[Music]
okay I get
welcome to Sputnik on this fine Boxing
Day orbiting the world with me George
Galloway and me gatri he's only the
funniest writer in England writing for
the mass circulation Daily Mail
sometimes twice a day as parliamentary
sketch writer of the very first Rank and
he's no mean theater critic either so
how would he have the time to write a
crackling new novel The Speaker's wife
and come on board the Sputnik well we're
glad to say he's here now he doesn't
have much time so let's meet the one and
only Quenton let Quenton a pleasure to
have you here at Christmas time the
speaker's wife is it uh biographical uh
it is about Parliament and it's about
the Church of England funly enough but
there is a character in it who is a
speaker who is a scurvy little so and so
and he he does H have a wife indeed but
no it is fiction and it's about
parliamentary corruption sure but it's
also to do with the cultural uh decline
of traditionalism in Britain today and a
complete lack of self-belief among the
traditionalists well our institutions
have uh have lost their credibility
that's not fiction that's not fiction
and you know the Britain that that uh
the outside world sees is a Britain with
the royal family and with magnificent
buildings and with all the old panoply
of Empire but actually the institutions
of Britain today many of them are
spiritually at least are husks and they
have lost that self-belief which was so
important you are a Christian man a
church of England man um Once Upon a
Time Parliament and indeed the country
was uh quite identifiably perhaps
hypocritically but quite identifiably uh
a Christian country but even the
Christians in Britain are not very
Christian anymore are they no there has
been a decline in churchgoing certainly
in numbers but I think on the whole it
is the Britain is still very much a
Christian country it draws it its its
modern understanding of Tolerance from
uh uh old-fashioned Christianity which
wasn't as tolerant but it takes its
Creed from that and my belief and partly
what I'm trying to reflect in this book
is that I think that that uh tolerance
and that that cultural uh liberality the
the liberal nature of of our culture has
been pushed about as far as it can
possibly go go without it starting to
damage itself and uh this is being seen
not just I'm not just talking about here
the the threat from uh uh from islamists
but I'm talking about the threat from
things like selfishness and uh the lack
of self-discipline and the way that we
have as a as a country have lost the
idea of community and of of of social um
generosity through capitalism perhaps
well capitalism is to my mind is a very
good thing in many ways I don't think
it's just to do with the the nature of
wealth creation it's to do with
something deeper inside us greed yes
greed and I think greed can greed is not
necessarily the same as capitalism uh so
it's to do with the way that we relate
to other people and uh it's to do with
uh for instance the idea that we can
just rely on the state rather than
relying on society the state and Society
are very different things indeed uh Mrs
stelo the The High Priestess whom I'm uh
guessing you admired uh up to a point
with with very much with with uh with
limitations there I mean she was she was
misquoted on that she but the she I
think was she was she said there was no
such thing as Society well she didn't
quite say that it has been taken out of
context a little but she was I think
trying to get across the idea that just
relying on the state just saying oh the
state can look after that that's not
good enough we have to we have to look
after things from from a smaller level
from our Villages and from our towns and
from our neighborhood
but but her lesson from the parable of
the Good Samaritan was that uh that that
the Good Samaritan had made piles of
money uh before he happened upon this
poor wretch otherwise wouldn't have been
able to help him well yes I mean she was
easily caricatured Mrs thater she was
not without her
faults let's talk about Parliament
because I uh I'm an admirer of course of
your novels but uh your parliamentary
sketch writing is uh Peerless there have
been other greats Matthew Paris uh the
late and great Frank Johnson Lev was a
very good one as well I I never read him
uh I'll take your advice and uh and read
some of his past columns but yours is uh
way well up there with these uh Giants
um but of course like every other writer
your material is all you've got to work
with uh I'm guessing that the Fusion of
Scottish nationalists a kind of Highland
Division has made the house a bit more
interesting for a sketch writer has it
it's made it different and difference is
always important for journalists because
we like the new but you don't
necessarily need to have uh a House of
Commons full of admirable um brilliant
people to make an interesting column
sometimes failure can be very
interesting to to write about and funny
to write about and what one tries to do
as a sketch writer and I think it's a
very it's a it's a a journalist istic
genre particular to Britain you try to
drill down into the character of the
people that you are that who are who are
passing the laws and so if those people
happen happen to be uh inadequate uh or
or or or lazy or downright stupid then
you know that can give you that's just
as interesting that's just as
interesting as to have a a house full of
ciceros so it was a quite tulous year
with the general election the
re-election of the Tories and then the
labor leader election what was your
highlight within Parliament well uh I
think the arrival of Jeremy Corbin as
the labor leader uh the leader of the
opposition in Britain has been very
interesting because he is not your off
the peg modern uh photogenic soundbite
politician and uh I mean I think he's
doing terrible things to the labor party
which sadly enough but you know it's
certainly interesting to see that as the
theater of politics yeah cuz you see it
all from above happening yes and it's
also been you know it's been unexpected
uh and G that that again you know is
very uh interesting but one of the
highlights which I'm sure George would
not have enjoyed was the speech of
Hillary Ben about uh the bombing about
taking whether or not Britain should
join the bombing action over Syria and
that was really interesting because
there you had the internal party dramas
which were played out in front of us of
uh Hillary Ben who is the uh the the
labor Foreign Affairs spokesman making a
speech next to him his party leader
disagree with everything and that was
fascinating to see that being played out
on the stage of pass of Comm it was
extremely dramatic as a piece of oratory
I didn't actually think much of it and
well it was well it was well delivered
George it was badly written it was it
was nothing as a piece of work it didn't
have interesting words but he delivered
it in a way that was first of all it was
great because it was unexpected from him
and he's really not not until now had
given us any idea he could do that but
also he turned to his own benches and
delivered the speech to his own Riven
party and that that's what made it it's
funny in Reverse I don't know if you
were there it might have been slightly
before your time a man who passed this
year uh Lord how Sir Jeffrey how as he
then was in the house the day he didn't
deliver it well because he never
delivered anything well but the words
were very very powerful when he made the
speech which effectively ended Mrs
Thatcher's leadership now I was there as
a piece of parliamentary drama that was
a truly extraordinary day wasn't it and
it was because in oratory context is
terribly important you know you can have
the most boring words delivered in in a
certain context which can become
brilliant and you can have brilliant
words delivered in a boring context
which die but there was how who was the
ultimate Mouse suddenly roared and he
roared against there was the
impenetrable Mrs thater who was suddenly
brought down by this unlikely person yes
I was there that day that was one of the
early days when I was sketching and the
uh the the the great now also late this
year uh Lord Healey Dennis Healey was
the a very big figure in labor in
government and in opposition he once
said that being attacked by the late Sir
Jeffrey was like being Savaged by a dead
sheep yes and uh that was the making of
both men in some ways indeed to some
extent um now Cameron's back in looking
very uh very pleased with themselves
looking very pleased with himself very
PL
uh is he going to last the 5 years you
think or will someone like Boris try toh
overturn him I would be surprised if he
lasts the whole five years because he
has said he's going to go and the nature
of uh human nature is to to want to have
someone someone else want to take over
from him just shortly before the end uh
I think he's going to have a failure in
his negotiations in Europe and that
might hasten that might bring early make
early his his departure and uh then will
be a terrible cat fight in the
conservative party to succeed him and
that will I suspect do the conservatives
damage as will the whole European R so
at the moment there are the
conservatives looking very very
confident but there are tumultuous times
ahead and this may be seen as the high
point of their fortunes indeed and I
wouldn't put money on them winning the
uh European Union referendum despite all
my problems with fists and xenophobes of
all kinds no I I'll be campaigning for a
withdrawal you will I will uh and I
think uh we're currently about 50/50 in
the polls and yes and it all depends I I
it's caught up with uh the immigration
stuff which is electric for a large part
of the population whether or not that
part of the population votes may be a
different matter and of course uh if
Cameron campaigns to stay in and the
vote goes against him and we pull out
especially if Boris has shrewdly
positioned himself uh what's your take
on him Boris likely to be the next
leader uh everything when you go around
the street with Boris it is
extraordinary to see the uh reaction uh
of the public to him the only person who
comes close to it in my uh experience is
Alex sammon if you go out on the street
with Alex sammon people run up to say
hello to him and it's the same with
Boris so there is an excitement and a
hunger in the public for more Boris but
this man Boris is not disciplined he
doesn't have the uh sort of rigor that
you need to be a prime minister The
Daily Grind of being of leadership and
he's indecisive and he hasn't made up
his mind yet about the European question
if you haven't made up your mind about
that yet this is one of the big
questions in British politics in
European politics then it strikes me
there's something wrong with you and uh
he lacks the seriousness he's too
ambitious in some ways he's he's a bit
of a goal hanger as we used to say the
sort of Center forward he used to stand
just near the opposition go waiting for
the easy goal wouldn't do the hard work
in Midfield Quenton let's as always
fascinating to hear you thank you very
much for joining us on the Sputnik
coming up after the break it's only
Brian
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Eno welcome back to Sputnik Brian Eno
has been a major figure in popular music
and culture for most of my life from
Roxy Music to Robert Wyatt producing
album for Coldplay and you twoo when
they were great and much much else
besides but his political commitment for
justice and peace against war after War
have made him stand out from the crowds
he has marched and sung the songs of
Freedom with Millions many mere children
when he commanded the stage with a
synthetizer it is an honor therefore to
have him on board the Sputnik on this
Boxing Day Brian thanks for joining us
uh I know uh you don't want to talk
about your music career so let me just
ask you how you segued or what made you
segue from being such a major rock star
uh to being a person next to us on
marches in London it's not
normal well I always had political
interests in fact I was I was a sort of
anarchist when I was a kid in the old
sense of a philosophical Anarchist of
thinking what was it possible to run
things without governments at all or
what was the minimum amount of
government that would be needed so I was
I was sort of into the theory of
politics for a long time but the action
followed as you say rather late so apart
from being a student and demonstrating
against Vietnam and so on there was a
long period when I wasn't physically
involved in anything political and then
when I started to see after thater
really the the end of what they call the
Golden Age of capitalism I think the
period postwar up until Thatcher and
Reagan when I started to see things
being clawed back so that workers rights
started to disappear again um welfare
started to be shrunk all the things that
had really been the product of you know
A Century of sort of socialistic
thinking actually when I started to see
those eroding then I became more engaged
again it was a brief moment of social
democracy really rather than socialism
from my point of view it was a very
brief period when you think of it yes
from 1945 to 1979 y years even in the in
the life of one man or woman that's uh
not that significant in the history of a
country it's a mere fraction of a second
uh and Britain has changed for the worse
very considerably uh since then but not
many people who I in Fair ing from all
this stardom that you are comfortably
off not many people who are comfortably
off uh care about that what's different
about
you well actually I think I think quite
a few people care about it um they don't
think that there's much they can do
about it which is which is slightly
different so they don't get involved you
know it's it's it looks complicated it's
made to look complicated I think it
isn't as complicated as it looks I think
the story has been
confabulated so in order to keep you out
of it actually the it's been made to
seem like an area that you couldn't ever
approach you couldn't have opinions
about and indeed you know if you see
when um public figures who aren't
politicians get involved in politics the
first accusation they always get in
England anyway is what right do you have
to talk about this I've heard this a lot
you know people saying what would you
know about it and you think well what do
politicians know about it sources of
information do they have that I don't
have most of the information is
available now actually so so any
intelligent person is able to make a
judgment um so I think the first thing
that I would say to everybody is it's
not rocket science actually there are
there are some simple social processes
going on that that we have a right to be
involved in and to intervene
in well Ryan you were uh at the
Forefront uh speaking against Israeli
oppression in Palestine uh past year and
in the Gaza war
2014 um you were along with some other
major stars from Hollywood as well
speaking against the aggression but some
of them paid the price for it like the
actress penelopi Cruz and her
husband how how have they um I'm trying
to understand that when artists trying
to speak against this major issue of the
Middle East the response among the among
the among your own circles basically
well again the first thing that people
always say is what do you know about it
so again it's it's turned into a much
more complicated story than it is the
story to me is very simple there's a a
people that are being colonized
essentially and their land is being
taken from them illegally that's that's
very simple and everything seems to grow
out of that but um that's constantly
denied and hid
within stories of Rocket attacks and
tunnels and blah blah blah so again it's
it's made to look too complicated and of
course I get a lot of reaction from um
pro-israeli or Pro Zionist um people who
say you have no right to talk about this
or why are you picking on Israel that's
that's the particularly frequent um
criticism I think uh you as well have
raised the Israeli pales
issue comparing it with South African
aparte do you compare the rise the the
voices from the artist against this
aparte to that era yes I do and I I hope
that it will have a similar effect I
mean I'm I have to say I'm slightly
equivocal about the um impact of BDS
though I support it I can also
understand why people wouldn't support
it and why they would think it's it's
better if I carry on with what I'm doing
um my as an artist you know so I don't I
I certainly wouldn't put pressure on
other artists to support BDS however as
far as I'm concerned that it's the best
thing I can do um for ex to give you an
example um poor Roger Waters who is now
being crucified daily for his support of
BDS all over the world you know Howard
Stern in his terrible ra program is um
absolutely laying into him with with no
mercy at all well this is at least this
is the minimum that you get out of it
the spark that you know it excites
Lauren Hill for example was supposed to
perform as well in Tel Aviv and in the
end he it was a long you know was long
he took a long time to consider it but
in the end he decided not to but was
very apologetic about it and that you
know this was a lot of response about it
a lot of people talked about and I think
that's a good start no
start not assume it as normal that's
that's absolutely true I think that
getting the conversation going is is
actually one of the important parts of
BDS it's it's not only the fact that
there's a cultural boycott of some kind
but it's the fact that that makes people
start talking about it so it keeps the
issue visible because you know
unfortunately what's happening in Gaza
for
example as soon as the you know after a
week it goes off the front pages so it's
it's always disappearing but it's always
going on and it isn't just going on in
the sense of um missile attacks and air
attacks it's going on in Daily kind of
humiliations and restrictions on freedom
for instance um I read the other day
that um the Israelis are now re redoing
all the road signs in Israel so that
they no longer carry the Arabic names of
any towns they now carry the arabized
Israeli names do you what I mean it is
uh an extraordinary thing you I I read
something you wrote that uh I found very
powerful you made the comparison to the
uh White settler colonization of what is
now the United States uh usurping the
indigenous people uh killing a lot of
them pushing them to the margins and uh
then watching them or not watching them
rot uh in essentially reservations I was
very close for very many years to the
late president Arafat and he used to
always insist we are not the red Indians
quite a politically incorrect phrase but
you know what he meant we are not going
to go he used to say into the museum uh
like uh the Indian culture uh in the
United States um but I I just wanted to
follow something up I I I certainly
won't name names but a major rock star
uh of acquaint uh was for a Time
involved with us uh on Middle Eastern
Palestinian matters and then pulled out
and when I asked them uh why they said
that the pressure in in Hollywood and in
in the music business and so on uh by
which they meant the the pressure of
losing money have you ever been subject
to that kind of commercial pressure to
desist from your criticisms of uh
Israeli
crimes no I haven't actually um but I I
should say I think that what's important
to most people most performers anyway is
not the commercial pressure I don't
think it's money they're worried about I
think if you think of the psychology of
performers they're people who like being
liked it matters to you to be liked and
to suddenly get a a kind of full-powered
Hose of vital directed at you U and it
really is virulent some of of this stuff
that comes towards you I'll show you my
scars yes exactly you would know yeah um
it's really shocking actually it's very
surprising for people who've been used
to audiences applauding them you know
and suddenly to get all of this uh
directed at them so I I think it's it's
really not the money that people are
worried about it's the it's suddenly
being the object of public contempt and
hatred you had a great line at the
demonstration outside Downing Street you
said uh to a man with a hammer
everything looks like a nail it's a very
very good line tell us what you meant by
it well we as a nation we're holding a
huge Hammer which we're very proud of
which is our defense structure you know
we've we've spend billions and billions
a year on it Far Far More Than People
realize actually and it's one of our
biggest industries defense is one of the
things that Britain does um in fact
we're one of the top five weapon sellers
in the world very few English people
know that um so here we are holding this
enormous hammer called weapons and so
whenever there's a problem that's the
first resort to solving it we don't
resort to what we were traditionally
supposed to be good at which was
diplomacy we resort to weaponry and you
know because we're in such close and
toxic alliance with America who has
exactly the same philosophy we we double
the amount that we do that so now we we
p in with the weapons and it's such a
stupid attempt at a solution it produces
as we can see from the history of this
Century let alone other ones we can see
that it immediately produces exactly the
wrong results and now we're allied with
um a country in the form of Saudi Arabia
who is our biggest buyer of weapons
actually that's our biggest customer um
so what is the chance that we're going
to actually say anything candid to to
them about the support for Isis that is
coming out of Saudi Arabia there's no
chance we're we're trying to fight this
war with with somebody who's supporting
the the enemy you know to whom we're
selling a lot of weapons from which
we're making a lot of money and some of
those weapons are ending up in the hands
of Isis yeah perhaps many of these
weapons apparently a lot of the Isis
weapons are left over from the Iraq War
um they've now been sort of repatriated
by ISIS and turn against us no it's it's
really the wrong entirely the wrong
solution you know we've got the hammer
but that isn't the nail um and hit it's
more like trying to hit a piece of
rubber it just keeps breaking and
stretching and turning up in other
places it's a tangled web we weave when
first we practice to deceive yeah Brian
you know it's been a pleasure having you
on board the Sputnik have the nice time
in the rest of the holiday alas that's
all we've got time for in the last show
of 2015
but there's more and you can stay in
touch through Twitter on rtor Sputnik
and on Facebook Sputnik on Russia Today
happy Boxing Day from me gatri and from
me George Galloway it's been marvelous
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