Michael Reiners is a writer, barrister, and architectural historian. Michael is the founder of the Reiners Project, which publishes essays, draft legislation and commentary on English constitutional law and the art and architectural landscape. 

Britain’s constitutional settlement has changed more in the last few decades than most people realise — and the consequences now reach into identity, speech, governance, and the question of who the country is for.

This episode forms part of Thinking Class’ ongoing inquiry: The Question of the West — examining the political, cultural, and civilisational foundations of our common life.

We discuss the “Yookayification” idea, the logic (and risks) of a Great Repeal approach to post-1997 constitutional reforms, and why any serious reform programme would need to confront the reality of the permanent state — the administrative machinery and quasi-independent bodies that can constrain elected power.

Topics we explore:

• England vs Britain vs the UK — what the words actually mean (and how they changed)
• Why “UK” is a very recent political identity
• Identity, citizenship, and why law doesn’t always reflect reality
• “Yookay-ification”, naming, and the politics of place
• Devolution, Human Rights, Equality frameworks — and unintended consequences
• What a serious constitutional “reset” would require (and what could go wrong)
• The “permanent state” problem: how reform attempts get contained or neutralised
• What cultural restoration could look like beyond slogans

Links

• Follow Michael Reiners on X: https://x.com/MCRReiners
• Visit the Reiners Project: https://reiners.org.uk/

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is an independent forum for long-form inquiry examining the political, cultural and civilisational questions shaping England, Britain and the West.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, legal scholars, economists, theologians, politicians, and public intellectuals.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, democracy, identity, inheritance, institutional continuity and social change.

New episodes every week.

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Lord Nigel Biggar is an Anglican priest, theologian, and moral philosopher, a member of the House of Lords, and Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford.  His most recent books are The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win The Culture War, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023), What’s Wrong with Rights?, In Defence of War, and Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation. In the press he has written articles for the Financial Times, the (London) Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, the (Glasgow} Herald, the Irish Times, Standpoint, The Critic, The Article, UnHerd and Quillette.  

Britain’s institutions are drifting toward a “new dark age” — where truth-seeking is replaced by intimidation and ideological enforcement.

This episode forms part of Thinking Class’ ongoing inquiry: The Question of the West — examining the political, cultural, and civilisational foundations of our common life.

Lord Nigel Biggar explains what’s happening inside universities, how liberal argument breaks down, and what citizens can do to push back

In this conversation we discuss: free speech as a civic necessity, why institutions reward intellectual vice, how debate collapses into smears, and why Biggar warns a “new dark age” is possible unless liberal habits of mind are defended.

Links

• The New Dark Age:: https://amzn.to/4kT9NWC
• Lord Biggar's books: https://amzn.to/4cfUPaZ
• The Biggar Picture: https://www.nigelbiggar.co.uk/

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is an independent forum for long-form inquiry examining the political, cultural and civilisational questions shaping England, Britain and the West.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, legal scholars, economists, theologians, politicians, and public intellectuals.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, democracy, identity, inheritance, institutional continuity and social change.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
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🐦 Follow on X

Lionel Shriver is a novelist and columnist at The Spectator, and the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Mania, and A Better Life among many other books.

Lionel Shriver returns to Thinking Class to discuss mass immigration in the West—not as an abstract moral debate, but as a lived experience reshaping belonging, institutions, and politics.

We start with Lionel’s new novel A Better Life, which tackles immigration through fiction from the host-country’s point of view. We explore why the “native-born” perspective is rarely told, what happens when immigration becomes mass-scale, and why voters increasingly feel unheard as demography, welfare states, and legal frameworks collide.

We also discuss: 

• the moral complexity of immigration, 
• why “a better life” can become an argument for open borders, 
• how asylum systems are gamed, 
• the sex divide on immigration, 
• the feminisation of institutions, 
• the crisis of male purpose, 
• and whether low birth-rates signal a culture that no longer believes in itself.

Support Lionel Shrivers work: 

• Books: https://amzn.to/4apdqQF
• A Better Life: https://amzn.to/4c3nPCJ
• Lionel Shriver at The Spectator: https://spectator.com/writer/lionel-shriver/

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Lord Jonathan Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice from 2012 – 2018. He is the author of The Challenges of Democracy And The Rule Of Law, the Sunday Times bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize.

Across Britain and the wider West democratic decision-making is increasingly being hollowed out by courts, by bureaucracies, by delayed elections, by restrictions on speech, and by a political class that often appears unwilling to govern according to the public will.

In this episode of Thinking Class, Lord Jonathan Sumption examines whether democracy and the rule of law can survive the conditions we are now creating.

We explore:

• What democracy and the rule of law actually are, and how historically fragile they’ve always been
• Britain’s legal inheritance and the health of the Rule of Law
• Whether freedom of expression is a precondition for democratic legitimacy
• The effects of mass immigration, sectarian politics, and demographic change on democratic consent
• Whether universal suffrage can function without a shared political community
• And whether the greatest threat to democracy comes from our institutions or from ourselves

This is a sober, historically grounded conversation about law, legitimacy, and the future of self-government in Britain and the West.

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Dr Carrie Gress has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and is the editor at the online women’s magazine Theology of Home. Carrie’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, First Things, Newsweek, The American Spectator, The Catholic Thing, The Federalist, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Examiner. She is a frequent radio and podcast guest and has appeared on Fox, BBC, CBC, EWTN, OAN, and Russia Times television. She is the best-selling author of eleven books including The Marian Option, and The Anti-Mary Exposed, The End of Woman: How Smashing The Patriarchy Destroyed Us, Theology of Home and, her latest book, Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can't Be Fused With Christianity. She co-authored City of Saints; A Pilgrim’s Guide to John Paul II’s Krakow with George Weigel.  Carrie has lived and worked professionally in Washington, D.C. and Rome, Italy and her work has been translated into nine languages.

In this episode of Thinking Class, Carrie  and I examine how feminism has transformed the understanding of womanhood, relationships between men and women, and the moral foundations of Western society.

We explore why motherhood has been devalued, how the promise of liberation has coincided with rising anxiety and loneliness among women, and why feminism increasingly positions men and women as competitors rather than complementary partners. Carrie explains how feminism has come to function as a shadow church while displacing older sources of dignity, obligation, and community.

Drawing on history, theology, psychology, and culture, we discuss the connection between feminism and Marxist thought, the emotional mobilisation of women for political ends, the neglect of men’s roles and gifts, and why a renewal of local relationships, family life, and moral seriousness is essential if the West is to recover a more humane vision of flourishing.

If you value serious, historically grounded conversations about Britain, the West, and the civilisational forces shaping our lives, please subscribe to Thinking Class, like the episode, and share it with others who want to think more deeply about what we have inherited, and what we owe the future.

• Buy Dr Carrie Gress' books: https://amzn.to/4qgVa0g
• Visit her website: https://www.carriegress.com/about
• Subscribe to the Theology of Home Substack: https://theologyofhome.substack.com/

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Dr. Bijan Omrani is a classicist, historian, and Oxford-educated barrister. His research explores questions of religious history and cultural identity, spanning from ancient Roman Greece to Afghanistan and the Silk Road. He has taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School, is a former editor of Asian Affairs, and currently serves as a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He is also a churchwarden.

Dr. Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert is the director of the organisation Don't Divide Us. She is an educator, academic, author, and campaigner who believes passionately in the essential importance of impartiality. 

What does it mean to steward a civilisation?

For centuries, England’s institutions — churches, schools, charities, civic bodies, even industries — were shaped by a Christian understanding of stewardship: the belief that what we inherit is held in trust, not owned outright; that culture, faith, and place impose obligations as well as rights.

In this episode of Thinking Class, Bijan and Alka and I examine how far Britain has drifted from that inheritance, and what the consequences have been for its institutions, culture, and public life.

We begin with the Christian idea of stewardship itself, before exploring:

• The disappearance of cultural knowledge once taken for granted — scripture, song, manners, dress, and shared moral reference points
• How stewardship historically shaped the governance of England’s public institutions
• Where those institutions are now breaking with that inheritance
• The Church of England’s Project Spire and the logic behind its reparations agenda
• How today’s political and cultural elites compare with earlier generations of stewards
• The decline of civic responsibility and the erosion of the “little platoons” of society
• Why fewer people now see themselves as custodians of what they have inherited
• And what, if anything, might be done to recover a culture of stewardship

This is a conversation about inheritance, obligation, and continuity — and about what is lost when a civilisation forgets that it is something to be kept, not endlessly reinvented.

Guest work:

• Buy God is an Englishman by Bijan Omrani
• Follow Bijan Omrani on X
• Read Bijan Omrani's writing in The Telegraph and The Critic
• Visit Alka Sehgal Cuthbert's website
• Follow Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert on X
• Visit the Don’t Divide Us website

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Firas Modad is an analyst and political economist focused on the Middle East and global geopolitics. He runs his own consultancy, Modad Geopolitics, helping companies and investors understand the commercial impact of political, economic, and security risks they face. Firas Modad is a host on Podcast of the LotusEaters.

Firas examines how Britain’s security is being quietly undermined at home and abroad, and why so few in the political class are willing to confront the scale of the problem.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• Britain’s internal security and the risks of social balkanisation
• The emergence of tiered citizenship and the limits of multicultural governance
• Whether remigration is politically or morally conceivable
• Britain’s relationship with the United States in an era of shifting power
• Whether a sovereign Britain can meaningfully escape the EU’s orbit
• China, offshoring, and the long-term consequences of deindustrialisation
• The Middle East, Iran, and the possibility of a rising Islamic imperial order
• Why some global crises provoke moral outrage in Britain while others are met with silence
• What Firas has changed his mind about during his life and why

Subscribe to Modad Geopolitics Substack here: https://www.modadgeopolitics.com/

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Professor Azar Gat, one of the world’s leading scholars of nationalism, war, and political identity.

Professor Gat is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the author of several major works on conflict and political order, including War in Human Civilization and, most notably for this conversation, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism.

In that book — and in our discussion today — Gat challenges one of the most dominant assumptions of modern political thought: that nations are merely recent inventions, artificial constructs, or the superficial products of elite manipulation.

Instead, he argues that nationalism and political ethnicity have deep historical, cultural, and even evolutionary roots, stretching far beyond the modern era.

Together, we think out loud about:

• why nationalism surged in the modern age — and why it did not begin there
• the difference between ethnic and civic nationalism, and the vulnerabilities of each
• how political ethnicity asserted itself in societies as diverse as ancient Egypt, Israel, China, medieval Europe, and early empires
• why Europe developed into a distinctive patchwork of durable nation-states, rather than large civilisational blocs
• Britain’s formation after Rome, the emergence of England, and how national identity and political ethnicity interacted across the British Isles
• whether multicultural governance can override inherited ethnocultural bonds — or merely postpone their re-assertion
• France as a revealing case of civic nationalism, and where its limits may lie
• and why contemporary examples — from Iran to Europe — suggest that political ethnicity never truly disappears

This is an important conversation because debates about nationalism, identity, and belonging now sit at the centre of political life across Britain, Europe, and the wider West — yet they are often discussed without historical depth, clarity, or intellectual seriousness.

Professor Gat helps restore that depth, showing why these questions endure, and why they cannot simply be wished away by ideology or administrative design.

We close, as always on Thinking Class, with a personal reflection — asking Professor Gat what he has changed his mind about over the course of his life, and what led him to rethink his assumptions.

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Renaud Camus, writer, painter, photographer, was born in 1946. He is now the author of more than one hundred and sixty works. His works are marked by the question of meaning and the fight against the industrialisation of man and the massacre of landscapes. 

In this episode of Thinking Class, John Gillam and essayist Renaud Camus engage in a wide-ranging conversation about what Camus has long described as “the disaster” — the civilisational, cultural, and demographic transformations reshaping France, Britain, and much of the Western world.

Camus is widely known in public debate for his writings on demographic change in Europe, often discussed superficially or polemically as "The Great Replacement". In this conversation, we move beyond caricature to engage his work on its own terms: as an attempt to diagnose what has changed within Western leadership classes, cultural memory, and moral language — and why these changes have proven so destabilising.

Topics discussed include:

• What Camus means by “the disaster” and why he sees it as civilisational rather than conspiratorial
• The role of political, media, and bureaucratic elites — whom Camus calls the “friends of the disaster” — in enabling demographic and cultural rupture
• Responsibility, narrative control, and why discussion of consequences is often displaced by moral abstraction
• Britain and France in comparative perspective, including demographic trends, historical memory, and elite ideology
• The prohibition on speaking of ancestry, roots, and continuity — and what is lost when a people forgets its own past
• Globalism, social engineering, and the moralisation of ideology
• Ecological objections to simplistic “solutions,” including unchecked population growth
• Why Camus rejects violence and insists on lawful, civic, and cultural means of resistance
• His reflections on monarchy, national form, and the endurance of peoples
• Christian hope, recovery, and the possibility that nations can outlast periods of profound disfigurement

The conversation concludes, as always on Thinking Class, with a personal reflection: what Renaud Camus has changed his mind about during the course of his life and what led him to think differently.

• Follow Renaud Camus on X
• Visit Renaud Camus' website 
• Buy Renaud Camus' books

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

William Clouston is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the United Kingdom and a member of the advisory board for Restore Britain. 

In this conversation, William Clouston and I think out loud about the current state of British politics, focusing on the disconnect between government promises and actual governance. We explore:

• The need for a cultural and civilisational vision beyond economics
• The challenges posed by mass immigration for social democracy and defining remigration
• The importance of governing in the national interest and what the national interest is
• Whether Western European nations will be forced into ending mass immigration by the United States' National Security Strategy 2025
• Lessons William Clouston has learned since entering politics

Follow William Clouston on X here.

You can watch and listen to my first conversation with William here:

• Watch: How Britain Began To Decline & Why Its Leaders Won't Fix It
• Listen: How Britain Began To Decline & Why Its Leaders Won't Fix It

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

New episodes every week.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X