Suspended From GB News： What Really Happened - Dan Wootton
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
168.62196
Summary
It's been a long time since Dan Wooden has been on air, but he's back in the cancelled seat. He talks about the early days of the show, how he coped with the early allegations, and why he thinks the BBC should have listened to Lawrence Fox's leaked messages.
Transcript
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The first presenter in the world who has been cancelled for not being offended
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enough by something and effectively that is what it was. It became too much
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pressure for GB News and they effectively gave in. I think Lawrence was really
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wrong to release those messages. Do you feel let down by GB News then? Yes, that
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massively. Organisations like GB News need to stand up now that they've got
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rid of me. They want to bring down the whole channel. This is not the channel of
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free speech. Can they be with Ofcombo? No. Dan Wooden, welcome back. Since we last saw
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you, a few things have happened. You're no longer with GB News. You've been the
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subject of various allegations and all sorts of things that have now materialised
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and you sitting here as someone who writes around Substack and lots of other
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things that you're working on. What happened? What happened? How are you back
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here in the cancelled seat? Yeah, it has been crazy. I think it's been about two
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and a half years since I was last with you guys and at that point, life was good
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in a traditional sense. The show at GB News was building. I mean, Constantine, you
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were there with me at GB News right at the start and you saw how difficult and
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actually truly traumatic that was. Well, let me tell the story now that I'm allowed to.
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I mean, because GB News, that chaos that we saw in the early days is not there
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anymore. I think they've kind of sorted it out. But the day I came in to do the
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dress rehearsal for your show, the dress rehearsal was abandoned halfway through
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so that you and some other people could go and have a big bust-up basically about
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getting it sorted. So you weathered the early storm, I guess is what you're saying.
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I mean, yeah, but that was literally the last dress rehearsal before we went on air.
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Yeah. We couldn't put a show out and it was nothing to do with the editorial. It
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was all to do with the technology. So yeah, we did weather that storm. And over
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the period of time, I so believed in the mission of GB News or what the mission of
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GB News used to be. And we ended up by 2023 becoming the number one rated show on
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the channel. We were beating BBC News. We were beating Sly News every night.
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Did you just say Sly News? Yes, I did. He's got all these little lines now. I love it.
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I'm sorry, I can't resist. Yeah, actually, they wanted me to stop using all of my nicknames
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at GB News. So now that I'm free, I'm like, no, no, no, no. Slippery Starmer and Fishy
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Rishi, they are here to stay. But it was an incredible period. Because everyone thought GB News
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was going to be a disaster. We were a laughingstock. Actually, people talk about how it's like the
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Tory channel now. Well, at the start, no Tory MPs or cabinet ministers, and certainly not
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the prime minister. None of them wanted to come on. And so I really felt like I was in
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GB News from the ground up. I was the first regular show. We ended up being the top rated
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show. And to me, it felt like it was my family. It was a huge part of my life. And so what
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happened was obviously really, really difficult.
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So what happened is that after that brilliant patch, where we had become the number one rated
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show, we'd overtaken Farage, the knives came out for me. And the knives came out for me in
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the left wing, the hard left wing media, not the mainstream media, actually, a blog called
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Byline Times. And they ran a whole series of allegations against me, which I've since proven
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to be untrue. But what they did was so immoral. They went to the police with these false allegations
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before anything was published. So it didn't allow me an opportunity to talk about these things
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in public. I mean, actually, it's incredibly corrupt and malicious journalism that was actuated
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by a desire to destroy me and to destroy my reputation and to destroy my career.
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And I'm happy to talk about what they did, because I think it's so important that people
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know the new techniques that the left are using in order to try and cancel people. But so what
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that meant is I was under intense pressure, intense pressure from July last year until the
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end of September, when, as you know, because I watched your interview with him, Lawrence Fox
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came on my show, said he didn't want to shag the journalist Davis Antina.
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We're past the watershed, so I can say this. Show me a single self-respecting man that
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would like to climb into bed with that woman ever, ever, who wasn't an incel, who wasn't
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a cucked little incel. That little woman has been fed, spoon-fed oppression day after day
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after day after day, starting with the lie of the gender wage gap. And she sat there and
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I'm going like, if I met you in a bar and that was like sentence three, chances of me
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just walking away are just huge. We need powerful, strong, amazing women who make great points
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for themselves. We don't need these sort of feminist 4.0. They're pathetic and embarrassing.
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Oh, Lawrence. Well, look, she... I'm just going to provide a touch of balance from her because
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she did actually respond to this earlier today, saying that she regretted her comments, but
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she didn't apologise. Yes. So, there you go. And she's a very beautiful woman, Lawrence.
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It was decided that I hadn't reacted with enough horror and shock and awe and I hadn't
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told Lawrence off in the way that I was meant to, to please the off-communists, as I called
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them. And so I was suspended at that point. Now, would I have been suspended if there hadn't
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have been all of these other allegations swirling around me? I think it's unlikely. Because
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as I say, I'd been at GB News from the start. I was their top-rated host.
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You know, I hadn't said the thing. Lawrence had released these messages between us, and
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all of it was, I thought, nasty and grim and dark. But I hadn't actually said anything.
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And so I called up Megan Kelly, who I watched your great episode with recently, and she said to me,
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Dan, you were the first presenter in the world who has been cancelled for not being offended
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enough by something. And effectively, that is what it was. I mean, Constantine, you'd been on the show
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with me. You knew I wasn't prepared to be that devil's advocate presenter, to just pretend that I was
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horrified about something simply because that's what someone in my earpiece was telling me to do.
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That wasn't me. Everyone knew that wasn't me. I thought that we had established some sort of
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understanding. But I think when the knives were out for me, it became too much pressure for GB News.
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And they effectively gave in to the woke mob, who decided, by the way, I mean, how ridiculous looking
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back. But they decided that this was the number one story in the country. Lawrence Fox's little rant
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on my show, according to the BBC, was the most important story in Britain for 48 hours.
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I mean, it was ridiculous when you saw the hyperbole and the way that people went absolutely
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nuts over it. But let's go back to the byline times, because I think this is very important.
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And obviously, this is a chance for you to talk honestly and openly about it. There was a lot of
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allegations that they made, and then they went to the police. So why was it that you weren't allowed
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to go, I completely refute these allegations, etc, etc?
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Well, I mean, I did. I did. I appeared on GB News. And I said that there were dark forces out to get me
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and that what is being said is untrue. But the problem is, is when allegations are with the police,
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your lawyers will be saying to you, you can't go into the specifics of this, because the most
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important thing is that you clear your name criminally. But the thing is, I knew this was
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all a complete lie. It was all a complete witch hunt. It was basically two journalists actuated
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by complete malice against me. They've been former colleagues of mine at the News of the World. One of
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them is a convicted phone hacker. So a convicted criminal, the most prolific phone hacker, actually,
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in British history, was the big hacker at the Sunday Mirror and the News of the World.
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So his career was over. And he then started working closely with Prince Harry and Prince Harry's legal
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team. You know, Prince Harry has a real issue with me because I've broken a whole load of stories about
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him. And then the people that they were relying on were two convicted criminals, one who had been
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imprisoned. This is really important, I think, that people know this, because these people should not
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have been relied on. So one of them was a convicted criminal who had gone to jail in Scotland for four
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years for extorting gay men, specifically gay men, out of tens of thousands of pounds. When he went to
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jail, the judge said he was a compulsive danger to society. I had never met him. The other was another
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convicted violent criminal who had just been released for jail after nearly ending someone's
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life, who on tape had tried to extort £100,000 out of me. And I had that tape. And then the other
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was my ex, who was an abusive guy. I mean, it's really difficult because the more I talk about him,
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the more I give him what he wants and the more he tries to damage me. But all I will say is that
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the allegations were untrue. It went through two separate police investigations. And again,
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this is really important. It seems like it's, I guess, technical, but it matters, right? The police
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did not even hand any evidence to the CPS. So it didn't even reach the first stage because I was able
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to prove categorically with irrefutable evidence that the allegations against me had been a lie.
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Now, Byline Times literally gave me one hour before publication. They had no interest in me proving
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that what they had been told was a lie because it wasn't about truth for them. It was about
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destruction. And people shouldn't have given in to Byline Times. People should have stood by me
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because it could be you. Because as I say, I hadn't even met this person. Loads of people have exes who
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are actuated by malice because you're in the public eye or you happen to have a political view. In my case,
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it's important to say that my ex has become a hard left activist. He campaigned against GB News. He was
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promoting stop funding hate. So you've got to think about that context. And when it comes to the
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mainstream media, both The Guardian and The Daily Mirror, Britain's two biggest left-wing newspapers,
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have issued apologies and paid me substantial damages for following up on the Byline Times reporting. So
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this is irrefutable. The problem is you've got an organisation like Byline Times that are so
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out of control. They're not regulated by anybody, even though they claim to be advocates of press
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regulation. It's utterly bizarre. So you can't complain to anyone. And actually, they want me to
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take them to court so they can continue crowdfunding. They've never made so much money as when they were
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writing stories about me and got so many hits for their website. So these are not honest journalists.
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As I say, my dealings with The Guardian and The Mirror were actually completely respectful. They knew
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they'd got it wrong. They apologised very quickly. So what happened was shocking. More people should
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be horrified about it because we're seeing time and again now personalities who are considered conservative,
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on the right or pro-free speech being cancelled for aspects of their past, whether it's tweets that
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they've liked or allegations. And it's wrong. And so what actually needs to happen is these organisations,
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like GB News, need to stand up against these nefarious plays. Because I knew once they'd given in when it came to me,
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they reset the playbook. These left-wing organisations know now that they can be pressured.
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OK, so I'm going to play devil's advocate here, Dan.
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But it's maybe actually something I kind of believe in. Doesn't that mean that there's a role for Ofcom
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to regulate people like byline times and go, hang on a second, you've just made a series of spurious
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allegations here. That contravenes law A, B, C, D and E. We're going to prosecute.
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Well, the press regulation in the UK is very different to the broadcasting regulation. So
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IPSO, which is the press regulation body, is not at all focused on political bias or patrolling a newspaper
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because they happen to platform a particular viewpoint or person. So that sort of regulation
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is different in my books to what Ofcom is doing. I believe that Ofcom, the Ofcommunists as I called
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them, I think they should be disestablished. I don't think they should exist. Now, I've never called on IPSO,
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which is the main press and newspaper regulation body to be deregulated, sorry, to be disestablished,
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because they do two very different things. The problem with Ofcom is that they are having to
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make political judgments all the time. And we see this. They have one set of rules for GB news
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and a totally different set of rules for LBC because they consider LBC a sort of palatable,
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acceptable establishment station. So it's completely fine for David Lammy, Labour's shadow foreign
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secretary to go on LBC and present breaking news. But it's completely wrong for Jacob Rees-Mogg,
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a former cabinet minister, who's a member of the Conservative Party, to do it on GB news.
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Dan, one of the things I wanted to ask you, and this may feel like an unfair question,
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but I think it's important to talk about this because it happens to many people, they get accused
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of things. And I've seen a lot of people go through where they don't quite know exactly the way to react.
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So for example, when the allegations were made against you, from memory, and you'll correct me,
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obviously, if I'm wrong, you basically said, these aren't true. And I'm not saying I'm perfect.
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I've done bad things in my life or something like that, from which some people may have deduced that
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there's no smoke without fire. Do you know, did you feel pressured to say that or?
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No, I really did. And actually, I spoke to Douglas Murray after and he said, you should never have said
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that because as soon as you, as a gay man, admit to doing something wrong or being ashamed about
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your previous life, you're immediately inviting people to come and attack you.
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These past few days, I have been the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with
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an axe to grind, notably by an ex-partner who I was, and this is something I've never spoken about
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and it's very difficult to talk about publicly, but who I was previously abused by
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and who has been on a campaign to destroy my life.
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In the past, he has written to me confessing to being a, quote, psychopath.
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And I saw this firsthand when he threatened in writing to, quote, slit my throat, many years
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after we had broken up. I, like all fallible human beings, have made errors of judgment in the past,
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but the criminal allegations being made against me are simply untrue. I mean, who doesn't have regrets?
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Should I be cancelled for them many years later? Or do you accept that I have learned and changed?
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The last few years, I've grown professionally and personally. And I've also found the meaning of
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true love after that truly toxic relationship with my ex that hurt me and damaged me.
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So I shouldn't have done that, but I was under a huge amount of pressure.
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From the investors of GB News, who wanted me to show some form of contrition and humility.
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Why? Why did they want you to show contrition if you were telling them that you were innocent?
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I don't know. I don't know. I think it was because I had been
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very outspoken when it came to the Philip Schofield story, which had happened a few weeks
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beforehand. And I also believe they thought my show was too bold, was too loud.
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They wanted all of it to be toned down. So I actually think, weirdly, they saw these allegations
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against me as sort of an opportunity to try and mold me into the type of presenter who they wanted.
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And that was not the type of presenter I was ever going to be. I just wasn't going to be that person.
00:17:39.000
Yes, massively. Of course I do. Of course I do. I mean, this is really difficult to say because I'm
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genuinely not arrogant when it comes to this. GB News was a huge team of people who worked behind
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the scenes to put it together, as you know. But people who are connected to GB News, including
00:17:59.080
people who were the initial investors in the channel, have told me that if it wasn't for a
00:18:04.280
handful of people, myself and Nigel Farage being the two key ones, they don't think GB News would
00:18:11.880
have got through those first three weeks. Because the pressure was so intense. You've got to remember,
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I came on a promise that I was going to have this big 8pm lead in from Andrew Neil, who was
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the big name connected to GB News. He was the chairman of GB News. He walked out after 10 days
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and slagged all of us off like he called me a shock jock in the Daily Mail when I had pretty much signed
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up for the station because of his involvement in it. And I had offers to return to News UK because
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they were launching Talk TV with Piers Morgan. And I stayed loyal to GB News. And so I do feel very
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let down. Very, very let down. Because if you actually look at what happened, like, let's just
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look at what happened. I basically made one mistake, according to them, on air. One mistake.
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I'm sorry, presenters make mistakes every single day. It's live TV. You're under huge amounts of
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pressure. I didn't want to turn the Lawrence Fox thing into some huge big drama. I mean, in hindsight,
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that was very naive, given what happened. But I just thought, look, if I'm apologizing for
00:19:25.160
Lawrence and turning this into a big thing, it's going to blow up. Now, of course it blew up anyway,
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right? It was a bad judgment call that I made, apart from the fact that actually, do we really
00:19:38.040
want to live in a society where people keep apologizing for things that they aren't actually
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sorry for? Now, as it turned out, I did apologize on Twitter, on X, after I came off air. Megyn Kelly
00:19:51.000
called it my hostage video apology. She had done the same thing on NBC when she was under lots of
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pressure over her so-called blackface comments. Now, in both cases, the apology did not save us.
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When they want you gone, you are gone. So one of the lessons I've learned from this is don't say
00:20:12.760
sorry, just because someone tells you to. I was right with the decision that I made while I was
00:20:19.240
on air. Because of course, it was my apology for Lawrence's behavior, which I didn't write,
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and I didn't actually believe that sparked Lawrence to post our private communication.
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In which you basically said, you know, lol, this is kind of funny.
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Yeah, but I wasn't talking about... The thing is, again, none of these details really matter,
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apart from that it's important to me and for people to know the truth. I was never talking about
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the segment with Ava Santina. What people forget is that in the previous segment that Lawrence and
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or the earlier part of the segment, Lawrence and I had been talking about Caroline Dynage,
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the head of the Media Select Committee, who had just written a letter to GB News,
00:20:59.960
effectively campaigning to get both me and Bev Turner taken off air, me because of the allegations
00:21:06.040
from Byline Times, Bev Turner because of her defense of Russell Brand. And Lawrence had said,
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and again, people have totally forgotten this, but had said some very spicy things regarding Caroline
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Dynage. Doesn't sound like Lawrence. Because we had basically been told that there were allegations
00:21:23.320
being made against her, and he had referred to that. Now, that's the thing that I was referring
00:21:28.920
to in my messages. I will say, and Lawrence and I are friends, and I have no beef with Lawrence as a
00:21:37.800
person, but releasing someone's private messages is wrong. I've spoken to so many people about this,
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and loads of people have been big supporters of Lawrence for years and years and years,
00:21:50.920
lost faith with him because of that decision. We have to operate in a world where we have the
00:21:56.600
public sphere and we have the private sphere. Now, I literally was sending a 10 second message to
00:22:03.160
Lawrence in the ad break. I wasn't thinking about it. I was just effectively wanting to be polite,
00:22:08.680
replying to a message that he had sent to me, because I would do that. If I had a guest on the show,
00:22:13.160
they contacted me, I'd say thank you. There was no malice intended in that message. It certainly
00:22:20.360
was not me trying to mock or take the piss out of my production team or the production team at GB
00:22:25.720
News, which is how it was interpreted. And I think Lawrence was really, really wrong to release those
00:22:32.680
messages, because how can anyone trust anything that they send to Lawrence ever again in the future?
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Because let me tell you, just like with Byline Times and they're going to the police with things,
00:22:43.960
I've never released private messages that someone has sent me because I've fallen out with them.
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It's just the wrong thing to do, isn't it? There's a kind of man code around it. It's just not what you
00:22:56.280
do. Well, of course, because otherwise, how can we have any form of private communication in life
00:23:00.680
at all? Given that so much of what we do now is on WhatsApp, is on email. If those lines become
00:23:07.160
blurred, and I think they have become blurred in public life, you look at the COVID inquiry and
00:23:12.920
the fact that Scheming Sturgeon and Boris Johnson deleted all of their messages, it's because they
00:23:17.560
felt like they had a right to have those private conversations. Now, in a public context, maybe that's
00:23:23.880
different. But yeah, I think that's wrong, because probably at the end of the day, it was the release
00:23:30.040
of that message that caused me to be suspended. Just to finish this line of inquiry, Dan, you said
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right at the beginning of this conversation, I think your words were something like the mission that
00:23:41.800
GB News had, or then you corrected yourself that they used to have. What is your view of how that's
00:23:49.320
evolved? Do you feel like some people have said this, that they're not sticking to the principles
00:23:55.640
on which they were founded? Is that what you're saying? I am saying that, yeah. And it's not said
00:23:59.880
out of any malice towards them. Actually, GB News was such a big part of my life, but this is not the
00:24:07.880
channel of free speech. Can they be with Ofcom though? No, no. I guess that's where my empathy for the
00:24:14.600
people running it comes in, because I feel like if you are being regulated by Ofcom, Ofcom
00:24:19.720
and you are the target of what is quite clearly certainly imbalanced, if not outright skewed
00:24:25.960
policing of broadcasting, then you are going to end up making all these decisions that to the
00:24:31.960
public just look like completely outrageous. 100%. But if you're in that position, you probably
00:24:36.840
would end up making very similar decisions if you were regulated by Ofcom. They're in a really
00:24:41.320
difficult place, and I'm not trying to deny that for one second, but they set a dangerous precedent
00:24:47.640
with me. Because what they're saying is that a presenter cannot make an error of judgment. That's
00:24:55.320
the first thing. And secondly, they're saying that a presenter must say whatever their producer tells
00:25:02.840
them to say in their ears. And you can see it on GB News. I mean, I don't watch much of it now,
00:25:07.160
not out of negativity, just because it's too painful for me to watch it. But people have sent me examples
00:25:13.000
examples of presenters absolutely freaking out at very, very minor things that guests have said,
00:25:20.280
because none of them wants to be me. None of them wants to lose their career and be unable to pay their
00:25:25.320
mortgage because they've ignored a producer's instruction. But I believe that presenters should
00:25:31.840
have that authority and that authenticity to make their own decisions on air. Especially, by the way,
00:25:37.560
when you remember that you're dealing in a context of most of the producers at GB News being uber-woke,
00:25:43.640
being people that are on the left politically, that want to go on and work for the BBC or Sly News
00:25:49.960
or ITV News, because that's who works in production. Now, something I had really tried at GB News,
00:25:56.680
and I was successful with a couple of key examples, was to bring in people who were ideologically aligned
00:26:02.040
with the channel's overall mission. But it was impossible to staff the whole station with people
00:26:09.000
who think like that. So, yeah, I mean, look, all I'll say is that if I'd listened to my production team
00:26:17.400
on everything, I wouldn't have done 95% of the items that I covered on GB News.
00:26:26.360
Dan, when did you know that your time at GB News was done, with the benefit of hindsight?
00:26:37.080
It's really hard to know because I hoped, because the thing is, what you've got to remember,
00:26:43.880
if GB News had stood by me, they would have had that moment of vindication against Byline Times,
00:26:48.680
because Byline Times is not stopping now that they've got rid of me. They want to bring down
00:26:55.160
the whole channel. They've attacked the CEO. So they could have had that vindication with me.
00:27:03.720
But I think the moment I knew it was over, actually, was quite a few weeks before any of
00:27:09.800
this happened. And it was when the chief executive told me that I needed to stop attacking the mainstream
00:27:16.600
media on air because he said, we're part of that. That's what we want to be.
00:27:24.440
And I really struggled with that. And I disputed what he said. And I continued to use the term
00:27:30.040
MSM because I wasn't going to be told that I couldn't use that term. Because the whole reason I went
00:27:35.960
to GB News is because I was so disillusioned with the mainstream media in this country. Remember, I'd
00:27:41.640
seen what had happened with Brexit. I'd then become incredibly politically engaged as the drive
00:27:46.520
time presenter on talk radio during the year of the COVID pandemic. And the whole reason I went to
00:27:52.680
GB News, and he knew this, was because I didn't want to be part of what I saw as the mainstream media.
00:27:59.320
And I stand by this to this day, because obviously I'm now independent. And I just,
00:28:06.280
honestly, I knew at that moment, I knew when he picked up the phone, I think it was in about
00:28:10.840
May or June of 2023, and my show was flying. We were number one in the ratings, thrashing all of our
00:28:19.400
rivals. And yeah, I just remember this call, you need to stop using the term mainstream media. And then
00:28:26.200
those requests kept coming, you know, you can't call Keir Starmer, Slippery Starmer,
00:28:31.400
you can't call Rishi Sunak, Fishi Rishi. And so I knew at that point that there was a change
00:28:38.040
happening within the channel. It was like, we've used you for what we needed you for. And we're now
00:28:44.840
going full on establishment. We want the Prime Minister, we want to have Rishi Sunak, we want to
00:28:50.600
have Keir Starmer. And you're not helping us with that.
00:28:55.800
You know, it's interesting you say that, because like Constantine said, I have a lot of empathy
00:29:01.320
for GB News, not in this instance, but you look at the criticism that they get. It's completely
00:29:07.640
disproportionate. When you look at what the BBC does, and then you look at what Lawrence did,
00:29:13.160
all right, he said something crass and ridiculous. Is that it?
00:29:17.720
And then you have people on the BBC, I think it was on Newsnight, saying that GB News essentially
00:29:23.960
needs to be cancelled because it's disrupting the delicate media ecosphere.
00:29:28.760
And they had no balance. So they had three guests all saying that GB News should be shut down
00:29:33.800
with no balance, which is what Ofcom is meant to judge people on. Plus, you have the BBC over
00:29:40.200
the same period, by the way, literally parroting talking points of Hamas. And there's no Ofcom
00:29:50.520
investigation into those mistakes. So yeah, I do have sympathy. Of course I do. But the only way
00:29:59.000
to beat Ofcom was to fight. And they're fighting now because they're coming for Nigel Farage. And I
00:30:04.520
thought, oh, that's so interesting. Because it's like, you've left it too late. You should have been
00:30:09.560
fighting when they came for Mark Stein. You should have been fighting when they came for Lawrence Fox.
00:30:14.200
You should have been fighting when they came for me. Because Nigel is their golden goose. He's the
00:30:20.360
one person at that channel who is untouchable. And he's the one person who they cannot afford to lose.
00:30:26.360
Ofcom is coming for Nigel Farage. Mark my words. Because the problem that Nigel has, and I'm a big fan
00:30:33.080
of Nigel and a big supporter of his, but he is the honorary president of Reform UK. Reform UK is about
00:30:40.520
to become a major political force in this country over the course of the election campaign. From Ofcom's
00:30:47.080
point of view, that's untenable. And I think they are going to force Nigel's hand. He's either going to have
00:30:55.560
to stand down from Reform UK or he's going to have to stand down from GB News. But I found it really sad
00:31:03.240
that finally GB News decided to fight Ofcom. Up until that point, it had been, no, no, no,
00:31:09.480
we believe in what they're doing and we want to be regulated. And I think they left it too late to fight.
00:31:16.520
To illustrate your point just very quickly, byline times is byline times, but there have been other
00:31:23.640
publications that are going after other people who either work or are part of the ownership of GB
00:31:30.280
News in exactly the way they went after me. And, you know, I know it would have been a difficult
00:31:36.040
decision, but I sort of feel like there was this thing about Andrew Huberman the other day. I mean,
00:31:41.240
I couldn't get to the end of the article because it was so shit and boring, but you just kind of have
00:31:45.400
to, I do feel that when allegations are being made against people that are clearly spurious,
00:31:50.600
or they liked some tweets, or they made some jokes in a private chat group or whatever,
00:31:55.240
the answer should be, fuck off, it's none of your business.
00:31:59.320
100%. And with me, for example, surely the question should have been, byline times are claiming you
00:32:07.320
broke the law. Did you break the law? Yes or no? I say no. The police investigate and say no,
00:32:14.760
don't even hand the evidence onto the CPS. To me, that's cut and dry. And I read that article too.
00:32:21.240
And I thought, this is so interesting what people are doing now. Basically,
00:32:24.920
any toxic ex can destroy a high profile figure. Now, in the case of my toxic ex,
00:32:31.800
because this is the one that I know about, and as I say, I'm sometimes nervous talking
00:32:34.600
about it because every time I do, he does something new. He messages someone I know.
00:32:45.160
But with me, I know what it's about. It's to do with jealousy. I went back and I read through all of
00:32:51.240
our emails and he had said things like when we broke up, oh, I always wanted to be a famous newspaper
00:32:58.920
editor or journalist one day. And he hadn't achieved that. So it's so easy for accusers to
00:33:06.600
destroy high profile people because the bar is now so low. And I've done a 180 on this because
00:33:14.520
I was a tabloid journalist. So I always believed in the freedom of the press over everything else.
00:33:21.560
And obviously, as a fundamental rule, I still do. But now that I have been subjected to false
00:33:27.560
allegations, I do believe that there needs to be limits. So those limits are that there should be
00:33:34.520
no reporting on allegations until you're at the stage of being charged. And we saw that happen
00:33:40.680
very recently with the leader of the DUP party in Northern Ireland. No one knew that he was being
00:33:46.600
investigated for historical sexual offences. Clearly, the police believed that there was
00:33:51.720
something in the allegations. So he has now been charged. At that point, it can be reported on widely
00:33:58.040
because the argument that's always made is if you're unable to report on these early investigations,
00:34:03.720
other victims won't come forward. But I don't think that's true. Because if you're charged,
00:34:11.320
then it does go public and people can come forward at that point. But what we've seen happen with folk
00:34:17.400
like Andrew Tate and Russell Brand, and look, I know they're controversial men. Personally, I support
00:34:23.160
both of them. I know a lot of people don't. But what we've seen happen with men like them is
00:34:29.480
absolute establishment-driven witch hunts played out in the mainstream media. And I couldn't work
00:34:37.960
that out. The Metropolitan Police were dancing to the beat of Channel 4's drum when it came to Russell
00:34:45.640
Brand. They literally were releasing press releases after a Channel 4 documentary saying,
00:34:51.080
please, if you've been a victim of Russell Brand, come forward. Well, the Channel 4 documentary didn't
00:34:55.320
even allege illegal activity. It alleged some immoral activity. For example, should a 30-year-old
00:35:02.360
comedian be in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl? Maybe not, morally. But from a
00:35:10.200
legal point of view, Russell had not broken any laws. There was no allegation that he was breaking any
00:35:15.480
laws. So why are the Metropolitan Police bringing their megaphone out, asking victims to come forward?
00:35:23.480
I'm, you know, the chance of him getting any form of fair trial after the trial by media that he's
00:35:29.880
gone through is nil. And that's the other thing. If these journalists, these media organizations really
00:35:37.160
want justice to play out, for example, byline times, then let the police do their job without this huge
00:35:44.680
amount of media pressure. But by the way, I don't give the police a pass in all of this because they only
00:35:50.120
care once something's in the media. So I think there was allegations about Russell that were illegal.
00:36:00.440
It wasn't just that one. There were allegations.
00:36:03.080
In Los Angeles. So the only, because I've looked at this really closely, the only claim of illegality
00:36:09.640
in the Channel 4 documentary was a claim of rape that took place in Los Angeles.
00:36:17.880
So that wasn't in the Met Police's jurisdiction. Do you see what I mean?
00:36:23.240
Yeah, no, I do actually see what you mean. So moving on, but just focusing back on GB News, because
00:36:29.960
another reason why I have empathy for them is a campaign by Hope Not Hate
00:36:34.360
when it comes to the advertising ban. And I don't understand how this is being celebrated
00:36:40.920
and championed, quite frankly. To me, this is trying to throttle free speech.
00:36:46.360
It's so anti-democratic. And it was before GB News even launched. So there's Hope Not Hate,
00:36:52.440
who are now digging into the social media backgrounds of everyone at GB News, including
00:36:58.360
Paul Marshall, the owner. Now, I hoped, actually, once they came for him, that it meant GB News would
00:37:06.040
start standing up for its presenters, but maybe different rules apply, you know, if you're a
00:37:10.600
billionaire compared to if you're a presenter for hire. But Stop Funding Hate launched an advertising
00:37:18.600
boycott before GB News was even running. So they had just decided what GB News was going to be.
00:37:27.320
Mark my words, the people who make all of these complaints and who sort of perpetuate these
00:37:36.040
broadcasts are not watching GB News. So you know, the incident with Lawrence Fox on my show was the
00:37:42.600
most complained about moment of British television in 2023. But that was off the back of a campaign
00:37:49.640
led by Carol Vorderman. And I've been sent these emails, right? They're actually quite threatening,
00:37:55.480
these emails that get sent out to the lefties. It's like, complain about GB News now. They are
00:38:01.400
terrible. Click this button. I mean, come on. That isn't democracy. That's not how things should work.
00:38:07.720
These whipped up social media campaigns shouldn't actually make a decision, make a difference about
00:38:13.880
whether something's going to be investigated or not. I mean, I honestly think the whole thing is
00:38:17.720
corrupt, but it's up to organizations to stand up to them. And that includes advertisers and woke
00:38:26.600
advertising agencies. But they don't. And I mean, I've been looking into this whole area,
00:38:30.680
and I'm really interested that, for example, you guys have a non-woke advertising agency. And I'm
00:38:38.920
really supportive of that. And I want to work with them as well, because it's so important that
00:38:45.320
there are alternatives for advertisers who don't believe in only putting their message out to
00:38:55.240
Well, one of the reasons for that is, and it's actually an interesting thing to explore is
00:39:00.120
most of our advertising comes from the US, where none of this is in any way remotely
00:39:05.720
controversial or triggering or offensive. It's like, you know, they've got all sorts of
00:39:10.600
conversations being had on all sorts of different platforms. It's the same with comedy in America.
00:39:15.480
Comedy in America is way more pushing the boundary and it's considered less. We just have a culture
00:39:22.280
in this country of like very, we have a bit of a limited mindset, unfortunately, when it comes to
00:39:27.400
things, including in the political realm. And so, you know, the idea that GB news is some sort of
00:39:33.720
fascist organization or that the conversations we have here are in any way unreasonable for people
00:39:40.520
to have and ought to be prevented from being monetized is just a very strange way of looking
00:39:47.960
at it. And, you know, when you look in the dictionary and you look up what fascism or far
00:39:51.400
right actually means, and then you compare that to the things you were told are far right or fascist
00:39:56.520
or whatever, you just go, this isn't the same universe even.
00:39:59.800
Yeah. I mean, Americans can't understand it at all. I mean, no American who I spoke to was
00:40:04.680
even slightly offended by Lawrence Fox's comments because, come on, if you watch the American
00:40:09.240
independent media like I do, I mean, Stephen Crowder says more offensive things. I mean,
00:40:13.400
I think he's brilliant, by the way, but in about 10 times an hour, you know? So that's the first thing.
00:40:19.880
The second thing I would say is that I actually don't believe the people of Britain sign up to
00:40:31.320
any of this ideology. I mean, I was looking back at the coverage of Lawrence and me for a project I was
00:40:40.920
doing the other day. And it was really actually horrible looking back and seeing like these people
00:40:44.440
who you thought were your friends in the media, you know, at Talk TV, describing me
00:40:51.240
as working for a hate channel. And I, it was, it was ludicrous. It was completely ludicrous,
00:40:55.800
but I looked down all of the comments and all of them overwhelmingly, especially the top rated ones,
00:41:02.440
didn't matter what media I was looking at, by the way, whether it was YouTube or Daily Mail or whatever
00:41:06.680
it happened to be, all of them were saying this was a complete overreaction. It's totally ridiculous.
00:41:12.920
So the thing is, is that you know how the media works in this country. It's a tiny pool of people.
00:41:18.280
It is the establishment media. They are all mates with each other. They all care about the same
00:41:23.640
things. They all socialise, usually in quite posh houses in North London, and they get whipped into
00:41:31.320
hysteria in Westminster by ridiculous things that do not impact the lives of ordinary people. And there
00:41:37.800
are so many examples of this. I mean, the Partygate investigation into Boris Johnson was one example.
00:41:42.840
The ridiculous bid to overturn Brexit, which even people who had voted to remain didn't want
00:41:51.880
that because they knew it would tear the country apart. So the media in this country is a malignant
00:41:56.680
force. Luckily, this is the great news, isn't it? That they're dying. You know, the mainstream media
00:42:03.640
is dying. They are on their deathbed. They only survived the COVID pandemic through government
00:42:09.400
advertising, which, by the way, is the reason that they were so in the pocket of the government when
00:42:15.080
it came to pushing mass vaccination of children and locking down the country unnecessarily. I mean,
00:42:21.320
seriously, the government was pumping millions and millions of pounds into all of those media
00:42:26.280
organisations to keep them alive. So there is a way too close relationship. I know now that I can't
00:42:34.840
work in the mainstream media in this country. I tried. I failed. I came from the mainstream media,
00:42:40.680
but the media has changed. I thought GB News was going to provide a haven. Ofcom cracked down on them.
00:42:48.120
And also GB News, I think, gave in to the people who hated them too much. But that's the negative.
00:42:53.560
The positive is, look at the impact that you guys are making. Look at the impact that the independent
00:42:58.840
media in this country is making. It is the future. A revolution is coming. You might even argue the
00:43:04.600
revolution is already here. Most people who I know only consume their news on their mobile phones,
00:43:11.240
via YouTube. They're not turning on the television. Do you think GB News has a future, Dan?
00:43:15.960
I think it's going to be really tough now. Really tough. I mean, we've got a Labour administration
00:43:22.440
coming into this country. They are going to crack down on regulation even more of the right-wing
00:43:30.360
media. They're also going to empower the BBC, by the way. I mean, the Conservative Party did a
00:43:34.840
useless job of bringing down the BBC, but I wouldn't argue that empowered the BBC. So they're going to
00:43:40.840
have to deal with all of that. The choice that they can make is to come off terrestrial television
00:43:49.000
and become an independent media outlet where they're not regulated by Ofcom, which is something
00:43:55.080
they've said they don't want to do. But the problem is, if you look at the numbers that the big
00:44:01.240
mainstream media organisations get on YouTube, they pale into insignificance compared to the
00:44:07.000
independent media because people can sense. I mean, look, it's been so funny for me. You know,
00:44:13.960
I've been in the mainstream media for years and years and years. All of a sudden, I'm completely on my own.
00:44:17.800
I'm doing everything myself. I'm editing my own videos. I'm a one-man band. It's been totally
00:44:23.640
liberating and also very scary. But I'm getting numbers that are hundreds and a hundred times
00:44:31.640
higher than anything that GB News is putting out on YouTube, or anything that The Sun or The Daily
00:44:37.160
Mail is putting out on YouTube. Because I think people are number one now attracted to authenticity,
00:44:45.240
and they want to know that the people who they're listening to can be trusted. And also,
00:44:50.760
it's that thing of, I've been looking at a lot of research from America, actually, which is more
00:44:55.000
advanced than us in the independent media space. And people are much more likely to want to invest in
00:45:01.000
or subscribe to an individual now, an individual journalist or an individual broadcaster,
00:45:07.080
rather than an organization, because they've learned. I mean, look at Fox News and Tucker Carlson.
00:45:12.760
Literally, one moment, the guy's gone. He was the number one host on Fox News. Well,
00:45:19.320
why would you trust Fox News after they made a decision like that and don't actually ever explain
00:45:24.360
to their viewers why Tucker is gone? Even now they haven't. It's such a good point,
00:45:29.720
because even for me, I look at a lot of these channels and 10, 15 years ago, I think we all
00:45:36.360
would have watched the BBC. We would all have believed the BBC. But it happens that you get
00:45:41.320
let down time and time and time again. And for a lot of people, I think COVID was the moment where
00:45:48.360
we collectively went, oh, we're being sold a dud here. Well, it was for me. And remember,
00:45:53.800
I was the executive editor of The Sun. But people think that I was in charge of The Sun. I wasn't.
00:45:59.240
There's an editor. I was under the editor. And I was very outspoken on COVID and lockdowns
00:46:07.160
right from the start. And by the end of my time at The Sun, I would be constantly being told,
00:46:13.160
oh, we just want you to stop talking about lockdowns. You know, they were in the pocket
00:46:17.960
of the government. It was so wrong. And all of the media made terrible, terrible judgments.
00:46:27.160
There were a couple of little pockets of sanity. And talk radio was one. And the Daily Telegraph
00:46:35.080
was another in the mainstream media. But they were small pockets of sanity. And it exposed the media for
00:46:41.880
what they are. And they still haven't been held accountable for any of it. And people often say
00:46:48.840
to me, how could you have supported Boris Johnson during that time, given he was the leader of the
00:46:53.800
day? And obviously, I was completely outraged and disgusted with the decisions Boris Johnson made
00:46:58.920
about lockdown. But hear me out on this. I can guarantee you, if Boris had done what he actually
00:47:05.640
wanted to do, and remember, he never wanted to lock down. He believed in a herd immunity strategy.
00:47:10.920
He wanted to do shielding of the vulnerable, which is always what I believed in the Great
00:47:15.880
Barrington Declaration theory. I promise you, if he had done that, the guy would have been driven
00:47:21.720
from office within six weeks. He wasn't just fighting the health establishment, the medical
00:47:26.120
establishment. He was fighting the entire mainstream media all around the world, who for some reason had
00:47:33.320
decided that COVID was the hill they were going to die on. And if you say that can't happen, look at
00:47:39.240
Liz Truss. Out within weeks, because she goes against the establishment view on economic policy.
00:47:47.960
It happens now. And the thing is that, again, this is where organizations have to stand up to the
00:47:54.520
media. They have to stand up to the establishment. But the Conservative Party is fundamentally weak.
00:47:59.960
Well, there's definitely no disagreement about that, Dan. And I'm curious, you mentioned, I would have
00:48:05.880
thought, you know, a Labour government would be good for GB News because it's an opportunity for them to,
00:48:11.800
obviously, it's a natural punching bag for them, you know, a right-leaning channel talking about a
00:48:17.400
left-leaning administration. But I guess what you're saying is, and we tried to get into this a
00:48:24.520
little bit earlier, is if Ofcom, the regulator, is there, GB News essentially is never going to be
00:48:30.600
able to live up to its own mission because it's supposed to, like, be another BBC, basically. And
00:48:36.840
that isn't really compatible. Yeah, exactly. And look, so my plan was always to see through
00:48:47.880
the election. I think I would have been really valuable for GB News there because I was one of
00:48:52.360
their few main presenters who doesn't want to be a politician, has never wanted to be a politician.
00:48:58.360
If you look at their primetime lineup now, Michelle Dubry, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg,
00:49:04.280
Patrick Christie's, they all either have wanted to be politicians, have run for parliament,
00:49:10.120
are politicians, or want to be politicians in the future, right? I never wanted to be a politician.
00:49:14.440
I'm a journalist through and through, and I'm an independent journalist. I've never been a member
00:49:18.200
of a political party either. So I think I could have been really valuable for them over the course
00:49:23.560
of the election when it's going to be much harder for them to keep people like Jacob and Nigel
00:49:28.520
on air, especially, by the way, in the six-week Purda period. This is a really weird thing.
00:49:32.920
Loads of people wouldn't have heard of it. But basically, in the six weeks before the election,
00:49:37.480
it's impossible to cover politics honestly as an opinion broadcaster in the UK. Literally,
00:49:45.320
they get their stopwatches out. So if you've had a conservative politician on for six minutes,
00:49:50.040
you've got to have a Labour politician on for six minutes. You've got to have a Green Party
00:49:53.000
politician on for six minutes. It's impossible to do. So that's why you don't get good sort of
00:49:58.120
debates happening over the election period. I'm really excited about that, actually, because,
00:50:01.240
of course, I'm going to have my show up and running by then, and we'll have no regulation
00:50:05.480
over the election campaign whatsoever, and can interview whoever I want and back whoever I want.
00:50:11.240
But then I was also planning to stay for the first year of a Labour administration too,
00:50:15.640
because I do think it is a, or I thought it was going to be a huge opportunity for GB News,
00:50:20.520
but I just don't have that faith anymore. I mean, the chief executive is trying to,
00:50:25.640
or was trying to hire Carol Vorderman. He's spoken about being desperate to hire Labour MPs.
00:50:33.720
There's nothing wrong with hiring Labour MPs, surely.
00:50:35.960
No, of course not. But I would argue, why is GB News wanting to hire any more politicians
00:50:45.960
I get, I mean, they would argue it's the optics, that they've got Jacobs Rees-Mogg, who is a sitting
00:50:51.720
MP. I don't know what's happened with Boris Johnson's show, but he was, well...
00:50:56.680
Is he still coming? So they've had plenty of current Conservative politicians and plenty of
00:51:02.840
former Conservative politicians and Prime Ministers. The fact they've had very few,
00:51:07.080
I can't really name one, they may have had one, but they would...
00:51:10.120
Well, they have Gloria Di Piero, who's still a host, a former Labour MP, but...
00:51:15.320
So they would say, from an optics point of view, they need somebody to come on to present,
00:51:23.000
I know, but look at Fox News, right? No major Fox News presenters over its entire history
00:51:32.040
have been current or former serving politicians. Now, don't get me wrong, they have lots of big
00:51:39.320
name former or serving politicians who come on as guests, as contributors, but not as presenters.
00:51:48.360
Personally, I just think we can do better than that as broadcasters and journalists.
00:51:50.520
I mean, having sitting politicians... I mean, we try to stay away from even interviewing sitting
00:51:55.720
politicians, really, or certainly sitting members of governments and so on, because it's hard to get
00:52:03.320
Yeah. Well, they have to follow whatever their party message is, so you're not getting honest answers,
00:52:08.760
or even honest questions. I mean, in saying that, I actually think Jacob Rees-Mogg is a brilliant
00:52:13.880
broadcaster. He led into my show. I really like him as a person. But remember, he replaced Mark Stein,
00:52:20.840
who was the ultimate independent thinking journalist, who was challenging narratives when
00:52:27.000
it came to grooming gangs and the COVID vaccine. It's just a very different thing. It's a very
00:52:33.640
different thing. GB News wants to be part of the establishment. Personally, though, I would challenge
00:52:37.320
them and say, stop hiring politicians. It's lazy. Jacob aside, I don't think they make good presenters,
00:52:45.960
and I just don't think it's really what you should be doing. Because I'm sorry, imagine if GB News had been
00:52:53.640
running during the pandemic, and they had a whole load of serving Tory MPs or party members. Well,
00:53:00.120
they wouldn't be challenging the lockdowns, would they? It was only people outside the party political
00:53:05.480
system who did challenge the lockdowns and challenge the vaccine. I think that's actually a very good
00:53:10.760
point. And it comes back to your point about independent media as well. We get stuff wrong all
00:53:15.560
the time as well. And I'm worried about the amount of misinformation and all sorts of crazy stuff
00:53:20.840
that's flying around in the new media space. But the one thing I think people do connect with,
00:53:25.640
as you talked about earlier, if you don't have a producer in your ear, then at least you generally
00:53:29.960
speaking know that this guy might be crazy, but at least he's saying what he actually believes.
00:53:33.960
Exactly. Whereas the BBC has a God complex, doesn't it? It's like, if it's said on the BBC,
00:53:41.160
it's true. But we know actually that the BBC are now purveyors of more disinformation and more
00:53:48.120
misinformation than, and I genuinely mean this, than any broadcaster in the UK, including independent
00:53:55.160
broadcasters. And they have the cheek and the arrogance to say that their fact-checking service,
00:54:01.080
BBC Verify, is what we should believe. It's like, no, you need to have an independent fact-checker
00:54:09.160
on you. You shouldn't be fact-checking other people because they have got so much wrong,
00:54:15.960
provably wrong. And they immediately buy into propaganda. And obviously the really terrible
00:54:21.000
example recently was when they repeated Hamas talking points over the bombing of the hospital
00:54:28.680
or the non-bombing of a hospital during the Gaza conflict. But that's just one. I mean,
00:54:34.040
there's hundreds and hundreds of examples of BBC disinformation and misinformation.
00:54:41.400
So this is why I hate this idea that the mainstream media should decide what's true.
00:54:49.560
We live in a post-truth world in a lot of ways. Now that's terrifying. Don't get me wrong. But again,
00:54:56.040
I come back to the pandemic and all of the things that folk like me were being labelled as conspiracy
00:55:04.040
theorists for talking about, and remember, I was talking about in the very early days, I mean,
00:55:07.960
right back to March 2020, you can go back and I've got the receipts for this, you know,
00:55:11.960
talking about a lab leak theory, talking about how lockdowns were part of a globalist bid to change
00:55:21.800
the world order. Now we were called conspiracy theorists. Those types of conversations were
00:55:27.880
literally labelled as misinformation and disinformation and would see you banned from
00:55:32.520
YouTube or taken off the algorithms on Facebook. And we were right. So we're in a post-truth world.
00:55:42.760
We can't trust the mainstream media anymore. And you shouldn't. You shouldn't. You should never believe
00:55:48.520
something that the BBC tells you. I mean, by the way, remember the BBC tries to say they're not
00:55:52.840
politically biased. Well, two of their main presenters, including the guy who they wanted
00:55:57.320
to be their current political editor for this election, John Sopel, are now hard left propagandists
00:56:04.920
on their own podcast. Finally, by the way, saying what they believe, which is fine. But my point is,
00:56:11.160
this is the guy who was meant to be the political editor providing unbiased coverage of the election.
00:56:16.280
This is the woman who was meant to be hosting Newsnight providing unbiased coverage of the election.
00:56:20.520
They're not. They are completely biased. Now, people might say that I'm biased. I would argue
00:56:26.040
I'm not biased. I'm just honest about what I think. I don't claim to be someone that is providing
00:56:32.760
a completely non-partisan, equal view of the world.
00:56:37.720
I think as well, it's important to acknowledge, I don't think anyone can be unbiased. It's utterly
00:56:44.280
impossible. We have biases. We have our beliefs. Some of them may be correct. Some of them may be
00:56:49.960
wrong. But that's just human beings. And to pretend that we're going to be unbiased is
00:56:57.720
Totally. But the thing is, on the left, although they wouldn't view themselves on the left,
00:57:01.640
but if you look at all of the mainstream media organisations in this country, BBC,
00:57:05.080
ITV, Sly News, they all think it's just a matter of right or wrong. So for example,
00:57:11.720
if you question the trans movement, which I absolutely do, anytime someone tries to say
00:57:18.520
you're part of the LGBT community, I say I am absolutely not. So I have questioned that strongly
00:57:24.440
and had a lot of hate from that community as a result. If you question that and you're part
00:57:29.400
of the mainstream media, you're just told that you're wrong. So they don't think that they have
00:57:33.720
a bias. Do you see what I mean? They think that they are just presenting the accurate, the correct
00:57:40.920
position. Likewise, by the way, on net zero, or as I call it, nut zero, do you know it's the one issue
00:57:47.320
in the mainstream media that you don't have to provide any balance? Climate change. Ofcom has said,
00:57:51.880
no, no, no, that is scientifically set when it comes to Ofcom. There doesn't need to be
00:57:57.000
any balance if you're discussing climate change. And I would argue that none of these positions are set,
00:58:02.760
because a few years ago, most people might have thought that trans ideology was just like gay
00:58:10.840
rights. But actually, what we've seen is that it's totally different. This is actually about erasing
00:58:16.920
gender altogether from society. It's about challenging scientific realities, which is
00:58:24.440
something that I think any honest journalist should not do. And it's also about degradating
00:58:31.320
the role of women in the world as well. Not to mention some of the practical challenges around issues
00:58:39.240
like safeguarding and women's sport, which is something that I'm really passionate about,
00:58:45.240
which people might find weird, but I'm a huge, huge fan of women's netball. I support the London
00:58:50.760
Pulse team. And let me tell you, all it would take is one trans person on court in a netball team,
00:58:59.480
and the game's over. Might as well all go home. And so that's what we're fighting against. And so
00:59:06.520
the point that I'm making is that if you're in the mainstream media and you raise any of this,
00:59:10.520
you're just a transphobe. You're wrong. They don't view it as a debate.
00:59:14.600
Yeah, that is true. Dan, it's been an utterly brilliant interview. Thank you so much for coming
00:59:19.960
on the show. The final question is the same every time. What's the one thing we're not talking about as
00:59:25.320
a society that we really should be? But we will go to locals for your questions very shortly. Go for
00:59:30.040
it then. Do you know what? I honestly believe it's the fundamental question of democracy. And I think
00:59:41.240
there's loads of different aspects to that. Obviously, one that I'm very big on is postal voting,
00:59:50.120
which we've seen both in the UK and the US, is fundamentally changing the results of elections.
00:59:57.960
And I don't think anyone is properly tackling this in either the independent or the mainstream media,
01:00:05.080
because actually it's such a massive issue. If how we vote is being corrupted, then we need to actually
01:00:14.200
have a really honest national conversation about it. And we saw in the UK, to give an example,
01:00:21.080
in the recent Rochdale by-election that something is seriously wrong if you look at the postal votes.
01:00:28.120
What are you suggesting, Dan? Because I'm not across this, to be honest.
01:00:31.400
I'm suggesting that sectors of society are using postal voting to fix certain election results.
01:00:46.440
I have heard the allegation, but I want you to flesh it out.
01:00:48.840
But it absolutely proves my point though, because people knew about that statistic,
01:00:53.800
but where are the investigations into it? That's right.
01:00:56.280
In a UK context, there's not, because it would be considered Islamophobic to have that conversation.
01:01:03.000
In the US, there's not, because it's generally considered that postal voting is good for the
01:01:08.280
Democrats, so the mainstream media love it. I know Trump has made a big issue of it,
01:01:13.240
but then that's viewed as like a Trump issue. And what I'm saying is that actually it's a big story,
01:01:20.680
and we need to genuinely be looking at it. And I would challenge anyone
01:01:26.520
to say why there is a need for this postal voting. Seriously, go and vote on election day.
01:01:36.680
Well, I look forward to seeing your reporting on it to get to the bottom of it and get to the truth.
01:01:41.400
Dan, thank you so much for coming on. Follow us over to Locals, where we ask Dan your questions.
01:01:47.640
I'd like to know his opinion on King Charles' cancer diagnosis,
01:01:51.640
and how the now Queen Camilla is basically acting like a stand-in monarch to him.