#099 - Paul Embery - Why Diversity Is Britain's Greatest Challenge

Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade union activist, writer and broadcaster. Paul has been a member of the Labour party since 1994 and active in the wider labour movement for most of his adult life. He has served on the executive council of the Fire Brigades Union and as the national organiser of Trade Unionists Against the EU.

Paul has written extensively about working-class politics and culture, including for UnHerd, The Huffington Post, The Spectator, Spiked and Compact. His first book is Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class, which was published in 2020.

In this episode of Thinking Class, Paul Embery and John Gillam analyse why cultural, economic, and identity pressures are reshaping British politics and society — and why mainstream political parties, especially Labour, often find themselves at odds with the concerns of working-class voters. Paul reflects on his lifelong experience in the Labour movement to explore how cultural identity, economic insecurity, and political alienation intersect in contemporary Britain.

They examine why diversity has become a central challenge for national cohesion, how political elites have misread public sentiment, and what a renewed sense of community and responsibility might require.

Where to find Paul Embery's work:

• Follow and subscribe to Paul on Substack
• Follow Paul on X/Twitter
• Buy Paul's book: Despised: Why The Modern Left Loathes The Working Class
• You can listen to my previous conversation with Paul here.

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking to Paul Embury. Paul is a firefighter, trade union activist, writer, and broadcaster. He has been a member of the Labour Party since 1994 and active in the wider Labour movement for most of his adult life. Paul has served on the Executive Council of the Fire Brigades Union and as the national organiser of trade unionists against the EU. Paul has written extensively about working class politics and culture, including For Unheard, The Huffington Post, The Spectator, Spiked, and Compact. His first book is Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, which was published in 2020. In this episode, Paul and I think out loud about the current state of the Labour Party, the sentiments of the working class toward the party, and about the nation as a whole, the impact of immigration and the economic issues experienced by Britain. The increasing influence of the Blue Labour movement in the Labour Party after being shunned for some years. Why the Labour Party needs to reconnect with its traditional base and address the concerns of the working class, particularly regarding cultural identity and national sentiment, and how Britain is being served up hard multiculturalism and why it has emerged as a political ideology, and indeed why Britain needs to put a stop to it. This is the second time I've spoken to Paul, the first time back in February 2024. Both conversations I have deeply enjoyed. I will include a link to the previous conversation, and I implore you to go back and listen to it where we really get into Paul's political philosophy and the overlap between it and uh what you would call cultural conservatism. I think there are some really interesting points in this, including whether the rise of reform is indeed an electoral pact crossing the political aisle. We maybe have slightly differing views on that. Paul, as ever, a prescient voice ought to have been listened to many times over, and perhaps he finally is being listened to by those people who would call themselves fellow travellers, at least with the party name above the door of the Labour Party. As ever, like, subscribe, share, follow on your podcast platform of choice on YouTube and on Substack. Enjoy the show, classmates. Thanks so much for joining me. Good to be back. Well, you are the 99th guest, but you've been on uh a second uh this you've been on once before, which was episode 18 back in February of 2024, and uh we were getting into the not only the politics of the day, but we were talking a bit about small sea conservatism and the old English left and where there might be some overlap there. So we'll we'll get into all of that in the fullness of time as well as what else is going on in the state of the nation here in the United Kingdom. But let's initially jump into the state of the party of which you remember, the Labour Party. At the time of recording, we are very freshly out of conference season for the Labour Party. And uh you've had some interesting observations in there, which I'm sure we'll get into. But perhaps we start with the general atmosphere of the party and how you perceived it at the conference, because to set the context for those who aren't British or following politics, we've got a Prime Minister, Sir Kia Starmer, whose ratings are lower than any other Prime Minister since these ratings have been recorded in the period of time he's been in office. We had a conference that, at least from the outside looking in, was very focused on trying to counter the threat from reform. And I think it's fair to say that there were a lot of smears on Farage, that the racist, worse than racist, policies are racist, were pulled out by senior figures in the party, and some of the policies were being uh reheated, I suppose, with a Labour stamp on top of them. And there were some people who thought Keir Starmer delivered the speech of his life. What was your take on it? How did it feel within the conference center?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Well, uh I I did visit conference and um I I spoke at a fringe meeting. Um, and what what I sense is that there is a growing sense of realisation within the party uh about just how serious the predicament is that we're in. Um and in fact it's almost unavoidable. Um you know, if if you if you weren't conscious of that predicament um and the challenges that face the party, um, then you must have been frankly living under a stone for the last 15 months or whatever it is. Uh Labour obviously won a significant victory in July 24 at the general election. But I think it was fairly obvious at the time, and if it wasn't, then it's certainly become obvious since that that victory, that landslide was actually, as someone called it, a loveless landslide. Um, this was not a 1997 moment, this was not an opposition um being swept to power on the basis of very deep wells of support amongst the populist. What I think happened is that people were so angry at the Tories, they felt such bitterness at the Tories, they felt such a sense of betrayal um at what the Tories had done or had not done over the previous 14 years that they were just desperate to get the Tories out. And the nature of our system being what it is, first past the post system, then obviously the only realistic alternative government was the Labour Party. Uh, and you know, people decided to opt for Labour as a measure of their hatred, and I don't use that word lightly, um, of the of the Conservative Party and their desire to evict them. Um, so it always seemed to me that very quickly Labour um needed to consolidate its position. It wasn't going to have a long honeymoon like Tony Blair had in 1997. It needed to move quickly, and it needed to move quickly on the fundamental issues that uh that people cared about in this country. And if you look at, if you look at, you know, 15 months down the line, whatever we are now, if you look at some of those issues, the reality is that Labour has not made anything like the progress that it needed to do in order to consolidate um the general election victory. And because of that, it's no great surprise to me that its support has towed away and towered away quite quickly and has towered away quite significantly, both in terms of Sakir Starmer's personal ratings and in terms of the party's ratings. If you look at the take three issues, which I think are probably the three three most important issues in the public consciousness, getting growth into the economy. I mean, Labour made all sorts of promises in opposition about getting growth, turbocharging growth, um, understanding that people's living standards had had fallen quite significantly since the global financial crisis in 2008. We then had the cost of living crisis, people across the country struggling to make ends meet, real wages falling, bills going up and so on. Um growth sluggish for many years. And the truth is, growth is still sluggish. There's been no particular economic growth worth speaking of, um, certainly not in any meaningful terms. And people know that, and people can see it, and people can feel it in their pockets. Immigration, Labour made again, all sorts of promises in opposition about smashing the gangs, about understanding finally why immigration was a priority for people. Um, you know, the the Boris wave, the significant numbers coming in over recent years, in fact, since 2010. Um, and again, nowhere near the progress that's needed on that, particularly with the boats. Um, you know, the image, the spectacle uh of these boats turning up regularly, with mainly undocumented young men arriving on our shores. Um we don't know the background of these people, um, many of them being put up in hotels. You know, you can be the most pro-immigration poly uh the most pro-immigration person in the world and believe in a liberal immigration policy, but still understand, at least you should understand, why that regular spectacle makes people feel uncomfortable because it gives the sense that we just haven't got control of our borders, we don't know who's coming in and out. There's absolutely no proper management or regulation of the system at all. And that hasn't improved. In fact, in some respects, it's got worse. Um, NNHS waiting lists, you know, which which went up to um record numbers. And since Labour came in, um, are not much improved upon what they were at the time. You then, I think, look more widely at other issues, you look at the housing crisis and Labour's, you know, talking a good game about that, but it remains to be seen whether they can tackle it and whether they can tackle it quickly. I think you look at the general atmosphere in the country, in many parts of the country, around economic injustice, concerns over a lack of integration, social disintegration in some cases, um, and you know, what some people perceive to be increasing lawlessness on our streets and so on. And I think there is a general feeling of unease out there. I think there's a general feeling that we're undeveloping as a country. Um, and I think there's a general feeling that Labour have not done anywhere near enough um since it got into power, and people's expectation is that things are not really going to improve anytime soon. So coming back to the conference, I think there is finally uh within the party, certainly elements of the party, um, a growing realization that that is the picture, um, that it's not uh an escapable picture, um, that short of drastic action quite soon, um, then we've got serious problems electorally, uh, and we need that drastic action if we're going to have any chance of winning the next election. Reform are at the door. Um, I think that's why Nigel Farage was mentioned so uh so often um throughout the Labour conference, because they know and they they recognize um that reform does now pose a serious threat, particularly in some of those what you might call traditional Labour heartlands. Um it's not a good picture. And those of us who have been making the case um over a number of years now, um, that Labour had to address some of this stuff, otherwise, we were going to lose the working class in significant numbers, as we have done and as we will continue to do. Uh, I think some people are slowly, perhaps grudgingly admitting that we had a point.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

So in the collective we there, I see you and of course Godfather of Blue Labour, Sir Morris Glassman, Lord Glor Morris Glassman, um, as being the people who were ahead of the curve. Indeed, your book 2018, was it, Despised? Why the modern left loads of the uh why the modern left loads of working class effectively laid out from a lived experience point of view, as well as with data and uh anecdotal evidence from the local area, just how disastrous on uh morale it was for the people of Dagenham to watch these mass immigration policies driven by globalisation just change the face of the area, and that this was just a disavowal of the core base of of Labour voters and indeed those that the the left are there to to look after. You and Glasman, you as you've written on your um on your substat, I suppose starting the field vindicated, you said you were did this fringe event and for the first time you didn't really receive any challenge, you weren't treated with suspicion, there wasn't obvious tones of dissent. Whilst polls can't be relied upon, particularly when we're talking about a general election in between three and a half and four years' time, is if we're going the way that we all saw it going with the Conservatives, and we're looking at a Labour being smashed to pieces and a reform potential landslide here. I suppose people, Paul, would ask why the likes of you and Glassman have stuck around the party when they long since deserted people like you and that intellectual foundation. Are you there because one day when it all comes crashing down, if it's not this time, maybe the next time, that people like you and Glassman will be there to rebuild from the rubble? Because I suppose, just to finish that question, is there are other parties, albeit with a much smaller footprint like William Cleuston's Social Democratic Party, who ultimately embody quite a lot of the blue Labour ideals which you and Glassman have been pushing all this time and have been uh seeing suppressed by the Labour top brass. So uh, yes, what's the hope for not just you, I suppose, but the the prospects of Labour post the next general election actually rebuilding in the image you and Glassman have become renowned for?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Well, I mean, I would like to hope, and it, you know, it's probably a bit optimistic, I would like to hope that we don't get into uh the territory of having to rebuild after a massive defeat. We've been there before as a party, um, not least in 2019, actually. Uh and if we can avoid that, then we need to desperately uh try to avoid it. But the reality is that we are heading, I think, for a serious good hiding electorally, unless something happens. Um, I mean, look, I'm I'm a Labour Party member, but I'm also uh a trade unionist, a proud trade unionist. Um, I understand completely the defects in the Labour Party. I understand why people say, you know, what's the point in being part of it? It doesn't represent people like you, your train of thought, you know, anymore, your your ideology anymore. It's become a very different beast to the beast, to the vehicle that it was when it was created, and the people it was created to speak for, it no longer speaks. So I understand all of those arguments, but at the same time, I think as a trade unionist and a proud member of the Labour movement, I want to be where the movement is. I want to be where the trade unions are, you know, the professional voice of workers up and down the country. Many of them are affiliated to the Labour Party, they had that link with the Labour Party, they can they can influence things, they can, you know, take the party in a particular direction, although equally it has to be said that a lot of trade unions now, I'm afraid to say, don't particularly represent the views of ordinary working class people. But nonetheless, there is that formal link. And you know, the truth is that the Labour Party has throughout its history swung, you know, between uh between different sides. It swung from left to right and back again. And you know, nobody, for example, in 2015, just prior to Corbyn being elected, could have predicted for a second that he was going to be elected and the party would have taken the radical trajectory that it did after he was elected. Um, and there are there are good people within the party who do try to articulate the the kind of views that that I articulate that I think once upon a time were quite mainstream in the party, but are now seen as a bit of a fringe belief. Um, you know, the likes of Blue Labour, who you've touched on, other pressure groups, Labour Future and so on, um, the English Labour network. Um, these are people who have been arguing for as long as me in some cases, the very things that I've been arguing, the importance of Labour, um, understanding the small C conservative impulses, the patriotic impulses of um its traditional working class voters in you know what you might call Britain beyond the 20, the M25, provincial Britain, post-industrial Britain, um, people who uh have very little um affinity with the general kind of radical woke agenda, which I think has infected the party and the wider left now in a serious way and made it almost unrecognizable to many voters. Um, so I live in hope and I work to to try to, in a small way, to try to bring the party back to ground where people in those sorts of communities that I mentioned feel uh that they're able to vote for it again. I always say that the the Labour Party at its most successful uh historically, and if it were to be successful again, uh is a is a coalition between what I call um Hampstead, Hartleypool, and Hackney. Um deliberate alliteration there. Um the you know, the the Hampstead vote, which is the white-collar, if you like, the liberal intelligentsia, which have always been around in the party. And that's a good thing, I think, you know, because they do bring a perspective to the party that I think has been influential in the past in a good way. There's absolutely a place for those people in the party. Um the Hackney constituency, which is, you know, if you like, the young, urban, liberal, cosmopolitan voter, um, city-based voter, and then the Hampsteads, which is, if you like, the traditional working class blue-collar constituencies, which, you know, the type of people who Labour ultimately were created to represent. And the problem is that that coalition has become seriously unbalanced in recent years, over about the last 30 years, really, um, whereby the Hampsteads and the Hackneys were were prioritized and the language and the messaging and the policy program of the party um were kind of designed to appeal to those cohorts of voters. Um, and the Hampsteads were just elbowed out. Um and the Labour Party during that time at senior levels thought, well, these people, they'll always the Hartley pools will always vote for us. They've got nowhere else to go. They're working class people, you know, we can pretty much take their vote for granted. Um, but it transpired that that they couldn't because, you know, millions of traditional working class voters started to abstain um uh around about certainly after the turn of the century um and in the first few years of this century. And then some of them started to flock towards UKIP in places like Blarkin and Dagenham, where I was living at the time. Many of them voted for the BMP, and it was clear that actually Labour was slowly but surely losing the working class vote. Um, I think Brexit was a manifestation of the resentment that was felt by many working class communities at the sense that there was no one really in power uh in this country who was willing to reflect their views, who was willing to speak for them. Um, and notwithstanding, as I said earlier, that we, you know, the Labour Party won a landslide last year, very much a loveless landslide. Um, the the working class has fallen out of love with the Labour Party for good reason. And unless the Labour Party can rebuild that coalition that I talked about, bringing Hartley Paul back into it and not just concentrating on the the Hackneys and the Hampsteads, unless it can do that, um, then A, I don't think it's got any chance of winning again electorally. And B, it could be argued that Labour had ultimately abandoned its historical mission to speak for those people. Um, so that's the type that's the scale of the task confronting Labour, and it's enormous.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah, it certainly is, and uh almost to prove your point about having uh the Labour Party having lost touch with the the Hartley pool set, we'll refer to them as as shorthands and prioritizing the the urban liberal intelligentsia, uh the the graduate set is that I don't know if you saw these these um polling data that came out of um I can't remember uh if it was more in common or something recently, but it had voting intention by education and state school non-graduates, reform, um state school graduates, uh Labor, uh but only just and then um private school Labour by uh a huge amount, um, which is pretty remarkable, really, that somehow the Labour Party's uh biggest um I don't know, uh supporters are those who are uh quite antisthetical to what the party was set up to look after in the first place. And if we take Keir Starmer's speech in which he was uh trying to draw a clear line between what he saw as a common um uh a commonly decent country, one that is focused on unity and not division, um, and yet I think was referring to um uh sections of society and particularly some of the national populist um uprisings, I suppose we've seen through Operation Raise the Colours and all the rest of it as being um enemies, knowing our enemies, and that those people who seek to divide us will use the full force of the state against was the promise. Seems furthermore like he is pushing away that constituency which has been lost, which uh now are flocking over to reform. And I suppose what last time you and I spoke about how it seems as a crossover here of interests between the small sea conservatives, those who've typically been part of the old English left and the red wall and all the rest of it. Um and I asked whether we could potentially see an electoral pact as we sought to um dislodge this regime that has uh overrun the country for the last 30, 40 years, mass immigration, multiculturalism, and all the rest of it, which is ultimately what the the current set of the Labour Party represent. And you said, well, I think when it comes to polling bay, probably not. When it comes to ballot box, it'll always be on a separate ticket. I suppose my question to you, Paul, is now looking at how Farage and the reform team have been sucking in people from the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, and all the rest of it, um, is actually are they the electoral pact at this point to dislodge the regime? I suppose number one is do you agree? And number two, there's a follow-up question, is who knows whether there'll be a good government? But do you think if they are en route to government, that even if they turn out to be bad, either because of unpreparedness or uh the scale of the issues that they're facing, that it's almost needed so there can be a root and branch clear out of what has been termed the Uni Party, Labour and Tories, so they can get their acts together thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Well, I mean, in terms of PACs, um it if and correct me if I've misunderstood you, but i if if you were asking about the possibility of an electoral pact between people like me on the left, with the views I have and the reforms of this world, um, whether or not we could work in tandem, um, then I would say no, because I have some very fundamental differences um with reform. And I think that many people of my persuasion on the left, the likes of some of the activists within Blue Labour, for example, would say the same. I mean, there are some things undoubtedly where reform uh have um have brought benefits, I think, to our political discourse in this country. Um, you know, they've certainly shaken up the political system in many ways. Um, they have or are beginning to, I think, shape the mainstream parties from their complacency and to force them to recognize that actually this kind of hyper-progressive agenda um which has been pursued um by our political class and many of our political and local and national institutions um for the last three decades or so uh has alienated huge swathes of the public um and caused some really serious divisions uh and resentment within our society. So, in in that respect, um, you know, they've really shaken the kaleidoscope uh and that was necessary. Doesn't necessarily mean that I think reform in power will be the answer. Um my assessment of reform is that they are a party who are populated largely by certainly in terms of their senior echelons, and I think a significant part of their activist base, not necessarily every voter, but populated by people who believe in a Thatcherite agenda, rolling back the frontiers of the state, handing everything over to the market, letting the market dominate, um, seeing no real room for government um other than as a necessary evil um and government shouldn't intervene other than where it's strictly necessary to do so, uh, and that the market knows best. Um and I think that kind of agenda, which is very much a thatcherite agenda and prevailed in this country in the 1980s, and supporters of it no doubt would say, you know, it was the right thing for Britain at the time, and um, you know, Margaret Thatcher carried out the changes that this country needed. But if you go to some of those communities, you know, the communities that I'd spoken and written about, including in this interview, um, post-industrial communities who suffered very, very badly because of that agenda. Uh, and in some respects, um, are still suffering today. I think it threatened the social fabric of our country in a in a big way. You look at some of the old mining communities, for example, and what happened to those communities in the wake of the destruction of the mines. So, so I've I've got some significant differences with reform, and I wouldn't be somebody to say, well, let's give them a go because the the you know the system needs it, notwithstanding, as I say, that there are some decent people involved who, on some things, on immigration, for example, on the um prevalence of you know wokery, the woke dogma throughout many of our institutions, are unquestionably saying the right things. Um, and on things, I mean you you mentioned, for example, Operation Raise the Colours, um and you know, reform are pretty supportive of that initiative. I would like to see Labour be supportive of it, but they are clearly very, very scared about it because they think, you know, as many people in the Labour Party often do, whenever, whenever the working class, particularly the white working class, gets organized and starts taking any sort of political action, they think, oh goodness me, you know, fascism's at the door. This is this is a real threat to our civilization. We've got to try to keep a lid on it. So you can see on the one hand that they're desperate to try to pretend to people that you know they're really patriotic. And you see interviews like Yvette Cooper saying, you know, I think she's got a Union Jack tablecloth and Union Jack plates and you know Union Jack hats and night dresses. I'm probably exaggerating a bit there, but you could certainly solve some of that stuff from the interview. Um, and then when it whenever there is any expression of patriotic sentiment among the white working class, they think, oh God, yeah, this is this is absolutely terrible. And it's you know, people could see through the hypocrisy because Labour itself, I mean, when I was in Liverpool last week, you couldn't move for national flags. I mean, they were all over the place. And similarly, similarly with the Lib Dem conference, where you know, all the delegates were waving the flags inside the hall. And at the same time as they were doing that, they were preaching to the rest of us about how, you know, the raising of these colours, the raising of the flag is potentially divisive and designed to intimidate people. And you think, well, hold on a second. How is it that you know 500 of your delegates in the hall can wave the flag, or you know, you can you can display it all around the conference center, uh, and we're supposed to just assume there's nothing divisive or intimidatory about that. But the minute people in working class communities, and and not exclusively working class communities, actually, stick one on a lamppost, you say, Oh, you know, that that's terrible, that's designed to intimidate. And it's almost as if they feel that, you know, they are innately good people, and therefore, of course, when they wave the flag, there's no harm in it. But these these working class people, when they do it, it could mean something different. If I was advising Keir Starmer, I would say to him simply, look, when it comes to things like raise the flags, do nothing but welcome it. Because the minute you start caveating your position by saying, Well, of course I'm patriotic, I mean I'm national flag, but not really sure about this because it could be designed to intimidate, you are reinforcing the perception in people's minds in working class communities that you don't really understand them, um, that your life is not like theirs, that you don't understand their patriotic sentiment, that you don't understand where the sense of resentment has come from, which is spurring many of them to raise the national flag. Not because they're white supremacists, not because they want to intimidate minorities, but simply because, as a cohort of people, they have felt for a long time now that they're losing their place in society, um, that their own culture, if you like, the indigenous culture, the majority culture, call it what you will, is being sidelined consistently and downplayed. And we have this phenomenon of asymmetric multiculturalism, as some have described it, where other cultures are constantly celebrated and elevated and played up. And that that is leading to much of the resentment. And for as long as on things like Operation Raise the Colours, who you know, when when these communities hear politicians um qualify their support for Raise the Colours with warnings that you know it's potentially divisive, they they take that message personally because they it it reinforces the idea in their own minds that these politicians don't understand them, they don't understand the sentiment that is leading them to take part in this kind of initiative. Uh, and again, we've got a teenyard establishment that looks upon working class people and any expression of patriotic sentiment, sentiment or political organisation as something to be discouraged. That's a message that comes across, and that's why Starmer and Labour need to be really careful about how they comment on that sort of initiative.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Yeah, and what's quite interesting about the flag waving is besides the attempts to reclaim the flag, as uh politicians are starting to refer to it as, they do so in a way where they almost wear it as a skin suit or as a or they boil it down to something. So in Labour's case or Labour leadership's case, it's down to the Blairite British values of tolerance and diversity and multiculturalism and all the rest of it. With the Lib Dems, it's a Davy marching into the Lib Dem conference with a brass band. Um, but almost yeah, it which is actually a very English characteristic to lampoon oneself and all the rest of it. So I don't want to take away from it, but the reality is that the country is in a pretty serious moment. And so the Labour to think that they can just hand out national flags at a conference and say, wave the flag, whilst telling everyone he doesn't wave it in the right way that you're being divisive. Um, and the Lib Dems can just continue to put out TikTok videos of Ed Davy offering FIFA matches to Starmer or entering a conference in a brass band, it makes a mockery of the whole thing. And they treat the voters with even more contempt as though people can't actually see what's going on. And the reality is we are a divided country. You know, we have whether it's by religious lines, because ultimately culture's downstream of religion, if it's down to enclaves of different ethnicities or nationalities clumping together, which you can see on any ONS map, you can see that people live side by side, but more like community by community rather than integrated with one another. You've got Labour politicians campaigning in different languages, uh, and clearly not everyone's on board with the message of uh this liberal metropolitan outlook. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any suggestion that there was wrongdoing or at least neglect by the state of the politicians, and yet everyone who goes against it is accused of fomenting division. But the reality is the division is already here, and no one seems to be offering a way forward, but they're not going to do that until they accept that there's a division here. And so what do we need? I don't know. I mean, now I'm really pontificating here, but think about Alfred the Great all that time ago as he's rebuilding England. It was right, look, the Danes, you defeated we're all for England under one flag. Oh, and by the way, we're gonna educate the nation. Here are the things that are most important for you to know. Whilst I'm not suggesting we all just go and read the life of Alfred and build a policy off the back of that. The reality is, is if we're a divided nation and you're gonna keep on preaching about unity, surely you're gonna have a plan to get there. You can't just keep on referring to communities and respect for communities and living side by side with mutual tolerance, because in reality, a nation will not function if we continue with the divisions that we have. But I don't know when people are going to accept that they are there without trying to pretend they're not and just say unity, unity, unity.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

I think it's it's ironic, isn't it, that you know, the the the type of people and politician who are so enthralled to identity politics, when it comes to the identity that arguably matters most to most people, which is national identity. Um, that's an identity that they suddenly think, you know, shouldn't bear any expression other um then in the most kind of vacuous terms. So for example, you speak about you know talking about British values, whatever they might be. Um, I think that's generally a phrase that's trotted out by by people in power without themselves knowing quite what it means, um, or the the buzzwords of diversity and tolerance. I mean, I I often say to people on the left, look, try to try to explain to me why you're patriotic, why you love your country without mentioning the word values and tolerance and diversity. Um, and actually, most of them find it really difficult to do so because you know it's almost like a nervous tick now. You talk about patriotism, those are the those are the things that you should mention. I mean, I I think when it comes to to issues like um you know multi-racialism and multiculturalism, I think most people in this country have a fairly settled and fairly common sense view. I think most people have no issue with multiracialism. I think most people in this country understand that it is inherently wrong for people to be treated any less favorably simply because of to, you know, their their skin pigmentation. Um and you know, that's obviously the right position. Um, multiculturalism is a very different thing. Um, clearly, you know, there's a difference between race and culture. Um, when it comes to multiculturalism, and first of all, I think it's important that when we have these discussions, we try and define what it is that we mean. Because I think that as some as some commentators and experts have begun to conclude, actually, there are two types of multiculturalism, what some have called hard multiculturalism and soft multiculturalism. I think when it comes to soft multiculturalism, which is essentially the idea that, look, you know, we live in a country where people should have the freedoms and the liberties to be able to go about their business and live the life that they want within the confines of the law, which means, you know, dressing the way that they want, eating the food that they want, worshiping the God that they wish to worship, going to the place of worship that they wish to go to, and so on. And they should have the freedom to do that. And it's not for us to try and stop them from doing that. And I'm all up for that, that kind of, if you like, soft multiculturalism. But that's not what we've practiced in this country for so long now. What we've practiced is hard multiculturalism, which I think is the active promotion of separateness and difference, actually saying to people, you are different, and we're going to celebrate the fact that you're different, and we're going to encourage you to try to be as different as you can. And I think that that has that has led to quite a significant amount of disunity within our society and division within our society, that type of hard multiculturalism. Um, and I would like to see us get back to a position where actually, in you know, when it comes to things like public policy, for example, we look at it through the lens of does this type of thing encourage national unity, the unity of all peoples within our country, um, or does it discourage it? Um, and you know, we we're even in a situation now where, in the eyes of the law, you know, for example, the Equality Act, um, the religion that has been an absolute centerpiece of our of our national life for well over a thousand years, Christianity, is given no more prominence in the law than any other religion. Um, and I don't know many other countries that would be so willing, so consistently, to downplay the majority culture of their own country, the majority religion of their own country, in an effort to, you know, to be inclusive and tolerant and to try to make all cultures and all religions equal. Uh, I, you know, I don't know of a an elite in any other country that is so willing, so constantly to trash its own history and its own traditions in a way that consistently alienates millions of people who can trace their roots in the country back for hundreds of years and all done in an effort to, you know, preach openness and tolerance and to show how welcoming we are of other countries, of other cultures. The idea that you have to follow that path in order to make people feel welcome, uh, I think is an absolute myth. I often talk about um Japan as an example. Japan is a country that doesn't particularly go in for hard multiculturalism that defends its own culture quite resolutely, um, that tries to unify people behind a national identity. Um, but nonetheless, um, by and large, is a civilized, peaceable um country governed by the rule of law, in which visitors are generally made to feel quite welcome. Um, so so it gives the liar to the idea that we have to preach this hard multiculturalism in order to be uh a civilized country. And and you know, sooner or later the people who have preached that mantra, that gospel, are going to have to realize that they have caused significant divisions in our country. And in fact, you can see them playing out on our streets now. Um, we don't really have, in fact, the kind of multicultural country that they like to portray us as. If you go to large parts of the country, um, you can see that it's still distinctly non-multicultural and non-multicultural. And even if you go to those places, some of the some of the kind of towns and cities which we're told are multicultural, uh, in fact, what you've quite often got are pockets of monoculturalism living side by side with each other. You haven't really got multiculturalism in its true sense anyway. Um, so that kind of state-sponsored hard multiculturalism has failed. Uh, I think that's undeniable. Uh, and it's going to take a heck of a lot to remedy some of the damage that it's done, I think.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

And well, look, I think first and foremost, I'll preface what I'm about to say with I'm not a demographer, but the demographics are inescapable insofar as if we accept that uh peoples have a culture, and so you could talk about a British culture and what that made that distinct to begin with, and we can talk about the liberal inheritance coming out of ultimately the era of toleration, once the Protestants and Catholics stopped persecuting one another, and the toleration, religious toleration is brought in by law, and you had that big long Whiggish settlement which we've been under for 350 years. And then we can also say we understand what it means like to go and be in Spain or Italy or all the rest of it into your Chinese culture, Japanese culture, is that when you look at the demographics of our country, and let's just stick with England for the moment, it's certainly the the the most ethnically diverse, and um I think 65% of England is white British. And on the face of it, you know, these things don't want to get into a conversation about uh race, really, but the reality is if people are harbingers of a culture, is that if you go 65% of England are white British, and uh right now live births uh 50 52% of live births are white British, uh and then you go, all right, but the the demographics for England show that lots of people are pretty old at this point, we're not having many babies, is that even if we bring up bring in soft multiculturalism, is that over time that may well turn into hard multiculturalism or indeed something else once the demographics change, because if if diasporas are growing to the point where they are effectively insulated from whatever the host culture is, is you'd imagine over time the as the demographics change, the politics will change with that. And so can we even be certain that there's even a liberal future remaining, one of tolerance, um even if we try to get it back now? So what's quite interesting is the the multicultural project, which now people recognise may be on its last legs, insofar as you've got a a host population, if you're just calling it that, that's clearly very unhappy with hard multiculturalism. But twenty, thirty years' time, it might not be the host population that's the problem. It might Be actually where the intolerance might be coming from that we're railing against is actually coming from what is a new majority. And so politics looks divided the further you extrapolate it out on current course. And I suppose as a a man who's part of a social democratic movement, insofar as that's that's what Labour is about, and we talk about having a welfare state as a safety net. Is do you think with all of that context, and even in the current context where social solidarity seems to be dissolving somewhat, can social democracy survive with all of these potentially competing factions if we don't find that unity, that integration miracle?

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Well, I mean, the the the the the old the old mantra from the left is diversity is our strength, as we know. That that is trotted out um relentlessly. Um and it's stated as if it's a fact, a proven fact that is undeniable. Uh in fact, it isn't a proven fact. The reality is that diversity isn't our strength, certainly not at the moment, it's our greatest challenge in some respects. Um, and you know, study after study shows that the more diverse a society, the harder it is to sustain support for things like you know, paying your taxes and supporting a welfare state and so on. People need to feel that sense that they have something in common with each other, um, you know, which I think separate argument to some degree, which I think is why the European Union, particularly in this country, um, didn't enjoy um the support that its supporters would have liked it to enjoy, simply because the the further the further wide you cast your net, the more you stretch the democratic elasticity in many respects and the the sense that we're all kind of in it together. I think when it comes to the nation-state, people quite often feel that they're um they're part of the same kind of single political and economic unit that there is, um, that there is a common bond that quite often uh binds people together uh and that they're they feel willing to support the institutions within that state um because they feel that they're they're supporting ultimately um people with with whom they have a connection. Um I I have in terms of the the the longer term view, um I I mean I'm generally quite relaxed about things like demographic change and cultural change, provided it's done in a way that most people feel is um something that they can handle, communities can absorb, um, and it's done in a sensible and regulated way. Um no serious person would say that the the culture of a country should never change, that the demographic of a country should never change. These things do change from time to time. Um but I think if you look at the you know the history of Britain and probably most countries, um most countries in Europe, I would guess, um certainly for for the years leading up to, I guess you could say, the last kind of 30, 40, 50 years, the the change generally when it came to cultural change and demographic change was by and large quite slow and done at a pace where I think people didn't feel that their sense of place, that their sense of belonging was being violated. I mean, you could actually go back as recently, probably as the 1990s. Um, and if you look at immigration in the 1990s, um, it was generally kind of in the tens of thousands, net immigration, and we'd gone beyond fortunately the days of the National Front marching through the streets and intimidating people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Um, and then all of a sudden we see a significant change into the new century where globalization takes hold and the effects of globalization really start to be felt most acutely in working class communities. We see massive demographic change, including in places like Barkin and Daggenham, where I was living, um, which disorientated people, which bewildered people. You saw massive deindustrialization. So you've got that damn, that double whammy of big social and cultural transformation on the one hand and big economic change, not for the better, uh, on the other hand. And suddenly and unsurprisingly, I think millions of people in those working class communities which suffered most from that phenomenon, uh, felt that their sense of place, their sense of order was being disturbed, their sense of belonging was being violated. And not surprisingly, there has been huge blowback, and that blowback continues and I suspect will deepen. If you do it at a pace and at a scale, um, you know, change takes place at a pace and at a scale that people are comfortable with, um, then I think you can introduce change without much public reaction, provided I mean, provided obviously it's it it the change isn't seriously damaging. Um, and you know, if if you if you bring in, if you try to overthrow democracy, for example, in a slow way, eventually you're gonna get to a point probably where people are gonna react to it. But as long as the change is is what most people regard as as you know sensible, then if it's done over a slow um over a slow course, I don't think um there's any problem, which kind of brings me to my point that in 500 or a thousand years time, um if if the demographic in Britain, if you know, people are different to what they are, if their roots are different to what they are, it may even be that our religion is different uh to what it is. I don't necessarily think that's a problem, provided we get to that point in a way that the majority of the population are comfortable with, obviously taking into account the fact that you know, where there are minorities, you need to make sure that they're they're protected from any sort of discrimination and oppression and so on. Um as I say, that's not what's happened in this country over the last 25 years. We have seen fundamental uh rapid and far-reaching change, not just in terms of globalization and you know, de-industrialization and demographic change and so on, um, but also cultural change in terms of what I think are age-old social and cultural norms being overturned at a rapid pace. You know, you touched on before, things that we we argued for and views that were mainstream five minutes ago are suddenly now regarded as taboo. Um and I think that kind of thing has made people deeply, deeply uncomfortable and made many people feel that they don't recognise the country that they were grown up in, that they that they grew up in. Um, and and that is why the reaction I think has been so fierce, and that's why I think it's going to continue.

SPEAKER_00 50:59

Well, I think you're right, and I think as an addendum to your point about cultural change, demographic change, all the rest of it, is perhaps it would be more accepted if we didn't we hadn't learned about uh the powers of the state or even the job market being arrayed against um those who are white British, namely because there's this under there's a there's a a common acceptance that um you must have privilege if you are indeed white and if you are British. And um I suppose if you're looking at a 2050 scenario of white British being a minority majority, and the state is already doing what it's doing uh against the white British, is uh perhaps once the demographics have changed so much that you've got politicians who have illiberal ideas because they're not being brought up in the liberal culture or they're a couple of generations down from it, then it's it's conceivable that illiberal policies continue. Uh, and I and I suppose that's where I think uh just to build on your point of these divisions deepening, that's where I think they'll come from when people just have the perceived injustice that things are being dispossessed, and that seems to be what what people are thinking about at the moment. Paul, I appreciate I've kept it kept you on for a long time. So I'm gonna jump to my my final question, otherwise I could keep you on forever. Uh the question is that I put to all my guests is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life? Perhaps it was something you thought was an absolute, maybe it was something more day-to-day, but it was something that felt right to you, but then it changed. And what was it that made you think differently?

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Um, I I would say uh the phenomenon of mass immigration. Um, prior to I would say 2006, um, while I was living in the London borough of Barkin and Dagnan, which is, as I said earlier, is where I grew up. Um, and I was pretty much your archetypal young lefty, really, you know, very relaxed about uh open borders, very much in favour of cosmopolitan liberalism. Thought it would be financially and spiritually, culturally enriching for our people, for working class communities. Um, and then all of a sudden, the place where I was living was really caught in the eye of a national storm over a lot of this stuff. Um, and I set out the figures in terms of the drastic change that took place so quickly in Barkin and Dagenham. I cite the figures in my book, Despised, um, about the numbers, um, and we saw significant demographic um and cultural change in that community very, very quickly. It had been uh a pretty subtle and stabled community for for most of its existence. Um, and then all of a sudden it fractured and it fractured quickly. Um, whilst at first I kind of pretty much went along with the idea, well, that's because people are probably a bit nativist, a bit bigoted, a bit reactionary, they're not, they're not open as much as they should be. Eventually became clear to me that most of these people actually are decent, tolerant people, but their sense of place and belonging has been violated. It's not unreasonable for people to say, look, this is my community, um, this is the culture of my community, this is how it's been for a long time, um, this is how I like it. I know my neighbors, um, you know, there's good deep wells of social solidarity and integration here. Uh, and if you allow that just to be up-ended so very, very quickly, which is what happened, um, then you're going to make me feel unsettled about the change. Um, and you're gonna make me feel violated and my community violated. Uh, and I got that message, and I got that message eventually. Um, and then I saw 12 BMP councillors elected to the local council because establishment politicians, including on the left, hadn't got that message and had dismissed those people as racists and bigots and so on, still, in many cases, haven't learnt that message. Um, and I've been arguing for the last 20 years that, you know, unless we realise we've got this wrong uh and we start reconciling ourselves to the fact that some of these people had very justified and legitimate concerns, um, then we can kiss goodbye to their support. And and that actually is what happened in many cases.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Uh without making you stay on too much longer, it's interesting that you had the cosmopolitan liberal view, I suppose. Um I I ended up there as well, though I was an early school lever, so I didn't go through university and uh any of the uh traditional sense of an open university degree about 10 years later or something. Um, but it was all online, so even then I didn't get the campus experience and all the rest of it. But when I left my hometown, I definitely had just more normal tact to the centre views, I suppose, as in I took for granted the English culture, and then I started moving around all the big cities, and I found myself in the end, after seven years in retailer in and sales, in a you know, the beginning of a white collar job. I was actually in a former mining town in Northumberland uh called Ashrington, the only people who had money at this small bank that I was working at as a cashier had had payouts from the mines. They had Whitefinger, emphysema, but otherwise, this is a town on its knees. Um, you could see pictures in the pubs of people dressed in tweeds, regardless of class, and looking pretty good. But that was very different to the picture I could see in front of me. And yet, the deeper I got into that white collar work, I ended up in head office and suddenly I'm surrounded by the professional middle class. And I think I've probably embarked on a period of preference falsification in many respects because it comes from everywhere. It came from the media, it comes from inside work and policy, all the rest of it. And you think, well, that's what it means to be a decent person, to be as accepting of all of these uh shibbilaths that we've been talking about today. And also, in some ways, you kind of turn your back on the town you've left because you go, Well, look, I'm learning all this stuff about the real way of the world, and you know, I'm probably I'm probably right and you're probably wrong. But it wasn't until I had more and more experience of actually living in these cities, and you know, I didn't have a lot of money, I was in low-paid jobs that I realized that actually this isn't the utopia uh that that we've been led to believe. And I think over time, it was my own lived experience that just saw all of these ideals just crumble away because like reality just was hitting me in the face. And so before I knew it, I couldn't, I couldn't really accept any of it. Um and I just interesting to know that you also occupied that. Was you did you did you kind of occupy that worldview from quite a young age, or did you also matriculate into it through social groups and all the rest of it?

SPEAKER_01 57:54

No, I mean I I was always um I was always quite political. Um I'd been a trade unionist since the age of 16. I came from an area that um, I mean, the old saying they didn't count Labour Party votes, they weighed them um in uh in Barkin and Dagenham. So I I was always kind of on the left. And I think when you're young, you generally you generally are a lot more, you know, radical because you think pretty much you know it all, and you rile against the system, uh and you roil against the state, and you roil against establishment thinking. Um, you think it should all be you know dismantled. Um and you then eventually I think get to realise the things that matter to people. I mean, it's all very well standing on demonstrations and saying um open borders and smash capitalism and all the rest of it. Um, but you need to speak to people, I think, in language that they understand and that's relevant to their lives. And actually, when you go to many working class communities, um, I think that, and particularly at the moment, I think there's a huge body of people out there who, when it comes to economic issues, I think are fairly left-wing. They think that the inequalities in wealth and income between rich and poor in this country are too wide. Um, they want the gap closed, they believe in strong public services, they believe in a government that's willing to intervene on the side of industry, they, you know, they want to see their communities leveled up and so on. They want to see a raise in the minimum wage, they don't like boardroom excesses, excesses and fat cats milking the system and and so on. But at the same time, they're probably quite right-wing uh on to the right on culture. So they believe um in their country, they believe in what some people might deem the faith, family, and flag agenda, relationships are very important to them, they've got a sense of rootedness, a sense of community. Um, belonging matters to them, place matters to them. Um, and if if things appear, whether it's rapid economic change or demographic and cultural change, that upends that and violates it very quickly, um, then actually they don't feel good about it, they feel unsettled. And you know, once upon a time, so so to sort of get back to your question, once upon a time, I would have seen that kind of reaction, as I say, as bigoted and nativist and xenophobic and all of the other you know, barbs that get aimed at those sorts of people. Whereas actually I think they're they're basic human instincts and instincts felt by many, many decent people. Um, that's the truth of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:37

Yeah, true. And cultural belonging, well, we we know it matters to people and their health because we we we want to extend it to all the groups of people who've arrived with their own cultures, and so we actually recognize that to be true, but we just deny it to people in this part of the world, uh, or at least to only know the culture in this part of the world. Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm sure if people are watching this, they probably already know who you are because they've they've been drawn to it because of your name. But for those for you who don't, where can they find you? And is there anything that we can expect from you in the works?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

Um, well, I've got my own website, paulembry.com. Um, it's a substack which I make regular uh posts on, and um this will be going up on it at some point, no doubt. Um, and I'm a bit of a talking head. I appear sometimes on GB News and Talk TV and so on. Um, I'm quite prolific on uh Twitter as it was X Now. Um so those are the those are the places that you can generally find me. My book Despised by the Modern Left Loads the Working Class seems to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance, I'm I'm pleased to say, um, because of what's going on in the country at the moment. There's quite a few people have been drawn to it again. Um, and I've been asked to do a follow up, which I may do at some point, but if I do, I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

Please do, please do. Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure. Keep fighting the good fight, and hope to speak again in the future.