What The Right Is Getting Wrong - Darren Grimes | Modern Wisdom Podcast 361

Darren Grimes is a political commentator and a YouTuber. Conservatism might be the least sexy political viewpoint there is. The righthand side of the aisle is hardly setting anyone's pants ablaze and almost of feels like a movement that should come wrapped in a flat cap and a smoking jacket. Is this just the way things are? Expect to learn whether olympic athletes should be figureheads for politics, why Darren still receives so much Brexit hate 4 years later, whether UK Political Commentator Celebrity Boxing could be a successful business, the reason that young people aren't seduced by Conservative politics and much more... Sponsors: Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount & Free Shipping on awesome vegan meals at https://vibrantvegan.co.uk/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Check out Darren's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX469QlvW5gdPCMek-d-kuQ Follow Darren on Twitter - https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #darrengrimes #politics #conservatism - 00:00 Intro 00:35 Darren’s Role in Brexit 11:43 Why Conservatism isn’t Attractive 20:05 Laurel Hubbard & Gender Identity 32:23 The Twitter Battleground 38:57 Over-sexualised Society 48:14 Encouraging Young People 52:19 Hostile Societies in UK and USA 1:02:12 Scepticism of Media & Government 1:12:06 Narcissistic Middle-class Technocrats 1:21:37 Where to Find Darren - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Were I to do a protest right now, I'd stand up with a sign saying, steady, steady on, steady as she goes. Should we really be doing this? Think again? Question mark.

• 0:10Chris Williamson?

  Very exciting.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Very exciting.

• 0:12Chris Williamson?

  Riveting.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  There's hardly anyone on the street that's going to be like beating the horn at me, is there? And saying, well, maybe to get out the way, but not to actually say, I want to join this person's movement. And that's the problem conservatism has.

• 0:25Chris Williamson?

  Darren Grimes, welcome to the show.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Thank you very much for having us. I'm dead excited about this one, I must say.

• 0:31Chris Williamson?

  Two northern boys today.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 0:33Chris Williamson?

  The way it works. Hashtag Brexit reality is trending at the moment and people are upset. Is this, is this your fault? Have you done something here?

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Do you know what? I don't think it is my fault this time. I can't say I've spent that much time on Twitter today, but I don't think it's me. There, there's always some form of Brexit reality, right? Despite the fact there's a global pandemic sort of wreaking havoc across the globe as we speak, and supply chains have been through, it's fair to say, a little bit of rough and tumble. That Brexit gets the blame. It's just the way things work on Twitter. It's a cesspool of FBPE remains sort of circle jerkery, I'm afraid, Chris. That's the be all and end all of that.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  It feels like you're still kind of one of the big public enemies around the Brexit debacle. I still had my head at my ass when Brexit was happening. I was actually flying back from some foreign country while the vote was going on. I was watching it live because there was nothing else at four in the morning with the time zone that I was in. What was your role in this? Why do people have sort of distaste or some, some circles of Twitter have distaste for you when Brexit comes up?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  So I set up a campaign from my bedroom in Brighton. I was at Brighton University at the time, and that was 2015, December of 2015. And I set up a campaign called Be Leave, and it was a liberal minded Brexit arguments that was there to cater to a younger audience, which I thought was being sort of a little bit left out of the debate and the argument. I thought there were actually legitimate arguments to make from a classical liberal perspective that simply weren't being made by the, the Vote Leave campaign.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  So anyway, I set this up and I had just recently left the Liberal Democrats after that because I thought I cannot get away from the fact that this party is unapologetically pro-EU and I couldn't understand why frankly, I just, I think there are legitimate liberal arguments for leaving the EU. I certainly think in many ways the EU on the world stage has been pretty damn protectionist and not very internationalist in its outlook, you know, the whole idea of, I remember one advert in particular where they had a, there was a man dressed up in Asian garb and there's this woman who's fending them off and a sort of man who looks like he's in sort of, I

• 2:56Speaker 00

  don't know, Saudi aristocrat dress, fighting off this EU superwoman. And that was an advert calling, basically to try and parrot this idea of the EU as the protector of the EU from, of EU countries, of the EU 28 at the time, from the rest of the world. And I thought, hang on a minute, how the hell is that compatible with any of the arguments that, you know, the Lib Dems parrot every two minutes about being inclusive and all the rest of it? If anything, that's exclusive. So I thought about this and I thought, well, this is entirely incompatible with everything that I've heard so far. I thought I was a liberal at the time, I'm not, but I didn't know that.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  I was quite sort of in my infancy of my political journey at the time, I would say. And anyway, I set up this campaign and I think it was pretty quick actually, the venom and vitriol. I remember the day after the vote, I'd had precious little sleep, I had been campaigning for the official campaign for the last two days, out and about, you know, handing out leaflets and knocking on doors and all the rest of it to try and get out the vote. And I went into the Channel 4 studio the day after and I was met by Sarah Morrison,

• 4:17Speaker 00

  who used to be, she was under Ted Heath, former leader of the Conservative Party, former Prime Minister of this country. She was his vice chairman of the Conservative Party. And I met her and I thought, this is very exciting, you know, meeting such a a grand character within the Conservative history. And she was utterly vile. I'm afraid there's no other way of putting it. She said, they basically, across that panel, said, I am thick, uneducated, I don't know, I didn't know what I was voting for. I clearly have, I guess, betrayed my generation. And that my arguments weren't worth hearing.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  And that, I think, I'm afraid to say, has been what the last, what, five years now have all been about. Which is this sort of contempt for those of us who are conservative minded, who quite like our country, who quite like our monarch, who quite like our flag, who quite like the fact that we should make decisions in this country and that we we champion that around the world, that sort of message of being the mother of parliaments, that democracy. And yet, all of these things,

• 5:36Speaker 00

  I think, just sort of, you're derided as being a complete Neanderthal, you know, an idiot that doesn't know what's good for them. Let us decide for you. That's what you've been doing all along. That's what you've been voting for. You did that with Blair. You did that with Cameron. You've been doing that for years and years. How dare you think you know what's good for you and your community?

• 6:00Chris Williamson?

  What specifically is it about you that you think triggered that talking point? Because, you know, more than 50% of the country voted to leave. So there's a lot of other people that could have been on the end of that particular shtick.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the 17.4 million people voted leave and 14 million in the last general election voted Tory. And you wouldn't know that, would you, by the narrative and much of the, what you hear from the media class? But I think the contempt for me, I think that I'd go as far to call it hatred. There's a lot of people out there that I think it's safe to say, do not like me. You only have to scroll through one of me tweets and look at the mentions to get a flavour of that. God help you, Chris, when you post this interview. But I think it comes down to this.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  I tick a fair few identity boxes. I'm gay, I'm working class, I'm from the North East.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  And all of these things, I did an arts degree, admittedly I dropped out of it, but I did. All of these things suggest that I should be a man of the left. I should belong to the left, I should recognise that the Tories aren't for someone like me, or conservatism, or Brexit. They're not for people like me, you know progressives own people like me, whatever that means. You know, there's this assumption that we're one homogeneous mass. All gay people, all trans people, all women, all, you name it, this rainbow coalition. We all think exactly the same way. When that's obviously completely not a farce, it's a completely not nonsense.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  So I think the hatred comes from that, it's the fact that I've never known me own place. It's the fact that I've dared have an opinion and I've dared go against the grain in that as well. You know, grandson of a miner as well. How dare I not recognise what Mrs Thatcher did at County Durham? You know, I've heard that before. So there are many threads to it, I think it's ultimately though, there's an element of snobbery to it.

• 8:09Chris Williamson?

  It does feel like a heterodox position now to be a young person, like under, what, forty? And lean right. And I only found out not long ago that twenty percent of the UK population is on Twitter. That's it. So even as you say, when there seems to be these pylons and it's like everyone on Twitter hates this person, or everyone on Twitter believes this thing. You realise that that at most, even if a hundred percent of people on Twitter were doing it, would be one in five of the entire UK population.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:44Chris Williamson?

  But it does feel, it does feel like a heterodox position to be, to be young and right leaning.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Absolutely, and that's been a phenomenon that's been going on for a little while now. But I think Brexit has sort of sped that up by a factor of ten. Look, I think all knots, it isn't lost with conservatism though, and I'm not as pessimistic as most people. I think conservatism has this sort of philosophy of love, as the late and great Roger Scruton once decided, called it. I think ultimately. What's gonna happen is, the left are getting so extreme, right? The left are pushing things as far as they possibly can. Where the public are going, "Oh, hang on a minute, mate, what's going on here?" And I think young people eventually will have a similar sort of view. Will come around and say, "Actually, I really don't like what you said.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  I think you've been incredibly divisive. And actually, I'm tired of this." And we're at each other's throats like you wouldn't believe at the moment. And it's a really, really nasty environment. So, yeah, you're right, but there are so many young people who get in touch with me and say, "I'd love to have conservatives come and speak at my university." But every time I try to do that, it's like clockwork. The invitation will be issued. Students that don't like this particular speaker, it could be a democratically elected member of parliament, a Conservative MP, they'll find out about this. They'll kick up a fuss.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  And the invitation will have to be cancelled because of the fact that the venue has been lost. So you cannot even hear, and I say, I repeat, 14 million people voted Tory in 2019. You cannot hear from a democratically elected representative of the people in a university, I was supposedly august universities. So to me, it's like, well, it's no wonder that people aren't hearing conservative viewpoints in universities and young people. The young people that aren't going to uni, you know, they're out there working hard. They're out there doing their jobs. They're out there making a living. And so, I can't, it's no surprise to me. I'm a freak in that sense, right?

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Being hyper-plugged in to political debate and all the rest of it. I recognise that I am not normal. But I think we'll get there eventually because... The left are really, really stirring the pot at the minute. And I think that's going to have some really nasty repercussions in the sense of people will just say, I've had enough with this, I'm up to here with this. Because we're not electing these people, yet they still keep winning power. They're still winning the cultural arguments. They're still everywhere in pop culture. They're still everywhere in political culture. They're still everywhere in media culture. And I think people are crying out for diversity of thought. And that's the only form of diversity that I'm afraid to see isn't acceptable in this

• 11:42Speaker 00

  day and age.

• 11:43Chris Williamson?

  I think that you're right, that there's an interesting paradox going on here that as in the UK specifically, the support for the left politically in terms of how we're getting on in elections appears to be declining. And yet, if you were to look at what's published in the media, it doesn't seem that way at all. But I'm less hopeful, I'm not sure that I agree about young people being, maybe having five or 10 years and then then being able to turn around and see that this is actually more divisive than it is supporting. Because the signal that a lot of the left-leaning articles are putting off at the moment is that if you are for the left, you are for compassion.

• 12:24Chris Williamson?

  It's acceptance, it's tolerance, it's a lot of buzzwords that just sound very easy to consume. And man, I think up until I was 27, 28, and then probably still now, I'm bro-sciencing my way through all of this. But I think that those sort of words just triggering you in a much less emotionally mature brain, oh, well, I want that. Stormzy, Stormzy supports fucking whatever, he supports Keir Starmer, like that must be the right thing. Amber, Amber from Love Island, she supports Keir Starmer because I'm going to take my political advice from someone that went on reality TV. Aye, aye.

• 13:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I don't know, man. It'll be interesting to wait and see, but I certainly think that one of the reasons that the talking points are effective with people that are young is because you want to do the thing that seems like it's good. Your ability to be skeptical hasn't fully developed yet. And I say that as someone that has to work very hard at being skeptical, not very conspiratorially minded, really struggle at poking holes and being disagreeable with people's arguments, because I presume that most people are telling the truth. And when you've just stepped out into adulthood, your parents have looked after you for 18 years, you're finally released into the big wide world to either have a job or go to university, and you think, well, mum and dad looked after me, most parents, they looked after me, they told me the truth, therefore probably most other adults not

• 13:45Chris Williamson?

  only tell the truth, but also know what they're doing. And it takes a lot of time for you to realise, hang on, the competence that I gave to my parents and presumed that they had actually doesn't exist with everyone else in the adult world.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  I think you're right. I think to a certain extent at least, because that's a tale as old as time. Conservatism has always had this problem. As I described it earlier, conservatism is the philosophy of love. It is this idea that I actually quite like what we've done here. I want to protect it.

• 14:17Chris Williamson?

  What if what we've done here is something that's disempowering to a particular group? Or what if what we've done here is a mistake?

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Well, then, so I would say section 28 was a mistake, right? But it was a conservative, David Cameron, I apologised for that, obviously a little while later, but certainly in my political lifetime. And there is a recognition that that's a mistake. There is a recognition of, well, actually, maybe we shouldn't have done that. But that's what politics is all about, right? I think there are certain things that, within the conservative tradition, that I wouldn't have been supportive of, and some that I am. For example, I think on environmentalism. I think in communities like this one, we are sacrificing or about

• 15:03Speaker 00

  to sacrifice so many working class jobs on the altar of the green. I've just seen a report the day on hydrogen, saying that actually it's more, it was something that a staggering number, a percentage point, more dangerous by one measure than gas boilers.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  And you just think, have we thought any of this through? There is just this narrative that some technology is coming, galloping down the hill. That's just going to save work. And all of a sudden, we're going to be able to have energy aplenty. And you're like, what is this? What are we doing? Why are we setting arbitrary targets? Why don't we just say, right, yes, we want to aspire to have cleaner air. We want to do that for a multitude of reasons, but one of them being that actually polluting our air with with this poisonous stuff and, you know, affecting the the well being of some of the British population probably isn't a net positive thing to do. And therefore, we want to do something about that.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Fine, I I accept that with my full heart. What I don't accept is telling working class people that you cannot have cheap food, that you cannot have your holidays, that you cannot have your car, that you cannot have your energy bills cheaper. All of these things, right? That you're going to have to pay to have your gas boiler removed. No, no, no. I say all of that is a nonsense because we are what 1% of global CO2 emissions and the likes of China and Germany are still pumping out coal like you wouldn't believe. So, no, I think it's a complete, it's fantasy and it's it's virtue signaling. Frankly, that's what they're trying to do with this. And you mentioned it earlier.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  I think the problem with the environmentalism within the Conservative Party, within Boris's current number 10 operation, a lot of the thinking is, well, this makes us look nice. We are the nice people. We can be the nice people. They're never going to think you're nice, sweetheart. Wake up buttercup, right? They're never going to think you're nice. Conservative and conservatism aren't meant to be seen like that. And there's a different, there's a reason for that, right? You can hold up, as an environmentalist, you can hold up a banner saying, I don't know. Resist, right? And you think, oh, resist, that sounds very exciting. That's quite tantalising, I'd have a bit of this.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Were I to do a protest right now, I'd stand up with a sign saying, steady. You know, steady on, steady as she goes. Should we really be doing this? Think again, question mark.

• 17:47Chris Williamson?

  Very exciting.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Very exciting. There's hardly anyone on the street that's going to be like beeping the horn at me, is there? And saying, well, maybe to get out the way, but not to actually say, I want to join this person's movement. And that's the problem conservatism has, because it says, you know, we actually want to look back through history. We want to actually see what's working and what isn't. We want to actually think about things before we do them. We don't want to say, okay, there's a problem here, let's do the most drastic thing possible. Let's cut off our sort of energy intensive nose to spite our face as we're doing in steel manufacturing, cement manufacturing, all of these things. The farce of what we've done in Northumberland, right? We've said we're not going to open a coal mine with about 250 high skill, high paid jobs.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  But we are going to get the coal that we need for those bloody big wind farms, the wind turbine things. And for the cement and steel that we need for Boris Johnson's level and up agenda from the likes of Russia, the Russian Bay, from the likes of Australia. Far flung countries, I love Australia, don't get us wrong. But the idea that we should be important things from Russia, do you really think they're doing things cleaner than we could do it in this country with open cast coal mining, with safe practices? You know, it's gone are the days of me grandad going deep down a pit and not being able to fully extend his arm because he's been down there so long. And just all of these things, the inconsistencies, and it's all, as I say, just a virtue signal. And it's going to hurt people.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  It's really going to hurt. And I think, there's a really important point, Chris, really quickly. I think that what we saw in Australia in their last general election, where the Labour Party was supposed to run home, right? There was, every poll put them ahead. And they turned around and said, in places up and the mining communities in Australia, there will be job losses, right? Because of our climate change targets. And the people in mining communities in Australia said, well, actually, I'd quite like to keep my job. Thanks. I'd quite like to keep pride over what I do, pride in my life, pride in my community. And they lost the election. I think that's going to happen. It could happen here in this country.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  I really, really do.

• 20:04Chris Williamson?

  So I agree that tradition isn't sexy. It's very hard. It's very hard to glam up shit that's been around for 300, 500 or 1,000 years. This quote from Donald Kingsbury that I love, and he says, "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Take the solution away and the problem often comes back worse than it ever was before." And I, I agree, man, as I've got older, I think that reinventing the wheel and trying to go for total upending change is just, we don't do it in any other form. Elon Musk hasn't decided to try and create a rocket that can immediately go to Mars. He's incrementally made improvements to, to an existing model that he's made. Okay, we'll try this, we'll try this. And he's the most revolutionary guy when it, when it

• 20:47Chris Williamson?

  comes to this technology. So I think, yeah, you're always going to be on the back foot when it comes to advertising, because there's just not as much sort of pizzazz going on when it comes to conservatism. And inevitably as well, that's, you know, for a TikTok generation that likes Instagram and stuff like that, and you've sort of got this bumbling fool Boris, and he's like all uncool and his umbrellas going inside out and he feels like sort of old England. I see, especially if you're a working class, young person, I see why that's not tremendously seductive. On the other hand, you've got Dave, the rapper, he'll tweet something. You think, yeah, Dave, like Dave says it, so I'll, I'll do what Dave says. So, yeah, I, I do get that, but it'll be, it'll be interesting, man. I think the UK, the UK is an interesting

• 21:31Chris Williamson?

  case study because we're so converse, at least in terms of what the polls have showed to what happened in America. If America had had the same Trump whitewash that we'd seen, an equivalent sized landslide to the right, I think that there would have been a really good case to make that, look, all of this sort of identity, woke-y stuff, it's just, it's not resonating at all with the electorate. But the fly in the ointment, the massive Biden sized fly in the ointment is the fact that that didn't happen. And that, I think, has lent four more years of credence to more critical race theory, more divisiveness, on and so forth, stuff like that. And um, yeah, man, you see it play out in everything now. I mean, did you see, here's another thing

• 22:16Chris Williamson?

  I noticed recently, you see this video of the weightlifter Sarah Robles being asked about Laurel Hubbard competing. So she got asked, what do you think it's this symbolic day where progression and the first trans athlete is now competing on the stage with you and there's three female weightlifters in the 87 kilo category that I think must be the same category and maybe one down, British girl, there's Sarah Robles and another girl, and there's a nine second silence and then she just leans forward and presses the button and goes, no, thank you. And then stops. What were your thoughts on that?

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Well, apparently should be, should they had actually asked and said, don't ask us any questions about that particular topic. So it could have been, to be fair to them, it could have been a, you know, next question. I'm not, but it did look amazing. When I first watched it and didn't know any of the the background behind it, I thought, you know, good for yous, because it's not fair. Good for yous. And this is a topic that actually I've fallen out with a fair few of my Conservative Party friends in the LGBT Tory or whatever it's called now. I'm not sure it is called that anymore. It's LGBT, I don't even know what that alphabet soup actually represents anymore. But anyway,

• 23:36Speaker 00

  putting that to one side, I've fallen out with a fair few people over this very topic. And it's quite sad, really, because I've never really understand, understood why people aren't willing to hear you out. Because I actually think that my view on this, once you scratch below the surface, is actually quite nuanced.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  And it comes from after watching, believe it or not, after watching a BBC whistleblower report, it was BBC Newsnight, and they had this most fantastic expose of the NHS Tavistock Clinic, which is the NHS is the England's only gender identity clinic, basically, for kids. And there were kids that were evidenced in this in whistleblower reports from people who had resigned from this clinic, which is now, by the way, in special measures, it's under investigation. And they had heard from kids getting younger and younger, and each

• 24:38Speaker 00

  time the case for medical intervention supposedly getting stronger and stronger. And these kids were saying things like, well, you know, I just don't like my body. Well, some parents got coming out and saying, I would prefer a trans outcome over a gay outcome. And you hear some of these stories. And I actually felt really upset. I actually felt the people who are calling me, you know, transphobic online and things like that, I don't think that's right. I think for some of these kids, you don't need medical intervention. You

• 25:23Speaker 00

  need a hug, sweetheart, you know, you need, you need some, you need to actually be able to sit down with someone and have some therapy and discuss these things. And if in the future, you know, when you're old enough, and you can decide to have a life change and life altering medical procedure like that, I've got no problem with that whatsoever. You know, if that's going to make you feel better, feel happier, feel more at home in yourself, then happy days. And that's the same position as someone like J K Rowling. She only said, the only thing she said. Was that she has deep reservations about what's going on as far as self identification is concerned.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  So you know, if you, Chris, decide that you are now Christine and in the gym tomorrow, you're gonna walk into the girls' changing room and have a good old time in there, then, you know, she said, I think that's gonna present some problems. And most people at home watching this will be thinking, well, I, I agree. But if they're not, I ask them to look a bit deeper at what she was saying, because in this essay that she published on our website that caused much hysteria, she actually was saying, I was a victim of domestic violence in the past. I had to use a women's refuge. It, to me, single sex spaces must be protected.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  And I know people, you know, at places like this, there's a lot of alcohol misuse. I've known people go that have gone through domestic violence, horrible as it is. And you, you just think, I cannot imagine a more vulnerable position, one for children to be placed in. We've seen over recent days, a therapist who volunteered at Childline for the last five years, James Essis, he's lost his position as, as a volunteer and his degree, his qualification, from, for the crime of actually saying, well, I think actually we shouldn't be just affirming

• 27:31Speaker 00

  that these kids have gender dysphoria, we should actually be saying to them, well, I wanna have a few sessions with you, I wanna talk things out and see if there are anything else that's underlying your, the issues that you feel that you're having at the minute. And you think, well, again, that's sensible. J K Rowling saying, I, I really worry about sex segregated spaces as someone who had to use them myself, as someone had, who had to use women refuge myself. And you think, well, again, that sounds sensible. But these people are derided and cancelled. J K Rowling hasn't been cancelled because she's too rich to be cancelled, too successful to be cancelled, but someone like James Essis has been, but saying actually, I'm too worried

• 28:15Speaker 00

  about the kids I've seen that are getting younger and younger. But the sort of methodology that's been pushed at them is getting more and more severe each time.

• 28:27Chris Williamson?

  I definitely think, I definitely think that there's a difficulty in justifying how someone that legally can't have sex is able to change their sex. That to me seems like, look, if you're not trusting them to put their-

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Gender. I must stop you there, sorry.

• 28:41Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, those two words used to be interchangeable. Yes, those people who want to change their gender are too young to have sex but can change that gender. That seems like you can't give somebody responsibility over one thing that is an immutable change for the remainder of their life and another thing that is going to happen in any case. Like, I don't know, that seems backwards. I think the interesting thing about the Olympics question for me was that it now, there is no place in the world which is not open to being used as a platform for political debate. That like, look, I know a lot of weightlifters. They work really, really, really hard. It's an incredibly fatiguing sport. Their central

• 29:26Chris Williamson?

  nervous system is almost always fried if they're training close to maximally in the build up to a competition. They're probably not spending that much time thinking about the finer points. And even if they were, even if they have done it, like, these people are good because they're athletes. They're not supposed to be, you know, the insights for sense making at level 1000. That's not why we go to them. We go to them because they're able to lift heavy things. I don't know, I just feel like there was that gymnast as well that did the Black Lives Matter fist at the end of her gymnastic routine. And you think, well, I don't know, like, what sort of an example? I can't work out if that's a good example to set for young athletes that, look, you have a platform and visibility, therefore do it. Or if it's like, look-

• 30:11Chris Williamson?

  Get on with doing your sport, like be good at the thing that you're supposed to be there for.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I mean, the the Hubbard example, I think, calls into question so many things. Hubbard, of course, lost, right? Hubbard didn't actually qualify and get through to to to become a medalist. And I say, well, you know, God bless those girls that did and women that did. Because it must have been, you must just be thinking, how unfair. I feel so sorry for the Kiwis that didn't get through, that Miss Hubbard took the position of. Because I think ultimately biological sex is an immutable fact. You know, I I'm born a man. If I decide that I want to live life as Darren and I have medical intervention to to go about that.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  I'm still going to be a biological male. I still have gone through puberty. I still have all of the, the, well, probably you more than me, Chris, let's be honest about this. But, you know, I still have more strength than than a male, a female counterpart. So there are so many ways, and this calls into a question of fairness. And that's that's where I'm at on all of that. But on the politicization of sport, that's a really, really interesting one. I've got myself in some hot water about criticizing sports in the not-too-distant past.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  And it is an interesting one, and I think the BLM fist is probably a naked attempt to get some sponsorship deals. You know, you can find yourself in a nice cover, raising your fist, and people, young people think, oh, good, goody-goody. This is virtuous. How amazing, how fantastic. Even though, of course, that symbol, the fist, has been a symbol of communist terror and tyranny throughout history. Communism, of course, being an ideology that has been responsible for murder, unique throughout the world. Billions, not millions, of people. And yet still.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Apparently, this is the new symbol of progressive virtue signaling politics.

• 32:22Chris Williamson?

  Did you have a second thought about the tweet that you sent to Marcus Rashford? Obviously, you're someone who's been the target of some pretty mean stuff online. And I imagine that if you'd just failed on a very tall stage and you'd gone online, there's almost a 0% chance that Marcus did see that. But I'm sure that it wouldn't have made you feel good if the equivalent had happened to you. Have you reflected on this?

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think that's a fair criticism. I think that I certainly wouldn't have enjoyed that very much. But everything that happened with Marcus, that sort of little run that he did up to the ball. And it was just like, it's the showmanship. It's the, it's the, well, of course, the politics, which we're discussing, we can discuss. And, and people saying, well, oh, you must be pro starve and children. I mean, Chris, I went to a school on, I had preschool meals myself, right? We struggled, my mum got divorced when I was still at school.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  And she had to remortgage the house and everything where we're going through financial difficulties, had to turn to a food bank at one point. I'm not someone who isn't supportive of charity and isn't supportive of looking after kids. I am someone who's critical of, I think, getting abolishing what is slowly happening, the abolishment of the role of the parent, that really worries me. And I think that's increasingly happening, actually. There's now a sort of a view that even getting your kids' eyes tested, oh, well, the school should do that, that's the school's responsibility. Teaching your kid to read, no, that's the school's responsibility.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  There's this, I guess, devolving of your responsibility as a parent. If you're not willing to teach your kid how to read, you shouldn't be a mum or dad, if you ask me. That's my view. And some people won't like that, but at this point, I couldn't care less. But yes, the one thing I do regret. Is is the the tone, I guess, of that tweet. The the the, I guess it could have become across as being mean spirited. But I still, I'm afraid I still stand by that I don't like politics in sport. You know, I want I want Rashford to be winning for England. I'd like him to be doing a little less winning for for Manchester.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  But apart from that, you know, I'd like him to to be to be doing his sport, playing. Because you're right, this politicisation of everything now. I mean, the BBC this morning posted out from BBC Women, the BBC Women account. Quite why there's a BBC Women account, I don't know. But they posted out saying that, is it right? Sort of asking for questions or or comment on the debate about showing children pornography? To teach them about consenting other issues?

• 35:19Chris Williamson?

  Didn't someone from GB News get annihilated about this only last week?

• 35:23Speaker 00

  Yes, I think so, yeah. So there's a, I mean, there's been a fair few little bits about this coming out and about. And I think the reason why the BBC actually ran this is because it was someone. It was Amber Rudd's daughter had tweeted something that had effect, saying, I think a good idea to teach kids about consent. You know, would be to to do this, to advocate in it. And she quickly deleted it.

• 35:48Chris Williamson?

  Dude, does does porn assist with consent? Like, what what do you highlight? Like, how does porn teach anybody about consent?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  I think that be, I think the the actually contained within this thread. I it wasn't a logical thread, I mean, an actual thread on Twitter. And it basically said, well, there wouldn't be any choking of things like that. And you think, my God, was any, would anyone really propose that with burns, with kids, with children? What what world are we living in? What sick, twisted reality?

• 36:20Chris Williamson?

  But that also presumes as well that choking can't be consensual, which is also wrong.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Yes, of course, but I still think that children shouldn't be exposed to those themes.

• 36:29Chris Williamson?

  Porn and children, just like, if you're thinking, if anybody that's listening to this is thinking.

• 36:36Chris Williamson?

  Got this idea about sort of porn and children. I might tweet about it, just that. Those are two of these sort of red boxes. And you're like, no, if those two things are in the tweet, just don't put it out. The final ultimate taboo is anything around underage kids and sex.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 36:56Chris Williamson?

  It is. It is the one that no matter where you stand, there is not a single person that's going to be on your side. So doing that just seems like, it just seems so dumb. And then, yeah, for BBC Three, or whatever BBC Women to tweet out about, you're like, what? What are we achieving here? Like, really? I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know. Here's another one. So Twitter again, Owen Jones trending today. I've had an idea because I come from an events background. How do you feel about UK political commentary, celebrity boxing? And then maybe Owen Jones, Douglas Murray? Because I'd pay very good money to watch that happen.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  You on this very show were talking to Douglas about his exercise routine, about what he's been doing with his arms. And that he's got some pretty serious arms. I really think he could take Owen Jones on. Not that I've been admiring Douglas's arms with any great depth, wink, wink. But I think that's probably a good idea, canny idea. Because actually, the problem is with people like Owen Jones and others like them, they're just not willing to engage with people on the other side of the argument. They think that. I go back to Roger Scruton again, actually, which is Roger Scruton said that I don't think the left are evil. I just think they're mistaken. And that's the difference between me and the likes of Owen Jones.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  He genuinely thinks that people like me are evil scum of the earth.

• 38:23Chris Williamson?

  That's a really nice distinction. It's a really nice distinction between malice being purported from one side about the other and ignorance or negligence being purported about the other side back. I think that's probably a pretty good way to characterize it.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  It is. It's a nice way. I mean, they would argue that actually it's the other way around, probably, right? You know, these well-meaning virtue signaling tosses, I was about to say. But, you know, each to their own. I would be more than happy to meet with Owen Jones and have a pint with him and a discussion with him. But I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.

• 38:56Chris Williamson?

  Lil Nas X, he's got a new song out, which is kind of like the gay male equivalent of WAP, of the WAP video. Have you seen this video?

• 39:08Speaker 00

  I haven't seen the video, I'm afraid. No, I have seen the WAP video.

• 39:11Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay. So it's kind of like that, but it's in a prison and it's all men instead of, instead of all women. And Lil Nas X and his, his backup dancers are completely naked. But, and then there's sort of blurred, blurred over the top of the areas that matter. And I was just quite surprised because when WAP came out, that it was so provocative, and maybe the lyrics were a tiny bit more provocative. But yeah, it sort of created this furor online about women empowering, being empowered by their own bodies and stuff like this and not being an object for the male gaze. It's sort of, we're retaking control of our personal sovereignty and stuff like that. And we haven't seen the equivalent with a man also doing

• 39:54Chris Williamson?

  it for the male gaze. We haven't seen the same with that. I don't really know why. And I wondered, given your sexual predilection, if you had a unique insight into this?

• 40:05Speaker 00

  I, I think there's, with gay men, there is a lot of deep rooted shame with a lot of gay men still. I think there's a lot of a sense of, actually, and one thing I find quite sad is this idea that, I think there's a lot of gay men who, I'm gonna get very deep here, I'll get me violin out. There's a lot of gay men who don't think, for example, that sort of, they don't recognize any form of self-worth. I think they could do with listening to a lot of your sort of motivation and positive thinking mantra. Because I think there's a lot of people who have been made to feel shame throughout their life. I think that's still, my brother's generation, he's eighty, he's younger than I am. I think my

• 40:46Speaker 00

  brother's generation have, have had it different at school to, to what I did at school. And that's a pretty fast trajectory. You know, things have changed at breakneck speed. So I think future generations won't have that problem. Whether or not... You need to, do I need to bring, sort of, show off my bits, dangly bits, to feel liberated? I don't, I don't necessarily think that's, that's true. I think to feel liberated, I need to feel like a ordinary member of society. That's why I supported same-sex marriage. I want to be as boring as all of you straight people, right? I want to be able to walk around and I come from that, I guess, old tradition of, of gay men

• 41:31Speaker 00

  that actually just want to be boring, that actually just want to, they would, they would say that I'm pandering to hetero, being heteronormative, I think is what they call it. And I'd say, well, no, I just want to live life, you know, I just want to be accepted by society, be a part of society. And I don't think that it's necessary to, to put out music videos like that. I'm just not sure what you gain from it, to be honest with you.

• 41:58Chris Williamson?

  So I understand the, the desire not to have your sexuality as the first and foremost part of your personality, like, I definitely understand that. I think the thing that was quite interesting was something Douglas said on the show, where he said, "You realise that you have true equality when you have to put up with the same level of shit as everybody else." And that lack of special treatment, I actually think is quite, at least, I only found out about this video seven days after it was released, it's had like 200, some ridiculous number of views, it's number two trending on YouTube at the moment, and it's been out for a week, and I only found out about it in the sauna chatting to a mate yesterday. So, it's completely slipped by me, and I'm usually fairly active online, looking for interesting stories.

• 42:42Chris Williamson?

  So, that was like, okay, well, cool. That is, a rapper releases a music video, and in it he's naked, and he's gay, and his fans care but nobody else does. I'm like, right, okay, that's progress, that really does feel like progress. Nobody gives a shit, like, that's the level, indifference is the level that everybody should be aiming for with equality, I think.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there's a certain extent to which I think we're sort of taking things. Everything is sex these days, you know, you've got Love Island, you've got, what, Too Hot to Handle on Netflix? You've got these music videos, you've got, I, I just sort of think that there's probably such a thing as too much sex. Right? I'm not sure why we, we are so obsessed with this now, to, and to what extent the, the sort of, I guess, children are being, you know, brought up. I remember we used to watch music videos in the, the sort of common room at school. To what extent we did have a common room and, um, uh, you, you would watch them back to back and I'm thinking,

• 43:53Speaker 00

  God, the kids that are watching music videos these days, you know, back in my day when, I don't know, the sugar babes were bobbing about on a stool. It's quite different these days when people are, I don't know, patting themselves and you just think, good God, what are kids watching? I, so I'm turning into a very old fart.

• 44:10Chris Williamson?

  Maybe this is part of the reason why increasingly people are needing, we, there's a, uh, an insight that some young people need to learn about sex sooner. I mean, taking the, the porn thing out of it, like, kids are being sexualized sooner because it's at the forefront of everyone's conversation at the moment. But then it doesn't really seem to be about the thing that everybody's actually bothered with. Like, no one's ever actually talking about how to find a good relationship, about how to make it work long term. Which ultimately is the, like, yeah, sure enough, you need to find someone sexually who's compatible with you, you need to work out what your sexuality is and so on and so forth. But all of that is in service, presumably, with you actually finding someone that you're going to be happy with.

• 44:52Chris Williamson?

  Because if you're still playing the dating game at 50 years old, not many people are going to look at that and consider it a success in the dating world. So all of this is in service of basically relationship building, but I'm not hearing anybody talk about that. Because too conservative, too old school, marriage is an archaic institution, it's heteronormative, it's, it's patriarchal, cisgendered, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. It's oppressive.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I certainly think in sex and relationship education, you should be talking about those things. You should be talking about, well, this is how people in a normal loving relationship are actually treated. Because, you know, I mean, the the number of kids at my school that had to drop out for a bit because they'd ended up pregnant. You know, and you just think, God, that's that's one, that's no life for that that Ben, right? Who's gonna be brought up by a child? And I hope they're all right, of course, I wish them well. But there are so many ways in which I wish in schools we weren't talking about, well,

• 45:59Speaker 00

  this is, this is, I don't know, this is what a trans person is. This is, I think there was an example with trans penguins or something, or gay penguins, or something like that. You can't escape the fact that gay people exist in this day and age. You know, you turn on Netflix, you turn on your chat show, you turn on whatever, you're gonna see that gay people exist, right? I'm not sure schools need to be doing it. I think what schools do need to be doing is actually saying to kids, you can be something, you can achieve something with your life, especially in areas like this. You know, you can actually, if you work hard, if you stick in at school, you can achieve something. This is a country where you can still do that.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Where hard work actually has results. Meritocratic. Instead of thinking, which I think to a large extent for a lot of my life I did as well, which is, you are stupid, you cannot, you know, there's no point in trying. I remember my maths teacher saying it was, when you fail,

• 47:03Speaker 00

  when you fail, it's not gonna be my fault. He said, it's it's gonna be on you.

• 47:10Chris Williamson?

  The most passive aggressive maths teacher that I've ever heard of.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely, but it stuck with us for obvious reason. But then another, and the you had these stupid waste of time sort of counsellors that would come in and say, oh, what is it you wanna do with your life? And he said, oh, well, with, you know, if if those are your projected predicted grades, you're not gonna get into a university and stuff like that. Now, I don't, I think we're sending, as it happens, far too many people to university. But I'd still like to kids to hear that if you wanna do that, you can do it. You know what you've got to do, though? You've got to stick in, you've got to work hard, and that means revising at home. That means not going out and about with your mates, getting drunk in a park. Not saying I did that. And all of these things, you know, that's not

• 47:59Speaker 00

  thinking about girls and boys quite so early. That's not all the rest of it. I I think there's a real problem with aspiration with kids in communities up and down the UK.

• 48:09Chris Williamson?

  Definitely the UK, definitely in the UK, man. So I was having this conversation with an American and we were talking about uh one of the problems that the American culture has is when these young kids get older. Because the American dream still still very much sort of is alive. You can be whatever you want to be, that sort of American dream is still yours, even if that dream is kind of changing. I think the encouragement's still there, whereas in the UK, it's a lot more tall poppy syndrome. You know, coming from a state school, if you talk a little bit differently, if you sound a bit differently, if you have different interests or whatever. Like, it's it's a it's a tough road. And what you get from the the advantage that you have in the UK of that is that you don't ever believe you're on bullshit. But the problem is you don't ever believe that you can be worth anything.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 48:52Chris Williamson?

  So you do get two sides of the coin. We're brought down to earth, and this is why I think you're seeing the super progressive um talking points, just not land quite so well in the UK, because we're quite salt of the earth people generally. Uh especially the place that me and you are from, you know, the northeast of the UK. No one's bothered about that. It when you're concerned about your next paycheck and keeping the the lights on, you don't have time to worry about gendered pronouns and bathrooms and stuff like that. Um but the disadvantage you get is you don't have as much encouragement. And, you know, that's something for the people that have got younger brothers and sisters, like, that's your role. I I'm an only child, so I never had the opportunity to do that, but that's your role 100% to be the person that gases them up.

• 49:34Chris Williamson?

  Like, tell them that they can do stuff because they can. I mean, the number one desired job of Primary school kids now is YouTuber, like that's the most desired, not policeman, not fireman, and you know, maybe we're making this situation worse, but I definitely think that if that's the case, then you literally can do it. Anybody can do it. There's like kids that are making millions reviewing toys and stuff like that. But I bet that there's still the same tall poppy syndrome challenge going on there. So yeah, that was, if I could change something about the UK, one of the top parts of the culture that I would do is this desire to mock or sort of drag people down that do non-typical pursuits.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely, definitely. And that's why we need to start talking about more things like technical education. You know, one of my brothers is, works in distribution for a supermarket, you know, pulling, pulling out loads from factories and things like that all day long. And he's in and out of work like that. And for someone like him, he would have really been able to benefit from a technical education. And it's interesting that you mentioned being a single child, because I actually think, you know, a lot of, a lot of my, what I'm passionate about comes from my experience with watching my brothers who have gone through exactly the same upbringing, but with very different sort of pursuits. And so for him, technical education. And I think for me, other brother,

• 51:00Speaker 00

  grammar school education, you know, there are, I think it's, I'm so passionate and so of the view that school choice and a diversity within education is, is the way we go about actually, you put like-minded kids together and you say, all right, well, you're interested in this, you're going to be passionate, you're going to give it your all. That's fantastic for kids. Let's do more of that. And let's give people the chance to actually think, I'm not stupid. I can actually, I am good at something, you know, that there's something here I'm passionate about and make them feel that they can do something and achieve something with their lives. Because far too many people in places

• 51:42Speaker 00

  like this, and it's, it's utterly horrible. I know a fair few people from school who have gone into just, you know, basically being alcoholics or drug addicts and.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  It's it's sad to see. It's so sad to see.

• 51:57Chris Williamson?

  Too much porn. That's the problem. Too much porn.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Well, maybe it's maybe it's the porn, aye.

• 52:01Chris Williamson?

  Too much porn in school. I think that might be. That might be a big part of it. I've been thinking a lot recently. I put a tweet out earlier on saying I want to bring someone on the show. And Josh Rogan has reached out to talk about China and sort of their long term political and global plans. But can you imagine? What do you think is the difference between the culture of the UK and the USA over the last 16 months that has occurred? And the culture that Russia and China would have wanted to happen if they wanted to begin the disintegration of those two countries?

• 52:39Speaker 00

  Yes, well, a culture that's basically eaten itself where at each other's throats, you know, it really does feel like that. It actually feels like the sort of environment and I've heard this said before, the sort of environment that you'd expect before a sort of, especially in America, civil war, you know, where people really are as delegitimate, I guess, the delegitimization of an election. And you've got people arguing over that, of course, you've got people arguing over Kamala Harris is one of the most unpopular vice presidents in quite some time. That's a really interesting statistic, I think. There are so many ways in which China-

• 53:24Chris Williamson?

  Hatred of the flag, like self hatred of the flag. Like that's literally the symbol of your country.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Uh huh. And a symbol of for many people throughout the world who really, really want to be in part of American life, American values, who look at that flag and think, oh, wow, the freedom and liberty, you know, when my granddad served in Korea in the 50s and alongside the Americans and Australians and Gurkhas and a few others. But he, looking at the the American flag, looking at the the our own flag, looking at the Union Jack, I dare say that they looked at those flags and felt immense pride in what they they were doing. Because look at South Korea now. It's a beacon of freedom, of hope and prosperity. And-

• 54:11Speaker 00

  You look at them in North Korea, a different example, and you think, wow, life there, not for me, gonna be honest, looks pretty grim, pretty tough, pretty horrible. And you think, well done you, grandad, I'm proud to know you, man. And you think, you look at the petulant prats today, turning their backs on flags, like the two of those I've just mentioned, the American or the UK flag. There, we have a period of self-loathing going on at the minute, that'll have the Chinese and Russia rubbing them hands with glee. They must be delighted by this. They must be thrilled. Because that's the only way

• 54:53Speaker 00

  I can describe it. Hatred. There is a deep rooted resentment of your own country. And I don't understand it. And that's why I say conservatives miss the philosophy of love, because there is certainly none of that on our side of the argument. It seems to be exclusively coming from the so-called progressives. And to me, there's nothing progressive. There's nothing that's gonna lead us forward about this self-loathing, about this, everything my country does must be bad. And Douglas has said this before, I think he said it on your show, where if someone, if a person that you know does not have your best interests at heart, says to you, Chris, you should be doing X, you should be doing this, I

• 55:36Speaker 00

  think what you're doing now is really bad, bitch shit. You're gonna say, oh, well, I'll take that with a pinch of salt, mate, because you don't have my best interests at heart. I think that's exactly what we should be doing with these people who sneer at our flag, who do not wish our nation well, who seem to want to see it fail at almost any opportunity.

• 55:57Chris Williamson?

  It's like gaslighting, like nation-sized gaslighting. You're being taught, like, I'm hitting you, but I'm only hitting you because I love you. And then it's almost like when you get that Stockholm syndrome of the person, they say, look, like, I stay with them for this reason. And it just appears to be self-perpetuated hatred coming from somewhere. And I found this out, I can't remember who it was that I was speaking to, but I've found out that the largest black lives, that pro black lives page on Facebook before BLM was started by the Internet Research Agency in Russia. Like, that was who began the page.

• 56:36Chris Williamson?

  So you think, okay, what are the chances that at least, let's say that it's 10% of the last year's violent and vociferous problems have come from those sorts of agents? What if it was the first 10%? What if that was the pebble at the top of the avalanche? And then you just allow people to do the social media thing? So going back to the England football analogy, the way that the press decided to perpetuate narratives about racism after the match. Now, I don't want that, those idiots, absolute morons, that the people that decided to tweet that stuff online or contact the players or deface murals and stuff like that. But I don't feel too good about what the press did either.

• 57:20Chris Williamson?

  Because all that did was they said, look, the headline of "we played well, but unlucky we didn't win", isn't going to generate that many clicks. But look at these closet racists from Romford and Blyth and, you know, Carlisle and all of these working class towns. We always knew that this was the case. And now they've finally had their opportunity to do it. And then to perpetuate it for days and days and days. You think, well, what's this achieving? Like, do you think this is for the betterment of the country? Is it educating people on racism? Or is it using fringe examples to limbically hijack people? And then after you've limbically hijacked them, are you just creating more divisiveness within it? I mean, you did see a really good response. Maybe you could say, from that, you saw this sort of beautiful

• 58:05Chris Williamson?

  presentation on Rashford's mural where people went and they made this really sort of nice display where it was fixed and people showed love. But I think you probably could have got away with that with just one story. I don't think you would have needed to keep it going for a full week.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Well, actually, the Rashford memorial, the Rashford mural rather memorial, is actually important because of the fact that the police had to release a statement saying that they didn't think that it was racism. There was no sort of racist graffiti on the mural.

• 58:35Chris Williamson?

  Oh, it's just like you take bad penalties or something?

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Something like that. I don't know. It wasn't me, I promise. And you look at these... Things and you think, well, hang on a minute because this was, this was going round and round on Twitter. You had people standing next to this mural on their bended knee, Black Lives Matter posters and things like that. And you're thinking, well, hang on a minute. It had, the police have just told whether it had sod all to do with racism? And it had everything to do with some, you know, some silly bugger, just graffiti and after probably been a bit miffed about the footy match that had just been played in? And you think, well, why would they do that? Hmm, that's interesting. And it's, it's to

• 59:19Speaker 00

  stir up that divisiveness. It's exactly what we on the conservative right get accused of all the time. This stirring up of hatred, you know, oh, hateful speech and all the rest of it. I'm sorry, but I think the ones that are stirring up hatred here are those trying to perpetuate, they push this narrative of racist old blighty, you know, post Brexit Britain, backwater that it is, racist backwater, doesn't like immigrants, doesn't like people, footballers that play well, like Marcus Rashford, which is, it's palpable nonsense. I mean, the number of people, if I look back throughout my life, I kind of think of many examples

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  where I've, I've heard of racism directed at, at footballers because of the fact that people don't seem to care much about the colour of the skin of the footy players on the pitch. They just care about the fact that the, the footy players, no matter what their colour, no matter what their, their sexuality, they are good on the pitch. They can perform well for their teams. That the colour of their skin, their immutable characteristics has absolutely sod all to do with their performance.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  And you think, is a country like that racist? And you're right, all of the examples of racism tended, they seem to come from abroad. With, you know, I think it was even BBC Newsnight that looked into that and found those statistics. And then you look a bit further and you think, well, hang on, what's going on here? Why are they, why are people doing this? Why is this happening? Why is my country having this? You know, as you say, all of these newspapers, there was a collective sort of circle jerk of hysteria over this stuff, saying nasty Britain, horrible racist blighty. And that's, we have fallen to such a large extent, if we genuinely have pockets of society,

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  that those that are publishing the news stories, those that are tweeting, those that are, and you mentioned that 20% of people are on Twitter, you mentioned that earlier. 20% is actually quite disproportionately high if you can compare it with the likes of India, for example, if you compare it with other economies, it's actually quite high. There are a lot of British people on it compared to other countries around the world. And you think, as far as the, the cultural clout that Twitter has in this country as well, tweets will end up in papers, right? Tweets will make news. Tweets will decide the headlines of stories.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  And you think, why are these people so self-loathing? And that's something I cannot answer.

• 1:02:07Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, have you got any impression about why? Because I, so I, I understand in the first instance, that limbically hijacking people is good for traffic, because things that you really agree with are things that you really hate, are both shit that you're gonna click on. That makes sense. Um, but it just feels like there was, it felt like there was more going on than that. It was just so perpetuated over and over and over again. I don't know whether it was a slow week for news. Um, maybe, maybe they genuinely do, the people in the BBC or the Guardian or whoever's commenting on this stuff, maybe they genuinely do believe that this is such a righteous cause.

• 1:02:44Chris Williamson?

  But they do need to continue talking about it because people need to know and they haven't known enough just yet. And I mean, that's the best, if that's the best interpretation, this sort of oddly paternalistic view of the world. And then from there, it's just like China and Russian agents and sharebots all the way down, as far as I can see. It just gets potentially worse and potentially worse and potentially worse. And yeah, man, I want to find out about this, about this China stuff, because the small insight that I've had into what Russia's doing at the moment is terrifying. And it just feels like, it feels to me like there's something else going on. It feels like my real world experience doesn't match up with the things that I'm seeing

• 1:03:27Chris Williamson?

  on the internet and the stories that are being noted. Like, I've met a million people on the front door of nightclubs. I've watched a million people go in and out of events that I've done. I must have seen maybe two things that are racist ever, that's in 15 years. A million people. Like, there is no sample size that's going to be bigger than that. And I stand on the door. So I see when the black bouncer drags a white customer out for being too drunk, or having a fight, or snogging someone in the corner, or whatever. I see when that happens. And this white guy, or it could be in reverse, has got every reason in the world to be very, very angry at this person. They've just lost their night, they're away from all their friends, they've had

• 1:04:05Chris Williamson?

  a little bit of booze. And even in that, sort of the most base, unfiltered version of ourselves, like the least gracious nature of ourselves comes on nights out, even then, I don't see it. I'm like, if that's not the situation in which it's going to happen. So I don't know, I just, I really think that the last 16 months, one of the main things that I've learned is to be increasingly skeptical, not only of the people that are in power, but of the things that I see in the press. And this may be like, duh, mate, you know, the Michael Malices of the world are messaging me and going, you're an idiot. Like, why were you ever believing this in the first place? But again, like, you know, if you're the sort of person that's a bit orderly and has faith in institutions, you don't think that there's something to bring up. You don't usually

• 1:04:49Chris Williamson?

  consider that maybe they don't have my best interests at heart. But like, holy fuck, man, like, this last year has completely eroded any of my trust in.

• 1:05:00Chris Williamson?

  Legacy media and in the people that are supposed to be in power.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  But it's interesting that you mentioned that that line there about middle class people who are paternalistic because it does strike me as a really patronizing view like, oh, well, actually, what racial arguments and tensions need is me to patronize people and say, I know what's good for you. You know, I don't, I'd like to hear more conversations from, I don't know, black mothers, for example, in the likes of London that are saying to these middle class liberals who are clutching their pearls and saying, we must stop stop and search because it disproportionately affects certain communities in this country. There are mothers who have been interviewed about this stuff and they're saying, I like

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  stop and search. I want stop and search because actually it's making me feel like my child is safe, that my child might actually stand a better chance of coming home tonight. And you look at, you hear that argument, the fear, imagine fearing that your child's not going to come home because they're going to be stabbed today.

• 1:06:06Chris Williamson?

  Imagine being a black mother of a young kid and realizing that the potential reason that your now dead child didn't make it home is because somebody sat in Westminster or somebody that was at the Guardian put enough political pressure on to say this is discriminatory. And again, like it does come back, like it's, for me, the more that I think about it, especially over the last year, there were certain things that needed to be done very quickly. There were things that required rapid and unmolested progress in order to be able to keep up with the pace of change that was happening in the world. But it doesn't need to be spread across everything. And I really do think, what was, what did your sign say? Steady on or something?

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, steady, just the word steady.

• 1:06:53Chris Williamson?

  Steady. Yeah. So I do think, you know, test things away. I mean, have you seen this refund the police now? So the studies came out in America that said that last year murders are at an all time high from the last 30 years. It was a 20 or 25% year on year increase, largest since the mid 90s. And so far this year, it's 15% up on top of that. And all of the researchers, every single one of them seems to agree that police presence is the best way to reduce homicides.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  And I mean, the number of police officers in DC that have killed themselves from that one force that I haven't seen this, what's this? That got involved with the Capitol, what happened at the Capitol Building with the, I guess, storming of the Capitol Building. Yeah. There've been at least five, I think it's six now, suicides of these police officers killing themselves. And you think, what sort of thing are they, what sort of abuse are they getting? And that sort of has me thinking, who in their right mind would want to be a copper in this day and age? You know, who in their right mind would want to do that? It doesn't, it strikes me as eminently sensible that police officers in this day and age

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  quite like the fact that they can, some of them at least, and this isn't a stress, it's not the vast majority of them, but some of them can sit in offices registering non-crime hate incidents, the most Orwellian thing I've ever been part of really, or ever fallen victim of. And I, I sort of think, good God, you people, you know, you don't deserve any of this, the stress and the shit frankly, that you have to put up with on a daily basis. No wonder you'd rather sit in the office and, I don't know, tick off non-crime hate incidents and look into them and say nothing, say here, Gov. You know, this sort of stuff is cartoon.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  I think the priorities of the West have, across the West even, have become so far removed from the actual concerns of people on the ground. You know, I've just mentioned there, people really concerned about the kids coming home on a night time, especially in places like London. You've got kids in Scotland, man, who aren't leaving school with the ability to read and write. And you think, it's 2021, I don't know why, I've just looked at the time, it's 2021, and you've got kids leaving school with an inability to read and write. And and they're talking about independence and things farting around with this sort of thing. The priorities of many politicians and and these sort of influencers and the middle

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  class liberals with the perpetual guilt, I think it is. I've met so many Atonians, you know, who really annoyed, there's always so patrician, there tends to be, and this isn't all of them, of course, but many Atonians. There's this idea of guilt, like, oh, I should feel ashamed of my, of what, the accident of birth that led me to have such wonderful privilege in life. No, you shouldn't. You should just go out there and do something with your life.

• 1:10:01Chris Williamson?

  What happens downstream from that? So let's say that this person, no, but genuinely, I'm asking, this person is born, they have this guilt, how do they, how does that change the way that they behave?

• 1:10:10Speaker 00

  That manifests itself in them being sort of very patrician in outlook. So, you know, like, oh, I know what's good for people, they should do X, Y and Z. And there's this sort of idea that actually people don't have agency over their own lives and that you need people like us who who can actually do it for you, who can tell you what's good for you and all the rest of it. So they think they're doing good, but actually they're not, and they're really, really being quite condescending to people. And if there's one thing I've noticed, especially in the North East, as you will well know, there is nothing that people like worse than than feeling that they're being spoken down to. And I think that's why the political class got such a punch in the nose in 2019 in that

• 1:10:53Speaker 00

  general election, where a large swathes of voters who've never voted Tory before said, you know what, I'm gonna get yous this time, like, I've had enough. How dare you talk to me like that? The anger that I heard over the last five years, my inbox being flooded with people saying, thank you so much for what you're saying. I can't believe I'm being spoken down to and lectured like this, patronized like this, from what is essentially a middle class Technocrats, a middle class view of saying things like, well. We need to go back to you being told by Tory tops, what's good for you? And you see that on the climate change debate as well, right?

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  We're go, oh, you can't, that gas boiler love, no Sheila, we're gonna pull that out for your pet. Don't worry, how much? Oh, don't ask questions like that, 20 grand, how much? And you think, what the is going on here? There is so much, I think that, there are so many problems in the world. And I think most of them are down to middle class liberals who feel guilty. That's, that's my, my theory, actually, strongly so.

• 1:12:01Chris Williamson?

  That doesn't surprise me that that's your theory. Yeah, I am, I don't know, man, I, I was talking the other day to J P C as needs to be a life coach. And he was saying that empathy is actually a very narcissistic emotion. Because when you're caring about other people in that way, what you're presuming is without me, your life is going to suffer so much. And that, I think, that sort of, maybe there is a little bit of guilt of being born with more access to resources or a better education and stuff like that. And perhaps that does trickle down to these people thinking, well, what I need to do, what my duty is, is to bestow this gated information

• 1:12:43Chris Williamson?

  that me and my friends are the only ones that we, that we have access to. But the dumb thing is, especially, you know, coming from a working class background and state schools like we both have, like, I, I arrived at university and met people from private school for the first time. I'd never met anyone from a private school really prior to that. I'd just been at state schools and I looked at the people who arrived at Newcastle Uni, a red brick, a proper university, and I saw just as many, if not more fuckups, come from the people that had been away at boarding school, like Pocklington, Hymers, you know, all of these like sort of middle Yorkshire, really expensive schools, boarding 30 grand a year plus. And they came, they came and they were just as fucked as everybody else.

• 1:13:28Chris Williamson?

  Like, they didn't have, they didn't have their stuff sorted at all. And, um, yeah, presuming that levels of education.

• 1:13:37Chris Williamson?

  imbue you with some sort of better moral sense, I think at the very least is probably inaccurate and actually might run in the opposite direction.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, absolutely, because what you quickly find, right, is with, and I've noticed this as well, I hadn't met anyone really until I moved down south, until I went to Brighton, anyone that went to private school, because I'd worked in, my jobs were working in a supermarket and working in a hairdressers, right, you don't meet many people that went to private schools in those sort of lines of work. And I, I thought it was like another world. And you think, you talk to some people and they're, they're just, they're so infantilised, because they haven't had, and this, this isn't, I'm generalising massively, and I've got many

• 1:14:27Speaker 00

  friends who went to private schools and they are not like this. But there's this sort of infantilisation, where the kind of person that I assume you're talking about at Newcastle Uni, would be the sort of person that is like, oh my word, there's this, look how cheap the drinks are, right, there's this sort of.

• 1:14:48Chris Williamson?

  Newcastle, man, three trebles for £5.50, catch up, come on.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  And they're like, Ben's in sort of sweet shops, right. And you're just, you're like looking at them, like, what world have you been living in? Like, what world have you experienced?

• 1:15:03Chris Williamson?

  So I think that you're right, there's, there's definitely a minority of people that will like that. And the, the worst culture that I saw, and this may trickle down to when they become adults and perhaps they get into positions of power and maybe they go into journalism and become, become influential in that way or something. The way, the thing that really, really riled me up was when everything felt a little bit like a game, it was the individuals to whom everything felt like, nothing was taken seriously, because the, the subtext of that was, I will be able to either pay or talk my way out of some sort of a problem. And it all felt, university and some of the situations, kind of all seemed a bit like.

• 1:15:49Chris Williamson?

  Like a summer holiday to them, you know, like, right, I'm just here for a while. Like, I'll fuck shit up. I don't really care. I don't need to act virtuously. And, you know, fortunately, I ended up in, uh, living with four of the guys, I think, all of whom went to private schools. But I was finding the ones that I really resonated with, and there was an equal, if not greater, number of people who had these sort of. And, you know, you could have people that didn't go to private school, went to state schools, but had quite a privileged upbringing. Maybe they were from London, perhaps they were from, you know, just somewhere that seemed, yeah, a little bit more walled off, a little bit more protected. And, um, they didn't do well, like, they didn't do well at university, they weren't prepared well for the world.

• 1:16:31Chris Williamson?

  And if they did manage to get themselves into positions of, of authority or power or influence, I wouldn't want that impacting the way that the country goes. Like, fair play. If you can game the system, if you can fuck around at uni and you can still come out of it with the, the right connections or the, the right degree that gets you into the right place. Like, you know, muffle anybody that doesn't do that because you've had tons of fun. But I still don't want to follow you. I still don't want to trust the things that you say, and I still really, really don't want you to be influencing the culture.

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. And I guess there's an element of, it's not what, you know, right, it's who, you know. And, and there's a sort of, I can fall back on daddy's connections or something like that. And again, this is a sweeping generalization. As I say, there are some absolutely bloody fantastic friends that I've got who have not had anything like a silver spoon in their life. You know, you've got people that go to these schools that have been there on scholarships, for example. And who I've so much time for in the world. Um, but I, I think you're right. I think there's an extent to which you think, well, and that's what we've seen with Trump.

• 1:17:38Speaker 00

  That's what we've seen with Brexit, to a limited extent. I still, I still don't completely buy that this was just a rejection of sort of middle-class technocrats. But I think there was a large extent to which it's saying, well, you people have been telling me that you know what's best for me for goodness only knows how long, you know, since, uh, the, in the nineties, the Clinton set basically said, well, Liberalism is what we've achieved and liberalism is what's going to deliver for everybody. So we as middle class liberal technocrats will do quite well in telling you what to do. Thank you very much. And we get all the way to 2016. And of course,

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  the big divides happen with Brexit and with Trump, where you've you've got people turning around to them and saying, well, you've been running the country now for X amount of years. And how good of a job would you say you've done? Right? The financial crash and all the rest of it. And I'm suffering and my I'm seeing my livelihood squeezed. I'm seeing that the things and prices in shops and all the rest of it are going up, but my wages, productivity in this country is not going up. Why is that? Why are you not doing anything about this? And a desire to actually send a message and actually have their voice heard.

• 1:19:00Speaker 00

  I think that's one thing I've heard more than anything else over these past few years, which is, I want to actually feel that I am being listened to, that I the voiceless, silent, we hear this silent majority, actually hearing the voices heard for once. And that, I think, is a theme that's still going on now, that's still resonating with people. And I'm afraid to say that I really don't think that Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party at the minute are doing much in the way of that. And I think that eventually Boris is sort of bumbling around a bit like a Asda shopping trolley with only three wheels,

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  right? He doesn't know his ass from his elbow. And there's no, there's no sort of anchor guiding him. You know, where you cannot say that about Blair, you cannot say that about Maggie Thatcher, you cannot say that about some of the greatest politicians that have been in the top job in this country.

• 1:20:00Chris Williamson?

  Also, they weren't, they weren't going through a global pandemic.

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  That's true. That's very true. But I think at this point, though, where a majority of people, especially those who are statistically more likely to be susceptible to the worst elements of the coronavirus, have been double vaccinated, where we're still, I think, at this point, applying a sort of, well, there's only one game in town and it's coronavirus. And actually, the only other game in town. Despite this government being elected on a pledge and a promise to level up, seems to be one that's going to achieve quite the polar opposite, that's going to achieve leveling down. And that's this stupid net zero target, which I am, as you can probably tell, I'm not happy with it. I'm so angry about it.

• 1:20:44Chris Williamson?

  Tell you who I've got on the show soon, Patrick Moore.

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  Right, okay, yeah.

• 1:20:48Chris Williamson?

  Co-founder of Greenpeace.

• 1:20:49Speaker 00

  Uh huh, that's gonna be interesting.

• 1:20:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he's written a new book and he was on Trigonometry not long ago. And yeah, he reached out. He's fascinating man. But yeah, I am, I don't know, dude, I think the next few years are going to be, are going to be hopefully quite interesting in a good direction. I just think, fuck, for me to be the one that's encouraging people to be skeptical, because I've always been so trusting. And it really does feel like this year has completely eroded that away. And yeah, if we can have more people that are a little bit more rational, questioning whether or not this is the right thing for us.

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  Steady.

• 1:21:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, steady, steady. This is going to be Darren Grimes is steady. But anyway, Darren Grimes, ladies and gentlemen, people want to check out your stuff, where should they go, mate?

• 1:21:38Speaker 00

  They can just go to DarrenGrimes.com and all of the links and everything they need to know will be on there.

• 1:21:43Chris Williamson?

  Perfect. Thanks, mate.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  Cheers.