00:00How would we know that we're beginning to imagine a different world, even within this hyper real one?
00:05You asked what real change might look like. And I think it's a really, I mean, that is a really
00:10interesting question for liberals and radicals, because there is a hunger for change out there among millions of people who
00:16feel sort of insecure, uncertain about the future and do want something, do want that to change.
00:24I think that change only comes through a big imaginative idea, a sort of picture of another kind of future,
00:30which connects with that fearfulness in the back of people's minds and offers them a release from it.
00:35That's the key thing. But I think the question for liberals and radicals is that they are always suspicious of
00:43big ideas.
00:43That's what lurks underneath the liberal mindset. And the reason is, and they're quite right in a way, is look
00:51what happened last time.
00:52When millions of people got swept up in a big idea, look up the last hundred years at what happened
00:58in Russia and then in Germany.
01:00The point is, is that change, political change is frightening. It's scary. It's thrilling because it is dynamic and it's
01:09doing something to change the world.
01:10But it is scary because it can change things in ways where nothing is secure.
01:16It's like being in an earthquake. Even the solid ground underneath you begins to move and things dissolve that you
01:22think are solid and real.
01:23And I think that the question liberals and the left have to face at the moment is a really sort
01:30of difficult question, which is, do you really want change?
01:34Do you really want it? Because if you do, many of them might find themselves in a very uncertain world
01:42where they might lose all sorts of things.
01:45I mean, what we're talking about in many cases is people who are sort of at the center of society
01:51at the moment.
01:52They're not out of the margins. They would have a lot to lose from real political change because it really
01:57would change things in the structure of power.
02:01Or, and this is the brutal question, do you just want things to change a little bit?
02:06Do you just want the banks to be a little bit nicer, say?
02:10Or people to be a little more respectful of each other's identities?
02:14All of which is good.
02:15But basically, you carry on living in a nice world where you tinker with it.
02:23Those, that's the key question, but you can't just sit there forever, worrying about big ideas, because there are millions
02:31of people out there who do want change.
02:34And the key thing is, they feel they've got nothing to lose.
02:38You might have lots to lose, but they feel they've got absolutely nothing to lose.
02:43But at the moment, they're being led by the right, so things won't remain the same, but society may go
02:50off in ways that you really don't want.
02:52So what you, well, I think, I mean, in answer to your question, what you need is a powerful vision
02:57of the future, with all its dangers.
03:01But it's also quite thrilling.
03:02It will be an escape from the staticness of the world that we have today.
03:07And to do that, you've got to engage with the giant forces of power that now run the world at
03:13the moment.
03:14You might, and the key thing is, is in confronting those powers and trying to transform the world, you might
03:22lose a lot.
03:23This is a sort of forgotten idea, is that actually you surrender yourself up to a big idea.
03:29And in the process, you might lose something.
03:32But you'd actually gain in a bigger sense, because you've changed the world for the better.
03:37I know it sounds soppy, but sort of this is the forgotten thing about politics, is that you give up
03:43some of your individualism to something bigger than yourself.
03:47You surrender yourself, and it's a lost idea.
03:50And I think, really, in answer to your question, is you can spot real change happening when you see people
03:57from the liberal middle classes beginning to give themselves up to something.
04:01Surrender themselves for something bigger than themselves, and at the moment, there is nothing like that in the liberal imagination.
04:23If you look at the middle school where the exists in real life, it is the British middle class, and
04:24it is four decades away.
04:24The British bottom issue is a big trolley.
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