Immigration is the Most Important Issue We Face - Peter Whittle
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per minute
168.7828
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
sentences flagged
Toxicity
19
sentences flagged
Hate speech
19
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Peter Whittaker, host of the New Culture Forum (NCF) joins Francis and Constantine to talk about his journey through life, how he got into politics, and why he founded the NCF in 2006.
Transcript
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This is of an historical, unprecedented nature.
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If you've got 250,000 to 300,000 people net coming into a country every year, that is extraordinary.
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today is the host of the New Culture Forum right here on YouTube, Peter Whittle.
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Thank you very much, Constantine Francis. Great to be here.
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Slightly novel experience, but you know, great. All the better.
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You're in the other chair now, Peter. The interrogation will begin shortly.
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But no, look, it's great to have you on. You have a great program here on YouTube.
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not only interviews in a similar vein to what we do but also you make documentaries and all sorts
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of other stuff uh before we get into all of that tell us a little bit about who are you who am i
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how are you where you are what has been your journey through life because it has been an
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interesting one i thought i thought you're going to say it has been a long one it has been a long
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the longer it is the more interesting it usually is as well isn't it whippersnappers no um yeah i
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Well, basically, first of all, I've always been interested in politics.
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I mean, I think for about 12 or 13, we had the kind of family,
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And, you know, so then I've lived and worked in London
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apart from five years when I spent in Los Angeles.
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um but i suppose my life in terms of work right alone has been essentially in a kind of creative
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media field i think i got the tail end of when the media was sort of good when tv was still good
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uh certainly for making documentaries and i used to work for something called the south bank show
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which is a older viewers will absolutely know it was like a an iconic program and then after that
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covered the new uh arts culture film theater all of that for um the sunday times and people like
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this and and then i suppose what brought me to a point with starting the new culture forum which
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we did in 2006 was that it just i did not like the way things were going i mean we didn't know
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then what would be coming down the pipeline you know but this at the time I was I had this kind
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of I came came back from America and I thought I don't like how this country is is going what does
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that mean Peter uh because 2006 it's way before what we now call woke culture or this sort of
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or not well no not really I mean there was already a kind of thing in the air you know that there was
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There was a set of orthodox views, and it went through the cultural section of our society,
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And I'm sort of thinking, well, actually, we've got to sort of challenge this in some way.
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So multiculturalism was great, climate change, all the things that are still the case now.
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because I'd kind of dropped out of being interested in politics.
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I used to be active in the Tory party and everything.
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And I dropped out of it because I was far more interested
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I think Christopher Hitchens said the same thing,
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that I really started to become much more involved again.
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But I mean, you know, I hope it gives you an idea of where I'm from.
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And you were involved in politics directly as well at one point.
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people used to find that hilarious you know what culture what does that mean you know basically
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they thought we would all have union jack waistcoats and you know and and all of that
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bulldogs and all of that but i was asked by them you know because of the ncf new culture form would
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you would you uh be our culture spokesman it was very wide it wasn't just like the arts and
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everything it was all these cultural issues which you guys talk about on your program and we do
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all the time, because they are the big issues of our time.
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and then basically stood for the mayoralty in London, 2016.
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that body that nobody's ever heard of, even in London.
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So I was up against Sadiq Khan all the time and all of that.
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um for about two years in the middle of that it was absolutely fantastic it really was you know
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it was we were right in the middle of and had indeed i would say caused some of the main events
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of the time i did the referendum and um i think that there were very good people involved and you
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really felt that uh this was something that was making a difference in fact of course it did make
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a difference. So I think, particularly I think 2015-16 was a fantastic time in UK.
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Peter, can I challenge you a little bit on this idea that it made a difference? Because there's
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no question that the referendum was a huge event in human history, I would argue, in terms of the
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cascading consequences around the world, potentially. But one of the issues we're seeing
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now is one of the principal arguments in favour of Brexit was the ability to control immigration,
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but the idea that a country should control its borders
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Boris Johnson is in power on the basis that he would deliver Brexit.
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We should be able to with Brexit, definitely,
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or indeed, you know, actually, even before Brexit,
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But I would say that there isn't the will to do it,
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and that goes across the whole establishment, really.
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and i don't know whether you remember but just i think a week ago before filming this uh it emerged
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that the head of the border force was pretty anti-borders now even for someone like me who
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thinks that the establishment's riddled with left liberal people even that you sort of think surely
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not i mean surely not there was this guy the quote was the borders are a pain in the ass i think is
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But then I think he started going on as we're all mammals or something, or we're all species or something like that.
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But what it didn't do is instill any confidence that this person actually really believed in his job.
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And you sort of think, well, actually, you're not about to take people on who are very, very rigorous about immigration, are you?
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I think that immigration is probably the most important issue, actually, that we face historically.
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So it's not that Brexit was never going to control immigration.
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I mean, to his credit, Nigel has been going down to the south coast and filming all of that.
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it's a failure of our entire political class. Peter why do you think it's one of the most
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important if I think you said the most important issue of our time? I think it is and I think it
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is actually for most people it's of historic proportions I mean I'm not anti-immigration
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at all I don't think I know anyone who is actually in principle and it would be hypocritical because
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I went and I went to another country, you know, be utterly hypocritical. I think that what we're
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seeing is, you know, this is of an historical, unprecedented nature. If you've got 250,000 to
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300,000 people net coming into a country every year, that is extraordinary. We now, that is
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normal now no one really even reports it very much and so many of the issues that we
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talk about whether it's housing whatever it is cultural change whatever it is um all of these
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things uh are absolutely um there's no point in even discussing them if you're not going to at
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least look at immigration too and when i was on the london assembly for example five years i was
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on it not once did immigration get discussed and london basically has been transformed by
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immigration within a generation and um i think you know that economically it's incredibly important
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but also culturally it's important i don't see why people should be sort of feel inhibited or
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rather should i i say i do know why they should be inhibited because they're frightened of talking
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They're going to be called this, that, and the other thing.
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It's just like, oh, well, that's just the way it is.
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to decide who enters a country and who doesn't. Freedom of movement doesn't work. And that's
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something I believe in. And actually, my mother is an immigrant, right? And I do not believe it's
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racist in any shape or form to say that. But it seems to me what we have is we have the vast
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majority of the population who believe that. And then we have the government and the political
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class who are not wishing to enact what the public want. And that seems to me a very major
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problem in our society well it is as i say it's one of the main ones yeah but in fact you could
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go through a whole raft of issues where that is the case uh where the majority of people feel one
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thing uh they watch these illegal uh you know landings coming in saying what is going on why
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why is it so difficult to stop this if you look back over the past year what a government can
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really do when it wants to you know so you don't you could go back and say well what about the
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war same thing a government can do something when it wants to and extraordinary levels of
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regulation have been put in and with covid and all of that and whatever you think about that
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the fact is is that it can be done and yet we can't do this simple thing we can't do this simple
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thing like control our borders but what we have now is even more interesting in that we have a
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home secretary who talks tough but actually doesn't seem to be controlling or isn't controlling the
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borders at all whereas before we had people fudging the issue and being mealy mouthed now we have
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someone who talks tough but doesn't deliver no it's uh all window dressing i'm afraid it was
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it's the same generally with the this government for me uh you know when we had the cultural attacks
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of last year and statues and all of that being attacked.
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I mean, you know, they sort of say, oh, this is bad and oh, we can't, you know.
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There's no sense really in which they're taking this very seriously.
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This is the amazing thing to me, Peter, and, you know,
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Certainly in the party sense, we both have conservative values
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But I thought that the political situation in 2019 when the Red Wall collapsed and working class people came over to the Tory party on a number of issues.
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But also, I think it was a pushback against what people now call the woke agenda, woke culture, whatever.
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People felt very strongly that they were going to vote for a party that doesn't buy into this stuff.
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I mean, if I was a Red Wall voter, I don't imagine I'd be feeling that this government is delivering.
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Yeah. So the problem for me there is there is no democratic way out at the moment for people who have these concerns as you do.
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No. You know, there's a lot of talk. You'll be aware, you know, if you swim in these political ponds that we're in, there's a lot of talk.
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The fact is, is that, look, with UKIP and then with the Brexit Party, I suppose,
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They were extremely effective pressure groups that became elected,
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or at least in the case of UKIP became elected.
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Frightened Cameron because the one thing that moves these people
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is when they fear for their seats, for their electoral seats.
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And they saw UKIP going up and up and up like that.
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So what I've been saying over the past year to anyone who will listen
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I genuinely think many of them don't quite get it.
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I mean, you know, when you talk to them, bless them,
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They sort of say, yes, oh, it's all a load of nonsense.
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You know, and you sort of think you don't quite get what this is.
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I mean, for me, what we're living with at the moment
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is an outright attack on our civilization, actually.
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When you go further up, people like Boris and people like that,
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obviously these are intelligent people, for goodness sake.
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This requires real courage to actually face these sort of things.
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You know, if you've got universities that don't believe particularly in free speech
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you've got a border control chief who doesn't believe in borders,
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you've got a police force which appears to have been entirely captured
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but actually sort of they feel unhelped and powerless and there's no one actually really
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basically answering their fears and their worries but I think it's I'm afraid it's down to
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the government in that way you know that they just simply haven't got the guts or the knowledge
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really to do what needs to be done and then that is a whole different argument about what you should
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do should you start new institutions should you start new universities i i noticed you've had
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um catherine stockholm recently she's gone to austin isn't it university it's not quite started
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yet but this is what we've got to do you believe that new institutions oh yes you're never going
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to reform these things why not because um it's too ingrained now you know it's it's all of it's
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too ingrained. You are just going to have to offer alternatives. Well, look, we're sitting
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in one, aren't we? You know, when it comes to media, we're, you know, trying to, you
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fellas, we're trying to offer something else. I would say, in fact, this is the new form
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of public broadcasting, actually, stuff you would never see anymore. So there's that.
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But I think when it comes to universities or, you know, other institutions, we have
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got to start really seriously thinking right we've got to start creating our own things you know
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very very difficult to do America tends to be much better at that kind of thing
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they've got more money they've got more people willing to put their money where their mouth is
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than we have but to go back to my original point yes I think you know people often tend to focus
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on Boris and say, well, he's always been a metropolitan liberal and all of that.
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But I think a lot of it there is just simply not really the will, you know.
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Whatever you think of Macron, he came out during the cultural kerfuffle last year and
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said, you know, this does not happen in France.
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the front bubble. And you sort of think, why can't our senior politicians just simply give people
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reassurance in that way? And they just can't. And why is that, Peter? Who are they afraid of?
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I think that they are basically afraid of the people that they mix with. Seriously. I mean,
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it just comes down to that. I think also, as I said, there's a great inability to understand.
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And if you were to say, like I've just said about the attack on Western civilisation, which I think is happening, if you were to say that to many senior lawyers, they would say, yes, you know, oh, and it's terrible.
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They don't really, I don't think they really take it on board.
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No. In USSR, we cancelled Christmas and we had Lenin Fest instead.
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We celebrated glorious leader and rewrote story of Jesus to make it better.
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Yes. In our story, three wise men were killed and gifts meant for Jesus redistributed to glorious workers of the Soviet Union.
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Jesus was put on gulag for having wrong opinion. As we call it in Russia, happy ending.
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Well, if you do want to celebrate the festive season,
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Grab yourself a ticket to our final live show of the year
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at the Leicester Square Theatre on Saturday, December the 11th.
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Yes, it is discussion with one of our favourite guests, Aisha Akanbi.
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She's almost as good philosopher as Vladimir Lenin.
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Our two previous shows sold out completely, and this one will as well.
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During interval, there will be special entertainment.
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I didn't realize we were going for that demographic, mate.
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You've given the universities with the problems with freedom of speech,
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You gave the example of the head of the borders
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Well, I would say this is not some conspiracy theory I'm talking about at all
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I think that when you look at the way in which, for example
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uh paintings all of these things music um one by one they've sort of been picked off so in
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america at the moment classical music is very much under the hammer as being an expression of
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white supremacy right um now if you say that even though in your mind you're thinking what a crock
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of crap that is to say that at the same time you'll be thinking well if i maybe go against
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saying that i will get it in the neck you know from the usual people particularly if i'm on
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twitter and all of that so fear plays a part but the problem is with these things is is increasingly
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uh when it comes to any uh creative endeavor of the sort that underpins our civilization
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um it's increasingly about you can't write about that uh you can only write or paint or whatever
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it is your lived experience right that kills creativity and even though people might say oh
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it doesn't really because um you know you can always say yeah no it does because also people
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who might want to say something else for example are just simply not going to bother they're not
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going to go go there also it leads to enormous self-censorship too i mean i think that the arts
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for example could really be you know killing themselves at the moment
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so and i think that you might say well people say well i don't really care about the arts you
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know why should we pay for them anyway well you know i mean the fact is is that they're a huge
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part of our civilization and our achievements and we're seeing them basically being chipped
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chipped away at and the thing that i find really frustrating with the arts and particularly with
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comedy but it goes right the way through i'm i'm a huge theater lover i love going to the theater
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one of the i used to but i don't anymore yeah and i think part of the reason is is because i sit down
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and i and i watch something i just want to be told a story i want emotions i want characters i want
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i want to live in a different world for two and a half three hours what i don't want is a tedious
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lecture and it sometimes feels that you go you go to watch these things and I'm being told how to
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live and that to me is not art I don't want perfect people no I mean it's not yeah but they're not
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also perfect are they that's the thing I think it I mean when it comes to I was a film critic for
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what 20 years for all sorts of different people um and uh I've always loved them I've lost interest
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a bit lately I have to say because I'm not interested in Marvel comics and that's the
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mainstream output now isn't it yes it is and i just can't get into it but you sort of know when
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you're being lectured and it's sort of got this rather wearing type of predictability about it
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here we go i think that that with the theater you mentioned for example when did you last see
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a political drama at the theater francis that sort of i don't know even sort of
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of gave a kind of balanced view of i mean could you imagine a play which i would have thought
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would be quite good dramatically actually about sort of working class people in the red wall
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who voted for brexit um it wouldn't have to be just about it could be the background to the play
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like you know and you've got to have a drama and everything doesn't have to be crude but the idea
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I remember when we first started the New Culture Forum,
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who at the time was director of the National Theatre,
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is we need good, naughty, you know, right-wing plays, you know,
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And I sort of thought, that tells you everything, that phrase.
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But I think the chances now of having real variety of thought,
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you know, in something like the theatre, is just gone.
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because a good friend of ours, Jeff Norcott, the comedian,
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He was a great comic before, but he made a TV career, you might say,
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and he was the sort of humanised face of Brexit in the comedy world
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where he's a lovely guy, Jeff, and so he's a lot easier to hear than maybe.
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But then everyone just went, oh, okay, so we've got that covered now
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And it seems like culture has been pigeonholed in this very narrow way.
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It's interesting what you say about cinema as well
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I thought you know that's really you put your finger on it
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i feel that you know it's like one's hinterland is being scraped away so you can actually list
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what don't you do anymore what don't you i mean i'm interviewed on the channel victor um davis
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hansen you know we've had him on yeah and uh he was saying i don't you know i don't i don't watch
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the super bowl anymore i don't uh certainly don't watch the uh news network news i don't watch the
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And it's the same when you get people in film and showbiz in America
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who come out with this deplorables line and make such a fuss about it.
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And you sort of think people will stop buying tickets, you know,
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Because they're going to sort of, people have hardened,
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So I got the guys, we had a big screen in our last studio
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And this won't say much to our American audience,
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because it's this very posh, extremely articulate William Hague
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debating with a working class, inarticulate.
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well, you could argue inarticulate John Prescott,
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oh, you're oppressing me, the working class man,
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He goes, well, you're making fun of my grandma,
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You mean the general deterioration in public discourse?
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Yeah, like everything is fight now, and it's fight to the death.
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Although there's, I think, been a slight change in the sense that, as well,
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is that people, because of the kind of cult of narcissism,
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And so, you know, there's this whole thing of, you know,
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being kept safe from things that you don't like or disagree with.
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It makes people, therefore, very angry when they're disagreed with.
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And I think as well that when it comes to Parliament,
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I would say there has been a kind of deterioration in colour of people.
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I think very visibly, you know, over the past sort of 10 years.
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I completely agree with you that there has been...
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I mean, why would you go into it if you're going to have everything you've said,
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you know, just brought up from like 10 years ago?
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What kind of a person is still going to go, yeah, I want some of that?
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And you're going to be badly paid and you're going to be criticised
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You're going to become a hate figure, particularly if you're on the right,
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I would say, or if you're on the far left, you're going to become a hate figure.
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You're going to get people sending you death threats
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You're not being remunerated for it particularly well.
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I think it has, you know, it has deteriorated, definitely.
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I don't know what, I mean, just to propose this, what we've been discussing, I don't
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know whether you guys get this, I'm sure you do, but on this point of the political
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class, not, absolutely not really responding to people, you get emails, don't you, and
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And people are genuinely bewildered and genuinely just so upset.
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During the whole stuff, we started this campaign, Save Our Statues.
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When we did that, the visceral hurt people felt
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at the kind of landscape heritage being attacked was huge.
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he didn't have to go and fight but he volunteered to go and fight the nazis and fought right the way
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from italy right the way down to north africa and fought in the battle of el alamein yeah
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to basically save the west and then when i saw that statue being attacked and defaced of churchill
00:33:36.160
to me it was not only were they disrespecting my country not only were they disrespecting a
00:33:42.680
political symbol, they were disrespecting my grandfather and his memory. And they don't
00:33:47.260
understand that. They don't get that. Because to them, I think they're utopians. They want to live
00:33:54.460
in this world without borders. They want us to live in this place where we overcome racism and
00:34:00.820
all these different things. But the reality is it's not the real world. They've been indoctrinated
00:34:06.400
in utopianism. Do you not think that is? I totally get the point about your grandfather.
00:34:11.180
and i feel that when you look at the the white poppy thing yeah you know i sort of think that's
00:34:17.080
a kind of implied insult actually because it's implying that people who wear red poppy somehow
00:34:21.920
love war you know no i think the thing is really on that point francis is it's i don't think to say
00:34:30.860
that they are utopian is sort of it gives them a kind of it's it's too nice i mean in the sense
00:34:40.840
you could say oh it's great to be idealistic and okay they might get it wrong but they're idealistic
00:34:46.800
i don't think that you see i think that it's it's it's a lot of it is hate uh i think that
00:34:53.020
you know one of the things that we've talked about a lot of the ncfs or over the years is the
00:34:58.160
kind of culture of self-hatred um it attack anything which is to do with the nation uh
00:35:06.760
Anything which has to do with the traditional family,
00:35:10.000
anything which has to do with basically the way we might do things.
00:35:14.440
So in other words, I don't think they're motive.
00:35:16.680
To say that I'm, you know, it's utopian, we want to live in a world like this,
00:35:21.760
I think a lot of it is based purely on resentment and anger and dislike.
00:35:28.420
Dislike of what they are, dislike of, you know, the country.
00:35:33.100
Do you not think, so for instance, when it comes to the BLM thing,
00:35:36.760
for example. Now, the people at the top may be like that, but there's a vast swathe of people.
00:35:42.740
I think BLM is deeply sinister as an organization because what I think they did is they exploited
00:35:48.860
black people's pain of the fact that they've had racism, particularly when you look at the
00:35:54.560
first generation of immigrants who came to this country in the 50s or 60s or 70s. They faced
00:35:59.200
awful, awful racism and prejudice. And what they did, I think, was essentially weaponize that pain
00:36:06.340
in order to try and fulfil their political ends.
00:36:12.540
But I think also it's interesting because obviously growing up in 70s,
00:36:15.860
yes, Britain was far more casually racist then.
00:36:18.280
There's no good getting away from it, you know.
00:36:23.380
And it seems that what's happening, it's the same with Stonewall
1.00
00:36:27.200
and the gay thing, is that essentially when things have actually
00:36:30.020
improved a huge amount, of course then people start
00:36:37.660
I mean, if an alien came down now and looked at Britain,
0.85
00:36:41.540
they would sort of think, God, what is this racist cesspit?
00:36:43.980
You know, because everywhere, in every newspaper,
00:36:47.960
you know, every newspaper, it's racism, racism, racism.
00:36:51.380
Whereas we all, I think, would believe and concede
00:36:54.020
that actually this is a remarkably tolerant country
00:36:57.540
and, in fact, certainly isn't maybe what it was like
00:37:02.440
you know certainly I would say therefore that the people who protest not just BLM but just
00:37:10.620
generally what we're dealing with at the moment are people who on the whole just do not like
00:37:18.180
their culture they do they do not like their country they do not like the society
0.99
00:37:24.660
I think people who really have a strong sense of, you know, injustice and, you know, wanting to make things better for ordinary people, I think you can tell those people, those sincere people, you can.
00:37:46.640
They liked the Queen, and they felt part of something.
00:37:55.880
Well, we don't usually, we tend not to be like that.
00:38:05.940
And they weren't sort of like absolute believers in the kind of free market, evangelical, sort of evangelical, oh, the market will solve everything and all of that.
00:38:20.880
They had a very strong sense, actually, of justice in that way, which I think was very strong in the Labour Party.
00:38:30.020
but you know and then basically you know like so many people they went over they went over to
00:38:36.140
to satire because labor was becoming already then in hock to these sort of smaller influential
00:38:46.060
groups and you know just becoming unrecognizable so it used to be low i think there was a genuine
00:38:52.100
i think in fact i find it very very moving if you go back to the beginning before you know
00:38:57.600
the very beginnings of the trade unionist movement
00:39:07.700
and in mining communities and things like that.
00:39:11.840
All of these things is just wonderful, aspirational.
00:39:18.760
That's entirely gone, I think, to the point where I think
00:39:21.420
actually people probably don't even know existed, really.
00:39:27.360
because I agree with you on the resentment point, actually.
00:39:30.120
I do think this is what drives a chunk of that.
00:39:33.660
Stephen Hicks, I don't know if you've had him on your show.
00:39:39.640
We're going to have him on the show very soon again.
00:39:42.700
He talks about the fact that there are different traditions on the left,
00:39:53.900
and they've made their impact on the world, which is fine.
00:39:57.140
People are allowed to have whatever, in my opinion, their political views.
00:40:02.100
The question for me is why are these people being indulged?
00:40:08.700
Why are these people being given the opportunity?
00:40:15.440
had an anti-Churchill woke rap performed on Remembrance Sunday, right?
00:40:25.020
Now, people are allowed to perform anti-Churchill woke raps.
00:40:30.400
You would defend free speech, I'm sure, as much as I would.
00:40:33.580
But why is that happening at the Imperial War Museum?
00:40:39.380
I understand people having a resentful view of society,
00:40:44.080
the breakdown of the family, all sorts of other factors
00:40:54.180
Why are the adults in the room pandering to that?
00:40:58.580
Well, I would say that, you know, in the case of the Imperial War Museum
00:41:05.980
I think that there has been, all of our main institutions
00:41:17.020
What I think was very telling is that during the BLM thing last year,
00:41:23.720
It was the speed with which all of these institutions suddenly started saying, we're decolonizing, we're decolonizing.
00:41:31.400
You had the death of George Floyd, then you had, you know, these statues and the BLM and everything.
00:41:37.320
And then this started to happen very, very quickly, almost identical.
00:41:41.260
So they had the British library decolonizing its collection.
00:41:46.180
This is like the spine of the culture, the British library, going through the spine.
00:41:51.480
And essentially, we're going to sort of start, you know, tinkering with that.
00:41:56.260
And then you had it the same with the National Gallery.
00:42:01.660
You had it with National Maritime, all of them.
00:42:04.940
And, you know, you almost, you can, there's one a week.
00:42:08.560
I would say that the same sort of people run them.
00:42:14.000
They have, broadly, they dislike, I think, our heritage.
00:42:19.640
The National Trust, of course, being another.
0.98
00:42:21.480
brilliant one um they are full of guilt um and also they tend to be quite ignorant actually
00:42:29.640
of the very thing they're meant to be curating um but i think in answer to your question that's
00:42:36.520
what it is really that the all of these these institutions obviously universities too essentially
00:42:44.120
what people feel the people who run them is essentially the same and so therefore
00:42:52.200
they were all jumping on this opportunity um and it will go on um you ask why are they being
00:43:00.260
indulged i mean i would say to you know you're talking about people with influence
00:43:05.100
and power you know aren't you i mean these people are influential they're in powerful positions so
00:43:19.860
All that most people can do, I think, is to just withdraw, boycott.
00:43:29.160
Or they can withdraw, for example, with the National Trust.
00:43:32.500
I'm not, you know, I'm canceling my membership.
00:43:35.460
Or, you know, if this happens, say, like at the Imperial War Museum, don't donate.
00:43:42.560
You know, people have a lot of power in this way.
00:43:49.620
Same works for corporations as well, same for companies.
00:44:00.660
They made hay while the sun shone during that period.
00:44:05.620
They've probably gone woke now too, but anyway.
00:44:10.420
No, no, but you can sort of do, I think this is one area, you know, where you can sort of like, because people say, what can we do about it?
00:44:18.140
They say, well, just stop using X or stop going to Y or withdraw your, you know, any support you give to this.
00:44:26.280
And eventually, eventually it will have an effect because money means a lot to these people.
00:44:36.320
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00:44:45.760
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00:44:52.620
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00:45:34.740
it's sad though Peter isn't it it's sad it's tragic it's tragic to see where the BBC is to
00:45:42.680
see so what what they create the output that they make because you're you're an Englishman
00:45:48.600
I presume at one point you loved what the BBC made oh I quite well you if you were you know
00:45:53.900
people of my I was about 60 people of my generation uh you know you were shaped by the BBC
00:46:13.800
We were talking before we came on about a good documentary that you saw.
00:46:20.480
I can't help feeling that the cultural damage they do
00:46:26.780
And I think what was shown now was the way in which they,
00:46:29.560
along with like the museums we're talking about last year with the proms uh they really did think
00:46:36.600
you know they did it again this is a perfect opportunity for us to refresh the way we do
00:46:41.740
last night as well because they hate i'm sure the movie hate doing the last night of the proms
00:46:46.120
oh blokes with with union with union jacks and all the rest of it so essentially uh you know but
00:46:53.620
obviously what happened there is that people uh you know rallied on social media if nothing else
00:47:01.600
Peter, do you think this civilization, the Western civilization,
00:47:09.120
do you think that you're being punished for your success?
00:47:16.280
I think there's an element of sort of cultural envy in it, I think.
00:47:26.900
But also, it's just perhaps that we have, we've sort of basically become too comfortable in a way.
00:47:38.220
That's not to say that there isn't sort of hardship in society.
00:47:42.000
And of course, there isn't inequality more, I think, than, you know, like a few decades ago.
00:47:47.640
But I think that it is probably a lot to do with that.
00:47:50.840
but also I think it is just our kind of self-criticism
00:48:15.560
and one of them was the one he made in uh poland in 2017 and he said the biggest question of our
00:48:23.460
time is does the west have the will to survive and i think he was absolutely correct there
00:48:29.520
to identify that because all the stuff we've been talking about um is all essentially comes
00:48:36.280
under this one banner i think i think writing civilization is a fantastic thing and it's not
00:48:43.900
without faults or whatever but the faults are always pointed out to us so i don't worry about
00:48:48.720
you know taking that on i think it's a it's a it's a wonderful thing um and i just wish that
00:48:54.280
the people who were in control of it felt the same way it seems more and more that we're and
00:49:01.520
this particularly affects the arts going back to the arts that we're operating in a culture of fear
00:49:06.380
people are terrified to put forward another point of view another way of seeing the world
00:49:11.200
particularly artistically when the industries around the arts
00:49:22.160
I mean, they always were when I was working in them.
00:49:26.880
I think there was some, there was a letter done to the Times
00:49:32.340
by all these big honchos in the arts during the referendum campaign.
00:49:38.500
and it was sort of like, God, thousands of them, you know,
00:49:44.340
And they were all, to a man and woman, absolutely anti-Brexit
00:49:56.280
Get this, our creative imagination as a country will be impoverished.
00:50:03.860
You know, I mean, this is, you know, the EU had been around for, what, 50, 60 years.
00:50:10.780
And hello, what, I mean, what about Shakespeare?
00:50:15.100
What about whoever else you want to mention who predated the EU?
00:50:20.120
But no, this is what they sort of felt and what they wrote.
00:50:28.500
Hence, you will not see that play I mentioned earlier.
00:50:30.740
or you know increasingly as well they're not going to take on radical islam are they you know
00:50:38.880
there are consequences there are consequences um so i think there's a lot of self-censorship
00:50:45.220
probably going on um and but i think the difference now and uh you know lionel shriver
00:50:51.340
she was talking about this when she came on you i know you've had on she uh saying you know it's
0.97
00:51:00.640
So basically, so what that means is as a white woman
00:51:05.000
of a certain age, she, you know, she cannot write about,
00:51:08.640
I don't know, an asylum seeker from Syria or something.
00:51:18.680
I mean, to me, that's just absolute impoverishment
00:51:30.040
because the greatest form of censorship is self-censorship.
00:51:46.500
I suppose that's very honest of him to say that.
00:52:10.760
It's much harder for a comedian who wants to have a mainstream career
00:52:15.020
because the moment you become authentic, they'll push you out.
00:52:21.560
We had an episode called The Truth About Trigonometry
00:52:34.040
I said to Francis, they're going to try and destroy us.
00:52:36.280
I said it to him that day because I knew it would happen
00:52:51.200
He gets murdered by, as far as we know, an Islamist terrorist.
00:53:02.520
No, they're talking about online anonymity, right?
00:53:06.380
If our members of parliament are not going to have an honest conversation
00:53:10.080
about who our enemies are, what they want to do to this country,
00:53:13.840
who it is that's actually killing one of their colleagues,
00:53:16.920
how are you going to expect a liberal comedian to be truthful?
00:53:20.520
Right. But you asked me like earlier, you know, who's, why is this?
00:53:27.440
So if you take the people who would like presumably commission comedians
00:53:43.320
I mean, Francis had a chat with one of them the other day.
00:53:47.840
And he was going to me, because I did my comedy set at this TV showcase thing,
00:53:53.000
and he came up to me and he was, oh, I enjoyed your set.
00:53:55.360
It was different from what you normally hear from comedians.
00:53:59.180
And he was like, so what do you think about the comedy industry?
00:54:03.020
I went, well, it's fundamentally biased, isn't it?
00:54:08.180
Stuart Lee would identify as being a left wing, very left.
00:54:12.260
You never get a Stuart Lee of the right, do you?
00:54:23.300
He says, well, so what would the Stuart Lee of the right talk about?
00:54:29.360
You talk about how these people are trained Marxists.
00:54:32.440
You talk about how they want to abolish capitalism.
00:54:35.760
Well, living in a country that gives them the very fruits of capitalism.
00:54:38.940
And he got very, very shaky at this point, shook my hand and then left.
00:54:46.600
And that's the people who are deciding what comedy is.
00:54:49.960
and this is not specifically about David Baddiel or anyone else,
00:55:00.480
Yeah, sure, you can go on YouTube and start a channel
00:55:02.620
and ruin any chance you ever had of a mainstream career
00:55:09.200
But that is not a path that many people are going to be willing to walk.
00:55:23.520
And, you know, and there was one guy who's saying,
00:55:26.220
you know, we've lost our guts and we've got to have courage.
00:55:28.780
And I at the time said, look, it's all very easily said and done.
00:55:32.000
But, you know, if you are, if you're not in the public eye,
00:55:34.620
I say, and if you are, if you've just got a steady job,
00:55:39.320
you've got a family, it's all very well to become a hero
00:55:42.880
You're more likely, I can understand why people would go
00:55:45.260
along and do the unconscious bias training and all of that i can i can understand that even though
00:55:49.960
i think it's appalling but i can totally get it so um i'm not sort of saying i'm not being too
00:55:55.420
harsh i think on i hope on people but i think that really we've sort of identified it's just
00:56:01.140
that people who would hire and fire you or people who will commission you or people who decide what
00:56:07.340
exhibits should be in museums and people who publish books and people who commission dramas
00:56:15.080
and people who make films, all of these people,
00:56:20.780
would be quite similar, I think, in a way to what your guys said.
00:56:25.960
And the worry is as well, so Ben Shapiro is starting
00:56:29.560
a conservative film company, an arts company, et cetera.
00:56:38.600
and I hope he produces great films and great art.
00:56:41.960
I don't want to live in a world like that, Peter.
00:56:54.360
But I think that, unfortunately, everything is being politicized now.
00:57:02.240
I mean, this is a big quandary for many people.
00:57:12.700
There's a great book out called The Benedictine Option
00:57:26.040
Well, you can go off rather like the name of the rose,
00:57:30.040
You can go off and you can actually sort of get together
00:57:36.820
and you can live amongst beauty and all of that.
00:57:40.860
You just keep trying to fight what you think is wrong.
00:57:44.760
You say, I don't want to live in a world like that.
00:57:58.100
and I have friends who've more or less done that.
00:58:00.060
They've decided to, you know, have a nice, quiet life.
00:58:06.860
But they, you know, they don't want to, they've had enough.
00:58:10.860
Whereas I sort of think, well, actually, I'm just going to be shouting at my non-existent TV.
00:58:17.240
You sort of think, actually, no, no, I'm just going to be too angry.
00:58:24.340
I think I'm not going to speak for you, but for me, it's an inability to shut up.
00:58:34.360
When I see these people, I just, I'm just, Francis, don't fuck it up again.
0.98
00:58:40.280
things that no yeah i've started speaking before i know i'm back where i started yeah well i i think
00:58:46.660
the answer peter if we can sort of chart one before we wrap up is the reality is the the truth
00:58:55.360
out in the end it just does and the success of the new culture forum trigonometry and all sorts
00:59:01.380
of other things you know you can see this you know three years ago francis and i would never
00:59:06.860
have had an agent who can help us get our live shows out into the big theatres now we do we've
00:59:13.480
got tv commissioners and they're very very you know they're very few and far between and very
00:59:19.460
reluctant and all of that but once it happens once you break through once you show that you've got
00:59:26.300
the numbers the people want to watch that instead of that crap that they're putting out money talks
0.55
00:59:32.640
and i think eventually that's what will happen well i mean i don't know you know the agent you
00:59:36.400
mentioned say or the commissioning uh they you said like this kind of solitary figures maybe
00:59:41.080
uh what these people should do is they should event they should band together and start bigger
00:59:46.160
agencies you know and and be quite unapologetic we uh you know we we've got no truck with any of
00:59:52.380
this time this is what we are you know that's i think to bring us right back to what we started
00:59:57.740
on uh that is i think what people have got to do in the few in the long term future well we shall
01:00:03.660
see what happens peter but in the meantime keep up the good work thank you very much i've had such
01:00:08.200
a lovely time thank you very much no it's been an absolute pleasure it's been wonderful it's been
01:00:12.240
great and we do still have uh questions for our local supporters of course uh but before that
01:00:19.080
our final question as always is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society
01:00:23.900
that we really should be uh i would say uh this society would be demographics
01:00:29.060
tell us more oh okay i thought it was one of these it's just a word it's just a word um i was you
01:00:36.640
know basically enormous demographic change um and because all of our politicians are short-term
01:00:43.500
merchants um it's always like kicked into longer 50 60 years time uh you know we're not going to be
01:00:51.140
here and all the rest but um what the implications are generally for our society when there is
01:00:58.440
considerable demographic change and um i think that uh you know when the census comes out in
01:01:04.220
london for example we'll see a dramatic change uh there already was in 2011 and i think you'll
01:01:12.260
see that even more um i'm not by the way saying uh that it's got to be a negative thing um i have
01:01:18.880
my views on it but we should at least be talking about it i think uh from what angle peter what
01:01:24.260
Well, I mean, the effect, for example, on whether we can, you know, say like what our religion will be, what traditions we will still have or not.
01:01:40.760
So are you saying that you have concerns about the impact of mass immigration?
01:01:46.900
And how that will transform this country 50, 60, 70, 80 years down the line?
01:01:52.100
I mean, you know, it's not just an economic thing.
01:01:57.180
And, you know, I think that, you know, this basically,
01:02:07.000
They should at least be discussed, should they not?
01:02:09.940
You might want a country that sort of rather is identifiably Britain
01:02:15.220
But whatever it is, we are not talking about it.
01:02:23.920
that is? That and whether trans women are real women
0.96
01:02:45.440
if people want to find you online, where is the best place
01:02:50.820
um no um well basically i'm on twitter yes but the new culture forum is uh newcultureforum.org.uk
01:03:02.700
and of course you're on youtube yes when you said what kind of society i thought you were
01:03:06.560
about to give us your grinder name anyway peter wittle thank you so much for coming on it's been
01:03:12.060
a pleasure thank you for watching and listening uh to this as well and we will see you very soon