TRIGGERnometry - ＂The System is Rigged Against the Poor＂

00:00:00.560 As we kind of enter this cost of living crisis, which has been going on for people in these

00:00:04.720 communities for a long time, it's only because it's beginning to affect the lower and upper

00:00:08.800 middle classes, lifestyles, that it's now become a legitimate area of conversation.

00:00:13.600 The problem of Britain in recent decades has been the fact that the people who run the country

00:00:20.400 have absolutely no clue what's going on where you were born.

00:00:23.840 The people in charge are almost like aliens in terms of the level of common ground that

00:00:29.120 they have with ordinary people and it's interesting because politics is a curious

00:00:34.240 profession where you don't have to have any prior qualifications, any specialism,

00:00:37.840 really you just have to kind of have the ego to put yourself forward.

00:00:41.840 The politicians, the political classes, our democratic structures, they're not designed

00:00:46.160 to take incoming calls but what we have now is a society that's so deeply unequal that in a

00:00:51.280 representative democracy the people who are elected to represent us are unrepresentative of us.

00:00:57.040 But when you're watching an American activist talking about white privilege

00:01:00.800 and then you're running from your affluent suburb in the UK into Preston Town Centre

00:01:08.960 and just accusing people of it, the first thing is I don't know what the

00:01:12.240 fuck you're talking about, who the fuck are you talking to?

00:01:15.360 And privilege is a term that is loaded with centuries of connotations

00:01:19.520 that people in working class communities use as an insult?

00:01:32.400 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:36.560 I'm Constantine Kisson.

00:01:37.760 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:43.200 Our brilliant guest today is a writer, activist and performer, Darren McGarvey.

00:01:47.440 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:48.480 Hello, guys. Pleasure to be here.

00:01:50.000 It's really great to have you. We're going to talk about your new book,

00:01:52.640 The Social Distance Between Us, How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain.

00:01:57.760 It's a really interesting conversation. We were just chatting before we started

00:02:02.080 about the fact that it harkens back to many of the issues we started the show talking about,

00:02:07.680 a class-based look at economics and the world and society, etc.

00:02:11.680 But before we do, tell everybody, you've had a very interesting life story.

00:02:15.520 Who are you? How are you? Where you are? What has been your journey through life

00:02:18.560 that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:02:21.360 Well, I grew up in a housing scheme, housing estate in Glasgow called Pollock,

00:02:28.640 which was at the top and bottom of all the wrong league tables in the 80s.

00:02:32.080 And so, you know, I was kind of subjected to the usual hustle and bustle of that sort of working

00:02:38.800 class life in a so-called deprived community. Lots to take from it, lots of character building,

00:02:45.600 quite a bit of trauma. And really that just kind of shaped my emotional nature really,

00:02:51.040 which I think was then what propelled me through my chaotic adolescence.

00:02:54.720 But I always had a passion for writing. I always had a passion for expressing myself.

00:03:01.440 And so I kind of fell into after realising I couldn't go down the acting route and realising

00:03:05.760 I couldn't go down the music route or the traditional musical instrument route.

00:03:11.920 Then I kind of fell into hip hop and in particular rapping, because it was a low entry level in terms

00:03:17.840 of what you need to acquire before you can start doing the thing.

00:03:20.400 And that sort of seen me through periods of homelessness and addiction and alcoholism.

00:03:26.000 And then when I got sober in 2013, I studied journalism for two years and kind of fell into

00:03:31.040 that and someone then suggested to me, have you ever thought about writing a book?

00:03:34.480 And that was the first time really I had thought about it, because I just thought people like me

00:03:37.360 don't write books. And so I wrote a book and it won the Orwell Prize in 2018. And

00:03:44.080 I've been doing this professionally ever since. And also, it's worth noting,

00:03:47.280 that is the most concise answer I think I've ever given to a really big question like,

00:03:51.760 tell us about your whole life.

00:03:53.200 Yeah. And you talk about some of the difficulties, but you also talked about it

00:03:58.240 deprived in inverted commas. Why did you do that?

00:04:02.240 It's the sort of terminology that someone looking at a community from a distance would use.

00:04:07.760 Because for people who live there, they might feel offended to be described in that way.

00:04:12.800 They might not feel necessarily deprived of everything. Obviously, when you look at the

00:04:17.040 socio-economic structure of the country, you understand that, and for reasons we might get

00:04:22.400 into later, the system is rigged against people who are born in the wrong postcodes.

00:04:28.240 And so what they're deprived of is health equality, educational equality, and this is

00:04:33.040 manifest in all of the life outcomes that many of them will go on to experience.

00:04:38.160 But also, a working class community and a working class culture is a very beautiful thing.

00:04:43.440 And often in our British culture, and in Scotland as well,

00:04:48.320 there's this idea that working class culture is a kind of infantile culture that's just waiting to

00:04:53.840 go through some sort of puberty phase to become middle class. And actually,

00:04:59.040 in working class communities, we have our own way of seeing things. We have our own way of

00:05:03.200 expressing things. We have different thresholds and sensitivities from traditionally middle class

00:05:08.640 people.

00:05:09.200 Give us some examples.

00:05:10.880 Well, I mean, if you, if you, we live in an age just now where, you know,

00:05:16.480 lived experience and trauma are big discussion points, right? And I think that's important,

00:05:21.680 you know, because there are things that we carry with us in life that, if unaddressed, can lead to us

00:05:26.160 as making poor decisions or having negative experiences. But someone who grows up in a,

00:05:32.880 in a pretty affluent background, their threshold for what they consider traumatic or what they

00:05:38.400 consider shocking is, is a bit different because they have been exposed to different material

00:05:45.760 conditions. And so if the worst thing that's happened to someone in their life is that a pet has died,

00:05:51.040 then that genuinely for their threshold and baseline of trauma is a painful event.

00:05:55.760 But if you grow up in a, in a poorer community, you've been excluded from school, you grew up at

00:06:00.400 a time where teachers were just slapping kids around. And, you know, people are dying left,

00:06:05.920 right and centre all the time because of convergent health crises and inequalities,

00:06:10.240 then your, your, your threshold for what you consider traumatic or shocking is, is almost

00:06:14.640 hilariously high. And so you might find something funny that someone on the other side of the train

00:06:19.760 tracks finds really, really shocking or insensitive. And I'm always fascinated as a writer and that,

00:06:26.800 that, that, that rub, that point of friction between the two, because I see it as, as part

00:06:32.240 of my role as a writer to do what other people have done for me, which is describe those points of

00:06:38.320 friction and try to articulate it in a way that both sides can understand, which for me is an exciting

00:06:43.840 thing to sit down and try and do. But that's just one area I think where class differences are very obvious.

00:06:49.520 It's such a powerful point you made there. And you're, because what you're trying to do

00:06:54.560 is make the point that both sides can hear. Yet in our culture, we very rarely do that because we see

00:07:01.040 the other side or the people who disagree with us as our enemies. We dehumanise them. And I'm certainly

00:07:07.600 guilty of this. I'm not innocent of this. And as a result, you just make everybody go a little bit

00:07:13.680 further apart. Yeah. And it's a hard thing to resist because it's part of our nature to think

00:07:18.240 in that and those tribal terms. And so we have to work very hard to always try and bring ourselves

00:07:24.080 back to that place of, of mindfulness about the, the kind of cul-de-sacs that we can fall into when

00:07:30.480 we're trying to think about things that are complicated. And one of the things that actually

00:07:35.760 helps me is the fact that because I'm in recovery from alcohol and addiction, I have to be vigilant

00:07:41.200 about certain things because, you know, for me, the problem isn't necessarily the alcohol or the

00:07:46.000 drugs. The problem is the emotional nature. So I have certain factory settings as a person,

00:07:50.720 whether that's because of trauma, whether that's because of the environment or just cultural,

00:07:55.600 genetic chance, whatever it is. If I'm not working on myself, it's very easy for me to slip into

00:08:01.760 selfishness, dishonesty, fear, resentment, which obviously will help your eyes through the ranks

00:08:07.920 of a left wing institution. But for someone who has to be, for someone who has to be very vigilant about

00:08:17.360 being under that kind of emotional duress for too long until the point where I end up trying to numb

00:08:23.840 the discomfort or the depression or whatever with alcohol, then I always have to be on guard for

00:08:28.720 these emotions. And so really what that brings to me as a person is when I'm having a good day,

00:08:35.920 is that I try to approach most people with a certain level of good faith. Now, not always on social media

00:08:42.560 is that possible. And you could go through my history of social media, you could find examples and go,

00:08:46.880 well, what about this? And what about that? But the point is that I'm always trying to get back to that

00:08:51.680 place where I recognise that we're all working off of a caricature of the other side, whether it's an

00:08:58.320 individual, whether it's a whole political ideology. And, you know, you've got to be kind of, you've got

00:09:02.640 to have a bit of humility about what you can truly understand as one person.

00:09:06.080 And you say that people who grew up in an affluent background don't particularly understand what

00:09:15.520 working class people have to go through. So let's explode some of the myths, Darren. What do working

00:09:21.280 class people have to go through, people who grew up in deprived backgrounds that affluent people don't

00:09:26.960 understand?

00:09:27.440 Well, the first thing is that working class people, by virtue of their social position,

00:09:33.120 are overexposed to economic shocks, economic transitions, unemployment, social policy. And so

00:09:43.840 this means that life in a working class community is always in a state of constant transition,

00:09:48.960 which leads to people often, particularly those where there isn't a dual income household,

00:09:54.640 maybe there's a prevalence of addiction at home, some sort of dysfunction at play.

00:10:00.400 This means that people are always really standing on very shaky foundations.

00:10:05.600 Yes.

00:10:06.480 And, you know, as we kind of enter this cost of living crisis, which has been going on for people

00:10:12.720 in these communities for a long time, it's only because it's beginning to affect the lower and

00:10:16.800 upper middle classes, lifestyles, that it's now become a legitimate area of conversation.

00:10:21.760 Before, if you were poor or before, if you worked hard and your money didn't go far enough,

00:10:25.680 it's because you were spending it wrong or you were making the wrong decisions. Now,

00:10:29.440 because it's middle class people, we're starting to look at the systemic factors and the cost of

00:10:34.000 energy and all of the contextual issues that actually put strain on households. So when you're

00:10:39.200 growing up in that sort of environment, then you become hardened to certain things. You might become

00:10:45.680 cynical of institutions. In fact, you might not make much effort to discern between a teacher and

00:10:52.640 a police officer and a social worker. You should begin to see this all as the man.

00:10:56.640 And so, you know, I write in the book about this mantra that you have in working class communities

00:11:02.480 in particular, this don't grasp mantra, this idea that any level of cooperation with law enforcement is

00:11:07.840 a betrayal and something that will mark you out as a bad one or a wrong one in a certain community.

00:11:17.600 And this is true in prison culture, as it is among young people and even certain criminal enterprises.

00:11:25.120 And even people who aren't involved in that, there's a lot of psychosocial pressure to take

00:11:29.840 that view towards institutions. And that is, I go in the book on to say that don't grasp mantra,

00:11:35.440 it's a class-based concern. It's based on an understanding that when you look at the prison

00:11:39.200 system, when you look at the criminal justice system, what you see is it's full of people who look

00:11:43.600 and sound like you. And so the idea that cooperating with it in any way is going to be of benefit to you

00:11:51.040 just is risable. And that's just one idea of how cultural attitudes are shaped by different

00:11:57.360 material conditions. Because it wasn't until very recently, with the shocking crimes and the

00:12:02.800 shocking incompetence of the Met, that middle class people started coming out and getting in

00:12:09.200 the face of the police. Because before the police were there to serve the middle classes and the

00:12:13.280 middle class are the people phoning the cops on you. There's loads and loads of things that I could

00:12:17.440 go through, whether it's cultural, social or economic, where there are really pronounced differences.

00:12:22.720 But the real challenge is not necessarily noticing them and acknowledging them.

00:12:26.560 The real challenge is then culturally, how do you communicate that up the structure?

00:12:30.720 Well, this is what I was going to ask you about, because this is fundamental to your

00:12:34.160 book and to your argument, which is that whatever people understand and know about each other,

00:12:38.880 the problem of Britain in recent decades has been the fact that the people who run the country

00:12:45.680 have absolutely no clue what's going on where you were born.

00:12:49.440 Yes. And people may assume, well, of course, there's always going to be a certain level

00:12:53.840 of inequality and there's always going to be gaps in knowledge. But what we're talking here is almost

00:12:59.920 the people in charge are almost like aliens in terms of the level of common ground that they have

00:13:05.680 with ordinary people. And it's interesting because politics is a curious profession where you don't

00:13:11.360 have to have any prior qualifications, any specialism. Really, you just have to kind of have the ego

00:13:16.320 to put yourself forward. And in a way, that's the way it should be because it should be accessible

00:13:20.400 to everyone. But again, because of class differences, then really since the Blair period,

00:13:25.120 what we've seen is the rise of the career politician and a real drop in the percentage of people from

00:13:29.760 working class areas. And so it's interesting because if you're watching the news, right,

00:13:36.000 or you're reading a report, an investigative report, you're not going to read an investigative report

00:13:40.480 by someone who's just writing out what they think based on what they've heard, right? There's someone

00:13:44.800 who's been sent out there to get quotes, to observe the situation, close. And same as when you get

00:13:52.000 in an aeroplane. You don't want to get in an aeroplane with someone who's never flown a plane.

00:13:56.240 Oh, I just finished the simulator, right? We're off to Mallorca. You'd be like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

00:14:01.200 It would be good if you had had some practical experience of some sort. I would feel comfortable.

00:14:05.760 But then you see how much Ryanair charge and you think, fuck it. Yeah, whatever, I'll take the risk.

00:14:10.800 So with politics, what we have is not just politicians who don't have any real world experience,

00:14:16.560 but we have a whole ecosystem of advice and information, which is really kind of contributed to

00:14:26.320 by some people from similar backgrounds. And they make very little contact with reality,

00:14:33.120 as it's experienced by a lot of other people. And this really shows when you look at things

00:14:37.120 like welfare reform. I mean, those reforms, no one thinks the welfare state should be generous.

00:14:44.080 No one thinks that it should be easy to get benefits. We understand the system will be open to abuse,

00:14:49.120 but we're talking here about tens of thousands of people with disabilities attempting suicide off the

00:14:54.080 back of trying to interact with the Department of Work and Pensions. And that's because the government

00:14:58.640 is more interested in listening to the advice of corrupt American insurance companies

00:15:03.680 than it is with people with lived experience. And that's a real problem. The system, the politicians,

00:15:09.200 the political classes are democratic structures. They're not designed to take incoming calls.

00:15:14.560 And the minute that you try to communicate stuff up the structure, you're just met with tremendous

00:15:20.080 resistance. And I think that this issue of proximity is a real fundamental problem for a democracy

00:15:25.440 generally, but particularly in the UK right now. And that was what the MP system sort of was meant

00:15:33.120 to avoid or prevent that from happening, because you had your local MP, that's who you went to see,

00:15:38.880 they were meant to be connected to the community. But again, they've kind of gone around that,

00:15:44.240 in that you see, and all political parties do that, you know, they parachute MPs in who've got

00:15:49.680 no connection with the area. Wasn't Peter Mandelson MP for Hartlepool?

00:15:54.240 Yeah, well, he was one of a number of New Labour leading lights that were pretty much parachuted in

00:16:00.480 there on the basis that these communities will vote Labour because they can't vote Conservative.

00:16:05.120 And that was true for enough time. But I think really that the real vulnerability with representative

00:16:10.240 democracy comes in whether the society is more equal or more unequal. You never have a true equality,

00:16:17.600 and I don't think anyone would argue that that's possible or even desirable.

00:16:21.120 Ah, there's some people who argue that.

00:16:23.200 Yeah, you know, when you get into it, you know that there is a place for merit and there is a place

00:16:29.040 for hard work, even within an equitable situation. But what we have now as a society that's so deeply

00:16:35.200 unequal that in a representative democracy, the people who are elected to represent us are

00:16:40.240 unrepresentative of us. And so this just creates natural dysfunction at every level of governance.

00:16:47.440 And then obviously, the further up the food chain you go, the more resilience you have in the face

00:16:52.000 of accountability, the more you can duck and dive, you can rely on your powerful social networks and

00:16:58.640 connections to bail you out of problems. And so there's, at the opposite end, you have a very punitive

00:17:04.000 system where a lot of people live in fear of being pulled up by an institution for something relatively

00:17:08.640 minor, while at the top you have people engaged in all sorts of corruption openly. And we're just

00:17:14.960 so desensitised to it now. So it's a topsy-turvy system in the United Kingdom and quite peculiar,

00:17:21.040 I would say.

00:17:21.680 I agree with you, and France is probably even more so. But the question I was going to ask you about,

00:17:27.280 you know, you asked us before we started, we've been doing this for four and a half years. And when

00:17:33.840 we started, this was one of the things, the question I'm about to ask you is one of the things we were

00:17:37.840 trying to work out. Because what you're talking about is basically looking at people's circumstances

00:17:43.200 and going, if you grow up in this sort of environment, these are the challenges that are

00:17:46.400 going to be in front of you. And if you grow up in a different environment, these will be the

00:17:49.840 challenges. And that seems to me to make a lot of sense. Where you grew up, how much money you had,

00:17:55.280 whether you had two parents, did you have a stable place at home? Did you go to a good school? These

00:18:00.720 are all things that will absolutely undoubtedly affect your life outcomes. But there was a moment

00:18:05.600 when the left stopped looking at things like that, or certainly stopped listening as much to people

00:18:11.680 who thought like that, and started to look at people on a different basis. You know, skin colour,

00:18:17.600 sexual orientation, gender, etc. And the kind of conversation you were trying to encourage sort

00:18:25.920 of went by the wayside. Would you agree with me on that?

00:18:28.400 I would agree at the level of culture, yes. Intersectionality really just erupted through

00:18:35.680 our social media in the kind of mid-2010s. Around about the same time as the Brexit

00:18:41.280 folds were beginning to appear in culture. And I remember that being a really tough time. I remember

00:18:48.000 that being a very tough time and a very confusing time as a lefty in his mid-20s. And somebody who has

00:18:54.880 a pretty firm grasp of language and the basic intellectual concepts on the left. What I didn't

00:19:01.200 understand was the emotional attitude that I was seeing at times, where people were coming with these

00:19:08.480 ideas around Professor Kimberley Crenshaw's intersectionality analysis, which I think is

00:19:16.560 a valid analysis. I think is an analysis that warrants study, because it was created to understand

00:19:25.280 how women of colour in the United States' experience is compounded by gender. And that in and of itself is

00:19:32.160 an important thing to understand. And I don't think you're going to find too many people that would say

00:19:36.080 it isn't. What happens is when a bunch of white middle-class people get their hands on it. It's

00:19:41.600 the same thing that happens when white middle-class people get their hands on most things. You know,

00:19:46.480 and there's an underpinning of hysteria, there's a complete tone deafness to class dynamics,

00:19:52.400 particularly around class and these thresholds for trauma that we discussed earlier. And so very,

00:19:58.080 very early on, as I had my first few run-ins like all of us did on the left, particularly around really

00:20:05.200 sensitive areas around immigration, then I could see that this had been cooked up. This cultural prong

00:20:15.120 of what came to be known as the left was actually more liberal in its overconfidence, shall we say. And

00:20:24.640 it was always going to crash down and be exploited by agitators on the right who very wisely could see

00:20:30.880 it was creating another reservoir of resentment that was only needing to be appropriated for culture

00:20:37.360 war resentments. And I think I came to a point where I started to understand that social media was

00:20:47.520 certainly magnifying the true extent of what was going on. And actually that whole time the trade

00:20:52.800 union movement was still working away organising. And that to me is what the left is. It's organised,

00:20:58.800 resistance, an understanding of collective bargaining, an understanding of industrial

00:21:03.680 relations, being in communities, being in close proximity, speaking in a language and a tone that

00:21:08.560 the common man and woman can understand. And that's been running completely parallel to this culture

00:21:13.360 war that's really taken the centre stage. And I think with the rise of the trade union leaders, you know,

00:21:21.520 Sharon Graham, Dempsey, Mick Lynch, what you're seeing is how captivating

00:21:26.400 a working class person can be when they know what they're talking about. They're pretty sincere

00:21:31.280 and they don't have this kind of conditioned reverence for media and posh politicians. They just get in

00:21:37.840 there and tell it like it is. And for me, that's the clear delineation on the left between the culture

00:21:42.640 war stuff and the actual let's organise her in material conditions.

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00:22:12.240 Wells Theatre. Get tickets at Mervish.com. No, no, I agree with you on that. But I suppose what I'm

00:22:19.920 getting at is, you say that the way trade unions have been working away, and I'm sure they have.

00:22:25.120 But I would argue the collapse of the Red Wall, for example, is a direct consequence of the Labour Party

00:22:31.600 being quite unsure about whether they are on the side of working people, of all races and genders and

00:22:38.240 whatever. Yeah. Or whether these narrower concerns are where their priorities should lie.

00:22:43.360 It could be a contributing factor, certainly. I think also that a lot of new Labour chickens came

00:22:50.800 home to roost. As I say, you're talking about Mandelson being parachuted into former mining communities

00:22:56.240 and all of that, you know. Have you ever seen that clip of him going to the fish and chip shop?

00:22:59.920 Have you ever seen this? And they offer mushy peas, and he goes, no, no, I won't have the guacamole.

00:23:07.040 And so, you know, that was always going to be time limited. Because it was based on the premise,

00:23:13.120 these communities will always vote Labour because the opposition is much worse for them.

00:23:18.640 But then, once you've voted Tory once, you've sort of crossed a taboo, and then you become desensitised to

00:23:25.040 that. So then it becomes easier for them to do it again. So that was always a kind of house of cards

00:23:29.520 that was going to fall. There was chronic underinvestment in a lot of these communities.

00:23:33.680 And for me, and what I say in the book, I think the true legacy of new Labour is that

00:23:37.760 managerial paternalism. So it was a new kind of class war, where it wasn't Thatcher sitting just

00:23:43.840 basically saying, fuck the lot of you. You know, I close down where you work, and if you can't find

00:23:48.160 another job, that's your fault. But there's a bookies, and there's a chippy, and there's an off-licence

00:23:53.040 on your street. So if you can't get a job there, go and spend all your benefit money there, you know.

00:23:57.600 That was basically her vision of an economy. And what happened with new Labour was they adopted this

00:24:03.520 more pleasing-to-the-ear rhetoric, which helped to sort of cloak the economics of Thatcherism,

00:24:10.800 which Blair partly was elected because he'd committed to continuing them, in a kind of red velvet glove,

00:24:18.080 you know. But parallel to that, what you had was the emergence of this idea of the working-class

00:24:26.320 person as vulgar and infantile, and always kind of wheeling and dealing. And you know,

00:24:31.920 so your Jeremy Kyle show, your Little Britain, and obviously everything is of its time. And I'm not

00:24:38.800 saying we go where a fine tooth comb and we say, oh, that thing that felt okay at the time is immoral now.

00:24:45.440 We understand that with the passage of time, most stuff starts to look a bit dodgy on some level.

00:24:50.800 I'm sure this interview will at some point. But really, there was a certain kind of vindictiveness

00:24:58.720 that revealed the middle-class bigotry. The informed, sophisticated, liberal, compassionate

00:25:04.720 middle-classes who would be empowered by the Blair administration to get out there into working-class

00:25:10.640 communities and teach people how to speak right and teach people how to dress properly and really

00:25:15.840 began to hold the keys for working-class advancement. And you advanced by learning to

00:25:22.240 conceal your working-classness. You advanced by drawing in your accent, by wearing a blazer instead

00:25:27.680 of a hoodie. And these are things I'm describing that any working-class person watching will intuitively

00:25:33.200 know even if they haven't heard that articulated before. And really, that's now why you have a kind

00:25:38.640 of poverty industry infrastructure, which has obviously been left to do a lot of the essential

00:25:43.040 work as the state has withdrawn from many areas. But at the same time, it's still a kind of class

00:25:49.120 warfare in the sense that working-class people are there as clients or they're there as lived experience,

00:25:55.920 people who tell their story and then go away. They don't have very little say over how these

00:26:00.160 organizations are running that. That's a class-based society if you ever wanted a definition.

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00:27:09.760 When we talk about, you know, the Labour Party and how it's abandoned working class people,

00:27:15.040 I just, and we used to work in a very liberal industry in inverted commas, which was a comedy

00:27:20.480 industry. And I used to get these very well-educated, you know, very wealthy people talking about white

00:27:28.560 privilege. And you just go, what are you talking about? Do you think someone who grew up on the

00:27:34.160 breadline in Middlesbrough or Sunderland is privileged in any shape or form? And then they would just had this

00:27:41.040 abject horror that they didn't vote Labour. Of course they're not going to vote Labour,

00:27:46.080 mate. You've been condescending them to them for the last four years.

00:27:49.520 Yeah. I remember the first time I was kind of encountered some of these concepts that came

00:27:57.120 out of the arise of intersectionality. And I think if you're sitting with someone and they're giving you

00:28:02.480 a context for where this term applies and the various layers to it, then it's not a difficult

00:28:13.040 concept to wrap your brain around. But what happens is if you have a young activist, you know, who's in

00:28:18.720 the kind of prime of their campaigning life, they're setting out to change the world, they have lots of

00:28:23.040 energy and they have lots of time and very little responsibilities or real world experience.

00:28:27.600 It's something that just feels intuitively correct to them. And then they get out there

00:28:31.600 and they just start throwing the term around. And sometimes they'll apply it inappropriately,

00:28:39.120 or sometimes they'll apply it with a certain emotional surety and a judgmental kind of accusatory

00:28:45.600 tone, which actually undermines the opportunity to persuade someone of the virtue of such a concept or

00:28:51.840 the validity of such a concept. And that's really the kind of what I would say is the emotionally

00:28:57.680 illiterate underbelly of a lot of the activism that we did see over the last few years. It's based on

00:29:04.400 conducting yourself with a certain level of certainty, despite limited life experience. Plus,

00:29:10.000 the term white privilege makes more sense when you're discussing it in an American context,

00:29:15.440 where the racial divides are more historic and more pronounced and more institutional. Not to

00:29:20.560 say that there isn't elements of that here, but when you're watching an American activist talking

00:29:24.800 about white privilege, and then you're running from your affluent suburb in the UK into Preston

00:29:33.600 Town Centre, just accusing people of it. The first thing is, I don't know what the

00:29:38.560 fuck you're talking about. Who the fuck are you talking to? And privilege is a term that is loaded

00:29:44.000 with centuries of connotations that people in working class communities use as an insult.

00:29:48.960 Right. So the cultural difference there is so stark that someone who says they're about equality

00:29:55.600 doesn't understand that you have to factor class into an intersectional analysis, even if you're just

00:30:00.240 looking at it in terms of how you're conveying your message. How are you campaigning? What is your strategy?

00:30:04.560 And I think that this was why it was rejected, because a lot of us on the left were too slow

00:30:09.360 to respond to that. The issues were so contentious and so numerous, and then you throw immigration

00:30:13.680 into the mix, which really tears the left in too, because there's the commitment to anti-racism,

00:30:19.120 which is obviously historic to the left, but then there's the class solidarity part of it.

00:30:22.800 And you're seeing Eddie Dempsey's historic remarks being framed in certain ways that reveal how

00:30:28.400 difficult that canyon is to bridge sometimes. So yeah, I mean, we dropped the ball on that, but

00:30:34.240 we always learn from these things.

00:30:35.280 Look, I love how carefully you think and speak about these issues. I really, really do.

00:30:39.840 Let me ask you something about, you know, it might be a challenging question, I suppose, but

00:30:45.120 how much of this is about the fact that the jobs aren't really there as much for people who are

00:30:53.920 quote unquote working class? There's just not that many working class jobs anymore.

00:30:58.560 You know, you talked about Thatcher, the pits have been closed down, the mines, the steelworks,

00:31:04.560 the whatever, it's all been outsourced or got rid of. Is it not that much harder to build working

00:31:12.000 class solidarity where you don't have the community as much as you did, and therefore you do have a lot

00:31:17.760 of unemployment, you do have more crime, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

00:31:21.040 Yeah. Obviously we are undergoing, even without a cost of living crisis and what's going on in

00:31:26.400 Ukraine and all the geopolitics of things and just an incompetent conservative government,

00:31:32.880 we would still be heading into a massive economic transition because of big data and automation

00:31:40.000 and technology generally. Yes.

00:31:41.920 And normally this would be a great thing, wouldn't it? This idea, well, hang on,

00:31:45.520 so that means that a lot of these hard jobs are going to be done by robots, so this is going to free

00:31:49.520 people up. But we haven't got the next part really figured out yet. We've got all the efficiency

00:31:55.360 built in and that will all take care of itself. But what do people do when they become surplus to

00:32:00.080 requirements permanently? And so what they've been floating in recent years, and you hear this from

00:32:05.920 Obama's Institute and Blair's Institute and all of that, they're talking about how people will have

00:32:10.560 to train and retrain and change careers multiple times. And really that's an attempt to kind of normalize

00:32:16.000 precarity, you know, because the reality is if you're, if you're, if you are working for low wages,

00:32:22.960 that's hard enough, right? You're constantly just, one of the definitions of working class is not just

00:32:27.760 a relationship to the labour market, it's how hard you have to fight just to get your basic needs met.

00:32:32.880 And that's becoming, you know, a really difficult struggle for people now. So the next part of it then,

00:32:38.640 you know, if you were thinking forward, you would be thinking, okay, so we need an integrated

00:32:42.560 transport infrastructure that's free, like a health service, right? We need to find ways to bring

00:32:48.240 down the cost of living people so that if you're in low paid work, you're not got all these other

00:32:52.320 expenses. And that's the sort of idea that just gets shut down intuitively. That's how successful

00:32:57.600 the right have been economically. That that is the sort of rantings of a mad person. This idea that,

00:33:04.560 the trains and undergrounds, you can just walk onto them, like you can walk into a public park,

00:33:11.440 you know, because the cost of transport alone is a massive strain. And people from working class

00:33:16.320 communities, they have to travel further and further to their place of work. They have to travel back,

00:33:22.000 they're being told not to use cars. And so, you know, this would be the next area where they're

00:33:26.640 shamed for their lifestyle choices and their economic decisions. That and eating meat.

00:33:30.240 He's driving a car and eating a burger in the car. You know, it would be like when lockdown,

00:33:35.040 they were following them, following them in parks and then going home to their big

00:33:38.400 fucking gardens and their chicken huts and all that. So it's difficult. And you don't really have,

00:33:45.600 you have a political class that really views the world from the vantage point of corporate

00:33:51.360 executives, which is a valid vantage point to include in the mix, but the scales are tipped too far.

00:33:57.760 I suppose my only question on that would be, and I'm probably on economics. I'm certainly not on

00:34:02.320 the left. I don't know if I'm on the right, but I'd probably position myself somewhere in the center.

00:34:05.600 The only question I have is, I'm intuitively all for getting barriers out of people's ways.

00:34:13.120 I just think that's really important. I think the most important thing is that people are able to

00:34:17.840 succeed if they're talented. And look, you no doubt have had to work extra hard because of your

00:34:23.520 background to be sitting here having a chat about your brilliant book. No doubt about that. And

00:34:28.240 that is a problem. It will always be around, by the way, we're never going to get rid of it entirely,

00:34:32.800 but I'm all for getting the barriers out of people's ways.

00:34:36.800 The difficulty is in a, in a society like Britain where we do already pay a lot of tax,

00:34:42.000 we all pay a lot of tax. The poor pay a lot of tax, the middle class pay a lot of tax, the rich,

00:34:46.800 those that can't evade and avoid tax. They also pay a lot of tax. How do we, you know,

00:34:52.400 how do we keep paying for all these things that we would like to have? So I don't know if that's

00:34:56.240 about the right, or maybe I'm not reflecting the viewpoint of the right. I just wonder how we pay

00:35:00.640 for these very good things that we would like to put in place.

00:35:03.760 Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a difficult question now that we've sold off all our assets,

00:35:07.440 you know, because obviously this is one of the things that Scandinavian countries have tremendous

00:35:12.560 foresight with, you know, we have this big boom. Okay. Let's create a fund for a rainy day.

00:35:19.040 Yeah. You know, and that's why they, they, they, they not only have more equal societies,

00:35:23.440 they have happier societies and yeah, they pay more tax, but they understand the investment.

00:35:29.840 So they understand the benefit of it. Whereas when people pay high levels of tax in this country,

00:35:34.560 or they're being hit with this horror stories about the NHS being run into the ground and trains not

00:35:39.200 being on time. So they think this money's just being poured into some kind of hole.

00:35:43.200 And it's really just because of the economic mismanagement, um, at the top level of society,

00:35:49.040 where people who have greater levels of wealth have greater leverage with politicians. And so decisions

00:35:55.040 are taken in the short term for electoral reasons that really place at one end of the country at odds

00:36:02.000 with the other. And then there's all the work of the centre ground to peep over that with all of the unifying

00:36:07.280 rhetoric, while at the same time, really pressing the accelerator pedal down on the economic policies

00:36:12.720 that divide us and entrench things. So for example, the marketization of the English education system,

00:36:18.720 it was kind of, it was, it was pitched as this is a, this is going to be an expansion of choice.

00:36:24.400 This is going to lead to innovation and competition. And it did for the middle class schools and the

00:36:29.280 middle class parents want to set up their own schools, but for the working classes, they go to the

00:36:34.000 school that's on their doorstep, right? And so in a marketized economy, then you have parents

00:36:39.200 parachuting into the catchment areas, the kids grades inflate the house prices, the house prices

00:36:45.680 inflate the kids grades, and this just becomes a little prosperity bubble. Meanwhile, all the people

00:36:50.400 who grow up there and go to school there, they all think that it's all going well for them because

00:36:53.760 they're just great people. And the people over here, uh, who not only have less money per head for

00:36:59.440 the pupils, but also they have a more diverse educational culture with very specific strains

00:37:06.320 on it because of the, the, the imprint that poverty and stress leaves on many of the pupils

00:37:12.400 who are going there. And so there's just a complete lack of understanding or any attempt to account for

00:37:16.560 any of that. Um, and that's just an education, you know, you, you, you don't even get into the

00:37:21.600 independent sector. I mean, these are just onshore tax havens that benefit the parents, uh, who send

00:37:27.600 their kids there as much as the kids who go there and they just function as pipelines to the main

00:37:31.520 professions. And you know, that's just, I would just, I would, I would, I don't know how you could

00:37:37.360 phase out or close down private education, particularly culturally in the UK, but I would

00:37:43.600 see it as a national security risk. I would frame it as a national security risk that you can actually

00:37:49.120 just get a bunch of absolute nobbins who all went to the same school, just being pumped into the

00:37:55.040 country's main institutions by virtue of the fact that they went to that school,

00:37:58.960 despite the fact that the evidence is in that they're of no merit, unless you're defining merit

00:38:04.240 as just absolute ruthlessness. Hard to argue against. Yeah. I mean, the, the one way actually

00:38:09.360 that you do get at these schools, if you do want to get at them, is every public or private school

00:38:14.080 in this country is a registered charity. So you take away their charitable status. That's what really

00:38:20.000 annoyed me about Corbyn when he was like, we're going to abolish private schools. I'm like,

00:38:23.520 you're never going to do that. Shut up. There's a virtue signal. If you truly want to actually

00:38:29.040 maybe, you know, attack these institutions, if that's what you want to do, then you go for the

00:38:33.200 charitable status and you ask them to justify it because many of them can't.

00:38:36.560 Yeah. And I mean, I've done a lot of, I've visited many private schools and it's another thing,

00:38:42.080 you know, when you're, you've got a kind of low resolution understanding of the other.

00:38:45.840 When you go to a private school, you meet teachers who understand perfectly well

00:38:49.520 the inherent problem of such an institution. They often go there because they get discounts

00:38:54.880 for their own children. Yeah. And they know that they'll give their kids a great opportunity to,

00:38:59.120 to, to get the best possible education. What you'll find in the private school sector also is almost

00:39:04.480 compared to state schooling, a kind of utopian scenario where the curriculum is designed around

00:39:10.480 the child being, the child's opportunities and experiences being optimised to the furthest most

00:39:17.760 point. So even just how a day is planned out, leisure activities, these are always sat in the grounds of,

00:39:24.480 surrounded by green space, windows with natural light coming in. They are environments which optimise

00:39:32.640 human potential. And there's a lot that the state could learn from how to design a school and design a

00:39:38.960 curriculum. Well, quite. As someone who did go to a private school for part of my education,

00:39:44.160 I totally support getting rid of the charitable status, by the way, to the extent that I understand

00:39:49.600 that issue. But equally, I think we need to make the rest of the schools better rather than tearing

00:39:55.600 things down. That makes more sense to me. Oh, absolutely. Because if parents with a bit more

00:40:01.600 money thought that they could save 20, 30, 40 grand a year by going to a state school, which is

00:40:06.560 performing just as well, then it would be a no-brainer for them. I mean, I'm not sitting here

00:40:10.800 saying everyone who goes to private school is a multi, multi-millionaire. I know many parents

00:40:15.360 take a big, big hit, but they see that as a long-term investment in their children and their

00:40:19.840 family as a structure. Well, and as you say, in a country where seven percent of pupils end up making

00:40:26.480 up 50 percent of the top jobs, it is a long-term investment. There's no question about it. Oh,

00:40:31.040 definitely. And that's when you're just looking at the kind of cold, hard economics of it. Of course,

00:40:35.440 it makes a lot of sense from that perspective. But the long-term damage that that level of

00:40:41.280 inequality does to a country's culture and politics and economy is undeniable at this point. And for

00:40:49.360 me, the big difficulty, obviously, is just culturally the needle has moved so far in terms of the right

00:40:58.960 and a free society for the rich to just do whatever they want. And in a sense, in principle,

00:41:04.160 that should be right. But see, when we talk about a free press now or a free education system,

00:41:08.400 what we really mean is the right of a billionaire to buy as many newspapers as they want and push

00:41:14.720 out their message that suits their politics and suits their economics. And so sometimes I think we

00:41:20.640 get confused about what a free society means. It's the balancing of everyone's freedoms and making

00:41:26.880 sure that people with the most don't get to race too far ahead, because then they start shaping

00:41:32.080 everything in the shape of their own desires and their own needs. And sometimes these can't be

00:41:37.440 reconciled with people who live in the deprived communities.

00:41:40.640 And look, you're making such a great point. How can you possibly, with the best will in the world,

00:41:48.640 even if you go into politics with the purest of intentions, but you come from a highly privileged

00:41:55.360 background, how can you possibly implement policies that are going to work for working

00:42:01.040 class people if you've never met one? How is that going to work? It's just not.

00:42:05.840 I know. And the chances are that the difficult conversation with whatever executive of whatever

00:42:11.120 multinational corporation you have to have is someone that you know personally.

00:42:14.960 So we all know what it's like. I write about it in the book, deference, right?

00:42:18.880 Deference is something that's really understated in terms of class relations in this country.

00:42:24.240 So I remember interviewing Sir Tom Hunter, who's a poster boy of Scotland entrepreneurialism.

00:42:32.000 He sold the sports division brand for 300 million and he's now a billionaire. And he does a lot of

00:42:37.360 philanthropy. And I was doing a TV series about class and I interviewed him. And I had met him before,

00:42:46.320 but I was interviewing him. And so my job was not just to hear from him. My job was to scrutinise

00:42:51.600 and ask questions and try and find an uncomfortable spot to put him in about the contradiction and philanthropy.

00:42:59.360 And I found it very difficult to speak, frankly, which is really odd for me.

00:43:08.480 And so we did this show and we filmed that and that interaction ended up being about the one thing

00:43:14.960 that we wanted it to be about. But I came away from it thinking, no, this was about something else.

00:43:20.560 And then what I realised was that he was the only contributor that we had relaxed the COVID restrictions

00:43:25.040 for. The BBC's COVID restrictions were double what the government's restrictions were. So we had to

00:43:31.600 have a two metre length of tape between two contributors who were walking in open space.

00:43:37.840 And this was what happened with every contributor. But for some reason, we just instinctively relaxed

00:43:42.720 this for Tom, even though he didn't want to be treated any differently. So I had to walk in the mud.

00:43:47.760 Tom got told to walk in the path. I got moved into the shitty cold car. He got moved into the big car.

00:43:53.360 And suddenly I went from being like the centrepiece of this TV operation to just realising where I was

00:43:59.040 in the pecking order. And then when it came time to get frank with him, the words came from me very,

00:44:04.160 very slowly and difficult. And that's deference, you know. So when a politician sits in a room with your

00:44:11.280 Jeff Bezos types, you know, and who's at the top of the society, they're going in there with a tail

00:44:16.400 between their legs. They're not going in there like that. Listen, I have a mandate from a population,

00:44:21.600 right, of hundreds of millions of people. And we need to get a fairer deal here because I know you're

00:44:27.760 offering a lot of jobs, but we're subsidising your business with our welfare state because your wages

00:44:32.240 are too low. So you need to get this sorted out, Jeff. No, it's Biden going in there. Sorry about this,

00:44:39.760 Jeff. Have you got any ideas about what I could do to run the American economy?

00:44:44.160 Why don't you get the guys from Pfizer in? We'll sit down, we'll bang heads, we'll come up with a new

00:44:48.480 deal, you know, to make sure you all still get paid while we try to make society a bit less horrific

00:44:53.360 for the poor. And that deference is a big problem. You know, you've met famous people. When you know,

00:44:58.880 you meet someone, you may get a bit used to it. I don't get starstruck really, but it's hard to have-

00:45:02.960 Not even now, Darren.

00:45:04.000 It's hard to have a frank conversation with someone who's used to being pussyfooted around

00:45:12.400 and treated very delicately. And culturally, that is one of the factors that means that the

00:45:17.600 people who need to have truth spoken to them often never hear the truth.

00:45:22.000 Well, look, the obvious solution to all of this, because I think the way you are talking about it,

00:45:27.520 you're talking about all the different things that make up the experience of people in different

00:45:32.160 social stratas. And that makes perfect sense. But that would all be remedied by more representation

00:45:39.120 of working class people in the political halls of power. And when the unions were really at their peak,

00:45:46.480 that was happening. But now, again, this is not because I want to jump on up and down on the

00:45:53.360 corpse of the Labour Party. I'm just being honest with you about what I see. You have a Labour Party now,

00:45:59.280 whose latest intake is all of these sort of like 24-year-old graduates from some university,

00:46:07.360 who I don't, with all possible respect to them, think have any fucking idea what you're talking

00:46:12.480 about, right? So we jump up and down on the Tory party all the time on this show. But I don't see

00:46:21.440 the Labour Party answering your call either. Do you? No. Because what Starmer has chosen after

00:46:28.640 kind of sounding vaguely original in the beginning is reheated Blairism to the letter. I mean,

00:46:39.280 if you understand the trajectory of Blairism from its development to its execution,

00:46:44.640 then you understand what Starmer's attempting here, right? Now, obviously, there's a new context

00:46:50.880 that has to be dealt with. But your colleagues on the left will say to you, well,

00:46:55.920 to Tony Blair brought us three election victories in a row, the most successful Labour Prime Minister,

00:47:00.480 all of that. Yeah, I mean, it's not that. I wouldn't say he was the most successful,

00:47:05.760 really, because, I mean, if you look at the real giants of British politics,

00:47:09.200 the only remnant of Blair's legacy is the discussion about his character. So everything

00:47:16.960 that New Labour achieved under Blair or did under Blair is gone, right? That's a bit unfair. What

00:47:23.280 about Northern Ireland, Darren? Come on. Well, I mean, that's all pretty precarious right now,

00:47:27.600 though, isn't it? What I mean is, the things that he'd done, he didn't win the arguments on.

00:47:32.560 So they're still contentious. You couldn't say the same thing about the welfare state. You

00:47:36.800 couldn't say the same thing about Thatcher. I mean, these were paradigm shifts.

00:47:40.240 I see what you're saying now. Yeah, or Churchill.

00:47:42.160 So he didn't change the country permanently. No, he didn't bring it home. And that's why

00:47:46.800 he wanted to stay on longer. Same with immigration.

00:47:48.560 That's why, exactly. So what happened was, he sowed the seeds of his own destruction,

00:47:53.840 which all politicians do, but he didn't quite wrap it up in a nice, neat little bow that history has

00:48:00.160 found for your Attleys and your Thatchers and your Churchills. And now the debate really about Blair is,

00:48:06.800 was he a big giant of politics? Or did everything he do just turn to shit?

00:48:10.960 No, I recognise that, you know, that that might be a kind of, maybe a cynical or mischievous way to

00:48:17.920 characterise it. But I just wouldn't be... No, I think you're making a fair point.

00:48:21.600 I wouldn't be putting Blair in the same category. It really remains to be seen.

00:48:26.320 I think you're making a very fair point. But I interrupted you when you started talking

00:48:29.920 about Keir Starmer. He went in Blair's direction. Talk to us more about that. Sorry.

00:48:33.200 That aspect of Blairism is the centre ground where you attempt to rhetorically reconcile

00:48:42.000 competing groups in society by speaking in vague terms of values.

00:48:46.800 So everyone wants equality. Everyone wants fairness. Everyone wants a society where hard work is

00:48:51.760 rewarded. Everyone wants a wee sprinkle. Not everyone. I know five million people in Scotland

00:48:57.120 that don't care. But everyone wants a wee sprinkle of Britishness over everything to just feel,

00:49:01.360 you know, a wee bit. Maybe not five million, maybe two million. Who knows?

00:49:05.280 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:05.840 But the thing about it is that actually the economic programme that will be brought forward

00:49:12.880 will be a commitment to the status quo, which is already deeply unfair and deeply unjust.

00:49:17.760 So you can paper over the cracks for a while with the comforting rhetoric. And if you can generate

00:49:21.840 a wee bit of economic growth, everyone will forget for a while.

00:49:24.560 But the minute that the shit hits the fan, then the flaws and the fundamentals of the economy reveal

00:49:30.240 themselves again. And that's when you create, you know, the levels of resentment and apathy and

00:49:36.080 scepticism that leads to massive dropout of voting, which is a gift to the privileged parties.

00:49:42.320 It leads to things like the debate around immigration that really became the momentum behind Brexit.

00:49:48.560 And that all goes down to Blair economics.

00:49:50.800 I see what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. But what I'm hearing out of what you're saying is

00:49:55.440 the economic structure now is such that when the shit hits the fan, as you say, we're not all in it

00:50:01.200 together. The rich just get richer, the comfortable just get more comfortable, and the working people

00:50:07.120 get left behind because of the flaws in the way the system is organised.

00:50:10.960 Yeah, because they're so overexposed. So even where they're managing their household budgets

00:50:17.600 reasonably well, and they're doing the deal in terms of trying to be responsible with the resources

00:50:24.320 that they have, this one rise in energy is just wiping them out.

00:50:29.920 Yeah.

00:50:30.000 And that, you know, you can't really, you'd have to be really, really confident to try and argue

00:50:39.200 that this is an equitable settlement economically right now. The only silver lining of a situation

00:50:47.200 like COVID and a pandemic is that it really revealed in high definition, the inequalities and

00:50:52.960 how overexposed working people were, not just to the virus, but to everything else around it.

00:50:58.320 The lockdowns, the inaccessibility of health. I mean, even just the mouth cancer numbers are

00:51:05.520 going through the roof now because people haven't been getting to the dentist, which is where this

00:51:09.680 shit has picked up. So just so many ways that working class people get hit. And, you know,

00:51:16.080 I'm not sitting here saying I have all the answers. I think part of my job or the job of people like me

00:51:20.880 who have spent time on the front line is really just to try and find new ways to articulate what we see

00:51:26.480 and taking account of the fact that there are people there who do want to do the right thing,

00:51:33.040 but they need someone to frame it for them in terms that they understand relative to their

00:51:38.000 and experience of working class communities. And that's, that's what I try to contribute to.

00:51:43.840 Hey, Francis, if you were a member of the public, would you like the opportunity to ask

00:51:49.360 incredible guests like Bill Burr, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Adam Carolla, Brett Weinstein,

00:51:56.000 John Barnes, Douglas Murray, Nigel Farage and Lionel Shriver, your own questions?

00:52:01.440 You bet I would.

00:52:02.720 And what do you think the best way to do that would be?

00:52:06.320 Probably stalking, mate. You'd have to corner them in the supermarket,

00:52:10.400 probably run near like the sort of frozen food aisles, and then just bark questions at them

00:52:15.360 before they can escape. Not the American ones, as they have guns. And you'd have to be extra

00:52:20.880 careful with the females, as that's how I got in trouble last time.

00:52:25.280 Can you really imagine you're going to get Douglas Murray near the frozen food aisle?

00:52:28.800 If you want to ask our incredible guest questions and have access to phenomenal

00:52:33.120 behind the scenes content, then you have to be on Our Locals.

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00:53:30.320 Exactly. More than both of us have really. People are now doing meetups in their city

00:53:35.440 because they love Locals. In fact, some people enjoy it so much, they prefer it over the show.

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00:53:52.960 Only $7 a month for all that incredible content. Trigonometry.locals.com. See you there, guys.

00:54:02.320 So Darren, moving on, you spend a large portion of the book, you're talking about homelessness.

00:54:07.040 Yeah.

00:54:07.600 And as someone who grew up in London, when I grew up in London in the 80s,

00:54:12.640 it was nowhere near as wealthy as it was now. There was a lot, you know, people weren't as wealthy.

00:54:18.880 You know, there was a lot more working class people. There was a lot more working class communities in London.

00:54:24.000 But there wasn't the same level of homelessness. I go and I walk around London now and it's much wealthier

00:54:29.280 and you see people who are more ostentatiously rich. But the homelessness has just gone through the roof.

00:54:35.440 Yeah. Again, this comes down to housing policy. So we have had a situation where the social housing stock

00:54:45.280 has not only been left to fall into disrepair over the last 30 or 40 years, but also culturally,

00:54:51.760 as I mentioned earlier with Blairism, there's this cult of home ownership now. Now, the concept of home ownership

00:54:59.360 property ownership is a good one. And the idea was democratic, that anyone should be able to own

00:55:06.640 property, not just your landed gentry. If people own property, they can pass something down to the

00:55:11.600 next generation and this will become a little prosperity cycle. And if everyone gets a fair

00:55:16.160 crack at the whip, why the hell not? The problem you have now is you can pay £1,000 a month on rent

00:55:23.200 for five years and a bank won't give you a mortgage for £400 a month because they're worried that

00:55:28.320 you're irresponsible with your money. So that's topsy-turvy economics. Then you also have

00:55:34.160 welfare reforms, which don't take account of the alternative family structures and dynamics in

00:55:39.760 working class communities where trauma, family members in prison, alcoholism, single parent families,

00:55:46.480 all these different setups that are adopted by households to deal with circumstances. You have

00:55:51.680 a benefit system that's punitive, that's not set up really to recognise the unique circumstances that

00:55:57.440 each household faces. And so the safety net that's there, when you do decide to go for the cult of

00:56:05.360 home ownership and pin the whole housing economy on that, the safety net is also removed for people

00:56:10.880 who don't fit that template. And an example of this would be removing child benefit for young people.

00:56:17.200 No, housing benefit, sorry. This is one of the most callous things that the Cameron Osborne

00:56:24.640 administration done. Their whole idea was that this would just incentivise people into benefits at

00:56:31.760 a young age. What they don't realise is, like myself, a lot of young people who grow up in poverty,

00:56:37.120 they have to leave the family home a lot younger and they don't even have their education in the bag.

00:56:43.760 And so without that housing benefit, they end up on the street or sleeping on couches. They just become

00:56:48.160 inherently residentially unstable. But you have welfare reforms which are underpinned by this

00:56:53.600 assumption that really anybody who wants to get on benefits is kind of a bit dodgy in some way.

00:56:59.280 And there's just so many examples of how welfare reform impacts and drives homelessness,

00:57:04.160 whether it's food bank use, this universal credit thing, where there's just this arbitrary amount

00:57:08.720 of time a person has to wait before they get paid of six weeks. It's weird because when the

00:57:14.800 self-employment grants were getting handed out to the middle class people to underwrite all their

00:57:18.480 gym memberships and their credit cards and their dual income lifestyles, you just had to put your

00:57:24.800 national insurance number into a thing and they sent the money in three days, no questions asked,

00:57:29.120 as much as £3,000. That really shows you how different the government views people from

00:57:34.800 different social classes. Because if you're in that income bracket where the government's

00:57:39.440 estimating that you're losing nearly four grand from four months of not working and you're just

00:57:46.400 getting the money, no questions asked. Whereas over here, if you're homeless, you're fleeing domestic

00:57:50.480 violence. Not only are you dealing with a Department of Work and Pensions, it's re-traumatising you with the

00:57:55.200 overbearing surveillance, the financial intimidation, the basic behaviour of a domestic abuser,

00:58:01.920 but also you're getting pulled in for random compliance meetings and told to go to the food

00:58:05.760 bank because you're not getting your money for six weeks. I mean, it's actually criminal,

00:58:11.120 the level of inequality. And it's the people with the most who make the decisions to make it so harsh

00:58:16.480 for the people with the least. And that's the thing that really, well, you can see it makes me angry.

00:58:20.400 I mean, they're all very good points. Do you think looking at this homelessness situation,

00:58:27.280 it's not just in Europe, it's not just the UK, it's in America, it just seems to be spreading

00:58:33.680 everywhere. And we don't seem to have any idea of how to tackle it. One of the ways we've tackled

00:58:39.200 it is we've created a culture where, much like ancient Greece, homeless people are just looked

00:58:44.080 at as absolute down and outs that should just be driven from the public life to the margins of

00:58:49.600 society. When actually, you know, every person who is experiencing homelessness,

00:58:56.480 if you get down on the street with them and talk to them, you're going to find trauma,

00:59:02.000 have occurred some recent tragedy, probably addiction. And so addiction as an illness,

00:59:09.920 and I know some of your viewers will dispute that, we'll not go down that cul-de-sac,

00:59:13.840 but I know from my own experience, it is an illness. And so until you can get the right support

00:59:20.320 for that, you're facing the stigma from society about the addiction. And also it's driving you to

00:59:26.240 behave in ways that really undermine your chances of surviving and getting on and getting a house

00:59:30.800 and securing accommodation. So that's one way culturally that we deal with it. We just put it

00:59:35.360 out of mind and we come up with a caricature or a stereotype of the homeless addict because that's

00:59:41.120 a story we can live with as individuals as we encounter these desperate people every single day.

00:59:46.720 In terms of how housing policy has affected it, we don't have enough social housing. And while we have

00:59:54.560 a rights-based approach to housing and local authorities all over the country renege on their statutory

01:00:01.840 obligation to provide a home or a shelter to someone who's present as homeless, they don't face penalties

01:00:08.880 severe enough for them to get their acts together. And to be honest, their hands have been tied since austerity.

01:00:14.800 So what you often see with homelessness is these kind of well-meaning anti-stigma campaigns,

01:00:19.600 or sometimes quite hostile campaigns, which say don't give your money to homeless people,

01:00:22.960 they'll only spend it on drugs. I mean, that was a Labour council in Nottingham that did that one,

01:00:27.760 you know, and that got pulled up by advertising standards. So it just shows you the level of

01:00:32.000 prejudice is widespread. And as long as that prejudice exists, people won't demand answers.

01:00:37.600 Because what the prejudice and the resentment that the vulnerable creates is an out for the political

01:00:41.920 class. Because as long as you feel that it's the fault of these people individually, then you won't

01:00:49.440 get in the faces of politicians and say, look, we know what you've done with austerity, we know what you've

01:00:53.680 done with housing policy, but get this sorted. Because we are fed up seeing people begging in

01:00:58.480 the street, not just because it disrupts our day and makes us feel bad seeing it, but because it's

01:01:03.040 morally reprehensible. Everyone should have a right to a home, give them a house, then we'll address

01:01:08.240 what issues can't be addressed by having a house. Seems pretty simple. Well, the problem is, and this will

01:01:15.680 feed very much into your view of the world, the reason we have a housing crisis is the government

01:01:21.120 cannot afford to let housing prices stop rising politically. Because then middle class people

01:01:27.200 who own property, like me, I mean, in my case, it's not true. But the most middle class people

01:01:32.880 who own property will say, well, you've just made me poorer. I'm never any any government that solves

01:01:39.760 the housing problem will probably never return into government for generations, because the middle

01:01:44.480 class people will absolutely hate them. Yeah, I see that in the book. All of the policies that you

01:01:50.480 would genuinely need to consider to make a more equal society, a more cohesive society,

01:01:56.720 a richer society, just culturally, never mind financially. It means looking at electorally

01:02:04.080 lucrative demographics out there, who are so looked after by both sides of the political spectrum

01:02:09.600 that they don't need to get out in the streets for anything. I agree with you, man. So it's basically,

01:02:15.280 your house gains value because there are other people who can't even get access to housing.

01:02:19.280 And by the way, the thing is, even if you're middle class, you've got to, you've got to look

01:02:23.120 out there and go, well, Mike, I barely fucking made it onto the housing ladder. My kids, what are

01:02:29.360 they going to do? Yeah. And, but, but, you know, the corruption, we've had Liam Halligan on to talk

01:02:35.360 about his book about this, like the corruption in terms of the way housing is, is run, housing policy

01:02:40.640 is run in this country is just, is deep. And, and the purpose of it is profiteering and politically

01:02:51.520 preserving the status quo. I think the ultimate, and I wouldn't want to dwell on this because it's

01:02:57.040 been spoken about enough, but the, the ultimate tragic expression of housing inequality and the

01:03:03.840 political exclusion that's inherent to whether you own a home or whether you're in social housing

01:03:09.040 is the Grenfell fire. So there you had residents in there who'd been campaigning for years to say,

01:03:15.040 hey, this place is like, it's going to go on fire one day. People are going to die. Could you come and

01:03:20.640 put a light in the stairs and maybe move these bollards out the front of the building and generally

01:03:25.440 check the electrics of the building? We've seen fires in other parts of London. This panel,

01:03:29.920 we're not quite into this kind of, this new front frontage you've put on the building. We don't

01:03:34.240 know if it's safe. Years they campaigned about that, right? Years. Place goes up in flames.

01:03:41.680 It goes up in flames in 20 minutes. It's beyond the expertise of the fire service. Now people talk

01:03:47.600 about the safety of the building as the proximate cause, the fire, the electrics, but it was the

01:03:53.840 political exclusion. It was the politicians and the council in that area being so attuned to the

01:04:00.880 interests of property developers and the middle class property owners in the surrounding area

01:04:06.640 that the frontage was partially designed so that they had something a wee bit more pleasant to look

01:04:11.120 at from a distance that adds value to their homes. So fuck what the people who live in there think.

01:04:17.600 And it's just diabolical. And it's amazing because they're still managing to wriggle out of it,

01:04:22.080 the people that are responsible and the institutions that are responsible for that.

01:04:24.960 This Grenfell inquiry no doubt is going to run to 2079, you know, just with all the ducking and

01:04:30.880 diving, all these people trying to get out of taking responsibility for the manslaughter.

01:04:35.520 And that in itself I think is just, that's a very tragic example of the inequalities that stem

01:04:43.040 from a basic housing inequality. There's the cultural inequalities, the political inequalities.

01:04:48.240 I hear everything you're saying and I think you're making some really good points.

01:04:53.040 And if someone is listening to this, who's been open to your argument, who maybe has influence and

01:04:58.400 power and whatever, and we do have people like that who watch the show or listen to the show,

01:05:03.840 what are some of the like low hanging fruit that we can use to make the situation more fair and more equitable?

01:05:14.880 You need to constrain the independent school sector in some way, whether that's revoking

01:05:20.560 the charitable status or something more radical. You know, trying to cross pollinate pupils from both

01:05:28.640 sides of the tracks and educational institutions so that you're getting a fair spread of that diversity

01:05:34.480 rather than having these middle class and working class ghettos. Because there's a hell of a lot that

01:05:39.120 the kids from the wealthier backgrounds could learn from the kids in the poorer backgrounds.

01:05:42.560 Let me tell you, and I'm not just talking about to study them like animals. I'm talking about,

01:05:47.120 all right, hang on, you're really insightful. Or hang on, you're really bright. Or hang on,

01:05:51.040 you're actually better at this than me, but I'm the one that's going to get the high paying job

01:05:55.040 because I live in that other postcode. So there has to be some constraint because education of

01:06:00.320 inequality is where this all starts. That's where the inequalities are cleaved and that's where

01:06:04.640 they're formalised and accelerated. Then you have to look at the labour market, right? So there's lots of

01:06:10.240 talk about the kind of resurgence in trade union activism, but we have to remember that

01:06:14.560 that resurgence is coming from a historic low in trade union membership and an absolute marginalisation

01:06:21.280 of the language of equality. What we have to understand is that collective bargaining workers

01:06:27.280 coming together and guaranteeing their safety, their pay, their conditions, this is a primary driver of

01:06:33.920 social equality. This is why you had the golden age of social mobility in the mid 20th century,

01:06:40.000 where you had record levels of inter-class marriage. You had record levels of health equality,

01:06:45.200 educational equality. It genuinely was one of the best times in Britain's social history,

01:06:51.600 where the power, the economic power of the government was used to restrain

01:06:59.920 unfettered capitalist interests in a way that sort of worked for both sides until Thatcher came along.

01:07:08.400 So something to do with the labour market, whether it's worker representation at board level.

01:07:15.680 But either way, that all has to come from the bottom. The corporations can say,

01:07:19.200 why don't we invite one of your shop stewards up to sit in the meeting and we'll try and co-opt him,

01:07:24.400 you know, or pretend we're listening to him. The pressure's got to come from the bottom. So really,

01:07:29.120 that's on workers and working class people. And then the third thing I think I would,

01:07:33.440 symbolically, Britain could break away from its relationship with hereditary privilege by just

01:07:39.360 bulldozing the House of Lords and creating a second chamber of parliament that's comprised of

01:07:45.440 ordinary people, experts in different fields, politically, philosophically diverse range of people.

01:07:52.240 You could do it on a rotation basis. It could be voluntary or it could be called up like jury

01:07:56.960 duty. You get the offer to do it. And if you don't want to do it, fine. But if you had people who,

01:08:02.080 you know, women who have fleed domestic violence or people with disabilities, if they got a chance to

01:08:07.680 look at some of that welfare reform legislation and send it back to the House of Commons saying,

01:08:12.720 hang on, I think some of this stuff might kill people.

01:08:14.960 And then that would create an opportunity for there to be more dialogue across these big,

01:08:22.080 massive chasms. And so I think taking the three of these together, what you're looking at is three

01:08:28.000 different policies that's trying to reduce that gap between classes. It's not saying eat the rich,

01:08:33.680 guillotines, maybe guillotine for a couple of folks. But I think it's about trying to push us

01:08:40.000 into spaces together where we can begin to hear each other and understand where we're coming from

01:08:44.720 and what we need. And one of the problems with inequality is that it drives people apart

01:08:49.600 economically and culturally. And that discussion and dialogue becomes really strained.

01:08:54.160 Well, I'm really glad we had you on to have this conversation because the more we do this,

01:08:58.640 the more I start to think, you know, you're clearly someone who thinks about things in a very

01:09:03.040 complex and nuanced and sophisticated way, which is why I've really enjoyed listening to what

01:09:07.280 you've had to say. But the more I do what we do, I also start to think a little bit more like that.

01:09:13.520 And what one of the things I recognize is, you know, I still have the question of how we pay for

01:09:18.560 some of the things that you'd like to do. And I think that's a valid question. I really do.

01:09:22.560 But I also think we can't have a conversation about how to run our society without voices like

01:09:28.400 yours being part of that conversation. It doesn't mean we do everything you're suggesting,

01:09:32.160 but it does mean that, you know, the people who have wealth and power and influence don't pull the

01:09:38.800 blanket all the way over to their side. Yeah. So I'm really glad we had this conversation. I

01:09:43.440 really appreciate the way you've talked about this stuff. I really recommend everybody get the book.

01:09:49.200 And I hope some people who are listening take on board a lot of the things that you've said. I

01:09:52.800 really do. No, thanks for the opportunity. I just thought it'd be interesting to come along

01:09:55.920 and give an account of myself as someone on the left. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know,

01:10:00.560 there is a caricature out there of what the left is. And the only way that people on the left can

01:10:05.680 beat that caricature is getting in a position where they can be heard and seen and maybe coming

01:10:12.080 across a bit more reasonable than some would lead you to believe. Absolutely. Darren, we always

01:10:18.720 finish our interview with the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about

01:10:23.840 that we really should be? Wow. I had the whole hour there to have that running in the background.

01:10:32.000 In terms of social issues or just generally? Whatever you want. Anything you want. Just

01:10:36.240 generally. Wow, man. I mean, I have to be honest, see, in my spare time, in my spare time,

01:10:44.000 I love watching computer game punditry, right? Yeah. Even computer game punditry that's not... What games?

01:10:50.160 I like... I'm watching all the punditry around The Last of Us remake, right? So anyway,

01:10:56.480 what I wanted to recommend to people, which is completely tangential to anything that we've

01:11:01.600 discussed, if you haven't played it, right? If you have played it, then the remake's not worth the

01:11:06.720 money. But if you haven't played The Last of Us on PlayStation, they've just made a remake of it,

01:11:14.160 and it's available on the PS5. And it is a game that will leave the kind of imprint on you that the

01:11:20.400 best albums or the best movies or, you know, admiring a beautiful sunset will leave on you.

01:11:28.320 I mean, I feel emotional just talking about it. It's just this beautiful, simple story,

01:11:32.080 post-apocalyptic scenario. A girl has immunity from a virus and a pandemic. Some guy she doesn't

01:11:38.960 know tries to take it across the country, and they form a relationship as they go.

01:11:44.160 It just came to mind there, so I thought I would just mention that rather than try to come up with

01:11:47.760 some smart arse thing. Because when I get out of here, I'm going to be going on to read the reviews

01:11:51.920 of it so I can pick it up myself. Yeah. I haven't played that one, but there are some...

01:11:57.360 This is what people don't understand. People like to shit on computer games.

01:12:00.640 Some computer games are like an interactive movie, which takes you on a beautiful journey.

01:12:05.680 No, this really is that. And it has beautiful music. And the remake is such high fidelity

01:12:12.160 compared to the original version. I mean, I've just been watching the video footage of it online,

01:12:16.560 and I think it's worth the £70, but I've got a wee bit of spare disposable income.

01:12:20.480 Somebody might want to wait until it's cheaper. But when I leave here and I'm on the train,

01:12:24.240 that's what I'll be doing the whole way home. So sometimes that's an insight into people you don't get.

01:12:29.360 Like, what's their guilty pleasures? What do they actually do when they're not totally

01:12:32.640 absorbed in the world of politics? You know, I like watching people talk about things

01:12:37.120 that they're passionate about, whether it's computer games, films, or stuff like this.

01:12:41.120 Mm. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. If people want to find you online,

01:12:45.680 if they want to buy your book, where's the best place to do that?

01:12:47.600 The social distance between us. Make sure you go and get it.

01:12:49.840 I'm at Loki Scottish Rap on Twitter, and that's probably the best place to get me. And if you can

01:12:56.320 stomach me long enough in there, you'll find out where all the other things are.

01:12:59.920 Darren, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. And thank you

01:13:03.920 for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon. We'll have a brilliant interview like this one,

01:13:08.640 or or show. And of course, we will see you right now for the bonus questions with Darren on Locals.

01:13:12.880 Absolutely. So make sure to join Locals and check those out. But thank you so much for watching.

01:13:19.040 And if you fancy listening to this interview and many others, it's also available as a podcast.

01:13:25.840 Take care and see you soon, guys.

01:13:30.000 And where are you on drug decriminalisation?

01:13:33.440 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto. The true

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01:14:04.080 hit is here, the Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise. April 28th through June 7th, 2026, the Princess of

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TRIGGERnometry - October 06, 2022

＂The System is Rigged Against the Poor＂ - Darren McGarvey

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