Is Farage turning Reform into a Trump tribute act?

This is a global player original podcast. Wouldn't follow what Mr. Kennedy's department does. I'd listen to what they have to say, but I wouldn't follow it. And frankly, nor would I follow. The World Health Organization. When Donald Trump talks about links between paracetamol or tylenol and autism, is he right? I have no idea.

You think he might be right? I have no idea. You know, we were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn't. Who knows? Nick, I don't know, you don't know. He has a particular thing. about autism, I think because there's been some in his family and he feels it very personally. I have no idea.

You're you wouldn't side with the medical experts who say it's dangerous to the city. I wouldn't side I wouldn't when it comes to science, I don't side with anybody. Nigel Farage can't answer a simple question. Can you dismiss the Trump conspiracy theory that links Tylenol paracetamol with autism? He can't because Donald Trump has declared it's true. Ed Davy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said We do not want Trump's America to become Farage's Britain.

Nigel Farage's inability to answer that question makes it seem that Ed Davy might have a point. The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And Nigel Farage was on Nick Ferrari this morning when he said that no science is secondary.

Well, I think that we know that, you know, if an apple falls from the tree it hits the ground because of gravity. There are things that are settled in science and over decades We have seen that paracetamol has been seen as a drug that is used safely, yes, occasionally, minor side effects, but that applies to any drug at all. But he won't distance himself, or can't distance himself, or doesn't dare distance himself, from something that Donald Trump has said.

Even though the health professionals in this country are unanimous. That there is no link between the use of paracetamol by pregnant women and the likelihood of autism in the babies they give birth to. He does start by saying he wouldn't bring that policy here. He calls him Mr Kennedy, RFK Junior's policy. He says he wouldn't bring it here. He said he'd listen to him though. Yes, and that's the curious thing, isn't it? That For a man who always says he's sort of straight talking.

He seems to just slime between the two positions. Westreating yesterday came out and said Do not listen to Donald Trump, there is no proven link between Tylenol and Autism. Farage could have done that. He could have got the British public on his side by showing that actually just because Trump says something, just because he magics up something in the Oval Office, doesn't automatically make it true. And yet Farage seems

Frankly, very slippery on that question. He says he listens to RFK, he doesn't want to go with it, he doesn't want to go against it, and he doesn't really know anything about science. Which goes to this whole question. That all you have to do is make people feel uncomfortable. Make people feel unsure. Make people feel that there might be something that they don't quite understand or know about.

Which then redirects their whole pattern of behaviour in a way that can be deeply damaging. Well I I think actually the last um twenty four hours um p this this paracesimal stuff but also we've seen it sort seen it more widely. It is extraordinary the extent to which Trump has just become a complete pole and dividing line of and within British politics on a daily basis. I mean it's always been the case ever since he was elected the first time, but compared to

the first term. He is so ubiquitous in daily British politics now. Think about the three events that have said just three things in the last sort of twenty four hours. One, we're talking about Farage, now on the back foot having basically sort of suggested that he partly backs or at least wouldn't demur from Trump's line on paracetamol. I think that's a huge, huge mistake for him in reform. We can talk about that.

Then you add in what you've just said, Emily, which is Westreating, coming out unequivocally against Trump. Why is Westreating doing that? Well one of the reasons is he's the health secretary, I've no doubt that he believes it, but it has not been unnoticed within Labour circles that West Streeting in all sorts of ways at the moment is on some manoeuvres.

And I don't think he thinks it's any bad things to be seen to be burnishing his credentials by slamming Trump in this way. And what did we see in Bournemouth at the Lib Dem Party Conference? yesterday, as John was alluding to, but Ed Davy coming out in the most unequivocal and visceral terms, comparing Trump's America and Farage's Britain. Imagine living in the Trump inspired country Farage wants us to become.

Where there's no NHS. So patients are hit with crippling insurance bills or denied health care altogether. That is Trump's America. Don't let it become Farage's Britain. And there was lots of commentary yesterday and about how many times Davy invoked

Farage and Trump. And I don't think mentioned Keir Starmer once. And he was sort of quizzed about that by by several people and criticised for it. You know, basically on on the basis that why isn't the opposition party or an opposition party critiquing the government?

But I think that is really, really misplaced or misjudged because I think Lib Dems are actually doing something really smart strategically and I think Ed Davy kind of gets the direction that politics, at least for the moment, looks like it's going in, right? Which is

A, it's a bit weird to attack Ed Davy for being obsessed with Farage when, you know, most of the media is obsessed with Farage on a daily basis. He's shaping the kind of contours of politics. But more than that as well, if the next election is anything like the polling looks like now, which is a big if, but if it is like that, then we know it's not gonna be a typical election where the opposition parties all the opposition parties in one form or another are just trying to knock the government

and knock the government out of contention. It's gonna basically be two blocks. You're basically gonna have a Farage block. Do you want Farage to be Prime Minister, or don't you? And in that context The Lib Dems are doing something smart, which is basically setting themselves up as one of the primary forces off of opposition to the

To Farage and to Trump. That is the direction that politics is going in. And I think it's actually strategically really smart. Yeah, I mean there was a very good piece by Stephen Bush in the F T yesterday which pointed to exactly this that Davy needs to keep Starmer in place.

It is his path to power. I mean, very possibly. We know how unhappy the Lib Dems were with the direction of travel that the party took under Nick Clegg going into a Conservative coalition. Whatever your thoughts about whether that did work or didn't work.

Mae llawer yn yw'r Libdem yn yw'r party sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n Or if Labour becomes the biggest party, then we get to help them. But I think it's actually even simpler than that. I mean that sort of is looking many years ahead. Taking space and

That frankly, the government, the party of government, has vacated because they're not pushing back on Trump. They're not pushing back on much of the stuff that comes out of America. They're not pushing back. in any sort of robust, muscular way, on the appalling kind of crackdowns to institutions, to norms, to democracy, to freedom of speech that's coming out from, you know, our special relationship closest ally. And so actually that ground has been ceded to the Lib Dems. Now

I think they went down a slight rabbit hole yesterday. They picked out stuff that Farage has said in the past about gun licences and said, Oh, you know, are are we going to end up with college shootings and school shootings all over Britain? I don't think they needed to go that far, actually, because Farage's own words Are so clearly a replica of the kind of conspiratorial nonsense that Trump has been peddling. I just want to play you this clip.

Where I mean You tell me if you are not thinking about the Springfield, Ohio cats and dogs. Swans were being eaten in rural parks in this country, that carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten in this country by people who come from cultures that have a different ab would you agree it happened is happening here. Neither of us can prove would be.

They're eating your cats. They're eating your dogs. They're eating your pets. It it is literally you've swapped out the animal and you've retained the sense, which is that immigrants are coming For your pets. The Royal Parks have been forced to deny that this has taken place today. But I think it was a nice touch to the side.

From their grounds, a Royal Park spokesperson has said, We've not had any incidents reported to us of people killing or eating swans in London's eight Royal Parks. Okay, there is a video which I will leave you to find on your own which shows A purported RSPCA officer we don't know if she exists or if it's real or if it's AI going round to an immigrant's home and taking the lid off a stew and saying you're not allowed to eat swan, you know, I paraphrase.

But the implication is that the RSPCA have now got their people on the ground checking out swan eating. Again, the RSPCA. So the question is is this working for Nigel Farage or not? I mean given the state of the polls are. Sorry, but you know, let's not

skip over that too. I know of course, but uh okay, what the fuck he's doing Yeah, but what what the fuck he's doing is borrowing from Trump's tactics when everyone snorted derisively when Trump talked about the what was happening in Springfield, Ohio. But he had the conversation then on what were illegal Haitians doing in your cities.

and the threat that they posed. And that worked actually quite effectively for him. And th although a lot of people thought this was going to be an absolute catastrophe for Trump to kind of invoke this whole idea that people were eating the cats and the dogs, which they weren't Yeah. of Nigel Farage are straight out of the Trump playbook. You know, when Trump was asked a difficult question about, say QAnon,

Well, I don't really know. I don't really know anything about QAn. I mean I think they've got I think they care about families and I think that's a good thing. You know. Farage on paracetam I don't really know. On paracetamol, I don't know. I don't think science. And all that science you allow the idea to just percolate that it might be true

that he might believe he doesn't actually take himself out to the far edges of it, but he just nudges the conversation in that direction without any kind of accountability or evidence base to suggest it. And you just throw these things out there.

And you see, Oh yeah, well I've heard Nigel Farage, he didn't deny it. It must be I bet there's something to it. I bet there's something to the meeting those swans. So so is d so that's y the point is You asked before, I rudely interrupted, does this work for the British public?

is making a profound series of mistakes. I don't think this is in isolation. We saw his conference which was sort of gushingly reported by some but actually contained a series of cranks and weirdos and odd, very odd things.

said, including other sort of conspiracy theories about the medicine and so on. We also saw we talked about it yesterday, this extreme policy on indefinite leave to remain. It is curious because at the start of the year All of the briefing that was coming out of reform was We're saying that this is a brand and party which is seeking to expand its appeal and which is seeking to soften

some of its rougher edges. They knew and know that if they're serious about maintaining or going much above 30% in the polls. They've already got much of, if not all, of the more extreme elements of public opinion on the right. What they need to do is try and assuage people of more middling opinion who are interested in some of the things that Farage is saying, but are suspicious of and concerned about Farage and some of those in his party and their pack.

And what have they chosen to? At the start of the year at the start of the year, they actually chose, particularly with the fight that we saw with Rupert Lowe and others, to actually have that fight and say that we are the more moderate force. What we've seen and I think this is dangerous, if Farage is

opponents are wily enough and have some balls and have some guts to actually go for him on this stuff, then actually A associating him with Trump, indelibly, is a big problem. We know Trump is deeply unpopular in this country, even among right leaning Uh conservative voters. And also being seen to represent some of the more extreme opinions and elements of the online right.

Is exactly the opposite way of expanding your appeal. So I think this is a dangerous moment for Farage, but it appears to be one. I think because he's concerned actually. I think I think the what we're seeing on X and the sort of radicalization of opinion on X is driving opinion within his party and Farage is attuned to that and alive to it as well as I think at some point probably wanting to maintain his position with the Trump court, MAGA court and the Trump dollar to come.

And so he's leaning into this stuff. Yeah, I think that what we saw at the beginning of the year was something much more sure footed from reform. And it seems ironic actually that as the Labour government has found itself in deeper water, you know, resignations and all the rest of it and and an uncertainty. that reform has also diminished in its standing. Now, you know, of course

I'm sure reform will point me to the polls and say, What are you talking about? You know, we're still way ahead of Labour and we are the putative next party of of government and all the rest of it. I mean, they have actually slipped, I think, three points in in recent polls. We've seen gains from both the Tories and the Conservatives, kind of curiously. But I wonder whether it is partly I mean, y you're talking about the online right, there are also parties to Farrages right now.

the Tommy Robinsons. The Ben Habibs, the advanced Britain, the Britain first. He should lean into that. I'm not crazy like those guys. He's sounding like those guys. Why wouldn't you do that? That's what I don't understand. Because there was a time when Farage was appealing to people who just didn't like the level of taxation.

in Britain, or didn't like, you know, how much their money was going into what they felt was the wrong things, or didn't like the state of broken Britain, whatever that meant. Once you're going down The dead ends of swans. of vaccines, of letting people at your own conference talking about whether the king's cancer was caused by a vaccine. You have basically relinquished that centre ground. Right. Completely. Any centre right or you know, any of that centre ground and people can just

Put you in the crank box too. Yes. I mean it's not about what is centre right or far right, it's about what is a bit nuts. Yeah. And the paracetamole thing and the swans and all of that stuff. And I think the important point here is To remember that to circle back to the question we sort of uh raised at the start of this is is Trump's America the new dividing line in British politics? We're not America. That's exactly the point. I have not. not got the same public opinion divisions.

as they have in America. The country is not as polarized as America. I still think there is a broadly sane base Of people, the quiet majority of British people are not on this page and won't be on this page, and that's why I think this is dangerous. For Farage. You know, I said, d is it working? Well look, you'd say look at the polls now, look at where we were a year ago. We're doing brilliantly. But is it sustainable when you're talking about crackpot and crap like this?

We saw this in the reaction to Charlie Kirk's assassination. You know, its politics and the politics of MAGA have become so central to our politics. There's almost now a complete fusion on a daily basis with the U s US kind of UK news cycle, at least at kind of an elite political level. And the people most exposed to that are Farage and the people around Farage. Because they've had a lot of contact with each other.

sort of MAGA world, the sort of Farage world, there's long been a fusion there. And so my take of it is is that frankly they are becoming so sort of terminally online with this stuff, they're so exposed to the kind of mores of MAGA and the daily developments of MAGA that they're making precisely the point that you identify, John, which is that they are transposing a political environment and a set of public opinions

From the United States to the United Kingdom, which does not exist and there lies peril for them politically. It does make our lives much easier because if you take for example the speech that Trump made last night to the UN

where he had a go at escalators, he had a go at the teleprompter, he had a go at windmills, he accused Britain of being a Sharia law state. I mean, it was So laughable this crackpot buffoon standing there because his words hadn't been scripted for him and the teleprompter had gone down, he just went off on the most ridiculous ramble.

What do people do at the end of that? They suddenly sort of latched onto the one line he'd said about Russia and Ukraine and tried to ask whether he changed his mind on Ukraine as if somehow that there was gonna be this one bit of truth that emerged from an absolute ramble of insanity. And all you have to do is put any of that back to Farage. You know, sorry, do you believe we're heading towards Sharille or do you believe that the person who stopped the escalator

Reportedly, from the White House own team, should face the full penalty of the law, which is what the press secretary said. Do you believe that? Windmills are a course of massive danger to the world. All you have to do is run through anything Trump said in the last twelve hours and put that to Farage.

For him to be absolutely dumbstruck if he can't say no. Farage would be better off shutting up for a bit. You know, he already he's in the perfect position in British politics right now, which is that he's I've got a very well established brand. Everybody knows who he is. And he is the perfect anti-system candidate at a moment when every other British political party in one way or another is seen to be discredited or had a go at governing and been useless at it.

And although it's a party that's based on momentum and vibes, he he's too addicted, I think, and has been recently, to these Monday morning press conferences and all these sort of things which get him attention. He would be actually better off right now.

withdrawing and shutting up for a little while. But Lewis, this is again where we're not America. In the American model, the attention economy is everything and you have to be giving content the whole time. Donald Trump never shuts up. He's always got something to say on any subject under the sun.

And it maybe doesn't work here in Britain. Not the same way. Not if you're ahead anyway. No, but th that's the mistake of transposing American political model onto the UK, assuming it's the same thing when it just isn't. I think what's interesting as well is is that what is definitely shifting. And we've seen it from Ed Davy. You've seen it some Sadiq Khan in the last twenty four hours responding to the attacks on him personally again.

from Trump. Something that is definitely becoming more American is definitely the kind of way politicians are responding, particularly on social media, to attacks and to buzz like the fight back is certainly gathering some pace. So in that sense, I mean there's no doubt there is a creeping Americanization in the content that we're seeing, in the news that we see, in our style of politics.

The thing that is more but that's all at a relatively elite level. The thing, as we're saying, that is more glacial, it is changing and is our politics is becoming a bit more sort of paranoid and conspiratorial and and polarise, but it is much slower at public opinion level than it is in an elite level. And that, it seems to me, is the mistake the reformer making is to

Mistake the two for the other. In a moment we're gonna be hearing from the author, the Booker Prize winning novelist Ian McEwen. His new book is called What We Can Know. It's about memory. It's about the future. And it's about what we're doing to ourselves right now. Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. James O'Brien on LBC. Good afternoon. we'll bring with you here Or the new LBC app. Leading Britain's conversation.

The news agents. Well we're joined now by Ian McEwen, author of latest novel, What We Can Know. It's an extraordinary thing, Ian, to Set up novel in the future. To talk about the present. It made me feel that you were addressing the sort of temporal equivalent of an alien who comes to land on the planet. and says what's going on. This is about us right now, isn't it?

Yes, indeed. Uh I guess I mean, I don't think there's really science fiction or it's science fiction without the science. But the question is if we're gonna describe ourselves, you know, where to stand. I mean and it's a question that faces all novelists at a beginning. first person, third person, and so on. But I thought that being a hundred years hence, not too far away in time, I mean it's you know, if we think of nineteen twenty five,

lots of modernity was in place. And if we could draw a straight line from the first quarter of the twenty first century and try and sort of extrapolate the rest. My guess is we're gonna go through a a series of crises and maybe even a a catastrophe or two'cause we're already We're already on that trajectory. So being a hundred years ahead gave me an ability to sustain the same language, more or less.

And to have someone a a young scholar at a university looking back not only with some horror but with some envy too. And to remind ourselves that actually we still hold a lot that is precious in our civilization and in our various societies, particularly in the first world. uh and that we stand before us is a forking path, if I could borrow that term from Borges, the garden of the forking paths. We could still rescue things. We are still rescuing things and we are making

efforts around the world. We mustn't give up on it entirely. But it's also it we are full, I think, of premonitions of of disaster. So We live in interesting times and uh having someone uh looking back when everyone now is long dead, seemed like uh a privileged position, rhetorically. your narrator has a sort of nostalgia and an envy as you say, but his students he's an academic and his students

just think we're ghastly that we've screwed everything up. Yeah. Well I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War and uh my back was somewhere between eighty and ninety million deaths. But as I turned into a teenager, I didn't want to hear about any of that. We had rock and roll, we had cheap paperback books, um, you know, the the world had all through the fifties and sixties had been getting better.

So I w with something of a blush remember my uh lack of interest in what my parents had gone through, Great Depression, Second World War. And so I wanted to maybe it was a something of an act of atonement to satirize these students who are at their backs have m tens, scores, uh even billions of deaths.

behind their great great grandparents. Well explain that to us. Where do the billions of deaths come from? Because on on one level it is about catastrophic climate change, isn't it? Well, this is not really a novel about climate change The only way to r write about climate change is to not write about climate change. It's just the background but uh it is very important because it affects very much my character's

point of view. Well, I just draw a line as I said. The first really big moment of crisis is a nuclear uh war between India and Pakistan. The world rushes in, diplomats etcetera and it stops. Then there's another one with Saudi Arabia and Israel ganging up on Iran to stop it getting nuclear weapons and they discover that it already has a couple.

So that's dire enough. On the other hand, a lot of dust is put up in the air and the earth's temperature drops to two degrees and we have a crack at uh climate change again.

So But but this is a world you call it the inundation where basically the countryside has pretty much ceased to exist and you have to go everywhere you have to go to the library by boat. So So another few years go by and uh the beginnings of uh war between the United States and Russia and a very large uh hydrogen atomic bomb lands in the mid Atlantic and the western coast of Africa, Europe and the eastern seaboard of the United States.

face a succession of colossal tsunamis. Not all of the world is drowned, but certainly Britain and it becomes an archipelago and um a series of islands My man is writing from one of the largest, it's almost forty miles long. It's the South Downs basically. He's at the University of the South Downs. Supply chains of industrial c civilization have collapsed. The world has become much more cellular. America is lost in endless civil wars from those who are wanting to

claim to inherit the imperial past. And the dominant power is Nigeria, which indeed, in for real, will be one of the most populous countries in the world by mid twenty first century.

So it's a transform world but there's also much that's familiar. There are universities, humanities departments, rivalries and love affairs and and the rest so that I wanted to get not the transformed dystopia of much science fiction of you know, complete ruin, but still a vastly changed world from our point of view. But still, you know, there are people interested in history and in literature especially. It still lives on. Literary criticism manages, biography manages.

But it has nothing of the sparkle of, say, our bookshop. trestle tables heaped with just last month's history books and fiction and books on science for the layman and so on. A richness of culture that we might regard as a constant din, but is in fact a fantastic privilege. So is that I mean is that what you want to come through? Not that

we're heading into, you know, oblivion. But that actually this is great. Like enjoy the complexities of everything now. It's it's great. It's really both at once. But I just wanted to so into, uh mix in with the pessimism, a sense that we have much to preserve and much to be proud of, you know, and one of his points of envy and admiration for us is that we've

made a golden telescope and sent it a million miles from Earth. This is a incredible time for the first chapter of AI. Who kn we have no idea where it's leading. great advances in biomedicine and in molecular biology in many, many fields. And of vibrant world literature. I mean, operas everywhere, street parties, gay pride marches.

you know, it's fizzing and popping right down to cheese rolling competition. What is interesting is that you have this massive noises off story about what the the new world is gonna look like. But at the center of the novel is this deeply human, and actually very distressing description of a marriage that sees Alzheimer's

come between its mm it's two people. And I mean for me that was the description of of Vivian and Percy and what happens to their marriage and how she I mean it seems like that is the That is the nub somehow. That is the most human nub of the whole story, isn't it? It's where we live, isn't it? The day to day and I think that most people over sixty five have

someone in a life who's suffering from some form of dementia and it takes many, many forms. One of its most striking aspects of course is the loss of memory, which accelerates. And with it goes identity. And I wanted to run that in parallel with this contemplation and reflection on history itself. Just as it's tragic for an individual, so it's tragic for a society to lose its memory, to to abandon a general sense in the population of history, not just for historians.

uh and I alarmed, you know, years back when history started to shrink in the national curriculum, for example. It's so important. But yes, Percy, the husband of of Vivian goes that normal route with Alzheimer's, forgets more and more. And the question always is, is it worse to suffer it th than to care for the person who's suffering? I mean go back to that question of history because

It's not just the national curriculum, is it? It is figures in power who are kind of removing bit by bit the repository of truth, you know, whether it's the sort of firing of people at the Labour Department or firing of people who work in science. I'm looking at the Trump administration. This is the brick by brick removal of what we think of as as our historical repository of truth, right? And locally, I mean in in in in terms of t in temporal terms we've lost

now the generation who were much affected by the Second World War and built some of the major institutions and the EU was one of them that grew out of a desire to make a a new and safer world. And the dispensation of course the so called world order is vanishing with it and the UN is becoming less and less important, for example And that too, you know, it was followed on from the League of Nations which was a sort of

fighters or the last victims are dying. I mean is it as is it as simple as that? Well there were politicians who at least grew up in the shadow of that war and were the full consciousness of it. And yes, I think um that it's had a massive impact on Our sense of who we are and what we're doing. Although Trump grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, and that doesn't seem to have played into any of his

I think he managed to sort of avoid most of that. He was not called up for Vietnam, for example. He had a a spur of bone in his foot. um we understand. But I think it has made a huge difference. Th there's now a generation of politicians who are not remotely connected either by growing up in the shadow of it or actually having

taking part in it or feeling it somehow at their back. And I mean of course there are many, many causes to our present turmoil, but I think that is that's an important one. Uh well what's the answer to that then? Because it certainly isn't to have another war, to bring it closer to home, right? It certainly is not to have another war.

But, you know, all around the world every country that can afford it is preparing for war. I mean we are now in m multiple arms races, so you know, that shadow hangs over us. Do you feel that the C and D experiment that you were so keenly part of has failed? It's very difficult to be making that case now with such an aggressive Russia, you know. So you wouldn't yourself? I would have huge ambivalence. I think it's not now current just how

frightening and vile and terminal a a hydrogen bomb is falling on a city. Whereas we it revived in the early eighties when we were worried that the two superpowers, Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States uh would stage a proxy war in Europe with

sort of limited short range nuclear weapons. But I think it's faded out of the m memory of things. I mean do you think we should be more geared up to I think we've got to re educate ourselves on just how how extraordinarily terrifying and powerful these weapons are. And yet, you know, they're being manufactured now at an extraordinary rate, w all being modernized, so to speak. I can't tell if you're saying that's good or bad. No, it's a terrible thing. It's a really horrifying thing.

And we now have a a new element in all this, which is the fact that AI will be posed between the human touch as it were to launch such a war. Chains of command and control are very, very slow and when you've only got twenty minutes to make up your mind what you're going to do when you see something on your radar, which actually sometimes has been a f flight of geese and we've come very close in the sixties and seventies. To be taken to war you really need to trust your leaders.

I mean that was sort of the the lesson of of the Second World War that Churchill seemed to take the country with him. and many still talk as if he's you know, the only one that did and could. Do you think we still have that belief in our leadership? No, no, and I I don't think we have that belief I think that that's part of a much bigger collapse, which I fear maybe more than all those fears of war and climate change put together.

And that is what I call in the novel the metaphysical gloom. In other words, you hear it from all kinds of people, not just cultural critics and intellectuals and writers and so on. journalists, you hear it from lots of ordinary people saying, I don't think my children and grandchildren are gonna have as good a life as I did. That is what I call a metaphysical gloom, because what goes with that is a loss in the idea of progress.

that you could make societies kinder, fairer, more equable, uh, with more opportunities uh spread across the way. I grew up in a time w of fantastic optimism through the fifties and sixties. And that's dying around us. Do you think progress has stopped? I don't hear it much from politicians or a general unified belief that that's what we're about and

You still hear it to some extent. I mean I fading. I could point you to AI, I could point you to scientific development, I could point you to medical breakthroughs and access to clean water and more girls at school. But it's not it's not in the mindset of the general population's

of the privileged West. I think there's something's dropping. I don't think it's past rescuing, but at the moment I get a feeling Especially coming from the States, which always had a notion of an American dream, that that has that has shrunk and there's great deal of cynicism here and across Europe. Uh and I think a populist right is is able to insert itself into that pessimism and shrinking of the idea of making things better for everybody.

not just your faction, not just your particular set of voters, not just for MAGA. So That's what I would call the metaphysical gloom that we've somehow got to remind ourselves. One of the things I want to do in this novel of how much pressure.

material there is, as it were, mental, physical material we have at our disposal. I know you're a writer, not the Pope, Ian, but what what is the answer to to that failure to progress? Well It is to take cognizance of the fact that we might not be seeing it, but all around the world, I think there are ten thousand more points of light, all kinds of experiments in relation to climate change. Yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud.

within seven or eight years it has astounded marine biologists. What has flooded back. That's a tiny thing in in the manif but vast bits of the Pacific are now or meant to be at least, uh, free of fishing. So the natural world at least will push back the moment we stop doing bad things to it. And More important maybe than that is the fact that um the transition from the fossil fuel world, civilization

its rising curve is much faster than in fact you'll see a slow decline in fossil fuel extraction. And it's interesting that uh Bill McKibben, a real prophet of gloom of climate change, It's just written a book, uh some of it was published in the New Yorker last month. Saying that he's full of optimism. And the reason we're not seeing this up uh uh seeing this change is because it's happening elsewhere, mostly China. Don't you think we've slightly given up on

climate change. I mean sort of net zero has become intensely unfashionable, hasn't it? It's very hard to um march and write books and et cetera, when you're holding your breath about whether there's gonna be an expansion of the Ukrainian war, you know, and so Yes, I agree. But it could be happening whether we want it, like it, or opposed to it or not. that is, that we are making

huge efforts. But, you know, of course uh clickbait does not generally r thrive on good news. Does the rise of the populist right scare you or does your optimism sort of stretch as far as saying it will recalibrate, we'll end up in the right place. Well, it does make me feel quite gloomy. One reason, one important reason is that populist politicians do not care about climate change. And that's a subset of not caring about science or expertise in a number of things.

And yet they happily submit themselves. themselves to very technical and difficult uh operations on their knees or you know, they climb aboard planes which are run by experts and built by experts and so on. It it's very contradictory. But yeah, I am very worried about that and I'd say the populist right is part of that.

metaphysical gloom that has has caught us. But I think it can be turned around by realizing, you know, we still have much that's precious, and it's all there to be thrown away or not. Ian McKean, thank you.

The news agents. Now last night there were two places you could go for late-night comedy. One was the Jimmy Kimmel show. He has returned even more pugnacious and we discussed But the other place was the UN, where Donald Trump was Well, kinda having a go at everyone and everything. I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help.

in finalising the deal. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen. But she's in great shape. We're both in good shape. We both stood. And then a teleprompter that didn't work. This is these are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.

Can you tell that the teleprompter hasn't worked? Come on, there was real content there that Sharia law has come to Britain and Yeah. So Sharia law is about to take over Britain. and he told us a long tale of how as a young real estate developer he wanted to buy the UN building and refurbish it but they wouldn't let him. So basically once again he's feeling a bit hurt by the UN, not for the reasons that you'd think, but for something that happened.

Forty fifty years ago. But it's also feeling hurt that Jimmy Kimmel is back on television and on NewsAgency USA we're discussing freedom of speech and whether this marks something of a turning point as Jimmy Kimmel seems to have won. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye. Bye for now. This is a Global Player original podcast.