#127 - Ewen Stewart - The Leviathan State, Civilisational Decline & the Way Back
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 105 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ewen Stewart is one of the UK's sharpest economic thinkers.
In this conversation, we unpack what's gone wrong, from bloated welfare and debt-fuelled decline to brain drain, overregulation, collapsing growth and the cultural death spiral hollowing out the UK.
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CONNECT WITH EWEN STEWART
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:05:00 – Growth Collapse Since 2008
00:07:17 – Austerity Was a Myth
00:10:00 – Quangos, Control & Chaos
00:17:58 – Brain Drain & Stagnation
00:20:39 – The Rich Are Leaving
00:23:01 – Lessons From Ireland
00:25:51 – Britain's Last Assets
00:27:15 – What Killed Entrepreneurship
00:30:54 – Can We Cut the State?
00:33:30 – BBC, Civil Service & Pushback
00:35:48 – Reform Needs a Plan
00:38:40 – Spending Cuts & Tax Strategy
00:41:00 – Employment Law Is Killing Jobs
00:50:12 – Sound Money & Tax Cuts
00:52:55 – Energy Prices Are Killing Industry
00:56:25 – The Civil Service Is Unaccountable
01:10:30 – Culture, Decay & the Death Spiral
01:13:00 – What Sound Money Really Means
01:16:30 – Why Keynesianism Dominates Everything
01:21:00 – Why We Need a Counter-Revolution
01:26:00 – Hope, Talent & the 11th Hour
01:29:40 – Britain's Economic Identity Crisis
01:38:30 – Why No One Wants Growth
01:42:00 – Final Thoughts
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What has happened is the welfare state has gradually grown out of control and it's broken personal responsibility and it's broken the will for people to do their own thing. |
| 0:13.0 | And that has now reached, I think, a tipping point that we either have a counter-revolution and I think we have to be thinking in those terms in a peaceful context, |
| 0:22.6 | and we realize just how far our liberty has been eroded, or we are entering really quite a dark period where the state will dictate virtually every aspect of our lives, and our scope for action will be really |
| 0:41.2 | quite limited. |
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| 1:18.5 | Iron is set in the standard. |
| 1:20.1 | And so you can find out more at iron.com, which is iran.com. |
| 1:24.5 | That is iron.com. |
| 1:26.3 | So I've been having some discussions on Facebook with some lefties recently.N.com. That is iron.com. So I've been having some discussions on Facebook with some lefties |
| 1:30.2 | recently who think I'm pro-reform and ideologically conservative, and I'm not. I'm pro-free |
| 1:42.0 | markets, a hyacian, and I do believe in free markets, although I've got questions about |
| 1:48.7 | that. But one of the debates I've been having is where I've been trying to explain to leftists |
| 1:53.3 | that by voting for any government, which has a policy of deficit spending, they're harming the people |
| 1:59.5 | they want, but they equally are |
| 2:03.0 | worried about cuts. So what would you say harms the poorest more? Government cuts or deficit spending? |
| 2:07.6 | It's jammed today, basically, isn't it? Anyone can offer short-term bribes and incentives, |
... |
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