# Transcript

## Iain Stewart, Matthew Parris, Bianca Todd and Ivor Gaber: 'What do you think are the two most important political events of the twenty-first century?'

Iain Stewart
I've thought about this a lot. I mean, how do you distil down so many important issues? But if I look at the twenty-first century, what's happened in the last 14 years, I think two principal events must stand out. And that is the financial crash that happened in 2008, and the huge shock waves that that sent round the world. And the other would be a collection of events, and that would be the various terrorist attacks on the West: on the twin towers, in London, in Madrid and other places round the world. So, I think, those two events are the ones in recent years that have most shaped political debate around the world.
There was a very painful realisation that the western world was living far beyond its means. We'd allowed at government level, at corporate level and at personal level too much easy credit. And we were spending at a level that we could not sustain. So we have had to seriously rethink how we fund public services, how we encourage economic growth, and that had a huge impact on the tone and terms of political debate. The terrorist attacks in the West, well that's been a very rude awakening, that the conflicts that exist round the world – on a religious basis, on a territorial basis – aren't just conflicts over there, out of our reach, that they can very quickly be on our doorstep and have huge impacts on our way of life. Not just the terrorist incidents themselves, which causes, you know, enormous loss of life and suffering, but the knock-on effects on what level of security do we have to provide. And that can be at one level, what screening happens at airports, before you get on to a plane, how much we should monitor the cyber-traffic, and you get into debates about liberty – to what extent should the state be able to read emails and see who's talking to whom in order to protect our western liberal values, but by doing it in a way which sometimes encroaches on it? So suddenly you get into all these different debates, that stem from one or two – or more than one or two – terrorist actual incidents. It does impact on the whole body politic, and goes into lots of different areas that we have to discuss and decide.
Matthew Parris
It's always difficult singling out one or two events as being the most important, but two that were important was the formation of a coalition government after the 2010 general election, when a lot of people, including me, didn't think that coalition went with the grain of British politics and didn't believe that it could last. And actually, we've had a pretty solid government for five years and it has worked. And that will cast a light forward into the rest of the century, so that whenever anybody suggests coalitions now, we know that we did have one and it did work.
The other, perhaps a rogue event, was the vote by the House of Commons not to intervene militarily in Syria, defeating the government on that issue. I've a feeling that that marked some kind of a turning of the tide, some kind of a dawning of understanding, amongst the people and amongst their representatives, of the limitations of Britain's powers and responsibilities beyond our shores. We are a diminished country, much diminished from what we were a century and two centuries ago. I think there's been a little bit of a delay in our coming to terms with that, but I, that vote seemed to me to suggest that we were coming to terms with it.
Bianca Todd
When you think about the two significant events in the twenty-first century, in terms of politics, for me the two issues are, when Tony Blair came into power with the Labour Party, for too long we had lived under the grey cloud of the Conservative Party, and all of the capitalist idealist policies that they had brought about. So it provided the country with an opportunity to reflect, and think, actually, there's a chance – the song 'Things can only get better' really resonated with the community. However, when we look back at that particular point in history, we realise that actually we were handed a poisoned chalice because Tony Blair did not deliver anything that he said he was going to. I think that one of the best things someone ever said to me was that 'Don't forget that people are human, regardless of their other identities'. And I think that actually this applies very significantly with Tony Blair, that actually, regardless of his Labour politics, he was a human first and actually, it's very few politicians that aren't corruptible. I'm lucky enough to come from a family where my granddad was offered to be a lord three times, as was Jack Jones and Moss Evans before them, and they are the only trade union leaders to not become lords. So I'm very aware of how difficult it is when you're at the top to keep the values that you had when you were at the bottom. So I think the journey of Tony Blair is a very significant one for all of us to reflect on in the left.
The second event that I think is significant links into Tony Blair, and that is when Margaret Thatcher died. And the reason why I think this is significant is because it actually gave people a chance to reflect and to be liberated from the years of misery that they had suffered at her hands. A good example of that is the miners, who in the '70s went through the horrific strike and actually spent such a lot of time fighting and surviving, that what we then saw was a kind of wanting to just move on and ignore what had happened because you just had to get on with your life. So Margaret Thatcher dying gave us on the left an opportunity to reflect and to celebrate our legacy and celebrate our history, and to actually right some of the wrongs that she had actually done.
So those two events are very interesting because they all link right back to the difference between the new kind of politics that I want to get involved in and the old type of politics which is about people and power, rather than grassroots communities and making things better.
Ivor Gaber
The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has had a profound effect on our world. There are some who claim that it stabilised Iraq. It's caused terrible havoc, and we're paying that price.
The other most important event also relates to current affairs because if the world's focus is not on the Middle East, it's on the Ukraine–Russia problem. And that is a direct result of the other most important event which was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, in 1989, 1990. And in many countries it's proved to be a good thing. Think of the Baltic States, which were part of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and so forth – all of those countries of eastern Europe have benefited immensely from the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it's also led to huge instability, mainly in the former parts of the Soviet Union which were to the south of Russia, and Russia itself, instability in countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, or dictatorships rather than instability, but in particular the ongoing problems in relations between Ukraine and Russia.
But on a global scale the fall of the Berlin Wall really brought to an end the big cleavage of twentieth century politics, which was capitalism or communism. That simple division, if you like, between communists and capitalists, was replaced by a period where it looked like the free market reigned supreme and then, linked to that – and I'm afraid I'm going to tell you three important events – was the world economic collapse which led to the global economic crisis of 2008. Which indicated actually the free markets weren't the way forward either. So since 2008 we've had a very complicated world view, that clearly communism had failed as a system, but then unbridled capitalism failed as well.