 Hello, my name is Aaron Bestani and welcome to this week's edition of Downstream here on Navarra Media. We have a great guest on a really important topic, but before we go any further, I want you to do two things. The first is to like this video. It helps us reach an even bigger audience. The second, if you've not already, is to subscribe to this video. So hit the subscribe button and again, it doesn't cost you anything and it really helps us. Now, on to the interview. For three centuries, there was a kingdom on the British Isles which acted with political independence from the south of what today we call England. Meanwhile, it maintained a similar relationship with an independent state which today we would call Scotland. Its name was North Umbria, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom which existed from the mid-seventh to the mid-tenth century north of the river Humber. While that was a millennium ago, the north of England has enjoyed a distinct political and social culture from the south of England ever since, as well as, more recently, a different economic model and relationship to industrial modernity, an event of which it was both the cradle and crucible. Now, as demands for Scottish independence amplify, calls for Welsh independence move from marginal to mainstream, and the prospects of the United Ireland seem plausible, for the first time in a century, could the north of England really get in on the act? And can the name North Umbria really give rise to a new, modern nation? With me to discuss that is founder of the Northern Independence Party, Philip Proudfoot. Philip, welcome to downstream. Thank you, thank you for inviting me. It's a great pleasure to have you on. Philip, I'll start right from the top. Why does the north of England need independence? Well, you were getting at it with your introduction there a little bit, so there's a, there are multiple ways to answer that question. There is the strategic question, which is, if Scotland gains independence, if Welsh independence starts to gain even further momentum, what is left of the north? The north has a similar kind of relationship with Westminster to Scotland and to Wales. So, you know, 70% of the time the north hasn't been represented by the government that it is voted for. So we have the same sort of relationship with Westminster. If you think about the ways in which, you know, that the Welsh sort of transport situation reflects the transport situation in the north of England, it's harder to move across the north than it is to move from the north to the south. These are deep infrastructural imbalances within the UK. And we've had, you know, we've had generations of attempted attempts to address that imbalance. So we've had, you know, regeneration schemes, powerhouse, levelling up. And we are now beginning to see the reality of what that levelling up agenda actually is, which is the same thing we've had through successive governments in Westminster. It is a fob off. It's a complete, it's a shore and dance without the substantial infrastructural change that's needed. And the reason why is because the UK is set up that way. It's set up to filter goods, resources, people from the north to the south. And the only way we'll ever have any chance at breaking with that is independence. So what kind of country will it be? I mean, it's sort of, you've got a lot of similar sized, I suppose countries in northern Europe, are there any sort of analogues? And you say, well, look, the north of England actually doesn't have to be the satellite to the southeast. It can be like here instead. Where'd you have in mind? Well, if we look at like comparable countries, you've got Sweden and Denmark. And I spoke, I spoke to someone, sort of a left wing activist in the SNP about the idea of Northern independence. And he said to me that, you know, you can tell that country is a normal country, if it's major infrastructure goes north, south, east, west, whereas we don't have that. So we would look to basically bring down the level of total regional inequality to a normal level rather than the obscene level that is currently the UK. But I think that like it's also key that we don't want to just replicate, right? One of the idea, one of the points about having this new independence movement is that we can really begin putting down like radical and imaginative proposals from the beginning. So one of the common criticisms we get is that if you have a Northern independence movement, you'll repeat exactly the same issue with Manchester as you have with London. So that's why right from the very beginning, people within our party in the different policy channels we have among our activists are looking at things like federal proposals. And we don't want to, we want to, why would we go for independence and then just repeat the mistakes that other states have built? We have a chance now to build something from the ground up from the very beginning of a party, which I know, let's be realistic, this is a long term project. But if we set the groundwork now, we can actually imagine, we can imagine what a fair, modern, normal country would look like. So yeah, we would basically, we'd be looking at having multiple capital cities, trying to minimize that sort of competition overfunding, which is at the heart by the way of the Tories levelling up agenda is just having Northern cities compete with each other, breaking down solidarity between our cities. So yeah, we would take inspiration from countries of comparable size, but look to build something new as well. So I mean, obviously there's a, there's a, there's a strand within the SMP, which says, look, we don't want to be, we don't want to be in, you know, a British nation state, we would want to be a Scandinavian nation state. You're saying actually that's not necessarily a useful binary. No, I mean, there's, when you, we can just, because we're so new, and because we're all driven by members with all these creative different ideas, we don't have to repeat ideas that have been developed elsewhere. We can look at what model would work best for the North. So for example, in your introduction, you talked a lot about, you know, Northumbria and identity and how, and how to cement that. Well, yeah, we're going to call the country Northumbria, right? But I also understand that you're not going to get someone in Liverpool to start saying that they're Northumbrian right away. We're calling it that because you don't want to say you're North, North in England, right? We want to break with England. We need a name for the country. Northumbria sounds pretty cool. So I'm all right with that. But we're not, we're not going to try and force that one of the people. We want to have a political system that reflects the proud regional identities that we actually have in the North. You know, like some of the places I think you'll find the strongest forms of identity outside of, inside the UK, are places like Liverpool and Newcastle. And we have a strong civic identity and we want a political system that gives that power. I suppose that that kind of, that somewhat answers then the next question, which is the Northern Independence Party self-defines the Democratic Socialist Party. But I suppose one of the criticisms or responses that you would get to that is, well, why can't you advance those values, policies, politics, whilst also maintaining the British state will be massively reformed. So you could have, for instance, a Northern Assembly, Greater Devolution of cities like Manchester and Newcastle. Why isn't that sufficient for you? Well, it's not sufficient because first of all, there was, remember in 2004, and I'm sure you're going to get to this, there was the North East Assembly vote, right? And that failed. And I would argue that if you have similar referendums like that in the North, they will just repeatedly fail because what people are not actually interested in having more and more politicians, what they're interested in is having a political system that actually has power rather than adding layer upon layer upon layer, until finally you get to Westminster. So the reason why they're not sufficient is first of all, I just don't think people in the North will actually vote for them if they go to referendum. I don't think people actually support further layers of between the North and Westminster. What they want is actual power taking back control. That's what they actually want. And so that's why we want to break with it. And you know, obviously on the left, we get a lot of criticism that we're going to, you know, break up working class solidarity and all of these things. Well, I would quite like the idea of building a new country in the North that is a home for everyone and that people who want to live in a basically normal, fair society will be attracted to move to the North rather than the other way around, which it has been for generations, which is all of us moving to the South. I'd quite like to reverse that and make a very attractive country that is a short train ride away rather than people talking about how they want to move to New Zealand. Sunderland is closer than New Zealand, right? So that's the idea. We're not breaking solidarity. We're looking at what's feasible within this thing called the British state and how will we achieve democratic socialism? Well, the biggest obstacle is the Union itself. That's our position. So you just want a normal English-speaking country in the North Atlantic because right now there aren't any, maybe Ireland I suppose. Yeah, just like, you know, people when we talk about the North being centralised, England being centralised, it's not, people don't realise it's not like a little bit. It's 300% more centralised than other comparable countries. We have the highest level of health inequality variation of any developed state. You know, I always, we always put out messaging that if you look at various statistics on the North South divide, I work in international development. Those are the kinds of things that you would expect to see in a country recovering from civil war. And we've built that ourselves. So, you know, this is the only route forward to build that basically functioning English-speaking normal country where suffering is a bit less, education is well funded, healthcare is well funded. You know, these are our objectives. Why is there any difference to the southwest of England though, Philip, I suppose? Because I think clearly the analysis you have and the response makes sense in so much as I think very few people would argue that the southeast of England overwhelmingly concentrates political, economic, cultural power clearly. And that's not to say that it's, you know, everybody there has the life of Riley to the cost of everybody else in the country. Clearly immense poverty exists in the southeast of England too. Actually, you know, some of the poorest places in the country, for instance, in Kent or around the coast of Kent, Essex, parts of London have the highest child poverty in Europe, like Britain. But clearly, there's a major issue of concentration regionally. But why is there any difference to the southwest of England? Because the issue, for instance, of you see in this country that transport really all roads literally lead to London, it's a similar thing with the southwest. If you ever tried to go to Plymouth, actually, it's harder to get to Plymouth from London than it is to get from London to Liverpool or Derby or Manchester. And there's a good argument to say actually the most isolated, most underfunded, most forgotten part of the UK is the southwest of England, Devon, Cornwall and so on. Oh, you mean Cornwall that has an independence movement? So no, but here's, yeah, so here's my question then. Why do you want, I mean, because ultimately the Northern Independence Party wants independence from England, but that's not just independence from London and the southeast, which of course I think most people get instinctively, but it's also independence from other places which are left behind. So what's the response to that? Do you also want a fragmentation of the south of England or is that beyond the proviso of the NIP? It's not our decision what the south of England wants to do. I mean, we express solidarity with all movements that want self-determination. So if there was a movement in the southwest, we've expressed solidarity and support. One of the first podcasts I did was with Cornish separatists. We support Cornish independence. We support the very small but emerging demand for London independence. Anyone who wants to break with the Westminster model has our support. But, you know, it's not for us. It's not for us to comment on that. Like if we can make, like I say, we're not, you know, it's this is an exclusionary nationalism here, right, that we want to build a country in the north that could actually be home to anyone who wants to move there. You know, right from the very beginning, we put out that kind of messaging. We are not that movement. It's built into our party documents that are starting to be written and signed off on through our fully democratic system. We're not exclusionary, but it's not for us to say what the southwest does. I agree with you entirely. I agree. And I think that the anything that breaks the Westminster model and empowers our regions is a great thing because again, this is not a normal country when it comes to centralization. It is abnormally centralized. And it's time that that was at the very front of the political agenda. Because otherwise, you know, I'm sure we're going to talk about it. But let me just talk about the Treasury moving to Darlington, because I'm from the northeast. And it, you know, it's a particular bugbear for me is that it's 750 jobs, you know, how many unemployment we have in the northeast. It's something like 85,000. And then it gets us, it gets a complete like free-for-all in the media. No one, no one drills down and looks at this proposal and what it will actually do for places like Darlington. First of all, how many of those jobs are people moving from the south to the north? How many of those are going to be high level management jobs moving people out of London to the north? Second of all, how many of those jobs are going to be low paid data entry jobs? It's 750 jobs. Why is it being talked about as if it's like a, you know, a radical, a radical new proposal in Durham, where I'm from, we already have the passport office. These things have been tried again and again. Again, it's not innovative thinking. And then on top of that, right, we don't particularly want to see a property housing bubble like you have in London. So what mechanisms are going to be put in place to stop driving the house prices up in Darlington, where we're going to get all of these senior treasury workers moving? Like it, there's no innovative joined up thinking. And, you know, we're not alone in saying this. Like most of the major, like, you know, the IPPR North, the immediate response was basically this, you know, people who, people who have been tuned in and researching the North South divide for a long, a long, long time of pointing out that these, this is, this is what levelling up actually means. And yeah, it's just a particularly, I'm particularly annoyed with that treasury announcement and the free pass it got. Do it. We really appreciate it. Now, on with the interview. Here's, here's a question. Obviously, 2019, Tory gains in the North of England were massively overstated. I think one of the most irritating of many irritating things you see on Twitter is the North is now Tory, which is just factually inaccurate. It's not correct. The North of East is still primarily, you know, labour held seats. But clearly, the Tories made massive inroads. Yeah. Massive inroads, all the long time coming. You see it after 2015 with the UKIP vote in a lot of these seats. So why do you think there is an appetite for a democratic socialist politics in a part of the country, which if anything, is turning away from the politics, even of the centre left, let alone the left, left? Well, let's, let's drill down into that a little bit, because that's a really interesting question. And I mean, I've heard you talk about it, Aaron. So I know that what you think, but what labour has to reckon with is that difference between 2017 and 2019. What changed in 2017? A radical and transformative agenda won in the North. Why? Because labour was respecting democracy and respecting the referendum. What changed in 2019? They dropped that respect for democracy. And as Ian Lavery himself said, you know, disrespect democracy at your peril. That's what that was, what the change was. So there's another thing that people say on that, right? So like, the North has a lot of property owners. So people think that means that they will buy into that conservative agenda. That's true. We do have more property owners in the North. But those property owners also have to go to hospitals. They also have their kids in schools. They also experience the infrastructural aspects of what it is to live in somewhere like the North of England. So yes, you know, there is that like potential base for the Tories, but people also have that direct material relationship with infrastructural inequality, which if labour had actually stuck to and respected democracy, you know, my position, I've said this before in other podcasts, is that if labour had said in 2019 that this is what a labour Brexit looks like, they would have done a lot better. They would have potentially that's that manifesto to me sounds like sunlit uplands. And then it's been dropped. And it's been dropped. Why? Because who took over the Labour Party? It's all of the London centric MPs again, the Southern MPs. The Labour Party is a dead end. That's so you know, like, this is why we need this independence movement because people will support this because they know what it means to have this huge degree of infrastructure inequality in their lives. And no party is offering to remedy that. No. And we're back to sort of the Blairite era of treating the North with contempt. Parish, I know we're going to talk about Hartlepool in Saudi policy, but parachuting in, parachuting in in a candidate, you know, and then Kia Stama this morning on LBC, I'm sorry, just lying saying that the local CLP picked him. I'm sorry, we saw the memo. The memo was leaked. We know that's not true. It's back to sort of Blairite era politics. Terrible. Just to clarify for our audience, the memo that Philip is talking about was there were communications, private communications between the CLP appears to be the CLP secretary and chair and the leader's office. And this is now being presented as the local membership one step. And in fact, it was it was arguably two people, it might have been more, it might have been 22 people. But it was clearly a minority of people acting in concert with the Labour leadership. And for you, that represents a return to a genre of politics, which actually means Labour will never win again in the North, do you think? I mean, then it's going to severely harm Labour's chances to win in the North yet. Because the danger is, look, let's look at what let's look at what's going on with these tactics right now, right? So you've got Tories basically doing this, they got the free, they got a free pass in the mainstream media. They move the Treasury to Darlington. It looks like they're doing something. It's not substantial. And then they also keep pumping up that sort of authoritarian populist rhetoric. And then you have the Labour Party, nor transformative economic policies coming out. You know, people barely interested in the Labour Party. And then also this transparent and fawny attempt to, you know, fly the, fly the union flag and view the North as this landscape populated by bigots, pies, gravy and just that sort of blue labour tendency mixed with no economic vision. I mean, what is the strategy here? What's the strategy? That just do you think that's unfair? Do you think, do you think that the sort of, do you think that's a parody of the North? Where's it coming from, do you think? Because clearly, like you say, Kirstam is not from the North England, but he has people around him, Jenny Chapman, for instance, I think she was the MP for Darlington actually. So do you think they're just misinformed or where do you think it's comes from Labour? This representation of the North of England is, like you say, bigoted and has a completely different relationship to the flag and so on to the state. So you know, graduates in major cities, where does it come from? So one of the places it comes from is the North South divide itself. So the North South divide itself produces that level of ignorance about the North, because if you have an entire sort of media, media and political aristocracy concentrated in London, they end up inevitably reproducing those particular ideas because it's sort of in the popular consciousness. And then more those ideas are repeated, more they start to find root in our communities. So I often tell this story about, you know, when I was growing up, my granddad is from Northwest Durham, and from a town called Crook. And he lives on a councillor's day amusingly referred called the Watergate estate. But next door to his house, there was a BNP supporter who would fly the big union flag. And it was very odd. And everyone stayed away from them. And my mum would be like, don't play there. They're weird. Like, it was like in the North, if you go the weirdos are the ones who fly the union flag. And increasingly, rather than fight this nationalism, rather than fight this sort of flag worship with with innovative policies, instead, it's just been played to. And I don't want to particularly sit by and watch the North of England just get more and more reactionary, you know, like, there are all these other traditions in the North that we don't talk about. What about the Jero March, the minor strike, the campaign for justice for Hillsborough, all of our left wing traditional traditions, socialism with a northern accent, like it's completely erased. And instead of instead of like playing to the best of us, they placed the worst of us. Yes, I'm not saying there are bigots in the North. But if I went if I went to London, and I got into a black cab and a taxi driver said something bigoted about a particular area we were driving through, I would never say oh, he represents all of London. So why if they go, if the media go up to the North, you know, particular individuals are more guilty of this and others go to the North, and then they go to a Leeds, go to Leeds and go to weather spoons in the middle of the day, and they find someone who's a bit drunk and says something bigoted. He's they're held up as a representative for all of the North of England. And then it filters into like Twitter culture, where you get like North FC and all these stupid memes. So I don't I genuinely don't know where it comes from. Like I'm from a family of minors. My my my granddad is incredibly progressive on both sides. I can't see like, I just can't figure out where it's actually coming from. It doesn't reflect my experience. If I if you speak to people in our party doesn't reflect their experience, that's we call it the fictional northerner. Because we don't know we don't know what it is. But I suppose I don't think that the Brexit vote was bigoted. I think I'm a Euro skeptic. I think it was very, very legitimate reasons to vote to leave the European Union. But I suppose some some people like that you say these kind of media aristocracy of London that goes to the North, those people would say, Well, look, this significant vote for leave in a bunch of places, many places in the South, by the way, you know, Bogna voted leave, you know, to an extraordinary extent, you know, Euro skepticism from the right actually historically has been a southern phenomenon, but many parts of the North also also voted to leave. And those people would say that's evidence of of of of of regressive politics. What would you say to that? Why did the North vote leave? Yeah, or what are parts of the North vote leave in 2016? Well, I mean, this is Novara, so I can be a bit geeky here a bit, I guess. I'm a fan of Ernesto LaClau's book On Populist Reason, which I think does a good job of explaining this kind of this kind of politics, which is which is that basically the way that. So you first have to acknowledge that the EU is a structure, it does have particular effects. It is not necessarily guilt free when it comes to the economic redevelopment of the North of England. First of all, second of all, it's sort of the perfect, it's a perfect body to hang these material grievances on because it's very opaque. It can be entirely emptied of specificity, such that you can say the European Union is the reason why my life is terrible, right? In some senses, it actually is, right? First of all, it's not it's not it's not guilt free here. But on top of that, you know, it's also that people needed this single term that could unify all of the particularities of that sort of infrastructural collapse in the North of England. And that's why, you know, and if people vote to leave, we have to respect that. You know, I actually, you know, personally, I abstained on the referendum because on the one hand, I am also Eurosceptic, but on the other hand, I saw how the campaign played out. And I just couldn't make a decision as to which way to go on it. But as soon as the vote came through, you know, I'm a Democrat, so I was like, we've got to support this. But that's really what happened with that leave vote. And it's really telling it. And if, you know, if you interview a leave voter, and you ask them about the about about about Brexit, you'll see that basically, as soon as they've said, you know, the thing about the EU, what they'll actually end up talking about is sort of Northern poverty, Northern experiences of poverty. And that's where it comes from. And that has still failed. People still fail to grasp that, I think. Let's talk about Harlepool. Yeah. More immediate concerns. You'll be facing Paul Williams as the Labour candidate in Harlepool. Yeah. He's centre left, NHS doctor. Some people would say this is going to be a very close race. Yeah. Why won't you stand aside? You're splitting the progressive vote. What's your response to that? There is no progressive vote. We are the progressive vote. Saudi Paul, I'm sorry to call him Saudi Paul, but I think we have to draw attention to the fact that this man is an apologist for Saudi Arabia. And he, you know, as, as Owen Jones also pointed out on Navarra, that, you know, he put out a puff piece for Saudi Arabia on Twitter one week after the UN said that Saudi Arabia was responsible for generating humanitarian crisis in Yemen. This man deserves no respect. So we're not splitting the vote. There is nowhere. You know, what, what Labour has to answer, right, is if that vision of the North, you know, is a place populated by bigots is true. You have to explain people like me. I grew up in County Durham. Who am I going to vote for? I used to vote for the Liberal Democrats under new Labour. Now where will I vote? Nowhere else to vote if you are genuine progressive. So we, as, you know, we support democracy, we have to give people that option. And that option is the Northern Independence Party. So I'm not bothered about splitting the vote because there's no vote left to split. But I think with Paul Williams, he's an interesting one because I don't particularly, you know, I'm not particularly fond of him. I don't know. I mean, he was only an MP for a couple of years. He's somewhat centrist in some ways, but he's, he's clearly to the left of Blairism, you know, he's kind of like an Ed Miliband style figure. And so you think there's really no hope for working alongside people like that? If they support an independent North, then we'll work with them. But if they don't know we want that, I mean, we're a single issue party, you know, well, we're not just a single issue. We have one big issue. And then we have lots of like visions of how we'll make that happen. So if he doesn't support Northern Independence, we won't work with him. We want a referendum on independence for the North of England. And tell our viewers about, because, you know, I'm familiar with these places. I don't know if I've been to either Stockton or Harley-Pool. He was an MP in Stockton, just explain this for us. He was an MP in Stockton for two years, about half an hour drive, I believe, from Harley-Pool. They're not a million miles from each other. He then stands in Harley-Pool. The selection process seems to have been a bit strange. Do you think that Labor, in terms of creating, formulating a long list of one for their parliamentary candidate for this seat, do you think they're still taking the people of the North of England, particularly the North East for granted? Yeah. I mean, Harley-Pool as a seat is interesting, because of course, it was like Peter Mandelson's seat. So it's one of those seats that really does have the tradition of taking a posh Southerner and dropping them in there. So yeah. I mean, you know, what else is interesting about Harley-Pool is that, you know, I spoke to a journalist at The Independent who said, if you're going to win any seat, it's going to be Harley-Pool. Because, you know, people like to call us a shitpost mean party, right? Well, Harley-Pool is exactly the sort of town that would support a party that wants to break with the establishment because they elected, you know, hangers the mayor, right? So Harley-Pool for listeners who don't know is famous because a ship ran ashore during the Napoleonic Wars and a monkey landed on the shore. And then the locals allegedly thought it was a French spy. So they hung it because this is what they thought a Frenchman looked like. So, you know, Harley-Pool embraces this sort of comedic element, you know, we've been officially endorsed by the Monster Raving Looney Party. And in Harley-Pool, that's no bad thing, right? So it's exactly the sort of place that we might actually win. And Harley-Pool is a place, you know, I'm not from Harley-Pool, I'm from County Durham from Sea of Durham. But I've been there, you know, many, many, many times. And it's not the sort of place that you can just take for granted, you know, it's not going to put up with this sort of top-down, parachuting someone in approach. This will upset local people. And when we start to like look a little bit more into this man and see what sort of person he actually is, I think there's a good chance that people in Harley-Pool will see he's not for them. So what's your campaigning strategy in Harley-Pool looking like? Obviously, things aren't going to open up again until April 12th. Have you got a timeline for the candidate? Are you going to have a ground campaign? Is it going to be primarily digital, etc.? Yeah, so basically, we've got, we've had four or five applications now for the candidate position. We're a brand new party, so we're still getting all of our mechanisms in place, but we're going to have a hustings and then we'll select our candidate. It'll be a fully democratic and transparent process. We've had a lot of interest from many people about standing. And yet in terms of the campaign, we're thinking mostly digital, in fact, because we've got, we have no backers, we have no serious financial financial supporters. It's mostly membership fees. And then a GoFundMe that generated £1,500. So when we're looking at what generates the largest amount of impact for the smallest amount of money, arguably things like Facebook advertising is the most effective. So we're doing a lot of research into the local groups in Harley-Pool. But I mean, obviously, we have loads of members from Harley-Pool. So we do actually know what the issues are on the ground. So we're going to, yeah, primarily, probably digital, also because of the lockdown as well. And the North has suffered a great deal under COVID. So it would be respectful not to be out there in huge force and to mostly do it from a socially distanced position. You touched upon there about some issues, but some areas of, I suppose, interest for people, even if you're not in Britain, even if you don't care about the Labour Party, it's kind of interesting that there's this new party which has emerged during a pandemic with no money and very few resources. So how do you guys collaborate, coordinate? How do you intend to grow over the next, say, 12 to 18 months? At the moment, we basically, we have a digital workspace, a digital headquarters, that's what I mean. And there we have people who have volunteer positions. So that's our major volunteer office space. We also are running, now, this is very sort of COVID politics. We have a Discord server. This is where the momentum of Northern Independence Party exists. So that's where people generate memes, pull out important statistics on the divide. This is like the sort of organising an activist space. So one of the ways we intend to grow is we're doing the opposite of Labour. So instead of pushing activists away, we're inviting them in. And it's kind of also amusing that after 2019, I don't know what they expected to happen with all of those people who suddenly gained loads of skills in activism, passion for developing, where did Labour think they'd go? They were just waiting for somewhere to go. And now we, now they're joining our party and helping us out and like brilliant, amazing talent producing all of this sort of social content. And I mean, listeners will have seen, hopefully, that we, you know, we trended over Twitter this weekend. And that's also thanks largely to that activist space that we're growing. We are, you know, we're controlling that narrative on Twitter thanks to these talented young activists. We understand the importance of the digital and of social media and getting that message across and shaping the conversation. I mean, Twitter is fantastic for an elite level discourse because journalists, I mean, journalists treat, you know, myself included, treat Twitter like crack cocaine. So if you can crack Twitter, you can basically crack a fair chunk of national conversation. But obviously for people in Hartlepool, that's less of an issue. So obviously, more so Facebook, email, WhatsApp, Telegram, let's extend Instagram and so on. So do you have a strategy beyond Twitter as well in terms of in terms of social reach? Yeah, I mean, like it's like you said, we've recruited quite a lot of people who were involved in running a lot of Labour's Facebook campaigns. So we have people experience Facebook campaigners now as well. And you know, I always find it like, you know, there's this sort of dismissive attitude people have towards social media and politics, which I find really odd. It's like, where have you been? Like really, like, my first feeling around that is that when we have an economy that's built around like what David Graber called, you know, bullshit jobs, sneaking a look at your phone actually is a really big place in which people gain their political knowledge. And I know about this personally, my dad voted for the Brexit Party in 2019. I let him, I got his password off him and he let me log into his Facebook. And I saw what his Facebook looks like. Very different to mind, very different messages getting across, very smart forms of campaigning. And then when I talked to him about why he's voting the Brexit Party, he was basically repeating like elements of their call messaging that had gotten into his head. And I was, this is incredibly impressive. So this sort of sniffiness towards online, whatever. The reason why we're getting picked up, the reason why I'm here today, the reason why we're moving into sort of mainstream media is because of Twitter, you know, more followers, more cloud, more notice, right? Second of all, we're not only on Twitter, we're looking at other social media. Third, there's a pandemic. So I don't know how we're supposed to be out there organizing at the moment. And then also on top of that, actually, we have a lot of people who are setting up community organizing units within NIP, looking at like different, different local groups that we can start getting involved with as we move out of the pandemic, because the North has been hit harder than anywhere else. So we're going to, we're going to have our activists on the ground and supporting people because what we care about most of all is our communities that have suffered for so long. So we want to get out there and help. And so if there's a general election say, I mean, it increasingly looks like 2023, but let's say 2023, 2024, is the NIP looking to stand candidates across, across what you would call Northumbria, across the whole of the North of England? It will all just depend on how much money we have. We know if we can, how many deposits we can afford to put up, but we base what we'll do is we'll look at every single marginal where there's, you know, a labor, a labor Tory marginal, a few thousand votes. And we'll probably stand candidates there in every single one, or as much as we can afford. Ideally by 2023, 2024, if we have enough, enough resources, we'll stand candidates across all of the North. Yeah. But I mean, it's very difficult when you're a volunteer organization, you know, we ended up doing the due diligence on Saudi poll for labor. Never mind. So, you know, we're going to have to do our own due diligence as well as doing due diligence on the labor candidates. All right, fine, whatever. Taking up a lot of time. And why would you only stand in marginal seats? Is that because you want the most leverage in terms of getting other parts of things? We have first passed the post. We've got, how else are we going to exercise leverage over Westminster? We have to stand in the marginal seats. That's the nature of the electoral system. That's why we're doing it. But I mean, that could, that could really, that could really hurt Labour, couldn't it? Good. I mean, if you, if you, if you, let's say, let's say your vote was 500 and 15 seats and Labour lose by 500 or less. I mean, obviously not all of your votes are Labour votes and he wouldn't have voted or there would be Lib Dems or Greens or... Aaron, I think we're, we're reaching the point where in the next election, on certain economic policies, the Tories could be to the left of Labour. So I mean, I'm not particularly bothered. I'm not like, like the levelling up agenda at least gets people talking about the North South Divide. What has Keir Starmer done? What has he done? Why is that not front and centre of Labour Party policy? You know, our first concern is the North. If, if we're getting 750 Treasury jobs versus nothing from Labour, I don't care. The point is to put pressure on Westminster. So of course we're going to stand in marginals. That's all, that's all in. And not only that, we think that we're going to win quite a lot of these seats because there are people out there who do not, who, who do not want to vote for the Tories that will not vote for Labour. There's a real possibility that we will actually start to gain by 2023. Look at what we've achieved in such a short time. By 2023, who knows, we might actually win these seats. Will you be standing councillor candidates in my elections? Will you be standing? So Hartlepool changed that a bit. We are standing candidates, but now we have to just, because we've only, we haven't got a huge amount of resources, we basically have to look at where can we exercise the most pressure on the Westminster establishment. And that looks like it's the by-election, but we will still stand candidates, but we, it will be an issue of like where we put the resources. Our deadline is for candidates, for local election candidates is coming up. I think it's in, I think it's tomorrow is our cutoff. And then we're going to, then our nominating officer will do interviews and then we will have hostings and we will select all of our local election candidates, but we might be throwing more resources behind the by-election, but that's to be determined democratically stale by the party. In terms of, I suppose, ins to the system, if you think about the rise of UKIP and the Brexit Party, clearly they wouldn't have had the prodigious rise they did without European elections, which had a much more democratic way of allowing new parties to enter than what we get with Westminster elections. So, I mean, are there any elections that you look at as a kind of in? So, obviously, by-elections are great for getting media attention, but are you thinking that the Northern Independence Party might want to run for, you know, Metro mayors? Yeah, but do you know how expensive they are? That's £5,000 to contest a mayoral election. So, as a party that's, you know, we haven't got this. £5,000? It's £5,000, yeah. It's £5,000 deposit. I'm not making it up. Sure, I'm not making it up. I'm pretty sure. And you think, well, okay, let's work on that presumption. So, what you think that's going to be a big obstruction to running candidates in a retro-mayor position to the future? Yeah, we would. I mean, there are also people in NIP who are really against the Metro mayors anywhere. They see it as a similar kind of fob off to the Northern Assembly as well. So, I mean, there's a debate to be had around that. But I suppose, I mean, Farage wasn't a big fan of the European Parliament. He was still an MEP for 20 years. Yeah. I mean, if we had the money, but it's all about, it's all about where can we use that money to apply the most amount of pressure. If we had the money to spare, I'm pretty sure I'm right about the £5,000, but we should definitely do a fact check on that. But yeah, I mean, it's much cheaper to run in general elections. It's much cheaper to run local candidates for local elections. And the good thing about local elections is if we start to get candidates, especially if they're just brand new to politics, it really builds up that capacity. We are in talk with quite a few local councillors who are very unhappy and are thinking of defecting, but I can't announce any of that yet. But we are starting to get some... So, it's possible that this year, the Northern Independence Party could have a councillor? Oh, I think we'll definitely have a councillor. Oh, yeah, no, we'll definitely have a councillor, yeah. Your first elected official. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no, certainly we will, yeah. That's hugely impressive. What's the media response been to you guys? Because, you know, the second you start to make any kind of impact, I mean, there's obviously, there's an interest story in terms of public curiosity on Northern Independence. What does that mean? How much of that has there been? And has there been anything a little bit more vicious? Have the right-wing press come after you? We get... I came under attack by fascists on Twitter, but that's the biggest amount of attacks we've had so far. I think it's because we, you know, we occupy this strange space. Like, I like to look at how the sort of the reactionary right are responding to us, because it's national self-determination, it's northerness, which they thought was there to rain, and we've taken from them. So they look at us and they're like, they don't quite know how to react. They don't quite know what to do with it, because it has this sort of strangeness to the idea that it's able to block that traditional sort of attack. But we've had generally quite positive press coverage so far, but I think that is because as you're saying, we're like, you know, we're at the moment, we are admittedly a and in none of the other news type situation. We are, but you know, I had an interview on ITV when we were very new. I was on a local ITV news, which was great for us because it makes us look very serious. Had some more less positive coverage in the independent, but generally, we get pretty good coverage. And the fact that, you know, the fact that so many people have placed bets on us winning in Hartlepool now is also forcing the media to take us seriously. I'm doing the new statement tomorrow. So, you know, we're moving the podcast or interview for an article, I think. Right. Just for our audience to be aware, you talked about betting on, I mean, this is, this is, this is actually a very good example of why you shouldn't necessarily, I don't mean to be offensive anyway, but people obviously put money on a bet and that in no way necessarily reflects the statistical probability of something actually happening. But of course, it increases the exposure of the bookmaker. So they change the odds and you often see, oh, well, you know, Jeremy Corbyn is X to one. So he can't be the prime minister because those are reflecting real odds. No, it's about where the money's going generally. But you are, I think presently at 33 to one and the 202 one, we're now ahead of 202. So you're 20 to one and the Lib Dems are 200 to one. Yeah. SDP 500 to one. What a weird party of the SDP. But I mean, that's remarkable because the Lib Dems and by election in the early 2000s came really close to winning the seat. Yeah. You know, I think it was 2003 for around then. Yeah. Which also shows the volatility actually of British politics over the last few years. It's a labor seat, Lib Dems almost win it. Now the Tories could win it. And of course, you guys are contesting it. So if we could win it, you could. Well, according to the bookmakers, you can certainly win it. Think about it. If there's a multi-party split, you know, what number of votes do we actually need to get to win 7,000? If there's a three-way split, it's not inconceivable. It's not inconceivable. If we do really well on our campaign, we start getting that message out on Facebook, we get a good high-profile candidate. We've got an OK chance. What would success look like in Hartlepool? Okay, you want to win, you think you can win, but what would be a really great result or a strong result? Well, I tell you, one of the advantages of if we win in Hartlepool, the fact that Hartlepool elects the first Northern Independence candidate will mean all eyes turn on Hartlepool. And these places that feel left behind will no longer look left behind when they're literally voting for independence. So it will, what success looks like for us is all mainstream, you know, mainstream political parties taking the North South Divide seriously. Because I like, what do I, the thing I care about most fundamentally is ending the North South Divide. It shaped my life. It shaped so many other people's life in the party. That's our agenda is ending that divide. We believe that it will be ended through independence, but for success for us looks like, you know, there are multiple ways you can measure success. You know, people always like laugh about us and saying, we'll get less votes than UKIP or whatever. UKIP couldn't even win a seat, neither will you. UKIP fundamentally changed the shape of the United Kingdom without winning a single MP. UKIP won. Yeah, won. No, he switched, didn't he? Did he actually win an election? Who's that? Which one? The UKIP MP. What's he called? Well, Carl's won reckless. They had two MPs. Yeah. I mean, it's not accurate to say that they didn't have any Westminster MPs. Did they win an election? Carl's, well, I think, came back as a Tory. Yeah, but they've had, they had MPs, but also, you know, they had a European, European assembly. Nigel Farage. This is what's slightly off topic, but it kind of frustrates me when people say, Oh, he's a failure. Nigel Farage came first in two national elections with two separate parties. Nobody has done that. Maybe, maybe Herbert Asquith or Lloyd George. No, I don't think I don't think anybody's done that before. It's a really, it's a huge achievement, it's what he did. And, you know, realistically, leaving the European Union was so marginal in the early 1990s. You know, it's not a million miles away from what you guys are saying. No, it was unthinkable. Yeah. And also, you know, that's Nigel Farage is what success looks like under first past the post. It's about swinging that weight around within the electoral system, as it is. If we, if we had a proportional, a proportional system, it would look very different. But as it is now, this is what success looks like is that you can influence agendas without winning seats. We're going to win seats, but you can influence them without winning seats. So this was, so you, so you view yourself as kind of like a party political campaign hybrid? Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, and a movement as well. You know, we're a social movement. We're a meme party. We're also a real party. We joke, but we're also serious. We're many things at the same time. So 2024 last question, general elections happening. What are your predictions for both the Northern Independence Party, but also the North of England and also, you know, national results? What do you think the landscape of British politics next time around will be? Well, my feeling is that by the next election, I hope that the sort of reality of the levelling up agenda is fully revealed. I hope the media does its job and actually shows how fake these, these policies are actually properly reports on what happened when they moved the treasury to Darlington. And then if people then see the reality of sort of the artificiality behind that levelling up agenda, hopefully then we will then begin to win some major seats. You know, there are seats where we have a good chance. If we win a Hartley pool, that will be our base. That's where we'll start building our experience to start moving out across the rest of the North. Because I think, you know, people in the North, we've been given bugger all for generations. And now is the time for self-determination, radical self-determination to actually finally, finally end the North South divide. And do you think that sort of, do you think that it's, do you think it's impossible to win the North South divide without leaving the UK? Yeah. I mean, the reason, the reason is, is that, you know, this is this mode of the UK as a sort of, we like to think of it as a pyramid scheme. So the United, the UK is a pyramid scheme, right? Boris Johnson famously said a pound spent in, in Croydon is more valuable than a pound spent in Strathclyde, right? And that is true. If you look at it as a value for money, right? Why is that though? That's because all infrastructure people talent is already in London. So if you're a company, most FDI, most investment, all those will go to London, because you're already getting value for money. So unless you have like radically redistributive policies, massive infrastructure building, look, what was dropped immediately? There was a 40% has been immediately been dropped off the budget for upgrading transport in the North. Without that level of connectivity, we're not going to attract investment. The pyramid scheme continues. So they're all, I, I, you know, if the Tories won in 2019 on the promise, they won the, you know, this, this would be the prime opportunity to actually see it. If they want to keep those seats, you think that they would start to address the North Star to provide and build that base, but they're not even doing it for that. Immediately they cut the Northern transport budget. So, you know, like the, the only way to end the pyramid scheme is by smashing the pyramid itself. We'll leave it there for it. Thanks for joining us and good luck. Presumably this bar election is going to be on May 6th alongside local elections. I'm not even sure if they've officially said that, but yeah, I think so. Yeah. Well, we'll keep an eye out, and we'll certainly be following your, your profiles, your story, your journey over the next couple of months and couple of years. Thanks for joining us here on downstream and have a good day, Philip. Thank you. Thank you very much. I enjoyed that. Cheers. Really interesting interview there with Philip. For me, what's going on with the Northern Independence Party is more than just the prospect of an independent North Umbria in the next couple of years, which I think is unlikely. Maybe Philip might disagree. Instead, I think for me, the real point of interest is how this potentially reflects a balkanization of Labour's vote, both geographically and generationally. And that's a huge challenge for Labour over the next five to 10 years, whether it's in South Wales, whether it's in the north of England, whether it's in Scotland, the politics of place, space and identity have really, really caused Labour major, major problems that probably isn't going away. What's more, the North-South divide as an issue is gaining in prominence, and probably will only continue to gain in prominence in the aftermath of Britain's departure from the EU. Now, these are exactly the kinds of conversations Ash and I want to be having here on downstream, including the future of the British state. If you want to be a part of that, hit the subscribe button. We put these into use out every single Tuesday. We don't shy away from the major questions. Alongside just subscribing to the channel. If you like what we're doing, you want to see more of it, you know what to do. Go to naviromu.com forward slash support, make a one-off payment or a rolling subscription. We call you guys supporters. We recommend, generally speaking, one-hours waged work, so whatever you gain an hour through selling your Labour, that would be your monthly subscription to Navarra. It doesn't have to be that, but it's just a recommendation. Great interview, really informative. Ash, you'll be back next Tuesday. My name is Aaron Bustani. Thanks for joining us on downstream. Have a nice evening.