TRIGGERnometry - Ed Sheeran Gaza Controversy, AI Fears and Piddington Immigration Protest - Off the Fence

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody and welcome to this week's Off the Fence with me Constance and Kissin and of course

00:00:05.600 my Trigonometry co-host Francis Foster, our friends Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall

00:00:10.920 Show and Tom Slater from Spiked. Welcome guys. We're going to get straight into it. This week

00:00:17.280 our three stories are going to be the Ed Sheeran opening acts dropping out over the Free Palestine

00:00:23.100 thing. We will talk about that. We will talk of course about the warnings from various AI and

00:00:29.920 side as the AI is going to kill us all. And more relaxed, Piddington in England has voted to leave

00:00:39.100 the United Kingdom in a referendum because they don't want migrants in a camp right around the 1.00

00:00:45.400 corner. Let's get straight into our first story, which is, of course, Ed Sheeran and his opening 1.00

00:00:52.200 act dropping out after Free Palestine controversy. Francis Foster, take it away.

00:00:58.280 Well, this, Constantine, is very much a story that has captured the cultural zeitgeist,

00:01:02.700 so I'll lead you through everything that's actually happened.

00:01:06.120 This involves an artist called Macklemore, who is an Irish rap artist who was booked to open for Ed Sheeran.

00:01:14.840 He went on Ed Sheeran's show to open, and he did his act, but he also delivered a speech about Palestine,

00:01:24.200 the Palestinian struggle in which he said the words free Palestine. Now, the New York Post

00:01:30.600 alleges that there was then a call with Robert Kraft in which it was asked him not to do that.

00:01:40.020 Now, this is an allegation. We don't know if it's true or not. He then went on a couple of days

00:01:44.520 later and then proceeded to double down on this and talked about, you know, the Columbia students

00:01:51.680 describing them as their actions as heroic for standing up for an oppressed people.

00:01:56.460 Now, what subsequently happened is there was a conversation between Robert Kraft and Ed Sheeran,

00:02:04.360 in which Robert Kraft, by the way, is the owner of the New England Patriots and one of the arenas

00:02:11.480 that Ed Sheeran was booked to perform in and said that this could not carry on. And not only would

00:02:18.680 he not be welcome to perform at Robert Kraft's arena, there were numerous other owners of arenas

00:02:26.000 that Ed Sheeran was booked to perform in that would subsequently pull out of the tour and refuse to

00:02:32.220 host Ed Sheeran's show. At which point, Ed, having really, I would say, no choice, then said to

00:02:42.100 Macklemore that he could not perform at any more of his shows. Now, something very interesting

00:02:48.900 happened at this point because every single one of Ed Sheeran's support acts have subsequently

00:02:57.140 dropped out. Macklemore then said he's going to donate all of the earnings that he's going to

00:03:05.260 get from the tour, roughly around a million dollars, to Palestinian causes. And Robert

00:03:10.300 craft in a beautiful piece of one-upmanship has doubled that and said that he's going to give two

00:03:15.740 million to palestinian causes so ed sheeran who for those of you don't know is a fairly milk toast

00:03:23.980 middle of the road pop act is now caught in one of the cultural war stories of this year and it's

00:03:32.620 very interesting to see where this will go wait francis just to check one thing did you say uh

00:03:39.180 robert craft is going to give two million to palestinian causes or israeli causes palestinian

00:03:44.860 causes to as in palestinian charities so having cancelled the shows over the free palestine thing

00:03:53.580 he's nonetheless going to give more money to palestinian charities yeah to help uh people

00:03:59.580 who've been affected by the war okay i see cool cool cool uh winston you are obviously our music

00:04:05.340 industry insider but can i just say one thing before we get into it just one thing uh i don't

00:04:10.780 there's obviously the free speech and all of the principal stuff but just from a we the the three

00:04:16.780 of us i think have opened for people and had people open for us at various life like if you

00:04:22.460 are opening for ed sheeran i actually had to look this up because i couldn't believe it like francis

00:04:27.980 and i were talking about this story and i was like well there's no way he would have said this

00:04:32.300 at ed sheeran's concerts he might have done like a speech at a different concert of his own

00:04:37.260 and then that's become the controversy i looked it up with venice ai no he did this political thing

00:04:43.420 at ed sheeran's concert at the concert of the guy for whom he's opening and it's like

00:04:48.620 what are you doing irrespective of the political cause like if you are opening for a huge act i

00:04:54.620 mean you're playing nfl arenas what are you doing stamp trying to stamp your message like if you're

00:05:00.380 opening for someone your attitude should be like the the white guy in the 100 meter final right

00:05:05.340 you're just happy to be there you know what i mean like what are you doing well if i may so

00:05:12.380 he his political activism was part of his act long before he was even booked to be on ed sheeran's

00:05:21.720 tour and it wasn't just any political activism and i mean it is classic sort of leftist

00:05:29.440 derangement you know he's on the wrong side of literally every possible issue you could be on

00:05:35.080 cuba ice lebanon the the west he he was always doing that so but that's actually quite key to

00:05:44.780 where i've landed on this and that in that ultimately it was the fault of sheeran and

00:05:49.980 craft for allowing it to happen in the first place they knew well before they announced it

00:05:56.120 what macklemore's live show was about if you book rage against the machine you can't then later say

00:06:03.160 post hoc say sorry lads you can play but just no political songs no no communism yet because it's

00:06:09.320 part of the act if i can just make a couple of corrections for francis's opening first thing

00:06:15.080 macklemore is is not irish he is american but i think key here they all think they're irish

00:06:21.160 they're made don't they yeah they all think they're right and but they are they are all ginger and a

00:06:26.200 lot of them are no one's talking about this the ginger no i think i think this is actually the

00:06:34.600 the part that everyone's missed the support bands phineas who's billy eilish's sister

00:06:40.600 pulled pulled out in solidarity with macklemore and another point so it wasn't ed or

00:06:46.120 Kraft who technically dropped Macklemore, it was the promoters Messina group. So hands are clean

00:06:55.660 in this from my point of view, although everyone on the sort of pallid arrangement side, the sort 0.89

00:07:02.680 of Gaza Tardation, they are against Sheeran. But Sheeran actually is kind of in the middle. I think

00:07:09.380 the only mistake he made was booking Macklemore in the first place, knowing what we know about

00:07:13.840 macklemore set because macklemore since 2014 was doing with you know zig hiles in

00:07:20.020 sort of jew costumes at the beginning of the homaz war even before israel had responded after october

00:07:29.380 7th he was doing instagram posts saying there's an unfolding genocide so this guy was hold on but

00:07:37.060 hold on your instagram story like you can post about whatever you want on instagram i'm talking

00:07:42.600 about why are you turning up to someone else's concert and doing a political thing a speech

00:07:47.800 about free palestine i take your point but i'm saying yeah i know what you're saying but i'm

00:07:54.840 saying that's part of his act and that and that we knew that that was part of his act before shirin

00:08:00.360 booked him i mean they announced this a year ago which is still two years after the war started

00:08:05.000 he's macabre's been doing that all of his shows for just as long as he's doing it it's it's doing

00:08:10.520 this pally nonsense is all it's always been part of it for him so how does that work winston as a

00:08:15.960 music industry person how how i don't understand how it's like i i francis and our background is

00:08:21.960 stand-up comedy like you would never say part of someone's set is to go out and do a pro palestine

00:08:27.720 speech at the top and then do a few knob gags like those are separate have you been on the circuit

00:08:33.240 recently mate no i haven't made that's maybe the point but you know what i mean like there's jokes

00:08:41.720 or there's music and then there is speaking about issues and sure some people might do both but

00:08:50.120 i don't understand as an opening if i when i was doing stand-up got to open for i don't know joe

00:08:56.120 rogan or bill burr or whatever i wouldn't go and then do a speech about the importance of ukraine

00:09:01.320 i just go and do my best jokes yeah but macklemore's songs and presumably he thinks they're

00:09:08.600 his best i i don't listen to macklemore i'm not a fan so it's hard for me to particularly rate but

00:09:12.600 he has literally got songs about gaza so if you're in this in this sort of analogy you're

00:09:19.000 trying to make if your best gag was about ukraine and then you do the the tour and and rogan says

00:09:27.080 great yeah or but but you can do it just don't make that gag about ukraine you'd be like well

00:09:31.640 that's not exactly the spirit of you know you said you know you need to have free speech in

00:09:36.280 the arts you've got to i mean when i was standing i was so desperate i i would have got any guy

00:09:45.800 i get to play an nfl arena i i'm to ukraine right now

00:09:49.400 that's what you want me to say i'll say okay you said when i remember when you were early on

00:09:57.960 early days of trig you were asked to sign a uh yeah you know the details yeah yeah right okay

00:10:05.640 uh but that's the point though that's that's that is actually the equivalent and you so that's where

00:10:11.240 it gets sort of tricky and i i imagine we're all going to agree that if artists don't have freedom

00:10:16.120 of expression that's a problem and if you start if you start saying you can't say this or you see

00:10:22.920 that there's punishment for saying this then people are going to start being quiet the problem

00:10:27.800 in this example compared to all the stuff we've been talking about work is that this guy's views

00:10:32.440 are absolutely abhorrent i mean they are as far left as you can get as far as i'm concerned i mean

00:10:40.120 he was doing on stage blood libel he was going and this happened at the met live show last week

00:10:45.880 he was saying to my jewish friends right so he's addressing he's picking out the jews in the

00:10:51.560 audience and he's going if i criticize genocide that is not anti-semitic well then why are you

00:10:58.920 addressing the jewish friends what's that got to do with them for a start secondly if you're 0.71

00:11:03.960 accusing israel of genocide that is blood libel because it's not genocide it's a war that hamaz

00:11:10.760 started and they're responding to. I also note that Macklemore did not say Hamas return the

00:11:16.860 hostages because that would have ended the war, by the way. He said, no, there's an unfolding

00:11:21.180 genocide. So it is anti-Semitic what he's saying. I mean, anyway, there's never anything. But I

00:11:26.060 really think the ginger thing's important because Macklemore's a ginger. Phineas, who was the

00:11:35.060 support actor, Billy Eilish, his brother, he's a ginger. So they've all basically converted

00:11:40.580 to islam it seems like they're races on that side now that pipeline is real the ginger 0.92

00:11:49.780 who are called boga or boga who are his backing band on stage backing man not the support band

00:11:56.420 on stage backing man they're all from ireland one of the other support acts is from ireland now

00:12:02.900 what's important here is if they're irish very likely they are carriers of the regressive red

00:12:08.820 dream gene even if they don't show themselves to be ginger this is the this is the correlation

00:12:13.460 it's a pattern i'm seeing guys i'm just noticing i'm just noticing there's a gender thing going on

00:12:18.820 here now it's also ireland is like the highest per capita rate of israel derangement syndrome so

00:12:23.700 there's there's something else going on here but jokes aside i mean it's astonishing that

00:12:28.980 sheeran hasn't fallen for all of that stuff and and he's now not being despite being a ginger

00:12:33.780 he's like yeah he's like a self-hating ginger the same painting ginger yeah exactly uh tom

00:12:43.380 i was i thought you were wrapped up win uh tom i know you as a free speech champion but i actually

00:12:48.100 don't agree with winston here about this free speech in arts thing in one respect at your own

00:12:54.500 concert you can say and do whatever you want and if a stadium then says you know i i personally

00:13:01.140 don't agree with those views therefore you're cancelled i think that's wrong but to me the

00:13:06.180 issue of opening for someone else is a completely different thing you you if you're opening for

00:13:12.420 someone else who is giving you an opportunity that you would never yourself have which is in this

00:13:16.580 instance to play an nfl arena holy crap it should be the dream moment of your career you don't get

00:13:22.980 to derail the whole thing by imposing your particular political opinions whatever they may

00:13:27.940 be like if francis and i did a trigonometry live show and we asked somebody to open for us and that

00:13:34.740 person went on and did a political message that i agreed with i'd still be like what the

00:13:40.580 are you doing you're here to do the thing we hired you to do which is do your comedy or do your music

00:13:46.180 or whatever it is what's your take tom no i think that's a fair point i suppose that would probably

00:13:51.700 more perfectly capture it if this was just a case of ed sheeran taking umbrage at this impromptu

00:13:57.140 pro-Palestine lecturer and saying you know what you can't really be on the tour I make love songs

00:14:02.020 for teeny bopper audiences um this is not the time for blood libel then there might have been

00:14:07.120 this kind of that argument might have applied more neatly I suppose the added dimension here

00:14:11.340 is the fact that because of individuals primarily Robert Kraft the owner of the Gillette Stadium as

00:14:15.900 Francis was explaining there um seemed to have gone out of his way to try to have Macklemore

00:14:22.620 pulled not just from his own arena but from other ones on the tour that it does it brings it into

00:14:28.520 the cancel culture discussion even if we don't think it's a perfect fit for what we're talking

00:14:32.920 about and at the very least I think we can say that when you have people on the more pro-israel

00:14:37.060 side trying to play that game at the very least it backfires spectacularly um McLemore has piled

00:14:43.360 on millions of instagram followers since this has happened it's kind of it's depressing but to be a

00:14:48.540 kind of rabid israelophobe in the music industry has become a bit of a cheat code it has elevated

00:14:53.360 completely talentless hacks whether we're talking about kneecap or bob villain or in this case

00:14:58.680 macklemore has had a lot of success up until this point but you know off the back of some very ropey

00:15:03.360 music it gives them this new status it gives them the martyrdom that they were seeking all of that

00:15:07.620 kind of stuff i but at the same time there's been this retaliation now which feels much more vicious

00:15:13.220 and sinister towards Ed Sheeran.

00:15:16.200 If you go online, you see pictures of him, you know,

00:15:18.900 stained in blood, people speculating that because he went

00:15:21.740 to a Shabbat dinner once, he's been got out.

00:15:23.840 I mean, all of this has gotten very, very ugly.

00:15:26.280 And it shows that if there's any kind of conformism 1.00

00:15:28.420 at play here, it's on the pro-Palestine side. 0.95

00:15:31.000 They're the ones who are trying to enforce 0.70

00:15:32.240 the kind of ideological purity tests.

00:15:36.080 And I never thought I'd say this, but I'm very much

00:15:38.460 team Ed Sheeran.

00:15:39.080 I do quite feel sorry for him, really, not least because

00:15:42.160 partly because of the sort of act he is and partly because of the sort of bloat that he seems to be

00:15:46.060 he's just not really built for this era he kind of he puts in mind that kind of like hollister

00:15:50.860 wearing kind of gap year middle class lad who just wants everyone to get along and yet he finds

00:15:55.100 himself in the middle of the biggest culture war story potentially of the year so far i mean it's

00:15:59.440 kind of really sad developments but um i was one thing that struck me um i think we might have a

00:16:06.500 clip of this is um when paloma faith was oh yeah summoned on to channel four to discuss this because

00:16:12.520 you know when there's a big political controversy who else do you uh turn to and dean let's get this

00:16:17.240 clip up so people know what tom's talking about no exactly well i'm sure we've got what is wrong

00:16:22.540 with ed sheeran saying look i mean i i write love songs mostly my audience are often children i don't

00:16:30.300 that comment i don't like when he said that really upset me because there's so many children

00:16:36.060 in palestine that are faced with unimaginable things and shouldn't be so when he said that

00:16:43.540 i was like i say three palestines for my children every night i think children should be

00:16:48.060 incredible i don't i don't know about you but by the way can i just add one small detail tom

00:16:55.560 i'm operating from memory here but her children i believe are nine five and seven months so there's

00:17:02.000 a seven month old baby in her little cradle or his little cradle being free palestined by her

00:17:08.840 own mother can you imagine how proud paloma faith will be if her son's first words are free palestine

00:17:16.340 i mean that seems to be what you're trying to do

00:17:19.300 no exactly i mean i mean after i saw that clip and after i called social services i was quite

00:17:27.000 struck by just how deranged these people have become without realizing it and also the lack

00:17:34.560 of appreciation about how much kind of conformist cultural sway they now have that side of the

00:17:38.720 argument not paloma faith herself but necessarily um who incidentally is someone whose status i'm

00:17:44.340 constantly bemused by i've never once met a paloma faith fan or anyone who could actually name a song

00:17:48.660 by her i'm starting to get suspicious as to what you're in the wrong circle going on there yeah

00:17:52.980 but it is one of those things where i was a little bit confused but she also said in that interview

00:17:58.440 that ed sheeran is having to learn the hard way that being apolitical is itself a political stance

00:18:04.020 so i think what we're seeing here is it's essentially like silence is violence from the

00:18:07.660 blm days repackaged in the palestine argument and the end point of that argument is miserable

00:18:13.400 particularly for pop culture the idea that you there is no area of life even i say like a pop

00:18:18.520 concert that is primarily aimed at kids to that must not be turned into a lecture and this is

00:18:26.760 something that's been going on for some time of course whether it's Macklemore or anyone else if

00:18:29.760 they want to be political that's absolutely up to them no one's really stopping them but at the

00:18:33.560 same time I think the demand that everyone be political will just it's bad for popular culture

00:18:38.320 because it just ruins it for so many people who don't want politics to infect it and also I think

00:18:44.200 bad for politics it just reduces everything down to the level of like a easy to regurgitate

00:18:49.080 celebrity platitude and brings with it this very conformist culture so yeah as i said i never

00:18:54.920 thought i'd say this but team ed all the way on this one tom oh well i never thought i'd say this

00:19:01.560 i never thought i'd say this and please forgive me but i'm team winston completely on this one

00:19:07.560 i know i'm i'm just as shocked as you are mate and i feel like i'm gonna have to have a shower

00:19:14.280 afterwards but genuinely because why but no no genuinely because this is what is called in the

00:19:21.980 business a booking error if i was playing if i put on a gig in a church i wouldn't bring on

00:19:28.460 some kind of you know edgelord who's just gonna do 20 minutes of pedo gags it's because i'm right 0.97

00:19:35.720 here fucking because you know what the priest is going to get upset that's his lived experience but 0.97

00:19:42.960 you know but genuinely he learned this the hard way in all seriousness you can't do that if you've 0.99

00:19:52.460 got this show which is essentially a middle of the road pop-up with you know fairly i mean let's be

00:20:00.000 honest what ed sheeran is it's milquetoast tame love songs about how he loves you know you like

00:20:05.060 dancing with your missus or some bollocks like that why is this milk host come out and just stop

00:20:10.900 bringing on about palestine do you know what i never thought i'd stop i never thought i i don't

00:20:16.900 care about music as you all know sorry win but i don't but i saw a clip of where ed sheeran i don't

00:20:22.100 care about you on my twitter i'm not offended uh i saw a clip of ed sheeran this morning on my

00:20:29.780 twitter on his own playing with that what what is that machine called where you play a recorder and

00:20:35.060 yeah yeah and he's brilliant i mean he's brilliant it's genuinely amazing to watch he's a good

00:20:41.940 performer the music is good uh frankly he thinks he's milquetoast so yeah but the thing is this

00:20:48.020 milquetoast language i don't get it when it comes to music because it's not why does music have to

00:20:53.300 be like edgy some music is just pleasant to listen to and i imagine if you're a teenage girl ed ed

00:20:59.220 sheeran is what you want to listen to it's great he's very good at what he does i've actually got

00:21:02.980 got a bit of a long history of as an ed sheeran apologist because in a previous life as a music

00:21:07.000 journalist i gave his second album three stars in time out which is something i'm trying to live

00:21:10.860 down to this day because even though it's not for me per se it's something that he's very good at

00:21:15.680 what he does um and i didn't have the kind of quite strange career he's had where he's sort of

00:21:21.220 on the one hand trying to be damien rice but on the other hand kind of came through doing like

00:21:24.700 hooks for grime ms it's a very odd character but musically at the same time it works because he's

00:21:29.640 just a very talented songwriter if you're selling out nfl stadiums you're probably quite good at

00:21:35.340 what you do you're doing something right but this is why i feel sorry for him because he's not of

00:21:39.180 the sort of you know omni cause mold he's somebody who just wants to have a good time and play to

00:21:45.520 audiences and hope that everyone can kind of get along um and yet he's unfortunately just still

00:21:50.300 been frog marched into the culture war and that's the bit that i think is really quite unfortunate

00:21:54.200 but that's the point tom if you want everyone to get along and have a nice time then you don't

00:21:59.160 book this lad i mean dean bring up please uh the bbc story now admittedly this is from 2014

00:22:07.080 but and he said he didn't say he didn't know that it was anti-semitic i mean

00:22:12.880 what was his cover story it was like i think he claims that he just

00:22:21.340 stuck the wig on wasn't really thinking about it stuck the nose on wasn't really thinking about it

00:22:26.720 Oh, I didn't realise what this was.

00:22:29.420 No, I said the N-word many, many times,

00:22:32.420 but I didn't know it was racist.

00:22:35.340 I thought it was a term.

00:22:36.440 A lot has been said about IQ in Gaza.

00:22:41.560 There's some reports that it's as low as 68 average IQ,

00:22:45.200 but we don't talk about the average IQ

00:22:46.800 of these pro-pally supporters in the West.

00:22:49.800 If you don't realise that that's anti-Semitic, 1.00

00:22:52.620 you're pretty dumb. 1.00

00:22:53.680 I mean, that's pretty astonishing. 1.00

00:22:55.060 Do you reckon that's got something to do with the ginger thing?

00:22:56.720 I'm just noticing. 0.98

00:23:00.400 It's all in the James. 0.99

00:23:01.160 Is Paloma faith a ginger? 1.00

00:23:03.540 Let's get Nathan Kofnus back on the show to talk about gingers. 0.97

00:23:09.060 He should be like a correspondent for all of these questions.

00:23:12.380 Go on, last word on this before we move on.

00:23:16.840 Tom, you said that no one's being political,

00:23:18.820 and there's two little points here,

00:23:20.140 which I think are important for this story.

00:23:22.280 They are, and Kraft is saying that he can't be political.

00:23:25.580 They don't like what he's saying.

00:23:26.720 saying it's because it's anti-semitic but it is it is political speech that's being shut down here

00:23:31.600 there's a question about free speech i think which look this is the private sphere it's not

00:23:36.000 the public sphere so this is not a first amendment issue but just as with x twitter there was a

00:23:41.600 conversation about it's you know it's a private company but it is the public square our stadia

00:23:46.480 the public square there's there's a question there and then the other thing which i think

00:23:50.400 important is important here is craft's behavior and the machina group in nixing macklemore gives

00:23:57.760 the impression to those people on the other side that the zionist lobby are in fact in control are

00:24:04.160 in fact controlling america and this is a big i think a big mistake from craft is that they have

00:24:11.760 played into in the long culture war you're playing out here they they've handed over a little victory

00:24:17.520 to the other side who can now say that israel's control the world and i so i think it was a

00:24:22.400 misplay doing this they should have thought about it in advance all right moving on uh to the story

00:24:29.160 about how we're all about to die which is always a cheery one and uh people enjoy uh winston tell

00:24:35.000 us about everything that's been happening in the world of ai this week there have been several

00:24:39.200 people who work for big ai companies coming out and basically saying there's a x percent chance

00:24:45.820 this will kill us all so this all starts with jacob coxson an absolute neat a rationalist

00:24:55.420 british researcher who wasn't working very long in ai he was a few years at open ai then a few

00:25:02.900 months at anthropic and he released a mega viral x post that said amongst other things

00:25:12.040 and i think dean can throw up the the asset here that they're racing to self-improving

00:25:20.260 super intelligence was gambling with our lives that's open ai and anthropic gambling with our

00:25:25.300 lives and that people inside on the inside earnestly believe ai could kill us by the end

00:25:31.700 of the decade and also and this is important thing that the people privately working at these

00:25:40.060 AR companies actually believe extinction is very potable, but publicly are like, no, full steam

00:25:47.880 ahead. So that's what that sort of was how this whole saga kicked off. Then he also said Anthropic

00:25:57.940 takes the risk seriously, but won't slow down in case a rival doesn't. So that's the other thing.

00:26:01.960 So you've got this race between this fear that if you slow down, China are going to get ahead or

00:26:08.760 indeed one of the AI, other AI models are going to go ahead. Then the big headline sentence that's

00:26:14.660 been doing the rounds was by Anthropik's alignment lead called Evan Hubinger, who said there's a 10%

00:26:21.620 chance of human extinction in the next 10 years. That's the big sort of headline thing that everyone

00:26:28.920 got super worried about. So that's the part of part one of the story. Now there's a little bit

00:26:34.740 of a conspiracy theory here because before this unknown neek coxson came out he's also a rationalist

00:26:41.340 uh effective altruist which we need to come back to because i i cannot the only group of people

00:26:47.300 other than that i hate more than gingers apart from ed sheeran is effective altruists but we'll

00:26:53.160 have to come back to that it's important is uh so the wall street journal actually had come out

00:26:58.480 with an article that came out before the tweet of this unknown nick so there's a sense that that

00:27:04.840 maybe there was some sort of conspiracy here but then anthropic put out a threat report

00:27:11.420 and in that threat report as well as saying there are five cases of unarmed scientists using clawed

00:27:19.200 to make by unnamed i should say scientists using clawed to make biological weapons it is also the

00:27:25.640 case that the houthis were using the weapons in the gulf now this is where i got sort of paused

00:27:34.360 before i'm thinking wow the houthis are are using ai to sort of kind of create software and engineers

00:27:43.460 and i've been using ai to make memes and that's why i was like what what am i sort of it's kind

00:27:51.480 of thrown me out a bit like what am i doing with my life i sat from my laptop these guys are out

00:27:55.500 they're doing something doing something you know trying to advance their stuff

00:27:59.120 you're making memes you could have been shutting down the trail from us mate

00:28:02.000 exactly but it was also the case that iran have been using them uh in in the in the iran have

00:28:11.320 been using iran linked operators using claude during the iran war china have also been using

00:28:17.340 them. But crucially, China have been using Clawed and within their own shell AI companies. So it

00:28:25.920 was actually American AI that they're dressing up as Chinese AI. So that was another part of the 0.71

00:28:33.080 report. And there's also reports of Russian drone swarm software being run through Clawed.

00:28:43.060 So that's the next part of the story. Then we have Dario, the Anthropic CEO, come out and say, 0.66

00:28:52.960 we need a one world government. And so we've got an asset here.

00:29:00.260 It seems like the fate of humanity is at risk. How much personal responsibility do you feel

00:29:06.100 about where we are going?

00:29:07.460 So, you know, look, my view here is it has always been very strange that this technology is being built by a private company.

00:29:18.240 People ask me that question all the time.

00:29:19.940 Why isn't this being built by government?

00:29:21.800 And the strangest thing about it is I agree with them.

00:29:24.700 I'm uncomfortable.

00:29:25.740 Would you be willing to give up the technology to the government?

00:29:28.800 To the right combination of governments.

00:29:31.700 So the worry I have.

00:29:32.780 You're willing to hand over this company.

00:29:34.680 I am concerned that one single government could abuse this technology just as easily as a single company could.

00:29:42.720 But I think a combination of democratically elected governments, I don't know about handing over,

00:29:50.640 but some kind of oversight, some kind of joint governance.

00:29:55.320 so you have there this speak of a one world government now you might remember Peter Thiel

00:30:08.420 saying one world government is the antichrist it's certainly my idea of of what an antichrist

00:30:14.100 might look like this is the kind of the communist end game I'm not a fan of this it's not a

00:30:19.820 coincidence I think that the likes of Bernie Sanders who I'm sure 10 minutes ago never heard

00:30:24.860 of sort of the AI frontier, are also saying that we need to close this down. It's more dangerous

00:30:29.820 than nuclear. That's it. He actually said that. It's the same people who think that there's a

00:30:34.440 climate apocalypse coming and they need to sort of take away our powers, you know, it's collective

00:30:38.660 action problem. So they're all taking the side of like, we need the one world government.

00:30:44.040 And by the way, Elon Musk says Dario is right. Altman says that we need to pace the frontier.

00:30:49.640 here. But there's also been pushback. Navidia's Janssen Wang praised Coxson but said that he

00:30:57.920 doesn't agree with the forecast of extinction. And so there's a bit of a split here, not

00:31:05.000 least with Trump. Now, this is an absolutely hilarious tweet, so I hope we can read it

00:31:12.020 together. The only control of guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart high IQ president.

00:31:21.940 The USA has that in spades. The Trump administration has stopped AI people from doing bad or

00:31:29.500 potentially bad things like Dario, who is now pretending to be a perfect little angel,

00:31:34.860 and we will continue to do so. We already have tremendous criminal and regulatory power over

00:31:39.560 these companies there is a sick conspiracy going on against ai and data centers and the only one 0.93

00:31:45.880 that is happy about it is china whoever wins ai wins we are leading china and all others will

00:31:52.120 continue to do so conspiracy theorists treasonists traitors and leakers beware thank you for your

00:31:58.040 attention to this matter president donald j trump so absolutely classic i mean this guy is just a

00:32:03.640 comedy legend as far as i can stand and uh so that you see the split there so there's the kind

00:32:09.080 of the the doomers think that we've got extinction on the uh near horizon and the the other side is

00:32:16.360 if you if you slack then china will take the lead and that's basically the slit the split there now

00:32:23.880 just to add because obviously i talk about the houthis there's another thing that's come up here

00:32:27.240 is this the hugging face intrusion and this happened back in july but the it was an internal

00:32:33.320 open ai cyber security test and hundreds of ai agents escaped a supposed sandbox reached the

00:32:40.120 internet and then actually committed a felony so if it had been humans had done it it would

00:32:44.840 have been a felony and they they um released uh the hacks a lot of sort of uh private uh

00:32:52.520 information and so it basically gave everyone a real scare that they're now working on their

00:33:01.240 own accord these ai agents so that's kind of what is a bit that this hugging face intrusion has been

00:33:07.320 a big scaring point for a lot of people so i'll let you jump in because i've been talking a long

00:33:12.780 a long time i've done my best to to lay out what i think has been quite a complicated

00:33:18.140 unfolding of events now you gave us lots of detail let me just reground the conversation

00:33:22.620 in the central premise which is the concern is that once ai becomes agi particularly artificial

00:33:30.480 generalized intelligence at that point we've effectively created a being that is smarter than

00:33:37.920 us and if we look at the history of this planet and look at the different species that have

00:33:43.000 inhabited it particularly with the evolution of various uh types of humans that we now have

00:33:52.500 the smarter ones always come out on top and they basically do what we've done homo sapiens have

00:33:57.660 done to the planet and other species on it which is we subjugate them to our own needs and purposes

00:34:03.260 and uh one of the things that is a concern with all of this and the reason that the the both the

00:34:11.340 heads of the AI companies and everyone else who's talking about this is talking about it is

00:34:16.180 it is now very close. I mean, I was looking at the cal sheet odds for when a company is likely to

00:34:24.220 achieve AGI. And we're basically saying, according to this, that within the next year and a half,

00:34:31.220 by January 1st, 2028, the odds are 67% according to the cal sheet markets. So this is not some

00:34:39.440 distant remote possibility. We are talking about this being on the cusp of AGI, artificialized

00:34:47.420 general intelligence, where it can think for itself, combined with the evolution of robotics,

00:34:53.860 which is somewhat further behind. So you not only have the brain now being independent species,

00:35:00.200 effectively, but it then has the physical embodiment through robots, which are also coming.

00:35:05.100 And at that point, you know, Donald Trump, his tweet, in my opinion, lays out the doomerous case in all its perfection, which is people in different countries see AI as a way to win.

00:35:19.220 And therefore, there is no way to stop the runaway development of AGI because each country is incentivized to pursue its own interest.

00:35:26.880 And unless there is some sort of global control architecture or at least some sort of, you know, the thing that we had with nuclear weapons, but the thing is with nuclear weapons, they're not autonomous. They couldn't launch themselves. This is something else entirely. Unless you have some level of global coordination, this will happen. And the risk to humanity is devastatingly significant.

00:35:52.420 It may not be 100%.

00:35:54.400 It may not be 50%.

00:35:56.020 It may just be a lowly 10%.

00:35:58.280 But 10% probability events happen in each of our lives on a daily basis 50 times.

00:36:03.920 You go outside of your house today, you will experience a sequence of 10% probability events

00:36:09.560 on a number of occasions in one day, right? 0.98

00:36:13.220 So to say that this risk is not serious, I think would be very, very foolish. 0.93

00:36:18.700 This is extremely serious, in my opinion.

00:36:22.420 yeah but so the problem of that argument is that uh firstly all of these american ai companies

00:36:30.900 have the power themselves already to regulate so if they are really so concerned then do the right

00:36:38.980 thing just stop going ahead of this put in the right no but but this is their argument though

00:36:44.660 is if we don't someone worse than us will and they're right yep but the problem with the the

00:36:50.820 world government regulation argument which is the same we've had with the un with all these

00:36:56.180 international bodies is that they're hijacked by the western enemies anyway so you you i agree you 0.92

00:37:02.580 look look at how at the sort of iran and russia and china always working and conspiring against

00:37:09.780 the west in those groups anyway you can't have a one world uh i'm not advocating for one world

00:37:15.060 government i'm not advocating for government i know and some some of them are but even if you

00:37:20.180 If you listen to Dario Amadei, he was talking about the democratic nations, so like an AI

00:37:25.420 NATO, basically, which puts us in a situation of a standoff with China, in which we already

00:37:30.400 are anyway.

00:37:32.060 But that's just the groundwork of the conversation.

00:37:36.420 Tom Francis, feel free to jump in.

00:37:38.680 Well, I suppose there's two things here which maybe need to be disaggregated a little bit,

00:37:44.180 of which is whether or not the AI revolution is going to pose the sort of level of threat

00:37:51.000 that's currently being talked about. I try to be a sort of optimist about technology,

00:37:55.280 but where this issue is concerned, they're really not making it easy. Of course, we have a history,

00:38:00.760 a rich history of panics about technological developments, doomsday predictions about whether

00:38:06.200 it was something as significant as nuclear weapons or something is relatively less threatening,

00:38:11.280 it would seem in theory is the rise of the internet has always been met with these kinds

00:38:15.000 of prognostications that being said as you mentioned there Constantine there is a couple

00:38:19.220 of things which make this very very different one of which is previous conversations about the idea

00:38:22.740 of something like nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands obviously applies here I mean it

00:38:27.000 would be funny going back to what Winston was saying if the twist was that when people said

00:38:30.360 that the Houthis and China and Russia were using AI they were using it to make memes but I doubt

00:38:34.780 that will be the case but so there is the issue of them it falling into the wrong hands or being

00:38:39.680 developed by the wrong people but then there's also this question of agi where what if the wrong

00:38:44.480 hands of the ai itself what if it becomes a malign actor an agent it doesn't have to tom i'm sorry to

00:38:51.560 interrupt but i think it's worth adding it does not have to become a malign actor this is the one

00:38:57.580 thing that people don't understand all it has to do is develop a will of its own and a survival

00:39:04.240 instinct of its own and in that situation and look i i i'm an absolute science science fiction

00:39:10.220 nerd i read all the books when i was a kid the reality is an ai that is designed to care for

00:39:17.280 humanity could destroy humanity by caring about it or could subjugate humanity by caring about it

00:39:24.500 so it could destroy humanity by realizing that humanity is incapable of living at peace with

00:39:29.580 itself it's just a bunch of warring tribes so you know the best way to save humanity is to destroy

00:39:34.320 humanity or it could just say you know what uh actually the best thing for humanity would be to

00:39:40.620 camp the population at a certain level which is super sustainable it means that the plan there's

00:39:45.380 no runaway this and no runaway that and it's been fed all this bullshit about runaway climate change

00:39:50.460 and all this other stuff which it has right that's where it's getting its information from

00:39:53.580 So what's the best thing to do? Let's sterilize everyone. Or I could give you a thousand scenarios where a well-intentioned superintelligence strips us of agency or kills us all, not because it's malevolent or anything like that, but simply because it is more powerful than us.

00:40:13.440 of course and like malign in effect if not in intention and the idea that it could be a sort

00:40:18.480 of benevolent it could come to consider itself almost as a sort of benevolent despot who knows

00:40:23.220 best and will impose that on the uh they understand that argument i suppose the difficulty is and

00:40:28.960 maybe it is a kind of intractable problem it certainly feels like it at the moment is what

00:40:32.040 do you do about it uh because of the fact that um as we saw laid out in the clip there there's

00:40:37.280 the question of just allowing these corporations to do as they will is obviously insufficient

00:40:43.400 similarly the idea that there would be some kind of international accord either smacks of a certain

00:40:48.800 potential for authoritarianism but on the other hand just whether or not it will actually work

00:40:52.620 whether or not this is going to be another case as we've already gestured to the countries that

00:40:56.600 we're most concerned about um having their hands on this technology or developing this technology

00:41:00.920 just completely ignoring it i mean as even going back to nuclear weapons the iran experience proves

00:41:05.560 that you can cut international agreements it doesn't mean that they're going to be stuck to

00:41:09.220 particularly when you're dealing with states such as the islamic republic so that's a huge problem 0.96

00:41:14.300 and there's also just how lurking in the behind all of this it's been a thread in our conversation 0.84

00:41:17.880 anyway is just the potential thought like authoritarianism of different flavors you know

00:41:22.320 whether or not that's the ai itself or probably more likely in the near term states using this

00:41:28.340 technology on it to a level that would unlock a level of sort of surveillance authoritarianism

00:41:33.180 that previously wouldn't be possible um you know there was always kind of natural limits on what

00:41:37.800 say a government could do by dint of the sheer technology you know i remember um being discussed

00:41:43.400 about in the pre-internet age there's only so many kind of phone lines you can tap as a kind

00:41:47.720 of physical exercise you don't get to the digital age edward snowden and the ability that say the

00:41:52.760 nsa might have to be able to tap into a particular phone but there's still you can't look at all of

00:41:57.640 that data all the time you know it's something that might be sat there ready to be accessible

00:42:02.600 but you're not going to be able to process it and look at it on a scale,

00:42:08.120 whereas AI presents that capability.

00:42:10.760 So the thing that I'm kind of, at least in the immediate term,

00:42:14.540 the only thing that I think might pull us back from the brink

00:42:16.820 is just whether or not this technology isn't going to develop

00:42:20.260 to the speed that its boosters or even the doom mongers suggest that it might do.

00:42:23.740 Because otherwise, it just leaves so many big questions,

00:42:26.660 which without wanting to be on the fence about things,

00:42:28.780 it's very difficult to see where the way through would be

00:42:31.440 if these predictions could turn out to be true.

00:42:36.720 So there is a part of me that goes,

00:42:39.900 and maybe this is a cynical part of me,

00:42:41.780 that just goes,

00:42:42.700 is this just the greatest marketing ploy of all time?

00:42:47.420 Do you know what I mean?

00:42:48.360 Like the way that it's presented,

00:42:50.260 the way that it's spoken about,

00:42:52.080 because I was in a cigar bar

00:42:54.240 and I was talking to a guy

00:42:55.820 who is an expert in quantum computing.

00:42:59.080 And he was saying to me that whilst AI

00:43:01.080 is very powerful, AI is the software, and quantum computing is the hardware. And I was asking him,

00:43:08.460 so why is it important? He said, well, I'll tell you one thing. When quantum computing happens,

00:43:12.960 which could be anywhere between a year and a half to two years, it will effectively make

00:43:17.980 encryption obsolete. Because encryption, data that has been heavily encrypted now takes around 50

00:43:25.740 years to decode. With quantum computing, it will take five minutes. It will also, as a result of

00:43:31.820 that, make AI far more powerful. So he goes, whilst everyone's focusing on AI, this is a thing that

00:43:38.240 we're actually really not talking about. And we are in an arms race, a technological arms race.

00:43:45.320 Everybody talks about the AI arms race, but we are in a technological arms race with China, 0.91

00:43:50.560 Because the first people to have this kind of technology, they automatically have a one-up on them. 0.88

00:43:58.560 So I was saying, well, with quantum computing, what do you mean?

00:44:01.140 He goes, well, think about cyber attacks.

00:44:03.480 You're probably not going to go after financial systems.

00:44:05.860 But what you are going to do is you're going to go after institutions that are very data heavy but have very weak security.

00:44:16.520 For example, hospitals.

00:44:18.400 Hospitals have a wealth of data.

00:44:20.860 But as we all know, particularly if you look at the NHS, they run on antiquated systems, antiquated firewalls, all the rest of it.

00:44:27.940 And that is a literal mine of information.

00:44:30.460 So why wouldn't you attack that type of institution?

00:44:34.860 So I think whilst AI is the thing that we're talking about, there is a whole other technological arms race that we're simply not focusing on because we simply don't have the bandwidth to do so.

00:44:46.360 yeah i mean that's a good point but i think we have to just come back to the difference here

00:44:52.120 if quantum computing a you said yourself it will empower ai but more than that if it's a thing that

00:44:58.200 humans control yes powerful weapons in the hands of humans that are scared and if they're the wrong

00:45:03.900 humans scary and if they're the wrong humans they're really really bad they're nonetheless

00:45:09.280 controlled by humans the difference with agi and the risk to humanity that we're talking about here

00:45:15.920 is we are creating a super intelligence which will eventually become embodied that will be

00:45:21.840 smarter and more powerful than the collective smartness and power of humanity and that and i

00:45:28.720 think by the way the reason no one is sort of not no one talks about it but the reason very few

00:45:33.280 people talk about it is the reason that tom said which is it's one of those things that we actually

00:45:38.160 have not there's clearly nothing we can do about it basically at this point um and and i think

00:45:44.640 that's the reason that this you know every time we talk about ai and trigonometry we're like

00:45:49.760 no one's going to watch this but we got to talk about anyway because people should understand

00:45:53.440 what's happening most people think ai at the moment is that model they tried three years ago

00:45:59.280 where they tried to look up the facts about something they know and it was quite wrong

00:46:03.280 and they think that's what ai is they most people do not understand what's going on they also by the

00:46:08.320 way don't understand the psychology and the mentality of many of the people who are developing

00:46:12.080 the stuff a lot of whom uh are not actually thinking about the consequences of what they're

00:46:17.520 doing in nearly the detail that daryama day seems to be a lot of them just think they're they're

00:46:22.720 god and they they've they've they've caught this moment in which they get to glorify themselves and

00:46:28.080 and write their name in history so um i i actually personally this has been very beneficial to my

00:46:35.280 mental well-being because i actually have completely accepted that there's a very strong

00:46:39.840 chance we only have x years left and so i'm just living my life as best i can in terms of you know

00:46:46.400 making sure i spend i'm present with my family i spend time with them etc uh because i genuinely

00:46:52.160 think this is a very very real risk and people are not taking it seriously enough

00:46:58.720 wow so mega duma i'm not even more duma than i i'm not a duma that's the most duma argument i've

00:47:07.440 heard even more than any anything and it's not i'm not a duma i'm a realist and if if the world

00:47:12.800 is about to end and there's nothing we can do about it the best thing you can do is live the

00:47:17.920 best version of your life that you possibly can which by the way just i'll just say this was

00:47:23.200 always true anyway because your life was going to be over at some point anyway and you might as well

00:47:28.560 exactly like that so so it's just obviously i don't know what's about to happen you make a

00:47:36.640 a pretty solid argument there but i will say that basically we humankind always has these moments

00:47:42.800 where we think the world is about to end i had this moment a thousand years ago at the turn of

00:47:48.240 the first millennium everyone thought it's going to end we have this all of the climate hysteria

00:47:55.120 the world was supposed to end six years ago and you know you can lay it out like you did and you're

00:48:00.320 in this position where well better to be safe then if that's the argument and then you end up giving

00:48:05.440 your power to someone else you're saying i'm not giving my power to anyone but you're saying it's

00:48:10.480 better that humans have the power and we regulate it than that the the the agi gets ahead and it's

00:48:17.920 sort of self-recursive improvement and all of this stuff and it's in control it's making so it has 0.66

00:48:22.080 its own will it has its own survival modes but i'm not i mean i'm not even sure that the human has

00:48:28.000 the the the better side all of the people they're proposing be in charge they're all effective

00:48:32.240 altruists one of them this morning her name was beth barnes i mean i saw this this morning

00:48:37.840 she's the same person that anthropic want to be regulating ai she is also saying that uh

00:48:44.720 closed borders is immoral so if you're if you're taking the duma position i'm taking the it's duma

00:48:51.840 duma it's lose lose it's either you have actual doom or you have people in charge making decisions

00:48:58.000 who have just got twisted morality and end up suppressing us and you have the totalitarian

00:49:04.080 regime somehow infringing on our rights um just in in the name of safety and in the name of

00:49:10.320 protecting us so that's why i'm my instinct is to be uh to kind of reject the doom a little bit but

00:49:16.480 maybe that's maybe that's but you're not rejecting the doom you're just saying we shouldn't try to

00:49:20.720 have world government which i agree with uh but you're not rejecting you're not countering my

00:49:25.360 argument about what happens when we have agi right no i'm not no yeah so actually you agree with me

00:49:34.720 about the likely outcome of all of this you just don't want world government which i don't either

00:49:40.640 what i'm saying is we don't have a way to stop this in my opinion um but i don't agree i don't

00:49:47.280 agree that there's the end of the world i i i don't understand the world extent of humanity

00:49:52.160 being in charge and that may mean we get to live on in some capacity uh but that doesn't mean that

00:49:58.880 yeah okay i reject this is the same argument i've heard from environmentalists forever i it maybe it

00:50:05.040 is maybe it is uh but this is a difference though you've got to understand the difference right

00:50:11.920 if you said to me the world's going to end in six years because of climate change i could say well

00:50:16.400 here are the reasons why it won't when i say the world could end in 10 years because of ai

00:50:21.040 humanity could end or be subjugated you don't have a counter argument that's the difference if i say

00:50:26.080 to you don't walk down a street in central london at nine in the morning because you'll be killed

00:50:31.680 you could say well that's nonsense but walking down that same street at 3 a.m in the morning

00:50:37.120 might get you stabbed or might get you mugged or might get you attacked so no well same

00:50:43.360 could be right no because your argument is somewhat hypothetical although we do have

00:50:48.080 it's not apples of we have examples of ai acting on that with their own on their own accord but we

00:50:55.120 haven't got examples where they're subjugating humans suddenly we haven't because it's not agi

00:50:59.840 yet yeah but we don't know that when it is agi that it definitely will do that we don't know 0.72

00:51:05.440 that it definitely will do that except every species that has the power to subjugate or pray

00:51:10.400 on other species in the history of this planet does that if it can it's not a species it is a

00:51:16.480 a species you're creating a thing that thinks and moves by itself that is a species

00:51:21.660 okay well i guess i guess i'm uh i don't know i i don't you know

00:51:31.220 that's what i'm talking about anyway on that happy note uh let's move on to our final story

00:51:37.080 uh which is uh we're gonna have to be fairly quick about it because we're running uh low on time and

00:51:43.760 this is the story of the migrant camp uh in a small village in england tom take it away

00:51:50.800 no it's a remarkable story this and this is the tiny village of piddington in oxfordshire population

00:51:56.080 about 350 which earlier this year was confronted by the fact that this military barracks in nearby

00:52:03.200 vista was going to receive north of 1200 illegal migrants the residents of piddington did not take

00:52:12.000 particularly kindly to this development and they have now held a vote to secede from the

00:52:17.200 united kingdom um it passed overwhelmingly they've actually redubbed themselves the principality

00:52:22.960 of piddington they haven't quite got to the point where they're you know erecting border

00:52:26.320 posts and season a post office but it's probably only a matter of time um and it's become the

00:52:30.960 latest backlash to the obviously the ongoing small boats crisis but i think in particular

00:52:37.040 Andy Burnham's attempt to try to just spread the problem around the country. He said rightly that 1.00

00:52:43.720 the migrant hotels and the HMOs were disproportionately in poor and working class 1.00

00:52:47.840 areas because the accommodation is cheaper there and part of his solution seemingly has been to

00:52:52.460 impose this issue on more well-to-do middle-class areas of which Pillington certainly is one. I think

00:52:58.260 what this has shown is that whereas up till now the more affluent sections of society haven't been

00:53:03.340 as exercised by the issue of illegal migration the only thing that required to change that was it

00:53:07.960 actually affecting their lives directly and whilst Piddington is a tiny place um and it's not

00:53:13.340 necessarily you know indicative of how the entire country is going to sway I think it shows that the

00:53:18.240 longer this crisis goes on the more intent the government is on just kind of sharing the problem

00:53:23.220 out more evenly the more opposition it's going to generate and I think also speaks finally to

00:53:29.240 one slightly underappreciated thing in our whole migration and certainly illegal migration

00:53:33.380 discussion is that this isn't really like a 50 50 issue it's not as if you've got half of the

00:53:38.420 country thinks it's all fine and half of the country who thinks it's terrible it's something

00:53:43.520 like 75 percent of people when polled will say that they're concerned about illegal migration

00:53:48.080 and also if you look at the attitudes towards what should be done about the issue it's really

00:53:53.000 hardening there was something in the survey in the times the other week which said that

00:53:56.160 57 percent of people now would support detention upon arrival for illegal migrants slash asylum

00:54:02.640 seekers depending on your particular persuasion so yeah it's the roar of the waitrose mums um it's

00:54:07.880 the acceptable if we're being honest in as far as the mainstream media concerned backlash against

00:54:12.620 illegal migration i can't be the only one who was struck that they haven't been called far-right

00:54:16.440 thugs to the same degree that other migrant hotel protesters and so on have been called but i think

00:54:21.640 it's it's it's proof that this issue isn't going anywhere even as the numbers come down i think

00:54:26.620 people realize it's not going to zero and therefore there's a hell of a lot of more backlash to come

00:54:31.220 francis well one of the one of the things that i find interesting is uh you know andy burnham has

00:54:37.620 basically said you know that we all need to take our share of the illegal migrants and what that

00:54:43.980 effectively means is he's going to put them in communities which don't traditionally vote for

00:54:48.320 the Labour Party. What a coincidence. But if you, I mean, who would have thunk it? But the really

00:54:55.740 worrying thing is this. In nature, when you have vacuums, vacuums will get filled. What we have now

00:55:03.820 is a country where it can't protect its borders, where people feel that they are no longer able to

00:55:12.880 trust the government or the police to keep them safe. And that can only carry on for a certain

00:55:18.160 matter of time before people start taking matters into their own hands and I am very very very

00:55:26.940 concerned that we are going to see the rise of vigilante justice vigilante groups patrolling

00:55:32.740 the streets and vigilante groups patrolling our borders I really do think that this is inevitable

00:55:39.960 And I put the blame solely at the feet of our current government and also our previous government before, who, quite frankly, in my opinion, have not done sufficient in order to solve this crisis.

00:55:59.040 Yeah, sorry. I mean, Frankie, it's already happened. You're worried it's about to happen.

00:56:03.240 And Danny Tomo and the Patriot platform after their their protest down in Dover.

00:56:09.500 Sorry to interrupt. That's one instance, Winston. I'm talking about it happened nationwide.

00:56:15.680 Yeah, sure. But it's happening. It's already happening.

00:56:18.320 They are operating on a nationwide level. He's got groups and organizations up and down the country meetings.

00:56:24.880 And when the state fails to protect our borders and people lose faith in the faith in that, you know,

00:56:31.260 protection is the number one responsibility of the state. If they fail that basic task,

00:56:37.340 then little wonder that people will take it into their own hands. So I'm not,

00:56:46.300 the state needs to do that, government needs to do that. Burnham, you said Tom that 57% think they

00:56:51.660 should be, the British public should think that these people should be detained upon arrival.

00:56:57.260 they should never even set foot on British soil. They shouldn't be here. Asylum seeker is just a

00:57:06.140 euphemism. They're illegal migrants. They're all men. They're all military-aged men. I mean, 1.00

00:57:10.780 like 99%, you can see the images of them. They shouldn't be in this country. The fact is Burnham

00:57:18.940 doesn't have the courage to say, we're going to stop them even arriving here. I would go further.

00:57:25.420 I've argued to have a mind floating wall through the middle of the channel.

00:57:29.340 Now, the problem, I think, is that they're now really they're coming from as far away as Belgium to the east.

00:57:35.260 And even now, as we saw last week, they're being escorted by French officials.

00:57:45.140 I don't know what the border guards or whatever across the English Channel, as far away as Normandy.

00:57:51.320 So it does seem planned. Patrick Christus was just in Calais. It looks like the French are

00:57:58.120 actively trying to make this happen. They should never even set foot in this country. And until 1.00

00:58:03.780 that Overton window shifts, I mean, it's already been said on, let's say, the right,

00:58:09.480 but that Burnham can't say no, they should never be here. All of those people in detention centres,

00:58:14.680 get them on a plane and get them out of here. They all came here illegally. If you come here 1.00

00:58:19.220 illegally, you are a criminal. Get out of it. What was interesting is Francis and I had Dan 1.00

00:58:25.280 Hodges on trigonometry earlier this week, having a discussion about this very issue. And Dan is a

00:58:32.100 very articulate and reasonable sounding voice of the sort of Westminster consensus, which is

00:58:39.260 nothing can be done about this. Legally, it's a minefield. You can't, you know, you can't deal

00:58:44.720 with the french etc and what was interesting is uh we kind of uh i can't remember if it was uh

00:58:50.860 myself or francis but uh dan i thought made some really good points actually in that interview but

00:58:55.180 there was one moment that that really stood out for us which is uh when he said well so what are

00:59:01.020 you going to do in response invade france and that's when we were like hold on a second so if

00:59:06.140 we if we turn yeah i made the same point winston invading france is a traditional british pastime

00:59:11.880 but but more importantly than that the moment we tow a boat into their waters that's an invasion

00:59:20.840 yet when tens of thousands of people come in on boats into our country you're not allowed to call

00:59:25.880 that an invasion hello what's going on here some and so i just think and i remember actually when

00:59:32.360 we had kemi on the show when shortly after she became leader of the conservatives and she said

00:59:37.240 this thing we said why can't we just get the royal navy to tow these boats back or whatever and she

00:59:42.440 said well you know i've spoken to people in the navy and said they said there may be loss of life

00:59:47.160 and they said that's not what they signed up for i go hold on the royal navy's explicit purpose i

00:59:55.800 think is to sink boats i'm not saying we should treat migrant boats as hostile enemy and and

01:00:04.120 shoot at them necessarily well i'm not saying that i'm not saying we should do that but but

01:00:08.600 there is already loss of life yeah we've and i don't mean those dying on the boats rhiannon white 0.97

01:00:14.280 killed by one of these illegal migrants there's plenty of example wayne broadhurst there's loads

01:00:19.080 of examples yeah exactly but my point is is that i think in the westminster bubble there has to be

01:00:26.760 a massive attitude adjustment which will only come when as tom rightly says the mood about this in

01:00:33.160 the country hardens so in a way this is a crass thing to say and you know as you guys know i

01:00:38.840 covered the crowborough protest which only down the road for me about the camp there people change

01:00:44.760 their mind when their reality their day-to-day experience changes and so in some way even though

01:00:49.000 it's something that affects me and people around me i have to say long may this continue and i hope

01:00:53.640 there's one of these little camps in every village where everyone votes lib dem and green because 0.98

01:00:58.040 then at least these idiots will stop voting for parties that actually want this to continue 1.00

01:01:03.960 don't say that i'm surrounded by these idiots yeah mate i think this should be a giant camp 1.00

01:01:10.600 for migrants in the middle of crouch end so all you get to experience what the rest of us have 0.99

01:01:15.480 to deal with how am i going to get my overpriced pastries and coffee if i have to go borrow a 0.99

01:01:19.880 migrant camp maybe you're the deliverer is going to get a lot more cheap a lot cheaper and more 0.91

01:01:25.800 efficient it's gonna you're gonna get your latte delivered to your door well that's all right then 1.00

01:01:32.360 let's crack yeah he's happy on that no finally of agreement i'm sure all of these issues will

01:01:38.280 be discussed and debated on off the fence in the weeks to come uh thank you so much for

01:01:42.760 being here guys. And thank you all for watching and listening. We'll see you next week.

TRIGGERnometry - September 18, 2026

Ed Sheeran Gaza Controversy, AI Fears and Piddington Immigration Protest - Off the Fence

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