# 2019-12-04 - Joe Boswell - Brexit and Error Correction [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdtssXITXuE) Duration: 00:42:25 ## Transcript ### Joe Boswell 00:00:00 - 00:00:19 Okay so David, you're best known as a physicist and an author and that's certainly how I first came across you but it was back in 2016 I first noticed you had this unexpected connection to Brexit. I remember in the middle of one of those pre-referendum BBC debates Michael Gove making use of your name. ### David Deutsch 00:00:19 - 00:00:21 No one was more surprised than I. ### Joe Boswell 00:00:21 - 00:00:43 Right well but he was citing you as a prominent British scientist that agreed with his position and I've since learned that Dominic Cummings, leader of the Vote Leave campaign and now advisor to Boris Johnson, has credited you in the Spectator I think with making the best argument for Brexit namely this argument from error correction which we'll talk about. ### David Deutsch 00:00:43 - 00:00:49 Yeah and by the way that's very nice of him but he also said that that had absolutely no effect on the campaign. ### Joe Boswell 00:00:49 - 00:01:01 Okay well fair enough maybe we'll have some effect now if we can get the word out as it were. But before we get to the argument itself, how did you get wrapped up in all this? ### David Deutsch 00:01:01 - 00:02:01 Well for many years I didn't think the issue was at all important. In fact I voted for staying in the common market during the first referendum although that was because I believed what we were promised that there was no intention to make this into a European super state and it was a purely economic arrangement. And the chronic problems that existed even at that time like with the common agricultural policy, we were told that those were being reformed. Oh and I was also reassured because people started talking about a two-track Europe where one track would be Britain and some other countries that would not have ever closer union and then the others would have ever closer union and there'd be two groups of countries in friendly economic relation with each other. And even in this referendum I could easily have voted remain if Mr Cameron's proposals had been taken seriously and if they hadn't sent him home in humiliation. ### Joe Boswell 00:02:01 - 00:02:07 What were the long-term problems in your mind of the EU that were occurring over time? ### David Deutsch 00:02:07 - 00:03:28 So there was the common agricultural policy and also for Britain the fisheries policy was it's only a small thing economically but it's significant of the kind of problems that arise and normally within the British system would get solved. And then there were issues like freedom of movement. I'm actually in favor of greater immigration but the freedom of movement in the sense that it was up to the Europeans whom the British government could deport. Right. And you might say this was only a handful of people in the end but again it was a niggling problem that was thought important by a lot of people and which the British political system had no purchase on. So an even smaller one I suppose is we couldn't remove the tampon tax and we found it difficult to forbid the export of live animals. And people will say well we could have done that there would have been a way of doing that but this is another example of the fact that in Britain there's a clear path if you have a grievance you can join a pressure group the pressure group will pressure the government or you can see your MP and the MP will see the grievance building up and so on. Whereas Europe is structured in such a way that it's very difficult to know whom to address your grievance to or what they could do about it. ### Joe Boswell 00:03:31 - 00:03:44 Well this brings us to this concept of error correction which sounds like a harmless bit of jargon but for you is a very deep fundamental principle. Can you lay that out for us and where are you getting that from? ### David Deutsch 00:03:44 - 00:05:04 So this is the political theory of Karl Popper whom I follow in this and other matters. In his political philosophy he had a definition of democracy which famously does not include anything about elections. Elections are simply a way, the best known way of achieving what Popper said was the essence of democracy, the criterion for democracy which is that governments and policies can be removed without violence. So the more a system is conducive to removing rulers and policies without violence and early in the game the more it is democratic according to Popper and that is the most important criterion in politics, more important than choosing the right rulers in the first place and that's because of fallibilism. Any system that purports to know in advance what the consequences of a ruler or a policy are going to be is based on a fundamental error of infallibilism and systems which try to do that clamp down on progress because they entrench the ruler or the policy. ### Joe Boswell 00:05:04 - 00:05:19 So it's your view that UK institutions, traditions, culture does a better job of error correction and has done historically than the EU. What is it about the UK and the EU that makes them so different? ### David Deutsch 00:05:19 - 00:08:06 Well there are many aspects to this and one thing that obviously goes in that direction is the first past the post electoral system. Although I must say that systems, formal systems are really not what it's all about. It's really about how individuals think of their relationship with the government, with the state and with other individuals. That goes very deep and it is because of that that certain institutions have certain properties. Now the property of first past the post that I particularly favour and that Popper favoured is that the government is maximally vulnerable to changes in opinion in the electorate. It only takes a few percentage points change in the electorate to make a large change in parliament and possibly remove the government and replace it by another government. So in the British system with first past the post the prime minister wakes up every morning afraid that something might happen that day that will shake his hold on power and that if people change their minds he will lose at the next election or the election could come early if it hadn't been for these constitutional changes that messed some of this stuff up. That he could be removed and if he was the opposition would get into power and they would be in charge. Now any other system dilutes this feature because if a government under for example a proportional representation system loses a few percentage points of support the first thing they will try to do is form a new coalition because they will already be in a coalition. This will change the electoral logic of the coalition so they will form a different coalition. So it can easily happen that a swing in the population in the electorate in one direction let's say to the right right causes the government to move to the left because the left-wing government will ally with an even more left-wing party which they had previously been able to rule without and this isn't just a theoretical thing it happens all the time in non first past the post electoral systems. In fact we've seen in the last few elections that even the first past the post system is not immune to this it can happen but we've had coalitions but it's much rarer in first past the post systems and when it does happen the logic of the system is to go back to evenly balanced. ### Joe Boswell 00:08:06 - 00:08:35 I mean it seems to me what you're talking about is preserving both leadership and accountability if it's the case that a third party like the Lib Dems or UKIP gain in popularity gain in seats through advocating a particular policy like Brexit then one would hope that one of the major parties would then think well if I want to stay as the leader then I need to suck up that policy in order to prevent the opposition getting in. ### David Deutsch 00:08:35 - 00:09:26 Yes and what they will generally do if they're in power if they're the party in power they will do it in such a way as to make it more palatable to them and to their voters to their constituents as well and if they're in opposition they will do the same and then who wins depends on who has the best arguments about how to accommodate this new problem and if they're wrong they will get to implement their wrong policy that is crucial and that's why power and responsibility go together. If you have a system that allows those in power to do what they think is right then it will be clear whose fault it is when it goes wrong and it'll also be clear that it was the opposition's fault for opposing it if it goes right. ### Joe Boswell 00:09:26 - 00:09:32 Right right and hence you can learn and you can make progress and you can improve how society works. ### David Deutsch 00:09:32 - 00:09:35 This is how political knowledge is created. ### Joe Boswell 00:09:35 - 00:09:44 As opposed to just sort of persisting in a perpetual state of argument about what would be right if only we had our way but never really knowing what works. ### David Deutsch 00:09:44 - 00:09:47 That's exactly it and no one ever gets proved wrong. ### Joe Boswell 00:09:47 - 00:10:05 You've built that idea up in the kind of UK context. I'm imagining the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP but what is it about the EU that fails these tests of fallibilism and error correction? ### David Deutsch 00:10:05 - 00:11:07 It seems to have been designed to make it difficult to know who is responsible for a policy. So policy gets decided by consensus, avoiding confrontation, trying to accommodate different strands of opinion within the policy and therefore no great changes of policy ever happen, only tweaks to the policy and this is the case even when there are huge problems perceived by the electorate. For example immigration, waves of immigrants and it's not that the wrong policy was implemented and then it would now be corrected and replaced by a better policy. It's that no policy was implemented and the EU is just unable to formulate one because there is no party in power in the EU. There is no prime minister or president who is in charge, who is the leader of something that has an ideology that could be proved wrong. ### Joe Boswell 00:11:07 - 00:11:42 I remember being quite struck by something that you said to me in private a few months ago about how the UK Parliament sits opposite each other. I actually was sat in the balcony a few months ago watching it like a great theatre set with the speaker in the middle. Whereas the EU sits in a circle and this symbolises the difference between a kind of disputational culture where you can point at the person who is responsible and shout at them and force them to take responsibility for what they're doing. And this system where it's all about sort of consensus but an artificial consensus and a soft consensus that nobody can really change or update. ### David Deutsch 00:11:42 - 00:13:16 Whereas in the EU they make the policy in a closed room where the voters who voted for one way or another are just represented by the number of delegates that they elect and those can form into a coalition that maybe wasn't even envisaged before the election and that coalition forms policies that weren't envisaged before the election. Were never voted on. Can't be voted on again because if you vote one way or another a different coalition will form that you can't predict. This fact that the legislature sits in a circle and the British one sits facing each other at two swords lengths apparently is indeed emblematic. Although I have to keep saying that the real nature of institutions is in culture. They are in human minds. They are ideas. How they are implemented in terms of buildings and laws and constitutions and so on is a secondary thing. But it is in this case emblematic and another instance of the same thing is the British legal system which is also adversarial and is in contrast to I think all or maybe just most European countries where it's not. Where the idea is that everybody is there to find the truth and you can't find the truth that way. You've got to have advocacy of something and confronting the opposing arguments with each other. ### Joe Boswell 00:13:16 - 00:13:54 Yes. I'm very enamored of Jonathan Haidt who is a social scientist who says that reasoning is not a solo process. You almost can't do it. The fact of confirmation bias means that everybody, no matter how rational they believe they are, really wants their theory to be true and will fight and fight for it. A person on their own can't do science. They have to be immersed in a culture of criticism where they're terrified of peer review and the review will rip their paper to shreds if they make a mistake. Truth is approached in a social way as opposed to a purely rational way. ### David Deutsch 00:13:54 - 00:14:10 Popper also said that science is a social process and there too the emphasis is on facilitating the removal of bad ideas or the modification of bad ideas in the light of experiment and also in the light of criticism. ### Joe Boswell 00:14:10 - 00:14:36 Do you think it's these mechanisms of error correction that explain the relative political stability of Britain through the centuries compared to Europe which tends to kind of go for these massive projects, communism, fascism, the EU, systems that seek total control but then are vulnerable to a tipping point when suddenly 51% of the forces are against them and collapse occurs? ### David Deutsch 00:14:36 - 00:16:18 Well it's certainly true that Britain is famous for political stability over decades and centuries and if you don't think it's due to that, I think if you don't think it's due to the political culture of Britain, you have a hard time explaining this blatant difference between Britain and the rest of Europe and also other countries. Now I think it is not an accident that say in the 20th century which was the high tide of both totalitarianism, that is fascism and nazism and communism and also nationalism and where this sort of engulfed Europe and even in the places where it didn't get into power, it affected the political system and influenced everything and yet in Britain it never even got close to power and this was the same over a longer time scale as well. Political philosophers in Europe simply held it as uncontroversial that the British political system was very stable and that this was something they wanted to emulate. The only explanation that makes sense to me is exactly what you said, that the institutions that correct errors and therefore build consent before grievances rise to the level of people wanting to use violence, thereby create stability and its stability despite rapid change. That's the difficult thing. You can have stability for decades and sometimes even centuries if you keep things the same but stability under rapid change is very difficult to achieve and it requires these institutions of criticism. ### Joe Boswell 00:16:18 - 00:16:39 Well I guess you might say that the situation we're facing in the UK at the moment in terms of this complete political deadlock is as a result of the referendum suddenly springing Brexit upon us as opposed to emerging naturally by the political first past the post. ### David Deutsch 00:16:39 - 00:17:52 Absolutely I think the referendum is very alien to the British way of doing politics. It arose as a sort of desperate measure because other problems were building up and were not being solved and the politicians were getting used to dissipating responsibility. They were used to saying oh it's EU rules or we can't do this or we're going to negotiate this or whatever rather than saying we think this is right and it's going to have good effects and you'll see and we got in therefore we are in charge now and we will implement that and we're now sticking our necks out because if it's deemed to be not true we know the other party is going to come in. That is what should have happened. Now with the EU I think what I would have expected to happen would be that the grievance or the grievances of the leavers and the ones who felt passionately about it would be putting pressure on the existing parties to accommodate that in their policies and eventually it might have led to a party adopting leave as its party policy. ### Joe Boswell 00:17:52 - 00:17:58 Yeah or forcing through the kind of tier one tier two we want to stay on tier one. ### David Deutsch 00:17:58 - 00:19:13 Exactly at the same time parties policies on relations with the EU would have had that pressure on and it was happening. It was you know the UKIP was rising and the tensions within both the major parties were rising and normally this would have led to creative thinking about other policies and since that didn't happen or at least didn't happen fast enough Mr Cameron decided to risk a referendum which if it had gone his way would have enabled him to say it wasn't me it was the people and the people can't be removed from office so the people the people with a capital T and P and they have spoken and therefore we're going to do what they say and he had to say that well if they say the other thing then we'll do what they say and that clashed with all the other institutions of government because it meant that that suddenly parliament was being told to implement something they don't believe in the whole the whole structure of the British parliamentary system is that people implement what they believe in and only then is their responsibility ### Joe Boswell 00:19:16 - 00:19:26 How deep and how far back do you think this distinction between the UK way of life and European way of life goes English individualism European collectivism all that? ### David Deutsch 00:19:26 - 00:20:29 Although I think it is true that that one notable difference in culture between Britain and the rest of Europe is the British greater emphasis on individualism I think that is not really the heart of the matter because Britain has had periods of collectivism too after World War II the Labour government came in and instituted a regime that is more left-wing than any regime instituted elsewhere in Western Europe and yet unlike everywhere else where highly left-wing regimes were instituted Britain embarked on it seriously tried it out and then eventually rejected most of it but kept some of it we still have the NHS we're still proud of that we still have all sorts of reforms regarding education some of which were disasters some of which were good and all of them were implemented by people who believed in them and who were therefore either proved right or wrong by events ### Joe Boswell 00:20:29 - 00:20:44 This is funny that I've come to ask you about Brexit but now you're giving succor to the socialists you know it's perhaps perhaps Britain is is the one place where socialism well has worked and could work again ### David Deutsch 00:20:44 - 00:21:09 I think socialism qua economic theory has never worked anywhere but Britain is certainly one of the few places where a full-blown socialism was tried and did not cause permanent damage it did not degenerate into communism and totalitarianism and authoritarianism and so where which is what it normally has a tendency to do but it showed no such tendency in Britain ### Joe Boswell 00:21:09 - 00:21:17 So what is the distinction between the UK model and the European model in your own mind if not individualism versus collectivism ### David Deutsch 00:21:17 - 00:21:27 Yes I think it is institutions of criticism of error correction and therefore of consent so that they become institutions of consent when they're working ### Joe Boswell 00:21:27 - 00:21:44 That word you just used consent is the big one as far as I'm concerned I do not like forcing other people to do anything they don't want to do and if I want them to do something that they don't want to do I make it my business to persuade them or give up you know I never want to go beyond that ... ### David Deutsch 00:21:44 - 00:22:15 Yes I couldn't agree more there's a very nice quote by Popper at some point where he says something like a rationalist is a person who would rather not get his way because he's failed to persuade other people than to get his way by force right forcing other people right and I entirely agree with that and there are there are many issues where I think the country is going the wrong way but you know if I were magically given the power to get my way I certainly would not use it that that would destroy everything ### Joe Boswell 00:22:18 - 00:22:55 Okay well so um in this spirit of Popperian criticism conjectures and refutations um I feel I should put to you some of the best kind of remain arguments if I can I put out a call on my facebook page a few days ago to just kind of ask people what in their minds is the most important reason to stay in the EU and the first and foremost was the prevention of war I mean isn't it the case that economic integration has fostered this unprecedented period of peace and stability in Europe and as important as error correction might be isn't the prevention of war more important than that ... ### David Deutsch 00:22:55 - 00:23:28 I think it isn't factually true that it is the EU or the common market as it was that has prevented war there was a theory even before world war one that the economics of different countries were becoming so integrated that the war would be impossible and it simply wasn't true when political forces made countries aggressive they naturally thought that that was more important than their economic well-being I mean if you're going to have a war you know that it's not going to promote economic well-being at least in the short run ### Joe Boswell 00:23:28 - 00:23:33 You don't think that if Hitler had been tied into the European Union he wouldn't have been Hitler or Hitler wouldn't have emerged ### David Deutsch 00:23:33 - 00:23:39 Yes if you put it like that it's obviously absurd it's obviously absurd I mean ### Joe Boswell 00:23:40 - 00:23:58 Germany was in a position of sort of humiliation after world war one and had felt belittled by the rest of the European powers that's what made Nazism attractive no and if they'd been engaged in a kind of positive fruitful trading relationship with that so emotional impetus for fascism so ... ### David Deutsch 00:23:58 - 00:25:04 That was the emotional impetus and I think that being subordinated to France would not have helped in that respect that is not the change that happened after World War Two Germany had set itself on a new course in 1945 by being defeated in war the Nazi ideology had been tested to destruction it simply wasn't true that that if one has a strong enough will one can conquer and that racial superiority would give them the good things in life and they naturally changed their opinion of what it is that gives you the good things in life to the right one and they made a national policy of pursuing that and they have been successful and the reason that Germany is not dangerous now is that change of mind which happened before they joined the EU and was perhaps a reason they joined it I mean the common market there's perhaps a reason why they joined it not vice versa ### Joe Boswell 00:25:07 - 00:25:35 All right well I suppose the second most important argument is the economic argument I think it was Nick Clegg that put this most clearly in my mind that Europe will always be our closest geographical neighbor so if we're going to be involved in a kind of monogamous trading relationship with somebody shouldn't it be Europe it's much easier just to ship things over the channel than it is across the Atlantic or to India do we really have more sovereignty involved in a trading relationship with America than we do with Europe? ### David Deutsch 00:25:35 - 00:27:09 I have heard that argument many times in many different forms I think the thing that that misses is the trade is mutually beneficial so of course we should trade with our neighbors we should trade with everyone and by the way long-range trade is easier than it ever was before and an increasing proportion of our trade is is a much longer range than with the EU but that doesn't matter the distance doesn't matter we should trade with everyone and I'm also in favor of reducing tariffs so that tariff harmonization and so on should become less and less a thing it should become less and less important now it is true that sometimes political considerations override economic welfare considerations and governments do unwise things like at the moment there's a big thing about increasing tariffs having trade wars this is a terrible idea and it has been tried again and again and it but I don't think that belonging to a monopolistic trade entity is the solution to this and even if it were subordinating one's political system to that entity is not advocated by anyone no one in Canada advocates that they should become the 51st state in order to get a couple of percentage points on their on their GDP which if those percentage points are available they're available through trade not through subordinating Canada to the federal government in the US ### Joe Boswell 00:27:12 - 00:27:47 When I voted remain in the referendum one of my thoughts was I think it would be good if power could be concentrated at many levels appropriate to the problems it solves like quite like local government in the UK English Welsh Scottish Northern Irish but I recognize that at the higher level there are problems like climate change or international terrorism or the power of international corporations which are much more powerful than individual states in a way and I quite like a supranational institution that was capable of standing up to them how do you react ### David Deutsch 00:27:47 - 00:28:46 I think that objection or that argument for remain mixes two very different things one is the issue of international cooperation and the other is the issue of what political systems should be subordinated to which other ones now we have international cooperation of many different kinds NATO is an international organization and it's actually an international organization for the control and direction of violence and even so it never purports to override the sovereignty of its members so international cooperation is is a good and necessary thing and in regard to the environment too we have long-standing international agreements that work very well on Antarctica and on the law of the sea and on the ozone layer and all sorts of things and countries which participate in these things do not usually demand political control of other countries ### Joe Boswell 00:28:46 - 00:29:28 Oh well this point is going to sound absurd as soon as I sort of say it out loud but I think a lot of people at the back of their minds do think aren't there advantages to top-down control I mean an argument that's often made to me and came up on my Facebook thread is that I don't really trust British democracy to deliver the right result it delivered thatcherism and I hate thatcherism you know I have friends who used to work in the post office and know which EU regulation it was that prevented them having to do unlimited overtime and they see that the EU was a sort of beneficent provider of rights that British democracy wouldn't provide of its own accord I mean what would you say to someone like that ... ### David Deutsch 00:29:28 - 00:31:22 Well I think that even if it were true that the current political stance which is nobody's idea let me repeat this is nobody's idea of what is right it's just something that emerges from the mists even if you thought that that happened to be best for Britain now it is still something that is preventing Britain from making changes for the better we were talking earlier about the benefits of socialism to Britain those things could not have been tried if Britain had been a member of the EU at the time it would have been against EU law all this business of you know we have to protect the NHS by staying in the EU well the EU do not have an NHS no but certainly the whole point of harmonisation and ever closer union is that individual countries experimentation is limited the thing about the British experiment with socialism is that it had good effects and bad effects and the good effects were retained and the bad effects were abandoned and the EU has never done anything like that in its entire history and it's structured in such a way that it shouldn't be able to perhaps I should mention that systems that are good at error correction make more errors it sounds paradoxical but they make more errors than systems which are bad at error correction until the catastrophe happens so systems which are bad at error correction fudge and fudge and fudge until at some point everything breaks and they're forced to do something new usually at random usually it's the devils have changed places and the lash goes on sort of thing ### Joe Boswell 00:31:25 - 00:31:53 Well let me take that opportunity to hit you with another counter argument which would be since you don't think referendums are a good idea wasn't the first one illegitimate I mean we didn't know what leave meant should we have another one to specify what leave means if people want that um do you think a four percent difference between the sides was really enough to justify this dramatic change of policy now should we remain now and then as you say have Brexit in the future through this gradual process ### David Deutsch 00:31:53 - 00:33:35 I think that if there's anything worse than having a referendum to decide a national issue it's having one and not implementing the results that is what has caused lack of confidence in the legitimacy of the whole system not just the referendum and if there were a second referendum people would know that the arguments for the illegitimacy of the first one would apply double in the case of the second one because people would then want a third one so long as the outcome of the referendum isn't implemented nobody has proved wrong one can say okay now we know what would happen we don't know what would happen all we know is what happened after the referendum not what happened as a result of implementing it now if the remainers had taken my view about what politics should be about then as soon as they lost the referendum they should have transformed themselves into a rejoin movement not a movement to delegitimize the national vote and if they are right then leaving would be a disaster by the way we would have left ages ago this would all be over by now leaving would be a disaster and they would have swept into power with plans to rejoin and those plans would have been endorsed by a general election not by a referendum that you know one can say we don't know anything we don't know anything everything we say we know at the moment is prophecy and that is a curse word in the Popperian scheme of things prediction comes from explanatory theories and we can't have an explanatory theory about the growth of knowledge ### Joe Boswell 00:33:35 - 00:34:05 I think some people listening to that would say it's all very well having the scientific mindset that we should have an experiment to decide the outcome but isn't there so much at stake you know won't there be EU nationals in this country who might face deportation I mean probably not on purpose but through bureaucratic fuck-ups won't the economic hit hit the poorest harder you know like is taking a risk worth it ... ### David Deutsch 00:34:09 - 00:36:25 There is a general answer to that question which is also why it is more important than any specific policy it is that making a policy of not experimenting which means not implementing what anyone thinks is the right thing to do but implementing something else that no one thinks is the right thing to do is a recipe for stasis and stasis in politics is hell on earth mistakes will always be made that that's another aspect of Popper's philosophy that that we have to recognize that we're fallible and that there is no way of choosing a ruler or choosing a policy that knows what the outcome of that will be that can guarantee it will be good or that it will probably be good or anything like that creativity is needed to do good things and creativity is in response to problems now it is a self-deception to think that the status quo is going to be satisfactory for everyone forever it's already not satisfactory for a lot of people we take it for granted that the whole political system is about grievances ancient declarations talk about the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances and that doesn't mean that there are 37 grievances and once they've all been met we won't have grievances anymore quite the contrary grievances are always coming up disagreements about what is right are always coming up and the paramount consideration is how to resolve those not just without violence but long before violence is even on anyone's mind as soon as they become serious enough to affect one or two percent of the vote in an election politicians and think tanks and intellectuals and academics and the whole country will be thinking about how to solve it and how to persuade people that one's idea is the right one to solve it that's obviously more important than getting any one thing right once and for all because once and for all will never happen ### Joe Boswell 00:36:25 - 00:37:08 One last remain argument I'd like to put to you which I think is kind of the most profound argument and the one that speaks to people most deeply is the argument about racism I know I tried to kind of be rational when I was listening to the to the referendum debates and to be honest I found myself more stupid by the end of it than at the beginning I learned almost nothing from watching weeks of question time episodes but what really swung it for me was the day that breaking point Nigel Farage poster came out and Jo Cox was shot and I just thought there's absolutely no way I'm voting with those guys you know I and I think that feeling is pretty ubiquitous in this country and how do you speak to that instinct ### David Deutsch 00:37:08 - 00:37:20 Well interestingly the vote leave campaign thought that that poster and the UKIP side of the leave argument cost them votes and almost cost them the referendum that is their opinion ### Joe Boswell 00:37:20 - 00:37:22 I didn't know that ... ### David Deutsch 00:37:22 - 00:38:58 I don't think anyone hates UKIP more than vote leave does they thought that this tendency almost cost them the referendum because of the fact that tiny numbers of people are actually fanatically racist fanatically racist yes a larger number of people are inclined to be persuadable by arguments with a tinge of racism because perfectly legitimate considerations sometimes overlap with arguments that have a tinge of racism and they find themselves allies with people whom they might not agree with but those groups together do not amount to anything like a majority thank goodness and thank goodness and therefore no matter how much you fire up those people to vote for you you're not going to win the referendum quite aside from the fact that many of the major players in vote leave are like me constitutionally and emotionally in favor of more immigration so I mean I myself can't get my head around the idea that I shouldn't be in favor of leave because it's racist because that that's kind of the opposite way to the way it looks to me yeah yeah the argument should not be about who is in favor you know if it turns out Mr Putin is in favor of one or the other or Mr Trump is in favor of one or the other that doesn't alter who is right no it's an ad hominem thing and one should not make that a consideration ### Joe Boswell 00:38:58 - 00:39:22 I completely agree with you in my head but my heart is so disciplined by this sort of fear of being anywhere near to racism that you know I feel nervous about filming and broadcasting this conversation with you know because to advocate for Brexit is to be on that side and I think a lot of people feel that it runs very deep which in a way is a wonderful thing people should feel deeply opposed to racism yes but um ### David Deutsch 00:39:22 - 00:40:46 Yes well I mean I too have found that people have put this argument to me not in the way that you just did but in the form will you make a reasonable argument but most of the people who are on your side in this are not reasonable now I think that isn't true I basically I can't remember anyone whom I've spoken to on the leave side making a racist argument maybe some of them are in their hearts racist but they know that that won't speak to other leavers and by the way it's also a fact that in all the surveys you see Britain is one of the least bigoted countries in the EU which uh that that's another sort of ironic thing about this argument from racism so you've just given a list of pro remain arguments and you haven't mentioned the argument you are a racist which one often hears as well and in fact I think it is very unfair to the British people to characterize large-scale political movements as being motivated by racism in any way people just don't think like that in this country which is related to the fact we were talking about earlier that nationalism which was the scourge of Europe from say the mid 19th century up to the mid 20th century never got a hold in Britain ### Joe Boswell 00:40:46 - 00:41:18 Yeah yeah it's something to be very proud about um I have to say speaking to you I've discovered a kind of um hitherto uh hidden streak of patriotism just because I always thought patriotism in Britain was about the flag and the army and bulldogs since you know uh the Second World War but uh you make me realize that that the UK is about things that I do care personally about namely consent humility discourse discussion tolerance moderation ### David Deutsch 00:41:18 - 00:42:01 I entirely agree and note that I am an immigrant and it is often immigrants who appreciate what is best about Britain I'm reminded of a quotation which George Mikes made in his book How to Be an Alien which is the quintessential book on Britishness by an immigrant written just after World War Two he was a refugee and he quotes a poem by Alice Duer Miller who's an American poet and the line he quotes is I have seen much to hate here much to forgive but in a world where England is finished and dead I do not wish to live ### Joe Boswell 00:42:01 - 00:42:02 Oh that's lovely ### David Deutsch 00:42:02 - 00:42:10 And I think that is precisely true as well as rather painfully sentimental yeah yes yes ### Joe Boswell 00:42:11 - 00:42:25 Thank you for watching if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to see more content at the intersection of science philosophy and politics then please consider donating to my patreon or my paypal account you'll find the links in the description