Politics: Whose Morality Is It Anyway?

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Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel right in one spot. And turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Good evening. This year's Reith lecturer Rutger Bregman rubs the right up the wrong way.

The Fox News anchor, Tucker Carlson, once ended an interview with the Dutch historian by calling him a moron and suggesting he do something to himself that's actually anatomically impossible. The BBC, by contrast, has presented him with a platform for his thesis that Western civilisation is in an advanced stage of decay, akin to the fall of imperial Rome.

America, under a precedent he calls a modern-day Caligula, is corroding from within, not through an absence of talent or wealth, but through a lack of courage and virtue. Europe's no better, just quieter, sinking into irrelevance. The right is corrupt, the left paralysed by cowardice. He's calling for a moral revolution, pointing to the past when small groups of committed people, abolitionists, suffragettes, temperance campaigners, an odd choice, you might think.

he says, achieved positive social change. Is he right?

Where are the important values in today's competing, contrasting political worldviews? Which part of the political spectrum has the greatest claim to morality? That's our moral maze tonight. The panel, Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Religion and Society. at King's College London, historian Tim Stanley, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, and James Orr, associate professor of the philosophy of religion at Cambridge University. Mona, do you think there's too much?

Too little morality in today's politics. I don't... I wouldn't... phrase the question like that to be honest I think it's more about what holds a society together and what brings people together in terms of not necessarily a common purpose but where People aren't constantly talking about polarisation, but thinking, actually, how do we move forward with every crisis that we face? Tim, Tim, sorry.

I don't expect to find the source of my morality in politics. You can bring morality to politics but I don't think morality emerges from politics. Morality to me is what God wants me to do. Politics is how we try to put God's will. into effect in the most judicious way possible. James, as a senior advisor to the Reform Party. Well, I tend to think that

Fierce moral disagreement in the public square is not a sign of a culture in distress. I think it's actually a sign of a properly working democracy. Democracy is... It's agonistic, it's competitive. We should be fighting about these things, and it's a sign that we care about these things. Now, I tend to think that, you know, it's wrong to think that the left just should have a monopoly on equality, or the right should have a monopoly on order, or liberalism should have a monopoly on freedom.

I think they tend to rank them and put different emphases on those different things. But I think there should be more charity, I think, towards our interlocutors on different sides of the aisle, whatever political party they're in. Matthew?

I don't know, having heard that, whether I agree with you or disagree with you. I've never been more concerned about the future of humanity than I am now. And that drives some to ideological fervour, but it makes me want to focus generally and this evening on what...

most of us might still have in common. Panel, thanks very much indeed. Our first witness is Tim Montgomery, who started the Christian Conservative Fellowship and the Conservative Home website and was a co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice and latterly...

a convert to reform. What moral principle do you put at the centre of your political worldview? I hope, like the other Tim around this table, it's the Christian faith that... is at the heart of who i am and my concern i think with how the church represent that to the country is the church repeats the error

that I think is the biggest error in our public life, is that society is seen only as the market and the state, when actually the richest, most important part of who we are as human beings is the social, relational links. between us and the lack of discussion and focus on that is why I think we're in quite so much trouble. Matthew.

Tim, I've known you for many years. If we go back to the days of Blair and Cameron, I suspect we would have thought we didn't really have a huge amount that separated us either politically or in terms of policy. Now with me, you know, stuck on the centre left, you in reform, it feels like we're much further apart. Is it you? Is it me? Or is it the world that has moved?

I think the decline of religion is an incredibly important part of this. I think we all have a God-shaped hole in us. We all need a moral purpose and understanding of... why we're here and what we do, why programmes like this are important. And as religion has declined, we need still something else to fill that hole. And for some, it's become politics. And I think that's very dangerous because politics is a much more adversarial...

thing and yes we should as james was saying earlier yes we should have robust disagreements but if if people do not have a lot of things in common outside of their political identity those differences really become inflamed you don't have things to fall back on to cope with fierce disagreements. And that lack of common experience is the thing I worry about, about why this country is in, and the Western civilisation is in the trouble that it is. So I...

would share a lot of that. But this is where I get a bit confused. You know, we're not talking about reform tonight. We're not talking about Donald Trump. We're talking about kind of morality of politics more broadly. But, you know, reform is generally sympathetic. to the Donald Trump movement. I wonder what, you know, conservative philosophers who would have agreed with what you've said, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, what would they make of MAGA? Well...

One thing that is important about MAG-AN reform is the acceptance, compared, for example, to the Blair years, that the nation-state matters. We have more of a solidarity with people who we share a nation with, a welfare state and all the rest of it, than people outside. I think it's why Denmark is quite such a successful model. They have that sort of solidarity.

So there are very good things about MAGA and reform, reasserting that there are differences between peoples and cultures. Some of the way it aggressively promotes that belief is unattractive. I would be surprised if you didn't see a lot of belief in what you believe as well, Matthew. Yeah, but if I think of... Those conservative philosophers who I had a lot of respect for, I think they'd want to emphasise things like respect for institutions, civility.

a preference for gradualism over revolutionary ideas. That's a long way away, isn't it, from some of the kind of rhetoric of both Donald Trump and Nigel Farage? I think the problem is that we've had a long period now where... all of the institutions and the BBC is one for example and I feel a lot of where the trouble that the BBC is a lot of what's

affected a lot of British companies. The human resource and compliance cultures that come from government have been a sort of a backdoor sort of socialisation of lots of institutions. And so I think institutions aren't what they were. And it is the great conservative dilemma. If you have a decaying institution, do you just manage it, as people did before Margaret Thatcher, or do you confront it? So it's great to hear you use the word dilemma, Tim, because for me...

The moral imperative of politics is actually this, that most issues that matter are complex. If they were simple, they would have been solved. Politicians want to be popular. If they could solve problems, they would do. And so the morality for me in politics, and I think mainstream politicians have flunked this, is to be honest with the public about complexity and to be honest to the public about the hard choices that governments have to make with and for people.

But populism, I mean, I don't use this just as a kind of derogatory term, it tends to say, no, there isn't complexity. There's just the wrong people in charge. The elites are in charge. If you get rid of the elites, then everything would be simple. strikes me as not being a moral message. I think the most important thing that a politician can say to the country, anyone, is that we can't do that much. That's the conservative in me. And politicians don't do that, including, I don't think, reform.

does it enough politics is ultimately a very sort of fordian everyone is treated the same and actually the complexity that you just talked about problems are only really dealt with by families communities people where there's understanding between each other. And I think the right obsession now with politics, how much we watch the news. We know what's happening in Gaza. We don't know Mrs Miggins three doors down is lonely.

Being a consumer of news and global affairs can never be a substitute for knowing what's happening locally. And I think that's a big part of our problem. Mona. So, Tim, you said at the outset...

outset that the Christian faith is at the heart of who you are. I'd like to probe that a little bit. So when you joined reform, what Christian principles do you think reform reflected? Well, for a start, one of the three defining ideas they have is the family. I think the love of parents for their children is the most important force for good.

in society i think it's why we're so offended when we see abusive children it's so much against the natural order and nigel farage has spoken very candidly he says i haven't lived a perfect life but i want to support the family and that really matters because

The right is obsessed with its own kind of individual, workers and taxpayers. The left is obsessed with its welfare claimants and identity department. No political party is championing that rich social architecture. But that's not uniquely Christian, though, the importance of family.

Not at all. I'm a great believer in C.S. Lewis and his idea of the Tao, where most of the major religions have a lot in common. But we are a Christian country and still in heritage, and I hope we were better standing up for it. As you say, we are a Christian country and I agree with you. But do you think that your sense of Christianity is really more about a mythologized national past rather than something that's grounded in scripture and theology?

No. I think it was David Brooks who said people can live their lives by the values of their CV, resume, as you say, from America, or how they'll be spoken of at their eulogy. And I think that's the deep thing inside all of us. And we all have to make a choice. Are we all about work and commerce? Or are we about the relationships closest to us?

And back to what Matthew was saying, that is fundamentally conservative. It's people-sized institutions, recognising all those institutions. Have reform got a policy agenda for that yet? No. But we can be concerned about people around us, family and neighbours, as well as what's happening halfway around.

the world. The two can go hand in hand. And I think a moral citizen should be aware of what's happening globally, not just what's happening in their neighbourhood. I doubt we really disagree on this because... That's absolutely true what you say. But if you do know what's going on in Gaza and you don't know what's happening in your neighbourhood, when you can't really affect what's happening in Gaza but you can affect what's happening in your neighbourhood, that's a poverty of morality.

And I think it's true of our country at the moment, particularly in cities. Do you think that you apply your Christian ethics consistently to all areas of life, whether it's immigration, economics, foreign policy, treatment of marginalised groups, or do you...

select your political preferences where your Christian ethics should be applied. Well, I'm a sinning human being and I don't get a...

Always right. But as I get older, I was so certain in my 20s and 30s of everything. As I've got older, I realise there's more complexity and nuance. I always feel I'm learning. I often call myself a follower of Christ rather than a Christian because it... communicates a process where we're always learning and improving so I'm sure you can find inconsistencies in where I've stood but I try and take it seriously for someone outside the faith I would say that the distinctive

doctrine of Christianity is not love thy neighbour, but love thy enemy. And I wonder where you stand on that in terms of... It's easy from a political standpoint to be cushioned by wealth and status and be able to make judgments about what's happening. But actually, for me...

As an outsider, I think Christianity is about vulnerability, about people who are not cushioned and the people who need support from those who are wealthy or have status. Do you think that's what reform stands for or what you stand for? I agree with what you've just said, by the way. And actually, if you look at the Bible, when Scripture talks about the vulnerable, it's in relational terms. It's about the widow, the orphan.

the migrant. And perhaps you could say to me, perhaps I'm more interested in the widow and the orphan, the migrant. I don't know. But it has to be all of those people. But do you think you're consistent? I'm sure I'm not. I try to be consistent. The reason I'm asking... is on what is the moral basis for you not being consistent when they're all in need of your compassion. Well, I suspect, you know, we all have different life experiences and those life experiences will skew us in certain areas.

And certain times demand different emphasis as well. Can I very briefly, at the end of this, get you grounded in, if you like, more rooted politics? Where do you stand in the... contrast between how far up do you place personal responsibility as opposed to equality, for instance?

Personal responsibility is much, much more important, I think. And it's ultimately actually why I left the Conservative Party, because you can't have a philosophy of personal responsibility for everyone, and then you mess up so badly and they're not. be consequences. And that's what I think is the immorality in our country at the moment. People are protected from the consequences too often and you do not learn. Just as loss is more important than profit and capitalism in driving change.

Bad experiences teaches us. And when a state and a society protects people from bad choices, civilisation decays and declines. Dear Montgomery, thanks very much indeed. Our next witness is Eleanor.

Penny, who's from the Ecologist website, which says it focuses on environmental, social and economic justice. Eleanor, you want morality brought back into... politics, as I understand it. Do you think those who disagree with you, let's say Margaret Thatcher or reform, who say their politics are based on principle, have an equal claim to moral validity?

When we talk about bringing back morality into politics, what I'm gesturing at there is being frank about the ideological origins of our projects, because we're decades in now to a neoliberal revolution. which has been trying to convince us that the right thing in politics is to completely absent itself from the ideological realm and to just kind of move numbers around on a balance sheet, right? And... Then we get to the question of, okay, what does that look like? And...

That is precisely the question that we should always be asking in these cases. The question I asked, which you're not answering, is do you think people who don't think the same way as you are equally principled? I think they have principles. I would just disagree with those principles. And that's what I mean by we should always be asking, what do you mean by that? You and I might both say that we value freedom, but that will definitely...

in different cases imply different kinds of freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom for who? What kind of duties does that entail from each other, from the state? That kind of thing. Okay, James All? I'm interested in the extent to which you think of those differences about, well...

something as contentious as freedom or as equality or climate or gender or race, whatever they might be. Interested to the extent to which you want to moralise one side over the other. I mean, tell us a little bit about how... You don't think that the right is just intrinsically somehow morally deficient because it disagrees with your principles. It rejects your principles. It rejects your conception of freedom or the way you rank freedom relative to equality.

Well, it depends which bit of the right we might be talking about, because if you were to think about Hayek, Friedman, these kinds of people, they would claim that precisely their moral programme is to prioritise a kind of freedom.

is sort of amoral, right? They're just trying to let human nature take its course and thereby maximize flourishing for everyone. However, I make no apology for... finding the moral programs of people like Donald Trump and respectfully reform as well morally horrifying because... This is the nature of having principles. Well, let's just think about Hayek and Friedman. Think of the context, 1970s, 1980s. The world is split between a vision of human society that is...

radically prioritizes equality, socioeconomic equality of outcome at all costs, over and up above freedom. And in that particular context, neoliberalism, although I probably share your skepticism towards neoliberal economic... policy. In that particular context, freedom versus tyranny made a lot of sense. And many in the West, in a way that I think is perfectly, perfectly plausible, might be wrong, but it was a plausible position to say, these principles, guarding freedom of the individual.

rule of law above this sort of crude enforced coercive equality of outcome that undermines human freedom is a perfectly legitimate moral position. Well, a couple of things there. One is I think that that's a bit of a naive characterisation of the state of play in the mid-century, which is when we're talking about 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, because there were many other ideas lying around, not just the kind of politics.

as instantiated in the USSR and, on the other hand, the kind of hyper-capitalism of the US and its satellite states. There were many other people who were and continue to be balancing the aims of freedom and equality. And for me, they aren't just...

they actually depend on one another. And when Hayek and Friedman are talking about freedom and talking about their prioritisation of that kind of liberty, what they're talking about is freedom for money, freedom for markets. And when you drill down into their policies...

That's what you get. Not the kind of freedom that supports dignity, that supports individual flourishing, that supports happiness, that supports the coherence of communities. We're talking about freedom for markets there. And they weren't shy about saying that.

You said earlier that you find some aspects of the political right morally horrify. Well, let me put it to you. There are parts of the political right that would find parts of the political left equally morally horrify. There are plenty of people on the right who are horrified that

For example, the reckless pursuit to net zero in 2050 will immiserate those parts of society that can afford at least. There are plenty of parts of the political rights who are morally horrified by the left's insistence. of thinking of justice in simply collective terms, as if we can just move around demographic blocks and introduce very, very coercive economic policies that undermine the freedom of individuals.

that all disparities are to be attributable to discrimination and so on and so forth. What would you say to that? I mean, who gets to choose between those two positions? There's a lot there. Let me take the 2050 claim first. If we don't do something, if we don't radically re-engineer our economy and the way in which we live together towards the absence of fossil fuels wholesale from our society.

Millions will die. Billions will die. That's the state of play here. And there are many, many people who have done the proper research, the proper grounded economics to show that 2050... Sorry. pardon me, net zero by 2050 isn't just affordable, it is actually precisely what is needed in order to lift people out of global poverty. Tim Stanley?

Hi. I'm thinking about voting reform in the next general election. I'm sorry to hear that. Would it be an immoral thing of me to do? Yes, I believe so. I think if you look at the... kinds of politics that will look at people for instance desperately fleeing persecution loading themselves and their families into small boats that

making dangerous crossings across the channel. I think those are the people who are the real threat to society. People who, meanwhile... handing out potential tax rebates and tax cuts to the mega wealthy who have done nothing but get away with it for decades, who are the real problem in my eyes.

I would have no problem in calling that an immoral act. And I think we need to not pussyfoot around that in terms of having these real discussions where we treat each other honestly as moral subjects and as political subjects. rather than just kind of treating it as a sort of sensitivity. Yes, I think that would be an immoral act. I don't want to be too party specific, but one might reply people dying at sea because they try and come by boat is immoral.

And a strong immigration policy is about trying to discourage that from happening. Sorry, can you just make sure that I understand you correctly? People drowning is immoral. People getting on boats, being encouraged to get on boats by people smugglers and then making a crossing that leads to them dying. We want to discourage that. And a tough immigration policy is designed to stop that from happening.

All sounds very nice in theory, but unfortunately it's completely unsupported by any evidence. We know that if you want to stop people taking those risky journeys, what you need to do is open up safe... routes to migration, safe routes to refugee status, and that is precisely the opposite of reform policies. But my point is, might you concede that some people genuinely want tough borders because they believe it saves lives?

Yes, I just disagree with that. You disagree with the policy, but it is possible that some people want tough borders because they want to save lives. Oh, you do disagree with that? Yes. I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. The other thing I can say is that we could be discussing Labour Party policy here.

Yes, absolutely. And I disagree with it when it comes from the Labour Party. I think the current Labour Party is a complete outrage and Keir Starmer has done nothing but traduce his reputation. But it's interesting that... Almost all the main parties now are imitating a policy that you describe as immoral.

Yes. Bit of a shame, really, isn't it? This is the kind of situation that we find ourselves in. This is when we get to the messy question of defining what... is a morally bad policy, what's an immoral policy and what's an amoral policy that's just orientated towards greed, towards the harvesting of more wealth for the super wealthy, it's kind of hard to determine which one is which because...

These are necessarily entangled because they reinforce each other. Of course, it's very convenient for people who have skin in the game in terms of keeping billionaires billionaires to try and persuade us that migrants or trans people...

are the real problem. But it's working because reform is ahead in the polls with this immoral policy and Labour's copying it because they want to beat reform at the next election. So the obvious question is, are the electorate immoral? Because they seem to like this stuff. I mean, the electorate contains many people, including people who don't vote, including people who vote against reform, including people who are not particularly aware of what that...

might entail because our education system and our media system and our democracy in general has massive holes in it. I'm sure it won't come as a surprise to anyone around this table. And so I don't think that we can... do anything like painting people with a broad brush. Living in a democracy with all these very immoral people. It must be awful. I think...

What's interesting is that when Labour tries to tack further to the right, it doesn't work. And that is an important lesson to glean from this, that many people just don't feel served because they can look at Keir Starmer trying to... urinate, shall we say, on their leg and tell them it's raining by telling them that it's not their landlord or their boss who's making their life easier. It's someone that they've never met from a country that they've never heard of.

They don't buy that. And I think that's a reason for hope. That is immoral. Urinating on legs, that is immoral. I was going to say, Eleanor, that image will stay with this for some considerable time. Eleanor Penny, thank you very much indeed. Thank you so much. At the BBC, we go further so you see clearer.

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Our next witness is Joanna Williams, who's an author, commentator, think tank member indeed, and staunch libertarian. Is that a moral? as much as, well, maybe more than a political position, and does that necessarily make you right-wing? Well, I would shy away, actually, from the label libertarian. It's not something I've applied to myself, I'm afraid to say, in quite a while now.

But having said that, I think for me the essence of perhaps what might be meant by libertarian is that I trust in people. I value people's autonomy and agency and people's capacity. to make the best decisions for their own lives. And for me, that's a very moral position, it's worth saying. And it's also the fundamental basis of democracy that we trust people to make actions.

their own best interests and to join with other people collectively in making society better. Mona? So, Joanna, you say you believe in people and people's agency. What do you think then the state is for? Well, I think the state can play a very important role in providing things like hospitals, schools. You know, there is clearly a role for the state to play there. You know, I'm very capable of running my own life, but I'm not terribly good at...

open heart surgery. I don't even know who I would phone up in order to get that done. So I think the state has a very important role to play. Sure, the state can provide infrastructure. But do you think that on the basis of what you've just said, should the state... be able to enforce anything.

I think we obviously we have rules and laws in society. You know, speed limits on motorways are a very good idea. I would be foolish to argue against that. And I guess that's where I question the libertarian label. Wearing seatbelts is a very... Very good idea if you're driving a car. And again, I think having laws to... Absolutely. So you wouldn't classify these kind of state-mandated laws as a nanny state. You would say, no, this is for...

the good of the society, the good of all citizens. Yes, absolutely. But that's because those laws have a social consequence. When it comes to things like so-called sin taxes, why should I have to pay more money for a bottle of Coke, for example? that's got sugar in it when I'm quite capable of making that decision for my own life if I choose to spend my money. But the decisions you make have consequences for other people.

Other people have to pay from their taxes if you become ill as a result of having too much sugar. Yes, but that's where I think we do need to fundamentally trust people to act in their own best interests and to make those decisions. Part of taking, part of existing in a society is we do collectively take on a share of risks for other people. I don't complain about people playing rugby. Many people get injured playing rugby. It's not my preference, but I accept that I might...

drink a sugary coke and other people might play rugby and I subsidise their risks, they subsidise my risks. So would you say that you believe that society shares or requires a shared purpose? Yes, I do. But I'm not going to say what that purpose should be. I think it's for people collectively, not for any one individual. So when you say people collectively, who decides what shared purpose is? There's always people who have power and wealth and status who talk about shared purpose.

There has to be somebody who decides whether it's a state or a collective community of people. Yeah, well, the latter, a collective community of people. And for me, that's exactly what democracy represents. And that's why I worry that many people who are arguing in the negative...

of democracy at the moment, actually wish to kill democracy in the interest of saving it. For me, populism and democracy, there's no huge distinction between those two things. I think if people want to make the case for something... something like net zero, the onus is on them to take that argument to the people and actually win people over to their point of view, not just to enforce that policy from on high.

Liberty depends on social order and social order depends on shared norms. Do you not think that libertarianism undermines the very conditions that make liberty possible? No, I don't. I think actually people's decisions to exist in families. And like I say, I guess this is why I would question applying the label libertarian to myself. It's why I don't use that label libertarian because I choose.

to throw my lot in, if you like, with my family, with my community, my city and my country, most importantly of all, my country. So one of the issues that's a very hot topic nowadays is about integration. of certain communities. So where would you be on that politically? If certain communities decide, this is for me...

the best for my family and my community. I don't really want to be part of a wider community. What I'm doing with my family in extended is fine. Would you say that was OK? No, I think integration is vitally important and that's what it means to be British, to belong to...

British society. Again, this is where democracy comes in, you see. And this is why Venetian is absolutely fundamental to democracy. Without a strong sense of Venetian state, you don't have... This is why I voted for Brexit, for example. This is why I think Britain shouldn't be part of the EU, at risk of rehashing that argument, because the nation becomes the meaningful way in which democracy is enacted. Matthew?

Can we just go back to this sugar tax question that you raised? So this week, the government has extended that sugar tax. You disapprove? I do. I think it's actually not. Not only do I disapprove, I would go further than disapproving. I would say I think it's actually deeply immoral because the people who will pay most money, most proportion of their income as a result.

of that tax are people with the lowest disposable cash. People who are poorest in our society with children will be paying out much more money to feed their children as a result of that tax. And to me, you know, not just disapprove. That's immoral. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how many of the poorest people in society are buying lattes day in, day out. But let's move on from that. What would you do? I mean, we know obesity is an enormous problem.

problem we know it causes a whole range of illness diabetes heart disease cancer dementia and we know it correlates very strongly with the rise of the marketing of high processed foods. What's the libertarian manifesto on obesity? Well, I mean, to repeat yet again, I do not define myself as a libertarian. What's your strategy for obesity? Well, I would fundamentally question the...

premise of your argument i'm afraid matthew i mean life expectancy is actually higher uh than it was uh a generation ago no actually that's not true it's flattened out recently and actually it's gone down and it's gone down for the poorest people that you say you care about most so so you're saying

obesity isn't an issue? No, I don't think obesity is the biggest issue we're facing. I didn't say biggest issue, I said is it an issue? I don't think it is a big issue in terms of the health of the nation. In fact, I would put it quite low down the ranking.

the inability of people to get a doctor's appointment, the length of NHS waiting lists, the fact that if you need an appointment with a cardiologist, you can be waiting eight months. I think all of those things are far more important when it comes to our health. You wouldn't want...

an obesity strategy, even though arguably... I think it's none of the government's business what anyone eats. Even though arguably people's autonomy has been infringed by the fact that consumer capitalism encourages them so strongly. to buy food which is which is bad for them and there's a question of where does autonomy exist when you're facing that barrage but you would it appears because you're worried about nhs waiting lists have more redistribution in order to fund

So you're happy for the state to lean in there. Let's take another aspect of your argument, democracy. When you talk about democracy, you mean the people's will? Yes, absolutely. So how do you deal with a couple of... characteristics of the people's will, which is on the one hand, what people want doesn't really add up. So if you ask people, they'd like lower taxes and better public services, for example, they want someone to care for their old relatives, but no more immigrants.

And secondly, when you ask people questions about issues, their view changes when they know more. I still think it's preferable to have people making these decisions than to hand responsibility for our lives over to some technocratic elite who assumes they know better than us. So how are they going to make them through some kind of Athenian, you know, we're all going to gather in the town square?

Sounds great to me, Matthew. I mean, I'm there. I'd be there in the town square. So you think we can run a more... Well, alongside democracy, I'm a very, very strong proponent of free speech. And I think having proper debates in society, actually raising the level of public engagement with issues that are live issues for people to have, let's say, join in with a public discussion.

I think is vitally important way that people can contribute to political discourse. And I like this idea, we're going to raise... public engagement? Who's going to raise public engagement? Well, I think people themselves. People want to be... Well, why aren't they doing it now, then? Well, I think people are when issues are put on the table. And one of the things that I enjoyed most in the run-up to the Brexit referendum was to, you know...

be sitting in a leisure centre, standing at a bus stop and hearing people say, what do you think of Charter 42 then? Or, you know, this subsection of this particular clause. And these debates became live issues and they were live issues. because the decision had been handed over to the people. You take decision-making away from the people, you infantilise the public and you degrade public debate. Joanna Williams, thanks very much indeed.

Our next witness is Paul Mason, political philosopher, formerly of this parish, in fact, economics editor on Newsnight, currently writing a history of communism, describes himself as a radical social democrat. A lefty then, Paul, or would you see your political morality as being on one side of a different kind of alignment? Well, I am left-wing. I think capitalism is a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, and I'd like to make the end less painful than the last time it ended.

Political philosophy, morality for me, is rooted in my experience as a working-class kid, grandson of a miner, son of a lorry driver. I know now, having studied... political philosophy, that the class consciousness that I was taught and imbibed in my reality in which I lived, two up, two down, terraced house, was a form of moral philosophy.

It was effectively a virtue ethic based on the question, what is a good society and what does a good person in that society look like? And I asked that of the left and right. Tim? I think that's so interesting because I think one thing we're trying to excavate here is the death of class and the death of the politics that used to emerge from that identity. But let me put it to you that...

Many working class people are not progressive. They're actually quite conservative. How does that fit with your experience? Is that a tension for you? How do you explain that? I don't dispute that. My experience as a Labour campaigner on the doorstep in my hometown of Leigh, Lancashire, in the 2019 election, was that, yes... Quite a lot of elderly people, older people, people my age, were socially conservative. Some to the point of genocidal ideation, I would say, but not all.

But many people came running out of their council houses with their slippers on saying, thank goodness you're here, because that argument is going on inside working class communities, always has, was going on when I was a kid. For me, the labour movement which I impart has always been...

a line drawn through working-class communities. It has never claimed to hegemonise or indeed make moral judgments about people on the other side of that discussion. Oh, come on. I bet you think you're on the moral side of that argument. You know what, I try to keep... A, first, I try to keep morality as close as possible to the person. I think in politics, we're often... Despite what Eleanor Penning said, we often are simply resource managing. And sometimes your values and your interests...

collide and you have to recognise that. But I recognise when I'm on the doorstep or in a social situation with what you might call socially conservative working class people... As a white man in his 60s, I have a lot in common with them. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that most of my waking hours are spent in ideological conflict with...

amoralist totalitarians on the left. Who tend to be middle class, I would suggest. The unfortunate fact is they tend to be young. Because I think that the problem we are facing, and like you, Matthew, I'm... very worried by this, is that the whole decolonial kind of post-modernist post-structuralist sort of

fallback position of the modern university tells people there is no truth and there is no human essence. And without a human essence, I'm an atheist, I've got no God to fall back on. Without a human essence, I cannot project. project of freedom. And it's also impossible to imagine a better future.

because there's no truth towards which to march. And with the decline of, say, trade unions or the decline of the real Labour Party, it becomes harder for working-class people to... perceive of themselves as working class and organise as working class. No, you use a value-laden term, though, the real Labour Party. I go to the Labour Party conference every year, and I will tell you that the overwhelming demographic, because it's a big...

It's not just a conference. It's a huge shindig of thousands of people in their best clothes. Most of them are working class. The average person, certainly in many cities, who holds together a... Labour Party branch is an African Caribbean or Asian woman, who may be a nurse, a factory worker, a shopkeeper. I would say Labour remains real, but...

the demographics on which it's based have changed. OK, is part of the reason, though, why that working-class identity dissipated is because working-class people work their way out of it? They wanted in the 80s actually to own a home. They wanted to be middle class. Owning a home doesn't make you middle class, to my mind. We can go into what is a worker. But let's accept that... there is a

that there is a divide on both sides of politics, on the right, even the far right, and on the left and the far left, between people who, and E.P. Thompson, the historian, said this in the 70s, amoral authoritarians on one side. And people who believe there is a human essence and therefore a link to the left has roots in liberalism and enlightenment thinking and therefore science, which cannot be severed. James.

Well, I'm struck and kind of almost confused by the way in which you, on the one hand, have got this striking, very moving politics at home, right? Your political philosophy emerges from the concrete, from the particular, from where you grew up. This is, by the way, just how Aristotle starts his politics. We start, we don't want the grand platonic utopian schemes. We've got paired individuals bringing new life into wealth. They need a village. And yet, on the other hand, you're still...

clinging to the politics of left and right and the politics of home is one that transcends that old dispensation that all it's it's nowadays don't you think the central axis through which to understand western politics is between those who believe in home and those who believe

in an abstract universal cosmophilist. No, no, because I am a universalist. And for me, my universalism, that is my belief in the universality of human rights and the need for a rules-based global system and the rule of law in... in a polity, arises from that same Aristotelian imperative that... That is, as MacIntyre says, it is out of the common practice of groups of people that a sustainable morality in an era post-God can arise. MacIntyre says...

The only alternative to that is Nietzscheanism. I will shoot somebody in the face and run away laughing as if it was a student prank. McIntyre identified very, very early on that we either base morality on emotion or we base it on community. Now, I think that spans left and right, but there are equally people on the far left, my side of politics, and the far right who... who simply are

authoritarian amoralists. Well I would suggest that your conviction that there is such a thing as a shared universal morality is much more at home on the right than it is on the left. I mean it seems very implausible to ground a shared universal morality in just some... document that was written in 1948.

Well, yes, and that's one of the problems with the Universal Declaration. But let me take you back to an earlier part of the programme. I was very interested to hear the example of Hayek and Friedman thrown at one of my previous colleagues. She mentioned it, not me. Absolutely, and I think it's fascinating. So I wouldn't sit there making moral judgments about either of those iconic...

figures of neoliberal economics because maybe they didn't realise some of the human misery that they were going to cause. But the difference is, as far as I know, Friedrich Hayek visited General Pinochet in 1977 while unspeakable things were being done to thousands of leftist prisoners, some of whom I got to meet when they moved here. And...

I don't think there's any evidence that Hayek was aware of what was the horrors of the Pinochet regime. The point is he went back three or four years later and explicitly said that it is a slander. And Pinochet regime, you can't blame that on his economic policy. No, no, no, but they were... But Hayek specifically went back and explicitly said that the Pinochet regime cannot be called authoritarian. So he... What are you saying here? You're not saying...

that it's the preserve of far-right regimes. No, no, no, no, because there are evil left regimes, and I'm writing a book about them right now. The PRC is one. But what I'm saying is that... But why feel that grounded? I want to get back to this question. If you're repudiating religion and you're repudiating Nietzschean nihilism, where does this...

sort of magic universal morality come from? Where's it grounded? It has grown in the idea that there is a human essence and that we have freed ourselves. But you just said that part of the human essence is to inflict terrible evils on all of this. On both sides of the...

No, I didn't. No, that's not what I said. I said that human beings are capable of that. When I talk about human essence, I'm not talking about good or evil. I am saying that we have a telos, and that our telos, that our purpose is to free ourselves from material...

moral and ideological enslavement. And we're kind of doing it. It's just taking a long time. Paul Mason, thanks very much indeed. I don't know, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Hayek, McIntyre, Friedman, you're getting full value on the moral maze tonight.

Mona, so there we are. Responsibility versus equality, family versus the state, charity versus welfare, the practical versus the ideological. From what you heard, is it as morally polarised as that? No, and I started off by saying that I don't think we are as morally polarised. I think we can all use, whether it's religion or whether it's a human essence or our sense of telos.

to we can weaponise it. And we can weaponise it for the politics as a political marker rather than a spiritual conviction. And I think a lot of the debates are actually circling around that rather than actual polarisation in politics. Tim, how well did the first witness, Tim Montgomery, make his case, when he actually got round to the sort of politics of it, that responsibility, accountability was morally preferable to, I don't know...

Well, he sounded to me like the man who brought us to this dance, Rutger Bregman, right? But the way you describe what Bregman says in his lecture... And I'm paraphrasing here that there is in Western politics a lack of courage and virtue, that Europe is sinking into irrelevance.

Right-wing people like me and Tim and probably James, who don't mind being called right-wing, we agree with that. That's the sort of thing we say all the time. It's like the Roman Empire. In fact, you said that. It's like the Roman Empire. And one thing the right constantly goes on about is the death of virtue in politics. That's very important to the right. But he is a progressive philosopher or a progressive historian. So isn't it striking that we're all complaining about the same thing?

We are just insisting that our version of politics is the best way to fix that one thing. Now, I happen to agree with Tim Montgomery, partly because another thing which has come out of this is I think that politics is a coming together. And a lot of working class people are coming together on the right. They're not choosing to come together on the left.

And they're doing that in part because of the absence of Christianity for certain institutions have lost their authority. Family has declined and people are looking for something. Mr. I keep going to say Rutger Hauer. Rutger wants us to find that in progressive elite. his projects. He wants us to rebuild the suffragettes and the temperance movement, etc. Well, the right's doing that, and it's called Trump and Farage. He just doesn't happen to like it. Matthew.

This evening's conversation confirms for me that the fundamental choice, the existential choice, if you like, is between a kind of messy humanism. and in irresponsible authoritarianism. That is the fundamental choice we face. And for me, that makes me want to find common cause with anyone on the right who I think shares my messy humanism.

But what worries me is the lack of, with Tim Montgomery, is that he, I didn't disagree with almost anything he said, but he's part of a party that is ahead in the polls. without having any credible policies, or indeed, as he said, in many areas, any policies at all. And...

And I want him to be a bit curious about that and to be a bit worried about the fact that we have a public now that will say, I will vote for somebody who is fundamentally at the moment about anger, oppositionalism, a kind of anti-elite rhetoric. rather than, his word, responsibility, taking responsibility for some of the hard choices we face. Can I just explain that?

why he might say that. The right's perspective is it's as if civilisation were going towards a cliff. And good liberals want us to say let's slow down and talk about how difficult this journey is and all the complexities. And what the right is saying is no, we need to U-turn. And that makes them...

revolutionaries, but it's because we face going over a cliff. James? I'm uneasy about this sort of neat cleavage between left and right, and I was trying to pick at that with Paul Mason towards the end. If you take both of our sort of... guests, both of our guests from the left this evening.

We had Eleanor Penny on one hand and we had Paul Mason on the other. Eleanor had this very grand sort of utopian, very cosmopolitan vision for the world that the problems that really animate her and trouble her be global problems. It's climate change. systemic structural problems and oppressions of marginalised minorities and so on. Whereas Paul on the other hand is starting from home, from the concrete, from the particular. And this seems to me...

they seem to me in many ways and just different, opposite ends of the spectrum. And I think, go back to the point that I made with Sir Josephson and put to Paul towards the end, that I think really it's proximity, it's home, it's what is our own. We love what is our own. We care for what is our own. It doesn't mean we hate other things, but that's where we start. It's not possible for us to love all of humanity as such in the way that we would love.

Our neighbour down the street. There were some things I didn't hear as much about as I thought I was going to tonight. Like the right saying it worked with the grain of human nature. It was mentioned, but it wasn't made much of. And in the right's view, the left is... kind of...

Maybe the left themselves think of themselves sometimes as Rousseau, naturally, and selfish and good. I didn't really hear much of that kind of moral talk. I think that's probably because I think that most of us are agreed that... Despite what Tim is saying, that, you know, the death of virtue and we're hurtling down a cliff, which I don't believe we are.

Those are very good slogans to make you feel that something really terrible is happening. Most people, I don't think, live their lives thinking something terrible is happening around me all the time. Or something really good is happening around me all the time. And I think that for most people, yes, I agree. Their home, their family, their friends matter. Those are the daily things that consume our lives.

But that doesn't mean that we are oblivious to what's happening globally as well. We are living at a time when global things affect us sometimes more than what's happening locally. Is that a morally... Is that morally insensitive or morally incoherent? I don't think that is, actually, because you can do both. You can be sensitive to both things. No, I think one's not saying that it's a zero-sum game. I think what one is saying is that there is, as Augustine said, an ordo amoris.

the subject of a big battle between the US Vice President and Rory Stewart, a theological cage match on X, I think, back in February or March. So it's a question of not so much, you know, you can only love your... If you love your neighbours, you can't love... You can't care about... If you love... happening in glasgow man you can't worry about what's happening in gaza uh it's a question of how you rank

your affections. I'm saying that what's happening in my daily life with family and friends is what consumes me but you're almost saying like if you think theologically and you would agree that the biggest theological arguments about what is the right thing to do come out of compassion. And compassion doesn't have borders. See, I don't... You know, I'm happy for us to disagree about these things, but I don't think what we're talking about is what's going on in society. You know, we live...

In a world now where opposition is much easier than governing, where attacking institutions is much easier than defending, and when telling the truth is much harder than peddling myths, these are the dangers that we confront. And therefore, for me, the moral imperative is a politics which is on the one hand morally curious. So I agree with a lot of what Eleanor Penny said, but I disagree with her, her lack of moral curiosity, her view that she...

alone held the moral high ground. Well, indeed, Tim, she saw politics entirely through a moral prism, her own moral prism, and the principles of others perhaps didn't count very much with her. Her opponents she found morally horrifying. Well, the problem is there are good elite virtue projects, and as I mentioned, some of them temperance or suffragettes, or anti-slavery is probably the best one, actually. But there are also very bad ones, the Bolsheviks.

I mean, the example was brought up of right-wing philosophers visiting South American regimes. I could mention George Bernard Shaw or H.G. Wells. Everyone's played that game at some point. Left as well. Even the messy humanists at some point find themselves attracted to some.

tiny dictator in boots. It's a very strange thing. But I want to add on the point about Universal in particular, I don't see a contradiction between them because I'm a Christian. I have my own local Christian church, but I'm also part of a body of Christ. This is why I believe, I honestly believe, that the only moral choice for this world is either socialism or Christianity. And the problem is in the 20th century, socialism was disproved.

It was debunked. And we're left with religion. And I think what people are groping back towards is religion. And Mona, you raised this question, well, then what is Christianity? Is it being good to the immigrant? Is it being good to the veteran? We're in the process of rediscovering what Christianity actually is before we even get...

to that point because we forgot. But Tim, this is lazy. When you say socialism is debunked, Some of the most successful societies in the world in Scandinavia are, you know, resolutely social democrat. And Mona, myself, almost everyone you meet on the left is a Scandinavian social democrat. an apologist for Bolshevism. So even you as an acute thinker, you've didn't necessarily have to caricature my position. James, where do you stand on the family and the state, sort of paternalism and autonomy?

I think there's a tendency to, as it were, particularly on the left, sometimes on the right, but mainly on the left, to project interpersonal morality up to the politics and the messy difficulties of governing. large, complex society at scale. If you take, just to go back to the religion question here, take the parable of the Good Samaritan that we haven't really touched on this evening. I mean, I take the parable of the Good Samaritan really to be a message about the importance of...

of understanding that morality is underwritten by proximity. I don't take the message of the Good Samaritan that Samaria should open its borders to Judea and become Judea's food bank. And so I think it is, but it's always tempting because we're human beings and so we tend to anthropomorphise government, particularly in the absence of religion, and we want the state to be, we want to be a father. In a fatherless society we're tempted to see.

the state should take on a paternalistic role. I want to challenge Tim on you're saying that people are rediscovering Christianity but a lot of people are hearing about Christianity through right-wing parties. It's become a nationalist project almost. Regrettably, because the left has given up God. That doesn't need to be the case, but the monopoly is permitted by the left. But that doesn't mean the right is picking up it in the right way either. No, not necessarily.

Paul Mason's idea, but I didn't quite understand what he meant by human essence, but he seemed rather vital to that particular worldview. It sounds disgusting. Aristotle has a view that all organic...

Yes, but it's... Have a set of properties, a set of necessary and sufficient properties that... But it has to be grounded in something. Well, it's true. I mean, you're just going to say, look, human beings ought to have 32 teeth. And that's the way you get... I don't think that's what he was talking about.

talking about something that comes naturally to us. Jim, are you more hopeful or less hopeful for the body politic after the discussion? I'm very hopeful. I think to answer that question about human essence, the striking thing is that almost all societies in all history, whether they are Christian or not, have fundamentally believed that human beings are good, and they have tried to form better societies. It's a perfectly human thing to want to be good. Last word, Matthew?

I think until we root this in the concrete challenges we face as a society and challenge ourselves to come up with not just ideology, but solutions. then I think we're kind of rolling around missing the point. And the point is we are a society that doesn't like having to make difficult choices and we're turning on each other as a consequence. That's it for this week. From our panel, James Orr, Mona Siddiqui, Matthew Taylor and Tim Stanley. And from me... Until the same time next week, goodbye.

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