Iain Dale on Conservatism, Immigration, Tax & the NHS
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 10 minutes
Words per minute
191.40211
Harmful content
Misogyny
5
sentences flagged
Toxicity
16
sentences flagged
Hate speech
21
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of Trigonometry, we talk to ex-Tory MP and current LBC Radio presenter Ian Dale about how he became a Conservative MP, why he left the party and why he decided to become a Conservative radio presenter.
Transcript
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okay hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissin and this
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is a show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they
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know nothing about at trigonometry we don't pretend to be the experts we ask the experts
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our fantastic expert guest this week is an lbc radio presenter ian dale welcome to trigonometry
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hello hi thanks to you thank you so much for coming on i was about to introduce you as a
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conservative radio presenter and then you said no no no let's have a conversation about it so
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why didn't you first of all tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are and then we'll
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get into the whole conservative not conservative thing um well god how do i start where did i start
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off um i studied german believe it or not at the university of east anglia and was intended to be
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a german teacher languages were my thing it's anything i was good at at school could i just
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interrupt you there as a former teacher in well done and avoiding the profession
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do you know there's part of me that wonders whether at some point i mean i was 56 yesterday
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so there is still time but i've always thought i might go back to do it don't um not it certainly
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wouldn't be in a secondary school i couldn't cope with that anyway um i got into politics at
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university and ended up working in the house of commons for a couple of years for a tory mp back
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in the mid 80s when politics really was great fun and then i had a succession of jobs in
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lobbying i was a financial journalist i opened a political bookshop in westminster became a
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publisher and then got into broadcasting and that's how i got into lbc so that's the sort
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of potted history and i've always been politically interested um i always remember my grandmother
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said to me in about 1974 never trust the Labour Party because they always spend more than they
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can afford and Michael Foote's a communist. She was certainly right on the first one and I actually
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started off as a liberal and I would still say I still am a liberal in many ways. We did a project
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after we'd done our O-levels in 1978 at the end of the term and it was on local politics. We had
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to meet the local liberal mayor of Saffron Walden, that's where I grew up in Essex, and I was really
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impressed by her. So I joined the Liberal Party for six months. And then I saw a speech by Margaret
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Thatcher, which I assume must have been at the 1978 Tory party conference. And I thought, well,
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I agree with every word she said. So I then switched to becoming a Tory. And I stood for
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Parliament in 2005 in North Norfolk with the electorate fought back. I always wanted to be
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either an MP or a radio presenter. Was it a close race, that one? No, you know that.
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What I did was I applied to be the candidate in North Norfolk,
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which you think of Norfolk as quite a conservative area, and it is.
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And it had always been a conservative seat until 2001
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when the Liberal Democrats, Norman Lamb, won it by, I think, 483 votes.
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But it soon became apparent that, I mean, he was very, very popular.
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So it was quite difficult to differentiate myself from.
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I mean, he's a little bit Eurosceptic for a Liberal Democrat.
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And to all intents and purposes was a sort of fairly moderate conservative voice.
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And I always remember one day in February 2005,
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canvassing in one of the coastal villages called Overstrand.
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Lots of big houses, you'd have thought, natural Tory voters.
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Every single one of them that we knocked on the door said something along the lines of,
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well we really like you but norman's such a nice man i remember going home that evening saying to
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my partner this is just not going to happen i think i think i probably knew that way before
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that but that really brought it home and on the night i lost by 10 600 votes so that was a bit
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of a blow um i i did try again in the next parliament but i took two years out to start
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a new business and i don't you can't really apply for seats while you're doing that and i left it
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too late i nearly got bracknell um but yeah it just wasn't to be so after 2010 i thought no that's it
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and when i got the job at lbc i didn't renew my tory party membership so that's why i didn't
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want to be introduced as a conservative because in many ways i'm not anymore um i voted liberal
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democrat in the last local elections in time of joe was partly because and you'll know because
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you live there it's a very corrupt local council they want to spend 90 million pounds on a new
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civic centre and try to pretend to the electorate it's not going to cost them any money. Well of
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course it is. On social issues I'm much more left-wing than I used to be partly because of
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my radio show because I hear people's experiences. If you have people telling you day after day how
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awful the bedroom tax is and what the effects on them or universal credit it does shift your
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preconceptions a bit and so I can see the logic of the bedroom tax but the way it's been implemented
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it just hasn't worked. So I'm still, from an economic point of view, very sort of dry
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and right wing, I guess. I voted Leave, so I'm a complete Brexiteer. But on a lot of
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issues, I'm not your stereotypical conservative voter anymore.
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There's such a fascinating point you make about having your mind changed by listening
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to people talking. This is what we try and do on the show. And we find that it's happening
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less and less people actually having genuine conversation and being able to change each
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other's minds so that's such a great point was there a particular moment when you thought well
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this is the one story that kind of changed my mind on this or some other issue um well I've
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been doing radio now on on a daily basis since 2010 so I don't know how many people I've talked
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to in all the shows I don't know what to calculate it one day I suppose but it will be tens of
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thousands and they've all got stories to tell some of them very emotional stories um and
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i do i remember one particular phone and it wasn't that long ago actually on universal credit which
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you think oh god a phone on universal credit how can that be interesting and i do i can't say i
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ever relish doing benefits phonies because they can be slightly uh you either get people phoning
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in saying what's all these sponges Ian taking out taxpayers money and all the rest of it or you get
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the opposite now on this phone in I had three male callers towards the end of the hour
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who phoned in and they all were crying and you think well they're not acting something's happened
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in their life in their dealings with the demand for work and pensions that has driven them to
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the brink of despair and and there are subjects that when people phone in and they're incredibly
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emotional and it's I mean I can be a very emotional person I mean I'll cry at Emmerdale so
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it doesn't take much to set me off and I've talked about I mean when my mother died I've
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talked about that quite a lot and broke down once and I've got no I was gonna say I've got
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no embarrassment about sort of showing emotion but in some ways you do because you're supposed
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you've got a professional role to transact so you don't want to be known as sort of the crybaby
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presenter all the time but and there was one i can't remember what it was there was one time
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i know what it was it was um lee rigby you know who was murdered in uh woolwich i was on air
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when that just after that happened and a couple of days afterwards i think it was i suddenly got
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flashed on my screen the statement from the ministry of defense issued on behalf of his
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his girlfriend or his mother i can't remember so i started reading this out now normally i would
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read i would read it to myself before i read it out which kind of kills the emotion a little bit
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but i i read it and i got to the bit which talked about his children
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and I just completely lost it and I went silent I mean I everyone listening could tell that my
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voice was choking and I literally went silent for two seconds while I sort of gathered myself
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and that was about seven minutes before the end of the hour and then just before the end of the
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hour I apologized for that because I said it was very unprofessional I'm sorry it happened
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and the text and Twitter feed just went mad saying why have you apologized we were doing the same so
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They said any normal person would have done that.
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And that was quite comforting because I could have got...
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You're there to do a job and to read what's in front of you
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where we were talking about gay conversion therapy.
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And this was leading up to the end of the programme,
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and then Nigel Faroosh comes on to do his talk-up.
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thinking well what as a radio presenter do you say to him at that point because you know that
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one word out of place and it could be seen as encouraging him to do it obviously wouldn't mean
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it to be and also obviously Ofcom intervene and you potentially lose your job and all I could
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think of was saying well Ryan stay on the line I'll talk to you after the show I've just got to
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finish the show and I'll come into the gala and talk to you which I did and it was fine and we
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ended up having a joke about he was um said are you going to watch the world cup match tonight
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so I said yes I am he said I like watching that all those men in their tight shorts
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so I'm right I was you sort of think well has that done the trick has that sort of I mean I
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don't think he genuinely really meant that he was going to do it but I did have another instance
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years ago, Bill on the M25, I will always remember it, where he convinced me that he
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genuinely was thinking about doing it. And I kept him on for 20 minutes. And I mean,
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I'm not a trained, I mean, I did do it, I was one of the counsellors on Nightline at
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my university, but I'm not trained to talk people off the edge. So all you can do is
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talk. And I kept thinking to myself, how do I get him, how do I stop this conversation?
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I can't remember how I stopped it. Anyway, I asked him to speak to my producer.
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when I finished and then he phoned in the next night and told us that that he had tried to kill
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himself I think it was with pills and then but then he thought what I and Laura my producer
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had said to him and then he called 999 and he obviously survived that sort of shows how radio
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is such an intimate medium and you do have this one-to-one relationship with people
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what I've got called a cock-sucking terrorist sympathiser
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Well, as we both know, that happens on both sides.
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and I spent virtually the entire day on Twitter
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Well, there is part of me that would love to just say,
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do you know, I'm not going to talk about Brexit anymore
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I mean, if I'm bored with it, God knows what other people must feel like.
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I mean, I sometimes, if I get abuse, I mean, people send in texts,
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and what they don't know is that I see their phone number at the bottom of the text.
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So sometimes, if I get particularly horrible ones, I text them back,
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saying, by the way, just so you know, I've reported you to the Metropolitan Police.
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But it is incredible what people will say, like with doing the show,
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the kind of stuff that people will put online about us or I guess just like for no reason whatsoever.
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Well, you wait till you see what comes after this.
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But anyway, coming back to politics, I was interested that you said that you worked for Tory MP in the 80s when politics was fun.
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Still fun. What does that mean? What do you mean about politics being fun back then?
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in your 20s you see things through a very different prism than you do when you're in your 50s
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and it's like the world cup when we lost the world cup semi-final last week i mean yeah i was
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disappointed but i didn't feel at all emotional about it but in 1990 when i was 27 losing to
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germany i was with i was in a hall with 800 insurance brokers watching this and 800 grown
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men in floods of tears that it didn't affect me like that this time and politics i i maybe it's
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because I'm looking at it now from the point of view of an outsider rather than an insider.
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And when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, you kind of felt things mattered. There were big
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issues in the 1980s that really mattered. The Cold War, which people now completely forget.
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And the economy in the late 1970s, when I became first politically interested, I mean,
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It was just a basket case and people don't remember, 27% inflation.
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So that was what drove me to get involved in politics.
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I just felt part of it, whereas now I'm not part of it,
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apart from interviewing politicians all the time.
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And I think I look at it in a very different way, slightly more detached.
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And people keep saying to me, well, do you not want to stand for Parliament again?
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And I got asked to stand as Tory for Mayor of London the other day,
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purely because I've got quite a bit of name recognition in London.
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And I said, I would rather stick hot nails down my knob than run for Mayor of London.
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But if a good friend of me said, should I go into politics nowadays,
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I would advise them not to, which is a terrible thing.
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When I told my mum that I wasn't going to stand for parliament again, she cheered.
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And I was thinking, well, she ought to be really sad about that,
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because you ought to be proud that your son wants to do sort of public service.
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But she took the view that if, I remember in 2010, she said,
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well, you could have got caught up in that expenses scandal.
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And the truth is, of course I could have done, because many people did,
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Some people did through their own fault, it has to be said.
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And she didn't like all of the public scrutiny.
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She knew because I was gay that I would have had much more scrutiny than maybe others.
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So I am sad that I've never been an MP because I think I would have liked it.
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Ian, looking back at the 80s and especially with Thatcher's government,
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I mean, there were some things that they brought in which were homophobic.
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If you think about the, I can't remember what the section was called now.
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Was there not part of you as a gay man that saw that and thought,
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hang on, I don't agree with that in the slightest?
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and I'm probably going to give you too much information here.
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and I remember logicalizing this to myself if that's a word on the basis that it was designed
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to prevent the promotion of homosexuality whereas the narrative now is that it was designed to
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prevent any discussion whatsoever now I think that probably was the effect of it because teachers
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were sort of nervous about well if I talk about it does that count as promotion now I don't believe
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it's the role of teachers to promote anything to their class and to their children so that was how
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I sort of rationalized it at the time I'm looking back yeah I would not have been knowing what I know
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now I would not have supported it and I think that has clouded every single discussion about
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the Conservative Party and homosexuality ever since and even now virtually every month in one
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of the gay magazines there's always an article about the wicked Tories in section 28 forgetting
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all of the progress that the Tory party has made on that issue which I played a very very small
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part in. I remember when I was selected as a candidate I was the first openly gay candidate
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to have been selected having told the selection committee in terms that I was gay. Now I was
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slightly forced to do that because I'd forgotten I'd agreed to speak at some gay fringe meeting
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at the Tory party conference and I remember the association chairman bringing me up saying
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um we've got a little bit of an issue in that people have seen that you're speaking at this
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event and he knew I was gay anyway and I said why is that an issue well it's just that people
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sort of aren't very happy and I said okay well I'll address it in the next because that was
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by that stage I got to through to the second round of the selection
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so I'd done my speech done my questions and answers and at the end I'd actually primed
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somebody in the audience to ask me the question and they worded it rather beautifully they said
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is this an issue that means a lot to you they didn't because they weren't allowed to ask if
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I was gay so I prepared a statement and it was quite a sort of tearjerker in a way and it was
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sort of as well many of you sitting in the audience you will know people who are gay you
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may not know that you know people that are gay but it could be a dustman it could be a hairdresser
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it could be whoever but does that affect the way they do their job does me being gay affect the way
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that I would do my job and I mean I got standing ovation at the end of it and they selected me
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with a 66% majority. Now bear in mind this was North Norfolk not the most liberal area in the
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country to say something. So I thought well good on them and they haven't let it affect them.
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They've judged me on what they think my abilities are and they selected me. Now the electorate
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didn't take that view and some people have said well do you think that the majority was so big
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because, I mean, some of my opponents obviously sort of promoted that I was gay
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I think there will have been some people that didn't vote for me because of that,
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I think it was mainly because they knew that Norman Lamb was a really good MP.
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you've had the Conservatives introduce equal marriage.
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And I don't think, and although quite a lot of Conservative MPs oppose that,
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I don't think there would be many Conservative MPs now.
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If it came back, if somebody put down a motion to repeal equal marriage,
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I'd like to think there would be no Conservative MPs that voted for that.
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But if there were, I'd be surprised if it was more than five.
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Now, I think people need to accept that the Conservative Party has come a long way on these issues.
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in some cases sort of being dragged and screaming but we are where we are and i think it's about
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time that people acknowledge that and what would you say to those people who say that the
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conservative party is an inverted commas the nasty party the party of austerity the party who
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demonizes the poor the party brought in the bedroom text which let's be fair has caught a huge
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amount of suffering to working I don't think that there are any politicians on which in whichever
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party that deliberately bring in policies designed because they think they will harm people
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that's not how it works I mean you know you really would have to be a pretty nasty individual to
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bring in a I mean take Ian Duncan Smith and universal credit and welfare reform um
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I remember back when he was leader of the conservative party and he went to this
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councillor state in Glasgow, Easter House. And he was profoundly moved by what he saw there and
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thought, well, this has been a Labour council for 60 years and they've left these people in this
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state. They've had the chance to improve their lives and they've done nothing. So, I mean, he
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could argue that the Labour Party was a nasty party for doing that. And I remember he came to
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visit me when I was a candidate. We went round a drugs rehabilitation centre and I listened to the
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conversations he had with drug addicts and there was one of them there that knew his cousin and
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i mean it was quite an emotional conversation um now that man is not motivated by hate or spite he
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genuinely wanted to reform the system to help the kind of people that he'd seen in in this council
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estate and i've seen them in my political life these are states that um that whichever political
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parties have just left to rot because they know that the people generally don't vote very much
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so they feel that all the political strategists feel they can be ignored now so i think he was
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motivated by the best of intentions how do you though do meaningful reform of the welfare system
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which is so incredibly complex it eats up so much public money um i think it's a really difficult
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challenge so when you i think all all parties have agreed that universal credit is a good idea
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trying to bring all the benefits into one but clearly there have been terrible issues in how
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it's being implemented now um who do you blame for that do you blame the politicians do you blame the
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civil servants who effectively i mean the politicians will say to the civil servants
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right this is what we want to do tell us how we do it now in the end the buck does stop with the
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secretary of state there has to be somebody who's formally accountable to it but he hasn't he wasn't
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served well by his civil servants and of course there'll be a lot of people listening to how dare
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he and they'll blame the civil servants well sorry civil servants do get away with an awful lot in
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this country and are not held accountable uh for it we do have some very fine civil servants but
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we also have some very very incompetent ones and it's about time that we recognize that and when
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When there are systematic failures in what happens, they need to be called out.
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But in the end, there are many more people to blame as well.
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Well, if you ever do run for parliament again, there'll be a constituency of what you're not getting as the civil service.
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But coming back to France's question, I mean, I'm an outsider in this country.
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it's just fact uh but it's it's like a given to me that the tory brand is a toxic brand and yet
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we've had a conservative-led government for years how does that happen in a country which
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supposedly hates the tories yeah we have a tory government well we have a shy tory phenomenon
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don't we people who don't tell the opinion posters that they vote tory that i think there are still
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people feel i don't know but they feel shame or embarrassment about voting tory i don't think
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anybody should be ashamed of who they vote for um it's like ukip were never identified in the
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opinion polls until 2014 really um because the opinion polling companies never picked them up
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um i think it's the same with donald trump in america that there are a lot of people that just
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didn't tell the polling companies that they were going to vote for him so he a lot of people felt
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that he was going to win but um all of the so-called experts didn't see it coming and then
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but there were howls of sort of disbelief afterwards and still are.
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I think people always contrast political parties
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and they compare whether they think they're actually capable of governing.
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When Tony Blair was leader of the Labour Party,
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people felt that, I mean, I never voted for him, but he didn't scare me.
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He didn't sort of frighten the electoral horses in the way that maybe Neil Kinnock did
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or maybe now Jeremy Corbyn does with some people.
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And there is a phenomenon of sort of stick to nurse for fear of something worse.
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And that's Theresa May's biggest asset at the moment.
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Where, I mean, when this goes out, she may not even be Prime Minister.
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But she has survived so often because there is no alternative, really.
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I mean, why is Labour not 20 points ahead in the opinion polls
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when you've got probably the most incompetent Tory government
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I mean, John Major, I think you can compare to Theresa May in some ways
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But Labour just cannot seem to break through in the way...
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oh, but we did so well in the last election campaign.
00:27:00.620
Even though you keep trying to pretend you did win,
00:27:05.640
And they can say, oh, well, it'll happen again in the next election.
00:27:10.520
And I do wonder now whether we've reached Pete Corbyn,
00:27:16.540
When do you ever see Jeremy Corbyn doing anything nowadays?
00:27:23.320
I would interview him every two or three weeks on my show and he was always if we couldn't find
00:27:28.120
another Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn was always our backstop he would cycle down from Islington
00:27:32.920
and come into the studio and I got like a house on fire with him he knew exactly where I came from
00:27:37.660
we had some really good discussions since he's been Labour leader not a single interview and
00:27:43.020
that's because Seamus Mill and his director of communications clearly thinks that we're all
00:27:46.800
fascists and therefore must be avoided at all costs but I think that's a real problem for them
00:27:51.280
Because if you are as leader of the opposition, you need to be out there fighting the good fight.
00:27:55.760
Now, you can talk to your momentum rallies till the cows come home, but you're not persuading anybody new to vote for you by doing that.
00:28:02.000
You are just confirming the view that you're a bit of a lefty, that sort of centre ground people can't trust to be in government.
00:28:10.900
Oh, you mentioned about the people behind him who run his campaign.
00:28:15.540
do you think part of the reason why they don't put him in front of people like you
00:28:19.880
is that Corbyn does have some pretty dodgy values
00:28:23.320
for instance his refusal to criticise the government in Venezuela
00:28:28.940
and I know first hand the terrible atrocities that are happening there
00:28:40.180
I mean he and McDonnell actually have praised Maduro
00:28:43.360
now I don't understand all of that I really don't but I don't think that's the reason why
00:28:50.180
they won't do interviews I just think that they they think they can bypass the mainstream media
00:28:54.640
now and use Facebook and social media to get to the people that they think they need
00:29:00.260
well I think they're wrong on that because you you've got to have a sort of multifaceted approach
00:29:06.300
bear in mind that old people are the ones that actually turn out to vote and all this
0.99
00:29:10.860
the fantasy that at the last election it was the 18 to 24 year olds that pushed the Labour vote up
00:29:16.860
they did vote in slightly larger numbers than before it wasn't actually it was a 25 to 45
00:29:21.540
age group but if they can tap into older people and they've got a tremendous opportunity to do
00:29:27.000
this now um that's how they could win but they show no sign of looking at doing that whatsoever
00:29:32.640
and just going back to Venezuela like because I find it absolutely baffling when I talk to
1.00
00:29:39.460
Labour voters I go but you do understand that he's in support of Maduro and they're like
00:29:43.540
yeah but it doesn't really matter does it and it's you know it's a long I got told by one person
00:29:48.240
yeah but it's it's very far away isn't it a country of which we know nothing yeah so I mean
00:29:53.420
why do you think that in many why do you think that it's so it's reprehensible for him to come
00:29:58.980
out and support with Maduro well I mean they kept praising Chavez and saying well this is what
00:30:06.680
socialism can do they were actually using the venezuelan economy as as a model for what they
00:30:12.640
would want to do and now that the venezuelan economy i mean it's probably the most basket
00:30:20.820
case economy in the whole world at the moment they now of course blame the americans for that
00:30:25.100
now i can't quite see how that works but that's what they do they've always got an answer and
00:30:31.180
they will never ever admit that they're wrong on venezuela but the electorate in many ways
00:30:36.320
discount that you're right just as they discount the fact that he used to meet with the ira just
00:30:41.520
the fact that they discount the fact that he met with hamas he's cultivated this image as a sort
00:30:46.480
of gentle old uncle figure um and he has become a bit of a cult that's l in that
00:30:52.720
and it is a fascinating thing to watch he I think his strings are pulled entirely by Seamus
00:31:03.480
Mill and John Macdonald I don't think he's got an original thought in his head now he believes
00:31:06.900
exactly the same as he believed in 1985 now that's a good thing in some ways that we like
00:31:12.920
consistency in politicians but he hasn't adapted to the modern world and he can never bring himself
00:31:19.520
to say anything positive about america about israel but he will always find positive things to say
00:31:28.160
about russia about certain countries in the middle east that you and i might find reprehensible
00:31:37.200
he used to take money from press tv admittedly i did a few programs on that as well but i think i
00:31:43.520
was paid 75 pounds for doing three programs and he was paid 20 grand he's never said well in
00:31:49.760
retrospect i was wrong to do that and i really deprecate the iranian regime's views on homosexuality
00:31:55.520
and all the rest of it he's never done that um and i find it very strange that he can utter
00:32:00.960
supportive words to that kind of regime and treat israel with the contempt that he does now israel
0.81
00:32:07.120
gets a lot of things wrong i'll be the first to admit that but it is a democracy it is a fairly
00:32:12.320
liberal democracy in terms of social issues um but you'll never find him acknowledging that
00:32:18.240
do you think he's unelectable no i don't i think the conservatives are doing their best to make him
00:32:23.920
electable um and because of what's happening on brexit uh i think there are a lot of conservatives
00:32:31.200
who will well i know there are because they tell me all the time on my program that they either
00:32:36.480
won't vote Conservative or they won't vote at all and I mean my partner's a good example of this
00:32:42.840
someone who's not really that interested in politics but sort of listens to the Jeremy
00:32:46.720
Vine show on Radio 2 and that's where he gets most of his current affairs knowledge from
00:32:50.100
said to me the other day um is it true that Brexit might not happen and I said well I don't I think
00:32:56.960
it will happen but there are lots of people who are trying to make it not happen including
00:33:00.140
lots within the Conservative Party and said well if it doesn't happen I will never vote Tory again
00:33:03.800
and he said not only that I will never vote again and I've had so many people say this and
00:33:09.320
particularly people who may be voted for the first time in the referendum because it's somehow on
00:33:14.220
either side it's somehow enthused them and I get a lot of calls texts tweets from people saying well
00:33:20.580
if we're if we're betrayed on this I should never take part in the democratic process again
00:33:25.240
and that is extremely worrying because it leaves a gap for someone like Steve Bannon who we were
00:33:31.080
talking about earlier, who said on LBC yesterday that Tommy Robinson was a great British hero
00:33:42.340
and that there will soon be a revolution in Britain. Now, Paul Mason, who I normally don't
00:33:51.260
agree with on anything, he tweeted that he thinks that when Tommy Robinson comes out of prison,
00:33:56.400
he will get huge american funding to start up a sort of tea party type organization
00:34:03.980
to try and rip down the uk political establishment and i thought jesus i agree with paul mason he's
00:34:12.560
absolutely right on that now what a frightening prospect that will be because whatever you think
00:34:16.720
of tommy robertson i actually try and ignore him i don't have him on my show but whatever you think
00:34:21.120
of him and his views he is an incredibly articulate human being and to many people will be quite
00:34:27.940
plausible and when you are in a time of political turmoil it only takes one demagogue to really
00:34:36.400
pull the whole sack of house of cards down now whether he would be capable of doing that i don't
00:34:42.680
know um i mean nigel farage is now saying that he's going to get back into politics because he
00:34:48.080
thinks that we're being betrayed by Brexit. Now, whatever you think of Nigel Farage, he is not
00:34:52.260
a Tommy Robinson type figure. I have a lot of time for Nigel Farage. I take over from him
00:34:58.000
every evening on LBC. And I've known him for 10 years. So I think I know him reasonably well. I
00:35:04.560
mean, he does say a lot of things that I disagree with. But he does believe in democratic politics.
00:35:10.780
So I think that's quite a boring development. It's interesting what you say about Tommy
00:35:14.740
Robinson because we had a guest on the show a couple of weeks ago who's a YouTuber who's done
00:35:21.320
conferences with Tommy Robinson and things like that and one of the things he told us I don't
00:35:25.540
think it was in the interview but we went for dinner after he was saying that one of the things
00:35:29.620
that you experience when you are with Tommy Robinson is that there's a huge number of people
00:35:33.940
who will come up to him they'll take a look to the left take a look to the right make sure no
00:35:37.900
one's watching and then they'll come up to Tommy Robinson and shake his hand and say thank you
00:35:41.420
much for what you're doing there is a huge undercurrent that i don't think anyone has quite
00:35:46.620
explained or understood of people feeling deep resentment and frustration in this country
00:35:51.660
where do you think that comes from i think it comes from a feeling that politicians have let
00:35:56.700
people down that's always been there to an extent but because we have social media now it's so much
00:36:02.620
easier for people to let people know what they're thinking um 20 years ago if mrs miggins from 32
00:36:10.700
location at avenue scunthorpe wanted to vent her spleen over something she'd write to the scunthorpe
00:36:15.920
courier now she can start a blog she's got twitter she's got facebook all sorts of different mediums
00:36:21.480
to make her views known now that's a really good thing in many ways for democracy it enables people
00:36:27.800
to feel that they're taking part in the democratic system but it's also a great danger because if
00:36:33.000
they feel that they're taking part but the politicians are letting them down that that
00:36:37.440
fuels a feeling of resentment um and in the end if politicians continue to let people down i mean
00:36:44.720
who knows where that leads i mean look at italy as a good example i mean okay maybe italy isn't
00:36:50.500
the best example because italy has always had political problems but i doubt whether this
00:36:54.820
current italian government would be there without the power of the internet i mean the five-star
00:37:00.820
movement is essentially a creation of the internet now by a comedian by the way really
00:37:12.040
And you know it's not well run if it's founded by a comedian.
00:37:17.840
But do you think part of what's happening with Tommy Robinson,
00:37:22.320
is the fact that immigration is a major issue in this country
00:37:26.320
and mainstream politicians have always felt an unease with tackling with it
00:37:30.900
and dealing with it and talking about it openly?
00:37:36.580
I think until about 2003, 2005, that was probably the case.
00:37:46.020
I mean, people keep saying it's a subject that politicians try and sweep under the carpet.
00:37:53.260
I mean, I'm as wet as a lettuce on immigration.
00:37:57.640
I think that generally people who come to this country come here for a reason,
00:38:01.080
and that is because they see a country where they can do well in.
00:38:03.860
um if you are a syrian um asylum seeker you come to this country presumably because you think it
1.00
00:38:13.260
can offer you the sort of things that you're that that syria cannot at the moment and people say oh
00:38:19.480
yeah but they should have stopped in the first country and yeah that's that's the system but
0.62
00:38:24.280
they come here partly because a lot of them will be able to speak english and we should think it
00:38:28.560
as a real compliment that they've chosen our country rather than France, Germany, Switzerland,
00:38:34.400
wherever. And it's not because they think we have a loose benefit system. I mean, there will always
00:38:39.900
be the odd person who comes here for that reason. I mean, it's the human nature. But 99% of people
00:38:45.500
come to this country for the right reasons, whether they are asylum seekers or whether
00:38:49.560
they're economic migrants. And in both cases, they're making rational choices, which if you
00:38:55.280
or i had been in that situation we would probably do exactly the same thing and they're taking
00:39:00.400
terrible risks to do it so i look at it and again this is something where i think my views have
00:39:06.160
become much more liberal since i've been doing my radio show um and from time to time i'd say once
00:39:12.400
every two or three months i will devote an hour to asking immigrants to this country to phone in
00:39:17.840
and explain why they've come here and um and what it's meant to them and with the view of trying to
00:39:24.560
persuade those people who think that all immigrants are on the take to just have a pause for a second
00:39:30.240
thought and think well you've heard what these people have said um do you really still believe
00:39:34.720
that they're all evil people come to bomb us or whatever now that's all i can do as a radio
00:39:39.280
presenter but i think that's almost a public service um i think every country has to have
00:39:46.000
control of its borders we clearly do not have control of our borders as long as we're within
00:39:50.240
the EU I think it's a fantasy to think that the number of immigrants is going to be reduced to
00:39:55.520
tens of thousands after we leave because the economy will always need new people if we're
00:40:00.160
not if we're not training people to do the right jobs where else are companies going to get them
00:40:04.240
from now in many ways it is a scandal that so many of NHS nurses come from abroad so many of
0.98
00:40:10.800
the doctors come from abroad because what we're doing is we're stealing them from countries that
0.93
00:40:14.800
actually really need them, like the Philippines or Indonesia. But they're not going to stop after
00:40:21.020
Brexit. I mean, Brexit doesn't mean that they're not going to come here anymore. Indonesia is not
0.89
00:40:24.760
in Europe. Well, indeed, but nor are people from Europe going to stop coming here. I mean,
00:40:29.340
the figures are out this morning, I think, showing that the net immigration to this country,
00:40:33.020
it has slowed from Europe. It's the lowest since 2013. But we still have a net inflow of people
00:40:38.420
of 102,000. Now, I don't see that changing after Brexit at all. Yes, the numbers might
00:40:44.740
come down marginally, but we're not going to get to this mythical tens of thousands
00:40:48.800
target. And that's where, again, people lose trust in politicians, where they stick to
00:40:53.060
a target which they've never achieved and which they know they can't achieve. And Theresa
00:40:57.200
May is the only one around the cabinet table who still believes in that target. All of
00:41:00.140
the rest of them don't. And what Sajid Javid should have done right from the start when
00:41:05.340
he became head secretary say to the prime minister we're abolishing this target and she would have
00:41:09.760
had to agree to it because you're never stronger than on your first week in a job and she couldn't
00:41:13.500
have afforded for him to resign straight after amber rudd and i think he has made moves in that
00:41:18.800
direction um but maybe not gone as far as he could but let me put the counterpoint to you
00:41:23.820
on immigration because i totally hear everything you've said about it and myself an immigrant but
00:41:29.180
But on the other hand, I sense that there's a level at which immigration becomes, I don't
00:41:35.880
mean unsustainable necessarily economically, but our ability to integrate people into our
00:41:40.480
society while preserving social cohesion within that society is limited.
00:41:48.580
It's very common in Russia or in other parts of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland, all these
00:41:53.120
places, for people to sit down and have a drink in the park on a bench.
00:42:02.000
In this country, the culture is different, right?
00:42:04.120
Now, in the last 10, 15 years, 15 years ago, it would be unheard of for people to be sitting
00:42:09.700
and drinking beer on a bench in a park in this country.
00:42:12.300
It would be completely unheard of unless they were homeless usually, right?
00:42:15.420
Nowadays, you walk around, whether it's central London or Tunbridge Wells, where you and I
00:42:19.320
live, it's very common to see lots of young men sitting on a park bench drinking beer.
00:42:24.480
I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but that is just a visual
00:42:28.220
reminder of how quickly the country has changed now there might be people who are troubled by
00:42:34.340
that or concerned about that or who feel that that's a reflection of the fact that society
00:42:37.840
has changed in a way that they're not comfortable what's wrong with that well i think generally we
00:42:42.940
have a really good record in this country on integrating immigrants where i mean what a lot
00:42:48.460
of people are really talking about are brown people let's let's face it polish people are
00:42:56.580
But for some people, it's more acceptable to have white immigration than brown immigration.
00:43:07.400
I just want you to address my point, which is not the racism, but the actual thing of people changing the structure of society.
00:43:14.840
I don't think that many people would have a problem with the example you've given.
00:43:19.020
I think what people have a problem with is that, particularly the Blair government, allowed so many people in all at once from Eastern Europe.
0.78
00:43:27.740
And there wasn't the infrastructure there to support them.
00:43:31.120
I think people accept immigration if it means that their children aren't going to suffer for lack of school places.
00:43:38.060
Or they think that in A&E they have to wait longer.
00:43:42.640
And I think we haven't got enough housing in this country.
00:43:46.560
so people naturally say well if we haven't got enough houses we can't let more people in i mean
00:43:50.900
it's a perfectly logical thing to think it doesn't mean that they're racist necessarily right some
00:43:55.340
of them will be some of them won't be so that's where again politicians have let down people
00:44:00.040
because they haven't provided the infrastructure for the numbers of people that have come in but
00:44:04.980
i think generally in terms of integration in this country i think we've done a pretty good job if
00:44:10.820
you compare particularly I mean you compare us with France so you look at the immigration that's
00:44:19.220
happened in France over the last 20 years and there are genuine ghettos in France where literally
1.00
00:44:24.580
French people indigenous French people are scared to go now there may be one or two areas in this
00:44:30.600
country that you could give that description to but I couldn't name you more than two or three
00:44:35.060
there may be one or two northern towns where for whatever reasons a particular section of the
00:44:40.040
population has decided to settle there and it's almost sort of there aren't any white families
00:44:44.680
in those areas anymore now that is something that should to my in my view should not have been
00:44:49.520
allowed to happen through the local council or whatever they shouldn't have allocated those
00:44:54.520
particular areas when we're talking about effectively immigration from pakistan and
00:44:58.900
muslim countries here um but that is not widespread in this country and i think but we do also have
00:45:05.640
to recognize that i mean we're sitting here in west london if we walk down the street i don't
00:45:11.380
notice someone's color when i walk down the street if i hear somebody speaking a foreign language on
00:45:16.060
the tube does that bother me of course it doesn't bother me i'm trying to think oh what language is
00:45:19.860
that i find it interesting if you live in a market town in the in the middle of devon
00:45:25.460
where you probably don't see a black person or a chinese person for months
00:45:32.700
you it's it is something i mean i remember once when i was walking down the high street in croma
00:45:39.880
on the north norfolk coast and there's a black man walking the other side of the street and i was
00:45:45.380
just sort of looking and watching people and they were all staring at him and that wasn't because
00:45:50.380
they were racist some of them maybe it was because he was different and that's what people
00:45:56.480
find a challenge and that's why people find different cultures quite challenging when they
1.00
00:46:03.560
don't understand them. A friend of mine a few weeks ago, a friend of mine was saying
00:46:07.840
we've got a Muslim family moved in two doors down. I said yeah and? Well you know. I said no you tell
1.00
00:46:15.480
me. Well you know I mean it's and I was really quite shocked by this conversation and then of
00:46:22.660
was two weeks later ran me up again and of course they're now in each other's houses having cups of
00:46:27.740
coffee very friendly but he'd never met a muslim before now that's the challenge for society how
1.00
00:46:34.540
do you address that in all of the areas where it's still a novelty to see someone of a different
00:46:41.180
skin color and i know i take your point about well nowadays it's not necessarily skin color but
00:46:45.700
that was all that always used to be the case and for many people i'm afraid still is um and i think
00:46:51.660
the internet and i think television has actually helped in this and that it normalizes things and
00:46:57.540
people don't feel the threat maybe that they sometimes used to from mass immigration um
00:47:03.720
and it's a bit like a gay thing um eventually people do when they meet people who are gay
0.91
00:47:11.600
they realize that not all gay men want to shag every gay man they meet
00:47:15.640
or every man mostly yeah every man what was that no i just know i know you got that right
0.94
00:47:24.000
um so um and it's the same with with immigrants it's the same with i mean just like muslims i
00:47:30.620
not every muslim wants to bomb you they'll be the very small proportion and then but they
1.00
00:47:35.880
they will still say oh yes but the others might sympathize with them well i mean once you get to
00:47:42.680
that level of argument you can't really win it. Well isn't that what Majin Nawaz says your fellow
00:47:46.640
LBC presenter? Isn't that exactly what he says that there's a small group of extremists and then
00:47:51.620
a very large group of people who do sympathize with them? Well I've I have never met a Muslim
00:47:58.180
that sympathizes with any form of terrorism. That doesn't mean to say they don't exist just because
00:48:04.400
I've never met them but I think I mean we all judge people by the I suppose the people that
00:48:10.480
we meet in our lives and I've had a couple phone in on my radio show and whenever there's a terror
00:48:17.520
incident and I've covered quite a few of the terror incidents because they've broken within
00:48:21.440
my show and I would always encourage Muslim callers to phone in to tell me what they think
00:48:27.160
now they shouldn't have to do that really but it's important for the rest of the listeners to
00:48:31.820
hear the condemnation and from time to time you'll get what I can only think of two incidents in
00:48:39.580
eight years where i've had somebody phone in to effect not support necessarily but to show
00:48:46.860
more than a degree of sympathy and understanding with what's happened and i and i let them have it
00:48:53.260
because i can if it was on the bbc i couldn't but i can and um it's quite a powerful position to be
00:48:59.820
in when and again all you i mean i remember one was a female zainab her name was and i kept her
00:49:06.300
on for about 20 minutes because I thought it was really important that she understood or I tried
00:49:12.120
to explain to her why I thought what she was saying was completely wrong and it ranged from a huge it
00:49:18.300
wasn't actually necessarily about terrorism it was on quite a few social issues but it's quite
00:49:25.040
that's partly why I love the job because you do have the opportunity at least to try and make
00:49:29.780
people think again even if you're not going to necessarily change their minds you've got to get
00:49:34.180
to question what they've been told by their parent because I remember saying to her your
00:49:37.960
parent should be ashamed of you for teaching you this which is quite something to say to somebody
00:49:42.520
and very teacher like can I just say as well yeah you've let yourself die
0.96
00:49:50.720
but I think a lot of fear of immigration it does come from a fear of the unknown and I explain it
00:49:58.460
through children um i remember when i was teaching i was teaching four-year-olds and i sort of did
00:50:04.660
this experiment just for myself really and i put a big bunch of crowns in and they were doing
00:50:09.260
coloring in and they were coloring in happy and then i got a big i grabbed a big load of the
00:50:14.840
crowns and i moved them over to there and i saw how they dealt with having a smaller number of
00:50:19.580
crowns all of a sudden that's when the argument started to happen and they started arguing and
00:50:25.360
there was pushing and there was shoving and all the rest of it and then tears now don't you think
00:50:29.960
a lot of the fear basically a child abuser yeah that's why i do it that's why i did it for 10
00:50:35.360
years but do you not think a large part of the fear of immigrants coming in is brought in by
00:50:43.120
austerity the fact that people see our services getting reduced the fact that we see the nhs
00:50:48.700
whether it's right whether it's wrong are starting to shrink and die and being privatized and being
00:50:52.820
taken away it's a load of old bollocks i mean you look at the money that is now spent on the nhs
00:50:57.820
it is infinitely bigger than it used to be she's got another 20 billion but apparently that's not
00:51:01.980
enough you don't solve the problems in the nhs just by throwing money at it we should be looking
00:51:07.480
at the systemic failures of the nhs but we can't because we are obsessed by this fact that the nhs
00:51:13.740
is loved by everyone and therefore cannot be changed we've got i mean anne widdicombe who
00:51:18.180
donkey years ago she had a health secretary she's like 2000 she said at the time and nothing has
00:51:24.080
changed in the last 20 years she said we've got a we're looking to have a 21st century nhs
00:51:30.760
using a 1940s bureaucratic system and we don't have an nhs you'll only have an nhs a national
00:51:39.780
health service when somebody in berwick upon tweed will get the same level of treatment on whatever
00:52:04.460
Under Tony Blair, sorry, under John Major,
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00:52:20.980
Now, you could say, well, that's a 50% increase on what it was under John Major.
00:52:26.380
I mean, if you want to be a propagandist, that's terrible.
00:52:35.600
And I don't really see that changing very much.
00:52:38.220
And this idea that somehow in healthcare, the private sector is evil.
00:52:42.440
most of us use private sector dentists pharmacies are all in the private sector
00:52:49.240
gps are effectively private sector contractors to the nhs um most other countries in europe
00:52:57.640
i forget america because everyone says we don't want an american-style healthcare system no we
00:53:01.280
don't but if you look at europe they aren't embarrassed that they that the french or the
00:53:06.060
german system uses a lot of far more private sector input than it does in this country
00:53:11.660
So the whole debate, to me, needs to be reframed about, well, OK, if we were starting from scratch, how would we do this now?
00:53:19.880
And then once we've decided that, and let's have a proper national debate on it, once we've decided that, well, let's see how we can get there.
00:53:27.200
That doesn't mean to say we dismantle everything that is in the existing NHS.
00:53:34.240
There's no wonder we have thousands and thousands of bureaucrats and administrators in the NHS
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00:53:39.480
because the systems are so bureaucratic that they have to be there.
00:53:51.240
Well, what was the alternative to the so-called austerity programme that George Osborne carried out?
00:54:00.340
I mean, if you believe that there's a magic money tree that somehow magics up this money that we can sort of get from nowhere, fine.
00:54:07.400
But we saw the result of that in the 1970s with 25% inflation.
00:54:11.000
And then in the 80s, the result of that was massive unemployment.
00:54:22.760
But it's interesting to me because on the one hand, you make a very good point about austerity.
00:54:27.320
And I actually agree with this idea that it was completely unnecessary.
00:54:30.340
and ideological, I think is completely wrong, on the one hand. But on the other hand, we earlier
00:54:34.660
talked about your experience of talking to people about things like the bedroom tax. So how do you
00:54:39.100
bring these two things together? This, on the one hand, the need to reduce public spending,
00:54:44.280
the need to borrow less, with the fact that when you reduce public spending, people suffer.
00:54:49.320
Politics and government is all about choices. When you fight an election, you have a manifesto,
00:54:54.700
it says, well, this is what we're going to do. And then when you get into government,
00:55:06.260
and you have to be responsible for those choices that you've made
00:55:09.180
and a Conservative government is inevitably going to make different choices
00:55:21.000
across all sorts of different government departments
00:55:25.800
and they try and implement those spending pledges
00:55:28.960
well the long-term effects of that there'll be there'll be a short-term um feel-good factor
00:55:34.760
particularly in education and the nhs probably where people say wasn't it wonderful that we've
00:55:40.620
got all these extra resources but in the long term because all politics is cyclical the chickens will
00:55:46.460
come home to roost now i don't pretend i would necessarily made the same choices as david
00:55:51.300
cameron and theresa may have made um but that's because it all individuals will make different
00:55:57.100
choices and and and i would not have made some of the cuts in some areas that were made but the
00:56:04.220
amount of the nhs hasn't been in financial terms the nhs has not been cut local government services
00:56:10.500
are being cut social care has been cut quite happy to accept that um but you picked the wrong one on
00:56:18.740
the nhs i'm afraid do you think we need do you think we need to be more mature about how we think
00:56:23.940
can talk about politics. I think you make this point about certain things that are going to have
00:56:29.060
to be cut, right? I think so few people actually accept the fact that political decisions will have
00:56:34.800
negative consequences. No, and we also have a media which, particularly on the BBC, if you
00:56:40.520
listen to the Today programme, I would say on average, in a three-hour programme, they will
00:56:45.540
have seven or eight lobby groups, pressure groups, come on to explain why the government should spend
00:56:50.280
more money on x y or z now i don't think that's particularly responsible i mean there are reports
00:56:57.100
that come out every single day complaining about this that or the other um and yeah okay they said
00:57:03.600
well they've got to fill three hours of news well is it really news that the royal society for the
00:57:07.880
protection of whatever demands that another five billion pounds is spent on something um in some
00:57:14.540
cases, it would be. But these desires for more money are entirely natural, but they're never
00:57:20.880
countered. You'll get John Humphreys interviewing a Treasury minister saying, isn't it outrageous
00:57:27.220
that you won't spend the money that this particular pressure group wants to spend? But he will never
00:57:33.540
quiz the pressure group on the fact that the money isn't there. It'll just be, well, why do you need
00:57:41.040
to spend this money yes that's a real problem isn't it thank you very much and
00:57:44.520
goodbye now as I say I don't think money extra money is always the best way to
00:57:50.580
solve in its systematic problems within a particular sector some sometimes it
00:57:55.780
will help a reform but not always and yet the the constant cries for money
00:58:01.560
from the left are just based on the fact that they want to soak the taxpayer they
00:58:07.420
think that none of us are paying enough tax particularly the rich well what
00:58:11.040
what what classifies as rich in london nowadays well according to the labour party it's somebody
00:58:16.160
who earns 70 or 80 000 pounds now if you're on 20 or 30 000 pounds you clearly do think that
00:58:20.400
somebody who's on 70 or 80 000 is rich but try telling someone who's um got a family of two uh
00:58:26.640
paying mortgage in london that 70 000 pounds means that they should pay a top rated tax
00:58:30.880
i think you'd have a bit of a job to do that um and in the end in the 70s there was this
00:58:38.000
were called incentives and so many people felt that the tax system was
00:58:44.460
working against them and they were being unfairly treated they just buggered off
00:58:48.260
to other countries because there was no incentive for them to stay in Britain
00:58:51.640
and I can see a point soon where that's going to happen here I think to the
00:58:57.560
current government is in danger of that if they bring more people into the 40p
00:59:03.280
tax bracket which they're threatening to do to pay for this 20 billion for the
00:59:06.600
NHS. I mean, it's outrageous that somebody who's on £41,000 a year is paying an effective tax
00:59:16.040
rate of well over 50%. Now, I would love to see a law that actually banned any future government
00:59:22.120
from taking more than 50% of someone's income, because I think it's just criminal. Why should
00:59:27.780
somebody have to pay more than 50% of money that they've earned? And it is generally earned income.
00:59:34.080
Now you can do unearned income fine, you can make a case for that being more, but you can't tax people till the pit's great because it will have long term effects on the future of the economy.
00:59:46.160
I think one of the things that people are very critical about when it comes to taxation is these big companies like Amazon or Starbucks who get away with seemingly paying nothing.
00:59:55.560
I totally agree. And to be fair to George Osborne, he actually did do something about that, which Gordon Brown didn't, has to be said.
01:00:03.900
but George Osborne did now you can argue has he done enough probably not but they're apparently
01:00:09.840
getting 14 billion pounds in which they wouldn't have had before so that's something but I totally
01:00:15.280
agree with you some of these big corporates need to be addressed and the thing is they've always
01:00:21.860
got tax lawyers who will always find another loophole one will be closed and then another
01:00:26.240
one will open up and somehow the Inland Revenue have got to try and do more to do it they have
01:00:31.540
They've employed a lot more people to look into this and to try and tackle it.
01:00:35.320
You're never going to eliminate tax evasion or tax avoidance, but you can actually do something to mitigate it.
01:00:43.000
Do you not think that's also an issue of political will?
01:00:45.780
Because a lot of these people who are not paying the taxes, they're in cahoots with the politicians.
01:00:51.660
They go to the same cocktail parties and dinners, and they meet on the same yachts with Russian oligarchs and all the rest of it.
01:01:05.040
I'm going to phone into your radio show, experiences by immigration.
01:01:08.640
Yes, I came to this country to buy a mansion in Chelsea.
01:01:13.260
So, but do you not think that's a big part of why Amazon and Google
01:01:19.000
There was always a lot of chatter about the fact that David Cameron's
01:01:27.220
but there was this little group of people around Cameron
01:01:29.640
and that all went off to work for Google or Uber or wherever.
01:01:41.680
Do I believe that David Cameron or George Osborne
01:01:50.260
I mean, I do wonder how Uber get away with what they do.
01:01:58.460
of under 30 year olds who wouldn't ever think of taking a black cab because they always take Uber
01:02:04.660
and that's why in the end when Sadiq Khan didn't renew their license I always knew he wouldn't in
01:02:09.220
the end because there would be there would have been a big backlash against that. I think there
01:02:15.180
are sometimes relationships between politicians and people in business and the media which are
01:02:20.900
unhealthy which lead the public to think that there might be things being done inappropriately
01:02:27.940
even if there aren't I mean I have this a little bit when I'm interviewing politicians that I know
01:02:33.480
and I've worked out that if I interview a politician who's a friend I tend to give them
01:02:38.940
a harder time because I'm conscious that there'll be people out there who say he has given them a
01:02:42.820
soft time because he knows it David Davis good example on the day after he resigned
01:02:46.380
I did an interview with him and I knew I was on a hiding to nothing but the news of Boris Johnson's
01:02:56.100
resignation broke just as we were halfway through this interview. So that gave a good news line out
01:03:02.760
of it. But Gillian Reynolds, the radio critic of the Sunday Times, she said that that was a really
01:03:11.940
good interview because I knew him and I asked hard questions. He gave coded answers. Now she
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01:03:19.300
doesn't, has never liked me particularly. She described my voice as being whiny on one occasion,
01:03:25.400
So that was, I really was very grateful that she wrote that.
01:03:31.060
And then I was talking to David on the phone a couple of nights ago,
01:03:35.260
and he said, I did five interviews that day, ITV, BBC,
01:03:50.740
and I thought he meant I'd been asking sort of really bad questions and it was genuinely a bad
01:03:57.560
interview but a journalist I know um dm'd me and said that he'd run into David on Friday and he
01:04:05.100
said I can't believe I did all these interviews and the two people that my friends they gave me
01:04:08.640
the hardest time and I thought well good because that I did my job then and I do find it interesting
01:04:15.660
that i found when i first started doing this i did find it difficult to interview people i knew
01:04:20.980
there was one time i interviewed rob halfon he's a lovely guy mp for harlow um he's a really good
01:04:26.940
campaigner and he was doing a campaign on something i can't remember what it was now
01:04:29.820
but he clearly didn't know his staff and i absolutely roasted him and then later that
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01:04:35.120
evening my phone went off and i saw his name appear oh shit here we go and he so i said hi
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01:04:41.720
he said um i just want to thank you i said what and he said because you taught me a lot in that
01:04:48.020
interview that i should not go into an interview not fully briefed and you were absolutely right
01:04:52.380
to do what you did um not long afterwards i interviewed priti patel and it was the day
01:04:58.260
jeremy corbyn was elected leader of the labor party and she'd been put up by the conservatist
01:05:01.760
to comment on it so i just said priti patel your reaction to jeremy corbyn's election well he's a
01:05:08.720
danger to our nation he's a danger to your family's economic security and off she went
01:05:12.840
and all these pre-prepared lines i and so i just let her finish and i said well aren't you going
01:05:19.540
to congratulate him it's not my job to congratulate him and i said be polite if you did and i've never
01:05:25.700
interviewed her since now rob halforn had a really adult reaction to that she didn't yeah
01:05:33.920
make of that what you will interesting well our time is running uh out so before we insult you
01:05:39.880
and never bring in before we insult you to say something that means you'll you'll be like pretty
01:05:43.820
patel and never speak to us again uh the question we always like to finish on is what is the one
01:05:48.300
thing you think that no one is talking about that we ought to be talking about god um
01:05:55.240
i could say something trite like mental health but we kind of are talking about mental health
01:06:01.400
now and that's certainly one thing that when i was doing the evening show on lbc i mean we got a real
01:06:07.640
reputation for that and i mean making a phone in on depression interesting is sometimes a challenge
01:06:13.500
but boy did we do that we got shortlisted for an award from mind for doing that but i think we are
01:06:18.940
talking about it now in 2018 in a much more different way than we did in 2010 um what subject
01:06:26.160
I think we should be talking about? Well, I mean, I go back to the NHS. I mean, we are talking about
01:06:31.540
the NHS, but we're not talking about it in any meaningful long-term way. And I would love to see
01:06:36.860
a proper national debate about the future of the NHS, because we're not having it. It's become far
01:06:42.260
too politicised, which is inevitable when we spend one in six pounds of taxpayers' money goes on the
01:06:47.540
NHS. People say, oh, well, maybe you should just have a non-political board that runs the NHS and
01:06:53.340
not have any politicians involved with it well i actually want politicians to they've got to be
01:06:57.760
accountable for the money that they're spending on my behalf so you can't take politicians out of
01:07:02.780
running the nhs um so i think that's that is a national debate that we should have and um possibly
01:07:09.640
also on uh how west ham can win the champions league yes i'm a west ham fan are you i'm indeed
01:07:17.500
yes you want straight up let's end the interview right now this could take about half an hour i
01:07:22.940
I don't agree with Son in Wilshire, but that's...
01:07:25.740
Really? Well, that's where it's probably going to kick off.
01:07:29.480
This is the end of our show for the rest of humanity.
01:07:39.040
I do it every week with Jackie Smith, the former Labour Home Secretary.
01:07:43.060
And we talk about the political events of the week.
01:07:45.860
But it's quite a fun podcast and very, very smutty
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01:07:55.280
If you want to talk about a withered clitoris,
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01:08:01.120
Well, that has quite literally ticked every box.
01:08:08.700
well, editing a book called The Honourable Ladies.
01:08:13.640
of every female MP that's ever sat in the House of Commons.
01:08:24.320
There's 168 different essays, all written by female politicians or academics.
01:08:30.520
The second volume, which goes from 1997 to 2018, has got 323 in.
01:08:36.720
So you can see the difference in numbers that there are now.
01:08:41.940
There's a female Tory MP from the 1950s called Patricia Ford,
01:08:46.800
who turns out to be the step-grandmother of Bear Grylls.
01:08:57.140
But actually, finally, if any Russian oligarchs
01:08:59.440
or any other people want to phone into your show
01:09:09.060
I actually do know a Russian oligarch, believe it or not.
01:09:18.700
Do you have one of the sort of like Superboy racer cars