rd of June in terms of the labour party the problem with the labour party is that you have this incredible gap between the parliamentary labour party and the supporters of the labour party so democracy means that every seat should be contested from scratch within the labour party there should be complete the selection of everyone but you but we have a new divide here we have a new divide the labour MPs who represent constituencies in cities feel that they should be the same and the labour MPs who represent I mean this is beyond Corbynism and all that the labour MPs who represent traditional post-industrial working class areas feel obliged to back leave but imagine what would happen if the labour party hold on Elif you're nodding can I just let Elif come in I'll come back because it's a pattern that's happening everywhere not only here in England politics in a traditional sense that too is shifting we use these terms left and right it's also a matter of habit but maybe it's time to notice the greatest divide is not between left and right anymore we have many other divides that we need to take into picture one of them of course the generation gap I am aware that not every young person came out to vote but those did vote were mostly of course voted for remain there was a big generation gap not only in this country but also in other countries as well we have seen the same pattern more interestingly I think it's the divide between the countryside and the major cities and it is a big mistake on the part of the Brussels elite not to see this because this has been going on for a long time and especially in the elections in Austria it was so visible the entire countryside voting for a racist party openly racist party and the major cities was a percentage winning and then it was a sigh of relief for many people I don't understand how they can see it as a sigh of relief big discrepancy between the countryside and the major cities but I think the biggest divide is between what I call tribalism this teaching that tells us we all belong in our own tribes and that we will be safer if we are surrounded by sameness and we should go back to that instinct that tribalistic, isolationistic instinct and those who oppose this and know that this could lead to a major catastrophe that is where the main divide is it's no longer in the traditional left and right Sereshko it's still January just as we look into the new year elsewhere in Europe where do we look next for the next part of this story well it's not only Europe so in Europe we will have first we will have the Dutch elections then we will have the French elections and then we will have the German elections what we can see there is a very worrying trend not only on the right but also on the left for instance in France you have leftists who propose the so-called legit position and from my opinion they cannot defeat Le Pen using the same weapon but what worries me most is something which goes even beyond Europe this is the geopolitical situation worldwide what do I mean by that you have probably followed the news I don't know if it was published by Guardian or Independent or is it the same I'm not sure anyhow I'm sure Guardian published about it as well I'm sure they did last week it was for the first time in history and I think it's a very important date that a Chinese train directly arrived to London I read that story in the Guardian so it's in Guardian it's probably written in Chinese as well already why is this important it's important because this train took only 17 days through Kazakhstan, Poland reaching to other countries to London and what you can see while we are talking about this about some elections in Austria while we are talking about Trump who will change geopolitics geopolitics already changed and I'm really glad can I mention BBC here you have a series which I think is a real authentic Leninist TV series from BBC taking place now which is called Tabu I'm not sure if Tom Hardy is a Leninist but what Tabu shows is precisely what Lenin wrote in 1916 in Zurich before starting the October Revolution that imperialism is the high stage of capitalism so what you can see in the series is someone who worked for the East Indian Company and who tries because he has a part of land there in US which is a route to China and he's playing a game between the Americans and between the Crown and between the East Indian Company what you can see there is a situation which is being repeated today it's imperialism at its end and what Lenin claimed of course some situations something changed in the analysis and in the facts but what stayed the same what Lenin showed is the following thing it is that when capitalism reaches this stage that you have countries which are so big that they export to other countries China coming to London Trump doing raising trade agreements and so on what do BRICS mean today what does G20 mean today anymore what you can see is the high stage of capitalism again and to come back I think the next consequence is war the Lenin text says precisely that and we don't need Lenin for that and you know with Turkey you can see it with the refugee crisis for me the Syrian conflict and the refugee crisis cannot be solved it cannot be solved because too many geopolitical players are involved from Saudi Arabia to Russia to the French to the UK and it was precisely the European countries who first created the war in Libya then the arms went to Syria follow WikiLeaks you can see this information pretty clearly and what is happening now the refugee crisis comes back to Europe Mikhail Gorbachev said this week didn't he as far as he could tell it looked like the world was preparing for war is he still alive he is maybe in the audience well I know Kissinger is alive he was on the guest list Yanis where are we going what happens next I prefer to talk about what should happen well tell me where we are going and by contrast where we could be going can you juxtapose no I'll answer your question I don't like answering it but I shall in terms of the global scene my great fear is that Trump will be successful for about a year he is new deal kind of economic policy of boosting infrastructure spending and supporting minimum wages the first people he saw after he became president was the trade union leaders I spoke to one of them and he was actually overwhelmed by the positive attitude of Trump to the trade unions which is of course what Mussolini did immediately after he took power in Italy he co-opted the working class he created minimum wages social security on condition of course that the working class would be completely acquiescent to capital to monopoly capital and that they would form a coalition with the ruling class against everyone else the imperialistic part so my fear is that the federal budget of the united states allow me to speak as an economist very briefly is underfunded because of Reagan and Bush tax cuts let me put it this way over the last 30 years every dollar the American government pays on infrastructure and on research and development that's a lot of money is funded by deficits by debt I don't have a problem with deficit spending but they are overdoing it there and the idea now is that he's going to do two things increase spending substantially while giving huge tax cuts to himself and to his mates so that is going to balloon the deficit it will create an irrational exuberance you can already see that wall street is going through the roof while at the very same time starting a trade war against China and pushing the Chinese to do that which Reagan pushed Japan to do in 1985 to boost the value of the currency at the time when the Chinese currency should be coming down not going up if he succeeds in this even 20-30% of the way this is we are running a very serious risk of the credit bubble in China bursting and when that happens global economic activity is going to be reduced and the Chinese are going to start selling a lot of the American federal debt US Treasury bills that they own because they will be impecunious so it will be the perfect storm in the United States the deficit will be going up because of tax cuts and infrastructure spending interest rates will be going up and then they will go much further up because the Chinese will be selling dumping their American bonds and this will be approximately before the midterm elections there Trump will panic he will slam the brakes of the economy and we will go into another huge recession starting from the United States and then I ask you this and this is a rhetorical question you can answer it if you want what do you think the reaction will be of all those people who believed in him that he was going to revive their life prospects what will the reaction be in Doncaster since we were talking about Doncaster what will the reaction be when in Germany many of the people with many jobs they working poor in Germany became unemployed poor it is not a very rosy picture it isn't but as you said earlier the center left the left arguably in most advanced economies is in a pretty confused state modernity confuses it there is no center left anymore so in a situation there is no center left where is this I think they are doing alright in Portugal anyway in Portugal they are doing alright in the sense that they were voted in they have a very fragile coalition but you know what is the tragic thing about the Portuguese government that they had to do that which Tsipras did six months afterwards they did it before they got elected in other words they surrendered before allowed to form a government before we go down a Portuguese rabbit hole hold on what will be the politics of the point at which those voters who have voted for these populist so-called populist options in the expectation that it might materially improve their lives in the absence of a viable left or center left what happens then something to the right of trumpet I think Turkey could be a good example for that because we have seen it over the years lots of crisis lots of problems but that did not necessarily decrease their electoral base it did just the opposite strengthen it and polarise it because the way many especially in Turkey the way the populism the mechanics of populism works is by dividing the society pitting half of the society against the other half and that very much works in their favour the second dangerous thing is and history is full of examples of that the longer they stay in power the more they benefit from controlling the apparatus of the state so they are strengthened over time and the third thing is if you can create enemies imaginary or real enemies inside and outside that will also bolster your position so even if there's an economic crisis that doesn't necessarily mean that that will undermine his electoral basis so that's right Trump will double down it will even double down that's the question the whole thing is going to become more reliant on fascistic methods for reproducing itself unless we have a progressive international response to the extent that history and politics is always replete with irony that his own failure will create more fertile conditions for his kind of politics of course not only there but in other countries as well and in the Turkish example you've said this before the worse it gets in Europe the more Erdogan takes encouragement from that and the same applies to Trump yes the same applies there are so many of them now we have Putin, we have Modi we have in the Philippines one after another the same models repeating itself and the one area that we haven't talked about yet is the Middle East I mean if we're talking about the future so much is changing there including national ethnic boundaries or at least there's a perception that it could change which could only mean bloodshed the refugee crisis the entire model is not sustainable so the crisis in one country only affects further crisis in other countries we have in a way unfortunately the the elite in Brussels tried to outsource the refugee crisis and we have three countries Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey in Turkey 3 million refugees the model is not sustainable it's impossible Jordan openly more and more he says we can't continue like this anymore so there's also the Middle East that we need to put on the table we have the 50th anniversary of the 6 day war lots of conflicts coming from the Middle East which is also going to trigger further far right across Europe before we conclude this very optimistic section of the evening Srećko, on last very optimistic question is it inevitable that the EU as we know it will collapse? not necessarily that's the reason why we found that something is called DM and we invite you all tomorrow to Convay Hall not only Brian Eno will join us which you didn't mention you did mention but also many others so what we are trying to do in DM is not only to have discussions such as this one but really to work on the horizontal level and I don't think it's finished this year I travelled from Nuit de Bou in France to Spain only in Catalonia you have 600 cooperatives they even invented a digital currency called ECO which means that inside of this system they created an alternative system so even if the European Union collapses there is the possibility to create a different kind of Europe I chose my words reasonably carefully when I asked you that question I said the European Union as we know it now federations of countries partnerships between countries of any kind if they decline if they hit choppy water they don't tend to seamlessly reinvent themselves you get periods of turbulence and crisis, right? so is that part of it inevitable? I don't think anything is inevitable how to pronounce it I'm a savage from the Balkans sorry is it going to get worse before it gets better? well I think in the end everything will be okay if it's not okay then it's not the end no let me just be very concrete jokes aside we still go home now that's it we've ended at the correct place no I'm joking I didn't think you were going to say that having read your material over the last week I did not think you were going to say everything is going to be okay but I added something if it's not okay it's still not the end that's what I said no also there is another anniversary I think it's important to say which is coming this year is the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution and well I'm not a hardcore Bolshevik or something like that but I think it's a very important revolution which shows that also out of a crisis out of a bloody war there is also a possibility for something else and I think also out of the crisis union there is a possibility for something better and also I mean I know it's not popular I know people are hostile towards our comrade Slavoj Zizek who is also part of them I mean almost everyone is he said that Trump's actually creates an opportunity and I agree with that in the sense that if Hillary Clinton was in power we wouldn't have this discussion if Brexit didn't happen I'm not glad that it happened we wouldn't have this discussion it was and it still is a big awakening and a chance for all the progressives and not only left I think it's a chance for the left for the liberals for the social democrats to come together and to build something which didn't exist in the 1930s which is the reason why the Second World War happened Elif just briefly before I go into the questions that we've been sent to what extent do you share that vision of things that even in this darkest hour there are glimmers of light or are there days when it's hard to see those glimmers you know there's something that worries me populism creates its own myths and the biggest the core myth that it creates is this antagonistic society antagonistic image of society the people versus the corrupt elite it's a pattern it keeps repeating again and again and I'm worried that we are buying that argument without even being aware of it you will remember after Brexit one of the very first things that Farrar said was to say you see the real people the distant people the ordinary people in Britain have made their choice what does that mean there's real people and there's also unreal people you know something else these dualities I really think we should be very careful because populists benefit from these dualities I do not think that Trump's, I know Zizek says similar things but I find it very problematic that it's good that Trump came to power because the revolution will come sooner you didn't say that he says similar things and I find it very problematic that kind of approach there's another thing you just mentioned which I find very interesting as well which is it's become a cliché in a matter of weeks actually this idea that the left should be populist that the left should start come up with its own conception of real people and it should declare war on elites and so on there are YouTube videos I've seen recently aiming to use a populist approach there was one about rail privatisation which made out, I don't know whether you saw this that made out that people in continental Europe ordinary Germans and Dutch people and so on were stuffing their pockets with the proceeds of rail privatisation and this was used as a left wing argument there's a danger there isn't there there is a danger but we should not fall into their trap we have to see that they are also part of the elite today it's populist leaders they are also the elite just another part of the establishment with a different ideology so Marine Le Pen she's not part of the political establishment seriously Trump is not part of the establishment is that possible this is the myth they are creating for me one thing is very clear they keep encouraging each other you know, breathing each other it's not a coincidence that this summit happened between populist leaders from the Netherlands from Germany from France it's not a coincidence and with the hashtag now they are saying we are going to make our country great again so I agree with you this is the moment for us to wake up they said it was a moment for them to wake up but it's for us a moment to wake up if I may add this there's a beautiful expression by the Lebanese poet and thinker Khalid Jigran he says in one of his book he mentions how he learned silence from the talkative silence from the unkind and how he learned tolerance from the intolerant I think that should be our motto at this moment in history we have to learn the indispensability of democracy from populists we have to learn the beauty of diversity from xenophobes and we have to learn the urgency of international cooperation from the nationalists so whatever they are saying we are going to do exactly the opposite Janice just quickly before I go to these questions this is a picture we've all seen this week of Le Pen and Geert Vilders and various other populist leaders I think it's you you used the term the nationalist international for these people how much do they worry you and to what extent do you think they are going to make the political weather in the next year I'm terrified of them they are thoroughly nasty people and they are getting stronger because of the spectacular failures the establishment so you have this combination of authoritarianism and failed policies by the establishment creating terrible outcomes you have a left which is not there to provide a vision the left does not need to be populist the left cannot be populist the moment the left becomes populist it's not left the left must become popular on the basis of speaking truth to power to everyone I want to emphasise something that Liv said very correctly it is a mistake to believe that there is an almighty political clash between the establishment and the populists I think of them as accomplices they need each other Le Pen thrives on the failures of Brussels Farage would not have existed without the inane handling of Europe's inevitable crisis and at the same time the establishment needs Le Pen because what is the only argument today for voting for somebody like Fillon for God's sakes vote for him otherwise Le Pen will come in so they need each other there are accomplices the right way of thinking of the historical clash which is shaping the future as we speak not between Le Pen and Fillon not between Farage and UKIP on the one hand and the Tories on the other or the official remain campaign against the official Brexit campaign the historical contradiction which is going to spawn the future and which we must influence in order to bring about a better future rather than a bleak one is between these two accomplices on the one hand there is an emergent progressive international that will oppose simultaneously the nationals international and the failing globalised establishment Right, I'm going to go through these questions, chip in as you see fit if you keep the answers relatively clipped we'll get through them there are seven or eight Sarah Franklin sent in this question given that the Le vote was a reaction in part to the widening and obvious gap between the very wealthy do you think a post Brexit economy in other words the economy of the UK outside the EU possibly without Scotland can redress this extreme inequality that has evolved over the past 40 years can the UK do that post Brexit it's highly unlikely it is not impossible depending on which government you have but Brexit unfortunately has toxic effects both on the politics of the European Union and on the continent and on the politics of Britain it's turning this place into a nastier place not to a better place because of the way you mentioned the Russian Revolution before there is among portions parts of the left I think now some idea of socialism in one country to use Joe Stalin's phrase always a good person to take phrases from no you're performing Zizek Zizek likes to do that is there any mileage in that idea do you think somehow this is a platform for socialism well we could have seen it in Greece when during the period when Yanis was the finance minister there were ones who claimed that it's possible and it's necessary to exit the eurozone in order to achieve a better society in Greece you could have seen it with the exit position in Britain and well it reminds me really on the old discussion about the possibility of socialism in one country I don't think it's possible because although Britain looks like an island Britain is not an island we are all part of global capitalism and global capitalism is everywhere and you cannot exit global capitalism even if you are living in a commune somewhere in Spain you are still part of global capitalism imagine only that for instance the sea level rises for one meter you will instantly have 3 million people from Bangladesh who will come to Europe so even if you live in a commune even if you're outside if you have socialism in one country it will have effects on your country and on your commune but Yanis said earlier that we have to accept Brexit so how do we marry those two things together if there is very little chance of creating a more equal society post Brexit and yet we have to accept it very briefly my line would be if I were a British politician I'm not both for Britain and for me but if I were in the Labour Party for instance my line would be Brexit was voted for so we have to accept it but no one delivered the verdict on the single market, on free movement on maintaining the human rights standards of the European Union and let's have the following let's activate article 50 because this is what the people wanted us to do that takes two years and negotiate in the meantime an interim agreement of about five to seven years of Norway kind solution which respects Brexit on the one hand but minimizes changes on the other and let the next House of Commons decide and deliberate and debate what form of arrangements we want with the European Union after that that is a democratic response to a Brexit outcome that I didn't want that answers the the next question you're obviously clairvoyant because Alexi Dimond sent in a question which you've just answered it seems just to make it clear that we have tackled this question it seems Britain is headed for a disastrous hard Brexit if this is the case surely DM 25 and Jeremy Corbyn must oppose the activation of article 50 how can that be done without being portrayed as anti-democratic you have just answered that question Elif this is this chimes with something you said earlier on Robin Stafford emailed in a question in a post truth evidence free emotive world how should the opposition change their approach and methods the answer is lie as well I suppose but there must be a more elegant version but it's such an important question I mean now we're talking about alternative facts and this the arrogance that comes with it I'm sure you have seen Trump's exchange with the American media when he claimed that millions of voters had voted illegally and so many media outlets came forward and said but that's not true there are no facts supporting this and he tweeted back saying then you prove that it's a lie so this method what everything is topsy-turvy you just fabricate a lie and then well prove it if you can't prove it then I'm not lying and certainly we have to have our facts straight certainly we should remind people of facts and the truth and knowledge knowledge is incredibly important what I am worried about and we have seen signs of this in Turkey as well politicians coming forward and saying to the people you see the experts got it wrong each time and you do not need them you do not need their knowledge you only rely on your gut feeling that's enough so we have this anti-knowledge movement that goes hand in hand with populism and I find that very dangerous as well we have to understand that they're not the same thing information is not the same thing as knowledge knowledge is not the same as wisdom we have a lot of information about anything and everything that's why some scholars call it the pancake generation like when you're making a pancake it diffuses everywhere along the pan it's quite thin isn't it it doesn't go deep it's not nuanced but we have a little bit of information about everything that doesn't mean we have the knowledge and that doesn't mean we have the wisdom either which is something else altogether and requires emotional intelligence so what I'm trying to say is we have to remind people and ourselves of the importance of knowledge because one of the basic tenets of populism is to undermine the importance of knowledge to undermine the importance of truth and facts we will be saying no these things are important and at the same time talk about emotions and feelings and perceptions to me the opposite of hatred they have a lot of hatred and I agree it's very toxic but the opposite of hatred is indifference is numbness when we become numb when we become passive when we think that we can't do anything when we can't change anything then they will benefit from that numbness there is a question here from Eva Ola about immigration immigrants she says have become the main focus of brexit she says she'd be interested to know the panel's views on immigration and its influence on the UK to sort of develop that question it's something I've encountered a lot in my reporting I meet people regularly who voted leave who are very anxious and often very angry about immigration and they see immigration as something which will make scarce opportunities even scarcer and overstretched public services even more overstretched and housing even harder to come by and sometimes when you visit those communities it's quite difficult to argue with where they're coming from which is a very very difficult conclusion to go anywhere near it's very uncomfortable to do about that because clearly it's antithetical to all the liberal values that we've talked about and yet it's probably the single biggest political thing which sits at the heart of what we've been talking about So let's go first Well I have to refer to something what Elif already said said look at Lebanon Lebanon has 40% 40% of the population are refugees which is 1.5 million which is the population of the country where I come from Croatia Denmark for instance they have a refugee problem Europe 1 million refugees it's nothing also another thing what I would add look at the jobs what the immigrants do in London it is the jobs when you go to the subway you will see all the bullshit jobs so I think people shouldn't be scared for those people they're actually doing the jobs normal or decent English people don't want to do so in that sense even if you just take the numbers people shouldn't be scared about it but they are no I can understand they have every reason to be they have every reason to be but the analysis is wrong if you think about it why do we have pressure on housing in English towns it's not because of migrants migrants highlighted and therefore become the focal point of anxiety because Mrs Thatcher sold off the council houses and because I was reading in the Guardian that even Labour councils in London are privatising they really are and they are creating new estates that are privately owned in order to push out everyone so this is the problem the problem is austerity and when you have austerity which is universal you have these two effects on the one hand you have you know I'll mention Doncaster once more because there was a story about that there was a fantastic old lady who walked up to me and she said to me what you were saying said to me look I support you I agree with you but you know what in my block of flats there are these four Romanian boys that live next to me they are lovely boys she was not racist, she was not xenophobic she actually liked them they do all sorts of jobs they don't have families their families are back in Romania they earn all four of them a bundle of pounds they can afford a much higher rate rent than a normal Doncaster family can so they are bidding the rent up most of the money that they make they do not spend in the local community because they send it by home and she understood why I go on like this now the answer to this is twofold you will allow me to say firstly more social housing in Doncaster and secondly let's have freedom of movement bilateral or multilateral agreements on freedom of movement predicated upon the condition that the Romanian government must provide Romanian people in their communities with a living wage if they want to have the right for their citizens to migrate to Britain this question is about emotional intelligence as much as it is about anything I think it's about culture as well so many of these clashes and perceptions revolve around culture and the fear of losing a national identity and I can understand that it's a bit when we speak about globalization I think it brought out the best in us and it brought out the worst in us at the same time simultaneously the same with all the problems that we are talking about we need to have a more nuanced approach so definitely on the one hand we need to uphold the liberal values but on the other hand understand people's worries when it comes to losing their culture we might not agree but understand another thing that we do not talk about much is the gender gender imbalance because the journey from particularly Syria but not only from Syria from Afghanistan, from Iraq as well into the shores of Europe towards the shores of Europe is such a dangerous journey most of the immigrants who could make this journey were young men in some places like Sweden this affected even gender ratios in small towns and it created further clashes we've seen this in Germany as well so we need to talk about these other aspects cultural aspects, gender aspects never understood why the Brussels elite again have been so blind not be more welcoming towards sexual minorities coming from Syria women coming from Syria empowering them more there is a huge mess at the moment and I agree it's not sustainable at all under this model we're getting very near the end can I add one story I'm moving towards this note of optimism that I've been thinking about for an hour go on quickly just one story because Elif was talking about the way in which the European Union has completely violated every humanitarian canon that one can imagine of I mean we are in the church so let me tell you a story about that has a Christian dimension his name is Shabir he comes from Pakistan his great move that completely wrecked his life was to come to the aid of his neighbour his neighbour was a Christian he crushed a Christian family in a town in Pakistan the Islamists petrol bombed the house of the Christians in the middle of the night and Shabir, who was a Muslim went out and helped that family the next day he was branded an apostate for having helped the Christian family his brother was killed he was a businessman he had a rental car business his cars were burned down and then he had in order to divert the attention of the Islamic fundamentalists away from his family he took his elderly father and walked across Iran into Turkey in Turkey who was attacked by robbers his father died he carried his father's corpse in his arms policemen attacked him he managed to escape to cut a very long story and Odyssey short he ends up on a boat from the Turkish coast to Lesbos the boat sinks, there were 70 people on board 35 died he managed to just about survive to escape with his life he ends up in Medellin in Lesbos and he applies for asylum this person whose life was wrecked because he tried to help a Christian neighbour a Christian Europe do in the context of the EU-Turkey Treaty he is now awaiting an extradition back to Turkey now you only have to tell the story in order to capture the horrors that is the European Union Turkey deal and this humanitarian refugee crisis the last question is about what we that is the people here and people who are going to watch this when it's turned very quickly to a Guardian video and podcast and all of that what we can do DM25 has a fairly or a very clear agenda which is first of all in the short term to make the EU transparent to hugely heighten its accountability then to convene an assembly which will then consider how to make the EU genuinely democratic and I'm right in saying by 2025 to begin to move towards exactly that point now I don't think there's anybody I'm running out of time I don't think there's anybody here who would have any problem with that the first question is we're British and we've just left despite some of our better efforts are we invited can we participate of course and secondly think about it you haven't left you're trying to leave don't get confused remember the Hotel California line you can check out it will take years to leave now how about wouldn't you like as citizens of this great nation the negotiations between your government and the European Union to be transparent so that you know what they are talking about on your behalf how about that that would be a start Thresko what can we do well I think if the sex pistols played in Conwy Hall you can all come for free to Conwy Hall tomorrow to increase the enticing nature of that offer what are you going to be talking about in terms of actual practical action people it will be just to say and it's important unlike this completely undemocratic event let me be a bit self-critical as well where all the questions were planned in advance and so on I'm joking of course I'm really joking you were a great moderator and thank you but unlike today tomorrow in Conwy Hall we will have a horizontal discussion we will have big speeches it will be a democratic deliberation where everyone can come and invent and invest into DM and in our common future Alice what can we do I think there's a lot we need to do but the first thing is to refrain from passivity or despair I've always been a big believer in Gramsci's motto it's good to be half pessimistic you know the pessimism of the intellect which will make us more realistic and urge us into action but at the same time optimism of the will because when you look at human beings when you talk to people the young people, minorities, women then you can also see there's a lot of hope there what can we do we need to travel we need to talk to people from completely diverse backgrounds get out of big cities get out of our own eco chambers you know connect and to understand that whether we like it or not we are all interconnected our destinies are connected so DM is very important because it sees Europe not only looking at the political boundaries of Europe you know Europe in the broadest sense maybe going back to Brodals Europe including the Mediterranean and reminding us that because the biggest challenges that we are facing today are international problems there's no way we can solve them unless we do it through international cooperation Janis you have 30 seconds tell us to send people home feeling better about the world why we still should think of ourselves as Europeans and the kind of society and the kind of world that when we do so in this way that DM proposes we can set our sights on it's exactly what I said at the beginning think of the problems that you're facing in exactly the same way that you're thinking of climate change either we're going to be efficient in the way we attack them or not as for what DM is trying to do tomorrow and generally we're trying to bring together progressives in Britain because progressives in Britain are so divided this sectarianism of the British political scene is mind boggling you have Corbyn's Labour Party not talking to Caroline Gluckas because she doesn't belong to Labour and if they talk to her then the Blairites are going to attack them even more fiercely they're going to be treated by Labour as the enemy you have Plaid Cymru we've had enough of this it's about time we stop recoiling behind our principles every general election losing it and you know, Trump gives us some hope doesn't he doesn't he? he's a despicable creature there's nothing good about his election except that he proved that we left this in profoundly wrong all our lives when we have been hiding behind the idea that the establishment is too strong and we cannot defeat it he ganked up on his own with a few idiots against the establishment and he won if he can do it we can do it on that note at 9.32 books by these three people are available in the foyer I suggest you buy as many as you can and I mean that sincerely that was probably the most rich inspiring conversation I've had since the referendum I'd like you to join me in thanking Janice Furrifachis, Elif Shafak and Sredsdor Hohola