Hello and welcome to UK column. I'm Ben Rubin and I am excited
to be sitting in the studio today with Will Keate.
Hello Will. Very good to be here.
Thank you, Ben. Be here, yeah.
And Will is definitely not an expert.
Thank you. But I will say that he is one of
our great minds and researchers as it relates to constitutional
issues. And I think that's fair to say.
He probably wouldn't say that himself, but I mean, I'm going
to give him. I'm going to give him those.
Credentials. I said definitely.
Don't call me an expert. Yeah, yes, because we're all,
we're always learning. Exactly.
But it's been a long time. Yeah, about 15 years or so on,
on constitutional all, I suppose.
Yeah, in a bit of a while. Fantastic.
Good stuff. And and we're here to talk about
a very important issue, right, Because there are a lot of
discussions happening in the country at the minute about the
future direction of the nation, how it will be constituted, how
we will be governed. And I think it's really
important for people to understand at a, at a, a
fundamental level, what we actually already have in place
constitutionally, what we're supposed to have in place and
really kind of start from the bottom up basically and kind of
layer in the different fundamental components of it,
right? And where are what, what are our
rights and, and where do they come from?
And how does our existing system as it's supposed to work,
outperform these new things that they're trying to bring in?
Exactly. Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, exactly. So where do our where do our
rights come from? Will so our, our, our rights
come from, from the natural order, from, from nature and,
and that, and that's a tricky one for people straight away.
Or what do you mean by that? So what I mean by that is that
you can, you can very well, not quickly, because it's not an
easy study. You, you can, you can do some
things and recognise some things quite, quite quickly.
Other things, it takes a little bit longer to look at the more
subtle dynamics of this. But if you look at the way that
that humans interact with each other, if you look at the way
that humans interact with with reality, so this is really down
to our nature, you, you begin to realise that certain behaviours,
if you engage in certain behaviours, it will go very well
for you. Life will go very well for you.
The the natural order and reality will will prop you up
and assist you in in your your living and things will go well.
If you engage in certain other behaviours, things are going to
go very badly wrong and you'll get disharmony and chaos and
will will manifest in your life. And that will happen both
individually, but it will also happen in the collective in the
aggregate as well. And those those laws and those
dynamics of the universe, you could say are inherent.
They're you can't argue with them.
They're not man made laws. They're just existing laws of
the natural order that, that determine certain behaviours
being a good thing for us and other behaviours being a a
pretty bad thing for us as well. And when and when you start to
look at that quite closely, you can begin to glean what would be
your rights from right behaviour and what would be a, a bad idea
to go outside what your rights would be.
You, you find the edges, if you like, of what that would be.
And you can determine what that is.
And, and just to cut a Long story short, where, where does
that take us? It takes us essentially down to
the, the golden rule, which is that my rights end where
another's begin. And what that actually is doing
is, is it's expressing the sort of coupled principle there of
our individual or fundamental rights on the one hand, which
is, which is the, the, the feminine aspect of us, which is
the sort of the freedom aspect. And then on the other hand is
the, the boundaries and the borders to that, which is the
equity. And what of course we mean by
equity, and we've talked about this before because that word
has been hijacked. What it actually means is that
we're all under the same set of standards.
We're all held to account under law equally.
Yeah. So we're all under the law
equally. That's what equity means
specifically and should mean. And, and it's, it's the two of
those ideas together, the individual or fundamental rights
on the one hand, which is that I am self determining.
I can make my own choices that I feel are best for me.
But where you start to see those encroaching on someone else's
ability to exercise their choices, that's the equity
that's coming into play there. And that's natural, natural
rights. That's natural law at play
there. You're beginning to see coming
through. And that's how we determine a
legitimate rule of law. So now we're starting to sort of
just bring to the surface there, well, what is our man made rule
of law in our community? If you base it on natural
rights, natural principles of justice, then then your
community's going to go, OK, you're going to go all right
there. Things are going to unfold
pretty well for you. If you distort that and you
start to ignore those fundamental principles and you
get away, you move away from my rights and where another's begin
and you start to introduce the concept of coercion, that
someone is taking a a view of how other people should live.
I am going to to decide what's best for you, whether you like
it or not, right? These are the kinds of phrases
of a collectivist and we could get into that.
What that is then think you are introducing some concepts,
concepts and some principles that are going to take you into
a very bad place, you and your community.
And that's going to manifest at a kind of micro level, all kinds
of dynamics that are going to take you down.
OK. So that give you a sort of a.
There's a lot. There's quite a lot in there.
Yeah, yeah, quite. A bit to unpack, but.
Yeah, Well, let's, let's wind this one back.
I've written a few things down, right?
So the first one is that essentially these laws are
immutable and they're, yes, they're embedded into the fabric
of reality completely, right. So it's almost, it's almost like
physical laws, like gravity. Very.
Similar to that, the laws of thermodynamics, anything like
that. Exactly.
You can compare it to that kind of thing.
Yeah, absolutely. Right.
OK. And, and when and when we when
we break these laws, we descend into disharmony and chaos.
Absolutely. That's exactly it.
Yes. And it feels like we are
descending into disharmony and chaos.
Probably does. Yeah, increasingly so, actually,
Yes. Yeah.
And and the thing that I would, I mean maybe the next place we
go there is well how much do we do?
Do we spot this and understand these principles?
Because what is often misunderstood is that, you know,
because we like to hurl abuse at the, the, the powers that be
and, and, and, and understandably so, and rightly
so in many, many respects. The difficulty is that to a very
large extent we are doing this to ourselves because we don't
spot this, we don't understand it properly, we don't
acknowledge it either. And so we engage in behaviours
that that are self sabotaging, we end up taking ourselves down
through in, in, in attention, not focusing on these things
ourselves. So we think we have a moral
right to stand on the moral high ground here and to, to blame the
powers that be And, and in many respects we do.
But we also don't realise that we've engaged in certain
behaviours and dynamics that have kind of put them there in
the 1st place and allowed it to happen as well.
Yes. Yeah.
And that's essentially we're outsourcing our agency to other
to others and. That's not the behaviour of a
sovereign. Right.
OK, well, that's an important word, right?
What is sovereignty? Well, exactly.
We'll come back to that. OK.
So let me just just pick up on a couple of other things that you
said there. So you talked about this idea of
freedom and that and that resonating with the the feminine
aspect. And then you introduced equity.
So we can be free, but we also have to be.
Boundaries and. Borders and there, but there are
boundaries and borders to that. Does that, does that then
conversely resonate with the masculine?
Yes. Yeah, totally, because because
that's about control, right. OK.
And you need a mid position of that.
You need a balanced position, yes.
You know, and, and in spiritual science, we, you might describe
that as the Christ impulse, you know, which is the impulse of
love, which is, you know, giving, giving people the, the,
the freedom to, to make their own choices, but also
understanding that there are naturally existing boundaries to
that as well. And yeah, that absolutely.
And that and that would be expressed as individualism, as a
as a kind of philosophy of individualism.
Yes, OK. So that's, that's and actually
within what you've already said, it's really interesting this
because we're we have these conversations and I think some
people will listen to this and go, well, hang on a minute.
You haven't actually said what the, you know, the laws are the
right or rights are. But actually within, yeah, the
Golden Rule, you are free up until the point where you
impinge on the freedom of others.
Where you hurt others or remove their choices.
Yes, then then actually that that actually covers basically
totally. Isn't it?
Yeah. Completely, Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So where are we really breaking these, these, these laws at the
moment then we're, I mean, it's basically everywhere, isn't it?
If you think about the way that our system's currently
constituted and and the way that people are behaving within it,
yes, this is happening all the time.
It is yes. And and and so actually, if we
if we start to sort of paint the picture of how our authentic
rule of law was always supposed to function.
Yes. OK.
That's a good place to start. Yeah.
Look at how the Constitution was originally set up and how it was
intended. Yeah, it's based on a set of of
customary principles that had been learnt from natural law.
And all right, from a historical perspective, we could go into
that. And, and those principles are
that that man governs themselves, that it's self
governance. You don't constitute a
government such that it can act under its own volition to start
imposing regulation and rules on the citizenry.
What what actually should be happening is that the the
citizenry owns its laws and that any government in inverted
commas, but let's call it an administration more correctly
and America got that right of course, in doing that.
That was a reflection of of truth that that any
administration that you have in the public space, really its job
is to execute the wishes of self management and self governance
by the people. Right.
And so the key question at that point comes up, which is, well,
what? What is that?
That man made mechanism that that needs to exist within our
constitutional rule of law that allows for the people to govern
themselves, to allow them to decide on the the edges of
acceptable behaviour that they wish to abide by.
Yes, that's that's really what what you're getting to.
That's the piece in between that takes us to our man made rule of
law, if you like. And and that's why because I
started life actually as a voluntarist really.
And I started life. Well, I suppose I did when I was
born, I was a voluntarist then maybe as well.
But what I mean is, is I started my journey, you know, sort of, I
don't know, about 20 years ago perhaps as a voluntarist with
sort of anarchist leanings. And I was following that.
And then I started to look at, at, at the English
constitutional law. And I was seeing all kinds of
contradictions and all kinds of cyclic arguments in the way that
the English constitution is described and expressed.
And I thought there's something not right here because it, it
doesn't fit these principles of volunteerism, this idea that we
should be self determining, that we should be self governing.
And then I started to peel more and more layers back.
And I realised that actually what was happening was that the
English constitutional law was being expressed incorrectly and
that you have to pull enough of those layers back to get to the
authentic English constitution as it was supposed to function.
And if you keep going back through those layers, what you
ultimately end up with is a a framework or a rule of law that
essentially places trial by jury at its centre and trial by jury.
But this is the key with the key feature of jury independence,
which is that that the jury gets to decide justice independently
of any man made laws that are created through a legislature.
And so you decide on the justice independently of that meaning,
meaning my conscious decision as a juror according to my
conscience is not bound by the legislation that brought the
defendant into court in the 1st place.
And and that is the paramount feature of your constitution
because if you don't put that front and centre as the central
pillar of your constitution, you don't actually have self
governance. You don't have a mechanism by
which the people can govern themselves.
It's missing, right? And this, this most famously was
codified in Magna Carta, right? So if you go and read Magna
Carta again, similarly to what I was just saying a moment ago, I
actually I only read it for the first time recently and I was
kind of going weird. Bits in that as well.
Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.
You know, what did they say? The past is a foreign country.
They do things differently there, right?
A lot of it doesn't quite add up with us.
Because a lot of it was about local and current time.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah.
But and then and then the sort of pointy bits as it relates to
what we're talking about, they're actually quite sparse.
So it's slightly well you have, you have, you have a jury trial.
Yeah, and so Article 39 and 40 are the most important.
Thing you go you know exactly I do right but is it but, but, but
actually and, and, and that that therein lies your your, your
governance model correct and actually and so oh wow, okay.
It's it's incredibly lightweight.
It's incredibly powerful, Yeah. But quite straight away.
Well, exactly, Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. And, and and essentially at that
point is this is this, is this anarchy?
Is this a form of anarchy? Would that fit into that
bracket? Essentially self governance.
It's sort of a bit anarchistic like if you want to put it like
that, but it's with the sort of protection and framework of, of,
of, of, of public justice, which is carries the recognition.
And, and I would say that that's a principle of natural law that
we submit to the consciences of those around us in our
community, right? That's so I would describe trial
by jury as just a more formal expression under English law of
a natural law tribunal. Yeah.
And, and that, that, that natural law tribunal, that's
just reflecting a principle that we, if we do something wrong or
it's perceived by the community that we may have done something
that is, is, is dangerous to somebody, that we've, that we've
hurt someone, that, that we are then brought to a space.
And that is considered and the evidence is put before before
the court, if you like. And all of that is thrashed
through, but it's done by our peers, it's done by our social
equals, because that's a reflection of the equity, right.
And and so really, trial by jury is just a sort of formalised
version of what I would call a natural law tribunal
essentially. Yeah.
And, and actually, you could, you can look at that and say,
well, it's kind of an inevitable.
It's a little bit like, you know, the the language, language
that was used by the the forefathers of the American
Constitution when they said we hold these truths to be self
evident, right. So there's a reflection, if you
like, in there of the recognition that this is about
natural justice. It's about the principles of
natural law that, that this is, is fairness and equity here at
play. And if you're going to have
equity, then then you, you have everybody judging the law
essentially and being, yeah, being a judge of that, of that
justice. Yes, and and and the, the, the
jury's role is to is to judge the the legislation as much as
it is to judge totally the the individual who's on trial.
Absolutely, because you're. So it's like self.
Correcting essentially exactly right yeah, yeah and and and
because your God given consciences sits higher than
than a a man made political opinion on on a on the formation
of legislation. Yeah.
And that's not to say that you can't have legislation, you
know, but you've got to be guarded and vigilant to make
sure that any legislation that is created for practical
purposes, you know, it's it's kind of like using the phrase
for the avoidance of doubt. You could say that in a way
that's the purpose of legislation for the avoidance of
doubt, etcetera. That's fine to do that.
And you would hope that all legislation on your statute
book, which would, which would mean probably very little
legislation has to be in alignment with natural law
principles. But all legislation must come
before that natural law tribunal to be tested every single time
that someone is is in court. Yes.
OK. So this, so then in terms of the
the way that this has been captured, we have Magna Carta,
12/15 Magna Carta. That's the sort of the original
that's the most gold standard. It's the most recent expression
of it, and it's an important thing to correct.
That's often stated incorrectly that that sort of started it
all. And that's not the case because
remember that what we're doing is reflecting truths, yeah, that
already exist. So you So what?
More correctly, you would say that Magna Carta is the most
recent expression of the principles of our Constitution,
right? The 12:50.
That's where it was written down, essentially.
Just to be absolutely clear. Yeah, this is how things are
supposed to work. Absolutely.
But and, and then since then, suppose that 800 and 810 years
now, it's just been a constant process of governments and
monarchs attempting to degrade the the rights of.
Yeah, it's a mix of that, but they keep people capitalising
on, on, on power grabs. But it's also the the, the
citizenry becoming lazy as well because, because maybe we quite
like the idea of representative government as it was sold to us.
So we begin to get to the point of, well, if we're going to
manage our society from the centre through policy and
regulation, because actually in for all of us to have a kind of
a centrally and managed society that's efficient, then then we
need to drive policy and regulation from the centre.
Now you're getting into a very dangerous place because actually
you can't do that under the principles that we've just
explained, which is my rights and where and others begin,
begin what you're claiming. Incorrectly is that you think
you have the right to do that by the fact that that piece of
policy is supported by a by the opinions of a larger number.
So now we're into this whole business that you you claim
legitimacy through majority yes and that really was green
lighted and 1st legitimised through the glorious revolution
and the Bill of Rights. That was the point really, that
so a lot of people make the mistake.
They think the Bill of Rights was an extension of our
constitutional principles. But look at, if you peel enough
of the, of the onion layers back philosophically, what you, you
come to realise is that what was formed ideologically at that
point by John Locke and and, and others and and and the Whigs, if
you like, at that time was actually a, an ideology that is
in, in, in complete opposition right to the authentic rule of
law. Yes, but that's not how it's
sold to us. No, and that's a glorious
revolution. Glorious revolution.
If it was anything but glorious, really.
It was actually a coup of England, really.
But yeah. OK.
Probably won't have time to go into that, but.
Yes, well, I mean, there's, there's so much to, to, to
expand on and I hope people take this as an opportunity to go off
and do their own research as ever with anything that we would
call in UK column right. This should be a starting point
for people, um, rather than an end point.
So that's, so that's, that's interesting.
The tyranny of the majority. There's this term that gets used
a lot, which is liberal democracy.
And I always define that as liberal.
We can do whatever we want, yes, democracy, if enough people go
along with. It Right.
Exactly. And that gives you the
legitimacy to remove the individual rights of the
minority? Yes.
Just because a greater number of people think that thing.
Yeah. No, you don't have the moral
authority to do that. Yeah, yeah, we.
But. And they're trying to bend the
universe to their will, essentially.
Right. Because it doesn't matter how
many people say if he's wrong, yes, and he's wrong, yeah.
You can't precisely change truth.
Yes, to fit you, to fit your agenda.
Yes, right and wrong behaviour already exists objectively.
Yeah. In, in, in the universe.
I say that because actually it's important to also to understand
that, that we have moral conundrums.
So it's not always clear in every situation.
The principles are objective. Yeah.
So you can start to glean from a study of natural law that the
principles are there. There's no question about it
that that that the universe requires, you know, self
governance, personal choice, because what does that lead to?
It leads to self responsibility and trustworthiness.
Yeah. It becomes, in other words, what
you're aiming for is for every individual to become a self
master of themselves. Yeah.
You don't submit and become a become weak.
That's that's not a, a growth in your humanity.
It's not an evolution. That's a devolution when you
submit through compliance. Yeah.
So that's opening up consensus, groupthink, compliance being
problematic. Yeah, it opens up a whole load.
You're going to need a whole pad of paper for this.
No that. Would feel weak.
This is good, yeah. This is great.
Well, no, the one that the one that always lands with me is, is
personal choice and responsibility ultimately,
right? And, and people might get a
little bit upset when I say this, but I'm going to say it
anyway, right? Which is and and actually, this
is the only way to actually go about fixing anything is to
think about what did I do wrong here?
Yeah, right. And, and this is this is the bit
that people find really difficult because the world is
going to hell in a handbasket at the moment.
We've talked about the fact that disharmony and chaos is
proliferating and and the natural order is being
undermined. And we actually have to take
responsibility for that. What have we done as individuals
in order to facilitate that? And there will be many things.
All right. And actually, there's a lot of
people who, who sit in the the truth movement, the freedom
movement, whatever you want to call it, who, who have a, a
little bit of a holier than thou attitude about, about the way
things are going and essentially that it's nothing to do with
them and it's all to do with the other people.
And often oversimplify justice as well, not realise that that
actually justice and moral conundrums are complex and
there's, and there's nuance that's required in these things,
you know, So you get a lot of people in the freedom and all
these people must go to prison or, and that's where we get sort
of positions where, where we've got some members of, of of sort
of freedom movement circles, if you like, calling for the death
penalty. Well, to be doing that at a time
when your government is becoming more tyrannical is really a very
stupid thing to be doing, I, I would say.
But anyway. Yeah, be careful what you wish
for, right? Yeah.
Exactly. I mean, one should say perhaps
at this point that, that just to sort of explore that a little
bit more, is that when, when you lose track of, of your grounding
ideology and your principles and you start to take on belief
systems that fly in the face of truth and that society does it
broadly without noticing it, without spotting it.
What you end up taking on as beliefs is things that will,
will generate unintended consequences.
And actually, that's what we're seeing now in the size of the
state. So the size of the, the state is
now collapsing under its own weight of complexity.
I I would argue through, through the the production of, of too
much regulation and legislation and, and that and that's the
issue. And so, So what quite often we
see as crimes of the state against us isn't necessarily
like it's people out to get you because they all know it's not
that. It's quite often the unfolding
subtle dynamics of the fact that we've already outsourced and
that people in government have huge pressures and expectations
on them to legislate because because we've outsourced it.
And and what you're now seeing as a result of that is it all
falling apart because we've just gone and created too much, too
much regulation, unintended consequence is that.
Yes, and, and actually you've, we've created through the
civilizational structure that we've adopted over the past
several centuries, the way the education system works, like
the, the, the whole setup, basically you've got a class of
people in the civil service, in the political class essentially
who only actually understand how to write laws and enact laws.
That's their currency, that's what they trade in.
And they've developed this mindset that, and you've seen
this all over the place, right? That if we write it down hard
enough, then it will then it will be so.
Yeah, right. And, and this obsession with
policy, we need policy for this, policy for that.
If we write the right policy, then the world will change.
Like you can write whatever you want if it's, if it's, if it's
impractical, unfeasible, UN actually undesirable for this
thing to actually to to to manifest.
And at the point when they come up with it, yeah, they won't see
those unintended concepts. Absolutely no.
And so that that's the complete introducing complexity, yes, in
a left brain sense. And layering it and it's just
more complexity on top of more complexity on top of more
complexity. And then and then the whole
thing just. Yeah, it could.
It just becomes, it breaks under the weight of its own country.
Internal contradictions. Yeah.
You know, it's actually sort of descent into lunacy, basically.
It's what we're looking at. Yeah, it is complete.
Form of madness. Complete madness and that's, you
know, basically half of our our economic output, you know, as a
sort of yardstick for how much time and energy and effort that
takes up in in our society at the moment because, you know,
basically 50% of our GDP is government spend.
Then then since management exactly half of what half of
what happens in terms of productive.
Well, I say productive, not probably productive in terms of
activity, let's say in the country is just managing the the
the lunacy and adding on additional players to it.
Absolutely right. You couldn't make it up really.
It's a very shortly shame it is, but we do need some.
We talked about administration, right?
Use that term, You know, so it's very easy to be kind of
absolutist and say, well, we should have no government
whatsoever, but there actually is a role for some kind of
administration of the system that we've described, right,
Because you have a trial by jury.
Justice system. The justice system, right,
because you need a judiciary, you have a trial, you're going
to have a trial and you need a judge, you need someone to, to,
to oversee that. And, and also you, you know,
ultimately the role of the state and Mike talks about this quite
a lot, right? Is actually the the only role
the state really should be to protect the weak and the
powerful. Yes, it feels it is hold the
individual rights in the way of life of the people.
Yes, that's essentially what it is.
Yeah. So you're right.
I mean, just just to get into that, you know, because the
systems of justice that you have in place there and the
mechanisms that have to be there, how do you manage that if
you don't have a state? And and those are interesting
questions. But the first thing actually you
were saying about a judge, the judge is not really meant to be
the judge because the, the, the, the judges, if you, you know, we
call it the independent judiciary.
Yeah, well, the independent judiciary is really the people
themselves. Right.
Yeah, the members of the of the jury.
It's the people governing themselves.
Self governance. They're like, they're like the
referees, what they should be. Doing right, yes, in the game.
So the the judge you could think of perhaps it's often thought
that that the judge's original purpose was more like a
convener. Yeah, the president of the
proceedings, you know who's who's sort of pulling it all
together And, and who are they? Well, they're just, they're just
volunteers of the community stepping up to do that job.
Yeah. And that's what we mean by the
public in a sense, is just people who, well, we know that
certain jobs have got to be done, so we're going to
volunteer to do those things. And that's how it's evolved.
That's in, you know, over time. But, but unfortunately the
distortions have come in that actually it's the, it's the
judge's role to judge the law. So the mantra that's often put
out now by our justice system is that, you know, even even in, in
our trial by jury now, by the way, and only 1% of cases reach
trial by jury, I should say that at this point.
So Muhammad is 1% really. So we're the thing that we're
guaranteed in a bad place, the thing that we're.
Guaranteed. Yeah.
Only 1% of cases. So we've got a problem with the
Magistrates Court in a big way, right?
Yeah. So the modern justice system
puts out the mantra that the, that the, that the jury judges
the facts and the judge judges the law.
And this is just put out as a kind of a, an accepted mantra.
But actually the if you go back and look at the history and even
further back into Saxon times and in other parts of of of
Europe, you can go into look at the history of the jury in
Scandinavia even as well. And you can start to see that in
fact, and this is, this is one of the sort of slightly
disingenuous arguments that's used by the establishment.
Oh no, there was no history of trial by jury.
Well, the reason for that is because what, what they're
comparing it with is, is the is with the distorted version of
trial by jury that you have now, which is this what I've just
explained, that the jury doesn't have the right to judge the law.
The further back you go. And if you go back into Saxon
times, actually it was 1 and the same.
So you you have the OR twelve citizens that you could think of
as a jury. What they were actually doing
was doing was judging all matters.
They were judging the law, probably the admissibility of
evidence themselves as well. They were judging the facts and
they were judging the punishment.
Right. I was going to ask about the
sentence. Yeah.
Yeah, all four, all four aspects.
Of the case because that's essentially now held by the the
the the the judge, isn't it the judge decides the sentence yeah
and and a lot of the time they'll be issuing guidance on
all sorts of. Right components.
Well, the judges themselves are also being Hanford by ever
increased increasing justice from the justice to the Ministry
of Justice, the Sentencing Council, which creates which
which which people in the freedom movement are beginning
to learn about because it all came up in this 22 tier justice
stuff that everybody was talking about.
And we've now learnt, of course, that, well, people have
generally learnt now that that even judges themselves are being
Hanford by sentencing guidelines, which are becoming
sort of ever increasingly complex and rigorous as well.
Now, what is that? Well, what it is in fact is
because the, the Ministry of Justice really falls under the
executive, which is, you know, the Cabinet Office and, and,
and, and so what's happening there is that you've got a kind
of a form of legislating for how judges now see, see justice and,
and, and yeah, it's so you've got these kind of complex.
And yet at the same time we're pretending that we have
separation of powers in the three branches of government,
which which frankly, I see as APR exercise and nothing more.
The whole, the whole 3 branches of government is for me just a
smoke and mirrors exercise actually, because they still
have those connections all over the place between in, in the big
broad machinery of government. You've got, I think Mike was
saying that you've got this, this whole business of the
Cabinet Office effectively or the, the, the executive in the
form of the Prime Minister and his cabinet sitting in the
legislature anyway. And the top of the legislature
was a court. Well, it's all a court actually.
And in was it 2005, you've got the breaking off of the, the
appellate committee of the, the, the upper house is now the
Supreme Court. Whereas actually, really all of
this is meant to be joined up thinking under the King.
Yes, and, and, and let's stop pretending otherwise, right?
And, and you've got, you know, things like the King's
prerogative powers being borrowed by the Prime Minister.
That's just madness. It's all just smoke and mirrors
I think. Yes, yeah, yeah, they're they're
they're playing games, yeah. And this has been going on for
quite some time. So basically because you just
talked about the Glorious Revolution, when was that 16?
SO168891689 was all, all happening and, and the yeah, it,
it was sort of, you know, the, the, the framing of of James the
second as a, as a, as a bad king, When in fact, actually, if
you take a closer look, I'm sure you didn't do everything right.
But if you take a closer look at what James the Second was doing,
he was very concerned about civil rights.
He was concerned about these issues.
He was actually quite a good king.
If you look at his actions and what was really going on.
And, and, and actually what came in at the Glorious Revolution
was, was a sort of through a kind of load of silent
conventions, was this elevation of Parliament, which is a really
so it looked like, you know, for the people at the time, as
though this might be a really good thing because it's all
about your representation in Parliament for policy.
And, and we've been through that adult suffrage, the dangers of
adult suffrage, which is what voting in, in elections in that,
in that respect, in order to bring about party policy.
That's what it does. And so that's what it brought
about. And then, of course, you had the
formation of the Bank of England in 1694.
You had the, the, the, the creation of the, of the new
political union with Scotland in what was it 1707?
I think it was soon after so you can see how all of this started
to happen then that that was when it all.
Started centralisation of power basically and completely
disenfranchising the the the, the common man.
Ultimately, you know the the the the wider population.
That's not to say that things were not all Absolutely Fabulous
before that, because of course you had a century in the 17th
century of absolute chaos where the kings were actually getting
out of hand and, and the, the divine right of kings in the way
that that was expressed became a problem in its own right.
But what had happened is that people forgot the mechanism for
bringing the king to account, the head of state to account
through his own trial by jury, which is essentially what Magna
Carta was all about. They brought the, the king, King
John to account through his peers, the peers of the realm.
It's kind of holding a, a court essentially that you've breached
your coronation oath that already existed.
Yeah. The principles of, of your
coronation oath, which is customary common law.
You, you've, you've committed crimes under our constitutional
law, which already existed. And we're bringing you to
account, and we're going to hold you to this in perpetuity.
And you're going to sign or seal rather that in perpetuity so
that the administration that's formed is formed under this
limitation. Yeah, it always was under that
limitation, by the way, But it's just for the avoidance of doubt.
Here it is again. So that's what Magna Carta was.
Right. And how many iterations have
have there been of Magna Carta itself, right, Because there are
versions of it. So I think even within that
document there, there have been attempts to reduce its its
power, right. Yes, and again, there's a lot of
smoke and mirrors around that as well.
So the 12:15 Magna Carta, the Great Charter is the is, is the
document that's beyond the reach of Parliament.
So that's the real thing. And people in the in the
establishment will say, well, that's not really law.
And that's been repealed and you know, although it hasn't because
that's that's the promise under which the king was was made.
That's that's how that was made. So yes, you're right.
The further iterations, I mean there was one in 2000 and sixty
2016, 12/16/12 a little bit further but a little bit further
like. That so they actually tried to
so that they so he sealed it and then the next year they tried to
change it. Yeah, well, yes.
Although actually Stephen Langton, the Archbishop who who
kind of was very involved in this, was actually involved in
that actually. And in fact, yeah, 12/12/16,
12:17 is another one, 1225 under King Henry, that was, that was a
very important one. That's the one where there was
a, a ceremony where they all like threw down their tabards or
swords or whatever it was. And they were really zealous for
these rites. They absolutely genuinely
believed them. They absolutely believed in the
content of what had happened in the Great Charter.
And, and in fact, the, the, the, the kings at the time, as you
know, going from the Norman kings into the Plantagenets were
also keen to, to express this through in a sense, their
manifesto. And so actually what was
happening was a legislative version of the Magna Carta,
which was really an expression of the King's manifesto, if you
like to, to, to, to govern according to these principles.
So the last one and the one that's currently on the statute
books is the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297, which is the
Edward the First statute. But all of these really were
just expressions of the king saying, yeah, I'm upholding
these principles. You know, I, I, I agree with
them. So that's really what it is.
But it's important for people and the establishment certainly
don't realise, realise and understand this, that the
authority doesn't come from the legislation, doesn't come from
the legislative versions. Of Magna Carta.
Those are just re expressions of those principles that you can't
really repeal because they're just truths.
The authority actually comes from the 12:15 because you know,
that was the promise under which the the head of state promised
to the people that that's how it would all work.
In perpetuity. In perpetuity.
To the point, yeah, Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And and that itself, as we, as
you established at the start, was actually just an expression
of the immutable fundamental laws that exist in natural
justice, in reality and the natural.
Justice to work like that. It can't work any other way Yes
exactly. Okay, well, it can, it can work
other, other ways, but not without serious detrimental,
destructive, you know, downward spiralling consequences for your
society. Yes, yeah, you absolutely can go
against the natural order principles if you want.
Yeah, be my guest. Tell me how it works out for you
exactly. Yeah, OK, good, good.
Right. Let's go back to to trial by
jury because we were talking about you, you mentioned that
statistic that actually only 1% of trials now go to trial by
jury and, and the, the introduction.
Is 1% yeah, pretty. Much.
Well, yes, if it isn't exactly 1%, it's not enough.
It's around that it's certainly not enough and.
They're going after it, right, because this is one of the big
areas with which they're focused on and they're really trying to
ramp up magistrates calls. So there's a big push to.
Or another intermediate straight in between.
Yes, there's another option. Yeah.
And that's these are all, these are all denials of rights.
Essentially, you've been denied the fundamental.
Rights, Yeah, or, or legislating away your birthright.
So the very idea that the government itself can legislate
away these principles is, is absolutely absurd and ludicrous.
You know, and, and, and The thing is, is that that broadly
speaking, certainly the the the mainstream part of society isn't
saying anything about it because they don't understand it.
But I would say actually that that broadly the, the awake
communities to our, the sort of conspiratorial nature of our
society, they're not really focusing on it either.
And I would say that this is a 'cause you know, in, in fact,
most of the issues that that we are dealing with can, can be
kind of solved by just getting your governance back in place by
by calling for jury independence as a concept and calling them
out under this and saying actually, you don't understand
how the rule of law is supposed to operate.
So you're right, we've had the Leveson review, which is is
perhaps we're getting close to that conclusion.
And in fact, I put up on my website,
commonlawconstitution.org the other day, I think it was a
Telegraph article that was hinting at the fact that that
the media are aware of the contents of that review and the
conclusions that that Sir Brian Leveson has come to in that and
and together. Now the investigatory powers
commissioner, I think, isn't he? I can't remember the exact
title. Yeah, very powerful man.
Extraordinarily powerful and influential.
Yeah, absolutely. OK.
So there's there are things emanating from the conclusions
are there? I think so.
I think beginning to come out, we've been needing to, you know,
see, see possible hints and clues as to what might be
happening. And what are the and what are
the suggestions? Well, as you said, we'll have to
provide a link to this if we go and have a look.
At that, yeah, I'll take it out. I'll have a look and yeah, it's
a couple of weeks ago I think it was an article in the Telegraph,
OK. But yeah, it's, it's, it's the
potential threat of further limiting a trial by jury, right?
And, and, and we're already in a bad place with it, you know,
and, and, but what I'm seeing is not enough people jumping up and
down about this causal factor, you know, and, and they're being
distracted by, you know, yes, important things and other
things, understandably. But actually, if you get
distracted by the effects at the expense of dealing with your
governance, self governance of the nation and that concept,
then then in a sense, through inattention and inaction, you're
actually take you're further taking yourself down.
You know, every day, every hour that goes by that you're not
talking about these issues that we're talking about now, partly
to re educate yourself so that you become clearer on it as
well. Every every hour and day and
week that goes by that we're not talking about this, you're
actually contributing to that, that that destruction that is
self destructive. I would say I.
Would agree. Yes, I mean this because it is
the clues in the name, it's constitutional.
It's it's the constitution, the makeup of the society that that
we are in and how. We should be absolutely
passionate about this. Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely. And they were back in the day,
you know, as I've said to you on an, on a discussion we had
before, you know, how the, the, the, the, the community in the,
you know, Norman times were absolutely zealous for their
rights. That was the word that, yeah,
often comes out in writings that you see that written zealous.
I wrote Zealous down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, we're not now. No, no.
People are totally apathetic and, and people don't feel like
they have any kind of capacity to do anything really.
It's quite odd, you know. Well, we've let things go so far
that it's now become very complicated to know what is best
to do. Yeah, and it's understandable
and I get that. But the first thing you've got
to do is educate yourself on this stuff.
Become clear on where do your rights come from?
What are the limits of government actually and why and
where do they think they get their power from or don't or
purport to get their power from and their right.
This is all to do with jurisprudence and, and some the
philosophy of law and and and and.
It's important to get into it and to understand it.
Well, well, well, let's let's begin to that then.
So where, where do they think they get their, their rights
from? Is it, is it just through the
compliance of people going along with the proclamations that
these people are making? Is that where they get their
power? Well, that they they give
themselves that power through that false belief.
Yes. That they think that they, they
have the right to do it because they are doing good for society,
right? So it's, it's these phrases like
for the greater good, right? So we're starting to get into,
you know, what we were talking about sort of communitarianism
and this, this idea that, that this collectivist impulse that
I, I'm going to decide what's best for you, whether you like
it or not. That's the expression, that's
the impulse behind it. And I have the right to do that
because my ideas and my my grand ideas for how society needs to
be fixed gives me the right to just go ahead and do it.
Yeah, because that's the collective.
Because I'm kinder and more empathetic than you.
That's basically there's a. Gas light there isn't.
That it's a gas light. There's a total lack of self
awareness with a lot of people as well, yeah.
And an enormous amount of arrogance you find with the sort
of collectivist viewpoint that because they supposedly want the
best for everybody, then that gives them the right to impose
their will. And actually that's not not the
case at all. You know who's going to protect
us from you? Yeah, yeah.
And we and we need to, I mean, the, the sort of the sort of
line that you want to watch out for this is kind of like a like
a red flag in, in, in people's conversation when you see when
people say we need to do this right.
We need to if, if you hear sentences like that, yeah,
that's a, that's a danger point because that's a collectivist
impulse, right? Oh, we need to do this right.
Who are you including in the we there?
Yeah, That's not individualist. That's, that's not a philosophy
of minding your own business and leaving people to their own
choices. Yeah.
And there are two, two caveats to that, by the way, Minding
your own business. It's we must call out wrongdoing
where we see it. Yes.
And, and also we at a spiritual level at least, yes, there is
the matter of charity, you know, which is that we don't want to
formulate a selfish society here.
But on the other hand, nor can you force somebody to be kind
through legislation. It's not kindness.
It's not kindness at that point. Yes, exactly.
You know, we're sort of kidding ourselves that we live in a
civilised society because we're really kind to, to the less
fortunate, you know, Well, actually, you're not kind.
It's just that someone will kick down your door if if you don't
pay those taxes that are being forced out of you through
coercion. Well, exactly.
It's one all all under threat of violence.
Anything that's just a lie is under is under threat of
violence ultimately. Yeah.
So it's interesting you there you talking to?
Well, individual, we're individuals.
Leave me to my business and we we're back to this idea of
freedom versus equity. We're not versus freedom and
equity come together in, in, in a, in a in integrated symbiotic
relationship with each other, right, Because again, it's, it's
we're free, but your freedoms end where mine begin totally
right, right. And and actually.
This is of natural. Law and a lot of the, a lot of
the kind of communitarian people, they, they look around
and I have to, you have to agree with them, right?
The world is extraordinarily unjust and and unequal and it's
becoming more so. But because there are too many
people who are exercising too much freedom to the detriment of
everybody else, what they're ignoring is the other side of
that equation ultimately, which is that we are all equal under
the under the law. And it's not their job to fix
it, right? OK.
Would you say expand on that? Well, again, that's the impulse
of the collectivist. It's not your job to fix
everybody else's problems, Right?
We have, because that's not the expression of self governance.
Yeah, self, self. You only learn to be self
governing and to be a self master if you learn to fix your
own problems and, and and you, you learn to take responsibility
for your own choices because it's at that point that you've
become trustworthy as a human being.
Yeah, yeah. If you're meddling around in
other people's affairs, you're fundamentally untrustworthy.
Right. So this is the stuff that we all
need to explore. Very interesting because these
collectivist ideas, they are, they are particularly coalescing
around the people who were talking about first rewrite,
literally rewriting the Constitution, right?
So you've got Gordon Brown at the moment, was actually never
elected as Prime Minister. He was an MP, He lost the
general election. David Cameron he didn't.
Actually win a. He didn't win a general election
and he's now on the the trustee board of the Rockefeller
Foundation. And he's leading this big
programme to rewrite the British constitution, change the
structure of the upper house like, oh, literally, which is
their dream. That's what they want to do.
They want to remove these principles of of national
sovereignty and constitutionalism.
Yes, that's what they want to get rid of.
That's what they are terrified of more than anything is the
principles of individual rights, national constitutionalism.
That's what they're wanting to remove more than anything.
Which is which is our defence against tyranny?
Yes, right it. Always was and it and it
embodies and frames those fundamental principles of the
natural order. Yeah, because because otherwise
you're in, you're into a world which is, you know what we were
talking about earlier, this sort of Liberal Democratic world
where we can do anything we want if enough people go along with
it. Yes, Right.
And, and, and that would just wreak absolute havoc with the
people who don't want to go along with it.
Yeah. Because actually you might be
incorrect or it doesn't meet up with my my my values.
Unintended consequences. Exactly.
Yeah. And those people will, they're
coalescing around this collectivist worldview.
They want to completely transform, basically scrap and
rewrite the the Constitution. Rewiring the the the the kind of
framework of our the way we, the way we live.
I think you used was a phrase. Maybe, I can't remember.
No, they are, they're rewiring it and they're going off.
They're going off the child by jury.
They, they want to dial up the magistrates.
They're also really pushing on what they call diverse diversity
in the magistrates courts, which does throw in, begin to throw
into question this idea of being judged by peers because actually
peers means fellow citizens, right?
But if you've got people who are.
Yeah, that would be their argument that the Magistrates
Court, that would be their argument for justifying the
Magistrates Court, is that the magistrates are our peers, yes.
But if you've got people who are sitting in the magistrate's
chair who are from completely different cultures, then you're
not being judged by your peers, yeah.
And they're kind of professionalised because
they're, they're used, they're not paid, which is quite
important to make that, that point.
Yeah. And, and also actually it's,
it's important to understand in the Magistrates Court as well,
is that it's not just magistrates.
So quite often they'll swap out a magistrate for a, for a, a
judge. Yeah, who is state paid and you
know, so it's not our jury. It's not.
It's not a jury. And it absolutely is not that
our jury. And what they're really pushing
towards is to run all this stuff algorithmically using AI.
Yes, that's what the end point, because they don't want to
basically it's all about efficiency.
They don't want to pay for anything.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
So you, you, you'll get, you'll get something that we call
justice. But actually it's not justice.
It's the lowest possible level completely of algorithmically
applied legislation compliance with arbitrary legislation that
you can possibly. And that justification of that,
of course, is that we've got 70,000 case case backlog.
Yeah, in the Crown Court. Yeah, yeah.
Which I would argue has been created through a perfect storm
of underfunding of the justice system.
Yeah, but they've done it deliberately.
Creative destruction. Creative destruction is what
they call. It yeah, I mean, I I put a
video. Out.
Oh, no, it's all broken. We've got to fix it.
Yeah, but you broke. We.
We will ignore the fact that we broke it.
Exactly. Yeah, and, and, and, and those
in the justice system actually are frustrated by that too.
You know, I mean, the lawyers know this, the, the judges know
that. I mean, you've got a problem
with the, the physical state of courts as well.
I mean, lawyers know this, that when they go into court, you
know, there are kind of bowls out to catch the drips from the
ceiling. This kind of stuff is going on.
You've got a, you've got chaos from the, you know, the, the,
what is it called the, the prisoner escort system, which is
the, the, the system for bringing prisoners to the court
system. And then quite often you get
cases being, you know, because, because they didn't turn up, the
prisoner wasn't well, you know, so that you've got a delay.
OK, so you've got these massive inefficiencies going on and
those in the justice system are massively frustrated by that
too, but they're not seeing that problem.
And, and, and, and if you go back further than that, of
course, why have we got this massive case backlog?
It's because you've gone and created a legislative landscape
through complexity that is so huge that you this is that's the
why it exists in the first place.
Exactly, exactly. OK, fascinating.
Let's just finish up with, I want to show you this, which is,
and I'll hold this up to the camera and we'll put it up on
screen as well as we're talking through it.
But this is from Makespace Oxford.
So yes, you did a segment on this.
Yeah, I did a. Segment on this on the news,
right? Because basically what they did
and people need to understand that the the British government
is actually right now building a parallel system that is based on
a completely different constitution and they have
opened it up. They call it the dark matter,
right? So it's all this stuff down
here. So they call these problems root
problems include things like private ownership.
That's a root problem apparently.
And this idea of of separation of basically is individualism.
Individualism. That that which that is a
problem. They're saying that, yeah, yeah.
And, and what you're saying and should be individuals.
And what our Constitution says is that we are and have to be
individuals. We have to be individuals, not
in, in, in, in a selfish, selfish expression.
Yeah. But as individuals, we come to
understand that, that, that we have to manage ourselves
responsibly so as not to tread on other people.
Yes. So it's it's fundamentally not
selfish. Yeah.
And when we want to engage with others, we do so as, as, yeah,
under, under, under, you know, our voluntary action, you know,
we want to come together as a group of other people with other
individuals because we wish to do that.
Not because, not because we're told we have to or not because
we're put in a category or because we're, you know, it's
all based on, on the, the volunteerism.
That's what it's all about. So, yeah, I mean, freedom of
expression is probably going to be another one there.
You know, freedom of ideas, freedom, you know, all of this,
all of the things that are expressions of individualism are
probably under the root problems there.
Yes, they are. And private ownership, private
ownership and they talk about this imperialist mindset and
extractivist mindset. And I'm certainly not
extractivist and I'm certainly not an imperialist.
I'm not entirely sure what they mean by that, but I think it's
basically western society, western civilization.
Evils of. Western society has been
presented as as as universally evil, but actually a lot of the
bad stuff that's happened, and there are plenty of bad things
that our societies have done both at home and abroad over
centuries. The vast majority of that is
being driven by the people who are deliberately trying to
degrade our constitutional rights completely.
Yeah. So actually, the things that are
being identified, the things that are potentially I could
understand as being legitimate problems have actually been,
have been, have been, have been put there by the people who are
trying to, to, to do the things that we've just been talking
about, quite frankly. And then also one thing that I
think is really crucial for people who who might veer
towards the kind of collectivist worldview to, to appreciate is
that the collective is made up of individuals.
Yes, right. And that's what collectivism
misses out when people talk about how well you want to think
about the collective. I should clarify that.
But it's made the collective. The base unit of the collective
is the. Individual who are there
voluntarily, yes, that's the key, yes.
Yes. Collectivism is is where you
are. You're, you're, you're seen or
identified as a group and whether you like it or not, and
you're given given rights or, or, or have rights taken away on
the basis of an identity. So we get into group identity.
We get into, you know, Jordan Peterson talks about group
identity. That's a modernist concept,
postmodern concept, really. So that's where we're getting
into. So that that's people need to be
really clear on what individualism and collectivism
really is. And I actually, I did a series
on that of little short videos of only about 15 minutes each on
the law and alchemy.org YouTube channel where I take people
through those steps of understanding the difference
between individualism and collectivism and why
collectivism is important to reject individualism is
important to embrace. And how those, those, those
those two different ideologies can be distorted.
The meaning can be distorted as well.
And and individualism often people.
Wrongly say, oh, that's just a selfish ideology.
But as we've said, it isn't because, you know, individuals,
it's about, it's not about not forming collectives.
It's about doing that as individuals voluntarily.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. OK, fascinating.
So look, just just to wrap up, what what can we do to help re
establish these immutable, inalienable right principles in
our daily lives around us now? We we need to be creating a lot
of buzz and activity about these subjects.
It's really educational to start with.
Yeah. And a lot of people will go, oh,
well, we haven't got time for that kind of stuff.
I I don't care. You don't have, you don't have a
choice. Yeah.
The universe will not give you that choice, I'm afraid.
OK. Because actually, if you don't
deal with this at the root cause, you have to educate
yourself and become absolutely clear on natural law, objective
morality, understanding through logic and reason, the difference
between those two ideologies, individualism and collectivism,
and how that community that is not based on the principles that
are baked into the natural order.
You're going to take your society down that way and it
will keep going down until you learn it.
It's, it's simple as that. So it's education, It's
educating others when you've got clear on it in the social media
space, causing people to to question those ideas, to reflect
on those ideas, putting awkward and difficult questions before
them that cause them to reflect on these kind of incorrect
belief systems that have come about.
We're going to have to do that it it probably wouldn't take as
long as we think it would if huge numbers started to do this
and we created that that buzz and that activity in the social
media space. But yeah, we've got to do it.
We've got to become familiar. With this, OK, there's a job for
us to do there and we'll share some, some some useful links
around all of these topics from Will and others so that you can
educate yourself and then begin to educate others and we can all
start to get active in this area.
Very, very important. I think the, the trial by jury
piece in particular really lands with people who are maybe a
little bit less less engaged with some of the other topics
that we talk about. People actually do understand
that the trial by jury is actually really important.
So I think that that's a. And you're not sounding lunatic
as well when you're doing it because actually what we're
talking about is the constitutional rule of law.
So even with mainstreamers, you can actually be quite tempered
and sensible sounding when you bring these subjects up.
And that's a benefit, you know, so that that's a reason to, to
talk about it with, with, you know, people who aren't awake in
the conspiratorial sense. You can talk about this, this
stuff, you know, without sounding completely lunatic.
Good. Hopefully so.
OK, fantastic. Will Keats, it's been a
pleasure. UK column, you're all fantastic.
I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for coming in.
It's been great. Good to have you in the studio
and until next time, thank you for watching.