Trevor Phillips： ＂We Live in the Age of Gangster Politics＂
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per minute
152.49225
Harmful content
Misogyny
6
sentences flagged
Toxicity
38
sentences flagged
Hate speech
33
sentences flagged
Summary
Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, joins Francis and Constantine to discuss how he went from being one of the most prominent anti-racist activists in the 1980s to being suspended from the Labour Party.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.
00:00:09.100
And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:14.260
What a terrific guest we have for you today. He's the former chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
00:00:21.960
Thank you very much indeed, Francis and Constantine.
00:00:25.140
It's been a while getting here, but I'm glad we are here now.
00:00:30.400
As are we. You know, in doing the research, one of the things that shocked me the most is your age.
00:00:40.480
But you've had a distinguished career, a very long one.
00:00:43.400
I love this show already. I love this show already.
00:00:45.260
Can we just repeat that bit for another 25 times?
00:00:51.020
We can keep going on that topic, but you've had a distinguished career.
00:00:54.980
And the question I really want to ask you is, how have you gone from being one of the most prominent anti-racist activists and spokespeople to being where you are now,
00:01:06.440
which is being one of the most prominent critics of identity politics suspended from the Labour Party and here talking to us on this very problematic show?
00:01:15.180
The world changed, Constantine. The world changed.
00:01:20.240
I wouldn't say that, you know, I'm not one of those idiots who sits around and says,
0.99
00:01:24.600
I stayed the same and everybody else changed.
1.00
00:01:28.600
That's nonsense. And that's both arrogant and also the mark of somebody extremely dim.
0.98
00:01:34.220
But it is also true to say that when I started on my journey in public life, which was as a journalist, really,
00:01:44.480
the things that mattered most were what's true, what do you know, what can you actually assert,
00:01:53.180
as opposed to what do you believe, to a place where actually now I think what seems to be more important is the last one.
00:02:03.420
What do you believe? And therefore, what facts, quote unquote, will you select? And whose gang do you belong to?
00:02:12.640
And I think if I were to give an answer to your question that made any sense, I suspect part of the problem in,
00:02:21.740
if you like, my public image as you've described it, is that I don't really belong to a gang.
00:02:27.840
So it's possible for anybody to say, oh, he thinks this, he thinks that, and he's wrong,
00:02:34.980
mainly because he doesn't belong to our intellectual or political gang.
00:02:40.580
Well, you know, that's life. I was brought up to believe that you stand on what you think,
00:02:50.580
you say what you think, you argue it out publicly. And you don't, you know, as we say in football,
00:02:57.500
you don't play the man, you play the ball. I think we've now got to a place where most political,
00:03:02.920
most public argument is about playing the man or woman, and not being too interested in what it is
00:03:08.240
they actually have to say. So I suspect the straight answer to your question is that the way
00:03:13.860
in which we talk about things in public and the way in which we deal with other people in public
00:03:19.420
has changed. All of our ideas have changed because the world has changed. But the way we argue things
00:03:26.120
out have changed. So whereas in, I guess, 1980, people would have worried about what is Trevor
00:03:31.160
Phillips saying? What they're now talking about is, you know, how many kinds of bastard is Trevor
0.98
00:03:36.120
Phillips, really? Well, let's explore that very subject on this show, Trevor. But, you know,
0.97
00:03:42.400
your use of the word gang is so fascinating to me because I almost feel like the sort of brutal
00:03:49.660
enforcement of conformity that happens within a gang is kind of like one of the changes we've seen
00:03:55.540
in politics as well. So, you know, I remember growing up in this country watching, you know,
00:04:00.640
Kent Clark be in the Conservative Party and Dennis Skinner being in Tony Blair's Labour Party.
00:04:06.860
And that was sort of the norm, like somebody who's completely on many issues opposed to the
00:04:11.780
leadership of their party being prominent, being respected, you know, having their voice heard
00:04:16.320
to where we are now, where you have to toe the party line. Is that a big change that has occurred
00:04:23.800
It's a huge change. It's poisonous. You refer to my position within or outside. I'm a bit,
00:04:31.200
at the moment, I'm a bit Schrodinger's cat. I've been suspended by the Labour Party, but not expelled.
00:04:37.600
And for the record, since I wrote to the Labour Party now, 11 months ago, explaining or asking why
00:04:45.820
I'd been suspended, I haven't had a single communication, not a text, not a phone call,
00:04:50.800
not a letter. You know, you never write here. Anyway, so I literally am somewhere in some kind
00:04:59.100
of limbo. But the whole issue for me, and of me, has not really been an argument about whether
00:05:06.700
I wrote something or said something that was right or wrong. The whole, the reason that I was suspended
00:05:12.800
was because my very presence is in some way regarded as polluting the party. Now, that comes
00:05:21.640
to your point, that we no longer seem to be able to debate different points of view within a political
00:05:29.800
party. You either belong to the leadership faction or some other faction. And depending where you are,
00:05:37.760
you are fair game, you are going to be attacked by the others, not because of what you believe or
00:05:44.700
what you say you believe, but because you don't belong. Now, I personally, I mean, that's gangster
00:05:52.160
politics. That's gangster politics. And I'm not having it.
00:05:57.400
And Trevor, when did this culture begin to seep into the Labour Party, but also modern day politics as
00:06:03.840
well? That's a good and a very difficult question, to which I'm not sure I entirely know the answer.
00:06:11.380
I think there are a number of points at which you could name it. First of all, I think that
00:06:19.280
the Blairite group, of which everybody knows I was a part, introduced the idea into British politics
00:06:29.040
politics, that you could have message discipline. That is to say that if you belong to a political
00:06:35.920
party, and it takes a view, then you have to be pretty fundamentally opposed to that point of view
00:06:45.500
to go about saying that I think that the party is wrong. That is to say that there was some
00:06:52.380
responsibility on you as a party member, as part of the organisation, to stick to the line, really,
00:07:00.980
unless you really, really had some very basic fundamental disagreement. And I think that,
00:07:09.260
frankly, was a good thing. And it was a good thing for democracy, because it meant that the citizen
00:07:13.580
understands what the Labour Party or the Conservative Party stands for. What I think then happened was,
00:07:20.040
post-Tony Blair's leaving the leadership of the party, is that people interpreted message discipline
00:07:27.600
as a sort of authoritarian imposition. Not that you had to be persuaded, or you had to believe,
00:07:35.860
in some way, in what the party was saying. It was that, if you're a member of the party,
00:07:40.560
it doesn't matter what you think, as long as you go along with what the line is, then you're in.
00:07:46.760
And I think part of the problem was that Labour itself forgot to try to persuade people and simply
00:07:54.560
started to tell people what to do. And then others copied it. The Tories copied it when Cameron and
00:08:00.400
Osborne were in government. I think something else has happened, though, since then. And this is,
00:08:07.360
in a way, I suppose, pretty much fundamental to my view of contemporary politics.
00:08:12.360
In, when I was involved in student politics, and in my early time in politics, you could always say
00:08:21.680
that in the, if you think of politics as a vehicle, as a car, that there were two people in the front.
00:08:29.800
One was economics, and one was identity and culture. And historically, economics had its hand on the
00:08:37.080
steering wheel. You know, you decided where you stood, depending on whether you were for a big
00:08:42.940
state, whether you're for a lot of spending, or whether you're for, you know, deregulation, and so
00:08:48.260
on. And the identity questions, race, gender, and so on, sort of went along behind that. I think
00:08:55.920
over the last 10 to 12 years, maybe since the financial crash, something has happened in which
00:09:05.420
the position has been inverted. And now identity has its hands on the steering wheel. And that's a
00:09:11.100
problem, because it's no longer, your position in politics isn't just determined by what you think,
00:09:18.660
let's say, about race, or about trans rights. It's also influenced by what you are and what you look
00:09:24.940
like. So people who happen to be female, have greater authority on issues to do with gender.
0.99
00:09:33.100
People who look like me, apparently have greater authority in the issues of race.
00:09:37.360
Well, this is all a bit bizarre, isn't it? Because the fact that I am black doesn't make me
00:09:42.420
much of an authority, just on race or racial equality. Why would it? I mean, the fact that I've
00:09:48.940
got a liver doesn't turn me into a surgeon. I think something's happened in politics in which
00:09:56.200
the virtue and the value of knowing stuff, of having an argument that you can sustain, has
00:10:04.800
sort of disappeared and been subsumed under the prevalence of, for example, the jargon phrase
00:10:15.500
now is lived experience. If you can say, I've got this lived experience, it gives you some
00:10:21.660
automatic authority. When frankly, as I say, you know, because somebody happens to have
00:10:27.460
a brain, frankly, I'm not letting them take a scalpel to my head. You know, you need to
00:10:34.140
But Trevor, let me just push back on that idea. So wouldn't you say that your experience of
00:10:40.880
racism and your opinion of racism is going to be more valid than mine? Because you're
00:10:45.840
a black guy and you grew and you were around in the 80s and the 70s. And you saw a real visceral
00:10:51.380
hatred to black people that as a white person, I've never experienced?
00:10:59.820
No. I mean, the point is, look, I've experienced those things. But there are two there are two
00:11:09.380
issues here. First of all, the fact that I experienced, you know, going on on leading
00:11:18.000
demonstrations against the National Front in the 70s, doesn't say anything about my knowledge
00:11:25.120
and ability to deal with the ethnic pay gap in a large corporation. There is absolutely
00:11:32.600
no particular relationship between those two things. And the question you have to ask yourself,
00:11:39.380
is, does, which one of those things matters more today? The National Front doesn't exist.
00:11:48.000
We put the British National Party out of business. But what we do know is that some ethnic groups
0.99
00:11:55.520
are about 50% behind others in average pay. Which one of those things is most important right
00:12:04.780
now. Well, I would say it's a second, it's a pay question. And the fact that I might have marched
00:12:10.000
against the National Front doesn't automatically give me any authority on that second question.
00:12:16.120
It happens that I know quite a lot about it, probably more than most. But that's because
00:12:21.460
I spend a lot of time studying charts. I've done a lot of the research. I've, you know, I have a couple
00:12:29.080
of companies. One is a big recruitment company, one is a smaller data analytics company, which
00:12:33.920
sort of started as a hobby, but is now a commercial enterprise. And we work with a lot of clients. So
00:12:39.460
we know stuff. And it doesn't matter. The fact I've got the skin, the colour I've got, isn't what gives
00:12:45.800
me authority and knowledge there. It's the fact that I spend night after night after night trying to
00:12:51.240
solve the problems of our clients on these issues. So this whole idea that being a thing gives you
00:12:59.420
automatic authority over everything to do with that thing is just nonsense. And by the way, the other
00:13:07.480
point is, the fact that I might have had an experience as a black person doesn't mean every
00:13:12.500
other black person's had the same experience. That's the thing I hate most. The idea that once I've walked
0.77
00:13:17.240
into a room, everybody thinks that they know exactly everything about me, and that every other black
00:13:22.180
person is exactly the same. Now, if you want to put the R word on anybody, or any kind of thinking, that's it.
00:13:31.740
Troy, you're giving me goosebumps here, because it's such a refreshing take. And it's refreshing while
00:13:38.040
simultaneously being, I feel like the way we used to talk and think about these things, the facts matter, feelings
00:13:44.040
less. So yeah, you can add a little bit of experience here or there to modify your view on things. But
00:13:49.180
overall, what matters is our ability to look at reality. So how do we untangle this web that we've
00:13:56.900
woven for ourselves, where who you are matters a lot more than what you actually know? And just
00:14:05.460
this, everything is determined by your skin color. Like, it's regressive beyond belief to me. How do we get
1.00
00:14:12.340
out of that? You've got to fight every battle every day. I mean, you know, to take a sort of
00:14:18.580
apparently not very related example, but it's a, you're asking about how do you win an identity
00:14:26.640
battle? Probably the biggest single political... But how you stop playing the identity game is what
00:14:31.440
I'm really asking. Yeah, well, let me just take what might appear to be a little bit of a diversion,
00:14:37.680
but it's not a very big one. The biggest single identity question in the United Kingdom today
00:14:43.240
is probably the issue of Britishness, as opposed to the components of Britishness. And the political
00:14:50.220
area in which that being fought out is over Scottish independence. Now, our friends in the
00:14:58.000
Scottish National Party will say that their nationalism is all civic, and it's all based on policy,
00:15:04.440
and all that. But actually, they know, and everybody else knows, that for 25 years, they have fought
00:15:13.560
little battles every day, in every school, in every workplace, to have the idea of Scottish identity,
00:15:23.340
an ethnic identity, recognised, essentially tartanising Scottish life. Now, I'm not criticising
00:15:30.880
them for that. But in a sense, I admire what they've done, because they have simply fought every
00:15:37.560
battle to assert that Scottishness is significant, is a significant identity, and should be part of
00:15:45.460
people's decision making about politics, about where they work, how they treat their neighbours,
00:15:50.540
and so on. And in the same way, I think the answer to your question is, there isn't a sort of great,
00:15:57.640
big, single answer. I think this is an issue that was going to be fought on every single front,
00:16:03.860
on the issues of, let's say, statues, on the issues of what's in the curriculum, on the question of
00:16:09.580
should you monitor ethnicity pay gaps or not. And at the heart of it, for me, I mean, you know, I'm a
00:16:15.280
geek. Basically, what I should have said right from the very beginning is, what you need to understand
00:16:21.020
is, I'm a guy who is happiest, not doing this, but worrying about spreadsheets, running software,
00:16:29.480
to try to work out what the patterns are, where is the problem? And therefore, where do we put the
00:16:35.480
effort? So my big thing, to be honest, is I think we need more data, we need more facts, and we need to
00:16:42.400
share that more with the public. At the moment, when we talk about race, it's all about feelings,
00:16:48.020
it's all about my impression, even though the impression of an individual doesn't tell you very
00:16:54.840
much about the whole group, or indeed, the whole country. So when we talk about race and identity,
00:17:02.380
it's like, the parallel, I suppose, I would sometimes make is that trying to read the political
00:17:08.220
landscape with an impressionist painting, rather than when what you really need is a Google map,
00:17:19.500
And Trevor, don't you think part of the problem is as well, is that we ingest narratives, we all
00:17:24.020
have narratives, whatever they may be, you know, everyone who voted Brexit is racist, the EU is
00:17:29.220
a universal force for good, Scottish nationalism is positive, English nationalism is negative.
00:17:35.120
And like you said, we don't appear to be analysing the data. Why have we become so obsessed with
00:17:44.720
Because it's way easier. It's way easier. I mean, the point about most politics is a very simple
00:17:52.160
one. There is no good or bad in any political decision. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a decision.
00:17:59.580
I mean, you know, what idiot would say there's a good way to tackle the health service or COVID or the
0.99
00:18:07.120
economy. And there's a bad way. Why do we choose a bad way, man? I mean, that's, that's more that.
0.99
00:18:13.040
I mean, that's just stupid. The point is, most political decisions are only political decisions,
0.99
00:18:19.600
because what you're actually doing most of the time is choosing between bad and worse. And the way that
00:18:26.640
you evaluate bad or worse, to some extent depends on your character. It depends on the range of
00:18:34.280
knowledge and data that you have available. And it depends by and large on your instinct. I mean,
00:18:40.500
you know, I've been, I've run big organisations, I've been in politics a lot, a long time. One of the
00:18:46.900
things that I think most politicians hesitate to say is that almost every decision you take has to be
00:18:57.140
taken on the basis of incomplete information. You know, it's always great. And we've seen this a lot
00:19:03.600
in COVID, that everybody knows six months down the line, exactly what should have been done.
00:19:10.620
The truth is, when you have to take the decision, almost always, you're having to take it on the
00:19:16.000
basis of some data that you have available, but a guess or a projection on what might happen.
00:19:24.820
And to some extent, that will depend on your experience. There's a, I won't get into the boring
00:19:30.840
technicalities of it. But there's a sort of a kind of analysis called Bayesian analysis, which
00:19:36.240
in which you use your experience of situations to try to predict what's going to happen next.
00:19:45.160
And some of it, frankly, just depends on what your instinct and your preferences for the kind of
00:19:50.520
society you want to live in are. So for example, somebody like me, who really values
00:19:57.020
individual choice more, I think, than what you might call solidarity, which doesn't make me a Tory,
00:20:06.300
it just means that I've grown up in a circumstance in which, frankly, I don't really like to be told
00:20:12.180
what to do by the state, because that's mostly run by people who are not like me. So my tendency,
00:20:19.420
generally speaking, is to go, yeah, okay, thanks very much. I'll make my own decision. I'm not going to
00:20:24.800
depend on you. Somebody else might equally validly, who, for example, has spent their life and benefited
00:20:34.140
from the health service or the education system, say, I trust government, I trust the state. That
00:20:40.140
doesn't make them bad, but it means they'll make a different decision to me. Now, I think part of the
00:20:44.180
problem with politics at the moment is that it just refuses to recognise that both of those positions
00:20:50.440
can be equally valid. And the task of politics is to navigate and negotiate between those different
00:20:59.620
I mean, it's a really, really, you know, really good way of summing it up, because it just seems at the
00:21:08.420
moment that those two types of people, they can't agree on anything. They can't agree. Whereas before,
00:21:15.380
we used to listen and go, well, look, I don't agree with what you've said, but I can see the merits and
00:21:20.020
the value of your argument. But now it just seems that we are two ships who are just simply drifting
00:21:30.340
Yeah, well, I know the two of you, basically, after this, you're just going to punch each other
0.81
00:21:34.560
in the face. And so I know that I know how you lot have fun. So but let's not go into that.
00:21:43.080
You'll have to rod us around in a minute. But I think you're right up to a point. But one of the
00:21:50.780
things I when I was an editor and the executive producer, one of the terms that I basically banned
00:21:59.280
was something you just said, we are like this, or we are like that. And it's interesting. See,
00:22:09.920
I think that's now used very, very widely. What people usually mean by that, actually, is everybody
00:22:17.020
I know is like that. They don't actually know the whole country is like that. They don't know that
00:22:23.080
all men are like that. They just know that everybody they talk to is like that. I think this is part of
00:22:28.140
the problem. You've discussed on this show, I know, the echo chambers that has been encouraged by social
00:22:34.500
media and so on. I think that there's a big problem in this country, and to some extent in the United
00:22:40.440
States, that the we that the decision makers, the opinion mongers, that you know, the what Vernon
00:22:48.060
Bogdana, the constitutional historian calls the exam passing classes. When we when people like us use
00:22:54.720
the term we, we actually literally mean people like us. But unfortunately, that's only 15 10 15% of the
00:23:01.040
population. I think the truth is that 80% of the population don't have those kind of vicious knockdown
00:23:09.260
drag out, you're this you're a fascist, no, you're a kind of anarchist, lunatic argument. Most people in
0.97
00:23:17.000
most of the time, in most families, they might disagree about Brexit, or, you know, or about
00:23:24.140
whether we should have masks or not have masks. But they will listen to each other with respect.
00:23:30.560
And in the end, they'll say, look, look, Uncle Jim, I hear what you're saying, but I just I'm just not
00:23:35.700
convinced. Most of this country, I think, doesn't participate in that sort of vicious rhetoric.
00:23:44.040
And I think for myself, that is the biggest problem in politics, that the people who are having
00:23:50.160
most of the airtime, who get most of the space, who get on shows like this, are busy shouting each
0.97
00:23:59.080
other down, and telling everybody else, he's a wanker. Excuse me, forgive me, I know you don't like
0.94
00:24:04.460
this. You can swear all you want. He's a tosser. He doesn't know his arse from his elbow. Whereas
00:24:13.920
most people go, yeah, yeah, okay. But most things are a matter of judgment. They're not
00:24:21.880
black and white, right or wrong. And we've simply that the elite classes, one reason I hate the
0.89
00:24:29.600
political and media elite, with a deep loathing, they have simply lost the skill, or the desire
00:24:40.500
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting point you make. We do try and steer away from that as
00:24:45.580
much as we can on the show. But obviously, you're going to get people coming through as
00:24:50.360
well, who have strong opinions about stuff. And it's a balance to be struck. In our defense,
00:24:55.080
I've got strong opinions. Sorry to interrupt you. I have very strong opinions. As my children
00:25:01.880
would say, I will start, not that I could, but I will start an argument in an empty room.
00:25:09.540
But what I object to about what we're doing at the moment, is that not only do we disagree,
00:25:17.380
but we disrespect people with whom we disagree. And I think that's intolerable. I think that is
00:25:32.020
Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto. The true
00:25:38.180
story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including
00:25:43.420
America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline. Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical
00:25:49.800
mega hit is here. The Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise. April 28th through June 7th,
00:25:55.860
2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre. Get tickets at mirvish.com.
00:26:03.620
Hey, Francis, where do you get your computer accessories?
00:26:09.120
No, you idiot. I mean, where do you buy them?
1.00
00:26:11.060
Instead of buying from some faceless multinational, why not support a small British business?
00:26:18.700
Taskmat is a UK company that has an incredible new product called the Taskmat Scribble. It combines
00:26:25.120
your mouse mat with a whiteboard so you can quickly and easily create an update task list,
00:26:32.520
I like scribbling. It's great if you're like me and struggle with to-do lists.
00:26:36.960
It's the perfect tool for getting yourself on track, staying on top of your to-do lists,
00:26:41.800
and getting information out of your head so you can focus on the things that matter.
00:26:46.340
I use Taskmat to make sure I never miss a meal, snack, or nap.
00:26:50.820
True. And by the way, getting your Taskmat Scribble couldn't be easier. Not only is it available on
00:26:56.800
Amazon, but you also get 15% off if you use our promo code, which is, of course,
00:27:03.860
Hit the link in the description or search for Taskmat Scribble on Amazon and use the promo code
00:27:10.340
Trigger15 and unleash a world of productivity and naps.
0.99
00:27:21.860
You're not alone, Francis. During the pandemic, British online infrastructure has faced an
00:27:26.920
astronomical rise in targeted cyber attacks, which is what I'm sure happened to you.
00:27:31.480
That is dreadful. What can I do to defend myself?
00:27:35.180
That is where Pocket Seam come in. They offer businesses like ours a special solution that
00:27:40.500
alerts us to hackers, crackers, and malicious employees.
00:27:45.220
Not only that, they are the only Seam provider to offer pay-as-you-go cyber defence for companies.
00:27:53.040
Absolutely. And they're from Doncaster, so they need the work.
00:27:56.080
You say that. Actually, they have kept their prices flat during the pandemic to make sure
00:28:03.600
Pocket Seam are offering Trigonometry fans a 10% discount.
00:28:07.660
All you've got to do is hit them up by email at info at pocketseam.co.uk
00:28:12.340
and make sure the subject of that email is Trigonometry and they will give you your 10%
00:28:19.560
That email again is I-N-F-O at P-O-C-K-E-T-S-I-E-M.co.uk.
00:28:29.820
And don't forget to have Trigonometry in your subject line so you get your 10% discount.
00:28:35.240
Can I just say, if you needed that spell, you really shouldn't be running a business.
00:28:38.380
I think you're right. And we all, I think, particularly with social media, all of us
00:28:45.520
can take responsibility. I certainly would include myself in this for sometimes, as you
00:28:50.240
say, playing the man and not the ball. So I take your criticism gratefully.
00:28:56.000
But one thing we will say is the episode will be called, Trevor Phillips called me a wanker.
00:29:00.220
That would be brilliant. But listen, Trevor, I want to talk to you about identity. We started
00:29:08.440
with it and you alluded somewhat to it. This idea, and we have mentioned it, but I want to go deeper
00:29:15.680
into it. This idea that you should see yourself as part of a racial group, as a tribe, as a member
00:29:22.840
of a tribe. And I should see myself as a member of a different tribe. And Francis should see himself
00:29:28.380
as a member of another tribe. Where does that lead us? Because, you know, I've studied a little
00:29:34.620
bit of history, and I'm not optimistic. Where does that take a society, in your opinion?
00:29:42.120
Well, it could take you into Rwanda, or some of the worst excesses that we've seen in the United
1.00
00:29:51.500
States. But it could equally take you, I think, in a modern society into a different place. I mean,
00:30:01.700
you know, tribalism, we think of as automatically a bad thing, because it has often descended into
00:30:11.440
a competition for resources between people who look like me, are related to me, and people who look
00:30:20.220
like you and are related to you. And I don't have to make any judgment about what you think, what sort
00:30:26.900
of person you are, what your desires are, what your ambitions are. As long as you look like you look,
00:30:33.780
you're the enemy. I get that. I get that that is one outcome of tribalism. But maybe this is, in a way,
00:30:44.060
coming back to what I was saying earlier on about the influence of background. I come from a very big
00:30:49.860
family. You know, I'm the 10th of, as far as we know, 10 of my father's children. And, you know,
00:30:59.940
tonight, for example, we're going to be on the Zoom. And there'll probably be 40, 50 of us.
00:31:06.420
And that's just a bit, that's just a bit of the outfit. But we are, we are a tribe. But in that
00:31:16.560
tribe, there are doctors, there are lawyers, there are management consultants, there are people,
00:31:22.260
you know, there are people who act as bailiffs, there are people who are unemployed, there are
00:31:28.920
people who do not go out to work. There's, I think there's probably a millionaire or two in there
00:31:33.700
somewhere. There are all sorts. But there's something that brings us together. We all have,
00:31:40.860
in this case, the same grandmother. And there are things that we share because of that. There are lots
00:31:47.440
of other things we don't share because of that. But I value the things that we share. I mean,
00:31:54.200
they are important to me. They're the things that make me the sort of person I am, to a large extent.
00:31:59.880
That doesn't mean that were I to, you know, come on a similar gathering in the Kissin family or the
00:32:09.940
Foster family, I would think, I'd automatically think, let's eliminate the Kissins, let's eliminate
1.00
00:32:15.480
the Fosters, because they're not as good as us. What I'd probably be doing is thinking, what those guys
0.85
00:32:19.640
got that we could copy? So my view about this idea of identity is that we should never get into the
00:32:28.860
place where what we're saying is, identity is bad, because we are all the same under the skin,
0.86
00:32:36.620
which is complete balls. Everybody knows that we are not. Yeah, we are creatures of our environment.
0.86
00:32:42.200
We are people who belong, who belong to it. You know, I'm, I come from a religious background,
00:32:48.800
a Christian background. I believe in it. And it's important to me, it gives me my values.
00:32:54.540
That doesn't mean that I think somebody who has a different faith is a worse person, actually.
00:33:01.420
For example, there are many things from Islam I wish we could borrow. For example, attitude to alcohol.
0.93
00:33:07.840
So my point about this whole issue of identity is, there is nothing wrong with cleaving to an identity
00:33:16.000
and regarding it as important. What is wrong is regarding everybody else's identity as somehow
00:33:22.200
lesser than yours or wrong? And secondly, thinking that everybody who shares some aspect of your
00:33:30.600
identity has to be exactly the same as you and take the same outlook as you do. That's where we're
00:33:36.980
going wrong with that issue. Well, let me add another point to borrow your family metaphor. The one thing
00:33:43.420
that will unite your family is some sort of shared values, which, which, while not explicit,
00:33:52.200
will be there, right? There are things perhaps passed down by your grandma, grandmother to everybody
00:33:57.320
else. And I wonder whether that is where we are going wrong, because you, you mentioned the issue
00:34:03.660
of Britishness before. I can certainly tell you from my point as a first generation immigrant,
00:34:08.520
you know, I am surprised by how terrified people are of even admitting that such a thing as British
00:34:16.220
identity exists. We can't seem to define what British values are. And again, when I say we, I do mean
00:34:22.500
that the chattering classes, of course I do. So there is that, that perhaps is an issue. Do we have enough
00:34:29.540
holding us together when we're encouraged to focus a lot on our individual identities? Do we have enough
00:34:36.340
as a society to hold us together? I absolutely think we do. And by the way, I mean, let's take this
00:34:43.760
issue of first generation immigrants. You know, if you, and this is where, you know, I'm a data guy.
00:34:52.440
So I, I don't worry about what somebody told me in Tesco last week, I go and look at the data.
00:34:57.140
So if you ask people in this country in general, do you think speaking English routinely is going to
00:35:08.600
be an advantage to your children? 80 something percent, probably more will say yes. And the
00:35:16.860
people who are most hawkish on this issue are not white people who tend to go, oh yeah, well, we need
0.76
00:35:23.260
to, we need to take into account the fact that all those Pakistanis speak some other funny language
0.99
00:35:28.180
at home and no, no, no. No, actually the people who are most hawkish are the first, are the immigrants.
0.97
00:35:35.860
Why? Because our experience is, if you are going to prosper in this society, which in many ways is
00:35:43.420
hostile, you absolutely need to master this society's ways, starting with its language. So immigrant parents,
1.00
00:35:52.720
and I, I, I, I defy you to, to tell me that this is wrong. Immigrant parents of all backgrounds will
00:35:59.380
be saying to their children, you have to be twice as good as them to get half as far. So pass your
00:36:07.260
exams. Don't give me any nonsense about you're going to be a musician or an actor or any of that kind of
00:36:12.320
stuff. Go and become an accountant or a doctor or a lawyer, get a job. And then you can play as much
00:36:19.640
music as you like once you've got the job, right? That is the immigrant position. Immigrants, more than
0.99
00:36:26.320
anybody else, actually cleave to the idea, the reality of what being British is like. That's why
0.93
00:36:34.420
they come here. So this whole idea, this is somehow, you know, we've got to get all complicated and get
00:36:43.060
ourselves in a state about British identity, because otherwise the immigrants are going to feel
0.99
00:36:47.740
a bit alienated, only comes from people who have never met an immigrant, actually.
00:36:53.540
Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. But that's exactly my point, though, Trevor, which is, it's the, the people who are
00:36:59.800
the chattering classes, uh, who don't understand the impact of their actions on people like me and my
0.98
00:37:07.600
children, who are going to be telling them that they don't need to, you know, whatever it might
00:37:13.740
be, whether it's to speak English or to, to understand the local culture, they don't need
0.99
00:37:18.440
to blend in or settle in, or they don't need to integrate. They need to just, you know, dive as
00:37:24.040
deeply as they can into the Russian Jewish identity or whatever other nonsense they come up with.
0.99
00:37:28.340
Shall I tell you why? Shall I tell you why? And this is one of the reasons that, this is one of the
00:37:32.280
reasons that all that lot, all that chattering class hate me. Um, I, I, I frequently say that
1.00
00:37:37.600
the one thing that white liberals most hate is a black man who doesn't owe them a favor
0.99
00:37:44.520
and who they can't patronize. One of the reasons is they like the idea that, you know, we are outsiders
0.98
00:37:54.240
who suffer, who need to be looked after, who constantly need to be saved. It's really important
00:38:02.000
that we stay different and that we stay at the bottom of the pile. Because if we don't, two
00:38:10.140
things are true. One is we don't need to depend on them to look after us. And the other thing that
00:38:17.520
is true is that we might actually take their jobs. And of course, one of the problems that we are going
00:38:24.880
to see, and we're to some extent seeing it already, is that some minority groups, particularly Indians
00:38:32.300
and Chinese, are earning, in those cases, something like 12 and 15 percent more on average per hour
00:38:42.280
than white Brits. Now, I don't sit inside the homes of white families. But I bet you,
0.91
00:38:51.220
I bet you that there is a sneaking anxiety about all of these clever Indian doctors and accountants
1.00
00:39:01.080
somehow creeping up the ladder. We're seeing it in Technicolor in the United States, where whites are
1.00
00:39:09.000
likely to become a minority. They're not that bothered, to be honest, about African Americans,
00:39:13.880
because they, you know, they can always patronize African Americans, because we're still, or not we,
00:39:20.060
the African Americans are still way behind. They really hate the Asian Americans, really hate the
1.00
00:39:25.180
Asian Americans, because actually, those guys have pitched up, they're the fastest growing
00:39:30.480
population group. And you know what, they dominate some of the industries, particularly some of the new
00:39:37.560
ones, the digital ones, the digitals. So one of the issues, I think, that we are all going to have to
00:39:43.400
confront is the sense that the old order of things in which, you know, elite white people sit at the top
00:39:56.660
of society. They look down on us, and can stroke our heads and tell us how much they care about us.
00:40:06.000
And that makes them happy, because that means everything stays the same. That they are unsettled,
00:40:13.220
particularly by anybody from a minority who says, you know what, don't really need you to look after
0.69
00:40:19.420
me, mate. I can get on with it. And you see that many, many times, particularly with first-generation
00:40:26.700
immigrants who are openly conservative, or black people who are openly conservative. You just see
00:40:32.320
white liberals, they can't seem to get their head around it. Like, my mother is, you know, a first-generation
00:40:37.720
immigrant, you know, right-wing, voted Brexit, you know, Latin American, whatever else. And my liberal
00:40:45.160
friends, well, actually, I don't have any anymore. Unfortunately. I was going to say, Francis, who is
00:40:51.060
that? But when I had them, they couldn't seem to get their head around the fact that she would be
0.98
00:40:58.760
in this particular mould. They just couldn't believe it. I mean, look, let us bear in mind that, on average,
00:41:07.600
some minority groups are less well-off in relation to employment and education. Nobody, I hope, on this
00:41:16.360
conversation is going to deny the existence of individual personal bigotry, and the fact that
00:41:25.200
there are some cultural, and what people these days, though they don't understand what they mean by
00:41:30.540
this, there are some structural inequities, which are, which relate to race. You know, none of that, there's no
00:41:38.540
point in arguing about that, because... Trevor, just clarify that for us, because I think it's an important
00:41:43.940
point. When you say structural inequities, and you say that a lot of people don't know what they mean by that,
00:41:49.620
could you explain to people who are open-minded, watching this programme, who keep having this idea of structural
00:41:56.620
inequality shoved down their throat by people who, as you say, don't really understand what they're
00:42:01.400
talking about? What is the legitimate case for structural inequities in society?
00:42:08.180
All right, let me, if I may, a small, mini-seminar on this.
00:42:14.540
I was very lucky, because I'm very old. I was very lucky to have met Stokely Carmichael,
00:42:20.820
later known as Kwame Touré, who was one of the leaders of the radical end of the civil rights movement.
00:42:28.620
He was the leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the late 60s.
00:42:37.700
And he would have described himself, did describe himself, as a scientific socialist, a Marxist.
00:42:43.160
He and a man called Charles Hamilton coined the phrase institutional racism, because they wanted
00:42:51.800
to make a distinction between themselves and Martin Luther King. Stokely's argument was that
00:42:59.800
you could have replaced the entire New York Police Department with a choir of black angels,
0.90
00:43:09.200
and it would still be arresting and beating black young people, that some of the symptoms of racial
0.94
00:43:19.720
discrimination and bigotry were independent of what anybody, any individual thought, and how good and how
0.66
00:43:29.860
lovely they were. His argument was that King and others spent all their time trying to persuade white
00:43:36.840
black people to be nice, when actually that would only have a marginal impact on where black people
00:43:44.360
lived, what jobs they got, their levels of education, and so on. I, as it happens, agree with Stokely
0.94
00:43:50.780
Carmichael, and still do. Spin forward to today. Some of the so-called radicals, who frankly are not very
00:43:58.320
radical at all, shout about structural racism. And when you test them, what they really mean is,
00:44:05.300
why don't we pull down some nasty people, whether they are, they happen to be dead white men who
0.96
00:44:10.780
are remembered in bronze, or maybe somebody who's made some unpleasant remark. And what they mean by
0.99
00:44:18.020
structural racism is some really bad individual bigotry. What I mean by structural racism is that,
00:44:25.880
for example, when people of Pakistani Muslim background came here, they almost totally went
0.86
00:44:35.140
into areas where industries with which they were familiar, textiles, were booming, and that's why
00:44:42.780
they were brought in. They were needed to work in those industries. What then happened was, those
00:44:49.620
industries died. That meant that the towns that they lived in died. Somebody once said to me,
00:44:56.300
the point about Burnley is that the only reason for it still to exist is because it's got a football
00:45:02.180
club. So the point about, the problem for that group is not that everybody hates them because
00:45:08.860
they're Pakistani Muslims. It is that structurally, history put them in a place where they were at a
00:45:15.820
disadvantage, and generation after generation, for reasons that will be obvious, they remain at a
00:45:21.400
disadvantage. And that is, there are parallels in all other groups. By the way, some other groups,
00:45:29.300
Indians I refer to, Indians I refer to, have had the reverse experience. They have followed in the
1.00
00:45:36.000
professional path of some other groups, and actually, their culture, their background, their
00:45:41.080
situation, to some extent, has helped them to prosper. So my point is that the people who talk about
00:45:49.140
structural racism, and then put as a solution, let's get rid of person X, or let's cancel person Y,
00:45:58.520
literally don't know what they're talking about. They literally don't know what they're talking about.
00:46:03.000
They are pursuing an old school, conservative position that says, if only people would be lovely
00:46:09.700
to us, then we would solve this race problem. Actually, they're not the real radicals. The real
00:46:14.660
radicals are the people who say, we have to do something about history, and geography, and
00:46:21.220
economics to solve this problem. Trevor, let me just ask one question, one question, for a better
00:46:28.080
understanding of what you're saying. So the only issue I have with what you've just said is, if that
00:46:36.000
structural difference has disadvantaged Pakistanis, in your example, but advantaged Indians, can we
00:46:44.460
really call that racism? Isn't that just structural difference due to history, and economic inequality
00:46:50.360
due to poverty? Is it not inappropriate to describe that as racism?
00:46:57.660
Probably, if you use the word racism to mean personal dislike. But you see, I don't think of
00:47:05.460
racism as personal dislike. I mean, let me be absolutely clear. One of the reasons that I
00:47:09.040
suppose I really get on these people's tits, is that I don't really care what white people think
0.99
00:47:15.420
about me. They care about it a lot. These people are obsessed with being liked and esteemed by white
0.99
00:47:24.340
people. I literally do not care. What I care about is that I do not lose opportunities, which should be
0.93
00:47:31.560
open to me because a white person is prejudiced against me. I don't want them to like me, but I
00:47:40.020
want them to recognise me for what I am. So when we talk about racism, one of the reasons I criticise
00:47:46.520
all those critical race theory nutjobs is that they're not radical at all. They talk about racism
00:47:55.220
like it's a fashion statement. I think about it as a social and economic and cultural
00:48:03.680
cage from which some people cannot escape. That to me is a serious conversation. This whole idea that,
00:48:15.420
you know, if we could get people to be nicer, it's pathetic. It's just pathetic. It's like the kid
1.00
00:48:23.060
at the back of the class who really desperately wants the most popular kid in the class to like
00:48:28.800
him and be his best mate. I mean, honestly, that's radicalism. Give me a break.
00:48:34.940
And we were talking about the structure and equality, but when you were talking about that,
00:48:40.320
my pushback would be, but that also applies to a lot of white working class people as well,
00:48:45.640
particularly communities like in Cornwall or Wales, where, I mean, I taught in Cornwall. And
00:48:51.820
when I, you know, first time I ever went there, it was holiday season. And I thought, oh, this is
00:48:56.000
lovely. And then I went to teach here and I was shocked at the levels of poverty that these children
00:49:01.480
were having to exist in, not live, exist. Correct. I completely agree. I mean, one of the things that
00:49:09.740
is saddest about what has happened in this country, you know, there's a great tradition here of
00:49:18.480
seaside towns. And when I was growing up, you know, a holiday to South End or
00:49:26.180
a day trip to somewhere, you know, Wimbledon in Dorset or somewhere was a really, for an inner city kid,
00:49:35.200
this was, this is fantastic. These were special places. And I think the same would be true in the
00:49:42.920
North, Harrogate or Blackpool. One of the saddest things I think that has happened over the last
00:49:48.280
20 to 25 years has been the absolute collapse of many towns which depended on a single industry,
00:49:58.720
in this case is tourism. But the same is true, say, about coalfield towns, or most of the steel towns.
00:50:07.300
And one of the things that I am most interested in, I'm really interested in, is the fact that a lot
00:50:15.560
of these towns, steel, shipping, coastal resorts, have died economically, and they have become quite
00:50:29.440
sad places. We thought for a long time, the way to deal with this problem was just about jobs. And
00:50:35.860
this was a labour issue. So we give people, we try and find people new jobs, and we create industrial
00:50:40.440
estates and so on. One of the things I think we have completely missed, and this is coming back to
00:50:46.740
your point about white Britons, is that alongside being, for example, a coal miner, it wasn't just the
00:50:56.680
job. You might spend six days underground, you know, and there you were in the heat, and you were
00:51:03.600
knocking out coal, and everybody looked the same, because everybody looked black, and so on. But the
0.52
00:51:09.820
thing that actually made your week was the fact that you were Secretary of the Miners Welfare.
00:51:16.160
That gave you status in that community. One of the things that's happened with all of these towns,
00:51:22.540
what you might call company towns, is all of that has been destroyed. And we can't replace that
00:51:28.120
by giving a man or a woman a job on a sort of windswept industrial estate, where he or she is working
00:51:35.820
next to somebody who doesn't live in the same village as them. They have to drive to work or
00:51:40.820
take the bus rather than walk to the work, the factory or the steelworks, and so on. And that
00:51:48.440
problem, actually, if you like to put it in these terms, is structurally a white problem. It is a
0.99
00:51:57.520
problem for white Britons who have that particular history. And we should recognise it as such,
1.00
00:52:05.000
because it's not just a straightforward economic problem. Remember what I said about what's taken
00:52:10.720
over, identity taking over? What has really struck most people, and that's why people in the so-called
00:52:18.020
red wall, I think, have defected from Labour, is that the Labour Party failed to recognise what working
00:52:26.980
people in this country lost when those industries and those towns changed. They didn't just lose jobs,
00:52:34.560
but they lost identity. So, for example, and I'll stop ranting about this in a second, but I can't tell
00:52:39.960
you how strongly I feel about it, because I've met a lot of these people there. You know, I have family
00:52:44.400
who live in the Midlands. One of the things that you see is a sadness of parents who lived in the
00:52:55.500
same village as their own parents and worked in the same factory or mill or whatever it is,
00:53:00.580
whose parents lived in that village and worked in the same factory. So there's three or four
00:53:04.940
generations. And now suddenly, these people, their children are nowhere near them, because they've had
00:53:11.780
to move away to have a job in a city somewhere. If they want to see their grandchildren, they have to
00:53:16.900
get in the car and drive an hour. Whereas, you know, their own grandparents could just walk around the
00:53:22.940
corner. I think we haven't yet grasped in this country the absolute trauma that the 80s and the
00:53:33.600
90s visited on many parts of this country. And that's the problem of the political and media elite,
00:53:40.960
who are busy yapping about, you know, the fact that their children can't do exams this year and how
00:53:49.140
terrible it is, when these people's whole history and identity is crumbling in front of their faces.
00:53:58.080
Sorry, I'm ranting on about it, but I can't tell you how strongly I feel about it.
00:54:03.180
I'll be honest with you, Trevor, I'm really, really glad that we talked about this, because
00:54:07.400
like I said, I've worked in those types of communities. And it's something we simply don't
00:54:12.040
discuss. We demonise these people. They're thick, they're stupid, they voted Brexit, blah, blah, blah.
00:54:16.880
And it's like, you don't understand what it's like when everything that you value, your entire
1.00
00:54:21.980
sense of community has just been eroded over time. And the worst bit is no one cares. No one cares.
00:54:29.060
Because we're all based, all the liberal elite are all based in London, and they don't address
00:54:33.920
those problems because quite simply, they don't concern them. But I think I would go even deeper
00:54:39.020
than what you say. I think these people have felt that their dignity has been stolen from them.
00:54:46.560
And I think that's where a lot of anger comes from.
00:54:49.640
Completely. And if you don't mind, I will tell you how I got to this point. And it is
00:54:56.340
partly the answer to Constantine's earlier question about identity and the commonality.
00:55:04.520
identity. I really got to this point of thinking, not by looking first at white communities, but
00:55:12.440
looking at black communities in the United States. I was making a film about the preacher
00:55:18.280
Al Sharpton. And I went round some part of the northeast with him. I went to see him preach
00:55:30.100
in a church in a church in New Jersey. And hundreds of people came to hear him preach. He's a fantastic
00:55:37.340
preacher. He's a great performer, so on and so forth. But the thing that most struck me, and it brought
00:55:44.740
back my own childhood in many ways, was that black American churches are very formal. They have a
00:55:55.540
structure. There is a preacher. There are elders. There are stewards. And when people come out to church
00:56:03.140
in black churches, they've dressed in their best. It's an important moment of the week.
00:56:12.380
And I remember talking to a guy who was actually the chief steward in this church,
00:56:16.600
who I think most of the week is a janitor. But on Sunday, he is the chief steward of his church.
00:56:24.620
Hundreds of people defer to him. You don't get to sit down unless he or his team sit you down.
00:56:35.220
If the children need to go out to Sunday school, he's organizing. He is numero uno. And in that
00:56:43.720
community, he's got identity. He's got status. So he can afford to, you know, he doesn't mind the rest
00:56:51.800
of the week, that he's completely invisible to the white people who go in and out of the building
00:56:57.020
where he's a janitor. Because on Sunday, he's the guy. And I, I realized actually,
00:57:06.480
the clever people, the exam passing people like us, because our lives are fulfilled, we have status,
00:57:14.960
we are deferred to, you know, people don't, generally speaking, overlook us.
00:57:22.340
On this point, you're massively overestimating us.
00:57:27.240
I'd like to find someone who defers to me. It hasn't happened yet. Oh, there you go.
00:57:31.900
Anton, does Anton? No, no, he doesn't. He's just shaking his head.
00:57:34.840
That will be the opening of the interview, Trevor, just a black man bowing to me. That will make me look great.
00:57:40.380
I just assume that you have a large group of people who are not on camera, who are simply,
00:57:47.640
you know, in between coming in and brushing your face and, you know, rubbing your feet and all that.
00:57:56.820
You're a rock star. You are rock stars of the medium. You should be treated as such.
00:58:04.320
But I interrupted you. I take your point, of course, that what you're really talking about,
00:58:08.880
I think, is the atomization of society, the destruction of community,
00:58:12.480
and the fact that people no longer have meaningful opportunities for status
00:58:17.780
outside of being on television, being on the radio, writing for newspapers, whatever else.
00:58:23.520
But your word, I think your word dignity is more important than any of that, actually.
00:58:28.820
I think you hit it right. It's about people's own dignity.
00:58:33.200
And I think we haven't grasped, when I say we here, I am talking about decision makers and opinion formers.
00:58:42.420
Because we haven't lost any of that, I don't think we have grasped how bigger loss it is
00:58:54.360
Yeah. And it all goes back as well to globalization, this idea that, you know, that we are one, you know,
00:59:02.000
that we are all interconnected, that identity doesn't really matter because, you know, we're all European.
00:59:08.180
And it seems that that liberal elite just don't seem to be learning the lessons.
00:59:13.960
They don't learn the lesson of Brexit. They didn't learn the lesson of Trump.
00:59:17.260
And now with Biden elected, they think that that problem has gone away when it all Biden is,
00:59:33.900
I tell you, I agree with that to an extent. I'll tell you what I think is an issue here.
00:59:40.080
I think a lot of us who are certainly in our 50s and 60s, who were the first in our families to go to university,
00:59:52.340
all that stuff, we, and I'm hesitating because I never like to get into the amateur psychology game,
01:00:01.580
but I think a lot of us are people who, in a way, got away from our family background.
01:00:12.080
We escaped what we were. I mean, for example, in my case, pretty much everybody in my family,
01:00:18.500
you know, my great-great-grandmother was a slave.
01:00:22.320
There's all sorts of things about my family which, you know, are humiliating and awful and so on.
01:00:29.760
Um, and pretty much everybody in my, my parents, my mother worked in a sweatshop,
01:00:35.840
my father basically worked in uniform, railway man, postman, all that, most of his life.
01:00:42.960
And the expectation was that we would all be in some kind of uniform, actually.
01:00:50.880
I escaped all of that, except when I was in the Salvation Army.
01:00:55.180
I've escaped all of that, you know, and I live a life
01:00:58.620
that wasn't just, isn't just different from my parents.
01:01:04.980
They didn't even know people like me existed, if you see what I mean.
01:01:09.440
Um, so I think the problem is that people in our class,
01:01:17.660
in a way, tend to treat other people who think their past is important and are still embracing it.
01:01:25.400
So, you know, they go around to their mum around the corner and so on.
01:01:34.060
it's a bit quaint, it's a bit old-fashioned, a bit backward.
1.00
01:01:37.660
But actually, that's what most people want for their lives.
01:01:41.940
And I think your point about globalisation is important,
01:01:47.380
I think the problem is that the deracinated folks of our class
1.00
01:01:52.520
basically think people who aren't like us are essentially a bit backward.
01:01:59.580
When in fact, I think we are the ones who've suffered loss.
01:02:06.040
because as I started this conversation by saying,
01:02:08.900
I come from a very big family, I love it to pieces.
01:02:13.380
You know, a lot of them think I'm a, you know, disagree with me politically,
01:02:18.180
and think, why has he gone over to the dark side?
01:02:29.740
because that thing, that grandmother, great-grandmother,
0.97
01:02:37.520
And that's more important than any difference we might have
01:02:43.540
I think that the big losers at the moment, actually,
01:03:18.480
That doesn't mean we've got to go all kind of mad about it.
01:03:27.020
it's the people who are making a big deal of this
01:03:35.700
you know, my niece is going to bring her wife round,
1.00
01:03:45.620
that will make sure that Dee feels comfortable.
01:03:49.740
is nobody talking about the fact that Dee's a lesbian.
01:04:09.280
I just wish we could talk to you for much longer.
01:04:13.680
I get a sense that you're quite optimistic about the future.
01:04:28.520
which I did not start this interview meaning to say,
01:04:31.040
and it's a tribute to your skill as interviewers,
01:05:14.660
warm, fuzzy blanket where you hide from reality.
01:06:46.960
might as well just go and slash your wrists, mate.
1.00