Hello and welcome to UK column. I'm Ben Rubin and I am excited to be sitting in the studio today with Will Keate. Hello Will. Very good to be here. Thank you, Ben. Be here, yeah. And Will is definitely not an expert. Thank you. But I will say that he is one of our great minds and researchers as it relates to constitutional issues. And I think that's fair to say. He probably wouldn't say that himself, but I mean, I'm going to give him. I'm going to give him those.
Credentials. I said definitely. Don't call me an expert. Yeah, yes, because we're all, we're always learning. Exactly. But it's been a long time. Yeah, about 15 years or so on, on constitutional all, I suppose. Yeah, in a bit of a while. Fantastic. Good stuff. And and we're here to talk about a very important issue, right, Because there are a lot of discussions happening in the country at the minute about the future direction of the nation, how it will be constituted, how
we will be governed. And I think it's really important for people to understand at a, at a, a fundamental level, what we actually already have in place constitutionally, what we're supposed to have in place and really kind of start from the bottom up basically and kind of layer in the different fundamental components of it, right? And where are what, what are our rights and, and where do they come from?
And how does our existing system as it's supposed to work, outperform these new things that they're trying to bring in? Exactly. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So where do our where do our rights come from? Will so our, our, our rights come from, from the natural order, from, from nature and, and that, and that's a tricky one for people straight away. Or what do you mean by that? So what I mean by that is that you can, you can very well, not quickly, because it's not an
easy study. You, you can, you can do some things and recognise some things quite, quite quickly. Other things, it takes a little bit longer to look at the more subtle dynamics of this. But if you look at the way that that humans interact with each other, if you look at the way that humans interact with with reality, so this is really down to our nature, you, you begin to realise that certain behaviours, if you engage in certain behaviours, it will go very well
for you. Life will go very well for you. The the natural order and reality will will prop you up and assist you in in your your living and things will go well. If you engage in certain other behaviours, things are going to go very badly wrong and you'll get disharmony and chaos and will will manifest in your life. And that will happen both individually, but it will also happen in the collective in the
aggregate as well. And those those laws and those dynamics of the universe, you could say are inherent. They're you can't argue with them. They're not man made laws. They're just existing laws of the natural order that, that determine certain behaviours being a good thing for us and other behaviours being a a
pretty bad thing for us as well. And when and when you start to look at that quite closely, you can begin to glean what would be your rights from right behaviour and what would be a, a bad idea to go outside what your rights would be. You, you find the edges, if you like, of what that would be. And you can determine what that is. And, and just to cut a Long story short, where, where does that take us? It takes us essentially down to the, the golden rule, which is that my rights end where
another's begin. And what that actually is doing is, is it's expressing the sort of coupled principle there of our individual or fundamental rights on the one hand, which is, which is the, the, the feminine aspect of us, which is the sort of the freedom aspect. And then on the other hand is the, the boundaries and the borders to that, which is the equity. And what of course we mean by equity, and we've talked about this before because that word
has been hijacked. What it actually means is that we're all under the same set of standards. We're all held to account under law equally. Yeah. So we're all under the law equally. That's what equity means specifically and should mean. And, and it's, it's the two of those ideas together, the individual or fundamental rights on the one hand, which is that I am self determining. I can make my own choices that I feel are best for me.
But where you start to see those encroaching on someone else's ability to exercise their choices, that's the equity that's coming into play there. And that's natural, natural rights. That's natural law at play there. You're beginning to see coming through. And that's how we determine a legitimate rule of law. So now we're starting to sort of just bring to the surface there, well, what is our man made rule
of law in our community? If you base it on natural rights, natural principles of justice, then then your community's going to go, OK, you're going to go all right there. Things are going to unfold pretty well for you. If you distort that and you start to ignore those fundamental principles and you get away, you move away from my rights and where another's begin and you start to introduce the concept of coercion, that someone is taking a a view of how other people should live.
I am going to to decide what's best for you, whether you like it or not, right? These are the kinds of phrases of a collectivist and we could get into that. What that is then think you are introducing some concepts, concepts and some principles that are going to take you into a very bad place, you and your community. And that's going to manifest at a kind of micro level, all kinds of dynamics that are going to take you down. OK. So that give you a sort of a.
There's a lot. There's quite a lot in there. Yeah, yeah, quite. A bit to unpack, but. Yeah, Well, let's, let's wind this one back. I've written a few things down, right? So the first one is that essentially these laws are immutable and they're, yes, they're embedded into the fabric of reality completely, right. So it's almost, it's almost like physical laws, like gravity. Very. Similar to that, the laws of thermodynamics, anything like that. Exactly.
You can compare it to that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Right. OK. And, and when and when we when we break these laws, we descend into disharmony and chaos. Absolutely. That's exactly it. Yes. And it feels like we are descending into disharmony and chaos. Probably does. Yeah, increasingly so, actually, Yes. Yeah. And and the thing that I would, I mean maybe the next place we go there is well how much do we do? Do we spot this and understand these principles?
Because what is often misunderstood is that, you know, because we like to hurl abuse at the, the, the powers that be and, and, and, and understandably so, and rightly so in many, many respects. The difficulty is that to a very large extent we are doing this to ourselves because we don't spot this, we don't understand it properly, we don't
acknowledge it either. And so we engage in behaviours that that are self sabotaging, we end up taking ourselves down through in, in, in attention, not focusing on these things ourselves. So we think we have a moral right to stand on the moral high ground here and to, to blame the powers that be And, and in many respects we do. But we also don't realise that we've engaged in certain behaviours and dynamics that have kind of put them there in the 1st place and allowed it to happen as well.
Yes. Yeah. And that's essentially we're outsourcing our agency to other to others and. That's not the behaviour of a sovereign. Right. OK, well, that's an important word, right? What is sovereignty? Well, exactly. We'll come back to that. OK. So let me just just pick up on a couple of other things that you said there. So you talked about this idea of freedom and that and that resonating with the the feminine aspect. And then you introduced equity.
So we can be free, but we also have to be. Boundaries and. Borders and there, but there are boundaries and borders to that. Does that, does that then conversely resonate with the masculine? Yes. Yeah, totally, because because that's about control, right. OK. And you need a mid position of that. You need a balanced position, yes.
You know, and, and in spiritual science, we, you might describe that as the Christ impulse, you know, which is the impulse of love, which is, you know, giving, giving people the, the, the freedom to, to make their own choices, but also understanding that there are naturally existing boundaries to that as well. And yeah, that absolutely. And that and that would be expressed as individualism, as a as a kind of philosophy of individualism.
Yes, OK. So that's, that's and actually within what you've already said, it's really interesting this because we're we have these conversations and I think some people will listen to this and go, well, hang on a minute. You haven't actually said what the, you know, the laws are the right or rights are. But actually within, yeah, the Golden Rule, you are free up until the point where you impinge on the freedom of others. Where you hurt others or remove their choices.
Yes, then then actually that that actually covers basically totally. Isn't it? Yeah. Completely, Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So where are we really breaking these, these, these laws at the moment then we're, I mean, it's basically everywhere, isn't it? If you think about the way that our system's currently constituted and and the way that people are behaving within it, yes, this is happening all the time.
It is yes. And and and so actually, if we if we start to sort of paint the picture of how our authentic rule of law was always supposed to function. Yes. OK. That's a good place to start. Yeah. Look at how the Constitution was originally set up and how it was intended. Yeah, it's based on a set of of customary principles that had been learnt from natural law. And all right, from a historical perspective, we could go into
that. And, and those principles are that that man governs themselves, that it's self governance. You don't constitute a government such that it can act under its own volition to start imposing regulation and rules on the citizenry. What what actually should be happening is that the the citizenry owns its laws and that any government in inverted commas, but let's call it an administration more correctly and America got that right of course, in doing that.
That was a reflection of of truth that that any administration that you have in the public space, really its job is to execute the wishes of self management and self governance by the people. Right. And so the key question at that point comes up, which is, well, what? What is that?
That man made mechanism that that needs to exist within our constitutional rule of law that allows for the people to govern themselves, to allow them to decide on the the edges of acceptable behaviour that they wish to abide by. Yes, that's that's really what what you're getting to. That's the piece in between that takes us to our man made rule of law, if you like. And and that's why because I started life actually as a voluntarist really.
And I started life. Well, I suppose I did when I was born, I was a voluntarist then maybe as well. But what I mean is, is I started my journey, you know, sort of, I don't know, about 20 years ago perhaps as a voluntarist with sort of anarchist leanings. And I was following that. And then I started to look at, at, at the English
constitutional law. And I was seeing all kinds of contradictions and all kinds of cyclic arguments in the way that the English constitution is described and expressed. And I thought there's something not right here because it, it doesn't fit these principles of volunteerism, this idea that we should be self determining, that we should be self governing. And then I started to peel more and more layers back.
And I realised that actually what was happening was that the English constitutional law was being expressed incorrectly and that you have to pull enough of those layers back to get to the authentic English constitution as it was supposed to function. And if you keep going back through those layers, what you ultimately end up with is a a framework or a rule of law that essentially places trial by jury at its centre and trial by jury.
But this is the key with the key feature of jury independence, which is that that the jury gets to decide justice independently of any man made laws that are created through a legislature. And so you decide on the justice independently of that meaning, meaning my conscious decision as a juror according to my conscience is not bound by the legislation that brought the defendant into court in the 1st place.
And and that is the paramount feature of your constitution because if you don't put that front and centre as the central pillar of your constitution, you don't actually have self governance. You don't have a mechanism by which the people can govern themselves. It's missing, right? And this, this most famously was
codified in Magna Carta, right? So if you go and read Magna Carta again, similarly to what I was just saying a moment ago, I actually I only read it for the first time recently and I was kind of going weird. Bits in that as well. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. You know, what did they say? The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there, right? A lot of it doesn't quite add up with us. Because a lot of it was about local and current time.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah. But and then and then the sort of pointy bits as it relates to what we're talking about, they're actually quite sparse. So it's slightly well you have, you have, you have a jury trial. Yeah, and so Article 39 and 40 are the most important. Thing you go you know exactly I do right but is it but, but, but actually and, and, and that that therein lies your your, your governance model correct and actually and so oh wow, okay. It's it's incredibly lightweight.
It's incredibly powerful, Yeah. But quite straight away. Well, exactly, Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And, and and essentially at that point is this is this, is this anarchy? Is this a form of anarchy? Would that fit into that bracket? Essentially self governance. It's sort of a bit anarchistic like if you want to put it like that, but it's with the sort of protection and framework of, of, of, of, of public justice, which is carries the recognition.
And, and I would say that that's a principle of natural law that we submit to the consciences of those around us in our community, right? That's so I would describe trial by jury as just a more formal expression under English law of
a natural law tribunal. Yeah. And, and that, that, that natural law tribunal, that's just reflecting a principle that we, if we do something wrong or it's perceived by the community that we may have done something that is, is, is dangerous to somebody, that we've, that we've hurt someone, that, that we are then brought to a space. And that is considered and the evidence is put before before
the court, if you like. And all of that is thrashed through, but it's done by our peers, it's done by our social equals, because that's a reflection of the equity, right. And and so really, trial by jury is just a sort of formalised version of what I would call a natural law tribunal essentially. Yeah. And, and actually, you could, you can look at that and say, well, it's kind of an inevitable.
It's a little bit like, you know, the the language, language that was used by the the forefathers of the American Constitution when they said we hold these truths to be self evident, right. So there's a reflection, if you like, in there of the recognition that this is about natural justice. It's about the principles of natural law that, that this is, is fairness and equity here at
play. And if you're going to have equity, then then you, you have everybody judging the law essentially and being, yeah, being a judge of that, of that justice. Yes, and and and the, the, the jury's role is to is to judge the the legislation as much as it is to judge totally the the individual who's on trial. Absolutely, because you're. So it's like self.
Correcting essentially exactly right yeah, yeah and and and because your God given consciences sits higher than than a a man made political opinion on on a on the formation of legislation. Yeah. And that's not to say that you can't have legislation, you know, but you've got to be guarded and vigilant to make sure that any legislation that is created for practical purposes, you know, it's it's kind of like using the phrase
for the avoidance of doubt. You could say that in a way that's the purpose of legislation for the avoidance of doubt, etcetera. That's fine to do that. And you would hope that all legislation on your statute book, which would, which would mean probably very little legislation has to be in alignment with natural law principles. But all legislation must come before that natural law tribunal to be tested every single time that someone is is in court. Yes.
OK. So this, so then in terms of the the way that this has been captured, we have Magna Carta, 12/15 Magna Carta. That's the sort of the original that's the most gold standard. It's the most recent expression of it, and it's an important thing to correct. That's often stated incorrectly that that sort of started it all. And that's not the case because remember that what we're doing is reflecting truths, yeah, that already exist. So you So what?
More correctly, you would say that Magna Carta is the most recent expression of the principles of our Constitution, right? The 12:50. That's where it was written down, essentially. Just to be absolutely clear. Yeah, this is how things are supposed to work. Absolutely. But and, and then since then, suppose that 800 and 810 years now, it's just been a constant process of governments and monarchs attempting to degrade the the rights of.
Yeah, it's a mix of that, but they keep people capitalising on, on, on power grabs. But it's also the the, the citizenry becoming lazy as well because, because maybe we quite like the idea of representative government as it was sold to us.
So we begin to get to the point of, well, if we're going to manage our society from the centre through policy and regulation, because actually in for all of us to have a kind of a centrally and managed society that's efficient, then then we need to drive policy and regulation from the centre. Now you're getting into a very dangerous place because actually you can't do that under the principles that we've just explained, which is my rights and where and others begin,
begin what you're claiming. Incorrectly is that you think you have the right to do that by the fact that that piece of policy is supported by a by the opinions of a larger number. So now we're into this whole business that you you claim legitimacy through majority yes and that really was green lighted and 1st legitimised through the glorious revolution and the Bill of Rights. That was the point really, that so a lot of people make the mistake.
They think the Bill of Rights was an extension of our constitutional principles. But look at, if you peel enough of the, of the onion layers back philosophically, what you, you come to realise is that what was formed ideologically at that point by John Locke and and, and others and and and the Whigs, if you like, at that time was actually a, an ideology that is in, in, in complete opposition right to the authentic rule of
law. Yes, but that's not how it's sold to us. No, and that's a glorious revolution. Glorious revolution. If it was anything but glorious, really. It was actually a coup of England, really. But yeah. OK. Probably won't have time to go into that, but. Yes, well, I mean, there's, there's so much to, to, to expand on and I hope people take this as an opportunity to go off and do their own research as ever with anything that we would
call in UK column right. This should be a starting point for people, um, rather than an end point. So that's, so that's, that's interesting. The tyranny of the majority. There's this term that gets used a lot, which is liberal democracy. And I always define that as liberal. We can do whatever we want, yes, democracy, if enough people go along with. It Right. Exactly. And that gives you the legitimacy to remove the individual rights of the
minority? Yes. Just because a greater number of people think that thing. Yeah. No, you don't have the moral authority to do that. Yeah, yeah, we. But. And they're trying to bend the universe to their will, essentially. Right. Because it doesn't matter how many people say if he's wrong, yes, and he's wrong, yeah. You can't precisely change truth. Yes, to fit you, to fit your agenda. Yes, right and wrong behaviour already exists objectively. Yeah. In, in, in the universe.
I say that because actually it's important to also to understand that, that we have moral conundrums. So it's not always clear in every situation. The principles are objective. Yeah. So you can start to glean from a study of natural law that the principles are there. There's no question about it that that that the universe requires, you know, self governance, personal choice, because what does that lead to? It leads to self responsibility and trustworthiness.
Yeah. It becomes, in other words, what you're aiming for is for every individual to become a self master of themselves. Yeah. You don't submit and become a become weak. That's that's not a, a growth in your humanity. It's not an evolution. That's a devolution when you submit through compliance. Yeah. So that's opening up consensus, groupthink, compliance being problematic. Yeah, it opens up a whole load. You're going to need a whole pad of paper for this. No that. Would feel weak.
This is good, yeah. This is great. Well, no, the one that the one that always lands with me is, is personal choice and responsibility ultimately, right? And, and people might get a little bit upset when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway, right? Which is and and actually, this is the only way to actually go about fixing anything is to think about what did I do wrong here?
Yeah, right. And, and this is this is the bit that people find really difficult because the world is going to hell in a handbasket at the moment. We've talked about the fact that disharmony and chaos is proliferating and and the natural order is being undermined. And we actually have to take responsibility for that. What have we done as individuals in order to facilitate that? And there will be many things.
All right. And actually, there's a lot of people who, who sit in the the truth movement, the freedom movement, whatever you want to call it, who, who have a, a little bit of a holier than thou attitude about, about the way things are going and essentially that it's nothing to do with them and it's all to do with the other people.
And often oversimplify justice as well, not realise that that actually justice and moral conundrums are complex and there's, and there's nuance that's required in these things, you know, So you get a lot of people in the freedom and all these people must go to prison or, and that's where we get sort of positions where, where we've got some members of, of of sort of freedom movement circles, if you like, calling for the death
penalty. Well, to be doing that at a time when your government is becoming more tyrannical is really a very stupid thing to be doing, I, I would say. But anyway. Yeah, be careful what you wish
for, right? Yeah. Exactly. I mean, one should say perhaps at this point that, that just to sort of explore that a little bit more, is that when, when you lose track of, of your grounding ideology and your principles and you start to take on belief systems that fly in the face of truth and that society does it broadly without noticing it, without spotting it. What you end up taking on as beliefs is things that will, will generate unintended consequences.
And actually, that's what we're seeing now in the size of the state. So the size of the, the state is now collapsing under its own weight of complexity. I I would argue through, through the the production of, of too much regulation and legislation and, and that and that's the issue. And so, So what quite often we see as crimes of the state against us isn't necessarily like it's people out to get you because they all know it's not
that. It's quite often the unfolding subtle dynamics of the fact that we've already outsourced and that people in government have huge pressures and expectations on them to legislate because because we've outsourced it. And and what you're now seeing as a result of that is it all falling apart because we've just gone and created too much, too much regulation, unintended consequence is that.
Yes, and, and actually you've, we've created through the civilizational structure that we've adopted over the past several centuries, the way the education system works, like the, the, the whole setup, basically you've got a class of people in the civil service, in the political class essentially who only actually understand how to write laws and enact laws. That's their currency, that's what they trade in. And they've developed this mindset that, and you've seen
this all over the place, right? That if we write it down hard enough, then it will then it will be so. Yeah, right. And, and this obsession with policy, we need policy for this, policy for that. If we write the right policy, then the world will change. Like you can write whatever you want if it's, if it's, if it's impractical, unfeasible, UN actually undesirable for this thing to actually to to to manifest. And at the point when they come up with it, yeah, they won't see
those unintended concepts. Absolutely no. And so that that's the complete introducing complexity, yes, in a left brain sense. And layering it and it's just more complexity on top of more complexity on top of more complexity. And then and then the whole thing just. Yeah, it could. It just becomes, it breaks under the weight of its own country. Internal contradictions. Yeah. You know, it's actually sort of descent into lunacy, basically. It's what we're looking at. Yeah, it is complete.
Form of madness. Complete madness and that's, you know, basically half of our our economic output, you know, as a sort of yardstick for how much time and energy and effort that takes up in in our society at the moment because, you know, basically 50% of our GDP is government spend. Then then since management exactly half of what half of what happens in terms of productive.
Well, I say productive, not probably productive in terms of activity, let's say in the country is just managing the the the lunacy and adding on additional players to it. Absolutely right. You couldn't make it up really. It's a very shortly shame it is, but we do need some. We talked about administration, right?
Use that term, You know, so it's very easy to be kind of absolutist and say, well, we should have no government whatsoever, but there actually is a role for some kind of administration of the system that we've described, right, Because you have a trial by jury. Justice system. The justice system, right, because you need a judiciary, you have a trial, you're going to have a trial and you need a judge, you need someone to, to,
to oversee that. And, and also you, you know, ultimately the role of the state and Mike talks about this quite a lot, right? Is actually the the only role the state really should be to protect the weak and the powerful. Yes, it feels it is hold the individual rights in the way of life of the people. Yes, that's essentially what it is. Yeah. So you're right.
I mean, just just to get into that, you know, because the systems of justice that you have in place there and the mechanisms that have to be there, how do you manage that if you don't have a state? And and those are interesting questions. But the first thing actually you were saying about a judge, the judge is not really meant to be the judge because the, the, the, the judges, if you, you know, we call it the independent judiciary.
Yeah, well, the independent judiciary is really the people themselves. Right. Yeah, the members of the of the jury. It's the people governing themselves. Self governance. They're like, they're like the referees, what they should be. Doing right, yes, in the game. So the the judge you could think of perhaps it's often thought that that the judge's original purpose was more like a convener. Yeah, the president of the proceedings, you know who's who's sort of pulling it all
together And, and who are they? Well, they're just, they're just volunteers of the community stepping up to do that job. Yeah. And that's what we mean by the public in a sense, is just people who, well, we know that certain jobs have got to be done, so we're going to volunteer to do those things. And that's how it's evolved. That's in, you know, over time. But, but unfortunately the distortions have come in that actually it's the, it's the
judge's role to judge the law. So the mantra that's often put out now by our justice system is that, you know, even even in, in our trial by jury now, by the way, and only 1% of cases reach trial by jury, I should say that at this point. So Muhammad is 1% really. So we're the thing that we're guaranteed in a bad place, the thing that we're. Guaranteed. Yeah. Only 1% of cases. So we've got a problem with the Magistrates Court in a big way, right?
Yeah. So the modern justice system puts out the mantra that the, that the, that the jury judges the facts and the judge judges the law. And this is just put out as a kind of a, an accepted mantra. But actually the if you go back and look at the history and even further back into Saxon times and in other parts of of of Europe, you can go into look at the history of the jury in
Scandinavia even as well. And you can start to see that in fact, and this is, this is one of the sort of slightly disingenuous arguments that's used by the establishment. Oh no, there was no history of trial by jury. Well, the reason for that is because what, what they're comparing it with is, is the is with the distorted version of trial by jury that you have now, which is this what I've just explained, that the jury doesn't have the right to judge the law.
The further back you go. And if you go back into Saxon times, actually it was 1 and the same. So you you have the OR twelve citizens that you could think of as a jury. What they were actually doing was doing was judging all matters. They were judging the law, probably the admissibility of evidence themselves as well. They were judging the facts and they were judging the punishment. Right. I was going to ask about the sentence. Yeah. Yeah, all four, all four aspects.
Of the case because that's essentially now held by the the the the the judge, isn't it the judge decides the sentence yeah and and a lot of the time they'll be issuing guidance on all sorts of. Right components.
Well, the judges themselves are also being Hanford by ever increased increasing justice from the justice to the Ministry of Justice, the Sentencing Council, which creates which which which people in the freedom movement are beginning to learn about because it all came up in this 22 tier justice stuff that everybody was talking about.
And we've now learnt, of course, that, well, people have generally learnt now that that even judges themselves are being Hanford by sentencing guidelines, which are becoming sort of ever increasingly complex and rigorous as well.
Now, what is that? Well, what it is in fact is because the, the Ministry of Justice really falls under the executive, which is, you know, the Cabinet Office and, and, and, and so what's happening there is that you've got a kind of a form of legislating for how judges now see, see justice and, and, and yeah, it's so you've got these kind of complex.
And yet at the same time we're pretending that we have separation of powers in the three branches of government, which which frankly, I see as APR exercise and nothing more. The whole, the whole 3 branches of government is for me just a smoke and mirrors exercise actually, because they still have those connections all over the place between in, in the big
broad machinery of government. You've got, I think Mike was saying that you've got this, this whole business of the Cabinet Office effectively or the, the, the executive in the form of the Prime Minister and his cabinet sitting in the legislature anyway. And the top of the legislature was a court. Well, it's all a court actually.
And in was it 2005, you've got the breaking off of the, the appellate committee of the, the, the upper house is now the Supreme Court. Whereas actually, really all of this is meant to be joined up thinking under the King. Yes, and, and, and let's stop pretending otherwise, right? And, and you've got, you know, things like the King's prerogative powers being borrowed by the Prime Minister. That's just madness. It's all just smoke and mirrors I think. Yes, yeah, yeah, they're they're
they're playing games, yeah. And this has been going on for quite some time. So basically because you just talked about the Glorious Revolution, when was that 16? SO168891689 was all, all happening and, and the yeah, it, it was sort of, you know, the, the, the framing of of James the second as a, as a, as a bad king, When in fact, actually, if you take a closer look, I'm sure you didn't do everything right.
But if you take a closer look at what James the Second was doing, he was very concerned about civil rights. He was concerned about these issues. He was actually quite a good king. If you look at his actions and what was really going on.
And, and, and actually what came in at the Glorious Revolution was, was a sort of through a kind of load of silent conventions, was this elevation of Parliament, which is a really so it looked like, you know, for the people at the time, as though this might be a really good thing because it's all about your representation in Parliament for policy.
And, and we've been through that adult suffrage, the dangers of adult suffrage, which is what voting in, in elections in that, in that respect, in order to bring about party policy. That's what it does. And so that's what it brought about. And then, of course, you had the formation of the Bank of England in 1694. You had the, the, the, the creation of the, of the new political union with Scotland in what was it 1707?
I think it was soon after so you can see how all of this started to happen then that that was when it all. Started centralisation of power basically and completely disenfranchising the the the, the common man. Ultimately, you know the the the the wider population.
That's not to say that things were not all Absolutely Fabulous before that, because of course you had a century in the 17th century of absolute chaos where the kings were actually getting out of hand and, and the, the divine right of kings in the way that that was expressed became a problem in its own right. But what had happened is that people forgot the mechanism for bringing the king to account, the head of state to account through his own trial by jury, which is essentially what Magna
Carta was all about. They brought the, the king, King John to account through his peers, the peers of the realm. It's kind of holding a, a court essentially that you've breached your coronation oath that already existed. Yeah. The principles of, of your coronation oath, which is customary common law. You, you've, you've committed crimes under our constitutional law, which already existed. And we're bringing you to account, and we're going to hold you to this in perpetuity.
And you're going to sign or seal rather that in perpetuity so that the administration that's formed is formed under this limitation. Yeah, it always was under that limitation, by the way, But it's just for the avoidance of doubt. Here it is again. So that's what Magna Carta was. Right. And how many iterations have have there been of Magna Carta itself, right, Because there are versions of it. So I think even within that document there, there have been attempts to reduce its its
power, right. Yes, and again, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors around that as well. So the 12:15 Magna Carta, the Great Charter is the is, is the document that's beyond the reach of Parliament. So that's the real thing. And people in the in the establishment will say, well, that's not really law. And that's been repealed and you know, although it hasn't because that's that's the promise under which the king was was made. That's that's how that was made. So yes, you're right.
The further iterations, I mean there was one in 2000 and sixty 2016, 12/16/12 a little bit further but a little bit further like. That so they actually tried to so that they so he sealed it and then the next year they tried to change it. Yeah, well, yes. Although actually Stephen Langton, the Archbishop who who kind of was very involved in this, was actually involved in that actually. And in fact, yeah, 12/12/16, 12:17 is another one, 1225 under King Henry, that was, that was a
very important one. That's the one where there was a, a ceremony where they all like threw down their tabards or swords or whatever it was. And they were really zealous for these rites. They absolutely genuinely believed them. They absolutely believed in the content of what had happened in the Great Charter. And, and in fact, the, the, the, the kings at the time, as you know, going from the Norman kings into the Plantagenets were also keen to, to express this through in a sense, their
manifesto. And so actually what was happening was a legislative version of the Magna Carta, which was really an expression of the King's manifesto, if you like to, to, to, to govern according to these principles. So the last one and the one that's currently on the statute books is the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297, which is the Edward the First statute. But all of these really were just expressions of the king saying, yeah, I'm upholding these principles. You know, I, I, I agree with
them. So that's really what it is. But it's important for people and the establishment certainly don't realise, realise and understand this, that the authority doesn't come from the legislation, doesn't come from the legislative versions. Of Magna Carta. Those are just re expressions of those principles that you can't really repeal because they're just truths.
The authority actually comes from the 12:15 because you know, that was the promise under which the the head of state promised to the people that that's how it would all work. In perpetuity. In perpetuity. To the point, yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And and that itself, as we, as you established at the start, was actually just an expression of the immutable fundamental laws that exist in natural justice, in reality and the natural. Justice to work like that. It can't work any other way Yes
exactly. Okay, well, it can, it can work other, other ways, but not without serious detrimental, destructive, you know, downward spiralling consequences for your society. Yes, yeah, you absolutely can go against the natural order principles if you want. Yeah, be my guest. Tell me how it works out for you exactly. Yeah, OK, good, good.
Right. Let's go back to to trial by jury because we were talking about you, you mentioned that statistic that actually only 1% of trials now go to trial by jury and, and the, the introduction. Is 1% yeah, pretty. Much. Well, yes, if it isn't exactly 1%, it's not enough. It's around that it's certainly not enough and. They're going after it, right, because this is one of the big areas with which they're focused on and they're really trying to
ramp up magistrates calls. So there's a big push to. Or another intermediate straight in between. Yes, there's another option. Yeah. And that's these are all, these are all denials of rights. Essentially, you've been denied the fundamental. Rights, Yeah, or, or legislating away your birthright. So the very idea that the government itself can legislate away these principles is, is absolutely absurd and ludicrous.
You know, and, and, and The thing is, is that that broadly speaking, certainly the the the mainstream part of society isn't saying anything about it because they don't understand it. But I would say actually that that broadly the, the awake communities to our, the sort of conspiratorial nature of our society, they're not really focusing on it either.
And I would say that this is a 'cause you know, in, in fact, most of the issues that that we are dealing with can, can be kind of solved by just getting your governance back in place by by calling for jury independence as a concept and calling them out under this and saying actually, you don't understand how the rule of law is supposed to operate. So you're right, we've had the Leveson review, which is is perhaps we're getting close to that conclusion.
And in fact, I put up on my website, commonlawconstitution.org the other day, I think it was a Telegraph article that was hinting at the fact that that the media are aware of the contents of that review and the conclusions that that Sir Brian Leveson has come to in that and and together. Now the investigatory powers commissioner, I think, isn't he? I can't remember the exact title. Yeah, very powerful man. Extraordinarily powerful and influential. Yeah, absolutely. OK.
So there's there are things emanating from the conclusions are there? I think so. I think beginning to come out, we've been needing to, you know, see, see possible hints and clues as to what might be happening. And what are the and what are the suggestions? Well, as you said, we'll have to provide a link to this if we go and have a look.
At that, yeah, I'll take it out. I'll have a look and yeah, it's a couple of weeks ago I think it was an article in the Telegraph, OK. But yeah, it's, it's, it's the potential threat of further limiting a trial by jury, right? And, and, and we're already in a bad place with it, you know, and, and, but what I'm seeing is not enough people jumping up and down about this causal factor, you know, and, and they're being distracted by, you know, yes, important things and other
things, understandably. But actually, if you get distracted by the effects at the expense of dealing with your governance, self governance of the nation and that concept, then then in a sense, through inattention and inaction, you're actually take you're further taking yourself down. You know, every day, every hour that goes by that you're not talking about these issues that we're talking about now, partly to re educate yourself so that you become clearer on it as
well. Every every hour and day and week that goes by that we're not talking about this, you're actually contributing to that, that that destruction that is self destructive. I would say I. Would agree. Yes, I mean this because it is the clues in the name, it's constitutional. It's it's the constitution, the makeup of the society that that we are in and how. We should be absolutely passionate about this. Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely. And they were back in the day, you know, as I've said to you on an, on a discussion we had before, you know, how the, the, the, the, the community in the, you know, Norman times were absolutely zealous for their rights. That was the word that, yeah, often comes out in writings that you see that written zealous. I wrote Zealous down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, we're not now. No, no. People are totally apathetic and, and people don't feel like they have any kind of capacity to do anything really. It's quite odd, you know. Well, we've let things go so far that it's now become very complicated to know what is best to do. Yeah, and it's understandable and I get that. But the first thing you've got to do is educate yourself on this stuff. Become clear on where do your rights come from?
What are the limits of government actually and why and where do they think they get their power from or don't or purport to get their power from and their right. This is all to do with jurisprudence and, and some the philosophy of law and and and and. It's important to get into it and to understand it. Well, well, well, let's let's begin to that then. So where, where do they think they get their, their rights
from? Is it, is it just through the compliance of people going along with the proclamations that these people are making? Is that where they get their power? Well, that they they give themselves that power through that false belief. Yes. That they think that they, they have the right to do it because they are doing good for society, right? So it's, it's these phrases like
for the greater good, right? So we're starting to get into, you know, what we were talking about sort of communitarianism and this, this idea that, that this collectivist impulse that I, I'm going to decide what's best for you, whether you like it or not. That's the expression, that's the impulse behind it. And I have the right to do that because my ideas and my my grand ideas for how society needs to be fixed gives me the right to just go ahead and do it.
Yeah, because that's the collective. Because I'm kinder and more empathetic than you. That's basically there's a. Gas light there isn't. That it's a gas light. There's a total lack of self awareness with a lot of people as well, yeah. And an enormous amount of arrogance you find with the sort of collectivist viewpoint that because they supposedly want the best for everybody, then that gives them the right to impose their will. And actually that's not not the
case at all. You know who's going to protect us from you? Yeah, yeah. And we and we need to, I mean, the, the sort of the sort of line that you want to watch out for this is kind of like a like a red flag in, in, in people's conversation when you see when people say we need to do this right. We need to if, if you hear sentences like that, yeah, that's a, that's a danger point because that's a collectivist impulse, right? Oh, we need to do this right.
Who are you including in the we there? Yeah, That's not individualist. That's, that's not a philosophy of minding your own business and leaving people to their own choices. Yeah. And there are two, two caveats to that, by the way, Minding your own business. It's we must call out wrongdoing where we see it. Yes. And, and also we at a spiritual level at least, yes, there is the matter of charity, you know, which is that we don't want to formulate a selfish society here.
But on the other hand, nor can you force somebody to be kind through legislation. It's not kindness. It's not kindness at that point. Yes, exactly. You know, we're sort of kidding ourselves that we live in a civilised society because we're really kind to, to the less fortunate, you know, Well, actually, you're not kind. It's just that someone will kick down your door if if you don't pay those taxes that are being forced out of you through coercion. Well, exactly.
It's one all all under threat of violence. Anything that's just a lie is under is under threat of violence ultimately. Yeah. So it's interesting you there you talking to? Well, individual, we're individuals. Leave me to my business and we we're back to this idea of
freedom versus equity. We're not versus freedom and equity come together in, in, in a, in a in integrated symbiotic relationship with each other, right, Because again, it's, it's we're free, but your freedoms end where mine begin totally right, right. And and actually. This is of natural. Law and a lot of the, a lot of the kind of communitarian people, they, they look around and I have to, you have to agree with them, right?
The world is extraordinarily unjust and and unequal and it's becoming more so. But because there are too many people who are exercising too much freedom to the detriment of everybody else, what they're ignoring is the other side of that equation ultimately, which is that we are all equal under the under the law. And it's not their job to fix it, right? OK. Would you say expand on that? Well, again, that's the impulse
of the collectivist. It's not your job to fix everybody else's problems, Right? We have, because that's not the expression of self governance. Yeah, self, self. You only learn to be self governing and to be a self master if you learn to fix your own problems and, and and you, you learn to take responsibility for your own choices because it's at that point that you've become trustworthy as a human being.
Yeah, yeah. If you're meddling around in other people's affairs, you're fundamentally untrustworthy. Right. So this is the stuff that we all need to explore. Very interesting because these collectivist ideas, they are, they are particularly coalescing around the people who were talking about first rewrite, literally rewriting the Constitution, right? So you've got Gordon Brown at the moment, was actually never elected as Prime Minister. He was an MP, He lost the
general election. David Cameron he didn't. Actually win a. He didn't win a general election and he's now on the the trustee board of the Rockefeller Foundation. And he's leading this big programme to rewrite the British constitution, change the structure of the upper house like, oh, literally, which is their dream. That's what they want to do. They want to remove these principles of of national sovereignty and constitutionalism. Yes, that's what they want to get rid of.
That's what they are terrified of more than anything is the principles of individual rights, national constitutionalism. That's what they're wanting to remove more than anything. Which is which is our defence against tyranny? Yes, right it. Always was and it and it embodies and frames those fundamental principles of the
natural order. Yeah, because because otherwise you're in, you're into a world which is, you know what we were talking about earlier, this sort of Liberal Democratic world where we can do anything we want if enough people go along with it. Yes, Right. And, and, and that would just wreak absolute havoc with the people who don't want to go along with it. Yeah. Because actually you might be incorrect or it doesn't meet up with my my my values. Unintended consequences. Exactly.
Yeah. And those people will, they're coalescing around this collectivist worldview. They want to completely transform, basically scrap and rewrite the the Constitution. Rewiring the the the the kind of framework of our the way we, the way we live. I think you used was a phrase. Maybe, I can't remember. No, they are, they're rewiring it and they're going off. They're going off the child by jury. They, they want to dial up the magistrates.
They're also really pushing on what they call diverse diversity in the magistrates courts, which does throw in, begin to throw into question this idea of being judged by peers because actually peers means fellow citizens, right? But if you've got people who are. Yeah, that would be their argument that the Magistrates Court, that would be their argument for justifying the Magistrates Court, is that the magistrates are our peers, yes.
But if you've got people who are sitting in the magistrate's chair who are from completely different cultures, then you're not being judged by your peers, yeah. And they're kind of professionalised because they're, they're used, they're not paid, which is quite important to make that, that point. Yeah. And, and also actually it's, it's important to understand in the Magistrates Court as well, is that it's not just magistrates. So quite often they'll swap out a magistrate for a, for a, a
judge. Yeah, who is state paid and you know, so it's not our jury. It's not. It's not a jury. And it absolutely is not that our jury. And what they're really pushing towards is to run all this stuff algorithmically using AI. Yes, that's what the end point, because they don't want to basically it's all about efficiency. They don't want to pay for anything. Yeah, right. Yeah. So you, you, you'll get, you'll get something that we call justice. But actually it's not justice.
It's the lowest possible level completely of algorithmically applied legislation compliance with arbitrary legislation that you can possibly. And that justification of that, of course, is that we've got 70,000 case case backlog. Yeah, in the Crown Court. Yeah, yeah. Which I would argue has been created through a perfect storm of underfunding of the justice system. Yeah, but they've done it deliberately. Creative destruction. Creative destruction is what
they call. It yeah, I mean, I I put a video. Out. Oh, no, it's all broken. We've got to fix it. Yeah, but you broke. We. We will ignore the fact that we broke it. Exactly. Yeah, and, and, and, and those in the justice system actually are frustrated by that too. You know, I mean, the lawyers know this, the, the judges know that. I mean, you've got a problem with the, the physical state of courts as well.
I mean, lawyers know this, that when they go into court, you know, there are kind of bowls out to catch the drips from the ceiling. This kind of stuff is going on. You've got a, you've got chaos from the, you know, the, the, what is it called the, the prisoner escort system, which is the, the, the system for bringing prisoners to the court
system. And then quite often you get cases being, you know, because, because they didn't turn up, the prisoner wasn't well, you know, so that you've got a delay. OK, so you've got these massive inefficiencies going on and those in the justice system are massively frustrated by that too, but they're not seeing that problem. And, and, and, and if you go back further than that, of course, why have we got this massive case backlog?
It's because you've gone and created a legislative landscape through complexity that is so huge that you this is that's the why it exists in the first place. Exactly, exactly. OK, fascinating. Let's just finish up with, I want to show you this, which is, and I'll hold this up to the camera and we'll put it up on screen as well as we're talking through it. But this is from Makespace Oxford. So yes, you did a segment on this. Yeah, I did a. Segment on this on the news,
right? Because basically what they did and people need to understand that the the British government is actually right now building a parallel system that is based on a completely different constitution and they have opened it up. They call it the dark matter, right? So it's all this stuff down here. So they call these problems root problems include things like private ownership. That's a root problem apparently. And this idea of of separation of basically is individualism.
Individualism. That that which that is a problem. They're saying that, yeah, yeah. And, and what you're saying and should be individuals. And what our Constitution says is that we are and have to be individuals. We have to be individuals, not in, in, in, in a selfish, selfish expression. Yeah. But as individuals, we come to understand that, that, that we have to manage ourselves responsibly so as not to tread on other people. Yes. So it's it's fundamentally not
selfish. Yeah. And when we want to engage with others, we do so as, as, yeah, under, under, under, you know, our voluntary action, you know, we want to come together as a group of other people with other individuals because we wish to do that. Not because, not because we're told we have to or not because we're put in a category or because we're, you know, it's all based on, on the, the volunteerism.
That's what it's all about. So, yeah, I mean, freedom of expression is probably going to be another one there. You know, freedom of ideas, freedom, you know, all of this, all of the things that are expressions of individualism are probably under the root problems there. Yes, they are. And private ownership, private ownership and they talk about this imperialist mindset and extractivist mindset. And I'm certainly not extractivist and I'm certainly not an imperialist.
I'm not entirely sure what they mean by that, but I think it's basically western society, western civilization. Evils of. Western society has been presented as as as universally evil, but actually a lot of the bad stuff that's happened, and there are plenty of bad things that our societies have done both at home and abroad over centuries. The vast majority of that is being driven by the people who are deliberately trying to degrade our constitutional rights completely.
Yeah. So actually, the things that are being identified, the things that are potentially I could understand as being legitimate problems have actually been, have been, have been, have been put there by the people who are trying to, to, to do the things that we've just been talking
about, quite frankly. And then also one thing that I think is really crucial for people who who might veer towards the kind of collectivist worldview to, to appreciate is that the collective is made up of individuals. Yes, right. And that's what collectivism misses out when people talk about how well you want to think about the collective. I should clarify that. But it's made the collective. The base unit of the collective
is the. Individual who are there voluntarily, yes, that's the key, yes. Yes. Collectivism is is where you are. You're, you're, you're seen or identified as a group and whether you like it or not, and you're given given rights or, or, or have rights taken away on the basis of an identity. So we get into group identity. We get into, you know, Jordan Peterson talks about group identity. That's a modernist concept, postmodern concept, really. So that's where we're getting
into. So that that's people need to be really clear on what individualism and collectivism really is. And I actually, I did a series on that of little short videos of only about 15 minutes each on the law and alchemy.org YouTube channel where I take people through those steps of understanding the difference between individualism and collectivism and why collectivism is important to reject individualism is
important to embrace. And how those, those, those those two different ideologies can be distorted. The meaning can be distorted as well. And and individualism often people. Wrongly say, oh, that's just a selfish ideology. But as we've said, it isn't because, you know, individuals, it's about, it's not about not forming collectives. It's about doing that as individuals voluntarily. Yeah, yeah, definitely. OK, fascinating.
So look, just just to wrap up, what what can we do to help re establish these immutable, inalienable right principles in our daily lives around us now? We we need to be creating a lot of buzz and activity about these subjects. It's really educational to start with. Yeah. And a lot of people will go, oh, well, we haven't got time for that kind of stuff. I I don't care. You don't have, you don't have a choice. Yeah. The universe will not give you that choice, I'm afraid.
OK. Because actually, if you don't deal with this at the root cause, you have to educate yourself and become absolutely clear on natural law, objective morality, understanding through logic and reason, the difference between those two ideologies, individualism and collectivism, and how that community that is not based on the principles that are baked into the natural order. You're going to take your society down that way and it will keep going down until you learn it.
It's, it's simple as that. So it's education, It's educating others when you've got clear on it in the social media space, causing people to to question those ideas, to reflect on those ideas, putting awkward and difficult questions before them that cause them to reflect on these kind of incorrect belief systems that have come about.
We're going to have to do that it it probably wouldn't take as long as we think it would if huge numbers started to do this and we created that that buzz and that activity in the social media space. But yeah, we've got to do it.
We've got to become familiar. With this, OK, there's a job for us to do there and we'll share some, some some useful links around all of these topics from Will and others so that you can educate yourself and then begin to educate others and we can all start to get active in this area. Very, very important. I think the, the trial by jury piece in particular really lands with people who are maybe a little bit less less engaged with some of the other topics
that we talk about. People actually do understand that the trial by jury is actually really important. So I think that that's a. And you're not sounding lunatic as well when you're doing it because actually what we're talking about is the constitutional rule of law. So even with mainstreamers, you can actually be quite tempered and sensible sounding when you bring these subjects up.
And that's a benefit, you know, so that that's a reason to, to talk about it with, with, you know, people who aren't awake in the conspiratorial sense. You can talk about this, this stuff, you know, without sounding completely lunatic. Good. Hopefully so. OK, fantastic. Will Keats, it's been a pleasure. UK column, you're all fantastic. I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for coming in. It's been great. Good to have you in the studio and until next time, thank you for watching.