The Forces Behind Britain's Downfall - Konstantin Kisin - #1003

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Before we get started, I'm going on tour this winter around the US and Canada, and you can join me. It's an hour and a half long show. There's a half hour Q&A at the end. There's meet and greet. There's music warmed up before I get started by Zach Talander and tickets are limited, and you can get yours right now. New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Salt Lake City, and Denver still have limited tickets left at chriswilliamson.live. That's chriswilliamson.live.
All right, let's get into it. US streamers are using UK downfall protests as an entire content niche. Now, that can't be a good sign.

**Konstantin Kisin** (0:35)
It's a rich vein from which to mine. I mean, look, the downfall of the UK, the death of the UK is greatly exaggerated, but it is happening and it's not downfall, actually might well be the sign of a recovery in the sense that you're starting to see people going on the street, they're being peaceful, which is really important, because the moment you're not peaceful, that will immediately get used to discredit the entire thing. And then you can see it changing the political consensus in real time. So a lot of the discussion is about illegal immigration, controversial term, because actually it turns out, this is part of why we're where we are. Coming to this country without permission is not actually illegal.

**Chris Williamson** (1:20)
Okay, explain that to me.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:22)
So if you come into the country and say, I'm an asylum seeker, I'd like asylum, you're not an illegal immigrant.

**Chris Williamson** (1:27)
You're like a Cuban or a Venezuelan arriving at the American border or whatever.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:32)
But I mean, in America, it is illegal, right? I think.

**Chris Williamson** (1:36)
I thought that when you got there, you just needed to go on.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:40)
Well, the point being, maybe it's also true in America. So until 2020-23, when the conservatives tried to do something about it, if you came here and made an application or said you were an asylum seeker, irrespective of whether you had a case or not, you're not an illegal immigrant. So technically, there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant. Anyway, that's why I said the term is controversial. But anyway, the point being that part of the reason that's able to happen is something called the European Convention on Human Rights, which Britain actually helped to create immediately after World War II.
The entire consensus for decades was, well, we can't leave this, we can't reform it, it just is what it is and we can't change it. Suddenly, when there's people on the streets, you get people from across the political spectrum whose parties have been saying this entire time, you can't do anything about this. Actually, we really need to leave the CHR. So I don't know whether it is downfall. I actually see as long as the movement remains peaceful, it actually is being quite impactful and constructive as things stand.

**Chris Williamson** (2:44)
Right, because downfall would suggest that this is the beginning of the end as opposed to the beginning of something better.

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:50)
Yeah, and none of us can predict the future, obviously, but if this pressure carries on and as I say, if it can't be dismissed as a handful of violent thugs, which I don't believe it is, then what you will end up is actually having real impact on the political situation. And that's great.

**Chris Williamson** (3:08)
Yeah, I would certainly say the people in America and some of them in the UK that are covering it, being more outlandish, being more inflammatory in the way that this is being covered, is definitely, it seems to me like the UK might be a boiling point. I'm not here. I'm not on the ground. I don't know what's going on. Is that being overblown? Boiling point?

**Konstantin Kisin** (3:31)
I think it's being overblown by some people. It doesn't mean that in the round it's being overblown. There are definitely people who are like, the UK is about to explode right this very second. The UK is not about to explode right this very second. But if those pressure valves are not allowed to vent the pressure and achieve actual change, then we, and you know this, I've been saying this for some time, like we're not on a good path, generally speaking. It is headed in a bad direction. If the people at the top continue to try and keep the lid on the pressure cooker down, if they actually go, oh wait, wait, no, it's not just a handful of thugs, it's actual human beings that are just mothers, fathers, people who care about their country protesting about this. And then they convert that into action that results in the concerns that people have being addressed. And by the way, we should talk about what those concerns are because they're pretty reasonable concerns. I mean, one of the things that happens, so I always give this example just because it puts this into numbers that are easy for people to digest. When I came to Britain, 1996, 55,000 people a year came into Britain legally, legal immigration, like just people applying for a visa, coming here.