Vince Cable
The Return to Middle-of-the-Road Politics?

Sir Vince Cable | The Return to Middle-of-the-Road Politics?

- All right, well good evening everyone and welcome. Tonight, we have a great treat for you. We felt that it was very important to look at the whole issue of the return to middle of the road politics, particularly in the kind of world we are living in where it seems that politics are polarising, not just politics, but religious views. We’re moving into an age of extremism and luckily, we found the perfect person to deliver this presentation and that’s Sir Vince Cable. He’s had an extraordinarily varied career. He was the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skill 2010 to 2015 in Britain before entering Parliament. He entered into Parliament as a liberal democrat in 1997. Before that, he’d worked both in government and in the private sector. He was Shell’s chief economist. He’s published some very important works, in 2015 “After the Storm: The World Economy and Britain’s Economic Future”; 2021, “China: Engage!: The New Cold War”, and that same year, “Money and Power”. What he did was to examine interesting historic figures who changed the way economic policy was made. He’s currently professor at LSC and visiting professor at Nottingham University. He’s also a great champion of adult education. So welcome, Sir Vince, and over to you and thank you very much for joining Lockdown.

• Well, thank you very much for your warm welcome and welcome to people all over the world who I understand are listening. I’m speaking here as somebody who is out actually, out on the streets at the moment campaigning for what I think is moderate middle of the road politics and I was the leader of a party that had that description, the liberal democrats in Britain. But the first point I want to raise is why are we raising this whole question about will there ever be a return to middle of the road politics? I think because there are so many different things happening in different parts of the world involving polarisation and extremism, we’ve had an election in the last few days in Europe for the European Parliament, and the big winners have been in France, the party of Le Pen, Marine Le Pen. Her father was somebody who was involved in what’s basically fascist politics, a holocaust denier in the tradition of Vichy France. In Germany, the Alternative for Deutschland, an extreme right wing party whose candidates were acting as apologists for Nazi activities in the war. And in Italy, the Meloni, the Prime Minister and her Brothers of Italy party did extremely well, a party which was essentially traces its roots to Mussolini and many of whose supporters have those prejudices. But not just that, I mean in the UK, we are now in the middle of an election campaign, and one of the potential outcomes is a much bigger role for Mr. Nigel Farage and his Reform party, which was the party that created the political and intellectual background to Brexit, extreme nationalism. In the United States, we’re limbering up to a presidential election which may well see the return of President Trump, and not just his own personality, vindictive, narcissistic, highly unpredictable, but with fairly openly expressed prejudices in relation to women, people of colour, people of dark skins from overseas, and particularly Mexico.

So we’re talking about an international phenomenon, and the question is how serious is it? I think before going overboard on the thesis that we’re in a world of extremes, it’s I think worthwhile to take a step back and question just how serious this is. For example, I mean there were in the recent European elections things that didn’t make the headlines, but mainstream conservative parties did well in many parts of Europe, not in France where they were almost eliminated, but in Germany, the mainstream conservatives did well. There were countries where the extreme parties, in Poland, in Sweden, went backwards. In the UK, it looks increasingly as if we’re going to elect a prime minister who’s probably the most middle of the road socialist that we’ve had, with the possible exception of Tony Blair. And elsewhere in the world, we’ve seen big setbacks for the extremists. I mean, the most fascinating and important in many ways is in the world’s biggest democracy, in India, where the BJP, the Hindu Nationalist Government, which had been inflaming tensions and hostility to Muslims, got a very bloody nose despite the predictions of much of the elites in India and elsewhere. And what happened was that the poor people in the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, used tactical voting to vote out extreme BJP candidates and have restored a much better balance in India. A few months before that, you may remember Bolsonaro, who regarded himself as the Trump of the tropics, was booted out, albeit rather narrowly, by a moderate socialist. And one can see in other parts of the world that this trend towards extremism and polarisation isn’t uniform.

I’m not deeply knowledgeable about what’s happened in the United States, but I’ve been been intrigued by the way in which women in America have fought back against one of the most perverse consequences of the Trump appointments to the Supreme Court by establishing state by state practical initiatives to restore women’s right to choose in relation to abortion, and appear to be increasingly successful in reestablishing a form of politics which deals with people in the mainstream. So it’s a mixed bag, but I think it’s probably useful to step back a little bit and ask what actually we mean by middle of the road? What is the road that we’re talking about? What are the curbs on both sides of the road? I think part of our difficulty in using these expressions is that certainly for the last 200 years we’ve gotten into the habit of describing politics in terms of left and right. And it originated in the French Revolution, but the idea that on one side, people who believe in more public ownership and on the other hand, in private enterprise, between people who argue for more government spending and taxation and people who argue the opposite, around a class divide with working class people, poor people on one side and rich people and business on the other. And that’s obviously a caricature, but that’s where this concept of left and right originated, and when we talked about middle of the road, we talk about people who are somewhere in the middle of that division. But what’s happened is over the last few decades, we’ve got a completely new way of looking at politics, which has nothing to do with left and right, but has been described as the politics of identity, that is between people who see the world in rather narrow exclusive terms and people who are very open and inclusive about religion, race, gender, and other matters.

And if I reflect a little bit on some of the issues which have dominated British politics in the last couple of decades, start with Brexit, the most important decision the country has made in the decade and probably for much more than that, nothing to do with left and right, but an issue about who we identify with, the nation state or something bigger. We’ve had the issue of Scottish independence, which is one of the less reported aspects of this election that’s taking place at the moment. We have immigration, probably number one and number two issue on the electoral debate. We have how we deal with Islam, radical Islam, and then the whole so-called culture wars issues around transgender. Now, none of these are left, right, they’re about a new kind of axis in politics between people who have a relatively closed and a relatively open way of looking at the world. And this new world is particularly dangerous because it’s quite difficult to strike a middle ground as you do between left and right. There is no middle ground really between Brexit and the opposite. There is no middle ground between Scotland being independent and not, it’s either in or out. So this is of its nature, a somewhat more polarised way of looking at the world and those who see it in closed and exclusive terms are often in a very virulent form, which is what we’ve seen increasingly in Western Europe and to some extent in the United States. So my next question is well, why has this happened? I mean, why have we got this new kind of very immoderate politics, politics of identity, populist, appealing to prejudices based on race and religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, how has this happened? Well, I think there’s several reasons, I’m not entirely sure which is overwhelmingly the most important. I think the first is that a lot of the old structures around which we used to have left right politics have disappeared. Much of manufacturing industry has gone.

In the UK, we no longer have coal mines, shipyards. Those working class communities that were at the heart of left right politics are no longer there. They’re alienated, left behind and often very attracted to the politics of identity. We see the same in the United States in some of the depressed industrial areas which Trump has a particular appeal to. I think another factor was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which as long as it was there, we had this dichotomy between communism and capitalism. The world is no longer cast in that way. I mean, to the extent to which there is ideological competition, it’s with China, and although China’s a communist country, the reason it presents a problem for the west is mainly because it’s so good at capitalism. So that old ideological division is no longer a factor. I think there is a lot of sort of anger because of insecurity. We’ve got massive change, structural change, industries dying, new ones being created, job insecurity is pervasive. So this is generating quite a lot of anger, and combined with that, frustration because since the financial crisis, 2008, in many countries, particularly in the UK, living standards have stagnated and fallen for many people with little prospect actually of much improvement. So you’ve got a combination of anger and frustration, people looking for scapegoats either in the form of minorities or blaming some abstraction called the elite, which is supposedly causing these difficulties. And I think added to that complexity, people struggling to deal with a world where things are moving very fast. We’re getting the whole internet, social media world, compounded now by artificial intelligence, particularly for older people, this is a very difficult environment in which to live. And so there is a greater appetite for people who have simple solutions to complex problems. And that is where populism comes in and extreme politics, it can cater to that kind of emotional need.

So it then leads me onto the question about, well what are the consequences of this kind of politics? What does it mean in real terms? Well, one of the things we’re seeing is the disappearance of traditional, moderate, middle of the road parties who are just being swept aside in this new world. In France, we’ve more or less seen the disappearance of the moderate conservatives. In the UK, we’re now having a very serious debate as to whether the conservatives who’ve been in power most of the last 200 years in some form are just going to disappear, they simply cannot adapt to this new environment. Their traditional appeal, which was on the one hand to sort of the business markets, but also to traditional social values, has been swept aside in this new populism, and we don’t know what will happen in a few weeks time, but their very existence is now being questioned. In the United States, the Republican party, the party of Lincoln and a great feature of the last 200 years, is now becoming the property of one man with very unpredictable and extreme views. So traditional parties are being devoured by this new kind of politics. And in their place, you are getting new political structures, often very extreme, often relying on identity, highly nationalistic parties, the National Front in France and the AFD in Germany, parties in Slovakia and Hungary, for example, extremely nationalistic and xenophobic, parties which are gaining strength simply on the basis of religion, even in a relatively mild way in countries like Poland, but also in Turkey and Israel and India and elsewhere.

So parties which appeal to what we might call nativist instincts are gaining support, and they may only be temporary, and they may just be the vehicle for a particular individual, a powerful, charismatic individual, but nonetheless, this is a new kind of politics that we’re not used to, certainly in countries like the UK and the US with very long established party structures. So my final issue, and I will then hopefully open up to discussion and hear your questions is how do we deal with this? I mean, if you belong as I do to a middle of the road party and you value that kind of politics, what kind of strategy do you adopt to keep sensible, middle of the road, moderate politics alive? How do you do it? And it seems to me that there are three different options opening to us. The first is you establish parties which are pitched in middle of the road territory and self-consciously label themselves as moderate parties. And of course the classic model of that is Macron’s party in France, but we’re beginning to see that it’s not a very effective way forward, it depends almost entirely on one extremely capable individual, it doesn’t appear to have the capacity for succession and renewal, it’s been nibbled at from extremes on both sides, and that doesn’t seem to be a very durable way of doing moderate politics, but it may succeed, we will see whether Macron’s gamble is successful in a few weeks time. There is another route which we see in Germany, we’ve also seen in Ireland, of attempting to create a cordon sanitaire around moderate parties by simply outlawing extremists from government. In Germany, you have the traffic light coalition, which is designed to keep out the AFD party and similar policies, the Wagenknecht party on the left. But what we’ve seen in these European elections that when people get disillusioned with moderate coalitions, they then turn to extremes so that doesn’t necessarily work either. The final option is to try to work with the extreme parties and we’ve seen that beginning to be tried in Europe with mixed experience.

Holland has just launched a government with a relatively unknown technocratic leadership, but which is working with an extreme anti-immigration party. In Sweden, the Democrats who, another identity party, virulently anti-immigrant, being absorbed into a coalition are naturally suffering from it. So there the experiment appears to be working. It’s difficult to find analogies in the United States, but I would, looking at it from the outside, I would see people like Nikki Haley, who’ve portrayed themselves as moderates, middle of the road people within the Republican party deciding effectively to getting into bed with the Trump people in the hope that eventually they can take over or moderate. The course of that remains to be seen, whether that succeeds. We’ve seen other cases, Israel is a striking and topical example, where the extremists appear to be calling the tune. In other cases, India, the opposite example, you have highly competent technocratic parties from other states working with the BJP and seemingly have an effect of moderating its choice of ministers and the way in which it operates. So this is a very mixed story. And I think what we will increasingly see are attempts to form coalitions with extreme parties. And the danger, of course, is that the moderates in the middle of road people get eaten alive. In other cases, they may survive. Clearly it’s a matter, to some extent, of political skill. But within the next few months in crucial countries, in France, in Britain and in the United States, we shall see whether middle of the road politics can survive. It’s easy to be pessimistic. There are people who talk in apocalyptic terms about the end of democracy as we know it, I don’t believe that myself, I’m fundamentally an optimist, but certainly, the kind of politics that we’ve known through much of our lifetime, the middle of the road, moderate politics, is in jeopardy in many countries and its future is uncertain. So thank you for listening to me and I’m happy to engage in debate or listen to whatever questions you want to throw at me so thank you very much.

• [Host] Great, thank you. Right, so we’ve got a few questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q - So the first question is from Riva, more of a statement but discussion, “South Africa is an excellent example of the we the people voting out the ANC control after 30 years, the last 14 years, corruption and theft of all the SEOs”.

A - Yes, I mean I’m following the South African election at a distance and what has happened or what seems to have happened is that the African National Congress, which was a widely based liberation movement, has splintered and the two parties that are benefiting from it are extreme racially based parties, certainly one around Zuma, and the other a more general and radical party arguing on racial lines for radically changing the structures in South Africa. I mean I’ve been there a few times, there’s some wonderful people trying to make the country work, but Zuma’s period in office of looting of public assets has done enormous harm and it’s difficult to be optimistic. There is a real scenario that South Africa going the way of Zimbabwe. If I wanted to be optimistic, I would refer back to my early experience in life, which was working for Jomo Kenyatta. I was one of his treasury officials in the 1960s and Kenya was one of these countries that could very easily have collapsed into racial violence, partly because of Kenyatta’s personality and wisdom, it didn’t.

And the way they operated was to try to lance the boil of resentment white farming settlement by expropriating about a million acres of land, and they did compensate the white farmers, but having distributed land in an organised way and with the support of foreign aid, they were then able to encourage commercial farming and productive commercial farming, including from white farmers, in other parts of the country. In Kenya, the real racial politics erupted in relation to the Asian minority, which I happen to have married into. And there was a period when the future of Asians in Kenya looked very precarious, many of them did leave, but many others, including my brother-in-law and his family, have settled, become Kenya citizens and are enjoying a very prosperous and peaceful life. So if you’re looking for a good outcome of what’s happening in South Africa, look to Kenya and look at some of the ways in which Kenyatta managed a not totally dissimilar situation.

Q - [Host] Thanks. So the next question is from Martin, which is, “How do you recommend people deal with regimes and cultures who want to conquer and dominate using physical means?

• Sorry, I didn’t quite see the significance of the last phrase.

• [Host] "Using physical means”.

A - Well yes, we’re we’re talking here presumably about Putin invading Ukraine. Well, I don’t think there’s any alternative but for freedom loving countries that value their independence to stand behind countries that are under attack and Ukraine is the most extreme example. I went to Ukraine recently by bus ‘cause you can’t fly in and out and met some of the people who are part of this struggle. They’ve been very brave, they appear to be at least holding their own and potentially beating the Russians in many respects. They need consistent support from the west and the United States wobbled about that. I worry about what will happen if Trump comes into power. But we do have this problem that if there is a lack of respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity and powerful countries start taking a nibble out of others, we get potential anarchy, because there are other parts of the world, and several parts of Africa which have already descended into extreme violence. But there is no alternative I think, but for countries that do value their freedom and their democracy to stand behind those that are under attack.

Q - [Host] Thank you. So the next one is more of a comment, but I’ll read it in from Lorna, “Appreciated the sweeping world brackets and national overview of true prayer which were seemingly impromptu.” So the next question is from Randy, which is, “I believe it was Khrushchev who said, "Democracies all fail from within”.“ Sorry, Czario, ” the reason for the threats is that power corrupts. Is this why democracies fail?“

A - Well, I think that’s a very deep and important question and I’m sure Khrushchev was right, but it isn’t, although we often sort of portray the world as a clash between authoritarian and democratic governments, it isn’t quite like that. The democracy survive if they’re strong internally. And the big test at the moment is primarily in the United States. If Mr. Trump returns to power and institutions are corrupted and corroded and the rule of law no longer prevails, America will lose its moral leadership in the world and democracy will be set back enormously. I’m not sure necessarily of the link with corruption. I mean India is in many ways an extraordinarily successful case of democracy and with an electorate that is very politically sophisticated, understands tactical voting probably more than in countries like the UK and functions and functions very well but there is a lot of corruption at all levels. Somehow democracy manages to survive in spite of it. But the main challenge to democracy of course comes from an alternative model, which is China. I’ve been working on China for the last few years and their arguments about competent authoritarian government can be very compelling because if you compare a competent authoritarian government with a malfunctioning democracy, it isn’t altogether clear which is preferable.

And the Chinese would argue that under their system of government, they can take a very considered long-term approach to economic development and nation building whereas democracies, particularly those that are riven by internal conflict, are trapped in a short term, opportunistic kind of government, and that is going to be our major challenge. I don’t personally believe that in this confrontation with China, which particularly many Americans are signing up to, I think we have to engage with them because we share the same planet, but I think we shouldn’t be under any illusion that they are offering the world a fundamentally different model, alternative to democracy. And for many countries, particularly say in the Middle East, which have a long history of internal conflict and an inability to establish democratic government, the Chinese model may prove to be a much more attractive one. So the soul of democracy is very much up for grabs and that’s why the elections we’re going through at the moment are so important.

Q - [Host] Great, thanks. So the next question is Melvin, "How do you view Putin and his apparent desire to reconstruct the Soviet Union?”

A - Yes, he’s not, of course, a communist. So the Soviet Union as a communist stupor state, I mean we’re no longer talking about that. It’s more a question of his own thinking and his own language in many ways recovering the traditions of czarist Russia rather than Soviet Russia, and he often cites the great czars of the past. But the idea of co-opting countries around the periphery of Russia and absorbing them by force if necessary or by subverting them as seems to be happening, for example in Georgia at the moment is pernicious. It is the big challenge to western Europe as to whether it’s capable of constructing an effective defence because we may well find in a few months time if Trump is elected, that NATO is no longer a stable structure offering protection to Western Europe and the Western Europeans will have to decide whether they wish to defend themselves against an expanding and ambitious Russia by having strong collective defence and being willing to pay higher taxes to pay for it. One of the points I would make about Putin’s Russia is that one shouldn’t underestimate the strength of their economy. There’s been a tendency in the West to regard it as just a corrupt petro state, but we are realising that it is actually very well managed economically, they’ve been able to circumvent many of the sanctions which western countries have introduced and able to operate a war economy, which is very formidable. So this is a real challenge to Europeans, and hopefully the Americans if they’re still with us, as to how to prevent Putin continuing this what I would regard as more a czarist model of imperial expansion.

Q - [Host] Great, thanks. The next question is from Tommy. “Where does the type of move associated in the UK with the Gang of Four fit into your possibilities for the future?”

A - Well, I joined the liberal Democrats via the Gang of Four. I was an active member of the Labour Party, quite happily so, I saw myself, still do, as a sort of centre left person believing in social justice as well as a successful market economy. And unfortunately, in the 1983 election, the SDP liberal alliance didn’t achieve the breakthrough that had been hoped but the effect of its intervention was to bring the Labour Party to its census. It was veering off to the extreme left, and under Neil Kinnock and then John Smith and finally Tony Blair, it became a highly successful party of government. The Labour Party has been through a very similar kind of civil war in recent years. Moderate people, probably not as substantial as the Gang of Four, did break away and join my party a few years ago over Brexit in protest against Corbin but the Labour Party has been once again brought to its senses. What I fear happening in the UK is that not only will the conservative party implode and potentially face a reverse takeover from the former UK Farage people, but that the Labour Party which is sailing, or seemingly sailing into a landslide victory, could after a few years run into very serious political problems because it’s freedom of manoeuvre is very limited, it’s not going to be able to do a great deal, there is very little ambition.

Their philosophy was captured recently by one of their spokesman who said that no hope is better than false hope. I mean it was almost a policy of despair and I fear a few years down the road with some of the anger and frustration I talked about that the Labour Party could find itself in difficulty as well. So we’re going into a period where extreme politics initially on the right and potentially on the left, once again erupts and why I think it’s terribly important that my party, which is very much middle of the road and proud of it, prospers in these coming elections and is positioned to take advantage of any fracturing of the traditional big two parties.

Q - [Host] Great, thank you. So the next question is from Martin. “Is it extreme for parties to deal with opponents who use violence and domination?”

A - Well, we’re fortunate in the UK and in most parts of Europe and hopefully in the United States, though gun ownership creates a somewhat different dynamic, which is we don’t currently have this problem of extreme parties resorting to violence. I mean this is one of the differences between the contemporary challenges that we have which are purely political and those which occurred in the inter-war period when extreme parties advanced their cause with threats and intimidation in Germany and Italy and the countries which fell under their control. But if one wants to be pessimistic and we see continuing economic difficulties in the main Western countries, extreme parties gaining in strength, it’s certainly perfectly possible that we could start to see violence and people wanting to react to it by fighting back. Civil war is a rather emotive phrase and I don’t think we’re anything remotely near that, but that is where ultimately extreme politics leads and I sincerely hope that middle of the road parties will get back their mojo and prevent us drifting down that road.

Q - [Host] Great, thanks. So the next question is from Glen. “It’s one way of preventing extremist representation to maintain the first past the post system, PR gives more oxygen to small but extreme parties?”

A - Yes, that’s a question we’re having to face at the moment and I suppose Israel is probably the best example of extreme form of proportional representation giving an entry to parties that are very extreme and that’s at least part of the explanation for the terrible conflict which has taken place in Gaza. So you can have that extreme world in which proportional representation does give an entry point to extreme parties and I suppose Holland would be another example of that. If you look the countries with first past the post, three most important would be the UK, the United States, and India, I think Canada has something similar, but certainly in the United States and India first past the post hasn’t stopped extreme parties, not just hasn’t stopped them, but potentially enables extreme individuals or extreme parties actually to go straight to power because one of the dangers of first past the post is that you can get wildly disproportionate outcomes depending on relatively small swings in the party vote. I was looking at the voter shares in India, for example, and the BJP party have never got anything remotely like 50% of the electoral vote, but nonetheless, have been able to get into parliament with a very strong and almost super majority.

You know, Trump could come into power under the American first past the post system with simply by winning a plurality in a relatively small number of states in the Midwest. So the the first past the post system is no protection against extremism. What I think we do need is a system that is more proportional, but nonetheless has candidates, MPs who are rooted in their constituency. And there are these hybrid systems, Scotland in the UK has developed in that way, Germany is the most developed example, of course, it hasn’t stopped extremist parties in Germany, both on the right and the left, but so far at least, moderate, middle of the road people both in the Christian Democrat Union and in the socialist liberal green coalition have continued to dominate German politics, and my instinct would but that sensible voting reform leading not to a Dutch or Israeli type of PR, but just to a form of hybrid system that has the best elements of first past the post and of proportionality and it can be done.

Q - [Host] Great, thank you. So the next question is from Jacqueline. “Young people who are just starting to be able to vote are so hooked into social media and in some case being woke, whatever that means. How will they ever become broad-minded enough to vote for the middle of the road politicians?”

A - Well, the young people vote is crucial and I worry that a lot of young people are opting out of the political process. I mean there are aspects that, you know, that they find distasteful, but the problem is you get into a vicious circle that if only elderly people vote or if they dominate the voting, they’re going to produce governments that meet their needs rather than the needs of young people. I mean, we have this intergenerational issue within the UK where housing policy is totally skewed towards protecting the prices of housing of older people who own their own homes and younger people squeezed out of the market and forced to live in precarious rental accommodation unless they have parents who can buy property for them, and this is producing a lot of very alienated and very insecure young people and it’s dangerous. And the only way in which, you know, young people can fight back actually is by voting and affecting the outcome of the election. We would never have had Brexit in the UK if young people had voted in the referendum in the same way as older people. There was an enormous split between the under 25’s who were overwhelmingly for remain and the over 70’s who were overwhelmingly Brexit, but the latter voted and the former didn’t and that affected the outcome. So for young people to opt out of politics, it’s tempting because it seems so remote and unfriendly and unappetizing, but it means that ultimately you lose. So my advice to young people is, I think it was Pericles who said that, “Take an interest in politics, because if you don’t, politics will take an interest in you.” And democracy is a way of at least collectively of advancing your interests. And so please don’t opt out is my message to young people.

Q - [Host] Great, thank you. And we’ve got a comment from Susan that just says, “An outstanding presentation. Thank you, optimistic and hopeful.” And then next question, this question is from Teza, sorry if I pronounced that wrong, “Climate change is an issue which you didn’t cover. How will that influence future politics?”

A - Yes, sorry, I was very remiss in not mentioning environmental politics except indirectly. It clearly is one of the factors which has been boosting some of these extreme right and populist movements. We’ve seen this in the Netherlands, to some extent, the reform party in the UK basis its appeal by rejecting what they consider to be excessively expensive policies for abating carbon emissions. No, environmentalism in politics is currently under pressure, and indeed one of the losers in the European elections was the green party, which was coming up quite strongly, particularly in Germany, but but also in France and the lower countries and it got seriously hammered. In the UK, the green party will struggle to come back with one MP and maybe not at all. So the environmental cause expressed through politics is currently in some danger. If you want to be pessimistic, I mean I say I’m not a pessimistic, but if you want to be a pessimistic, there is a real danger now that western governments find environmental policies to reduce carbon emissions through transport, through home, trying to reduce waste heating homes too expensive and they simply give up on their net zero ambitions.

And if the rich countries give up, then the poor countries will say, well why should we bother? Why should a country like India stop burning coal if the rich world isn’t willing to make the necessary sacrifices? So we’re at I think a tipping point where with real political will, it will be just about possible to achieve the net zero objectives and stay within one and a half, two percent global warming. But if we let that go, we’re into three and four percent temperature increases by the end of a century, maybe even more, and with catastrophic consequences which we’re already beginning to see. I mean, the heat waves in India are killing large numbers of people and the more visual wildfires in North America, the strange climate we’re now getting in the UK. So we are at a tipping point, green politicians are currently under pressure, they’re going backwards and we have to make sure that the middle of the road parties make sure that green policies, and particularly climate change, are absolutely at the centre of what they’re arguing for.

Q - [Host] Great, thank you. So the next question is from Jerry. “Do you think that the shock jock type of popular media and the aggressive attack attitudes and commentary of social media, both of which seem to allow adverse behaviour with impunity, have added to the extremism seen in politics and in groupings behaviour and values?”

A - Probably. I’m not very adept at using social media, so I’m not totally familiar with the TikTok world, but it’s interesting that the rise of the extreme right in France has been really driven not so much by Marine Le Pen but by her deputy, this young man called Bardella, who is supposedly absolutely brilliant at developing the memes in TikTok and in messaging in that way. Trump as as we know, built his reputation and his popularity by very, very skillful use of Twitter, simple, clear messages, reducing complex issue to slogans, and it is very dangerous. I’m not sure that there’s a great deal we can do about that except to learn to do it better. When you have long since passed the point where governments can reasonably control social media outlets, it’s now part of our political life. I think what we do have to do is to try and make sure that the social media companies are subject to some kind of discipline, not just around things like child pornography, but extreme misogynistic abuse, and are called to account if they don’t control it. And we have been stumbling towards regulation in the UK along those lines and it clearly needs to be enforced. I guess it’s not feasible in the United States and, you know, a good deal of harm is being done as a consequence.

Q - [Host] Great, thank you. Our next question is from James. “Isn’t the rise of the populist far right parties in Europe, the result of the radical demographic changed caused by the unlimited immigration from Asia and Africa?”

A - Well, it’s not unlimited, and in the UK, we’ve had net immigration targets which have been broken, but it’s certainly limited and most European countries have quite strict immigration controls, though people are getting round it. But in terms of the basic question, I mean I think you are right and this is the kind of looming problem that there is a more or less unlimited supply of people who will take considerable risks to come to the west because living standards are higher, the quality of life is greater, it has more political stability and freedom from violence and there is a limit to absorptive capacity. I personally argue for liberal immigration policies, but I do recognise that, for example, in terms of pressure on the housing market, these are very real. And one of the major reasons why house prices have reached crazy levels in the UK is because the population has been increasing faster than the supply of accommodation. So we do have to be sensitive to these concerned, I think immigration is often presented in very, you know, black and white terms which are not very helpful.

In the UK, we have this argument about small boats, which is about 30, 40,000 people a year, often desperate refugees, who are being put into the same calculation as overseas students who are classified as immigrants, skilled workers, I mean, these are completely different things and it’s incumbent on governments it seems to me to try to treat immigration not as some undifferentiated whole, but to try to break it down into its separate parts, and there’s a perfectly reasonable argument for having controlled migration for work visas in areas where there are scarce skills, or maybe in the case of the UK, we are wanting people to help in terms of the care sector for the older population, to manage it, but nonetheless to treat it in a fairly liberal way. And that’s quite different from giving people asylum who are fleeing persecution in Iran or Afghanistan or Sudan or Eritrea. Those are cases where there is a genuine political motive behind people leaving, fear of persecution, and the tradition of liberal asylum is one we should fight to protect. But this whole process can be managed, it doesn’t need to be regarded as out of control. But to go back to your basic question, there is this demographic imbalance. We have lots of young people in Africa and we have an ageing population in Europe and of course also in Japan and South Korea and China and we have to make a choice. I mean these ageing countries can stagnate, which some of them are doing, in Italy, Japan, or they can rejuvenate, but if they do rejuvenate, it’s higher birth rates, getting a better balance in the population, it will involve people coming in from outside. I have no problem with that, but you are quite right to pose the basic question that underlying the technical arguments around immigration there is a demographic issue at its heart.

Q - [Host] Great, thank you. So the next question is from Barry. “Can you comment on Canada? It looks like our liberal government in Canada under threat to its present leadership is starting to lose popularity and PM Trudeau seems to be losing popularity. Your comments would be greatly appreciated.”

A - I don’t know a great deal about Canadian politics except that Justin Trudeau, like his father, was something of an inspiration to people in the liberal tradition. Liberals in Europe, which I’m one, have tended to forget that the most successful liberal party in the world is in Canada, and it goes back to Trudeau and Croteau and others, and they’re a a kind of role model for what we should be doing in Europe. But we tend to treat Canada as a far away place, a bit like the United States, and to ignore its very rich political traditions. I’m sorry hear that Mr. Trudeau is running into trouble. It’s not surprising. I mean he’s had I think two terms in office. It’s not healthy for people to go on and on. And if Canada switches to a moderate conservative alternative, which I assume is on offer, this shouldn’t be bad news for the world or for Canadians.

• We’ve got time for one more question, I think.

Q - [Host] Okay. Should I just go for any or?

A - Just choose. Just choose.

Q - [Host] Okay, we’ll go from Bob. “So please comment on the possibility of nuclear weapons being used, possibility of another world war, and the probability of Biden and Trump being nominated by their political parties after the first debate.”

A - Well you are cheerful. What a sort of question to finish off with. I mean there is, of course, a danger. I mean we have 10 countries, I think, nine, 10 countries, with nuclear weapons capacity. There is a danger of a breakout, which has been actively discussed. Countries that have managed without, like Japan, Saudi Arabia, are seriously contemplating whether in a more anarchic and violent world, they need to have nuclear weapons, and the more countries that have them, the greater the risk that something bad will happen. I think probably the most dangerous area of the world is the Indian subcontinent because you have three nuclear powers jostling, China, Indian and Pakistan, but fortunately, decision makers appear to be rational. We have one country, North Korea, where completely mad people seem to be in charge, but nonetheless, they’ve exercised a certain amount of restraint in this field. We just have to hope and pray. I think it’s instructive that in the Ukraine war the Russians have been stopped from using nuclear weapons, which they have threatened to use and battlefield weapons, and it would appear that the Chinese were one of the key influences on telling them that this is absolutely not what you should be doing and I take some comfort from that.

• Well, thank you for an absolutely brilliant presentation. I’m glad you finished on China because I’m hoping in a couple of months you’ll come back and give a lecture on China. So thank you. I think you gathered from the kind of responses just how appreciative the audience was. So thank you very, very much. And I think it’d be wonderful to return to the kind of world where middle of the road politics becomes the norm. Let’s hope.

• Good. Thank you very much.

• Bye-bye. Goodnight, everyone.

• Goodnight.