Dr David Starkey

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846 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 20 Jun

Dr David Starkey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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TRIGGERnometry · The British State Hates its Own People - Dr David Starkey · 20 Jun 2026 podcast

They sound wonderful.

But you see, the problem is what you do with those ideas.

Traditionally, I mean, again, the great contrast is between the French and the American revolutions.

If you look at the French, the French are the first people to come up with a declaration of, it's called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

But of course, the moment you do it, you have the terror.

So you put it in the box and forget about it.

And by the way, when it comes back, because of the very loose nature of Napoleonic law, which is a series of general principles anyway, yet another set of general principles get lost in it, it's when you embed that stuff in a common law system where words are taken seriously that you have the disastrous consequences.

But if we go back,

to what Bingham is saying there.

The law itself is turned against its principal purpose.

The principal purpose of the law is to protect the law-abiding citizen.

And also the principal purpose of the state is to protect itself.

If you constantly go on about, oh, our duty is to the world, you know, the man who's just been made a knight of the garter, the king being, of course, you know, as soaked in this stuff as...

as the leftist of lawyers, Gus O'Donnell, who was the head of the Treasury.

There's the famous conversation, which is reported by David Goodhart, when they were in conversation, and I think it was Mark Thompson, who was the director general of the BBC, and then went off to run the New York Times, and David Goodhart, and the conversation was, well, what is the actual purpose of government?

And O'Donnell, oh, you know, I didn't think my purpose was just to pursue the prosperity of Britain.

It was the well-being of the world.

That's what's gone wrong.

And conservatives, again, had no defense because people like Churchill, you know, Churchill was a liberal, really.

Remember, he crosses the floor of the House twice.

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