Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
"Wokeism is a denial of our humanity" - Francis Foster
1.3k Plays2 years ago
Update: Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations.
Why are there almost no right-wing comedians? Why do we take jokes so seriously? Is it possible to be funny in 2023 without being cancelled? Host Will Kingston searches for answers with teacher-turned-comedian-turned-podcasting magnate, Francis Foster. Francis is co-host of the hugely successful Triggernometry podcast. Will and Francis discuss comedy and a buffet of culture wars issues in this wide-ranging conversation.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Promotions
00:00:00
Speaker
The Spectator Australia magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivalled authority. Subscribe today at spectator.com.au forward slash subscription.
Australiana Podcast Overview
00:00:27
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator, a series of conversations on Australian politics and life. I'm Will Kingston.
00:00:36
Speaker
In the preview for Australiana, I challenged anyone to find a funny Aussie comedian who hasn't been canceled. I got no responses, which is most certainly because it's an impossible challenge and not because no one listened to the preview. Therefore, we've had to turn to a poem.
Comedy in the Modern Era
00:00:51
Speaker
Francis Foster is a schoolteacher turned comedian turned podcasting magnate. He co-hosts my favorite podcast, Trigonometry, a show that well and truly lives up to its tagline of honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:01:03
Speaker
It's been a worldwide smash hit. In fact, I'm told the combined number of downloads for Trigonometry and Australiana is now well over 40 million. And I see no need to break down that number any further. Francis, welcome to Australiana. Thank you for having me, mate. Glad to be here. I know that Joe Rogan kept you for four hours and 18 minutes. So I'll try and come in slightly under that number. How was that experience with Joe?
00:01:30
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. It was it was weird because when we first stepped into the studio we were waiting for Joe and when he turned up you had that moment where you go oh it's Joe Rogan and he's kind of in real life this is weird and then you talk to him and then you realize he's just a bloke but the thing that sets Joe apart from practically every other comedian I've ever met
00:01:54
Speaker
actually isn't talent, isn't a lot of things. He is the most incredible mindset. I mean, he's a very talented comedian. Let's be clear on that. It's his mindset. It's his drive. It's his want to improve. It's what he does. And the fact that he's never satisfied. He always wants to get better. He always wants to improve not only what he does or his show, but also he's very much about building communities
00:02:23
Speaker
So to me and to Konstantin, he's a huge inspiration. We're both massive fans of him. And more importantly, as you obviously would say, he's a bloody good bloke, mate. You guys have created a wonderful community around trigonometry yourselves.
Challenges in Mainstream Comedy
00:02:37
Speaker
I want to let you loose on a buffet of culture war topics. But before that, let's hone in on that craft of comedy that you just mentioned and how it's faring in the woke world of 2023.
00:02:50
Speaker
There's a good argument to say that comedy has historically been the most subversive art form. That's obviously no longer the case. Can you give me an example of something that you could have said at the start of your career that you could no longer say now? Something that you could have said at the start of the career that you couldn't say now. Now, the thing is, Will, is that you still can make whatever jokes you want pretty much. The reality is, is all those jokes going to limit
00:03:20
Speaker
your progress in the mainstream comedy community. The amazing thing that is happening now in comedy is you don't really need the mainstream anymore because all their platforms are crumbling. The content that they're producing is substandard or below par. Not all of it. There's still wonderful comedians, stand-up comedians working in comedy, in mainstream comedy on the BBC.
00:03:42
Speaker
But the problem is if you want to do comedy that's more interesting, more challenging, more politically subversive, you are going to find it a real struggle to actually progress within the mainstream. If you think about it, our biggest stand-up comedy platform is called Live at the Apollo.
00:04:03
Speaker
Live at the Apollo has had many people who have been pro-Remain stand-up comedians have been pro-Remain and that's absolutely fine. I voted for Remain at the time.
00:04:13
Speaker
But they only had, to my knowledge, one person who was pro-leave. And there are lots of wonderful stand-up comedians who are actually leave or right-of-centre or right-wing. And they never really got a sniff on that platform. Our other biggest satirical topical show is called Have I Got News For You, which is an institution. It's a BBC institution. It's been going for around about 20-odd years.
00:04:39
Speaker
I only know one person, one right leaning comedian who has been on Have I Got News For You and that's the wonderful Jeff Norcott. Nobody else gets a sniff. The reality is, is that there is a dominance of one particular point of view. So it's not even as simple as saying a joke that you could do then that you can do now.
00:05:02
Speaker
It's more as if you have a certain world view, if you see the world a certain way, if politically you think differently to the tastemakers, the gatekeepers, it is highly unlikely that you're gonna get a career. That is a brutal reality of it. But the great thing is, online, you are free to build your own platform, which is what myself and Konstantin did, and there, it's far more of a meritocracy.
00:05:32
Speaker
Hmm, it's interesting because, you know, I don't think you would describe yourself necessarily as right wing, but you're, you're bucketed in that category just because you don't have this worldview that is so homogenous among the mainstream comedy community. The question is, is why, how have we got to that point where there is such homogeneity in the way that people think in a, you know, in an art that traditionally really appreciated diversity of thought.
00:06:01
Speaker
Well, I think the thing is, thank you for saying that I'm not right wing. There are many people in comedy who would disagree with that. It's a reality, I suppose. Yeah, and by right wing, they really mean racist. So there we go. Because look, there's several problems within comedy. Number one, the people who are attracted to the arts, whatever the arts may be, whether it's theater, whether it's
00:06:27
Speaker
dance whether it's comedy whatever it may be cinema they always tend to be more left-leaning that's just the way it works people who enter banking tend to be more right-leaning so immediately there's a bias there more left-leaning people in comedy then because more left-leaning people tend to be higher on the let's say on the empathy scale they tend to be
00:06:53
Speaker
more open to ideas as well, et cetera, et cetera. So when wokeness came in, because if you look at wokeness on the surface, it sounds incredibly legit. Yeah, let's have equality. Well, who's going to disagree with that? Black Lives Matter, of course Black Lives Matter. We all know that apart from a couple of brain dead morons in a corner of a pub somewhere muttering something into a pint.
00:07:18
Speaker
But what has actually happened is that no one looks under the bonnet of what this ideology actually espouses. And that's where the danger has come in. So they've allowed this ideology in. They've repeated the mantras, whether it's trans women or women, which we all know is moronic. And we can see unraveling literally at this moment in Scotland,
00:07:40
Speaker
where they are putting male rapists who suddenly identify as being a woman and putting them in a female prison. And then you have on Question Time, our biggest political debate show, a member of the SMP, the Scottish National Party, a member of Parliament,
00:07:59
Speaker
when asked about whether this person, right, this bloke, let's just call him what he is, a two-time rapist who is now identified as trans and calls himself Isla, whatever his name is, I was going to say Isla Fisher, that would get you programmed. I can't remember the surname, Isla Graham, Isla Bryson, whatever he calls himself.
00:08:19
Speaker
The SMP member got asked, is this a man or a woman? And she refused to answer the question and said the words, this person is a rapist. And all you could hear from the audience in Glasgow was an audible groan. An audible groan because people realize we are starting to get into a world that is utterly ridiculous, where people can no longer
00:08:49
Speaker
Repeat year two biology. The interesting thing is you really saw this world coming at least a few years ago. I was binging your back catalogue last night and you've got a wonderful little clip on YouTube from your stand up routine on the culture of a fence. Let me get this right. You say that you are worried about a future where you will
00:09:11
Speaker
go on stage, make a pedophile joke, and then have to retract it because the pedophile at the back of the room announces they're disgusted being victimized. And this is exactly the situation playing out in Scotland at the moment where the media is tying themselves up in knots because they're too afraid to dead name or to get the pronouns wrong of a, to your point, a serial rapist. My question here is, where does this
00:09:34
Speaker
end. I often wonder, is wokeness just this slippery slope we will just have to deal with forever as it gets worse and worse, or will there be an adjustment and a return to normality? I think eventually there has to be an adjustment and a return. And look, what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is by adjustment to normality or return to normality, you mean going back to the 90s, basically.
00:10:00
Speaker
or the early naughties? Well, yeah, putting it in a comedy context. I was watching an old Billy Connolly set the other day, and there was no virtue signaling. There was no wokeness. There was no agenda. It was just funny for the sake of being funny. It was colonoscopies and masturbation
Impact of Societal Changes on Comedy
00:10:16
Speaker
and the design of Toblerone bars. It almost feels like that is passé.
00:10:22
Speaker
That's in a comedy context. It's that era. And you're probably right. More generally, maybe the 90s and early 2000s is when we started to see a step change in the way people spoke about these issues. Yeah. Look, the reality is, is for what I think, is that we're never going to get back to that. The world is constantly changing. The world is constantly evolving. Social media, technology, the internet has changed all of our lives forever. COVID,
00:10:47
Speaker
COVID as well. What COVID did, I don't think people talk enough about this, COVID was a catalyst for our society. The changes that were going to happen, and that happened over COVID, were going to happen anyway. But COVID just sped the whole process up.
00:11:04
Speaker
The reality is we're never going to go back to the nineties. We're never going to go back to those times because life, the world society has changed. I think a lot of people understand that catalyst in the sense of how people work and other people say use digital tools. Explain to me how COVID was a catalyst for change when it comes to our culture. Well, so for instance, if you took us your mind back to the murder of George Floyd, that went viral all around the world.
00:11:33
Speaker
And the reason that it went viral, number one, let's be honest, it was a disgusting, awful heinous crime and the way that man died was unforgivable and it was utterly reprehensible. So let's make that completely clear at the start. But the fact that we were all sitting locked down in our houses or flat, mainlining social media into our eyeballs for 19 hours of the day,
00:11:57
Speaker
The fact that we couldn't go out, the fact that we couldn't communicate with other people, the fact that we couldn't socialize, the fact that we couldn't see our friends and our family, the fact that people were very, very, very angry because they couldn't go to see their relatives in hospital, they couldn't go to funerals. They saw that and there was an explosion of anger and rage and what it was, and what it was,
00:12:25
Speaker
was that was a spark that lit it. And I don't know if this was big news in Australia, but the week before that, and people forget this as well, people were outside Dominic Cummings' house in London, the former advisor to Boris Johnson, and they were ready to lynch him. It was turning nasty. It was getting really, really, really worrying. And then the week after that, you had BLM.
00:12:54
Speaker
So that all happened. And as a result of that, our culture just changed. And wokeness went into hyperdrive. And the Black Lives Matter movement, defund the police, these all became mainstream things to talk about, but also mainstream slogans. Six months before that, if you said the words defund the police, everyone would have looked at you like you were completely nuts.
00:13:20
Speaker
But then it just became a normal thing to say. Absolutely standard mainstream point of view. And that was the spark. And Covid was a part of that as well. A major part of that. George Floyd would still have been a story. People would still have got upset about it. And rightly so. But it wouldn't have sparked the wave of rage and anger that it did if we weren't all locked down in our houses.
00:13:47
Speaker
That's really interesting, and I think we might get back to then, well, if that catalyst has taken place and this is now the world we find ourselves in, how does that correction take place? But before we get there, a few other questions I have around comedy in today's environment specifically. Are there things in comedy which you can and cannot say? Yeah, you can't say trans women are men. You cannot say that. You cannot say that. You can say that, but if you say that in a club,
00:14:17
Speaker
In the vast majority of clubs, you will never get booked again. Let me reframe the question then. Should there be things in comedy that you can and cannot say? No. No. You can make any single topic funny. It's just about how you approach a topic. But if you have a gender critical point of view on the trans topic,
00:14:40
Speaker
you are not going to get booked again. You are going to become a pariah, you're going to be known as transphobic, even if you talk about a subject that is as ridiculous as the one that we've just addressed, the story of Isla Graham. Two-time rapist identifies as a woman, gets put into a woman's prison. I did a video on it and it did very well on the internet.
00:15:03
Speaker
Partly because, you know, the jokes were good and whatever else. But a large part of it is because I have got the field completely clear because no other comedian in the UK is going to touch that live rail because they know what it means. They understand what it means. If you make fun of that, if you go near that, you're done. You are absolutely done.
00:15:26
Speaker
There's an analogous problem here. And if that's your workplace, a lot of people will be listening to this in a corporate environment where if they say a similar comment, they can face repercussions and it may not be as overt as being fired, but it can be socially ostracized in a workplace. It can be perceived in a different way. What advice would you have to just normal people like that who feel like they can no longer say what they believe in both social environments and in their workplace?
00:15:56
Speaker
Look, this is, it's a really tough question because there's some people go you need to stand up and you need to fight against this and whatever else and I think it's very easy for people like myself to say that who have got an independent source of income and have got a business and who are touch wood for the most part uncancellable. It's very difficult if for instance you work for Price Waterhouse Cooper and you're an accountant
00:16:20
Speaker
I was going to say, if you work on a building site, I think they're a bit more based on a building site. Do you know what I mean? Particularly in Australia. I doubt there's many years in graces. It's probably one of the very few industries that the cancer culture hasn't reached is the construction industry.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But I think there's an interesting point lying in there, because this is an ideology that tends to affect the educated, wealthy middle classes. So if you have a job, which is a white collar job, like Price Walter, you are far more likely to get fired or ostracized for your points of view than if you're an Aussie builder, where I imagine
00:17:02
Speaker
It's pretty no holds barred when it comes to the banter. I've never been to Australia, I've never been on an Aussie building site, but I can just imagine.
Cancel Culture and Comedy
00:17:11
Speaker
But I think the reality is for a lot of people, you've got to think very long and carefully about what you want and how important these things are to you.
00:17:24
Speaker
Because if you've got a family, if this family relies on you, on your job, to pay the mortgage, to put food on the table, put clothes on their backs, is it a wise thing to do to stand up in the middle of a DEI meeting and say, this is a load of bollocks? Personally, I don't think so. So I would say to each and every person, you've got to make your own decision. But also as well, the vast majority of people know this is bollocks.
00:17:55
Speaker
They do. It's complete bollocks. And as a result of that, there's going to be a lot of people who are looking around trying to find similar people. So you're not alone. That's the most important thing to realize. You are not alone. There's a lot of people who think like you, who just look at this nonsense and realize that it's a complete load of bollocks.
00:18:20
Speaker
That's very well said. You mentioned that you're now at a point where again, knock on wood, you're hopefully uncancellable. That term uncancellable I think is really interesting. There's almost a class of people that have carved out a little niche for themselves as being uncancellable. Donald Trump can say things which would get any other Republican candidate would ruin them. And yet he does that in comedy. You know, someone like a Chappelle is probably a good example where he can get away with things that other people can't.
00:18:50
Speaker
How do you go about making yourself uncancellable, or at least approaching a point of being uncancellable? Right. I think this only really applies to people in media and entertainment, if I'm being honest. Or independent businesses, or if you've got your own independent business, or if you're independently wealthy. The way that you do it in media, arts and entertainment is you build an audience big enough for yourself
00:19:17
Speaker
that they can't touch you. Ultimate example is Ricky Gervais. You interview Ricky, and by the way I like Ricky. Love him, very funny man, huge fan of the office extras etc etc. He will say there's no problem with freedom of speech in comedy, that's Ricky's position and
00:19:37
Speaker
The reason Ricky says that is because for Ricky Gervais in comedy, there is no problem with freedom of speech. Ricky's got a huge audience, which he has built for the last 30, 25 years. And that means Ricky can do whatever the hell he pleases. He can go on the day and say what he likes, when he likes, how he likes, because he's got a huge audience, he's a multi, multi millionaire, and he is untouchable.
00:20:04
Speaker
He's not hustling the stand-up circuit in central London. No, but if you are, let's say you're a killer club comedian. Let's say you're a killer and you have those views, you will find, but nobody knows you. You're just a dynamite club act, of which there are lots of them. And you say the similar type of material that Ricky does in your stand-up,
00:20:29
Speaker
you're going to find your professional opportunities curtailed. And this is the interesting thing as well. Because stand-up is so competitive, because there's so many people who want to do it.
00:20:42
Speaker
There is such a vast range of acts to choose from that it's not even a case of cultural culture a lot of times. It's harder and harder to get people to leave their houses with the cost of living crisis, with the fact that you've got a wealth of entertainment on your phone. So to get someone to come out of their house, get a babysitter, go to a comedy club, sit down, it's becoming harder than ever, right?
00:21:09
Speaker
So the promoter will look at this dynamite comedian who is incredible, incendiary, brilliant, but splits the room, creates complaints, and he will think to himself, shall I do that? Or could I book, for example, Sean Walsh, who's a good mate of mine, who's probably the best observational comedian working in the UK at the moment, who will smash a gig to pieces, be hilariously, brilliantly funny, but will talk about toasters, and there will never be a complaint.
00:21:39
Speaker
Who are you going to book? Do you see what I mean? Yeah, it makes sense. Well, there is obviously a group of comedians and let's call them identity comedians who don't necessarily follow that observational comedy route. Instead, they really play up their particular claim to victimhood. Could be the female comedian that talks about the patriarchy.
00:22:00
Speaker
gay comedian that talks about cis, white males, black comedian that talks about racism. Is this emergence or a particular type of comedian a good thing? Look, there are people who do that type of material who are actually very good. They're very, very, very good. They're very good comedians who have that particular way of looking at the world.
00:22:26
Speaker
I have no problem with woke comedy. A lot of comedians come up to me and go, what do you think of Hannah Gadsby? What do you think of her? And I go, I'm really glad she's selling out arenas. I'm really glad she has a great career. I'm really glad she has an audience. There is an audience for what Hannah does. Good for her, good for them. They can all go and watch it and enjoy it. It's just not for me. So Hannah has her career, brilliant.
00:22:54
Speaker
Other people should also be allowed to have their career as well. This is the thing, people misrepresent it. I don't have a problem with woke comedians or people who are woke. I just have a problem with people who want to inflict their own view of the world and silence others in the process of doing that. That's my real beef with the whole thing.
00:23:19
Speaker
If you want to believe certain things, you can. My mother's from Venezuela. My girlfriend believes in socialism. I think she's fucking demented. But she's allowed to believe it. It's a free... Do you know what I mean? I genuinely like, you do you love. And sometimes she goes to me like, oh, I need to lose weight. I'm like, right, we'll get you to Venezuela. You'll get there for a month. You drop the pants, you come back.
00:23:46
Speaker
I like the way that you put this in a BBC interview. You said virtue signaling is a denial of humanity because it's a denial of the ability to transgress, which we all do. And then leading on from that, it's a denial of the ability to forgive, which I thought was a really lovely sentiment. Can you expand on that a bit? Yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker
To transgress, to make mistakes, to fail, to be fragile, to be broken is human. That's what it means to be a human being. None of us are perfect. None of us are angels. I was listening to a Nina Simone song. I think it's called Please Don't Let Me Be Nymphs misunderstood yesterday. And I was, because I'm a wimp, I was nearly tearing up at it. And it said, I'm only human.
00:24:35
Speaker
I try to be good. Please don't let me be misunderstood. And the problem with wokeness is that it's so rigid in ideology. It doesn't let people transgress. It doesn't let people fail. It doesn't let people be human. Because if you're going to deny me the
00:24:59
Speaker
the opportunity to make mistakes, to fail. You're also denying me the opportunity to learn from my mistakes and to progress as a human being and is to develop. If you think about the moments when you really developed as a person and as a man, it's when you made mistakes. It's when you fucked things up. It's those moments where your dad, your mate, your brother took you aside and go, Will,
00:25:23
Speaker
You got this wrong, mate. Have a think. Have a think. And you think about, you go, you're right. I need to change. I can't keep doing this. But wokeness doesn't allow for that because it just cancels. This person is evil. Race is the bigot. And that's it. You're done.
00:25:38
Speaker
Well, that even worse means that there's no freedom of expression in comedy because the most brilliant comedy, and look, this is all subjective, but for me, the most brilliant comedy is a transgressive comedy. It's a comedy that goes right towards a line where you're laughing, you're thinking to yourself, I can't believe they said that. I can't believe they made that joke. But I guarantee you as someone who does comedy,
00:26:01
Speaker
that the first six months or even a year, that joke wasn't funny. It was just offensive. But you needed to go over the line to then find where the line is, to then play with the line, and then make it truly wonderfully, beautifully funny.
00:26:18
Speaker
What is it that little part of the human psyche that makes us laugh at those moments that are super dark that are right on the edge? It's obviously something which is as old as time itself. Can you pinpoint that part of us that reacts to that sort of humor? I think it's a knowledge. I think there's a couple of things.
00:26:39
Speaker
What Wokism is, it's utopianism. It's like communism, it's like socialism. It's this idea that we're going to perfect the human being and then we're going to reach this utopia where everybody's equal and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like all utopian religions, there is no utopia. We're never
Role of Comedy in Society
00:26:58
Speaker
going to reach there. You are never going to perfect the human condition. That's why
00:27:03
Speaker
we still watch Shakespeare. That's why we still read Shakespeare. That's why Hamlet still resonates because it's talking about the human condition. Hamlet will never die because it goes, and this is why it's a work of brilliance, it goes right to the very heart of what it means to be human, what it means to be a man. We're never gonna perfect that. Now where it comes from is the knowledge that we are all mortal, that we're all gonna die, that this is but we are but,
00:27:32
Speaker
a blink in the lifetime of eternity. We know we're mortal. And also we all deal with things that are awful, horrific. Things that, if we let it, would completely engulf us. But, by laughing at this, it makes it more bearable. And it makes it seem like life is not that dark, that futile, that hopeless.
00:28:02
Speaker
So my girlfriend was going for a very, very, very tough time. And I was hoping for a mate called Jeff Norco, who I've mentioned before. He's a fantastic comedian, conservative, right-leaning comedian. And he's a great bloke as well. And I said to her, why don't you come and watch Jeff's show? And she went, OK. And she came to watch it. And she laughed her ass off. And she came out and she went, I really needed that. I feel a lot better.
00:28:28
Speaker
That is what we're looking for. That's what we need. That is the purpose of comedy. So by not allowing us to go to that dark place, we're removing that safety valve. It's why people who have the toughest jobs, teachers, fire service, the military, they all have really dark senses of humor because you need it in order to cope with it because of all the shit that you're dealing with.
00:28:55
Speaker
The interesting thing about that is that in many ways, because that sense of mortality is something that we all have to face up to, that sort of comedy is actually something which should bring people together because it does force us all together to face eternal realities that we all experience. And it's ironic because it would be a lot of the woke who would be saying, well, we all want to be inclusive, but really that's true inclusion right there.
00:29:25
Speaker
It is true inclusion. The problem is, is that the words that we used and have used for a long time have, they stop meaning the same things. If you think about it in university, you have a safe space. What does safety actually mean? It prevents you from being attacked to physical harm.
00:29:45
Speaker
What does it actually mean now, a saved space? A saved space means that my words and opinions and viewpoints will not be challenged. And I will not encounter views that are different to my own. Well, that's not safety. That's nothing to do with safety. Kindness. People say you're not being kind. It just means that you're challenging me a lot of the time and you're challenging my way of thinking and you're challenging my points of view.
00:30:15
Speaker
And when people say they're kind and that we need to protect ethnic minorities, whatever it means, that means that they eliminate people who disagree with their point of view when it comes to wokeness, for instance, and their view of race. That's not being kind either. So the problem is, is that language is being manipulated in front of our eyes. It's like when
00:30:41
Speaker
Somebody says, for instance, that they are gender critical. And they go, what does that mean? You just say, well, people can't change sex, which is a biological and scientific fact. People will go, you're being transphobic. You're denying the existence of trans people. You go, well, I'm not denying the existence of trans people. We've had lots of trans people on the show, like Blair White. Blair White is a trans woman. I am not denying her existence. I'm just saying she's a biological male. You can't change sex.
00:31:12
Speaker
I actually think that it is starting to affect the quality of debate in our politics. You're a self-confessed politics nut. There is no doubt that the batch of politicians that we've seen in the UK and Australia over the last 20 odd years, they're not the same people of substance that you saw in the days of Hawke, Keating Howard, Thatcher, Reagan, that ilk.
00:31:36
Speaker
My question to you is, when we think about politics keeping in mind the changing way that we talk to each other in society, are we just in an unlucky bad trot? Is this a cyclical problem or is it systemic?
Political Landscape and Society
00:31:49
Speaker
Is it near and impossible in this environment to be a good politician in 2023? Look, we get the politicians that we deserve and what we have now is the most minor transgression by a politician
00:32:06
Speaker
in terms of what they say, particularly when it comes to issues of race and gender, we will make their lives a living hell. So we say politicians aren't honest. Well, that's our fault, because we don't let them be honest, because we don't let them be flawed, we don't let them transgress, number one. Number two, politics more and more, particularly in the UK, I can't speak for Australia, has become the preserve of the upper middle classes and the upper classes.
00:32:36
Speaker
And very frequently what happens in politics nowadays is you get these young boys and girls, mainly boys, they go to an exclusive private school, they then go to Oxford or Cambridge, and the ironic thing is they do the same fucking degree. It's PPE, Politics, Philosophy, Economics. They then come out.
00:32:56
Speaker
They then go and work for an intern as an intern for a politician or an MP. They then work their way up, they then become a political advisor and then they climb the slippery greasy pole of politics until they become an MP and whatever else. So what that means is that we have a whole generation of politicians who are running the country but have never worked in the real world, have never held down a job,
00:33:25
Speaker
have never encountered a normal person because they've all been in this little privileged bubble of theirs, whether it's private school, whether it's Oxford or London School of Economics or where it may be. Never talked to a working class person. They've then gone into politics. So you go, you've never run anything, yet you want to run the country. You want to connect with an ordinary working class person, yet you've never worked with them, let alone spoken to one.
00:33:54
Speaker
The entire system is not fit for purpose. We have this privileged political elite who have no idea what it means to be a normal person. And that's, to me, the crux of the problem. And look, you still get the odd person in the Conservatives or Labour who have strayed away from that. But that's why you've got such
00:34:20
Speaker
You're orthodox to your viewpoints in both political parties because effectively they're the same person. Yeah, it certainly is analogous in Australia, the rise of the career politician.
00:34:33
Speaker
I sometimes think that there's a real branding problem at the front of that talent pipeline. When you're in the university political societies, they're generally the kids that you wouldn't be seen dead with on campus. There must be a very high crossover with local incel societies and the political societies.
00:34:52
Speaker
How do you think you improve the brand of politics so it actually encourages people who we actually want to enter politics and get into that pipeline earlier? I think number one, people aren't going to want to hear this, particularly in the UK. We need to pay politicians more. We need to pay them more. But look, we'll pay them 250 grand a year, let's say.
00:35:16
Speaker
Prime Minister is on something ridiculously low, like 190 grand a year. Ridiculous. It should be on at least a mill a year. At least. Right? And what we say to those people and to those politicians is, you've got a quarter of a million a year, mate. You're only going to do fucking politics. Excuse my language. You ain't going to mess around. You aren't going to do it. You aren't going to be an advisory board. You aren't going to be doing this. You aren't going to be doing that. You are going to be doing your job. That is it.
00:35:45
Speaker
And if we find you doing work for other people, consultancy, we're going to fire you. And simple as that. You concentrate on your job, which is to represent your constituency.
00:36:01
Speaker
Or, if you are the Minister for Defence, represent your constituency and be the Minister for Defence. Nothing else. And if we find you doing anything else, you're out the door. You're probably one of the ways we get around this problem.
00:36:17
Speaker
It makes a lot of sense. One of the emblematic career politicians in Australia is our foreign minister. Her name is Penny Wong. She was recently in London and she delivered a speech at a think tank in which she lectured the English on the need to face up to their colonial past. That old chestnut. Should the Anglosphere feel guilty about empire? Should they feel guilty about empire? No.
00:36:42
Speaker
because the empire has nothing to do with me, it has nothing to do with you. I really find, as somebody who actually comes from a colonial country, what my mother does, Venezuela, why do we never talk about the Spanish empire? Why do we never talk about the French empire? Why do we never talk about the Belgian empire? You want to learn about atrocities, read about what King Leopold did to Congo, the massacres.
00:37:05
Speaker
But we don't talk about that. What about the Ottomans? The Ottomans enslaved more people than we did. We don't talk about the Ottomans. Because obviously they were oppressed because they were Muslim.
00:37:14
Speaker
There's about 10 times as many slaves that were used by the Ottoman Empire than the American slave trade ever used. It's extraordinary. But you're right, because of those sensibilities around particularly Islam, and because of the self-flagellation of countries like the US and the UK, we just choose to conveniently ignore those parts of history.
00:37:39
Speaker
We absolutely do. You know, we don't talk about what the Spanish Empire did in South America, and you actually talk to most people, they'll be like, well, they don't know. Because to, you know, to most people, the narrative that they've been fed, and again, it goes back to the same point. You don't look under the bonnet. We are the OG, racist, white supremacist. And it's historically illiterate.
00:38:06
Speaker
Look, of course there are atrocities, you know, the Amritsar massacre, etc, etc, that happened under the British Empire. You know, splitting India into Bangladesh, Pakistan and India as well. A million people died. Obviously horrendous, obviously awful. But can we at least have a nuanced conversation about the fact that all empires have atrocities?
00:38:32
Speaker
All empires had slaves. You know, I don't think the Ottomans invaded people and invaded countries and nations, and then to ask them what their pronouns were. Australia's colonial past continues to inform our politics today. We have a referendum coming up later in the year on an Indigenous voice to parliament. It's different in substance to Brexit, but I see a commonality in that Brexit's opponents.
00:39:02
Speaker
much like the Voice's supporters, both appear very happy to reflexively label their opponents as racists. What did you make of that aspect of the debate in the UK? What happened with Brexit is we had the referendum in 2016 and we voted to leave, 4852. So it was a close wrong thing, number one, but we voted to leave. And before it was, you know,
00:39:30
Speaker
There wasn't much rancor, there wasn't much toxicity, there was just a discussion about it. The moment that it was then passed, things turned ugly. And very quickly we saw this narrative being propagated that people who voted leave were stupid, thick, white, racist, ignoring the fact that around a third of all ethnic minority people voted to leave. But we don't really talk about that because that affects the narrative.
00:40:00
Speaker
and the other thing which the thing that really annoys me was a Billy Bragg line the singer-songwriter who said not all racists voted leave no sorry not all Brexiteers are racist but all racists are Brexiteers right
00:40:18
Speaker
And that really, really annoyed me. I remember one of my very liberal friends saying that to me in a pub. And I said to him, do you not think that there's some coked up posh boy working at the city who's actually got very problematic opinions about ethnic minorities and black people and Asian people, but he's making a killing from working in the stock market. And he knows that for his job, it's actually pretty imperative to stay in the European Union. Do you not think that bloke exists?
00:40:48
Speaker
And he just kind of looked at me and then, you know, there was an awkward silence and we moved on and never spoke about it again. The way I would frame it is you've got to look under the bonnet. You've got to realize there's no good or bad decisions, as Thomas Sowell said, there are only trade-offs.
00:41:09
Speaker
And you don't know what is going to come down further down the line as a result of your decision. Now I voted Remain. Why did I vote Remain? It's because I thought economically it would be better for this country and I saw it purely through the lens of economics. Knowing what I know now, I think the EU is a doomed and failed project. The euro is one of the most catastrophic
00:41:33
Speaker
ideas I've ever encountered. I'm not an economist, but even I can see it's utterly demented to have one currency for completely different economies. How can you have the same currency for an economy like Greece, which is mainly tourism and agriculture, and for Germany, which is a manufacturing powerhouse?
00:41:55
Speaker
And the result of what has happened is that what we've created is a series of zombie states in southern Europe where their countries have been in permanent recession. The Italian economy has been permanent recession since they've had the Europe.
00:42:10
Speaker
Relying on bailouts from the EU, they've had a permanent brain drain where their brightest and best have gone to countries like Italy, or sorry, like Germany, England, wherever else. And for the record, I don't blame them. You're a young person, why wouldn't you do that? I would do exactly the same thing in their position.
00:42:27
Speaker
And what we've had is just these southern European economies and countries withering on the vine as a result of freedom of movement and as a result of the euro. So to me, the EU as a project is completely unsustainable. We can't keep bailing out these countries. It is not sustainable. And I remember I went there's a very nice pizzeria around the corner for me. I think it's called
00:42:54
Speaker
I can't remember what it's called, but it's a very, very good pizzeria. And I sat down and it's run by a lovely Italian man called Gianni. And I went in late and there was just me and a bloke in there eating by himself and we started chatting. And he started talking and saying, people who voted for leave were thick and racist, but whatever else. And I said to him, okay.
00:43:19
Speaker
Do you like Gianni? He goes, yeah. I go, ask Gianni what he thinks about the EU. He asked Gianni, it came back with one word, bastardi. I don't even think we need to have the English translation there. I think it's relatively straightforward.
00:43:37
Speaker
The problem is, is people just see these debates in very simplistic terms, in very simplistic ways. And again, I understand that most people have families, they have jobs. They don't have the time to really dig into these ideas and these debates and really find out what's going on. I would just say to people,
00:43:59
Speaker
Don't have a surface level opinion. If you don't know the ins and outs of a particular debate, maybe just abstain from it.
00:44:09
Speaker
If there's one thread that's come through so strongly in everything you've said, it is that line, look under
Critical Thinking and Societal Issues
00:44:15
Speaker
the hood. And it's interesting because I think that's something which you and Konstantin have done so well is encourage people to actually think more deeply about particular issues, to not just take the common mainstream view, but to actually make your own decisions. And it's reflected quite nicely in the question that you ask at the end of every interview, what is something that we should be talking about that we're not talking enough about?
00:44:39
Speaker
I'll throw your own question back at you, Francis. What is something that we should be talking about that we're not currently talking enough about? The excess death rate in the UK. We have got a huge excess death rate in the UK. I think a couple of weeks ago in Scotland alone, they had the highest excess death rate in Scotland since 1952.
00:45:06
Speaker
Our excess death rate in England is astronomically above what it normally is. We're not talking about it. And we're not talking about it, honestly. There is going to be a very real and very serious debate about the NHS, whether it's sustainable, what we need to do in order to make it better, because there's a lot of people who are being failed by the system
00:45:33
Speaker
because the infrastructure is crumbling and there's probably a lot of other things going on that were caused by lockdown, drug addictions, gambling addictions, suicides, failed marriages, businesses that were failing. It's a real problem and we're not talking about it and we don't want to talk about it because it's going to uncover some very real and some very unpleasant truths.
00:45:56
Speaker
Francis, Trigonometry is hands down the second best podcast going around. If you're not listening to it or if you're not watching it on YouTube, do yourself a favor, subscribe immediately. Our listeners can also follow Francis on Twitter. I recall you saying you haven't been to Australia. I know I'm certainly not the only one who would love to see you here at some point so we can see you here live. Keep doing what you're doing because it is truly such an important addition to what is now the global debate. So thank you very much.
00:46:27
Speaker
It's a pleasure Will, thank you very much for having me on. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and if you really enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and a review.