An Interview with Mark Steyn (Part I)

(Photograph: manningcentre, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mark Steyn is the bestselling author of many books, including America Alone, After America, and Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and The Twilight of the West. His previous incarnations include broadcaster, film and theatre critic, and jazz musician. But for the purposes of this interview, it’s his role as a campaigner for free speech where I think Steyn deserves the most credit. He was the man warning us about demographic decline and the dangers of Islamic immigration two decades ago. He successfully campaigned for the repeal of Canada’s Section 13 hate speech law and, more recently, has been a voice of sanity against COVID restrictions, vaccine injuries, and climate change, all of which he’s paid quite a high price for. 

Haviland: I’d like to start with the issue of Islam, specifically in relation to Britain. It’s been a major thorn in the side of the Conservative Party. We’ve had former home secretaries stating that basically ‘Islamism’—which is their preferred term because it allows you to pretend it’s totally separate from Islam—is running Britain. And we had Lee Anderson chucked out of the Tory Party for saying the same about London. But whatever the official Downing Street line, the fact is that our elected representatives, the police, the judiciary, and faith leaders, by their actions, all seem to suggest that either appeasement or downright homage is the only viable response to Islam. To what extent do you think Islamic extremism is running Britain at the moment?

Steyn: Well, let me just say, I was surprised to see that ‘Islamism’ is still the preferred term. I’m not sure I had actually heard that in a decade and a half, or maybe longer. Because it’s a term I associate with the immediate post-9-11 period when George W. Bush was anxious to distinguish between what he called a ‘religion-of-peace Islam’ and this teeny, tiny, incy wincy, barely detectable sliver of Islam that is into blowing things up. And so I recall using the word Islamism circa 2001–2002, but I really haven’t had much use for it in the past twenty years because I quickly concluded it was an evasion. So it’s disturbing to me that the evasion is somehow still the preferred currency in the UK.

I wrote a book; you mentioned America Alone; that’s a book about demography, and it was published in 2006, when it still would have been possible to do something about it. I still get emails from people when some girl gets stabbed in a French park or whatever, and they say, well, why don’t the police do this and why don’t the police do that? And you know, it is because we’re now at the stage where a lot of the official bodies that you would expect to be engaged on the front lines have actually been hollowed out by Islam and apologists for Islamic supremacism. We’ve seen this most grotesquely on a topic I used to cover on GB News a lot, with the so-called ‘grooming gangs,’ which is another euphemism, another evasion, up and down the spine of England. You know, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Banbury, Telford—insert your town here—and where essentially all the institutions you might have expected to protect little 12-year-old girls—the politicians, the police, the social workers—had all concluded that it was too sensitive, too problematic.

And as for Muslims, there are Muslim schoolgirls in Britain who just want to live like any other non-Muslim schoolgirl, and at a certain point, it dawns on them that they’re about to be shipped off back to Mirpur in Pakistan and married off to their cousin. And if they think to go to the police to complain about that, they will have some diversity outreach officer who is himself a Muslim, who will then go to the girls’ parents and squeal on her. So just looking at it from that point, these people are nobodies to the British state. The white ones are written off as ‘white slags’ and ‘Paki-shaggers’ and all these other discriminatory terms. And the Muslim girls themselves have no status because they’re just supposed to do what their dad tells them to do. And what has been interesting to me, particularly with Lindsay Hoyle and that business in the House of Commons, is that members of Parliament themselves are now as equally impotent as a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Rotherham. They live in fear of the Islamic pressure to just shut up. We saw it again with Rishi Sunak when he did that. He’s suddenly concerned about extremism. I don’t even know what that means, nor does he, but he’s at pains to point out that he’s not just talking about Islamic or Islamist extremism.

Haviland: He had better move the ‘far Right’ into the balance.

Steyn: I don’t even know what ‘far Right’ means in a UK context. But the fact of the matter is that we’re not in the post-9-11 era; we are advancing to a new stage now with the demographic strength in the UK, as in much of Europe, which means that in a democratic society, it would require extraordinary courage for a political party to actually be honest about the challenge it faces here.

Haviland: I want to move on to the topic of free speech. It appears that what’s happened—to borrow one of your great lines—is that “everything is policed in Britain except crime.” The authorities have decided that it’s easier to arrest the people noticing than the people actually committing the crime. For example, recently, a man was given a two-year custodial sentence (he’s a big ‘far-right’ guy, apparently). He was making stickers that said things like “It’s okay to be white.” He also made the point that someone should do something about this immigration, along with statements that are certainly more distasteful. But during the Palestine marches, the only person the police arrested was the guy holding up the sign saying Hamas are terrorists. So that being the case—and obviously you’ve had first-hand experiences with Ofcom and GB News—are we winning the war on free speech or is it a lost cause at this stage?

Steyn: Well, it’s not a lost cause, but it’s losing in European countries. It’s also losing very badly in Anglosphere nations, in the U.S. and in Commonwealth countries, which have always been thought of as having more of a principled commitment to free speech. One of the big differences you mentioned was that I helped get rid of Section 13 in Canada, which Justin Trudeau now wants to bring back. But at that time, I do remember that you could still find lefties who were prepared to quote that apocryphal bit of Voltaire, you know, “I disagree with everything you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Well, nobody’s asking you to fight for the death; a mildly supportive tweet would do.

But we don’t even have that anymore because for large swathes of the population—under 25, under 35, under 50, etc.—it keeps advancing. There are correct answers to all the great questions before us. And therefore, nothing that dissents can be permitted. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about transgender bathrooms, the joys of Islamic immigration, or, most disturbingly of all, public health. You’re not allowed to express doubts. This product was never on the market until 20 minutes ago. But if you question it, you’ll be kicked off Facebook and Twitter. And I find, in the case you just mentioned, which is absolutely outrageous—that’s a guy who belongs to some political group that I’d never heard of—on their website, they predict to the second when ethnic Britons become a minority on these islands. And no one is arguing that he’s incorrect about that. They’re saying that it’s hateful to say that, and so you have to go to jail.

Haviland: The government keeps those figures for London. I mean, in the last census, we were down to 35%. That’s the government’s figure.

Steyn: So, the government is allowed to issue these figures, but you are not allowed to attach any significance to them. You’re supposed to act as if the fact that ethnic Britons are now no more than 35% of the population of their capital city is normal—it’s just one of those things that could happen to anyone. But it isn’t at all. And this idea of pre-crime, as the dystopian novelists used to call it, where essentially a judge is saying, “Oh no, this chap hasn’t committed any crimes yet, but he’s got stickers that indicate he might eventually become criminal”—that shouldn’t be a standard in English law. In fairness, in Dublin, the government’s so-called hate crime bill is even worse, because they’re saying that if they happen to kick the door of your house down and they find the draft of a speech you’re thinking of giving in three months’ time, then you can be jailed for that.

If you were to put your example of the population of Britons in London on a post-it note on your fridge in Cork or Shannon, the Irish coppers could put you in jail for that. So, what’s disturbing to me here is that these things would not have been possible (and the same with Justin Trudeau’s proposed restoration of Section 13) only a few decades ago. These are things that would not have been countenanced. And they’re being countenanced in the interests of things for which there is no sound basis. It’s not even as if they’re saying, “Look, there’s the view of the majority, and you can’t contradict it on something like the transgender mutilation of ten-year-old girls.” There’s no societal consensus for that. It’s very much a minority view, an elite view. And yet they’re now saying, “Oh, no, wait a minute, it’s settled.” It’s as settled as the settled science of climate change. And if you contradict it, you’re not only taken out of the public debate, but we will send the useless coppers—the coppers who don’t mind little girls being raped in Telford, Rotherham, and Rochdale. We’re going to send the useless coppers around to arrest you for it.

Haviland: You’re right; it’s shocking. I think even in the case of Sam Melia, the prosecution stated that the stickers were not criminal in any way. So absolutely staggering.

Steyn: No, no, it is. And by the way, this is one of the most disturbing trends in the common-law world as a whole. This is the complete perversion of the first principles of law. Any British subject from the day before yesterday would think it frankly incredible. The judges were prepared to go along with this. But as we have seen, you know, the judiciary has transformed beyond all recognition in recent years.

Haviland: Despite the populist rebellion that’s been taking place in Europe over the last couple of years, why is it that we cannot find a body more opposed to conservatism than the British Conservative Party? Although they haven’t yet managed to make Corbyn look centrist, after 14 years of their ‘conservative’ government, no one seems to be concerned about Keir Starmer.

Steyn: I remember mocking Theresa May at the time in the Telegraph for the famous speech she gave 20 to 25 years ago. She said that the Conservatives were perceived as the ‘nasty party.’ That was more influential than it ever should have been. And so, just as Blair decided to not disturb certain aspects of the Thatcher years, David Cameron decided that he would accept the broad generality of the Blair years.

And what has happened because of that? Perhaps I didn’t really grasp this until I returned to the UK media for the first time in a very long time. And so my assumption regarding the so-called Conservative and Unionist party—which in fact is neither right now—was that somewhere on the back benches, there were still all the characters I vaguely thought of as Tory—chaps like Nicholas Ridley and Keith Joseph. This is not the case at all. I’ve known Boris Johnson for 30 years or so. And Boris has never had any political philosophy. He’s always been a complete opportunist. And Cameron always struck me as a modish twerp. And Theresa May—I have never thought anything of her since she gave that nasty party speech. I hadn’t heard of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak until ten minutes ago. But I assumed there was a core somewhere on the Tory benches; there was actually some kind of conservative core. And I don’t think there is.

I don’t know whether the next election is going to be just a supremely bad defeat or a Canadian Conservative 1992 catastrophic defeat. But the net result of that, from the way Rishi is playing things, is that whatever survives of the Conservative Party will in fact be even more left-wing—which I think is the fair term, because I think to support Net Zero is left wing. I think supporting the online harm bill is left wing. I think to actually screw the Union as the Northern Ireland Protocol does and screw Brexit as the Windsor Framework does is also left wing. And I think the way to bet is that after the next election, whatever is left of the Conservative Party will be even more indistinguishable from Labour and the Lib Dems. So therefore, what is necessary is to inflict such brutal pain on that party and establish a genuine alternative which, in the fullness of time, can stage a friendly takeover of the Tories, like what happened after the Canadian Tories’ collapse. My view is that the priority in this election is for the last wasted 14 years of so-called Tory rule to be repudiated as thoroughly as possible.

Haviland: The projections from the great and the good are that it could even be worse than the John Major era. The Tories may have under a hundred seats—a thoroughly deserved outcome. I think a lot of people are just saying, we’ve got the highest taxes since the Second World War; we’ve got open borders; so why don’t we let Starmer in? At least he’s honest about that, and we might get some free Wi-Fi. What’s the difference?

Steyn: I think there’s a lot to be said for someone who’s completely upfront about this stuff. If you like things like Net Zero, if you like having your speech policed by the state, you are better off voting for a party that is in favour of all that openly, as opposed to a party that lies about it. I would put it this way, taking a sort of UK-wide view of it: if you went back 150 years in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, everybody in Great Britain and Ireland voted for a Conservative or a Liberal; it was a two-party system, and that was it. Everyone in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland voted for a Conservative or a Liberal. Then the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Home Rule Party came along, and there was a third party.

And then, as you’ve seen in the last half century, the so-called Celtic Fringe—with apologies to my fellow Celts—but in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, you saw the rise of multiple additional parties that advance particular local interests: Plaid Cymru, the Scottish Nationalists, the various Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein, and all the rest of it. So the question is: is England going to remain immune to this 150-year trend, or will England decide that they going to follow their fellow citizens in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales in supporting some genuinely different kinds of parties?

Haviland: Absolutely. I wanted to briefly touch on Reform UK, if you don’t mind, because they have managed to get some traction recently. I think they’re up to about 14%. They’ve just had gained Lee Anderson, quite a prominent red-wall MP, after his defection from the Tories. Nigel Farage is also kind of hovering about in the background—is he going to take over? Is he waiting until after the election? Some people even think that he’s likely to stage a coup in what’s left of the Tories. You know Nigel, I’m guessing quite well—do you think Reform UK has any legs as a viable alternative to the Tories?

Steyn: Well, you said Nigel was hovering—he is. He has been a brilliant hoverer; he hovers and waits till the moment is right, as he did lethally to Theresa May in that European election a few years ago. I think he is trying to calculate what is the current equivalent of his timing just a few weeks ahead of that European election. I’ve had my differences with Nigel, but he’s brilliant at connecting with people that other politicians don’t connect with, and I think that’s certainly true with the present leadership of the Reform Party; they need something more. But I also think they need some of these Tories who’ve got nothing to lose. I can understand why home-county Tories would wish to stick with Rishi Sunak, who seems concerned, insofar as he is concerned about anything, to protect a conservative rump in the leafier counties of southern England.

But if you were one of the red-wall Tories—I’m not even thinking particularly red wall—there are many places that are between the red wall and the home counties that are going to be lost. If I were in that scenario, I’d be figuring that if we’re going down, I might as well take a stand on the kind of opposition party I want to be a part of. I think it’s natural for political parties to die. The Liberal Party, which was one of the great political parties of this country, died. The American way—where there are the same two parties that have existed since the Civil War—is super unnatural. There’s not a single Tory leader from Mrs. Thatcher’s time who would recognise this as a Conservative Party. So the thing is, if you manage to scrape through and survive, you’re just going to be part of an unprincipled Conservative Party whose leadership and whose backers will still support Net Zero rubbish and all the other codswallop.

Would it actually be better to do what happened in Canada, which was called the breakaway? The Canadian Tories suffered because there were two breakaway factions; in Quebec, there was the Bloc Québécois, which was a secessionist party; and in the west of Canada, there was the Reform Party. In the UK, we now have a similar situation. Unless the UK can suddenly produce a bunch of French separatists, we have an exactly analogous situation where there’s a dying Tory party and a new party called Reform. What red-wall members and other Tory members need to do is say, look, this is going to be a watershed election. It’s going to be a watershed election because we’re going to be driven to our most humiliating defeat ever, a defeat that would have seemed incredible to Mrs. Thatcher, to Lord Home, to Harold Macmillan, etc. And so, given that this is on the cards anyway, why don’t we make it a watershed election in two ways? It won’t just be the death of this awful, unprincipled party, but the birth of something new that offers some hope for the future.

(Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow!)

Mark Steyn can be found at Steynonline.com, which is heartily recommended!

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

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