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0:59

Hello, I'm Matt Kelly. And I'm Matt Dankona. And this

1:01

is the two mats for the week ending Friday the 26th

1:03

of April, the podcast

1:06

that celebrates St. George's Day in the

1:08

traditional manner. Didn't we Matt? Not

1:11

really, but it's nice. Is

1:14

it traditional to interview two authors? I think

1:16

it is, and what authors? So we

1:18

had our

1:20

friend Tom Baldwin, who we had the other

1:22

day to talk about his stomabography. He's written

1:25

another book. Tom is

1:27

a very distinguished journalist and he was

1:29

director of comms for the Labour Party and

1:31

just written this book on Kia Stama. And

1:34

his friend and colleague Mark Steers

1:37

co-authored this book on England. And

1:39

Mark is now the director of

1:41

the UCL Policy Lab. He was a

1:43

professor at Oxford before and he was

1:45

also chief speech writer for the Labour

1:48

Party. So they're a high

1:50

powered pair and

1:52

they've written this book about England and what it

1:54

means. And they've been travelling around and we

1:57

had an absolutely fascinating chat. We did. England's

2:00

seven myths that changed the country

2:02

and how to set them straight.

2:04

About this week? It's about this

2:06

week and I think listeners will

2:08

find the chat really really fascinating.

2:10

Yes, they have a very interesting

2:12

and original

2:16

take on the subject.

2:18

And also how it may impact

2:20

a Labour government. Yeah it's very

2:22

topical and very contemporary so we

2:24

recommend it. I enjoy talking to

2:26

them. Yeah so tune in now

2:29

for our discussion about what England and

2:31

Englishness means. This is the two myths in

2:33

episode 42 in the evening. So

2:54

Mark, Tom, welcome. Welcome to the

2:57

two maths. Congratulations on the book.

2:59

We're recording this on Thursday which

3:01

I believe is publication date. So

3:03

hearty congratulations. It's a

3:05

fascinating book and I

3:07

really do commend it to listeners of the

3:10

podcast. And I want to ask sort

3:12

of a few basic preliminary questions.

3:15

One is that you, in addressing

3:17

the issue of England, you structure

3:20

it around seven cities and seven

3:22

myths which struck me as

3:24

a very imaginative way of doing it.

3:26

But I wanted how you got to that

3:28

approach, how you adopted that strategy. I

3:31

think almost accidentally initially Mark was

3:33

in Australia. Mark emerged to move

3:35

from New South Wales as we say. I was walking

3:38

around, I was trying to sort of work out

3:41

how we're going to do this book and it

3:43

was during lockdown I went for a walk to

3:45

Runnymeat where Magna Carta was sealed in 1215. It

3:48

was so striking because all these

3:50

new monuments have sprouted up since

3:52

2015. Since certain

3:56

aspects of politics have decided to make Magna Carta

3:58

a huge stand. And you

4:00

realize the places and

4:02

the monumental architecture around them almost

4:06

embodied a myth and show how the myths

4:08

are the varying relevance to the

4:11

myths at different times. And

4:13

so, you know, then I went to

4:15

Plymouth and saw this vast amount of

4:17

architecture and place street names and different

4:20

monuments and different statues for Drake. And

4:23

you see how these different places

4:26

are so tied up with the myths, but

4:29

also that the people living within them aren't

4:32

necessarily living the myth, they're living

4:35

their lives. And that contrast between

4:38

the ordinary life and its

4:40

grandiose, engorged myth really struck me. So we then

4:42

sort of tried to sort of fit these different

4:44

myths to different places and we came out with

4:46

a structure. And Mark, one of the interesting things

4:48

about the book as well is that most

4:51

sort of attempts to characterize

4:53

a place or an idea

4:55

nowadays, aim

4:59

at reducing a stock, reducing a

5:01

stock to a simplification

5:04

process. But you both seem

5:06

to almost set out to

5:09

look for nuance and

5:11

ambiguity and to deflate the simplistic

5:14

myth. So again, was that a

5:16

conscious choice or did it come

5:18

as you were? As

5:20

Tom said, we started writing the book in a really

5:22

weird way, which is, you know, it was locked down,

5:25

I was in Australia, Tom was here. And so what

5:27

we started to do is we had sort of Zoom

5:29

calls with people all over the country, you know,

5:31

sort of famous people are not famous people, older

5:33

and younger, richer and poorer, and

5:36

tried to get a picture of what folks

5:38

thought about England at the moment. And

5:41

in those initial Zooms, it

5:44

was extraordinary because this theme

5:46

of sort of mix and muddle and

5:48

complexity and nuance, just like came through

5:50

all of the conversations, even

5:52

conversations with people like Michael Gove, who

5:54

you might not associate them with, you

5:56

know, whose public persona might be sort

5:59

of very... either angry or

6:01

grandiose or sort of vegan booming,

6:04

you actually get people to reflect on what England

6:06

is, they very quickly go

6:08

to the mix and muddle. And

6:11

that kind of, you know, Tom and I just reflected on that

6:14

right from the start then, which is, okay, if

6:16

we're gonna try and give a picture of the

6:18

country, it's gonna have to start from that nuance,

6:20

you know, much more complex place. Well,

6:22

let's take one of the places, and you mentioned it,

6:24

Tom, Runnymede, and

6:27

especially for a lot of conservatives who, you

6:29

know, panting themselves as libertarians, it's

6:31

a great sort of symbol of

6:33

Magna Carta and libertarianism, and this

6:37

rather imagined narrative that

6:40

says that, you know,

6:42

the 1215 document signed by King John

6:44

was the origin of basically

6:46

when the day that liberty was invented.

6:49

Talk us through how that's not true and

6:51

the consequences of it not being true. I

6:54

think most people would accept the story of Magna

6:56

Carta as a flawed one. If

6:58

you ask people what Magna Carta

7:00

meant, I think the answer is

7:03

varied significantly over the last 800

7:05

years from sort of getting concessions

7:08

to catch fish on the Thames and

7:11

prevent Jews getting any,

7:14

you know, I can't remember quite what the

7:16

clause is against Jews, but certainly nothing about

7:18

liberty. To symbolizing

7:21

the Civil War, a

7:23

kind of restoration of a sort of

7:26

basic English set of rights which were never in

7:28

the document, to then the

7:30

Chartist picked it up in the

7:32

19th century as ordering people's rights

7:34

against the establishment and the power,

7:36

again, nothing to do with the

7:38

document. And then, you

7:40

know, it was cited by suffragettes, it became a

7:42

symbol in the Second World War. And

7:45

then you have this period after the

7:47

Second World War where Tony Hancock famously

7:49

says, yeah, Magna Carta, did she die

7:51

in vain? Yeah, yeah. There's a sense

7:53

of it, you know, people realizing

7:55

that it's a complete myth, seeing for

7:58

it all. And

8:00

then of course we get the Eurosceptics

8:02

in the noughties. So Dan Hannon writes

8:04

his book, How We Invented Liberty. Yeah.

8:07

And he talks about running meat as

8:09

a place of a global seismic event

8:11

happened. Well, so the Man-Patton Project of

8:14

Freedom, wasn't it? Yeah. And,

8:16

you know, the reason why they wanted to do that is

8:18

because they had this conception of

8:21

exceptionism, of a sort of

8:23

Anglo-Saxon birthright of liberty, the weird event

8:25

that we need to take no lessons

8:27

from foreigners. Indeed, the European Court and

8:29

the Human Rights Act is a threat

8:32

to this kind of liberty. And

8:34

David Cameron, who really should have known

8:36

better, was playing into this. I

8:38

think we described in a book he's sort of fumbling around

8:40

the Eurosceptic and ruthenous zones with a speech on

8:43

the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, with

8:45

the fire flying overhead and the queen

8:47

in front of him. Every

8:49

single single Englishness you could have. So

8:52

he's saying that the Human Rights Act is a threat

8:54

because he's playing games with that. And

8:57

it's the politicization he's missed. I don't really

8:59

mind a story about Magna Carta. It's a

9:01

great story. I like the cartoon version with

9:03

King John. And, you know, the hissing snake,

9:06

you know, it's great. It's

9:08

when these things become inflated that they get in the

9:10

way. Yeah. And distorted so that it's

9:14

not relevant to the future of liberty in

9:16

this country to think that we

9:18

invented it. It's actually, you

9:20

know, I think the kind of conception of freedom

9:22

we found in Runnymede is a much better one.

9:25

It's about going for a walk

9:27

on a drizzly Sunday afternoon and

9:29

worrying about where we should buy a school at

9:31

the National Trust Cafe. It's

9:33

so boring that you

9:35

can take liberty for granted. That's why.

9:38

That's liberty. Well, that's our English expression.

9:40

Yeah. And I think to be

9:42

able to take it for granted is to be very free

9:44

indeed, rather than being obsessing

9:46

about who invented it. And I'm trying

9:49

to sever all our links with continental

9:51

Europe. Did you discover on your travels

9:53

around the country, did you discover anything

9:56

that was defining England and Englishness? What

9:59

did you conclude? The best that we came

10:01

up with is this idea of sort of mixed

10:04

muddle and everydayness. I mean the running

10:06

mead story is really brilliant because Tom,

10:08

when he went, you know, when

10:11

I was in Australia and he went

10:13

wandering off during lockdown to have a

10:15

look around running mead, you know, he

10:17

bumps into people looking at the monuments

10:20

and they've got this sort of, what

10:22

I think is an extraordinary English response to them.

10:24

They kind of think they're a bit ridiculous, a

10:26

bit absurd. They know it's

10:28

all kind of made up, but, you

10:30

know, it's, as Tom says, it's nice to have a little Sunday

10:32

stroll. They

10:34

enjoy the sort of quiet, they enjoy the

10:36

countryside, and they are quite happy to kind

10:39

of rub up against each other. And, you

10:41

know, that's what we kept on coming across

10:43

is that actually the vast majority of English

10:45

people, when they think

10:47

about the country, you don't like bombast

10:49

or puffed up-ness or claims of exclusivity

10:51

or being the best in the world.

10:55

They're almost at the opposite end. They're

10:57

kind of a little bit melancholic, just

10:59

getting on with it and sort of

11:01

enjoying it for what it is. And

11:04

we did some polling with the polling

11:06

company more in common recently, just when the book came out,

11:09

just to check in whether that's actually what

11:11

people feel. And it's remarkable. It's

11:13

like, you know, the vast majority of people, they

11:15

don't want to turn their backs on the past.

11:17

They're not interested in fighting a kind of culture

11:19

war. But neither do they think

11:21

that the past symbolizes, you know, sort of

11:23

a moral mission, which is greater than

11:26

any other country in the world. It's just not who

11:28

we are. Yeah. And I'm interested to know, was

11:30

the feeling of Englishness represented

11:32

equally or not equally throughout

11:34

the places you visited? Do

11:37

we feel more English in certain places than

11:40

others? I think in

11:42

terms of what Englishness has come to mean,

11:44

yes, because I think during Brexit

11:46

and the years after, there

11:49

was lots of polling evidence, and Rob Ford

11:51

does this very well in his book, Brexit

11:53

Land, showing that people who identified as English

11:55

were more likely to vote for Brexit, were

11:57

more likely to be concerned about immigration. What

12:01

we're trying to do is not sort of

12:03

reclaim one version of Englishness, but say there

12:05

isn't one version and that's sort of the

12:07

point. Right. It is in that

12:09

muddle, in that, you know, the

12:12

fact that, you know, everyone in this room has probably

12:14

got a slightly different sense of Englishness. That

12:16

is actually very English. And

12:19

rather than just recognize the model, we think

12:21

we should embrace it because in that muddle

12:24

is a genius. That's where we become most

12:26

creative. That's where the most

12:28

brilliant things happen in this country rather

12:30

than trying to impose one

12:32

size fits all grandiose versions of this country, which

12:35

were never true in the first place and have

12:37

got no guide to where we go in the

12:39

future. Right. I thought one

12:41

of the most interesting sort of takedowns of

12:43

the myths was in

12:46

the chapter on Blackpool because the idea

12:48

of this sort of homogenous white

12:50

working class has been

12:53

such an important kind

12:55

of dynamic in recent politics

12:57

and you really deconstruct. Can you tell us

12:59

why it's wrong? Well,

13:01

I think the idea of there being a white working

13:03

class vote is as wrong as there being a Muslim

13:05

vote or a black vote. Yeah. There

13:07

are white working class people and they're all different.

13:09

I mean, you know, who'd have

13:11

thought it, right? Yeah. And

13:13

now you put it like that. We've got,

13:16

and the trouble with the debate is, you

13:18

know, you have all these focus groups and polls and

13:21

old labor losing support of the white working class and

13:23

they're all voting for Boris Johnson. And

13:25

if you really look at a poll in the real party,

13:27

the white working class, the state party,

13:30

they don't vote. They've turned the back some parties,

13:32

but that's not all of them, of course. And

13:34

this is kind of caricature. So we went to the end

13:36

of the peer shows and there's

13:38

these appalling comics, you know, who might,

13:41

you know, Mirza, both London liberal was

13:43

outraged about. Yeah, there was

13:45

saying I'm not going to repeat some

13:47

of the things the same, but it was, you

13:49

know, there was a couple having sex in the

13:51

theater to Rose in front of me, which I've

13:53

never seen before in a theater until security arrived

13:55

anyway. And

13:58

the danger is. we use

14:00

that caricature of

14:03

a white working class saying this is what they are and

14:06

we've got to listen to them because they've

14:08

become really important politics and we end up

14:10

with policy made by Roy Chubby Brown. Yes.

14:12

Yeah. But that's not who they are. It's

14:14

not who, you know, they're

14:17

going along for to be shocked, most

14:20

of the audience, you know, there's

14:22

lots of decency and love and tenderness

14:24

on display in Blackpool, lots of care.

14:27

That's as much of who the white working

14:29

class are as Roy Chubby Brown. Yeah. And

14:31

the, you know, I was outraged by what

14:33

Roy Chubby Brown said rightly. I think lots

14:35

of the people in the audience went to

14:37

be shocked. What we

14:39

don't do is take that outrage that that's

14:41

who they are and empower a

14:44

kind of caricature parody of

14:46

a white working class and elevate it up into

14:48

a form of politics. Isn't it also

14:51

true though that that Roy Chubby

14:53

Brown is part of Englishness?

14:55

I mean, I can remember since I was a

14:58

school kid, Roy Chubby Brown being jokes,

15:00

being told and being for that shock

15:02

purpose, you know, even then they were,

15:05

you know, beyond the pale and that was the whole point of

15:07

it. But there's something, there is

15:09

some, you know, we can't just push all

15:11

that to one side and say, well, that's

15:13

exceptional. It's not, it's part of. Yeah, no,

15:15

that's right. But it's, I think the key

15:17

is that it's, it's a part and what

15:19

politics has done is it sort of concentrated

15:21

it down. So, you know, so you're absolutely

15:23

right that there are elements of these

15:26

myths, which you see in everyday life, you

15:28

know, like the Roy Chubby Brown one, and

15:30

they are real and they have been around

15:32

for a very long time, but they've been

15:34

turned into the sort of essence of Englishness

15:36

by these myth making politicians who want to

15:38

say it's that and it's that alone. And

15:40

that's the real thing. That's the authentic thing.

15:43

And everything else is just rubbish. So, you

15:45

know, white working class voters who vote for

15:47

the Labour Party or don't vote for anybody

15:49

who are or are completely turned off by

15:51

GB news or by reform, suddenly

15:53

described as not white working class anymore. You

15:55

know, it's like the stereotype, this kind of

15:57

form of identity politics that we've generated. And

16:00

I think that's what we see in all of the

16:02

myths is that elements of truth, elements

16:05

of fun, elements that we wouldn't want to

16:07

get rid of because they are enjoyable stories

16:09

to tell. But the problem is

16:11

when you distill them down, concentrate them and

16:13

say that's the essence of Englishness and nothing

16:15

else counts. Did you encounter any

16:17

parts of the world like I mean, I'll

16:20

prefix this by describing Liverpool,

16:23

because I grew up in Liverpool

16:25

in the 70s and 80s

16:27

where there was

16:29

a disassociation from England almost literally driven

16:31

by the Thatcher government who were saying

16:33

let's run the place down. You

16:36

know, Geoffrey Howe wrote a memo

16:38

to Thatcher saying let's just manage

16:40

decline. So growing up in Liverpool,

16:42

the last thing you felt was

16:44

English. You know, you felt European,

16:46

you felt scoused definitely. But you

16:48

know, you were encouraged by the

16:50

government, by Westminster to feel alienated

16:52

from England. And I wonder,

16:54

has that healed completely? Or,

16:56

you know, I think we almost

16:59

see the opposite now, which is that I

17:02

think of all the places we visited in the

17:04

book where that sort of distance from England

17:06

and Englishness is strongest is probably London. So you

17:08

talk to young people in London, and you

17:10

say, how do you identify? Most

17:12

of them start by saying they're a Londoner. And

17:15

then if you say, OK, well, what about the country? Then most of

17:17

them go straight to Britain. And then they might

17:19

go to Europe and they might go to the world.

17:21

And sort of England doesn't feature in their self description

17:23

very much, because they've come to

17:25

see Englishness as wrapped up in these nostalgic

17:28

myths or myths of the white working class

17:30

or sort of Eurosceptic myths of liberty, etc.

17:33

And they think, oh, kind of Englishness isn't for me

17:35

anymore. But really, interestingly, we gave a talk on the

17:37

book a couple of days ago, and at the end

17:39

a guy in

17:41

his early 20s came up and

17:43

said, I've never thought of Englishness

17:45

or England before, but now

17:47

I'm hearing all these stories. I reckon it is

17:49

part of my identity. I just haven't wanted to

17:52

acknowledge it as such, because the only version available

17:54

in public life or in political life

17:56

doesn't appeal to me. But this subtle,

17:58

more quiet, more complex. complex picture, it's actually

18:00

a true representation of who I am and I'm kind

18:02

of happy to be able to say that for now.

18:05

So you go to Wolverhampton which was the

18:07

site of Enot

18:09

Powell's famous notorious River of the

18:12

Blood speech in 1968. And that's you gave it

18:14

in Birmingham. Oh he's in Birmingham. He read it

18:16

in Birmingham. But he would have said that. My

18:19

mistake. I mean he, but

18:22

he himself as you say incarnated

18:24

a certain kind of view of Englishness, a

18:27

certain kind of racialized view

18:29

of Englishness which in

18:32

a funny way at the time it created a

18:34

crash barrier because it was you know teeth sacks

18:36

him and that's the limit you cannot go beyond.

18:38

And then suddenly the beliefs

18:41

he represented in a bad

18:43

rise form reemerge in

18:45

the social media age in the hands of

18:47

Farage and others. And we are

18:50

to a certain extent living with the consequences.

18:52

I mean I don't want to go too

18:54

far but you know a lot

18:56

of power is a lot of what we

18:59

encounter as day to day politics. Now

19:02

what was the upside of

19:04

the Wolverhampton experience that takes

19:07

that down that myth, the myth of power. I

19:10

think that's important because every

19:12

chapter tries to after deflating

19:14

the myth find some sort of essence

19:17

of hope, measure of hope in

19:20

the ordinariness of the place. And

19:24

so one of the things that really struck me is I went

19:26

with Pat Fadden who's now a very important member of the Shadow

19:28

Cabinet to go to a

19:30

Sikh temple in his constituency. And

19:33

he warned me on the way he says, oh you know they're going to have a go at

19:35

me about Car Park. I went, really? And

19:37

he said, yeah that's all they ever talked to me about Car Park.

19:39

They really just thought of Car Park. I thought, well this is quite

19:42

interesting though because this is the city of Powell

19:44

and we've got Farah's roaming around the country and

19:46

we've got all this. And

19:48

they're not talking about race relations. They're

19:51

not talking about violence

19:53

on the streets. They're talking about the Car Park.

19:56

And there's a huge Church of England church where

19:58

no one goes to. It's got

20:00

a big car park that's now an antique centre

20:02

and they can't have that. So the Sikh temple

20:04

wanted to get this little patch of park, but

20:07

the council says they can't have that. And it's been

20:09

going on for ages. And in the arcanaity of

20:12

a planning dispute about car parking,

20:15

I think there's something really hopeful. Healthy society

20:17

negotiating a problem. There's no rivers of blood

20:19

in that car park. No, rivers of car

20:21

park. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, you

20:24

know, if something's so English

20:26

in its ordinariness, that

20:28

I actually left feeling really optimistic even

20:31

though I'd have to listen to Pat.

20:34

I just pushed back for an hour

20:36

about, well, I'm not going to promise

20:38

you things, I can't promise. But I

20:40

thought, Pat's interesting, you know. He's Scottish.

20:42

He grew up in Glasgow. His parents

20:44

were Irish and they spoke Irish at home. He

20:48

represents a Sikh adjacent

20:51

to E0 Powell's in England now.

20:53

Yeah. He's a

20:55

pro-European. I think that sort of, that

20:57

multi-layered identity is really

21:00

important to cities. There's

21:02

another great story from Walter Hampton. In

21:05

football, which has always been something which

21:07

exaggerates differences. I mean, why wall fans

21:09

hate West Brom fans when they're both

21:11

from the black country and looking sound

21:13

exactly the same. I've never understood it.

21:15

That's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

21:18

for a long time, football was a vehicle for the worst sort

21:20

of racism. Yeah. When Bond

21:22

scored in the Maracana in Brazil, the

21:25

National Front fans singing, we only won

21:27

one meal because players were told by

21:29

black people didn't count, right? And

21:32

now, football has managed to

21:34

transform us up, not totally to solve problems. But

21:37

the work that the Walter Hampton, the

21:40

Walter Hampton Wanderers community program

21:42

does is extraordinary reaching out

21:44

to different groups. It's

21:47

now got this group of fans of

21:49

the Punjabi Wolves who bring their doldrums

21:51

to away games and they've got their

21:53

own sections. And they're part of the

21:55

Wolves club now and recognize and people

21:57

are proud of them. Yeah. think

22:00

that it's not about street theatre

22:02

bringing people together, it's through recognisable

22:04

ordinary things which the whole city

22:07

sees as being part of Wolver Hampton

22:09

and everyone else is now part of

22:11

it too. That's optimistic. And that's so

22:13

crucial I think in the Wolver

22:15

Hampton story is that it wasn't

22:18

that the sort of absurdity of Powell's

22:20

sort of racism and the attempts at

22:22

sort of English purity was replaced by

22:25

a kind of utopian idyll of multicultural

22:28

diversity where everybody did street theatre

22:30

and sort of you know wave rainbow flags

22:32

or what have you. It's that you have

22:34

this negotiation through everyday institutions which enables people

22:36

to learn to live with each other and

22:38

sometimes they really like each other because they

22:40

support the same football team, sometimes they're having

22:42

a you know an argument about where the

22:44

car parks are but the sort of mess

22:46

and the mix and the muddle is the

22:48

realistic way that a diverse community lives together,

22:50

keeps on going and that's what England is

22:52

and we ought to you know not just

22:54

sort of embrace it but celebrate it for

22:56

that. Did you get a sense anywhere that

22:58

that sense of community that street by

23:01

street community has eroded at

23:03

all? I think we thought that

23:05

I think that's what we thought we would find

23:07

but actually I think we found more resilience than

23:09

we imagined you know so we go to Greenwich

23:11

to the Millennium Dome or the O2 as it

23:14

is now in a bit of the book and

23:16

I think we thought that we would find a

23:18

sort of soulless part of London which was all

23:20

sort of shiny apartment buildings with

23:22

no one living in them because they're all owned

23:24

by Russian oligarchs and you know sort of the

23:26

old had been stripped out and replaced with sort

23:28

of you know shopping malls and commerciality etc

23:31

and there is some truth in that you

23:33

know but you know Tom was hanging out

23:36

there chatting to people you also see the

23:38

emergence of a new kind of community life

23:40

so there are new community centers there are

23:42

teenagers hanging out chatting to each other making

23:44

friends you know going out with each other

23:46

planning the future as they always have and

23:49

it's almost like when you look at the

23:51

dome now it's not

23:53

a shiny white service anymore it's

23:55

got little bits of lychee and

23:57

moths and that's what's happened to

23:59

the neighborhood well is that human relationships

24:01

have started to grow again. It's a

24:03

brownie pack there now. Yeah. And

24:06

the Shadow of the Millennium. Yeah, it was fascinating that.

24:08

I mean I found that chapter

24:10

particularly interesting because it was the first sort

24:12

of interrogation I've read of

24:15

the kind of myth of modernity in

24:18

the 90s, you know, and we all lived through that

24:20

in the New Britain and it was exciting. And

24:25

I thought yeah, that there is a

24:27

point here which is that you

24:30

can't actually simply rest

24:32

a governmental mission or a social order

24:36

on a kind of everything

24:38

must be new. It doesn't work. But

24:41

it's very, it is and was

24:43

very intoxicating, isn't it? Yeah, I mean,

24:45

Matt was talking about Liverpool. Michael

24:48

Epstein went up Liverpool. He didn't

24:50

want Liverpool to be evacuated but he did sort of want

24:52

to raise large parts of the ground and build a new,

24:54

the whole thing. And

24:57

Hestrong was involved in the dome. He was

24:59

the first instigator before Tony Blair picked it

25:01

up. And I

25:03

think there's something, there was a big connection

25:05

I think between Thatcher and Blair and sort

25:07

of the majority. I mean Thatcher of course

25:09

pretended that she represented Victorian values. I think

25:11

we describe in a book as like sort

25:14

of lambid, dissented grandmother of his cake. Later

25:16

than Fethomin. Yeah, you got it. You

25:19

got it. And

25:22

you're right, it was exciting but essentially

25:24

it was vacuous and there was a

25:26

reaction to it. So

25:28

I think there was a direct link between

25:30

that ultramodernity of

25:33

the year 2000 and then the

25:35

reaction when you have the sort of countryside

25:37

alliance on the mark. Yeah. The

25:40

sense of something being lost. You

25:43

compare the opening of the dome to the Olympics only,

25:45

2012. The

25:47

dome was, can we even remember

25:49

what was in the dome? I mean it

25:51

was all amorphous and sexless and weird and

25:54

didn't really feel like some plastic pubic life.

25:56

What's that got to do with England? Very

25:58

weird, yeah. the

26:00

Olympic ceremony was

26:02

an extraordinary muddle with like a sort

26:05

of soup of different sorts of Englishness.

26:07

You had the dancing nurses and you

26:09

had Morris Dancers and you had Windrush.

26:12

Mary Poppins, I think, Bob the

26:14

Molson. And in that sort of

26:16

dreamy sequence, people

26:18

actually loved it. Yeah. And that was

26:21

a moment when almost we captured a

26:23

sense of the muddle of this country

26:25

and liked ourselves for it. Yeah. And

26:28

I think, you know, the tragedy of

26:30

that is I don't think we then moved on and tried to

26:32

build something more out of it. So

26:39

retrospectives, what historical events are we picking

26:41

off on this week's run of Today

26:43

in History? Well, Monday is the anniversary of

26:46

the day Roger first publishes Famous Bessaurus.

26:48

Then on Tuesday we say, happy birthday,

26:50

Mr. Potato Head. On Wednesday, the extraordinary

26:52

stories of the child soldiers who fought

26:54

in the American Civil War. On Thursday,

26:57

how King James changed the word of God. And

26:59

on Friday, what did spam emails look like

27:01

in 1978? We

27:03

discuss this and more on Today in

27:05

History with the retrospectives. Ten minutes every

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30:38

today. How

30:42

much is inequality part of Englishness?

30:44

How much, you know, vestige of the

30:46

class system that we all grew up

30:48

with and we now like to think

30:51

has kind of eroded away. How much

30:53

of that is still kind of baked

30:55

into Englishness? Yeah, I mean that comes

30:57

across so powerfully, I think, in so

30:59

many of the myths. I mean,

31:01

many of the myths are designed to sort of hide

31:03

the realities of inequality or class. You

31:05

know, that's what they, you puff them up so much

31:07

in the hope that you can obliterate the landscape underneath

31:10

you because the landscape is scarred by that kind of

31:12

inequality. And I think we saw

31:14

that most in our chapter in when we went

31:16

to Oxford to talk about the establishment. And

31:19

again, there's so many sort of myths about

31:21

the establishment, but the one in places like

31:23

Oxford want to tell the story, which is

31:25

that they represent the best of England

31:27

and there's a sort of they're

31:30

an honest broker or there's a sort of, you

31:32

know, they protect us from the sort of ravenous

31:34

populism that might take place if they didn't have

31:37

these established institutions. And as always, there's some truth

31:39

in that. I mean, it isn't really important to

31:41

have really great universities doing fantastic higher education

31:43

and they create opportunity and they have done

31:45

for a very long time. But

31:48

there is also the remnants of that

31:50

exclusivity in inequality, which is some people

31:53

don't feel welcome and that's because they're

31:55

not yet fully welcome. You know, yeah,

31:57

we went for a wonder of. around

32:00

Oxford and happened upon

32:02

this lovely little church

32:04

hall which was having a gathering of

32:06

all the local charities and social enterprises

32:09

and groups that do good work in

32:11

Oxford. And essentially one side was all

32:13

the university students and the other side

32:15

was all the townspeople. And

32:17

you could have been back in the 17th century.

32:19

They weren't talking to each other, they weren't working

32:21

with each other. Tom very sort

32:23

of normally went up to one of the student

32:25

groups and said you know who were working on

32:27

issues of domestic violence and they said are you

32:30

interested in domestic violence in the housing estates

32:32

out in East Oxford as well as on campus.

32:34

And they just said no no of course not, you

32:37

know with the student society that's what we do. Look

32:39

they're not bad people, they're trying to do good things

32:41

you know. But the sort of

32:43

scope of what they do is still

32:45

driven by some people being in, some

32:47

people being out. And I think we

32:50

end that chapter on the establishment by saying

32:52

look we need these institutions they're absolutely vital.

32:54

We don't want to smash them up like

32:56

Dominic Cummings wanted to do. But

32:58

they've got to connect again with the

33:00

whole of society and they've got to be genuinely open, they've

33:02

got to be genuinely inclusive otherwise they can't do the work

33:04

that we need them to. You also in that chapter

33:07

you know obviously the

33:09

fact that the last four prime ministers have been Oxford

33:12

graduates is indicative of

33:14

something. And you make the point that

33:17

the one problem is that

33:19

alternate routes to power, I think you

33:21

use the phrase of the silting up. So

33:24

whatever happens in that university

33:26

and Cambridge and or other

33:28

Brussels group universities, there is

33:30

a sort of blockage on the

33:33

diversity of routes to power that

33:35

oddly enough they used to be.

33:37

And I

33:39

was intrigued about what you thought about that and

33:42

what the answer to that is or is that a whole other book?

33:46

I mean it goes back a bit to the

33:48

comedians of Blackpool where there

33:51

used to be a great traditional working class

33:53

comedians coming up and getting TV shows. Now

33:56

most of the comedians on TV are

33:59

people who you know. Metox or Cambridge. Yeah,

34:01

they're sort of... With

34:04

a bit of Manchester University. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But

34:06

yeah, pop music used to be working

34:09

class and middle class is having

34:11

a bit of fun. So they're taking that too.

34:13

I mean, football was one of the few that

34:15

haven't done that because you can't go to university

34:17

and be a Premier League footballer, it turns out.

34:20

And sorry, lads. So

34:23

there is a sort of sense that

34:25

we're becoming more elitist, even

34:28

as universities open up a bit

34:30

more. There's

34:32

another thought going on as well, which I think is

34:34

part of this dislocation of the

34:37

establishment, which is the sort of

34:39

globalization of these institutions. So

34:41

Oxford has had a vast investment from people who

34:44

have actually not got anything to

34:46

do with the university. They're

34:48

sort of washing their reputation quite

34:50

a lot. You've got the Blofacknick School of

34:52

Government and the Stephen H. Schwarzman School of

34:55

Humanities or whatever. There's huge

34:57

investment going on, which

34:59

is not really

35:01

related to the people

35:04

you're meant to be educating there. You

35:06

know, when you're the source of the

35:09

funding now is huge donations from individuals

35:11

like that, alumni donations, putting on conferences,

35:13

foreign students. Only number five is

35:16

educating 18 to 21-year-olds from this

35:18

country. And that dislocation

35:20

between the university's core purpose and

35:24

where its income sources are, I think it's quite

35:26

important. You'll see it elsewhere. You'll see it with

35:28

the BBC is now trying to compete with Netflix

35:31

rather than necessarily serve

35:33

license fee payers. And

35:36

what we argue for is a sort of

35:38

reconnection. I mean,

35:40

one of the best examples of that,

35:42

I think, is the Oxford-Asselin-Zeneca vaccine

35:45

we had during Covid, which

35:47

wasn't invented in some dreaming spot or one

35:49

of these new shiny buildings paid for by

35:51

some foreign billionaire. It was a really unfashionable

35:54

part of Oxford up in Headington in a

35:56

building that looked like it's a holiday in

35:59

blood women. who has always

36:01

struggled to get funding and

36:03

you know, Dang Sara Gilbert and

36:06

there's something about how

36:08

it's rolled out through dowry NHS

36:11

GP surgeries and health

36:13

centers rather than some sort

36:15

of world beating app which again

36:17

felt English to me. It felt, you know,

36:19

there's more in

36:21

the ordinary and more talent

36:23

and creativity to be had in

36:25

that than in the

36:28

so-called symbols of brilliance

36:30

and wealth and power sometimes. We're

36:32

recording this in the week of

36:34

St George's Day and it was

36:36

very interesting that Keir Starmer, subject

36:39

of your biography Tom, very

36:42

good biography, went very hard on

36:44

that and I mean

36:46

it's not the first time he's sort of defined

36:49

himself by patriotism but

36:51

it seemed to me reading this book that

36:54

there was a lot of overlap

36:56

in his approach. I

36:59

mean I think in your biography

37:01

of him you just have friends

37:03

describing him as a small town

37:05

patriot, something like that, which is

37:08

at odds with his media images

37:10

being, you know, the absolute archetype

37:13

of the North London,

37:15

Guocarati, Lefty Loy, you know, you

37:17

fill in as applicable. But

37:21

it's interesting isn't it that what

37:24

you've described here meshes quite

37:26

a bit with what seems

37:28

to be his worldview? I think

37:31

it is really interesting and perhaps it's no

37:34

coincidence that, you know, there is a kind of

37:36

contiguity between the two books in that they're being

37:38

written at the same time. But

37:42

Starmer's message from St George's Day was

37:45

significant because of the absence of some

37:47

things that he could have talked about.

37:50

He didn't have any of these grandiose myths. He

37:52

wasn't talking about the invention of liberty or global

37:55

Britain. World leading. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He

37:57

wasn't talking. About,

38:00

you know how we've set the

38:02

war on our own. He wasn't

38:04

salty about a missile maternity I

38:06

that he took about rather ordinary

38:09

things. Service the Nhs. Didn't.

38:11

Have a scarf help like with his

38:13

mode by disabled mother. Singing.

38:16

Free. Lines at Wembley Yeah! Supporting

38:18

The And I Like. A.

38:21

Meeting people and I think

38:23

there's something in his. Ordinariness.

38:28

Which. Has the potential. of

38:30

such stress or really potential. To.

38:34

To. Work quite significantly in politics as if

38:36

he gets a chance as fight difficult

38:38

to pulses so was meant to be

38:40

for been forced to do other things

38:42

and be other things. but but I

38:44

think his instincts are t. So.

38:47

Fit into the phones of this

38:49

country. Rather

38:52

than impose some idea upon

38:54

it, you know, like also,

38:56

roads. Bend. Round hillsides

38:58

rather than top freedom. whole idea is

39:00

a lawyer are common law system. Is

39:03

based on presidents and slowly some

39:05

sort of jurisprudence emerges. I think

39:08

to the extent the reversal starmer

39:10

isn't in some the Vols with

39:12

the landscape in the people rather

39:14

than it's some big idea invented

39:16

in Westminster or it was some

39:18

think tank. So about yes of

39:20

were with really which is gonna

39:23

solve everything. It's. And.

39:25

That's soft, gentler

39:28

people. Based. Story.

39:30

Could could be I think some normally politically

39:33

attractive of the next. he is just on

39:35

it on the specifics of the flag. Because

39:38

he starmer made a point about saying and

39:40

of people who are com of the exact

39:42

phrase people he wins at the flag or

39:44

something like this. Like when sit the flag

39:46

I'll be absolutely honest enough, I'm walking through.

39:48

sometimes I go and take my daughter to

39:51

go the hide to play football and this

39:53

is a flagpole in one of the gardens

39:55

with it St George's else on it or

39:57

not be upset. I've got no idea who

39:59

lives there. got no idea what it represents. But

40:01

when I look at it, I kind of wince a

40:03

bit and I think, nah, it

40:05

sends a bad signal. And that signal's

40:08

been inculcated in me from growing

40:10

up in the days when the National Front claimed

40:13

that flag, you know, and it was all about

40:15

this skin-haired kind

40:17

of racist, fascist ideology that

40:20

was represented by the flag.

40:22

And I just wonder, is it wrong

40:25

to wince at the flag still, you know?

40:27

I mean, personally, I think it's sort of

40:29

definitely not wrong to wince at those associations,

40:31

you know? So there was a period in

40:33

time when, as you say, it was the

40:35

skin-ed from the National Front who grabbed hold

40:37

of the flag and it symbolized a very

40:40

straightforward kind of white racism. And,

40:42

you know, much of mild childhood was spent in the

40:44

same, you know, in that era. But I think it's

40:46

what we're trying to say in the book is in

40:49

the same way that England is a sort of

40:51

identity or as a country isn't

40:53

best represented or isn't at all represented

40:55

by that, neither need be the flag

40:57

itself. And you've seen these

41:00

moments in the last few decades where there

41:02

have been sort of different variations

41:04

of usages of the flag. So, you know,

41:06

Tom can talk about the way in which

41:08

the flag has shifted and changed in football,

41:11

for example. But, you know, I always think

41:13

most recently, just when we were thinking about

41:15

the cover of the book, and

41:18

we suggested having the flag or a version of the flag

41:20

on the cover, and a few

41:22

people we suggested that too are horrified because

41:24

the flag has the same connotations for

41:26

them as you've described. And then

41:28

I was walking through the tube like the same day

41:30

as that conversation. And the

41:33

playwright James Graham had a play at the National

41:35

Theatre called Dear England about the England football team.

41:38

Brilliant play. And the poster is a sort

41:40

of five foot version of the flag with

41:43

a little Gareth Salke in the middle. And,

41:45

you know, millions of people walking through the tube

41:48

all day every day looking at the flag, looking

41:50

at that symbol. And that's not accidental, I think,

41:52

because what James is trying to do in the play, as

41:55

he says, as the Gareth Salke character says, he

41:57

says, we've got to stop telling some stories and

41:59

start telling news stories. So you don't stop telling

42:01

stories altogether, you start selling new ones. And as

42:03

you do that, you take the symbols of the

42:05

old stories and you give them new meaning. And

42:07

I'm hoping that's what we can do with the

42:09

flag as well. And the

42:12

subject, there are probably times when people, you know, in

42:14

the past when people winced or thought it was a

42:16

major talking point when they saw the first black news

42:19

reader. Right. Or the

42:21

first black player to play for England,

42:23

Viv Anderson. Huge news story. Now we

42:25

don't think anything more about it. There

42:28

was a controversy when Kirsten Dahmer started

42:30

appearing on TV with a union flag

42:32

in the background. And

42:35

not so left wing. And now no one mentions

42:37

it anymore. Yeah. It's

42:39

just like, it's what it does. Storm about the

42:41

bastardization of the flag on the back of the

42:43

shirt. Yeah. I

42:45

think we've allowed the flow. You know,

42:47

something I think if you take the role to put

42:49

a whole flagpole up in your front garden. I mean,

42:52

that's probably quite strange behaviour still for me.

42:55

But when more and more

42:57

Labour MPs or liberal MPs or green

42:59

MPs start actually adopting a flag like

43:02

other countries do, you know, centre-left politicians

43:04

do in other countries. I

43:06

think it will become normalised. And I think it's

43:08

quite important. I don't think, you know, I don't

43:10

think a flag is just a symbol. But

43:13

I'd really, part of this book is not

43:15

allowing just one version

43:17

of Englishness to be told. Now there's a

43:19

left wing version of Englishness, which is also

43:21

rubbish. It goes about the diggers and the

43:23

chum off the stuff. Levelers.

43:27

Yeah. Billy Bragg. It usually ends

43:29

with Billy Bragg singing a song about miners. There

43:31

isn't just one version and we

43:33

shouldn't let the flag be associated with

43:35

what, just one version. Yeah. And

43:38

I think when, you know, initially when Keir Starmer

43:40

started doing clips for

43:42

TV with a

43:44

flag behind it, I thought it was strange. Now

43:47

I think he was right. Right. I

43:49

think we just need to normalise it on

43:51

centre-left again. Can I ask about Ordinariness again?

43:53

The English Ordinariness that runs through the book,

43:56

like a river. Because

43:58

you've both been... speechwriters,

44:02

comms, strategists, you know you've been

44:04

intimately involved in the day-to-day battle

44:06

of language and the

44:09

truth is that the day-to-day battle of language

44:11

now in politics is unbelievably

44:13

turbocharged. It's driven by bombast,

44:15

you know everything during Covid

44:18

was world-leading even when it

44:20

barely existed. Social

44:22

media requires a sort of violent

44:26

brevity and

44:28

none of that is desirable but

44:30

how feasible is it

44:33

to bring the

44:35

Zeppelin down to earth? You

44:38

know just in terms of practical

44:41

politics for Stalmer.

44:43

I think the truth is that it

44:45

is flying in the face of a

44:47

conventional wisdom so there is a conventional

44:49

political comms strategy wisdom which is that

44:51

you can't do complexity, you can't do

44:54

nuance, you can't do shades of grey,

44:56

you've got to do sound bytes, friend

44:58

enemy, you find the dividing lines, big

45:00

visions and everything. Simplify

45:02

and exaggerate. Exactly and everything in

45:04

three words you take that control but

45:08

I think our strong sense is that's

45:10

let us down like from

45:13

all sides. So everyone who's tried to do that

45:16

sort of false simplicity big argument

45:19

you know divide the country in half and

45:21

try and bash the other lot have left

45:23

us in a horrible mess you know and

45:25

Brexit is a perfect example of that which

45:27

is that it was just an untruth you

45:30

know you're dressed up as a big exciting

45:32

story which you've got some people's pulses racing

45:34

but is undeliverable because the complexity of real

45:36

world doesn't allow us to do the kind

45:38

of things that Boris Johnson and others promised

45:40

that we could do. So I kind

45:43

of think there's a political imperative to do

45:45

subtlety and nuance because we can't solve the

45:47

problems unless we do but but I'd also

45:49

say that you know we're not I

45:51

don't think we are alone in this view and we one of the things

45:53

that I loved most when I was working

45:56

with Ed Miliband in the old days is we

45:59

flew over David Axelrod run from America and we

46:01

didn't give him very much time or space to

46:03

do anything. But one

46:05

thing he did say all the time in

46:07

the few meetings he was in, he says,

46:09

you guys want to talk sound bites and

46:12

slogans all the time. Just let me talk

46:14

in paragraph. Yeah. And I thought that that's

46:16

essentially the insight. David Axelrod being Obama's

46:19

great writer. Yeah, there's Inuit

46:23

and ambiguity. It's not just

46:25

a recognition of what the country really is.

46:27

I don't think most people could place themselves

46:30

exactly on some ideological spectrum. Most

46:32

people are have much more ambiguity. Even

46:34

Nigel Farage in our book, maybe

46:36

he's trolling me somehow, but at the end of the

46:38

interview, he said, what's his favorite place

46:40

in England? He said, London's the love of diversity.

46:44

That was brilliant. Yeah, yeah. There's

46:47

something in this that as I've got

46:50

older and hopefully wiser,

46:53

I think I've learned that politics isn't

46:55

about straight lines. It's

46:57

not about cutting through that hillside. It's

47:00

about trying to find a way around it. And

47:03

indeed, if you can recognize neurons

47:06

and ambiguity, recognize those bends in

47:08

the line, then

47:10

you can actually find potential to

47:12

find consensus with other people, Robin

47:15

saying they are the enemy. These are our

47:17

friends. We're now going to go to a

47:19

political war. What's language about dividing lines and

47:21

politics? We should be looking for places

47:23

where we can find unity

47:26

and alliance surprising unity and alliance, because

47:28

that is almost a definition of how

47:30

we make progress with the country. There's

47:33

just this wonderful sentence I've actually transcribed

47:35

because it was towards

47:37

the end of the book. You say the problem

47:39

is this country is too large to hide away

47:41

from the world, but also too small to change

47:44

that world. So I thought was as

47:46

good a kind of

47:48

encapsulation of Britain's place or

47:50

England's place, I should say,

47:52

in the world as I've

47:54

read recently. And all right, maestros,

47:56

how do we negotiate

48:00

that moving forward because you're

48:02

right you we can't retreat

48:04

into a sort of bucolic

48:06

stroke urban ordinariness which

48:08

no one cares about but we don't

48:11

have the might that many people

48:13

imagine in made-up slogans

48:15

like global Britain and and so on

48:18

so wherein lies the

48:20

the nuanced ambiguous answer

48:23

is there answer there's

48:25

no one answer there's

48:27

lots of little answers so

48:30

yeah if you look at how you

48:32

know if there is a Labour government it would

48:34

approach it subject of Europe I

48:36

think if they went into a right we got big solution

48:39

this we're going to go back in well

48:41

you're not going to do anything for five years and apart from that

48:43

I'll give out Brexit again and

48:46

if you say right we're going to really make

48:48

Brexit work we're going to use our independence while

48:50

you go forward flatten your face again like this

48:52

government has I

48:54

think what you'll see is

48:56

a sort

48:58

of progressive incrementalism of

49:01

step-by-step you know do you want

49:03

to align yes do you want

49:06

to align on a veteran agreement

49:08

on visas maybe you travel yeah

49:10

there are areas around for the

49:12

carbon trading area where and

49:14

slowly you're going to get closer as bit

49:17

by bit a picture emerges because that's what

49:19

a country like Britain needs to do so

49:21

no people no longer wins yeah

49:23

and and and not to imagine that

49:26

we can reclaim some

49:28

imagined greatness from the past and that

49:30

our future lies beyond Europe it doesn't

49:32

it lies working with allies

49:34

quite difficult allies and we're a difficult

49:36

ally and finding places where we can

49:39

work together and make consensus and we're

49:41

going to need to do that in

49:43

the next few years not just on

49:45

trade but on security you

49:47

know how Europe comes together to

49:50

find a proper security pact to

49:53

deal with Russia to deal with refugees

49:56

to deal with Trump

49:58

climate change and have to

50:00

deal with Trump because Europe could be

50:02

fighting a war against Russia on its own

50:04

in the next few years and we haven't got

50:06

a great record on that. And

50:09

so, you know, history doesn't say

50:11

we're going to succeed. We need another kind

50:13

of magnificator again. Yeah, well, we're going to

50:15

need to find ways of working

50:18

with our closest partners and that and

50:21

big myths about ourselves are

50:23

going to get in the way. So we need to come and

50:25

muddle through and find

50:28

that ambiguity, find those little

50:30

chinks of space where

50:32

we can make a consensus with people

50:34

which we wouldn't normally expect. Tom

50:37

Mark, thank you so much. So Mark is such

50:39

an interesting discussion. We could have gone for hours and

50:41

hours. Really, really interesting. But not just waving at

50:43

us wildly. Wildly saying. But the

50:45

book is on sale now. It's

50:47

called England, seven myths that changed

50:49

the country and how to set them straight by

50:52

Tom Baldwin. Mark Stears, thank you so much. Thank

50:54

you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

50:57

Thanks. So brilliant conversation. I hope you guys enjoyed

50:59

it. Very, very good. We must get them back

51:01

on. Yeah, they're great. Please,

51:04

if you enjoyed the show, if you

51:06

got any questions, get those into us.

51:08

Any feedback to two mats at TNE

51:10

publishing dot com. That's the number two

51:13

M A T T S at

51:15

T N E publishing dot com.

51:17

Or if you listen on Spotify,

51:19

you can message us there. And

51:21

that's what cool Garo did, who

51:23

says, I'm an ex smoker brackets

51:25

glad to be, but it's not

51:27

correct to say there are no mitigating

51:29

factors to smoking. Many people get a self

51:31

medicated relaxation from cigarettes. What do you think

51:33

about? Well, I mean, the

51:36

logic is unimpeachable, although it's also

51:38

true of heroin. Yeah, I'm not

51:40

sure it's a very good way

51:43

to approach life. I don't know. Anytime you

51:45

use the phrase self medication, I think you

51:47

have to question whether that's a good thing

51:49

or about. Yes, I mean, self medication, I'm

51:51

not sure it's generally a good thing. No,

51:53

that's right. Like citizen journalism

51:55

and you know, nobody talking about

51:57

citizen dentists. Exactly!

52:02

OK, well anyway, thank you Coolgarrow

52:04

for the question. And

52:06

you can send in, if you're

52:08

listening to this on Spotify, you

52:11

can ask us any questions there.

52:13

Very simply indeed. We will have

52:15

more questions on Sunday. Please remember

52:17

our subscription offer. Head to the

52:19

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52:21

there's a link in the show

52:23

notes. And if you subscribe

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52:27

passport cover just in time for your summer

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52:31

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52:35

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