Our Honest Opinion on Israel - Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
181.45683
Summary
In this episode of Whatever This Is, we discuss the latest developments in the conflict between Israel and Iran, and the role of the media in covering it. We also talk about the growing influence of pro-Israel voices on social media, and whether or not they are really as bad as they make out.
Transcript
00:00:05.400
The idea that Israel is now committing a genocide, I would say, is a mainstream position now.
00:00:10.500
But when it comes to the propaganda war, there really is only one winner.
00:00:16.060
They cannot wrap their head around the fact that people think differently in different cultures.
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They have no interest in trying to work out what the solution to the problem is.
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Iran couldn't give a flying toss about the lives of Palestinians.
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To the contrary, the more of them die, the better it is for Iran.
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Who is it that's preventing the conflict in Gaza from coming to an end?
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All right, Francis, welcome back to another episode on Whatever This Is.
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Exactly. It was a bit of a damn squid. 12 days.
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Yeah, but there were a lot of people who got very excited about it, which I thought was quite interesting and telling.
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Because there were people calling for President... Dave Smith called for President Trump to be impeached.
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Tucker Carlson explained that this was going to cause thousands of American casualties.
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No, no, but it's always good to hear from the moderates.
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But I just thought it was such a telling moment because it just shows you that the people who are always losing their shit online and in the media,
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which increasingly are becoming the same thing, they really don't know what they're talking about a lot of the time.
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And there's so many clicks to be had from pretending that you know and from presenting the worst possible scenario
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and from amplifying and exaggerating the worst voices and doing interviews with the most extreme people.
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And then you get a very distorted picture of reality being presented to people.
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And I think you really hit the nail on the head where you were like, we are incentivized.
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And by we, I mean people in the new media, in the media.
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We could have done those things and got all the clicks from doing that if we'd chosen to.
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Throwing a little bit of trans in there as well, all of a sudden you're on to a million.
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But the reality is, is we're being incentivized much in the same way as the old media was incentivized.
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If you think about the tabloid press in our country to come up with ever more salacious stories, salacious headlines,
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because you know that that will generate clicks, it will generate engagement,
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because what you're doing is not actually giving people information.
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And when people react emotionally, what they're not doing is reacting logically.
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And in many ways, people enjoy being triggered emotionally because it means you're feeling something.
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It's why if you actually did an entire podcast just presenting people with dry facts,
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nobody's really or very few people are going to listen to it because actually what people want,
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whether they're reading, whether they're listening, whether they're watching, is they want to feel something.
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Right. Stick around because we're going to do a lot of triggering.
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We're going to talk about all the stuff that outrages you.
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But actually, I think you make a really good point.
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However, you wonder what the impact of that will be, because obviously a lot of people said a lot of things
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and then came out and were completely discredited as a result.
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President Trump stared them down, in effect, right,
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because there were a lot of people effectively trying to say he's choosing the wrong path.
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He was proven entirely correct in the approach that he took effectively.
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whether that means that people will stop listening to those people as much as they have been,
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or whether these people carry on as if nothing ever happened
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and people carry on listening to them as if nothing ever happened.
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And the whole conversation about Israel is evolving as well, isn't it?
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It is indeed, you know, because one of the things that I find really interesting about Israel
00:04:03.260
is that people in our space tend to be pro-Zionist.
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By our space, I mean the people that we know in the UK.
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I think of like the YouTube channels and the podcasts, right?
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In that space, I think it's very divided, actually.
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And in fact, what I'm seeing when I talk to people, and when I talk to people I describe
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as normies, and when I ask them about Israel, what I find very interesting is actually how
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much they disagree with our point of view on Israel.
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The idea that Israel is now committing a genocide, I would say, is a mainstream position now.
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Within regular people, they will say it's a mainstream position.
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Now, you may ask them, what does that define genocide?
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They may not be able to do that, but they will say with absolute conviction, this is genocide.
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Piers Morgan is actually saying Israel is committing war crimes.
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And I think what Israel needs to be very mindful of is the fact that they may be winning the
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war against Hamas and against Iran and all of these countries and organizations.
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But when it comes to the propaganda war, there really is only one winner, and it ain't Israel.
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Well, let's go back to talking, because you kept saying our position, and I want to maybe
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lay out how, I don't know about you, you can talk for yourself, but how I arrived at the
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position I have on that issue, because people who watch our channel will know that neither
00:05:54.680
And this latest flare-up of the war is obviously very significant, there's very heavy casualties,
00:06:00.780
But it's not the first time Israel has been at war, including in our lifetime, really.
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So our first encounter with this issue as an issue was, it would have been 2019, I think,
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the first time we interviewed Melanie Phillips.
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And as I said, I think to her face when we last interviewed her, I didn't come away from
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that interview thinking, well, you know, Israel is like purer than pure and whiter than white
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I came away from it thinking, you know, Melanie made some good points.
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But overall, the creation of the state of Israel is clearly a contentious issue, right?
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And that was really my entire takeaway from it.
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And I didn't have an opinion when October 7th happened, other than October 7th was really
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And then I just, we interviewed people from every side of that conflict, Basim Yusuf, Norman
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And Basim Yusuf was a big eye-opening moment for me, because I remember before we started the
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interview, it was all friendly, it was all joking around, you know, we're going to have
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And I asked him what I thought was a very simple and reasonable question to ask, which
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is ultimately, once October 7th has happened, what do you think Israel should do, given that
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you are advocating that it shouldn't do what it's currently doing?
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And I felt really bad because people who watch our show regularly will laugh at this, but I
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And I'm always worried about, like, I've been talking for a long time, it's time for
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But with him, we just kept going round and round and round around this question.
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And I kind of realized, first and foremost, that many, many people who are talking about
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this issue, they simply have no interest in actually being rational about this entire
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They have no interest in trying to work out what the solution to the problem is, first
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And then you add on top of that, that I'm pretty certain that if we had had modern technology
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like the camera phone and the internet, in any other major conflict in history, in which
00:08:12.780
we were involved, the West, I mean, right, we'd be experiencing many of the same things.
00:08:17.700
Because in every war that Britain's ever been involved in, or America's ever been involved
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or God forbid Russia's ever been involved in, the troops of that country, whichever you
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And if you look at World War II, I mean, Britain and America destroyed 80 German cities, we were
00:08:35.140
dropping, like, way more munitions on Germany than Israel is dropping on Gaza per head of
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population, to the point where, you know, according to some analysis, it's like several nuclear
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weapons worth of munitions every month, flattening entire cities.
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I mean, killing somewhere between three and 600,000 civilians, German civilians, just in
00:08:57.380
So I think a lot of this is to do with the way that we, on the one hand, living in relative
00:09:03.700
peace and safety, we talked about this in our upcoming interview with Dominic Sandbrook,
00:09:07.080
which is a great interview, are then confronted with the reality of war, if you want, 24-7 on
00:09:14.020
your phone. You put that together, and the emotional reaction of that, coming back to where
00:09:20.420
we started this, is so overwhelming that critical thought, I think, becomes very difficult at that
00:09:26.260
point, right? And I know this, and I'm not, it sounds like I'm saying that the people who support
00:09:32.320
this particular view are, like, stupid. I'm not saying that. I just mean that being confronted with
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the reality of war is such a powerful thing, it becomes then difficult to actually think about
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this from a more historical and rational perspective, which is, what, how does this map
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onto everything else that's ever happened, and therefore, what is actually right or wrong,
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I'm completely seeing what you're saying. I think, look, it's part of the reason why I make sure that
00:10:01.020
none of that content ever gets through to me, because I don't want to give myself PTSD via my phone.
00:10:06.180
It's why, when we were invited to go and see the films of October 7th, I didn't want to go,
00:10:13.320
because I can read about them, and I've read about them thoroughly, and we've read Douglas Murray's
00:10:17.380
book. I know what happened. I know the awful atrocities that were committed. I've read about
00:10:22.040
them. I don't need to actually see them and essentially damage my psyche in order to ingest that
00:10:28.520
content. But also, I think, if you're going to have a strong opinion on this conflict, which you have
00:10:33.840
every right to do, every right, then is your responsibility, and I use that word, responsibility,
00:10:42.480
to understand what is actually happening. I have family in Lebanon. When I talk to my family in
00:10:48.880
Lebanon, they talk about Hezbollah. Hezbollah are evil. They are evil. They are Islamic fundamentalists
00:10:56.620
who believe in to establish a global Islamic caliphate. Women should be subjugated. Gays should
00:11:03.460
be killed. They believe in their absolute rule of law. Well, we all agree with parts of it.
00:11:08.440
Yeah, of course. Of course. The women think. Come on. But the reality is, these people are not good
00:11:16.560
people, and they have contributed to Lebanon essentially being in a state of civil war for
00:11:22.640
decades now. So this idea that Israel is just psychopathic aggressor that enjoys destroying
00:11:32.980
Gaza and wiping Gaza off the face of the map, it's a very, to put it kindly, one-dimensional view of the
00:11:42.280
situation. And I really do believe, if you're going to have a strong opinion about this, have a strong
00:11:47.560
opinion. But make sure you've done the reading. You actually understand the geopolitics behind it.
00:11:52.240
Well, right. And also, the reason I've come to the position that I've come to on it is you just
00:12:00.280
conduct a mental experiment in your head, and you go, imagine that you are the prime minister of
00:12:05.000
Israel on October the 8th. And actually imagine it. Don't say the words. Imagine it. Thousands of
00:12:13.100
your citizens have just been slaughtered or wounded. Hundreds of them have been dragged off as hostages
00:12:27.220
And then you go, okay, if that had happened to Britain, or if that had happened to America,
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or if that had happened to any other country, that you might be a citizen of watching this,
00:12:38.560
A, what do you think your government would do? And B, and this is really important for people to think
00:12:43.380
about, and really be honest, is what would you want your government to do, right? And people go,
00:12:48.980
oh, no, I'd want them to do really, you know, be careful and do this. Really? Is that what we saw
00:12:52.980
on 9-11? We saw the American public be wanting to be really surgical? I don't think so. And my thing
00:13:00.840
with this is, I think the truth is, there's a luxury belief thing going on, which is we sitting in
00:13:07.740
comfort and safety and plenty, are judging Israel, which experienced the most horrific terrorist attack
00:13:14.140
in their history, right? And if we were in their position, I hope we would be as careful as Israel,
00:13:20.880
but I don't think we would be, is the truth of it. I don't think we would be as careful. I don't think
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we would be, as the ratio of civilians to combatants killed would be anything like what it is now.
00:13:31.900
And historically speaking, that is how it's gone down. After 9-11, America invaded two countries,
00:13:38.220
one of which had nothing to do with 9-11. That is the level of overreaction we saw there. So you can
00:13:44.780
definitely say Israel is committing war crimes. Every country at war has committed some war crimes.
00:13:50.600
And this food distribution thing is sus. And, you know, the settlers in the West Bank,
00:13:56.740
lots of questions about stuff like that. I think there are very legitimate criticisms to be made
00:14:01.820
of the way Israel has prosecuted this conflict. But as a broad thing, does Israel, is Israel doing
00:14:08.320
what we would do? I don't even know, because I suspect what we would do would be far worse in
00:14:13.320
the same situation. So I'm not going to sit here and in an air-conditioned studio in a place where
00:14:18.820
October the 7th could never happen and judge them for the way that they're prosecuted, for the fact
00:14:23.560
that they're attempting to destroy the people who did this. And to say nothing of the fact that,
00:14:27.740
of course, all the figures that we get told and all the news, etc., are Hamas lies, right?
00:14:33.420
And, you know, there are people like Piers, by the way, who say, well, they should let journalists in.
00:14:38.540
I'm not necessarily against that, although I do think what would happen is basically that a lot
00:14:42.900
of them would get killed because it's a tiny little area, highly urban conflict. Some of them
00:14:47.080
probably get set up or killed by Hamas. And then you've got them being used as a, their deaths being
00:14:51.900
used as a propaganda weapon as well. So anyway, my broad point is I've come to the position in Israel
00:14:57.140
that I have by engaging with the arguments and then going, okay, but what would I do in the same
00:15:03.060
situation? What would my government do in the same situation? And not being a hypocrite and not holding
00:15:08.100
Israel to a different standard that we would hold ourselves to. That's the only thing. So I don't even
00:15:13.460
consider myself pro-Israel. I don't think I am pro-Israel. I have just looked at the facts of this issue,
00:15:19.060
and that is how I see it in this particular conflict. Israel can be engaged in another
00:15:23.540
conflict. I'd be anti-Israel if I thought it was the wrong thing to do. What I'm saying with pro-Israel
00:15:28.740
is I believe Israel has a right to exist. Of course. Which we think is a pretty mainstream position.
00:15:37.040
I'm going to be honest with you. Amongst young people, I don't know how many of them do.
00:15:42.480
Well, they are the ones that are then generating this conflict for eternity, because if you don't think
00:15:47.400
Israel has a right to exist, you're putting Israel in a position where it has to continue to fight for
00:15:52.080
its existence. And then this entire thing is going to keep going. But you look at, for instance, the
00:15:56.520
footage coming out of Glastonbury with Bob Villain chanting death to the IDF. And the fact that it was
00:16:03.420
getting chanted back in a sea of Palestine flags. If you look at the amount of people week on week
00:16:10.420
going to these protests, you know, pro-Palestine action protests, 70 people being arrested,
00:16:16.420
that is telling you something quite fundamental about young people's attitude.
00:16:24.360
First of all, I didn't hear much chanting back on the death to the IDF thing. He was notably much
00:16:30.280
more muted than the other stuff. And by the way, we should talk about that because it's a free speech
00:16:34.220
issue as well. And a lot of people started losing their shit about him. And I thought, you know,
00:16:39.020
make fun of it, criticize, whatever. But like, if someone went on stage and chanted death to the
00:16:45.460
Russian armed forces, would the people melting down about that, about the chance to, about death to the
00:16:53.180
IDF be having that same reaction? I don't think so. I personally think, I don't agree with it,
00:17:00.280
obviously, but from a free speech perspective, a musician has every right to do that.
00:17:05.440
No, I look, I agree. I agree. And I think it's, I get really uncomfortable when I see people on the
00:17:12.460
right a couple of years ago, screeching about free speech. And I'd be like, yeah, you're right. You
00:17:17.840
know, it's bad that somebody has, gets canceled for their views. And then you flip markedly in a
00:17:25.740
space of, you know, a couple of years and demand and celebrate that this person loses their agent,
00:17:32.980
gets their visa canceled, isn't able to play certain shows, gets deplatformed. And you're going,
00:17:39.200
hang on, you've got to be consistent, which goes back to the emotion part of it. And I do think a lot
00:17:46.540
of people are just governed by their emotions and they can't help themselves. And the moment they see
00:17:52.260
something that triggers them. And look, I understand we all have our triggers. We all have
00:17:56.720
some things that touch us. And then we react in a way that is emotional, not logical.
00:18:02.740
But if you're on the right and you have championed facts, don't care about your feelings.
00:18:08.700
Well, I don't know if this is, that saying applies to this situation. What are the facts here?
00:18:13.340
The facts are, is that free speech is important and you shouldn't cancel people because their speech
00:18:19.000
differs from your speech. That's a fact. And by the way, I imagine his agent knew that this is the
00:18:25.100
stuff he was doing, presumably. Yeah. Right. Because it's not the first time he was doing it. No.
00:18:31.220
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00:20:01.140
So, Palestine action has been prescribed as a terrorist organization. So, they snuck onto a
00:20:07.120
military base in Britain and they damaged, I think, some war planes or some planes, which, again, I wasn't
00:20:14.400
certain that they have committed an act of terrorism in doing that because they were sort of just,
00:20:20.020
they sprayed some pain on it. However, what I was very surprised by is like, if I snuck onto a military
00:20:25.680
base and started mucking around, to put it in a very British way, with planes, I'd expect to be
00:20:31.880
shot. Yeah. I don't understand why that didn't happen. Like, so, I don't think they're terrorists,
00:20:37.620
but they also should have been shot when they entered that base, right? I completely agree. I
00:20:42.060
don't understand how you can break in to that type of highly classified, I don't even know the word for
00:20:50.340
restricted, whatever. Restricted area and expected damage property, which is important for our national
00:20:58.920
security and for nothing to happen. Yeah. I don't, I don't understand. But it has created this thing
00:21:06.100
where you've got some granny in a kefir sitting there and getting arrested because she supports
00:21:10.920
this group or whatever. I just, my sense is that once you open the door to the policing of speech
00:21:17.600
in the way that we have seen over the last particularly five years, since the pandemic
00:21:21.380
especially, now it's just fucking all, it's, it's, it's censorship all the way down. Now,
00:21:26.940
you're going to get people with this view and that view. And this is, by the way, what we have been
00:21:31.280
saying from the beginning, do not open this door because it will be used against you. And now,
00:21:36.600
you're seeing people on the left, suddenly they're massively pro-free speech.
00:21:40.680
I go, you're the dickheads that created all of this. When you had the ability to enforce
00:21:45.300
your views, you did it. Yeah. And now it's being used against you. How do you like it?
00:21:50.240
Yeah. And, and this is what they don't seem to understand. And this is the thing that I
00:21:54.900
really struggle with, with people. I remember one of our guests who shall remain nameless,
00:21:58.660
who basically said, oh, you know what? It's only till my side started getting canceled that I realized
00:22:04.360
cancel culture is a bad thing. I'm like, really? It's only when you saw your friends lose their jobs,
00:22:09.920
their livelihoods, suddenly being unable to provide for their families, having their reputations destroyed,
00:22:14.540
being pushed to the point of a nervous breakdown. You understood that this is bad?
00:22:20.380
But it's also a difficult one, right? Because with Bob, with this Bob Villain guy,
00:22:24.980
like, are you saying his agent should have kept him on? Are you saying the United States should
00:22:31.780
allow him to come and do a tour there and keep his visa? Are you saying concert organizers should
00:22:38.540
maintain his bookings? Like, that's where there is a there is that line about like, people don't you
00:22:45.840
have the right to speak, but there are consequences that people will voluntarily choose to apply,
00:22:51.320
right? And that's the gray area, I think, because I defend his right to say whatever he wants.
00:22:56.720
But then I do also think that if I were organizing a series of concerts, and I thought that his
00:23:04.860
appearance would be detrimental to my business, that would be a decision you'd have to consider.
00:23:10.060
Now, is that cancel culture? I think many people would say, yeah.
00:23:13.520
Yeah, look, it is very difficult. But also as well, look, when it comes to the art,
00:23:19.940
you have to look, and this is just my point, opinion, and people will push back on it.
00:23:23.920
Like, artists have always been transgressive. Artists have always pushed the boundaries.
00:23:29.200
Artists have always said the unsayable. It's part of what great art is. A great art is presenting
00:23:35.680
something, in my opinion, if you think about great comedy, that we may be uncomfortable with,
00:23:41.820
we don't like saying, but we will say it through the medium of the art.
00:23:45.860
I would not go as far as to call Bob Villain's music art. I wouldn't.
00:23:51.760
But it's subjective. There are lots of people who would.
00:23:56.360
I don't know. For me, it's not creative enough to be called art, personally. However, I did the
00:24:03.580
kneecap is different. Kneecap's music is actually really good. It is. Did you know my YouTube
00:24:10.060
history is now all fucked up? Because I just listened to it just to find out what it's all
00:24:13.860
about. And it's good. And now I've got all these Irish protest songs, like go on home,
00:24:17.820
British soldiers go home that are playing while I'm in the shower. Anyway, my point is, I think
00:24:22.440
you're right, though, which is music, comedy, and other forms of art. They're very good at
00:24:28.420
allowing you to suspend your critical faculties and not think about the content as much as the
00:24:34.160
music. So if you put a nice beat to something, you can pretty much say anything.
00:24:39.240
Ultimate example. So anyway, this is a very long way of wrapping up the conversation about Israel.
00:24:45.180
But basically, I think, and by the way, something I wanted to say as well is,
00:24:49.780
we didn't really talk about the Israel conversation for a long time on the show,
00:24:55.740
because I really wasn't sure like what I think about it. And I was just listening to different
00:25:00.260
perspectives or whatever. And then at some point, you said something, because I was having all these
00:25:04.220
thoughts in my head. And then you just went, you know, the truth is, Constantine, that a lot of
00:25:08.600
people are just not being honest about that issue. And I think you were totally right about that.
00:25:15.180
Yeah. The moment you saw people engage with it, I remember listening to people of both sides.
00:25:22.620
And I love talking to people and I love listening to people. That's what I really enjoy.
00:25:30.400
Yeah. It would just be holding court. But yeah, I really like listening to people and seeing
00:25:36.620
what they think and why they think. And I would talk to them about Palestine and about Israel and
00:25:44.220
the Middle East. And as somebody who has family and knows a bit more about it and was raised by my
00:25:49.160
grandfather who was South American, but was very much an Arab, first and foremost.
00:25:52.940
And then I see people talk about it. And it was all done through the lens of emotion and
00:26:00.960
righteousness. And I was like, OK, but can we just accept about what the Iranians are doing?
00:26:09.460
And what the Iranians are doing is effectively a program of destabilization
00:26:15.240
Let's be even more honest, Francis. Let's just say it like it is. Israel is surrounded
00:26:19.200
until very recently when some of the Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and the
00:26:29.700
The reality is Israel is surrounded by countries that have repeatedly invaded it
00:26:35.300
in an attempt to destroy it and would like it not to exist.
00:26:39.360
If our countries were in that same position, whether it's the United States was at constant
00:26:45.480
threat of invasion from Canada and Mexico or Britain was constantly threatened by, you
00:26:50.860
know, whoever. That would be a very different context in which we'd be operating and we would
00:26:56.220
have a very different posture towards the world and a very different attitude to our
00:27:01.980
Yeah, of course. And to me, the key to all of this was Iran. The more I looked into it,
00:27:06.900
the more I saw what Iran were doing. And I was thinking to myself, well, what is Israel
00:27:12.740
What is Israel meant to do? One of your neighbors is advocating that you are wiped off the face
00:27:19.540
of the earth. It compares you to a cancerous tumor. It funds terrorist organizations across
00:27:25.400
the region which are trying to kill, rape and essentially wipe you off the map. It's started
00:27:33.340
a proxy war because that's what, let's also be honest about that. October the 7th was
00:27:39.020
done in the most provocative manner possible in order to start a war. And also, let's be
00:27:44.600
honest as well, Iran couldn't give a flying toss about the lives of Palestinians.
00:27:49.280
No. To the contrary, the more of them die, the better it is for Iran.
00:27:55.800
Hamas are explicit about this. They want high civilian casualties because it helps them do what
00:28:01.040
they are doing, which is win the PR war against Israel.
00:28:03.560
Exactly. So you have all of that happening. So you go, well, and I wouldn't mind if the people
00:28:12.120
on that side were like, look, I accept all of this, but Israel needs to change part of its tactic
00:28:19.260
here. It needs to change part of its tactic here. I think that is a very important conversation to
00:28:23.920
have and to still be having. Because like you said, every country commits war crimes.
00:28:30.000
There are things that are happening in Gaza, which are awful and terrible and civilians are dying.
00:28:36.500
Awful. However, however, until you address the issue of Iran and you are honest about what the
00:28:44.220
Iranians are doing, rather specifically the Ayatollah and his cronies, what they're doing and what they
00:28:49.720
want. And talking about that problem, honestly, I don't really think we're having an honest
00:28:55.460
Well, let's be even have an even more honest conversation. I think we don't need to say,
00:29:00.740
however, after we've said terrible things are happening in Gaza, which they are. It's not
00:29:05.960
however, it's an and. And the responsibility for that lies with the people who are preventing that
00:29:12.760
war from coming to an end. Who is that? Who is it that's preventing the conflict in Gaza from
00:29:17.560
coming to an end? It's Hamas. They are the ones that are refusing to release the hostages.
00:29:22.560
They're the ones that will not hand over the terrorists who took them. They're the ones that
00:29:26.400
won't surrender. And this comparison, people get very triggered when you bring up World War II,
00:29:30.840
but I think it's the perfect comparison for the simple reason that Nazi Germany was a country that
00:29:36.660
was held in the grips of a death cult, right? Adolf Hitler was effectively willing to fight to the
00:29:42.060
last German. In fact, someone should fact check this, but I'm pretty sure he said at some point,
00:29:47.560
that if the German people cannot triumph in this conflict, they don't deserve to survive,
00:29:53.280
right? In other words, he was prepared to see all of Germany destroyed in this fight,
00:29:59.200
right, for the cause. And we had to, we were forced to, Britain, America, the Soviet Union were forced
00:30:06.960
to invade, were forced to destroy, just like Japan, by the very fact that they wouldn't surrender,
00:30:11.780
right? So if Hamas holds on to the hostages, won't capitulate, won't surrender, and won't hand over
00:30:18.900
the terrorists who took the hostages and who committed October 7th, Israel, for the sake of
00:30:24.060
its own survival, has to go in and try to finish that job, get the hostages back, etc. So the terrible
00:30:30.580
things that are happening in Gaza are terrible, and it's Hamas who should stop them.
00:30:34.120
Yes. And I agree. But the reality is nobody's prepared to have this conversation. And what
00:30:40.280
people don't understand as well, I remember having a very, I was in a green room in a comedy club,
00:30:47.540
and people, and there was one particular comedian who was, made a beeline for me, and was like,
00:30:52.940
what do you think about the things that are happening in Gaza?
00:30:59.140
Yeah. Loved every moment, mate. Actually, don't watch Pornhub anymore.
00:31:04.640
But, and I said to him, and he was just like, what do you think? And I said to him,
00:31:08.620
and I said to him, the thing you need to understand is you are looking at this situation through
00:31:14.680
Western eyes. You are looking at it through a Western lens. Hamas do not have your values.
00:31:22.220
Hamas do not think the same way as you do. Hamas's objectives are utterly different to what
00:31:32.740
your objectives would be in that situation. Your objectives would be, let's bring this to an end.
00:31:38.860
People are dying. Innocent people are suffering. They don't think about that. They don't care
00:31:45.040
because they have a higher objective in their eyes. The more people die, the better, because they're
00:31:51.100
going to go to heaven anyway, because they are righteous. And then they are going to be able to
00:31:55.560
achieve their goal. That's all they care about. And to look at it through a Western lens and say,
00:32:01.600
oh, these people are suffering. And, you know, we must bring this to an end as if that's what
00:32:05.800
Hamas wants. Hamas do not care. The Ayatollah do not care. Hezbollah do not care. They don't care.
00:32:14.900
If anything, they like it. So if you're looking at this situation through a Western lens,
00:32:22.460
and this comes from somebody who has family who are Arabic, who has seen the very real anti-Semitism
00:32:28.820
that lies in the Arab world that we haven't even begun to touch on. You don't understand hatred until
00:32:35.120
you talk to those people. The reality is your view isn't valid. You're Western. You're not an Arab.
00:32:43.160
You're not Muslim. And you're not a jihadist. It's as simple as that.
00:32:48.760
Well, and if you look at, I mean, there is not much difference between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
00:32:56.080
jihad and ISIS. Now, look at what ISIS did when they controlled Swadha territory, right? They raped
00:33:02.960
and butchered people that they didn't consider to be them, the Yazidis and whoever, right? Now, if these
00:33:09.080
people are your neighbors and they are going to raid across the border, I remember I interviewed
00:33:12.540
Wilfred Reilly. Do you remember it? He talks about Native Americans and the way that they would just
00:33:18.040
butcher people, etc. In a very similar situation, actually, some people might argue like, you know,
00:33:24.340
you've got people from another continent who've come and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:27.640
Ultimately, you cannot deal with that through the ceasefire. Like, how can you have a ceasefire with
00:33:38.240
people who want you eradicated? You can if they're prepared to accept certain conditions, right? But
00:33:43.920
they're not. They're not handing over the hostages. They don't want a ceasefire. Hamas do not want a
00:33:50.220
ceasefire and they've demonstrated it repeatedly. If they wanted a ceasefire on day one, they could have
00:33:54.600
just handed back the hostages, said, look, we'll give away, we'll hand over the people who committed
00:33:59.120
this terrorist atrocity for justice, right? Israel would have no, nobody would support Israel bombing
00:34:06.880
Gaza. I wouldn't support Israel bombing Gaza in that situation, would you? No, nobody would. They
00:34:11.820
had that option and they don't take it precisely because they want exactly what's going on right now.
00:34:17.220
They want this. It's them that wants this. Of course, of course. And people in
00:34:24.380
Brooklyn or in parts of North London or wherever it may be, they don't understand this. They cannot
00:34:32.180
wrap their head around the fact that people think differently in different cultures. There's this
00:34:38.520
great liberal lie where we go, oh, everybody's just like us. People are all the same. They're not.
00:34:45.460
People are different. People are different culturally. I even think back in Venezuela. I always
00:34:52.400
remember being really quite horrified, even as a little boy with the attitude over there that if
00:34:58.800
I screw you over, you're dumb, I'm smart. In Russia, it's the same. Because you let yourself
00:35:05.220
be screwed over. Therefore, you're dumb. And I was there coming to it from an English perspective going,
00:35:10.520
yeah, but if we do this, then society can't work. You've got a low trust society. And once you have
00:35:15.580
a low trust society, I mean, I wouldn't have been that articulate as a servant. But I was going,
00:35:20.980
but this can't work. How are you meant to have relationships? How are you meant to run a
00:35:25.660
business? How are you meant to do anything if every time you step into the room and you think,
00:35:31.300
well, he's just going to stab me in the back when my back's turned?
00:35:33.780
Do you know, there's a phrase in Russian, means that something is lying in the wrong way,
00:35:41.840
lying somewhere, like this mug is standing in the wrong way. I mean, basically, I'll say,
00:35:45.540
oh, I stole it because it was not sitting there properly. Do you see what I mean?
00:35:49.580
So this culture is pervasive. And it's something actually, I think Jordan Peterson, when I was on
00:35:57.480
tour with him, he talked a lot about the fact that a healthy society and a healthy community in which
00:36:02.740
people voluntarily reciprocate good things towards each other and do good things towards each other
00:36:07.460
as an unhealthy society is one in which they don't, right? So there's a massive difference between
00:36:13.340
cultures. And of course, one of the big concerns with our country at the moment is that it is rapidly
00:36:19.160
heading in a low trust direction, thanks to mass immigration, the decriminalization of crime.
00:36:26.240
We just had a great episode of Lawrence Newport come out, who basically left the bike to be stolen
00:36:31.400
outside Scotland Yard. The police basically refused to do anything about it. He told them where it was,
00:36:37.180
they refused to do anything about it, etc. And there is, you know, it's time to talk about Britain now.
00:36:43.140
And it does seem like, you know, I almost, I am almost optimistic now, because I just think
00:36:49.800
things will get so bad, they can't not change. But that is where it's headed, right?
00:37:00.300
Being sleep deprived messes with everything. Reaction time, memory, decision making,
00:37:05.380
even your emotions. It's like walking around legally drunk. And the long term effects,
00:37:11.140
just as bad as smoking. Most people reach for melatonin. But here's the problem. Melatonin
00:37:17.100
is a hormone. And most supplements give you doses 10 to 50 times higher than your body naturally
00:37:23.160
produces. That's why you wake up groggy, your sleep gets worse over time, and your body stops
00:37:28.800
making melatonin on its own. That's why I use Evening Being by Verso. It's melatonin
00:37:35.340
free using clinically studied ingredients to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer,
00:37:40.740
and get more deep end REM sleep without messing with your hormones. I've been taking it myself. And
00:37:48.060
honestly, I'm falling asleep faster and my mind actually switches off at night, which used to be
00:37:53.540
a battle. Shut it. Of course it did. Head to ver.so and use code trigger to get 15% off your first order
00:38:03.740
or click the link in the description. That's V-E-R dot S-O. Code trigger.
00:38:11.480
And there's been certain markers for me. I find I'm very interested in culture and I'm very interested
00:38:18.000
in how internet culture mirrors what's going on in society, but not in the ways that sometimes people
00:38:26.400
think. Do you remember that clip of Robert Jenrick in the tube talking to people who
00:38:33.400
were just forcing their way through the barriers at the tube station refusing to pay? That went
00:38:40.500
super viral. And you go, why? Because it touched something really fundamental. And by the way,
00:38:48.820
I've seen this happen time and time again. You go to a tube station, people force their way through the
00:38:53.100
barriers. But you know something, Francis, before you go on, I don't know if you remember, I tweeted
00:38:57.240
about this a couple of years back because you and I talked about it. That is a very new thing.
00:39:03.080
It is. It's a very new thing. Yes. So I basically, I used to go on the tube all the time. And then I
00:39:10.320
think at some point, I might mostly cycle around London. Yeah. So I hadn't been on the tube for like
00:39:18.780
a year or a year and a half. And then I went on, middle of the day. And it was, it was a different,
00:39:25.900
it was a different environment entirely. People were not paying. There were kids running rampant
00:39:31.280
all over it, like pressing the stop things on the elevator, like being genuine nuisances. And
00:39:36.500
nobody was doing, it is a very new thing. And it's happened very rapidly. Agreed. Agreed. And
00:39:42.460
it's really interesting because I see this and I talk to people about it. I had a clip from my own
00:39:50.460
like podcast, just go quite viral actually, where Peter Blexley was talking about it and he was getting
00:39:55.380
really angry and people were sharing it all over TikTok. And the reason it's resonated isn't because
00:40:00.860
of the tube. It's because of something very fundamental and people are going, I contribute to
00:40:06.280
society. I pay my way. I do what's right. And this lot don't. And they are allowed to run rampant,
00:40:14.460
behave in a manner that is anti-social, not contribute, and nothing happens. And you know
00:40:19.140
what's interesting? In that generic video and other people have done similar things since,
00:40:23.220
one of the things that shocked me was, look, 17-year-olds jumping over the barriers and being
00:40:29.780
dickheads, 17-year-old boys are going to do stupid things. And we all have been there. But it's like
00:40:36.340
people in their 30s going to work but not paying. Yeah. I don't get it. Yeah. And what you see is
00:40:46.420
people literally not doing anything. And this is run rampant through our society. I was in
00:40:51.960
Walthamstow, a very she-she part of East London. There was a group of about, this happened literally
00:40:57.820
yesterday. There was a group of seven police officers, maybe more, and they were all congregated,
00:41:03.020
talking, having a laugh. Part of me is going, with what's going on in our society, should you
00:41:08.760
really be doing that? Firstly, this guy on a Deliveroo bike cycled past them on the pavement.
00:41:15.680
The police officer went, don't do that. The guy ignored him, carried on cycling. He turned
00:41:21.220
around to his mates. They all laughed about it and carried on chatting. And you go, that is
00:41:27.520
amazing. That, right there, in that tiny microcosm of what I've just seen, sums up so much of what is
00:41:36.020
going wrong. Well, I hope it keeps going because, like I say, I don't think there's any other way.
00:41:40.940
I don't think people are actually going to wake up until things get really bad. I'm convinced of it
00:41:45.780
now. Every time something bad happens now, I celebrate. I'm serious. Yeah. Because I'm just
00:41:52.120
going, if things carry on being quite bad, but not terrible, everyone's just going to keep acting
00:41:58.140
like nothing's going on. That's what they do. And people do this in their own lives. If their lives,
00:42:02.560
if their marriage, if the financial situation is really quite bad, but not terrible, they'll just
00:42:08.120
put up with it. They won't make any changes. They won't try and improve anything. And that's where we
00:42:11.800
are. Yeah. It's like the proverbial alcoholic. You need to hit rock bottom. Right. And to be fair,
00:42:18.200
I mean, we're going down there pretty quickly. We seem to be. And it's something that I think is
00:42:23.700
happening across Western societies. You see the election of Mamdani in New York. And I wrote a
00:42:31.220
piece on my Substack about it, but there's a lot to discuss about it, which I think it's very easy
00:42:37.620
for people to go, oh, young people are stupid and whatever. But the reality is, it has become very
00:42:46.320
difficult for young people to lead what we would consider a normal life, even on very high incomes,
00:42:52.900
because of the way that housing is completely screwed up in this country and in the US. But
00:42:58.180
particularly in Britain, it's such a massive issue that people go, oh, you know, these young kids are
00:43:03.780
spending five quid on lattes and whatever. And it's true. But if you can't afford your own property and
00:43:09.740
house prices are going up so much faster than your salary, you might as well have a coffee and you might as
00:43:15.180
well go out for a nice meal because what else are you going to do? Yeah. Yeah. And people don't seem
00:43:19.740
to understand that. I get really frustrated by people on the right when they lambast the young
00:43:26.440
and they go, oh, they're woke and they don't buy into society and they're nihilistic. And I'm like,
00:43:33.420
look, it's like a game. Let's say we get the board out and we're going to play Monopoly and we're
00:43:41.420
going to have a nice game of Monopoly. And we've got all the team involved, all the older ones,
00:43:46.080
and we're going to have a nice game. But we say to all the young ones like Jack, no, mate, you can't
00:43:50.140
play. Jack's our producer. Yeah. Jack's the producer. And this is actually an accurate depiction of our
00:43:54.720
business model. Anyway. And we're going to, but you can't play. And not only are you not going to be
00:43:59.620
able to play, we're going to charge you an exorbitant amount not to play. Right. Eventually,
00:44:04.560
you're going to go, do you know what, mate? Fuck your game. That's what I think of it.
00:44:10.600
And that is basically what is happening. Yeah. And that is what's happened with woke.
00:44:16.120
And now the woke has kind of lost its energy and its team. It's still there, but it's not,
00:44:21.920
doesn't have the cultural force or relevance behind it. But what we're going to get from the
00:44:26.600
left is something quite different. Well, and the right, because you're seeing an equal and
00:44:30.880
an opposite force on the right now where, you know, I wrote an article a while back about,
00:44:36.340
I think it was the one I called Tucker Carlson and the woke right. But basically, one of the
00:44:40.140
points I made in it was that this new movement on the right, it was sort of looking for how to frame
00:44:45.600
it's who the enemy was. And it kept like talking about globalists or whatever. But now they found
00:44:51.640
Israel and Jews as like the thing to latch onto. They're the problem. As if all of the people's lives
00:44:57.980
are really caused by that issue, the problems in their lives are caused by the issue, which,
00:45:02.060
of course, they're not. And on the left, you've got that. But plus, they've got all these ideas
00:45:06.180
about socialism and rent control and all of that's really going to fix everything, which,
00:45:10.080
of course, it never does. But I think what I'd want people to understand is that anger that is
00:45:16.320
building on both left and right, it's actually not random. There are good reasons why that's
00:45:21.620
happening. And Matthew Saeed, who's a favorite guest of ours, who we've had on, he had a great
00:45:26.820
article in the Times today talking about basically how people like him, who invested in the housing
00:45:34.160
market 10, 15, 20 years ago, are now in a position of such locked in advantage that it makes everyone
00:45:42.560
else's life very, very difficult who's coming up behind them. And actually, those people do need
00:45:47.760
to pay more in a very particular type of tax, like a land tax, for example, which is actually
00:45:52.700
something that's right-wing and left-wing economists support. Because if you maintain
00:45:58.100
this housing situation where essentially housing prices are going up way higher than people's
00:46:03.140
wages, because in Britain, people's wages aren't going up in real terms, it's no surprise that
00:46:07.960
people aren't having kids. It's no surprise that they're looking for a cause to rebel. It's no
00:46:11.960
surprise that they're voting for lunatics. Why would they want to preserve a status quo that doesn't
00:46:17.260
work for them? I read a horrifying statistic in that very article. I think it's 21 to 34 year
00:46:23.100
olds, 40% of them live at home with their parents. And then we sit here and go, well, we've got a
00:46:30.120
collapsing birth rate. Well, of course we've got a collapsing birth rate, mate. How are you going to
00:46:33.920
bring up a kid? How are you even going to have sex when you've got your parents next door and your
00:46:39.160
sister below you? I mean, if you're into that thing, I don't know. But the reality is that ain't
00:46:43.340
going to happen. It's not going to happen. But also you're not going to mature. I don't know
00:46:47.360
about you, but when I first started living on my own, it forced me to really grow up very quickly.
00:46:51.840
When you live with your parents, lots of things are made easier for you or made possible for you
00:46:56.100
that you're simply prevented from growing into a full-blown adult, right? And so all of those
00:47:01.120
other things go out of the window. And I think it's a massive, massive issue. And this is why
00:47:06.360
when people always call us right-wing or whatever, inequality, particularly when it comes to
00:47:13.020
housing and things like that is a massive issue. And the right mostly wants to ignore it. The left
00:47:18.740
will bang on about it and come up with the wrong solutions. But actually the right answer is you
00:47:23.800
have to make opportunity like that possible because you can talk about pulling yourself up
00:47:30.100
by your bootstraps all day long. But the reality is if you work really hard, you should have the
00:47:36.120
opportunity to get on in life. And that is increasingly being denied to a lot of people.
00:47:40.020
But another thing is Fraser Nelson, former guest of us, infamously, due to a debate him and I had,
00:47:47.660
he wrote a brilliant article that you sent me, which was about the fact that a lot of this is
00:47:51.480
also to do with what's called elite of a production. In other words, if you over-educate, if you educate
00:47:57.740
too many people to a higher education level, university, college, whatever, you then basically have
00:48:04.800
a lot of people who have very high expectations and may even have not skills necessarily, but a high
00:48:09.900
education. But there's not the jobs for them. And they get very frustrated because they're like, look,
00:48:14.520
I'm supposed to have, you know, a hundred grand a year, 200 grand a year job and be able to afford
00:48:19.520
a house and marriage and kids and whatever. And I can't in the big cities, especially, which partly
00:48:24.300
comes back to housing. Absolutely. Because, and I think, look, that's a great point. But also there's
00:48:30.420
something emotional going on here as well, which is that generation have been lied to. When they
00:48:36.120
went to school, they were told, work hard, go to college, get a good degree, you're going to get a
00:48:42.120
great job. They were told that. They were told that by teachers, they were told that by parents,
00:48:48.020
they were told that by elder siblings, because that model worked for their older parents,
00:48:54.800
they worked for their parents, it worked for the older generations, it worked for the teachers.
00:48:58.200
Right. The reality is, is that model no longer works. And again, partly that's because of
00:49:03.940
technology as well, right? Because ultimately we have an interview with Daniel Priestley coming out
00:49:09.080
in which he, I think he's absolutely right. And look at me and you, like the opportunities to make
00:49:16.020
something of yourself are still there, but you probably are not going to get a job that's going
00:49:21.260
to be your stable job for 40 years. The world has changed. So I do think it's probably still the best
00:49:26.760
time to create and build and not have gatekeepers and really make something of yourself, but you're
00:49:34.680
going to have to work so much harder and have so much more success to be able to achieve the very
00:49:38.620
basic things that people 50 years ago just thought was normal. Like, you know, dad goes out to work in
00:49:43.280
a factory, mom's at home, two kids, three kids, house, car, right? That used to be normal. Now you have
00:49:50.680
to be a millionaire to achieve that. Yeah. For a lot of people, that's what it feels like, especially if
00:49:54.920
you're coming up and you don't have inheritance from parents, they're not going to be able to help you
00:49:58.380
out, get on the housing ladder. In London, I mean, look at the housing prices.
00:50:03.340
It's insane. So that's where I think a lot of these really stupid and really counterproductive ideas on
00:50:10.740
both left and right are coming from. It's just the fact that young people are looking into the future
00:50:14.780
and going, this is really not a society that is looking after me. And by the way, I will say this,
00:50:23.500
you know, we and I are elderly millennials. I don't think we can quite be blamed for this,
00:50:27.240
but I really respect Matthew Saeed for making this point because I think he's a little older than us.
00:50:31.620
People who are rich and in the kind of boomer generations, they've got to realize if you keep
00:50:40.540
screwing young people over because you keep voting for people who only do things that are good for you,
00:50:45.860
you're not going to find yourself living in a comfortable retirement 20, 30 years from now.
00:50:50.060
Someone's going to have to pay for that. Someone's going to have to wipe your bum in a fucking nursing
00:50:53.220
home. And it's not going to be these people, right? Because people have forgotten something,
00:51:00.820
which is for society to work, everyone has to contribute and sacrifice for the greater good.
00:51:07.120
And if the only thing you ever vote for is for your house prices to keep going up and for no one to
00:51:13.660
build a house in your backyard and for you to hold on to the three rental properties that you've had,
00:51:18.660
well, you're going to brew a hell of a lot of resentment in society. It's going to come out
00:51:23.540
one way or another and you're not going to fucking like it.
00:51:26.100
No. And this is what people don't understand. And then they turn around and they blame young people.
00:51:31.880
And you know what you're going to get? You're going to get more Zoran Mandanis.
00:51:35.320
You're going to get more Jeremy Corbyns. And they're only going to become more popular.
00:51:40.780
I think what we're going to see as when you look at our electoral systems,
00:51:46.060
more and more, I, and we've spoken about it ad nauseum, but this two party system,
00:51:53.860
Well, and it is breaking down here in the UK. I mean, reform is leading the polls at the moment.
00:51:57.560
And they are a fairly, you know, as far as a right-wing populist reaction to what's been going
00:52:04.860
on goes, like you go, thank fuck we've got them. If you look around Europe.
00:52:10.360
Yeah. You know, those boys are a lot more spicy. So with, with, with Nigel Farage and reform,
00:52:15.460
you know, Nigel, I don't know if he said this publicly, but he certainly said to us, he feels
00:52:20.780
like this is, you know, we're drinking at the last chance saloon as a country. And I think
00:52:24.440
he's right. Um, and I am, you know, I have to be honest, um, Nigel. So there's a lot of things
00:52:32.520
to say really about reform. I think the first thing is Nigel is the greatest talent, political
00:52:37.220
talent of his generation. There's no question from a politics perspective from he's incredibly
00:52:42.660
likable. Uh, there are a lot of people who don't like him, but generally speaking, he's incredibly
00:52:48.140
likable. And I think the mood music on him has changed a lot. A lot more people are now
00:52:53.760
receptive to, to him. Um, as for the party policies, there's a lot to like, and there's
00:52:59.680
probably a lot to question in there as well. I mean, I think that obviously dealing with
00:53:03.480
illegal immigration is a massive priority. Everyone would accept that mass immigration
00:53:07.260
being reduced to something reasonable again, net zero dealing with that as important. But
00:53:12.140
I also look at the economic policy and I go, you are really promising a lot of things to
00:53:17.560
a lot of people and you are effectively, you know, being very high, you know, I'm not either
00:53:24.540
it's not all going to add up or you're going to do a lot of the kind of left wing economics
00:53:29.480
on this and you're just going to go big on everything, uh, giving people money to these
00:53:33.420
people, those people, et cetera. Um, so I think, uh, they are the hope for a lot of people.
00:53:40.800
And I'll be honest with you. I hope they win the next election. I do too. Not necessarily
00:53:44.760
because I, I believe that they will create some kind of utopia. I don't believe that's
00:53:50.020
going to happen. Britain has a very long road to recovery. Um, but I think we've seen that
00:53:56.420
both the conservatives and the labor party are just, they're not going to deliver any
00:54:00.500
meaningful attempt at change. And Starmer's government, if you thought it was going to be
00:54:05.340
bad. So, I mean, look at what they're doing on, on the illegal immigration. Now they're
00:54:11.240
going to reduce it by not reducing it. Well, he said he wants a one in one out policy. I'm
00:54:16.740
going great. You can turn my country into a fucking nightclub. But I, I don't, why would
00:54:21.740
you want? So their, their idea I think is they're going to bring in asylum seekers and
00:54:27.220
get rid of illegal immigrants. But I, I honestly don't think that's what the British people
00:54:32.720
wanted. How about, and I know this is controversial, we control our borders and we, we do our best.
00:54:40.960
It's not going to be possible to reduce it to zero. How about that? How about we actually
00:54:45.800
be a country that enforces our borders and goes to illegal immigrants? If you come here
00:54:52.560
illegally, that is a criminal act. You are not welcome and you will be deported. I know
00:54:58.840
that sounds pretty fascistic. Does it? Every other country in the world does that. Yeah.
00:55:06.200
Except stupid countries in the West. Yeah. But I was being kind of facetious, but you know,
00:55:11.660
it's, that is a sensible position. That, that's common sense. But the fact that we can't even
00:55:21.320
say it, the fact that we bow down to the French time after time, the fact that we're given the
00:55:26.780
best part of half a billion quid a year to actually deal with this. And then it's only now that they
00:55:33.420
managed to like slash a few boats to stop people coming. You're going, what is going on? What is
00:55:40.660
going on? It's weak leadership. All right. Bit of an unexpected one for you, but this actually got my
00:55:48.080
attention. The other day I was scrolling online and came across this video from none other than Chuck
00:55:54.020
Norris. Yes, that Chuck Norris. He's in his eighties now. And according to him, he still feels
00:56:00.140
like he's in his fifties. And honestly watching it, I could believe it. The video goes through three
00:56:05.960
specific foods. He says you should avoid like the plague and a few other things he's doing to keep in
00:56:12.000
shape and stay sharp. I was skeptical at first. The stuff he suggests is genuinely simple and actually
00:56:18.720
makes a lot of sense. If you're interested in health, energy, or just curious what Chuck Norris
00:56:24.380
swears by at 80 plus, this is worth your time. Watch the video now at chuckdefense.com slash trigger.
00:56:32.960
That's chuckdefense.com slash trigger. And we put the link in the description below to make it easy.
00:56:40.920
And the economy obviously is in a lot of trouble. Not only that, but the tax situation is such that
00:56:48.420
they're going to have to raise more taxes on more things. And that is going to massively, you know,
00:56:53.040
we know that we are losing entrepreneurs and wealthy people at a rate like you've never seen.
00:56:59.600
It's absolutely crazy. And that's where you hope a reform government might actually implement some
00:57:08.220
pro-business policies that's going to create more jobs for people. Because that's the only way out of
00:57:12.220
this really, is you have to have the businesses of the future and the people who are going to create
00:57:17.320
and start and run them in this country instead of chasing them out. And with this current
00:57:22.780
administration, I mean, to be honest with you, I still meet a lot of people in Westminster who think
00:57:27.660
like, you know, the Tories are going to come back and do, and you just go, I haven't heard from them.
00:57:38.880
Robert Jenner is doing some good stuff, but he's not the leader.
00:57:43.000
I don't really hear anything out of the Conservatives. But so, yeah, anyway, we're in a lot of trouble.
00:57:50.040
And like I say, I genuinely, I know this sounds evil and cruel and whatever, but as things get
00:57:55.200
worse, I'm like, well, at least there might be a chance we get out of this.
00:57:58.900
Do you know what it all comes back to and has been the problem that we've spoken about time and time
00:58:04.980
and time again? And it's about all of the issues that we talk about, is there is a lack of honesty.
00:58:11.780
People aren't being honest. They're delusional. We've been living in la-la land for a long time.
00:58:17.480
Whether they're thinking it's girls can be boys, which is the most ridiculous of all the arguments,
00:58:22.760
or what's going on in the Middle East, or the fact that, you know, if you have borders,
00:58:27.020
that somehow makes you akin to Joseph Goebbels, or the fact, you know,
00:58:31.100
the no human is illegal, despite the fact that sounds like something Jeffrey Epstein would say.
00:58:36.140
But all of these things, and you just look through it, and you go,
00:58:40.100
you can only indulge in these types of nonsensical narratives for a period of time.
00:58:47.460
And then, unfortunately, the rubber hits the road.
00:58:50.780
But here's the problem, Francis, is given where we've got to,
00:58:56.140
we are kind of like the alcoholic, and the alcoholic really doesn't want to wake up.
00:59:01.100
Right? Because if we did, we'd have to recognize that we're all living beyond our means.
00:59:07.200
We can't afford the current levels of spending.
00:59:09.640
We can't afford even the shitty public services that we have now.
00:59:13.140
We can't. We can't afford, you know, the levels of benefits,
00:59:19.140
unemployment benefits and sickness benefits that people are getting,
00:59:25.640
We cannot have a country in which that number of people, you know,
00:59:28.860
they're a bit depressed, or they're anxious, or whatever.
00:59:32.020
And they're getting basically paid to not do anything.
00:59:36.040
Like, I remember as an 18-year-old being super depressed.
00:59:45.140
And then the answer to my depression was to try and work.
00:59:52.780
Almost everyone has been at a point where they were really depressed or really anxious,
00:59:56.520
and you just have to find a way to deal with it.
00:59:59.360
And you have to find a way to cope and to work through it,
01:00:01.840
or maybe to live with it, and nonetheless keep moving forward.
01:00:07.200
Life is not about the government, which is other people giving you money,
01:00:13.420
That is not to say that there are not many people who genuinely are unable to work
01:00:17.560
because they're mentally too unwell or physically too unwell.
01:00:20.800
But we have stretched those definitions way past their remit.
01:00:30.980
The moment you say to yourself, I cannot do this because of X, Y, and Z,
01:00:41.600
And the government is facilitating people to say, I cannot do this.
01:00:48.260
If you say you cannot do something, I guarantee you, you won't be able to do it.
01:00:53.020
There are times in all of our lives where you just think, I don't think I can go on.
01:01:10.180
Do you know, I remember going, when I was a student, going to the student employment office
01:01:17.600
And I would be sweating just looking at them because I was like really anxious and nervous.
01:01:23.220
I did loads of jobs I did not want to be doing.
01:01:28.340
They just weren't jobs that were suited to my personality or whatever, being a waiter
01:01:38.140
You, I'm sure, had loads of jobs you didn't enjoy doing either, right?
01:01:45.660
My understanding is I think there were fewer people as a percentage on unemployment and
01:01:49.740
sickness benefits in this country after World War II than there are now.
01:01:53.840
And that's when there were people with no hands, no legs, no arms.
01:02:01.460
And now you've got someone who's a bit anxious playing on their PlayStation all day.
01:02:07.940
So, but again, is a Farage government going to deal with that?
01:02:14.300
And the thing is, is when you implement those types of policies, people get hurt.
01:02:28.380
There'll be somebody with terminal cancer who gets their benefits cuts and will die.
01:02:38.300
But we can't keep going like this because what we're going to do is we're going to
01:02:49.160
There are issues that I have with some of the way that it's being prosecuted, right?
01:02:52.560
So it's going to have to be calibrated pretty carefully.
01:02:55.180
But I think the point is the problems have got so bad, it's going to take fairly drastic
01:03:02.800
And that is drastic action is always a high risk thing.
01:03:11.780
And you always want to be very, very, very careful, which is why I would much rather
01:03:16.420
we didn't continue building up to things being that drastic, to being so bad that drastic
01:03:23.260
However, I think we're past the point of no return now.
01:03:27.220
That's why I keep saying I'm kind of an accelerationist on this one.
01:03:30.760
I think things need to get so bad, the British public just go, you know what?
01:03:36.280
You know, to use the metaphor of addiction, there is something called an intervention when
01:03:41.860
people, when addicts are so bad and they're so out of control that they stage an intervention.
01:03:47.880
What happens normally with an intervention is your family and friends essentially surprise
01:03:51.480
you in a pretty unpleasant way and go, look, you need to go and get professional help.
01:03:59.960
I think we're at the point now where you say, you look around at the country and go, we're
01:04:08.220
But the more you go down this road, the more drastic the action has to be.
01:04:17.460
Pretty soon, it's going to be it might be the case that that medicine is going to be
01:04:22.960
It might save your life, but it's going to make you really sick at the same time.
01:04:30.840
But look, I mean, you probably know more about this with your Latin American roots, but
01:04:39.080
You know, he cut like 30 percent of government spending.
01:04:58.420
Maybe I'm just getting soggy as I get older, but I really care about this country and I
01:05:04.600
I want it to be a good place for my children to live.
01:05:06.840
Britain still, even now, has the potential to be a great country, a great country.
01:05:15.460
It's got highly educated, intelligent, capable people, many of them, many of whom want to
01:05:23.260
Many of whom have great ideas that they're willing to implement.
01:05:26.040
It's got amazing infrastructure compared to lots of other countries in terms of being
01:05:42.460
But that that British spirit has to be revived.
01:05:48.920
Otherwise, I just I really don't see a good future for this country.
01:05:56.720
I know this sometimes comes across gay, gay, gay, what's the matter with you?
01:06:09.680
And the reason I criticise it is because I love it deeply and it breaks my heart to see
01:06:14.780
You know what I hate is when I go over to America and my country and my city.
01:06:20.240
I'm a Londoner is now become the punchline for every crap hack joke from Americans about
01:06:28.040
how bad this country is, how bad London is, blah, blah, blah.
01:06:33.880
Mom, Danny got elected because now we're going to stick it back to them.
01:06:37.580
Now they're going to find out what socialism really looks like.
01:06:41.680
And it's just and it's just and they're all there laughing and I'm it's it's tragic that
01:06:52.980
I told people I was from London and people go, wow, you're from London.
01:06:56.160
And they want to sit down and talk with me because because of the amazing things this
01:07:00.820
country has created, your scientific and technological innovation, the art, the music, the literature,
01:07:07.540
just the amazing things this country has produced and how it's changed the world to now I'm sitting
01:07:15.920
in a green room of a comedy club and it's been reduced to a cheap punchline to a crap joke.
01:07:23.580
Well, here's another thing, man, I think is the truth is, you know, we just had Ian Dale
01:07:28.100
We'll go out in a bit to talk about Margaret Thatcher.
01:07:31.520
And I remember at the end I asked him, so, you know, what was her sense of like what
01:07:37.820
British, you know, what was what was what did Britishness mean to her?
01:07:41.720
And every time we talk about Britishness, it always goes back to, well, this country has
01:07:50.660
We're going to have to forge some kind of forward looking identity.
01:07:59.700
And and what that means is maybe is something like happened under Thatcher, which is it's
01:08:06.880
It's about some way of having a positive vision of the future, which we currently don't have.
01:08:12.140
That's what we need, because this current shit is not going to it's just not going to
01:08:29.660
You know, that saying sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
01:08:35.560
But the reality is names of obviously it's an aspiration.
01:08:40.800
But it's like if you were constantly talking yourself down, you may not believe it at the
01:08:50.080
But eventually you keep saying those mantras and those those sayings about yourself and
01:08:55.100
those narratives, even though they might not be true.
01:09:00.340
So this idea that we're an evil country, we're a terrible country, there's no future.
01:09:05.860
A lot of what was actually said in the 70s before that actually came into power.
01:09:09.780
Well, eventually you go, well, this is all true.
01:09:14.440
And you look at what has actually been a wonderful country.
01:09:26.380
Well, in fairness, we have been saying that for the last hour.
01:09:28.840
But that's only because the problems are real and we would like those problems to be dealt
01:09:36.160
That's the reason we're talking about in this way.
01:09:38.220
And I think it's a really important point to emphasize that ultimately this is going to
01:09:47.160
But the only way you're going to believe in some lead a revival.
01:09:52.000
A lot of the time, revival start with young people.
01:09:57.480
They're the one that go out, start companies, create bands, do this, start, so blah, blah,
01:10:04.900
But you're only going to be able to engender that in young people if you give them a chance
01:10:12.360
And if you shut them out and you say you're never going to own anything and you're never
01:10:16.080
going to be able to buy property, whatever else, then they aren't going to play the game
01:10:21.200
Well, see, these are the questions for reform to address.
01:10:24.040
Because, look, clearly, the concerns about immigration are extraordinarily widely shared
01:10:31.740
Mass immigration has been way too high and detrimental to Britain.
01:10:35.880
Illegal immigration is completely unacceptable, of course.
01:10:39.460
But I always keep saying to people within reform, you know, once you've achieved your
01:10:43.660
great British dream of deporting all the illegal immigrants, you're going to have to then
01:10:47.640
have something beyond that because that's not going to transform the country overnight.
01:10:55.800
We shouldn't be spending money on migrant hotels.
01:10:59.460
But that is not going to transform the country into what you want it to be.
01:11:03.220
There's got to be an economic agenda that is actually going to deliver for people.
01:11:13.660
So that revival, it's not going to be an easy job.
01:11:17.460
But the way things are going now, my sense is, you know, some people think there will
01:11:25.320
But if the election is in 2029, my sense is, things are going to be so bad, reform are going
01:11:33.140
Not least because if, you know, these Zaira Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn and whatever form
01:11:38.420
their own party, they will split the left in a very helpful way for the right.
01:11:43.140
And by the way, this fragmentation of the big political parties, I think it's a good thing
01:11:49.740
that Zaira Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn are forging their own party.
01:11:52.980
And those people who have those views will have their political views catered to.
01:12:03.180
Well, there are about 57 parties on the right now.
01:12:23.240
And I'll be honest with you, I don't think it's particularly helpful.
01:12:30.940
Like, I don't see how this narcissism of small differences on the right is helping anything.
01:12:39.720
There's only, for me, there's only one person on the right who's capable of delivering
01:12:47.500
And you either get behind them or you're just not helping.
01:12:52.740
I understand there are a lot of people who have questions.
01:12:54.640
Some people want him to go further on certain issues and whatever.
01:12:57.440
But the truth is, come election time, it's either going to be him or Starr, if he's still
01:13:04.820
You know what I found really interesting about that?
01:13:15.380
I'm not going to say his name, but someone that you were talking to at the Spectator Party,
01:13:22.040
a very senior figure in the Conservative Party.
01:13:24.600
He was talking to me and he was like, oh, so what do you think?
01:13:35.940
And I went, my dad is somebody who has been a Conservative voter, off and on, for the
01:13:46.700
He said to me, Francis, I'll never vote Conservative again.
01:13:49.780
And I said, my dad is just a regular guy who went to work.
01:13:55.120
There was nothing special about him, but he's the type of person who this country is built
01:14:00.860
Decent, hardworking people, turn up every day, do their best, work hard.
01:14:05.160
Pay their taxes, go on one holiday a year, because, you know, that's all that they had.
01:14:13.680
But they believed in something they believed in this country.
01:14:16.380
And you've got people like my dad saying they're never going to vote for you again.
01:14:19.820
That is a damning indictment of the past 14 years of your government.
01:14:28.760
I find increasingly a lot of people within the Conservative Party are starting to understand it.
01:14:33.700
I mean, Jake Berry, who's the former chairman of the Conservative Party, I actually remember
01:14:37.720
arguing with him on Question Time about Net Zero.
01:14:45.700
But nonetheless, my point is, you will start to see a lot of defections over time, because
01:14:54.080
You probably want to see defections from more senior figures who are still MPs, who have
01:15:01.300
more views that are much more aligned with the reform defecting.
01:15:09.820
And then it's a question, hopefully, if they do get elected, of what are they actually going
01:15:14.820
But we're a long, long way away from any of that.
01:15:19.920
He's probably going to keep making things worse.
01:15:21.920
And as I keep saying, maybe that's a good thing.
01:15:24.660
And on that upbeat note, final question is always the same.
01:15:27.940
What's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be?
01:15:44.360
And by the way, have you noticed something, right?
01:15:51.200
It's interesting that you need climate change to make green solutions work.
01:15:55.860
Now there's solar panels everywhere, but they actually make sense.
01:15:59.660
Look, I'm just saying, scrap net zero, climate change is brilliant.
01:16:05.080
I'm going to get myself one of those orange t-shirts.
01:16:07.540
You know that's not actually going to help, right?
01:16:12.520
What's the one thing we're not talking about, Francis?
01:16:14.680
You know, I go back to an interview with Barry Strauss, the ancient historian, which
01:16:26.480
And he said something about the collapse of the Roman Empire.
01:16:29.820
And I think you or I went, why did it collapse?
01:16:43.060
And essentially, the vast majority of people stopped believing in the Roman Empire and the
01:16:50.560
And I would say to every single person on the right or who's got money and demonizes
01:16:58.180
young people and looks at them and goes, oh, we're, you know, moaning, voting for stupid
01:17:16.400
Now head on over to Substack where we answer your questions.
01:17:19.520
Tomorrow, we're posting a clip from the Substack portion of our incredible interview with Daniel
01:17:27.200
It's where one of our viewers asks the question to Daniel, what's the five things we need to
01:17:39.420
Is there any answer to the immigration-induced social collapse in which we find ourselves other
01:17:46.460
What does each of you think your blind side is?
01:17:49.020
What is the thing that always gets you even if you know it happens now and then?
01:17:55.560
Can you give us any advice on navigating differences that arise in business relationships?