05/11/2021 - Bigger and Better Buffets

DAN RICHARDS: Hi, there. I'm Dan Richards. I'm the producer of Mark and Carrie. If you like this show, check out the Watson Institute's other podcast, Trending Globally. Each week on that show, . We talk with leading experts about some of the biggest issues in politics and public policy today.

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CARRIE NORDLUND: Hello. And welcome to Mark and Carrie. Hello, Mark, I can see you're still in your music room.

MARK BLYTH: I am still stuck in the basement of musical destiny. Yes, that is correct.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Great. So are you recording some new singles?

MARK BLYTH: It's going to be a 10-part concept album based around the word "amagama."

CARRIE NORDLUND: Wow.

MARK BLYTH: No. That's total nonsense. No. It's actually just a playroom. It's really-- there's no record. I mean, I could do recording, but I just can't be bothered. Because at the end of the day, who on Earth wants to listen to a 53-year-old white guy songs? It's just a really bad idea.

This is why-- this is why U2 are no longer superstars, right? Because at the end of the day, they're now like 60-year-old white guys, and it's like, "nah, we're done. That's it."

CARRIE NORDLUND: That's funny. Well, you never know. You could be doing a nostalgia tour or be nostalgic for some of those listeners out there.

We're back, and it's May. And there's, as always, lots going on around the world. And we're going to start with Facebook "Supreme Court." And I was looking this up because I wanted to make sure I got it right. But the official name is the Facebook Oversight Board, which to me just sounded so bureaucratic and like, old communist mother Russia.

It's a five-member board, you know, of 20 people. It's rotating. And then they deliver the verdict. And the one that made the news was whether or not former President Trump would be allowed to have his Facebook account back or not. What was your take on this whole process?

MARK BLYTH: Well, I thought, to use a great British cricketing expression, I thought they played a blinder with this one. Because the person who runs the ethics side of Facebook, which is a bit like running the sort of-- how can I put it?-- the ESG for Satan, is Nick Clegg, who used to run the Liberal Democrats, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yup.

- So then I'm sure he came up with this wheeze of, let's have a Supreme Court. So when I think oversight board, I agree with you, I think bureaucratic. But I also think the type of thing is like the oversight board for some small club in middle England.

The oversight board for-- the oversight board for the finance committee of the cricket club, it does nothing. It has no power whatsoever. So they recruited all these worthies, ex-journalists, human rights people, whatever, and said, well, you decide this. And they basically got together and said, do you smell a stitch-up here? I mean, do you think that basically, they've just asked us to do this so that they don't have to make the decision?

And what they did was they just, bang, kicked it right back and said, over to you, Zuck, because you got no standards, no procedures, no guidelines. You need to work all that out before we can come to a decision. We are not going to carry the can for this one, back to you. So I thought they did exactly what needed to be done.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, I just-- so I was interested in the people involved in it, you're right, like Nick Clegg, another former prime minister of Denmark, you know, former circuit court judges from the US. So I was interested in the makeup of the panel.

MARK BLYTH: I wonder how much they're getting paid.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, I wonder that too. And Nick Clegg is the head of global affairs or something like that. But anyway, in any case, I do think it was interesting, too, that they really showed that the emperor doesn't [? have ?] doesn't have much behind the curtain.

And did you-- in such a public way as well-- I mean, you know, who knows whether it will have any implications for the future. But at least it showed that the panel was actually being serious about what they were taking on.

MARK BLYTH: Well, mainly because if they just did the ruling themselves, they know that they would have 75 million being Republicans after their blood.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So you're not going to do that unless there's an extremely clear set of guidelines that you can actually say, no, here's why we made this decision. They gave them nothing. He kicked the ball to them. They went, no, that's toxic, and kicked the ball back.

So it'll be interesting to see what they do with it next. My basic idea here is that they just want to get them back on the platform because he's great for numbers.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: That's it.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I was thinking the same thing for Twitter too. I mean, there are several articles recently that the world seems much calmer because people aren't worrying about what's going to show up on Twitter. But then I thought, well, I mean, Twitter, and Facebook, et cetera, I mean, they have to be thinking exactly to your point. Like, we're losing eyes. We need to have those eyeballs on us, wondering what's going on every second of the day.

MARK BLYTH: And the guy's an eyeball generator. It's as simple as that. The one I always used to say was, what happens to CNN when Trump's gone? Because their business model collapses. And it turned out I wasn't far wrong.

Ed Luce in The Financial Times runs Swamp Notes, which is this little thing that you can get from them if you subscribe to the FT. And he had the number. And their business, literally, their revenues were down 40%.

CARRIE NORDLUND: 40%. Jeez.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, exactly. So you can imagine the irony of like, the liberal network that tells the truth, basically praying that Trump comes back to save their business model.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, I've been watching, spoiling myself, which is-- or treating myself to little cable news in the morning, and which is actually just torture. But

MARK BLYTH: I should say, is that your definition of treat?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I know. Instead, it's just total. I don't know why I do it to myself. But they're really scraping. They're like, today, President Biden said red. And his secretary, press secretary, said blue. They're clearly not on the same page. And so it's just, yeah, it's just not to the extent. But they try to reach back.

And I think some of this is around Liz Cheney, and she's losing, she's going to lose. I think the vote's tomorrow, going to lose her leadership position, outvoted on Wednesday. And I was texting with one of my friends.

And he said, why do people care about this? She's the number three in the Republican Party of the House of Representatives. Does anyone even know who she is except the daughter of former Darth Vader vice president?

And I thought, yeah, you're probably right. No one cares. And it's just the insider baseball trying to pump up whatever, the news content.

MARK BLYTH: No. Absolutely. I do think the one thing that is more interesting than that in American politics, and I want your take on this, is the Arizona recount and then the Florida whole voter restriction thing.

Is this really just evidence that at the end of the day, not just that Trump's hold is still there, you must agree with the leader, and you must agree with the big lie, that ultimately, the Republicans really are willing to just dispense with democracy for power? I mean, is that really where we-- I mean are we literally like, this is what happens when democracy is dying moment?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I mean, you want something there's a little bit more glamorous, I think, as an explanation. But just like old school political science, it is just about-- it is just about power. And they're just-- I mean, the people, the elected officials, are just thinking this gets my people excited. And it moves them to the voting booth. And that's all it is. It's about maintenance of power.

I mean, Kevin McCarthy, I saw on Twitter, someone said, why did we ever think that Kevin McCarthy didn't sleep well at night? He's just fine. He's made-- he's decided that he wants to be Speaker of the House or whatever he wants to be. And that's what his angle is. So why are we suddenly thinking that he's going to have some sort of crisis? He never has.

So I do think it's about power. It's about maintaining, getting, the majority back in order to have your power. But I do think just in terms of chess, Republican Democrat politics stuff, that is also the big lie. And the voter restrictive laws in Florida and the Arizona recount also keeps the base excited for the Democrats as well.

So I mean, both of these narratives, I think, keep things going. And especially going into Twenty-Twenty-Two, both sides are hoping that it just keeps everybody excited and then moves them on election day.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah it's funny you should put it that way. So I was reading this book by a sociologist called Lane Kenworthy, called Social Democratic Economics, which is not the most exciting talking title in the world. But basically, what he's saying is all the stuff about America can be like Denmark. It's not as crazy as you think. Because it's really just about extending the programs we have and making them better and all that sort of stuff.

But anyway, he had a line on this about money and politics, basically, wouldn't money in politics-- doesn't money in politics means this will never happen. And this is when you think about it, there's so much money in politics. What is the effect of the marginal dollar? It's

Not as if one side is massively spending the other? But they're spending more money, probably, for diminishing returns. And I was thinking that's very similar to what you were talking about there in terms of how do you restrict the vote? What effect does the marginal law have on doing this, given that it's all going to be contested in court?

So given it's all going to be contested and some will be overturned and all the rest of it, and then people find workarounds to do it and all the rest of it, maybe a mile from the polling station you'll hand out water, that sort of stuff, you know. And then they'd have to have a law against this.

Maybe we're just getting to a point were we've exhausted. these strategies. And it's all just about keeping bases excited. Because elections are decided by such a tiny fraction of the electorate.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. No. That's such a good point that the cost-benefit analysis that they're doing is, OK, so maybe this doesn't go into effect. But just the fact that we're pushing it forward does something. And then if it does go into effect, then this would help us at the 0.01%, which is enough for us to win the election. Yeah.

Vaccine production, I mean, the US, god.

MARK BLYTH: No, come on. There was no segue on that. I was expecting an elegant segue.

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, no, god.

MARK BLYTH: Do you want that one again?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Your expectations are far too high. OK, yeah, give me another. Give me another try here. The US, we're so selfish in terms of barely giving any of our vaccines to any other country. And we're really keeping it all to ourselves. That was terrible.

MARK BLYTH: No. There was no segue. That was just an introduction to a different topic. But I was hoping for something along the lines of maybe like, OK, so moving from the tiny, terrorized majority that decides elections to the tiny amount of vaccines we are giving the rest of the world--

CARRIE NORDLUND: That was smooth. That was really nice.

MARK BLYTH: That was good.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Thank you. So let's go there.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Five stars.

MARK BLYTH: So thank you. What's been happening then is that large developing countries like India and Brazil have done what they've done before quite successfully, which is going to the WTO, the World Trading Organization, which we now believe again because we were no longer in Trump land.

And they've said, how about you basically suspend the patent on the vaccine because it's too expensive? And Biden went, OK. And the Europeans went, what? What are you-- what are you doing?

Now the weird thing is it's not as if, there's no French manufacturer that's going to lose out on this one. There is like half-German outfit which is BioNTech But that's not really it. It's more sort of, once again, they just felt blindsided by this.

And also there's a lot of thought-- I'd say rather than evidence-- that this isn't really what's going to matter. Because the thing is, the way the vaccine production has moved as I understand it, is for a long time, we had all this stuff about there's no new antibiotics because there's no money in it. There's no new vaccines because there's no money in it.

Well, it turns out when you have a global pandemic, it really forces the mind. And what happens is it turns out that there's technologies off-the-shelf that you can no use that were never part of the conversation and suddenly will become incredibly powerful. And this is the mRNA transfer technology that's behind the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

And the issue with this stuff is less the patent on it. You get to make it, and you have to pay a fortune. It's the fact that the tech that you need to make it-- it's a technology transfer issue-- you're going to have to send that to India and set it up and scale it up and all the rest of it, to be worth it, in which case you might as well just double your production where you have it and then give out the vaccines.

And we can talk then if this is really about the cost, et cetera, et cetera. So I just thought that was quite interesting that we think about this very much in a mindset from 10 years ago. And from 10 years ago, it's the AIDS basically, the thing that got all this going was years and 20 years ago now.

Brazil basically said to the WTO that keeping proprietary patents on AIDS medicines was basically destroying the public health system. And they said, you shouldn't do this under the trade agreement. And the WTO went, OK. And America went, what?

And then we all adapted. And then AIDS stopped being a thing. And I think they were using that model in their head. But now that the tech has changed so much, it's not clear that's the model.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: It's not clear that's really the issue. But I just think it was funny that the Europeans freaked out even though the fact that they actually don't make any of the stuff directly very much.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, I do think about it as a tech transfer versus-- I mean, because I think of it as health, medicine, you know, someone's like, within a chemistry outfit with a microscope versus the tech transfer part of things.

There's been a few articles about-- and I've been really interested in wanting to talk to you about this-- about the way the EU negotiated or didn't negotiate contracts for the vaccines. And you know, there's been a lot of reporting of it like one set of negotiations were text messages and a meme or I mean, stuff like that.

Or that somehow the EU wasn't particularly great at negotiating these contracts. And this is why they've been so terrible. I'm just trying to picture it. Because in my head, I picture experts sitting at a table or talking on the phone, and not like a text of like, hey, you have a few million extra vaccines to spare. I mean, is this fair and accurate? Or what is your--

MARK BLYTH: I think it's pretty fair. And it's quite easy to understand. The EU isn't a government. It's a regulatory agency. It lives off of approximately 1% of Euro GDP transferred, which is a fair amount of cash. It's enough to run Brussels and Strasbourg and keep 60,000 bureaucrats and foie gras.

But what is it that they do? I mean, you know, they're like, I am director at 7G, and we do competition law, and we write directives that tell firms that they can't poop on a Tuesday or whatever it happens to be. So they're not exactly big negotiators.

Also, they have no foreign policy, right? There's no-- we saw the whole debacle in Turkey over Sofa-Gate recently, all this sort of stuff, right? They don't really have foreign policy. They don't really have a leader, or any of that sort of stuff. So it's not set up for negotiations.

And I understand the negotiations that they've always done have been with other governments. So even Brexit was with another government. Now, they have procurement. They buy stuff, but it's not usually this like, out of nowhere negotiate with these big multinational firms. And I think there was a kind of, let's say, developed country hubris.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes.

MARK BLYTH: So basically you know, it's us. You know we're going to pay top dollar. We're fine. We need 800 million doses, sort of. And then the company went, OK, fine. We'll put that in the because we've got a billion doses over here. And they just weren't prepared for the fact that somebody might go, actually you're not our main priority.

And also, the way that you've written this contract means our lawyers can drive a truck through it. So that's what we do. Why are you not thinking that way? Because ultimately, they're not really a negotiator or an office. They're a kind of regulatory office. So if you think about it in terms of-- imagine the HR of whatever firm you work with, suddenly did procurement.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: It wouldn't go too well. And I think it's really that simple.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right, right. The lack of experience that's just not their wheelhouse to be doing things in. And that's an interesting perspective on things. Speaking of foie gras, census and reapportionment numbers are out.

MARK BLYTH: Whoa. That's clever.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I try hard.

MARK BLYTH: I'm not sure what's that segue into. But I do like the notion of foie gras as associated with this in the sense of some grotesque buffet.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Right? Something like that.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes.

MARK BLYTH: So tell us about tell us about the grotesque buffet that comes out of this.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, slowly, the census numbers are going to be released. But the ones that were important for our political purposes were, of course, whether or not what states would lose and gain seats. There was a lot of talk that Rhode Island was going to go from two House seats, huge two house seats, down to one. But it turns out, actually, that Rhode Island's going to stay stable and keep their two House seats.

Pickups were in the Sunbelt, really-- Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and then Oregon and Montana. And it was interesting to me to see the map of where those are obviously, but also that there are majority Republican state legislatures that will redraw these maps.

And of course, the big ones are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Colorado in that. Those are super populous, gaining seats as well. And those are, I mean, North Carolina and Colorado, some could claim are purple states.

So you know, where does that sort of leave things in the R&D columns? And all of the minus 2 are-- the lines are drawn by state legislatures. So just a quick intro to American government, reminder of districts or states draw, their House district lines, and they're based on roughly 360,000 people.

So this has obviously become very partisan. And Republicans will draw Republicans safe districts, and Democrats do the same thing, lots of Supreme Court stuff.

MARK BLYTH: Exactly, yeah.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Things that look like a lizard. And Oregon, who's a Democratic state, they're the-- or I'm sorry, Colorado is the only state to have a nonpartisan commission draw those lines.

So this will be interesting, of course, headed into Twenty-Twenty-Two. But if you haven't fallen asleep quite yet on my census discussion, the thing that I thought was most interesting is that overall, the US population has fallen. And of course, there's all sorts of implications for that.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah. That was the bit that caught my attention as well. Because the rest of it is interesting, but it's a bit sort of an inside the beltway for me. But yeah, the fact that America's managed to keep ahead in part because it's about eight years younger than the OECD average. And that's in part because of the higher birthrate. So we've never really liked immigrants, but we always ended up doing it.

And now it looks like that's really not happening anymore. And the more it becomes politicized, particularly because the face of immigration that you see in the media is basically climate refugees coming from Central America, and resultant gang violence and complete collapse of their societies. That doesn't scream, these are the people that we want to let in, right? And that gets totally politicized.

It's going to take a couple of years, apparently, just to clear the backlog that was created by the Trump administration in terms of other forms of immigration. We're not getting any younger. And of course, things are so expensive, nobody wants to have any kids.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yup.

MARK BLYTH: So you bang all that together, and what you end up with is a declining birthrate. This is econ 101, right? But a simple way of thinking about the economy is the number of workers, the number of hours worked, and the amount of quality and capital that they have to work with.

So put the capital stuff constant, either you increase the number of hours to compensate for the lack of workers, or if that's not going to work, you accept a lower standard of living, unless you can miraculously increase your capital stock.

Now we've got a brilliant capital stock. It's just it's all in the hands of very few people and very few firms. And it's not clear that that then filters down. So you know, all around, this is bad news.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, and in our industry, which is higher education of course, that is going to, at some point, come, and enrollment numbers are-- will start dropping as well. I mean, this is something for American higher education, that has these huge price-- these huge sticker prices attached to them.

And what that will ultimately mean, I mean, Harvard and likely, Brown, will be fine for the rest of time. But for the majority of universities and colleges, this will be something for them to contend with.

MARK BLYTH: Well, that's because in part, they fell for jumping into the status competition of trying to play the IV game of bidding up prices at 4% a year irrespective of costs. And state legislatures, particularly Republican ones but also Democratic ones, essentially saying, you're on your own. You're not getting any more public money. We're going to take it in tax cuts.

So the only way they could do it is by basically raising fees, and doing a status competition, and building bigger gyms, and having more facilities, and more counselors, or whatever it is that you happen to need to compete these days. So yeah, the whole industry is a great example of capital expenditure gone completely awry. And at some point, that will be corrected.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Bigger and better buffets. See what I did there?

MARK BLYTH: Bigger and better buffets. That's it. That was really good. We can keep the boot up the buffet motif going, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: One other note on the census. I don't know if you saw this actually on the front of the FT. But actually, population in China is expected to be lower than what they had predicted. And so it's going to be at 1.4 billion. And last year, they had predicted it would be more than $1.4 billion.

And the population-- the most populous country is going to be India now instead of China. And of course, there are lots of different policies that the government is thinking about in how to encourage people to have more kids.

MARK BLYTH: But it's not as if that's a small number, is it?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Let's check that.

- You know, your average European countries about 30, I mean, it's a false average because you're basically adding Latvia to Germany. But you know, it's something like 40 million, let's say. So America comes in at 330 million.

You know 1.4, is it trillion, billion, 1.4 billion rather, yeah, 340 million. Well, know what I'm saying. Yeah. That's a huge number. It's still a huge number. I mean, basically, add China and India together, and you have over 40% of the world's population.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: How many people do you need for goodness sake?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, more I guess, to keep everything moving, to do all the things that they want to do and keep the capital moving as well.

MARK BLYTH: I guess so. What's your segue? Where are we going?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, we'll go to India based on this, and the huge-- and the enormous COVID spike that is that's happening there. And I just shake my head only because I'm sitting here vaccinated and thinking about what's happening in India and the total failure of their government to just provide basic health care. But it's as much a story--

MARK BLYTH: Hold on, hold on. That's a very old story.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes.

MARK BLYTH: You can't just blame Modi for this one. They haven't had a decent health care system for the 1 and 1/2 billion people who live there like, forever. That's a constant, right? People die in the street, and nobody cares.

That's been going on forever. Why did we canonize Mother Teresa? Because she was picking dying people off the street and giving them a decent death. So that in itself is not new. What's new is when you then dump a virus in the middle of that, of course, it's going to have catastrophic effects.

Modi's response doesn't help. The authoritarian response, it's all about me, I don't really care, it should be fine, don't worry about it, carry on, what you see with both scenarios, so with Trump whatever, yeah that causes massive problems. The really interesting one for me for India-- and this may be of a sort of like, dry and uncaring-- is the Monday morning quarterbacking that it exposes.

And here's what I mean by that. Last year, when they were doing fine, relatively speaking, even when it seemed that they were picking up cases, particularly in Kerala in the South as people came home as the pandemic closed down and a lot of construction jobs in the Gulf and a lot of people came home, it didn't go that far.

So here's all the explanations that we invented at that point. It's because they've got bigger immune system, tougher immune systems because they're already crawling around and bugs that we can barely imagine because the health systems are bad.

It's a younger population. We know this affects all people. So really that's what's behind it. It's because they don't have many of the co-factors. Neither diabetes nor obesity are big things in India. Check, check, check, check. All of which fitted the fact that the curve was there.

And then, boom, the curve goes like this. So what is it? It has to be a new variant that's done it. Well, there is a new variant out there definitely. And they're still struggling to get a handle on it. It may be that that's really the game changer, and it probably is.

But it shows that like anything that we really think we know about this, at any given moment and time, is deeply fragile, which is not to say they don't know anything, and there's no sign. It's not-- they know tons But it can be fragile, in the sense that places that look like they're doing really well can very quickly get out of hand. And I think that's really the lesson.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, another thing that, as I was saying, I was like, people are dying in the streets of the US, too. I don't know why I'm saying that. They are thinking or they are suggesting that.

MARK BLYTH: Yes. The awesome health care system that we have. Absolutely.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Totally.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But this is the other thing I've been-- is the vaccination diplomacy, that term. I mean, also that the US has kept everything. Basically, the UK has, EU has done little. I mean, that we are ahead of vaccination is one of the big reasons why we're not having a spike. So you also just think they just got screwed in this deal, too.

MARK BLYTH: Well, and they're also the world's largest vaccine manufacturer. But it's all made for export.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Right? And you know this is one of the things-- actually, this is where the EU's "what are you talking about, Biden?" comes in. Because the EU, despite the fact that they don't have a lot of big pharma of their own, make a lot of the stuff. And they export it somewhere in the region of about 60% of the stuff, whereas America makes a lot of stuff, imports even more, and doesn't give any away.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Exactly.

MARK BLYTH: So for America to rurn around and say, well, it's all right. We'll just waive the patents on it. It's like, yeah, but you just basically sucked up the global supply, mate. Why are you saying that?

CARRIE NORDLUND: For a bunch of people who are naysayers and skeptical of even taking the damn vaccine, so I mean--

MARK BLYTH: And no, in fairness, as we've said before, the most vaccine skeptical country in the world is France.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, right. It's all the cheese.

MARK BLYTH: Yes. Actually, about 10 to 12 percentage points more than the United States, although that's the average. If you do it partisan, it turns out that Republicans really are vaccine skeptics. Why? Because Democrats are vaccine believers.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: That's how uselessly polarized we are.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Yeah. Wow, France.

infected with HIV back in the: 1980

was another big crisis in the: 1990

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, from France, let's get on the Chunnel and travel on to in London. What's happening-- what's happening there? Boris has done some renovations-- let me get my terrible transition-- some renovations. Is he still prime minister?

MARK BLYTH: Yes, he is. The best line I heard about Boris recently, and I just thought this was total genius, is one of the reasons that Boris does better than people think, and he's still around when everyone thought he'd be dead by now, is because he has the look of a man who sleeps in a box.

[LAUGHTER]

And that, basically, makes you think, oh, he's never going to survive. But of course, that is his natural state of being, which means that he's way more survivable than you possibly think. Because he probably does sleep in a box.

All right. So speaking of boxes, so here's the story, right? There's all this stuff about number 10's renovation. And number 10 is the official residence at Downing Street. Now here's the thing. The flat above number 10 is really small. So in number 11, which is where the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a.k.a the finance minister, resides, has a much bigger flat.

So since the time of Tony Blair, they've basically said, bugger it. You throw the finance minister out. We'll take over the big flat. And every time, they move in, they get 30 grand a year to redecorate the place, right? That's 30 grand a year, not a term, right?

So you would think that would be enough. And there's a comedian on Radio 4 pointed out, if you look at when Gordon Brown was prime minister, he was only there for two years, but he spent like 29,999 two years. It was like a psychopathic level of control. Boris comes in with his new partner, who's about 15 years his junior.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, because they have a baby.

MARK BLYTH: And they've got a baby. And they looked at it and went, oh, my god, this is John Lewis frozen in time. And it's got to go. So she goes out and hires somebody who's this, oh, look, why don't you make your wallpaper out of oatmeal? One of these people. And suddenly, they spend 10 times the 30,000 on the renovation.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Holy cow.

MARK BLYTH: So the answer to this, well, where did you get that money from? And Boris said, "well, I paid for it." He said. But we all know your state of finances. You're broke. You were counting on your new biography of Churchill paying your divorce settlement your wife and four kids, who you just completely screwed over. You're busted.

So who gave you the money? So it turns out some Tory donor gave him the money, but that's a violation of the law. So at that point, the Labor Party, the opposition, come in and go, oh, shame, shame, yeah, shame, inquiry, inquiry.

And it turns out nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn. So just as Washington has this like, Beltway reporters, who are totally obsessed with Lynne Cheney, and Lynne Cheney doesn't matter at all, right? So this is something you can beat Boris with.

So basically the London liberal crowd basically are like, ah, he's a bad man! It's like Trump response. And this is the Curtain-Gate or whatever you want to call it, right? Reno-Gate, right? And it turns out nobody gives a shit. And the reason we know this is because just a few days ago, there's a town up North called Hartlepool.

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK.

MARK BLYTH: And Hartlepool, when they did the redistricting-- yeah, yeah, we do that, too.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Wow, connections.

MARK BLYTH: In: 1964

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK.

MARK BLYTH: So this is the one. They've already been talking about the Red Wall. Basically the same as the Blue Wall in the United States. The Red Wall of labor in the North falling down because of Brexit.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: This one, basically, the Conservatives-- the Conservatives' candidate was a woman who reportedly spent more time in the Cayman Islands than she's ever done in Hartlepool. The Labor candidate was a doctor, a local doctor, who's this young, photogenic guy, who believes in the health system and all this sort of stuff. And Labor got its ass handed to it by 20 points.

CARRIE NORDLUND: No. I mean, that's not--

MARK BLYTH: So Boris is like, yeah, Curtain-Gate. Keep going, keep talking. It makes no difference. We are annihilating you. And there's been huge amounts of like, to and fro in the British press and on Twitter and all that sort of stuff about what's going on.

And I think there's a very simple story with this, which is the Right are always more politically adaptable than the Left, because the Left have principles, where the Right basically has strategies. And what the Conservatives have done is they've realized that all the years of austerity and everything was a total disaster for them, and Brexit hasn't helped.

But they've rode with it, and they own it. And what they've done is they've gone to the left economically. And they've proven with COVID and everything, they're willing to spend the money, right? And they're committed to making building back better, or their equivalent, and putting money up North and all this sort of stuff. So to your marginal voter up North in Hartlepool, they probably will spend as much money as Labor.

And then what happened is they moved to the right culturally, right? So they are not the-- most British people don't think-- most British people do not think that throwing statues of Winston Churchill in the sea is a good idea.

Because if it wasn't for him, you'd all be speaking German. That's a narrative that strongly resonates, right? So they have managed to hit this sweet spot where they're on the left economically and on the right culturally. So there's nowhere for Labor to go.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Right? That's it. So Matt Goodwin, who's a political scientist in Britain, did this piece in The Sunday Times. And it just said, "what's the point of the Labor Party?" And that just nailed it for me. I thought that was it exactly. Yeah. What are they for when they've been totally outflanked?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I mean, this is such a lesson for the Democrats, in that you have successfully put $1,400 in people's pockets, and they don't give a crap about Liz Cheney, or whatever her name is, right? They're happy they have $1,400 in their pocket. And so period. Stop there, because you're ahead.

And then when you start to do this identity stuff and all this stuff this like, touchy, whatever, that's not PC, you can't say that anymore stuff, like, turn it off, and I don't want to hear it.

And so as much as I am for having those conversations, as a party, just that has to-- I mean, the Left, whoever's driving those conversations, has to just be-- has to be in some sort of conference room somewhere, talk to you or they have their voice heard in some way. But as a big party, those conversations. It's Hartle-- it's going to be Hartlepool in Twenty-Twenty-Two.

MARK BLYTH: So there was a great line. I'll quote the comedian on The News Quiz in Britain who said this. He said, the Labor Party's problem is very like the Democrats, just now when you're talking about the traditional wing versus, if you will, what they call on Fox, the Woke Warrior, for want of a better term.

And this comedian put it beautifully. She said, the Labor Party is a bit like a village hall. And it turns out they're double booked. And you've got to accommodate both on the same day. One group is the Mormons, and the other one is a sex club.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

MARK BLYTH: Right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, that's great, though.

MARK BLYTH: And that's it. It's kind of like it's a joke, but it's kind of brilliant. Because it really is that incompatible. And that's what it is. So the way that the right wins on this is by basically just pushing buttons to watch the culture war get more and more hot.

Because all it does is it hurts the Democrats or Labor. For them, it's gain every time, gain every time. Which is why Fox does what it does. It just keeps pressing on it. That's it. And then they get a response out of the Left. And then they just turn that into the meme machine.

CARRIE NORDLUND: The more you say cancel culture, the better it is.

MARK BLYTH: That's it. And then if somebody walks up and says, well, you should think about it. We've always canceled people. We're just actually being honest about the reasons we're doing it. No, no. Don't care, don't care. See, you're the problem.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: That's it. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yep. Is it time for fun stuff?

MARK BLYTH: There is one little thing, which is that the Scottish also had an election.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, jeez.

MARK BLYTH: And the SNP came back with not enough for an overall majority. But they did slightly better than I thought they did. And along with the Greens, they do have enough to call for a referendum. Whether or not they can get it is a matter of constitutional dispute.

The first minister has said that she's not going to call for it until we're out of COVID, anyway. But they expect this one to run and run. This is a real story. This is going to happen sooner rather than later. So keep watching this one. I don't anticipate anything over the next two years, really, till we're fully out of this. But then, yeah, we'll see where this one goes.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Do you have-- is your view-- and I know you've spoken about this in various talks and written about it as well-- what's your personal view, personal/professional view? Or are those two separate views that you have?

MARK BLYTH: No, they're not. I mean, I would put it this way. I'm a sort of a de facto-- not supporter. It's the wrong word. I understand why people think it might be a good idea to be independent after all this time.

And one way to think about it is the following. It's two cities that are closely integrated together over a distance of 20 miles. It's a technologically advanced society. It's got really good universities. It's got a lot of cultural and historical capital.

Add a dozen towns on top of that and a handful of other places, fantastic, beautiful, countryside. I mean, how hard can it be, right? And then the other one is this. The last time that Scotland was independent, the word capitalism was yet to be written down.

CARRIE NORDLUND: No. So that's--

MARK BLYTH: Yeah. 300 odd years, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I was wondering--

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, exactly. So if you think Brexit taking 30 years of stuff apart is a hard one, try 300.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So what happens is, when you get down to talking about this-- and I actually just spent an hour on a call with a think tank in London talking about this and brainstorming the things. What we ended up doing was the following, right? So imagine that this happens. Then what happens to the currency market? Imagine when this happens, what happens to imports, right?

And literally, they could tell me a story. And I would tell them a convincing story of the exact opposite. I would tell them a story. They could do that to me. Nobody knows. We've never been here before. So my rationale for it, to the extent that I have one, is if people in Scotland want to be independent, a democracy says you should be, right?

And if you look at the numbers, overwhelmingly with younger people, and I think that's going to stay, because they're just not basically able to form assets in the way that prior generations have, like everyone else. Therefore, they have less to lose.

ve Party, in full throat, was: 1951

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So for all of those reasons, I kind of think it's an inevitability. And if it's an inevitability, then it's everybody's responsibility to make the transition as good as possible. So does that make me a supporter or a realist? I'm not sure.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it sounds very realist to me. But here's my follow-up question. And this is on the personal level, and totally asking from America, as an American. Is there an identifiable Scottish identity that is separate from the British identity?

MARK BLYTH: Oh, there certainly is, but the way to think about it is how much of that is generated by the fact that it's not the English identity.

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK, I got you.

n example of this. During the: 1980

And we went to tournaments, when we still got to tournaments, and basically got drunk and kissed people and fell in fountains and became everybody's favorite fans. And we did that because they were awful, right? Had they been awesome, I suspect we would have been awful.

When the football's on, there's a t-shirt that's get sold in England-- although I think you can't do this now, because it's a bit too sort of racist-- which used to be the following, "just say ABE," which meant "Anybody But England."

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK.

MARK BLYTH: So I don't care. I don't care. Nigeria, New Zealand, whatever, anybody but England. So it's an identity that's very much built in opposition. And that's not to say that's all the content. There's definitely something there.

But to the extent that it's a separate identity, if you look at opinion polling, all the rest of it, there's this notion that Scotland is this much more left wing country. It's utter tosh. Just go look at the numbers. It's just simply not true. It's very similar to the rest of the United Kingdom. And it's attitudes. it's dispositions. We have a funny accent. I mean, can you really build a nationalism on an accent? I guess you can try, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So to me, the case has to be, essentially, that you think, over the course of a generation, your children will be better off in a place where they're in control of the economic and political decisions. Right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: That's the grown-up way of thinking about it, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yup.

MARK BLYTH: But it is a generational project. It's not for the next five years. And people want to know what's going to happen the Tuesday after independence. And the honest answer is, nobody knows.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right, yeah. I mean, you'll so right with the experiment. I mean, this is my super deep thought for the day. I mean, it can't be known for so many-- I mean, so many years down the road. I mean, whether it's a success or failure. And even then, I don't-- I mean, whether one could deem it a success or a failure, too.

bout Ireland's experience, in: 1923

Our major export was labor going to London to work on building sites. Ireland was a poor, badly educated country. And it took them basically 50 years to turn that around and turn it into what is now-- a successful, high tech economy. And he called those years the Taliban years. It was a Catholic Taliban, but it was the Taliban.

gh that? No, because it's not: 1923

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right.

MARK BLYTH: And anyone who's telling you that basically must be lying, because nobody knows what's going to happen.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, they need to start having babies, is what the Scots needs do, so then--

MARK BLYTH: They are also much more-- interestingly, the government is way more pro-immigration.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, really?

MARK BLYTH: Right. Now, here's the thing. When it doesn't actually have any costs, when it's cheap talk, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: You can say that and people can go, oh, yes, absolutely, right. When you're independent, are you going to be able to actually sign that check?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Over the summer-- total side note-- the prime minister-- who's a woman, right?-- decided to pay for feminine hygiene products. So the first government to do that. I mean, so that kind of stuff is kind of cool.

MARK BLYTH: I guess.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Those sorts of policies, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: And then, I'm just going to pass this to you here. Here's your segue, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Thank you.

MARK BLYTH: So speaking of highly competent political operators who have had very long careers, how's Rudy Giuliani?

[LAUGHTER]

CARRIE NORDLUND: I was going to go with a hygiene product, but yours is much better. You know, Rudy, I mean, so this house guy, whatever the technical term is, they broke in-- they didn't break in, but they had the warrants.

That's the word I was looking for. FBI had warrants for, and they seized a ton of stuff. And you know that if the FBI has warrants for that, they have some real-- I mean, they don't do it just on a like, well, we think he's got some bad stuff there. I mean, they have some real evidence. So I'm so curious to know.

MARK BLYTH: Well, I don't know. Do you remember the Mueller investigation?

CARRIE NORDLUND: But did they do-- did they do the knock on the door at 8 o'clock in the morning?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah. I think there was a couple of door knocks. I think there was a couple. And theyu even tried to get people to roll and all that sort of stuff. And it turned out-- to me, my reading of that whole thing-- not that I read the whole report-- was essentially like, a hunch that I had right at the start was, what you've got here is a bunch of bozos from Queens that happened to have made a whole lot of cash.

If they were really doing deep cahoots with Russia or whatever, the combined arms of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI would probably find out in about 10 minutes. If you spent 10 months looking for it, it probably isn't there. So you know, as with Rudy, I don't know if that rule applies. But yeah, apparently, it's the stuff over Ukraine that they're quite excited about.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But I mean, you can't-- I mean, now I'm just talking out of both sides of my mouth. But I mean, you can't think that Rudy is some criminal mastermind. I mean, this is kind of like, he wrote it on a piece of paper, and photocopied it, and sent it to Putin or something, you know?

MARK BLYTH: And then he wiped his hand with it, and then all the hair oil came off, and nobody could read it.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Exactly. I guess I'm just for the Rudy stuff, on salacious kind of stuff that they're going to find, that will just further disintegrate his reputation. But maybe his reputation is--

MARK BLYTH: I don't know. I think at this point in time, things are so polarized here that there are probably people who think that he still did an excellent job and he's trying to expose the big lie, and the whole of the establishment and the deep state are against him.

And nothing you could say would shift that opinion, right? And then for anybody else who's on the other side, it's sort of like, wow, that was America's mayor. When did he lose it?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I know, right? Yeah. When did he go-- when did he become this Rudy Giuliani?

MARK BLYTH: The Kraken.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks, Mark. That was fun.

MARK BLYTH: That was. It was a good catch-up. It was longer than our usual episodes. So I hope people can deal with that. But there we go.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: It's been a while.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Just press pause and then come back, you know. We'll still be here.

MARK BLYTH: There's always that. Exactly.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, thank you.

MARK BLYTH: Do you want to segue our way out of this?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Segue. We'll be back for another episode.

MARK BLYTH: How's this one? Like the guy who bought the Segway Company and then managed to kill himself by reversing off a cliff, we'll be back.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, in a much more positive way, though.

MARK BLYTH: In a much more positive way. Exactly.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Thanks. Thank you for listening and talk to you all soon.

MARK BLYTH: Bye.

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