Transcription
The Blair transformation of the British state was astonishing in its breath and it's been very successful. This is not the same country. The country has been radically changed. The results have been frankly disgusting. People are angry about it and they're correct to be angry about it. You sow the wind and you reap the whirlwind.
What is very striking is the absence of a clear political voice at the moment for the majority. I think we'll look back at this period when we try to write up the history of the 21st century civil war in Britain and we'll think that we were already in it by 2026.
Hello and welcome to David Starky Talks. And me, David Starky, is talking to another David, Professor David Betts of the very distinguished department of war studies at King's College. And I remember uh much of my academic career was spent on the other side of the Strand to you uh in LSE or I'm afraid we were uncou enough to refer to you as Strand Pololly, but these are ancient bitternesses. Uh David, you obviously have a very wide reputation in the whole area of war studies, but you've come to this terrible thing which we can call online prominence recently because of your I think prediction is the wrong word, but you're saying that there are characteristics in modern Britain that give I think you've calculated it roughly a one in five chance of civil war in the reasonably near future. Do I put that broadly correctly?
Uh yes, that's uh fair to say. Um the um I mean people are always attracted to numbers and uh they like to hear a number thrown at them and it feel makes them feel confident that the person uh that they're speaking to um has uh some credibility. uh and I like to feel that that I do but um I I I'm really more of a qualitative um social scientist. Uh so let's say my opinion is that there is a very strong uh likelihood and I have felt this uh for some time. I think we're actually accelerating towards uh uh civil rupture. the um there is a a branch of the literature on civil wars on which I've drawn which is more um explicit and more inclined to come up with uh numbers. That's where I drew the the the uh figure you uh you mentioned is from a book by an American scholar named Barbara Walter uh who wrote a book called Civil Wars um how they start and how to stop them if I remember correctly which was m mainly focused on the American case um contemporary American case and also making the point that this was a country that uh um exhibited many if not all of the uh generally understood conditions uh of
So this country being America over
That being America and so it was at the end of her book where she remarks uh that on the basis of her uh analysis of a range of countries that where the conditions exist for civil war the chances of one actually occurring in any given year is about 4%. % uh so if you look forward um over uh a period of uh years say five years which is what I was doing then statistically you get up you get to a number that's something around 18% given the way statistics work um or given the way probability um u uh works uh so that's that's simply where the where the number comes from comes from though I I think I'm I'm I think that's actually rather optimistic.
Can we just pause there for one second because as somebody who is not hugely well informed in America but has lived there on and off for quite long stretches, a very obvious point of difference strikes me. America like France to a different extent is a country where political violence is effectively uh established. There is a right to bear arms under the constitution. uh which is rigorously vigorously used. There is um the that tradition of the civil war itself. There is interracial violence in a way which I think surely is radically different from Britain. You've only got to look at the kind of police forces on either side of the Atlantic. one aggressive, heavily armed, the other still, you know, however fragilely preserving the inheritance of the civilian police force of Sir Robert Peele. So, doesn't the extent to which violence is institutionalized and legitimated play a very important part? And wouldn't that distinguish us even now from America or France?
Uh, I think that's that's true. I think there's a strong distinction uh between European and uh European countries and uh and the United States uh for the reasons that you mentioned and to that I would add I think that the United States has more uh I think it has more kind of in intrinsic health remaining in its uh political system. I think it has more potential to recover itself. it that will be painful undoubtedly. We can see that occurring on the streets. Uh but it doesn't seem quite uh it isn't a political culture which is so inert which is so uh apathetic and which is has so uh fully uh in which the elite has so fully and completely embraced national decline. uh as have um European elites which seem to have frankly seem to have given up um on on um on on governing.
In other words, this is the enormous difference isn't it between somebody like Kia Stalmer whose essential approach to everything is to try to do something and then stop with Trump with that extraordinary facility uh his monarchical instinct whatever one thinks about it. there is in the American political system at least a reserve of energy that can actually do something whether one approves of it or not.
I think that's correct. Uh, I would say that, you know, at least from my my perspective as a as a distant observer of the United States and somewhat closer to the uh to the British uh case, of course, um that the difference is I think that Trump genuinely wants to save his country. uh whereas I don't think that that uh Starmer and his his advisers the people close to him uh in fact generally speaking our political national political class is very ironically named because they're all very postnational in their orientation
Or indeed antinational you could say.
Yes. Yeah. Uh I think that's that that is that is that is fair uh that is fair to say. I mean I I generally say postnational. I don't want to load it too heavily but but the bottom line I think is that I think that the United States uh for the better or worse has a a national leader who does think in national terms who has a an apprehension of the national interest. He may be a country club sentimentalist uh and very awkward uh uh individual uh in many many ways but un unlike our own elite which um is uh I think just fundamentally managerially managerial and postnational in its orientation and they don't really see the uh eraser of the this uh Britain as a a cultural historical entity as being terribly, you know, being any sort of tragedy.
On the contrary, they rather embrace it, don't they? I mean the the whole excuse me rebounding of Britain under Tony Blair, cool Britannia, a new country was in fact with a great deal of academic connivance. um a uh an attempted the erasure of history to say we are starting a fresh into a brave new wonderful world of the equality act of uh the the um the human rights act the elevation of judges above politicians. So one of the clearly one of the things that you are focusing on is the the view which I suppose is some of it the work of David Goodhard some of it Matt Goodwin this whole idea of our political elites having abandoned the centrality of the nation state and the fact that the first duty of a politician is to his own country and instead through international law in particular you see this embrace of every country but your own. So you would see that as one of the central in other words the abdication of national politics by by our political institutions by our political leaders you would see as one of the fundamental preconditions for this idea of civil strife.
Uh yes uh I do because from the perspective of uh the rest of the population to use uh David Goodhart's frame
The somewheres
From from the perspective of the somewares this is a gigantic betrayal they look at the country um and they say this is a broken country uh and almost everyone acknowledges this. I mean on left and right is subtitle of however many national reports has this term broken Britain. So there's really not much controversy in the suggestion that this is a very seriously politically, socially, economically um uh ill country and it feels to people that it is broken and that makes them wonder why why why was it broken? Why did they why why was this done?
Who broke it? Who are the guilty men? So they I I think they uh people apprehend that the country is broken and I think they have a fair idea of who broke it. Um, but I personally
Would you like to name names?
I think you just did moments ago. you talked about, you know, the Blair the Blair transformation of the of the British state uh was astonishing in its breath breadth and it's been very successful. this is not the same country and I've lived in Britain since 1998 and I I I recall very um and I feel that you know in my own personal experience it's massively transformed in in that in that period and of course the you know the Blair government uh the Blairy establishment which continued after Blair of course
Because the tour is the concern I mean again let's let's fair or unfair to both sides. David Cameron explicitly saw himself as the heir to Blair. He says quite explicitly he wants a conservative party where liberals will be at home to raise a may continues the whole of the net zero agenda and intensifies it. Similarly, non-crime hate incidents. In other words, we've had and I think it's a problem, David. I I find myself shrinking when you start sounding like an online conspiracy theorist, you know. But we really have had post Blair a uni party government that has simply prolonged the Blair episode that has let left left major figures uh from the Blair years in power that you know you had a conservative government giving the chairmanship of English nature to a a Labour cabinet minister to Chris Smith. We've just had scenes of Theresa May um and Iet Cooper sitting girishly giggling at each other. Uh we have a former conservative attorney general advising the government on how to how how to how to outlaw Islamophobia or whatever turn of phrase we've now we've now done. So there is this very broad sense of a complete political establishment being and again it's important to use the word and knowing what we're using with the word implying the phrase the phrase the guilty men is of course the title of Michael Foot's book uh on the appeases uh those who prevented or he argued had prevented rearmament those who'd appeased Hitler were looking to appease on the on their buildup to the second world war. So what we're talking about are the domestic appeasers. Those who are appeasing. Now there's another word that's creeping into the air, isn't it? The enemy. Wars have two sides. Who is the other side?
I think there are three sides in this. what uh ultimately what what will emerge um there uh we've just spoken of two of them which are essentially a a large fraction and a small fraction of the native population of Britain uh the somewares those people right uh u uh native u native uh Britain who remain um national thinking remain rooted in in their land, in their language, in their culture and their elite which has abandoned uh those things. Um and that abandonment is and the effects of it is what gives rise to um such frequent utterances nowadays when people talk about having been betrayed for example. betrayal is just an enormously powerful uh world word.
It echoes treason, doesn't it? It echoes the idea of treason.
Yes. It's very it's very very powerful language. And when a when a uh civil society, I think, starts to um to use these terms because they because they feel they they feel them deeply. That is a that is a extremely um strong signal of um of um of conflict. Um, the um the the country has been radically changed. Uh the results have been uh frankly disgusting and people are angry about it and they're correct to be angry about it. Uh consequences will follow from this. you you you sow the wind and you you you you reap the whirlwind.
So, can I just be a little clearer? When you say it's radically changed, are you talking uh I mean, we could be talking about lots of things. We could be talking about de-industrialization. We could be talking about urban decay. We could be talking about the rise of worklessness and unemployment. Or we could be talking about what I think is the principal focus. And I think we we both agree with Confucious that the beginning of wisdom is calling things by their proper names. The proper name is the greatest wave of immigration that the British Isles have ever ever seen. Uh dwarfing by factors of hundreds if not thousands anything seen before. Is that right?
Abs. Yes. Absolutely. You're you're entirely right. And everybody understands this too. I mean there are many uh there there are many small betrayals. You've mentioned those. I mean the um de-industrial, you know, the de-industrialization uh being a key one. But with without doubt, the the the the most significant betrayal is on on migration. And both parties have done this. Both parties had something around 14 to 17 years in power in which both ran um migration policies where we had net migration of 200,000 a year. Uh of course currently it's it's actually it's considerably uh more than that. Um, and this is despite the fact that if you look at the uh election manifestos of the conservative and later labor parties from 1945 onward, you never you you will not find um them saying, well, we're going to have mass migration. If migration was talked about at all, it was talked about in um in the terms of uh uh managing migration in a sensible way as required to serve a high functioning high knowledge economy and so on and so forth.
Except blur, can we again remember there's that famous quotation from the the the insider whose name has gone out of my head at the moment that it was about rubbing the the face of the British people in in diversity, isn't it? So there was there was a degree of understanding within within the government with within the in fact this was the heart of Downing Street what they were doing but carefully not communicated of course.
Yeah, there there there are occasional instances in the last few decades where there have you had these kind of brief flashes of honesty and uh and and that was one of them. the person I believe it was Andrew Nether who was correct an advisor to Blair and uh of course subsequent to that did his best to try to convince people that he meant something different than the actual words uh that had been said.
Okay so but the bottom line is yes you're entirely correct the issue is ab above all it is migration and this goes back to your your earlier question about who are the belligerents uh so you've got the anywhere's and the somewares and I think the conflict in that case looks something basically like a peasant rebellion under 21st century conditions it's a situation in which the people uh are seeking to punish their elite uh for having changed the rules of the game in some way in some way that's invidious to them.
Can we just again forgive me because I think it's really important if at each stage we try and look at the specific examples. Would we see the being two components of this revolt as you describe it? A political one and a street one. The political one, I take it, is the extraordinary rejection of the Conservative Party at the last election and the corresponding collapse in Labour's polling within 18 months of, you know, that loveless landslide. So, in one sense, the people have spoken very clearly within the political process. But the problem is of course that the political process which was supposed to deliver change uh in uh in uh last year delivered no change whatever and in fact an intensification because of the uni party and the ultra commitment of Kia Stalmer. I mean Storma is everything you talk about as an anywhere isn't he? He is the complete concentrated you know kind of dregs of the Olympic uh of of Blarism. uh this this kind of stinking product of of concentrated internationalism, concentrated um uh anti- anti-Britishness um to the extent again you know his record as a lawyer uh in uh advising any any any convenient terrorist be it Irish or Syrian or or Afghanistani or whatever against the British. So there's a political component, but you I mean how are the ri were the riots for example of last summer? They were they had many of the symptoms the the the South H sorry the Southport riots of last summer they did have many of the symptoms of a peasants revolt um don't they a Tommy Robinson march
I think uh that I think that's true um uh I would locate the uh political revolt as you or revolt in inverted commas the very distinct uh message from the somewares as delivered through the ballot box as the Brexit uh the Brexit vote above all. I mean everything after that was was was subsidiary and the response uh it was the government or the establishment response to the Brexit revolt which did I think colossal damage to the uh perception of legitimacy of the system. you know, to ask people for uh democratically validated instruction on an um an issue of enormous uh national importance. to receive that instruction and then to spend uh years trying to sabotage and subvert it um is effectively something the equivalent of dragging you know you know it it's just com it it was very destructive of the uh government legitimacy of the whole kind of perception of legitimacy of the political system
They spat in the face of the people who'd elected them didn't Yes,
I mean there is I'm sorry I'm using I'm using much more physical language than you're doing. I mean you're using the proper abstraction of academic analysis but the way it was felt I mean the site again let's let's name names uh particularly uh uh the uh people like Dominic Griev the the the speaker of the house of commons the sheer contempt that was exhibited um it is a spitting in the face it is these little people who did not understand their own good we superior by our intelligence we superior by our knowledge have to guide them and okay you know well it was only advisory wasn't it although in fact Cameron had said that he would abide by its verdict and it was I mean I'm I'm trying to trying to think what would be a a direct and it's very it is in fact even if you look back to the days of uh absolute well we never had absolute monarchy but even if you look back to my kind of period of history it's very difficult to see a moment at which a government offers a particular um promise um a quai compact and then defies it so completely and it is I just agree with you completely. It's it's frankly astonishing. And so that's really where and and and that is also where in terms of my own um sort of academic uh trajectory with respect to this subject. It it it starts in that period. Uh before that I'd always I I'd been uh studying uh wars in hot and dusty places abroad. Not uh and was probably one of those who was uh somewhat comfortable in the assumption that these kinds of uh these kinds of wars, these kinds of conflicts are are uh afflictions of other people, not uh of us and
Comfortable Britain. Yes.
Right. And so my views on that um ch began substantially to alter uh around then which is when I began uh writing on this uh particular topic. The um the other thing I would add though is yes I mean it's you say spit in the face. I think it that's pretty pretty fair way to uh fair way to put it. But in in light of that, you know, I think people have revisited in their heads an a whole range of things which have been done to them now in in that context. And one I think is probably the most significant. Sometimes I maybe you do this also as a historian but sometimes I try to imagine myself as a historian 50 years from now writing think thinking back to our to the present you know and I think well how would a historian look at this when would they think was the vaunted turning point uh you know when do they shift from chapter 1 to chapter 2 so on and so forth and to me a really significant ificant moment was that in 2011 when a clearly intoxicated u uh young uh kind of I suppose I think he was probably attached to Tommy Robinson's group but young guy was uh interviewed on went on to YouTube and he was talking about Muslim ray guns uh and of course He had a horrible accent and uh but he wasn't talking about Muslimic ray guns. He was talking about Muslim rape gangs. He was talking about parallel systems of governance that had emerged uh across parts of the country that for the most part our national establishment, our chattering classes don't know about and don't care.
They've never even visited,
You know, never visited. They don't know. I mean, they haven't the faintest idea what you what's going on in some of like ex pit villages around Durham or something. I mean, they may know Durham very well. That's wonderful place, but just go five miles outside, they don't know it. Uh um and this this guy was made a fool of pillaried. And now you look back at that and say, "Wait a second. In the light of the revelations around the industrial scale uh activities of Pakistani community-based sexual torture networks in this country, how dare they have laughed that off. Um, so I think we're going to start the I I think the thing is when it comes to it, I think we'll look back at this period when we try to write up the history of the 21st century civil war in Britain. Um, and we'll think that we were already in it by 2026. the the watershed the the tipping point had occurred previously. No one's going to start there's you know just as you know historians of the American Civil War don't pick up the story on page one with the bombardment of Fort Sumpter. There's you know that might have been when the first shot was fired but that's not when the story begins. and our the story of our 21st century civil war is uh starts at a point which is which we have already passed.
Let let's just take then as a pickup we agreed that one of the signs of the popular revolt of the white working class the white someares was the Southport riots. Let's look at one of the reactions to the Southport riots in the Pakistani communities that you talked about. If we go to one of these places that the political class doesn't go to, which are the suburbs of Birmingham was famously recorded because Jessson was actually there. Um, and there was this extraordinary scene. She's the M she's the MP for the area. You will remember there was an extraordinary scene with between a Muslim police officer and a large gang uh of Muslims wearing black black clothes, many of them masked and carrying clubs and sticks and baseball bats. And they were going to sort out a pub that they thought was the haunt of this white working class that you talked about. Um, what happened? If we look of course at how the Southport rioters were treated by the police, the extraordinary aggression, the deliberate speeding up of judicial process against them. What happened with this gang of actually armed Muslims was I'm sure you know the incident. Chaps, we don't want any trouble, do we? We don't want to attack you. You don't want to attack us. Why don't you go home and put your weapons back in the mosque? Now, that is I mean so many things you can pull out of that. the complicity of a large part of what should be the machinery of law and order in the early stages of civil war and the other those Pakistani communities, some members of which too many were complicit uh in the in the rape gangs. now as a community defending itself seeing itself as separate and entitled to arm against a section of the native population. Now, presumably, so far that must be the clearest instinct of of the point I made when I said that there've got to be two sides in a civil war and yours that there is a third party alongside the divided white native population of the tiny group of somewhere and the much larger group of anyways. We do have this group now, don't we?
Yes, undoubtedly. uh and I think your uh example is is probably uh the best of many u of many available. Uh although recent headlines concerning the essentially the um uh manipulation of the West Midlands uh police uh and um the continuing uh seem almost seemingly permanent pause now in the sentencing of the two uh uh thugs who beat up armed police in Manchester airport um well almost two years ago Now exactly uh and what these are indicative of is government fear government uh and police uh fear of a reality that they're not quite prepared to own up to uh publicly which is that the Muslim population in the UK is quite organized. Right? You see with that with that incident uh a relatively small community able to put two or 300 guys uh onto the street armed within 12 hours I think something you know half a day basically. Um this is um this is requires a degree of uh of organization of networking and so the the um uh the I would say that they are already actually quite well uh organized compared
Can we just forgive me can we go further because the work I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Patrick Nash uh in his that marvelous book and its various appendices of learned articles on Islam and English law looking at the fact that you have not simply an organization you've transported the entire clan structure of uh Pakistani Muslim society with its own methods of justice its own notions of law uh its own forgive me again it it its own self-imposed social disciplines um and its own values um all held together by that profoundest of familial ties cousin marriage. So we we have in that sense the uh you have both an ethnic and a religious group uh which are forgive me distinct and proud of their distinction that have all the features of of well a sort of subnation. If you have your own law, if you have your own family structure, if you have your own basis of a kind of uh disciplining structure, if you have the ims of the mosque um acting as um religious and community leaders, again, this extraordinary phrase, David, um you will be familiar when the police find one of these situations, they invariably talk about we are going to address our community leaders. But of course, white people don't have community leaders.
Well, I think you've you've put your finger on uh exactly um the important point here. We could go on uh agreeing on on the matter of the difficulty or of what how uh what is represented by the situation you describe of a parallel legal, cultural, and economic system. um in one of many of these places the local economies also work in um a rather separate way. We could go on agreeing on that point but it wouldn't probably wouldn't be very interesting. I think we need to get to the point that one of the inevitabilities of the triumph of identity politics is that um inev uh eventually there this kind of third rail of British politics which is about the the denial of British indigenity would also crack. And I think that's that's to me what what um is um increasingly uh obvious since Southport and particularly with things like with the raise the flag movement and the and the like. Now you have people saying look you know essentially uh acting as though they understand that we do not have a democratic system. What we have is a kind of imperial system that operates within the confines of a formerly national uh national democracy. Um where essentially if you do not behave as a as as a group in pursuit of your group interests, you'll just simply be um uh uh dispossessed. Uh you'll be prayed on. I mean quite literally in the case of uh these um working class many many thousands of working-class girls literally prayed on and so I think what is what is occurring now is um a an inevitable transformation of the native British uh I think principally English uh uh consciousness frankly and That has that has huge consequences because once the dominant majority in a multicult in a in a fractured highly polarized multicultural chaotic mess uh begins to think in ter in the same terms uh as all of other groups then you're in a a naturally conflictual situation. And it becomes a very zero sum game. It becomes about who has who has the the power to seize control uh to seize control and and basically take the whole pie for themselves. That's why this ultimately that's why this situation is is quite um is so um is so perilous because it's not just that the country is fractured. It's it's actually fractured in uh in a particular way in in a uniquely particular way where there is a a uh dominant majority which uh feels for very obvious reasons uh and correctly that it is being downgraded uh displaced.
Countries, two-tier policing,
Um, and that is happening very very quickly. And that then uh fuels a sense of urgency uh to um uh to do things uh to act fundamentally to act out.
Can I just pause there because one thing seems to me to be very striking and you you made the point already that whole sections of the state machinery, be it the Labor Party, be it local government, uh be it the police, be it the welfare system, have become fully involved in the Muslim enterprise, haven't they? In other words, that that you have a section of the state which again we we use those terrible phrases at the beginning uh the the the enemy of the people, the uh those who have betrayed have betrayed. What is very striking is the absence of a clear political voice at the moment for the majority. I mean the even I mean you mentioned Tommy Robinson even Nigel Farage has pulled back from anything like sorry again anything like the forceful statements in defense of minorities that we've heard from Stalmer and all the rest of it on the left. So there is there's still a huge space on the right in terms of a national politics isn't there? Do you see somebody stepping into that? I do do you think that's the next step that Farage finds himself pushed aside and a clearer, more forceful, dare I use the word again, more ethnically based politician emerges because that surely would be the logic of what you're talking about, wouldn't it?
Log logically, yes, that is what I think will occur. um uh what I uh you know um from our understanding of how societies work and how they fall apart. I mean I think that's that's a very sort of straightforward prediction that proceeds from fairly standard understandings of mass psychology. uh uh uh for one thing um who that might be uh I don't I don't know I don't see such a person on on the horizon. I I think many people h now have um um invested a lot a lot of hope in the idea that Farage might be such a person. But that uh seems an increasingly implausible um thesis at this point. And that uh too is very uh worry worrisome because uh what it creates is again a feeling of defeated expectation that is again u a huge propellant towards uh conflict. When people sense that they they asked they were asked and they were denied. they uh they chose uh but those choices were discarded. They asked for they they they asked for leadership and they received none. And ultimately where does that go? I think it probably it you know I believe it leads to a situation where they're prepared to contemplate um uh uh uh figures who are radically outside the status quo. That seems um uh so I do wonder in in Britain a will we make it to the next election? uh you know, let's say we do, but uh you get a reform government that hasn't the wherewithal or probably doesn't have the desire to um act in accordance with what uh urgency requires. uh doesn't have the wherewithal and even if it did have the wherewithal uh would would probably be resisted by the uh by the bureaucratic state.
I'm sure that's true. But I think there is something that we really ought to talk about and give ourselves a little time to talk about. namely we are going to have a test of exactly what we're talking about in the forthcoming bi-election um uh in in Gorton and Denton because there you have juxtaposed to each other within the same community you've which is an area um uh very I suppose I really am very much an anywhere but an anywhere dangerously dangerously h um somewhere tendencies but my family comes from Olderman Rodale so I'm very familiar here. I wasn't born there. I was born in the Lake District, but I'm very familiar with the area. My mother even lived in Denton Lane. Um, and there you've got in Denton, you've got the old white working class. On the other hand, in Gorton, you've got two groups. You've got very powerful Pakistani communities, but you've also got their principal allies uh in the university educated elites, large numbers of students, university teachers have moved into into these areas. And of course together those two groups the as it were the junior anywhere the wouldbe anywares uh the the trainee elite and and the the Muslim uh the Pakistani groups have formed this bizarre alliance held together by their mutual hatred of Israel although they agree on nothing else and they've found a leader in Zack Palanski and the Green Party who are prepared to use much more extreme language even than Kia Starmmer. We don't yet have a Green Party candidate though it may very well be Palansky himself but we do have of course Matt Goodwin who is within the reform group the one who's used the language which comes nearest to that populist language uh of any um men he's now I suppose we should call him a mainstream political figure. He's an endorsed party candidate. So how do you see that election that bi-election playing out against the background which you've talked about?
I think I can answer the spirit of the of the question uh and say that I don't think it matters because I don't think that the political system can cure itself. people think that this this election matters because if if Matt Goodwin is elected, say, that might suggest that there is um more kind of uh political capital remaining in the national uh tank than is thought. Um, but I don't think that's the case. Uh I don't think it really matters. I don't think that that there is most of the things we've been talking about for the last 47 minutes are deep structural and they're not and they're not going to be shifted. This this is the Titanic uh and it's aimed at an iceberg and you know we've got you can you can stick a paddle over the edge but it it's not shifting fast enough. Our political system is not going to be able to maneuver uh uh quickly uh uh enough to resolve I think the the issues that are are accelerating. How do I put it? You know, our political system is moving at the speed of a London bus and the the the the the problems which uh exist in uh our society that are leading it towards fracture are accelerating at the speed of a Formula 1 car or a jet airplane. And that's so for this or that um um event in the in the political calendar, I I have the feeling that there isn't actually that much consequence in them. No doubt it will fill the pages of our mainstream newspapers and people will be all over X and undoubtedly I also will have some kind of opinion on it. But the but the really if we take a an objective step back and look at the situation in some historical perspective and informed by our our understanding of the condition of society and how societies work then I don't think it matters. Palansky doesn't matter. Goodwin doesn't matter. Star doesn't matter. I think that is a marvelously dying echo maybe marking the dying society rather sad gone on so long been so wonderful we will pause there David I'm immensely grateful thank you thank you Ry