July 15, 2025 • 33 mins
Roger welcomes Lord Daniel Hannan, a British writer, historian and member of the UK House of Lords, for a wide-ranging conversation on executive overreach, constitutional principles and the ideas that preserve liberty.
They explore how power has steadily concentrated in the hands of presidents and prime ministers, weakening the roles of legislatures and citizens alike. They also reflect on what America borrowed and improved on from British political traditions through its written Constitution, and consider how both nations risk forgetting the foundations of their freedom. Other topics include the aftermath of Brexit, the future of free trade and why humility and historical awareness are essential for effective governance in the 21st century.
Lord Daniel Hannan serves as international secretary of the Conservative Party, is the founding president of the Institute for Free Trade, a New York Times bestselling author and a former Conservative member of the European Parliament. He was also the keynote speaker this year at TFAS’s annual Neal B. Freeman Lecture, which discusses the principles of a free society, free markets, personal responsibility and virtue.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
Today.
I'm your host, roger Ream.
My guest today on the Libertyand Leadership Podcast is Lord
Daniel Hannon of Kingsclare.
Lord Hannon has been a memberof the House of Lords since 2021
(00:24):
.
Previously, he served for 21years in the European Parliament
.
Daniel is a acclaimed author ofnine books.
He writes regular columns inthe press both in the UK and the
United States, in theWashington Examiner, our annual
(00:46):
conference at Monticello in 2013, and we're pleased that he's
here this trip to speak to allof the students attending our
summer programs in Washington DC.
He'll be before 300 studentstonight talking about America
250 and what it means to theworld.
Daniel, thank you for beingwith me.
Thank you very much, roger.
Let me begin by asking if youcould just enlighten us on what
your duties are as a member ofthe House of Lords.
You know you've been there forfour years and what is their
(01:07):
role and what do you accomplishwhile there?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
The first point to make and I would make this point
to all parliamentarians inevery country is do not think of
yourself as a legislator or alawmaker.
That may be an incidental partof your function, but you
mustn't come to see that as whatdefines you, because that
really is a misunderstanding ofhow things work.
I was lucky enough to have youvisit me in the House of Lords
(01:31):
not long ago, roger, and you'llremember that in the chamber, as
you look around towards theceiling, there are these figures
of rather hunky medievalfigures in chain mail, and those
represent the barons who madeKing John agree to the Magna
Carta in 1215.
And the House of Lords reallytakes its origin from that event
.
That was the beginning of akind of conciliar form of
(01:53):
government that was a constrainton the king, and I think that
that's a really importantreminder of what our primary
function is.
It's not to participate indebates, it's not to represent
constituents.
It's not to participate indebates.
It's not to representconstituents.
It's not to serve on committeesand it is certainly not to pass
laws.
Our primary function is toconstrain the executive, to
(02:14):
ensure that the people in powerwho have the potential to abuse
that power are not able toexceed the boundaries laid down
in law.
Everything else we do issecondary to that goal, right?
I'm not saying you shouldn'tpass laws Sometimes that is
necessary but never lose sightof what we're primarily there
for Now.
We're a fairly weak secondchamber.
We are a revising chamber.
(02:34):
We're not elected, so under theBritish understanding, the
House of Commons ultimatelyalways gets its way.
We can improve and tweak anddelay things.
We can't block them in the longrun.
But I think that makes it allthe more important to remember
why we're there.
We are there, as I see it,primarily to stop bad things
happening.
That's not a bad way ofdefining your role as a
politician.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Well, there seems to be a lesson in there for the US
Congress in terms of theimportance of their role in
checking executive power andabiding by their duties as
outlined in Article 1, Section 8of our Constitution, I mean
first of all, I think yourfounders knew exactly what they
were doing when they putCongress in Article 1 of the
Constitution and the presidencyin Article 2.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
The way in which successive Congresses have let
their powers slip reflectslittle credit on them.
One of the things that I reallyadmire about the constitutional
makeup in this country is theway in which the constitution
itself is foregrounded and theinstitutions of government are
created to maintain theconstitution, not the other way
(03:37):
around.
It's not that the constitutionis there to maintain the
government, but the governmentis there to maintain this idea.
That hasn't always happened.
I talk myself hoarse, remindingmy friends in Congress that
commerce is very clearly acongressional jurisdiction, that
there is no question about thatin the original documentation.
But the willingness ofcongressional assemblies the
world over to hand power to theexecutive on a supposedly
(04:01):
contingent basis because theyhappen to agree with it on one
issue, and then they've lostthat power forever and they
never get it back, that is areal problem, and we can see the
impact of it now.
I always think that P Joe putthis beautifully.
He said look, the USConstitution is a flawed
document, but it's way betterthan what we're doing now.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, you know the great constitutional scholar
Randy Barnett.
I've heard him say that theConstitution is the document
that governs those who govern us, and he points out that
American citizens don't take anoath to uphold the Constitution.
It's people who go intogovernment or military service,
the president.
They take an oath to uphold theConstitution because it's the
(04:39):
constraint on them, it's whatshould be governing them.
I'm sure that's quite acontrast to your many years
experience 21, I think in theEuropean Parliament.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It's interesting to contrast.
So now I have to take an oath,and the oath I take now is to
the Crown.
That, of course, is an exactequivalent of the oath to the
Constitution.
It's a way of saying I'm goingto uphold the rules.
The rules matter more than whowins If my side loses.
I've taken this oath to acceptthe constitutional legitimacy of
the whole system.
In the European Parliament therewas always this tension between
(05:11):
the people who saw it in theway it was intended originally,
which was a way of providingsome check on the European
Commission, some legitimacy,some guarantee that public
opinion would be involved in thedecision-making process, and
those who always wanted it to bea federal legislature.
In the eyes of theEuro-Federalists, they see the
(05:34):
European Commission becoming akind of cabinet.
They see the Council ofMinisters, which at the moment
is the supreme body, becominglike a senate or a bundesrat, a
chamber representing the regions, ie the nations, and they see
the European Parliament becomingthe primary unit.
The problem with that and youreally run into what's wrong
with the whole European projectis almost nobody feels European
(05:55):
in the same sense that somebodymight feel Swedish or Hungarian.
Very few people have thatconnection.
Democracy for me doesn't justmean that you get to vote every
couple of years.
It means there's got to be arelationship between government
and government.
There's got to be a willingnesson behalf of the population to
accept government from eachother's hands because they feel
that they've got enough incommon Same language, the same
culture, the same religion, thesame history, whatever it is.
(06:16):
They have enough in common toaccept what my friend Roger
Scruton always used to call thepolitics of the first person
plural.
You have that as an American oras a Swede or Hungarian or
whatever.
You don't have it as a European,and creating the institutions
of statehood when there is nonation strikes me as a very
dangerous thing and ultimately,that was why I was a Brexiteer.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Speaking about that, how has it worked out?
Where would you assess it?
Today?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
We have been disappointingly slow to take up
the opportunities of Brexit.
I underestimated the immobilismand the lingering Euro
fanaticism of our administrativestate, absolute foot dragging
over any divergence from EUstandards, and I also, I think,
(07:02):
overestimated the ambition ofour politicians.
They have been verychange-averse.
But with all of that, it's notto say that we've done nothing.
For example, we are the onlycountry that has any kind of
trade deal post-liberation daywith the US.
That's just kind of a stopgapdeal, but I'm hoping that there
will be a much more ambitiousone soon.
I don't see any prospect of asimilar deal between the US and
the EU, not for a very long time.
(07:23):
The two sides are too far apart.
We've begun to deregulatethings like AI, things like gene
editing, and in a way, theproof of the success is this Our
current Labour government isfilled and led by people who not
only campaign to stay in the EU, but who initially refused to
accept the outcome, who spentthe next three years arguing for
(07:47):
a second referendum so thatthey could reverse the result,
having, of course, previouslypromised that this was a
once-in-a-generation thing.
They then said oh, we had ourfingers crossed behind our back
when we said that Now, havingcome into office and seen the
costs that would be involved interms of losing jurisdiction and
accepting an inappropriatecommercial and regulatory
framework, as well as the lossof democracy.
(08:09):
Even they have now lost anyinterest in trying to take
Britain back in.
It's true that they're stillemotionally very European and
therefore they're more willingto kind of agree to things
because Brussels wants, and tounilaterally harmonise, but even
they are not proposing that weagain accept the supremacy of EU
law, and so, if you like,that's the ultimate success that
(08:29):
nobody now wants to reverse it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, let's shift a minute to your book Inventing
Freedom.
It was a New York Timesbestseller.
Why do you think the responsewas so strong to it?
Is it because you've coveredground that really others
haven't covered?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
We're coming up to the 250th anniversary and I
think that's a really big deal.
But I'm interested as a Britishconservative in how the US
Declaration of Independence iskind of part of my heritage as
well.
The authors of it were notacting in a vacuum.
They were drawing on ideas thatwere centuries old.
(09:04):
It's important to remember thatwhen the conflict began no one
saw it as a national conflict.
When you go to Concord andLexington now you get the tour
guide saying well, the Britishwere here and the Americans?
You'd have sounded like alunatic if you'd said that in
1775.
Everyone was British right,paul.
Revere riding through saying theBritish are coming would have
been a bizarre thing to shout ata Massachusetts population that
had only ever considered itselfBritish.
(09:25):
It was only much later, afterthe French got involved, that
people started thinking of it asa war rather than a civil war.
I wanted to explore the extentto which the founders were, in
some senses, conservativesrather than radicals.
They were, in their own minds,restoring the privileges that
they believed they had been bornwith as Englishmen, and they
(09:49):
were under threat from theinnovations of a German king.
You see that very, very clearlyin not just in what they were
saying and writing in theirletters, but in the conclusions
of the First ContinentalCongress and all the rest of it.
It was very clear that thesewere people who were embittered
by the betrayal of theirbirthright.
They probably exaggerated that,but they were not wrong to see
(10:10):
that there was a betrayal atleast of the idea of a
comprehensive representativesystem where taxes should
reflect the right torepresentation.
There was a line that Jeffersonwrote that was eventually
excised from the Declaration.
It was a rather haunting andbeautiful line where he said we
might have been a great and freepeople together.
I wanted to talk about.
(10:30):
What does the Declaration ofIndependence mean to the rest of
the world, particularly to therest of the English-speaking
world, because we share thistradition coming from Magna
Carta and the Bill of Rights andso on, but actually to
everybody?
I believe that the US, bysucceeding as it has, has
elevated and ennobled the ideaof individual freedom and
autonomy.
When the US diverges from thoseprinciples, because human
(10:53):
beings are flawed and nothing inthis world is perfect, all of
us lose something.
It's not just your problem.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
In your book.
You quote Roger Scruton inthere, who wrote that English
law existed not to control thereally expected.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
We're used to it in the US and in Britain we're used
to the idea of this inherited,evolved legal inheritance, this
(11:30):
folk right, but actually it's anincredibly weird thing if you
think about it.
The normal thing, if you weredesigning a legal system from
first principles, is that youwould write the law down and
then you would apply it to aparticular case.
Common law does the opposite.
It says every judgment is thestarting point for the next one.
And so we have this accumulated, this accreted precedent, and
it grows like a coral, case bycase.
(11:52):
Nobody would invent that.
And yet the beauty of it isagain and again, it has
preserved the freedom of theindividual because it's a legal
system that belongs to thecountry, not to the government.
It's not an instrument of statecontrol.
Even during the English CivilWar, the courts functioned all
the way through the one time wereally did have a monarchical
(12:13):
dictatorship, under Charles I.
He ruled without parliament for11 years, the 11 years personal
rule, as the monarchists calledit, the 11 years tyranny, as
the Whigs called it.
There was no parliament.
The opposition was from thebench.
Even the judges, who weremonarchists, were fundamentally
loyal to the legal principles,and people fall short.
Right, there are judges whofall short in my country and in
yours now.
But just getting them to readthat story will make them better
(12:35):
judges, and it didn't end wellfor Charles I.
It did not end well for CharlesI.
He was beheaded in 1649 andactually died incredibly bravely
.
He exhibited a virtue in deaththat he'd never exhibited in
life and this is really whatmade the restoration happen.
One of his sort of chiefcounsellors, a man called the
Earl of Clarendon, who thenwrote the Great Rebellion, as he
(12:57):
called it, said there was noone who was a better husband, a
better father, a better friend,a better Christian.
It's just he wasn't a very goodking.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
You told me the story about his trial and him
questioning the authority uponwhich he was being tried.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yes, it became clear to the victorious
parliamentarians after they'dhad to fight a second civil war
against him that there would beno peace while this man was
still on the throne.
He was constitutionallyincapable, ideologically
incapable, if you like, ofaccepting defeat.
In his view, he was still amonarch dealing with subjects in
open revolt and therefore hecould do whatever he wanted.
Anything he did was justifiedby ending the rebellion.
(13:36):
Of course, that meant thatthere could be no peace In the
end, rather like actually after1775,.
The logic of the position ofthe anti-monarchists in both
(13:59):
cases was a position that noneof them had really started with,
which is you can't treat theking as our of the court.
He said I would know by whatauthority I am brought hither.
I mean by what legal authority.
He said there'd be illegalauthorities, there'd be footpads
by the highway.
But by what legal authority amI brought here?
Of course, very difficultquestion to answer.
He was on trial by a group ofMPs, not even judges.
They'd long since exhaustedtheir mandates.
(14:21):
They'd kicked out all the MPswho didn't agree with them.
So they had a very shaky claimand they said well, you've
broken all the deal, you'vebroken your coronation oath,
you've inflicted this war on us,taken people's property, killed
people without due process allof which was true, none of which
was an answer to his questionby what authority was he being
tried?
And so, in desperation, to getthemselves out of that difficult
(14:41):
situation and answer thequestion, they turned to what
had until then been this veryfringe doctrine, above all
associated with a radicaldemocratic group called the
Levellers, and they said ourauthority comes from the fact
that we are the electedparliament.
Sovereignty is vested in thepeople of England, and we
(15:01):
articulate it as their electedrepresentatives.
To you and me, that doesn'tsound at all radical.
That is the basis of England,and we articulate it as their
elected representatives.
To you and me, that doesn'tsound at all radical.
That is the basis of prettymuch every modern democracy.
We all start from theproposition that sovereignty is
vested in the people, an almostunthinkable thing to have said
in 1649.
I've always felt that thisdeserves more attention.
From this happy accident of ajudge needing to find an answer
to a tricky question, we getwhat John Locke then turned into
(15:24):
the preponderant theory ofmodern government.
Yeah, sovereignty comes fromthe people.
Sovereignty comes from thepeople.
Up until then, it was alwaysseen as sovereignty comes from
God to the king, and he can thendo what he likes 2010,.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
You wrote the New Road to Serfdom and you
subtitled A Letter of Warning toAmerica.
Why do you think we needed thisletter of warning and where are
we today?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Well, this was during Barack Obama's first term and I
could see a certainEuropeanization in his policy,
most obviously in terms of whathe was trying to do with health
care, but actually in terms ofhuman rights, in terms of
foreign policy, in terms oflevels of taxation, we were
living in your future, hence theletter of warning.
Looking back 15 years on now,I'm not very cheerful because a
(16:12):
lot of the executive overreachthat Barack Obama indulged in
has now just become standard forboth sides.
There seems to be a real sensenow that if your guy is in
office or your party has amajority, this is your chance to
mobilize the full force ofstate power against the people
(16:32):
that you don't like and to sayyou know how do they like them
apples.
That is really incompatiblewith the constitution.
So if I just take a currentexample, like plucking one of
hundreds, there's a bunch ofbattles at the moment political
and jurisdictional conflictsbetween the Trump administration
and Democratic-run Californiaon lots of things.
I mean most obviously on thesanctuary policy and the
(16:53):
treatment of immigrants, butactually on a whole bunch of
other things.
Trump doesn't like the waythey're promoting electric
vehicles, he doesn't like theLGBT stuff.
I mean there's a whole bunch ofareas where they disagree.
On almost all of those issues,I would incline more to his side
than to that of California.
That does not mean that heshould unconstitutionally usurp
(17:15):
states' rights and impose hispolicies and that the difficulty
that people have with this isbecoming a real problem, that
people don't seem to care aboutprocess when they want an
outcome.
Badly enough, that was what Iidentified under the Obama years
, and I'm afraid both sides arenow at it.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I read recently that one issue you face in the UK is
that a lot of wealthy people areleaving the country.
They're exiting because of, Iguess, the high tax burden there
.
Is that actually taking placeand why is that?
What are the taxes like?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Taxes are high, but Milton Friedman always used to
say look at the spending rate.
That's your real tax rate,because the taxes are either now
or they're deferred, but oneway or another, it's the
spending rate that counts, andthat's the thing that has really
shaken a lot of taxpayers inthe UK, In common with most of
Western Europe actually, we'vegone from the state accounting
(18:04):
for maybe a third of GDP at thebeginning of the century to much
closer to half.
The first of those issustainable.
It's not great, I mean, I stillthink that the idea of the
government taking $1 in three isbad enough, but at least it's
sustainable.
It's the difference between, ifyou like, two people carrying a
third and one carrying one.
Two men can drag another one.
(18:24):
One puts his hands under hiselbows, the other one grabs his
ankles.
You can manage One holding theother in a five-minute lift.
That's only conceivable for ashort distance.
It's not sustainable.
So that, I think, is why peopleare beginning to leave, of
course, leaving the rest of usto pick up their share of the
tax bill.
This is the point that peopleso often struggle with On the
left, including among a lot ofLabour MPs, when you present
(18:47):
them with this evidence of anemigration of the wealthy.
Their instinct is to say goodriddance, if they're that
unpatriotic, we're better offwithout them.
But of course that invites theanswer well, so who is going to
make up the shortfall?
And the worst of it is thatit's not just the millionaires
who are emigrating.
It's the young entrepreneurswho are not yet asset rich, but
(19:09):
who are energetic and ambitiousand think well, I can earn more
and pay less tax in Dubai orSydney or wherever.
You are then in real danger ofa spiral where the people who
generate the tax revenue areleaving.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I think Friedman made a very valid point about the
total cost of government, totalspending being the real impact
of government on the economy,not just the tax burden.
At the same time, our issue inthis country since before COVID
really, but certainlyaccelerated under COVID is the
tremendous amount of borrowingwe're doing, and so, even though
all spending is higher andhigher, this borrowing has led
(19:42):
to a national debt that'sdraining the federal budget
every year in interest paymentsand isn't sustainable long term.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I've thought for a long time that this is the
single biggest security risk tothe US, actually, that a country
that is spending that much ondebt servicing rather than on
its military is not going to beable to hold its position in the
world rankings, if you like.
What can be done about that?
Well, I mean, I'd love to beable to say that there's going
to be such huge cuts that thebudget is going to come back
into balance.
Realistically, I don't thinkthat's going to happen.
(20:11):
I remember all of our freemarket friends wearily
predicting that Doge wasn'tgoing to work because it wasn't
going to be as easy as peoplethought, and sure enough, that
seems to be the case.
I mean, yes, it's done somegood things and it's got rid of
some really egregiously annoyingstuff, but really, I think the
only way that you reduce inproportionate terms a debt of
this kind is by making theeconomy grow faster than the
(20:34):
government.
I think that is feasible.
I think that this administrationis making a vast and unforced
error on trade policy and ismaking a lot of people worse off
with absolutely no compensatinggains whatever to Americans.
However, that can be offset inother areas.
This is the largest economy inthe world, and so, because the
(20:56):
US has a very big GDP, trade isa relatively small share of its
GDP.
Trade matters much less ifyou're a big country than if
you're a small one, andtherefore a really good
competitive, pro-growth set ofregulations on AI and related
tech and digital currencies, onAI and related tech and digital
(21:18):
currencies, that can offset abad trade policy, a very strong
pro-energy policy, energyabundance policy, that can
offset a bad trade policy.
Now I mean, obviously it'd beway better to have a good trade
policy as well.
Right Then the country reallywould be booming as far as
damage limitation and bringingthe debt down goes.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Free marketeers should be willing to acknowledge
that some of the people in thisadministration Free marketeers
should be willing to acknowledgethat some of the people in this
administration not the ones youalways see on TV, not the
(21:51):
loudmouths there are some reallythoughtful, good, patriotic
people doing very that.
But it seems that despite theoverwhelming evidence, the
historical record of why freetrade enriches people,
protectionists still seem tohave winning arguments with
political officials population,because what they say is
(22:13):
intuitive, even though it'sfalse.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
What I mean by that is a lot of the arguments for
protectionism and mercantilismsound like common sense.
They appeal to ancientpre-agrarian heuristics that are
buried deep in our genome, sothey are literally intuitive.
If I say, for example, that acountry can't carry on with a
(22:36):
big deficit, or if I say that itneeds to be able to grow its
own food, or if I say that itcan't compete with slave wage
economies in the rest of theworld, or that it needs to
protect its strategic industries, all of those things sound like
common sense.
All of them, actually, whentranslated into policy, make a
country needlessly poorer.
But it takes a little bit ofbasic economics to understand
(23:02):
why that is.
In a screen-addled and impatientage, when the average amount of
time spent on a TikTok video isseven seconds, most people are
not giving it that time.
So that's why, if you like,free trade is always unpopular
and why its exponents havealways had to show, not tell.
They've had to make it work.
But the way you asked thequestion, roger, was you said
why has it got this grip overpolitical officials?
Let me ask you what leadingconservatives in this country
(23:25):
were in favor of protectionismbefore Donald Trump altered
their career incentives?
Very few, if any.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah, maybe some that represented particular
industries dominated theirdistrict.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
It was a really minority position until five
minutes ago.
What we're really seeing is theobsession of one politician,
but because his devotees havethis intimidating and cult-like
loyalty, that has brought a lotof other people into the fold
brought a lot of other peopleinto the fold.
(23:56):
The reason that we've had freetrade and that it's worked we
had six or seven good decadesafter the Second World War is
because, although it's acounterintuitive doctrine,
whenever people tryprotectionism the results are
palpably dreadful.
You can see it in the countriesthat are doing it still in the
world today.
The most protectionist countryon earth is North Korea.
Who would you like to livethere?
But you could also see it whencountries suddenly lurch into it
(24:18):
, and that, of course, lasthappened here in 1930 with the
Smoot-Hawley tariffs, and that,I think, just like people burned
their fingers and theyunderstood that maybe we don't
get why this is the case, butwhat all of those economists
were saying, it must have beentrue.
When we did this intuitive thingand tried to protect all the
industries, it turned the WallStreet crash into the Great
Depression.
That led to a global effortstarting at Breslin Woods in
(24:40):
1944, of people to come togetherand say let's not do that again
, and that has lasted until now.
Maybe people have forgotten thelesson.
There's nobody around anymore,or maybe it's just that Donald
Trump has had this impact.
But one way or another, asKipling said, the burnt fool's
bandaged finger goes wobblingback to the fire, and I have a
horrible feeling.
We're going to have to learnthe lesson in real, practical
terms again.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
There are some small countries with very little in
the way of natural resourcesthat have been tremendously
successful because not only freetrade, but they've committed to
free markets.
I'm thinking Hong Kong andSingapore, even the Netherlands.
The UK has been pretty wellcommitted to free trade over the
years, hasn't it?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I mean until we joined the EU.
Yeah, and now we can be again.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, think of Singapore asan example.
Singapore has zero naturalresources.
It doesn't sit on diamonds, itdoesn't sit on oil, it doesn't
sit on timber or rubber oranything else.
It doesn't produce one edibleounce.
It is utterly dependent on therest of the world for its most
(25:38):
basic needs for food, fordrinking water, for electricity.
So, from a protectionist pointof view, all the most terrifying
things.
It's the most exposed, it's themost vulnerable, and yet
Singapore has the cheapest andmost reliable food supplies in
the world.
Why is this?
Well, let's challenge one ofthose caveman heuristics.
Let's explain the differencebetween self-sufficiency and
(26:01):
security.
Britain imports about 42% ofits food.
When I tell somebody that, ifthey're not a politician or an
economist, the first reaction isimmediately that makes them
feel nervous.
Oh, we're so exposed.
What if somebody turned off thetap?
We've actually been a net foodimporter since about the 1720s
and we've done pretty well sincethe 1720s because we kind of
moved up the production chain.
We learned that to havesecurity, whether of food or of
(26:24):
anything else, means being ableto source what you want from the
widest possible range ofsuppliers so that you're not
vulnerable to a localized shockor disruption, which may as
easily happen on your ownterritory as anywhere else.
Difference between security andself-sufficiency you look at a
country that really does produceits own stuff.
(26:46):
Well, again, north Korea is theanti-Singapore.
They try and grow everythingthemselves, the last place on
the planet where you still havefamines, because you are hugely
vulnerable.
When you do that, somethinggoes wrong at home, if you like.
The ultimate stress test of allof this was the pandemic and
the associated lockdowns, whenthe whole world was subjected to
this simultaneous disruption,and yet the food markets worked
(27:09):
beautifully.
Nobody starved, nobody had togrow potatoes in their gardens
for want of imports.
It was a supreme vindication ofhaving security by having a
dispersed network of suppliers.
But again, that is acounterintuitive argument.
It's always going to beunpopular.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
What's the path ahead for the Conservative Party in
England?
I saw some polls show themranking in fourth place.
I think behind the Labour andReform and Social Democrats Is
there a path forward.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Look, we have the same voting system that you guys
do and that tends towardsbroadly a two-party dispensation
and it punishes a split oneither side of the spectrum.
The problem we have is we havetwo competing right-wing parties
.
The difference between themisn't really to do with their
policies.
If I were to lay the twoelection manifestos next to each
(27:58):
other, you'd struggle to tellwhich was which.
The differences are much moretonal and cultural.
The Conservatives were in officefor a long time, had to make
all sorts of compromises andtrade-offs and made a lot of
unforced errors as well.
The result of this is that theyare sometimes fairly and
sometimes unfairly blamed foreverything that went wrong.
(28:18):
They brought a bit of it onthemselves, but some of it was
to do with the lockdown or otherthings which the whole country
was demanding Reform, has neverbeen in office and therefore has
the luxury of being able to saywe're going to be different and
better.
For example, they say we'regoing to deport every single
illegal immigrant.
I don't think any country inthe world has ever managed that
or even come close to it.
But because they've never beenin office, they can say that
(28:39):
without being measured againstthe practical reality of the
inability of a government to dothat.
There shouldn't, on paper,really be this division.
The two electorates arecomplementary.
They're different.
I mean the policies are thesame but the kinds of people
that they appeal to aredifferent and the geographies
are different.
Reform, in very broad terms, isstrong in the north of England
(28:59):
and in Wales, and theConservatives are strong in the
south of England.
I think if the two parties werejust to have a non-aggression
pact I'm not suggesting thatthey merge or that they coalesce
just that they say look, hereare some districts where it
would be crazy for us both torun, because we know that if we
did that, the left would win.
If they just did that, I thinkthey would have a majority
between them and then, you know,eventually down the line they
(29:20):
may get together.
It may be that, as in Canada,the leader of the merged party
comes from reform, but that's agood problem to have.
The issue is avoiding yet moreleft of center government with a
tiny vote share because we havesplit the vote.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Now are you still finding time, among all the
other duties you have andresponsibilities, to do some
teaching?
I know you've taught atUniversity of Buckingham.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yes, actually, my favorite thing is to be in the
classroom, and one of the lovelythings about the way I've been
able to arrange it is I canusually manage just to do the
teaching without all the admin,which is the dream of every
teacher, right?
It's like for any teacherswatching this.
I don't need to tell you this.
You did not go into it for themoney, right, right.
The pleasure of discussinginteresting ideas with bright
young people is what it's allabout.
I would love there to be aworld where which I think is
(30:03):
very feasible and in touchingdistance where ai takes the dull
stuff off the plates of thepedagogues and allows them just
to spend time teaching what doyou think is the most important
thing that you try to inst thinkall young people are prone to.
This is to say here is animperfection, let's change
(30:42):
everything, and not to ask butwhat were the alternatives?
How do we compare with othercountries?
How do we compare with othereras?
Imperfections are always partof life in this world.
You don't smash everything upbecause there's one thing that's
going wrong.
Look at the stuff that's goingwell.
I was talking to a student, avery left-wing student, a few
weeks ago who was saying thiscountry's, meaning Britain, this
(31:04):
country's done all theseterrible things.
It's racist and it'simperialist and it's colonialist
and it's oppressed black people, oppressed women and so on.
So I said, okay, well, look,perfection is not for this life,
but I want you to come back anddon't answer right away, but
come back and tell me where downthe centuries would you rather
have been female or poor or froma religious minority?
(31:24):
Seriously, where?
Russia, japan, abyssinia?
Come back to me when you comeup with somewhere where, taking
everything in the round, you'vegot a better record of standing
up for oppressed groups than inthis country.
There may be one or two, butthere won't be many.
Similarly, if you want to say weare the cruel imperial
oppressor that did theseterrible things to this or that
country, you've got to look infairness at what was there
(31:46):
before and what was thereafterwards.
Don't compare us to someplatonic ideal.
Compare us to what was thepractical reality when we had
our anti-slavery movements inWest Africa that ended up with
these protectors.
What were we replacing?
And then, if you'd ask peoplefive years after decolonisation,
how do things compare?
All I'm asking for isperspective, and I think the
single most valuable thing thatwe can encourage and inculcate
(32:10):
in people is that sense of whatis, in an imperfect and flawed
and sublunary world, what is theadequate, reasonable, imperfect
but comfortable solution thatwe can all live?
Speaker 1 (32:21):
with Thank you for joining me on the Liberty and
Leadership podcast.
I especially want to thank you,daniel, for coming across the
pond to speak to our studentstonight.
I know you'll be sharing yourknowledge and experience with
them and inspiring them aboutthe documents that we're talking
about now, as we celebrateAmerica 250, which starts, I
think, on July 4th yeah, so forthose, Kick off that year
(32:43):
celebration.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Right, so happy Independence Day.
Remember that you Americans,who are watching you, are heirs
to a sublime tradition and thatyou should keep it intact and
pass it on to those who comeafter.
Hear, hear.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg, andbe sure to subscribe to the
show on your favorite podcastapp and leave a five-star review
.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
(33:19):
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
things, large and small.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
Today.
I'm your host, roger Ream.
My guest today on the Libertyand Leadership Podcast is Lord
Daniel Hannon of Kingsclare.
Lord Hannon has been a memberof the House of Lords since 2021
(00:24):
.
Previously, he served for 21years in the European Parliament
.
Daniel is a acclaimed author ofnine books.
He writes regular columns inthe press both in the UK and the
United States, in theWashington Examiner, our annual
(00:46):
conference at Monticello in 2013, and we're pleased that he's
here this trip to speak to allof the students attending our
summer programs in Washington DC.
He'll be before 300 studentstonight talking about America
250 and what it means to theworld.
Daniel, thank you for beingwith me.
Thank you very much, roger.
Let me begin by asking if youcould just enlighten us on what
your duties are as a member ofthe House of Lords.
You know you've been there forfour years and what is their
(01:07):
role and what do you accomplishwhile there?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
The first point to make and I would make this point
to all parliamentarians inevery country is do not think of
yourself as a legislator or alawmaker.
That may be an incidental partof your function, but you
mustn't come to see that as whatdefines you, because that
really is a misunderstanding ofhow things work.
I was lucky enough to have youvisit me in the House of Lords
(01:31):
not long ago, roger, and you'llremember that in the chamber, as
you look around towards theceiling, there are these figures
of rather hunky medievalfigures in chain mail, and those
represent the barons who madeKing John agree to the Magna
Carta in 1215.
And the House of Lords reallytakes its origin from that event
.
That was the beginning of akind of conciliar form of
(01:53):
government that was a constrainton the king, and I think that
that's a really importantreminder of what our primary
function is.
It's not to participate indebates, it's not to represent
constituents.
It's not to participate indebates.
It's not to representconstituents.
It's not to serve on committeesand it is certainly not to pass
laws.
Our primary function is toconstrain the executive, to
(02:14):
ensure that the people in powerwho have the potential to abuse
that power are not able toexceed the boundaries laid down
in law.
Everything else we do issecondary to that goal, right?
I'm not saying you shouldn'tpass laws Sometimes that is
necessary but never lose sightof what we're primarily there
for Now.
We're a fairly weak secondchamber.
We are a revising chamber.
(02:34):
We're not elected, so under theBritish understanding, the
House of Commons ultimatelyalways gets its way.
We can improve and tweak anddelay things.
We can't block them in the longrun.
But I think that makes it allthe more important to remember
why we're there.
We are there, as I see it,primarily to stop bad things
happening.
That's not a bad way ofdefining your role as a
politician.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Well, there seems to be a lesson in there for the US
Congress in terms of theimportance of their role in
checking executive power andabiding by their duties as
outlined in Article 1, Section 8of our Constitution, I mean
first of all, I think yourfounders knew exactly what they
were doing when they putCongress in Article 1 of the
Constitution and the presidencyin Article 2.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
The way in which successive Congresses have let
their powers slip reflectslittle credit on them.
One of the things that I reallyadmire about the constitutional
makeup in this country is theway in which the constitution
itself is foregrounded and theinstitutions of government are
created to maintain theconstitution, not the other way
(03:37):
around.
It's not that the constitutionis there to maintain the
government, but the governmentis there to maintain this idea.
That hasn't always happened.
I talk myself hoarse, remindingmy friends in Congress that
commerce is very clearly acongressional jurisdiction, that
there is no question about thatin the original documentation.
But the willingness ofcongressional assemblies the
world over to hand power to theexecutive on a supposedly
(04:01):
contingent basis because theyhappen to agree with it on one
issue, and then they've lostthat power forever and they
never get it back, that is areal problem, and we can see the
impact of it now.
I always think that P Joe putthis beautifully.
He said look, the USConstitution is a flawed
document, but it's way betterthan what we're doing now.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, you know the great constitutional scholar
Randy Barnett.
I've heard him say that theConstitution is the document
that governs those who govern us, and he points out that
American citizens don't take anoath to uphold the Constitution.
It's people who go intogovernment or military service,
the president.
They take an oath to uphold theConstitution because it's the
(04:39):
constraint on them, it's whatshould be governing them.
I'm sure that's quite acontrast to your many years
experience 21, I think in theEuropean Parliament.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It's interesting to contrast.
So now I have to take an oath,and the oath I take now is to
the Crown.
That, of course, is an exactequivalent of the oath to the
Constitution.
It's a way of saying I'm goingto uphold the rules.
The rules matter more than whowins If my side loses.
I've taken this oath to acceptthe constitutional legitimacy of
the whole system.
In the European Parliament therewas always this tension between
(05:11):
the people who saw it in theway it was intended originally,
which was a way of providingsome check on the European
Commission, some legitimacy,some guarantee that public
opinion would be involved in thedecision-making process, and
those who always wanted it to bea federal legislature.
In the eyes of theEuro-Federalists, they see the
(05:34):
European Commission becoming akind of cabinet.
They see the Council ofMinisters, which at the moment
is the supreme body, becominglike a senate or a bundesrat, a
chamber representing the regions, ie the nations, and they see
the European Parliament becomingthe primary unit.
The problem with that and youreally run into what's wrong
with the whole European projectis almost nobody feels European
(05:55):
in the same sense that somebodymight feel Swedish or Hungarian.
Very few people have thatconnection.
Democracy for me doesn't justmean that you get to vote every
couple of years.
It means there's got to be arelationship between government
and government.
There's got to be a willingnesson behalf of the population to
accept government from eachother's hands because they feel
that they've got enough incommon Same language, the same
culture, the same religion, thesame history, whatever it is.
(06:16):
They have enough in common toaccept what my friend Roger
Scruton always used to call thepolitics of the first person
plural.
You have that as an American oras a Swede or Hungarian or
whatever.
You don't have it as a European,and creating the institutions
of statehood when there is nonation strikes me as a very
dangerous thing and ultimately,that was why I was a Brexiteer.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Speaking about that, how has it worked out?
Where would you assess it?
Today?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
We have been disappointingly slow to take up
the opportunities of Brexit.
I underestimated the immobilismand the lingering Euro
fanaticism of our administrativestate, absolute foot dragging
over any divergence from EUstandards, and I also, I think,
(07:02):
overestimated the ambition ofour politicians.
They have been verychange-averse.
But with all of that, it's notto say that we've done nothing.
For example, we are the onlycountry that has any kind of
trade deal post-liberation daywith the US.
That's just kind of a stopgapdeal, but I'm hoping that there
will be a much more ambitiousone soon.
I don't see any prospect of asimilar deal between the US and
the EU, not for a very long time.
(07:23):
The two sides are too far apart.
We've begun to deregulatethings like AI, things like gene
editing, and in a way, theproof of the success is this Our
current Labour government isfilled and led by people who not
only campaign to stay in the EU, but who initially refused to
accept the outcome, who spentthe next three years arguing for
(07:47):
a second referendum so thatthey could reverse the result,
having, of course, previouslypromised that this was a
once-in-a-generation thing.
They then said oh, we had ourfingers crossed behind our back
when we said that Now, havingcome into office and seen the
costs that would be involved interms of losing jurisdiction and
accepting an inappropriatecommercial and regulatory
framework, as well as the lossof democracy.
(08:09):
Even they have now lost anyinterest in trying to take
Britain back in.
It's true that they're stillemotionally very European and
therefore they're more willingto kind of agree to things
because Brussels wants, and tounilaterally harmonise, but even
they are not proposing that weagain accept the supremacy of EU
law, and so, if you like,that's the ultimate success that
(08:29):
nobody now wants to reverse it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, let's shift a minute to your book Inventing
Freedom.
It was a New York Timesbestseller.
Why do you think the responsewas so strong to it?
Is it because you've coveredground that really others
haven't covered?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
We're coming up to the 250th anniversary and I
think that's a really big deal.
But I'm interested as a Britishconservative in how the US
Declaration of Independence iskind of part of my heritage as
well.
The authors of it were notacting in a vacuum.
They were drawing on ideas thatwere centuries old.
(09:04):
It's important to remember thatwhen the conflict began no one
saw it as a national conflict.
When you go to Concord andLexington now you get the tour
guide saying well, the Britishwere here and the Americans?
You'd have sounded like alunatic if you'd said that in
1775.
Everyone was British right,paul.
Revere riding through saying theBritish are coming would have
been a bizarre thing to shout ata Massachusetts population that
had only ever considered itselfBritish.
(09:25):
It was only much later, afterthe French got involved, that
people started thinking of it asa war rather than a civil war.
I wanted to explore the extentto which the founders were, in
some senses, conservativesrather than radicals.
They were, in their own minds,restoring the privileges that
they believed they had been bornwith as Englishmen, and they
(09:49):
were under threat from theinnovations of a German king.
You see that very, very clearlyin not just in what they were
saying and writing in theirletters, but in the conclusions
of the First ContinentalCongress and all the rest of it.
It was very clear that thesewere people who were embittered
by the betrayal of theirbirthright.
They probably exaggerated that,but they were not wrong to see
(10:10):
that there was a betrayal atleast of the idea of a
comprehensive representativesystem where taxes should
reflect the right torepresentation.
There was a line that Jeffersonwrote that was eventually
excised from the Declaration.
It was a rather haunting andbeautiful line where he said we
might have been a great and freepeople together.
I wanted to talk about.
(10:30):
What does the Declaration ofIndependence mean to the rest of
the world, particularly to therest of the English-speaking
world, because we share thistradition coming from Magna
Carta and the Bill of Rights andso on, but actually to
everybody?
I believe that the US, bysucceeding as it has, has
elevated and ennobled the ideaof individual freedom and
autonomy.
When the US diverges from thoseprinciples, because human
(10:53):
beings are flawed and nothing inthis world is perfect, all of
us lose something.
It's not just your problem.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
In your book.
You quote Roger Scruton inthere, who wrote that English
law existed not to control thereally expected.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
We're used to it in the US and in Britain we're used
to the idea of this inherited,evolved legal inheritance, this
(11:30):
folk right, but actually it's anincredibly weird thing if you
think about it.
The normal thing, if you weredesigning a legal system from
first principles, is that youwould write the law down and
then you would apply it to aparticular case.
Common law does the opposite.
It says every judgment is thestarting point for the next one.
And so we have this accumulated, this accreted precedent, and
it grows like a coral, case bycase.
(11:52):
Nobody would invent that.
And yet the beauty of it isagain and again, it has
preserved the freedom of theindividual because it's a legal
system that belongs to thecountry, not to the government.
It's not an instrument of statecontrol.
Even during the English CivilWar, the courts functioned all
the way through the one time wereally did have a monarchical
(12:13):
dictatorship, under Charles I.
He ruled without parliament for11 years, the 11 years personal
rule, as the monarchists calledit, the 11 years tyranny, as
the Whigs called it.
There was no parliament.
The opposition was from thebench.
Even the judges, who weremonarchists, were fundamentally
loyal to the legal principles,and people fall short.
Right, there are judges whofall short in my country and in
yours now.
But just getting them to readthat story will make them better
(12:35):
judges, and it didn't end wellfor Charles I.
It did not end well for CharlesI.
He was beheaded in 1649 andactually died incredibly bravely
.
He exhibited a virtue in deaththat he'd never exhibited in
life and this is really whatmade the restoration happen.
One of his sort of chiefcounsellors, a man called the
Earl of Clarendon, who thenwrote the Great Rebellion, as he
(12:57):
called it, said there was noone who was a better husband, a
better father, a better friend,a better Christian.
It's just he wasn't a very goodking.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
You told me the story about his trial and him
questioning the authority uponwhich he was being tried.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yes, it became clear to the victorious
parliamentarians after they'dhad to fight a second civil war
against him that there would beno peace while this man was
still on the throne.
He was constitutionallyincapable, ideologically
incapable, if you like, ofaccepting defeat.
In his view, he was still amonarch dealing with subjects in
open revolt and therefore hecould do whatever he wanted.
Anything he did was justifiedby ending the rebellion.
(13:36):
Of course, that meant thatthere could be no peace In the
end, rather like actually after1775,.
The logic of the position ofthe anti-monarchists in both
(13:59):
cases was a position that noneof them had really started with,
which is you can't treat theking as our of the court.
He said I would know by whatauthority I am brought hither.
I mean by what legal authority.
He said there'd be illegalauthorities, there'd be footpads
by the highway.
But by what legal authority amI brought here?
Of course, very difficultquestion to answer.
He was on trial by a group ofMPs, not even judges.
They'd long since exhaustedtheir mandates.
(14:21):
They'd kicked out all the MPswho didn't agree with them.
So they had a very shaky claimand they said well, you've
broken all the deal, you'vebroken your coronation oath,
you've inflicted this war on us,taken people's property, killed
people without due process allof which was true, none of which
was an answer to his questionby what authority was he being
tried?
And so, in desperation, to getthemselves out of that difficult
(14:41):
situation and answer thequestion, they turned to what
had until then been this veryfringe doctrine, above all
associated with a radicaldemocratic group called the
Levellers, and they said ourauthority comes from the fact
that we are the electedparliament.
Sovereignty is vested in thepeople of England, and we
(15:01):
articulate it as their electedrepresentatives.
To you and me, that doesn'tsound at all radical.
That is the basis of England,and we articulate it as their
elected representatives.
To you and me, that doesn'tsound at all radical.
That is the basis of prettymuch every modern democracy.
We all start from theproposition that sovereignty is
vested in the people, an almostunthinkable thing to have said
in 1649.
I've always felt that thisdeserves more attention.
From this happy accident of ajudge needing to find an answer
to a tricky question, we getwhat John Locke then turned into
(15:24):
the preponderant theory ofmodern government.
Yeah, sovereignty comes fromthe people.
Sovereignty comes from thepeople.
Up until then, it was alwaysseen as sovereignty comes from
God to the king, and he can thendo what he likes 2010,.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
You wrote the New Road to Serfdom and you
subtitled A Letter of Warning toAmerica.
Why do you think we needed thisletter of warning and where are
we today?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Well, this was during Barack Obama's first term and I
could see a certainEuropeanization in his policy,
most obviously in terms of whathe was trying to do with health
care, but actually in terms ofhuman rights, in terms of
foreign policy, in terms oflevels of taxation, we were
living in your future, hence theletter of warning.
Looking back 15 years on now,I'm not very cheerful because a
(16:12):
lot of the executive overreachthat Barack Obama indulged in
has now just become standard forboth sides.
There seems to be a real sensenow that if your guy is in
office or your party has amajority, this is your chance to
mobilize the full force ofstate power against the people
(16:32):
that you don't like and to sayyou know how do they like them
apples.
That is really incompatiblewith the constitution.
So if I just take a currentexample, like plucking one of
hundreds, there's a bunch ofbattles at the moment political
and jurisdictional conflictsbetween the Trump administration
and Democratic-run Californiaon lots of things.
I mean most obviously on thesanctuary policy and the
(16:53):
treatment of immigrants, butactually on a whole bunch of
other things.
Trump doesn't like the waythey're promoting electric
vehicles, he doesn't like theLGBT stuff.
I mean there's a whole bunch ofareas where they disagree.
On almost all of those issues,I would incline more to his side
than to that of California.
That does not mean that heshould unconstitutionally usurp
(17:15):
states' rights and impose hispolicies and that the difficulty
that people have with this isbecoming a real problem, that
people don't seem to care aboutprocess when they want an
outcome.
Badly enough, that was what Iidentified under the Obama years
, and I'm afraid both sides arenow at it.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I read recently that one issue you face in the UK is
that a lot of wealthy people areleaving the country.
They're exiting because of, Iguess, the high tax burden there
.
Is that actually taking placeand why is that?
What are the taxes like?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Taxes are high, but Milton Friedman always used to
say look at the spending rate.
That's your real tax rate,because the taxes are either now
or they're deferred, but oneway or another, it's the
spending rate that counts, andthat's the thing that has really
shaken a lot of taxpayers inthe UK, In common with most of
Western Europe actually, we'vegone from the state accounting
(18:04):
for maybe a third of GDP at thebeginning of the century to much
closer to half.
The first of those issustainable.
It's not great, I mean, I stillthink that the idea of the
government taking $1 in three isbad enough, but at least it's
sustainable.
It's the difference between, ifyou like, two people carrying a
third and one carrying one.
Two men can drag another one.
(18:24):
One puts his hands under hiselbows, the other one grabs his
ankles.
You can manage One holding theother in a five-minute lift.
That's only conceivable for ashort distance.
It's not sustainable.
So that, I think, is why peopleare beginning to leave, of
course, leaving the rest of usto pick up their share of the
tax bill.
This is the point that peopleso often struggle with On the
left, including among a lot ofLabour MPs, when you present
(18:47):
them with this evidence of anemigration of the wealthy.
Their instinct is to say goodriddance, if they're that
unpatriotic, we're better offwithout them.
But of course that invites theanswer well, so who is going to
make up the shortfall?
And the worst of it is thatit's not just the millionaires
who are emigrating.
It's the young entrepreneurswho are not yet asset rich, but
(19:09):
who are energetic and ambitiousand think well, I can earn more
and pay less tax in Dubai orSydney or wherever.
You are then in real danger ofa spiral where the people who
generate the tax revenue areleaving.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I think Friedman made a very valid point about the
total cost of government, totalspending being the real impact
of government on the economy,not just the tax burden.
At the same time, our issue inthis country since before COVID
really, but certainlyaccelerated under COVID is the
tremendous amount of borrowingwe're doing, and so, even though
all spending is higher andhigher, this borrowing has led
(19:42):
to a national debt that'sdraining the federal budget
every year in interest paymentsand isn't sustainable long term.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I've thought for a long time that this is the
single biggest security risk tothe US, actually, that a country
that is spending that much ondebt servicing rather than on
its military is not going to beable to hold its position in the
world rankings, if you like.
What can be done about that?
Well, I mean, I'd love to beable to say that there's going
to be such huge cuts that thebudget is going to come back
into balance.
Realistically, I don't thinkthat's going to happen.
(20:11):
I remember all of our freemarket friends wearily
predicting that Doge wasn'tgoing to work because it wasn't
going to be as easy as peoplethought, and sure enough, that
seems to be the case.
I mean, yes, it's done somegood things and it's got rid of
some really egregiously annoyingstuff, but really, I think the
only way that you reduce inproportionate terms a debt of
this kind is by making theeconomy grow faster than the
(20:34):
government.
I think that is feasible.
I think that this administrationis making a vast and unforced
error on trade policy and ismaking a lot of people worse off
with absolutely no compensatinggains whatever to Americans.
However, that can be offset inother areas.
This is the largest economy inthe world, and so, because the
(20:56):
US has a very big GDP, trade isa relatively small share of its
GDP.
Trade matters much less ifyou're a big country than if
you're a small one, andtherefore a really good
competitive, pro-growth set ofregulations on AI and related
tech and digital currencies, onAI and related tech and digital
(21:18):
currencies, that can offset abad trade policy, a very strong
pro-energy policy, energyabundance policy, that can
offset a bad trade policy.
Now I mean, obviously it'd beway better to have a good trade
policy as well.
Right Then the country reallywould be booming as far as
damage limitation and bringingthe debt down goes.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Free marketeers should be willing to acknowledge
that some of the people in thisadministration Free marketeers
should be willing to acknowledgethat some of the people in this
administration not the ones youalways see on TV, not the
(21:51):
loudmouths there are some reallythoughtful, good, patriotic
people doing very that.
But it seems that despite theoverwhelming evidence, the
historical record of why freetrade enriches people,
protectionists still seem tohave winning arguments with
political officials population,because what they say is
(22:13):
intuitive, even though it'sfalse.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
What I mean by that is a lot of the arguments for
protectionism and mercantilismsound like common sense.
They appeal to ancientpre-agrarian heuristics that are
buried deep in our genome, sothey are literally intuitive.
If I say, for example, that acountry can't carry on with a
(22:36):
big deficit, or if I say that itneeds to be able to grow its
own food, or if I say that itcan't compete with slave wage
economies in the rest of theworld, or that it needs to
protect its strategic industries, all of those things sound like
common sense.
All of them, actually, whentranslated into policy, make a
country needlessly poorer.
But it takes a little bit ofbasic economics to understand
(23:02):
why that is.
In a screen-addled and impatientage, when the average amount of
time spent on a TikTok video isseven seconds, most people are
not giving it that time.
So that's why, if you like,free trade is always unpopular
and why its exponents havealways had to show, not tell.
They've had to make it work.
But the way you asked thequestion, roger, was you said
why has it got this grip overpolitical officials?
Let me ask you what leadingconservatives in this country
(23:25):
were in favor of protectionismbefore Donald Trump altered
their career incentives?
Very few, if any.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah, maybe some that represented particular
industries dominated theirdistrict.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
It was a really minority position until five
minutes ago.
What we're really seeing is theobsession of one politician,
but because his devotees havethis intimidating and cult-like
loyalty, that has brought a lotof other people into the fold
brought a lot of other peopleinto the fold.
(23:56):
The reason that we've had freetrade and that it's worked we
had six or seven good decadesafter the Second World War is
because, although it's acounterintuitive doctrine,
whenever people tryprotectionism the results are
palpably dreadful.
You can see it in the countriesthat are doing it still in the
world today.
The most protectionist countryon earth is North Korea.
Who would you like to livethere?
But you could also see it whencountries suddenly lurch into it
(24:18):
, and that, of course, lasthappened here in 1930 with the
Smoot-Hawley tariffs, and that,I think, just like people burned
their fingers and theyunderstood that maybe we don't
get why this is the case, butwhat all of those economists
were saying, it must have beentrue.
When we did this intuitive thingand tried to protect all the
industries, it turned the WallStreet crash into the Great
Depression.
That led to a global effortstarting at Breslin Woods in
(24:40):
1944, of people to come togetherand say let's not do that again
, and that has lasted until now.
Maybe people have forgotten thelesson.
There's nobody around anymore,or maybe it's just that Donald
Trump has had this impact.
But one way or another, asKipling said, the burnt fool's
bandaged finger goes wobblingback to the fire, and I have a
horrible feeling.
We're going to have to learnthe lesson in real, practical
terms again.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
There are some small countries with very little in
the way of natural resourcesthat have been tremendously
successful because not only freetrade, but they've committed to
free markets.
I'm thinking Hong Kong andSingapore, even the Netherlands.
The UK has been pretty wellcommitted to free trade over the
years, hasn't it?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I mean until we joined the EU.
Yeah, and now we can be again.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, think of Singapore asan example.
Singapore has zero naturalresources.
It doesn't sit on diamonds, itdoesn't sit on oil, it doesn't
sit on timber or rubber oranything else.
It doesn't produce one edibleounce.
It is utterly dependent on therest of the world for its most
(25:38):
basic needs for food, fordrinking water, for electricity.
So, from a protectionist pointof view, all the most terrifying
things.
It's the most exposed, it's themost vulnerable, and yet
Singapore has the cheapest andmost reliable food supplies in
the world.
Why is this?
Well, let's challenge one ofthose caveman heuristics.
Let's explain the differencebetween self-sufficiency and
(26:01):
security.
Britain imports about 42% ofits food.
When I tell somebody that, ifthey're not a politician or an
economist, the first reaction isimmediately that makes them
feel nervous.
Oh, we're so exposed.
What if somebody turned off thetap?
We've actually been a net foodimporter since about the 1720s
and we've done pretty well sincethe 1720s because we kind of
moved up the production chain.
We learned that to havesecurity, whether of food or of
(26:24):
anything else, means being ableto source what you want from the
widest possible range ofsuppliers so that you're not
vulnerable to a localized shockor disruption, which may as
easily happen on your ownterritory as anywhere else.
Difference between security andself-sufficiency you look at a
country that really does produceits own stuff.
(26:46):
Well, again, north Korea is theanti-Singapore.
They try and grow everythingthemselves, the last place on
the planet where you still havefamines, because you are hugely
vulnerable.
When you do that, somethinggoes wrong at home, if you like.
The ultimate stress test of allof this was the pandemic and
the associated lockdowns, whenthe whole world was subjected to
this simultaneous disruption,and yet the food markets worked
(27:09):
beautifully.
Nobody starved, nobody had togrow potatoes in their gardens
for want of imports.
It was a supreme vindication ofhaving security by having a
dispersed network of suppliers.
But again, that is acounterintuitive argument.
It's always going to beunpopular.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
What's the path ahead for the Conservative Party in
England?
I saw some polls show themranking in fourth place.
I think behind the Labour andReform and Social Democrats Is
there a path forward.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Look, we have the same voting system that you guys
do and that tends towardsbroadly a two-party dispensation
and it punishes a split oneither side of the spectrum.
The problem we have is we havetwo competing right-wing parties
.
The difference between themisn't really to do with their
policies.
If I were to lay the twoelection manifestos next to each
(27:58):
other, you'd struggle to tellwhich was which.
The differences are much moretonal and cultural.
The Conservatives were in officefor a long time, had to make
all sorts of compromises andtrade-offs and made a lot of
unforced errors as well.
The result of this is that theyare sometimes fairly and
sometimes unfairly blamed foreverything that went wrong.
(28:18):
They brought a bit of it onthemselves, but some of it was
to do with the lockdown or otherthings which the whole country
was demanding Reform, has neverbeen in office and therefore has
the luxury of being able to saywe're going to be different and
better.
For example, they say we'regoing to deport every single
illegal immigrant.
I don't think any country inthe world has ever managed that
or even come close to it.
But because they've never beenin office, they can say that
(28:39):
without being measured againstthe practical reality of the
inability of a government to dothat.
There shouldn't, on paper,really be this division.
The two electorates arecomplementary.
They're different.
I mean the policies are thesame but the kinds of people
that they appeal to aredifferent and the geographies
are different.
Reform, in very broad terms, isstrong in the north of England
(28:59):
and in Wales, and theConservatives are strong in the
south of England.
I think if the two parties werejust to have a non-aggression
pact I'm not suggesting thatthey merge or that they coalesce
just that they say look, hereare some districts where it
would be crazy for us both torun, because we know that if we
did that, the left would win.
If they just did that, I thinkthey would have a majority
between them and then, you know,eventually down the line they
(29:20):
may get together.
It may be that, as in Canada,the leader of the merged party
comes from reform, but that's agood problem to have.
The issue is avoiding yet moreleft of center government with a
tiny vote share because we havesplit the vote.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Now are you still finding time, among all the
other duties you have andresponsibilities, to do some
teaching?
I know you've taught atUniversity of Buckingham.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yes, actually, my favorite thing is to be in the
classroom, and one of the lovelythings about the way I've been
able to arrange it is I canusually manage just to do the
teaching without all the admin,which is the dream of every
teacher, right?
It's like for any teacherswatching this.
I don't need to tell you this.
You did not go into it for themoney, right, right.
The pleasure of discussinginteresting ideas with bright
young people is what it's allabout.
I would love there to be aworld where which I think is
(30:03):
very feasible and in touchingdistance where ai takes the dull
stuff off the plates of thepedagogues and allows them just
to spend time teaching what doyou think is the most important
thing that you try to inst thinkall young people are prone to.
This is to say here is animperfection, let's change
(30:42):
everything, and not to ask butwhat were the alternatives?
How do we compare with othercountries?
How do we compare with othereras?
Imperfections are always partof life in this world.
You don't smash everything upbecause there's one thing that's
going wrong.
Look at the stuff that's goingwell.
I was talking to a student, avery left-wing student, a few
weeks ago who was saying thiscountry's, meaning Britain, this
(31:04):
country's done all theseterrible things.
It's racist and it'simperialist and it's colonialist
and it's oppressed black people, oppressed women and so on.
So I said, okay, well, look,perfection is not for this life,
but I want you to come back anddon't answer right away, but
come back and tell me where downthe centuries would you rather
have been female or poor or froma religious minority?
(31:24):
Seriously, where?
Russia, japan, abyssinia?
Come back to me when you comeup with somewhere where, taking
everything in the round, you'vegot a better record of standing
up for oppressed groups than inthis country.
There may be one or two, butthere won't be many.
Similarly, if you want to say weare the cruel imperial
oppressor that did theseterrible things to this or that
country, you've got to look infairness at what was there
(31:46):
before and what was thereafterwards.
Don't compare us to someplatonic ideal.
Compare us to what was thepractical reality when we had
our anti-slavery movements inWest Africa that ended up with
these protectors.
What were we replacing?
And then, if you'd ask peoplefive years after decolonisation,
how do things compare?
All I'm asking for isperspective, and I think the
single most valuable thing thatwe can encourage and inculcate
(32:10):
in people is that sense of whatis, in an imperfect and flawed
and sublunary world, what is theadequate, reasonable, imperfect
but comfortable solution thatwe can all live?
Speaker 1 (32:21):
with Thank you for joining me on the Liberty and
Leadership podcast.
I especially want to thank you,daniel, for coming across the
pond to speak to our studentstonight.
I know you'll be sharing yourknowledge and experience with
them and inspiring them aboutthe documents that we're talking
about now, as we celebrateAmerica 250, which starts, I
think, on July 4th yeah, so forthose, Kick off that year
(32:43):
celebration.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Right, so happy Independence Day.
Remember that you Americans,who are watching you, are heirs
to a sublime tradition and thatyou should keep it intact and
pass it on to those who comeafter.
Hear, hear.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg, andbe sure to subscribe to the
show on your favorite podcastapp and leave a five-star review
.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
(33:19):
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
things, large and small.
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