... you certainly, you at least can't know that.

Sure, and I, I mean, just again, to try and, if we go right back to the beginning to answer your, answer your que- your, your earlier question, I mean, it, it's quite plausible that a lot of this starts with the great figure of Immanuel Kant, 1724 to 1804, and particularly that extraordinary burst of creative philosophical genius that we witness in, uh, 17, in the 1780s, uh, from him.

The great first Critique of Pure Reason, 1781, opens with a very moving and quite sort of poetic passage where he says that metaphysics, so this, the desire, the, the desire to understand the world, the fundamental reality of the world, always has a tendency in the history of philosophy from Thales onwards up to me always to overreach itself, always to go beyond what is given to us in sense experience.

And what that means is it introduces all sorts of puzzles that we can never truly resolve.

And in particular, and this is why I think actually Kant is, uh, for me, is not really a bête noire, he's quite a moving figure, uh, who is in his own way committed to the reality of God.

He was a, a pietist.

But he said, you know, the trouble for believers, the trouble for theologians is that like the metaphysicians, they're always overreaching.

Well, I, I mean just heavy in the sense that w- w- that that numbers, uh, that math- ... would correspond to what we call reality i- is itself-

Tabula rasa.

This is Locke's view of the tabula rasa or the white page, and we're completely free of all unchosen obligations.

Uh, and there can be no obligations that we don't ourselves ch- choose.

Uh, and this is just a, a, a complete fantasy.

Um, I don't think it's an accident that the, the great liberal philosophers, like John Locke and Immanuel Kant, never had any children.

[chuckles] Anyone who's had a-- anyone who's had a, had a child will understand that the radical nature of dependency, uh, that most basic bond, we're born into the world with that most-- literally, with a, with a physical bond.

We're attached to a ph- physical bond to our, to our mothers.

But they move back and forth?

What happened from Fukuyama in 1992 to now, what you say, 2016 to now, where you go from this kind of hubristic, prideful, you know, kind of exaltation of liberalism to a completely different moment right now?

Yeah.

Well, that book, The End of History by Francis Fukuyama, it's a fascinating kind of moment of sort of a kind of hubris, you might say, a kind of misplaced optimism.

But if you read the very end of that book, the actual full title of the book is The End of History and the Last Man.

And he has this fascinating kind of final chapter or two of that book where he says, look, actually, this sort of sense of this end of history dispensation where everything is, we've hit the sunlit uplands of the kind of liberal utopia and peace and prosperity for all.

That, in the end, is not going to satisfy man's instinct.

And this is particularly this is what he calls the thumos.

pensioners are retirees

Labor.

...

the focus on...

Well, I mean, there are...

Uh, uh, you focus on the crescent, you might say.

(laughs) There's a, there's a focus on the rainbow, there's a foc- focus on the star with the old socialists.

So it's, it is, it's not gonna, not gonna, uh, uh, work out well.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, so it's very interesting seeing the parallels between somebody like Mandani and Zach Polanski, who is the new leader of the Green Party.

And it's growing very, very fast as a party.

um it's easy i think you only pay like five pounds to to get in so it'd probably be quite easy to to uh to do some entryism and maybe hijack the green party but as far as we're concerned it's it's it's fantastic you know um uh may may may many flowers on the british left bloom because it's basically fracturing the vote between you know you've got sort of the focus on well i mean You focus on the crescent, you might say.

There's a focus on the rainbow.

There's a focus on the star with the old socialists.

So this is not going to work out well.

middle east certainly what what's the state of christendom in europe in the uk well i

Dr. James Orr, of course, from Cambridge, which is a- another university, but, uh, uh, we want to know all the details, please.

Well, Andrew and Mikey, it's great to be with you.

Uh, yes, I am now at Cambridge, but I, once upon a time I was at Oxford, and in fact I've been a member of the Oxford Union since 1997 when I first went up as a fresh-faced undergraduate, uh, aged 18, and so I've been taking a very close personal interest in this, uh, n- not just because Charlie was such a dear friend and I know he was thrilled to have had the opportunity to debate there as well as at Cambridge, and my goodness didn't he do well, uh, up against, uh, uh, Sweatpants Bro, as you call him, uh, who should never really have been, uh, admitted to the University of Oxford, just to be clear.

I mean, uh, difficult to translate the, his, his admission, the grades, but they were very, very poor.

I- I'd certainly never let a student in with grades that bad.

I'm afraid it's, uh, look like, looks like he was a, a, a, a di- a diversity admission, and this is, uh, uh, uh, the, the kind of the admissions process, sadly, in Oxford, is, is, is pretty corrupt, and I'm very glad that this case, if nothing else, has drawn attention to that.

Um, yes, look, we may be another country, uh, but my goodness, the rules of the Oxford Union are labyrinthine, byzantine, pretty arcane.

(laughs)

[laughs]

... uh, who should never really have been, uh, admitted to the University of Oxford, just to be clear.

I mean, uh, difficult to translate the, his, his admission, the grades, but they were very, very poor.

I, I'd certainly never let a student in with grades that bad, I'm afraid.

It, uh, look like, looks like he was a, a, a, a di- a diversity admission, and this is a, a, a, a the, the kind of the admissions process, sadly, in Oxford is, is, is pretty corrupt.

And I'm very glad that this case, if nothing else, has drawn attention to that.

Um, yes, look, we may be another country, uh, but my goodness, the rules of the Oxford Union are labyrinthine, byzantine, pretty arcane.

[laughs]

He goes... (laughs)

Um, uh, and, um, so, you know, why is it? Now, this is slightly speculative, but I think it's because he's just, he's, first, he's immensely relatable and he speaks to so many different constituencies as I just, I just rattled off a few of them there.

Uh, you know, he is, he is just as at ease in some sort of, you know, uh, in a factory in Ohio as he is in a boardroom in Silicon Valley, as he is in the Oval Office, as he is, frankly, at the Munich Security Conference, uh, surrounded by people who want to basically, you know, break basis, stab him in the back as quickly as possible.

So there is a sort of, there's a quiet confidence there, and there's a relatability, and, uh, you know, in many ways, I think of him, I think of him a little bit like Obama in some ways.

I mean, there's a kind of comparison that ought to be made a, a lot more in the sense that, you know, you've got somebody who, you know, writes this extraordinary book.

He's got this amazing trajectory, a very interesting life.... life story.

Um, and yet, you know, Obama gets lionized and, and Vance sort of, he's lionized within MAGA.

I make the case a lot, as Freddie knows, but there really isn't, but there needs to be.

Yes.

Just deeply, deeply sorry that, that, that offense has been caused (laughs).

Um, but, you know, repentance, you know, the Greek in the New Testament is metanoia, which means a, a complete transformation of one's mind, of one's intellect, one's understanding, one's heart.

Um, and, uh, you know, the Latin translation I think is, is which is kind of not just repentance but do penance, and there's a lot of debate about that in the Reformation, um, about, you know, his sort of repentance as something not just of the heart but you, you've gotta do it.

You've gotta do stuff that shows the, that there's gotta be outward working, the outward expression of inner contrition within, within, within one's heart.

And, um, I don't know.

Look, I don't have a window into, into men's souls.

But I think up until, you know, the end of, the end of the last century, there was no sense that, that there was a kind of, you know, there were free speech problems in-

He also had there George Finch, who's the, um, Reform leader of, uh, Warwickshire County Council, talking about the incident in Nuneaton, uh, that was reported over the weekend, where, um, a couple of illegal, uh, migrants seemed to have been involved in, uh, the rape of a young girl.

girl.... public policy and, uh, we're not, we're not simply serving up policy to Reform.

But we, I think, when we look at Reform and we see that, you know, it really is asking this question of, of every policy, is it in the national preference? Can we refract this policy through something that makes sense for the nation, makes sense for improving the nation and achieving a better Britain? Now, I don't doubt that as and when we know a little bit more (laughs) about the Tory Party's direction over the next year or two and the, the sort of the policy commission's report back, that we, we will want to help them too and, and serve up some ideas and, and help them work through their own policy platform.

But, but for now I think, you know, despo- even though there are some re- re- very interesting figures within the Tory Party who I think really do, you know, they're not the No Nation Tories...

Sorry, the One Nation Tories, uh, but they are, (laughs) they are better Britain Tories and we'd want to support them, uh, as well.

So, you know, we're open to both parties and we're seeking a politics of national preference.

A- and, you know, I think we hope that Nigel and the leadership of Reform will be responsive to good ideas and we hope that the Tories will be responsive to good ideas.

Can you tell us first of all what he's like and, and why he's chosen the Cotswolds to holiday in?

Do you live in hope that these words will make good and that we will get a great deal with the USA?

I confess, Martin, I'm a little bit skeptical when I hear British government offering up those kinds of views.

I mean, because I just don't think it's true that they're making the best efforts they can to forge a free trade agreement with the United States when at the very same time they're pursuing a so-called Brexit reset.

with the European Union, including on food standards and customs deals.

We're going to see increasingly large swathes of various sectors coming under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

Remember that in Luxembourg? I don't think that's something that the Americans are going to take kindly to.

And I just don't think that it's something that these are parallel negotiations that the UK can conduct.

Mm.

Um, they accommodate disagreement better on the whole.

If there is real disagreement, then breaking off a node of a network isn't such a catastrophe as a big institutional split that can paralyze an institution, um, and its functions.

They're harder to capture, much harder to capture because they're made up of people rather than, you know, big, you know, big, big buildings or big foundations or whatever.

And I think crucially, they're invisible to the naked eye.

This is why historians, in fact, until Niall, have been so bad at picking them up.

Because you've got to go through cor- complex correspondence, relationships and, "Oh, this guy was in this... went to this school with this guy, and he was in this... went drinking with this guy." It's, they're harder to spot, and so harder to take down, harder to target.

Yeah

Mm

... that it's been sitting on, and that we're getting, we're starting to get worried about this.

And, uh, so I think what we're gonna be looking at now, uh, what we're gonna be trying to do in a small way, is to look for the taproot, to explore the taproot of Western culture, which is the Gospel.

It's not just the Gospels, it's the Gospel message.

Paul says the Gospel just is Christ crucified.

Um, it's a scandalous thought, Christ crucified.

Scandalous, he says, to the Jews, and it's madness for the Greeks, and it was an offensive superstition for the Romans.

And so everything is in a very dire state, you know, before the, the, the main character comes in to-