Is Britain on the Brink of Collapse? | Peter Hitchens talks to Aaron Bastani

I know I'm supposed to be a hard-headed fascist from the island, but in reality I've spent a lot of time traveling, especially around the European continent, and I know how other people live and in many cases I've realized that they live much better than me. us, you talk to people in the Netherlands and they are surprised at how old-fashioned and run-down our country looks when they go to visit it and you know what they mean, the lives. that the lives we lead are not as good as they should be. I also still retain a kind of social democratic desire to reform the lives of the poor and I look at things like housing and education and transportation and feel ashamed.

In Britain we tell ourselves many stories, some true and some less so, so one of the central stories is the national mythology of the Second World War, how we choose to remember an extraordinary event, from the Dunkirk fiasco to the Battle of Britain , D-Day and even its aftermath. of the 1945 welfare state, this is overwhelmingly seen as the Genesis of the modern country we all live in today, but what if that story isn't true? Also, what if that history is one of the main reasons we continue to make mistakes when it comes to foreign policy. What if that's the reason we entered Iraq under a series of delusions?

We occupied Afghanistan for more than a decade. What if that self-image we've created is the reason we think we can police the Red Sea while the British top brass the streets disintegrate well Today's guest has some really unique insights into all this Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday and his recent book, The Phony Victory, looks at how Britain commemorates the Second World War and the functions that memory serves for politicians when they want to invade countries in the 21st century. Peter Hitchens, welcome to Downstream. Well, it's wonderful to be here again. It's wonderful to have you again.

The first conversation was very revealing. Many people said that you defeated me without a doubt. I don't think it was. a competition, that's not the point of these at all, it wasn't, I'm obviously flattered to think that they thought it was, but I didn't treat it like something that no, I don't and I think that's something that, um, I think While people look at a lot of Legacy Media and see things as a contestation, we try to be deliberative here at Nara Media, so I'm glad you say that today's conversation will focus more on Foreign Affairs security policy, clearly with a focus on Russia Iran China because you obviously have very original views on these things in the UK context so I'll start with this Peter Hitchin what keeps you up at night um politically no, personally, not much, actually because no, it's not like Come home, think carefully if I hadn't signed that treaty or if I hadn't appointed David Cameron as foreign secretary this war wouldn't have happened I'm not responsible for anything it's foreign foreign policy it's not something that I keep going at night because I have no influence on that.

Was there ever a time when there were things that used to keep you awake? I never had the When I was in Trist I had the fantasy that I would probably influence the world in the short term and do you know what I got right? I never did and since I became a member of a national newspaper I don't think I have influenced anything at all. Still, it would be nice in some ways to remain baffled by the idea that someone actually listened to me and followed my ideas and that policy may or may not have turned out well, since I don't have that. problems, so you don't think you've had any impact, not even your entire career, the whole thing, nothing at all, ever, nobody pays attention to anything.

I say that until 20 years after this, when they say oh God, yes. We were right, you still know, yes, but for some people it's all over by then. No it's no use, you said the conservative party basically died after 2010, well it's the conservative party. I started attacking the conservative party as useless around 2003 and I think. I declared it officially worthless in 2007 and I was urging people not to vote for it again after 2007, especially in 2010, and they didn't pay attention, so we got David Cameron, why shouldn't people have voted? Consider obviously that he is writing. This is Sunday's email, oh, because look, most politics take place between general elections, they take place within parties, the parties have revolutionized the Labor party, in my opinion, they have been revolutionized by the smiling Eurocommunists in the years leading up to 1997 and it was a completely different party from Anything else anyone had ever faced one of its targets because they are big Eurocommunists or, rather, the people who run it, was to transform the conservative party.

You had that type of cultural, moral and political revolution that every institution has to conform to and the main opposition party. It was one of his main objectives and in 2010 David Cameron practically represented Elation on a Blairite platform. He didn't understand it, he didn't know what it was about, but he adopted it because he felt it was the only way. he would be allowed back into office and he was right, but it also meant that the British people no longer had friends in Westminster, the whole thing was that all political parties were under the control of the same fundamental elite, as pretty as Patel Sol bravman. members of a political party that can be characterized as Eurocommunist well, no, it cannot be characterized as Eurocommunist these people are not these people are not Marxist-Leninists they do not understand what they are doing it is a party that has been defeated and has accepted their nostrums without knowing what they are.

You must remember Mayard K's famous comment. I will paraphrase it because I can't do it exactly. Whenever he met someone, particularly a businessman, he would sneer and say: "I have no ideology at all. The man was invariably the slave of some deceased economist and such is the case with the Conservative Party's policies that follow entirely the same." equality and diversity agenda and implement the Equality Act 2010 with absolute enthusiasm is Blair's is Eurocommunist, but they have no idea what they are doing and you don't think that can change within the Conservative party, so, For example, you've said that they're not very bright, so let's take some substantial things that they could change, which would be a step towards the things that you're talking about, they could eliminate the Supreme Court, for example, they could actually, it's a very, very important example of one thing, because the Supreme Court has been a huge part of changing this country and the way it is run, but they have never made any effort to do it, they have never even tried to reform it and, for example , a pretty smart reform would be to have hearings for the appointments of Supreme Court judges and bring in some kind of parliamentary scrutiny, but they haven't even come to the conclusion that these people are completely their own masters and that the government has no influence over them and they changed the law as they said they would in ways that would greatly limit the power of the government compared to the past, so their relationship with the conservative party, which as said, really changes since the early 1990s. 2000 to 2010, it seems like a pretty clear time when What I've written is that you just got tired of having to um Elevate people that you considered stupid, but they weren't, a lot of people in politics were stupid, uh, and always It has been and always will be.

Now what's the problem. What you have as a colonist of a national newspaper is that you are faced again and again with a series of things that keep coming up, whether it is the total ineffectiveness of the police force or the extraordinary enthusiasm of a poor and not very strong country to go to war abroad or the accelerated

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of the education system and you write about it and nothing happens, so in my case I go away and I think there must be more I can do about it, so I'll go away and try. and write a book about it that will be partly a way of educating myself and also a way of establishing an area of ​​knowledge that anyone can consult and that will help them reach the same conclusions that I have reached and I write these books and no one checks them and no one reads them, that's not the case.

I wrote a book called The the the originally called The Broken Compass, which was later changed to Cameron Delusion to explain what was happening in the Conservative party and it's very good and I highly recommend it, but hardly. Anyone had it ready, if they had it, they would know what happened and how it happened and what the purpose of it was. Abolition Britain has sold very well, he sings. I think many authors would love to have those numbers. You say that no one reads your selling books is selling is one thing reading is another Authors mostly have to be content with the fact that someone bought the book and they generally keep silent about whether they have read it or not, how many books do they give you or you buy what?

I never actually read "They give me" They give me too many, so I go out and buy "I read" "I read three questions" "I read carefully" probably half of them "Yeah, okay, well, that's a bit like asking, It's like a doctor asking a man." How much do you drink, don't you? because you already knew what I was asking you there, if you and you are exceptional, in any case, you are, obviously, you are a diligent reader, a lot of people buy books. so they can have a nice bookshelf, especially nowadays, it's a great thing for Zoom purposes, isn't it having books?

So, that's part of the rack. I think I would love to know and no one has ever dared to do the research. Publishers don't want to know how many books that are bought are actually read, but certainly when I talk to people or even on some occasions am interviewed by people, it is pretty clear that they haven't read the things that I have read. written well, I have to be honest with Britain's abolition. I haven't read it, I've listened to it, no, I listen to it as an audiobook and I'll tell you why, because you narrate it, yeah, that's like it's in a booming voice, so what an opportunity, yeah, right, will you say it? ?

I don't know, so what do you think is the difference between reading something new and listening? I think reading is much better than audiobooks, you're probably right, but again in 1984, uh, yeah. You ask people how it begins or how it ends, they don't know it's true, everyone thinks they've read it, they've seen some television dramatization or a movie, they haven't read it, so I say: they make references to fragments like the book of Goldstein or the news dictionary and they're left blank, you know they haven't read it, people don't read books very often, they certainly don't read mine, but I know, sometimes I read mine. even going back and reading them after I've written them, I think, yeah, that's good, I forgot that for people, the Cameron hoax, I have to say if you want to know what's wrong with the Conservative party, then that's your, that It's the place you should go. still in print, hear a very nice picture on the front of David Cameron turning left on a bicycle for people to look at or listen to.

By the way, his audiobooks are a delight as he can sound very strange about abolition Britain when he speaks. about you know John Reed and Tony Blair as Eurocommunists, you know you say that, you know it's quite satisfying, musical, almost very musical, you know, one of my regrets is actually with my book, I didn't read it, so it's a big difference yeah, well I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to do it right. I think you are a very wise man to say what you said about the disintegration of the education system. Yes, is it true because all the international data regarding the UK? suggest that, for example, on things like reading what we just talked about, we're actually doing pretty well, things like math and science not so well, but we're actually doing better than we're potentially referring to the P of studies.

For you, the OECD, well, I don't consider the OECD to be a neutral observer of the world, the OCD is an egalitarian organization and has its own views, so for example, every time it does surveys on education in Europe , German-speaking countries that still have selective state education usually turn out quite poorly and it seems ridiculous to me, I distrust the pza studies, I don't necessarily think they should be treated as totally objective, but if they had the same methodology throughout over time. and the UK is getting better over time, that would still suggest we are getting better, but we are not.

I have a very simple measure and it works, what is the exam system of the country you are looking at and what has it become. of this and when I was in secondary school there used to be an exam called GC level which has now been replaced by the gcsc and a simple study of the history of that exam, it was first watered down and then had to be abolished. Because Reformed High Schools Could Deal With It will tell you a lot of what you need to know, as will studies on the kinds of things newcomer college students must do before they can even enter their courses, in many cases these days, I witness I live from this.

I know what they were likeschools before. I know what they are like now and I can tell you they haven't gotten any better. Have? You have grandchildren? I guess?There is an observation, yes, there is an observation, yes, why do people change these things regarding Ola? I mean, it's one of those things that you know, I'm leftist, I should mean. To find out what was not working, I must refer you to my most recent book A A Revolutionary Bets Trade which is not to be confused with its um, it is with the Revolutionary Bets Trade, but it describes in detail what happened when the governments of the mid- the 60s got rid of academic selection in state schools copy but that's understandable it's understandable but it's true again I wrote the book because I got tired of the fact that there was no book like this and that no one had done it and so whether I wanted to point out to people the most basic and simple historical fact: there was not one place where they were all gathered now there is, you can read it, you should, it won't take you long, actually, again, it's, uh, is. short and very easy and in the end you will be surprised at what happened, let's go back to the selection in a moment, but I can, if you want, one can understand that to the extent that a conservative can understand that to the extent that there are people with a set of political commitments that do something because it aligns with their political commitments, but levels or why the levels are removed or because it is a technical change SC because the schools couldn't handle them, the new schools the new comprehensive schools they couldn't They couldn't cope, the students couldn't pass them or if they did, they passed them with such low marks that they first had to soften the marks to make it look better and then they just got rid of them all together and merged them into O level with an exam called csse at the GCSE which is a much lower level and actually a different type of exam there, it doesn't assess in the same way as the levels or used to so we should bring back the levels is Well, you couldn't because you wouldn't, you wouldn't have anyone once.

One of the things that is so catastrophic about this is that after about 30 or 40 years of bloated and diluted education, there is no one left who could teach the old, the old, the old curricula or or or who could cope. to them, so you actually destroyed something that you had and the elementary schools that were destroyed and that were open until '65 to anyone who was bright enough to get into them, in many cases they were schools that were hundreds of years old and not I can think of no other education reform anywhere in the world that involved the systematic destruction of over a thousand of the country's best schools, many of them dating back to Shakespeare's time, but that's what we do, they simply don't exist anymore. , they are gone like the people who taught in them in a national catastrophe.

Bournemouth Bournemouth School they kept, kept the dream alive for you, well, they did. Don't you see it because in the end they survived in Northern Ireland, but what the gr schools in Northern Ireland do and any school that is even remotely selective and these are all private schools of course, they will do fantastically well in the modern exam. system, but what they have not done is continue to use the old exam system that they took at GCSE and ZD, levels that come later and therefore they can get the most fantastic results, but they are not teaching to the same level of discipline and rigor that they had before, so I have my own criticisms of selection for having gone through that, but the standard answer is that you shouldn't determine someone's life chances. at 11, based on a single exam, what would you say to that?

Well, the moment we determine someone's life at 11, on their parents' income, on national offer day, they send you to the school that is in the catchment area. your parents can afford to live is better, I mean, I'm not totally in favor of Second Chances and, in fact, under the old draft viability system there were quite a few Second Chances, but that's a separate thing. question, you will have selection and which do you prefer, selection by ability or selection by parental wealth or the willingness of parents to lie about their religious affiliations, this is how it is done now, can it be better and schools like suton trust , isn't it? my friend on this argument, but it comes with more than one survey showing that the best comprehensive schools that are not very good by old grammar but are better are strongly socially selective for that very reason that they tend to be densely populated by people whose parents they are better off because of geography and yes, because that is the way things are and again, like me, they understood this, when, when, when, when Michael Stewart and then Anthony Crossin started the destruction of high schools in '65. they understood the problem from the catchment area, they acknowledged it but did nothing about it because there is nothing they can do about it.

You'd have to have an almost Stylin Society to instruct people where to live or alternatively arrest people. uh, in schools many miles from where they live, what would be the only way to get rid of that problem. What would be the point of that? What is the point of schools? What is the point of schools? What is the point of schools? of schools to create a more egalitarian society or is it to create an educated society? I think the second thing, well, I think it was political, it was never an educational project, it was a political project.

I think they would say that it is about creating Fair Access to Education for everyone, they wouldn't say it's an egalitarian project, they would say it's egalitarian in terms of equal opportunity, but it hasn't and it's been evident for decades that it hasn't achieved that at all and that it's actually created a more unequal society in which selection by wealth is replaced by ability in 1954, about 65% of the people in primary schools, the best public schools in the country were working class. Find me anywhere in the country, I am now a good state school. of the highest ranking ones where that is the case and I found it, so my experience disappeared, they destroyed it and therefore in no time and this is almost 60 years ago, they have had a lot of time to see it and work.

They realized they made a mistake, but imagine you are going with a friend who wants to drive with you to Manchester and you realize that halfway through the trip you are, in fact, on the road. On the way to Newcastle one time you took a wrong turn and you said look we're on the wrong road, we've got to turn left a little and go a little more northwest and northeast and he said no, no, no, I'll take it. . In this way, what do you think of him? You think it's misplaced and the same goes for all these governments: they said they wanted to create a more equal society and they didn't and the evidence kept coming that they hadn't. and they never ever reverted their C or changed it.

They continued to do what they have been doing and it was having the bad results that it is having and continues to have nothing changes, you have all kinds of things, all kinds of tricks in education. of the Conservative and Labor governments, I forget even the names that David Blun used to come up with for all these supposedly special schools they were creating, but in the end and now they are academies, but in the end the problem is still selection for secondary school. education is through wealth and the only point where this does not happen is in the large and successful colleges of London, where there is absolutely rigorous academic selection, but at the age of 15 or 16, when it is too late to lift Children of the poor out of any disaster where they fall into the problem with selection at 15 is and at 16 is that by then people's paths in life are already set at 11, 12 or 13, can change someone's life and get them out of what would otherwise be a grim fate of disappointment and waste 15 16 it's too late look at my elementary school experience and this is from the mid 90's to the early 2000's um and like you said, the current system doesn't work better at creating fair outcomes are more equal, etc.

I can agree with all of that, I think, however I would reject the claim that primary schools can be strong vehicles for social mobility to the extent that my current experience appreciates Harold P Pinter saying, you know, hack my school primary, etc., yes, in the past. The day of my experience was that the children from poorer families, um, maybe a chaotic home situation, etc., those were the children who in year seven, eight, year n, dropped out of school, were expelled. Behavioral problem and the kids who stayed were generally middle class, well that may be it. may be true because we've had tremendous social decline in this country since the 1950s and people who grew up with people laugh at the Lady Bird Books account, the Ladybird Books accounts of the council states In the 1950s, they were actually drawn and made by people who lived there, the world that the working class lived in in this country was very settled, it was full of stable families and they lived in civilized homes in nice areas and the huge wave of disastrous family breakups that overwhelmed the the country after the 1960s hadn't started schools schools can't protect you against all of that can protect you against some of that uh and so you can't you can't ask schools to be a huge 100 foot concrete barrier against all social change but you can ask them to offer a chance to people whose parents are not wealthy and that's what I'm against and abolition Britain is very clear on this I have to say I am as against the social changes that cause the problems you mentioned as I am against the transformation of public schools into a system of selection by wealth.

I thought I would say something completely different about how many of the middle class parents besiege primary schools and are obviously just as affected by the wealth factor as comprehensive schools, which I would say is largely true, but that is because the number of primary schools left are mostly in well-off areas because in poor areas they were forcefully closed by labor councils and also because there are so few and they are under siege, if you had a national system of primary schools which was never complete before they were abolished, I have to say that if you had a proper national system of earth schools that I would create if I had the chance, then that wouldn't happen and it wouldn't work either.

There are two interesting points there before we move on, so firstly I thought I had to address it because otherwise we might overlook it and what you said there wouldn't be mentioned, people would then say what's up with that, like they always do in the context of the 2020s. You are basically saying that primary schools cannot be an engine of social mobility. like they were in the past for other reasons, okay, that's it, that's it, I say that a lot, yeah, and just to add to what you're saying, if it hadn't happened 11 more, I would have gone to a place where I was.

I was not Catholic at that time my mother was Catholic. I would have gone to a Catholic school because there were no other good schools, so what are you saying about if you don't select by testing and ability, you're selecting by religion? and Faith, that is exactly and not always genuine, our Experience One, it was not your case, it certainly was not mine at 11, but it is the parents, it is the faith of the parents that is important, but I think so, I think it is widely accepted. Many people start going to church when their children come for National Offer Day.

Oh my gosh, you go to your church on a Sunday and you'll see lines of little kids with their parents and it's all that. This is also the case in primary schools and it is ridiculous. I'm sure it's entirely possible that some people have a lot of faith as a result of this, but it's a very poor reflection on the kind of country we are that people have to behave like this. or they feel they have to behave this way to get a better education for their children. I think that's true. Do we live in a dangerous world?

Well, yes, in all the worlds life is dangerous we have managed because we live on an island and because we have defended it successfully until recently. We live in remarkable security in this particular country, and most people have no idea that it has one of the problems that this creates is that a large number of people in this country have no idea about foreign policy because they can't. I understand why other countries worry about what happens on their borders because we have no borders except with the Republic of Ireland. Americans have a similar problem instead of having, for example, Germany on one side, China on the other and, uh and. and maybe the southern bulls, uh, Americans have Mexico at the bottom, Canada at the top, and two giant oceans on either side, why should they care?

It is not a terrifying world for them, they are not in any danger, but a large number of other countries are and they feelvery sensitive to things that happen on their borders. In fact, Americans become sensitive to things happening on their borders even though they are not actually threatened. Remember the Cuban crisis the moment someone begins to move towards what they consider their sphere of influence, they worry and I do not blame them or disapprove, all countries do, yes, we live in a dangerous world, but it is not very noticeable or not until recently in this country most of the wars we have fought in recent centuries have barely touched this country except in the form of aerial bombardment and, in fact, compared to what was inflicted on Germany, for example, not much of that if what they had done to Germany did to us, most of our cities would have been razed or burned and they weren't, a lot of damage was done, but a lot of the place was left standing we really haven't experienced the Total War in this country the first world war nothing happened except some zeppelins and the bombing of Scarra by the German Navy.

We are surprisingly immune. Other countries in Europe have rivers of gray steel roaring. their cities and foreign troops walking through their streets in their countryside, we haven't had that, so we feel saved, it's what the RF did to the German cities during the um, during the second world war, those were war crimes , actually I don't think so. in the phrase war crimes, as far as I'm concerned every war is a crime, was it a punishment for civilians? Well, I'm not going to get into that because I'm not caught up in some slogan here. I am very opposed to the bombing, the deliberate bombing of civilians, which is what we did and I have written a large part of my here is another book, the false Victory on this same topic.

I am morally against it. I'm also against it. It is actually very effective as a form of warfare as well, but we shouldn't have done it and it has caused serious damage and he is one of the people in British public life whom I admire most and his reputation did a lot. of effort to save some years ago Bishop George B, who not completely alone but almost alone in British public life stood up and opposed the deliberate bombing of civilians during the war and I think that was a very brave thing for him to do. . and he I'm glad he did it because a lot of people respond to these things by saying you weren't there at the time and I wasn't, of course not, I wasn't alive, but he was and this was. a man who had been an early anti-Nazi, among other things, and had been very active in helping Hitler's refugees.

He was not any kind of German Nazi sympathizer, he was quite the opposite. He was a great friend of Dietr Bonhof. for example, but he stood up publicly and did it knowing that it would generate a lot of unpopularity and displeasure, but it was right for him to do it, we shouldn't have done it, that was saying it was wrong and militarily highly ineffective it was evil again we are us we are moving towards slogans I will stay with you you are a Christian man I will stay with bad you are a Christian man yes, well, it is very complicated to be a Christian because your actions, um, your actions are wrong, uh, but the classification of human beings She's evil, she's really not.

I'm not asking you to call people, evil actions, evil. Not me, I'm not. I'm left with the wrong evil. es eil mal no es es no es una category mal es um mal is a word designed to vary the temperature of the argument without saying anything objectively different from what you would say if you said mal well no because mal is inappropriate it is a very broad term it is a course of action inappropriate no, I didn't say inappropriate inappropriate is the is the inappropriate inappropriate is the is the word atheist because they can't use the word evil I say that it is wrong for you to kill innocent people it is the deliberate murder of innocent people and the terrible things that most people don't even realize to this day that it was deliberate it was wrong.

I'll stick with that, I'm not going to let myself be tempted to get emotional. Later, the thing coldly and rationally examined as I try to examine these things was wrong and I believe it was a serious national mistake. We shouldn't have done it. Would you call it immoral? Well, yes, of course, because being wrong, it's if it breaks the Christian moral code, something may be strategically wrong or not, it doesn't affect the consequences that you want. I'm talking, I'm not talking about strategy, yeah, I'm talking about whether it was like an act. It was right or wrong, it was wrong and one of the problems is that the aircrew that was ordered to do it uh, no, I'm not putting the burden on them, they had very little idea what it was. was what they were doing and uh they were also massacred in very large numbers by responsible military leaders who we killed with their lives because of this, I'm a politician who was largely pursued to please Joseph Stalin, so when you hear People talk today about the Allied bombing campaigns in continental Europe, particularly in Germany, as a license for what is happening in country XY Z, how does that make you feel good?

That is exactly the point, which is why we must examine so carefully what we did in those years. because yes because that is how countries become demoralized if they start defending things of that type and absorb them into their history as things that were okay to do, then they feel free to do other things that are not okay like Well, I think what We did lower the overall moral standard of this country and I think it still does, it makes people terribly angry if you mention it, it's one of the reasons I try to stay calm and I'm discussing it right now.

You start to think about what these events entailed, the temptation to become bitterly angry and passionate is strong but I try to be dispassionate about it and yet we haven't learned the lessons because 80 years later people still refer to it as it is justified, well, I can only, I can only, this is one of the reasons again why I write my books because I think I can do it if I have met people who have held the view that the Boing is justified and who have read what I wrote about this and wrote and told myself that now they don't believe it.

I can only try to change the Minds one by one, but it's my job, if I think something is wrong, I have to say it and that's how I went through everything. I know it's very difficult to change your mind, people have opinions for all kinds of reasons and are very reluctant to change them, but if you read the passages about the bombing of civilians in Germany in the false Victoria I think it's possible that if you felt it was justified before, you might change your mind. I hope why I wrote it is a brilliant book, as you say, and I think the left should read it.

It is one of Better I want to say that it is not an anti-war book to the extent that no, it is not an anti, I am not a paist pacifist, I am absolutely not a pacifist nor is George Bell, by the way, two of his brothers died in first. world war if he had not chosen the church he would have had, he would have died with them. I don't think I would be a pacifist, if it weren't for the people who criticize, know the status quo of foreign policy or the clichés we hear in the media about what an intelligent person is. or an unintelligent way of proceeding militarily, it's a brilliant corrective, so pacifist is not the right word because I don't know what the right word is, but hey, I could barely get it reviewed and one of the reviews was done by a Ned's teacher in The New Statesman that Sly called it a Eurosceptic book, which is so ridiculous for a book written primarily about the period 1935 to 1945, and also said that it was designed to please my older readers.

The man himself was I think 75 years old at the time he wrote. that review and it wasn't at all, if the IID wanted to please my readers I certainly wouldn't have attacked the bombing of Germany because it's still something that most of my readers support and I know that if they write to me and tell me when I criticize it in strong terms and I respond. They were quite surprised to receive a seven page letter explaining why they were wrong, but they didn't like it so it didn't happen, but it was surprising that it was almost the only review. received then why is it called False Victory what was the pH because it fascinated me that anyone who knows anything about the contract the war will recognize that the first months of the war were very peculiar, in fact, although there was a rather fierce war At sea there there was no real effort to start a ground war against Hitler even though we promised at the polls that we would come to his aid and then when the ground war started we

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d very quickly as we had entered the war. as a great power that declared war on Hitler because he had challenged us just like the French and very quickly it was shown that we were not a great power and yet at the end of the war we were the great victors of this gigantic fight against Tian's illness and how we had gone from that a to that b and it seemed to me that we had not done it.

That at the end of the war, although we were on the winning side, we were not really the victors of the First War as well. Describe the length of the very peculiar relations between this country and the United States, which are anything that, shoulder to shoulder, the enormous reluctance of the Americans to come to our aid in 1940 and the very high price they demanded for it in the war we had started with. France France fell and was defeated and occupied. We were not occupied thanks to the Navy and the English Channel, so we were still in the war, but the war was taken over for their own purposes by the United States and the Soviet Union, who imposed the final agreement with little reference to us because at that time we were more or less bankrupt and I think we must recognize that that was the war, we were not in the best moment, I do not dispute it.

It was tremendous that we stood up and didn't do it. Wiston Church's greatest achievement was not considering for a second the negotiations with Hitler and that was something that I continued to applaud enormously and be grateful for, but if it hadn't been like that, as I say If it had been because of the fact that we still had a navy and we still had the English Channel, he wouldn't have been in a position to do that and we exhausted him. Everyone

talks

about the Battle of Britain and within reason, but uh. It could be much more significant - we used a lot of destroyers in the Royal Navy simply fighting that war at sea in the first few months and of course rescuing Dkirk's army and by the end of that period the Navy had taken control .

The most tremendous blows, but that is why, in my opinion, we remained free because the Navy had been there, had fought, had taken those blows and was able to recover afterwards, so Americans may have noticed that I come from a naval family , but these things interest me. That's where much of the battle took place without Churchill not being able to do what he did. You were born in Malta, right? I was your father, I was a Royal Navy officer, yes, so my wife is Walter's, well, I give you my best wishes little world but I'm afraid I'm not the multis don't recognize me I was an imperialist baby so no I have I don't have uh there are no rights there of any kind yes fascinating relationship between malter and my The birth certificate is interesting, is it in men or in English?

Oh wow, it was redacted, but I think you had to go to the police station to register the birth. It's signed by a police sergeant. It is fascinating. It is the size of a. huge pillow, big white thing so fake The victory is really a nod to the fact that this war is started by two 19th century European colonial powers, in quotes, on the one hand, the allies, France and Great Britain, and it is ended by these two powers of the 20th century, the Soviet. Union and the United States in the book you actually say that after 19441 Britain is effectively occupied by the United States to the extent that it is no longer a completely autonomous militarily actor in foreign affairs and so on, or am I overstating the case, overstating it? a little, I mean, there.

In a sense, Britain experienced some of the occupation experiences that were friendly rather than hostile. Once the American military came to this country to a large extent, it transformed society and in many fascinating ways, but it would be a stretch to call it an occupation, which we certainly were, we had become more or less an American pensioner, uh, Lend Leas was in a position, although much less generous than people think. they lend themselves more to Stalin than to us, uh, and it was set at a level that would allow us to fight but wouldn't necessarily allow us to recover economically afterwards, for example, and that was intentional on the part of the US, I think so and I think remember the procedure we had to follow before the liberation began, basically a stripping of our assets by the United States and shipping all our reserves of gold and convertible securities across the Atlantic, many of which we never They returned until um Morgant too. actually went to Investigate and the treasury at that time actually had to go to the Senate and say if we don't give these guys help now they're going to have to stop fighting because those were theirtrue words to the Senate because The Senate was very reluctant to help us at that stage and, uh, a lot of American resentment, I remember in 1934 and people will again deny it, but it's true, you can look it up.

A book is being written about it. Thank God. I mean Britain defaulted on its war debt to the United States in the First World War in 1934 and we have never paid a cent since and there is great resentment that in America these guys have definitely def W the World War I debt to us, why should we turn them back and drag ourselves to another Europe? Correl and all sorts of people were involved in anti-British sentiments at the time, from Kingman Brewster, who later became an American ambassador to Britain to, I think, Hemingway and in the Midwest, where Irish and German America were quite hostile to us.

In any case, there was much opposition to the United States coming to our aid. I mean, even in '39, Roosevelt says we're not going to get into another war, don't worry, yeah, and he meant it. I think when he said it he was very firm about it. Do I think he would have lost the 1940 election if he had said he was going to go to war? So the popular memory of World War II in this country is really based on a lot of misunderstandings and misunderstandings. We are such biased people who don't know so many things that were happening.

I have to say that the gold convoys. I mean, I had kind of a vague idea that they were going. It took them a while to discover the details of them and the immense amounts of national wealth that went first to Canada and then by train to Fort Knox where, as far as I know, it still is, and all the things there, even the gold deons , the majors and the pieces of eight. that Francis Drake had looted from Spanish treasure ships, all that stuff that was still in the vaults that ended up being shipped across the Atlantic along with the modern gold bars given to the Americans, so it's fair to say and we didn't have any left. nothing.

By the time we strip it away completely, this is an argument actually made by David Edon, and I don't know if you agree or disagree. He says that the modern British state, you can argue, has a sort of antecedent in the 1920s with the development of what becomes the protein type, the embryo of what becomes the welfare state after 1945, but the modern British state was really born in 1945 and, you know, our Lexington is, you know, the Battle of Britain, that's what he would say, there's a new, low-key poity afterwards. 1945 before then is a very different power, an Empire, um, that's what he would say, where do you sit on that?

Because, well, I think the welfare state, as Paul Addison spent a lot of time pointing out, was very developed before World War II. so I wouldn't necessarily accept that, but it's certainly a Cura 1940, it's a point where everything changes to the old ruling class that I discredited for that, uh, that the books like the guilty men and their deputy, who basically said this, this this. We get into Dun Kirk and the rest is false from the Tores, uh, it's a widely held belief. Have you ever seen what is probably Alan Bennett's best work called 4 Years Later?

No, it's worth watching because this is discussed at some point. For a long time there and the contempt for the Tores when the men returned home from Dublin was to have failed, the country is very deep and I think it changed the politics of the country and when the 1945 elections finally came, I think a lot of resentments that were born in 1940, a lot of them are actually not entirely accurate, then they came into play politically, so the left has a myth around a lot of this, the left has a very, very peculiar myth because the left right until 1939 he was opposed to rearmament, uh, Neville Chamberlin again, as I say in the book, he was actually quite busy rearming, but he was rearming for a different war than the one he had, but he was definitely rearming the right-left, particularly the the right.

In 1939 he was opposed to rearmament and in 1934, after Hitler had been in power for quite some time and the nature of it was quite clear, the Labor party's main newspaper, the Daily Herald, described the first steps towards rearmament. I think it was the 1934 white paper on defense as an affront to Germany they weren't um the left in this country wasn't enthusiastic about the real thing they thought it would be used for imperialist purposes or against Soviet Russia and they continued to oppose every estimate, a name was obtained until the last minute because no, neither Labor nor the party has a particularly good record of all people.

Quiny Hog, the late Lord Hellam, wrote a pretty good book about this called The Left is Never Right, in which he describes in detail what really happened. the one who won the bi-election in Oxford in 1938, so when there was an anti-Neville Chamberlain coalition he tried to take the seat and won it, but that book will tell you a lot of surprising things, but the basic truth is that the left never had right, they just weren't on the rearmed side against Hitler, so just for the people watching this, what are you talking about? So common mythology and I'm not suggesting it's correct. or wrong, we'll talk about that in a moment, but the common mythology is that Neville Chamberlain is guilty of appeasement, he made a big M, what he did it for, he was guilty, so that's what failed to put the country back together that he left Great Brittany. exposed and it was the left that was the people that said no, Hitler is a threat, Hitler is a threat, they were this unique voice in civil society and you think, well, you know a lot about that, well, it wasn't that simple, I mean Chamberlain Chamberlin. was spending billions in modern terms on weaponry on the national radar chain on the re-equipment of the Air Force and on the re-equipment of the Navy not so much on the Army decision that was made in 1936 that we could not afford to modernize the Navy and the Air Force and we have a full scale Continental Army and then of course we went into a war where a full scale continental army was needed and we didn't have one so yeah but I see what you were preparing Chamberlain. because it was a defensive war, the Spitfire is a defensive weapon, this is exactly the point, it is not really a close military support fighter, it is a defensive fighter and it was very useful because radar was also a defensive technology and the construction of the source chain and everything that came with it was a defensive technology and these were triumphs and Neville Chamber paid for them, uh, and you can't take that away from him, whereas at the time the work that was certainly generating a lot of anti-aris speeches when it was was about discussions about the real in general opposite and See against, you can look it up because in a modern context, I think spitting is what 35 I think I would go back to that, yes, but it took There is a lot of development to get there, but in a modern context people will say they'll hear this argument regarding Russia right now and we'll move on to contemporary events, that's why I'm talking about all of this, um, them.

I would say look at the left LED on the rearmament debate in the 1930s, we need to do it again. In opposition to Putin, I would say that the basic presumption of the argument is completely WR. Well, look it up, it's not true, it really is. It was a very, very strange paradox. I'm not saying that Neville's camera armed the country to the teeth because I was very afraid that economically we couldn't afford it and probably couldn't, we weren't, we weren't in a very strong economic position at the time, certainly not to build the kind of weapons levels that we later had to build with American help, very high taxes and large amounts of borrowed money, but it did do a lot of rearmament. and the left in general was not in favor of Neville Chamberlain being unfairly maligned so okay?

I don't know, I think the argument should always be whether he was tricked in Munich or whether he was playing in some kind of delaying the game eh, unless you knew what he thought you couldn't know because the 1938 war would have been a disaster for this country. We would have done well, I don't think we would have done better than in 1939. The big material difference would have been that the Germans would not have had the Czech goods factories, that would have been the big material difference, but on the other hand, after that , people never look at European maps, which is further east.

Prague or Vienna, tell me Vienna and the problem is that once the anulus occurred and once the Germans controlled Austria, the AL, although the Czechs had very good defenses in the Esab mountains on the northern borders of Germany and its borders with Austria, which If now were the borders with the Third Reich, I have crossed them by train. They are a beautiful country of tanks. If not, they could not have defended themselves and, furthermore, they would have been within incredibly close range of German aviation, so Czechoslovakia is unlikely. It could have held out for a long time in any case and what we could have mobilized.

I don't know, the French could have done something, but again, France wasn't set up for an aggressive war, so I don't know if it's one of their greats. Imponderable, isn't it? We could be here all night discussing what would have happened if we had gone to war in 1938, but the question Chamberlain has to ask is whether he was really fooled or whether he was simply playing for time. I don't know the answer, I don't really care, actually the problem with all this is that the whole conduct of European diplomacy and political politics between Versailles and the arrival of Hitler was so foolish, you say.

You don't care, it matters because nowadays people are labeled with the term appeasement. You are guilty of appeasing. I get it all the time but appeasement is popular and the biggest act of appeasement in my life was the appeasement of the IRA in 1998. about the bast deal when we said if you stop bombing London you can pretty much have whatever you want but it's never called p is like treason appeasement never prospers because when it prospers no one dares to call it appeasement the other thing is The whole world has been constantly telling Israel for the last 50 years or so land for peace, land for peace, if you give land to the Arab world, you will get peace, that is appeasement and it would be interesting to see what would happen.

If they did, I want appeasement to be popular, but it's called a lot of appeasement, when that's what a two-state solution would be called, appeasement. I two-state solution, uh, on the verge of insanity, especially after October 7 of last year, why are you familiar with the terrain? Have you been there? I haven't been there, no, this is the problem, it is very small. I mean, Israel is huge in international politics, it's small and the border that would run between Israel and the supposed neighboring Arab state would actually run through the capital city and I think about 8 miles, I think you can, you can cross Israel on your narrowest point on a tank in less than half an hour, it's that narrow, but putting that aside, imagine for a moment, I think The current ruler of the Palestinian Authority is 8 years old and in year 19 of a term of office. 5 years.

He can't be there much longer. Who will replace him? Who will be the leader? The political leader of the new State. If it was Hammer or someone like them then you would have nothing but a fence and maybe a strip between Israel and a state ruled by people like Hamas that had large quantities of rockets, but that's because it's not a normal state, I mean, Nobody, I say. I'm just saying that no one is proposing to say how the hell do you expect this idea to work? So let me just say that it's just not like that.

If it went wrong, it would go so terribly wrong. Well, I think going, I mean, no. No, I mean it could be much worse than this if all of central Israel were within reach of actions like the one that took place in the Gaza region on October 7 of last year, which would be if there were a second Arab state and If that Arab state were taken over by militant enemies of Israel, then what do you think is going to happen? So let's go over it. They asked me this question. I have been asked this question many times.

Well, if you were Israeli and you knew that 10 miles away people wanted to kill you, what would you want? I say I would love a highly militarized internationally recognized border and I think that captures the heart of the question, you know, in the late 1990s, by then Israel had one Israel had one they developed nuclear weapons one of the security forces most effective in the world Etc. The question for Israel is whether you want one state or two states. Now they clearly don't want a state. Because of the Zionist project, that's something intellectually coherent, you can agree or disagree, but that's just a fact or you can have two states, which is totally in line with the Zionist project and you're saying, well, that wouldn't be sure, well, no I don't think it's no, I don't think it's a solution, it would be two states, but I don't think it's a solution.

I think it would be thebeginning of a new period of very, very severe conflict. the outcome of which we cannot know, but if Korea can do it, why not? I mean there was a bloody war and they've had a militarized war. Have you been there? It's not, it's not, it's not the same as North Korea is not. It is not filled with people who wish for the destruction of South Korea nor is it governed by people who wish for the destruction of South Korea. Basically, the two states turn their backs on each other, but don't you think it's an Israel, it's not a comparable, it's not a comparison.

I think you are basing that argument on Miss Noma because it is in Israel's interest to have a prosperous Palestine. Oh, wait a minute, now we're invading the important plot area because what I would say. For you it is this. I will tell you this anecdote because it is true. A colleague of mine, an Arab Israeli journalist with whom I have worked several times. One time I was being taken through the north of Jerusalem to Romala, the capital of the Palestinian Authority, and because of the various border agreements that exist now, we had to make a lot of moves from left to right and back again, which doubled until we got there and he got there, got a little tired and at the end said, "Oh, for old times' sake before we had peace," and what he meant was that probably now, at least going back to Oslo and 1993, there have been relentless attempts by outside countries. impose a peace on Israel and what they have actually led to is more and more barriers, less contact between the two peoples and a constant low level conflict of extreme business when I first went to Jerusalem, which is in the time of Margaret , who was prime minister.

You could drive to Bethlehem to spend the night. Also people who live near Gaza would go there to enjoy the nightlife. The level of mutual acceptance between the two peoples living side by side was extremely high. There was friendship. A large number of Arabs. He came and worked in Israel and took home good salaries and was prosperous, as he says, the relationship between two people was good. If you are really concerned about this area, it is about the lives, livelihoods and safety of the people who live there. I would say don't try to create a political solution that can give you the Nobel Prize, look for a compromise that doesn't really test anyone, no Arab leader who has concluded that he doesn't want any Arab leader.

West Bank settlers steal land every day; I think there are a lot of sensible people on the Palestinian side and he fired one of them who worked a lot on the idea that what most had to be done was to increase the prosperity of the Arabs who live in the region and I think that is a lot of what has actually been achieved. Now you go to rala and it has rules for shopping and it has black cinemas and a pretty high standard of living that people would have if they didn't. I don't even have guaranteed property rights you don't have guaranteed I'm not I'm not arguing about that I'm saying don't try it if you're trying to get a solution uh it's like the big scene in Alice Through the Looking Glass where Alice tries to get into the garden outside the house and continues walking towards the garden until he realizes that he is in the world of the Mirror, to enter the garden you have to move away from it if you want.

To have peace of any kind, real peace between the people of that region, you have to stop trying to negotiate a Nobel Prize-winning agreement and work on the small things, and that is after many, many, many visits to the area and many, many conversations with people on both sides, that is my absolute conviction, these attempts to achieve a fixed negotiated agreement will never achieve what they say, do no, I'm not, I'm talking, I'm talking, I'm talking, talking about what I know and. that and I really like people on both sides of that line and I want each man to live in peace under his own Vine and under his own fig tree and that could be done if people would stop trying to create some Big Big uh boastful agreement in the that people had to make political commitments that they will never make.

I have this as I say. I've been there a lot. I've thought about it a lot. I have written a lot about it. My absolute conclusion is that you will not get anything remotely resembling peace, prosperity and happiness in the region. If you keep trying to achieve a major political agreement, it won't happen, stop doing it. I'm completely convinced of it and I have nothing that shakes me for me it's a very compelling counterargument it doesn't mean it's offensive contrary it's actually most people say you should have peace I don't have you haven't even been there I've been there I have been there many times.

No, I can't go because if I go there I will never be able to go to Iran, which is why I would love to go. There are fixes people can make to avoid this. problem I won't say on this microphone what they are, but you shouldn't interrupt yourself. I would love to go there, of course, I would love to go there, um, but the thing is, Peter is very, he's very convincing. The argument is good, I think it was intended to be, yes, well, you make a compelling argument, but the point is that I think it misunderstands the nature and direction of the State of Israel, so if you were making the argument 30 or 40 years ago and the State of Israel again, people may have problems with z M as a project, but liberal Zionism as a political project as a political trend is clearly very different clearly very different I'm not saying it's better I'm saying it's very different from the current directional course in Israeli politics where you have far right parties that are illegally calling for no no no allow it is terrible not to agree to ask for illegal settlements arm the settlers I mean they are basically inciting a civilian government the Israeli Constitution was designed by the enemies of the country or it seems be that you know it's the most daring deal possible and it needs to be reformed, but that doesn't mean it can't be reformed, there have been attempts to reform it in the past, the behavior, I mean, I have very mixed feelings about Benjamin Netanyahu.

I wrote a long article about him based on the very good Angel Fe biography a few years ago in which I explained that he is actually very good, but I have taken back a lot of that now since his incredibly stupid behavior in bombing the gods or in response . to the aob s, which I completely deplore, but one of the problems with Israel has been that it is a very small country and it doesn't necessarily have a lot of talented people even though we believe it only has The Israeli left has concentrated so much effort in your distaste for Netanyahu that you have not seen that the best way to deal with him was almost certainly for the Israeli left to cool down on him and thus maintain all the cases that you recently referred to. out of office and they should have done it and that would have been the best way out, but here it is this is an anecdote from the book of AEL faith and it is true after Rabin was assassinated, the hell of the Run family is, of course, who opened their house. to the mourners to come and comfort the family uh a message was sent to Benjamin Netanyahu that he was not welcome now anyone who knows anything about Israeli politics will know why he was not welcome, but here's the interesting thing, someone else was welcome Yas Arafat a confirmed anti-Semite, a man who once said that I have no use for Jews, who was he?

He was invited to Rabin's house, but anyone who wasn't, now this seems crazy to me, among other things, a death of that kind is surely a moment for reconciliation between opponents and secondly, I think he just did it They have treated him badly, he is an intelligent man and he is a brave man, it cannot be done, and in fact he has carried out the policy that precisely because he is a military man he has carried out until now. He's been remarkably bloodless and I think he's been mishandled by the Israeli left, but again, these are my opinions after much thought, a lot of reading, and a lot of traveling in the area.

This is what I think, people, I have no doubt that there are people. Seeing this, I find it repugnant to those who think I am in favor of bombing Gaza and it is for exactly the same reason that I am against Britain's bombing of civilians in Germany in the 1940s. The range of things that civilized people can do has another feature that I said at the time it happened is that after October 7th we had before us the most powerful example since the end of the Third Reich of what hatred of Jews actually entails this horrible murder rape destruction, no one could say that people had behaved this way because they thought the refugees had been treated unfairly or because they were in favor of moving a border or because of some other detail of relations between the State of Israel and the Arab world this was an act of racist barbarism and there it was before the world and if Netanyahu had done what I would have done in his circumstances and I would have done it and I said and I backed away and I said we will do nothing in response to this this is what they saw Israel, which For many decades it has been losing its moral standing in the Western world, it would have had a chance to regain it and remind people why Israel is there in the first place. place, but by not taking that opportunity and by doing this bombing of Gaza, which is ineffective and stupid, have you seen that great movie The Battle of Algiers?

Yeah, well, then you know that every time you hear a politician or a military leader say we're going to exterminate Pate, this or that terrorist organization, you know, he, he, he, he, he's talking about BGE, it's not going to happen, will not happen, you cannot defeat ideas, no matter how much you dislike them, with torture or machine guns or high explosives will never work and the bitterness and hatred stored in the Arab world against Israel on this occasion is so great that I fear, in what ways can it eventually explode? cruel and stupid just wanted to put that on the record that's what I think about it certainly I mean we had a conversation once on TV recently and I said that every bomb the IDF drops is a recruitment of recruits.

Hamas Sergeant, I think we are not just for Hamash, there are other people who will be, you know the hoes are incredibly popular throughout the Arab Muslim world because they are seen as the only people who oppose his popularity. It is universal throughout the Arab Muslim world. It's unusual for a British journalist to say this because you know I've seen a lot of op-eds on the BBC and they say actually oh Yemenis hate the hoies and no actually what they've done and we can have a conversation about why they've done what they have clearly done, adds to their prestige both nationally and in the region.

I'm just saying I know these things, it's not, it's not very difficult to know. yes yes yes yes yes if you do the reading I'm not I'm not advocating for the hois or particularly against the and I say this is the fact that this is the state, there is a whole Muslim Arab world in which people have a opinion and a vision of the world completely different from the one we have, it is time for us to realize. Do you think there are many? Are you familiar with the word cope? perhaps not in that context and in what context, then there is a There is a lot of COPE in the West to the extent that we do not understand or fail, particularly in Britain, we do not accept the changes around us from an increasingly multipolar world to a technological leadership that once again becomes more multipolar.

We only have pieces of the planet. We see things differently to ourselves and yet in Britain, particularly with the media, I don't mean the general public, in fact the public is much more literal about these things, but the media They have what we would call coping, which is they say they just resist any possibility that in reality everyone doesn't agree with us and we're not always right about everything. Well, I don't know, I think the essence of foreign policy is. recognize that other countries exist and have their own interests different from ours and that if you want to change that then you have to know what you are doing, but I think that the performance of Western countries in the Middle East and in the Arab world since particularly Since World War II it has been pretty poverty stricken anyway and I don't see much sign of it getting better.

We are still not over the Iraq war. Iran has not yet overcome the Anglo-American P against MOS, why should they? If the Iranians had overthrown our government in 1953, I think we'd still be pretty angry about it and it's just amazing how sloppy it is and it doesn't seem like we have to belong to clubs, right? It seems that at this moment if you are on the right you have to be in favor of bombing Gaza and if you and I have this difficulty because I have been a convinced Zionist for many years. Do I believe that the need for a State of Israel cannot be avoided because I believe that the mass murder of Jews in Europe by the German Third Reich provides the unalterable argument?

I think D Danny Finlin puts it very well in his recent book that you've probably read Hitler Crippling Mom and Dad about how in the end his grandfather, who was a great activist against Zionism among the Jews of Germany, thought it was a dumb idea. that integration was possible. See, but when this happened and he was one of those who escaped when this happened, he could no longerargue against the Zionist State and that is the problem. I think for anyone who looks at it, there has to be a place to go for Jews who are persecuted. and I can't see a counterargument there.

I guess one argument would be that Zionism is really an expression of anti-Semitism to the extent that they can be an expression of anti-Semitism to the extent that we don't want them here. please everyone go there, this, but this is what Danny Felin's father would have discussed in the Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s. He participated in debates with the Nazis, but he still went home and said : "I don't want to". No, I am not a Zionist, I will not support this Jew, many intelligent Jews on the right and the left throughout Europe adopted the same point of view, they were against the idea of ​​the Jewish State, there were many very good arguments against it, no But once the fields opened, all those people who said they couldn't do it in the end had to accept that they were wrong.

I think we still have to accept that they were wrong. You may have all kinds of questions about whether it should be where it is, but it is where it is. So what are you going for? Are you going to ethnically cleanse it and move it somewhere else? No, that's always barbaric, so you have to accept that it is where it is and make rational and intelligent arrangements to sustain it or, in the end, where are we, I mean my position is simply going back to pre-1967 borders, but all the borders in that region are unpopular while they exist and popular, popular in retrospect, no one wanted the 1967 borders when they were there, yes I appreciate that, in fact they did Vladimir Putin, yes.

Is he a new Adolf Hitler? There is no other question: Why? Because? Because we hear this left and right. Tell me why you think he's okay. I don't think it is, but this is something that is somewhat common. It's something like it's not, it's not. an ideological or utopian leader I don't think Putin has any ideology, he has the weight of Soviet education, which he demonstrated in that often very boring interview with Carlson when he gave his account of the months before the Second World War and that tremendous mess which he got into because of Poland, uh, because anyone with the Soviet location can never get over the fact that they divided Poland with Hitler and he ended up blaming the Poles for being invaded.

It was ridiculous. who is burdened by a Soviet education but he is not a communist, he is not at all a Marxist leist, he is a Russian nationalist of some kind and you should not confuse him, he has no dogma, eh, therefore, that is one thing that separates about Hitler um I also think we have to remember that Hitler was the leader of a country that had been defeated in the war and he was very bitter about it. Russia, the Soviet Union was not defeated in the war in 1991, it was practically voluntarily dissolved. I have written an alternative fantasy story about what would have happened if the Soviet leaders in 1989 had behaved like the Chinese leaders and machine-gunned the people, and would now be welcome in all the presidential palaces and parliaments of Europe, just as the Chinese are , but they didn't.

They didn't say okay, we gave in and dissolved their empire in response to the popular president, I say voluntarily, and they dissolved their Alliance and, uh, it's just in parallel with a country that was defeated in the war that thought it had been stabbed in the de turned to his own left and wanted revenge, but it is not historically, it is different, it is not worse in a way, although in May it may well be worse, but it is not a parallel. There has been a false victory again. I dedicate several pages to this guy, he is a new Hitler fantasy.

Among the people selected for the role of the new Hitler, I believe Emanuel Nora from Panama. I'm ridiculous, people who are prepared like the new one. Hitler, when the United States wants, wants to go to war with them and one of the reasons I wrote the book was because I could see that a lot of people in the West wanted a war with Russia and I go into the points that quite a long time ago, people like our President King had said things like Putin is a new Hitler, I'm afraid he's historically illiterate, when I mean some people seem to think he has claims to hegemony over Europe, you know? like Charles I or like Napoleon, he wants to conquer, well, he could do it, but they can't even take kcko, which is what 20 miles from their border, how are they going to get Cali.

I really don't know, they ruined the invasion of de. Ukraine is in pretty bad shape, its army is. I remember going when they started having big military parades in Red Square again and I went to Moscow to see the first one, the first Russian one, I saw the last Soviet one in, in, uh, in. In November 1990, on the day of the Revolution, I saw it and they came and saw the new one in May, so I came and saw it with my old friend now dead, unfortunately, iGo monf, who was the son of a submarine captain Soviet nuclear and knew. the military stuff from him and we sat down to look at things and at the end he turned to me and he said: how did you enjoy our exhibition of strategic junk? and almost all the things on display, the missiles, the tanks, the vehicles, whatever they were, were actually prototypes.

They were not things in mass production, they took everything they had from the most modern weapons they had and of course the most impressive troops for parade purposes, but in fact, the Russian military is still heavily haunted by large-scale corruption. scale. You spend a billion rubles on the army in a corrupt country, how much of that reaches the soldiers or the weapons factories? A large amount is skimmed and this is evident when they went to war. I think we overestimate him. I'm sure Putin is well aware of his capabilities. They still have a very strong nuclear capability, but how can they use it?

They are producing a lot of shells right now. They are producing a lot of shells because they basically have a World War II economy. and we don't and we have started to stop producing weapons, producing butter eventually, if the West wants to repeat the first world war in Ukraine, it will certainly build enough factories to build the shells to sustain it, but no one else. The world is thinking about such a war apart from the Russians, but that doesn't mean that they will be able to make their way through Europe or that they necessarily want to, I don't know.

Whether they want it or not, it is ridiculous to claim that they know the minds of these tyrants, they do not know it. One of the problems with people like Putin is that, because he is a tyrant, he never meets anyone with whom he disagrees, his thoughts increase. but even in democratic countries the national leaders are likely to go crazy in most cases and there is a danger that he has been there too long and may think all sorts of things but when he orders it to happen it will happen and I believe that there has been a contradiction that has been largely ignored by all the people who said, well, Putin wants to take back the Russian Empire at that time up to Berlin or whatever, and he also wants to know that he and then came the invasion of Ukraine in which they said, look, look how the Ukrainians are defeating the Russian army with some weapons supplied by the West, look how they are crushing them, uh, you can't have it both ways either or they're ready to invade Europe. or he was defeated by a few Ukrainians and some with a small amount of Western weapons in a short period, you can't have it both ways.

No, I agree with that, I think he was defeated, I think they were, I think, I think in Moscow. They were deeply disappointed and shocked by what happened, but hey, some of them were. I think those people who really understood military matters always knew that the Russian military had not been as reformed as the new Cold War people claimed. Okay, I still think it's true. They fought for months to take ground on the Ukrainian front. No, they still can't, they're not taking large amounts of land with all this, all these projectiles they have. I agree with that, but what I would say is that I think it's quite plausible and I think your point about him being a tyrant is so true that there are so many contingencies at work that I think he'll probably be thinking one day that I'd like to go . to Dena another day I'd like to go Kon adessa another day mova so I think that's right I think I'm trying to get inside his head I'm not sure that's what he wants I mean, he was him, doesn't he want to go? to Dena, this is what he said to cson, this is historical Russian land all the way, well, he said what Bas, what he basically says is that Ukraine, if it wants to leave the Russian orbit, should not try to do so.

Face it and I'm not defending this. I have to say this because I am constantly told that I am some kind of Kremlin cold. I'm just saying this is what he really says if you read his articles and speeches if Ukraine wants to be outside the Russian sphere then it shouldn't try to take with it the territory it actually got while it was part of the Soviet Union it should go like Ukraine, So, that basically means leaving. behind the Crimea and the dawn basin, which I think will probably be the result, that's what he means by the whole idea that he fantasizes about being a new tsar, well, maybe he will, but he doesn't have the weapons to achieve it.

There were 13 years during which Lithuania and Estonia were as far from St Petersburg as Coventry is from where we are sitting and they were not members of NATO and what happened nothing happened, they were more or less defenseless if Russia wanted it. to make these seizures that you wanted to do then, why didn't you do it then? Who was responsible for destroying Nordstream? I have no idea, but I think you have some idea, well I don't, because again I can guess. It seems to me unlikely that it was the Russians, why would they do it if they want to stop the flow of gas up the northern current?

They just need to turn one wheel, don't they? They need to send highly trained divers, deep divers with extremely sophisticated underwater explosives and radio controlled timers which I imagine is what you needed to do it. I'm not even sure Russia can do that. Do you remember when that submarine of his, the KK, sank? Basically, they turned out with an rbo. didn't seem to have much deep water capability, so it seems unlikely to me that they could or would have after that, you have a wide selection of possible, um possible perpetrators, don't you think, it was a CIA, doesn't that seem most likely? ?

I don't know how I could know I don't know you I don't know and before you said I have no idea I think you have some idea no, I have, I have no knowledge no, I'm just I'm just saying I don't claim to know things. I do know that Radex Sosi, the former foreign minister of Poland, tweeted immediately afterwards thank you USA and I do know that Joe Joe Biden has said things about how they would end Nordstream Victoria. Nulan says I know the evidence is circumstantial. There is circumstantial evidence, but I firmly believe in the presumption of innocence.

I can't condemn incircumstantial evidence. Your naval history doesn't mean you haven't delved into deep waters. uh, I think I know what my nebal head tells me that this is quite difficult, especially in the Baltic, which is not a nice, sweet sea of ​​Cal, it is quite a difficult operation to perform and not many people would be able to perform it either Many people would be able to do it without anyone realizing they are doing it, so circumstantial evidence is excellent, but you can't convict them of it. I'm going to give you two quotes. Grant Shaps recently said that Britain must move from a post-war to a pre-war society, meanwhile Patrick Saunders, the head of the army, recently said that professional armies start wars, citizen armies end them.

I guess the first one. I myself said a long time ago that we live in a pre-war era, it's not a big apu and you wouldn't expect big applause from GR shaps would you be the father of the E scooter? uh, but no, it's not, it's not unreasonable to say that certainly the way people like him have behaved has made it a pre-war era, it wasn't a pre-war era until the neocons They took control of foreign policy in Washington and Britain, everyone else supported them, but it's become a pre-war era, so 20023, well, I guess. That's when you go back to the Annunciation of the Doctrine of Wwitz and everything that followed it and you get a clear sign that, for some reason, foreign policy in the United States has been captured by people who have a kind of utopian attachment.

They want to change the world and start many wars. Well, they think this, of course, because they are fundamentally revolutionary and that is why my late brother was so interested in these things because he was fundamental. The Revolution, they believe they will make a better world, including Grant. Guys I don't think I think I think we pay Grant a lot of flattering compliments to assume that he understands this kind of stuff. I doubt he's ever heard of entitled wol. I don't know if most of these people could, could find, could find KF on a blank map, so let's go to the Patrick Saunders quote, so because he's the one you know he's the head of thewell, that's a truth, isn't it in modern wars?

It's what happens that the participants very quickly turn out to be not enough and then you have to start, it's not the volunteers, the test is not enough and then you have to start getting other people to participate, but it's logical, isn't it? If citizen armies start wars when you say start, I think what you mean is wars start with um with iose, what are you thinking? So what's the point of a professional army if your professional army literally can't end wars, why have a professional army the goal of the professional army is deterrence the goal of all sensible defenses deterrence the goal of defense It's sensible to make sure no one attacks you, that's what it's for, but why don't we have an army of recruits?

It can end wars, surely that is the best for you. We again, forget that we live in a lucky country that did not need a conscript army because we have the sea, the sea, the deep and salty sea is worth 40 or 50 divisions and not We need this, one of the reasons why our policy has been so different: countries with large standing armies necessary for their defense become armies with countries instead of countries with armies and the tension between army and society , even in France, it has always been very strong, but in Germany it was enormous and in Russia too and in Austria, Hungary, but we did not have that there has never been a naval dictatorship in the history of the world, unless you cannot call the Admiral Hoy, who was in fact an admiral but did not have a Navy at the time.

I'm going back I have no idea I mean, I wouldn't I would do it on Sunday You've got your You've got your They're recording me I'm not going to give Fortune a big hostage just because you've given me a nice cup of tea I don't know I don't I would rule out because I wouldn't rule out anything think in the world that we are on the verge of a very uncertain you are a mundane you I have seen a lot, so I believe your opinions on the probability of recruitment. I don't think so if you want if you want I wouldn't I can't see a progression by which we can achieve it unless We are stupid enough to join the Ukraine war, something I think most Western nations have figured out since the principle that they never will.

The Ukrainian war is becoming a miniature of the Ukrainian war. uh, the Western Front in 1916, in which case, if we got involved in it, we would probably end up having conscription that a lot of people wouldn't happily accept, just as Ukrainians don't happily accept conscription and the numbers in the numbers. of people who fled Ukraine to avoid serving in the military is quite surprising, it's around 700,000, isn't it? I've seen a figure, but I don't have it in my head, but it's a lot, uh, and it's It's and it's growing all the time because the borders of Ukraine can be crossed and, again, there are a lot of people evading the recruiting squads.

If you live in a city, you can hide from them. Only if you live in the countryside, they can necessarily locate you, but I have heard of people who 63 were given encrypted documents in Odessa 63 63 and no women, I have not had women, that is purely voluntary at the moment. I imagine so and women are still allowed to leave the country and they have it fine because we hear a lot about people fleeing Russia Russia, almost a million, but as you say, we don't really hear that regarding Ukraine, but people It has me many people, many people who Those who left Ukraine at the time of the invasion are not particularly interested in returning, they like it particularly in Poland and also in the other Western countries that welcomed them in Ukraine.

We constantly tell you that Ukraine is some kind of advanced democracy, it is not at all. a country plagued by corruption, very poorly governed and which suffered a significant economic decline at the end of the Soviet era, had in particular a very well-educated population and many advantages, but has squandered many of the advantages it had at the time. it's not a place that people necessarily want to live and it's had a lot of immigration it's another one of their problems it's not a paradise it's not nice wonderful brilliant free Democrat uh lovely Ukraine fighting horrible brutal Russia I mean hor Russia is certainly horrible and brutal, but Ukraine is in a paradise and we should stop telling ourselves that this is what is called Ukraine, Russia without the oil and gas well.

I think a lot of people, a lot of people called it, that means economically that zalin is Putin, obviously not, but what does that mean? say about their political class, so if you're saying I'm saying but in terms of if you're trying to determine what the difference is between if you travel in the Soviet days you traveled between Russia and Ukraine, you find it difficult to tell the difference uh slightly different alphabet um and there is a little bit of Ukrainian spoken but basically the cities look the same and the general atmosphere was the same just the look of the place was the same uh if you go from Moscow the last time I was I went to K some time ago, moving on from comparing Moscow with Kia Moscow is a much richer and more advanced city than KF, which still shows many more signs of not having freed itself from the poverty of the Soviet past and Moscow is a In comparison, the rich city of KF, not for example, but the Ukrainian economy lacks the crucial thing that the Russians have had and also the Soviet Union, they don't have oil, they don't have gas, so that makes a difference, what do you do?

Think Zilinski. I have had I I I admire his conduct at the beginning of the invasion. I think he behaved bravely and honorably with what he did. I think looking back at his time as president, I feel sorry for him and that. He was elected for a peace program and a cleansing program and he discovered very quickly that trying to clean up a country as corrupt as that is extremely difficult and that when he tried to reach a peace agreement he was sabotaged not only by the banderite uh nationalist fanatics who It seems to me that they probably wanted war with Russia uh, but also because of their predecessor Penko, who helped remove the opposition when he arrived, he actually put in a piece and presented a peace program and they immediately said like they always do well, any kind of peace with the Russians is capitulation, which, in my opinion, is a misunderstanding of the word capitulation, he tried to do what he promised to do in the elections, so I don't know, uh, obviously, this is also a man with a sense of Humor is always a plus for a sense of humor in office because it tends to mean they also have a sense of proportion, but I don't dislike it.

I don't think I've ever said a rude word about him. That's not it, I'm not a Paran, this guy is bad, this guy is good, he participates in this war at all. I think it's a tragedy for all the people of the world, but that sums up what I think was the last question. I am GNA. with a quote from Peter from one of your recent columns, yes, don't worry, it's not a trap, well, I hope not, I like the quote, it's actually good, we can't get away from the illusion that we are one big power that influences the destinies of all nations.

Around the world, we are not as anyone who has visited, say, Black Pool in recent years or wandered one of Gap's dozens of toothy main streets or endured our public transportation system or tried to find an NHS dentist. I don't know, I might I don't agree, I couldn't have said it better, why do so many people, especially in our kind of political media, think that we are still a great power, given all that, partly because of our sorry educational system and partly part for the long time? the long afternoon that faded and was prolonged, I think, by the very long life of our late Queen, which had a very strong psychological effect on the people, I think because we are an island, because when we travel we mainly do so on vacation and , therefore, we travel above our standard. of life and we see, we enjoy foreign places, we don't really visit them the way you should visit them, so she goes and sees how other people live.

I've traveled a lot and I know I'm supposed to be a hard-headed fascist from the insula, but I actually spent a lot of my time traveling, particularly on the European continent, and I know how other people live and in many cases I've come across realize that they live much better than us. You've talked to people in the Netherlands and they're surprised at how old-fashioned and run-down our country looks when they go to visit it and you know what they mean, the lives we lead aren't that good. as they should be, I also still retain a kind of social democratic desire to reform the lives of the poor and I look at things like housing and education, transportation and I feel ashamed because it was something I found among serious Russian patriots, not communists, when I lived in Moscow, these are the people who are most critical of their country.

The patriot is not the person who says that my country is brilliant and wonderful and, in general, the patriot is someone who recognizes the defects of and I thought that was my duty and it is for me, it is the most tremendous legacy of the very long course of recovery I have had at Fleet Street University, now in its 47th year, I think, when I was taught. a lot of things that they didn't teach me in school, they didn't teach me in college, largely from traveling and reading The Wider, thinking that makes us not a great man and I'm also very moved by my life. of my father and mother in the Second World War and what they had to endure and I am very interested in my father's life in Her Majesty's Navy before 1939 and the position of this country at that time and I know how much which is forensic.

I read M's records of his travels in many parts of the world, from the islands of Greece to Shanghai, and I see a completely different world in which we played a different role, we were these things that we imagined and that we are no longer. You know what you read was living in the United States reading the newspapers watching the television news programs would they ever mention this country they are not very aware that we exist there are Americans who do not even realize that English comes from England we no longer We are important, but we are actually very, very lucky to have all kinds of resources that, if we used them intelligently, we could make this a very, very liveable country, but we don't because we waste our substance pretending to be what it does a lot. time CE be Peter great place to end thank you very much for joining us thank you for inviting me