I read the sentence again. Rubbish, isn’t it? With its dog whistle subtext of “I’m well ‘ard, me!” An unhappy mix of the nasty and the incoherent.
But the Good Doctor is a formidable intellect. So let’s respect his rhetoric and give it a good going over.
The opening, subordinate clause, in the mode conditional, creates a note of humble uncertainty and hard won chalkface wisdom. A saloon bar cliché, it softens us up for the walloping certitudes of its main clause, where two semantically treacherous abstractions are clumsily tethered by an ugly phrasal verb, which “gets in the way of” all clarity. Does it mean “stops”, “blocks” or “prevents”? Who knows? Onwards.
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