From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is
the power Line Show with your host Steve Hayward. This Sunday, the member
states of the European Union will be going to the polls to elect their members
of the European Parliament. Now, the European Parliament is a rather opaque organization
to most Americans. We're not really clear what it does, but actually it's
somewhat opaque to Europeans as well. In any case, it's all linked up
with the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels, the subject rightly of a lot of
suspicion, and the campaign is in full swing through the continent. Here in
Budapest, where I still am at the moment, there was a march last
weekend of several hundred thousand people campaigning on behalf of the Conservative candidates for the
country, and I gather similar things are happening at other countries around the continent.
Now, the polls suggest that populist parties or center right parties insurgent parties
are likely to do very well in the elections this weekend. We'll just have
to see. There are a few outliers, like the Alternative for Germany Party
AfD, which has lately encountered some problems because of some basic conflicts and uncertainties
about what they're all about. Meanwhile, on July fourth, Britain will go
to the polls for the first time in five years, and all the polls
suggest that the Conservative Party is going to get wiped out. They look to
be heading to a historic defeat after what I think thirteen years in office and
seemingly unable to get their act together. Well, I thought the person to
decode both of these is one of my hosts here in Bouot, and it's
the famous John O'Sullivan American listeners may remember, was the editor of National Review
for many years back in the late eighties and early nineties, where he was
way ahead of the curve and raising issue of immigration and what he liked to
call the national question, meaning you know, what's the national identity of the
country and what waves of mass immigration mean for that, both here and in
other countries, And in that respect he was an early prophet of what became
the national conservatism movement, both in the United States and around the world.
Currently, John lives here in Budapesta, where he is the president of the
Danube Institute. He was, as you may know, a chief speechwriter for
Margaret Thatcher for a long time, as well as spending time in America and
at all the premiere publications on Fleet Street. So with his finger on all
these issues, I decided to have a conversation with him about what to look
for, what these elections are about, what's behind all this And so without
further ado, here is John O'Sullivan. So, John, I want to
talk to you about the upcoming elections. The European Parliament elections are coming in
about the week and a half here in Europe, and then on July fourth,
kind of an ironic day for Americans, will be the next national election
in Britain. So, first of all, most Americans, I think don't
really have a good feel for what the European Parliament is and what it does.
And then we'll get the politics side it. Maybe you can be called
it just briefly in the summary form for mostly American audience. Well, the
European Parliament was initially not directly elected by the voters. It was Parliament's which
sent their members to Strasbourg and those delegated MPs, where in fact they were
the European Parliament. But now for the last twenty more years or more,
it has been directly elected. As a result of that, it wants to
exercise more power. Problem because it's powers are fairly well circumscribed, and so
they're trying to use votes on matters in which they have And this is the
left. It's fundamentally when he left parliament, but we can we might look
into that. But because of that, they try to use votes in the
parliament to pressure both national governments but also the European Commission, which is the
executive arm of the European Union. They try to pressure these bodies, and
these bodies, particularly the European Commission, are quite happy to bend to that
pressure to pursue more powers, to give themselves more power over member states and
in particular of course on moral issues, on everything except the economics, to
push Europe, the European Union as a whole, to the left, so
to the extent that the Americans are familiar in all the European Parliament. That
remember Niger Farage, who am I right to say that he couldn't have been
elected the parliament in England. He was such an outlier in British politics.
But he could be elected to the Parliament. Well, it's slightly difficult to
answer your question. I'll tell you why you say that that Nigel could.
He tried several times to be elected to Parliament and he didn't get in.
That itself doesn't tell you a lot because he was not standing for one of
the major parties and it's very hard for anybody to get in. But we
discovered in the Brexit debate that he spoke for actually the majority of the country.
Now neither major party wants to concede that they and they are very hostile
to him. And for example, although he helped the Conservatives to gain their
eighty seat majority last time, neither he nor any other member of his party,
the Brexit Party then Reform now has been given any seats in the House
of Lords. I regard that as a scandal and a shame and borishing me
ashamed of himself because he was the man who drove a hard bargain but didn't
even give some of the ceremonial treats that British government can hand out to Nigel.
So I think that Nigel is an extremely important figure. We don't know
if he'll carry on being important. After all, he's been important now for
about a decade without the benefit of a political party. So we now have
to see whether or not in the new politics, which are basically quite favorable
to him in the sense that there's now a large number of people who share
his critique, his criticism of the UNI Party, the way in which both
of these parties tend to adopt the same policies. Not only were they against
Brexit, but the Laborers and Conservative Party until the brief period of Boris's leadership,
the labor and Conservas have been shadowing each other on other masses too.
They're both in favor of net zero, although it's fairly plain now that this
is completely disastrous policy and isn't and is in any way doesn't it go anyway
to achieving it's professed aim, namely to reduce the temperature levels average temperature levels
in the following industrialization. Well, right, I mean the brief digression.
But net zero is a great con game. I mean, you know,
twenty years ago it was in an eighty to ninety percent reduction from baseline level.
Net zero means you leed lots of room for cheating, and that's what's
going to happen? Right, Absolutely well, now the kind of just But
on the other hand, it had the allegiance of the entire House of Commons.
When the Climate Change Act, which enshrines it was first pass only five
members of Parliament voted against it from a house of about six hundred and thirty
MPs. So there was a sense for a long time that it was inevitable.
But the reason I felt argue that it wasn't inevitable we could and should
fight it was because if it was seriously attempted, it would impose intolerable living
standards, price increases, and higher taxes on the majority of people, and
there'll be no reason to think that they would go along with that. They
would in fact rebel. And that has happened, and it's come as a
terrible shock to all of the adults in the room who tended to think they
could put one over on the voters. Right. We'll follow up on that.
This is a bit arcane even for me. But was there really nobody
who was skeptical or was this one of those votes that had what are you
called the four line whip or whatever it's called, were the imposed party discipline
or do you know, I don't think it mattered really. I think I
would guess that there were two votes, the most recent one, but they
both, however, had massive majorities. And the fact that everybody else seems
to be believe it means that anybody who doesn't believe it is going to have
to have very strong principle, very strong character, more simply a willingness to
fight for what he believes. And as I say it turned that turned out
to be fives of parliament. Yeah, oh boy, right, all right,
So back to the European parliamentary election scene from Afar. The general news
is that popular center right parties rebelling against Brussels had been gaining strength Marine Lapan,
showing great strength in France. I'll set aside AfD for just a moment
in Germany Ian to talk about them specifically, but and I gather that the
expectation is that those parties are going to do very very well on this selection.
Is that sound right? Yes? The general view is that what are
called far right obviously falsely but far right or populist parties look like doing well
almost everywhere, which will turn out to be an exaggeration. But almost everywhere
except Britain. And the reason Britain is the exception is that first of all,
we're not in the European Union and we won't be in those elections,
but in Britain's own election. The problem for the Conservatives is that they've been
in past since twenty ten. They have done very badly. They didn't handle
the pandemic well. They have really not got the benefits that are available under
Brexit because they're running skirred of EU reactions and there are other many other things
like that. So because they're in power and because everybody thinks that they not
only have not done well, but on the issue of immigration, have lied
about what they were going to do and actually they have. Instead of reducing
immigration to the tens of thousands David Cameron's pledge in twenty ten, it has
in fact risen to several hundred thousand and is currently producing a very significant,
i think change in the way in which public affairs are debated in England.
People are very worried about growing anti Semitism, which they attribute in part to
high levels of immigration from the Middle East, and they are very worried about
the fact that there are clear physical threats to Jewish people on Saturdays in London
when these big marches occur. So there's a general feeling of great anxiety apart
from other things, and so they weren't. So the Tories suffer from the
fact that they've been in when they haven't done much of any good at all.
Right, Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's right. That's side
of that is Johnson missed his opportunity to on COVID. Yeah, but so
did President Trump and a lot of people who I think should have known better.
And then your immigration and then in that zero business. It's all going
to be worse under Labor though, isn't it. I mean, understand the
impulse to throw the bums out there have been laughs too long and would say
more about that, but yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't
mean to laugh, but I mean the Labor Party is hardly a sensible alternative
to those problems. No, And it doesn't look as though the insurgent right
wing party so to speak, Reform is going to get enough votes to win
any seats they might get, you know, as many as eighteen twenty percent.
At the moment they're getting about twelve. But even if they were to
get twenty percent. That could mean that they still don't win a single seat.
So the general feeling is you're correct that the Tories are going to be
punished for what they have and haven't done in office. Labor is likely to
win. Sorry, the other conservative parties just are stymied by the two party
system. Labor is almost certain to win, is the general view. A
slight question mark is now being raised against that expectation, and that is that
because of what's happening in the Middle East, because the Labor Party has not
been prepared to accept the demands of the pro Palestinian, the pro Palestinian demonstrators
and voices which are strongly influenced by the Muslim religion in their own party,
that they will not do as well with the Muslim voters everybody expected. They're
going to suffer the same problem that the Democrats are facing in the States,
which is to say, on the one hand, they are seen by Jewish
voters and by people who are worried about the attacks on Jews, as not
being strong enough to defend the civil rights of everybody, including Jewish citizens you
know, who are not immigrants. They're born and brought up for generations in
England, and secondly, they are not satisfying the demands of those who would
like to see a Palestinian and embrace the Palestinian statehood. And so there's a
feeling that they may not do quite as well as they expected, having as
everybody expected about a month or two ago. But having said that, it
still looks as though they will win a majority, a clear majority and former
government and the Tories will be reduced to well, some people think below one
hundred. Some people think it'll be more like one hundred and fifty one hundred
and eighty. Yeah, So well I stick with that from how do they
rebuild? I mean we just said that. I mean after the Tories were
way down under Tony Blair, who was a very talented man. Yeah,
but then came back finally under I mean, I don't know David Cameron's incapable
of what rather bland, but no, they came back. So I don't
know what's the toy is going to have to go back to their Tory roots
and Thatcher right roots to get going again. Well, it does appear that
one of the things that is now happening is that rather than fight the election,
quite a lot of people at the Tory Party, preparing the ground to
fight for control of the party when it goes into opposite and now. Until
recently, the people who seem to be talking most strongly about getting control of
the party and making it a more genuinely conservative party were the people who were
talking the most. But just lately members of what's called the One Nation,
which is malely liberal group of conservatives, they are talking now about saving the
party from alert to the right. It looks likely as though most of the
people who lose their seats simply because the majorities are smaller than the others,
will be the people on the right. And it's not likely that people like
Zuela Bravoman, who is admired for the courage that she has taken in quarreling
very publicly with the Prime Minister on immigration and control. It's not likely that
people who who are like her in seats which they probably their personal reputation probably
won't save them. That doesn't often happen in the British system. So there
will be a you know what, they call it a dunny Brook in Tory
politics when it's over, and that will last for a couple of years,
I think. But the electoral dynamics, which have been well laid out by
Matt Goodwin, the political scientist, in a couple of recent books on populism.
The most recently is called I Think the New British Politics Not quite right.
I have a reviewer in the Clermont Review in fact coming up. It
looks to me as though there is going to be the Tory Party is going
to be forced to become a Conservative or else it will stay out for well
probably two, three or four elections. Oh boy, I think what the
number? I heard something like eighty Conservative members are not standing for election?
That's right, Yeah, I heard seventy eight eight. Is that typical when
you're facing a white belt. I suppose there's a tendency for that to happen,
But I think it's something more too, which is that quite a lot
of the Tory Party, particularly people brought in by David Cameron, who attempted
to create deliberately bring an intake of young progressive people into the party, they
were never really comfortable in the Conservative Party. They were on the opposite side
to the majority of its members on Brexit. They started leaving five years ago,
and though quite a few of them have just simply been glad to sort
of say, well, we're going to lose any way, we might as
well go into private life and maybe make some money instead. Now, so,
yes, I think that will be a fact as well, what you
might call that disproportionate resignations. Right, let's go back to Europe for a
moment. So I've been following from AFAR with some interest, the AfD alternative
for deutsch Land, and I don't trust what I read a lot of the
media about them. On the other hand, you know, our mutual friend
Mario Fantini has been very cautious about them and mixed in's evaluation, and most
recently I think they've been either expelled is that the right word? From one
of the sort of international consortions of populist parties. I did any Unpan Parliament.
What's your assessment of them? I mean, was it always a sort
of unstable or unclear? I mean, I think this thing began fifteen years
ago with a bunch of economists. I was told that's right, it began.
I used to call it the International Alliance of German bankers because what they
were most concerned about when they founded the party was actually they didn't want to
go into the Europe or they want to go in on much more restrictive and
anti inflationary terms. And yes, despite the fact that the despite the manifest
respectability of their aims and interests, they were treated by German media and others
as a monstrous, kind of dangerous, neo fascist group of people. The
German German media is it suffers from a permanent German version of Trump derangement syndrome,
and so everybody who comes along looks to them like another Trump. And
that's what that's the that was the problem. Now, as you say,
its character has changed. It's become a party which is strong as first of
all in Eastern Germany rather than in the old Western Germany. Secondly, they
are undoubtedly strong, powerfully motivated by issues like immigration. And thirdly they are
not so that they are They are themselves a various, very gated bunch.
And I think it's probably reasonable to say that most members of the party are
simply right wing conservatives, but there are one or two who we discover every
now and then who have other points of view which are probably too probably dangerous
or at least highly unrespectable. Now, the truth of the matter is that
there is something going on in German politics which is extremely interesting and which the
conservatives have never yet grasped, nor of the centrists, and that is that
there is also in Germany and in other parts of Europe, the potential which
is now beginning to be realized for left wing populism, people who have socialist
policies in a very clear way, and at the same time not left wing
on gender, who want to control immigration, who take the view that you
may remember Bernie Sanders expressed until he was bullied out of it, that an
open immigration policy is damaging to workers' rights and to and you know, it
prevents the tight labor market which benefits the workers in iowages. So I think
that we're going to see quite soon some changes in German politics because there is
now a vowedly left wing populist party. It's new and it's small, but
the potential for us is there, and it's there in other places. In
fact, one of the things about Hungary which is interesting is that Victor Auburn
obviously saw populism emerging and Fidez is a conservative party. It's not a populist
party, but it's a party which like and Borris did the same thing five
years ago in England. It reached out it's with its right arm and brought
the populist voters into the into the party. And if you if the Conservatives
don't do that in any given country, they're going to find that the left
winger comes along and takes I don't know a third of those votes, sure,
right, yeah, oh my goodness. Yeah. I think AfD has
been polling well in Germany, something like over twenty percent. That's right.
It's it's the second largest party I think at and has been for some time.
What is interesting is the way in which in Germany, in the European
Parliament, in Ireland and in several other countries, what you have is the
development of what i'd call gram coalition politics. You've got a party emerging on
the right. People say it's unrespectable, wicked, can't have anything to do
with it. So the conservative voters start not voting for the Christian Democrat parties
say at that point, the Christian Democrats, which used to be in all
of these countries probably the most the largest, most stable governing party, almost
always in power, they find themselves shrinking and they find in order to stay
in power. They and the Socialists and now the Liberals get together in the
Grand Coalition. It has happened in Ireland, and it's happened in the European
Parliament. Now for the first time, there is a real prospect. Personally,
I think it will This will not quite happen, but there is a
real prospect that the governing coalition in the European Parliament Liberals, Greens, Christian
Democrats and Socialists, we'll find that it falls just below fifty percent. I
think it will be a buppet. But if it falls below fifty one percent
of the votes of the Parliament, you could begin to see really serious changes
in Europe. Without that, I think we have, we'll have to wait
for another five years. Oh boy, Well, let's let me ask you
about two questions about America and then we'll wind it close. This left right
coalition it's harder to work out in America except on the level of ideas,
and I'm thinking of, in particular some aspects of the National Conservatives. By
the way, they always seem to schedule the conferences. When I have a
scheduled conflict can't come. But you know, I know or in cass I
like his work. I'm skeptical of his calls for industrial policy because I kept
saying, when did we decide that Walter Mondale was our right? But i'd
I mean, I understand the impulse, I agree with it, but and
I keep thinking, well, I wonder how that's going to fall out.
And in fact, you know, people like Soba Mai and I think Oren
have made some overtures to central left thinkers, pro labor people, pro union
people, and hasn't gone well as my perception, But there's been anyway,
how do you size up all that? What? It seems to me that
this needs to be a lot more work to really figure out how to make
that work. That's the policy? Want go no, no, No,
Well, I think I'd say two things. The first is that for me,
national conservatism is an attempt to say, why did the Conservatives after nineteen
eighty nine and for about twenty years after that, why did they abandon the
idea that patriotism and nationalism will pass natural paths of the Conservative coalition they always
had been before, they are going to be in the future. I couldn't
quite understand why that had ceased to be true. I think it's something to
do with the fact that the elites at the top of conservative parties in Europe
and to some extent in America found the supporters who were still, as they
saw it, knuckle dragging reactionaries, embarrassing and they wanted to in a sense,
go away from that anyway. So that's the first thing. Is I
happen to think that the argument that has an he makes in his book this
is a very important argument that in most cases it is the case that a
country which is a national democracy is better than one in which it's one country
in about ten and they have to quarrel about what their policies are with all
of the others to get in thething done. So that's the first thing.
And the second point is that in sorry, what I think, what's going
to make for us? Well, maybe it'll come back to your So last
thing I was going to ask about is speaking here shortly after Donald Trump has
been convicted in this crazy kangaroo court. By the way, I'm going to
ask Tony Abbott and I forgot whether kangaroo Court is an insult to Australians,
and he said, if you called the Wallaby Court it would be anyway.
And I don't know you. We spent some time living in America some years
ago, and I don't know what's your sense of things? I mean,
I have a sense of where this is going, but I don't know do
you have a prediction or expectation or what your what's your evaluation where things stand?
Right? Yeah, I mean I think everybody seems to me that.
And this is you know, I'm sitting in a comfortable office here in a
country which is actually more reasonably at peace with itself because there are disputes and
arguments, but still, and everybody, even the people who would be particularly
favorable to all Man's government, there's they tend to look at what's going on
in America and to be very worried about it. You must, and they
also so there are people here who will tell you when I hear what the
left is saying in America about gender, about immigration, about the about the
about economics of all of these things, I feel that's what it reminds me
of my youth when I was living under the Communists. And there is this
sense that the kind of wokery is a kind of of Marxism that has gone
to sleep for twenty years and woken up after with some very new ideas and
so now that's an inadequate account, but nonetheless that's what people feel. And
so I think the sense of anxiety for America is quite strong in Europe.
And the second thing is I think in America, because of course I managed
an American and live in America and come back and forth zon, is that
sense of anxiety is quite strong there people. And that's true for England as
well. We're living in a period of extreme nervousness about the people we put
into government, which is interesting because the odd thing about the current campaign in
the British election is how dullage is. It's very, very dull, and
partly because it looks as though we're going to march in lockstep and with our
eyes closed into voting for a labor government. And nobody likes that, but
they somehow feel that it's inevitable. And I would say that probably that's probably
right, But it also means that you cannot rule out a surprising reaction,
maybe in reaction to some damaging event, and so right up to the last
minute, I think people could change their mind. Yeah, you know,
I kind of a hunter. It's going to be closer than people think too.
I mean, you know, I think back to John Major pulling off
an upset election. I mean, he was certainly a bland fellow I think,
sound I suppose, but I think it was a great campaigner on the
stuff is what people used to tell me. But yes, I don't think
that was the reason I think. I mean, I'm not not attacking I
mean, he fought to a good campaign. But the really interesting thing I
think was the way in which there was a kind of people use the term
Nurumberg style rally by labor a week beforehand, and I think that's a bit
unfer tokay. But and people kind of rebelled against the notion that these people
were going to be running their lives the next and that could happen again.
Though Kirshtarmer obviously thinks that's the main risk to him, and so he's running
a campaign of extreme caution. And you have this very peculiar situation in which
the Tories are saying we're going to spend more money on this and this and
this right and I was saying, oh, I don't think so. We
really have to reduce borrowing before we can think of spending money again. It's
the two parties have changed personalities for the duration of the campaign, and of
course it doesn't bode well for public policy, and certainly not for Tory policy.
But and it's obviously in a sense fallacious that they can't hold their breath
for four full years, can they? No? Right? I mean I
think the Democrats. I mean, we think back to the famous Wellstone funeral
in nineteen ninety four, I think it was, whatever year it was.
Maybe there's more reason than that in two thousand and two, but I could
easily see them doing the same kind of thing if they can turn anybody out.
I mean, these Biden rallies are embarrassing. But yeah, and then
that's very funny, of course, right, exactly, bigger crab. Well
then, but your general analysis of the anxiety and happiness, that's why I
think Trump is gonna win, and maybe win big. We don't know.
It's a strange world, but that's what I expect right now. Well,
yes, and I can see why you do, and I probably would show
your view. The one thing which alarms me slidely is, given the very
good reasons for anxiety and nervousness, why isn't his lead bigger in the states.
The key states it's four put four points, five points, three points.
I'm surprised it's not more. And I recently read an arka by a
guy on the left who argued, I think, very reasonably and interestingly and
from his own point of view, it wasn't his advantage. He said he
thinks that the figures for the Democrat turnout are false and that that the victory
will be bigger for Trump partly because the figures are misleadingly good for the Democrats.
Yes, I mean we now have two big elections where Trump ran ahead
of his polls. Yeah, and why wouldn't you expect that? I know
the posters are trying to correct and all kinds of things, but then they're
scared of death of all these surveys showing growing strength among minority voters for Trump.
Oh yeah. I did ask Glenn Lowry the other day, who's got
this terrific new look out about He has criticized conservatives for not sort of giving
up on blacks and inner city and I kind of agree with him in a
certain extent. I asked him, whatever happened to Enterprise Zone? Do you
remember those forty years ago? Nothing ever came of that really, and there's
been no replacement that I've really seen. But yet you see these numbers of
And Glenn's answer was simple. He says, it's not a vast majority,
it's not a huge ground swell, but more and more blacks and Latinos are
tired of being condescended too. I think there's something to that. Well.
Glenn and I have been conversations back in the eighties in which I was trying
to involve him in discussions and he was quite keen to be involved in fact,
in which we discussed American the American identity as one that in principle did
contain everybody, but but somehow or other, significant portions of my racial ethnic
minorities didn't feel that it did. And what could we do about that?
Now? As those conversations resulted in our in the National Review making the national
question a major issue, and I think we now look very good in reference.
Yes, and I think you know, so Glenn was part of that,
but he and I we drift. I mean, there's nothing significant.
He just had to do other things and so we and we lost touch of
it. I'd like to make touch and I'd like to get in touch with
him again, actually, because I do agree with you that he is very
talented and he's pursuing an extremely interesting line of argument, and it's a line
of argument which is creative and positive about the about identity as opposed to divisive
and frankly absurd. Right. Well, John, thanks very much. I've
been a terrific visit here in June. I'm looking forward to coming back again
soon. That's great because you're always welcome here. And of course we have
and we have a lot going on too, so I mean, I've just
advise your listeners. You know, we have a website. Everything we do
eventually ends up there, and sometimes it's a bit of a way because we
have so many things going on, but it will all. And so when
I when I hear, you know, people on the left say that we
are dangerously reactionary, right, I say, well, okay, quote me,
you know, yeah, right, No, I'm staggered by the level
of activity not just here here at dannyb Institute, but at the MCC and
there's all kinds of other things, the Center for Fundamental Right, and it's
it's astounding the level of activity, I mean relative to the population or the
size of it it's it's amazing, so you can learn a lot from him.
So okay, thanks John, Thanks Steve Ricochet. Join the conversation.