Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay, so today we're going to do something a little bit different.
Chapter 2: What criticism did Rory Stewart have about the host's economic views?
We're going to be getting involved in the biggest piece of gossip, slander, some might say libel about me that took place in the last six months while I was away. We are going to discuss Rory Stewart, his attacks on me, and we're going to be answering the question, who is allowed to talk about economics?
Okay, so I'm going to provide just the most basic context for people who maybe don't know The Rest Is Politics, don't know Rory Stewart or are not from this country.
Chapter 3: Why do people attack certain economic perspectives?
The Rest Is Politics is probably the biggest politics podcast in the UK. It is hosted by to centrist political figures, a former conservative MP called Rory Stewart, and a former Labour strategy advisor under Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell, and they interviewed Zach Polanski, who is the new sort of resurgent leader of the Greens, last year in November.
Chapter 4: Who is considered qualified to discuss economics?
And I became a subject of the conversation, and let's, I'm gonna watch, well, I'm gonna show you what was said about me back then, so you can see for yourself.
Tell us which economists you're listening to. Who are your intellectual influences here? Brilliant people.
So Grace Blakely, Richard Murphy, who's been doing a lot of work on this. Gary Stevenson, who I know you've had on recently. James Medway or James Meadway. Lots of different economists, though. A lot of the time it's just reading the stuff that they're talking about. And I think there is a consensus that the neoliberal model has broken and it's not worked.
Consensus where? From people like Gary Stevenson? Or where's the consensus? Where's the academic consensus here? I think the academic consensus is among economists who aren't working for the government. I think they're all looking at government decisions. And you see Gary Stevenson as a sort of pseudo-academic economist? I don't think he's pseudo-academic. I think he's literally an economist.
That's his job. What about you mentioned... It's not his job. He's a city trader. He studied an undergraduate degree in economics. Right.
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Chapter 5: What is the argument against wealth taxes presented in the episode?
Okay, he's not a professional economist. But I think if you do a degree in economics, it's fair to say you're an economist. Where are the people with graduate-level degrees in economics that you're focusing on here? Where are the professors? Where are the people for whom this is their academic speciality?
So this underlies... Okay, so that is Rory Stewart. Pretty publicly denying my credibility as an economist and... Disappearing my postgraduate degree at Oxford is pretty scandalous really. People who've followed this channel for a long time will be aware that it is not uncommon for me to be attacked in the press. I have been attacked pretty publicly on YouTube before.
Chapter 6: Are the elites out of touch with economic realities?
Skinny little dipshit. And in the newspapers. And in general, I have like a strategy which is like, I just don't engage with nonsense on the internet, nonsense in the newspapers. And I wasn't going to engage in this one. But I think something happened when I was filming the documentary for Channel 4.
Chapter 7: How does gatekeeping affect discussions around economics?
So for people who don't know, I've been filming a documentary for Channel 4, which will come out in the next couple of months, and I was filming that in the last few months of last year. And this incident was released while I was filming
that documentary and I remember I was in a car driving back from somewhere doing an interview with probably somebody horrible and somebody messaged me on my WhatsApp saying, have you seen this, Rory Stewart talking about you on The Rest Is Politics and I had a look at it and I thought, as soon as I saw it, I thought it was really, Interesting. And I'll tell you why.
Chapter 8: What predictions should be used to judge economic theories?
So I get attacked a lot in the media. The Daily Mail ran four attack pieces on me in four consecutive days last year. They knocked on my parents' house. They went through my mum's Facebook. The Financial Times wrote a 5,000-word hit piece on me. And I don't enjoy those kinds of things, but I've come to expect it. But what was really interesting about this attack by Rory Stewart
was most instantly how easily disprovable it was. So the big attack which sort of my former colleagues like to come at me with is Gary was not the best trader at Citibank. It's a very popular attack line from them. And it's smart. The reason it's smart is because it's obviously impossible for me to prove I was the best trader at Citibank. There's no like certificate you can bring out.
And if you're gonna attack somebody and say somebody's a liar, it makes sense to attack them in a way that they cannot immediately disprove. But Rory Stewart came out and implied that I don't have any qualifications in economics, which is incredibly easily disprovable. And I posted a tweet immediately saying, look, here is my degree. You get a certificate for it. You can show it.
Here is my master's degree from Oxford. And as soon as it came up, it was in my sort of high school WhatsApp chat. I said to them, you know, this, we will get a public apology from this guy because, quite simply, because otherwise, like, it's a legal risk, right? You cannot lie about the qualifications of probably your biggest commercial rival publicly.
Like it's, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but I would imagine you can't get away with that. So I told them we'd get an apology and we did get an apology. And I was going to leave it at that. But then while I was filming the documentary, I started to notice a sort of a trend happening, which was, so I've never had any negative interactions with the public, which is amazing.
I get attacked online all the time. But I had one negative interaction while I was filming the documentary, which was I was filming outside the Treasury here in the centre of London. And a guy came out of the Treasury, sort of middle-aged guy in his sort of, I guess, late 40s. And he came up to me and he sort of took me by the arm in quite like a tender way.
And he came close to me and he said into my ear, I just want you to know you're completely economically illiterate. and this is a guy who worked in the treasury and then over the course of interviewing some different people especially people like sort of from this sort of intellectual elite i started to realize a kind of narrative a new narrative was forming on this
global battle against inequality, global battle for wealth taxes, global battle to improve the economy, a new sort of very simplistic narrative was forming, especially from these kind of elites, which is basically, Gary is an idiot, Zach Polanski is an idiot, don't listen to them because they're not economists, basically.
And that made me realise that this sort of new stance represented here by Rory Stewart versus politics, which is just to basically say, you know,
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