Welcome back to the Keiser Report, I’m Max Keiser.
Time now to turn to George Galloway, a
Member of Parliament here in the UK.
George Galloway, welcome to the Keiser Report.
George Galloway, got to get to this right away.
You’re against Scottish Independence. Tell us the
economic and monetary reasons for your position.
Well first of all it wouldn’t
really be independence.
We’d still be in the European Union and we’d still
have an unelected monarch as our head of state
and of course the question of which
currency we would use is a moot one.
The Bank of England, the
Treasury, would surely not
allow an independent country
to operate the Pound
because that would be giving the Scottish
government power without responsibility
and the Westminster authorities and
the City would have no authority
over what the Scottish government, the
newly independent Scottish state,
was doing with the currency,
doing with rates of tax,
doing with interest rates and so
on, so that’s an impossibility.
So the possibility emerges of joining the Euro.
Well how’s that going?
Who in Scotland would be persuaded
to go quietly into that good night?
There have been occasions when the
Scottish independence movement
has floated the idea of Scotland as Iceland,
Scotland as, I don’t know, the
Republic of Ireland before it sank
and of course the Republic of Ireland is
in the Euro but the Icelanders are not
and we know the ash that
enveloped the currency and
indeed the economy and
the whole society there.
So the question of which money the independent
Scottish state would use is a moot one.
But of course the more serious problems
are that an independent Scotland
would trigger a race to the
bottom for working people. Why?
Because without 71 anti-Conservative
MPs coming from Scotland
which is precisely the number now- 71
anti-Conservatives, 1 Conservative-
there would be perpetually Conservative
right-wing government in England
and in England the government
would ensure, surely,
that rates of corporate taxation, personal
taxation, public expenditure levels etc…
were so low that the Scottish
government would have no alternative-
even if they weren’t enthusiastic
about doing so, which they are-
of following them to the bottom
at which point, what price the so-called
progressive, even socialist independent Scotland
that's projected by supporters
of the SNP, what price that?
You would have two free market,
Friedmanite, monetarist governments
chasing each other to the bottom
and I think the time would come
quite soon that the Scottish people
would rue the day that they
had broken up this country.
And my last point is less powerful now than
it once was but it remains I think a fact
that in these storm-tossed times, to get out
of an ocean liner and get into a rowing boat
which is what a country of
5 million, with the only
population in Western Europe
that’s actually falling,
which is 4000 miles of coastline, oil and gas fast
running out and huge tracts of the country empty,
that would be a very perilous choice
for the Scottish people to make.
I mean I understand the pragmatic approach but
does your heart match what your head is saying?
My heart really does, I’m
against breaking up countries.
I’ve been against up the break-up
of virtually every country.
I think the partition of India and
then its repartition was a mistake.
I think the break-up of the former USSR,
the break-up of the former Yugoslavia,
or Czechoslovakia now into two states,
has all been a big mistake,
that in this world that we
have where huge powerful
economic forces are at work,
that democratic states have to come
together, not splinter asunder
and of course if it all goes
wrong, what happens is a
rise in ethnic, sectarian
tensions, national tensions
because if it didn’t work out the way the
Scots hoped that it would, who’d be to blame?
Who’d be blamed for the fact
that the Elysian fields promised
by the independence movement
have not been delivered?
I understand that breaking-up countries, you’re
against this idea of breaking-up countries
but without this kind of recourse for
countries to revolt, as it were,
there is a consolidation of power
always at the top of the hierarchy
and we espouse democratic principles but they’re
few and far between; power tends to corrupt.
But I wanted to ask you about a comment you make
regarding independence, that socialism won’t work.
Your position is that Scotland would be
socialist and that socialism doesn’t work?
Socialism in one country didn’t
work even when the country
concerned stretched from
the Urals to Vladivostok.
The USSR failed as a socialist country, with all
those people, all that land, all those resources.
Scotland has few resources, hardly any people
and would be attached forever, organically,
to a permanently Tory England.
So the idea that an independent Scotland
could emerge as a kind of cold-water Cuba,
which is how it’s sold by some on the
left in Scotland, is frankly absurd.
And when it became clear that it was absurd, as I
say, the search would be on for the scapegoats.
But let me address if I may the point
you just made because you’re right,
I’m not suggesting that instead
of breaking-up countries
we have a kind of Super-EU
run on the current lines.
There are many serious problems,
fundamental problems, about that model.
But the answer to that is
to democratise that model,
not to atomise us all
into independent states.
Every state will have an army, a navy, an air
force, a chain of embassies around the world,
we’ll have bureaucracies, we’ll
have a flag and a border
and the temptation with borders is that you stand
at them shouting ‘Boo!’ at Johnny Foreigner.
That’s what’s wrong with the
Farage/UKIP perspective for the UK
and it’s what’s wrong with the Alex
Salmond/SNP perspective for Scotland.
Let’s talk about this idea of socialism for a
second because if I'm understanding correctly
you’re suggesting that in Scotland’s
case it wouldn’t necessarily work
but it’s not a blanket
condemnation of socialism as such
because of course the way that
people view the world typically
is they break it into two opposing
ideologies: socialism and capitalism.
I don’t think I could safely put
you in the camp of a capitalist
so under the very crude
definitions that we are forced
to live with, unfortunately,
in this day and age,
there’s usually that split
[of] socialism-capitalism.
If you’re not capitalism,
you’re kind of socialism,
but you’re saying that it
wouldn’t necessarily work for
Scotland, you’re just saying
that in Scotland’s case,
you’re not saying socialism as such doesn't work
because obviously in Venezuela
under Hugo Chavez- [you’re
a] big supporter there-
that’s a socialist model.
So how do you fine-tune it?
Yeh, I mean socialism as a
concept is not a busted flush
but it can only work where you have a
critical mass of population, resources
and the ability to actually act independently.
Scotland has none of these three things.
We would not be acting
independently because we’d still
be tied to the English currency
if the English agreed,
and they would only agree if we signed over any
independent tools of changing the economy…
Let me jump in, because what
I’m hearing as a tactician,
you're saying this is not
necessarily a great idea.
Let's roll this on... You’re an MP for the
Respect Party in the House of Commons
and obviously the Respect Party
wants to increase its influence
 and you want to bring in other
MPs under the Respect Party.
You mention Nigel Farage-
here’s a guy who was really
on the outlying force- UKIP
started on the fringe.
And they’ve really made their
way into mainstream [politics].
As a party leader for Respect, are there
any lessons [to be] learned from that?
Number One, from the tactical point of view,
putting aside the politics for a second,
as a mere tactician Nigel Farage
seems like he’s done a good job.
He has and I try to do the same kind of thing.
Be honest, be straight, be real, be a human
being, not a speak-your-weight machine,
say what you mean and mean what you say.
Farage is perceived in the country to be all
of these things and I try to do the same.
Of course, selling right-wing
nationalist ideas to the simple-minded
is an easier task the selling left-wing,
progressive, socialist ideas,
especially in the sea of media power all around us
which is deeply hostile to the
kind of things we talk about.
Let me ask you a question:
it seems that Nigel Farage’s popularity is not
really home-grown, it came from foreign media.
Nigel Farage is a star on RT
because he’s been on RT’s shows
and this raises global awareness to the point
where the UK media couldn’t ignore him anymore.
This speaks to the fact that a
huge institution like the BBC,
very centralised, autocratic institution
here in the UK, is losing its grip;
Murdoch’s side of the picture, certainly,
and this global media, alternative media-
I know you’re big on Facebook and Twitter- how’s
that playing into your political ambitions?
I mean I think you’re right,
there comes a point at which
the mainstream- so-called
lamestream- British media
cannot ignore the phenomenon
that are rising in the country.
One of them is a detestation of the British state
in Scotland, of the European Union in England.
Others are of what I call the three
cheeks of the same backside,
the three rulers of the mainstream parties
who have an iron-clad consensus
behind war, privatisation, austerity.
The media, the prevailing orthodoxy-
Dr Johnson said the grimmest
dictatorship of them all
is the dictatorship of the
prevailing orthodoxy-
and the prevailing orthodoxy would have prevailed
were it not for, as you say, foreign media,
the existence of Twitter, Facebook, the
Internet, the ether, the cyber wars,
ideological wars that are
going on, they have climbed
over the walls of that
prevailing orthodoxy.
Now of course on the foreign media side,
your appearance before Congress in America
just a few short years ago testifying,
where you slammed the gentleman who was asking you
the questions, and I wanted to ask you something:
I was watching that event and it seems
to me that it was a great example
of how education in the two
countries is vastly different
because in this country
of course, people grow up
debating and in the Houses of
Parliament debates are key
and you see [it in] Question Time every Wednesday.
In the US there’s no such tradition at all.
It was like watching Muhammad Ali go after a gnat.
I don’t even remember the guy’s
name [who] you were debating…
Ex-senator Norman Coleman.
Ex-senator Norman Coleman!
But it was so one-sided!
I mean you’re a brilliant orator in your own right
but this is a system that produces, in
the House of Commons, a lot more debate.
We have about a minute left, you know the
system so well, how do you contrast the two?
Well it’s a good point, Senator
Coleman, [as] George W.
Bush would say,
mis-underestimated me.
He thought I was just a working class
son of immigrants from a Scottish city,
how could I stand up to the princes of the Senate?
And therein lays the point.
These Senators regard themselves as princes and
other people treat them as if they were princes.
No one goes into the court of the
Sultan and speaks the truth to them.
I got up-close, personal and punched
the living daylights out of them.
It’s good you made the Muhammad Ali analogy.
I’m a former boxer myself.
Rocky Marciano was the model I purposefully
set out to follow on that day.
I decided not to be Muhammad
Ali, not to be Mike Tyson,
just to be Rocky Marciano, remorselessly
punching, punching, punching.
But as a boxer I can tell you that
you see in the other guy’s eyes
the point at which he wishes
he was no longer there.
In boxing you can throw in the towel
but in politics, in front of live
TV cameras from all over the world,
you simply cannot and there was no escaping.
He could run but he couldn’t hide.
Look it up on YouTube, it’s George Galloway vs.
Norm Coleman who is long gone
but George Galloway of course is on the ascent.
Thanks so much for being on the Keiser Report.
Pleasure.
That’s going to do it for
this edition of the Keiser
Report with me, Max
Keiser and Stacy Herbert.
I’d like to thank our guest
George ‘Gorgeous’ Galloway,
a Member of Parliament
for the Respect Party.
