 Welcome to Tiskey Sauer. I've been planning for this show to go live straight after the meaningful vote. Free May's third attempt to get her withdrawal agreement through Parliament. But after a dramatic day yesterday in which the Speaker of the House John Burkow ruled out Parliament hearing the same motion for a third time, MV3 was not to be. It's up for debate whether the Speaker overruling the Prime Minister on such a key legislative issue constitutes a constitutional crisis, but it most certainly is a sign of political chaos. So to talk through this pivotal moment in British political history, I'm joined by a journalist and writer who is consistently capable of taking the long view, especially when it's all kicking off. Welcome to the show, Paul Mason. A pleasure as always. How are you doing? Good. Frazzled. Frazzled. We're in the middle of the biggest political crisis ever and nobody knows what's going on. Whether or not this is the biggest or not is a later question. First of all, we're going to stick to the details. Yeah, let's do. Was John Burkow sticking his neck out and saying the meaningful vote free cannot be heard because Parliament has already debated this question. Was that a risky move? There's already a big narrative in the country that this is a political stitch up by elites trying to stop Brexit. So to stop Parliament debating in this way. Do you think that was a mistake potentially? There is going to be that narrative. And as Brexit goes to shit, which is the technical parlance in political science, this narrative will rise. But I really don't think Burkow can be held at fault here because what's interesting is that the era of King James I keeps influencing the Brexit crisis because at the very start, the only reason we're having these meaningful votes is that Gina Miller, private citizen, took the government to court and won and the judges and the Supreme Court in one of the first ever judgments in the Supreme Court that actually made constitutional law in this country because Supreme Court's new. They said, you know, since since 1610, it only the will of the people is only expressed in Parliament. So you have to have a meaningful vote. And that they quoted, you know, the Attorney General of the year 1610. And it's a remarkable kind of testimony to the time value of the rule of law that if you establish it, then future people who always want to go back to the rule of law can always go back to it. So what Burkow did, he went back to 1604, again, the first year, first two years of King James, the first rule, when what was what was clearly happening was the attempt by the nascent bourgeoisie of England to create a space for the creation of rule of law and constitutionality. And so both things have basically bitten May on the arse, as we say, you know, because because we do have a 400 year old constitution that says you can't keep moving the same law again and again and losing it in Parliament. Everybody knew that. Now what may what what the real fault lies with is may see in in in Parliament, whenever you want to do something, it's possible to consult the speaker. You go to Mr Speaker's office and he's got his whole retinue of people. And like, we know that for months, for example, this Tig group, this group of centrists that wanted to form itself, were constantly trying to find out what they could and couldn't do by consulting Burkow. You know, Theresa May clearly didn't think it was necessary to go and consult Burkow. Hey, John, do you think you might rule this out of order? The assumption was that you wouldn't dare because the next day, as we saw in the big British tabloids, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Express, you're a traitor. But he has done so and he has, for the first time, and it won't be the last time, taken the process of Brexit out of Theresa May's control. It was always on the cards that Parliament would and I think it will eventually seize the agenda. It lost by three votes last week, the attempt to seize the agenda and so that MPs can move the order paper of Parliament. But before we even get there, her agenda has been seriously put out of the joint. She was hoping to keep the clock ticking, meaningful vote after meaningful vote on the same issue she no longer can, and it hands the European Union a weapon in the negotiations on Thursday, Friday this week, where they're going to say to her, Luke, you need to go to your Parliament with a new thing to even have a vote, so no, you tell us what that new thing might be. So that's up for debate, right? So the new thing could potentially be if Brexit date changes, right? So again, John Burkow has a lot of room for maneuver as to how he interprets it, but what it really comes down to is the numbers in Parliament. I mean, that's a long wind of way of going, what is going to happen next, you know? So now she clearly has to go to Europe this week, well, she sent them a letter today, she's asked for an extension. We don't know how long it's going to be, how long the extension she's asked for. Michel Barnier, for his part, has made clear that the EU will only grant an extension if Theresa May is clear as to what she wants to use it for, and we're very likely to see a vote in Parliament next week on meaningful vote. So it will be meaningful vote three, slightly different, but basically the same, and MPs will have a choice as to whether to go for a short extension or a long extension. But how do you see the next negotiations with the EU going? Look, the first thing to say is that these negotiations have always been a contest. It's a battle between Theresa May trying to get her way and the European Union trying to get their way. And she repeatedly has just stymied her own ability to win through the strategy of trying to avoid any consensus with other parties about either the type of Brexit, the procedures for getting there. There's been no cross-party talks, really, or no cross-party institutions at all created. So she said, I'm going to get through with my votes with the DUP, this nutty creationist 10 person group in Parliament and the far right to the Tory party. That was her strategy. And because she clung to that strategy, the Europeans were able to defeat her again and again. And so at the end of the process, you're not in the same position as you were at the beginning. You are in a weaker position. Now, what's happened, effectively, in the last 36, 48 hours is the further weakening of May's position. Because now she and the critical thing will be what? So she's going to write a letter and they are on the news. All the political journalists have been briefed to say in this. Number one, it's going to say we are asking for an extension. So that is her latest climb down. Remember, all the climb notes that Labour have imposed on her. Meaningful vote. She didn't want one. Europe's citizens' rights for European citizens here. She didn't want to give them that. They gave it to them. Then, you know, all the content stuff that Labour has pushed and pushed and pushed. And now, by simply just blocking her, she's had to, she's running to the barrier of this burqa reeling, the Jacobian intervention. And so she goes, I'm going to ask for an extension and I want a short one and the Europeans will say, well, what for? And she'll say, so I can get my meaningful vote through. And they will quite rightly say, hold on a minute. Your own speaker who has constitutionality. So, you know, we could, you know, our speakers in our parliament talk to him, says you can't do that. So if you, and she says, well, I might need a longer extension and the Europeans have in mind 21 months. That's the figure in their minds. And they'll say, you can have that, but you're going to do something as Barnier says, spectacular. And no, I think she can get away with that. And I would like her to do that, precisely that, to say, the spectacular thing I'm going to do is consult the British people. Now, that can be an election. It can be a second referendum on her deal or no deal or whatever. We can come to that in a minute. It could even be, and Macron's people have been saying in the background to her, it could even be citizens assemblies, you know, you just, just do what the Irish did, have some citizens assemblies, just basically show that you are not sticking to this impossibilist position of trying to get this thing through, whether or not votes to get it through. So I think she goes into that meeting week. However, she can come up, once she comes out of it, she goes into the next week, which will be equally chaotic as this week, strengthened in the sense that she then has a new deadline. If she comes out of it with a new deadline of, say, May 31, that is the no deal Brexit day, that you can't go beyond it. And there would have to be a change of government, I think, or a collapse of government, which I think is entirely possible for the Europeans to reopen that deadline, because then you're in the EU, but with no MEPs, no MEPs in the parliament, which is a de facto illegal situation. So there's two things going on there, I'm slightly. So in terms of the idea of you'd have to go and consult the people, May would just presumably have to say, I will in some form consult the people and then the European Union will say, OK, then you can have a 21 month extension, or May is going to get in that deal, or if I manage to pass my withdrawal agreement, we'll only need to the 31st of May. So do you think the EU are going to be resistant to just give her that? No, the next thing is, and by the way, as we speak, all these political journalists on the TV are trying to do this in three minutes with less analytical knowledge than me and you have. So what people are getting is like really kind of quite good public service analytical broadcasting here for nothing. Ka-ching onto the Navarra donation site. So she's not going to get a short extension from the EU without an internal struggle inside the EU. And remember, the EU has several institutions, if only people understood that before we started this fiasco. One of them is the Commission. The leadership of the Commission are neoliberal centre-rightists. They are desperate for Britain to get out, to sign this deal, and move on. Because the last thing they want, they've reallocated all the seats in the parliament, making sure that they all go to nice places. It's just a ball lake if they stay after all this. But even more importantly, they want a centralising European project. Junker, who's the outgoing president of the Commission, says, I want a European nationalism, a Europeanism. And I think their prediction is to give her something, to get us out. But the rest of the EU 27, and I've spoken to senior politicians in Germany and elsewhere about this, say like, look, our project is Europe. If you're Spain, which are in excruciating austerity, or Ireland, or Greece, on behalf of the Eurozone, then what you do not want to see is Britain being given special favours at this point. And in fact, because they understand negotiations as a battle in a way that Theresa May clearly didn't, they can see yet another victory. So they go, look, all we have to do is sit it out for a week, and what do we have? Either then, no deal, which is perfect for Europe, because yes, there'll be a disruption, but the disruption will be major here in the United Kingdom. And then a negotiation will start, in which the United Kingdom is completely weakened, and they'll dictate the terms of the ultimate deal. Or if no deal is avoided, you get a long position in which case what they all want, which is much less disruption, is the soft Brexit. And I think that a nine to 21 month delay would clearly produce a soft Brexit, will produce possibly a new government, certainly a new Tory administration, because Theresa May will be on our air. And then they've got somebody to talk to about a Norway-style deal. So there's no incentive for the EU 27 to give May a special deal. There is a bit of a warm for the commission, because they're just keen to get it off the table. Remember, the new commission will come in May after, when they're all reappointed by the government, it will be probably a more right wing and less Europeanist commission. And I think they feel that they have this job to do on behalf of the Europe, the centrist neoliberal Europe, before it splatters apart under the influence of people like Salvina and Orban. Now there was just one thing you said about May will be in a stronger position next week in a way, because she has a new deadline where no deal might happen. Because if she gets a short extension of article 50, because if that goes to May 31st, the reason it goes to that is because after that, really, you have to take part, you'll have to have taken part in the European election. Do you think we will? Because there's been sort of different legal advice on this. If we get a long extension, we will have to take part in the European elections. I would relish that. Yes, you wouldn't like, for the first time, a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party to stand in the European elections and say, no, whether you take your seats or not on principle, I think that's an interesting debate. Because you could say, look, we're waiting the outcome of whether we're leaving or not, but you take part in the elections and you go right for a social Europe, for a Europe of anti-racism and in defense of the Muslim minorities. All of that you could take right into the campaign. And of course, nobody had any idea we could do that. We've all reconciled ourselves to this. European election campaigns in Britain are really crass unless you're a right winger then UKIP always win. And it's always kind of people you've never heard of standing. But this could be quite exciting. And of course, it would be incredibly charged and polarized. I would expect the far right in politics and also the kind of right wing tabloids to try and stage some kind of preparatory boycott of it. Because the far right, I mean, the ultra lunatic, semi-fascist far right in Britain has already threatened to disrupt any second referendum. Now, in preparation for that, you could have the mail and the express say, don't vote, anybody who votes a traitor. Now, that will be very interesting. So I think that you know that my attitude is for, unlike some viewers of this program, my attitude is bring on the culture war in Britain. It's gonna happen and it started already. Just need to fight it. You wouldn't be worried about a new far right. Because I mean, the UKIP that would stand in this European election would be very different from the UKIP that stood in the last one. You'd potentially have Tommy Robinson on the list. And even if they don't perform that well, if he's high up on the list, you could easily have him as an MEP. Is that not, well, one, is that not a situation that worries you? But two, do you not think it's a situation that worries the establishment enough that they will find some legal loophole that means they don't have to go forward with the European elections? All this because you know Tommy Robinson have to be staged with the knowledge that it's no subjudice because he's no gonna be tried again for his contempt of court. So just to remind you about that. But of course, I fear the emergence of an amorphing of the far right in Britain. But we already know that there's a mass far right online. It's not a niche far right. And the forms it's gonna take will just be dictated by what happens in the political struggle. Nothing that we can do can prevent it morphing into its ultimate existence. We need to take it on and defeat it. No, I think that I would rather, I would rather the ultimate argument within the left, I think, and liberal intelligence in Britain is that this is unavoidable. And therefore sometimes you can't pick and choose your own kind of battlefield when you find the far right. But in terms of the issue of, look, we're gonna have the European elections. Do you wanna be in them or not? It would be interesting to see whether they took part in them. I doubt they would. But if they did, then the immediate problem for them could cause it's proportional representation. So if you get the votes, you get representation. This Brexit party that's been set up by Farage, I know that the reason for setting it up was as a warning, as a kind of big stick against the Tories to warn them not to do what they look like they're now doing, which is an extension. And the threat would always be if you get an extension, we'll stand in the Euro elections. So again, bring it on for me because what I wanna see and what I think we will see in Britain is the fragmentation of the right wing politics between if you look at liberal conservatism, the kind of born to rule conservatism, which is in total crisis because it was born to rule technocratically a system that no longer works. And then you've got the right wing nationalists, the kind of thatchites in one country, then the new UKIP, which is quasi fascist, and then the Brexit party, which is the remnants of sort of all the BNP and blazers, which is what we used to call UKIP. Bring it on. I wanna see them fight each other on the streets, because they will. Yeah, but there's context, isn't there? So I mean, I don't wanna dwell on this point too long, but I suppose you're gonna have to fight the far right electorally at some point, but elections that are run on proportional representation with party lists, so a divided right isn't that damaging. And in the context of the most heightened our country is ever gonna be in terms of a narrative of Brexit betrayal, are we not giving them the perfect electoral moment? No, I don't. Whereas if you just put off this European elections here and you take them on in a general election in two years' time or something, they won't get any seats. Even if we were, it's not an argument for avoiding the long delay. Because if you leave aside the party politics of it, no, there are only three functional outcomes to the present situation. Well, the four, one, which I think is unlikely, mays deal goes through. And you know, shortly after that, of course, Theresa May's Tory party will fall apart because that's the price of it going through. But more likely you get a no deal. And no deal is likely because of the German government and the other kind of, you know, the Nordics, they're thinking, well, you know, they have intelligence services. They have, you know, they have their own version of GCHQ. They're not just relying on kind of guys in sort of, you know, cuff links and sort of silver ties going to cocktail parties in London, either diplomatic service. They know that it's entirely likely that a no deal will happen. When would they know? I want just some clarification on this because I feel like the media narrative has shifted since last week to no deal is off the table, at least for now. Theresa May has stopped talking about no deal, but you still think it could happen? So her plan is to create a no deal crisis in May. Whose plan? Mays. Theresa Mays. Yeah, because by asking for a two month delay, you get an absolute end to the process. As long as you've got this situation we're in, that yes, no deal is off the table and everything else is on the table. If you can say short delay and nothing else, you leave on the 31st of May, so decide what your deal's gonna be, then you create the ticking clock again. So you think she's just gonna ask for two months? You don't think she's gonna ask for two months or? Well, she'll ask for two months, but she'll use the prospect of asking for longer as the big stick that she takes into parliament next week to persuade the right to vote for her deal. But you know, just going back to the functional outcomes, it's no deal, it's a short delay, it's a long delay, or it's no Brexit. That's what the functional outcomes are. And going back to, is it a good time to take on the far right? The thing is, the imperative is to avoid a no deal, for me, it's to avoid a no deal because it's an irreversible historic moment in British politics that nobody is ready for. Leave aside the 8% collapse in GDP, the chaos, small businesses, go to your local garden centre, there won't be any plants. It's April. Apart from all that. That's a very niche example there. Well, it's a niche example because I met a load of garden centre owners and when I was explaining to them what will happen in a no deal and really, they took a lot of sort of getting up off the floor after I'd explained it to them. But more than that, most businesses, two thirds of all businesses are tiny in Britain. They don't have any cash flow. They live on credit. They're desperate from one week to the next and you're already seeing this dry up so we must stop no deal. And so the price of stopping no deal is also, I'd say to the left, eyes on the prize here. For the first time today, right now, before we came on air, you've got May's spokesperson saying to journalists, she no accepts the country has slid into crisis. Now, I think, because I know that spokesperson, if it indeed was the person I think it was, you're not supposed to name them. But I did once work with Theresa May's spokesperson, Robbie Gibb. And I could almost feel in his voice the kind of resigned sigh that at last my boss realises she's fucked it up. And so there is great things for us to play for here on the left and I don't just mean for Labour or momentum or Navarra. I mean for the progressive side of British politics. We could destroy this right wing nationalist project forever if we stick to it. I suppose, I mean, do you think if you stop no deal, does that stop the right? I mean, that doesn't seem to follow. It destroys the project. Because the project won't just find a new project, but sort of enriched or enlivened by a new betrayal narrative. So they've got the betrayal narrative and it comes with no deal and they can take it out on someone else. Oh no, they will have the betrayal narrative for a generation, it'll be there. But demographics are all on the side of progress. Demographics are all on the side of people. Even people who don't like the European Union or might even today like wish for kind of left wing exit or couldn't give a shit about the whole thing, that generally their values are gonna be progressive values. And what is happening is that as well that we know, although there's a splintering of the pro-Brexit vote, 31% of people want no deal. That benightedly, they think that would give them greater sovereignty, but they will soon find out it gives them zero sovereignty because without a deal, trading with Europe, Europe simply dictates the terms. But only, so 31% is a lot, but that means the other, whatever, 31 plus, the other 21 percentage points that gave us Brexit, either 51, 52 have begun to splinter. And we know from the research that unions and the left have done that these are working class women, Muslims and young people, young working class people like in the C2D group. That's good because that shows that by staying tough on the message of, we don't like this Brexit. We're gonna try and labor, we're gonna try and do one that's better for you. But ultimately, if it's not possible, we're not gonna vote for one we don't like has actually, it's probably the biggest psychological and intellectual shift in British politics that is completely unremarked on by the mainstream media because they're not interested in it. And they're not interested in its cause and consequence. The cause is Jeremy Corbyn, right? A left-wing Labour Party able to say, we'll stick by this vote, we'll do it a different way with credibility. And the consequence is, either consequence of the splintering of the vote is that it leaves the Conservative project very tied to an impossible thing which is in an economic nationalism in a world of global chaos. I think when the, I constantly try to stand back from the dust and, you know, because it won't settle, you know, you can't wait for it to settle and understand things. The dust will be in our faces. You can stand back from it a bit. That's how I see it. I see a two-year process of trying to win back those who voted, you know, for whatever reason, for leave, towards a more social orientation. I think that's clearly happened. Now, whether they would love to remain, I don't know, but they're clearly not liking what was on offer. And you get so many people now saying, you know, like, I want it over with. That's quite, you know, when somebody starts saying, I want all this over with, it's not a positive feeling. It's like, it's like when you're tooth out. No, they didn't think it was gonna be like having your tooth out, like a two-year process of having of extreme pain in your jaw. But no, they've realized it is. So I suppose what you're describing is a sort of splintering of the reactionary from the non-reactionary section of the leave vote. And the non-reactionary section hasn't necessarily necessarily gone to remain. Yeah, and I wouldn't even use the words reactionary. I think that the leave vote, leave was clearly at the project of the xenophobic, racist and misogynist right in Britain. There's no doubt about that. But it dragged people into it because of real grievances that we, it's not, I hate it when Labour people say, we have to acknowledge you had a grievance. No, that was my grievance. The use of poorly paid migrant workers to whether or not technically, there is a case, of course, that wages were suppressed in some sectors by that. But it was not just that. It was to break up citizenship. It was to break up the idea of community cohesion. Suddenly, there are three million people who can't vote. Three million strong section of the working class that doesn't have the vote. The bourgeoisie of Britain has dreamed of that for years. Suddenly they got it. And people said, like, I don't like this. Okay, I'm glad they didn't like it. I'm only sorry we couldn't persuade them to reform Europe. I don't want them to lessen their critique of Europe. But what, in other words, a battle for the minds of people who are not necessarily reactionary at all, but certainly culturally are not enamoured in the way this sort of classic urbanist, you know, educated FBPE person on Twitter is. And I don't see them as a dead loss at all for Labour. I actually, for me, the progressive project in Britain for a generation is creating an alliance of those forces around something new. And I see, it's been awful actually to watch Labour have to simply just grind, grind, grind through party discipline. And almost like sometimes illogical kind of refusal to engage with argument and just say, we're not going to do this. We are going to do this. It's been not a pretty sight. So what should they do? What have they done wrong? And what should they do differently? Well, in terms of Labour, the critique I would have, you know, there's this, there's this facade critique that said Corbyn always wanted Brexit. He was a Bernard. He hated Europe. Therefore he's conniving with the Brexit. I think that it's totally wrong. Yeah, it's not, there's no basis in fact for it. What is true is that Corbyn had to deal with and still has to deal with a variety of forces inside Labour. And now some of them simply express what I just expressed. The justified critique of Europe as a neoliberal project with marginal impacts on wages, but big impacts through migration on stress on local services, not enough money for those services. And also the idea of citizenship and community. Right. Well, that is bound to find its way into the political discourse through MPs who are close to it, especially if they are ideologically pre-disposed to it. So you've got blue Labour. Maurice Glassman is not an MP. He's a Labour peer. He's a senior lawmaker. The equivalent of our Senate, unelected. And he wants a no-deal Brexit because he has this project of socially conservative Labour. But on all of the things, you know, I would ally, many other things I would ally with him. And then you've got people like Lisa Nandi, the Wigan MP. Now, I'm from next door to Wigan, and I'm going up there indeed quite soon to do some fundraising with Lisa. But I kind of understand that what the problem she faces is civil society in a term like this is that this end of the pub, my mates in momentum, ex-minors arguing for socialism, at the other end of the pub, another load of ex-minors who are quite frankly embroiled in xenophobic narratives, you know, without wanting to say what they say, it is not very pleasant. And then just at the other two ends of the pub, sometimes shouting at each other, always arguing, always having to live alongside each other. My friend, who literally I'm talking about, made a broadcast the other day that said, thanks to you, thanks to neoliberalism, I now have to live alongside working-class fascists and I can't escape. No, what's the problem? The centre barely exists. Of course, there are teachers, doctors, lawyers in a place like that. But politically, the extremes are strong. And I can see what Lisa is trying to say, look, I've got to represent what my constituency thinks. But in the end, what's been good about what Labour's done, so you asked me what was bad, what's been good is that by making the not very pretty compromise with people like Lisa and Andy, they've destroyed the Tories' unity. They've actually grown them down. However, what the price of it, so it's not a question of right or wrong, it's a question of price. I think they've paid a very high price, Labour, Labour Front-Bentch, Corbyn, not only in people now saying he's just another politician, because you can remedy that by new gestural, you know, gestural sorts of dramatic things that you do. It's, I want to, I believe we, the left can only win on a positive story. The narrative of hope and the narrative of hope has to be expressed in very clear terms around values. And what we can't do is triangulate with the reactionary values. And so while, well, something like Lisa and Andy, I would respect, I've got loads of other people in the PLP who are basically saying, I can't face my own constituents. And I can't face going on the pub or being on the doorstep, listening to a torrent of racism and xenophobia anymore. And they just love it to all be over. They're the other, let's make it should all be over crowd. And that's what's wrong. You can't have, I see this struggle Brexit as a part of the class struggle. The same way as I see, say, the Catalan national struggle as part of the class struggle, or the Irish struggle for a United Island as part of the class struggle. There's this tendency within the labor movement that says, oh, we hate these political questions. We want to get back onto the issues of homelessness, food, poverty, the health service. And you can't. And so those labor MPs are just trying to dodge the issue. There might be lucky, there might be lucky in Theresa May destroys herself and all they should just deliver is Brexit. And there's nothing we can do about it. But as long as there's something we can do about it, the labor movement, we ought to oppose it. And we ought to oppose it like Acasio Cortez opposes things or Talibe and Omar in the American Congress with values, with, fuck you, you know, look at my face. We are a multi-ethnic nation. We are progressive people. We are feminists, blacks, gays. We can't give you any compromise. We can't bring the world of Coronation Street, 1965, back to you. So, but here's what we can do. Here's a ton of money for your maternity ward, for your local library, for your school. And some, some on the doorstep, you might have seen it as well. Some say I'd rather the economy go to shit and all the migrants go back. But some don't. And I think we're only going to be able to have that argument in the same way as AOC and Sanders do from the heart. And that's what I think's been missing from Corbyn's dialogue and everybody, and most of the Labour front bench. Here's what we stand for. But I think if we can defeat her in Parliament, we can actually get back on that front, front foot quite quickly. Because actually the other thing is, it's a sad thing. Most of this is going on in a top two inches of British politics. Most people don't even know, most people, I'm really sorry, most people don't even know what me and you were talking about. They're not sure about it. I'd be really interested to see the BBC's ratings, like when you watch half an hour of the news and it's all about the backstop and you're like, I barely care about the backstop and I'm like pretty in the know in terms of politics. I don't know how this is sort of being viewed by everyone else in the country. You know what's interesting to me about this, having been a mainstream media reporter for the BBC, I'm for Channel 4. I'm sickened by the total lack of proportionality in the reporting. We are living through a constitutional crisis and most of the political reporters treating it like a joke. You know, if Corbyn wears the wrong hat at the wrong ceremony, it's like a 10 minute diatribe. You know, he's in, you know, he doesn't, it's all the value judgments in the language are the guy's useless, he's fucked it up, he ought to, the implicit thing is he ought to go, time to go, magic grandad, all that. But Theresa May has just destroyed the British constitution and you get these kind of funny segments where people go, yes, you know, it's kind of, it's on the one hand, on the other hand. There's a total lack of engagement with the drama of this situation by the political reporting class because they know their world is one step from destruction. Corbyn comes, Theresa May falls, Theresa May falls, the Tory party fragments, Brexit is averted or radically softened, end of the right wing politics in Britain project for a generation, Corbyn in power, goodbye the world that you thought was permanent. And it's so obvious when you see it and listen to it in the subtext of what these journalists say. And of course, if it's subdued on the broadcast media, it's huge out there in the print media. Virtually, I still write for The Guardian, but the whole narrative of The Guardian is, you know, again, please, you know, please don't let our world die. Corbyn could be in power this year. And if he is, that's the first major country with a nuclear weapon and remnants of an empire and a major intelligence and security service that has gone to the left, and I can't wait for it. And that's why I will actually, just before my critique of Corbyn, I'd still say I will endure all kinds of tactical disagreements with him and the people around him to get that. I mean, I suppose to push on something that I think probably the audience of Navarra Media will have the most doubts about this idea that Brexit should be viewed through the lens of a class struggle. So I think the way I've looked at it, and the way many people on the left have looked at it, is the Brexit disagreement is a disagreement between two factions of the Tory party between elite neoliberals and sort of nationalists. And that it's not, I mean, for me, it's not necessarily tied up with an anti-racist struggle. So I think an anti-racist struggle is part of the class struggle, but is our constitutional or our trading relationships with the EU really an element of the class struggle? Well, the first thing you have to say is that this is the argument that Lenin had to have in the famous argument with the economists. Lenin said, look, there was a group called the economists. They weren't economists, but they were in favor of economic struggle inside the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party. In favor of economism. Well, yeah, what they said is like, look, the liberal intelligentsia wants a constitution. They're having all these banquets. We're not invited to the banquets. What do we care whether there's a constitution or a czar? They're the bourgeoisie. They exploit us. They own all the factories. So as they said, let's leave politics to the liberals. Now, in a way that there's a tendency within Labour, which has which has subcutaneously said, leave people's vote to Chukka Ramona or, you know, or if Paul Mason's involved, why is he involved? Because that's straying away from pure, you know, pure economic struggle. Well, and Lenin called this Lenin had a word that he used the German term, Nur Gevekshaftlerai, only trade unionism or pure trade unionism. And he criticized it. No, I'm not a Leninist anymore. I was once, but he was right on this, that the national struggle can be part of the class struggle, the struggle for a constitution. And actually to remember what the Brexit struggle was before we won a series of things, there was a danger at one point when with all the momentum of that vote in June 2016, that Theresa May would actually say, or whoever became Tory leader, that we're going to leave Europe and in the process we'll rip up all the European laws that are currently embodied inside UK law. And the struggle was to say no, because we do that, we create a free fire zone for neoliberalism. I also think that I don't want to side with any faction of the Tories, but I do think that the breakdown of the global order and the rise of the far right means that, you know, I've said it overtly, the main enemy is no longer the neoliberal center. The main enemy is the xenophobic nationalist right. And if what is required to ally tactically with the neoliberal center, you have to do it. Now that doesn't mean supporting Macron, battering people on the streets with the CRS riot police. It means fighting him. And sometimes fighting alongside people who are de facto right-wingers, you know, in the Gilles Jaune. I would be on the street with Gilles Jaune critically and try to organize a left presence within it. But when you look at something big, like should we break up the global system and cause chaos into which Steve Bannon can insert all his millionaire money and agency, I would say no. And we have a combined, we have a joint interest with the remnants of the liberal centrist bourgeoisie in defending and reforming a multilateral global system. Now I know that is actually the argument on the left because especially in America now, Thomas Fazzi, Bill Mitchell, you've got economic nationalism. I would argue that the MMT theorists are effects of the economic nationalists who stand behind the Green New Deal. Can the European people be Wolfgang Streak, right? So someone who argues to return to social democracy, you have to return to national democracy. Streak is one. All the parties in the party of the European left, you know, the left communist parties, KKE in Greece. No, I don't, excuse me, I don't write off the arguments because we are gonna, the next step for the left in Europe is to pull away from a neoliberal multilateralism towards greater control at national level. Now this in fact, you know, although Mellon Sean is repeatedly condemned as a nationalist, an economic nationalist, all he's actually arguing for is a form of subsidiarity. It's bringing control to the nation states, but you still keep the multilateral system. Now, you know, I, you know, the European Council is 27 nation state heads of government and they were all democratically elected apart from in Hungary, which is an quasi-democracy. But you're not necessarily having to argue for the breakup of the system, excuse me, in order to pull it closer to the democratic control. The other thing is the reform of Europe, which will have to go on whether Britain's in or out, has to fill the gap between the nation state democracy and sovereignty and the pan-national sovereignty, which has been deliberately created and this is a free-fire zone in which corporations work. The fact that there is no unified tax structure in Europe allows them to play the tax rules, Lichtenstein Luxembourg to emerge as tax havens within the system, if you shut that down, you know, what is that? More nationalism, more internationalism. It's no, it's simply the rule of law applied to Europe and the clarity about sovereignty that doesn't exist in Europe, excuse me. But so yeah, I think I want to accept a lot of the reasons that are driving the kind of proto-economic nationalists left towards their conclusions because we do have to remake the multilateral system and the reform will feel like a revolution. You know, if the European Union broke up Facebook and established technological sovereignty for Europe and its citizens over Facebook, it would feel like a revolution. I'd rather do it, this is my argument with the lexity is that I'd rather do that with Europe than do it against Europe because against Facebook, Britain on its own with the elite that we've got is gonna be much less powerful than a Europe that is technically already committed to things like GDPR, you know, the global data protection registry and to, I mean, it's growing. There is a growing mood now inside Brussels to really heavily regulate Facebook or even break it up. And so I'd rather do that at a European scale. So what I'm saying to the proto-economic nationalists left is your nationalism doesn't solve the problem. And with Streak and Coal, I think they make dangerous concessions as Glassman does to the cultural aspect which is a different thing. You could be quite progressive politically and still be pro-economic nationalism. But they slide into sort of cultural nationalism as well at times. Well, I wouldn't accuse them of cultural nationalism but I would say that what there is, is that there's a, the root of it all is an argument about agency. There's a nostalgia, which you mentioned at the very beginning in my book, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, that and post-capitalism and the one that's coming out in May, Clear Bright Future are all effectively rifts on the who is the new agent of history. And as you know, I've argued that it is the networked individual and that the networked individual is a kind of sublated version of the working class that whereby, above all in Germany, on the German left, only the blue-collar proletariat is seen as proletarian. It's an argument even to get them to admit that a teacher is proletarian. But worse than that, that the old culture of family tightly knit society, exclusionism, implicit solidarity got us so far in working class history but it won't get us any further. And to me, you know, the new culture of the networked youth of the salariat of the educated workforce, the workforce and a lot of workers working in companies were saying something from a UKIP leaflet would be a sackable offence. And that's good. It means that the global corporate system is actually more progressive in some ways than the society they come from. And the point of that is that that's because they have, all these companies don't have like political correctness rules because they want to. It's because black people, women, gays, lesbians, fought for them. And so my critique of people like Streak is that they don't value that. They see it as a retreat from solidarity where I see it as an advance for solidarity. I'm about to take your questions. We've got 15 minutes left. As you know, we are a crowd supported media organization. This is only possible because of your subscriptions and your donations. If you already donate, if you already subscribe, thank you very much. You are what makes this possible. If you don't, you know that our ask is to the equivalent of one hour's wage a month. So to subscribe, please go to support.nevaramedia.com. We have 1,300 people watching, but I want it to get high. We want it to get up to 2,000. So make sure you share this, make sure you like it so it appears higher up in people's news feeds and make sure you subscribe to Nevaramedia so that you can get a notification every time we go live. As you notice, Kisawa is every night at 8 p.m. On a Tuesday, that's the one thing that I should be able to remember. But sometimes we do emergency shows if there is an emergency. I think we might have to do a few emergency shows. We might have to do a few of those in the very near future. So give me your questions whilst they're appearing. How would you, you have an argument for European reform, but for me, so for me, the Another Europe is possible line of Remain and Reform has always seemed very abstract. The idea that there's often what people say on Twitter is, oh, if Alistair Campbell gets given the campaign we'll lose again, you need to give it to Another Europe is possible. I've never been convinced they'd be any better at making that argument. And that's not me calling them incompetent. That's just me saying, I don't actually think this Remain and Reform argument has that much traction. No, I mean, the concretization of it is this, you've got to rewrite the essential treaties of Europe, Lisbon and Maastricht. You've got to remove from Lisbon the inbuilt neoliberal or as the Germans in the German version, auto liberal economics that says competition is in better than state ownership. State aid is impossible. All the, the ECJ as an institution has consist, you know, consistently ruled in favor of bosses against workers, I would argue. So the as an institution, its culture is pervaded by this neoliberal culture. So the judiciary would have to be reformed and then Maastricht, which imposes austerity and deficit limits. You know, look, America's growing at 3.9%. Its deficit is about the same. You know, basically it's deficit funded growth, job creation on a vast scale. Europe's still stagnating. And the Germans were asked, you know, well, would you change this? Macron said, let's change it. Macron now says, even Macron, I'm prepared to reopen the basic treaties. And the Germans are saying, no, because for Germany, the Eurozone is a giant economic game. So, you know, Germany, Eurozone delivers near zero unemployment in Germany and stagnant growth, yeah? And a crumbling infrastructure and 25% unemployment in Spain and stagnant, slightly better growth at the moment, but not good. And until Germany and France are prepared to give up the respective games, it's not going to be reformed, but at least now you've got, you know, when the guy with the riot police and the guy on the streets fighting the riot police, you know, Macron and Melonshaun are both calling for the rewriting of the European treaties. You'd have to say there's a bit of a chance of it happening. And that's what reform means for me. It's nothing less than, I go to Europe and these social democrats go, Paul, you know, how could we replicate what Jeremy Corbyn has done? I said, well, Jeremy Corbyn doesn't have a copy of the Lisbon Treaty in his head. You do, rip it up. And that's what, you know, they really find that very difficult, but that's what we're going to have to do. So the strake argument to be his defender is that that's impossible because there can never be a European demos and capitalist interests are much better at lobbying on a transnational level than trade unions, except. He might be right, but in that case, what do you do? I mean, in that case, the project of socialism is screwed anyway. In a globalized world, et cetera. But even the, I'd be in favor of taking some, you know, this is how I would do it. You know, a labor government comes to power. You take some state aid measures. You rewrite company law. You sideline all the competition rules, nationalize this, that and the other, the energy system. And of course, the Europeans go crazy. And you then say, look, well, right, you know, we've done this for a reason. And you deliver growth. You know, one of my big fears in the next two years is that Trump will win because growth is so strong. And Trump, you know, it's often, Michael Moore points this out, Trump doesn't just spend on arms. You know, doesn't just kind of spend on the largest to his family and the rest of it. Trump has given the go ahead to every increasing welfare that Nancy Pelosi has asked for. You know, you can do this if you're prepared to run a deficit and a massive debt and Europe isn't. And guess what? The world is now Europe, Russia, China, India and America. And I, you know, the big powers of the big powers, it's only Europe that's strangling itself. I think that the history is on the side of those of us who want to reform it. And even if we're outside it, we'll be in something like the single market or our customs union. We're going to have to reform it from without. So I'd rather reform it from within. I suppose on a conversation about how to create a European demos, Danny Blackwell has asked, what do you both think about Varoufakis's DM 25 and European spring movements? I should also add he's put hashtag Euro Shanley and Max Shanley for MEP. I wholly endorse that part of it. That would be fantastic, wouldn't it? There's a dream team of RC MEPs. If Labour were to stand, Max would be great. You know, it should be all, probably all women. That's what it should be. But so, you know, if I was still supple enough to actually demonstrate a head bang on this desk, a face plant, that would be my reaction to DM 25. Because, you know, in Germany where Yanis is standing, on what basis against the left party and against the left of the social democrats who were desperately trying to evolve? I didn't even realize that. So Yanis Varoufakis is standing in Germany against the German left parties. Yeah. Wow. I think while DM 25 is, you know, what the premises of it, primitive of it is, is, and we've got till 2025 to reform Europe and then we give up on it. I mean, I interviewed him live on stage in Camden or Islington a couple of years ago. And he said, like, in his mind, he'd already admitted that the pessimism of the intellect meant that it wasn't really gonna be possible to do it in that way. Also, look, I think the Green New Deal thing that he's produced is good. But what I've got great respect for Varoufakis actually as a thinker and an economist, but I've been observing close up as a political operator. I think he's not a very effective one. And I think that DM 25 has, you know, has been effective in places where there isn't really a strong left like Croatia. It's managed to pull in people like Rasm from Poland who are a good party. I think a good progressive, great positions, especially important Poland on anti-racism abortion, et cetera. But we need an international, and DM 25 should bring those forces that it's got with it. I mean, I struggle to forgive them for endorsing Nick Clegg, the British, the architect of his austerity, they endorsed Nick Clegg in the last election. The DM 25 endorsed Nick Clegg. You can get your fact checkers to check this, but I'm pretty sure that, because the idea was we endorse a range of progressive people. Oh, because they're pro, it's that whole sort of like the United Front in favour of the EU. Yeah, so look, but look, the substantive point is we need a functioning international. And the real problem is that the radical left in Europe doesn't function as an international because Cyprus can't sit down in the same room as Melonshaun because Melonshaun's trying to kick him out of the European left. The Nordics, to me, are the greatest, the best part of the European left, alongside Pudemos. They are rooted in what you might call the modern world, the modern life, the networked individual. They barely can stand sitting in the room with the more communist kind of sort of economic nationalists. And as a result, left social democracy and social democracy itself is far more, and the Greens are far more clearly organised on an international scale, and the far right is utterly organised in a mimetic way. We're not. And I don't think DM 25 does much to solve that problem. Interesting. We've got lots of difficult questions, which involve odds. Odds. You've got two minutes for this one. So Leon Cardoso, odds on a general election, please. 25%. I do percentages. How likely is a Norway-style Brexit in the next few years? That's from Craig Dobson. I'd say a Norway-style Brexit as the proposal in the next six months has a 40% likelihood. 40% there. We've got to add up to 100 in the end. Frank. No, no, it doesn't. Probabilities do have to add up to 100. No, because they're different. You're asking me. I think there's a four-to-one chance of getting a... There's a sort of... Oh, yeah, because you could have a general election in Norway-style Brexit. Yeah. Sorry, you're right. From Frank. Hi, what are the chances of the EU not granting an extension? Low. Low. Low. Good. This is from Phil Burlidge. Oh, I've forgotten his bloody name, but Avery Publix, a very public sociologist. All right, Avery, yeah. I always read it as Avery. Great blog. Yeah. Avery PS is how it comes up on the thing. What's the best play available to Jay Corb's to help along the split in the Tories? The play. Yeah, what can Corbin do to best? He must... Provost a split in the Tory party. What he must do, I could even finish on this. My fear has been that 20 or 30 Labour MPs will at the very moment rebel and vote with Theresa May because they say... And it's not just the kind of what you might call Lisa Nandy sort of rooted in working-class leave areas. People, even Jess Phillips said, at the end, who's kind of seen as more of a Blairite, I'm prepared to vote with Theresa May to avoid catastrophe. Now, the worst thing would be is to either by design or even worse by accident to give them the idea that they're allowed to do it. And I have worried that there are people who kind of would quite like to do that in the Labour front bench to give that signal, go ahead, you save us, we vote against Brexit, you betray us, we forgive you, Brexit's passed, we can get on with it. And the best thing that Corbyn can do is actually what Corbyn MacDonald and Keir Starmer, because they're almost like the three powerful leaders know Labour, is to go on making it very clear that that is not the plan. The plan for us ourselves in the left is to defeat May's Brexit because it will shatter conservatism. Which, ooh, sorry, this sometimes happens when I... Will Brexit chaos precipitate a ride in support for Pusadism in the UK? You mean Pusadism, not Pujardism. Pusadism, that's communism. Pusadism is nuclear... No, no, Pusadism was a strange form of Trotskyism in the 1970s and 80s, which believed that if we ever made contact with people from outer space, they would be communist because they had to be higher civilization than us. The workers bomb thing, which is what people think it is, many, many parts of Trotskyism, and of course all of Stalinism, wanted a workers bomb. And I don't call Britain's nuclear weapon a workers bomb, it's a bourgeois bomb. It's just that I'm in favour of dismantling it through multilateral disarmament rather than unilateral. Interesting. All right, good. Next Tory leader. Oh no, that's difficult, isn't it? I suppose there's a way of framing that, which is more in terms of what's currently going on than just the stab in the dark at who's it gonna be. What faction do you think is on the rise and what faction is on the decline? There's four people in the cabinet who are liberal Tories who can see that mays over and they don't want to have their hands on the catastrophe. Amber Rudd is their leader. She cannot become leader of the Tory party because not only do most MPs subscribe to the kind of doom neoliberalism or the nationalism, but the members, it's been invaded by the ex-Ukippers. You know, somebody was telling me the other day about a Tory MP whose members voted 19 to one for no deal and my joy at the floor, not because of the result, because only 19, 20 people were at the constituency party meeting. So the forces of liberal tourism are not at those meetings. So what I would say is it's a straight fight between Javed, who's gonna be, you know, the Martinette, you know, kind of, me and you are neo-fascists according to Sajid Javed, but, you know, actual fascists, you can't lift a finger, but you notice when they rampage down Whitehall, it's either him or the avatar of the nationalist right, which is gonna be Johnson. Johnson is, you know. He doesn't get the nominations. I thought that's the whole point, right? The membership is sort of irrelevant if he can't get into the top two from the Tory party. Well, you know, Johnson keeps writing these semi-autobiographies that turn out to be biographies of Winston Churchill. And Winston Churchill was, as a real biographer said, you know, a study in failure until the moment where, in a crisis, he stepped forward. And I'm sure that's what Boris Johnson thinks he's gonna do, in a crisis. He's establishing his right-wing credentials with all these anti-Muslim dog whistles, Islamophobia and racism and sexism, and even like weird comments about child abuse. He's doing all that now in order to be the candidate that unites that, you know, the kind of Daily Mail reader down in the pub with the liberal Tories in the end, which is where he comes from. You know, he's part of that kind of oldie-tonian world. Brilliant. Time is up. It turned into a kind of crystal ball game. Always a pleasure. Yeah, crystal. It's best when it's a crystal ball game. I mean, Phil BC is in the comments complaining that I've got his double-barreled second name wrong, but he still hasn't told me exactly what it is. So, to make up for that, follow at PhilBCfree on Twitter. Well, one of them could be Boyschwar and the other one could be something we're not gonna say. What is it? What was it? Phil BC is Phil BC. He does the blog, a very public sociologist. Well, I know who he is, yes. But we just, I can't remember what the B and C is. It's Berkeley, but something can't, put it in the comments anyway. He's a very good public sociologist. Always a pleasure, Paul. Yeah, and pleasure to the Vara as well. We need to get you back in every time there's a crisis. Send money now. Send money now to the Vara. They're gonna need to be 24-hour broadcasting on College Green. If that is, if you wanna take Paul's advice, which normally I recommend you do, do go to support.varmedia.com and donate some money. As you know, we recommend a one-hour wage a month so we can continue working around the clock, which is gonna be more and more necessary Burton Cartledge. I feel. It's appeared in the comments. I feel. I blurred the two. All right, see you next week. Same time, same place. Good night.