YouSaid · the spoken record

Ian McEwan

lines on the record: 51
first: 2019-10-01
most recent: 2019-10-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“River Garden 50 and the whole nightmare would be over and we could just go back to where we were in 2012. I think if we're going to reverse it, if it's ever going to be possible in the second vote, it does need the legitimacy of people going to the polls for it.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right if we do it often enough, then I thought, God, do we need a written constitution? What a mess. So there is a possibility, and I agree with you, that we might if we found the right kind of government would come out of this. I mean, I feel disenfranchised at the moment. There's no one I particularly want to vote for. I don't think, I mean, I voted Lib Dem in the past, I voted green and voted Labour. I'm a bit queasy about pressing the button on revoke, assuming that Swinson never got a revoke came Article 50.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I thought, oh, I got something right because I didn't use proguing. I used pairing. When an MP has to be away from the house, when a government MP on the government backbenches, usually pairs up with an opposition person, they both agree in a kindly, courteous way to both not attend, so the vote's not affected. And I have a plot whereby the government takes forty of his MPs abroad and then sneaks them back the last thing, doesn't tell the opposition, and gets its bill through. And when Jim Sam's the cockroach prime minister is being questioned about this, he says, you have to understand that we have this pairing arrangement and we have a glorious long tradition of cheating. I thought, yeah, well, that was the argument the government lawyer was making about proroguing. If John Major prorogued for political purposes for his own favour, it was wrong. He's not saying, oh well, it's fine. We live by a cumulative common law by which anything wrong.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when I was writing this novel and I was trying to, proroguing had just been mentioned, and I was very interested on the last day in front of the Supreme Court, the government's lawyers said, proroguing is like for Five weeks, is perfectly acceptable, because other people have done it for political purposes. John Major did it, and then someone did it in the nineteen forties, and someone did it in nineteen twenty six. Baldwin, perhaps I can't remember.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes the Daily Mail just on the website just to get a taste of it. But certain things are not going to change. So that's very important. And perhaps two, to come back to something you said which I thought had a kind of shred of hopefulness about it, that it has held up a mirror to ourselves. It might prompt the right kind of people at least to start reflecting on the British state and how we've let its mechanisms grow rusty. We probably now need a written constitution. I mean, this has really shown us that we were floundering. I mean, when I was in Iceland to come back to Iceland, people were saying, well, you don't seem to have any rules.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but I mean the Brexit story. Sorry, I was back with the news agenda, gloomily listening to the Today program at six in the morning, gloomily looking at the Telegraph Guardian.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're cathartic. I've been asked this, and I know. I mean, I had sort of fun writing it. Reversalism was fun. There is a sort of shrugging something off at first. But when I'd finished, which was not very long ago, I think I handed it in September the 5th. publishes an amazing job to turn around so quickly. I was then back in the sort of coal face of the next story. Which could be?”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when Theresa May was home secretary and she was going to get immigration down to ten thousand a year from the Commonwealth. I mean, even with the best hostile will in the world, she couldn't do it. And it's the same with the EU. We need these people. My son is a scientist, one of his postdocs is their courtesy of the EU, and he's very worried what will happen. I'm pretty sure I know what will happen. It'll be negotiated if we leave, and with a lot of RGB and political efforts. Those postdocs will be here and working with us. So it could be that it gets a bit dreary at some levels, but not catastrophic, and on the social level we will never go back on all those things I've just mentioned”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Already this government has said and presumably university vice chancellor has been pitching in We've got to have foreign students because they're a cash cow. We've got to have immigration EU or Commonwealth to run our health service, to run our hotel services. Someone's got to pick the strawberries. I mean you are not going to see a quite mass of white faces as you would if you looked at a picture of Oxford Street in nineteen fifty two. It's not coming back and thank God it's not coming back. There's no way you can reverse this.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We could dump all the plastic we like into the ocean. It would make no difference to climate change. It's not a climate change matter, but they run in parallel. And I think also, however sad I am at the loss of Gob's bill, if we were going to leave the EU, I think there's awareness now that we'll be dragged behind the climate awareness. and I don't think we can reverse on that. And the final, am I going on too much about this”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that was actually environmentally friendly, it was very celebratory, really, of the unique nature, certainly of lowland English agriculture, its hedge roads and boundary trees and so on. Where's it gone? When Parliament was prorogued, it fell, and there are no plans to bring it back, because it rather stands in the way, I think, of the Prime Minister's plans for a deal with the United States. But I still think And here's my third thing that I think the genie out of the bottle seeing all those kids on the street. concern about the climate emergency. I think that's unstoppable now, and I think it spills over into many other things.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just as Allen Turing would have been amazed that he could marry the man he loved. We will really enter a new space, and I don't think Brexit can stop that. I think we're on a path now. This genie is out of the bottle, and I find it quite exhilarating. So that's one thing already. The one thing I hated about the EU was the common agricultural policy. I thought it was environmentally disastrous. I thought it was socialism for the rich. You gave money to people just for the number of hectares, acres of land they held. Michael Gove, not my favourite politician, had a very good bill before Parliament.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The transformation in social life to have so many gay friends living together happily is amazing when you think of what poison it was to people before and how easily it accepted. That can't be undone. And that's continuing in this sort of sometimes very irritating but still I think it's all part of a very young revolution that's guarding its territory, sometimes a little overzealously. But the whole LBGTQ and onwards turnaround in which I think sexuality will become like that famous scene in the first Star Wars movie, that bar. There are elephants drinking with weasels. We'll all be so many Ways of beings having a sexual identity in the world shamelessly happily and”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I've got this on mental list like there's an old inurium, the blockheads, reasons to be cheerful. So I hear that especially the olders, people my age, 65, age was a very good predictor of how you voted and the old really led us down selfishly, the future which they will mostly not inhabit. And they want to go back to, I don't know, some imperial past or memories of the fifties, and I think to myself, well, certain things have happened in my lifetime. There have been so glorious, and you can never undo them. And it's an ongoing process, and the first thing I put my finger on. comes out of having been over the last many, many years endless gay weddings.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's got bigger than any economic consideration. Something has entered the heart and the brains of those who just say from the street you see hear and see the vox pops every day I wish they get on with it. I just want to leave. I'm tired of the whole business. The EU is standing in our way and they just want to leave. And it's become, as I said at the beginning, It's become religious, it's become no, that insults religion actually. It's become mystical, let's put it that way.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was anyone talking about Brexit? Were they saying what? Yeah, that was the Grams were great, but if only we'd left the EU I'd feel so much better about it. No one was talking about it except for a handful of right-wing politicians. So how is it that this is this screw has turned An incredible number of people. The last time I saw it was like 38% of people polled said they would want to leave without a deal. Not just 38%. I mean, it is extraordinary. This is not how many want to leave, this is what we leave without a deal. Even as the newspapers are full of yet another bulletin from car manufacturers and just in time and all the jobs going, but”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“about all the lies told and the rest of it I'd have to get in I'd have to find that out really James Mek wrote a lovely book going round talking to fishermen in Grimsby and people in Wales and actually he Reading him on that, I thought Am I thinking is that James is not only a very good novelist, but he's exceptionally good journalist, far better than me. I'm not sure I'm all that good. Getting people to talk to me without me kind of getting impatient. But that's why I think that there's only one way to do it. You have to get into the mindset of what it would be like to really want. to leave the Even This, I think, but it all seems so confected. Go back a few years when we're all feeling rather happy and proud of ourselves. I mean, many people have said this after the Olympics.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you remember the accounts of when evacuees were streaming out of London to go and live in the countryside. There may have been many memoirs of people and I wasn't alive at that time. and the country discovered itself in the most extraordinary way. Kids were out in the country who had never seen a cow, never used a knife and fork, who were completely feral, filthy. and the matter was raised in Parliament, and there was a very important discussion which seemed as if the nation had suddenly arrived in front of a mirror and seen itself. Is this such a moment? Your question which I think is extremely good one takes me back to the point at which I said I would have to occupy the state of mind of a Brexiter to write a novel. It would be pointless just becoming me moaning on”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's true I do think they're wrong. I don't think they're stupid, but I think they're wrong. And I think this is self-harming. But to answer that question, there are a couple of very cherished friends who are highly articulate levers. And I have avoided the subject with them because I don't want to wreck our friendship, and I worry about my own temper. I've had some discussion with my brother in law, I love dearly, and we have kept the peace. But I have to say it reminds me a bit of the Falklands War, the whole nation was for it, and yet I only knew people who were against it. Apart from Christopher Hitchens, of course, always liked a good walk.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But still there were lots of things that once we begin to contemplate doing, say, a deal with the United States, we're going to suddenly remember that we've got all these things which actually are quite corrosive in a deal as the EU has already found in doing a trade deal with the United States. We needed to have celebrated those things and our silence on them as a sort of apologetic silence has led us into this state in which we're going into a completely pointless self-harming exercise.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was going to be like a Lichtenstein poster with cloud bursts of star bursts, sorry, of little slogans, free roaming, cleaner beaches, workers' protection, environmental protection, animal welfare, all over the place, things no visa, all sorts of things that on everyday levels frictionless trade I decided was too much jargon. Oh no, what's I going to say ECJ?”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's nothing in the United States that parallels anything like the diversity and richness of civilization of this space, and this space contains a lot of misery in its past, it has hit extraordinary plateau of peace, and yet each nation, Slovenia is so different from Portugal is so different from Sweden, and Germany even has a border with France, they are so entirely different, and you know within seconds. Weigh you in another country. You do not have to sacrifice your national identity. You can keep your sovereignty. We needed to have celebrated that. So I made a poster. I'm terrible at art, but I made it on my iPad, and I'm hoping that some amazing graphic designer will come and help me.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was in Austria hiking a couple of years ago with a friend. We were going to go trout fishing and hiking in a remote part of Slovenia. Sorry, Slovenia. And we got in a hired car. I was driving. We're going to very remote places, little cottage to rent. And we were driving along. Suddenly, we both looked up and looked out the window. We're in Austria. And we both went Wow Fantastic This was the eastern front in the First World War we think mostly the First World War in terms of the Western Front but the Eastern Front was savage too beyond belief and we could have driven to Sweden or to Portugal.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Celebration of an extraordinary political entity probably the most magnificent for all its faults human institution, many faults, but still one of the greatest achievements of mankind out of the rubble and disarray and cruelty, savagery of the mid twentieth century to establish to bind France and Germany together with and end up with a Schengen group. Now, I mean, I cheer myself up by saying whatever happens, we will still have the Schengen group. You and I will be able to drive all the way all around Europe, even though we're not members of the EU.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, lies are very important, and they are a kind of oil in the sort of wheels of social interaction. And I've thought about this a lot because I published a novel about a robot who could only tell the truth. Lines are very important. If you go and see your dying friend You say you're looking a bit better today. And If the person you passionately love comes staggering out of the hairdresser and it's a complete wreck, you say it looks fine, it'll grow. I don't think the remainers have told many lies What they have done. On their sin sheet is they have not celebrated the EU enough, and I think the campaign was lamentable. There was not enough.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unbelievably fascinating stories when they came down from Barrow Moral, and it was announced a preregue of Parliament, we saw what for me it took me back to the old days of the Soviet Union. There's a special Soviet way of telling a lie by a politician. So I tell it to you this lie I know I'm lying You know I'm lying I know that you know I'm lying and I've got this little smirk on my face and you saw it on the face of my Michael Gove you saw it on Reese Mogg's face Of course it was lying shamelessly when they said This has got nothing to do with Brexit How could anyone even begin?”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we do have an exceptional queen who's lived through many, many prime ministers, maybe thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and I would actually like I keep hearing this phrase you mustn't drag the queen into politics, but I would quite have liked the head of state at that point when Reese Mogg and whoever went up to Balmoral for the Queen to say five weeks why five weeks? Not feel the weight of convention on her that she mustn't say anything at all. I would have liked to have been a bit more active and drag herself into politics and say, come on, Prime Minister, first of all spell it out for me. Usually you only need five or six days to prepare for Queen Sweet. Why are we having five weeks? So I would like a little more active head of state. The next thing, what was extraordinary, I think, in this”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hours ago, I punched the air for that very reason. I happened to have name dropping, but I happened to have dinner two nights ago with the president of Iceland. And he's a history professor, and he was voted for, and he's the head of state. And I said, Do you have to do much? And he said, well, I have to do a lot of ceremonial staff. But if I would only have to do something if there was a constitutional crisis. I'm not a royalist, but I'm not particularly strong on anti monarchists, but I would otherwise that we had a Mary Robinson whoever to come and Play the”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got a bit shirty about getting school places or too many people in the doctor's waiting room. People down south say xenophobes and they didn't listen. But that was the British state that had done that. It was not the EU that said a million poles please proceed to Wolverhampton. And again something has been deflected, something that was not Brussels, it was the British state or the British government. It was our patterns of what is exposed for us is what a frail state our democracy in was in any way. What a terrible situation we were in terms of distribution of income. Obscene disparities now of wealth that's continued since the crash. In fact, even got worse or better.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I think you've got to deconstruct the lies, and I think the biggest lie was the sovereignty lie. But then you have to look at immigration, which I think was a really interesting question. The EU had a perfectly sensible law that when you had a new country come in, like all the accession countries, you waited seven years before you switched on the free movement of labour button, as it were. All that you did that except for Britain, Sweden and Ireland. As a consequence, we had a massive influx. Of Poles and others. And when people in the northeast and the North Midlands”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and it gives a list of all the marvellous things going to follow when we left. We're going to be the centre of battery technology and the electric plane and we're going to solve the differences of disparities of income and so on north-south. All of that and green, we're going to be green. There was not one of those aspirations that could not be pursued within the EU. There's not one single thing. It was not the EU that said you must really try and make the rich a bit richer. And can we please make the southeast much more sort of attractive than everywhere else? And can we please invest a lot more in London than Newcastle and Birmingham? So I think there is a duty to try and”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said right at the beginning I understood why lots of people in the North Midlands, northeast, northwest were not about to go and vote for the status quo. As my brother in law said, they pressed the fucket button, because they weren't happy with their lives. The great trick of Brexit, persuading people, decent people to get so fired up about it, was that everything that was wrong with the British state, the colossal disparities of wealth, the huge divisions between the southeast and the rest of the country, many other matters of opportunity and education, all the things we've talked about that were the fault of the EU. And it's a massive When Boris Johnson gave his priority statement to the House of Commons.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know we are the herbivores in this debate, and we haven't killed anyone yet. They have killed Joe Cox. So yes, we are desperate to understand, and maybe we should stop, but I don't read Brexit column saying we've really got to try and understand the Remainers. Why is it they're so attached to you? You don't see pieces like that. They're much more abusive than they're. So if you're accusing me of an excess of generosity, then thank you very much.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“descended to the level of a blockheaded populist, talking about shackles. Who was it? Which minister was it who Jeremy Hunt said compared the EU to the Soviet Union? I mean, the a historicism of that is repellent.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's more a John Majorish kind of decent soul who tries to make friends with all sides and collapses, and so the cockroaches of Westminster, twenty five of them, infiltrate the ministries and this particular cockroach becomes Jim Samson and he watches as the real Jim Sam's scuttles out of the room in cockroach form to make his way back to the palace of Westminster and he's there to really put fire in the belly to really push ahead with this Brexit is Brexit and get on with do or die pitchfork the incubus of the EU off our backs When you hear a phrase like that, these are very You realise how purile the level of conversation this is an educated man had very expensive education, and is indeed an educated man.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It might have, I don't know as I said I sort of drifted into this, but on the basis of Obsession Obviously, I didn't need to do any research. Or this is one of those moments when you find out you've been researching all along. You were on the job, really It was such an impulsive thing in this novel. I mean, if you told me in June I was publishing a novel in September, I'd say you've got the wrong person. So I didn't expect to be having this conversation with you about this. What does it change in me? I still feel that there's a Brexit novel court to write which is much more serious and I think the only way to write it is from the point of view of someone who deeply believes in it and that's why I forgot some cockroaches who you know so here's a prime minister that's not Theresa May”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's great fun, but I've met one or two people who said, You know, I think reversalism could work. I thought I've screwed up it is not more absurd than Brixit.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But there comes a point, a sort of Leninist moment when the government declares reversalism in one country, knowing full well that when they see what a huge success it is, that all the other countries will follow suit. I wanted to have something as common. completely zany and pointless as Brexit. But I'm not sure I succeeded.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so far in the novel it's not going very well. The only country that signed up to a reversalism deal is St. Kitts and Nevis.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's not quite as absurd as you say. So basically you just reverse the flow of money. You do a job at the end of the week or the end of the month, you turn up and pay for your job To pay for your job you must go shopping, so you come away with goods and cash at the retail price of all those goods. You're not allowed to hoard money. So if you find yourself with too much money, you better train yourself up or work overtime. And so you stimulate the economy. The problem, the real problem with reverse aluminism is when you have to decide about trading with other nations. When Germany sends us BMWs or Mercedes, they can have to send us lots of cash as well. And when we send our stuff abroad, Chesa Cheese and bagpipes, we will have to send money with those goods too.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I cannot any longer see any good reason to leave, but also I know now that if we don't leave we will be a very embittered nation divided, and if we do leave. We will probably spend a vast amount of critical capital getting back to where we are now. And it could take twenty years, I'm seventy one, that'll just about see me out. I'm not pleased about this.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That very same man. What was missing? The missing middle of take back control. is that in a sovereign nation that makes agreements that signs up to the Paris Accords, becomes a member of NATO, signs up to the preservation international treaty on the seabed, these are all compromises with sovereignty, and just as on a personal level, if you fall in love, You compromise some of your sovereignty if you decide to have children, my goodness, in return for all that happiness you compromise a lot of freedom In a community of nations about two hundred on earth with whom we want to live peaceably, we sacrifice, and we will sacrifice again sovereignty as we go round the world painfully putting in place all the trading arrangements that we already have with more than seventy countries.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because then the last because it's italicized. And I think that's where we are. I can understand all the reasons why people would wanted this in the first instance. I think austerity had a huge Amount to do with it, I think that people who were suffering wage stagnation, long lists in AE and fewer policemen on their streets and all the consequences of austerity, and then the slate of hand by which they were persuaded that this was somehow Brussels' fault. But we're never going to vote for the status quo. Why would they? I can understand that. But I also think that terrible lies have been told, and I think the lie on the bus about the NHS was a trivial lie, actually, compared to the much bigger one about sovereignty. Take back control the coming's little confection. is really a statement about sovereignty”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very impressed actually I thought walking those two big marches October and then what was it April? Very hot day in April. I thought actually this is my kind of England and it was Elsa thought If this is an elite, then we are a triumph. of a democracy and a meritocracy the sixteen million of us in this elite. Not bad really but good lots of room for improvement would take the other seventeen million with us. But in the last few months I have felt that we've reached a new stage I have not heard even remotely plausible economic or other argument for Brexit. It has passed out of argument into something mystical. People just want it. They want it. Why do they want it? Because or because we ask for it or because you said you'd give it to us.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Together, yeah, but they always be bringing the country together on the terms of that particular politician. I don't see well I guess remainers are a more peaceable crowd from my observations of it and being on all the marches.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, here I am, fevering away in front of you. Simmering gently no I had a bit of fun along the way because I It was intended as a sort of humorous take on this. Maybe there's a bit of relief. But I think it's the kind of laughter I have in mind is where laughter and despair meet because we've now reached a point, or I've now reached a point where I can't see any way out of this, whether we have a second vote or we leave, I think we are now scarred. And I'd love to be proved wrong, but I can't see us unifying at some point. I know politicians are talking about bringing the country.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like a kind of I got a kind of fever I suppose some of it's to do with the sense that this has profound historical consequences for my children, for my grandchildren. Some anger is in there that I think of identity as a set of concentric circles as my own particular selfhood and then there's my family and then there's my neighbourhood and then I'm an English novelist rather than a British novelist but I'm also a European citizen and I feel comfortable in Europe and someone is just taking this away from me and I resent them.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's been a pretty good time for journalism, actually, and I've been quite impressed. I think it's been a silver age, let's say, of long form journalism about this. And I've become a wide reader of the press and internet on it, and on the whole with some shameless moments in front of the Daily Mail and so on, but on the whole, I've been quite impressed by the general sort of intensity, but I think by reading everywhere from the mail and telegraph across to the Guardian post and all the blogs. that I have a fairly good idea of what's going on and I don't think it's fake news at all. I mean I think I have a pretty good sense of what's real. Your question makes me wonder what is it in myself? What's going on with me?”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I was doing trump blow by blow, tweet by tweet. Now I just get the general picture from the Washington Post New York Times entirely partisan fake news, of course. So I stuck with Brexit ad nauseam. Do you feel”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, we'd had a referendum just a couple of years before that on changing the voting system, and that was binding on Parliament. This was not binding, so it was an advisory, but both parties signed up in their lecture manifestors, so they were sort of bound to it, and so was an expectation laid on them was perfectly reasonable from all those who wanted to leave. But the story is unfolded, I'm a complete junkie for it. I hate it, but I can't leave it alone. It's the first thing I do in the morning. It used to be Trump and Brexit, and then I thought, no, I just have to do Brexit.”
2019-10-01 · Intelligence Squared · Satire, Boris and Brexit with Ian McEwan and Razia Iqbal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source