TRIGGERnometry - Geoff Norcott：＂Why I'm a Working Class Conservative＂

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissin and this is a show

00:00:40.280 for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant returning

00:00:45.720 guest this week is one of britain's only openly tory comedians jeff norcott welcome back to

00:00:51.640 trigonometry still out still proud when you said fascinating i thought he's gonna say fascist

00:00:57.440 they were the only people having fascist conversations with fascists anyway this might

00:01:02.840 be the last one before society sort of like concertinas because of the coronavirus what a

00:01:08.500 great word concertinas i don't know where it came from i went upstairs to the brain and the brain

00:01:12.860 went what are you doing why have you started with this and then it come up with an actually

00:01:16.760 needlessly complicated one but but yeah this could be when we're all in self-isolation watching this

00:01:21.680 this could be the last bit of like you know new content yeah it could be mate people could be

00:01:25.820 watching you from the bunker this could be it you know and then and then when future societies

00:01:30.480 that rebuild after the mad max dystopia that coronavirus will definitely be and we're not

00:01:36.520 getting slightly overreacting uh and then this will be it they'll judge culture by what we say

00:01:41.620 in this next hour well that's a lot of pressure on this episode but actually i was thinking back

00:01:45.780 to the last time we had you on the show and i remember just think how much has changed it's

00:01:49.520 been less than a year my opening question i think to you was your working class story what's that

00:01:55.240 all about well i think we've seen as i spit on you with my corona sorry that's what people normally

00:01:59.760 do from the left when they tell me i'm working class story they say you're a workout story and

00:02:03.760 then they spit in your face but anyway that's enough it was a nice loop yeah it just went

00:02:08.180 as it went over it had a pleasing sort of trajectory it was like a lot but anyway so

00:02:12.260 yeah just to say i love the fact that we're all hyper we're aware now of saliva have you noticed

00:02:16.260 that before it wouldn't even mention worth a mention now you like see it in slow motion well

00:02:20.760 see on the train coming down here like there's people coughing and that look you know like in

00:02:24.420 those alien films where where there's some sort of contagion and one person on the ship has got it

00:02:29.220 but they're trying to hide it yeah because they've got boils coming out on their skin yeah now i was

00:02:33.160 on i was on stage the other day in uh in bromsgrove and uh i had a couple of coughs come up just as

00:02:37.580 you do naturally but the stakes for for suppressing it felt so high do you know what i mean because

00:02:42.840 like there's the you know sort of several thousand people in front i mean there was only this would

00:02:49.320 be what's interesting right is if this band comes in and they say right there's there's a ban on

00:02:53.260 kind of gatherings

00:02:53.920 over 500 people

00:02:55.140 then it will really

00:02:56.040 show where people

00:02:56.800 are at in their

00:02:57.400 sort of touring

00:02:57.980 because I'll go

00:02:59.260 I'll be fine

00:03:00.020 I am comfortably

00:03:02.140 yes

00:03:03.020 haven't become

00:03:04.340 that successful yet

00:03:05.320 I'm unsuccessful

00:03:06.200 enough to deal

00:03:07.180 with the coronavirus

00:03:07.960 fantastic

00:03:08.740 no problem

00:03:08.980 not even anywhere

00:03:09.820 near 500 people

00:03:10.780 smashing it

00:03:11.480 anyway sorry

00:03:11.960 you were saying

00:03:12.360 about like

00:03:12.900 I was trying to

00:03:13.380 make a serious point

00:03:14.100 but that's gone

00:03:14.840 out of the window

00:03:15.300 with corona

00:03:15.780 but my point was

00:03:16.640 it's my British

00:03:17.120 kind of like

00:03:17.780 blitz spirit

00:03:18.380 yeah it is

00:03:19.500 roll out the barrel

00:03:21.180 but keep your

00:03:22.780 distance for now

00:03:23.820 is this how you

00:03:25.120 close the show Jeff

00:03:26.020 that is going to be

00:03:26.960 tonight

00:03:27.340 just have like

00:03:28.000 a little mask on

00:03:28.880 yeah

00:03:29.180 work for Michael Jackson

00:03:30.300 I'm opening for Jeff

00:03:31.180 tonight so it's going

00:03:31.980 to be me him

00:03:32.500 and three people

00:03:33.120 who still turn up

00:03:33.960 yeah I mean if the

00:03:34.480 audience are really

00:03:35.600 coughing you might

00:03:36.280 be doing the whole

00:03:36.780 show

00:03:37.060 and Jeff Norcon

00:03:38.460 I'll be going

00:03:38.880 just you mate

00:03:40.560 there'll just be

00:03:40.940 some stagehand

00:03:41.780 saying that he left

00:03:42.660 in one of those

00:03:44.260 outfits

00:03:44.500 he snuck out the door

00:03:45.520 you know those

00:03:46.260 outfits that you get

00:03:47.220 in E.T.

00:03:48.260 when the fellas

00:03:49.880 arrived

00:03:50.380 that'll be I'll come

00:03:51.420 out on stage like that

00:03:53.140 You know, for now, I think what I have is,

00:03:56.240 I was thinking about this the other day,

00:03:57.380 and this applies to politics, and it does apply to your point,

00:04:01.480 is I have a mixture of optimism and apathy

00:04:05.260 where I believe everything's going to be all right in the end

00:04:09.160 in almost every situation,

00:04:11.000 but that's also slightly born of the fact that I am true.

00:04:14.420 I'm apathetic enough to know I can't change things,

00:04:16.900 and in the situation where you can't change things,

00:04:19.040 you might as well be optimistic, right?

00:04:20.380 or if you're not going to do anything to change things.

00:04:22.760 There's no point getting upset about something

00:04:24.400 that you're not going to actively try

00:04:26.180 and orchestrate a different outcome.

00:04:27.920 So I'm going to call it optimism.

00:04:30.440 Have you ever thought about tweeting about it, though?

00:04:32.280 Because that can make a difference.

00:04:33.460 Well, tweeting, yeah.

00:04:35.580 The interesting thing about tweeting, right,

00:04:37.420 because I suppose we all come on to the culture war,

00:04:39.460 is I'm sort of thinking about why people still feel this need

00:04:42.340 to believe that it's some sort of source,

00:04:44.660 like a force for good or even change, right?

00:04:46.840 When all of the evidence repeated,

00:04:48.740 Every time the real public get a chance to have a vote on something, suggests that it's miles out.

00:04:53.240 And I was thinking, one, I think it's because of Me Too, where that was one of the few times where it was a genuinely impactful movement that was started simply on Twitter.

00:05:02.300 But that is very much the exception that proves the rule, isn't it?

00:05:05.160 I think people have gone, wow, this is what could always happen through Twitter.

00:05:08.600 Whereas actually what happened there was quite a useful way of women that had, you know, like sexual harassment or attacks or experiences to come together.

00:05:16.440 It made sense that that happened in Twitter, whereas all this other stuff, it just pisses away on the wind.

00:05:21.580 You think every day there's things that don't happen on Twitter where people are trying to generate a movement or a meme.

00:05:28.240 And, you know, the last election result was a great example.

00:05:30.820 We all sat there as, on the day, the usual thing that was happening among the left.

00:05:34.900 They were going, you know, I think it could happen, man.

00:05:37.700 I've seen reports of like seven people outside a polling station in Shoreditch, I think.

00:05:45.180 They're all baking their own rye bread.

00:05:46.600 I think it could happen.

00:05:47.460 And even I, even I, like with my views, was, oh, is Jeremy going to do it?

00:05:53.140 You know, have we got it horribly wrong?

00:05:55.240 And then, again, maybe like the 2017 election,

00:05:58.160 that was another exception that proved the rule.

00:06:00.840 And Twitter is like a mass gaslighting operation, isn't it?

00:06:03.800 Like you think that Twitter is real life and then you have an election

00:06:07.380 and you find out it really isn't.

00:06:08.700 Well, gaslighting is a good example of a word that is pretty much

00:06:11.440 only used on Twitter.

00:06:12.680 Like all comics will make that mistake if we'll go out.

00:06:15.260 And we'll say, hey, you're just gaslighting me

00:06:16.860 and you just feel like this figure in the room

00:06:18.260 where like 97% of people didn't know 0.99

00:06:20.440 what the fuck you were talking about. 0.99

00:06:22.020 Gaslighting is a Twitter word. 1.00

00:06:23.540 Gammon is the same.

00:06:24.500 Do you know Gammon is exactly the same?

00:06:25.440 Yeah, you know, I've used that about people

00:06:27.080 and I've used it in front of people

00:06:28.760 that would probably use that word 0.99

00:06:30.360 if they knew what it meant, if you know what I mean.

00:06:32.040 They'd probably find the word quite funny.

00:06:34.220 Gaslighting, you know, Gammon,

00:06:35.580 all of these words are kind of chattering classes words.

00:06:38.380 And when I say chattering classes, 0.97

00:06:39.720 I don't just mean from the left. 0.98

00:06:41.360 I mean all of us that are involved in this kind of heaving fucking ongoing 0.76

00:06:45.220 culture war online that just hasn't – it's like there's a country 0.71

00:06:49.460 and you know like you find out sometimes you hear that there's war in a country

00:06:52.660 and then you think, well, how did daily life go on?

00:06:55.240 And then you find out the war was only in this one bit.

00:06:58.620 Do you know what I mean?

00:06:59.300 Isn't that bit is called London?

00:07:00.680 That bit is with London, but yeah, just people are of that disposition

00:07:04.400 having those debates and that's how you end up, you know,

00:07:07.220 with, you know, a very large Tory majority.

00:07:11.180 All right, finally, we're back to my question.

00:07:13.440 Concentrate, boys.

00:07:14.820 It's all about my question.

00:07:16.180 So, I mean, the irony is that I asked you, like,

00:07:19.080 working-class Tory, that's a bit weird, isn't it?

00:07:21.020 What we find out, actually, I mean,

00:07:24.200 half the country is now, seemingly, right?

00:07:26.140 It seems to be.

00:07:27.060 You know, and the last set of polling figures is the,

00:07:29.020 you know, Tory vote, with these Westminster intentions, right,

00:07:33.080 where they poll, what would you vote

00:07:34.380 if there was another election right now? 0.99

00:07:35.680 I think most people vote, why the fuck are we having a number of elections? 0.94

00:07:38.320 But in theory, and it's gone up to 50%. 0.97

00:07:40.480 And actually, when you look at what's been happening in Labour

00:07:43.100 over quite a long period of time, this actually goes back a long way.

00:07:46.500 This goes back to, part of this is to do with how they perform in England.

00:07:50.960 The last time they won the popular vote in England was, I think, in 2001.

00:07:56.780 Labour, you're talking about?

00:07:57.700 Yeah, 2001.

00:07:58.640 So you think that's going back to the bit when it was good, right?

00:08:01.840 Well, from their point of view, or the bit where they were propped up

00:08:04.480 by Scotland or the Welsh vote.

00:08:06.680 So it's been an issue with particularly the working class in England

00:08:10.520 for some time.

00:08:11.680 But if it's any consolation to Labour,

00:08:13.620 they've won the moral victory every time, Geoff.

00:08:15.720 Oh, yeah.

00:08:16.180 Well, they've practically a one-party state

00:08:18.440 when it comes to since their inception.

00:08:21.060 They've been in power.

00:08:22.100 They've been in unbroken power ever since, what was it,

00:08:25.040 Nye Bevan invented the NHS,

00:08:27.960 which no one else was definitely thinking about.

00:08:30.780 I mean, it's not the hardest thing to invent, is it?

00:08:33.580 I mean, it's sort of like just going, oh, you know, it's health service that we have.

00:08:37.000 Like, it does feel like there could be a national version of it,

00:08:39.580 but I just can't put the words together.

00:08:42.220 And then Nye Bevan just had this eureka moment.

00:08:44.440 That is odd, the way that, because apparently Churchill was,

00:08:48.360 and, you know, there was a big mood at the time of lots of people thinking,

00:08:52.320 how can we have a health service that's national?

00:08:55.000 And Nye Bevan went, how about a national health service?

00:08:57.100 They went, genius.

00:08:58.780 Because they did what Steve Jobs did with the, you know, that Bill Burberry team?

00:09:01.800 where Steve Jobs just come and goes, 0.99

00:09:03.700 how about if we just put loads of shit on the phone? 0.98

00:09:07.620 Get your songs and your map. 0.99

00:09:09.920 No, I better than did that with the health service.

00:09:11.640 That is such a brilliant Bill Burr routine.

00:09:13.820 Old phone can't fit the new charger.

00:09:15.940 Is that your hero?

00:09:18.660 But anyway, are you happy in terms of,

00:09:22.740 do you feel like working class people

00:09:24.540 are really having their say and have been heard?

00:09:28.280 Well, yeah.

00:09:28.840 I mean, if you look at the Brexit vote,

00:09:31.200 I mean, they're like the, what is it, the CD2E demographic, which effectively covers the working class, was swinging towards the Tories from 2015 onwards.

00:09:41.380 And I think it's one of those things that people have tried to put sticking plasters over and now have realised that this is a fundamental and more longstanding migration.

00:09:49.380 What you had in this last election was perhaps some of the last bastions of people that you would have thought would have never done that, you know.

00:09:55.020 Because bear in mind, you already had ex-mining villages and towns going conservative in 2015 and 17.

00:10:01.440 Ashby, Ben Bradley, who's an MP for Mansfield, you know, that was an ex-mining town.

00:10:07.480 So some people were just crossing the Rubicon because they just don't feel that the Labour Party in its current guise really represents them.

00:10:16.780 And I know that like, you know, a lot of Labour politicians were saying, well, you know, our policies were very popular, you know.

00:10:22.640 But I think they were saying individually each policy was popular economically, right?

00:10:29.200 But did they ever do a survey of, do you want all these done right now, like in one parliament?

00:10:34.960 Because I think that's a separate thing, isn't it?

00:10:36.500 A manifesto is saying this is what we're going to do in the next five years.

00:10:39.380 But what they were polling was, would you like some of the water facilities to be made public again?

00:10:44.320 You know, would you like, you know, a rising corporation tax for the top earners?

00:10:49.100 What they never said was, do you think we should do this straight away?

00:10:51.740 because it's like moving house, isn't it?

00:10:53.600 If you was moving house with your missus or mister, right? 0.73

00:10:57.240 Well done, mate.

00:10:57.860 Well done.

00:10:58.400 2020.

00:10:59.040 Good work.

00:10:59.540 Men can date women.

00:11:00.400 Women can date men.

00:11:01.240 I was just covering that one.

00:11:04.180 But if you was moving house and you looked at loads of work

00:11:06.880 and then your partner would say to you, partner.

00:11:10.340 Sometimes liberals do think up good words.

00:11:12.840 But if they say, oh, we can do this, we can do that,

00:11:16.200 and we can knock out a kitchen and we can go through

00:11:18.080 and then we can dig up the garden, go, you know what?

00:11:20.440 Let's just not move.

00:11:21.740 Do you know what I mean? That sounds like a bit much.

00:11:23.380 And I think that maybe the electorate individually liked those policies

00:11:27.640 but collectively thought that they were a bit much for one term of office.

00:11:30.960 And also it's about realism.

00:11:32.380 Do you think all those things can be realistically done in one budget?

00:11:35.840 You can give away all that free stuff to people all at once.

00:11:38.520 It was double, wasn't it?

00:11:38.860 It was double the spending commitments of the previous manifesto,

00:11:42.660 which was also seen as fairly spendy.

00:11:45.080 Yeah, fairly spendy.

00:11:46.980 And then obviously it gets to the comedy point where they're just going,

00:11:49.900 free broadband. 0.98

00:11:50.380 And you go, that almost sounds like if you had like, if you were to back a socialist into a corner and just like almost make them do word association until they come up with the most stupid thing, that would be it. 0.98

00:12:03.240 Yeah. 0.97

00:12:03.320 Just go, free broadband, you know, like I blurted it out.

00:12:06.280 Didn't brief a lot of their campaign in, you know, sort of constituencies and, you know, the Parliamentary Labour Party.

00:12:13.020 They're just like, yeah, free broadband.

00:12:14.260 And it was almost like if you could think of a pledge or a promise

00:12:19.060 that was almost self-parodying, that would be it.

00:12:22.980 Free broadband.

00:12:23.740 Kids love broadband.

00:12:24.500 Make it free.

00:12:25.660 But what do you think the challenges that this conservative government

00:12:29.480 are going to face now?

00:12:30.920 Because as Johnson said, they've lent him the vote.

00:12:34.840 They've lent the party the vote.

00:12:36.800 What do they need to do?

00:12:37.400 Do you think that's true, first of all?

00:12:38.960 Because you've been a working-class Tory for many years.

00:12:43.020 But from the south, I do think that there is a difference.

00:12:45.280 The culturally ingrained opposition to the Tories is certainly greater

00:12:49.040 the further you go up north.

00:12:50.800 Not all of the north.

00:12:51.780 I mean, Yorkshire, a lot of parts of Yorkshire are fairly Tory and stuff.

00:12:54.820 But I think it is really important.

00:12:57.760 I think the first year is when the narrative will get set.

00:13:00.500 So that's why a lot of people on the left are immediately trying to pin

00:13:03.520 betrayal narratives on the Tories already,

00:13:06.220 because by the time the narrative is set in politics, it's quite early.

00:13:09.340 Like with Corbyn, his first eight weeks, he just turned up,

00:13:11.720 looked scruffy

00:13:12.640 and read out emails

00:13:13.400 and that

00:13:14.000 it felt like

00:13:15.080 he was always like

00:13:15.820 you know

00:13:16.040 punching back 0.95

00:13:16.660 a long way

00:13:17.200 from there

00:13:17.720 so I think

00:13:18.540 that they know

00:13:19.200 that they have to deliver

00:13:20.100 and that's why

00:13:20.600 you get them

00:13:21.040 drinking the Yorkshire tea

00:13:22.140 you know

00:13:23.280 the old AR Tories

00:13:24.460 I do think

00:13:26.300 there'll come a point

00:13:26.800 where they'll just

00:13:27.240 start speaking

00:13:27.860 in northern accents

00:13:28.580 as well

00:13:29.240 we had emergency

00:13:30.420 meeting the

00:13:31.180 corporate

00:13:31.540 and we agreed

00:13:33.940 that there was

00:13:34.460 trouble at Mill

00:13:35.360 and that we would

00:13:36.880 all speak

00:13:37.620 like Geoffrey Boycott

00:13:39.000 and they

00:13:40.840 you know

00:13:41.280 they're both

00:13:42.620 symbolic measures

00:13:43.700 in terms of having

00:13:44.740 Conservative Party

00:13:45.500 headquarters up north

00:13:46.500 you know

00:13:47.940 and maybe having

00:13:48.580 the Lords sit up north

00:13:49.660 I'm happy to put

00:13:50.740 the Lords on a

00:13:51.540 permanent tour

00:13:52.640 after that

00:13:53.220 just like the

00:13:55.060 England football team

00:13:55.880 when it was

00:13:56.240 Wembley Stadium

00:13:56.940 was getting redone

00:13:57.700 they could go on tour

00:13:58.520 yeah

00:13:58.920 yeah exactly

00:13:59.800 see if they still

00:14:00.480 want their Diems 0.99

00:14:01.380 once they get

00:14:02.860 outside Diem 25

00:14:03.840 because obviously

00:14:04.420 while Brexit

00:14:06.080 was an issue

00:14:06.740 the attendance rate

00:14:07.920 in the Lords

00:14:08.360 went up exponentially

00:14:09.400 suddenly

00:14:09.820 they were all

00:14:10.280 you know

00:14:10.480 wanted to exercise this parliamentary power that they had, you know.

00:14:13.900 But it took Brexit for them to do it.

00:14:15.520 So, frankly, as far as I'm concerned, send them to Morpeth.

00:14:18.880 No offence to the people of Morpeth,

00:14:20.600 but it always sounds like the grimmest town up north.

00:14:24.420 So it was offence to the people of Norpeth.

00:14:27.100 So going back to the question, though, what do you think they need to do?

00:14:31.520 What do you think they need to do if they're going to retain

00:14:33.260 this massive base that they've won?

00:14:35.060 Well, I think that one of the things is that what they've already done

00:14:37.820 is they've had a budget that was quite a sort of Blairite budget, really.

00:14:42.060 But it's also, I mean, it's already been skewed, isn't it?

00:14:44.220 Because they had the floods, right?

00:14:46.140 I mean, that almost seems like old news now.

00:14:47.780 But that really depressed economic activity up north.

00:14:51.560 And then immediately they've had coronavirus.

00:14:53.620 So what they've done is taken measures that are very much

00:14:58.060 sort of squarely focused in on people in the most vulnerable positions.

00:15:02.960 So that's the first step.

00:15:04.020 I think that budget the other day was a real win, a real win,

00:15:07.160 because obviously there was a number of levels in which it delivered.

00:15:09.760 Not least that when Rishi Sunak got the job,

00:15:12.980 a lot of people, these kind of weird, ironic, paradoxical racists on the left

00:15:16.660 that then say, oh, what, they just picked any old brown face

00:15:19.400 to step in instead of Saj.

00:15:21.020 I thought, yeah, wait and ruin his big day. 0.97

00:15:24.620 You're just there because you're brown, mate. 1.00

00:15:26.940 But actually, it turns out maybe they knew something.

00:15:29.540 Maybe Saj was given the nudge because this is an extremely talented performer. 0.50

00:15:35.300 That was an exceptional debut.

00:15:37.160 to do a budget

00:15:38.500 like after the floods

00:15:39.840 your first ever budget

00:15:40.840 and the coronavirus

00:15:41.960 and he's got to step up there

00:15:43.520 and just talk

00:15:44.720 I feel a bit nervous

00:15:46.060 for doing this

00:15:46.900 right

00:15:47.740 I get nervous for everything

00:15:49.000 but imagine if it was like

00:15:49.980 right you have to

00:15:50.560 the nation is teetering

00:15:51.920 on the brink of economic collapse

00:15:53.440 on you go son

00:15:54.920 you know

00:15:55.720 it's almost like

00:15:56.240 when they put an 18 year old out

00:15:57.640 you know

00:15:57.920 making his debut

00:15:58.520 for a football team

00:15:59.500 but yeah I think

00:16:01.340 he's got to pull one back

00:16:02.260 an extra time

00:16:02.840 yeah

00:16:03.060 yeah but he did a great job

00:16:04.700 but do you think

00:16:05.580 are you

00:16:06.260 I don't know whether you're fiscally conservative or not.

00:16:09.820 Are you not concerned about the fact

00:16:11.320 that we just seem to be spunking money

00:16:13.000 when we owe more than we've ever owed?

00:16:15.000 Well, there's pragmatism as well.

00:16:16.500 So that's part of the conservative sort of...

00:16:18.240 I mean, when it's obvious that you need to spend money,

00:16:20.260 you spend money, obviously.

00:16:21.540 We're in a slightly better position to do that

00:16:23.420 because we've got borrowing down.

00:16:25.160 And a lot of people will be saying at the moment,

00:16:27.320 you know, that proves and underlines

00:16:30.040 that austerity was completely a choice.

00:16:32.500 But you've got to remember when austerity happened,

00:16:33.960 we were already...

00:16:35.120 you know, the percentage of our GDP that was for structural deficit

00:16:39.200 and borrowing was massive.

00:16:41.340 Arguably, right, you could say that we're able to spaff a bit of money now

00:16:45.300 because we did what we did, and in a way, it's a good thing.

00:16:48.040 Obviously, that is highly contestable, right?

00:16:50.740 I can imagine in all the ways I would be contested.

00:16:54.640 You can see Jeff has had his fair share of online abuse at this point.

00:16:57.860 He's hedging everything.

00:16:59.180 Well, yeah.

00:17:00.280 We've all become a bit savvy, haven't we?

00:17:02.200 Obviously, that's highly contestable.

00:17:03.800 And then you do, like you boys do, your sort of GMB edit of that,

00:17:07.300 where you find another bit of me just clunking my fist out.

00:17:10.780 No admission that that could be debated at all.

00:17:13.660 But that's certainly, yeah, that is how I see it.

00:17:15.620 And I think that, I think, yeah, and I think in fairness to Corbyn, right?

00:17:20.680 We've never heard that out of your mouth before, have we?

00:17:22.740 Yeah, when they're on their way out, you can afford to be fair to them.

00:17:24.940 Yeah, in fairness to the pensioner that is now on his way,

00:17:29.020 is that he did draw the argument further left economically.

00:17:33.580 But, you know, as a lot of people have always said,

00:17:35.580 it is easier for the right to go left economically

00:17:38.260 than it is for the left to go right culturally

00:17:40.740 because the left has such an utter distaste for anything

00:17:43.600 that they see to be, you know, right-wing thinking

00:17:46.500 or certainly in some cause patriotism.

00:17:49.380 It's really difficult for them to track back the other way.

00:17:51.620 But the right, I mean, the Tories are brilliantly shape-shifting.

00:17:55.440 The way they go, well, no, spend some money.

00:17:57.620 Yeah, that's what we've been saying.

00:17:59.380 It wasn't what you were saying.

00:18:01.780 Look, we are where we are.

00:18:04.080 And now is definitely the right time to be doing that.

00:18:07.140 You know, and public services do need to be invested in.

00:18:10.480 But it is really easy to forget that, you know, in 2010,

00:18:14.420 with the amount that Britain owed and was lending,

00:18:16.980 there was real potential issues of people losing faith

00:18:20.040 in our country's ability to repay its debts.

00:18:22.520 We're not in that position now.

00:18:24.180 And I was going to ask, why is it still?

00:18:26.880 I felt like a real Tory MP when I said that.

00:18:29.140 Mate, you're wearing the blue.

00:18:32.620 I don't normally wear, this is me,

00:18:34.260 I normally wear like polo shirts,

00:18:35.900 but I thought, you know what, I'm 43 now.

00:18:39.100 Maybe this is an audition, you know.

00:18:40.820 I'll be the next Rishi Sunak.

00:18:43.600 Do you know what, I went for lunch with my mum,

00:18:45.840 who's a massive Tory.

00:18:48.000 Massive Tory, what is it?

00:18:49.560 She's fully right wing, first generation immigrant, right wing. 1.00

00:18:52.620 But a normal sized woman. 0.95

00:18:53.680 A normal sized woman with massive Tory views. 1.00

00:18:56.360 She looked at me, she went,

00:18:57.340 Richie Sonak, France, he's 39 years old.

00:19:00.460 Yeah.

00:19:00.720 And she just stared at me

00:19:01.760 and then asked me how my comedy was doing.

00:19:04.680 How old are you now?

00:19:06.460 37.

00:19:07.140 37.

00:19:07.700 That's all right.

00:19:08.180 Richie came into it, mate.

00:19:09.260 Yeah.

00:19:09.880 You say, just to go,

00:19:11.640 well, mate, I will be,

00:19:12.600 if I'm not Prime Minister,

00:19:14.300 because obviously we're all going to die

00:19:15.600 because of the coronavirus,

00:19:16.380 this is a good time to make

00:19:17.500 sort of like pledges that you can't see through.

00:19:20.120 Absolutely.

00:19:20.720 You can bat way above your average 1.00

00:19:22.640 after the corona's over, mate,

00:19:24.140 if you survive.

00:19:25.220 There's going to be opportunities, mate.

00:19:26.940 There absolutely is.

00:19:27.700 But why is it that people are still ashamed, dare I say it,

00:19:31.980 to admit that they're Tory?

00:19:33.200 I don't know if they are as much now.

00:19:35.020 I certainly, I'd like to think that, you know,

00:19:37.220 I've been at the vanguard of, you know, demystifying the Tory.

00:19:43.440 But I think, you know, part of the reason I got into talking about it

00:19:46.420 in the first place, I just thought it was so immature.

00:19:48.880 Do you know what I mean? 0.98

00:19:49.440 Like, it was so ridiculous. 0.94

00:19:51.220 Especially after the 2015 election, we had this thing of shy Tories, right? 0.85

00:19:55.440 And I thought it's so ridiculous when you've got these two, like, obviously two sort of sides of a different coin of how you manage the world and the economy and stuff. 0.60

00:20:03.960 And the idea that one of them is inherently good and one is bad, it was just fatuous to me. 0.70

00:20:09.100 It was embarrassing, I felt.

00:20:10.860 It was intellectually embarrassing.

00:20:13.220 And I did feel that that needed to be challenged.

00:20:15.560 You know, I've challenged that quite a lot.

00:20:18.020 and I do think now that

00:20:20.200 what's harder for the left perhaps

00:20:22.140 is that if they want to be mean

00:20:24.520 about Tory voters now it's about

00:20:26.600 a set of voters that are equally

00:20:28.300 characterised as working class

00:20:29.740 so when you're kind of digging out

00:20:31.380 kind of like Angry from Tunbridge Wells

00:20:34.220 I'm not talking about you there

00:20:35.160 he will end up Tory if he's living

00:20:37.840 but they're not essentially

00:20:39.820 that's why I live there man

00:20:40.780 I'm just in the closet unlike you

00:20:42.920 I know I'm out and proud

00:20:44.400 and I think that

00:20:46.180 But, you know, it's easier for you to just, you know,

00:20:49.080 take the piss out of Daily Mail readers from the South East.

00:20:51.680 When, you know, like the Tory may encompass a lot of people

00:20:55.080 from ex-mining towns, again, it becomes a lot harder

00:20:57.840 to pin pejorative insults on people.

00:21:00.840 Is it? They just go racist.

00:21:02.420 Yeah.

00:21:02.820 Well, no, but that was Leave.

00:21:04.120 That was more of a Leave thing.

00:21:05.540 But not even then.

00:21:07.020 Don't take our Leave USP. 1.00

00:21:09.140 No, right, Leave is stupid and racist. 1.00

00:21:12.760 Tory is selfish and evil. 1.00

00:21:14.840 Yeah, selfish, evil, and greedy, yeah. 1.00

00:21:16.540 Really? 0.95

00:21:16.820 That's what it is.

00:21:17.460 Yeah, of course. 1.00

00:21:17.860 So I'm a stupid, racist, selfish, evil person. 1.00

00:21:21.540 So how did you feel? 1.00

00:21:22.620 You must have felt vindicated on the day of the election.

00:21:25.480 You must have been secretly happy about it or maybe openly happy about it.

00:21:28.380 Well, there was a part of me.

00:21:29.640 I didn't particularly enjoy Boris's tone of campaigning.

00:21:33.000 I felt that it was quite...

00:21:34.580 Hiding in the fridge?

00:21:35.780 Well, yeah, I mean, and ducking the Andrew Neil interview.

00:21:38.700 I just felt like...

00:21:39.540 But, I mean, obviously, strategically, they clearly knew what they were doing.

00:21:42.040 I just didn't appreciate it.

00:21:43.100 I couldn't get why that wasn't a bigger issue because I just thought it was such a weak move.

00:21:47.500 But we go back to gaslighting, right?

00:21:50.580 Did you see the percentage of things that the public kind of were fully aware of throughout the election?

00:21:55.500 So they listed all the big moments.

00:21:57.200 One of the biggest actually was Jacob Rees-Mogg's insensitive comments about Grenfell.

00:22:00.940 And then after that, virtually nothing.

00:22:02.700 So, you know, they probably banked on the fact that guys like us and, you know, us chattering glasses, commentary, whatever you want to call us, we're obsessing about this day in, day out.

00:22:13.100 The rest of the British public aren't giving a toss.

00:22:15.340 And there is something good about the degree to which the British public care

00:22:18.880 is that they're able to zero in on what really matters, right?

00:22:21.920 They're not getting confused by day in, day out, PR clusterfucks, right?

00:22:25.800 They are absolutely right.

00:22:27.100 What are the top line issues here?

00:22:28.380 And if you read the Lord Ashcroft report, which I obviously haven't,

00:22:31.320 I've seen a tweet and I've absorbed a very small bit of it

00:22:35.060 and thought I'll chat about that when I'm next talking about stuff.

00:22:38.100 But it's really interesting the way that it characterises

00:22:40.680 how working class people saw the Labour Party

00:22:42.840 Because they're right. There's a really smart deduction of like, well, you know, intention's good. They've overcommitted. They don't really have the competence to deliver it. They're distracted by social justice issues and niche concerns, obsessed with Palestine. You know, like the public were right. And sometimes there's a real virtue in just because politics is so big and so complicated. There's a real merit into getting it right down. Right. What are the main issues at heart here? 0.82

00:23:10.820 And that's why something like Brexit, get Brexit done, was such a successful slogan, because I think Labour's was, what was it?

00:23:19.440 Oh, it said, it's time for real change.

00:23:23.580 I mean, that's very, that sounds like a sort of like, if you're a pensioner that goes on a river cruise or something like that, change your river cruise.

00:23:32.280 But all the good slogans for a while now have been ones that are dynamic.

00:23:36.840 So whether you agree with it or not, make America great again is a dynamic, positive sentiment.

00:23:41.600 Take back control is a positive sentiment.

00:23:44.120 Get Brexit done. 0.60

00:23:45.400 You know, for the many, not the few, it was quite successful.

00:23:48.260 The worst of recent times was probably Hillary Clinton's was I'm with her. 0.99

00:23:55.160 That's the shitsiest. 0.95

00:23:56.580 Who signed off on that? 0.99

00:23:58.280 I'm with her.

00:23:58.720 Because the thing is, right, one, it alludes to a sort of feminist agenda, which could be a good thing. 1.00

00:24:03.300 Right.

00:24:03.800 But on the other, but it won't be to everybody.

00:24:06.080 Right.

00:24:06.480 And then on the other hand, it makes it sound like you're going to some sort of VIP bar

00:24:11.160 and you're not even on the list yourself.

00:24:13.900 I'm with her.

00:24:15.320 You might not get in.

00:24:16.420 It just shows the deluded sort of thinking that can go behind me.

00:24:20.260 You know, saying liberal bubble, that stuff have become cliches,

00:24:22.940 but they've become cliches because they're true.

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00:25:34.100 All you have to do is listen to Francis.

00:25:35.880 Absolutely.

00:25:36.520 Probably the only time he's ever said that.

00:25:38.320 And all you need to do is text the word

00:25:40.060 TRIGONOMETRY to 78070.

00:25:43.120 That's text TRIGONOMETRY to 78070.

00:25:49.100 And what challenges do you face now

00:25:51.240 as being a conservative comedian

00:25:52.980 when actually you've won?

00:25:56.100 Yeah, I mean, like,

00:25:57.080 I'm definitely broadening what I'm talking about.

00:25:58.860 And on the current tour,

00:25:59.740 Taking Liberties, which is out on the road

00:26:01.680 to the end of, well, either Humanity

00:26:03.540 or April.

00:26:07.500 Which may be both at the same time.

00:26:09.580 I'd already sort of moved on, is the truth,

00:26:11.620 because I've been doing shows on this

00:26:13.480 since 2016,

00:26:15.740 right? So I did one in 16, 17,

00:26:17.520 18. They're all new

00:26:19.400 hours, right? So you can't

00:26:21.660 keep, I mean, obviously I'm playing to bigger

00:26:23.500 audiences now, but you can't

00:26:25.640 keep saying the same thing creatively. So I was

00:26:27.620 already talking about civil liberties and you know like uh nanny state issues which obviously

00:26:32.560 Tory and Labour are guilty of and and sent you know censorship and stuff and more broader subjects

00:26:38.240 really so I didn't do that because I thought oh the Tories are going to suddenly win this argument

00:26:42.040 which solves both like kind of like uh you know the sort of magic bullet that solves Brexit

00:26:46.460 and the kind of uh like minority parliament but now I'm glad that I did because I was already

00:26:51.980 talking about different things I mean obviously in the show I um I will talk about stuff as it

00:26:56.240 happens you know like labor leadership contest there'll always be things that come around

00:27:00.220 but i think it is interesting now because it's been so long since there was real power at the

00:27:04.760 heart of government right probably to sort of mid early to mid blair but now that there is the fight

00:27:10.840 is very much about who exercises that power and that's just as interesting and it it still involves

00:27:16.080 left and right but it's just it's left and right from within you know the body of people the

00:27:20.680 executive uh effectively and you know looking at the power struggles of people like cummins and

00:27:25.780 johnson i suppose another thing is as well i feel much more at ease in criticizing the tories now

00:27:30.720 because there was a long long period where i just felt like the comedically that wasn't coming from

00:27:35.260 anywhere you know and i felt it was totally disproportionate whereas now you know ultimately

00:27:40.140 i'm a political comedian first and foremost so my job should be if to make funny jokes about what's

00:27:45.740 happening politically now obviously i've got a bias so that will naturally come out that that

00:27:50.540 will probably be more towards the left and liberal left and remain but oh you know there's got to be

00:27:55.060 something back the other way, because I don't even know if you could call yourself a satirist

00:27:58.700 if there wasn't. Right. No, there's got to be balance. But you mentioned the Labour leadership

00:28:02.980 election. I think this is maybe an area where you talk about the culture war being just something

00:28:07.760 that people like us engage in. Yeah. Where I think I probably would disagree with you,

00:28:12.240 because I think the Labour leadership is a good example of where the culture war issues that

00:28:18.000 ordinary people couldn't give a toss about have now infected major mainstream politics to the

00:28:23.120 point where it's affecting their electoral prospects if they keep banging on about trans 0.96

00:28:28.180 women and all this other bullshit you know people don't care about that stuff no it's a really it's 1.00

00:28:32.740 a really good example and that's one of the problems i mean labor have always been incredibly 0.98

00:28:36.300 proud of their half a million membership you know and it's an impressive stat but it also means that

00:28:41.300 they're bound to create content right we all create content we create content and we know

00:28:47.340 sometimes the way we need to shape that for the people that like what we do we've got to throw

00:28:51.180 out some red meat every once in a while and the Labour have to do that for half a million people

00:28:55.780 and so what it creates is you know they used to have 12 and a half million voters they've got

00:28:59.700 half a million members so they're often having to say things and do things especially and this is

00:29:05.100 what's really killed them is how long this leadership contest is I mean they're the only

00:29:08.820 people that are delighted about coronavirus are the Labour part because thank god we had to fight

00:29:14.280 we got to finally stop talking in public because as you say the best example of that is Lisa Nandy

00:29:18.640 who I thought had had a really good campaign.

00:29:20.840 And she gave a very good account of herself

00:29:22.720 against kind of like the big attack dog interviewers

00:29:25.740 like Andrew Neal, Nick Robinson, not an attack dog,

00:29:28.840 but, you know, like a big figure, Andrew Marr.

00:29:31.240 But then she kind of like, she did one public debate

00:29:34.360 where she was asked about legalising cannabis.

00:29:37.160 And she said, oh, no, steady on, you know what I mean?

00:29:41.320 Steady on, that's a bit, you know, I haven't had that chat.

00:29:43.560 And then she was, no, obviously she's been asked about trans issues

00:29:46.080 where she holds a progressive view that is way ahead

00:29:49.040 of the vast majority of the British public.

00:29:51.780 There's this weird tension there that you're willing to say something

00:29:54.200 that's so out on a limb and potentially alienating,

00:29:58.020 you know, or get dragged into it on one issue.

00:30:01.100 And you're asked about legalising cannabis

00:30:02.580 and you're like a 1960s Tory going, oh, no.

00:30:06.000 Well, we haven't had a chat about that.

00:30:07.320 I think that's a long way off.

00:30:08.440 And I think that that is the problem,

00:30:10.640 is that to win this Labour leadership election,

00:30:13.320 you do have to curry favour with a membership

00:30:16.200 who are like the world's most militant Patreon.

00:30:19.620 You know what I mean?

00:30:20.240 They're just constantly demanding the things 1.00

00:30:23.360 that they give a shit about. 0.99

00:30:25.020 And I think that we're starting to see 0.99

00:30:26.640 that it could be a hamstring for the Labour Party

00:30:29.100 because they're enthralled to the unions, right?

00:30:32.640 We've always known that.

00:30:33.600 We always knew that funding-wise,

00:30:35.060 Tories were big business,

00:30:36.860 Labour were the unions,

00:30:38.480 and the Lib Dems were like the campaign 0.99

00:30:39.940 for a fucking relay or whatever it is, right? 0.97

00:30:42.780 But now Labour have got this dual pressure, which is unions and membership. 0.97

00:30:46.880 And then the unions, a lot of which have this kind of 1970s style,

00:30:50.980 some of them do, have quite an old-fashioned socialist agenda.

00:30:54.300 The membership have liberal values from the year 3000.

00:30:58.480 How could it possibly go wrong?

00:31:00.220 Sounds like a great Bustard song, mate.

00:31:02.020 It does, yeah.

00:31:02.880 A bit a year with not much of change, but they're still out of power.

00:31:06.420 The only way to get cannabis legalised is we need to brainwash them

00:31:09.520 into thinking that it's part of the transition process.

00:31:12.780 that way you can get it done.

00:31:14.780 The thing about cannabis,

00:31:16.160 I understand the reticence to a point,

00:31:18.120 but sometimes the British public

00:31:19.300 are ahead of the political establishment

00:31:20.860 in terms of their liberal values.

00:31:22.800 And I think the concern is, right,

00:31:25.160 and it's always been that

00:31:26.040 if you're the prime minister or leader

00:31:27.760 that suggests it,

00:31:28.900 the first thing you get

00:31:29.780 is the Photoshop mock-up

00:31:31.240 of you with a spliff.

00:31:33.340 Yeah, but Boris has had far worse. 1.00

00:31:35.340 I mean, some of the shit that guy's taken, 1.00

00:31:36.760 you think cannabis is fucking mild. 0.99

00:31:38.100 Well, yeah, in the Tory leadership contest, 0.99

00:31:39.720 it wasn't like a day that went past it. 0.99

00:31:41.180 at one of them admitting that they'd done smack fucking opium. 0.99

00:31:43.980 It almost became like an arms race as to, 1.00

00:31:46.260 I've done that weird shit where you see the devil. 0.98

00:31:49.080 It was almost like, you know when blokes teenage boys 0.99

00:31:51.540 are sitting around going, opium?

00:31:53.980 My dad's done heroin, yeah.

00:31:56.200 Tory leadership is a new rock and roll.

00:31:58.480 It was at that time.

00:31:59.580 It was at that time, whereas, you know, the Labour leadership.

00:32:02.160 So, yeah, like you say, I think that they keep,

00:32:06.220 I mean, Blair is right, ultimately.

00:32:07.800 I think we are going in this weird period of,

00:32:09.320 there's a lot of people say this Tory

00:32:10.880 administration could be quite Blairite because

00:32:13.260 one of the principles

00:32:15.300 of Blairism was don't

00:32:17.280 go to war with the public unnecessarily

00:32:19.120 do you know what I mean? Like if you really want to do good

00:32:21.360 for the country, don't get bogged down

00:32:23.400 in kind of culture and identity debates

00:32:25.500 whereas a lot of Labour thinking

00:32:27.220 particularly over the last five years has been

00:32:28.820 the opposite. Now get bogged down man

00:32:31.400 don't worry about running the country

00:32:33.200 get right into the nitty gritty

00:32:35.160 of things that the

00:32:37.340 membership care about and it's just

00:32:39.140 it is ridiculous to a lot of people right you'd say that you know i mean i know that that trans

00:32:44.660 women competing in sport isn't the biggest deal when it comes to the trans community and i know

00:32:48.760 that the vast majority of trans people overwhelming don't aren't competing in international sport

00:32:53.520 you know they have a high rate of suicide there's a lot of mental health issues there so this is the

00:32:57.980 real issue but obviously in this one issue like with with toilets and two degrees sport i just

00:33:03.980 think you'd struggle to find people that weren't perplexed by the idea that someone who is still

00:33:07.840 metabolically demonstrably stronger can compete against a woman. 1.00

00:33:14.680 I think that if you polled on that,

00:33:18.640 I think you're talking in the high 90s percents of people.

00:33:21.980 I mean, like I said, I'm guessing at this,

00:33:24.000 but sort of anecdotally, that's what I'd suggest.

00:33:26.240 So for Lisa Nandy to not come out with a clear line on that 0.99

00:33:30.160 was an odd shout.

00:33:32.700 But in defence of Lisa Nandy, isn't part of the problem,

00:33:36.360 which you've just alluded to,

00:33:37.840 is that the Labour leadership is an impossible job

00:33:39.980 because the reality is you can't please the...

00:33:42.400 It's like the England manager.

00:33:43.040 Yeah.

00:33:43.720 You can't please the socialists

00:33:45.340 and you can't please the progressives at the same time.

00:33:48.460 You're going to piss one or the either off.

00:33:50.540 Yes, yeah.

00:33:51.100 And maybe, you know,

00:33:51.960 there was a lot of talk throughout Brexit

00:33:53.460 that the Tories,

00:33:54.280 it would be the thing that would break the Tories, right?

00:33:56.880 But they've sort of forgot the way, again,

00:33:58.780 that the Tories have this shapeshift

00:33:59.820 and ability to just reform as something else.

00:34:03.040 And whereas the Labour Party,

00:34:04.220 you know, I always thought,

00:34:05.680 and this isn't just being wise off the event,

00:34:07.480 I always thought that it was a bigger problem for them in the long term

00:34:09.900 because it kind of highlighted Brexit, the fault line within their party

00:34:13.480 between the kind of metropolitan, liberal MP class

00:34:16.880 and then, you know, obviously the trade union class on the other side.

00:34:20.040 But now you've got this third element, which is the membership.

00:34:23.100 I mean, like if Keir Starmer becomes leader, right,

00:34:25.800 and then within, as he probably will,

00:34:27.780 he'll dilute the agenda over a couple of years.

00:34:30.540 There'll be a lot of Labour members that will want something else.

00:34:33.360 They want something a bit spicier, a bit more hard left because they've finally got their chance to have that and they won't want to see it go away so easily. 1.00

00:34:42.720 When it was taken from them in sort of late 80s, they didn't have the size of membership.

00:34:47.720 They didn't have the social media.

00:34:49.500 Now they're not just going to blindly vote for what they see to be a quasi-Blairite party.

00:34:55.060 I suspect there'll be something that will come up in its absence.

00:34:58.040 They'll give Jeremy another go.

00:34:59.220 I mean if you had a Jeremy Corbyn party

00:35:02.860 they'd be like

00:35:03.380 they'd do okay

00:35:04.220 they'd probably have

00:35:05.600 half a million members

00:35:06.360 they'd be doing better

00:35:06.920 than Change UK

00:35:07.540 yeah they would be

00:35:08.980 but in terms of the Tories

00:35:10.460 I know you don't all

00:35:11.280 have a WhatsApp group

00:35:12.180 but do you think

00:35:13.840 what Tories in comedy

00:35:14.780 three people

00:35:16.780 no there's not

00:35:17.440 there's loads of them

00:35:18.220 but none of them can admit it

00:35:19.440 no a lot of them

00:35:20.240 they call themselves libertarians

00:35:21.820 I feel like

00:35:22.580 just admit

00:35:23.380 you're a Tory

00:35:24.480 Dominic Frisbee right there

00:35:25.900 but they're all the cool guys

00:35:27.720 like Dominic

00:35:28.260 they're all cool man

00:35:29.140 I'm a trendy, I'm a tabloid reading.

00:35:33.840 What tabloid do you read?

00:35:35.320 Well, I read them online now.

00:35:38.300 No, you know what?

00:35:39.180 You're right to put me up on that.

00:35:40.500 You just sound like you're reading a tabloid. 1.00

00:35:43.540 The fucking Daily Mail, man. 1.00

00:35:45.220 I get my news from Gogglebox. 1.00

00:35:49.040 Come on, mate. 1.00

00:35:49.680 You read the fucking Times and Economist. 1.00

00:35:51.400 I do read the Times. 1.00

00:35:52.780 To be honest, I've stopped reading a lot of newspapers full stop,

00:35:57.040 and that's not like a conscious decision.

00:35:58.460 It'd be great if that was a bridge for me.

00:36:00.500 It's a conscious decision to play to my working-class roots.

00:36:03.480 No, no, I just, I don't know.

00:36:05.300 I'm totally self-absorbed, is the truth.

00:36:07.140 I get up, check Twitter, check all my stuff, like tour sales and all that.

00:36:10.520 So it's not really a cool kind of like, no, man, I've tapped out of MSM. 0.99

00:36:15.320 It's just I've tapped into my own shit probably too hard. 0.94

00:36:18.840 So in terms of the Tories, though, I mean, Boris Johnson, you know, 0.99

00:36:22.140 for all the people saying, you know, we've got a hard right government,

00:36:25.300 you know, he is a liberal Tory, right?

00:36:27.480 Right. So do you think that he's going to be able to hold the Tory coalition together as more and more people who may be kind of economically harder, right, than he is or culturally hard?

00:36:39.860 I mean, like, look at the immigration point system that they've introduced.

00:36:43.140 In my opinion, it's actually going to create more immigration, not less.

00:36:46.100 Right. So do you think that he's going to be able to hold the Tory coalition together effectively as a lot of the people who were delighted that he had a clear message on Brexit start to realize that,

00:36:56.340 actually he's quite a lot softer than many of them are well that was odd you know watching the

00:37:01.600 election campaign and the way that he was represented and obviously there were those

00:37:04.860 those two articles several articles things that he said but there were at the very least you know

00:37:09.580 unwise i mean certainly in the case of the the watermelon smiles and the piccaninnies like when

00:37:14.420 you read i i think it's totally legitimate for anybody to read the article and come to the

00:37:18.720 conclusion that that he's a racist but i do get the impression that a lot of people haven't read

00:37:22.680 the article so that's what i'd say to anyone watching this it's really interesting to read

00:37:26.880 the article because obviously it was a it was interestingly quite an anti-imperial it was a

00:37:32.180 themed piece i don't think he was being racist oh well but you know what i think he really he does

00:37:36.780 right it's because he's smart i think he sort of takes a stance where he knows he's on the moral

00:37:41.100 high ground and then he uses that high ground to get in a few cheeky words that's my honest

00:37:45.320 taking it so i think he deploys that kind of language for comedic effect or to push the

00:37:50.020 boundary because he's taken that stunt so i don't think it's actually as clear-cut as any of the

00:37:54.200 sides of the argument what i did find was interesting it just shows how something can

00:37:57.400 stick politically is that when i every time i ask people um if they'd read the article um they hadn't

00:38:03.060 read the article the one about um muslim women looking like letterboxes which was done when he

00:38:07.760 was foreign secretary i think you know it's even harder that's harder to defend because it's just

00:38:11.940 like why are you getting involved in this sort of nonsense do you know what i mean like it's just i

00:38:16.200 I just quite like serious politicians, you know, like, you know,

00:38:20.320 an article written a long time ago as a columnist,

00:38:22.700 I think is quite different than something written when you were holding one of

00:38:25.360 the five great offices of state.

00:38:27.220 So it's obviously you can make a defense of it on a free speech platform and

00:38:30.660 all that sort of stuff.

00:38:31.340 But like, I'd rather say, you know,

00:38:32.940 a fair bit of my free speech stuff for artists and columns, 0.99

00:38:36.540 not a fucking foreign secretary. 0.98

00:38:37.900 You should just be getting on with being the foreign secretary. 1.00

00:38:39.960 Like he shouldn't be allowed to say it,

00:38:41.360 but you don't want the foreign secretary to be doing that.

00:38:43.280 Yeah, just get, just, you know, just toe the line, mate, a little bit.

00:38:45.720 And he, but he, you know, that article, again, he was talking about, he was talking about defending the right of women to wear burqa and niqab and hijabs in public spaces, right?

00:38:56.300 But he's done the same thing again.

00:38:57.580 He's sort of taken the morally liberal view, but, and I don't know if it's him throwing red meat to a certain side of what he believes to be his supporter base.

00:39:04.960 So he's sort of, that's what I find a bit duplicitous.

00:39:07.920 He sometimes plays both of the angles.

00:39:09.720 You know what I think with Corona, he might make it mandatory for women to wear the hijab. 1.00

00:39:13.140 Yeah, that would be a protective measure.

00:39:14.640 Yeah, that would be ironic.

00:39:15.720 But come back to my point, which is, can he hold the Tory coalition together as a liberal Tory, given that, you know, many of the concerns about Brexit?

00:39:28.020 I mean, there's a significant number of people who are seriously concerned about the level of immigration that we've had.

00:39:34.060 And I'm not sure that he's necessarily going to be the person who is going to, you know, crack down.

00:39:38.680 No, I don't. I don't think he will be.

00:39:40.140 I think, you know, certainly for me as a Brexit voter, my desire for the take back control of borders wasn't to suddenly end immigration.

00:39:48.100 It was just I always found that having unlimited immigration in perpetuity was a bizarre sort of absolutism.

00:39:55.940 Well, it's not sustainable.

00:39:56.920 Unlimited forever.

00:39:58.060 No circumstances could ever interfere with that.

00:40:01.020 And so I wonder if Johnson, who is also a liberal like me, probably that was what he took issue with more.

00:40:07.620 Because it's an example of a lack of sovereignty.

00:40:10.140 You can't take a decision based on your own needs.

00:40:13.660 But I think that what, in terms of the parliamentary party,

00:40:16.660 I think that they stared the abyss in the face so hard,

00:40:20.680 you know, like literally bits of their,

00:40:22.440 you know, like in the films where bits of their eyebrows 0.99

00:40:24.180 are getting sucked into this fucking vortex. 0.99

00:40:26.960 So they will just be happy that the party exists. 1.00

00:40:31.040 The other thing about his majority, the size of it,

00:40:34.620 means that there is a number of ERG types

00:40:37.280 that can comfortably rebel as well.

00:40:38.780 You know, without sort of causing the downfall of the government.

00:40:43.360 But what about, sorry, Francis, I just want to get this point home.

00:40:45.820 What about the people who are working class northern voters, perhaps, whose concerns about immigration were harder lined than yours, right, in terms of the Brexit vote and the 2019 election?

00:40:59.280 Do you think there's a risk that he might alienate them by not having a kind of more hard line position?

00:41:06.280 Possibly, but even more so than before,

00:41:08.300 there's nowhere else to go, if you know what I mean.

00:41:10.200 So if he alienates them and we have, you know,

00:41:12.840 so we've left the EU and the Labour Party are still, as I think,

00:41:16.560 what might happen to the Labour Party is after three years

00:41:18.820 of being behind in the polls, they might change leader again

00:41:21.020 or they might change tax.

00:41:22.260 So I can't tell what he'll be up against by then.

00:41:25.040 But like I said before, a lot of things will be based

00:41:27.320 on early impressions the first year or two.

00:41:29.220 Maybe that's why Priti Patel's, you know,

00:41:31.980 the noises she's been making, right?

00:41:33.680 you make those noises, you create a narrative.

00:41:36.480 And in a weird way, the left play into this

00:41:39.000 because, like you say, the points-based system

00:41:41.060 could easily create more immigration.

00:41:42.760 But the left-wing press and left-wing Twitter and social media

00:41:45.540 acts like she's the most draconian, you know, anti-racist,

00:41:50.020 essentially, home minister since time began.

00:41:52.920 So that might be the kind of thing that, in a way,

00:41:56.040 if there are more nationalist-type voters

00:41:57.860 that have gravitated towards Johnson,

00:41:59.720 that rhetoric might be the thing that sort of saves him in a weird way.

00:42:03.620 But do you not think we're at quite a dangerous point politically,

00:42:06.740 and I'm saying that as the only lefty in the room,

00:42:09.220 because we don't have an opposite?

00:42:10.700 I'm a centrist, mate.

00:42:11.480 Have you officially...

00:42:12.280 I'm a centrist, mate.

00:42:13.500 It's how it starts.

00:42:15.340 Yeah, mate, I know you're indoctrinating him.

00:42:17.440 You see, I've been introducing him to...

00:42:19.020 Christy Constantine, me and Councillor Haynes.

00:42:22.260 What's your feel when you rub up against...

00:42:23.780 I've been opening for Geoff, so he's rubbing off on you.

00:42:25.580 Yeah, he started as Lib Dem, he's now drifted further to the right.

00:42:28.140 I used to vote for the Lib Dems, mate.

00:42:29.460 Yeah, I did vote. 0.99

00:42:30.460 This is what you've fucking done, mate. 0.99

00:42:31.780 Anyway, well, it's called, you know, how old are you? 0.99

00:42:34.260 37.

00:42:35.340 Yeah.

00:42:37.280 I mean, I've stopped at all.

00:42:38.780 I'm not going any further.

00:42:40.060 I think I've caught on a...

00:42:41.260 There's not much further right to go.

00:42:42.500 I mean, there's no party that's really there anymore, is there?

00:42:45.040 Yeah, and, of course, the Brexit Party would have argued

00:42:46.480 that they weren't sort of orientated.

00:42:48.720 I mean, a lot of people had argued against that.

00:42:50.140 So in the absence of UKIP, yeah.

00:42:52.880 And maybe, like, going back to your point,

00:42:54.420 maybe that is what Johnson is politically relying on

00:42:58.940 is that electoral reality.

00:43:01.200 Where is she going to go?

00:43:02.320 But is that not dangerous,

00:43:03.740 that we do not have a credible opposition?

00:43:06.080 We make jokes about the Labour Party.

00:43:07.520 I know, totally, yeah, yeah.

00:43:08.880 But it's dangerous.

00:43:10.100 No, but this is part of it.

00:43:10.960 No one ever believes me,

00:43:11.760 but this is partly why I dig out the opposition as much as I do,

00:43:14.680 because I think that in the age of spitting image, right,

00:43:17.220 spitting image was a great example.

00:43:18.520 The thing about communities,

00:43:19.060 a lot of communities are hesitant about doing anti-Labour Party jokes

00:43:23.400 because it's seen as by proxy being in support of the Tories, right?

00:43:26.700 So if you say that on a panel show, it's your face on it,

00:43:28.740 you're the one who will get stick.

00:43:29.960 And maybe that was true in the 80s.

00:43:31.580 The difference between Spitting Image was these were puppets.

00:43:34.880 There was a team of writers.

00:43:36.040 People did the voices.

00:43:36.980 It was almost like a Russian roulette thing

00:43:38.260 if you didn't really know where the bullet was coming from, right?

00:43:41.020 So then you had a show like Spitting Image,

00:43:43.100 which maybe 30% to 40% of it was about the opposition,

00:43:46.680 which is what I always thought comedies should be.

00:43:49.120 So when I'm doing the job,

00:43:51.180 and I know that left-wing people or Labour voters

00:43:53.780 will be spitting at their laptops as I'm talking,

00:43:56.020 I honestly think I'm doing something...

00:43:58.100 I honestly think I'm doing something of worth because it's that.

00:44:01.960 And you look at a lot of things that I and the people that critique

00:44:05.380 in the Labour Party have said in jest have been things

00:44:08.180 that if they'd listened to, they would have done better, right?

00:44:11.180 If there would have been good advice to follow.

00:44:13.060 So it's not a case of just taking the piss out of them for its own sake.

00:44:16.300 It's saying, do you realise how you're seen by people like me?

00:44:20.040 But it's also as well, like, with all due respect, 0.99

00:44:23.220 the Conservatives were crap for the past few years. 0.99

00:44:27.020 If you look at the way they handle Brexit, awful, dreadful. 1.00

00:44:30.580 If you look at Windrush, a disgrace. 1.00

00:44:33.500 All of these things.

00:44:34.860 And yet, Labour still couldn't win.

00:44:37.840 I love the way he listed two things and then said all of these things.

00:44:41.140 And also one of them was the outside of, you know, like, it was, yeah, I mean.

00:44:46.340 But Brexit should have been enough to sink the Conservative Party.

00:44:49.200 It should have been enough.

00:44:50.240 But one thing that I think is odd that gets discounted from the last few years is the jobs market.

00:44:54.880 I mean, like, you know, it's Bill Clinton.

00:44:57.360 Bill Cosby.

00:44:59.240 As Bill Cosby always said.

00:45:00.820 I'm not sure how many jobs she created, mate. 0.86

00:45:02.660 Sweet dreams.

00:45:04.460 No, as Bill Clinton always said.

00:45:06.460 We're going to clip that.

00:45:08.460 It's up to you.

00:45:08.960 It's a joke.

00:45:09.620 Well, hey, Bill Clinton isn't that far away from Bill Cosby on the whole scheme of things.

00:45:13.140 Yeah, I mean, they both, like, you wouldn't let either of them babysit.

00:45:18.440 Harvey Weinstein.

00:45:19.440 Yeah.

00:45:20.020 How unfortunate, mate.

00:45:21.240 He might die in jail.

00:45:22.780 Yeah.

00:45:23.740 It's funny.

00:45:24.060 I saw a lot of things.

00:45:25.120 It was a really simple joke.

00:45:26.040 Well, don't rape people. 1.00

00:45:27.540 That's the only time I've agreed with Jess Phillips on Twitter.

00:45:30.380 Yes, yeah, yeah.

00:45:31.200 No, yeah.

00:45:31.760 I think I like that tweet as well.

00:45:33.940 She tweeted, she was complaining about how he might die in prison

00:45:37.340 and she just tweeted, well, maybe this is why he shouldn't rape people. 1.00

00:45:39.520 Yes, that was where I saw it.

00:45:40.540 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:41.160 So not Bill Cosby, but as Bill Clinton said, you know, 1.00

00:45:44.580 it's the economy, stupid. 1.00

00:45:45.700 So, like, the economy is the biggest way of people having skin in the game, 1.00

00:45:49.480 right, where it's having jobs, having houses, mortgages, whatever, right?

00:45:51.780 You all need it to keep going.

00:45:52.920 So the record number of people in employment, as much as the left try and poo-poo it, you know, and say, well, this is because of zero-hours contracts, one, it was at the beginning of the jobs revival.

00:46:02.180 But after that, for a long time, it's been full-time jobs that have been leading the way, right?

00:46:07.120 People are working, right?

00:46:08.860 Waging wage settlements started to outstrip inflation.

00:46:12.960 The irony is, is the Tories, for the first time in a long time, they were doing what they're supposed to do, right?

00:46:18.160 The Tory brand is run the economy well, get people working, people feeling like they've got a few quid.

00:46:24.400 But actually, that's been the thing that's been discussed least about them the last few years.

00:46:28.600 And what will be sort of ironic for them is if coronavirus and stuff derails the economy and they seem to have handled it badly, the jobs market is at a record peak.

00:46:38.100 There's only one way it could go, right?

00:46:39.760 So, you know, it could lose loads of jobs.

00:46:41.400 We'd still be in relatively historically good position, but it would look like things were catastrophic.

00:46:46.160 catastrophic. And they'll probably regret, I think, not making more of that in the good times.

00:46:51.280 Because weirdly, the Tory spend a lot of time trying to deal with the ways that they're perceived

00:46:55.280 negatively and turn it around. But actually, there's things they do positively. They almost

00:46:58.240 got this weird public school thing of not being able to pat themselves on the back. You know,

00:47:01.420 they don't seem to know how to shine a good enough light on the buoyancy of the jobs market. So that,

00:47:06.720 in answer to your question, that is the biggest single reason, I think, that one of the two

00:47:11.700 biggest single reasons that the last election result happened. Because when Labour were talking

00:47:15.240 about this broken Britain and no one's got jobs

00:47:18.220 and everyone's on the food banks.

00:47:19.620 The truth was, for most people, that wasn't true.

00:47:22.160 So they're talking about a political and economic environment

00:47:25.660 that didn't make sense to a lot of people.

00:47:27.880 It's not saying that there weren't people struggling.

00:47:29.660 Of course there weren't.

00:47:30.740 But households had more people in work, more women in work, 1.00

00:47:35.760 more ethnic minorities in work than ever before.

00:47:38.500 So it was a weird narrative.

00:47:40.680 And do you think as well, the left, and again,

00:47:43.440 I'm part of the left, the deeply patronising attitude to ethnic minorities will go, well, they're all going to vote Labour because they're all liberal.

00:47:51.220 And that is, quite frankly, bollocks.

00:47:53.060 Well, but it's also like, you know, certain, you know, you look at, you know, British Asians for quite a long time.

00:47:59.140 It has, you know, there's not any specific, there's always been a reasonable record of them voting for the Conservatives.

00:48:04.680 And I think the entitlement, one of the things that excites me most about the political age that we're living in

00:48:11.300 is that all of the parties are having to pitch for the business, right?

00:48:15.540 That's how it should have always been.

00:48:17.020 No givens, no gimmies, right?

00:48:19.200 Every election, every vote, well, why should I vote for you?

00:48:22.600 Not because your granddad worked in a mill, do you know what I mean?

00:48:25.620 And not because your granddad was a doctor and that's what our stories do.

00:48:29.340 You know, more a case of a play-by-play basis.

00:48:32.600 That's what democracy should always be, you know?

00:48:34.480 Like you get party officials and stuff,

00:48:36.440 a small amount that have to stay loyal for the mechanism that will work.

00:48:39.340 The rest of us, we should always be floating voters, really.

00:48:43.320 I think there are a lot of reasons why I will probably vote Conservative,

00:48:47.360 but it's not an absolute given.

00:48:49.400 Are you saying you can vote Lib Dem then, Geoff?

00:48:51.100 Well, probably, based on last election, probably it would be to not vote at all.

00:48:54.820 Because look at last election.

00:48:56.300 There were times I got frustrated with the Conservative campaign,

00:48:59.720 but I was like, well, I'm not going to vote for Lib Dems.

00:49:01.580 It's just the arrogance of the way that they thought that they could revoke a vote.

00:49:06.140 And it gives me great heart that the public were broadly in line with rejecting that sort of extremist stance.

00:49:12.340 And the Labour Party, I mean, just a million miles away from a party I could vote for.

00:49:16.060 So, yeah, it would have been just to not vote at all.

00:49:19.440 And do you think that we're seeing a sort of new humility amongst our MPs?

00:49:24.920 Because they've sort of realised that the game has changed.

00:49:27.940 There's no such thing anymore, really, with certain exceptions, as a safe seat.

00:49:32.500 And we've seen it with the way Labour got decimated.

00:49:35.260 So there's a lot of people looking at their seats thinking to themselves,

00:49:38.420 well, there's a chance I could lose this.

00:49:40.220 I really need to up my game and connect with the voter.

00:49:42.880 Well, I mean, it's no surprise that a lot of the Labour MPs

00:49:46.020 that were most sympathetic to the idea of honouring Brexit

00:49:48.240 were the ones that had to face constituencies that had voted for Brexit.

00:49:52.760 But, you know, they were roundly, not ignored, but, I mean,

00:49:55.800 how Labour changed policy on Brexit, given the numbers

00:49:58.260 and where all their marginals were in Labour heartlands.

00:50:01.440 I mean, this is the thing, they keep making out Keir Starmer

00:50:02.980 as the grown-up in the room, you know.

00:50:04.660 Centrists love this idea, you know, he's the adult in the room because he seems clever and he is like intellectually clever.

00:50:10.100 But he was one of the architects of Labour's change in policy on Brexit, you know, and he led the way on that.

00:50:16.900 And, you know, there are arguments that Labour were snookered at that election to a point.

00:50:21.780 But when you know, when it's touch and go, you look at the marginals and all the marginals will leave constituencies.

00:50:28.140 I just think in that election, because of the change in the party membership that you've talked about, I don't think there was a way out for them.

00:50:36.260 They had to chop off this arm or that arm and they would have ended with no arm, whatever they did. 0.99

00:50:41.460 So being Labour, they chopped off their penis. And that's not a trans reference. I was just going for another part of the body. 0.99

00:50:49.260 You can never join the Labour Party again, Jeff. Yeah, I'm sure you're disappointed.

00:50:53.800 We've got a few minutes left. You mentioned Corona and the potential impact. I mean, one of the things obviously will affect the economy. But the question is, you know, how much of a discount does the government get for the fact that it was I mean, look, they can do stuff about it. But ultimately, it's, you know, it's an act of God kind of thing.

00:51:11.440 Yeah. Well, it will be how it plays out, right? If eventually it peaks in Britain in the same way that it has been doing in Italy, and if the NHS is unable to cope, and if the narrative sticks, the reason is because of cuts and stuff like that.

00:51:27.880 Even though there was a stat recently that showed that the number of hospital beds had been going down throughout the Blair years as well.

00:51:33.740 But again, it's whether the narrative sticks, right? So they may be held accountable for that.

00:51:37.980 I mean, bear in mind, if you want to like a historical parallel, is that, you know, John Major, 1992, surprise victory, right?

00:51:46.260 You know, he got a huge unexpected share of the vote immediately afterwards, Black Wednesday, right?

00:51:51.880 Britain pulls out the ERM, the economy's taken, everything seems to be in free fall.

00:51:56.240 So this idea that like it's just a guaranteed five years of Boris, there's a degree of economic clusterfuck that could pull any government down, right?

00:52:05.280 Any government.

00:52:05.920 I mean, like, you look at the reduction in GDP that could occur through this.

00:52:09.900 Even the worst elements of, like, I think, like, in the credit crunch,

00:52:13.740 the worst in one quarter was, like, minus 1%, right?

00:52:17.060 This could be more than that because if people come to pretty much a grinding hall,

00:52:21.240 you could be looking at record losses in GDP, right?

00:52:24.040 You could be.

00:52:24.360 Now, I'm not being a catastrophizer because, obviously, the way that the virus works,

00:52:27.300 it will also recover quicker as well.

00:52:29.520 But what happens in this period, it could sort of set the tone.

00:52:34.360 and it's an unenviable task, right?

00:52:37.080 Enviable? I never know.

00:52:38.560 No, it's an unenviable task.

00:52:39.820 It's not a good task for anybody coming into this

00:52:43.120 because it's this simple idea of, like, we'll shut the schools, you know.

00:52:46.480 We'll shut the schools, right?

00:52:47.360 Who's going to stay at home with them?

00:52:48.760 Yeah.

00:52:48.860 Well, yeah, there's one kid.

00:52:50.080 Dad drives, you know, a coach or a lorry to deliver food, right?

00:52:54.760 Or mum's a doctor, you know.

00:52:56.960 So every time you talk about shutting stuff down,

00:52:58.800 you're also taking people out of the infrastructure of the country.

00:53:01.900 So at some point, you know,

00:53:03.160 as much as there's all these broadcasters at the moment,

00:53:05.840 I mean, there's this weird thing,

00:53:06.740 like people are going,

00:53:07.440 stop listening to the chief medical officer.

00:53:10.060 Listen to this guy on this radio show.

00:53:13.120 It's time we started listening to the broadcasters.

00:53:16.080 Because these are really tricky decisions.

00:53:18.280 And also there's a decision about how, you know,

00:53:21.360 how you manage the degree of economic contraction.

00:53:24.040 What about the effect that that has on people in the long run?

00:53:27.280 You know, so this isn't an aggregate of things.

00:53:30.980 This isn't a, oh, you know, would, well, if shutting down schools and offices and public gatherings right now, would it slow down the spread of the virus?

00:53:40.080 Yeah. You know, but if you haven't shut again for two weeks and then reopened before the virus has peaked, it's still knocking about.

00:53:46.300 So I've been surprised that the alarmism, and it's not to say there's nothing to be alarmed about,

00:53:52.600 but it's the scale at which the people expect the government

00:53:55.440 to abandon their plan,

00:53:58.260 which is based on the medical advice that they've been given.

00:54:01.560 And this is the weird thing.

00:54:02.320 People are tired of experts, mate.

00:54:04.060 But now, weirdly, I'm seeing a lot of people who are Remainers

00:54:07.960 who say, we should be listening to the experts. 1.00

00:54:11.360 And now they're going, fuck the experts. 1.00

00:54:13.260 We should be listening to Peter's Morgan. 1.00

00:54:16.260 And then someone like me, who, let's be honest,

00:54:18.500 as a Brexiteer, you had to ignore a certain amount of expertise. 1.00

00:54:20.940 You go, yeah, fuck the experts. 0.99

00:54:22.600 Now I'm going, no, it's the experts and we should be listening. 1.00

00:54:24.920 So it's almost like God has sent us away to challenge our own viewpoints yet again.

00:54:29.420 He's going, right, I'll show you how subjective this all is.

00:54:33.160 And obviously, in my view, God is like a sort of...

00:54:35.940 Upper-class white Tory.

00:54:37.260 Deep voice.

00:54:39.080 Yeah, benevolent sort of like Macmillan.

00:54:42.380 God is a woman, mate, as we keep being told. 0.93

00:54:46.160 Yeah, God is a lady. 1.00

00:54:47.380 Have you never heard this? 1.00

00:54:48.940 It's feminist, love that shit. 1.00

00:54:50.500 No, I don't, but I've never thought of... 1.00

00:54:52.160 I've never spoken to a feminist.

00:54:53.520 If you ask me in a sort of like

00:54:54.940 Evan Almighty type way,

00:54:56.880 yeah, I'm seeing a male.

00:54:58.440 But like if you really ask me

00:54:59.820 what I thought God was,

00:55:01.380 I don't think gender is the first thing.

00:55:03.620 Because if it was the first,

00:55:05.720 you know, it just wouldn't have a gender 1.00

00:55:06.960 by definition, you know,

00:55:08.900 which so it couldn't compete in weightlifting.

00:55:10.900 I'll tell you what,

00:55:11.640 this is taking a turn, this podcast, hasn't it?

00:55:13.700 There you go.

00:55:14.200 God is gender neutral according to Jeff North.

00:55:15.500 This is the bit like,

00:55:16.060 you know when lads be sitting there

00:55:17.080 and when the space cake starts to be true?

00:55:19.540 Anyone that's just watched the last few years,

00:55:20.980 That was when it kicked in and we just started feeling paranoid.

00:55:23.780 The next bit will be us going out to get a big bottle of Sprite

00:55:26.240 just because we're all getting paranoid. 1.00

00:55:27.640 Like, fuck, man. 0.99

00:55:28.660 Well, actually, the next bit will be our final question. 1.00

00:55:30.900 Yeah, and the final question is what is the one thing

00:55:33.100 that we're not talking about that we really should be talking about

00:55:35.720 as a society?

00:55:37.420 Well, I suppose the thing that precedes and will antecede all of this

00:55:41.000 is the degree to which the state and people should be telling other people

00:55:44.940 to live their lives, right?

00:55:46.000 I'm not just trying to plug the tour show again,

00:55:48.260 But you have to look at the degree of incursion.

00:55:51.600 I mean, you look at schools, for example.

00:55:53.180 Right now, schools can – have either of you got kids?

00:55:56.820 No.

00:55:57.420 No?

00:55:57.920 Right, even – have you ever hang out near schools?

00:56:00.920 I used to be a teacher.

00:56:02.300 There you go, right?

00:56:03.340 We get a lot of comments about Francis' appearance

00:56:05.660 that he looks like he hangs around around schools

00:56:07.860 and not in the teaching capacity.

00:56:10.560 Yeah.

00:56:11.060 Yeah, I can see where it goes.

00:56:13.640 But, like, it would have been a case at school

00:56:15.840 where you can look in kids' lunchboxes now.

00:56:17.740 Really? Yeah. Yeah. They can inspect. Some schools do that. So these are this encroachment of the state. So, you know, whether the Tories claim that they've reduced the size of the state or not, in so many other areas, there are an increasing body of people that feel at liberty to tell you how you should be living, saying where you should be driving, whether you should be flying, what your kids should be eating at lunch.

00:56:38.140 And this is all happening in the background.

00:56:40.880 And it's sort of, it's above left or right politics.

00:56:43.500 It's beyond Brexit or remain.

00:56:46.840 And, you know, even a pandemic, right?

00:56:49.780 And quite rightly, government should take action.

00:56:52.080 But the thing about when governments take action or they pass emergency laws, they rarely give them back again.

00:56:56.700 It's like emergency taxes.

00:56:57.900 Remember VAT going up to 20% just as a temporary measure?

00:57:00.760 It's been five years now.

00:57:02.440 Or no, it's been even longer than that.

00:57:03.520 It was 2010, wasn't it?

00:57:04.340 So that's my concern is that we're so used to omnipresent organisations

00:57:09.980 and corporations knowing stuff about us and, you know,

00:57:13.640 like clicking, you know, updated terms and conditions, whatever. 0.91

00:57:16.940 I mean, who fucking knows what we've said to Apple 0.74

00:57:19.160 just so we can keep having music over the years. 0.92

00:57:22.280 Every single time we've ticked that, what are they saying in these things? 0.94

00:57:26.460 Yeah, I'm definitely a pedo. 0.83

00:57:28.260 Will you donate your organs while still living to the CEO of Apple

00:57:33.020 if he has like an incurable kidney complaint yeah it's just fine it's just i don't i don't

00:57:38.000 want to lose my like you two uh deluxe acting baby edition so yeah it's fine click click click

00:57:43.320 so it's not just that governments like have become more interventionist if we have also

00:57:49.040 these these these corporations and i blame us as human beings right we just lazily let this stuff

00:57:54.080 happen but but they're they're also all up in our business yeah to a fascinating degree and i don't

00:58:01.780 think it's i don't know if it's reversible at this point you know because let's be honest amazon is

00:58:06.160 fucking great you've got a terminal case of the nanny state is what you're saying well yeah and

00:58:11.580 if you want to hear me talk about it more you might want to come along to my tour show oh plug 0.98

00:58:15.900 the tour show well jeff is on tour at the moment is jeffnorcott.com to get tickets uh yeah or if

00:58:20.820 you just go like to my twitter or my facebook i mean just jeffnorcott tour but i know the modern

00:58:25.300 internet user needs to be told exactly where stuff is yeah you could go to live nation go to live

00:58:29.740 nation website and uh yeah i'm on tour to the uh end of april and yeah like even despite the

00:58:35.520 coronavirus thing i had i had my my attendance rate last week i you get no shows in comedy right

00:58:41.100 was less than usual i think that's that that's the benefit of having part of your audience being 0.94

00:58:45.180 quite brexit we're not staying at home i'm going more out i'll lick his face 0.88

00:58:50.520 yeah and i've been on tour with jeff opening for him on some dates it's an absolutely brilliant 0.98

00:58:56.480 Have you had your face licked? 0.99

00:58:59.400 That was the most random fucking question 1.00

00:59:01.140 in the middle of me plugging our guest show. 0.99

00:59:03.480 He's done very well.

00:59:04.980 He's done very well, Spawn,

00:59:06.760 but sometimes too well.

00:59:07.980 Like, I've almost been like,

00:59:09.000 okay, mate, get the old club.

00:59:11.940 Get the push hook out. 1.00

00:59:12.560 No, no, Jeff's like,

00:59:13.700 no, no, that's never happened.

00:59:14.880 He's always been mildly okay.

00:59:17.280 No, no, you've done great. 1.00

00:59:18.700 Oh, my fucking shot. 1.00

00:59:20.300 I've just plugged it. 1.00

00:59:21.640 But this is the thing with comedians.

00:59:24.420 You can't take it when you're just sincere.

00:59:26.060 I just told him he'd done great.

00:59:28.400 It freaked me out more than if I told him.

00:59:31.420 It's because he's lived in his country for too long. 0.99

00:59:33.240 No, it's been an absolute pleasure.

00:59:35.160 And like all Brexiteers, Jeff needs a little bit of Russian help every now and again.

00:59:38.480 There you go.

00:59:39.140 But it is a cracking show.

00:59:40.880 Jeff is firing on all cylinders right now.

00:59:43.480 He's really, really great.

00:59:45.340 So make sure you go and check out one of his shows.

00:59:48.220 He's got all over the country.

00:59:49.420 And you're going to Edinburgh this year as well.

00:59:50.900 I will be taking, yeah, and it'll be an amended version of the show.

00:59:53.660 It'll be fully updated.

00:59:54.640 so if anybody saw me

00:59:55.780 do the work in progress

00:59:56.640 last year

00:59:57.500 this is going to be

00:59:58.060 a completely different show

00:59:58.980 I'll be up there

00:59:59.440 for three weeks

01:00:00.060 and also you do a podcast

01:00:01.140 now as well

01:00:02.000 a podcast yeah

01:00:02.340 what most people think

01:00:03.400 so the revolutionary angle

01:00:05.200 of what most people think

01:00:06.820 it's just

01:00:07.220 like what do most people

01:00:09.120 think about this

01:00:10.080 trying to come to

01:00:10.880 a reasonable view

01:00:11.660 on the big issues

01:00:12.920 of the day

01:00:13.500 oh well done

01:00:14.800 alright mate

01:00:15.340 touch my elbow

01:00:15.940 thanks very much

01:00:16.500 for coming on the show

01:00:17.280 there you go 1.00

01:00:18.440 that was the most stupid 1.00

01:00:19.440 thing we've ever done 1.00

01:00:20.140 we'll see you again

01:00:21.220 in a week from now

01:00:21.860 with another brilliant episode

01:00:22.840 take care

01:00:23.500 see you next week guys

01:00:24.460 We'll see you next time.

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TRIGGERnometry - March 22, 2020

Geoff Norcott：＂Why I'm a Working Class Conservative＂

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

TRIGGERnometry - March 22, 2020

Geoff Norcott： ＂Why I'm a Working Class Conservative＂

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Geoff Norcott：＂Why I'm a Working Class Conservative＂