Helen Lewis: The State of Britain
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps
Josh Szeps
4.5 • 905 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2024
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the U.K. prepares for a sudden national election in four weeks, Helen Lewis and Josh wrestle with the issues that dominate all around the English-speaking world. Anger about rising prices – check. Anxiety about immigration – check. Dislocation due to globalisation – check. A culture war about wokeness – check.
Helen is arguably Britain's most insightful and entertaining journalist. Her interview with Jordan Peterson for GQ has nearly 70 million views on YouTube. She's done several terrific radio series and podcasts: The Spark, Great Wives, and The New Gurus; and she co-hosts The Private Eye Podcast. Her book, Difficult Women, was an instant classic. She’s a frequent panellist on the smash hit BBC TV panel show Have I Got News for You. And her columns in The Atlantic, where she is a staff writer, are a must-read.
If you believe the polls (and who could possibly doubt them these days?), the Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is about to sweep away fourteen years of conservative rule. There’s no one better to explain why than the unmissable Helen Lewis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Gahy humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. The UK has an election. They are |
| 0:09.4 | officially in election campaign mode after the deeply unpopular conservative prime minister, |
| 0:14.6 | Rishi Sunak surprised everybody really by announcing that the election was going to take place |
| 0:19.1 | in just a matter of weeks. He could have announced it any time this year. |
| 0:22.8 | He is woefully behind in the polls. |
| 0:24.9 | And if you believe polls, and there are many reasons not to believe polls at this point in time, |
| 0:28.9 | but if you believe polls, then this will bring an end to 14 years of conservative rule in the UK |
| 0:34.2 | and the resurrection of a centre-left government under Kia Starma, who's currently |
| 0:38.5 | the opposition leader, presumably soon to be prime minister. |
| 0:41.7 | What does this tell us about the state of Britain, the state of Australia and the US, the |
| 0:46.9 | sort of political waves that may wax and wane across the course of history? |
| 0:52.9 | It's a momentous moment for Britain coming out of the shadow |
| 0:56.1 | of Brexit and trying to find itself in the world. So I wanted to turn to my favourite UK commentator, |
| 1:01.9 | Helen Lewis. You may remember in 2018, Helen interviewed Jordan Peterson for GQ, the video of which |
| 1:08.6 | went viral worldwide. It was not the catastrophic Jordan Peterson |
| 1:11.9 | interview of the same time. It was the brilliant one, the acerbic one, where Helen managed |
| 1:18.4 | to pounce on Jordan in many a way that brought her up in my estimation immensely, and I've |
| 1:24.1 | loved her ever since. She's a regular panelist on the BBC television show, |
| 1:28.1 | Have I Got News for You? She has a bunch of great podcasts, which sadly are quite difficult to listen |
| 1:33.4 | to unless you have the BBC player. But I'm going to plug them here because I loved them. |
| 1:37.6 | One is called The Spark, the other is called Great Wives, another is called The New Gurus, |
| 1:41.5 | and the latest is called Helen Lewis has left the chat. |
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