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BONUS: Will on Nick Dixon's 'The Current Thing' podcast
2 Playsin 3 hours
Earlier this week, Will joined comedian and GB News host Nick Dixon on his podcast, ‘The Current Thing.’ They chatted about the news of the week in the UK, including a poll from The Sun revealing the depths of despair in the country, Ben Habib’s new party, the Birmingham bin crisis, anti-white racism in the West Yorkshire police, Douglas Murray’s debate with Dave Smith on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and several detours this way and that.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
Subscribe to Nick's YouTube channel here.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Overview
00:00:21
Speaker
Earlier this week, I joined comedian and GB News host Nick Dixon on his podcast, The Current Thing. We chatted about the news of the week in the UK, including a poll from The Sun revealing the depths of despair in the country,
00:00:36
Speaker
Ben Habib's new party, the ongoing Birmingham bin crisis, anti-white racism in the West Yorkshire police, Douglas Murray's debate with Dave Smith on Joe Rogan's podcast, and several detours This Way and That.
00:00:50
Speaker
I think you'll enjoy it. Without further ado, cue Nick's jingle. are are are a
00:01:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to what is normally called Dixon Cox. But this week, Paul Cox is away, so we have an excellent replacement, super sub, off the bench, like Oli Gunnar Solskjaer, if you get that reference.
00:01:18
Speaker
It is GB News contributor, host of the Fire at Will podcast, Mr. Will Kingston. Thanks so much for doing the show, Will. You know, Nick, big shoes to fill, but excited to be here.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, we've done this show before, before we even settled on the the Cox format. So, you you know, you know the drill. You do this for a living. I'm sure it'll be great. The only problem is people might try and come up with names for it in the comments, like Dix and Willie I could see happening.
00:01:42
Speaker
So I just want to you know, warn you. my my ah My dad's name, the world's worst name is Wayne. And he's always said that he's very glad his last name is Kingston and not King because that could have been disastrous. So, you know, yeah and make of that. Yeah, in Australia, especially the kind of piss taking is on, it's sort of on a par with like the north, north of England where I'm from It's that level, isn't it?
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. what Wayne King is a name that you just, there's no coming back from that in an Australian school. yeah You're screwed from the age of seven onwards there. there's um That would be shattering to your psyche for for the rest of your days.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. All right. well we Well, luckily you've got Wilkinson. That's pretty solid name. You've got King in there. I think you'd be pretty happy with that. yeah um so It does sound quite does sound quite you quite quite British, doesn't it? It does, actually. see You could almost fit in. yeah you could almost I'm not generally pro-immigrant, you know but you know we might give a pass for Anglosphere people.
Opposition to Trump's Tariffs
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny how um basically whenever the GBNU's crowd, you know whenever I'm saying something which is red meat to the base, they're always very supportive. And as soon as I say something that may be a bit...
00:02:54
Speaker
off what may be kind of their view. For example, I'm pretty against the Trump tariffs. Suddenly I become just another shit-stirring foreigner. um why well What are you doing in our country? So i'm I am, yeah, it's ah it can go both can take that visa like that. Well, I don't think the Trump tariffs great. I don't think we should be blindly Trump cultists. If anyone's a Trump cultist, it's me.
00:03:15
Speaker
But even i have gone, I'm not sure about these tariffs, mate. I'm not sure, but they're a bit beyond my understanding as well. We talked about it last week. This week, we've got so many stories. We've got, we'll start with this big one in the sun, ah Britain is broken. And it was just quite a sort of striking headline for the sun to have. And, you know, it's still a fairly influential paper.
Political Landscape in the UK
00:03:33
Speaker
And what they meant was there'd been a poll of Labour's red wall and 68% said Britain is broken. This won't be a shock to you and me, but for, you know, people who don't follow politics all day to be saying that that is quite significant 21 said britain's going the right way like who are those people you have to wonder who are they maybe they've just exactly don't know it won the lottery or something but um you know 23 say britain isn't broken nine percent don't know they just need to walk outside um but what did you make of this poll i mean it's really a red wall poll it really showed that reformers are doing very well despite all their recent problems and um
00:04:09
Speaker
whereas Keir Starmer is in the absolute toilet. So Starmer's net rating in the North and Midlands, minus 26%. That can't be good. And there was another poll that Farage was basically doing better than Starmer on every metric.
00:04:22
Speaker
And don't know, I'm not sure if that thing with Rupert Lowe has made a big difference yet or not. What did you make of this? So I think what it reveals is the track for reform is actually pretty obvious.
00:04:36
Speaker
It's basically trying to recapture that 2019 coalition that Johnson successfully managed to capture and um and then so stunningly lost.
00:04:48
Speaker
If they can get that red wall coalition of kind of lower class or working class and middle class voters in traditionally Labor seats, they're on track to win that election.
00:05:00
Speaker
whether they have the organizational chops to get there. You mentioned Rupert Lowe and what that saga revealed about the internal machinations of the party and potentially whether they are playing this canny game of moving to the center to try and attract a broad coalition before moving back to the right.
00:05:22
Speaker
or whether they really are just another addition to the uni party, that all remains to be seen. But their electoral process path is really clear. the The way that they capture that 2019 Red Wall coalition, um perhaps less so at the moment. And I keep flip-flopping every day as to, because I really was annoyed by the Rupert Lowe saga, and I think it revealed so many cultural problems within that party.
00:05:50
Speaker
But you know, you know as well as I do, at the moment, the country's in such dire straits as that Sun poll revealed that you kind of go, do we just have to throw a lot in with them because they're the best of a bad bunch?
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, Robert Jemmick to me always looks like the person most doing the best work on the right, really. And today he's released, ah we'll talk about the police story later, but he's released a good video about the police racist recruitment policies in West Yorkshire.
00:06:16
Speaker
And he's, I mean, you so can people forgive the Tories? The voters are a bit behind, I tend to think, probably, maybe that's patronizing, because a lot of voters are very smart. But because we follow this stuff all day, I sometimes wonder if they're a bit behind. Like, I've already said, right, Reformer have lost my vote because of their treatment of Rupert Lowe.
00:06:32
Speaker
I'm looking at Jen Rick going, could we go back to Tories though? Whereas I feel like the public are just going, we hate the Tories still. They've totally betrayed us, which is totally fair. And we're not that bothered about Rupert Lowe. It hasn't really landed on their radar and we're still just going with reform. So yeah, there is something in that. um but Well, the the the key question is, is the institutional rot in the Conservatives too far gone?
00:06:56
Speaker
So is that David Cameron, Liberal, Democrat, group of MPs so ah so so strong? Is that kind of soft-lib-damn attitude so strong that really, even if you did have Jenrick as leader, it wouldn't make much difference because he wouldn't be able to actually move towards a more traditional conservative position?
00:07:23
Speaker
I don't have an answer on that, but that really is the question that people have to ask themselves. Because if you still have the Lib Dems controlling that or the the faux Lib Dems controlling that party, then it doesn't matter if Jenrick or Badenock or his leader.
00:07:37
Speaker
It doesn't matter if they pull off a coup and manage to get Rupert Lowe on board because the institutional culture is still center-left. That is the question that we really need to to resolve.
00:07:48
Speaker
Okay, well, let's get on to all the Ben Habib stuff in a second and the other shenanigans around that.
Emergence of New Political Parties
00:07:53
Speaker
But did you think this headline was significant in itself, even though it sort of was actually just about a poll?
00:07:59
Speaker
Do you think it was sort of significant at capturing the mood of the nation that the the public is really, really like saying we've had enough? I mean, especially with the bins thing, which we'll get into as well. but But do you think the nation just had enough in general ah of the current and government?
00:08:15
Speaker
the so So, again, it's interesting you say, like, we we personally are ah surrounded by this stuff every day. And I sometimes do wonder because, you know,
00:08:26
Speaker
yeah We're both on GP News a lot. We both do the podcasting stuff. I'm on a couple of other stations. And generally, those stories are resoundingly negative about the state of modern Britain. you is is Are we just searching for calamity in order to get clicks, in order to get views?
00:08:44
Speaker
And I don't think don't think we are. But at the same time, I will speak to friends in London. I'll speak to you know well-off people living in Fulham or Notting Hill or Islington.
00:08:56
Speaker
They're not raving lefties by any means. like call you know They'd probably be right-wing, a lot of them. And when I say, for example, geez, I'm just so worried about the problems facing the UK and I'm increasingly thinking there may be terminal problems, particularly when it comes to demographic change and the economic position we find ourselves in, they go, oh, really? What do you mean by that?
00:09:17
Speaker
And I go, can't you see walking down the streets of central London? They go, oh, really? you know they They don't say it, but I think they're probably going, well, my life's pretty nice. So to answer you you answer your question, I still think there is the big divide between that the insiders and outsiders or the, what was it, the Dave Goodhart quote, the somewheres and the anywheres.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I think that is still playing out. So I think kind of there are there are parts of central London who still have that mentality that, you know, the Uni Party has fed off for the last 30 years, which is for us, things are pretty good if you're going from your place in Fulham to your job in central London, perhaps just working from home.
00:09:58
Speaker
um You're not seeing the problems that Birmingham are seeing. You're not even seeing the problems that, you know, are happening in Croydon, you know, half an hour away. And so ah to answer your question, ah the the the answer is, yes, the problems are very real, but they're very real to particular groups of people in this country. And there are other groups of people in this country that would see that headline and go, what on earth are they talking about?
00:10:21
Speaker
And it is that disconnect. And particularly because Westminster is part of the geographic and cultural location that is very much ignoring the rest of the country.
00:10:33
Speaker
It's that disconnect, which is why it's a difficult question to answer. All right. Fair enough. um And I wonder how much um this reform stuff has affected the average voters. There's a lot of debate on this.
00:10:44
Speaker
Carl Benjamin keeps sharing polls saying, look, they've stalled in the polls. Other people claim it hasn't affected them at all. And um there's speculation of Rupert Lowe going to the Tories. Let's first just look at this ah other story of Ben Habib.
00:10:58
Speaker
launching this party or not launching it, accidentally launching it because people found on Companies House that he had changed ah to take over this party called the Integrity Party. And he he had to comment on it because there was so much speculation. He says, there was much speculation yesterday about me having taken them control of a political party, the Integrity Party.
00:11:15
Speaker
I can confirm the speculation was correct. I do control that party. I was not going to make any comment on the speculation. There's much to be done to get it fully operational, including possibly renaming it. However, have been bowled over by the support the party and I received yesterday.
00:11:28
Speaker
We gained over 200 members and raised £6,000 without me even saying a word. I'm therefore compelled to thank you for your support and engagement. Thank you. I'll be not making any further public comment on the part until it's much more advanced, but I can assure you will stand without fear or favor for a proud, sovereign, independent, and prosperous United Kingdom in all its parts.
00:11:45
Speaker
And for all its people, please watch this space. So... I wonder, I mean, he as we record, he's about to go on Dan Watton and talk about it, so he may know more. He's kind of been forced to talk about it. You could say that's kind of classic right-wing party organization, the fact that he's had to just end up talking about it.
00:12:00
Speaker
Is it absurd now, that although I really like Ben, he's been on my podcast, is it absurd now that we have Reclaim, Reform, heritage integrity and it's just like endless you know it' it ah you can just start a right room party call it something like renew reform heritage home party and it's just like just start today two members and you're already like in the game i mean isn't it getting a bit ridiculous yep Yeah, I think it is, unfortunately. And I completely see why Ben has done what he's done.
00:12:29
Speaker
And again, i'll share many of the concerns about reform that obviously he has. But in a first-past-the-post-voting system, this is not a good outcome for the right.
00:12:40
Speaker
It's just that's the that's the reality. You're going to keep... dividing and then subdividing and then subdividing the vote on the right. and And so I think electorally, I can't see what the objective is. Like surely, even in his wildest dreams, you can't see them being really viable force.
00:13:01
Speaker
I'll eat my hat if I'm wrong. ah so So one wonders what the objective is. The other thing I would point out is I think it's a really dumb move branding yourself around integrity.
00:13:12
Speaker
I say that for a couple of reasons. Number one, when the first inevitable scandal hits that party, and it will hit that party because there are scandals in every political party. They've created a rod for their own back.
00:13:22
Speaker
And so their whole reason for being will be called into question. But the second thing is, whilst so I think people are sick and tired with the way that Westminster operates, I think they're more concerned with body with with policy, with what you actually achieve as opposed to the way that you go about achieving you it.
00:13:41
Speaker
So to be honest, I don't care there is maybe there is maybe a a tad less integrity if we manage to stop the boats, if we stop mass migration, and if we get economic growth back in this country.
00:13:56
Speaker
If we have a bunch of shits who end up managing to do that, that's more important to me than a bunch of ineffective people who have the right morals. And I think probably most people are now at that point in this country. So I struggle to see why they've gone for that particular type of branding as opposed to being something saying, these are the three big issues and this is how we're going to fix them.
00:14:14
Speaker
fair Fair, but he did say, including possibly renaming it. So he's taken over this party because some of the machinery is already in place. There's another bloke that runs it. His name escapes me now. um It was already extant, basically. And then he just took that.
00:14:28
Speaker
And he'll probably rebrand it. It'll be called British something or other. Cheerfully withdrawn. Well, in that case, I think there's still just a fundamental question around splitting the right. Oh, no, what you No, you're right. mean, you're about name if they did keep because then the headline would just be the brackets lack of integrity party.
00:14:43
Speaker
So there's absolutely that. What do I think? It's it's a tricky one, isn't it? Because you just want reform to be less ridiculous, but they they won't be. you know they they They have to alienate Rupert Lowe for some reason.
00:14:57
Speaker
i said I've said they had my vote. Now they've currently lost it, unless they can sort that out I mean, to be so savagely attacking someone who was representing so many of us with his views where we thought finally a guy who's saying the things that need to be said.
00:15:12
Speaker
And then they go, yeah, this guy's got dementia and he's a bully and he's got an anger problem. and he wants to kill our chairman and we're going to take his shotguns away. even though he's a farmer who obviously would would have struggles and even though no one on earth thinks he was actually going to kill your chairman.
00:15:24
Speaker
What a 67 year old guy, he's been a chairman of a football club, multimillionaire net worth, something like 30 million goes, you know I'm going to do today? just I'm going to kill someone. just like It's absolutely absurd.
00:15:35
Speaker
Never committed a crime. i It's disgusting the way they've cheated him. so and I say this as a colleague of of Farage. you know and and i've been
00:15:44
Speaker
no no I agree with you. um I think the way that he has behaved has been appalling. I think, and again, let's put the GB News contract on the line. Let's see what happens.
00:15:56
Speaker
I think the way he's behaved has been appalling. I think that If you look at that whole saga, sorry, the difference between being a prime minister and being a president is the prime minister, you have to run a cabinet. You have to be a good man manager in order to do that job effectively.
00:16:13
Speaker
President, you can afford to be like Donald Trump and be the... the the one man band. You can't do that as a prime minister. So i don't think that this saga has demonstrated that Nigel Farage necessarily could run an effective cabinet.
00:16:27
Speaker
I would love to be approved proved wrong, but I can't see that at the moment. But the one thing also I will say, ah put up a post supporting Rupert Lowe only a couple of days ago in response to that evidence from Dan Wooden that, uh,
00:16:42
Speaker
that they had been, that reform had been briefing journalists, that Rupert Lowe had dementia. And I did notice a huge amount of people basically saying, shut up, Will, just fall in line.
00:16:54
Speaker
This saga is over. You know, Rupert Lowe is an attention seeker. We just need to back the right horse now. So I think there is that element of tribalism to say, you know what, you know, we're over it.
00:17:05
Speaker
We just need to back reform or else we're going to keep getting the inequality. Yeah, I get a lot of that. Lee Hurst blocked me over it. um I've seen quite a few people blocked me over it because I've just supported Rubello.
00:17:16
Speaker
But yeah, and I'm not necessarily blaming Farage individually. I don't know what happened. i mean, it was it Zia Yusuf people said? Farage, some people said, didn't we know about it. But somehow, yeah, of course, he's the leader. And it's happened. um So I don't know what's going on there. I still have people have lots of friends. are I spoke to somebody yesterday for a podcast. He's a big friend of Farage that will be coming out.
00:17:34
Speaker
And he's sticking with Farage. And, you know, that's fine. it's It's fine as well. i've I've thought about it for those people to say,
Media Pressures and Independent Opinions
00:17:41
Speaker
get behind them. It's a bit annoying when they say, oh, you shut up, big fall in line, blah, bla blah, blah. I'm blocking you.
00:17:45
Speaker
It's kind of annoying. But at the same time, maybe they're right to do that because they are concerned My job I see is a bit different. It's just to tell the truth. So if Keir Starmer says something good, which is incredibly rare, but if he ever does, I will say it on GB.
00:17:59
Speaker
And if Kemi Badenoch says something good, I'll say, even though people see me as very anti-Kemi, which I am because it was a terrible choice and Generic was the right choice. And I'm very pro-Generic, but if he says something weird, I'll also say that. And I'll call out Farage even on GB. It's so annoying. I got all these comments on the GB news comment section.
00:18:15
Speaker
And they said, why is Nick always attacking Kemi? And yet he adores Farage. It's like, do you want to check the five episodes where I said that Reform had been appalling in their treatment of Rupert Lowe, of my podcast and Headline? People don't ah watch everything, that's fine. But I think we may we we maybe have a different role.
00:18:30
Speaker
Maybe it's okay for the people to say, no, no you've got to just back Reform. Whereas ah if you're a commentator, think you just have to tell the truth.
00:18:38
Speaker
I still think... Mate, tribalism is hell of a drug, hell of a drug. um And it is extraordinary now how most people...
00:18:50
Speaker
look at politics and then use politics to inform their principles as opposed to the way that I think it should be, which is you have a sense of principles and then you look at politics through that lens.
00:19:04
Speaker
I think we've got it ass backwards at the moment for too many people. um And I don't think Trump started this, but I think the cult of Trump certainly ah has has has played a huge role in it.
00:19:15
Speaker
I think I was telling you off air that, you know, I... um fully supportive of everything that Trump has done in the cultural realm. And I've been ah very open in my criticism of of his economic policies.
00:19:28
Speaker
And you know I haven't changed. I'm a libertarian. I believe in freedoms in the cultural space and I believe in economic freedom at the same time. And it's very obvious that Trump's agenda is is great for one element and not so great for the other.
00:19:42
Speaker
But as soon as I've started saying the economic stuff, ah people think that I'm you know a libtard lefty, woke nutter. It's extraordinary. um So I would like it if we could move back to a place, and maybe we never were there, where there were principles and then you looked at the world through that. But unfortunately now, you know, politics has become a team sport and you have to support your team no matter what.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, there is a divide on the on the right and on the Trump-supporting right between the libertarians and the kind of Musk side that's come in, the Silicon Valley versus the what it was originally, the economic nationalism of Bannon, and which we're now seeing with the terrorists, which comes from advisors like Robert Lighthizer.
Debate Over Trump's Tariffs
00:20:21
Speaker
It would be very strange if you suddenly flipped on that because that's a very different... That's the that's the um vertical axis.
00:20:27
Speaker
would be very strange to suddenly flip to the other one. It you flipping to the left on the horizontal axis, talking about the political compass grid if people don't know what I'm on about. But can i can I just pick up on this? I know we weren't meant to talk tariffs and some people are sick of it, but just a really quick point because it annoys me.
00:20:42
Speaker
The problem is that there have been two justifications given for these tariffs and they are completely contradictory. And depending on which person in the Trump administration you hear from on any given day whatever mood Trump is in, you'll hear those two justifications.
00:20:56
Speaker
So one is we're current trying to re-industrialize America. We're trying to bring jobs back in manufacturing. And the other one is, this is a canny game of 4D chess, and we're trying to get countries to come to the negotiating table so we can do free trade deals, and this will usher in an era of wonderful free trade for the Western world.
00:21:15
Speaker
And they are literally completely contradictory justifications. If it is the 4D chess game and we're going to get free trade out of this, I'm all for it. But if it is this kind of misguided attempt to try and bring kids back onto the day assembly line in America,
00:21:29
Speaker
You know, obviously, if you're someone who believes in economic liberalism, you can't get behind it. I think one of the problems of this whole process has been that the messaging has been muddled and people will just say, well, that's just the art of the deal.
00:21:43
Speaker
But the art of the deal, I think, doesn't really apply when the outcomes are ah temporarily tanking the markets and and I think kind of really doing damage to trust both in the American economy and America more generally.
00:21:58
Speaker
No, it's fair. I mean, to say there's two explanations is generous. as There's at least 16. six sixteen I mean, there's like, no, ah china this is a trade war with China is one. This is to balance trade is another. This is to bring back manufacturing, which is not quite the same thing. I mean, to say, no, it's about bringing jobs back to the US is not quite the same as destroying China.
00:22:16
Speaker
it says You could say it's two sides of the same coin, but you know is it a trade war with China? Is it about spending around the world. and and And also, I think Trump has, my guess is Trump has a different understanding to, for example, Lighthizer. Lighthizer says, okay, he's an economist. So he says,
00:22:31
Speaker
It's about trade balance. We have things like chlorinated chicken restrictions, which which are not free trade. We have environmental regulations, so we don't have free trade. And we don't have fair trade because China does what it wants and is cheap.
00:22:45
Speaker
So what we want is balanced trade, at least. And the tariffs are just one part. That's something he said. Whereas Trump has just been saying since like the 80s, they're knocking the hell out of us. He just sees it more like, why are they getting away with this?
00:22:56
Speaker
It seems like that to me. and And look, the one thing you have to say is he's been remarkably consistent on it. I don't think a lot of people thought he'd go the whole hog in the way he has, but you can't really complain now that he has, because you know you're right, you see those old talk show interviews from the 80s where he's saying pretty similar stuff to what he's saying. Well, the only thing he could say is then why did he blink and do the 90-day pause?
00:23:18
Speaker
He said, don't be a panicking. He invented his term. And then when the U.S. bond market suddenly looked shaky and that undermined trust in the U.S., he went, whoops, i I'll pause it. So then you go, well, was that part of the deal or was that just a cock up?
00:23:32
Speaker
And yeah yeah, I think I try to be very objective about that, despite lobbying Trump generally. um Back to the old, I don't want to say UK because it sounds like that those memes are with the YOO, UK, Britain, or really England is is what where I live. but um um i By the way, i you know as an immigrant to this country, say that with forked tongue, ah ah I will never understand fully the England, Britain, Great Britain, UK distinction. I know it's been explained to me a million times, but it's i I will never fully...
00:24:09
Speaker
and Well, some of them are literally different places. Obviously, UK includes Northern Ireland, Britain doesn't, all this kind of thing. But then there's then there's England, which is just separate country. But in terms of the sort of politics of it, we grew I grew up in England and we ticked English on all these boxes. Then somewhere in the 90s, we were suddenly told we were British. We'd never been told that.
Identity Confusion in the UK
00:24:29
Speaker
um So um I never identify as Northern.
00:24:31
Speaker
Really, Lakes first, then Cumbria, then the North, then England. Concentric circles, you know what mean? Then Britain, if you really want to go there, then UK. But this UK thing, it went from we were English to we were British to the UK, which was never a a thing at all.
00:24:47
Speaker
Now, some people tell me... yeah but obviously Obviously, if you're in Wales, for example, you're still going to say, I'm Welsh. over you know you're You're not going to say I'm from the UK, particularly if you're in Scotland. you I imagine you can say, oh I'm Scottish. I'm not...
00:24:59
Speaker
not have met and won't necessarily you know a citizen of the UK. I think it's kind of, it probably has different meanings as well for different people. ah Yeah, exactly. i mean, i mean, um yeah, it's it's absurd. I mean, you're never allowed to call yourself English, but allowed to call yourself all those other ones.
00:25:17
Speaker
Some people tell me that this was, ah that was rare, and we used to call ourselves Britain, and then we started saying English, so I don't know. Anyway, is i don't blame you for not understanding it, because I'm not sure many people here do either. But, Back to wherever we are now in this country, on this bit of soil.
00:25:32
Speaker
This Rupert Lowe, just another part of the Ben Habib reform fiasco or whatever want to call it. This story, Nigel Farage's nemesis Rupert Lowe could join Tories in bombshell move. This is from the Express.
00:25:43
Speaker
Maybe a bit of a non-story when you read it. It was that Tory chairman Nigel Huddleston signaled that the door is always open to Rupert Lowe. And that's not really much of a story when you look at it because other people will say the opposite.
00:25:54
Speaker
I'm sure Kemi Bain wouldn't say the same, I imagine. So whether he's actually allowed to join the Tories, but do you think he will? And do you think that's a good move for Rupert Lowe?
00:26:05
Speaker
ah I don't think he'll join, no. I think in that same article, the chairman also said, this is someone who has made it, or has previously been a member of a party whose raison d'etre is destroying the Conservative Party and who has openly been incredibly critical of the Conservative Party.
00:26:24
Speaker
So I don't, I don't think the conservatives would want him in. And to be honest, I don't think Rupert Lowe really would see the value in it either. ah so So the short answer is I think this is a bit of media sensationalism.
00:26:39
Speaker
um I think he would be very valuable addition. But the question is when he... say, would walk into that party, would he just be too compromised? And would that institutional DNA, which we were talking about earlier, just force him to to compromise?
00:26:56
Speaker
If reform, for example, weren't moving quickly in the direction he wanted to go, and if they were too centrist for him, I think he'd be pretty bloody frustrated going into the Conservatives. True.
00:27:08
Speaker
You sort of want a generic-led Conservatives withfor with Rupert Lowe in there, and then you think maybe...
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, really, it's tricky, isn't it now? I don't know. It's a big cock up. I don't know how this all gets fixed. And there was another story that Dan Wotton shared. I couldn't find it in any paper when I checked, but it was um on Dan Wotton's show that Suella Braverman was put off joining reform due to the Rupert Lowe stuff.
Internal Dynamics of the Reform Party
00:27:34
Speaker
I mean, that seems plausible. I mean, who wouldn't be? So that seems, I mean, it's yeah what do you think about that? Yeah, so that's that was certainly my my feeling after that whole saga. So I think that's very, very plausible.
00:27:47
Speaker
ah Again, we do wonder how much of this is just inside the beltway compared to the broader population, and it probably is largely inside the beltway. But the one thing which I think is underestimated is that there was still a really strong component of the reform base that were really put off by this.
00:28:05
Speaker
So even if it doesn't necessarily show up in polls, or at least not outside of the margin of error. Even if you're annoying 2% to 3%, let's say if you're annoying 5% of your your voters, the chances are the ones that you're annoying through that are going to be the hardcore base of reform because they are the ones that are behind the more hardline policy that Lowe was putting forward.
00:28:33
Speaker
And that 5% are the ones that are most likely to go out and drop leaflets in letterboxes. They're the ones who are most likely to campaign. They're the ones who are most likely to share posts on social media.
00:28:43
Speaker
So there is two questions here. It is a does the Rupert Lowe saga actually really impact the polls and then eventually the vote? And I think you can say probably not a lot.
00:28:55
Speaker
But does it alienate a small but very important group of, let's call them super fans, who are going to be really integral in the electoral mechanics in 2029?
00:29:08
Speaker
And I think the argument you can make there is yes, I think it has. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good argument. um I think it does make some difference um in that sense. I think that's a good case. so And there's something you I wanted to come back to that you said earlier, which is if these there were people who were you didn't rate them their character necessarily, but they were going to get everything done, it would be different.
00:29:31
Speaker
But it's the combination of this behavior with Rupelo with the Farage's soft on mass deportations at times, at other times he changes his mind. Faraj says odd things about Islam. We've lost. It's all over.
00:29:43
Speaker
And you go, all right, you're saying these things and you're acting this way. The whole package is alienating me. and and And you don't feel like you're asking for a lot, really. You're asking for like someone to do the basic things we need to do in the country.
00:29:57
Speaker
And it's like, hang on, you're saying even the radical new disruptive force can't do it either. That's what it sounded like to me. And what's more, They're alienating the one guy quite nastily that can do it. That's that's where I was like, what what is there left to vote for here?
00:30:11
Speaker
Well, this also, I think, goes to how you think about politicians. Should they be leaders who have a set of principles and then see it as their job to take people on a journey, to bring people with them?
00:30:25
Speaker
Or do you see politicians as being people who should reflect the mood of the nation? Now, the Lotus Entry guys, Kyle Benjamin, they've been putting forward a pretty, I think, compelling case that throughout his career, Farage has been someone who's been very good at picking up the public sentiment, trailing about 10 metres behind and then picking up, basically, the the picking it up after a lot of the grunt work has been done in other parts of the media, in other pockets of the political establishment.
00:30:54
Speaker
In other words, he's a follower. He's not someone who sets the agenda. um Now, look, If this is a 4-day chess game and he is moving to the center
Nigel Farage's Political Stance
00:31:04
Speaker
and he's trying to wait for the political mood to come to him, or if he goes, I can't piss off Muslims and I can't piss off, you know, kind of centrist dads um because it's not going to be electorally viable, but I'm going to move back to where most of my base is at the appropriate time.
00:31:28
Speaker
I can, you know, that may be canny. But again, we just aren't sure whether, you know, is this, who is the real Nigel Farage? I think that's something which a lot of people are now asking.
00:31:40
Speaker
And is he playing canny game of politics? Or really, is he just a slightly more conservative version of what we have had over the last 20 years? Yeah, exactly. and it's funny about that point you say about Loti, it's because Gawain Tawler was making that point, but as a positive, saying that Farage has been able to kind of read the mood, but he said it as a positive thing, whereas they were seeing it as a negative.
00:32:02
Speaker
um And just to be fair to Farage, of course, he has done a lot. I mean, he's an extraordinary campaigner. great It must be frustrating for him to hear all this stuff and go, hang on, I did all these things. I was there for Brexit, blah, blah.
00:32:12
Speaker
There's different narratives. And then his in his narrative, everyone just kind of loses just on his coattails and he's doing all these big moves. And there's some truth in that as well. I think that's reasonable.
00:32:24
Speaker
but And it also raises an interesting question of, is it still possible to be a conviction politician in 2025? So, um you know, shameless plug alert, on my podcast, I'm speaking to John Howard next week.
00:32:39
Speaker
John Howard was Australia's second longest serving prime minister. He served from 96 through to 2007. And he was known as a conviction politician. Common phrase that often has accompanied Howard was,
00:32:54
Speaker
A lot of people hated him. a lot of people loved him, but everyone knew what he stood for. And in the yeah UK, you would say that that was Thatcher. You would say that that type of politician died with Blair.
00:33:06
Speaker
would say everything that we've seen since has been almost the opposite of the conviction politician. um And I think, you know, that is, with the possible extension of Trump,
00:33:19
Speaker
and Millet and maybe one or two others. That's what we've seen as a global trend in world politics in the last 20 years. The death of conviction and the the birth of, was going to pragmatism, but I think that may be actually being too kind. The birth of just, you know, trying to a achieve power for power's sake without then actually ever really putting your balls on the line and doing something.
00:33:41
Speaker
So it raises the question of, is it possible to be a conviction politician in 2025 have just been or have we just been unlucky had 20 years of dud dud leaders and there will be hopefully that person in the future who can actually do like who actually can can have substance behind them yeah I remember on my old podcast Weekly Skeptic at one episode Toby Young just basically said yeah of course you can't actually say what you think as a politician now but he said it as if it was nothing and I remember thinking you like well hang on like never like so that's a terrifying idea the idea is just you can't be a conviction politician at all
00:34:19
Speaker
ah yeah Maybe two. trump Trump obviously is the is the exception, isn't he? like you know Trump has shown that yeah you can still still do it, right? um But maybe it's different in ah in in you know a Westminster westminster system where you need to get kind of broader coalitions of support.
00:34:40
Speaker
It's tough one. It's a really tough one. But it's whichever way, but you wherever you fall, it's incredibly sad that we have so many just nothing politicians now that don't seem to really stand for anything. It's really sad. This is the whole uni party story. There's a breaking story, as we recall, which we don't have. You might have seen already just before we started, which is, and I can't confirm, but it's Vance telling Starmer he has to repeal hate speech laws in order to get a trade deal.
00:35:09
Speaker
but I'm not totally sure how definite this is yet, so I don't want to say too much.
US-UK Trade Deal and Free Speech
00:35:13
Speaker
But that would be an example of they're kind of almost there's almost some pressure of trying to force and integrity onto onto Britain from the US, s which is was an interesting new development.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen this before where they've said, it's quite a nice little line, no free trade without free speech. um And there's two ways you can look at it. Number one, which is the US needs to stay out of our business.
00:35:37
Speaker
And I can have some sympathy for that. But I think, to be honest, I'm now so despondent about the authoritarian anti-free speech instinct in this country and across Europe that if J.D. Vance wants to take up that fight, because to be honest,
00:35:52
Speaker
no one really on the right is in the UK. We'll take all the soldiers we can get. hi um it it's is such a sad indictment that this is the country that has done more historically for free speech and for individual liberty than any other, including the US, throughout human history.
00:36:09
Speaker
And we're now in this position where you're having foreign countries saying that you need to get your house in order when it comes to free speech or else we're not going to engage with you.
00:36:20
Speaker
um It's just, it is an incredibly sad set of things. Yeah, I'm almost case by case on that. I mean, when it comes to the pro-life stuff and the buffer zones, i'm like, yeah, America needs to it say something because we where those laws are obscene.
00:36:33
Speaker
And when it's when it's um having a go at all of Europe and Britain, then it kind of casual way, either in a signal chat or somewhere else. And you just think, maybe shut up. And then I get more patriotic about it. I'm just like, hang on, shut up.
00:36:47
Speaker
So what it depends. You know, sometimes it is useful what they're saying and it's correct when it comes to some of our ridiculous. I mean, when Elon Musk intervened about the grooming gangs, that was very welcome. We needed it.
00:36:57
Speaker
But when it's some of this back chat of just like Europe crap and Britain hasn't done this blah, And thinking like, well, we've been under the thumb of America since World War II. So it's kind of not necessarily our fault that we haven't done all these things. You didn't allow us to do anything. Check out the Suez crisis. You know what mean? So it can be annoying as well.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah. And look, obviously, you know, I'm not British, but I am an Anglophile and, you know, I plan on staying in this country. and And, you know, I think one day, you know, hopefully if my visa isn't mysteriously revoked, i you know, i will I will try and get citizenship one day. so So I've got a deep love for this country.
00:37:35
Speaker
ah But at the same time, you know there is an argument to say that the UK well and truly deserves all of the comments that come through those signal chats and all of you know all of the commentary that comes from the US when they say, you know look at the state of the United Kingdom.
00:37:53
Speaker
Now, you've seen all these kind of videos of police officers saying you know what you're saying may be a hate crime. I think the most recent one was when someone asked an Islamic guy at a protest to, can you please speak English? And the police officer comes and says, well, I'd be careful. That may be ah maybe a hate crime or perceived as a hate crime.
00:38:11
Speaker
And like, we have become so unmoored from the days of John Stuart Mill and the classical conception of free speech, which has underpinned our society, that I think, you know, that even if it is a bit annoying for America to be slagging us off,
00:38:30
Speaker
they're right. Like, I'm sorry, but that but, you know, they're right. Yeah, I was getting on to find that that case later as a P quote maybe, but yeah, absolutely pathetic. The idea you can't say, beyond pathetic really, the idea that you can't say speak English in England, which he didn't even say, he just said speak clearly.
00:38:45
Speaker
And then you could argue, i was saying that if, uh, if it's customary in someone's country to mumble, is it hateful to say, speak clearly? I mean, and insane. ah So disgusting to say, and you can barely begin with it. um But I'm glad you love this.
00:38:58
Speaker
I'll just say that the, I'm sorry to interrupt, but but the the the real problem that we face is, And, you know, Toby Young's doing really great things with the free speech union and that movement is so important, but there still aren't enough people who are arguing for first free speech on first principles because that's like sometimes not an easy argument to make because you've got to be able to argue that, say,
00:39:24
Speaker
Let's use the extreme example. Using the N-word in public is morally abhorrent, but still should be legal because the alternative is worse.
00:39:35
Speaker
You need to be able to be smart enough to argue that people should be allowed to say atrocious, racist, awful, nasty things because on balance, the alternative is a slippery slope where the government gets to control what societal morality looks like.
00:39:51
Speaker
And almost inevitably, that is a morality which favors coercion or favors a loss of of individual freedoms. But again, a lot of people just hear, oh, the N-word, that's disgusting. Of course it should be illegal. Why would you allow people to say nasty things?
00:40:08
Speaker
We need more people who who can actually argue that case in an easy-to-understand way. There's that case, which is, yeah, I agree with. But then there's also the... cultural case, which is just if you're in England, you should speak English.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so should be completely fine to say someone speak English. And that shouldn't even be a free speech issue. There shouldn't be hate speech laws, in my opinion. They shouldn't exist. <unk>t There shouldn't be hate crime laws either, because ah crime's crime. If you murder someone, you murdered them. It doesn't matter that you also hated them. of course you hated them.
00:40:37
Speaker
So I always think that I hate crimes nonsense, hate speeches nonsense. so But you're right, I mean, it's very hard to make the case, especially when it comes to things like the buffer zones, because everyone just says to me, oh, she broke the buffer zone. was like, the buffer zone law was invented 10 seconds ago and is moronic. You can't pray in your head in England, get lost. But yeah, very hard to make the case when it's an issue people don't like, like the one you cited or the hypothetical one or the real one of the buffer zones.
00:41:04
Speaker
um yeah I'm glad you still love the country. When the Integrity Party get in, you'll be deported, but that's that's a separate issue. um What about this story that is a big story for people?
00:41:16
Speaker
and We'll get onto it now, talking about Broken Britain. The Birmingham bin strike to continue as deal rejected. That was in the BBC. So we know about this bins thing. It's running and running. I haven't had chance to cover it yet.
00:41:27
Speaker
Massive piles of bins in Birmingham, horrific stuff happening, rats, of course, and then the air is poisoned and just total dystopian decay.
Labour and Union Influence in Birmingham
00:41:37
Speaker
And, you know, it might be harder for some people to notice this than it was in the 70s, because I go to a lot of places in London and there's quite a lot of bins there at all times. So you go like, some of our culturally enriched areas are quite bin-centric as it is, but then you go, um but then you you look and say, this is what did for Labour in the seventy s So
00:41:59
Speaker
They couldn't, not this exactly, but they couldn't bury the dead, for example. So basic services breaking down and you go, hang on, we can't live like that. And it's the unions having their death grip on labor.
00:42:09
Speaker
What's fascinating to me is that we have this slick labor now, post Blair labor, Starmer's labor. You don't really associate it with the working class. yeah the The people who vote for labor are mainly people with income over 70,000, you see the graph goes down. The more they earn, the more likely they are to vote Labour.
00:42:26
Speaker
And the inverse is true for reform. If they're under 25K a year, they will vote reform. So they're not the party of sort of working people, unless they're working class people who've done really well and and run a union or, you know, have a ah good train driver's salary or something. So they may have some working class origins, but Labour is not the party of the poor anymore. And it's probably not, and it's just fair say it's not the party working class either.
00:42:47
Speaker
And look at that result from the Red Wall, how much people hate Starmer. And yet they would retain in this death grip of the unions. So they can just say, no, we're not clearing up the bins. And I think this is the kind of issue that can really destroy a party or should in any kind of sane world.
00:43:02
Speaker
If you can't clear the bins, that's got to be, we're talking about the Westminster bubble or even the political commentariat bubble. But this is an issue that cuts through to everyone, surely. Yeah, it's because it is symbolic of <unk> civilizational decay.
00:43:20
Speaker
ah there isn't You probably couldn't get a more resonant image for the broader decline of both the north of England, but the UK more generally, and just rubbish piling up on the streets. It's so poignant.
00:43:34
Speaker
But I think we've also got to, you know, you mentioned the the death group of the unions, but even taking a step back from that and look at why this has happened, and there's two reasons. Number one, because that Labor Council has been spending huge amounts of money over decades now. And I should say spending, wasting huge amounts of money over decades now.
00:43:54
Speaker
And again, those low-to-seas guys have done a really good breakdown of just some of the ridiculous spending that that Labor Council has done. like Things like, you know, ah from memory, over a million pounds, sorry, over a million pounds for a new ah website for the Birmingham Library with a £90,000 per year upkeep.
00:44:11
Speaker
Anyone who's even got a passing knowledge of IT will know that a million, £1.2 million pounds or a website theft. um There was the need for a new IT department in the Birmingham Council, which they budgeted, I think, 19 million pounds for, blew out to 100 million pounds.
00:44:30
Speaker
And again, I'm sure no one got sacked for that. I'm sure it's just, oh, well, you know, these things cost money, had to be done. That same government instinct, which is worse on the Labour side that says, well, it's not my money, so who cares?
00:44:41
Speaker
And then the second one is that hey he over 700 million pound claim against the Birmingham Council ah was paid ah was was was made against them over um equal pay. Are you aware of this particular claim?
00:44:57
Speaker
I'm sort I'm not across the story. was going to get on to the council stuff, but I'm not sure if I knew about that exactly. So go on. So, and I think this is in kind of 2012, maybe 2013, judgment was made against Birmingham Council was brought by effectively cleaners in Birmingham Council.
00:45:16
Speaker
And they said that they weren't getting the same payment as garbage collectors, as as yeah people who were picking up the bins every day. And it comes back to a particular part of the equal pay regulations in the United Kingdom, which coincidentally or not, ironically, were brought in by Thatcher 83, which said that, that pay has to be, you have to have equal pay for work of equal value.
00:45:38
Speaker
Note that doesn't mean work or note that isn't the same job. So we're not saying that, you know, male and female garbage collectors should get paid the same.
00:45:48
Speaker
Of course they should. That would obviously be discrimination if that wasn't the case. What it says is, and where the court ruled was basically cleaners in air conditioned offices working nine to five in the Birmingham council,
00:46:01
Speaker
should get paid the same as garbage collectors getting up at 3am, dealing with what can sometimes be a dangerous job and picking up rubbish outside, out and about.
00:46:13
Speaker
they made and And because primarily cleaners are female and primarily bin collectors are male, it became an equality thing. And because of a huge back pay bill...
00:46:25
Speaker
The end bill for Birmingham council was 700 and something billion pounds. As a result of that in 2023, Birmingham council basically said they're broke because of course they're broke. How can they pay that back?
00:46:36
Speaker
Um, and so what that meant is that they didn't have the money to be able to basically even address the demands of these, these bin collectors. And it also meant that every time you needed to say,
00:46:51
Speaker
um put up the pay rates of bin collectors. You have to put up the pay rates of the cleaners as well because work of equal value. And so there is there is this problem which basically A, has been brought about because Labor can't effective, Labor Council can't effectively manage a budget, but B, because we have this sort of woke identity politics thing, which is now embedded in our employment laws, which says that you have to be able to have the same pay for work of equal value, even if we all know that it's probably not work of equal value.
00:47:25
Speaker
All right, excellent. Well, yeah, I did that story last minute, so I didn't know enough detail, but this is why we have you on. And that reminded me of that Asda equal pay claim, which is very similar, where the the idea is that the people on shop floors, et cetera, should have the same pay as the people in in the warehouse. And we've seen a few of these now.
00:47:44
Speaker
ah Completely insane. Yeah. And again, this unfortunate saga will now mean that the Fair Work Commission, because they've got to justify their existence, will now be out searching for more examples of, you know, probably, you know, identity politics style, uh, uh,
00:48:03
Speaker
examples where you'll find predominantly female jobs or say predominantly jobs that are filled by a particular ethnic minority and then jobs predominantly done by men or jobs predominantly done by white people or whatever, and they'll basically pull out that, well, equal pay for equal value. And because value is such a subjective term, and because we know that the judiciary in the UK has become so captured by this sort of stuff, I think this will snowball and snowball, and this is not the last council,
00:48:34
Speaker
and indeed the last institution that's going to face this problem because it's it's it's so easy to interpret this in a way which we know the judiciary of the United Kingdom now likes to to interpret things, which is through the lens of identity politics. Yeah, it's communism. In other words, equality is the root of all evil. This is what I now think.
00:48:55
Speaker
okay, there's a basic type of equality before the law and people have ah people's souls are equal and such. But beyond that, the idea of equal, everything has to be completely equal. That's probably the most toxic idea in our culture. What's so strange to me as well is, not strange, it's it's in Labour's DNA, but the fact that they stick with that, Starmer could do so, because Starmer's been quite pragmatic on other things. He's been prepared to like win to fuel payment. That's, no, doesn't care about that. And that's even a stupid one and cruel, but like, yeah,
00:49:23
Speaker
He's been prepared to be very pragmatic in many cases and tear up the rule book of labor and tear up policy. But on the kind of these ideological things, these acts, well, some of it's not labor, it's the judiciary, but in even which are even further left than labor.
00:49:37
Speaker
But it seems like other times they're just they're just hopelessly attached to this equality nonsense and this DEI nonsense. You've got the employment rights bill coming in. It's going to be another disaster.
00:49:48
Speaker
You just think if Starmer could get rid of all that, he would be getting rid of all remaining labor principles. But if he could, he's got rid of most of If he could just get rid of that as well, he would be all right. But he's still ideological.
00:50:00
Speaker
Yeah, this is such an interesting question, who is the real Keir Starmer and whether he does actually believe that stuff, whether he's going along with it because you have to go along with it these days as being the leader of a left-wing political party.
00:50:13
Speaker
I don't know. ah But the one thing I do know is identity politics has infested left-wing politics in part because they have given up on the working class because the old school left-wing politics of effectively wealth redistribution,
00:50:29
Speaker
um ah is no longer of real interest to them in many instances. So they needed to find something to fill that vacuum, and and that vacuum has been filled by by a different type of redistribution, but it's redistribution across an identity lens.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's it's unfortunate, but it is unfortunately where we are at in modern Western politics. You know, Starm is the ultimate human rights lawyer. He's described himself in very similar terms. Douglas Carswell pointed out in my interview when I'm brought up the sentencing guidelines, and at least they when you have elected politicians, they can be put under pressure. So they say, okay we've got to scrap these sentencing guidelines, which wanted to discriminate against white men and Christians and so on.
00:51:10
Speaker
And they had to do that. But they probably loved those sentencing guidelines. And in many other cases, they would keep them. And we see these activist judges who are even more off the reservation than that, but they they're not elected. So he made the good point. That's why it has to be in the hands of politicians and not this activist ah judiciary.
00:51:26
Speaker
I wonder if the left are pivoting back or are going to work out, they have to pivot back to the rich and poor thing? Because we've got this Gary Stevenson guy put in our faces constantly, and he's just gone back to tax the rich.
00:51:39
Speaker
So maybe they're going to pivot back to that, I wonder. Yeah, this is a really interesting topic, and it has implications for the US and for the UK.
00:51:50
Speaker
If this tariff... ah and experiment, let's call it, fails in the US. And there is a chance now, a very good chance, the US will go into recession.
00:52:02
Speaker
The economy will fall into dire straits in the Trump administration. If the economic experiment fails, even though tariffs are a left-wing thing, at least in my eyes, I think what you could see is you could see a populist revolt on the left where they basically have the Bernie Sanders,
00:52:21
Speaker
The AOCs of this world say, look at where capitalism has got us. Look at all of the tech bros like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos all rallying around Trump and look where it's got us.
00:52:32
Speaker
You know, basically our economy is in free fall. The answer is what we've been saying, which is kind of an old school socialist response. You could have the same thing and in the UK where basically a general malaise and the general problems regarding capitalism the economy that we can all see means that a lot of people will go, you know what, we need to, to go even further to the left or, yeah um, and so,
00:53:01
Speaker
There is a very real possibility in the US of President AOC. And I never thought I would say that, but I think it is the case, particularly if the economy is seen to tank as a result of the Trump experiment um and that it would be disastrous,
Potential Left-Wing Populism in the US
00:53:16
Speaker
disastrous. That is a frightening prospect, President AOC.
00:53:19
Speaker
Wow. She stuck around though. I remember the rest of the squad, so-called, they all sort of disappeared, maybe because they were complete raving lunatics and, ah you know, sort of sounded quasi pro 9-11, things like that.
00:53:32
Speaker
And then you go like, oh, you're all absolute nutters. And AOC is obviously mental as well, but she's able to just sort of parrot things she's told and she looks better. So she's stuck around. It's weird. We were doing squad and there was four of them and now there's only one.
00:53:46
Speaker
You never hear about the squad. Yeah, that's a good point. They are still lurking around. There's Ilan Omar, the other one of the other ones. She still pops up from time to time with some sort of racist, awful comment against white people. But ah if you think about Trump, Trump was a reaction to the failures of the established political order.
00:54:04
Speaker
Trump has remoulded the established political order. And if that is seen to fail, there will be a response. You know, politics follows the laws of physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
00:54:16
Speaker
And in this instance, whereas in 2016, Trump was the response, AOC will be the response to Trump. And there is, again, ah very real possibility now of a left-wing populist movement, which would be the mirror image of the Trump movement.
00:54:31
Speaker
And in many ways, AOC is the mirror image of of Trump. Yeah, because as you say, they had it they had it with Bernie. they just They just basically screwed him out of the nomination. that was that That was a mistake there. I mean, because he could have beaten Trump, but they gave it to Hillary.
00:54:44
Speaker
that And that was just an establishment screw job, basically. and um And so they've never quite recovered from that. And now, yeah, now they're deciding which way to go. It's it's interesting. And i yeah I wonder if they're moving back to this because we see these people thrust in our faces like Gary Thunberg, as Morgoth called him. So you know i've almost forgotten about a massive story that we wanted to do that we've both got to go in a few minutes, not a few minutes, but we've got a bit of time.
00:55:09
Speaker
wanted to do this story.
Diversity and Meritocracy in West Yorkshire
00:55:11
Speaker
Police force blocks white applicants to boost diversity. We've we've just been talking about DEI anyway. This is West Shorts of Police and everyone will know about it. It is, and as we record, it is sort of last week, but this is a weekly summary. So,
00:55:22
Speaker
One whistleblower claimed Black and Far East Asian candidates were considered particularly underrepresented and given a gold ranking, followed by those of Southeast Asian origin who were in the silver tier. White others, including candidates from Irish and Eastern European backgrounds, were bronze.
00:55:36
Speaker
I don't know where Aussies are. Well, I think you're copper or tin or something. You're well down the list. But it's incredible. I mean, just what I've been saying. and One thing I forgot to... Did I brag about this last week? Maybe I'm having a day of time. Did I brag about it on telly?
00:55:50
Speaker
I think I didn't have time to do it on the podcast. Anaya Thingy um wrote a piece ah attacking me and many others like Steve Edgerton. I can't remember. Forgive me if i already said this on the podcast listeners, but she... said that, oh, and Nick Dixon was saying that there's anti-white racism in the police.
00:56:04
Speaker
Does anyone seriously believe it? Then she writes article on the Telegraph. Yep, there's anti-white racism in the police. Changed my mind. Completely right. like, yeah, thanks. Because we knew about it because it was happening to us. So we already kind of knew about it because you sort of know about it first when it's happening to you.
00:56:18
Speaker
And then, so she had to completely admit it. And at least she did. And wasn't There's that, sorry, there's that there's that dumb wonderful meme about how the left chooses to address these sorts of issues where they will basically say, a you know, not um anti-white racism in the police is a right-wing conspiracy.
00:56:39
Speaker
Then they'll have to concede anti-white racism in the police is happening, but it's just around the edges. C, anti-white racism in the police is happening.
00:56:50
Speaker
It is widespread, but that's a good thing. Long may it continue. And so we're we're we're somewhere in that in the middle of that process. Yeah, and she's meant to be some sort conservative, but you're right. That is that meme. It's happening and it's a good thing. And actually on that,
00:57:02
Speaker
Chief Constable John Robbins, head of West Yorkshire Police, said the law should be changed in order to boost the number of ethnic minorities in his force and across the country. And he compared it to Catholics in Ireland. and So his view was very much, it's a good thing and we should change this. And if we can't do this, we should change the law to make it happen. I'm like,
00:57:21
Speaker
Incredible. Incredible. And the title, Telegraph went with the headline, I want to discriminate against white candidates says police chief. And it was basically that. The mayor has denied it. um She came out and said, oh, no, it's all fine. This was ah the West York, this was, um where is it? Oh, yeah. Mayor Tracy Braben or Braben. Oh,
00:57:40
Speaker
And she said, no, no, they're just trying to widen their net of applications. The best person for the job will always get the job. Well, they obviously won't, will they? If they come in as bronze. I mean, what are you talking about? the best Complete nonsense.
00:57:53
Speaker
There was also a story while we're on this, I'll let you comment on all them, is from the NHS. and NHS discriminates against white job applicants in shortlists. So this was, of course, a Telegraph again, the only paper still doing any work. But this was an NHS hospital in Liverpool admitted it had previously used positive discrimination to shortlist applic applicants from minority backgrounds.
00:58:12
Speaker
And there's loads of other things like that. I mean, we don't have time to rule them, but this is happening. It's anti-white racism. I call it an apartheid system. That's what it is. um It's across so many companies and institutions, but this is just ah ah but the latest flagrant example, Will.
00:58:29
Speaker
Yeah, I got into some on the Saturday Five on JV News every week and they've got the token lefty that they have to put on there for Ofcom reasons. and i He's actually a lovely guy. Kai Wilshire, he's actually a very nice guy. So um being a bit bit a bit silly there. But I got into an argument with him about this topic.
00:58:46
Speaker
And, you know, he does the standard left-wing thing of saying, well, this is obviously a good thing because it increases diversity and diversity is important in the police force. And the thing is, these arguments fall down under the slightest Socratic questioning.
00:59:01
Speaker
Like I just said on TV, I said, well, why? went, well, because diversity is a good thing. And I said, okay, yes, why? went, well, because you need diversity in order to understand the people that you are. You need to be of that particular cultural group to have a better understanding of the people that you're policing.
00:59:16
Speaker
Okay. going, okay, provide me an example of why being a part of a particular racial group means you are better able to apply the objective laws of the land to that racial group.
00:59:28
Speaker
And they go, but cultural understanding is really important. And then you go back, well, why? It's like, it's this weird circuitous argument on the left that says, oh, well, you know, cultural diversity is a good thing.
00:59:40
Speaker
Why? Well, because diversity is a good thing. but did There is no... credible argument to say that because you are of a particular skin color, you are better able to understand and police other people in the population of the same skin color.
00:59:55
Speaker
It is a nonsense. It is racist, but it is just the mindlessness of DEI that says, well, diversity is a good thing in and of itself. Like they cannot get to that next step to say, what are the practical reasons as to why we need to have a certain amount of particular ethnicities in the police force?
01:00:12
Speaker
And you know what? If you could actually tell me that having more Albanian-born police officers would reduce the rates of crime from Albanian immigrants in this country, which I think from memory are like 32, 35 times more likely than someone who is all British descent to commit crimes in this country.
01:00:33
Speaker
If you could tell me that more Albanian police officers would lead to less Albanian crime, ah I would openly consider it. But there is no evidence of that. Absolutely no no evidence.
01:00:44
Speaker
And so, unfortunately, this is just yet another example of just woke, mindless feel-goodery for the sake of it, as opposed to having any logic or rationale whatsoever. Yes.
01:00:55
Speaker
I mean, this is nonsense. but Sorry. No, no, it's a good rant because this is whole the whole idea of community leaders. This came in. This completely accepted by Labour's normal. It's like, oh, do you mind putting some of your weapons down in the mosque? It's like, do you mind if we do some police here next Thursday? I'll check with the lads and get back to you to see if they want to be policed. That's my understanding of it. It's like community leaders, you've already accepted. You have sectarian ghettos.
01:01:17
Speaker
You can have a Mad Max country. You've already accepted that because... That's not a thing, community leaders. That's just like, yeah, this area is lawless. and And we're just going in as a police to sort of see and how lawless they're being this week. is it It's insane.
01:01:31
Speaker
I mean, also, the idea that of your of your lefty mate there going, You know they have to be policed by people who understand it. It's that's already a capitulation to the criminal on the face of it. Why is the criminal dictating the terms of who polices him?
01:01:44
Speaker
That's completely absurd on the face of it. And so i'm i'm never I'm against this anywhere. In comedy, it used to be, oh, you've got to have a represent the people. In comedy, like, hang on, stand-up comedy has to be perfectly representative of the country.
01:01:55
Speaker
This incredibly weird thing that mainly is done by men and the country being majority white is mainly going to be straight white men. It's like, what are you talking about? No, it doesn't. There's some argument for politics that it has to be representative.
01:02:08
Speaker
But even then, you're accepting identity politics as saying, I have to have someone that looks like me from my background. And if you are going with identity politics, Then, okay, well, then white people are going to do it too. Do you want that? Oh, I'm guessing you don't.
01:02:18
Speaker
So it's like, are we going with this idea of colorblind meritocracy or are we going with identity politics? So even it's so accepted now. Of course, you've got to have someone that looks like you and is from your background being chancellor or something. I'm do you?
01:02:29
Speaker
And if you do, then do you want to follow through the implications of that? You probably don't. no There's there's no no evidence to suggest that whatsoever. It's just been one of those mindless wineless maxims. And in fact, maybe the only one where it could be of some value is if you applied a class lens to it and said, you know, we need to have, you know, particular people who have come from disadvantaged backgrounds who can then understand, you know, crime that's committed by youths coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.
01:02:56
Speaker
Maybe have some sympathy for that argument, but the great or the irony of identity politics is the one thing it doesn't really care about is class and socioeconomics. You know, if you're a white kid from a disadvantaged background, you're still part of, you know, the white male privilege group.
01:03:13
Speaker
um So, you know, I think we need to have a bit more courage just to ask the really simple questions on stories like this. And I think, you know, it is tempting for people like us to basically just go, oh woke nonsense, how stupid.
01:03:27
Speaker
Because this woke nonsense and this is stupid. But I think the better response is like putting to people who propose this stuff Tell me why, tell me why, tell me why, tell me why, tell me where the value is because it is highly likely they will not be able to give you an answer.
01:03:43
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you want to bring in a consultant on Knife Prime or something who's come from a background and been involved in gangs, whatever it is, I'm not against that. Or if you want to... find ways to get on more, like like in The Wire or something. You've got to get on with the kids somehow or you're going alienate them. Of course, there's an element of that. You're trying to be part of the community as police, which they aren't anymore. They're sort of part of the state apparatus they to enforce the state ideology.
01:04:08
Speaker
Police were always supposed to be part of the community, of the people. They were supposed to police by consent. and they were supposed to be They were supposed to be the community. But that's very different from ghettos where you have people...
01:04:21
Speaker
it kind of if It used to work at a national level to have that. Now what we have is it's it it's police for certain communities, which just means, usually it means Muslim areas, basically, but there's a few other things it can be.
01:04:34
Speaker
but it means not the majority. and it means And it means an unequal style of policing, two-tier policing we all know about. So that's what it means. i mean, nothing wrong with the idea of community policing at its root when it meant Robert Peel's policing by consent and all that. That's something quite different though isn't it?
01:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the big problems is that the role of the police has right has moved from policing based off the laws of the land as determined by the parliaments of the United Kingdom, taking the understanding it, and then interpreting it to the world as they see it without fear or favour.
01:05:16
Speaker
that That's you know perhaps even an overcomplicated view of of what policing should be. And then now their job is to police morality. So through things like non-crime hate incidents,
01:05:29
Speaker
through things like trying to interpret what is or isn't hate speech, through things like, you know, being constantly put through these sorts of woke, anti-racist programs and cultural awareness programs.
01:05:44
Speaker
Their job, in many cases now expressly, is to police what is good or bad behavior, as opposed to the traditional classical liberal view, which is it's up to the community to determine what is or isn't moral behavior.
01:05:58
Speaker
And it's up to the police to then apply or to police the laws of the land. um And the fact of the matter is the police are in no way equipped to be able to police morality.
01:06:09
Speaker
No one really should be, that power shouldn't be with anyone, but particularly not police officers who who, quite frankly, many of them don't have the the the ability to be able to do that.
01:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. they that They become the morality police and they also have to police between different groups who have different value and different points assigned to them. And there was a good ah video here from Morgoth on Twitter and he said, British policing when the Equality Act does not protect you.
01:06:37
Speaker
And it was basically some young white girls getting brutally kicked and thrown on the ground by a big police officer and you go yeah you wouldn't do that with another group you'd kneel and back off and run away and and this and I'm amazed police will do that to um people but you know the police have done this kind of thing in the past there was a minor strike where the police were against the minors they will turn on people I'm just surprised you want to be in the police doing that kind of thing you say okay white people are scum treat them differently. I'm amazed they don't all resign. but i don't want attack the police because we have listeners who are retired police officers and things like that. And I know it's a very, very tough job on an individual level.
01:07:13
Speaker
I'm, of course, attacking this ideological police, which is not the individual's. And I hear so many stories of police officers who are so sick and tired of this nonsense as well. Alison Pearson, I can't remember the last interview, she was on some podcast, it may have been her podcast, where she was talking about the responses to her saga, the non-crime hate incident saga that she went through.
01:07:36
Speaker
and She said she was overwhelmed with the amount of either former police officers or current police officers requesting anonymity who empathised with her and who said that this is absolutely shameful and it makes me and and it makes me shut ashamed to be a police officer.
01:07:50
Speaker
So I think you're right to say but this is not, I think police officers are being put in a very difficult position by a political establishment that is imposing a particular orthodoxy upon them and then asking them to to to implement it. um So I i ah don't put the blame at police officers for the for the most part. I put it at the the ah levels, the the establishment that sits above them. Yeah, I mean, and we had great ones come to our live shows when we did Weekly Skeptic Live and they yeah they knew it was all bollocks.
01:08:21
Speaker
It'd be nice if they all walked out en masse. I don't know if they would. there was There was an element of that when the armed police, they said, oh, but were they were getting sued for actually using their guns in that case. And they said, right, we can't use our guns.
01:08:33
Speaker
And they just handed in their guns in protest That kind of thing is effective when you don't let them do their job. That seemed quite effective. But yeah, of course, you want the police to rebel, but it is hard. It's like when people, maybe it's like when people say to me, why didn't you quit your job when Lawrence Fox i had to leave GB something? I'm like, why didn't I quit my job? once I mean, I like Lawrence, but when a face someone with a famous actor dad who gets independent funding, he doesn't need the job, when he quit, and you and I used to sign on in Biker in Newcastle, and you want me to quit?
01:09:01
Speaker
It's like, Why didn't you get fucked? So, you know, it's easy to be on the outside. Yeah, no, I agree with that entirely. The other thing I would say, having said all that, there are certainly some police officers where I think it is is easier to say
01:09:19
Speaker
pursue online thought crimes than to investigate a robbery. So I think the last data I saw quite recently was 30 arrests are made per day in the United Kingdom for comments made online.
01:09:36
Speaker
Now, that is A, just for any classical liberal or anyone with common sense, absolutely grotesque. But if you think about it, you know, above and beyond directives that are being given to them, it is easier to go on to Twitter, to search particular keyword, to find someone's account, to link them to a person and then to get their address and to arrest them.
01:10:01
Speaker
than it is to solve a burglary. It just is. So there is also a perverse incentive to be able to go after hate crimes because, like everyone, human beings tend to gravitate to easier work. And we all do it in all of our jobs.
01:10:15
Speaker
And it is an easier job to go after a thought crime than an actual crime. Yeah, and there was a piece recently about how detective standards have gone down. People aren't doing investigative stuff anymore. They're missing the golden hour, so-called, after a crime.
01:10:27
Speaker
and all that kind of thing. One thing they are doing, and I want to very quickly cover this before I get to one more story in the last 10 minutes, but they are actually going into these so-called Turkish barbers. They're not always strictly Turkish, but they're going into these dodgy barbers and vape shops and actually tackling them.
01:10:43
Speaker
It's been so funny to watch Kirsty Allsop's account. At least she's admitted. At least she's telling the truth, but she's like, she was shocked by it. She said, this article really shocked me. I'm sure many will say that is naive. Well,
01:10:53
Speaker
while others will and have said that even commenting on it is bigoted. But either way, this level of criminality in plain sight is unacceptable. And Tom Swarbrick also struggled with his cognitive dissonance on LBC saying, you know, is it racist to say this? But, you know, it is happening. It's like, no, Tom, it's okay to call out crime and money laundering on a massive scale.
01:11:10
Speaker
But he's just going, ugh. And it's like, and So finally, the i mean I don't know why it's been allowed to go on for so long. Well, I do. course I do, because that's what Kirsty asking. It's because we live in an anarcho-tyranny where certain groups are favoured and where criminals are favoured in the ways we've been talking about.
01:11:23
Speaker
But it's funny to see all these normie-type people waking up to it and going, hang on, maybe we are so we shouldn't have loads of fronts for crime on our high streets?
01:11:33
Speaker
It is cognitive dissonance. That's precisely the right term. And the thing is It is for anyone with either a basic understanding of mathematics or again, with any sort of common sense, it is blindingly obvious that in a relatively small town, why do you have five Turkish barbers, four mobile phone repair shops, four three of those stupid American candy stores.
01:12:00
Speaker
ah And um what are the ah what are the other ones? It's always vape, mobile phones, mobile phone cupboard. And vapes. Yeah, yeah.
Small Town Economic Speculations
01:12:09
Speaker
and And four vape stores, you know, for a town of 6,000 people. Like if you just do the maths and you go, how often do people need to get a haircut every month?
01:12:16
Speaker
And then you divide that out by the number of Turkish barbers. you know People are getting you know three haircuts a week. They're buying 20 vapes every two days. they're They're buying you know a kilogram of American shitty gandy every day. It's like the maths don't add up.
01:12:31
Speaker
So you have to ask yourself, well, why are these stupid businesses here? And why do they always seem to have expensive German cars out the front of them? So... good on the place for finally kept catching on, but this has been pretty bloody obvious for a long my theory is now, you know how you'll see it takes people with those really sharp angles cut into their hair and beard.
01:12:49
Speaker
It's to prove that barbers are real. That's my theory. is It's like, no, our barber's real. Look, look how sharp my beard is. Totally real barber. Okay, you're on, it's real. It's just, that's my theory anyway. um We've got,
01:13:02
Speaker
10 minutes maybe before both of us have to
Podcast Platform Controversies
01:13:04
Speaker
go. And I just wanted to tackle a massive topic in that time, which is impossible to cover, which is the Douglas Murray versus Dave Smith debate on Rogan. I thought this would be a bit of fun to end on.
01:13:15
Speaker
um wondered if you had a view on it because... ah basically two camps. One is that Murray, and everyone go and listen to it if you haven't, basically Murray came on and was saying, why do you have these people like Dave Smith on who claim to be comedians one minute and seem to talk about a subject loads and the next minute as if they're experts? And then Dave Smith said, well, I'm not saying that. So he's going, well, you're certainly talking about it a lot for someone who isn't.
01:13:40
Speaker
And it was the artist this argument went on for about an hour. Various ways looking at one thing that immediately annoyed me was that Murray was having a go at Rogan for who he's platforming. And this has been done to Murray in the past. Sam Harris once said to Douglas Murray, why did you speak to Stefan Molyneux? Because he spoke to so-and-so.
01:13:57
Speaker
And but Murray basically rejected that kind of thinking and just said he does it doesn't that guilt by association doesn't work. He's not interested. Now he's doing it to Rogan. And Rogan has done't been so successful because he's followed the same method the whole time, which is just following his gut instinct.
01:14:11
Speaker
On a small scale, it didn't matter. He's having his mates on, then he's having Trump on, but he's followed the same pattern. And he's smart to stick with that. There is an argument, of course, when you get so big that as a responsibility, but then you're sort of becoming the mainstream media. You're becoming the thing that you were there to replace.
01:14:26
Speaker
You're worried about your responsibility. And Murray's arguments were indistinguishable to me from the Democrat arguments that they made they made to Rogan. Like, why are you platforming X so-and-so? And Rogan's well, are you platforming? And I just brought them on to have a chat.
01:14:39
Speaker
you know There is a new argument, even on my side, coming out against that saying, actually, these are becoming sloth and these are becoming lazy. And, OK, actually, maybe the mainstream media has some merit.
01:14:49
Speaker
So you could end up with the mainstream media sharpening itself against these podcasts by saying, OK, what we do is we have more rigorous checking, but we're also going to tell the truth for a change. That's what they need to do
Media Adaptation to Podcast Influence
01:14:59
Speaker
to counter that. Because the the attack on mainstream media is, of course, it's complete lies.
01:15:03
Speaker
And the attack on Rogan is that he's a bit sloppy. So, you know, I had a sort of nuanced view. i don't but fatigue I didn't love Murray's attitude because, of course, it it was it was a sneering attitude. i don't I didn't love Dave Smith's attitude either.
01:15:17
Speaker
um'm I'm weird in this. I mean, I'm not like... I'll ask you a question here as well, controversially. How many times do you hear someone advocate for either Israel or Palestine who helps their cause? Because I find so often they damage their own cause.
01:15:29
Speaker
and Often, ah sometimes on the Zionist side, there'll be a kind of, in my experience, maybe I'll get in trouble here, there can be a kind of condescension and as sort of arrogance. And they're not often on the Palestine side, you'll see people just crazy things like celebrating October 7th. So I see quite a lot quite a lot of time, I see like none of you are helping your cause.
01:15:48
Speaker
I came out of it not thrilled particularly with anyone, but um what was your take? I think that's a very nice way phrasing it. of phrasing and and And I had an adjacent thought, which was I don't think that debate changed a single person's view if they had a solid view coming into it.
01:16:10
Speaker
And I don't think that's a reflection of the debate as much as just a reflection of the world in which we live now. If you came into that debate supporting Israel, you thought Murray won that debate.
01:16:21
Speaker
If you came into that debate supporting Palestine, you thought Dave Smith won that debate. I don't think there's a single person in the world who would have had their view changed as a result of that. So like make of that what you will, but that is, that is that is I think, is is one thing.
01:16:36
Speaker
I think you're right. I didn't wasn't persuaded by Douglas's opinion arguments to Joe Rogan, in part because I thought about the way that I pick my podcast guests. Admittedly, I've got about one one millionth of the reach of Rogan.
01:16:48
Speaker
But, you know, I just pick people that I think are interesting and I, you know, leave the kind of balance thing, as it were, to you know, government's broadcasters who have a statutory obligation to be balanced.
01:17:02
Speaker
And, you know, they certainly don't manage it. So why on earth should i have to have that obligation? um So i didn't have much ah ah ah truck for that argument, but I did have more I was more persuaded when the debate turned to the whole notion of experts.
01:17:21
Speaker
So you had the kind of American free speech warriors saying, oh, look, at listen to Douglas Murray so that you shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion on something if you're not an expert. I don't think that's what he was saying. I think he was saying that there was a preponderance of people who don't really know what they're talking about who have been given these platforms.
01:17:39
Speaker
Now, you should be legally allowed, you know, either there should be no no legal barriers to that. But I think it was more of a general sense of frustration from Murray that there are a lot of idiots who get a disproportionate amount of airtime in this day and age.
01:17:55
Speaker
And there are a lot of very smart people who seemingly don't. I think that's undeniably true. You know, Candace Owens and that stupid historian that they were talking about, O.H. Churchill and all these types of people.
01:18:07
Speaker
get more reach now than someone like an Andrew Roberts on the topic of Churchill or, you know, someone who is a more insightful, nuanced commentator. So I have more sympathy for that argument.
01:18:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're talking about Daryl Cooper. A lot of people really like him. I've not listened to him much or have never listened to his podcast. I'm very pro having anyone on.
Critiques on Expertise and Commentary
01:18:30
Speaker
it's The one argument was that he wasn't able to debate Andrew Roberts and admitted it.
01:18:36
Speaker
He doesn't really have to debate him. I understand that people saying, well, if he can't debate him, he doesn't have the knowledge to do that. Why should he be commenting on these things as a sort of amateur historian? I could understand that. A lot of it came back down, in my opinion, to a kind of elitism and to a kind of Oxbridge system. I mean, I would struggle in a debate because we never did debates. I've never done them because we don't have them at the kind of schools I went to.
01:18:57
Speaker
Right. So even though I got ah high very high A-level grades, I sometimes say I got the third highest grade in the country on my A-level syllabus because it's true on my history exam. I talk about it a lot. But no one ever said to me, go to Oxford or Cambridge. So I've not had the same access.
01:19:09
Speaker
I'm sounding like a proper lefty here. Murray has gone through that system. So he, of course, advocates for that system. But I'm not necessarily against it because when we do a story like Oxford and Cambridge ceremony is no longer going to be in Latin or you know no longer publishing grades that everyone can see. I hate all that thing. So I do like the elite institutions that that we should be proud of.
01:19:30
Speaker
So it'd be weird for me to be arguing against hierarchies and against elite excellence in a sense. but And in a way, I think that's what Murray's coming down to. it He's coming down to like, he was a bit of outsider. Now he's the establishment.
01:19:44
Speaker
He's got the credentials. ah He's the expert everyone else should shut up. i think there's a little bit of that in there. On the point of Roberts, and yeah just quickly, on the point of Roberts, should he debate him? Maybe he should be able to debate him, Daryl Cooper.
01:19:55
Speaker
But what it actually came down to it boiled down was, Murray just said, yes, but why didn't you just have more of these people on? so but So if Rogan just had three people on who were pro-Israel or pro-Ukraine or something, whatever it was, Murray, why?
01:20:06
Speaker
He could solve it. That's really all it came down to. You've had six of these. Have six of these guys. I don't quite read it as balanced as why don't you have more people on who are authorities on what they're talking about.
01:20:20
Speaker
Um, now I can understand the Rogan argument saying, well, look, Andrew Roberts has written 20 gazillion books and has got plenty of airtime in the mainstream media. That's not quite my, my role, but the the challenge is, and this is what Murray was saying as well, you now have huge access to an audience who have no interest in, in,
01:20:42
Speaker
reading an Andrew Roberts biography of Churchill. And so there does come some sort of an obligation there. um So I think it is a, I think it is a slightly tricky one. I don't think he was lecturing. I think that is Americans with a fundamental inability to understand British culture.
01:20:59
Speaker
And I think one of the big things that came out of this debate is that the gap between American and British culture, having lived in both countries as an outsider is much bigger than I think either country cares to admit. Yeah.
01:21:11
Speaker
And i think this this debate was in a weird way kind of felt like an interesting insight into Americans who didn't just quite understand a British person, particularly British person of a particular type of class as Murray is, and the British not being able to understand the earnestness and and of of Americans in many cases.
01:21:35
Speaker
um And I find it quite fascinating just sitting in the middle because I actually think Australians have picked in some respects, some of the worst elements of both British and American culture into ours. You're absolutely right. It was Murray from the the English class system saying, look, you need to know what you're talking about.
01:21:49
Speaker
And then Dave says, going I'm an American, bro. I'm like, I've just come into town with a six gun and I'm going to settle things and I'm going to say what I want and it's in my First Amendment. You're absolutely right. There was a massive distinction. Do have time to very quickly say, what did you think of the visiting the place
Content and Media Availability
01:22:03
Speaker
thing?
01:22:03
Speaker
Because that's been very successfully parodied on Twitter and it is very funny. The idea that, you Douglas, you can't talk about X and Y because you weren't there. But Murray, im I'm being very fair, and I think Murray had something when he says, you should at least visit the place. i mean But he had something because there is something about journalism. You go there on the ground. it is different from how it's been described.
01:22:23
Speaker
We've got the fake news media. So why not go there and see for yourself? I think there is something compelling in that. But of course, it's also an absurdity to say you have to go to every place to comment on it. and And there's a little bit of credentialism and status of Murray saying, well, I get to go all the time. And you could say, yeah, because you're Netanyahu's mate. Are you really that impartial? So there's like there's ah I've seen both sides of that as well. what do you think?
01:22:44
Speaker
But this is where the debate just kind of was on parallel tracks and never really actually meeting in the middle in that Murray was saying, oh I've got a rule as a journalist that if I'm going to comment on somewhere, i should go to it.
01:22:55
Speaker
Great rule as a journalist in inverted commas, that is absolutely what you should be doing. And then Dave Smith would come back and say, well, yeah, that's great, but I'm not a journalist. I'm a comedian.
01:23:06
Speaker
And then Douglas Murray would come back and say, but in this day and age, in the way that you are now framing your arguments, You effectively are a journalist because a lot of people are getting their information on this conflict from you.
01:23:21
Speaker
Therefore, if so facto, that makes you a journalist and arguably a much more influential one than, you know, an AAP reporter. And then, you know, it kind of, they kept going backwards because...
01:23:34
Speaker
It was a nice, interesting microcosm of how the changing nature of the media, like Douglas Murray was applying an old school journalistic rule to a new media guy who just couldn't really comprehend that argument.
01:23:46
Speaker
um So I can't really tie that up in a bow because neither of them, really like because you can kind of see where the disconnect was. And it was as a result ah of the modern media landscape that we now find ourselves in.
01:24:00
Speaker
Very interesting. Well, I never claim to be an expert or even a journalist, so I never have to leave the house. This is the deal I've struck. like I don't even talk about things I don't know about. I don't really talk about Israel ah much and palsine I don't know enough about it. I don't talk about Ukraine much.
01:24:12
Speaker
I'm forced you on to on the telly a bit, but i and therefore I never have to leave. And I just talk mainly about my country. um Brilliant stuff, Will. um ah We both got to go. ah Where can people find you?
01:24:25
Speaker
ah go for sorry you can go to the fire at will podcast it's available on youtube just google fire at will also available on spotify on apple podcast all that stuff i'm also on the saturday five on gb news 6 p.m every saturday night just for four headliners which you can also watch on gb news with me although i rarely plug it and definitely go to the fire at will podcast great guests including me um i think i did one so did you come on mine or did i come on yours or both think both both. We've now got that kind of mutual podcasting circle jerk thing going. So we'll get you back on mine. We'll do a debate. Murray versus Smith around two. All right. And of course I'm on nickdixon.net. I might put all this one out for free because it's a kind of one off. I'm not sure, but everything is on nickdixon.net.
01:25:10
Speaker
My interview I've just done with Douglas Carswell, very good interview. I thought mainly because of him, not me. NickDixon.net, some great ones coming out. Everything's on there. So much content, huge amounts of content, all the stuff with Paul Cox and that extra bonus podcast we only do on NickDixon.net. It's five quid a month, the price of a quarter of a pint in London. So sign up for that.
01:25:30
Speaker
And Will, thank you very much.