Our next panel is on the nanny state can labor out to the Tories Charing the panel is James Bickerton director of the campaign against Corbynism Sound perfect. I got a loud voice. I think so the panel is for nanny states can labor outdo the Tories So obviously we're going to be discussing it's very possible in a week's time Well in a month's time, it's plausible There could be a Jeremy Corbyn-led government. What would that mean and in terms of individual liberty In the cover nanny state areas how much difference would that make so obviously the current or the former conservative government introduced things like the the sugar tax or the sugar levy and Not lots of restrictions on cigarette displays, etc. So so we've got a great panel So we got Douglas Carswell who was MP for Clacton Elected first as a conservative then I believe was the only UKIP MP ever to be elected a general election. Is that correct? And then of course an independent also the awful number of books including progress versus parasites a brief history of the conflict that shaped our world We've got Christopher Snowden. I imagine we have quite a lot to say about this Who is the head of lifestyle economics at the Institute for Economic Affairs? He's also written a number of books Including kill joys a critique of paternalism We've got Lucy Harris who is the Brexit Party MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber She founded leave as of London, which is a kind of pro-Brexit campaign in social group And that grew into leave as a Britain which became quite a kind of big national thing and obviously you went into politics So I think we should start with start with Douglas Do you want to say how how kind of concerned are you about a Labour government in terms of the nanny state? Do you think it'd be much worse or what we've got at the moment? Do I Thank you very much for inviting me along to the Ayn Rand Centre and I'm going to Move on to answer that question in just a second, but I wanted to preface my comments We're just a few observations as we're on the eve of what I think will be a very decisive Election decisive for all sorts of reasons I've just came come back from a week staying in in New England in the old summer house of Milton Friedman Milton and Rose Friedman have this beautiful little cottage that they built themselves It's on the top of a very high mountain in Vermont It looks out across the Connecticut River towards New Hampshire A state in America that famously has as its slogan live free or die and as I as I sat there in Milton Friedman's house looking at the view that he looked at a thought struck me It must have seemed pretty grim at times for Milton Friedman Those who believe in the fight for liberty must have had all sorts of calls for despair in the 1950s and the 1960s Half the world would have been run Not just by socialists, but half the land surface of the world was controlled by communists in Academia at those times free market liberal ideas were regarded as terribly fuddy-duddy in old-fashioned Cane's in is and was all the rage We saw at that time governments around the world including in Britain and to some extent in America trying to Engineer society and certainly engineer the economy things must have seemed at times pretty grim for those who believe in the free market and liberty and Yet look at what Friedman and his generation achieved Look at what they did to shift what we today call the Overtown window away from Nanny state top-down state control officials trying to manage people's lives for them and Look at what they did in terms of shifting the body politic in Britain America in Europe And I would say around the world towards the cause of freedom and liberty We've got to find ways of doing in this day and age What Friedman and Bob Chister and those other heroes did in an earlier generation and we've not been doing it and The price of not doing it is not just that we see a labor government Embracing a hard socialist agenda where they want to nationalize companies and control our lives I think the real price we pay is What happens to those who should know better on the so-called center right of British politics and American politics? I would argue it's impossible To counter Corbynism when the alternative is a sort of George Osborne Tory party that wants to control the amount of sugar in your iron brew I would say it's impossible to argue against Jeremy Corbyn's ideas of people's quantitative easing helicopter money when you had a supposedly free-market Tory government for the past nine years handing out quantitative easing subsidies to rich bankers I Would say it's impossible to argue the case for liberty in a general election if you've allowed the Overtown window To be shifted so far towards the interventionist left I'm an optimist I I think this is a battle that that we can win, but I think we should be absolutely Unforgiving for those who when it comes to an election offer us tax cuts when it comes to an election Bang the drum of liberty, but who have a record of micromanaging from the top down Because of the cowardice of successive generations of conservatives I would say ever since November 1990 in this country when Thatcher fell That's the real reason that we end up with a hard left Corbyn alternative if People who should know better Friedman use this wonderful phrase where he said that the mission in politics is for us to make sure that Even the wrong people have to do the right thing We all know that Corbyn and co are the wrong sort of people and they're definitely intent on doing the wrong thing We need to focus on making sure that even the Sajid Javids and the Boris Johnson's and the Jacob Rees mobs And the pretty patelles Understand that they have to do much more for the cause of liberty the price we pay for not doing so is not just Controlling how much sugar in our Coca-Cola if we concede that the state has a role in doing that Then there's literally no limit to what the state can do It will reach into our children's classroom into our wallet into the fridge in our kitchen we're living with the consequences of a failure of 20 30 years of Conservatives who are free market libertarians in name only I think we desperately need Friedman's It's a great privilege to be on a panel with one or two of them. Thank you Yeah, thank you much. I'll pass down to Christopher who I imagine has caused the other subjects Thanks. Yeah Well, I'm against in any state and I'm against socialism We'd be very neat and tidy if I could say that they are part and parcel of one another and that's The further left a party is the more likely they are to intervene in your personal lifestyle I'm not sure. That's really the case. However, I had it to make all the nanny state index which compares the 28 EU countries with one another on the basis of how they over-regulate smoking vaping Diet alcohol and so on and Finland has always come up top Finland is a pretty big welfare state and our social democracy pretty left-wing so that could Be used as evidence. However, right underneath it is Hungary, which is not especially a left-wing to put it mildly the UK islands Lithuania at the bottom of the index the freest countries of places like Czech Republic and Luxembourg Germany there isn't really much of a much of a pattern there and if you look Through history, you know the the the hardest left governments have not necessarily been nanny state They've tried to control people's lives in all kinds of ways The communists actually got rid of alcohol prohibition a lot of people don't know that there was full US style alcohol prohibition in 1917 after 1917 when the Russian Revolution took place and some historians have said it probably wouldn't have taken place had the population been more drunk But the the Bolsheviks after a few years got rid of prohibition of every form of alcohol They were not particularly fussed about people Smoking there wasn't a lot of a beastie in the USSR or other communist countries But that was more of an unintended consequence rather than a deliberate public health policy And if we look at Britain over the last 20 years, you know Tony Blair And Gordon Brown were better than David Cameron and it's certainly Theresa May I mean over that 13 year period of new labor.  It's really only the smoking ban It is a big blot in their record in terms of nanny state activity And that was then followed by David Cameron who very quickly brought in the display ban for tobacco the plane packaging for tobacco the sugar tax he wanted to bring in minimum unit pricing was only overruled by Elements of of his own parties. You would have to say that the conservatives have a worse record on this In recent times then the Labour Party has and if you look further if I don't know that Yaron's already said that Trump is a socialist, but let's be dealing with shades of gray here I mean Donald Trump is is getting the process of clamping down on e-cigarettes Putin is being far more anti-alcohol than any of his communist predecessors and I wouldn't put him down as being a left-winger So I don't think there's that much of a of a connection So it's quite hard to say what Corbyn would do There is actually an element of the hard left which is really quite laid back about the working man having a drink having a bet having a smoke and I'm told that there are people within Corbyn Circle who They didn't like Tom Watson for a lot of reasons But one of the reasons they didn't like him is he was trying to clamp down on you know breakfast cereals and gambling and so on and actually some of those people in the hard left don't actually like this stuff They for whatever reason you wouldn't call them libertarians obviously, but it's not It's not inevitable by any means that Socialists want to control that part of People's lives. Perhaps they've got bigger fish to fry. We're trying to control the economy I think the key word here is not socialist is actually progressive and You might say that splitting hairs a lot of socialists now call themselves progressives, but they're always changing their names You know We're called themselves liberals and they're obviously the exact opposite of that It's currently quite trendy for for socialists to call themselves progressive But someone like Owen Jones or Ash Sarkar then they are socialists. They're pretty hard, you know hard line Progressives We don't have a history of the progressive movement in in Britain It's worth reading up on the progressive movement in America There's a very good book called a liberal reformers came out a few years ago I can't remember the name of the author but Describes a progressive movement and their aims very well to put it in simple terms progressives They are not really socialists. They're quite they're quite comfortable with a large amount of state involvement in the in the economy But they're not particularly interested in the state actually running the economy on nationalizing industries They they like trust busting, but they don't actually want the government to to run these businesses They are very technocratic They believe essentially in creating a new world in creating a new man and using various forms of coercion to do that Taking lessons lessons from science and applying them in a very bureaucratic way. It's a very elitist project really And it's in some sense is well-meaning and that they want people's health to improve for it for example But out of the progressive movement came prohibition in in America It was a classic example of a progressive policy very top-down illiberal Designs to fundamentally change society so that a point would come when people wouldn't even want to drink alcohol eugenics also was a was a very big part of it and because the the way eugenics kind of came to a head in the 1940s in Europe who's one reason the kind of progressive ideas Fell apart so progressive ideas are fundamentally different to socialist ideas. They're both, you know left-wing certainly, you know to people who fans of iron rand but it is actually a different mentality and I think that the Politicians who have got caught up in this nanny state stuff. They're buying into that Progressive mentality and it doesn't matter whether you're on left or right You are you are vulnerable to that and finally I would say that a lot of this You get out of hope I make clear you can't really pigeonhole this left or right Generally speaking you're dealing with Quite low-grade politicians if I don't think we've ever had such a bad bunch of politicians many of whom hopefully we'll shortly be getting kicked out But I mean Tom Watson to go back to him. He's a classic example.  I don't think he's got many principles But he likes the idea of the big action of Fundamentally changing something whether it's something as trivial as clamping down on gamma gambling machines and in bookies Or getting Tony the tiger off the the pack of a Box of frosties and there are lots of people like him James Riley in Ireland's a big nanny state guy Nicola rocks and in Australia Sarah Wallaston Anna Subaru these people you know very low-grade people Who don't have much of a vision actually? But they'd like the idea of the big statement the big policy that gets their gets their names out out there They feel that they're taking on vested interests feel that they're taking on big corporations and if we do end up I don't think we will but if we do end up with a Corbyn government in so far as they will be nanny state I think it will be entirely framed in the rhetoric of taking on the big businesses Corbyn's tweet when Tom Watson retired a couple of weeks ago Applauded him for taking on the big sugar companies. It's very difficult to tell whether this was deliberately damning with faint praise You know it seems so such an absurd thing to compliment somebody on the end of a long political career But he took on the big sugar companies fantastic and I Not sure that they necessarily want to control people's eating and drinking habits But they certainly don't like the idea that there are big businesses ultimately behind these products Yes, so by sound of things there are big concerns about a commitment to individual Liberty mugs both What for both Labour and the Tories now about the Brexit party? What can we expect from the new outfit? Oh, what can we expect from the new outfit? Well, I mean from we were basically voted in as MEPs in May And I think the Brexit Party has gone some way and uncovering a lot of the bureaucracy and a lot of the strange goings on in the EU Parliament And I think from from my background from Leaves of Britain and looking at how You know social conventions fit in with nanny's statism It slowly becomes something that from nanny's statism something a little bit darker I think nanny's statism is too kind it suggests that the state means well But I think what we're slowly seeing is that actually the state means to control And I think we should get rid of the idea that it's a nanny. It's definitely not a nanny It's a it's a boss that's screaming down your neck every two seconds about every money shy of your life So, you know apart from both, you know, Tories and Labour introducing further regulation in the past few years I think real culprits of this outfit Is the culture of quangoism and the quangocracy as I'm going to call it within within our state, but also within the European Union And it's been introduced by Labour. So they've initiated this idea of ultimate control over Every single money shy of your life and it's to be you know supposed to be an impartial body But they've made it completely partial. It politicizes the very people who control every element of your life And I am terrified to see a Jeremy Corbyn government Get control of those mechanisms that do control every part of your life because it will always be tinted with an element of socialism and Indeed with a lot of the anti-semitic stuff that's been coming out if you believe that the Labour Party is fundamentally Anti-semitic and its whole structures are institutionally anti-semitic that will filter through into the very mechanisms and cogs of how we Go in to make law in our civil service And I think we've seen a lot in recent times of how the civil service does act in a very politically Minded way. I think the case of Darren Grimes having to go against some of the institutions That have basically dictated to him What is the correct way of going about his business and then ultimately slapping a fine on him of I think it was £20,000 Basically when it had no jurisdiction to do that it why why have we given so much power to these quangos? and ultimately Their reason to be is to create more and more legislation That's how they feel that they have control power and are able to implement Implement their idealistic world and their idealistic vision And that's what they view as progress The EU itself is a perfect realization of this And that's what I've I've come to see when when I'm working in the EU Parliament There's things that we vote on which don't really need voting on and I'll give you give you a few examples of of that in a minute But how do how do they get all this through? How are they able to sell this to the general public and I don't think it's through public approval? I think that they've basically given up on trying to find public approval for banning certain things Especially I think it was was it porn that they were trying to ban recently They've given up on public approval and they've now turned to public disapproval to get things through Or looks like public approval And together that sort of that quango and together with public disapproval They are able to create this atmosphere where people feel like they don't have control over anything And if they speak out against it then they're in a situation where they're on the back foot and Their freedom of speech is quashed and their ability to get things Said and done in a way that they perceive the world should be is is completely out of their control And that's underpinned by this by the media and the institutions likewise in in sort of the quango sort of civil service being Ultimately partial and being ultimately leaning towards a certain political ideology It means that there is a case for people with ordinary traditional views feeling like they can't speak out Now I started Leave as a Britain which basically talks about which basically is a group of People from across London it started with ten people who voted for Brexit within the London area who felt that they weren't getting a fair hearing And I think this is indicative of also conservative minded views I think it's indicative of many views that aren't accepted by the wide wider mainstream opinion that aren't accepted by People within positions of power and we had ten people show up to the first event We now have over 4,000 signed up members in London alone And I think that tells you that there is a desire for ordinary people to actually talk about Things that are happening to them On that in their daily lives, you know, they want to go down to the pub without feeling this public disapproval this This inability to talk about what's on their mind and It's part of It's part of this idea of social ostracization this ability that if you don't think exactly the way we do You're going to be left out of the discussion. You're not going to be able to play a part in society at large And I think this is very much the way that they get around having their their sort of World of you pushed and forced upon the ordinary members of the public through the mechanisms being fundamentally Partial and then also having a widespread public disapproval pushed by the media and pushed by other institutions within society and I think one of the things that really Really stood out for me and there's a book that I often read And I often sort of refer back to when I'm thinking about what we're currently Facing and that's the road to we're going to hear by George Orwell and it's basically George Orwell is describing, you know, the miners and how they're confronting this the social the middle class social Socialist mentality from From the middle-class partners and it's you know, it's exactly as you know, it's been said in the book I'll read out some some a few a Few passages which I think really hit home and it's about suppressing that traditional viewpoint It's about suppressing people's opinions. It's about suppressing what you actually want to talk about to move on from to progress through into a different Situation where the quangos and basically people who have a very particular viewpoint are so On the working class in the middle class, you know, what is the attitude that they give up? What they give out? What is this attitude an attitude of sniggering superiority punctuated by bursts of vicious hatred? You will find it everywhere Taking for granted that a working-class person as such is a figure of fun except odd moments when he shows too many signs being too prosperous whereupon he ceases to be a figure of fun and becomes a demon and It goes on to say that His habits and traditions are then sort of mocked within the public eye And I feel that that's what a lot of people currently are feeling They feel that they can't openly talk about things that they hold dear things that they hold to be the reality of life and things that they seem are Basic social conventions, there is a suppression of people to speak freely And I think that's ultimately a way for the nanny state and a way for the general The way for people in power to suppress ordinary people's feelings and minds Yeah And now as an American How kind of concerned is the freedom loving movements in America about the prospect of a Corbyn government in Britain? I've got a my I'll just just just one little comment just a slight disagreement. I wouldn't call them bosses. You can resign If you're a boss, they're frigging tyrants They're little dictators They're not bosses is way too good of a term. It's better than a nanny, right? I mean you want to have bosses in the world. You need bosses in the world. We're not Marxists, right? We believe bosses have a role, but but they are dictators. They're tyrants now How how upset is the United States about Corbyn? I mean We've got our own problems And we're struggling with them. So I think people are worried because they see it as a much bigger trend I think one of the things you've seen in the UK is a dramatic shift to a more a more extreme left But you've seen the same thing in the United States. I mean Elizabeth Warren talk about a nanny Dictator is is the leading candidate right now in the Democratic Party something that I think was unthinkable You know a couple of years ago that the Democratic Party would shift that far to the left Of course the moderate in the Democratic Party the guy who's gonna save the party right now is Mayor Bloomberg right who famously wanted to ban soda if it was beyond a certain, you know size so this idea of a nanny state is is Dominates both political parties.  I guess the latest science says because once you nationalize health care Then that's the ultimate nanny state. There is no bigger nanny than nanny state or dictator state or Then then the NHS the NHS is basically The ultimate in in dictating and then once we've socialized the provision of health care Then I care about what you eat Because I'm paying for your unhealthy habits I care about how you behave because I'm paying for your unhealthy habits One of the reasons that we fight so hard in the United States to prevent the socialization medicine. There are lots of reasons but one of them is Because as long as you're paying your own health care bill Then it's your business how much you drink and how much you smoke and how much what you eat and how much sugar you consume Because you get to pay for it you get to suffer the consequences of bad behavior once you nationalize it at all We all start caring and it's very very very dangerous one of the you know When the last little bastions of this kind of freedom in the US is the fact that we some of us a Certains percentage of population is still by private health insurance Not if you're over 65 that there we believe in socialism completely. It's under 65 We believe in a little bit of Freedom, but I think what's important here is there is to think about What unites the left and right in their belief that they should dictate our lives that they should run our lives for us that they Could they could be dictators over different aspects of our lives And you're seeing this both on the left on the right And you're seeing it unfortunately in the population at large and this is why they elect these people is a distrust of the individual's capacity to take care of himself a distrust of individual of the individual to live his life in pursuit of his own happiness independent of regulation controls and manipulation by by the society As as channeled through the state It's a distrust of individual human reason individual ability to live and to take care of oneself And and this has always been the excuse of why we regulate because I don't think you can separate nanny state issues From business regulation. I think they're very much related right They tell us what toys we can buy because some toys might be too dangerous And and we as parents are too stupid to know what toys are good and what's not and the market would not Determine what good or toys are good and what's not so we need a state regulatory agency to ban certain things And to regulate and we need we need public education. Well here. It's reverse we need government education because God forbid you leave parents alone to decide what education their kids go get they can make decisions for themselves We need to dictate that every kid gets an education and we need to provide the education because parents can't be trusted To do it themselves they would they would send their kids off to work in the factory If they had that option or they would They would they would send them to the worst kind of schools possible if if if they had those kind of options God forbid we have school choice or any kind of choice like that All of these things all of the business regulations the educational regulation the healthcare regulation are all a form of the state The progressives and I agree with Christopher about the history of the progressive movement, particularly in the united states Really pushed this and of course the republicans embraced progressivism Early with Teddy Roosevelt and and there was an old progressive wing of the republican party in those days and they left embraced him too with with wilson So Progressivism is is part of american political culture But it's it's the idea that we as individuals need cannot live Cannot use our reason to pursue our own values our values are corrupt as individuals. We're corrupt and we need Society to help us take care of ourselves whether in the material world or in the spiritual world Whether in the economic realm or the day-to-day kind of decision-making realm in every single realm We need the state's help. We can't negotiate our own salaries No, you're going to be underpaid So we need the state to provide a minimum wage and benefits, you know We have to tell the employer what benefits we get and what we don't get We can't negotiate that ourselves because you can't trust the individual to actually provide for himself Who are you as an individual to live for yourself? Ultimately, you're just a cog in some collectivistic machine and this is all driven by different forms Form the right or form the left of collectivism. So I want to go back to what Douglas said it's what we need to fight for Consistently in every aspect of our lives Is for the rights of individuals to live their lives free of coercion free of force Free of people dictating to them what they can and cannot do free of authorities That tell us how we shouldn't shouldn't live and if we don't live by their standards, we get penalized by force What we need to do is throughout from the economic realm the social realm every realm of life Fight for liberty fight for individual liberty individual freedom and fight for individualism the sanctity of the individual And and so it's it's too many of our of our free market fellows You know fight the fight in economics and even there they compromise way too much And ignore the social side then the people special but it's all one fight There's one fight and that is for individual freedom for the individual mind for the individual ability and right To make the and the two are connected if they don't have the ability you're never going to have the right You have the ability and the right to make decisions for yourself. You might make lousy decisions. You might fail in life. That's on you That's on your decision So you have to fight for free will for reason and for individual rights Consistently throughout every aspect of human life and until we're willing to fight consistently about that We continue to lose no matter who's You know in in power Now I think we've got time for some questions if we're taking batches of two or three just to kind of keep things going Should I have an hour on the microphone for me the easiest way Cheers Thanks, just a quick one because the conservative party as I say has given up a lot of the moral Ground on things out when the debate comes about spending you can always point to get to conservative spending plans which kind of take the Argument away from them then fighting against an excessive labor-based spending plans because they're both spending plans Um, I thought that occurred to me and thanks for the inspiration from the brexit candidate. That's sorry brexit. MEP apologies um Would it work if the current rise of brexit minded individuals? You mentioned the london the leave for britain Yep, um society and people like that with this current lecture It actually worked if they went in a tea party like rush into the modern conservative party and changed it from inside We want to John book Do you think anti-semitism is on the rise today and where is it going if this is happening? Um, yeah, I just wanted to ask what you thought would be the best way to take this fight to the world Um, there are some different avenues politics media academia Where do you think people in this room should put their efforts? How many are we taking? Hello everyone, I'm an architect in uk and we are subjected to a lot of building regulations so I like to believe that our Job is more inherently capitalistic and individualistic But these regulations are not allowing to do that. Unfortunately, it's absolutely frustrating for example There's one rule where if you own a property, you can't even build even one meter extension without asking Your neighbors permission the council's permission and so on and so forth So what are your opinions about this and how do we stop this madness? I'm sorry. How do you Do Yeah, um, can it happen it well who says it's not already happening I mean we have a lot of really sound people who are now in you know the mechanics of the dory party And I think there's a lot of people with within The dory party that have got individualism and have got the basic structure of the policies that small c conservatism has had and For some time I think that all in all the general the General political scene hasn't really been relating back to its own philosophies for a really long time and they've been concentrating on this over-regulated, you know control mentality Whereas they never refer back to the reasons why they exist in the first place Why did the conservatives exist in the first place? And I think now that we have people who are You know fundamentally educated in philosophy and who have that at the back of their mind continuously working within the dory party I'm hoping I am hoping to see a change Um, can can it, you know, can there be a modern day tea party? I think a lot of people right now are slowly shifting back to whether they're Tory whether labor, you know parties like mine Are seeing, you know a drop in the polls and I think people are realigning and reasserting themselves in their original homes So, yeah, I think it's possible Yeah, that's great. Um, so Douglas, I think it's the third or fourth question Um, if you're defy for liberty right now, what should you do? It's tempting to think that the answer to it is through politics And certainly there are people in politics who who support we need to affect change and change isn't going to happen Unless it manifests itself ultimately in a change in the body politic But politics is not enough Politics is never going to be enough Don't ever take comfort from the fact that Sajid Javed says he admires Ayn Rand Because he may have read The Fountainhead But it's the civil servants around him who encase him in this bureaucracy of Limited possibilities for change that are going to really drive it. So the question is what do we do? Yes, by all means look to politics, but it's not politics. It's going to drive change The fundamental cause of the problem isn't even as Lucy brilliantly described the quango state with its insistence upon Doing things by top-down design the fundamental cause of the problem. I believe is a corruption in the social sciences People in social sciences, particularly that corrupted and degenerate subject economics believe that it is possible To gather in one place enough information To know enough about outcomes to order human economic and social affairs by design In the past in the pre-enlightenment era, there were religious creeds and doctrines which told rather conveniently for the priesthood of Elites, whether they were pharaohs or medieval princelings that they Knew enough to be able to order the world by by design And we see this same conceit post-enlightenment Manifesting itself in all sorts of ways science ism communism environmentalism europeanism all of them are basically post-enlightenment creeds that say that a small enlightened priesthood who know enough Can order our lives for us And this invidious notion is so pervasive now in academia. It pervades almost all the social sciences If we want to counter it we need to recognize that it's based on not true empiricism, but on what david doge the famous philosopher and physicist calls inductivism and economics and sociology and pretty much everything that You find in a PPE degree at an oxbridge university now is basically an inductivist Training of the mind rather than a proper education And we need to tackle that if we are to affect real change, but I sense that there is a crisis coming in academia Um, you can only go woke so far You can only pile on so much debt in the universities before you start to realize you're producing third rate degrees for third rate minds Talked by third rate academics when that crunch moment comes I think there will be ripe opportunities for universities like buckingham with two-year degrees to come in with proper genuinely empirical Academic degrees that are profoundly different and game changing to what we've had mainstream academic universities produced for the past 20 or 30 years Um, great if I could pass down to you so There are kind of two things that particularly struck me. So first of all, I think we had a debate about anti-semitism And it's extraordinary the extent to which it's become an issue in the u.k. with the jewish chronicler the biggest British jewish newspaper kind of urging urging is not to vote So the first thing is Obviously you've explained why you think that's an issue on the left But why do you think it's become an issue so specifically in britain and second floor? How do you think that? Advocates of you know, a freedom of individualism to organize and work in the u.k. I mean, yeah, I'm not sure. I know the answer to that You know, I I don't know enough about the uk to know why it's specifically here. It's always been around In the moxist left. There's always been anti-semitism as I read You know, I read an extensive quote from Karl mox himself. He was a Quite an anti-semite in spite of jew being jewish himself He was very anti-semitic and linked judeism with capitalism and I think that is why the left so resents uh, judeism is real I think is another source of anti-semitism in more recent times particularly here in the uk. You see that everywhere And again, I think that's connected to the whole the success of Israel the fact that Israel is such a has become such a powerful state, uh, and and people people resent Particularly on the left people resent success. They resent achievement. They resent wealth and is rules become wealthy. So I think those are the two things that come to mind in terms of why it happens here, but you're seeing it all over I mean, it's certainly, um within the democratic party in the united states You're seeing the same kind of phenomena Of elements within their democratic party. They're quite anti-semitic And you're seeing it on the radical right in in on the extreme right in the united states people the anti-immigration You know, the people who are anti-immigration very much affiliate that immigration with jews Um, you know, they if you remember Charlottesville Uh, when they had the tortures and they were walking around The the the thing they were chanting one of the things blood and soil was one With the direct reference, right and the second one was jews will not replace us So I think in times of angst. I think in times of uncertainty In times of where people, uh, are struggling to make sense of the world I think anti-semitism rises in times Like that and I think you're experiencing that in in the uk for a variety of reasons And you're suddenly experiencing that very much. So, uh in in the united states Just two things on the previous questions I'd be very weary of using the tea party as a good example of something good as an example Because what they've done to the republican party initially we all thought was good It's turned out to be a disaster And and they turned out to be just as bad in terms of wanting to control people's lives In in many respects as as uh, as whatever happened before then and I would just add To what Doug let's just say I agree completely. This is about education education education and the bastions of education Are universities and that's where the real battle is being fought every single day and we're losing, right? So so that that is that is certainly part of the problem and it does go back To a very fundamental battle That that that is that is waged and that is the battle between the enlightenment and everybody else Uh, the enlightenment is the era of individual liberty. It's it's a philosophical era that advances individual liberty because it recognizes reason as man's means of of of living in survival and by raising reason up by In science and reason and the idea that you are competent enough to choose your own path in life. They liberate Literally liberate the individual And a lot of what's happening in academic today. A lot of the central planning is really going back harkening back to plato Right. It's these are philosopher kings The idea truth is in another dimension, whether it's a An identity dimension in the united states with identity politics Whether it's it's some other dimension whether it's religious or secular And only the philosopher kings can commune with the world of spirits and tell us how to live it goes back to plato's republic And all anti-enlightenment ideas are in very much a platonic ideas and in that sense It's all about a between Aristotle and plato and and unless we embrace the enlightenment ideas The ideas of individualism and ideas of reason and ideas of pursuit of happiness We lose these are these are deeply philosophical issues that in and this is why politics is a reflection Of the philosophy adopted by people At an implicit level without them even knowing it And chris faced similar questions. So, I mean how can advocates of freedom organize in the uk and slightly more specifically One issue where perhaps the labor party is doing more than conservatives is with certain drug policy So cannabis is is an issue which I think it's going to come up quite a bit We haven't seen their manifestos yet, but it's quite plausible that labor will A royal review or possibly even go all out and legalize If that's the case, could you argue the labor party is doing more for individual freedom than the conservatives in the united states sense? Yes, but as I said before, I mean, why would that be particularly surprising? What what does one of the tories doesn't last nine years to make you think it would be otherwise? I don't know what they will do regards that issue because the parties tend to steer clearer, but I think if If any conservative prime minister's going to legalize counters and give me Boris Johnson I'm fairly optimistic about Boris Johnson. Actually, I don't know he And drinking on the tube before someone mentions it But I mean the guy is if not a libertarian a libertine himself And I think some of that will hopefully shine through in terms of what people can do To to fight this fight. I mean ideally going to the civil service or politics or at least academia If it's too late in the day for that to happen then, you know Take to social media, bring up the Jeremy Vines show, you know and and oppose everything You know oppose everything because there's there's these people never acting good faith Even if they've got an idea that sounds relatively benign It will be designed to open the door to a whole slew of regulation And you don't need to oppose it on kind of arcane philosophical grounds over there are perfectly sensible um, you know Comprehensible reasons to oppose this stuff on economic grounds. This stuff doesn't work. It's nearly always based on on junk science um And it can be opposed, you know, because although there's kind of quite broad support for this kind of stuff in parliament it's pretty shallow And if politicians have any feeling feeling that there is it might lose them any votes Then they simply won't go ahead with it. This is an optional add-on for a lot of politicians It's not at the core of their being it is not why they got into politics Um, it might give them a few headlines and it puts something on the cv But they're not that bothered about things. There's no way gave me Cameron Who cared either way about plain packaging He just made the mistake of launching a public consultation and then left him in a position where he kind of had to do it for political reasons It was not something that he he became prime minister to do So most of this stuff people will drop if they feel there's any real opposition The trouble is the people who are proposing it. They are not there is not a grassroots Nanny state movement in this country and hasn't really been since the time of the temperance movement Um, it is a bunch of what's quangos, you know, it's what were you saying?  They're it's simple as that They shut up, you know the the the public out lobby on minimum pricing For example, they got a fair hearing in scotland because the smp wanted a big ball policy Something they can actually do Which didn't depend on Westminster in the uk gordon brown Made it very clear he wasn't going to do it the conservators eventually made it very clear They're not going to do it and there isn't an ongoing campaign You don't hear people banging on every week about minimum pricing because they realize it's not going to happen They only bang on the door if they think it's going to open So politicians just stonewall them. They just go away. It really is simple as that.  They don't do it again Can I answer where do we take the fight first? Um, well, that's kind of why I set up what I set up I greatly believe that social ostracization is a great tool for people who do want to oppress people's freedom of speech And being able to talk freely means that we can actually reason like Like we said was the initial The initial step of being able to be a free individual in control of your own future So being able to talk freely is really important and I feel that because we've been under such pressure from you know From from the state and having everything decided for us We've forgotten how to debate and I think that brexit was a political renaissance Where people actually woke up and decided actually, you know, we we do have a say in this We can actually manipulate where our country is going It's not going to be the same old thing every day in and out basically trying to Control us under what provisions of the two main politicians political parties have in mind So the ability to reason and the ability to talk about opinions openly to be able to make mistakes and to be able to Like blind people sort of, you know feel our through ourselves Through difficult political topics is really essential.  Thanks Hello, um, I've met you before Lucy. So I've got a brexit type question And my question is as we all know in in England, it's really realigned politics So that you will have, um, you know a kind of conservative gentleman who I met who was talking about Communists saying okay comrade on we go. So we've you know, sort of, you know, quite often in the leavers meetings There's a lot of communists, although mainly conservative What my question is and I know in a way that you won't be able to answer it or anybody really nor can I Is philosophically you would just mention something you said that with the coming election You thought that the parties the Tories and labor were sort of going back into their normal places Do you think brexit is ever going to really end? My question is to Christopher, I would like to know a bit more about the nanny state index if you could explain What goes in and what is left out because in my mind whether Company is regulated on how much sugar it can put or what price it can put on sugar Is the same thing to another company not being allowed to sell a specific type of financial product or Having a set price on loans. So Where do you draw the line in assessing how big the nanny state is in the index? Yes, I think Chris fabiological place to start. Yeah, sure. Um, yeah, we we look at specifically E-cigarettes tobacco food soft drinks and alcohol So the traditional nanny states issues we would like to include gambling, but it's Kind of data reasons it's rather complex and there is a case for putting things like sex work and drugs in there as well But to be honest, I mean there isn't much variation actually across Europe and how governments regulate those two things So, yeah, we stick to the the traditional what people I think normally think of as nanny state issues as opposed to, you know, broader Regulation you can check out the index. It's I think nanny state index.org And you can you can see Who ranks where? Yeah, thank you. This was kind of babing to Lucy, but I'll direct it somewhat to Douglas will brexit ever end The short answer to the question is yes, I think it will. I think it will end Fingers crossed at the end of January when we leave the EU But I think your question alludes to a broader issue I think what brexit has done has exposed the extent to which there is a smug self-regarding elite who preside over public policy formation Who tell us what is and what isn't acceptable? And I think we've woken up to the fact that this country is run by these charlatans And I don't think the sort of suburban Clactonian people that I used to represent in Essex Are going to doff their caps to that any longer. I think they realized that the country is run by charlatans People who preside over central banks with the same stupidity with which they said project fear would be unleashed if we Voted to leave again and again and again Whether it's central banks, whether it's the people who decide what goes in the national curriculum Whether it's the people who preside over our national health service These people are basically morons and they are routinely wrong It's Hemorrhaging confidence in the political establishment and the political establishment talks about this as though this is a bad thing It is a thoroughly good thing that people realize That like in the Wizard of Oz when you draw back the curtain these all powerful people Are confused middle-aged men who don't know what they're doing And when people wake up to that I think we will look back and see brexit as the beginning of a fundamental change A transformation between the governed and the governing if I could just finish When I was growing up There were four tv channels and a distant program I would decide what we watched on a saturday night Paul gambuccini was a famous dj. He would decide what music you listen to on radio one Radio one because there were four or five channels When classic fm came along and you could have 24 hour classical music it was considered radical and revolutionary today People are growing up. They can listen to what they want watch what they want the idea That we need people like those distant Programmers like those distant djs deciding what we should have and what we shouldn't have those days are coming to an end And I think brexit is stirred something very deep in the in the english psyche This this effect incompetent elite, you know these these I would call them the sort of the georgia school generation of politicians They need to get out They need to go and we need far-reaching and fundamental change never again If I could just put in this way, sorry for using too much time I think this country has been saved in the past century on three historic occasions by ordinary working people by ordinary folk Against the stupidity and the folly of their elites It was the elites in this country who in 1940 1941 wanted to cut a deal with germany The only reason this country didn't do that is because when winston church said we're not going to do it Working people backed him. That's what rescued this country All the posh people all the Tory party grandies all the people in the carlton club were on the side of appeasement 1979 the same thing happened all the elite said we needed a price as an incomes policy We needed more canesism It was a grossest daughter from grantham backed by the working class She never once lost an election because she had majority working class support Who saved this country from the stupidity of academic socialists? and then again June 2016 this country was saved from the folly of its elites From the folly of its oligarchs from the folly of its poshos from the folly of its academics By ordinary working people full time on the EU and you know, we need to put Suburban people back in control of their lives And drive out the parasitic elites who've run this country and done a pretty good job at times of almost running it into the ditch So if there is a revolt against the elites both in the UK or brexit and perhaps in America with Trump or burly sanders Do you think that's a good thing for individual liberty or bad? Well, the problem is it's a revolt against something. Well, what is it for? And in the united states you're seeing what it's for it's for a different type of Statism and irrationality in the form of trump. So I certainly don't think trump has a move towards liberty I don't think trump has a move towards individual freedom I think trump is to move just towards a different type of collectivism statism And and state regulation of our behavior just on different fronts and it is a it is a red light for a lot of It's a green light or it's a green light for a lot of different type of tribalists and collectivists To dominate the dialogue, but there's no discussion in america left or right In terms of individual liberty and individual freedom or really rolling back the state in any way Donald trump is spending I mean the the spending of the republican party and the donald trump it mimics Mimics obama and you can cut taxes or you want but what matters is spending because One way or the other you're sucking money out of the private economy where the two taxes are through debt Doesn't really matter that much Focus always on spending not on taxes if you want to do anything to taxes simplify them But reducing taxes for the sake of reducing taxes If you don't touch spending is meaningless in the long run So there's nothing that donald trump has done with exception of some reduction of regulations at the agency level That has moved the united states Forward and of course if bernie sanders gets elected You know, it's it's it's it's it's it's much worse Although i think he would get very little done because i don't think anybody likes bernie sanders in politics So i don't think he'd achieve anything Elizabeth wand is what scares me because she's bernie sanders with brains And and and and i think he's competent and that's that's really scary But there's no nobody in american political world right now nobody who is advocating for freedom The the tea party has gone. It's disappeared. It's completely diffused itself It's basically become a trump party or a status collectivist party but I think and i look at britain And and you guys look so much healthier than we are I mean truly We are i mean i'm we're building walls. We're we're doing nutty things in my view Instead of actually focusing on the problems that we have and we're left and right have bought into the same rhetoric The rhetoric inequality the rhetoric of the of the of the lost middle class which is complete garbage and complete nonsense just untrue Um and both from an economic perspective and from the perspective nanny state I don't see a difference between the left and the right in the united states today. Um, and and you know, I think abortion rights are in Going to really are really under threat in the u.s. On a massive scale. You see state after state reduce Those right. Yes. We're seeing marijuana So so you'll be able to smoke which you won't be able to have an abortion and and in in in many other respects You're seeing yeah, they choose they pick a choose but they want to regulate our individual lives in one way or another Of course republicans are very much against marijuana certainly The justice department in the u.s. So I very little optimism in the u.s. And I hope you guys take a much more positive path and of course with brexit I think what I'll just say this. I think what's interesting about brexit is not brexit. It's what you do with it, right?  You completely screw it up And that would be a tragedy because there's certain elements of the opinion union of the good And and you have to recognize that and unless you really commit it to free trade and and free movement of capital Free movement ultimately to some extent of people then you're going to mess it up And it's it's so it's it's going to be really Interesting and fun to watch but i'm much more optimistic about What you can do here in britain than what we're experiencing in the u.s. Right now Yeah, and finally lucy. So is that they used questions originally? So again, um, it's brexit's kind of symbolic of a large shift in our politics and also it's a brexit particle to future beyond brexit Oh, is is that okay? I see we're in here. Okay So, you know like it is brexit ever going to end and I think it depends how you see brexit if you see it as the chaos that A lot of our media outlets want us to see it then, you know, it's going to end hopefully in january But for me, you know brexit I really do hope it ends. I'm an MEP for the brexit party and I I really want my job to end So I really hope it ends very soon because for me brexit isn't just about the very fact where Changing but we're leaving the european union for me. It's the whole process. It's it's changing the country itself You know actually holding a light to those To those quangos it's holding a light into the dark places of how our country is run And actually putting the voice of the general public back into our politics So I think that brexit is a much is a journey It's going to be here for a long time if if I have anything to do about I want it to be The light of people's voices that was in the brexit The brexit conclusion was I wanted to see it there continuing continuing to the future of Of this country So for me, no brexit isn't going to end because for me brexit is a very positive thing A thing and it means fundamental change throughout our institutions What's the future for the brexit party? I'll give you that one. Um, uh, you're probably looking for something to write about but um It was a future for the brexit party. Well, you know, we are one currently We have a few policies out there, but we have um, you know, the brexit party is called the brexit party Um, and I think the people within the brexit party also want to see continuous change within the system Um, so I think it's not so much what happens to the brexit party But what happens to the sense of brexit within our own politics and the politicians that have become brexit party MEPs and Maybe or maybe not brexit party MPs And I think it's holding the light and continuing to hold the light um To see whether brexit is truly a brexit to hold boros johnson to his To his promises I'm not sure we will be able to do that fundamentally going forward in the same way that we were doing However, I definitely feel that as individuals of the brexit party We can definitely have more of our voice that shines light on whether boros johnson Is going to fulfill his brexit promises. So, yeah, that's where it's going to go It's going to be spokespeople from the brexit party highlighting what he's doing or doing wrong Yeah, thank you very much. There's some wonderful questions. Thank you to our brilliant panel. I think it's a break now. Is that that's right? How long is the break? Yeah, yeah, so, uh We're slightly behind schedule. So we're going to cut the break to about 15 minutes During that break your own broke will be signing copies of a new textbook of americanism Which you can purchase here for 10 pounds Uh, we have some of iron rands books for five pounds and we also have What justice demands america and the israeli palestinian conflict? I really recommend this book. So, um Yeah, we'll we'll see you in In uh 15 minutes for the free speech panel with your own broke, uh, suti angudarzi tobyoung and our chair is sophie sandor Terrible


So I've done burn surgery, done a lot of nipple grafting and done a lot of skin graft. When you put on a skin graft, this is where we're going to put it on. So you could see this little blood coming in, it's going to keep this alive until there's vessels and stuff that goes into it. So in order for it not to elevate and get stuck down, literally you have to make little holes in the graft. Usually we mesh it when it's bigger, but with something like that we just make little stabs in it. So if any fluid does build up underneath the graft, it will be able to get out so the graft can stick down to the tissue. Okay so the next step was that we put on the nipple graft, we put on a couple of different sutures. One suture is a baseball suture, it'll stay on for longer and it'll fall off for itself. Then the other suture we put on is we're going to put some pressure so that this is going to stick down to it.  You'll see it in just a second, stay tuned. So we lay down the Xeraform, first it has Vaseline and has some antibiotic tendencies.  And next what we're going to do is we're going to wrap this all up and we're going to use the sutures to tie this down so it stays firm and the graft adheres to the skin. So this is what we call a bolster. So basically a bolster puts pressure on the skin graft to allow the neogenesis, neovascularization and everything happened for the blood flow to get to the grafted region. So that's what we have. It's called the bolster. It looks like a little flower, but we did it, it's done.


Well, thank you all for coming. Good afternoon, a good late afternoon, and good evening to all of you. And thank you for being here for this issues briefing on Afghanistan, the way forward. I'm Ishaan Thirur, a foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post. And I'm joined today by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hina Rabani Khar from Pakistan, and the head of the UN Development Program, Akim Steiner. And without any lengthy preamble, I think we should really get into it. We are all acutely aware of what happened in Afghanistan last year, a collapse that gripped the global imagination and our news media, but then has swiftly receded from the headlines amid all sorts of other crises, not least the war in Ukraine. But of course, a genuine crisis endures, and we're gonna talk through what's happening there, along with perhaps getting some insights on how to work or engage the current political dispensation in Kabul. So I'd like to begin, Mr. Steiner, you were recently in Afghanistan in March. You have seen firsthand the situation on the ground as you were telling me before the session, there's been an astonishing economic collapse, and that has also triggered a whole series of other calamities as well. Could you set the scene for us in terms of what the ordinary of Khan civilian faces right now and what UNDP and other programs and other international organizations are trying to do? Thank you, Shana, and great pleasure to be here with Mr. Khair also. And let me perhaps begin with, where was Afghanistan just before August of last year? It was a developing country, insecure, but with a negotiated exit and handover to the Taliban in visage. So I think the first thing is that what was meant to be a structured and orderly handover, then as we all learned, turned out to be a very chaotic and sudden departure plus takeover. But the country before that was a country that over 20 years had essentially tried to invest in both a securitization, a political project, and a development project. And I think perhaps I want to begin by saying, well, clearly neither on the security nor on the political project cannot be considered a success because clearly it did not deliver on it. But on development, there is a slightly over hasty way of dismissing everything that happened. Some people forget that in July last year, 40% of Afghanistan's civil servants were women. That hundreds of thousands of girls had actually gone to school, had gone on to work, some of them to university. That in terms of rural development and some of the infrastructure, clearly there had been investments. There were development gains. And I think it is first of all important not to congregate these three because those are probably what is keeping at least parts of the Afghan population even able to survive right now. But the public budget was 75% funded by the international community. Overnight those 75%, the billions of dollars were turned off. A new administration took office. But the factor, as I think you will all appreciate, it's difficult to speak of a new government while it is forming itself on the back of such a chaotic situation. And what we have seen really is an almost unprecedented implosion of an economy. I cannot think of another parallel example in the last 30 to 40 years where an entire nation and its economy literally ceased to function in terms of all the modern tenants of what we consider to be an economic system. Central bank ceased to function. Money, cash was no longer circulating. The private banking system collapsed. Government had no funds. Many of the, let's say, most trained civil servants had left the country. So all of that essentially left the Afghan people. The 40 million Afghans close to 40 million in an economic freefall that is without precedent. And this is still the situation to this day. And so when I visited in March, what I found was a country that continues to struggle even with some of the most basic tenants of a development effort. People are, for instance, not able to trade. They're not able to import. You know that the reserves abroad have been, for the moment, seized. You know that there is a sanctions regime in place. And most Afghans are struggling to survive in terms of being able to even earn a basic income. Now in the last few months, we have seen some revenues in government emerge from taxation and so on. They begin to pay civil servants, but largely the international response paid some of the salaries for the health worker staff, UNDP initially in the first month, with a global fund provided salaries for 24,000 health workers. Because this is the backbone of the most fundamental access to health services. Subsequently, WHO and UNICEF have put in place a system to try and finance health workers. All of this however happening, and I'll stop with that, essentially not by being able to work with the government because the Taliban, the authorities in the country, remain de facto authorities. They are not internationally recognized by any member state, therefore also the United Nations cannot recognize them. And so we're essentially engaged in a, let's say, a form of cooperation without recognition and trying to make the best possible for an increasingly desperate Afghan population. I use the term increasingly desperate Afghan population very deliberately. And I want to return to these forms of cooperation. But Minister Kar, over the process of the talks that happened in Doha with the Afghan Taliban, we were told in Washington that this Taliban is not your, the Taliban of 20 years ago, they're more pragmatic, they're not going to return back to the past. They represent something different. And we heard this from some Pakistani officials as well. But now of course we're seeing what's happening, we're seeing what's happened, especially to school girls in Afghanistan. I'd welcome your thoughts on A, the state of education there and what's happening to women's rights. And then of course on how you see the political leadership in Kabul. Okay, yeah, that's a lot of questions. But I will first directly go to the specific question that you asked about the state of education and what's happening to women because I think it's important to get complete clarity on where Pakistan stands on that. Because I think sometimes we get lost in translation and we get sort of judged upon having to deal with the compulsions of geography because unlike many other countries, Pakistan cannot pick itself up and just migrate or just leave. We have 2,600 kilometers of border, an active border with Afghanistan. So it's a state to state relations. And as I said, compulsions of geography. However, on the question of girls and women, now let me take you to where Pakistan is and what Pakistan is. Pakistan is a country which has perhaps highest representation of women in parliament comparable to the Nordic countries. Pakistan is a country which has had a woman, Prime Minister Mohtarama Ben-Zibhuto, a woman Speaker of National Assembly, constitutional post, a woman Foreign Minister, a woman State Bank Governor, women are in the banks, women are obviously getting educated. Women are in equal part of Pakistani lives. Now in a country like ours, see across the border something like this happening, we absolutely cannot condone it and we absolutely do not, we feel threatened by this perhaps much more than someone sitting in New York or Washington DC or London because it has things like this permeate through the border, extremism, extremist thoughts, extremist mindset permeates through the border as we've seen in the past and finds itself somewhere or the other. And as you may know, there are many takers of extremism in countries, in all countries. So we are obviously very threatened by this type of a mindset being just across the border. Now to the bigger problem of where did this come from? Now, the shocking part was of course on how quickly the Afghan government, the Ghani government fell and how quickly the Ashraf Ghani himself fled, right? However, I am surprised if the world would be shocked at that the regime that did take over, how did they take over? And I will tell you the answer to that, the enabling factor, if you look at one single enabling factor for that, it was the 2020, what was considered to be a peace negotiation, but turned out to be a withdrawal agreement. So there are many perhaps wrongs that we can point to, but strategically speaking, if there is something that went fundamentally wrong, it was the conversion of what was supposed to be a peace negotiation into a withdrawal agreement, right? In which you're actually interacting with them even to the extent of who will you issue visas to? Who will you issue passports to? So you're already accepting in 2020 that the takeover or their place in government in the largest way is coming. And from then onwards, I think what has been, as a neighbor, exceptionally distressful to us is that both the incoming regime and the international community leaves us wanting in its reaction. Okay, when Mr. Steiner talked about the collapse of the economy, allow me to say that in some ways, it seems like internationally, because of having a value system, we have enabled at the behest with the explanation of why a value system doesn't allow us to deal with a country which has such a regime, that we were okay with dealing with in 2020 and doing an agreement with, we have enabled the collapse, the absolute collapse of the Afghan economy by holding on to some of the reserves. You're specifically talking about what the Biden administration chose to do. Absolutely, I feel no, I cannot give any explanation to that, because generally it is considered that in order to appease our conscience, we should try and get as many people out of Afghanistan as possible. My question is how many? 180,000? 200,000? One million? What about the 39 million which are left? Are they left to die and be in their own devices? And that reminds me of these interesting conversations that I keep on happening. And this delegation from a European parliament who said, minister, you wouldn't understand, we absolutely are conscience and our principles will not allow us to deal with Afghanistan as it is, because we care about women's education and girls' education. And I said to them, and you would therefore have them starve because you're principally, you believe that they must get educated, right? And as I said, compulsions or geography will not allow us to have that possibility. And of course, when it comes to the regime itself, we've heard very happy words, okay? I mean, post 15th August, whatever was coming out of Doha was as if everything had changed and we find out. And even at that time I said, let's wait for the, this is a good talk, but let's wait for the walk. And so what is really happening is, what is really happening is that there is a bit of brinkmanship, if you allow me to take a few steps back, from both sides, from what I would consider the international community largely, enabling their collapse is not smart, okay? Who will go and fix it? Then again, we are not learning our lessons from history. So from the international community it is, the messaging is wrong and therefore we will, in some ways, enable the collapse by the economic decisions that we've taken. And from the regime, it seems to me that there is fence sitting and brinkmanship as, oh, they are not assisting us, so now we will ensure that we will do worse to our own population. So in many ways, it's unexplainable, but what we have, and I would like to perhaps end with this, but I think we have all shown that none of us have been able to learn any lessons from history. And as someone, as a country, as a state, that shares 2,600 kilometers border with Afghanistan, which has really suffered from not two years or even 20 years, we are talking 40 years. We're talking post-Soviet Union invasion and then the reaction of the world and then going, putting in the Mujahideen, you have the option of plugging out, by you, I mean, broadly international community. Now what we are left to do is to pick up the pieces, both how the mines have been polluted with extremism, the situation that has been created on the ground, its impact on us, so as I said, whether you call it revenge of geography, you call it compulsion of geography, and then we are held to be in this very uncomfortable place of holding the brief, we don't hold any brief of them. I mean, they are quite opposed or opposite of the value system that Pakistan wants to propagate. And frankly speaking, the value system that the state of Pakistan currently has fully espoused through its constitution. I want to get back to you, Mr. Sainab, but I have to stick with this. These are some of the figures in power in Kabul now, in the top ranks of the Afghan Taliban, are known entities to the Pakistani state. They had shelter in Pakistan. Surely there is a question to be asked about the Pakistani legacy in protecting this wing of the Taliban, especially as you now have to confront a security situation that they seem to be enabling with the Pakistani Taliban attacking all sorts of targets within Pakistan. Is the critics could say that Pakistan is reaping what it sowed? Yeah, I mean, that would be the simplistic view and that would be a luxury that critics have. It's a luxury that we don't have because we have to live through the decisions that are made 20 years back in the reaction to 9-11 and how that war came out and how it was played. I'll take you no further than the SIGAR report, which has recently been released, the interim report and the report in 2018 and the report before that, which tells you of the flaws and the strategic mistakes which were made, which tells you how the Afghan army, so in many ways, what you refer to is this, is perhaps one of the biggest problems because as someone who was from the region, as a country which was from the region, which was telling the world, look, perhaps you should engage with them early on. Born, we live up to that. We said, let's engage, let's normalize, let's let them be part of, because they are Afghans after all, right? And the world thought, oh, no, no, no, Pakistan, doing its regular thing. And then when this, putting up a 300,000 Afghan army, which according to the SIGAR report is basically an image of the US army and was using the same technological advances that only perhaps the US army can do, when all of those mistakes were made, we were considered to be the ones who were assisting these forces. And then we have the 2020 agreement, which the Pakistan, you know, that doesn't say the government of Pakistan and whatever nomenclature, very interesting and very long that you use for the Afghan Taliban at that time, it was the United States of America. And again, I forget the nomenclature, but it was two long lines of what you decided to call them. So I think this thing about Pakistan was the one who was assisting them. I think that is probably been proven by history not to be the case, because Pakistan would not be, if we had the type of control, let me just put it this way, if we had the type of control that the world associated with us for 20 long years, right? Then we would not be suffering from the security situation that we're suffering right now. If our dream come true, then our dream come true would translate into the dream coming into stability and peace in Pakistan, which hasn't been the case. So I think there's a tendency to try and project all the wrongs that took place in this Afghanistan experiment on Pakistan. And please allow me to say that I think the stated objective of this mission changed drastically within three presidents, right? And then as someone who heard many international delegations tell us repeatedly, our first priority is women education, is girls education. We have to protect the women of Pakistan. Then you hear President Biden tell everyone, we're not here to protect women. That's not our goal and objective. So I will absolutely end with this by saying that I think really the malaise is that many of the domestic compulsions that are felt in Congresses and parliaments abroad translate into policy in faraway lands, which does not have any direct repercussion on where the policy is being made, but has immense repercussion on the surrounding area, region, surrounding countries and the people and the population itself. Now you can extract, you can change that policy immediately and extract and do a pullout, which might be as hasty as unplanned and live with the repercussions of reputational hazard. We have much more than reputational hazard to live with. Understood. Mr. Saini, if the Biden administration unlocked some of these billions of dollars of Afghan funds that they have frozen, what sort of impact would that have at this point on the Afghan economy and for Afghan society? Well, putting aside for a moment of how one would do this and how the money would, in a sense, flow back to Afghanistan, I think there is no doubt that if these funds were injected into stabilizing Afghanistan's economy, if these funds were then become available to re-establish a working financial system, including a private financing and banking system, then clearly it would have a significant impact because right now you have to imagine you're living in a country where essentially much of the institutional functioning of a government has initially seized from local to national level. Your banks are de facto closed, one is functioning. You don't even have cash in your hand. You are not able to import, you're not able to sell in markets, except in a highly informal, survival economy. So clearly, this is a country that has no reserves, no funds, and not even the financial means with which to function. So this, without doubt, would have a major impact. And I think it is also the decision of the Biden administration to put forward a scheme that would release three billion, as I understand it, once the details have been worked out, in order to essentially allow the country to have access to what are genuinely its resources. And in that sense, I think it would be a very significant impact. And in the absence of that sort of assistance, can you talk a bit more about some of the projects that your organization is involved with, and some of the ways in which activities outside of the governmental realm can be supported in Afghanistan on the ground? Well, I think in the absence of that, what we have seen the international community do is first of all, leave Afghanistan, then define terms of engagement with Afghanistan, as if on the other side of the table there was a negotiating partner, when really there was a group of people who were basically one over the other side in their own view. So the first two, three months regrettably, there was very little dialogue and a great deal of non-communication or cross-purpose communication. Now let me be very clear, just as you did, Minister, just now, the United Nations, starting with the Secretary General, the General Assembly, us as individual agencies, we're unequivocal about the fundamental human rights that we expect a country like Afghanistan to uphold and to respect, and that includes unequivocally the right of girls to attend education institutions, and not just primary school, but also secondary school, their ability to pursue careers, to go to university. And it is without doubt, I think a grave misjudgment that up to now the Taliban have not fulfilled the commitment that they have repeatedly made to their own public, but also the international community, that they would reopen the secondary schools. Primary schools are reopened, girls can in significant parts of the country attend school. Now interesting enough, in parts of Afghanistan, even secondary schools are open. So this is a large country, and it is governed through different, let's say, lenses at the moment. So I think the first thing that we have to re-establish is a rule of law in the sense of fundamental rights. And I think this is perhaps the greatest single litmus test that the international community holds up to the Taliban, and I think quite rightly. But what is not correct is that in a situation of such chaos and disruption, essentially an international community retreats into a purely humanitarian mode, and does not recognize that this is a development emergency and economic emergency, in which if you leave 40 million people essentially alone in this economic implosion, you are creating the very scenarios that you set out to avoid, that people would be displaced in their own country, become refugees, start moving to other countries, radicalization, polarization. So I think from the beginning, and this was not easy, as UNDP, we took a very different approach. We in fact began preparing for that day because as you said, Minister, this was a negotiated agreement. So for us, the question was, what would happen on day one after this agreement was fulfilled, and the Taliban would rule the country. And we basically anticipated this economic implosion and put forward a way of saying, look, you cannot feed 40 million people with food from outside the country. You have to start essentially stabilizing a people's economy, which is where do people survive at the moment?  And therefore we needed to put together a program to stabilize and support and bring cash back into these livelihood dependent enterprises. And to some surprising micro-enterprises, in particular in small enterprises, are significantly run by women. So when I visited Afghanistan, I traveled to Masai Sharif and I actually met with women entrepreneurs with whom we are working. And the Women's Chamber of Commerce is our counterpart because we are with none of our funding working through any central ministry that is currently run by the de facto authorities. With a mutual acceptance, we operate in direct implementation mode. We bring finance resources to cash for work, rehabilitation of local canals, trying to look at the opportunity of bringing solar panels in because much of Afghanistan has no access to electricity. Off-grid solar is a way in which you're not only bringing electricity there, you actually create the opportunity to irrigate fields. As I flew from Kabul to Masai Sharif, it was fascinating in an utterly dry country. Whenever you saw a green field right next to it were solar panels for pumping water. This is how you help a country to survive a moment of extraordinary political disruption in which many things are happening that are difficult for the international community to accept and even as you said, minister, to a country right next door. But we cannot abandon 40 million Afghans simply on the principle of moral outrage. And that is why the United Nations immediately stepped back into Afghanistan and became the backbone of an international community's presence. And whether it is UNDP, whether it's 350 staff, whether it is the World Food Program, UNICEF, UNHCR, we are there because we see the desperation of Afghan people. And while the international community, in a sense, finds a way with the Taliban to conclude a process of political rapprochement, we are trying to essentially intervene in an economy that has to keep people alive. So minister, about that rapprochement, you seem to indicate that your government has very little leverage over the de facto authorities in Kabul. What is the way forward then? And if it doesn't involve recognition, what do governments need to do and what does Pakistan hope to do in terms of improving the situation there? Okay, I think the first thing that governments all over the world need to do is to not enable the impulsion that Mr. Shataina was talking about, right? So I know, and I'm sure he will be able to give you evidence for that, that even international agencies have to use stashes of cash and literally have cash come in and banking channels not open, right? So you're basically saying that we will, we are willing to maybe get scraps of fish for you and keep on feeding you a little bit of fish just so that you're alive and you don't really stop breathing. But we will enable the collapse of the economy. So if there are any low-hanging foods such as perhaps trade once and could potentially become the hub that it was once meant to become. And that if there's any scope for small enterprise, anyone can do anything, there will be no banking channel, there will be nothing that anyone can do, right? So just as a first, stop enabling the collapse would be a good thing that we can all perhaps contribute to. Now this other thing about using this moral outrage to try and get solutions is a little bit difficult and eventually the problem remains what it was during the last 20 years also that we all rely on each other and what is Pakistan saying? What is the U.S. saying? What is London saying? What is Germany saying, right? And not what are the Afghans saying? And this whole peace negotiation because the intra-Avgan dialogue which was supposed to precede the withdrawal agreement or the peace agreement between the United States of America and the Afghan Taliban did not, it did not precede it, it did not precede, right? So that I think was strategically if you look back, perhaps one of the biggest reasons. So what options are we left to deal with? I mean, we as I said, have to always because of the compulsion of geography have a pragmatic approach where we are a state which cannot change our geography and we may not, we do not like the values that they espouse to. They are frankly speaking dangerous for our polity, for our country, for not only the women and the men for peace stability, but you want to ensure that the implosion doesn't happen in a way that, you know, the impact of it is even worse. So there are no easy answers. I would say enable the economy would be a responsibility that we all have. It's not a matter of choice. So spending $1 trillion on a 20-year adventure and then freezing their $10 billion reserves doesn't sound very smart to me, right? So I think it's important that we create the circumstances for the Afghans to be able to rebuild whatever. And the negotiations will have to happen between the Afghans. And I'm less worried about the signs or the messages that Taliban are sending to the international community by not opening schools and more worried about the signs and the messages that they're sending to their own people and to their own women and to their own girls.  I think it's quite the opposite and it's a dangerous situation.  But right now the state that we're in, which I described right in the beginning, of this brinkmanship between the international community and the Taliban is perhaps the only people it is endangering is not you and I as much. Me, of course it is. I don't, you know, a little bit. But it's the Afghan people. They're the ones who are suffering. And I think once we wake up to that reality, enabling an economy and not creating parallel structures of aid forever. So it's like, it's almost like the strategy is, we will keep on feeding you bits and pieces of fish, but never allow you to. Can I just step in here for a moment? Because this is very important. One thing is humanitarian aid, which is essentially providing relief, saving lives. I just want to be very clear that as UNDP, we argued for a very different approach. One, there was a need for humanitarian aid. Let's be clear, I mean the situation in terms of food, supplies, et cetera, is desperate. But what we have advocated from the beginning is that the international community needs to take a wiser and more informed approach. Because precisely by not investing in people's ability to survive to earn a livelihood with some dignity, while a, you know, national government structure regroups and reestablish itself, will not only cause immense suffering and harm, it will also trigger precisely the kind of insecurity that you were referring to. And that is why UNDP from the beginning argued very strongly, but could not persuade many capitals that this was a moment where, and this is what the Afghan people, the women and the men that I met during my visit said, look, we don't need charity. We need help to start rebuilding our economy. This is going to be a very difficult decade. But the rebuilding starts with us, the women entrepreneurs, the widows I met who look after seven or eight people in their family, who employ 20 other women who have seven or eight people. You know, it takes so little money to enable them to restart their micro business. It takes so little money compared to what was spent before in a security approach to bring electricity to remote villages so that this most fundamental drive of development can actually enable people to survive. You know, people survive despite dysfunctional governments. And this is a situation where people are in survival mode. And while a government is reconstituting itself, we need to, with wisdom and foresight, invest here, not because we are aligned in any way in terms of politics, but it is in part also a responsibility because you can't turn your back after 20 years and say, well, this is not our problem anymore. First of all, it will come back to bite you. And secondly, it is, quite frankly, morally not acceptable. And so investing in that kind of engagement, and I completely agree, it's not to create a parallel state, but it is at the moment in the absence of a political agreement with the international community, the only way is to reach the people themselves. And that is exactly what they said, leaders in the private sector. And let me also say, I traveled to Kabul, I traveled to Masai Sharif. At no point was I constrained in my contacts. I met with women's chamber of commerce leaders. I met with women entrepreneurs. I met with civil society leaders, private sector leaders. I had a public workshop in Kabul where these conversations are being held about how on earth are we going to survive the next three months? And I think that is where we have often made mistakes in this crisis. When we retreat as an international community, we put people on a drip, so to speak. And in this instance, the World Bank could not function, but there was over a billion dollars lying in the World Bank of Development Funds for Afghanistan that were simply frozen for eight months while we watched the economy implode. And that is where I think we need to learn some lessons, which is not to be expedient, not to be tolerant of extremist views that simply take women out of schooling, but also not to be naive that by simply withdrawing, we are helping any woman or girl in Afghanistan. Thank you on that note. We could double this conversation in length and I'm so sorry that we're out of time. I'd love to take some questions from the audience and my apologies for not facilitating that earlier. But thank you so much, Mr. Sainah. Thank you so much, Minister Khar. And I hope this is a conversation we can keep on having and extend in the days to come in Davos. So thank you very much for all of you. Thank you. Thank you.