Liar, liar, Reeves’ pants are on fire

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This is the most chaotic run up to a budget in all my years of following budget. The vast majority of academics don't want trouble and they don't really care about Britain's colonial record. So they keep quiet. Trial by jury is a fundamental part, a cornerstone of our democracy.

Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with Alison Pearson. Hello. And me, Liam Halligan. Blimey co-pilot, I've heard about budget statements imploding in the days following... But last Wednesday's effort from Rachel Reeves has caused a near-constitutional crisis. Last October...

The UK's Labour Chancellor raised taxes by a staggering £40 billion, as well as jacking up government borrowing. It was a one-off increase, she said, to fix the foundations of the admittedly shaky public finances she inherited from the Tories. But after her tax rises thwarted growth, Reeves has now raised taxation by another £30 billion, along with even more borrowing too. Consumers are protesting in this, the busiest retail season of the year. The tills are barely ringing.

Businesses are shaking their heads, hiring and investment are down, and Labour's policies are killing enterprise. The headlines, though, have been less about the economy, as important as that is, than the astonishing row between the Treasury No. 10 No. 11 and the Office for Budget Responsibility, the official fiscal watchdog.

And now the chair of the OBR has resigned, with even the Bank of England now saying Labour's policymaking chaos is undermining the UK's fiscal credibility, just as global markets are questioning this country's status as a sh**.

or fire borrower. It's all happening, Copilot, and almost as if this was a good time to bury bad news. Labour's decided it's now going to abolish trial by jury in all but the most serious cases. You've written brilliantly about this in Wednesday's Telegraph. Link in the show notes. But I think it's fair to say, Alison, that Lord Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister David Jammy Dodger-Lammy is off your Christmas card list.

talking of which there are only 21 shopping days left until Christmas. Where's the year gone? Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? Me neither. In the run-up to every Yortide, do you get that sinking feeling, Alison? There's always a pre-Christmas rush. There's always so much to do. Time, I think, to break out the emergency sherry. We're in Advent after all.

Well, at least I've got your present co-pilot. I thought an inflatable boat. So we could go down on New Year's Eve to Folkestone, get in the boat and go across to France. What do you think? Claim. Asylum. Asylum from the madness of the UK. We feel we're being oppressed in our home country. Excuse me. I mean, we're laughing, but anyway, we'll develop this theme further. But the gap between us and Stalinist Russia, by the day you can tick off.

You know, what did Joseph Stalin do next list? It's absolutely horrendous. Just before we go into that, I wanted to say that in our very pleasant, prosperous market town in Essex, last weekend was payday weekend and all the retail.

and the market traders I was talking to, they look forward to that sort of pre-Christmas rush. Rush came their none, Halligan. Even after the budget, Rachel's catastrophic budget, people are really sitting on their hands and several shops... owners said to me, this is the worst.

pre-Christmas they've ever known. So I know that our distinguished guests last week, Roger Bootle and you said you didn't think there was going to be a recession, but the third wing economist is going to go out on a limb and say, I think this is going to be the worst Christmas for retail in my lifetime. Don't set up a false dichotomy between us. I actually said we can check the tape. God, you're so bad. I actually said...

Actually, Roger, we're already in a per capita recession, a GDP per capita recession. Recession, of course, is when you get two successive quarters of what Gordon Brown christened negative growth. That means economic contraption.

And it's certainly a possibility. We're a ways away from it, yet we have seen... a little bit of growth but that makes it even worse in the sense that the fiscal situation is rapidly deteriorating even though we're not yet in recession even though there hasn't been a sort of at the moment a massive global shock even though the oil price and of course we're a big oil importer now

That oil price, when it goes up, feeds directly into our inflation, feeds directly into government borrowing costs, which, of course, costs serious amounts of money. The government spending over 100 billion quid a year servicing its... But even with oil prices low, we're in dire straits. So, you know, what happens when the OPEC exporters cartel, you know, allows oil because it's suppressing the rate at the moment for various reasons, allows oil to go back up to sort of 80%.

or $90 a barrel. That's going to feed directly into our consumer price index. And I'm afraid our friends, the shopkeepers, the market traders in the North Essex market town where we both... live a pretty she-she place it must be said voted the best place in britain to live not so long ago really near cambridge which of course is a place of high productivity high tech within an hour's commuting distance

of london if even there people are reining in their horns you know only buying presents for the kids really going for a kind of stripped down austerity ration book christmas then we can bet our bottom dollar, if we've even got a bottom dollar in our back pocket at the moment, that it will be worse elsewhere in, with respect, less prosperous parts of the country.

I'm absolutely boiling this week. You know, I know. Fuming. Fuming. Beyond fuming. We have got. the most deceitful, low-down, lying government in living memory and possibly in all history. So let's just take one example. Ed Miliband is going around saying to people, aren't we good? We're going to get 150. pounds off your energy bills. I can't swear on the podcast, but listeners can consider now a very large

barrage of swear words. You're not giving us £150 off our energy bills. You are taking more money from productive people. to give an illusion of taking money off our energy bills. Liar, liar, liar. Rachel Reeves, liar, liar, liar. And also, before we go, and I really want to hear you on this, Liam, I just want to say...

If Rachel Reeves was a Tory Chancellor, there would have been a drumbeat every hour of every day since that budget and the revelation that she has misled the public as to the state of the public finances, so she could... Pick more money. out of our pockets to distribute to people on benefits and her favourite client groups. And the fact that she clearly has deceived the public. And there would have been the media if it had been Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson.

Johnson, they wouldn't have stopped. The pursuit wouldn't have stopped of Rachel Reeves until she was basically a heap of dust, right? She would have had to resign and scuttle off and everyone would have said, oh, do you remember the disastrous Reeves?

But apart from the Telegraph and the Mail and GB News and a few other people, Talk Radio and so on, they've just let her go again. And it's complete favouritism. But that's me. That's my rant number one. There are others to follow. But can you... just now tell listeners

what the truth is with this. We've obviously heard that Richard Hughes, the senior guy at the OBRs, had to go fall on his sword. There's been an exchange of letters about who knew what. Liam, what's your perception about what went on?

Okay, the first thing to say is that Richard Hughes, who you mentioned, who was the head of the OBR before he, you know, pretend resigned, obviously he was pushed out the door. You know, he's a broadly centre-left guy, like a lot of public sector economists, but he's a damn good economist. He's a... very analytical man and he has a first-rate intellect and it's not good that the head of the Office of Responsibility has gone.

The world is watching. This is a chancellor who is going to make the Office of Budget Responsibility more powerful. And yet when they came up with stuff she didn't like, it was off to the chopping block for the top man. Now, what we know, Alison... We know that because the OBR has said in letters that were made public and the authority to make those letters public, we understand, according to Telegraph reporting, that authority was given by the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury.

less to make a letter public an information public which embarrasses the chancellor and that information from the OBR is that just when Rachel Reeves was going on television to tell us that the black hole was even bigger than she thought and it was all the tory's fault and it was brexit's fault and it was productivity's fault and it was anyone but me you know there's a brilliant meme going around

God, the Battle of Hastings was bad for business sentiment. I'm now going to have to raise taxes with sort of Rachel Rees looking like Harold or something. That was a brilliant one. Look, she clearly was, at the very least, being economical with the actuality, as the late, great Alan Clark used to say. She was suggesting that the... gap in the public finances was bigger than the OBR was telling her it was in order to justify raising taxes from ordinary people so she could placate.

the economically illiterate people on her back benches who just ideologically want higher taxes. They want a bigger state. For a chance for the Exchequer to do that... When the British gilt market, when the market in our sovereign debt is clearly under pressure, we are clearly paying the highest borrowing costs of any G7 nation by a long way when there's already a dearth of debt.

hitting those markets that has to be absorbed by those markets for a charles lee exchequer and her advisors to be putting out there The idea that the UK economy and public finances are weaker than they actually are, having just been told the opposite by the fiscal watchdog, in order to try and make her life easier politically with her own party, is beyond...

reckless it is beyond reckless now what richard hughes actually officially resigned for was an error where the budget document the obr's commentary on the budget document which contains all the measures

was released, I think it was like 48 minutes before Reeves actually stood up. It should have been released as she stood up. That was obviously a mistake. I don't know. I'm not in the OBR. You're sending out an email to like, you know, 50,000 people around the world right and maybe the timing of the email the software you use to send out Mass emails isn't always straightforward. Maybe some civil servant inadvertently got that wrong. It was clearly an error, a bad error, but nothing that was...

you know, completely catastrophic, not least because most of the budget had been leaked anyway by Reeves' advisors. So I think the fact that the email was sent out early was almost like... Oh, let's do him for that was almost a fig leaf because the reality is he's gone because the OBR, the Treasury and number 10 have been in open warfare.

That is why the head of the Office of Responsibility has gone. And frankly, Reeves is going to be really lucky if any serious economist of Richard Hughes' rank actually takes the job because she's clearly now...

completely out of control and i say that advisedly and having thought about that phrase for a while that is what is happening that is what is happening it is absolutely outrageous that the obr The Treasury and number 11 are briefing against each other, right, at a time when Britain's public debt, our debt markets, our sovereign borrowing costs.

are one of the biggest stories on global capital markets. People are talking about this all over the place. This is really, really bad. And as to your media point, I think I agree with you. I've been knocking around the... British print and broadcast media for nigh on 30 years now. And I said three or four weeks ago in my Telegraph column, this is the most chaotic run up to a budget.

in all my years of following budgets. Roger confirmed that was his view too on last week's podcast. And Roger is one of the doyens of economic commentary in the UK globally. He's a huge figure. And he's been watching and being involved in budgets literally since the late 70s and the early 80s. And he said he completely agreed with that statement. And his kind of date range goes back even further than mine.

And that was before we had the leak, which was unfortunate, but not Reeves' fault, obviously. And then, of course, since the budget, we've had this insanity. This madness. And she's going to be really lucky if anyone serious takes that job now. The OBR do have a really good economist who I've known a long time. I've mentioned him on the podcast before. I've got a lot of respect for him, both analytically.

And as somebody who's politically even-handed, David Miles, he's number two or three at the OBR at the moment. She'll be lucky if he agrees to do it. I haven't spoken to him. At all. I know him, but I haven't spoken to him. But from where I'm sitting, should be lucky if he agrees to do it. Given this madness, he's got a reputation that he needs to protect. And on your broader point about the broadcast media, I do think they would be gunning.

for Reeves if she was quasi-quoting all his trust. I do. I just think that's an objective observation. It's astonishing that she isn't under more pressure given what's actually happening. Yeah, I mean, it hasn't done. any good anyway you know the polls show the majority of British people think they're going to be worse off and you know Liam I think what you've just described brilliantly and obviously when you express shock you don't lightly use words like

chaos and disgraceful and so on. I'm the foil to you, aren't I? Let's not get into that men are from planet normal, women are from planet hysteria. I'm Starsky to your huts. I'm canon to your ball. I don't know. But, yeah, so I think one of the things that this row about...

did she take advantage and lie about how bad the situation was in order to secure her and Starmer's increasingly precarious position, which is an absolutely despicable thing to do. But one of the things it's obscured, Liam, Obviously, we had a great budget show with you and Roger, but I think what's emerging since then now, not least in the Planet Normal inbox with particularly younger listeners outlining the...

perilous state of their finances. And I have to say, Liam, listeners will hear that in a minute, but some of it's so shocking, you know. very entrepreneurial young people working hard, trying to pay off student debt, trying to pay absolutely soaring rents while settling Rachel's taxes. There is no incentive now for these people, these bright, capable young people to stay in our country.

But something that's been emerging, I think, is now seeing the full effect of transferring more money to what I described as the shirking classes away from the working classes. So one stat here for you. After the budget, someone working on £37,000 a year will be paying £1,400 more in tax. And someone on benefits with six-plus children will get up to £14,000 a year more.

in benefits a couple working full-time and you know all the hours god sends to try and keep their children out of poverty which is what this measure was supposed to bring 500 000 children out of poverty what about the hardship being inflicted on the families I know where both parents are working round the clock and they would have to earn, a couple now, would have to earn £71,000 a year if they had two or three children.

to be better off the people next door who aren't setting the alarm clock to get up. So that's the other story. That's two adults, each of them earning more than the average full-time wage. Yeah. Right? The average full-time wage is about 34 grand, something like that. But are you ready for the next rant now, rant two? Go on then. I'll strap myself in. Right, I'll give you a countdown. Five, four.

Three, two, one. Right, eroding our rights one by one, right? Talking about Rachel Reeves doing what she pleases and lying. These things did not... appear in the Labour manifesto. They have no mandate to raise our taxes to give that money to people on benefits. They've got no mandate to destroy family farms with inheritance tax. They've got no mandate to raise abortion limit up to live birth.

earth they've got no mandate for the online safety bill and new powers to persecute honest citizens no mandate for compulsory digital id also to spy on us and certainly no mandate to restrict jury trial with a chilling effect on our freedom and the cornerstone of our democracy. They are out of control, Liam. I try to avoid conspiracy theories as much as I can, but I think we are looking now.

at a pretty hardcore, unapologetic socialist government forcing through policies which would not be out of place in some far-left regimes. And I don't say that lightly either. I do think we're at the point where... a lot of Labour MPs and maybe even some ministers, whereas very few people thought this.

before and then immediately after the July 2024 election. We both said it. We both said this would be a one-term government. Yes. You had the likes of Andrew Marr, you know, political sage, talking about two or even three terms. The grown-ups are back in charge. Sorry, Andrew. true but you got that really really wrong and that's probably because you were happy your friends were coming into government and not people who aren't your friends

It is going to be a one-term government. It may not even be a one-term government in that the parliament may be cut short in the midst of some ghastly fiscal meltdown. And I don't say that lightly. And if anybody is raising their eyebrows at me saying that. Google around a little bit and you'll see that lots and lots of extremely highly qualified, respectable people have said the same thing to me in various interviews.

And because I think it's going to be a one-term government or even less than a one-term government with the parliament being cut short, I do think there are now backbenchers and ministers who are just thinking, let's just go for it. Let's just do all the left-wing things we can. You've got... otherwise very clever

Labour leadership candidates waiting in the wings like Andy Burnham saying, oh, you know, basically sod the bond markets. What do we need to pay back our debt for? He says he isn't saying that, but he did say we've got to get beyond this thing where we're in hot to the bond markets.

at a time when there was speculation about his leadership, because he too, like Starmer and Reeves, has his eye on those Labour backbenchers and then the slew of Labour activists out there in the country, you know, quite a few of whom are decent people, many of whom are my friends. I'm afraid a lot of them, they don't just not understand economics. They are absolutely determined to deny all economic reality in order so they can then implement things that make them feel more virtuous.

than everything else you can't do that in life if you do that in life you're going to end up with a big fiscal meltdown you're going to end up with a spike in inflation and guess what a plunging currency and what happens then the poor suffer most there is a sense of that now

in the aftermath of this budget. What's been shown here isn't just the kind of full horror of Reeves did the most punitive tax-raising budget in over 30 years in October 2024, saying, I won't be coming back for more. She literally said...

that many times on television that's it this is a once in a parliament budget i needed to fix the foundations yes she did inherit a bad set of national accounts from the tories as i acknowledged in the top of this program and as i always acknowledge whenever i talk about this stuff

publicly but she's done the same again because her big tax increases last time stymied growth which undermined the public finances even more less tax if the economy is on its knees more benefits if the economy is on its knees

Public finances get worse. So then you have to do even more to consolidate them. But all Labour wants to do to consolidate the public finances because they will not countenance. I'm not talking about spending cuts. I'm talking about spending controls. Just slowdowns in the rate of...

increase of runaway public spending they will not countenance them that was clear over the summer when labor tries to do some very very modest welfare reform saving a few billion quid or slowing down the rate of increase of welfare spending by a few billion quid Backbenchers said no. Those backbenchers, those activists, they decide who is party leader. It's a clunky process, but they can oust the leader. They can oust Starmer. They can oust Reeves. They can anoint Rainer. They can anoint Byrne.

They can anoint Lucy Powell, the new more lefty. deputy leader compared to Phillips, the education secretary, who was the slightly less lefty deputy leader that Downing Street wanted. The Labour Party is in absolute turmoil at the very top. of their party which means it's also at the very top of this government which runs our country and the world is watching the danger now is that reeves goes and we end up with someone a whole lot worse

And meanwhile, while all that recklessness, childish student Marxist politics is going on, we are seeing the country being put on a very, very dangerous authoritarian route. As you said, I written this week about David Lammy saying we've got a backlog of 80,000 cases in the criminal justice system. So guess what? Let's make it all better by restricting jury trials to certain number of serious offences. And he referred to jury trials, Liam, which have basically been a right established by...

Magna Carta, Runnymede. He described them as a tradition. Trial by jury is not a tradition like buying a Christmas tree or having an Easter egg. Trial by jury is a fundamental part. a cornerstone of our democracy and of the presumption of innocence, which I would say is an ornament of our country. And it's absolutely vital.

to have a jury of mixed men and women, 12 men and women, good and true, to decide if your guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt. The idea that you're going to have some solitary judge sitting in judgment. on a person is pretty chilling. It's inimical to our traditions. I was very involved with Lucy Connolly. I've been involved more recently with Jamie Michael. Listeners will be able to look up on a Spike documentary I was involved in on freedom of speech, which

It features me and Jamie Michael. He's a former Royal Marine in South Wales who was dragged in after posting a perfectly decent Facebook video after the Southport Massacre of Little Girls. for peaceful protest and for people to come and discuss things with MPs and so on. Treated absolutely disgracefully, Liam banged up in a cell for 17 days, denied bail as Lucy Connolly was, although you'll like this, Liam.

pretty tough egg having done two tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. So he said the cell he was being kept in was pretty comfortable compared to what he'd been used to as a soldier. But the jury at Mercer Tidville Crown Court in February this year... They acquitted Jamie Michael in 17 minutes. That's one seven minutes, which I think showed a good Welsh two fingers up. at an overpowering authoritarian state and Jamie himself has said to me, thank God for the jury.

because he had normal men and women who thought, what the hell are these people playing at? This guy has done nothing wrong. So that's what we risk losing. And I'm going to suggest that David Lammy's so-called swift courts, we don't want... speedy justice we want justice don't we and this is what you're putting at risk and i'm going to say now that i think this is part of a wider plan to enforce what we've seen in the police and in the judiciary and

two-tier justice system, a way of enforcing far-left progressive views on a country essentially where the majority are small-c conservative. And I sincerely hope... that the House of Lords will block this, that there will be people protesting. I believe even the king, if it came to it, could deny royal assent for moving away. from trial by jury. And I would be all for that. It's a drastic measure, but I don't think this socialist cabal led by human rights lawyers like Starmer and Lord Hermer.

I think they cannot be allowed to destroy this cornerstone of our country. I must say, I was pretty shocked when I saw David Lammy, who has got a law degree from Harvard University, no less, referring to Magna Carta.

as a tradition i mean that is just insane and what should happen rather than trial by jury being abolished for financial and logistic reasons and yes there is a disgraceful backlog and yes i'm glad that the deputy prime minister slash lord chancellor is highlighting that if someone is involved in a sexual assault now, they may not get their case heard for two or three years, which is obviously outrageous.

People can abscond, memories fade, victims just lose the will to live and drop the charges and so on. All of that is outrageous, but you don't abolish the principle or hugely restrict the principle.

to trial by jury, you roll up your sleeves and you fix the problem. You know, you set up what we might call Nightingale Courts. You find some money, you make cuts elsewhere, because what are we for if we're not for justice? What does this country... represent if it doesn't represent trial by jury innocent until proved guilty and a legal system which we still tell ourselves

is widely admired as the best in the world. Well, a lot of the principles of our jurisprudence, a lot of our case law, a lot of the principles we first established were both the best in the world and pioneering. in the world. All of that's true. But that's because of our forefathers. That's because of what other people did. And we just happen to be the same nationality as them and live on the same, you know, small rock in the middle of the North Sea. It's up to us.

our generation to not only preserve those massive achievements of civilization, which have been hewn from anarchy. and have been mimicked around the world and admired around the world, it's not just for us to preserve them, it's for us to build on them, enhance them, strengthen them. And for a few billion quid a year... We're going to abolish trial by jury? That's mad.

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Now on to our Planet Normal guest. Nigel Bigger is a Scottish-born British theologian and ethicist who was Regis Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford until his retirement in 2022. He's the author of many books, including Colonialism and Moral Reckoning, and his work focuses on Christian ethics, particularly regarding empire, war, rights and public life.

In 2021, Nigel Bigger became CBE for his services to higher education, and in January 2025, he became a conservative peer in the House of Lords. Nigel Bigger's latest book is called Reparations, Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt. Britain of course played a central role in the transatlantic slave trade from the late 16th to the early 19th centuries, transporting millions of Africans to the US and the Caribbean.

But Britain was then the first major power to abolish slavery in 1833, having deployed 250,000 Royal Navy sailors to suppress the transatlantic slave trade. Over recent years, Caribbean nations, through the CARICOM Reparations Commission, have demanded huge amounts of cash, estimating the UK's liability at over £18 trillion. That's based on assessments of economic harms like lost wages, health impacts and ongoing inequalities. 18 trillion. That's more than six times the UK's entire annual GDP.

Nigel Bigger has, from a Christian perspective, in his latest book and elsewhere, pushed back on these claims. Nigel Bigger, great to have you on Planet Normal. You've written this book, Reparations, it's just out. Why did you write it now?

So, Liam, thanks for having me on, because I anticipated that the general guilt that we had been made to feel about Britain's colonial past was going to find a practical focus in... particularly in Caribbean states, actually giving us a bill for, as it happens, 18 trillion pounds as reparations for the evils of slavery we inflicted on.

Africans in the West Indies. So I anticipated that what had been quite a kind of academic discussion about Britain's colonial history was actually going to become serious in the sense that it was going to make practical demands on Britain and on taxpayers. Now, the UK, of course, did play a central role in the transatlantic slave trade from the 16th to the 19th century, though we were at the forefront of abolishing slavery, of course, in the early and mid-19th century.

You dedicate your book, Nigel Bigger, to the sailors of the Royal Navy of all skin colours who gave their lives in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade. I mean, the UK, clearly it was a big colonial power. You know, I'm a Brit of Irish origin. I know all about that. But why do you think we're particularly in the firing line? Or are we particularly in the firing line when it comes to reparations?

That's a really central question because, yes, you're quite right, along with other European nations like Spain and Portugal, We were heavily involved in slave trading and slavery for about 150 years, from 1650 to the early 1800s. But look, the truth is that slavery and slave trading were practiced by people of every skin color on every continent.

British involvement needs to be put into a larger context. And then, yes, another context it needs to be put into is the fact that the British were among the first peoples in the history of the world to abolish slave trading and slavery itself. in the early 1800s. And then the second half of the British Empire's life was devoted to suppressing slavery from Brazil across Africa, India to New Zealand. That's another part of the context that's usually missing in discussion.

reparations, and indeed were running vast slave plantations in northern Nigeria, employing as many slaves as in the whole of the US in 1850, 20 years after the British abolished slavery, you might well ask... why is the finger being pointed at the British? And the only plausible answer I can come up with, Liam, is that it is politically opportunistic. That's to say...

Caribbean nations, and now the African Union cheekily. Cheekily, I say, because lots of African peoples were involved in slave raiding and slave trading. Even the African Union now, noticing that our elites... are prone to feel guilty about a colonial past, reckon that they can get money off us. How much of this has stemmed from the tragic death of George Floyd? Oh, yeah.

How significant is that in this story? You're putting your finger on a pivotal moment. This was May 2020, of course, just into lockdown and Minneapolis police... There's no two ways about it. Somebody died under their care, which is obviously something that absolutely should not have happened. It was absolutely awful. On the other hand, the death of George Floyd seems to have been hijacked by activists.

to make political points about society in general. The Black Lives Matter movement experienced an upsurge on the back of George Floyd's death. And in the US, the story BLM tells is that... The US is systemically racist. It was fundamentally racist and that racism was built into the whole country. So the campaign for justice for African-Americans is radical and there's no end to it, really.

But then BLM crossed the Atlantic and landed on these shores in Britain. And the British version of the BLM story is that, yes, we in Britain are systematically racist, and we're systematically racist because of our colonial past. And because our colonial past can be summarized in one word, slavery and the racism that was behind it. So there's no doubt in my mind that the upsurge of BLM and it's crossing the Atlantic.

gave issues of racism and of reparations for slavery a salience they never had before. Just one point on the claim that Britain is systemically racist, and I think the social scientific evidence is against that, quite apart from the fact that... We now have a black first-generation Nigerian leader of the Conservative Party. We had an Indian prime minister in Rishi Sunak recently. World Value Survey 2023 reckons that Britain...

is amongst the least racist countries on earth, in stark contrast to China, Russia, and Iran. And in fact, Australia and Canada, also parts of the former British Empire, are also among the least racist. And far less so than many West European countries we can name. And indeed, you put those sociological and encephalological facts prominently in your book, and in my view, rightly so. Look, you're an Oxford...

Professor, you're a serious academic. Even people that don't admire your politics would have to acknowledge that you're a world-class scholar. And yet we've got CARICOM, the sort of reparations commission of the Caribbean nations. saying that the UK owes £18 trillion. That's more than six times our annual GDP. That sounds to me like a completely made-up number. In your book, you look very closely at...

the work of the likes of Hilary Beckles, who's a Caribbean academic who chairs the CARICOM Reparations Committee. You devote chapter 10 of your book to the so-called Brattle Report, which is another... international effort to give some kind of academic and scientific heft to these reparations claims. How does this work stack up when you actually look at the evidence as an economic historian?

Both of those chapters you mentioned, one on Hillary Beckles, one on the Battle of the Port, I refer to them both as naked emperors because Hillary Beckles, he's a knight of the realm. He's got the title Sir in front of his name. He's been showered with prizes and awards. The Brethel Report was chaired by Patrick Robinson, who was a senior international judge. So both Beckles and the Brethel Report...

appear to be led by authoritative people. But if you examine what they say, it is really, really poor. I mean, Beckles, I've analysed his book, Britain's Black Debt, leans heavily on... Marxist economic historians such as Eric Williams. He effectively ignores the fact that most economic historians reckon that the contribution of slave trading and slavery to Britain's economic prosperity was...

between small and modest. And I noticed that Joel Mocker, who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize this year for his work on the prerequisites for sustained... growth through technological progress. He's written that in the absence of West Indian slavery, Britain would have had to drink bitter tea, but it would still have had an industrial revolution if perhaps at a marginally slower pace.

I mean, Beckles follows Eric Williams in 1940, who said that slavery made an enormous contribution to Britain's industrial wealth. Most economic historians think that's not true, and people like Mocker think. Actually, it made a pretty trivial contribution. Possibly in contrast to the US. Obviously, the UK's Industrial Revolution was all about iron and steel. It was all about steam. It was all about mechanisation.

You had the sugar barons, so-called, in the Caribbean. So that's your reference to tea. Of course, the British involvement in that sugar trade was huge. But what they're saying... is that Britain would have been a wealthy country anyway. It would have led the world and become an industrial powerhouse anyway. It wasn't as dependent on slavery, particularly in agriculture, as other.

colonial powers. If slavery had been a major necessary motor of Industrial Revolution, then Spain and Portugal would have been way ahead of Britain. But they weren't, because the motors of the Industrial Revolution in Britain were independent of slavery.

Now, you're Regis Professor of Moral Theology at Oxford, which is, you know, quite an accolade, if I may say so. You're also an ordained priest in the Church of England. And yet the Church of England seems to, at least softly... support the case for reparations. How's that gone down? And by the way, what do your Oxford colleagues think of reparations?

Your new book. Well, first of all, on the Church of England. Well, the Church of England, its commissioners have said they're going to devote £100 million of the Church's assets. to making, as it were, tokens of reparation for the churches involved in slavery. I mean, the evidence is the church's assets had almost nothing to do with slavery at all. But the church handed over this issue.

to a bunch of activists, all of whom thought the same thing, all of whom assumed that reparations were owed. So I think the church has behaved like so many of our elite institutions who just assume guilt. over racism and colonialism, and they've handed the whole thing over to a group of activists. Some of us are trying to get the church to roll back, but as you know, once bureaucracies have made commitments, it's very embarrassing to roll back.

that's right i'm sorry i think it just made a huge huge mistake here

As for what the colleagues think of reparations, I don't know, to be honest. My colleagues are not terribly communicative about these things. I've certainly had some very positive reviews in the press. You have, but when you wrote... colonialism in 2023 oh yeah you got quite a lot of pushback from your so-called colleagues in academia didn't you yeah well even before that when i had left my moderate views on britain's colonial record

be known. And to be clear, I think the British Empire presided over bad things as well as good. It's just that the good things are being completely obscured. When I let that be known, I was dragged into the culture wars when a Cambridge academic called Priyambara Gopal. tweeted her followers in Oxford in December 2017. OMG, oh my God, this is serious. It's S-H-I-T. We need to shut this down. She was referring to a project I was running on Ethics and Empire.

But then I endured a week's worth of three online mass protests, the last of which was directed at my university here in Oxford to persuade them to try and take the project out of my hands. Yes, I discovered then that there are quite a number of largely younger historians and post-colonial scholars.

who are ideologically committed to the position. The West is to blame for the woes of the world, and in particular, the West's imperial colonizing record. What I've noticed is that there's a much larger number of... professional historians and academics who know that the highly unbalanced view being put about by an ideological minority is unbalanced, untrue. But the guys who know better say nothing. Yeah.

which gives the impression that the ideologues are in the majority of the knot. I know these are deep waters for you, Nigel, but... Why is it that our universities, which used to be at least presented as crucibles of free speech, why have they become so intolerant? People may be ideologically opposed to you, Nigel, but that's no excuse to completely shut you down and threaten your livelihood and deny...

your scholarship, which is obviously, you know, I've said it once or twice, it's considerable, it's world-class, what you've done in academia, whatever your views. How did it come to this? University wasn't like this when I was... knocking around in universities in the 80s and 90s and even into the 2000s. What has happened? No, that's a great question, Liam. I think what has been happening is the following. There have been...

pockets of highly ideological, highly politicized parts of the humanities. Largely literature, actually, but then history. So you've got a very ideological minority, and they will not tolerate views that they don't agree with, so they will try and shut people like me down. But they're very aggressive, and the vast majority of academics don't want trouble.

and they don't really care about Britain's colonial record. So they keep quiet. And besides, if they do have doubts, they look around and they say no one else is protesting. So they imagine they're alone, but they're not. They're actually the majority. But most of all, institutional managers in universities, many of them do not support dissidents. They're scared of being accused of being racist by the ideologues. And so oftentimes people like me...

find themselves completely isolated and abandoned. In my own case, I have to say Oxford University was better than that. Good. That's good to hear. The university did not give way. I kept my research project. And the top of the university, then Louise Richardson, communicated to me that she had my back, although I do observe this was communicated to me by a messenger who insisted we meet in a deserted cafe behind the screen when no one could see us.

So the point of that, Liam, is don't underestimate the degree of fear in universities. There is a lack of courage and a lot of fear. And Nigel, do you think you can carry on doing what you're doing? Do you think, do you fear? You know, you've obviously got a national profile. You've got a seat in the House of Lords. You are a don that is probably now too big to be cancelled. But there must, you know, well, I know there are from my own life. There are many, many people without your particular...

expertise and national profile, if you like, who are really scared. They're cowering. Surely there needs to be some kind of reckoning at the university. Surely the state. Well, it's not going to happen under this government. These institutions get a huge amount of government money. And a lot of the public won't like the fact that the 14-year-olds seem to be in charge. No, absolutely. So the good news, Liam, is we do have a...

a pretty vociferous writer-centered press in this country, some of which make a lot of noise on these issues. So these issues do get a public airing here, which they don't get in, for example, Canada. Yeah. That's good news. The other good news is the foundation of the Free Speech Union five and a half years ago, of which I'm chairman, that now has 40,000 subscribing members. It's got enough resources to take the UK government to court.

And that's now busy, embarrassing universities who fail to uphold free speech. And then we have the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act 2023, which although the incoming Labour government last year... threatened to repeal. It's not being repealed. Most of it will come into operation. And that is now going to force universities to take upholding free speech much more seriously under threat of a fine.

from the Office for Students. So I'm not pessimistic about this, and I'm certainly going to carry on because this is a really, really important matter. I want... Britain to return to where you and I thought it always was, namely to be a liberal place where we get to express our views, however wrongheaded, and we get to engage in the give and take of reasons, and we get to sort out which...

points of view are actually more reasonable than others that's where we want to get back to we want to stop people being frightened of saying what they really think and i think we can do that but it's going to take time finally i'm not a historian but i'm a keen student of history

And it strikes me that even though I think universities have taken a big turn for the worse away from free speech in recent years, notwithstanding your comments, that improvements are... on the way, comments I take seriously and find reassuring, by the way. But I do think there's a big historic picture there. We've had this kind of English disease for years, haven't we? I mean, it's in Orwell. Orwell says...

England's perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. It's a hackneyed quotation, but it's so true. In left-wing circles... says Orwell, it's always felt that there's something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution from horse racing to suet puddings. Orwell...

Orwell himself was, of course, a proud man of the left. But, you know, that doesn't mean that he can't be, I'm sure you'd agree, a brilliant writer and a brilliant observer of humanity, which of course he was. Funny how... So often people on the right are more than willing to acknowledge the genius of some people on the left, but never vice versa, right? Yes. Orwell put his finger on something really important there.

This has been around for a long time, hasn't it? This kind of hatred, particularly of England by the English. It's not so much a Celtic thing in the British. It's a particular English. So should we see all this wokery in the grand scheme of the ebb and flow of the tendency that Orwell mentioned there back in interwar Britain? Or do you think...

When future historians look back, this will be seen to be a period in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's death and the kind of critical race theory and so on. Will this be a particularly notorious era? of kind of cultural cowardice. Yes, who knows how this is going to look in the future. But I, in recent years, Lima, I have taken to declaring myself to be a British patriot precisely because for the whole of my life...

and I'm 70 now. For the whole of my life, I've been aware that in my university-educated circles, middle-class circles in Britain, to admit to being a patriot is to invite a sucking of teeth, as if you just said that you're a fascist. And it seems to me to be deeply unhealthy. I mean, there's lots wrong with our country, but those of us who are citizens of this country have inherited some really important institutions, some really important traditions.

And we need to have a balanced appreciation of our past. We need to appreciate what the good we've inherited, because if we don't take care of it, we're going to lose it. And one thing we're on the verge of losing is a properly liberal culture where prevailing ideas get to be tested and questioned. And that's really important for our political health. And so I think more of us need to get over our faux diffidence about Britain and acquire a due gratitude and a due appreciation.

and start standing up for the country. But you won't find many people in universities doing that. Although I'm not a Reform Party supporter, I'm a Conservative, so by conviction, I do see the flood of popular support for Reform. as partly a reaction by small C conservatives who are patriots, both on the left and on the right, who are fed up with having our country treated lightly, even by the people who rule it. So I take some hope from that.

There is a popular reaction. And one reason I support Kimi Badenoch as leader of the Tory party is, as a first-generation Nigerian immigrant, black immigrant, Kimi has an appreciation for Britain that too many white folk... particularly middle-class, university-educated white folk, have lost. I'm self-consciously repudiating this really poisonous self-hatred that Orwell identified way back during the Second World War. It's really unhealthy.

Nigel Bigger, the Reverend Canon and Right Honourable, the Lord Bigger CBE. Thanks a lot for appearing on Planet Normal. Thanks, Liam, for giving my whole title. And my whole titles. the co-pilot

And now on to our listener emails, the messages you send us at planetnormal at telegraph.co.uk. Please keep them coming. We learn so much from you, the citizens of Planet Normal. I've got some pretty amazing heartfelt emails this week, and this is from Claire.

I'm writing this on Thursday evening, listening to your latest episode. Brilliant as ever. Thank you for being a voice of sanity. I didn't think my blood could boil any hotter after reeling from this week's absolute joke of a budget by the clueless clown outfit currently running our country.

says Claire. I thought my heart couldn't sink any lower and then I received a phone call from my younger son. To give you the context, a few years ago my son was inspired at a careers convention by a Royal Marine. He set his heart on the core. Let me tell you, the sweat, guts and tears that boys spilled over the next couple of years were incredible.

The hurdle those lads have to overcome to earn the coveted green berry are monumental. It is no wonder so few make it. When he passed, his father and I simply could not have been prouder. We are a family who's always done things the right way. We've raised four children. We've grafted. my lives. My husband served in the police for years.

Don't even get me started on why he finally felt he had to leave. Let's just say the woke rot set in deep in the police. We paid our taxes, says Claire. We bought our home. We paid into pensions. We taught our kids that laziness doesn't pay. and the effort is rewarded. God, were we wrong?

I could get on my soapbox about the state of this country until I'm blue in the face. I could scream about the boat people or the wokeness destroying the NHS. My nurse friend tells me horror stories of a cash-strapped service spending money on DEI picnic. while money is cut on essential services. My sister, a super teacher in a pupil referral unit, sees jobless pot-smoking parents raking in thousands of months in benefits because their children are conveniently labeled.

with every disorder under the sun. But here is the reality that broke me tonight. My son, a qualified Royal Marine Commando, a young man who signed a blank check to his king and country up to and including his life. is currently living in substandard accommodation. Last winter, he and his team had no heating. They slept in full winter uniform for many nights. He sent us videos where you could see their breath as they lay in bed.

The food is substandard. He's paid so poorly that we, his parents, have to step in to help him buy his own food and kit to do his job because the issued kit isn't good enough. He is treated like a second-class citizen. My son has been messed around, lied to and let down. This once highly enthusiastic, dedicated, patriotic young man has been reduced to a disappointed, disillusioned, depressed shell.

On the phone last night, he told me he's ready to jack it all in. He asked mum, should I just do what everyone else seems to be doing? get his girlfriend pregnant, pop out a few kids, declare himself too anxious to work and live off the state. Because right now, looking at this broken country... He'd be better off doing that than being holed up in a barracks, waiting to risk his life for a government that treats him with utter contempt. What exactly do I tell him?

that it's going to be all right, when honestly, I'm not sure it is. I could cry, but I don't think I'd be able to stop. Yours in despair, Claire. God, we have some amazing listeners to Planet Normal, such brilliant writers, such thoughtful, decent people. You guys make this podcast. Please keep writing to us. This is Peter, not his real name.

Co-pilots, I'm a long-time listener indeed. I've listened from the very start. I've just been listening to the two of you and Roger and, of course, have spent the last 48 hours reflecting on the budget. I'm 39. I started work in 2008. I've built a career, now earning a low six-figure salary. I'm married with a seven-month-old, and I do just not think the political class, particularly Labour, have a clue about my life.

They don't understand the journey many people of my age have been on. No real increase in earnings. A 30K student loan. I've paid roughly £160,000 in rent since moving to London, all of which is post-tax earnings, of course. You do the maths. And this doesn't take into account saving for a house deposit to pay for a house, which now has a vast mortgage. I probably won't be able to pay off. All thanks, by the way.

to decades of poor policy planning across a range of areas, not to mention a Bank of England addictive to quantitative easing. My wife and I now think, what's the point? I pay half my earnings in tax. Any additional pay rise has to be deferred to my pension, otherwise I get quotes mullered on childcare.

The Chancellor's decided that those contributions need to be taxed too. I cannot begin to fathom that decision, says Peter, not his real name. And my taxes have to go to support people who don't work. But realistically, if they have three to four children, have a better quality of life than I do. It's reaching the point where the exodus of people my age leaving will turn into a torrent. If it wasn't for our baby, we'd have left.

What's the point in working? My taxes support benefits and services I myself will never use. And as for a state pension, most people my age don't believe they'll get one. It's hopeless. And now I quietly pray for a political revolution, perhaps not for me. I think my generation is sadly lost, but for my daughter. Email aside. Thank you, Liam and Alison, for all you've done since COVID. You got me through that for sure.

You made me realize I wasn't the only one. It's desperate out there. Those people are so important to a strong economy, are being squeezed to a point of sadness and anger. Keep going, Alice and Liam. Thank you for all you've done. Wishing you a happy Christmas. Peter. not his real name goodness and in a similar vein this is from alex

I'm in my 20s and have worked my backside off both at school and in the working world. I came from a disadvantaged upbringing in the early years, but I managed to get my head down and go to university. I graduated my undergrad and then self-funded my master's degree living costs.

not a traveling year or a gap yard to find myself just some solid grafting i've been working for about five years now gap yard i've been working for about five years now says alex plenty of late nights and unpaid overtime I'm now in the 40% tax ban for my slaving away. However, to get here, I've had to move down from my small Lincolnshire town to the south where all the jobs are. I'm paying £1,400 a month's rent for a one-bedroom flat outside of London. This was one of the cheapest in the area.

I pay my 40% tax, but also 15% on top for 9% undergrad loan, 6% postgrad loan, and then I contribute 5% towards a pension because that's the correct thing to do, right? But that'll be taxed too, of course. That's a 60% take-home pay loss over £50,000 and still 35% below £50,000.

I'm working in a very specialist field, says Alex, and I'm seriously considering moving abroad where I could double my wage and half my housing costs. I have little to no hope of affording a house here, even on my wage, let alone of starting a family. However, back home in Lincolnshire, I know of several people who have never worked a day in their lives. They've got five kids and they take home more than I do, all paid for by taxes from people like me.

It's the unfairness that's really the killer for me, says Alex. It feels like everything is against me for working hard and doing what I'm supposed to do. And it's really feeling like a dead end at the moment. And there's little hope for the future for younger people like me without rich parents to help out with housing deposits, etc. Anyway, I feel better for this ramble to you two at least.

But I hope it gives you some further insight into where young people are. All the best, Alex. Alex, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry, right? And Peter. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry our country's in this dreadful mess and it's my generation. which has not been on it sufficiently. And I really hope that in the next few years, we are going to see that revolution Peter talked about, which is going to give back more to the productive people like you two guys. And on that bombshell.

That's it from Planet Normal as we leave our sanctuary of sweet reason, our flying refuge of reasoned views. Email of the week. It's you, Alison. Right, I'm going to be completely controversial. And in the almost Christmas spirit, we're obviously going to give one to Claire for her remarkable moving email about the plight of her wonderful son in the Royal Marines. And we are going to... also give a much sought after planet normal mug to both alex

and Peter, not his real name, because they're getting precious little Liam out of the rest of the country. So the least we can damn well do is give them a cherished Planet Normal mug with love from us for being... patriotic, productive citizens, because some of us really do appreciate that. Your government might not appreciate that, but Liam and I really do.

And Alison, our Planet Normal mug-packing elves will have to go into full production mode to get that slew of Planet Normal mugs, a fleet, a flotilla of them going out there into the real world. Back to Planet... Let's hope they don't get broken on re-entry into planet Earth. So send us an email. Those three.

proud mug winners with mug winner and subject heading and your postal address. Send that to planetnormalatelleroff.co.uk and you will get that much coveted Planet Normal mug. A quick piece of housekeeping on Sunday. Alison and I will be manning the phones at the Telegraph. That is Sunday, the 7th of December, because we are taking part in the Telegraph Christmas Appeal. You can see details of that.

on our website and in the newspaper so if you want to talk to Alison and I directly then you can do so by ringing up our Christmas appeal line and pledging some money to our fantastic charities That's in the morning and early afternoon of Sunday, the 7th of December. A lovely tradition that Alison and I...

like to take part in. So thanks finally to our producers, Cass Ho, James Hodgson, Louisa Wells. Stay safe and in touch with us and with each other until next week. It's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from him. This holiday season, millions of families will pack their bags, load up the car and head off for a family vacation. But not every trip is going to be somewhere fun.

The American Red Cross responds to about 7,000 emergencies during the holiday season alone, from home fires to natural disasters, providing families a safe place to go when the unthinkable happens. But they can't do it without your support.