Welcome back to the Keiser Report, I’m Max Keiser.
Time now to turn to George Galloway, a Member of Parliament here in the UK.
George Galloway, welcome to the Keiser Report.
George Galloway, got to get to this right away.
You’re against Scottish Independence. Tell us the economic and monetary reasons for your position.
Well first of all it wouldn’t really be independence.
We’d still be in the European Union and we’d still have an unelected monarch as our head of state
and of course the question of which currency we would use is a moot one.
The Bank of England, the Treasury, would surely not
allow an independent country to operate the Pound
because that would be giving the Scottish government power without responsibility
and the Westminster authorities and the City would have no authority
over what the Scottish government, the newly independent Scottish state,
was doing with the currency, doing with rates of tax,
doing with interest rates and so on, so that’s an impossibility.
So the possibility emerges of joining the Euro. Well how’s that going?
Who in Scotland would be persuaded to go quietly into that good night?
There have been occasions when the Scottish independence movement
has floated the idea of Scotland as Iceland,
Scotland as, I don’t know, the Republic of Ireland before it sank
and of course the Republic of Ireland is in the Euro but the Icelanders are not
and we know the ash that enveloped the currency and
indeed the economy and the whole society there.
So the question of which money the independent Scottish state would use is a moot one.
But of course the more serious problems are that an independent Scotland
would trigger a race to the bottom for working people. Why?
Because without 71 anti-Conservative MPs coming from Scotland
which is precisely the number now- 71 anti-Conservatives, 1 Conservative-
there would be perpetually Conservative right-wing government in England
and in England the government would ensure, surely,
that rates of corporate taxation, personal taxation, public expenditure levels etc…
were so low that the Scottish government would have no alternative-
even if they weren’t enthusiastic about doing so, which they are-
of following them to the bottom
at which point, what price the so-called progressive, even socialist independent Scotland
that's projected by supporters of the SNP, what price that?
You would have two free market, Friedmanite, monetarist governments
chasing each other to the bottom
and I think the time would come quite soon that the Scottish people
would rue the day that they had broken up this country.
And my last point is less powerful now than it once was but it remains I think a fact
that in these storm-tossed times, to get out of an ocean liner and get into a rowing boat
which is what a country of 5 million, with the only
population in Western Europe that’s actually falling,
which is 4000 miles of coastline, oil and gas fast running out and huge tracts of the country empty,
that would be a very perilous choice for the Scottish people to make.
I mean I understand the pragmatic approach but does your heart match what your head is saying?
My heart really does, I’m against breaking up countries.
I’ve been against up the break-up of virtually every country.
I think the partition of India and then its repartition was a mistake.
I think the break-up of the former USSR, the break-up of the former Yugoslavia,
or Czechoslovakia now into two states,
has all been a big mistake, that in this world that we
have where huge powerful economic forces are at work,
that democratic states have to come together, not splinter asunder
and of course if it all goes wrong, what happens is a
rise in ethnic, sectarian tensions, national tensions
because if it didn’t work out the way the Scots hoped that it would, who’d be to blame?
Who’d be blamed for the fact that the Elysian fields promised
by the independence movement have not been delivered?
I understand that breaking-up countries, you’re against this idea of breaking-up countries
but without this kind of recourse for countries to revolt, as it were,
there is a consolidation of power always at the top of the hierarchy
and we espouse democratic principles but they’re few and far between; power tends to corrupt.
But I wanted to ask you about a comment you make regarding independence, that socialism won’t work.
Your position is that Scotland would be socialist and that socialism doesn’t work?
Socialism in one country didn’t work even when the country
concerned stretched from the Urals to Vladivostok.
The USSR failed as a socialist country, with all those people, all that land, all those resources.
Scotland has few resources, hardly any people
and would be attached forever, organically, to a permanently Tory England.
So the idea that an independent Scotland could emerge as a kind of cold-water Cuba,
which is how it’s sold by some on the left in Scotland, is frankly absurd.
And when it became clear that it was absurd, as I say, the search would be on for the scapegoats.
But let me address if I may the point you just made because you’re right,
I’m not suggesting that instead of breaking-up countries
we have a kind of Super-EU run on the current lines.
There are many serious problems, fundamental problems, about that model.
But the answer to that is to democratise that model,
not to atomise us all into independent states.
Every state will have an army, a navy, an air force, a chain of embassies around the world,
we’ll have bureaucracies, we’ll have a flag and a border
and the temptation with borders is that you stand at them shouting ‘Boo!’ at Johnny Foreigner.
That’s what’s wrong with the Farage/UKIP perspective for the UK
and it’s what’s wrong with the Alex Salmond/SNP perspective for Scotland.
Let’s talk about this idea of socialism for a second because if I'm understanding correctly
you’re suggesting that in Scotland’s case it wouldn’t necessarily work
but it’s not a blanket condemnation of socialism as such
because of course the way that people view the world typically
is they break it into two opposing ideologies: socialism and capitalism.
I don’t think I could safely put you in the camp of a capitalist
so under the very crude definitions that we are forced
to live with, unfortunately, in this day and age,
there’s usually that split [of] socialism-capitalism.
If you’re not capitalism, you’re kind of socialism,
but you’re saying that it wouldn’t necessarily work for
Scotland, you’re just saying that in Scotland’s case,
you’re not saying socialism as such doesn't work
because obviously in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez- [you’re
a] big supporter there- that’s a socialist model.
So how do you fine-tune it?
Yeh, I mean socialism as a concept is not a busted flush
but it can only work where you have a critical mass of population, resources
and the ability to actually act independently. Scotland has none of these three things.
We would not be acting independently because we’d still
be tied to the English currency if the English agreed,
and they would only agree if we signed over any independent tools of changing the economy…
Let me jump in, because what I’m hearing as a tactician,
you're saying this is not necessarily a great idea.
Let's roll this on... You’re an MP for the Respect Party in the House of Commons
and obviously the Respect Party wants to increase its influence
and you want to bring in other MPs under the Respect Party.
You mention Nigel Farage- here’s a guy who was really
on the outlying force- UKIP started on the fringe.
And they’ve really made their way into mainstream [politics].
As a party leader for Respect, are there any lessons [to be] learned from that?
Number One, from the tactical point of view, putting aside the politics for a second,
as a mere tactician Nigel Farage seems like he’s done a good job.
He has and I try to do the same kind of thing.
Be honest, be straight, be real, be a human being, not a speak-your-weight machine,
say what you mean and mean what you say.
Farage is perceived in the country to be all of these things and I try to do the same.
Of course, selling right-wing nationalist ideas to the simple-minded
is an easier task the selling left-wing, progressive, socialist ideas,
especially in the sea of media power all around us
which is deeply hostile to the kind of things we talk about.
Let me ask you a question:
it seems that Nigel Farage’s popularity is not really home-grown, it came from foreign media.
Nigel Farage is a star on RT because he’s been on RT’s shows
and this raises global awareness to the point where the UK media couldn’t ignore him anymore.
This speaks to the fact that a huge institution like the BBC,
very centralised, autocratic institution here in the UK, is losing its grip;
Murdoch’s side of the picture, certainly, and this global media, alternative media-
I know you’re big on Facebook and Twitter- how’s that playing into your political ambitions?
I mean I think you’re right, there comes a point at which
the mainstream- so-called lamestream- British media
cannot ignore the phenomenon that are rising in the country.
One of them is a detestation of the British state in Scotland, of the European Union in England.
Others are of what I call the three cheeks of the same backside,
the three rulers of the mainstream parties
who have an iron-clad consensus behind war, privatisation, austerity.
The media, the prevailing orthodoxy-
Dr Johnson said the grimmest dictatorship of them all
is the dictatorship of the prevailing orthodoxy-
and the prevailing orthodoxy would have prevailed were it not for, as you say, foreign media,
the existence of Twitter, Facebook, the Internet, the ether, the cyber wars,
ideological wars that are going on, they have climbed
over the walls of that prevailing orthodoxy.
Now of course on the foreign media side,
your appearance before Congress in America just a few short years ago testifying,
where you slammed the gentleman who was asking you the questions, and I wanted to ask you something:
I was watching that event and it seems to me that it was a great example
of how education in the two countries is vastly different
because in this country of course, people grow up
debating and in the Houses of Parliament debates are key
and you see [it in] Question Time every Wednesday.
In the US there’s no such tradition at all.
It was like watching Muhammad Ali go after a gnat.
I don’t even remember the guy’s name [who] you were debating…
Ex-senator Norman Coleman.
Ex-senator Norman Coleman! But it was so one-sided!
I mean you’re a brilliant orator in your own right
but this is a system that produces, in the House of Commons, a lot more debate.
We have about a minute left, you know the system so well, how do you contrast the two?
Well it’s a good point, Senator Coleman, [as] George W.
Bush would say, mis-underestimated me.
He thought I was just a working class son of immigrants from a Scottish city,
how could I stand up to the princes of the Senate?
And therein lays the point.
These Senators regard themselves as princes and other people treat them as if they were princes.
No one goes into the court of the Sultan and speaks the truth to them.
I got up-close, personal and punched the living daylights out of them.
It’s good you made the Muhammad Ali analogy. I’m a former boxer myself.
Rocky Marciano was the model I purposefully set out to follow on that day.
I decided not to be Muhammad Ali, not to be Mike Tyson,
just to be Rocky Marciano, remorselessly punching, punching, punching.
But as a boxer I can tell you that you see in the other guy’s eyes
the point at which he wishes he was no longer there.
In boxing you can throw in the towel
but in politics, in front of live TV cameras from all over the world,
you simply cannot and there was no escaping. He could run but he couldn’t hide.
Look it up on YouTube, it’s George Galloway vs. Norm Coleman who is long gone
but George Galloway of course is on the ascent.
Thanks so much for being on the Keiser Report.
Pleasure.
That’s going to do it for this edition of the Keiser
Report with me, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert.
I’d like to thank our guest George ‘Gorgeous’ Galloway,
a Member of Parliament for the Respect Party.