In Search of Sanity

America and Britain produce Nobel laureates, technological geniuses and some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. Yet when it comes to choosing political leaders, we somehow end up with a talent pool that wouldn't necessarily make the shortlist for managing a McDonald's.

Usually spectacular incompetence gets you fired. In politics, it can get you promoted. In America, politicians are harder to get rid of than Japanese knotweed, while in Britain we periodically throw the entire government out, only to discover that the replacements aren't much more inspiring. On both sides of the Atlantic, party machines reward loyalty over talent, money buys influence and capable people increasingly have better things to do than enter politics. Perhaps the real mystery isn't why politicians keep disappointing us, but why we keep expecting political excellence from a system that seems designed to reward everything but.

So who's really running the circus? The voters, the politicians or the people paying for the tent?

Twelve men at a restaurant in Sicily. Ten engrossed in their phones. Presumably the other two had forgotten their chargers. This week, Mark and I ask how a device designed to connect us became such a convenient way to ignore whoever's sitting opposite. From scrolling through strangers' lives to sending children off to do homework on the screens we've just told them to put away, have we confused being connected with having a connection?

Join us for 15 Minutes of In Search of Sanity. You can even listen together. Radical, we know. If you enjoy our content, follow our Substack!

Trump's shenanigans. Newsom's Democrats running California as a one-party State. Labour changing Prime Ministers without any votes cast. The left wants government to deliver equity. The right wants it to restore order. Both seem increasingly tempted to give it more power, provided their lot hold the keys.

Meanwhile, Singapore poses an awkward question: would you trade some political freedom for a government that actually delivers? Everybody imagines a benevolent dictator until they become the person he finds inconvenient.

This week, Mark and I take aim at both political tribes and look beyond America to ask whether voters are losing faith in freedom or simply patience with failure.

Join us for 15 minutes of In Search of Sanity. Before somebody decides we've had quite enough free speech.

After Macklemore accused Israel of genocide and apartheid during performances at MetLife Stadium, Robert Kraft refused to host him at Gillette Stadium. Other venues objected and Macklemore was removed from the remaining dates of Ed Sheeran's tour. The online pro-Palestine crowd promptly turned on Sheeran.

Macklemore has the right to speak. Kraft has the right to decide who performs at his stadium. Sheeran has a tour to run. This week, Mark and I ask: did anyone actually do anything wrong, or does every disagreement now require a human sacrifice?

Political tribes and their chiefs now seem to believe they are saving civilisation. One side is fighting fascism. The other is fighting socialism. Alas, once disagreement becomes proof of evil, politics stops being a contest of ideas and becomes a vicious divorce, and the kids caught in the middle are the whole country.

This week, Mark and I rummage through the Greek philosophy on love for three ideas we may have mislaid. Philia, fellowship between citizens; pragma, the grudging compromises that stop society falling over; and xenia, extending dignity to strangers, even the irritating ones with podcasts. We also consider Mandela's admission that he was no saint, merely "a sinner who keeps on trying".

The good news is that democracy does not require us to love our opponents. Only to stop treating them as enemies. Listen in. Love may be the most radical idea in politics.

California has the wealth and talent of a superpower. It also has some of America's worst housing costs, highest wealth and income inequality, eye-watering energy prices, stubborn homelessness, weak infrastructure and awful school outcomes. Yet after years of Democratic dominance, voters still seem reluctant to change the management. This week on In Search of Sanity, California newspaper editor Joe Tarica joins us to ask why. Britain, meanwhile, is seeing voters scatter across Labour, Conservatives, Reform, Greens and Liberal Democrats. So why does America's richest state remain so stubbornly locked into a two-party choice?

A slightly lighter 15 Minutes In Search of Sanity this week, yet with a serious question underneath.

Prince Harry was once Britain's most popular royal. Now he and Meghan Markle are planning to spend more time back in Britain just as support for the monarchy hits historic lows.

So we look beyond the Sussex soap opera and ask what a constitutional monarchy actually means. Is the King really just ceremonial? Who pays for the institution and how much constitutional power still sits behind the crowns, carriages and bearskins?

Fifteen minutes of monarchy, money and mild mockery.

As faith in America's institutions declines, increasingly radical voices on both Left and Right are offering very different answers. Are they diagnosing real problems, exploiting public frustration or both?

Last week we examined the rise of democratic socialism. This week we turn to the populist Right, from Tucker Carlson and America First to the darker fringes represented by Nick Fuentes.

Perhaps America's problem isn't that Left or Right has all the wrong answers. It's that too many Americans have stopped believing the center has any answers at all.

One man owns more wealth than the bottom half of America. Britain’s richest 10% now hold half the country’s wealth. The DSA’s have more members than ever. The Greens just overtook the Tories in members.

Even Lenin admitted socialism doesn’t deliver equality. He called it a “narrow horizon” on the way to something else.

Denmark isn’t socialist. Venezuela isn’t an accident. Most of the kids calling themselves socialists, from New York or Newcastle, have no idea why that used to be a scary word.

Same panic, two countries. We go looking for cause and effect. 15 minutes, five definitions, zero patience for either side’s myths.

In Sweden, trust-based governance outperformed fear-and-mandate governance in the US and UK. Not just on the virus alone. On education, the economy, free speech and institutional credibility.

This week, Mark and I go looking for the line running through Fauci, Whitty, Ferguson and the technocrats and politicians who told us they knew best…..then shut us down. Literally. Then we explore why the one country that didn't panic came out the other side with something the rest of us lost. Trust.
Who should be point the finger at? With the 250 year anniversary of American Independence still fresh in our minds, our conclusion may surprise you!

Discussed: Anthony Fauci, American Policy, COVID-19, British Policy, Bipartisanship