 Back in June we talked to our good friend and former member of the European Parliament Godfrey Bloom about the then-pending Brexit vote. You may recall that Mr. Bloom was firmly in the leave camp, but somewhat pessimistic about the chances that the British people would vote in fact to leave the EU. Well, it turns out that Brexit did pass, the leave camp was successful and the sky has not fallen. So here to provide us with a great post-mortem of why and how Brexit passed from a libertarian and Rothbardian perspective is the inimitable Godfrey Bloom. Stay tuned for a great interview. First and foremost, Godfrey Bloom, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to the show. Always such a pleasure and an honor indeed. Well, Brexit, although you were cautiously pessimistic, actually passed. The leave camp succeeded. The sky has not fallen. Is there a hangover in Britain? Is there a residual ill will in the countryside? No, funnily enough, the reason I was pessimistic when we last spoke was the whole establishment was against us. I mean, the BBC, Sky TV, the political establishment, every single hand was turned against us. And I thought it would be too difficult to break out of that, you know, the propaganda, the doomsday scenario, and blow me down. It was quite extraordinary. And it was driven by where I live, Yorkshire, Yorkshire was 70, 30 in favour of leaving. This was very much a non-London thing. This was very much a shock to the metropolitan elite in London, who had to get maps out and find out where places like Yorkshire were. So we're absolutely delighted. And most of the country, there was genuine celebrations. I mean, people were going around shaking hands with each other, people were coming up to me in pubs, complete strangers and shaking hands and saying, you know, you must be pretty pleased, Mr Bloom. And I said, well, so much to you, and they said, yes, we are. Because it did come as a little bit of a surprise. We didn't think we could rock the establishment and blow me down. We have. Well, I'm interested in this cultural divide. We have this in America, the urban versus rural red state, blue state divide. And in England, especially, we have sort of this disappearing pub and fox hunting rural crowd versus the city of London types, who are obviously all voting to remain. It's an interesting divide. It seems like it's getting worse. Well, there is an urban rural divide, as I think there is probably everywhere in the world, which is a sad thing. To be honest, I think it's perhaps not quite so strong in England as it is in other parts of the world. It's very much. Well, I tell you what, in Scotland, for example, it's very much urban and rural. There's no middle ground, whereas that most urban people, most people that live in cities have a little bit of a soft spot for the rural way of life, and they rather envy it in many ways. And that calls to in France. They say the great saying is every Parisian is a peasant at heart. So it's a very interesting phenomenon. But what was quite clear, what came across was actually much more black and white. Was those in the public sector were for remain, and those in the wealth creating sector were for leave. Now that was absolutely clear as a bell. Did you notice or hear of Tony Blair's recent remarks in France that the British could still change their mind and the debate continues? There is amongst the political elite and the civil service elite a state of state of denial. You have to bear in mind that, as I said before in the last, you know, our last interview that we had together, the European Union is nothing to do with economics. It's fake. That was always a fake argument. It's a political ideal. It's a political dream. And that political dream started in the hearts of the political elite and the civil service elite in the late 1960s and early 70s. So those people now who bought into that dream are at the top of the civil service and at the top of politics. And it's more of a religion than anything else, you know, Geoff. It's a religion. These people are deeply horrified and shocked. And they don't quite know how to deal with it because it's suddenly their dream has been completely shattered and it's been shattered by ordinary people. You know, this isn't a force majeure of some international political game. This is ordinary people who've rejected this political ideal. As they would have always done in 1972 when we went in and 1975 when we had a referendum, we were told it was a common market. Common market was on the ballot paper. I voted for it because I'm a great free trader and I wanted free trade with Europe. And that's what we thought we were getting. There was no question in 1975 that we were voting to be part of a European super state. And of course, some of the smart people say, oh, well, if you'd read the small print of the Treaty of Rome, you'd have seen that. Well, we didn't. We believed in those days what politicians told us that we wouldn't lose sovereignty and Edward Heath, if you look at Hansard, which of course is our transcript of the House of Commons in the 1970s, Edward Heath said it would have no impact on our sovereignty. Extraordinary lie. Extraordinary lie. And admitted much later after the 30 year old that he had lied. So this is quite an extraordinary thing. But also, it wasn't just Tony Blair who's yesterday's man and deeply, deeply distrusted by now by the British public. He was an asset to us in the campaign because he's so awful. But more interesting is Gus O'Donnell, Lord O'Donnell, who was head of the civil service, who was saying very much the same thing. And it isn't possible. It has not been possible to be promoted in the civil service unless you were deeply embedded with this europhilia. You deeply believed in this political dream. So the head of every single civil service department is also deeply shocked. And this to me is far more worrying than yesterday's men like Tony Blair. What do you think of Theresa May's actions to date? Do you think she's serious about moving forward with the mechanical steps to negotiate a withdrawal treaty? Well, the jury is still out on this. We don't know. Nobody knows Theresa May, particularly. She made a terrible dog's breakfast at the home office, but the jury is still out. Maybe she'll do better in this job. She hasn't got a particularly good track record on what she's done in the past. But let's give her some elbow run. She's got the head of Brexit, the Brexit ministerial cabinet, which is David Davis, who is my local MP. And I know very well we have lunch relatively regularly and we understand each other. We know each other. We respect each other. And he is a man of honor. He isn't a chance of politician. He's late in his political career now. He has nothing to gain by any chicanery, and he is trusted. He is certainly very much trusted on this. So we really have to see, but again, the thing that makes me slightly uneasy is this talking about negotiation. We're going to negotiate our exit. I've never heard anything so quite ridiculous. The European Union is a customs union. It's the last of its kind in the world. It's a complete anachronism. It was formed in something like 1952, 53. And if ever your members who might listen to this interview, imagine a 1952 or 1953 Studebaker. That's what we're actually doing, or phone or typewriter. We're dealing with something here, which is deeply and hopelessly anachronistic. It's yesterday's idea, not even yesterday's. It's last month's idea. It's hopeless. And that's why it's not been working. It doesn't work for anybody. And other European unions are equally fed up with it. So she's talking about negotiating. Now all she needs to do, Parliament needs to rescind the 1972 European Communities Act. That can be done in an hour, can be done literally in an hour, and trigger Article 50, which everybody agrees legally. She doesn't need Parliament to do. That can be done in one hour. So we don't know why the prevarication is. What is the point of prevarication that we're trying to do a good deal? There is no deal. The deal's done. We're coming out. The people have spoken. We're coming out. And of course, if you look at the trade figures, if you look at the economic argument, the trade imbalance to the European Union, to the United Kingdom is 80-20. We take 80% of their goods, and they take 20% of ours. It's massively in their favor. We take 18% of France's wine production. Lord only knows what percentage of German automobiles we take. It's huge, as if any of your members who visit England can see. Every second car is a German car. So any suggestion that we have to negotiate our way out is fundamentally absurd. And a lot of people in the pubs and clubs of England say, what is it she wants to negotiate? What is it to negotiate? We leave. They can knock on our door politely, and we may or may not see them over a cup of tea. We might give them the time to make their case to get a deal out of us. We don't need a deal out of them. We're the customer. Well, it's interesting because the Guardian seems obsessed with this idea of freedom of movement and that there's no way that the EU will allow you access to the single market, another obsession. To have access to the single market, you're going to have to agree to freedom of movement with between the UK and the EU. Well, again, you see, it's absurd. And of course, everything that the Guardian writes on any subject from the environment to the European Union is absurd, bless their cotton socks. They're rather fun and they mean well, but they're not of this planet. So all that, of course, is complete nonsense. What are the Germans going to do if we don't agree to free movement of labour? Are they going to stop selling us BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen? Are they going to stop selling us? The French are going to say, I'm sorry, you can't have any more of our wine. Have you ever heard of anything quite as ludicrous? Only the left-wing press can come up with this sort of buffoonery. So I'm afraid no, it doesn't cut any mustard with me. And it doesn't cut any mustard with the people who voted out. They're getting a little bit distrustful. They're getting a little bit annoyed. I want to see a schedule. People want to see a schedule. When are we triggering Article 50? And when are we rescinding the 1972 act? Give us some dates, please, Theresa May. Give us some dates. Do you think that this kerfuffle with Apple and this tax bill that the EU Commission has presented them, based on funneling a lot of their international profits into Ireland, do you think this kerfuffle is sort of assisting your cause? In other words, people are saying, ah-ha, perhaps Brexit was the right thing to do. Well, you don't want to be part of this morass. Yes, indeed, I think it is. People are going, goodness me, what on earth can this have to do with the European Union? Which, of course, this is what the European Union is. And Ireland, where 80% of Irish traders were the United Kingdom. And of course, they voted no. They voted no to the treaty, the Constitution, the Treaty of Lisbon. They had to be told to vote again. Otherwise they'd be severely punished. And I think the Irish now will look across at us and they'll go, just a minute, you know, it's a very sound base to go back to the United Kingdom and Irish agreements that we've had since time immemorial. They can still vote here, you know, the Irish in the UNESCO, something of an anachronism, but they can. So their natural home, of course, is with the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom's natural home is global trade. We're a global trading nation. Only 45% of our trade is with the European Union and it's declining. It's increasing in the rest of the world. So we are strapped now, bound with hoops of steel to a rotting corpse of the European Union, which is destitute bankrupt and going backwards, demographically, economically, whatever you like. So yeah, we need to get out and we're not alone, you know, I think the Czech Republic would want out. A lot of the French themselves are getting fed up, the Dutch are fed up, the Swedes are fed up. Ordinary people are now saying just a minute, what are we getting out of this? And the answer is not very much. Well, another bullet dodged, of course, is the Eurozone itself. Don't you think now that the Remain camp are going to have a hard time arguing that in the long run, this is bad for the British pound? Isn't this good, ultimately, for the pound? Well, it's an interesting phenomenon. The problem that the pound has, the pound sterling has, and I've been saying this, of course, for a very long time and Austrian economists understand it full well, is that we have the second biggest national debt in the world. It's growing at the moment by 5,000 pounds a second. Our budget deficit runs at somewhere in the region of 60 to 70 billion pounds a year. It's completely and totally out of control. We're not alone on the globalness. I mean, the United States is in exactly the same position. But it's very bad here. And this is the problem that we have with the pound sterling. And of course, we have Mark Carney, who's a maniacal Keynesian Bank of England governor, who's soon to be voted for Brexit for no reason whatsoever. Immediately, he taught the economy down. They would doom and gloom for the 10 weeks up to the referendum that we were all going to die. Our firstborn babies would be taken away from us, would be hit by meteorites, and a great plague would descend upon the land if we left. And so, of course, when we actually did leave, we voted for Brexit. I don't know whether he believed his own propaganda, but he then started another round of quantitative easing and rate reducing. Of course, the pound fell. The pound fell further, which is in nobody's interest at all, although you can't tell that to the average television producer who believes a falling pound is somehow a good thing, because one person in 100 might export something to it, which is very unusual. But there we are. So people don't understand. They seem to think that a falling pound somehow helps us, which, of course, we know it doesn't. So that is our problem. And the other big problem that we have, of course, is that if the government is only going to replace Brussels with Westminster, we won't get the great benefit that we should experience from Brexit. But we, like I'm afraid America is going the same way, we believe there is no aspect of government which should not involve itself in the citizenship, whether it's sugar in drinks, whether it's smoking in pubs. It doesn't matter what it is. The state believes it has a legitimate role to play in our lives. Well, the whole point of Brexit is to cut ourselves loose from the stifling bureaucracy of the European Union. If it's going to be replaced by Westminster, we will not reap the benefits at all. And that is something that worries professional independent neo-Austrian economists greatly. Well, when you talk about replacing Brussels with Westminster, let me ask you this. We're told that, obviously, there's a populist sentiment behind Brexit. Is there any libertarian sentiment behind it, a sense in the UK, finally, that people feel they're over-governed? There is, but they have no outlet for it because no political party is going to the people and saying, this is one of the reasons I left party politics. I failed in my bid for the United Kingdom Independence Party to persuade them that there was a market for a new political party to say, we don't want the government in every aspect of our lives. And believe me, it's a very working class thing. It's a very ordinary working man thing. Not your lawyers and your bureaucrats and your public sector people who benefit from all this nonsense. It's your ordinary working guy who can no longer clean your windows because there's a directive that says he's got to have a ladder if it's over 15 feet or if it's over 30 feet, he's got to have scaffolding to paint a third-floor bedroom window. He can't change your gas cylinders because he needs a special European certificate, but he's been changing gas cylinders all his life. This is absolutely endless. I meet very few Americans outside the Mises Institute that really understand what the European Union was all about. I'll give you a couple of quick examples, if I may. We had our speed restriction signs were around about two feet wide and they covered the country. And the European Union insisted that we complied with a directive that standardized right across the European Union. So we changed all our speed restriction signs across the country. We reduced them by one-third in size. Imagine the cost. Can you imagine the cost of that? Millions and millions of signs being replaced, metal signs. There's not one Englishman probably in 10,000 who knows that was a European directive. There's also optics. If you go into the pub, it used to be one sixth of a Jill. If you asked for a single whiskey in a British pub, they'd give you one sixth of a Jill. But that wasn't good enough for the European Union. It has to be standardized across the whole of the European Union. So every single optic in every single pub had to be changed. There must be at least six optics in every pub. How much did that cost? It cost millions and millions and millions of pounds. So people in the referendum used to get into a bit of a stew about whether it cost just one billion pounds a month to be members or three-quarters of a billion pounds a month to be members of this ludicrous organization. It wasn't that at all. It was the cost of implementing all these rules and regulations. That's what was the fiscal drag. And that was costing industry something like 50 or 60 billion pounds a year. That's going to be good, Jeff, if we get rid of that. But I've got a sneaking suspicion. I've never known politicians have a great deep-seated desire to deregulate either here or in your great country. Godfrey Bloom, final question. UK is about 65 million people. So call it roughly one-fifth the size of the US population-wise. Is there any lesson here for the US? Is there any hope for Westerners and Americans specifically coming out of the Brexit vote that perhaps we can finally shrug off this tide of globalism and we can get back to a more decentralized approach? All I can do is I say I can hope so. But of course, I'm restricted to the Americans I meet are of my kidney. They're all sensible guys who I talk to. So it's difficult for me to assess Middle America. But I can't believe that most ordinary Americans aren't absolutely fed up with having Washington telling them what to do all the time about every subject. No, American likes it any more than we Brits like it. We're actually both quite bulky. We come from the same stock. So we're bulky people. We don't like it. So we all want to see less government. But even in your election that's going on at the moment, you've got two candidates. But neither of them are talking about cutting spending. They're just talking about how they can spend more money more effectively and how they can run your lives more effectively. They're not saying vote for me and I'll get out of your face and bugger off and play golf. They're not saying that. They're saying vote for me. I will manage you and your family more effectively. So there's huge divide against ordinary people, the electorate, and the politicians. It's a huge gap. And it's the same in North America. It's the same in Europe. And it's the same in the United Kingdom. We've got a long way to go yet. A long way. But this is certainly the first step. This is the first step on a very long and difficult journey. Well, we look forward to keeping up with you as this unfolds. Godfrey Bloom, thank you so much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend.