Transvox - Funding anti-trans movements in Europe - What’s going on?

[00:00:06] Welcome back to Transvox. The person you hear talking over the wonderful sound of silence is my old colleague, Jenny Harvey. We haven't had a little podcast together for ages, Jenny. No, I think it's been a minute since we've been sat down together and shot the breeze, as they say, in America or something. Anyway, no, it's good to be back, Gill. It's good to be back. And we've had, it's been quite an interesting time. So last week we were chatting about, sorry, not last, but the week before, we were chatting about the Trans Solidarity Alliance.

[00:00:36] Yes, that was really interesting. It was all about that stuff, which is good. And we did a YouTube one on that. And back to the lovely confines of just podcast and audio only, which is nice, isn't it? It's more intimate, it's more relaxed. You don't have to do all that faffing about with makeup. Now indeed, and you can listen to it as you fall asleep. Yeah, I do use a few podcasts for that to just help me fall asleep, because I've got tinnitus. So sometimes when I wake up in the morning in the middle of the night, I can just shove it on as quite,

[00:01:05] It just kind of tightens the noise a little bit. So anyway, I've never tried to fall asleep too high, but I'm sure many people do. A few weeks ago, actually probably a couple of months ago, we did a little episode around why does the right wing hate trans people so much, if you remember. Yeah. And we'd written an article, and we'd seen so much stuff. And I thought actually it's quite interesting, because there was a quite a big article, I think it's the Parliamentarian magazine or something, or paper, which I thought we should have a bit of a chat about.

[00:01:36] Oh yeah. The parliamentmagazine.eu. I think probably people have seen it. It's a European publication, isn't it? Yeah. And the title of it is Inside Europe's Billion Dollar Anti-Gender Movement. Wow. And it's really quite interesting, because it talks, and I think it talks quite interestingly about the sort of European arm of the sort of anti-trans movement, which arguably started in the States, but has actually been taken out with a form of gusto in Europe as well.

[00:02:03] But certain sections of Europe as well. So I thought it'd be quite interesting to have a little chat through this, because there's a lot going on with Supreme Court and EHRC and all sorts of nonsense going on. But sometimes it's nice to have a look at the bigger picture and realise that we're just the excuse and not the main target. It is interesting, isn't it? And it's fair to say, it seems to be, it seems that in every country right now, there's a battle against immigrants and trans people to blame for everything.

[00:02:30] It seems the same in America, but across Europe as well, with the rise of the far right across Europe. They seem, all of them seem to hate LGBTQ people and particularly trans people. And yeah, even though we're seeing progression in some countries in Europe, it's very clear from what this article is saying that there is a significant amount of funding they have.

[00:02:50] I think when you read Project 2025 and the Heritage Group and such, like in the States, it's hard to, and I managed to slog my way through all 800 pages of it or whatever. And it really comes across quite straightforwardly that it's about replacement theory. It's about white nationalism. It's about anti-abortion, anti-women.

[00:03:09] And it's about resetting the world back to where the white male patriarchy, I guess, patriarchy has to be male, is in power and doing what it wants. And people don't believe you when you say that because it just seems such a strange idea, but also such a step backwards that you think to yourself that's not, never would be possible.

[00:03:32] But of course, there's a Me Too movement in the States, which is there because actually women are definitely seen as the second sex or gender, whatever you call it. But it's interesting how we see women's rights in Europe. And I think the point the article starts by talking about is saying that the sort of the high point for all LGBT rights was 2013. And there were tons of things really positively going on. You'd be able to think back to 2013 around that area. And it was a very positive time, wasn't it?

[00:04:01] No, I think, yeah, certainly 2013. I think all through the early 2000s up to, in this country, I would say maybe 2015. So it's around about that time. You'd seen improvements, particularly the whole of LGBT, improvements in civil rights across the board in terms of legislation, equality. We talked about this before, the equality, gender recognition, as flawed as that is, we were starting to see legislation come in. Equal marriage was the high point. Was that 2015? Equal marriage. That's right.

[00:04:31] That had been, at one point, I'd thought that's going to be impossible. And once it was implemented, nobody's looked back. It's become the most, in many ways, very boring and dull, right? Equal marriage. I wouldn't want equal marriage. And everything felt so progressive. I always think, I'm just trying to remember what it was like when it was the Olympics and how positive the country was in that opening, the Olympics opening, and how not positive the country feels like now.

[00:05:00] So, yeah, it is around that period, I think, that things started to, and you mentioned the Me Too, and you said it in America a lot, whether the Me Too movement is a pushing back of the patriarchy or pushing back. And there's that sort of to a throw in of rights, isn't there? And whether that, but it does seem from reading this as well, particularly in Europe, that this is also the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ plus movement is also very much anti-women movement as well.

[00:05:28] And it is, you've talked about this before, maybe I've been a bit naive in not seeing that, is that they are all tied together. You've seen what's happened in terms of, in America. Because it is interesting, but hard. And I think the thing is interesting, the two authors of this article are Frederica Desario and Eloise Hardy. And I don't know who these reporters are. Like anything, when we start quoting their facts, we don't know how well this has been researched.

[00:05:58] But let's just talk of it as a sort of, use the article as a talking point. I think what they're saying is that the religious conservators movement also got alarmed in 2013 by what they were saying. And they actually, they started to, at that point, started to collect funds together to defeat what they were calling and was being called gender ideology.

[00:06:20] And, and they saw that having a progressive agenda that includes everything from access to abortion, to sex education, to LGBTQ plus rights. And I think this is interesting because that, and you have this theory of in groups and out groups, don't you? If you other a group of people, you take away their rights. And it became a massive twin pronged approach, one which is anti-abortion. The other one was separating transgender people from the rest of the LGBT community.

[00:06:47] And, and I thought that was, I think we've always known that, but now seeing it written down and actually with sources of funding put against this is really quite interesting, isn't it? It brings it home in a way. You're right. In this country, we tend to think of the gender ideology when the people say that it's generally the TERF movement, the trans, excluding radical feminists that talk about gender ideology and the idea that gender is a spectrum. The idea that gender is a social construct, the idea that people can transition as their gender, as an ideology.

[00:07:17] And even though I would argue it's never been an ideology, it's just been a fact of people's lives, right? But it seems like in Europe, it is become more as well as encompassing attacks on abortion, attacks on, I think it says in the article, sex education, but the whole of that. And it becomes shorthand for the anti-woke, doesn't it? Because that's what woke has become shorthand for that. I don't know how on earth that happened. So I was watching a video today about how the right like to redefine terms.

[00:07:47] They either make them very narrow or they make them very wide. Woke had a specific identity within black American culture, wasn't it, in terms of being socially just as aware. And then it's become shorthand for everything from trans people to health and safety. The political correctness gone mad term used to be. But health and safety is political correctness, which it's clearly not. And it's just how the right redefine these terms. But a lot of it is interesting, isn't it?

[00:08:17] Because a lot of this does go to the nth degree of stupidity when you do have political correctness going mad. Because of the legal framework that exists, oddly enough, in America. One of the things that's the biggest storm and literal teacup was in America, isn't it? When McDonald's had to start writing contains hot liquids because someone had sued McDonald's. Because the liquid in the coffee was too hot. So this is an interesting confluence between the legal world and the... There's some interesting YouTube videos.

[00:08:46] That is a famous case. But actually, I don't think that's fully properly reported. But it has become shorthand. About the woman that sued it because she was having the coffee in a lap. It isn't quite how it is seen. But it was used again. But I think it's again how the right have used... And that's become mythology almost. Like an urban myth to a degree. Something did happen, but it wasn't quite like that. That has now become... That's crazy. The world's crazy. People are seeing stuff. And it's all part of that pushback, isn't it? That progression and that pushback.

[00:09:16] And I never... Political correctness is fine. It's just about treating people well. Why on earth wouldn't we want to do this? Being woke is just about... I'd rather be over-cautious than horrible. Do you know what I mean? I just don't understand the mindset of people that we want to hate. And I guess that's where I struggle with it, Jill. I don't have any lens of understanding why anybody wants to hate any other community, Rick. I think... I actually think it's all part of the sort of collective narcissism, oddly enough.

[00:09:44] Because it's this idea of what's more important, individual rights or group rights. And you often see that the progressive left talking a lot more about how we get along together. How we exist as groups. How we collaborate, cooperate and all those things. Whereas the other side of the argument is how do I get what I want? And therefore, I see everything that doesn't allow me to have what I want is somehow an infringement of my civil and perfect and my public rights. And then you get this idea, exacerbated by social media, that everybody's out to get me.

[00:10:14] And you're now in the egg chamber of your own sort of narcissism and fantasy. And we've seen... We've seen... And what's interesting, what I thought was fascinating, the article talks about that between 2009 to 2018, which is I think nine years, they'd raised in Europe $81 million, $81.3 million. But between the four years, half the time, between 2019 and 2023, they've raised $1.18 billion.

[00:10:44] So this is... These are the people who are funding some of the turf campaigns in the UK. They're... Some of the money's coming from Brussels, bizarrely enough, because of the way that the education system works. And what people are saying is we didn't know how big the anti-LGBT movement was. They must be terrible after all. And what they're not saying is actually this is just the magnification of a small group of people with a lot of money.

[00:11:08] Because actually, a lot of people with that narcissistic, self-absorbed view of the world often are people with a lot of power and with a lot of money and a lot of influence. And that's the bit that coalesces. Once you have power and influence and you think everything is about you and you become very wealthy, then you have a vested interest in maintaining that view and actually making sure everybody else doesn't have those rights. You're absolutely right. And it goes hand in hand with how...

[00:11:35] You just look at how many articles about trans people were in the news in 2015 or whatever, before we started having the debate on the gender recognition act. We will barely get like a handful in a year. Now, every single newspaper, every single website has a trans story on it. And it's conflated. That has then enabled all this money to come in. Because they're saying, I would argue from my certainly leftist-centred viewpoint, that this actually...

[00:12:05] Part of this does come down with capital. Because I don't generally think Rupert Murdoch, as powerful as he was in terms of press, cares about trans people or not. Don't give a crap. They just care about keeping hold of power. And the way they've done that is to other people. You said it. To other, say, immigrants or trans people are your problems. It's painfully obvious that trans people are no issue to anybody else, right? There's hardly any of us. There's only 1% of the population less than, right?

[00:12:34] We're not affecting anybody. But if you tell everybody enough times that these people are terrible and are going to mess your life up in some way, that what you're doing is distracting from the fact that there's massive wealth inequalities and all that. And I think that's... I would argue that it is linked to late-stage capitalism and unfettered capitalism. The people in power have used those platforms. Elon Musk is the exact example. A horrible anti-trans bigot. But he's...

[00:13:04] It's impossible for us to fight against those forces, really, in terms of money. What we can do is educate, can't we? I don't know how we... How do we find the billion pounds to support trans rights? What's interesting here, and what we have to focus on here, is that, in a sense, we're a small subsection of the issue. So there's two things that... You know, this is about anti-abortion. It's about sex education.

[00:13:32] It's about LGBTQIA rights. Yes. And what they said is that it's much easier to separate trans people off because we're the most vulnerable, I think, is the word, to be able to remove because we have the least power. But the key is that it's not all about us. And I think that's one of the things we've got to watch out. And the bit of education that matters for me is the anti-abortion stuff. Now, if you look at, according to this article, it's a lot of Christian groups. It's a lot of big EU donors. And Hungary, apparently, who styles himself, Victor Orban styles himself

[00:14:02] as a defender of Western Christian civilisation. He's just a dictator who's hanging on to power. These are people who are funnelling money into anti-gender groups. And what they're saying is they're fighting back against the left-wing funding represented by people like Bill Gates and George Soros, which is just... But the thing is, because they're giving money to pro-life organisations. And what's happening is the...

[00:14:30] To me, this is much more... We're just a by-product of what's going on around this big issue, which is much more about abortion, I think. I think it's about abortion. But I agree that there's that. But it's also bigger than that. It's about people keeping hold of power. It's about distracting from that. So I think abortion is that. Because abortion has never been a particularly hot-button issue in this country. So I don't think it is... I think they've voted recently to decriminalise abortion, right?

[00:14:59] So in this country... In America, definitely it has been for a long time. And they've plotted that. But I still think that doesn't account for why this anti-trans movement in this country. There's a unique thing, I think, in the UK about the TERF movement, the trans-excluding radical feminist part of the movement, that you don't see in other countries where it's nearly always... So I think there's more of a... For my own movement, in terms of somebody who's part of the Labour movement, parts of the Labour movement have been anti-trans.

[00:15:29] I don't think that's been quite the same in other countries, I don't think. Most of it is just being driven by far-right and very conservative, religious type of politics that you've seen. The one thing in Hungary, though, did you see that massive pride march they had? Yeah. The Budapest. Absolutely extraordinary. In the face of that sort of oppression, that people went... Sod that. We're getting out there. And so there's things like that that do give us hope. But you're absolutely right.

[00:15:59] I think we are... We're an easy target, because we don't, as a community, have power. And because there's a lack of... There's always been a lack of understanding about trans people and their lives, because most people don't know them. It's easy to paint us as weird. It's easy to paint us as... The sport thing was a real wedge issue. It played quite well, didn't it? In America particularly, but even in this country as well. Okay, you know, that's unfair. We can't talk about these people that are changing genders

[00:16:27] to win a swimming competition. Well, I can float, but I can't swim since the transition. I'm not any better at swimming. It's... I think there's... I think it's interesting, that. Because I genuinely think... I can't think of a smaller community, the national community, if it's a trans community, being even so much smaller than the LGBT, that have had so much vitriol. And that's... I might just feel unfair, Jill. I don't know if I'm being unfair in that.

[00:16:56] But it just seems crazy that everybody's obsessed with us. Don't you think? It is interesting. And I suspect that our perspective is somewhat warped, because obviously we're part of this community. That's true. It's true. I think what's interesting, something that struck me in the article, and I always come back to this, because I think it's the big issue, and I think we're used just as a distraction. And I think also because of the... Some of the feminist thinking, and also because of particular individual interests. But I didn't know this, that in 22... According to this article, 2023, prominent figures

[00:17:24] from the international populist rights... So these are all the Catholic bodies, of course, which is... Okay. Catholicism is concerned about this, this lack of replacement of white babies. And apparently there was a big conference. They went to Budapest to a summit focused on how to persuade European women to make more babies. And Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney, Serbian President Alexander Vukic all went there, along with lots of other people. Orbán was there as well.

[00:17:52] And a lot of the populist sort of pseudo-dictators and communists, the ex-communist in the areas. This is what it's all about. I think the trans population is that classic dead cat thing where it gets swept up with LGBT rights because that's against lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, gay people. None of us are fitting into the module of just being enslaved to have children. This is the handmaiden's tale, isn't it? It is. Yeah. And you only have to look at...

[00:18:21] Elon Musk has gone crazy on lots of... 14 kids. One, he seems to want to populate the world himself with clones or whatever. It's crazy how many kids he's got, but also he never shuts up about we need to procreate. And that's because most of the richer Western nations, populations have been falling, right? Yeah. At the same time... We may not have race. Yeah, the population have been falling because people are having less babies, okay? People are getting less babies. At the same time, we don't want immigrants to come in

[00:18:50] and care for our elderly because it's all mixed up. And there's racism as well, though, isn't it? When you talk about the great replacement theory, that's just downright supremacist. It is pure. Supremacist. Yeah. Of course it is. And that's the thing about immigration. We don't have... If you look at what Trump is doing with all those white South Africans, he was encouraging them to come back to the country. We were very happy to have Indians who were good at data mining and such, but on the whole, we don't want poor black people from Africa. What we want are well-established.

[00:19:19] There was a bit of a hoo-ha in our country really about the Albanians, wasn't it? Because actually, we all got a bit surprised when we started accusing all the Albanians of being drug runners and we didn't realise they were from Albania. We all thought they were from Poland because we had this love affair with the Polish. And quite right. Yeah, I don't know, but I'm not sure about that because I haven't heard quite that story, but the way that the hordes are going to come in from Turkey, this was all about Brexit. This is all... They're all going to invade us. And then we suddenly find, nah, we've restricted immigration.

[00:19:48] And now our public services can't run because there aren't enough people to do it. I represent people in care homes. They desperately need that labour force. You know? Yeah, of course they do. Yeah. I mean, it's simple economics. If you've got a different coloured face or a different colour of accent or whatever, it's convenient. It's convenient to have a narrative in our country that says that we're full. And all you have to do is drive out of the southeast and drive and fly over anywhere. Actually, really, even across Hampshire and you'd notice how much of our country is empty. And it's farmland, obviously.

[00:20:18] It's not... But it's not like where... It's not like where... The issue isn't that we're full. The issue is we haven't got enough services to go around the people we have. Yeah, exactly. Of course. Simple. We've got plenty of room. There's big swathes of the country where you won't see anybody from that. Clearly, we don't want where I live because we don't want all those people coming up to where we are and invading the Geordi nation. That's it. You don't want them coming across from Sunderland, do you? Or going across the river. Do you have to stop the boats on the Tyne, do you, Joe? We do. They're not coming across the Closed of Tyne Bridge and all that.

[00:20:49] But it's nuts. It is crazy. Any logical... I don't know. I despair sometimes, Joe, but at least with the pod, I've got a chance to get it out of the system. I think the thing I was thinking when I read it was actually with the sort of inconvenient side of it that it's slightly... I think broadly on the whole, you were saying, why is everyone picking us? I genuinely think, actually, it's much more of a non-event. I'll go and meet, train a bunch of people, hundreds of people. Sometimes people have heard of trans people. Most people haven't.

[00:21:19] Most people, once they don't care, they just say, well, get on with your lives and such. Often we're both working in a health setting and they're people who are more likely to come across trans people and they still come across very few. And I think it's really... I think it's hard for us because we're in the eye of the storm, but for the vast majority of people, it's that the problem is apathy, not even ignorance. I think the problem is apathy because it's just so far away from there. Unless you know a trans person,

[00:21:47] it's very hard to be that bothered about it. But what we have to realise is that half the population who are female are massively going to be affected by anti-abortion legislation, which may well come to the UK as well. And that's been facilitated by anti-trans rhetoric. And that will then be anti-LGBT. I mean, you're absolutely right. But I don't see anti-abortion laws coming in. I just don't think it's... In five years' time, sorry, in four years' time, when this hopeless government voted out

[00:22:17] and you have a reform coming in, they're already talking about it. I still don't see that because it's never been... They've never got any traction in this country on that. I know what you're saying. Never rule anything out. God, I never thought we'd leave Brexit. But I don't... I just don't see it's ever been an issue watching this country. And I wouldn't... They're going to overreach if they're careful anyway. They're going to overreach on that. Let me just read you an article from, what is it? The Independent. Nigel Farage's plans

[00:22:46] to restrict access to abortion would have catastrophic consequences for women, campaigners have warned. Yeah, that's... Yeah, but we know this is the problem and actually, this is where the legislation should be enshrined now. This is where, actually, it's that thing. We know now, the thing that probably people have just won this very quiet victory on abortion laws in the UK. We know that once you have a right, you've got to fight to keep them, not fall asleep because you think you've got them forever. And I think that's one of the challenges here.

[00:23:16] And I genuinely think the Wake Up Corps, there's a lot of stroppy women, cis women in the UK. They've got... They've had proper... They've had a proper shot at feminism, a proper shot at equality. There's much more acceptance as women as part of the workforce. There's much more respect for women. Not masses. There's all those problems. But compared to other parts of the world, we're pretty good. And I still think... I still think it's vulnerable over here unless people fight to protect it. And it's once your friendly local neighbourhood

[00:23:45] trans person has disappeared along with Spider-Man. And then all the gays and lesbians and intersex people have gone. Then all that legislation will be in place. Yeah, I mean, it's first they came for us and then they came for... But yeah, I get that. I think what Farage is doing is just more... It's probably just a pit trying to appeal to donors from the United States. They're just genuine... I just don't see anywhere, even in the mainstream press, even the press, which seems to set so much of the agenda

[00:24:15] that are being reported. Do you know what I mean? The Sun aren't running headlines. The mail aren't going too much abortion. They're just not. Whereas... Yeah, but I just don't... Maybe that's the one thing I'll hope. I just don't... I think that will be their water. That will be if they try and... I just think they would... They would not get elected on that platform. That's what's going to mobilise resistance to reform is if women are resistant to this idea of losing their abortion rights and losing their equality. Yeah. And once that happens, that's the only way... The Labour government's not going to produce anything

[00:24:44] that's going to fight off reform. They're not going to fight on that platform. They'll be too bothered, obsessing about immigrants to deal with that. Yeah, I get where you're coming from because they're a far-right party. So naturally, they fall into that camp like the other far-right party. It's anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and, you know, and misogynistic. So anyway, that was the article I thought was interesting. It was interesting. Are we going to have a link attached to the... Yeah, we could definitely... Because I think it's an interesting article. Yeah.

[00:25:13] I think it's interesting to... The thing I want to just touch base on is that I wanted some positive news and a good news story for the week and I just wanted to reflect on the party I think you used to belong to or have belonged to or have supported. They've had a year in power. Jen, how do you think the Labour Party are doing? How are the Labour Party? I'm not going to say whether I'm still a member or not. I'm probably hanging on by my fingertips. How are they doing? Shocking, to be honest. I would say the only two things I see that they've done that are

[00:25:42] core Labour progressive values would be they are going to reform employment rights, better rights for workers and maybe nationalising some rail. Other than that, I mean, attacking welfare in the way they've done is absolutely crazy and you've seen I think it's been this week, hasn't it? The amount of they've got to in a weird way they've got two bigger majority which means plenty of rebels can gather together without it risking government.

[00:26:11] They're set in power but I think they've been the big thing why did they not why did they commit not to raise taxes to support the NHS? It would have been simple. People would have voted for that still, wouldn't they? They've set themselves up now. Other than those two things I quote at the start I see little difference between Starmer's Labour Party at the moment and sort of Cameron's Tory party. I see I don't know where the parties have left me behind for a bit

[00:26:41] but I'm still hopeful there's plenty enough good people in the party. I always think you have to differentiate between the party's support and the government. Can't say I'm a supporter of the government at the moment. Right. Is that a nice weaselly political way of getting out of the fact? Yeah, I think a career in the cabinet awaits and all you have to say is that's the wrong question the question you should be asking is this and you would be there you'll have had your media training. Yeah, that's true. And that's not even

[00:27:11] touching on the trans stuff so what would your assessment be then, Jill? You know my views about it. As an ex-Thatcherite if you don't mind me saying that. I was not in any shape or form a Labour supporter but I despaired of the Tories at the last election and they had to be kicked out and I think the problem is that the Tories are not regrouping. Labour actually I think are trying to fill the void. They're trying to do the time that we talked to we did an episode about blue Labour didn't we? Yeah, yeah. And we talked about this idea that they would be fiscally red

[00:27:40] and socially blue and what's ended up happening is there been neither because they're just all what's staggering as well isn't it? It's this lack of vision it's this lack of underlying passion about what you believe in. I'm no fan of let's just talk about political figures and we'll go out with the sort of political connotations of them, okay? John Macdonald you knew what he believed in he was passionate he was erudite you knew that if he'd come into power he would have delivered that agenda Thatcher was exactly the same love them or hate them you need politicians with conviction don't you?

[00:28:10] That's because when someone is setting a direction that gives people the chance to follow them now when you're just jumping in front of the prevailing themes and trying to get ahead of them that's not leadership that is the problem Do you not think that's been exactly the same though in this country in America with the Democrats where the Democrats have ended up letting an absolute nightmare be a president because they couldn't have a principled

[00:28:40] platform to stand on and they tried to and it seems so echoing this Labour government and what the Democrats did and this Labour government were lucky enough to have a Tory party that was so dysfunctional that they swept to power that the Labour party swept to power didn't they? You've got two broad themes haven't you when you think about politics you've got people who are passion politicians because they believe in a specific thing so Obama's change thing Thatcher's Thatcherism wasn't called Thatcherism at the time

[00:29:10] bashing it getting rid of the unions and all that sort of stuff and setting Britain free for many years of three day weeks and crap like that all right but then you have disruptors and actually you know what Trump is is a disruptor Trump said he was going to do all the things and he's gone and done them and actually where he has approval is because he's delivering on what he said where the left wing ideology sometimes doesn't work is that they don't deliver they have no particular beliefs I was listening to Wes Streeting talking this morning that's just mealy mouthed nonsense and it's that you've either

[00:29:40] you've got to be you've got to be something or other disrupt or have passion but you just can't sit in the middle of being bureaucrats because we've got a civil service to do yeah but do you think it's not it's the donor class in America the court and it's the same here corporate donors so the Democrat both in America and this country America Bernie Sanders we had Jeremy Corbyn and we're principal politicians neither of them perfect but would stand for something and they were forced they were both effectively forced out

[00:30:09] by their party you know in that respect I know Bernie's not technically been a Democrat but he's always caucused with them but it stood against Hillary and the donor class didn't want them and it spooked him but they were so there has been principal politicians of the left in both countries and they've both been squeezed out oh definitely in the right you've had yeah yeah I mean we haven't got any in the moment in terms of in terms of horrible principles but yes you've had those disruptors and things there were disruptors in this country

[00:30:39] Bernie Sanders and I'd say Jeremy Corbyn what's quite interesting is this point where you come to with Bernie Sanders is actually fiscally very very red very blue and he's socially very red because what you've I know the colours work differently in America Bernie Sanders believes in tariffs and many of the same policies that Trump has so if you break that down that's really quite interesting but there's a lot of what they call Bernie bros that went over and voted for Trump yeah they were seen as disruptive and that's also part of the left

[00:31:09] though in this country there was a part of the left wing movement that I was involved in I wasn't involved in that part of the movement but part of the trade union movement supported Brexit because of globalisation and companies so that's where protectionism is about protecting your jobs and your manufacturing I don't agree with it but I can understand it from a left wing idea that you want to bring jobs back manufacturing jobs that we've lost and things like that and but yeah but both of those ideas

[00:31:38] I can't ever go back to the fact that capitalism collapsed in 2008 with the crash capitalism ended at that point because we had to bail things out so unfettered capitalism ended and we've not changed as nations since then we've just got back into the same don't you think I mean at that point when you have to bail the banks out you're saying okay this system doesn't work I'm not saying I'm not saying completely scrap I wouldn't scrap capitalism myself unfettered

[00:32:08] capitalism got completely decimated didn't it in the crash I think we probably need to come to the end of this we have got a bit on I think we need to do some judicious editing Jill I love the fact that Alexis Hale was saying something around this idea that the trouble with left wing politics is to spend too much time fighting each other rather than fighting the right wing and I think that's the biggest problem of all that is very true and so on that note thank you Jill it's great to see you

[00:32:38] again and we'll catch up soon we've had low therapeutic time but hopefully that last person that just started snoring has just had a very good sleep oh that's fair enough yeah see you next time see you soon bye bye thanks for listening to this episode of Transvox it's been a joy to have you with us if you want to make contact with us you can contact us at jillian at transvox.co dot uk and all of our money goes to our

[00:33:08] nominated charity and Jen you've chosen the charity for the next number of episodes which one have you chosen our charity is called beyond reflections which is a charity that provides support and counselling to trans people non-binary people and their friends and their families across the uk an amazing charity doing some amazing work really important so please if you can give great and if you want to go and have a look at beyond reflections it's beyond reflections dot org dot uk and but as i say

[00:33:38] if you'd like to make a contribution to what we're doing because we love to help the people who help us again if you've got ideas for the show things you'd like to ask us questions comments applause or brick baths feel free to send it all in to Jillian at franzvox.co dot uk until the next time goodbye bye bye