YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Cowley

lines on the record: 43
first: 2022-04-25
most recent: 2022-04-25
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

“Can play that statement really is the starting point for my book. Today, I think huge events are happening again. And all I'm trying to do is work out what England is and what part England can play. But you're absolutely right. Paradox is part of who we are, I think. And we have to accept ambiguity. We have to accept paradox. And also we have to accept that we're part of this complex, strange, but resilient multinational state, which isn't just one nation, but it's several.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And Orwell caught that beautifully, I think, in that sense of sort of a changing, changelessness. But the changes just over the last 25 years have been truly dramatic, haven't they? I mean, you touched, you began with Caul Britannia and then took us all the way through to Brexit, the Brexit wars that followed, and then the pandemic. What huge events that have been happening? There's also another line by Orwell, if I can find it. I might not be able to find it. If I can find it, he says, and I've got it. It is of the deepest importance to try and determine what England is before getting what part England can play in the huge events that are happening. He wrote that in 1940 as the bombs were falling on London during the Blitz, September 1940, huge events were happening, and he wanted to determine what England is and what part England can.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so, and hope so. I certainly, what we're calling selfgateism, which I love actually, I love that word. I did see a flourishing of self-gateism around the Euros last summer, which obviously had been delayed by a year because of the pandemic, and all sorts of people were brought together around the flag. One can't be complacent about it. These battles need to be won and fought, sorry, fought and won, and then won again. These issues are always in play, national identity, the flag, the nation, patriotism versus nationalism. These are big forces driving events right across not just the UK, right across Europe and the rest of the world. And that's why you've always got to be vigilant, I think.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Them, you know, the English question for some reason is very problematic for the left, I think for some of the reasons we've touched on in this conversation. But that's what I'm after in the book. That's why the book ends, I think, hopefully, you know, I hope in the end, although some of the stories are painful that I explore, I hope I reach a point of accommodation and hopefulness. Because I do see change, some of it, not always for the best. But I saw good things during the pandemic, you know, this terrible event that tested us all. But I did see moments of national unity, social solidarity, people being brought together across divides. And that's why all the way along, I'm always looking for what I call this. Politics of the common good, the things that unite us rather than divide us. And I do hope we can evolve a more open”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for a start, you make Gal Southgate Prime Minister, perhaps, when he ceases to be England national football manager. But Southgate's in many ways, you know, he's a remarkable figure and has a respective, he's players. Some of them are political activists himself, like Raheem Sterling around race issues or Marcus Rashford around poverty issues and others as well, such as Jordan Henderson and Tyrone Mings. And, you know, this guy has their respect and he's someone who seems able to combine tradition and diversity in interesting and progressive ways. Whereas so many of our politicians seem fearful of these issues. They're either exploit them for their own populist ends. You don't need me to mention any names. Or they avoid...”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Although in recent times, I think particularly because of the success of what Gareth Southgate has achieved as England national football manager and the culture he's created around his young, diverse and dynamic multiracial team, I think we've begun to see a modern English identity, which is not too dissimilar from modern British identity. I'm pleased to say”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He used to support the National Italian football team, of course. I understand why he supported the Italian national football team. And we were both Arsenal fans. But I wanted him also to call himself English. For some reason, that mattered to me. Although, of course, now all these decades later, I understand why he didn't and why he felt uncomfortable about it. I encountered similar attitudes when I started working in London. and particularly at university with my black friends who were born in England. But nevertheless, they had a very strong sense of what they called a black British identity. And a black English identity then, in particular, I'm talking about the 80s. More complicated, more contested.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A pole below them all. So that's the question I'm asking. And my friends, as I say, I grew up in this little cul-de-sac in Harlow in Essex once we moved away from Potter Street. And my neighbors were three Sicilian families. And their children, born in England, were my friends. You know, they spoke with a local estuary accent. We were very comfortable at calling themselves British, but I remember my friend said to me, look, I'm Sicilian, I'm Italian, and I'm British. Not England, never England”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To lose, to lose that sense of Britishness, particularly so valuable since the Second World War, when we've had so many migrants arrive in the country, I think on the whole, harmoniously. And compared to any other European country, we haven't had a significant neo-fascist party or neo-fascist movement. Look at the French elections. We've got the National Front or what was formerly the National Front, the far right, for the second consecutive presidential election in the runoff against Macron. Eric Zumur polled 7% in the French election, another far right populist, whereas you had the traditional center-left, the socialists and the traditional center-right, the Republicans, collapsed.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is the question, that is the defining question of really both for our conversation and indeed the book. That's why I've called it Who Are We Now? Because I cherish Britishness. I think I value it greatly for the reasons that you articulate so well. But my worry is what happens if it's taken away? Happens if the British state breaks up? What happens if their Scottish independence? That's why I'm so interested in the English question. What will that mean for England and Englishness? And can we create an English identity that is as accommodating as modern British identity is? That's the question, I think. I don't have definitive or decisive answers, but I just, but I'm asking those questions because I want to kind of explore the possibilities. And I hope encourage others to think about them as well. What would that mean?”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And also, it was a wonderful moment because Sunai, who approached Gillian Duffy and said, are you Labour? Sunai was known as Gordon Brown's gatekeeper. Well, she opened the gate that day and Gillian Duffy walked straight through it.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely iconic political moment. And quite funny as well, it's quite comic. I mean, if you, I've tried to write it also with a little bit of comedy because it was.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was sort of the voter that Labour had to win back. And then in the end, she was ultimately ignored by Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starman never mentions her now. But she voted for Brexit. When I caught up with her for the book, she was a Brexit voter. I mean, she had abandoned the Labour Party in despair and she opted for Brexit. As a third of the Labour vote did in those northern towns and those former Labour heartlands. So fast forward nine years to the general election of 2019 when Boris Johnson's Brexit Conservatives are running on a crude platform to get Brexit done, whatever that means, Boris Johnson was able to go into those old Labour heartlands and win. So many of those Labour voters, including in many former mining towns, switched. They switched from Labour. They backed Brexit and they then voted for Boris Johnson in 2019. And we are where we are today. So I think that was an”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Although she seemed to be a figure from the past, in the book the chapter about her, I call her a visitor from the future, because that afternoon what she did, she came to warn Gordon Brown, a new labour, what was coming, what awaited the Labour Party over the next 10 years. And in many ways, Gillian Duffy had a better understanding of the political atmosphere or the social atmosphere of the country than Gordon Brown. And for a period afterwards, she became a kind of totemic figure, both Millibrand brothers sought her nomination during the Labour leadership contest after Brown had lost the election and resigned. David Milliban went to see her in Rochdale. She was brought to London to meet Ed Miliband after he became Labour leader. The local Labour MP Simon Danchuk became a close friend of hers. She opened his office. And for a period, she”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he gets into his car. What he doesn't realize there's a microphone on, and Sky News, pick him up, dismissing her as a bigot. Later on, he discovers what's happened. He is aghast, he returns to her house later that afternoon, has a meeting with her, apologizes, and he thinks it's over. There's a wonderful moment as his car pulls away that afternoon when the cameras were on him, initially he's smiling, but there's a moment where the camera catches him and his face is frozen in absolute misery. And why it's so significant, I think, is that Mrs. Duffy represents a voter that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown associated with the past. She was a conservative, small-sea conservative. They would perhaps have even called her a reactionary. She didn't embrace the new globalization that they embraced. She was unsettled by it.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She said, Of course, I'm Labour. And she said, Would you like to meet the Prime Minister? And she said, of course, I'd like to meet the Prime Minister. And she was taken over to meet Gordon Brown. And it's a wonderful encounter. And it's on YouTube if you want to have a look at it. And she starts to ask him questions. And actually, she's quite politically literate. And her questions are probing. And you can see Brown's trying to flatter her and take control of the conversation, but she won't let him. She's like a very, very good political interviewer. She does raise the issue of migration, but not immediately. I think it's her fourth or fifth question. And she particularly asks about Eastern European migration. She doesn't make a racial point, I'm pleased to say. She's also raises student debt, neglecting in her hometown, national debt, and so on. And Brown's mic'd up after the conversation there.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I think you're absolutely right to call it an iconic moment. I think it's one of the big political moments of the last sort of 15 to 20 years. This is during the 2010 general election campaign when Gordon Bauer's prime minister we're in the financial crisis now. Brown is trying to hold on to power. But clearly the new labour years are coming to an end. Brown's campaigning in Rochdale, and he meets this lady Gillian Duffy, a longtime Labour voter, he believes who's disaffected. He didn't know she was disaffected when he was introduced to her in front of the cameras. One of his aides, a woman called Sunai, approached Jillian Duffy on the street and said, are you Labor?”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He would do that, and he knew under freedom of movement rules as members of the EU, he wouldn't have been able to do that. But nevertheless, they made these hollow pledges and hollow promises British jobs for British workers and so on. We saw something similar when Tony Blair took us into the Iraq War. So all along, I think, the elites, the political elites, haven't been honest. They haven't told the truth. They haven't leveled with the public. And that's what's created the sense of distrust.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In large numbers, to reopen the immigration debate, as he put it, which he thinks he believed had been closed down since Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech. So I think one of the challenges for the ruling elites, who obviously favored more migrant workers arriving in the country, was to be truthful to the people, to tell them actually exactly what was happening, why it was happening, what the potential benefits were, as well as the challenges, the challenges on schools and maternity units and on the welfare state. And I think one of the themes of the book is this absence of trust. I mentioned austerity and this idea that we are all in it together. I remember a speech Gordon Brown gave when he first became prime minister, that he will create jobs for British jobs for British workers. Do you remember that? David Cameron promising, pledging that he would reduce net migration to below 100,000. He never said how...”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By a sense of an English identity. But immigration has been such a dominant theme over the last sort of 15 to 20 years, not least since 2004 when the East On the freedom of movement, which they could have done under EU rules, the big economies Germany, Spain, Italy, France, chose to impose those seven-year transition controls on the accession states, UK, Sweden and Ireland didn't, which inevitably led to a huge influx of Eastern European workers into the country, which I welcomed personally. But it unsettled a lot of people and created, well, what it led to was the greatest unplanned migration into these islands in British history. And that had consequences. And one of those consequences when it enabled the kind of the new populist right, nationalist right, to exploit it. I remember Nigel Farage, who I spoke to for the book, said to me, he used 2004 and the arrival of the Eastern European migrants into the UK.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is Cavito, I think. You know, I welcome immigration. I welcome the multiracial diversity of the country as it is today. And that's one of the themes of the book, how we can create a kind of more cohesive sense of Englishness, as well as Britishness. Britishness was always a more welcoming identity, I think, than Englishness. Englishness, for whatever reason for some, there was always a sense of uncertainty and unease about it, perhaps because of associations with empire and colonialism and even whiteness, whereas Britishness was very much or is or has been, it's non-racial, it's civic, it's inclusive, it's plural. And many of my friends whose parents were born outside the UK have always been very comfortable with a sense of their own British identity, slightly more”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That they're working in restaurant kitchens, they're working as fruit pickers or as cockle pickers. We see them, but we don't really see them. We have no idea how they came to be here about their inner lives, the suffering that they've endured. And I just wanted to really tell that story from his point of view. So I spoke to him, I interviewed him. We had a very long conversation and I drawn what he told me to tell the story from his point of view. And I think it's the story in the book that has been particularly well received.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Into the Liverpool docks on a ship, some of them from the north of China, some of them from the south. He was ill, fatigued, but nevertheless, the next day he was sent on to the sands to pick cockles. That was his first day, in effect working in England was on Morcomb Bay as a cockle picker. And that was his first day of work and his first day of work was when the disaster happened. I mean, it is a truly remarkable story, occasionally during that long journey he would make phone calls home and his wife would plead for him to return, to return to the farm where he had lived and worked with his father. But because he was in debt to the gangmaster, he'd paid all of this money. He was in effect trapped. So really, it's a story about what I call the dark shadow of globalization. And I'm very interested in people who we see all around us. They're working in Naobas.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With other Chinese workers, then he was taken to Ukraine, then he was taken to Slovakia, then he was taken to Germany where a group of them were detained and then he was in a detention center. And then inexplicably, rather than being returned to China, he was released from the detention center. In Germany, and then he went to the Netherlands, and then he went to France. And so it went on. Eventually, he came across a channel, English Channel, in the back of a lorry with other undocumented migrant workers, all Chinese eventually when the lorry arrived in England, he was immediately arrested, detained again for a couple of days, then released, ended up in Soho in Chinatown, in London, where he was given an address to go to in Liverpool, in the northwest of England. He went to the address in Liverpool. The house was full of ill, thin, emaciated, impoverished Chinese workers. Most of them had come in.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And after he was rescued, there was obviously a police investigation and the local gang members were arrested and prosecuted. And Lee was one of the witnesses giving evidence against them. He had to do so under witness protection for fear for his own safety. So he was given a new identity. So he has that identity today and he has a family and he set up a business. So his story has had a happy ending. But what I wanted to find out was how he ended up on those sands. And what I didn't know, and I don't think anyone knew, was that a journey which should have taken a week. I mean, he paid some money in his village in China, a lot of money, to come to England where he had been promised accommodation and a job by the so-called local sort of snakehead gang, as they were called, the snakeheads. But in effect, the journey took about 15 months. He had to go to Beijing and then to Moscow. He was spent months in a house in Moscow.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dark during a winter night pouring with rain, winds ripping across the sands, and more than 20 of the Chinese workers drowned, they died out on those sands. I mean, it was a national scandal and a tragedy. And we were horrified because nobody really knew, so they claimed, that this was happening out there on the sands. And nobody knew who these people were. They were just shadows that were just ignored. And as someone said, they were operating in plain sight. Because, of course, we saw them, but we chose not to see them. We ignored them. And Li Hua was the sole survivor who was pulled out of the waters that night by a search helicopter. Miraculous that he survived. So all these years later, I tracked him down. I wanted to find out what happened, who he was, how he ended up on the beach, and how he came to be in England.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this is Li Hua, who some of your listeners may recall was one of the cockle pickers who ended up on Morcombe Bay picking shellfish clams from the sands, which were then gathered together, bundled together and then sold particularly to European markets. And a lot of those workers on the Morcombe Bay Sands in the northwest of England were undocumented migrant Chinese laborers, traffic laborers in effect who had come into the country illegally. And there was a terrible disaster where they were out one night in February 2004, out very far out on the sands. And it's a treacherous. They have hidden channels and fast-moving tidal waters that suddenly at short notice come surging in. And that happened to them on that occasion. And they were cut off, abandoned, alone out there on the sand.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gather, I think. I mean, it's that idea of sort of private affluence and public squalor. And that does worry me as someone who believes in the politics of the common good as I do. So, yeah, you're right to Zolian on austerity. And the story about my aunt's doctor surgery is certainly a story of the consequences of austerity, I think.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Boy in the 1970s, where its wonderful public facilities and its parks and play schemes and libraries and a wonderfully clean and well-resourced town centre compared to what the town became sort of 20, 25 years later when it was, in many ways, like a ghost town, particularly the town center, full of empty and neglected buildings. And we see this repeated across the country, particularly in smaller towns, when you just have to visit the local high street and shop. There are so many sort of semi-derelict shops or charity shops where they're all once thriving community shops. And I find that profoundly upsetting in so many ways. So that sense of dispossession was exacerbated, I think, by austerity that followed the financial crisis, but it was already there. It's about the kind of society that we want to be and how we value the public spaces in which we.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it possibly preceded the financial crisis, but the financial crisis was such a huge event. And the consequences were what became the Great Recession and then a period of prolonged austerity as the coalition government, conservative-led coalition government attempted to kind of reduce the budget deficit as they saw it. And do you remember the rhetoric at that time was we were all in it together. And I don't think we were because certain communities were adversely affected by austerity. And already there had been a kind of decay of the public realm. Already the public spaces in which we work and live and gather and commune had become degraded, I think, through neglect and underinvestment. And we saw that very acutely in Harlowe, for instance. I mean, the Harlow, I remember growing up there as a young.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bigger, I think, about the social atmosphere of the country, you know, what was going wrong, what had gone wrong in Harlowe, and why Harlowe was a kind of microcosm of other things that had gone wrong elsewhere in the country, which I think was reflected in the 2016 vote for Brexit. And that resonant slogan, take back control. Because what the people of Potter Street had lost, I think, was a sense of control over their lives. They were dispossessed, but also that I think they felt deeply humiliated that such a decision could be taken without even any form of consultation. And I thought that told us something important about how the country had changed and how the country was changing. So it's not only is it a poignant story, I think, it's a story with political resonance. So I begin by telling that story.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The local MP, a conservative politician called Robert Halthorne, wasn't consulted. The local council wasn't consulted. And she was horrified. And what it would mean that a lady of 90 would have to take four buses in effect to reach a doctor's surgery where she would be relocated along with thousands of other patients. So it was a terrible thing to happen and it deeply saddened and shocked her. And she started a little campaign to try and stop it. There was some interest from the newspapers, from the BBC. And what we discovered was that actually the ultimate owners of the Prentiss Place NHS doctor surgery was an American conglomerate. And they'd taken the decision to close it because it was so-called not cost effective. And my aunt told me that she was heartbroken by the decision. And it also really, I begin the book with her story, not only because briefly it gathered national attention, but because it told us something.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ordinary people's lives. And my parents, they were married in the 1950s, they moved out to the town from the east end of London. And my mother's oldest sister had made a journey before them. She was called Connie. She settled in a part of the town called Potter Street, which was one of the old villages, but had grown alongside the new town. And actually I was born in Potter Street in a little flat above a bakery in a place called Prentice Place. And directly opposite where we lived was the doctor's surgery, Osler House. And I can see it now as I looked out of the window of our flat directly at the doctor's surgery, which opened in 1955. Now, fast forward to 2018 and my aunt is now 90, and she received a letter saying that the doctor's surgery would close. There was no explanation, there was no consultation. It was a fait accompli.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“New towns created after the Second World War by the Clement Attlee Labour government, an attempt to create housing and a decent environment for working class people, many of them living in the bomb districts of East London and North East London. And after the war, there was a great need for housing and to resettle people. And a series of new towns were created around London. One of them was Harlow, which was an old settlement. It's mentioned in the doomsday book. It was a network of villages and they built the town around the villages. In effect, they kind of didn't erase them. They sort of subsumed them into this huge, what became a huge new town. And it was a utopian project. Clement Attley spoke about creating the new Jerusalem. And it was a social democratic project. And it was about trying to sort of bring dignity.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, the book is not a work of polemic or political analysis. It's a book of stories. And I wanted to explore what I call the social atmosphere of the countries. It's a phrase George Orwell used. And I thought the best way of exploring the social atmosphere and how we've changed over the last 25 years was to tell stories. And one of the themes of the book, it's about crossing of borders. It's about journeys. It's about people who coming into the country, people who are leaving the country. I write about the young Bethnal Green girls, for example, who go to Islamic State. They leave their homes and go to Syria. It's about migrants coming in, people who want to leave. But it's also about journeys within the country and crossing borders inside England itself. And I make a return journey. One of the journeys I make is to go back to the hometown, which was Harlowe, Essex, where I was born and grew up.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or the big dynamic multicultural cities, but what was happening out in the shires, in neglected new towns, the coastal regions, the provincial towns, something was stirring that Blair ignored. He didn't really want that to be part of the Britain that he was creating. And what was stirring, I think, was what I call in the book an incoherent English revolt.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, he had a particular vision of Britishness. He also thought he could solve the sort of existential crisis of British identity and the complexities of the multinational state about which I spoke at the beginning. In other words, he thought if he introduced his devolution reforms, introduced the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Good Friday Agreement obviously brought peace to the island of Ireland, he thought that would solve many of the tensions inside these islands. One of his key lieutenants at that time, a guy called George Robertson, who later became head of NATO, he said that devolution would end in effect the movement for Scottish independence. It would kill it stone dead. I mean, he couldn't have been more wrong, of course, but that's what they believed. But while they were talking about Scotland and Wales and peace in Ireland, they ignored England and they ignored what was happening not in London or Manchester.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lead and they tell stories about the future. In other words, the direction of travel. And he wanted to tell a particular story about a country that in many ways was a construct of his imagination. It didn't really exist. But for a period, I think a lot of people believe that it did.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that coincided, as you said at the beginning, with that whole cult of corporate that we live through in the mid to late 90s. And that was the Blairite vision. And he wanted to kind of harness the forces of what he called the new globalization, the new market-driven globalization that was kind of transforming the world. As Blair saw it in exciting ways and dynamic ways. And he wanted to be part of that. And he wanted to escape from the past. He didn't like the associations that labor had with the past. He wasn't a socialist. He was a different kind of labor politician, actually close to him in many ways, to the Clinton Democrats than to those who had come before him. In the Labour Party. And of course, Blair was a brilliant communicator. And one thing he understood is that very successful politicians tell stories. They tell stories about the country that they are spiriting.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think those early Blair years were very interesting when you look back. Tony Blair was a particular kind of progressive politician really, very unusual for such a figure to have emerged inside the Labour Party and ultimately to become Prime Minister. But you're right. In 1995, two years before he won the first new Labour landslide election in 1997, he gave a speech in which he did say, I want this to be a young country. We will be a young country. What he was speaking about was Britain, I think, not England, but he was aware of the weight of the past empire, colonialism, and he wanted somehow to be free from it. And he wanted to kind of reinvent the country as dynamic, open, liberal, progressive. He wanted the country to be right at the center of the European debate, not at the fringes of it. And he wanted to kind of”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where does that leave England and the English who have been encouraged for so long to think of themselves as British? So that was really the beginning of my reflections plus the polarisation and the division that followed the Brexit referendum in 2016.”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dominant country in the multinational state, but at the same time being aware that somehow England and Englishness had been lost within Britishness and Britain. And I think in recent years as the British state has fragmented and British identity has become more contested, not least because of the rise of Scottish nationalism, I think it's forced upon the English a reconsideration of who they are and what England is because if we had an existential referendum in 2014, a Scottish Independence referendum, which had that been won by the independent side, would have led to the breakup of the British state. And there was some complacency in England about that, an assumption that that wouldn't happen. Well, it nearly happened. And it certainly didn't put the matter to bed in many ways. It fired the ambitions of the Scottish nationalists. So I was very aware that what happens if Britain breaks out?”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the key question, I think. Well, I've always born and I've always lived in England. And even from a young age, I was aware of the complexities of living in a multinational state. And I've always had a sense that somewhere England, which is obviously the dominant country in the United Kingdom, I think 84% of the population of the UK lives in England. And the UK has been called by summer mini English Empire, perhaps. But I was always aware of that complexity of living in”
2022-04-25 · Intelligence Squared · Who Are We Now? Exploring English identity, with Jason Cowley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT