 Good evening. Welcome to the Fixed Live with me, Aaron Mustani, Kirsty Major, and guess what, our boy Clive Lewis. How you doing? I'm alright. Hey, I gotta shake your hand, babe. Hey, I'm alright too. I'll give you one. We obviously have just come back from Labour Party Conference last week. Today we'll be talking about Catalonia, we'll be talking about Tory Party Conference, but before we do, I think for our viewers who aren't yet acquainted with Clive, you have to see this video. It's a must watch. We all know she's the absolute girl. Round three, my friends. I'm the final one. We have Fixity Fortunes. It's like family fortunes, only it's got a terrible pun. Let's repeat this again. That's awful. I can't believe you've done that to me. What happens at conference days? It's obviously not. I hope your viewer appreciates what you just did. That was broadcast. He brought the saphons. Outrage. Look, the conference blues. Look, we broadcast the whole thing live, so there's not really much of an excuse. I thought you were great. It was a great quiz. It was good. It was a good night. Really good night. The energy was fantastic. And I think I just got carried away with the whole night, the whole week. That was towards the end of the week. And I hadn't drawn that much actually by the week. That was Tuesday, right? That was the night before Jeremy's speech. That was the night before Jeremy's speech, and then conference ended. So that was just a warm-up. And Emily Thornbrie was out in style that night, and then I saw her on the TV that morning. Looking fresh at Jeremy's speech. Emily can put to shame most of the younger intake of Labour MPs in terms of she's like a proper trooper. So before we carry on with Katarina, Tories, a few quick thoughts. Start with you, Kirsten and then you, Clive, about Labour conference. Because it's easy to be euphoric, optimistic. This was a conference the likes of which we haven't really seen before. Normal people were getting excited about a Labour party conference. What are your thoughts? I'm in the optimist camp. I think the amount of organisation and energy that went into it is something I haven't seen before. And it was like seeing all your mates who kind of came to age during the student protest, all of a sudden being MPs age, putting on events like, and they're only going to get older and wiser and better. Yeah, I think we're going to win in 2022. It was vibrant. It was young. It was networked. It was everything I've always thought a conference could be. And I have to admit, I spent 95% of my time at the fringes and the world transforms. Most of the world transforms didn't really go into the... I don't think MPs were allowed on the conference floor anyway. But I didn't go in, didn't try and go in. But not because I didn't want to take part in debates, but because I was booked up for so many different speaking engagements and the energy there. It's just kind of like a renewal. And I think there was a sense of optimism of hope. I think it has to be tempered with outside that bubble, the reality of an establishment and a Tory party and an elites who will do everything that they can to hold on to power. Look, we've got a real potential for a left-wing Labour government here. And they ain't going to go quietly. I think yet be confident, bold, enthused, but temper that with the reality of what we're up against and understand that and don't underestimate them. Great way to move on to Tory Party Conference, which started yesterday, was it? Although today was the first big day, we had Philip Hammond give a speech with Davidson. Theresa May gave a speech yesterday? Or she mentioned that these headlines around tuition fees were yesterday rather, right? I think they've been floated before her speech. Precisely. She speaks tomorrow? I mean, who knows, right? Nobody's there. No, well, Matt Parrises. I kind of tweeted Matt Parrises, formatory MP, who basically described them as the living dead and a conference of the kind of walking dead. There was no life in them. And unless he was saying they have to basically decapitate the leadership and put someone else in that's capable, that's the only chance they've got. I think there are lots of people who are thinking about that at the moment, and I am struggling to see Theresa May survive until the next election whenever that is. Obviously Boris has been slapped down, and I think at the moment, the reason I think the thing keeping Theresa May in place is Jeremy Corbyn, and I will explain that. I think because we are doing so well at the moment in the polls and as a party in terms of confidence and united left, then I think that means that they don't want to take the chance of anything destabilizing their government and calling into question the legitimacy of their government. And I think Theresa May has negotiated with the DUP. We don't have a government, we have a hostage crisis. She's held in place by the DUP and the Brexit extremists in her party. Those are the people that are basically holding her hostage. And if she goes, what happens then? It can be quite destabilizing. They do not want a general election because of where we are as a party, so I think they will stay in place for now. And obviously with the election changes that have taken place, it means that there are so few opportunities now, just the Queen's Speech, which they've cancelled for next year, it's over two years this one, to actually bring down the government. So it's pretty difficult to see how, unless they fall on their sword, we're going to see a general election. I can't see one before Brexit. It's an inordinate amount of bi-elections, right, if all of a sudden. That's happened before, wasn't it? In the early 1990s there was a flurry of bi-elections. Yeah, it's possible, it's possible. It is possible, it is possible, yeah, that is possible. But I mean you're waiting for people to drop, and as many could drop on our side, there's a lot of scandals, which is also possible. But yeah, that is one possibility. I think Clive is right, I think we do need to accept that we're in for the long run. I mean Boris is rattling the cage, but he's been slapped down. Ruth Davidson, Philip Hammond, there was one other person. Michael Fallon? Michael Fallon, he went from today. He's rattling the cage, he wants in, he wants to go. He wants her out before 2019 and he'd like to help. I mean I think what he ideally wants is, he wants, I think he kind of wants to be slapped and he wants to become like a backbench Brexit martyr. She wants it held in, keep your enemies close. That's it, Brexit goes really badly, backbench rebellion. You have to see Boris in the context of this old Atonian and he's protege Cameron. It's basically, I've been in Downing Street, you haven't. And I think Boris sees this as his best chance now. With this destable, unstable, weak leader, the knives are out. He wants to go for it, he doesn't seem to have the support. Mainly I think, because although I think many people think Boris in the Tory party, think Boris is great, they do not want the destabilisation that will cause because their biggest fear is A, an election now, B, Jeremy Corbyn. And they're like get back in your box. I don't want to know about this. So I think he's timing is very poor. And I think, but he sees this as his chance to kind of the glory, the history and it doesn't seem to be materialising for him just yet. Another potential successor to Theresa May's, of course, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor. If we can cut to a video, I think we've got a video lined up. His speech today was appalling and he couldn't help but talk about Christ of capitalism. He called it North East, didn't he? He's in the North West of the Manchester. He said him in the North East. It was an appalling speech, but once more he said we need to defend market capitalism because this isn't just a crisis for the British Conservative Party. So we have to always have to keep on repeating it. It's a crisis of global capitalism itself. So let's cut to that speech very briefly because I don't want to send you to sleep. Listen to them and we must respond. Not by embarking on reckless experiments that would put at risk all the progress of the last decades, not by swimming against the tide of history, but by working with the market economy to deliver pragmatic solutions that will make ordinary lives across Britain better. At this conference, our economy is not broken. It is broken. It is fast. I'm going to quickly say why it's broken, okay? Productivity, we now produce less than an hour of work than we did 10 years ago. Wages down, I'm going to repeat myself, Adam Finitum, GDP per head, not really going very far. We're now the poorest performing economy on GDP of the G7. But he repeated something that Theresa May did last week at the Bank of England. They're now doing this thing where they don't just repeat the failed attack lines of the last general election against Jeremy Corbyn. They're also saying, look, on the one hand they're saying, we know that people are tired of the system, it's rigged, but then about a minute later they say there's this consensus and we can't deviate from it. They've just got 43% in the general election. Why all of a sudden do they feel compelled to defend market capitalism itself, given that was the best performance for a Tory party since, I think, 87? What's going on? Are they listening too much to the media? Jeremy Corbyn set the agenda to an extent I don't think any of us thought plausible even a few weeks ago. I think they know they have a long-term demographic problem. Young people want, not socialism, it's not socialism what McDonald Corbyn had proposed and it's social democracy. And they know that's what people want and they're trying to square the circle in their head. They're like, we need to give something to young people, but I really love the market. And I don't think they can afford that, I think something has to give. So what we didn't see in Hammond's speech is he proposed more funding for help to buy. And this is a really good example because help to buy doesn't help young people because it keeps health prices high, it keeps them inflated. It doesn't help with the supply or it does increase the demand. Whereas what Corbyn's proposing is more housing, help with rent. Like that actually appeals to young people and then the other thing of course is tuition fees. They're just going to freeze it and all the other people don't like. Whereas Corbyn's like, you know what, get rid of it. It's like you're going to take Corbyn light proposals or you're going to take actual Corbyn. What do you think like? I think on the tuition fees, 70% of the 2016 intake of students will still be paying off. You know, we'll have to have their debts ridden off. You know, it's ridiculous. As they know when they retire, it's ridiculous. Basically you're loading, you're front-loading the debt onto individuals. And yet as taxpayers, engineers, doctors, nurses, they're making a massive contribution to our economy. If they're accountants, they're making a contribution to our society. I think in terms of what that speech was about, you have to understand it's not just about what's happening in the UK. Global neoliberalism is in retreat and the institutions that were set up, the IMF, et cetera, et cetera, to basically enforce that are coming apart. And it's not just because of Jeremy Corbyn or because of left populist movements, although they do play a small part. Actually it's coming from their own sides. It kind of breaks into two camps. Now you've got the neoliberals like Trump, ultra-neoliberals, who want neoliberalism in one country. To hell with the global networks that we've built up over the last 40 years. It's America first, but we want a neoliberal America just for Americans and to hell with the rest of you. But then you've got people like Cameron, Osborne, Philip Hammond and others who are old school neoliberals who just think one more heave, actually it's that global order of the last 40 to 50 years, 35, 40 years that we want to protect and maintain and they're hanging on by the fingernails. And they've been weakened, yes, by people like Corbyn and the resurgence of the left, but also by their own side, by powerful elites from their own countries who for a variety of reasons are now saying we don't want to play the way that we used to play. And that's what their problem is. They're not singing with a unified voice, which has always been the signature, though, of neoliberalism. Yes, there have been minor differences, but by and large, low tax, deregulation, undermined democratic institutions, financialization, they've all sung from the same sheet and they've had those international institutions that have done that. That's now breaking apart and that leaves an opportunity for the left, I think, to come in and blow wide open those cracks that are now appearing in that neoliberal monolith which has for 40 years dominated politics and economics. The point of ideology is that it's invisible. It veils social relations to the extent where something is common sense rather than an imposition of economic forces. So for them to explicitly say, we need to now defend markets, we need to defend neoliberalism, effectively, right? The settlement of the last several decades to the British public, it just seems odd to me. Particularly, it seems a very, very immature, counterproductive, silly thing to do. This is a real, you've picked up on something there. That hegemonic power, real hegemonic power is transparent. It's common sense. And the first chink in that, really, I suppose recently, was the whole austerity debate, which is now falling apart around there is that there is no choice. There is no alternative. This is the only way. And actually that now, by having to defend the forces which have been so transparent for so long, now means that it's out in the open. And if you saw the research that we were talking about before we came on air, which was that there's been some quite substantial polling of public opinion in this country. And something like high 70s, high mid 80% of the public across the age range now want to see water, energy, what else? Water, energy, rail, renationalised, back into public ownership. Around about 50% of the population are saying that we would consider seeing all banks pull into public ownership. And that might be even a stage too far for John McDonald, I'm not sure. And 30% even saying take the airlines into public ownership, which clearly after today's debacle with Monarch could have gone up as well. So I think what you're seeing is people are beginning to say this whole process, these free markets, haven't worked for us. They've worked for some, they've worked for the 1%, but they're not working for us. And so you need to, I'm afraid to say, coming out with, well, maybe we can patch it up with this, or maybe we can give you students a little bit of that and freeze this here and do that there. I think people want something bigger and deeper and more profound in terms of change in politics. The Labour Party, thank God, is now offering that. And it's in a position to make those offers in the next couple of months and weeks and years. And obviously the 2017 manifesto was the start of that. But we can now begin to build on that and begin to make an offer to people where people say, this makes sense. I think the tide's turning. I think that transparency of common sense is beginning to fall apart. And the time, I think, not to be complacent, but to say we've got a real opportunity here to shift the political centre ground. It is shifting, but to shift it fundamentally for some time to come and to build on that. And that's what's so exciting. We're so excited about our conference and what's so exciting about politics at the moment. I can see it in the chamber. The Tories are scared. Now, be careful what you do, because when you put a Tory party scared in the corner, they're going to get desperate. And I think we have to be prepared for that. Nonetheless, I do think we've got them on the run and we just have to keep them on the run, but not trip over our own feet while we're doing it. That's really important. OK. Well, I've got some questions to ask both of you. How far do we take nationalisation? So let's start with Greg's. Kirsty. Nationalise all pasties. Nationalise Greg's? Fully automated luxury Cornish pasties. Fully automated. Fully automated. Fully automated. Nationalise Greg's. Do you know what? Look, this is the thing. You know, people say, I've had people on Twitter say, no, capitalism's grave. No one expects John McDonald and Jeremy Corbyn on day one of a Labour government to abolish capitalism and to abolish markets and to abolish shops and currency, etc. That's OK. Greg's can stay, I think. Well, I think, you know, I would like to see, I'd like to see a far more workplace democracy for its workers. So Greg's could become a sort of worker-owned cooperative, potentially. Why not? OK, next, Weatherspoons. Weatherspoons. Oh, well, Brexit support and Weatherspoons. I really need to make our own version of Weatherspoons, get rid of Weatherspoons full stock, because, you know, we need to make our own people's Weatherspoons. Potentially controversial. Nationalise Weatherspoons. Do they do wedgerite? That's the question here. Minister for Weatherspoons. No. Do I think they should be... No, again, you know, look, there are certain things, the kind of the heights of the economy, there are certain elements of the economy, which I think are... Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Which are natural. Which are natural. Which are natural. Which are natural. You can make natural arguments for them to be publicly owned. For things that tend to monopoly, for instance, right? Yes. And things which people, you know... I also think, you know, information. You know, this is part... Yeah, this is my big thing. This is something which is, you know, neoliberalism, kind of modern capitalism is trying to suppress. You know, markets are based on scarcity, on finite resources. Knowledge is infinite. And there's a contradiction there. And what we're seeing with Google and Facebook and others is that they're trying to monopolise. That the reaction of capitalism is to try to monopolise an infinite supply, an infinite resource. And that's not working. I mean, you know, and I think that's... I think that is... This is really, really important, really interesting area where I think, you know, you saw the world transformed. You've seen momentum and how they've worked with technology and how they've spread ideas through that technology. You know, you look at the... You look at the 2011 uprisings that took place across the, you know, the Arab Spring and so on. These were also interconnected, globally interconnected people using technology to kind of spread ideas and information. So I think, you know, that's one of the areas that we as socialists have to look at is what will be the different... What will be the components of the economy in the 21st century that we have to democratise and have to ensure that they're not captured solely by large corporations and the elites. I think that's something that we need to do a lot of thinking about. Yeah, I totally agree. I think Uber was, I mean, a really small microcosm of this. Really, like, TSL in London should be able to step in straight away when Uber was clamped down on the London Zone version, a TSL version of Uber. Because right now, Uber has all of the data on the journeys that are made in London. They know more about London than TSL do. And that's dangerous, right? If private enterprise is no more than the sissy, than the seas and the states. So what would these 40,000 workers who are being laid off now, effectively, if the licence isn't renewed, which it may be renewed, but if it isn't renewed, 40,000 people lose their means of earning a living. What should the government do in regard to them and Uber more generally? And that's the question, right? You're the Minister for Transport. Clubs at Weatherspoons. You're at the Department of Transport. So this is where I think Corbyn pushed upon this in his speech, which was talking about what we do in an automated future and what you do about jobs. And it's about providing not welfare, but like a basic income to people who've got to lose their jobs because of automation or changes to regulations in the case of Uber and what you do to retrain people. So Singapore has a really great model for doing this. Denmark has a really great model. We're really crap at it, because all we do is think about educating young people. But actually, there's no vast way for people who need to start re-entering the education system. And we're just not prepped for it. We're not even thinking about it. I don't know. I'm kind of like just kind of fumbling around here, but I kind of think if you have open source data and software which anyone can utilise, you would have, if the transport of London put the infrastructure down, if they actually put down these the conditions on which you and these the licensing conditions, which Uber hasn't been operating by and which you must operate by. You'll have kind of cooperatives setting up, using open source data, being able to share that data, make it free. That to me would work far better than allowing a monopoly like you, Uber, to control. And as we all know, there's been issues about price fixing and about what's been going on, about how Uber operate. So there's an opportunity here. We don't just have to see it as 40,000 people being put onto the scrap heap. This is the technology that isn't going away. You can't put this back in the box. What we can do is, as a government, and what governments should be doing, is setting down the rules to A, make it fair, a level playing, filled and safe, make sure the people are paying their taxes, etc. but also open it up, allow people who actually, you know, to have access to the data, to be able to put forward their own software. Because I think that's the thing that we forget. It's our data. It's our journey. It's always this weird, faustian deal. You enter into it and you're like, oh, you can have every single element of my soul if I can just have a two-bride. You know, that's mine. I actually get a bit of a benefit from it. Democratise it. Make it countable, transparent. It's those same rules that go through everything. Accountability, transparency, open. And that kind of, I think, what can you do to prevent those cartels, those monopolies from dominating, especially in those new technologies. And I think there is a future for apps like that in this city. Of course there are, but they just have to play by the rules, and I think it has to be done with the principles and values of 21st century socialism. Right. Before we continue, talk about Catalonia. We're now going to cut to the inspirational, the breathtaking speech of the Prime Minister given at the Bank of England last week. Again, try not to fall asleep because it really is something else. Let's see what Therese has got to say. We should never forget the immense value and potential of an open, innovative, free-market economy which operates with the right rules and regulations. When countries make the transition from closed, restricted, centrally planned economies to open, free-market policies, the same things happen. Life expectancy increases and infant mortality falls. Absolute poverty shrinks and disposable income grows. Access to education is widened and rates of illiteracy plummet. Participation in cultural life is extended and more people have the chance to contribute. It is in open, free-market economies that technological breakthroughs are made which transform, improve and save lives. It is in open, free-market economies that personal freedoms and liberties find their surest protection. A free-market economy, operating under the right rules and regulations, is the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created. Clear. So far! Are you alive? We actually had Twitch and Jensen and adrenaline into Clive. Kirsty was smearing, you know. Fentham in of my teeth. That was pretty bad, wasn't it? Look, I mean... She's the Prime Minister of a major global economy. We were talking to bankers. But it's... I mean, yeah. Something's going really... We're going to talk about Catalonia. There's a potential... Not revolution, but they may be a unilateral declaration of independence in Catalonia. We have a British Prime Minister saying we need to defend capitalism. This is not a cliché anymore. It's beginning to feel like the 1930s. Trump is a big part of this. I mean, I've said that before. But there's something that is breaking down. And Brexit is a part of it. There's a breakdown in the kind of... the cosy order that was there. You know, the neoliberals in Europe... The neoliberals in European capitals and the neoliberals in London, they're not happy with each other. Because this is... And Trump, it's all breaking apart. And this is a reflection of that. She's trying to show up. You know, the bastion of global capitalism, London, the financial centre. And they're not happy about what's happening because they see it weakening. They're looking over at Corbyn. I was meeting with the Financial Conduct Authority. I said to them... I mean, I remember saying to them, if you don't get banks in order, you're going to have John McDonnell coming in, potentially. Yeah? How do you think your boys in the bank... In the bank... About three weeks ago, their faces dropped. They were like... Like, they hadn't thought of it. And it was like... I can see this image of John McDonnell coming in and like, oh, my God, we never thought of this. It's like they should be thinking about it because it's a reality. Start cleaning your house up. Get your act together. I think... Look, I think we can get carried away here. I think we have to understand is that, you know, these people, these institutions, these organisations, they're extremely wealthy and extremely clever. They're survivors, you know? And I'm afraid to say, you know, the history shows that the left has a fantastic capacity for kind of tripping over its own feet. Now, I don't think that's going to happen this time. But what I must say is we must be cautious. We mustn't overreact the fact of what's going on. It is happening. It is a reality. But we've got to think very carefully about what we do and how we do it and how we... how we maximise the possibilities and the potential that these cracks in their system, which are now glaring. And I think that's something which I think so far, John, Jeremy and the leadership have really done really well. They've managed to navigate this and turn it to... No, put us into a position where we're in a really strong position. We want to stay in that strong position. But we can't guarantee that they're going to continually trip over their own feet. At some point, they're going to sense a danger. I think they're sensing it now and they're going to start clubbing together. That's when it becomes more difficult for us. But one thing I do know is that the last two years have battle-hardened the left in this country. It's been a tough two years for us, especially in the party. But I think if we can get to where we've got to now, we know there's a real opportunity here. I don't think we're going to mess it up. So you're at the Indies. Is there a sort of changed sense of possibility in the last several months? Is it really coming home now to people that John McDonnell could be telling, you know, the various regulators what's walking on the street? I feel like you can split it. You can put the newsroom in half and it's between young people working in New Zealand and older people. Older people don't agree with the Corbyn project. It doesn't appeal to them. They just don't understand. So this was another journalist who I'm not at the Indie but another reputable paper who, as I was going into the World Transform Conference and there was a queue outside me for Corbyn speaking, he was like, I just... I mean, I like politics. That's why I do worry people. I don't get it. And I was like, ah, it's because you're older. You've got a house. You know, like none of the things which have affected the rest of us, all the rest of us young people have affected you. But return to what was Clive was saying about the economy. I think we need to like take a few steps back, right? And I think when we talk about the economy, we tell stories, right? And this is something that George Monvieu has been writing about a lot recently and I'm really into the idea. You know, you tell stories and what older people are saying is they're saying the 70s was awful. It didn't work. It messed up. And then you have younger people saying, neoliberalism messed up. I saw the banking crisis. I saw the banks being bailed out. I can't buy a house. So you've got these two competing stories and in many ways they're really old stories. Social democracies are well-worn tales. Those neoliberalism. But actually maybe what I think part of the longer term project is coming up with a new story, like yet neither of these things work but we've got this new thing to offer you. Because then you can't knock it, right? In the way you can knock neoliberalism or you can knock social democracy. Yeah, we own it. You know? We own it. Which is a kind of group that's been talking about public ownership for quite some time. And they were saying, look, it's the values and principles of social democracy. No one's talking about bringing back British rail and soggy egg sandwiches. That's not on the agenda. Fried eggs sandwiches. That's not on the agenda. It's possible in the 21st century to create something with those values and principles in terms of accountability, in terms of cooperation, democracy into public ownership with that investment of what we pay to go on those trains reinvested back into subsidised travel and into new and up-to-date technology. They can do it in Europe. We can do it in the UK. We are so far behind Europe in terms of what we are like and parts of Europe in terms of what we are like, what's publicly owned, what's not, how the economy works, basic democracy, trade union rights. That's what's unified the left at the moment. It's that we are so far on the back foot compared to the civilised world in European countries in terms of, you know, I say the civilised world and developing world as well in terms of those basic rights. That's why so many people, you can build that coalition of people. It becomes more difficult the further on you get down, but that's... Well, this is happening, right? I don't think most Brits know this, but China has 15,000 miles of high-speed rail. 15,000 miles, right? And we're talking about HS, too. Now, I know it's a very wealthy country, but on a GDP per head basis, it's a very poor country. And it's also geographically very big. We're quite a small island. So, yeah, I think something strange is happening and you've got more high-speed rail in places like Brits, China, and eventually many countries in the global south far more than here. And yeah, we have a model that's not working. The thing that's not... The thing that isn't... It's Southern Rail, which is why so many people were late to the first day of the world transformed. It's the catastrophe. The ring conspiracy. Well, the carriages they use the trains they use primarily are still intercity 125s and they were developed in the early 1970s. So we're using these carriages from, you know, 45 years ago. Unbelievable. Yeah. I think the other thing that we have and the kind of the elephant in the room, I don't know, there's two elephants and there's Brexit, but we don't go there. We have a conversation about Brexit. But the other elephant in the room is climate change. The nine planetary boundaries. Resource depletion. This is another reason. You know, I couldn't think of what... You can't think of a worse economic system of avarice, of greed, of inequality to be in place at a time when the world is burning, you know. So that free market approach that has dominated for the last 40 years is the worst possible combination of ideas and values you could have when you're trying to tackle, you know, population, biodiversity, climate change, the issues which are... which increasingly, you know, if you listen to scientists, they're saying by, you know, what scientists and economists are saying, if we still have the neoliberal order, you can kiss goodbye. After 2050, you know, we will go into head and a hand car in terms of population shifts, in terms of, you know, natural catastrophes, in terms of unchecked warming, you know, global warming. You know, we have got a limited time frame to get this, you know, sussed and to kind of get these guys out of the way and to bring in, you know, a new order, a new way of doing things. And this is my big issue, and it is a little bit linked to Brexit. It can't be socialism in one country. We have got to rekindle internationalism. You know, we have got to link up with the SPD, who are now on the opposition benches who are saying to me, we need to look at what you're doing to see what we need to do, because we lost a lot of our core support, working class vote, to the AFD, the fascists. So how are we? You know, they brought into the whole kind of Merkel neoliberal project. It's kind of slightly different neoliberalism to ours, but nonetheless it is. They now want... So, you know, we need to be linking up with these people to make sure that we understand that we can't do this on our own. We're going to have to link up with global movements around the world. We're going to have to make sure the dots connect up, because there's no point having fantastic NHS, fantastic high-speed rail in this country when the rest of the world is going to head in a handcart. And that's the big challenge. There are people around the world that are looking at what Corbyn has done, what the left has done in this country, and are inspired by it, and we need to build on that. Would that internationalism have to bypass existing global institutions? That's the big question, such as the EU. I mean, that was the case around Lexit, right? It was like, you should be able to organise grassroots and social-democratic projects between borders without the EU, which is essentially a neoliberal monolith in itself. No, it's not. I know, but that was the Lexit. Yeah, that was the Lexit argument. There's nuances between that. I just wanted to raise one really quick thing, which is the environmental question, because I think, actually, this is a question that the left is not asking itself because the social-democratic model of growth, the Keynesian model, doesn't deal with climate change. It's based on an economy which has two moving parts, the state and the market, and it's based on growth, and that growth is often based on production and how we produce, create climate change. But this conference was okay. I mean, this was much more alive to climate. I picked up on it, because my klaxons go off. He didn't use growth. He used sustainable growth. Now, there are some in the ecological and environmental movement who go, eh, you can't, it's a contradiction. It's a contradiction in terms. However, I think, you know, there are some really interesting theories out there. There's someone called the donut theory, which is what you're talking about, about flows of resources, linked to carbon, and so on, which has been a lot of thought has gone into it. It's kind of been described as Keynes for the 21st century, taking into account planetary boundaries, the ecology, and how we could have an economy that works for everyone, not just the rich white West, but the rest of the world. Did I sound like I'm a fudder? The rest of the world, but taking into account resources and population. And, you know, this is called, you know, Look It Up, Go Online, The Donut Theory. Really interesting. It's been done by Oxford University, a woman professor there, academic, who designed this, and George Monbiot has written about it. And I don't understand the intricate details of it. You know, I know a little bit more about Keynes, because I did a degree in economics at universities. I understand my aggregate demand and so on. I'm not so, I'm not so clued up, but it's something I'm going to be looking at. And I think these are the kind of radical ideas that, you know, 21st century social democracy needs to be looking at. And this is what's so exciting. And these were the kind of things that were coming up at the World Transforms. And that's what made it so inspiring, so brilliant for someone like me, who feels that we've been trapped in a kind of, you know, time loop of a neoliberal time loop. And at that conservatory conference, it's like, where's your fringe events with these like radical new ideas? Well, the one I retweeted. It was Brexit would offer fantastic new deals for vaping deregulation. Yeah. Vaping for dads. I mean, it had all these like kind of four crusty men on there about to come and talk about the opportunities Brexit would release for, you know, vaping deregulation. That's the high watermark of Conservative Party thinking. You know what? Goose, let them crack on with it. Let them vape to their hearts content. You know, happy days. Right, you know, that's what we're up against. Vaping, huh? Mind you, vaping is kind of cool. Do you remember the Hillary vaping meme? Do you remember this? No. We'll leave that to one side. It's a centristad thing, isn't it, right? Speaking of internationalism, beyond the institutions of the existing global order, there's been a significant amount of solidarity it's fair to say from including Jeremy Corbyn from the left towards those in Catalonia over the last couple of days. Yesterday, there was a referendum in Catalonia in regard to independence. It won't be legally binding. In fact, it's illegal, yet millions participate around 2 million people voted yes to independence. Turnout of around 40%. In terms of the actual numbers, we're not sure, but it could be, I think 700,000 was the number in terms of stolen ballots. So it's up on the last independence referendum in 2015, which was also not legally binding. Clive, Paul Mason wrote a piece in The Guardian, we had a great conversation yesterday, I checked that on the Facebook page. He wrote a piece in The Guardian saying that this movement for Catalan independence is an extension of a global order in collapse and a grassroots desire for social justice and a break with neoliberalism rather than vanilla nationalism. Do you accept that argument? There were definitely overtones of that in the Scottish referendum. It was a radical independence vote, which was only narrowly defeated by the fact that corporations basically club together to say we're leaving your country, which enabled the older vote to say all my mortgage, and you can understand that. So I think yes, I think he has a point, I think it is linked into that. I think what it raises, the violence society, which has been appalling, it does raise into question the legitimacy of states and how they hold themselves together. What is it based on? What is the legitimacy of a state, of the entity of Spain as it currently is formatted? What is it based on? I'm sure lots of people, lots of lawyers will come out and can be waving documents and it's based on this settlement and this constitution but democratic legitimacy requires the consent of people and in Catalan the Spanish government clearly it looks like doesn't have that consent to rule as a Spanish entity. So I think there are links with this into the global order breaking down the accepted global order of what you can and what you can't do. Do states have a right to exist? I'm not sure where the states do. Does the Spanish state have a God given right to exist as it is? There was a question that came up during the referendum debate between the United Kingdom and Scotland when people say we're the United Kingdom we exist. We are. Well they were saying we have a right to break away we have a right to break up the United Kingdom through our own self-determination that's what the Catalan people are trying to do and I have to say my sympathies are with them I understand it's a very complicated situation but there is a there does feel to be a democratic legitimacy there they want to be able to break away from what is in effect Spain is an integral part of that neoliberal order I mean I think it might be a little bit too early to say that this is some kind of radical breakaway movement it's quite possible that if they did happen to break away they would very very quickly do nothing little more than just establish a kind of Catalan version of neoliberalism and join into the kind of whatever the world was at the time that's the most likely outcome I might be wrong I'm not an expert in Catalan politics but I definitely think the upsurge in public support for this is definitely linked to wider social movements that Paul's identified In many ways it's analogous to Brexit which is quite worrying in the sense that austerity led to the vote for the National Party and to vote for independence to break away and the party which is insomniating the debate in Spain is Tiki Cat and they're centre right so on the one side you've got a centre right party Tiki Cat and the other side in Spain you've got Tiki who are right wing so the two parties dominating the narrative like Brexit the right wing parties so even though you have a vein of resistance underneath the way you deflect it and the way you do with Spain with Podemos they don't dominate the narrative they're there their voice has been heard but they're not the loudest voice and that's kind of the worrying thing about it but I think like Clive said there's really big questions about what the state is and the state is a social contract right you agree to be from the state you agree to pay tax as you agree to be police by consent but what we're seeing I mean this is what really got me about it it's not that's not consent that's the police enacting political will that's the police being the arm of violence of the state and that worries me so deeply because it's like you forget about it and I know we have this ACAB it's transparent it's transparent and then yeah if the production guys next door can get up some videos of various scenes of violence that may be helpful for you to aren't familiar with this yeah here we go they're good one of the videos we put up yesterday was actually from 2014 and 2015 that's watermarked with live leaks and these are firefighters these are people that work together normally I mean I assume I guess they ship these people in from Spain because imagine the Catalan police aren't playing ball this is the Guardia Civil I mean they do public order policing etc a bit like the TSG but they're a fair bit bigger territory or sport group in this country let's not forget you know Spain Spain was a fascist state 40 years ago in living memory 40 years ago when I was born I'm giving my age away there but when I was born Spain was a fascist state my dad and grandma brought back a coin from their first holiday with Franco's head on it that seed is unreal yeah it's unbelievable if we can rewind that a second maybe not I don't know we probably can't but you know basically the defenders of this stuff including Boris Johnson and Michael Fallon they're saying well there's a constitution there's a rule of law you're not upholding the rule of law when you drop kick somebody who's sitting on a bloody stairwell this is the issue as it's become increasingly understood by lots especially the developing world the rule of law is flexible when you have might on your side and you know this is one of the things that we see with the neoliberal model is this obsession with the rule of law because without the rule of law you can't extract these excessive profits you can't control society you can't control the economy without the so-called rule of law so it does require consent and it does require people to kind of accept what's happening and increasingly people are saying no and the problem is we understand now that the rule of law is fixed it's why these investor state dispute settlement processes so-called international trade kangaroo courts that was at the heart of t-tip this is about having the rule of corporate law agreed in dark rooms between different corporate lawyers about how they will control the nation's democratic elected nation state that's what it's about so the rule of law is very important to neoliberalism but it's also very flexible for them as well when they want it to that's why it's such a song and dance it's made when George Burr or Tony Blair or others don't seem to play by the so-called rule of law it's what Valimir Putin who is a brutal dictator in my opinion he's not someone to look up to but he often he makes the point that the west has a rule of law when it suits them they do what they want, what they need to do so you know I think what we need to understand here in what's happening in Catalan and when the Tories talk about the rule of law what they're on about is basically the global order is cracking we don't like it it's all stick to what we know and I think that's the feeling you're getting from the speech at the bank of England that's what you're getting with what's happening in Catalan that's what's part of the kind of Jeremy Corbyn movement things are beginning to fall apart and they can sense it the rule of law I mean for me it seems it's about guaranteeing property relations Aldo-liberalism is a way of understanding this there's a guy called Werner excuse me, I'm so sick Werner it'll come to me, Google it Libcom, Werner, German theorists who came up with the idea of Aldo-liberalism they say we don't want the state we want the guarantee in our contract we want strong courts, strong police it's a German model all the Germans have Aldo-liberalism and then the first it's the antecedent to neoliberalism and it's about having a strong state against the weak and a weak state against the strong but yeah is that correct or are we being unfair are we being cantankerous leftists no, not at all I mean I don't know how anyone can watch those scenes and not feel afraid of the state the power that the state wields when it suits them I can sit here where you say all-grieve you can think of student protests you can think of a number of situations throughout our history where the state neoliberalism in the last 40 years has used violence to maintain the the status quo what's the term the expression we're using the rule of law I've got a question for you though if there's a unilateral declaration of independence by the Catalan government in the next several days which is entirely plausible and they're arrested what separates Rahoy from Erdogan and then by extension of that question why is Spain and the EU but Turkey isn't and would Spain be kicked out of the EU I mean it won't be but what does that say about what does that say about European democracy and by extension what does that say about EU values I think so I think if that happened Spain would be in a world of pain if they arrest the Catalan government because that's clearly not going all they're going to do is dampen down the fires they're not going to put them out and I think the only way this is going to be resolved is through a democratic settlement it's not going to be resolved through repression if anything it's going to radicalise yet more people so I think Spain probably feels like it's got its back against the wall that it has to do this I think whoever made this decision has made a tragic mistake look I think that whatever the situation in Catalan is in terms of the federal deal that's an offer it clearly isn't enough it wasn't enough for Scotland ultimately it was but up in the run up to the referendum campaign it wasn't but I think in terms of this would put Spain on a pile with Erdogan Erdogan is I think in a different category I think in terms of what he's up to and what he's doing in terms of how he's undermining the rule of law the extra powers he's given himself or been given through the plebiscite that he had recently I think he's of a different order of magnitude in terms of despotism to Spain but I think Spain is definitely on rocky ground and it's going to be ground which increasingly will be challenged it would be nice to see other European countries socially progressive European countries and they do exist Scandinavian countries for example challenge this but I think what you often see in Europe is they provide a united front we're going to bolster and support successionist movements because you've probably got your own at home if you're Sweden you've got the Sami people in the north the indigenous people who want their own territory if you're in the UK you've got the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish but these are the things states I think you look at history it's about constant change and it's about managing that change and about trying to learn from history about how can we manage how can we avoid the bloodshed of the past how can we manage this in a way that actually leads to an outcome which benefits all and takes out the immediacy of a crisis and this obviously has failed dramatically states don't have a right to exist indefinitely they do change people's change this is inevitable this is inevitability of history we see that clearly Spain is going through a period where there are millions of people that no longer want to be part of the Spanish collective they want separation from that so this complete nightmare for Spain and the way that they're dealing with this I think is completely wrong Speaking of law Universal Declaration of Human Rights the right to self-determination is there so this is up for grabs in terms of what but the UN Declaration of Human Rights it's under UN and in special these are the norms, par excellence of international law if this is a country in the global south if it's south Sudan we say look they have the right to self-determination then you go to the Palestinian Declaration of statehood that was done recently in the United Nations there is an element of to be able to the way that nation states or state entities often are created is through violence look at the United Kingdom, look at the history of it Cromwell and so on and so forth the wars which kind of brought Scotland and Wales into the United Kingdom they're created by violence and they're often held in place by violence look at Northern Ireland, look at both sides the violence that's been committed by both sides of that that's the UK, the British Government and the Irish it's almost as if the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence yes I know you're a politician it's very how do you reconcile that a genuinely democratic state does and yes I suppose I believe it has that right to maintain law and order I sound more like a Tory now, don't I but what I don't believe is that you can basically sell that ability to G4S which is apparently something that's potentially been or private now in America the right to administer violence if you want to put it that way it's outsourced to if you think about the private companies the private organisations which run the most violent institutions in the United States the prisons it has I have an issue with that making outsourcing violence for profit doesn't really kind of float my bow so look I think it's something we do need to be aware of but ultimately our history is based on empire, on colonisation on wars of dominance of our neighbours violence it's been done by the state sometimes it's been a monarchy sometimes it's been an oligarchy sometimes it's been something less than perfect democracy do I think we have a perfect democracy now no I don't but I think if we as social democrats can strive for the best possible democracy we can have then we also have to say we have a right to defend that democracy for those who would take it from us and that means enabling the state to use violence do we think in a perfect democracy we're going to suddenly say there is no crime no we don't therefore taking a criminal capturing them and put them in prison imprisoning someone is an act of violence of sorts it really is so are we going to say we don't have that right no we're not now if you believe that you shouldn't then I guess that probably puts you into the category of anarchist I would have thought looks like the idea from Thomas Paine that governments are necessary evil but it's about entering into a contract with people and it's the idea of accountability like that contract should be up in negotiation over time which is the idea of the constitution with Spain like Catalan is illegal under that constitution why shouldn't constitutions be up for debate every four years you can't just look to move the news on a little bit look at what happened in America today like the right to bear arms is in their constitution but it is essentially just pulling that state apart nearly fifty people Native American Indians the suppression of slavery colonization of the west this is a country that was built on all states are built on violence but this was built on violence in relative terms very recent history and on top of that the right to bear arms now you have a country which I think actually more people are killed domestically in the US than in all the wars they fought elsewhere since Vietnam it's an awful figure more people die from firearms raising stuff in Vietnam on the one hand the state has roughly on violence but then you look at a devolved ability to bear arms for Hobbes like the healthy in between for Hobbes America would be a state of nature it's a war of all against all because peace ability yeah peace ability isn't the virtue par excellence you don't have privatization so to speak of violence but within the body or the office of the monarch the state the sovereign so yeah very quickly we're going to finish up so I'll ask you both there's been a growth of militias in the US since the crisis in the last 10 years almost an allegous I guess to an increased desire for independence in places like Scotland and in Catalonia are there big problems ahead for the US state? there seems to be an arms race going on I read a little bit about this I read a little bit about this one of the big concerns about democrat socialism I don't mean democrat to the capital D but I mean kind of civil rights groups is the militarization of the police and the effect that is having on policing but if you go to the kind of one of the core roots of the root sources of this it is an innate fear of the far right militias who if you speak to the police this is not it's not actual jihadi terrorists their fear are well trained well armed well armed better than the police in some cases hard right militias not all of them are hard right but the vast majority of them this keeps I'm told this keeps kind of police forces and civil law agencies at wake at night because it has such a potential and then you throw in every kind of redneck that has got a shotgun or an AK-47 style automatic weapon it's a proper nightmare America is really a powder keg when you look at it like that so I think destabilization and obviously Donald Trump isn't the most stable development in a critical situation and you begin to see that America is a country with vast problems you look at even after an attack like this or similar attacks Obama if he put his head above the parapet start talking about gun control peppered behind him shots he had to kind of duck back down this is a very difficult situation and because of the way the American constitution has been constituted in terms of the checks and balances to kind of stop oligarchies which is what the founding fathers look to the old Greek city-states and Athens and democracy to kind of work out how to stop history repeating itself they have put those checks and balances in but some of the amendments actually allowed the capture of that state I think by large corporations and it's caused a gridlock in politics even if you have a massively reforming Bernie Sanders type character can you see how he could pioneer radical change to that country in a five or ten year term through congress and the senate collectively I struggle to see that I don't see America seems to be locked into a kind of I'm not going to say a death spin America seems to be locked into a dark place and I can't see how it's going to get out of it and when you look at the the armed camps and the militarization of the police seems to be an internal arms war an arms race going on and that can't be good I don't want to over dramatize it I don't want to like you know this is obviously my choice I don't think it is talked about enough and you know look one of the problems that we have with Brexit whatever happens with Brexit there's a good chance in the next five to ten years our relationship with Europe is going to be weakened that means and that's what in the context of the hypothesis like Liam Fox one we are going to be pulled into the American orbit an increasingly destable and violent American orbit that's what some of them want I don't I happen to think that for all its faults Europe is far better for us it's our closest neighbor trading and economically but also civilly in terms of culture and our outlook on the world about democracy about our views about how the world should proceed about climate change about resorted police that's closer to us and what we do is we cut those ties with Europe we end up gravitating that's my fear towards that country and it doesn't feel like it's heading to a great place and that's what I think people need to think about you know it's not just about trade deals it's also us moving closer to them in terms of alliances in terms of military operations and so on and so forth we're close enough as it is the further we move from Europe the closer I think we end up moving towards America because the area of you know the United Kingdom kind of forging out you know what is it called Empire 2.0 that went down really well that went down really well with the Commonwealth I just don't think that's a starter of course it's not a starter so you know that's my concern another one of my concerns Kirsty we're going to finish with you so we're talking about a succession in Spain in the United Kingdom briefly touched upon in the US historically speaking it's been very successful and I think which has endured for about 250 years so look along with the most places is it possible that in our lifetime we might see genuine secessionism in the US of the right or the left right if you're in California and you're a liberal and you work in Silicon Valley you might want to California Republic right I think actually to look a little bit further if you look at Puerto Rico you're living in Puerto Rico and your president hasn't really said anything about you 80% of your country has gone I think you're going to start looking at smaller islands back in the way from the US rather than the actual like the federal states like some of the dependencies some of them will be under water for climate change really on that happy note very quickly I would just say you know I think America's already had well I had a war of so called secession the civil war the original civil war which was probably one of the bloodiest wars in American history it was bloodier than I think the First World War and the Second World War in terms of the amount of death but I think what you have to remember very carefully is that it wasn't just a war of secession in fact that was I think there's been a lot of revisionism that's been going on we're doing a lot of reading about this after the charters of the automatically and the demonstrations the civil war of America was predominantly a war of slavery and if you doubt that go back and look at the secessionists the so called secessionists that were talking now obviously America doesn't have a slave issue a slavery issue at the moment and there could be a multitude of reasons why states would want to secede from the union I think it's very difficult but I think what you would see again in the American state would not hesitate I can't see it hesitating to use the most extreme violence to stop a state from doing that but who would I mean if San Francisco I mean sorry California you know you could think possible what would lead up to that what would happen to that for that to happen you could have said the same about Spain ten years ago I mean the stats on a Catalan's wanting independence in the mid-2000s were like 15-16% and now we're seeing what we're seeing so who knows anyway Clive you've been great thank you leave me hanging I wanted a fist bump here we go well we've all survived the conference I'm looking the main camera here we go I've got flu you're not feeling too great you said I'm off the booth I'm being healthy for the next two months I had two boiled eggs for breakfast Clive feels great he looks great he's well rested Clive looks younger than me and he's the MP he's meant to be the stressed out one so yeah Michael Walker's sick so we survived decent show long live socialism the Tory conference let's have a real laugh over the next few days we'll be back next Monday we'll see you then