TRIGGERnometry - Why Can't We Just Get Along？ - Iain Dale

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00:01:17.640 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry from our brand new studio in central London.

00:01:27.080 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:28.520 I'm Constantine Kishan.

00:01:30.000 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:35.700 Our fascinating guest today, who laughs at the idea of being fascinating as he's introduced,

00:01:41.700 is the broadcaster and returning guest to Trigonometry, Ian Dale. Welcome back.

00:01:45.140 No pressure, then.

00:01:46.300 You've got to be fascinating.

00:01:47.720 Okay, I'll do my best.

00:01:48.600 You are fascinating, and we just have to reveal it,

00:01:51.760 as we have before.

00:01:53.820 You've just written a book, which is absolutely fantastic,

00:01:56.580 and, dare I say, extremely timely,

00:01:59.000 given some of the things that have been happening,

00:02:00.940 which is called Why Can't We All Get Along?

00:02:03.860 Shout less, listen more.

00:02:05.700 You see, you even got the title wrong.

00:02:06.960 You missed out the word just, which everybody does,

00:02:09.500 funnily enough.

00:02:10.240 I was on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, and they did the same.

00:02:12.540 Well, I'm almost as good as the BBC. What can I say?

00:02:16.000 No, no. BBC Radio Cambridge.

00:02:18.100 Yeah, fair enough. I'm almost as bad as a regional radio station.

00:02:22.400 Anyway, Why Can't We All Just Get Along is a great book.

00:02:26.600 I really enjoyed reading it. But the title itself, let's talk about that.

00:02:30.460 Why can't we get along? It seems like for the last four years, certainly,

00:02:33.620 and probably before then, I'm sure you'd argue,

00:02:35.920 we've just been suffering some sort of collective hysteria, delusion,

00:02:39.880 whatever you describe it, where the fever pitch of our public discourse has just taken off.

00:02:46.440 I think one thing that has become apparent is that there are so many people in this world,

00:02:50.720 on the left and the right, who don't accept that somebody is entitled to hold a different opinion

00:02:56.560 to them. And I argue in the book that unless you understand that somebody is not only entitled to

00:03:03.660 have an opinion, but you know, from time to time they may be right, how can you marshal your own

00:03:08.660 arguments against them because otherwise you're just talking to people who agree with you and that

00:03:14.080 is really boring i mean my radio show um i prefer people to ring in to argue with me not in a bad

00:03:21.220 way but just have a good debate how boring would it be if i spent three hours every night just

00:03:26.180 talking to people that agreed with me or thought i was fantastic i mean it would be wonders for my

00:03:30.240 ego but it would be very boring radio there are radio presenters who thrive on that who just want

00:03:36.200 people who agree with them they have a narrative they want to get that narrative over and anyone

00:03:40.940 else who disagrees with them is immediately sort of cast into outer darkness now that's not what

00:03:47.680 i think debate should be all about but let's not pretend that it's just over the last four years

00:03:52.100 this has happened i think this this if you go back to the i don't know 18th 19th centuries you look

00:03:58.440 at the political cartoons of the time and there were really violent debates in the house of commons

00:04:02.980 and our current house of commons is fairly calm compared to that but i think what's happened

00:04:08.700 certainly over the last 20 years is the the internet has intervened now in many ways for good

00:04:14.700 the internet has allowed people to have a voice and everyone should be able to have a voice

00:04:19.540 but the destructive voices have come to the fore i think particularly in the last 10 years with the

00:04:25.160 advent of social media um back in the early 2000s i was one of the first people to do a political

00:04:31.080 blog and I thought this that blogging as soon as I discovered blogs I thought this is fantastic

00:04:36.520 I don't have to bring up my website person to change my website when I want to put something

00:04:41.400 new on it I can do it myself in a few minutes now that was great because it gave ordinary people

00:04:47.240 a platform it might be that they only had 30 readers in their local area well so what it

00:04:51.300 still gave them a bigger voice than they had before and I think blogging allowed people to

00:04:56.340 put forward views that were different from what they were reading in their newspapers or hearing

00:05:01.060 on the radio but with the advent of twitter i think things have really changed and twitter is

00:05:07.500 a great thing in many ways but it's so spontaneous you can react instantly and that's sometimes a

00:05:13.780 good thing but very often it's a bad thing if i tweet to you that you're a twat you're in correct 0.98

00:05:18.980 your instant human reaction is to think no i'm not i'm going to call him a effing twat so you 0.97

00:05:27.080 type it instantly now on a blog you'd probably take a couple of minutes to think about that and 0.69

00:05:32.940 by the time the couple of minutes were over you think oh well i better not do that that's a bit

00:05:36.760 rude whereas on twitter people don't think that there's no buffer on twitter and it it's not i

00:05:43.860 think it's actually just sort of natural human reaction if we're attacked we fight back if you

00:05:48.600 look at the way that politics works on twitter if a conservative politician is in a scandal or

00:05:54.520 something the conservative tribes sort of circle the wagons and defend their man or woman same on 0.99

00:06:01.580 the left if corbyn's under attack or was under attack he would be defended in the same way

00:06:06.060 so it's like my country right or wrong there's no shades of gray here and if you've read the book

00:06:11.860 you'll know the word that i most often use in the book is nuance there is no nuance on social media

00:06:16.280 it's all black and white and you're either for me or against me you're in my tribe or you're not

00:06:21.440 and if you're not then you're my enemy that's not how public discourse should really be conducted

00:06:28.080 i don't think and in don't you think part of the problem is when it comes to social media is that

00:06:32.780 we because of the nature of social media it tends to promote posts that have the highest level of

00:06:38.100 interaction which tend to be lo and behold the most divisive ones you know all brexiteers are

00:06:44.460 racist all remainers are woke or whatever it may be so actually these nuanced points they simply

00:06:50.600 don't get promoted because of the algorithms no and it actually when you have people on both sides

00:06:56.480 of the brexit debate for example who don't i mean i've never called a remain supporter a ramona

00:07:03.440 i mean i just think it's quite disrespectful i might call them undemocratic sometimes if they

00:07:10.440 didn't accept the referendum result i think that's entirely legitimate but i think if you

00:07:15.100 indulge in sort of calling people ramonas or breckshitters or whatever i mean is that really

00:07:21.660 is that really where we want to be in our society it's so pure out there like you see the fact that

00:07:28.940 people when i i once asked a news night producer when i used to run news night literally every week

00:07:35.380 it seemed at one period and even i was getting bored of myself on news night and i said to one

00:07:40.420 of the producers i said why do you keep booking me why don't you find other people and they said

00:07:45.320 well we see you as the thinking person's brexiteer i thought well i've been called worse but because

00:07:50.560 i was seen as a sort of more moderate voice than the likes of andrew bridgen or john redwood or

00:07:55.860 whoever um and i was actually willing to entertain the thought that um that there might be issues

00:08:03.420 with brexit i wasn't sort of saying it's all going to the land is going to be flowing with milk and

00:08:07.240 honey um but that enrages the other side even more because they see somebody on their television

00:08:13.240 screens or they hear somebody on the radio that can put a reasonable sounding argument for brexit

00:08:18.620 and it destroys their narrative that everyone on the brexit side of the argument should basically

00:08:23.340 be cancelled because they're mad or racist or whatever yeah and no i mean isn't part of the

00:08:30.440 problem and this is a very coarse way of putting it in that it's unlike you

00:08:34.680 but isn't part of the problem on social media that you don't have the threat of physical

00:08:44.380 violence because when you know if you're talking to someone are you advocating for physical violence

00:08:49.920 i'm saying it's a deterrent it is a deterrent man getting punched in the face i mean it's a

00:08:55.220 modulator of behavior let's put that one six foot two like you're on west ham support yeah

00:09:00.100 I mean, this is the thing.

00:09:00.900 I sometimes say to people who insult me on Twitter,

00:09:04.260 you'd never say that to my face.

00:09:05.940 And they say, oh, come on, big boy.

00:09:07.620 I thought.

00:09:09.240 Yeah.

00:09:10.880 But I guess France's point is,

00:09:13.200 it's maybe more the car situation

00:09:15.860 where you're in your car

00:09:17.080 and you feel like there's a safe distance

00:09:19.520 between you and another person.

00:09:20.760 So you can give them all the finger salutes

00:09:23.300 of different shapes and sizes.

00:09:25.220 When, if you were standing next to them

00:09:27.620 in a queue or something,

00:09:28.600 you would never in a million years do that.

00:09:30.760 I wish I'd thought that analogy

00:09:31.640 because I'd have put that in the book.

00:09:33.400 I'm helping you improve, just sowing little seeds,

00:09:35.960 just little seeds here.

00:09:37.740 But I mean, we've talked about social media to death

00:09:41.500 and there's no question it's been a contributing factor.

00:09:44.020 But one of the things that you talk a lot about in the book

00:09:48.080 is your industry, which is the media.

00:09:50.700 And you say in the 18th, 19th century,

00:09:53.920 similar things existed.

00:09:55.940 And I'm sure you're right.

00:09:57.440 But I certainly feel like in my lifetime, which is not all that long, the sort of way that we talk about things has changed.

00:10:12.000 It absolutely has.

00:10:13.520 And I think we've seen this during the coronavirus pandemic where you had in these daily Downing Street press conferences, you'd have all of these big name journalists asking questions to the various politicians.

00:10:24.540 and generally they were questions that were along the lines of aren't you ashamed of yourself why 1.00

00:10:30.180 don't you resign you effing idiot obviously i didn't put it that way and so any fool could 1.00

00:10:35.320 have seen that this was going to happen and on the 13th of march you said this but now you're 1.00

00:10:39.300 saying that and i think the public saw through that because all they were doing was looking for

00:10:44.500 gotcha moments they weren't looking to get information from the politician or an explanation

00:10:50.900 all they were trying to do was to get the politician to say something that would give

00:10:55.680 them the headline in the news bulletins and you see this where um and this is all broadcasters

00:11:01.960 are guilty of this so they ask um questions which are that they just pick their own journalist

00:11:08.660 questions to the exclusion of others even though they may have been better questions

00:11:12.700 and got more newsworthy answers and then at the end of the press conferences you'd have all of

00:11:17.960 the regional and local journalists asking questions and they were the ones that were

00:11:22.260 actually spot on and actually got interesting answers from the politicians well what a surprise

00:11:27.600 that is in a way the way the media has developed it's inevitable that this has happened where if

00:11:33.940 you're doing three or four minute interviews so on a breakfast show where inevitably it's much

00:11:38.480 more pacey than other times of the day and the politician goes into the studio with maybe one

00:11:45.000 or two things that they're determined to say whatever the question is and the journalist

00:11:49.480 starts off not with a sort of softball first question because you haven't got time for that

00:11:56.220 on a breakfast show you go straight in why are you lying to me minister well immediately the

00:12:01.000 shutters go up but if i start with an if you started here with an aggressive question to me

00:12:05.680 immediately my defenses go up and i'm probably not going to say anything very interesting you

00:12:09.520 might think i haven't anyway but i mean it's just again natural human nature and so i'm really

00:12:16.620 pleased actually that the long form interview is coming back particularly on podcasts where you

00:12:22.460 don't have a time limit i mean your show is all an hour long the podcasts i do sometimes

00:12:28.400 maybe two hours long we just go and see how it goes um and you actually i did a 78 minute interview

00:12:36.720 with Andrea Ledsom the other day.

00:12:38.560 Now, many of your viewers think,

00:12:39.720 oh, my God, I bet that was interesting.

00:12:41.780 Well, actually, it really was.

00:12:42.980 And I had so many people say,

00:12:44.740 my God, I saw a different side to her.

00:12:46.940 I really like her now,

00:12:48.360 which I'd never seen that in her before.

00:12:50.660 And I mean, our job is not to make politicians interesting.

00:12:53.920 They've got to make themselves interesting.

00:12:56.140 But if you can bring things out of people

00:12:57.840 in that kind of format,

00:12:59.040 that's so much more satisfying, I think,

00:13:01.720 than just trying to get some crappy news line

00:13:04.520 out of someone and embarrass them.

00:13:06.000 But don't you think the problem is, Ian, in that a lot of the mainstream media, they're finding it impossible to monetise.

00:13:13.020 They're really struggling financially.

00:13:15.260 This is the only way that they can make themselves seem relevant in many ways.

00:13:19.220 Well, it may be, but it's going to be a short-term pleasure.

00:13:22.340 And in the long term, they will just eat themselves.

00:13:25.180 I mean, we've seen this week that there are now apparently two rival news channels being launched because,

00:13:33.080 well presumably because they think that sky news and the bbc aren't doing a good enough job now

00:13:38.000 commercially i'm not sure i see how that can work back in 2006 i was part of a team that launched

00:13:44.340 an internet tv channel called 18 dowdy street and it was i mean a bit like this it was we we did

00:13:50.720 live programming but also recorded programming where there was much longer you had a lot more

00:13:55.180 time and it was seen i remember a lot of people wrote it up as always new fox news because we

00:14:00.200 were predominantly on the right although we had people like peter tatchel presenting programs it

00:14:04.500 wasn't entirely on the right um now that was 10 years ahead of its time um and it only lasted a

00:14:10.460 year but it i mean that cost i think it cost about a million pounds over the course of that year this

00:14:15.740 is not a cheap thing to do so although i i think competition is great and i'd love to see a whole

00:14:20.900 plethora of different style of news channels um that is a reaction to i think a widespread feeling

00:14:28.300 that mainstream media news channels in a way aren't servicing their public properly um now a

00:14:34.920 lot of the times you've got people on the i won't say far right but people on the right people on

00:14:40.180 the left who think that the bbc and sky are either right wing or left wing and then the bbc and sky

00:14:46.960 think oh well if they both think that we're either right or left we must be doing something right

00:14:50.360 which is the laziest way of thinking i think um and it's interesting that tim davy the new bbc

00:14:55.880 director general has already in his first week stepped into this and said well i think we are

00:15:01.760 getting things wrong we're not speaking to the whole country in the way that we should be

00:15:05.320 well good on him and i let's see what he actually does i mean we're recording this just after it's

00:15:11.020 been announced that they've reversed the decision on the proms and there will be singing now in a

00:15:15.200 way not a massively important issue but that i'm sure will have come from him and that is a signal

00:15:21.840 that something is going to change at the BBC.

00:15:25.380 I hope he's right because I think the BBC is a bit like an oil tanker.

00:15:28.820 It's quite difficult to turn around, but let's wish him luck.

00:15:31.960 I think the symbolism of it is quite important

00:15:34.240 because we've obviously gone through a period of time

00:15:36.240 where a lot of people feel like British history as a whole thing

00:15:39.600 has been under attack.

00:15:41.020 And to see the national broadcaster sort of spearheading that movement,

00:15:45.200 it's not what a lot of people...

00:15:46.620 And the other interesting thing here is that the left

00:15:49.880 to have tried to pretend that this wasn't a story

00:15:51.960 and that it was got up by the right.

00:15:54.380 Well, I was listening to the Fortunately podcast,

00:15:57.620 which with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover,

00:15:59.660 it's one of my favourite podcasts.

00:16:01.120 I mean, they are...

00:16:01.540 After this one.

00:16:03.600 Well, you see, I don't...

00:16:04.440 I regard you as a bit above a podcast

00:16:06.260 because you do it all on video too.

00:16:08.320 So, well, I wasn't lumping in with that.

00:16:12.680 And they had Nezrin Malik, the Guardian columnist,

00:16:15.520 and they were talking about this.

00:16:17.260 And she alleged that this whole story

00:16:19.720 had been fabricated by the right to enable Boris Johnson to look patriotic and all the rest of it

00:16:25.600 well the journalist who broke this story in the Sunday Times is Grant Tucker who used to be my PA

00:16:31.040 so I spoke to him I mean when the story happened I thought well that is a really good story

00:16:36.820 and so I talked to him about how he got the story so what the sort of he didn't tell me

00:16:41.040 necessarily who the sources were but he actually had quoted name sources as well

00:16:45.440 I'm thinking, well, how can you say this wasn't a legitimate news story?

00:16:48.960 So she's accused him of fabricating it,

00:16:51.160 which I think is a really serious allegation to make.

00:16:53.720 It wasn't a fabricated story. 1.00

00:16:55.140 You can say, well, it's a stupid story 1.00

00:16:57.700 because who wants to sing all these old-fashioned lyrics anyway? 1.00

00:17:01.460 Fine, have that debate, but it's a legitimate story to write.

00:17:05.420 Oh, for sure.

00:17:10.000 Have you ever been abroad and felt out of place

00:17:12.340 because you didn't speak the language?

00:17:13.960 No, because I voted Brexit, mate. Brexit means Brexit.

00:17:17.660 I know that when you go on holiday, sometimes you don't speak the language.

00:17:21.020 It can feel really awkward, a little bit like Francis talking to a woman. 0.95

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00:18:08.380 slash play and use the promo code trigger on your six-month subscription that's b-a-b-b-e-l

00:18:17.060 dot co dot uk forward slash play and use the code trigger and we're not going to explain how

00:18:23.640 to spell the word trigger because that would be patronizing but you you mentioned this uh sort of

00:18:32.120 new right of center channel potentially that people are talking about and i thought you you

00:18:37.820 said you didn't think it was going to work do you not think there's a huge gap in the market there

00:18:42.020 well i haven't said i don't think it's going to work i think it's going to be difficult for it

00:18:45.020 to work commercially now there are lots of people with very deep pockets who might be willing to

00:18:48.800 accept that it's never going to make a profit and that they'll happily subsidize it um i think it

00:18:54.760 can work from a journalistic point of view i think you can have a channel which has uh

00:19:02.860 which allows opinion i mean i work for a channel where all the presenters are encouraged

00:19:07.400 to express their opinions and we have a very diverse range of opinions so you know at one

00:19:12.900 stage it went from sort of Nigel Farage through to Ken Livingstone I mean actually they weren't

00:19:17.460 on at the same time but um I think that is the way probably to do it rather than have just a

00:19:24.140 whole stream of uh right of center presenters who are inevitably going to give I mean it will

00:19:31.040 inevitably be called a British Fox News if you do it that way um I'm not sure I would want to watch

00:19:36.000 a channel that did that necessarily because why would you just want to watch people that you might

00:19:41.840 agree with all the time um i think you've got to be challenged um otherwise you just develop lazy

00:19:48.440 thinking habits and isn't this a problem that if we do have this channel that it's just going to

00:19:53.580 increase polarization and that people who agree with it are just going to watch it and they're

00:19:57.620 not going to engage well we can see what's happening in the united states where if you're

00:20:00.900 on the right you watch fox news if you're not on the right you watch cnn or msnbc i'm not sure

00:20:05.820 that's very healthy for anyone really but that's what that's where the point you made about the

00:20:11.300 bbc is so important as you say that the mooting of this new right of center thing is a direct

00:20:18.100 response to people a lot of people feeling that the bbc has gone to the left and and so if the

00:20:24.160 bbc under this new director general can recover a sense of what their role is which is to provide

00:20:29.640 balance and uh unbiased reporting if they can achieve that which remains to be seen at this

00:20:35.460 point then then then that threat of a right of center channel may dissipate by itself potentially

00:20:42.080 it could do and the bbc is capable of doing that if you think back and people forget this if you

00:20:47.420 think back to the brexit referendum campaign i thought they covered it really well i think most

00:20:52.500 people did it was only afterwards when all the shenanigans started that you could tell that there

00:20:57.880 weren't very many brexiteers working in the bbc and that is that is a problem and the fact that

00:21:04.580 they didn't really see all the sort of red wall thing coming up to be fair i'm not sure anybody

00:21:09.420 saw it to that extent a lot of our guests did well did they okay well fair enough but sorry

00:21:14.100 we do a better job i mean i i certainly thought there would be a tory majority i didn't think it

00:21:20.440 would be be that much um people like matt goodwin paul embri that that sort of caliber of person

00:21:28.820 that we've had on the show repeatedly they all predicted it with quite a lot of confidence

00:21:32.600 because they were aware of what was happening.

00:21:35.040 And the metropolitan centrism of sort of broadcasters in general,

00:21:41.240 I think, is probably a big factor in that.

00:21:43.180 Well, there were two things.

00:21:43.760 First of all, I don't think the BBC or anybody in the sort of London media bubble

00:21:50.220 understands that Boris Johnson has an appeal outside the M25.

00:21:54.960 And I was saying this, I've always said this,

00:21:58.140 if you walk down the street with Boris Johnson,

00:21:59.940 It doesn't matter whether it's in Kensington or Halifax.

00:22:03.580 He attracts people around him in a way that no other politician does.

00:22:07.180 People want to have their self-esteem.

00:22:08.480 I mean, he's got it.

00:22:10.760 Whatever it is, he's got it in spades.

00:22:13.460 And I've never seen that in any other politician

00:22:15.800 with the possible exception of Margaret Thatcher.

00:22:17.720 What about Ian Duncan Smith?

00:22:19.080 No.

00:22:21.460 And that's the thing.

00:22:22.840 I mean, Ian Duncan Smith once said that you have 90 days

00:22:26.640 as a political party leader to make your mark.

00:22:29.300 if you haven't made your mark after 90 days you might as well give up there and then and i think

00:22:34.660 he's absolutely right now you can't create charisma you either have it or you don't

00:22:39.240 one of you does and one of you don't doesn't

00:22:41.080 but it's it's true you cannot people see through it yeah sometimes people try too hard i'll give

00:22:52.060 you an example um liz truss i think tries a bit too hard in this regard with her sort of instagram 0.98

00:22:57.500 photos and they're amusing but i'm not sure they did her any good as a sort of creditable politician

00:23:04.440 she didn't actually add to her political credibility um by doing all of that stuff 1.00

00:23:10.040 um people people want when cameron had this phrase keep it real and you've got to keep it

00:23:16.140 real if people don't like your personality you're not probably going to persuade them to you know

00:23:21.120 before farad just ask you a question just on david cameron my wife is completely apolitical 1.00

00:23:25.660 you've met my wife i think possibly briefly maybe you haven't uh but anyway she's completely

00:23:30.980 apolitical couldn't care less about politics at all but she said she said to me uh she's not 0.96

00:23:37.440 right or left or anything like that but she said to me every time i see david cameron on tv i want

00:23:41.560 to throw up he just looks so dishonest yeah yeah that was her i can think of many politicians i

00:23:48.040 could say that about but he wouldn't be one of them that's interesting she just thought he was

00:23:51.660 a sort of very fake person but anyway speaking of i'm interviewing him uh in a couple of weeks

00:23:56.300 that explains that i'll put that to him put that to him why why are you so fake

00:24:00.500 but speaking of prime ministers uh prime ministers who've been criticized boris johnson is someone

00:24:07.780 who during the hustings in the last election you you you had a little bit of a run-in with his

00:24:12.560 fans it's fair to say and that's what i have always liked about you is you know you are probably

00:24:16.920 centre-right on some issues, centre-left on others.

00:24:20.800 But you are on the right, I think.

00:24:22.160 Yeah, I would self-describe as being on the centre-right.

00:24:24.680 Centre-right.

00:24:26.280 Nazi is how we describe it. 0.55

00:24:27.900 Yes, exactly.

00:24:28.840 With a few sort of lefty social issue opinions.

00:24:32.560 Right.

00:24:33.400 So, for example, in immigration, you described yourself as wet as a lettuce.

00:24:37.240 Exactly.

00:24:38.000 But when you were interviewing Boris Johnson,

00:24:40.100 you actually pushed him quite hard to the chagrin of his following at the time.

00:24:45.300 And what do you make of Boris Johnson's nine months

00:24:49.440 or wherever it's been in power so far?

00:24:52.640 Believe it or not, it's over a year now.

00:24:55.300 Wait, wasn't it December?

00:24:56.740 No, 24th of July.

00:24:58.680 Yeah, of course.

00:24:59.320 Wow, yes.

00:25:00.680 My next book, which has come out in November,

00:25:04.280 is A History of Prime Ministers,

00:25:06.660 because in April 2021, it's the 300th anniversary

00:25:09.820 of the office of Prime Minister.

00:25:11.560 So I've commissioned 55 people to write an essay

00:25:14.400 on each prime minister for this book and i've written the boris johnson chapter oh wow um and

00:25:21.060 i mean i've written it up to the end of april i might do a little it's going to print soon so

00:25:25.160 i can't do much of an update um i said before boris johnson became prime minister that i thought

00:25:31.860 he would be one of our great prime ministers or the shittest prime minister we've ever had

00:25:36.460 now i it's far too early to come to a judgment now i think he did what a lot of people thought

00:25:43.440 would be impossible he has got us out of the european union which i was beginning to doubt

00:25:48.540 whether that was actually going to happen so that's certainly on the plus side which i mean i

00:25:52.780 would say that wouldn't i if he gets a free trade deal done of of any in any meaningful form with

00:25:59.120 the eu by the end of the year that will be a significant achievement i actually do believe

00:26:03.440 that that will happen um we already know that there's we're about to sign one with japan which

00:26:09.100 we're told is actually better than the deal that the eu has got with japan i think that would be

00:26:13.140 a landmark thing to do. If we've got a lot of the free trade deals rolled over from the EU by the

00:26:19.960 end of December, again, an achievement. But he's not going to go down in history as the Brexit

00:26:26.360 Prime Minister, which is what he thought he would. He's going to go down in history as the

00:26:30.400 COVID Prime Minister. And I don't think even his greatest fan could say that he's got a stellar

00:26:38.440 track record in handling this statistics don't lie in the end and although i think the british

00:26:46.460 public are very forgiving um there are things that were done over the last four or five months that

00:26:52.960 could have been done differently could have been done more quickly and it's easy for anybody to

00:26:57.360 say in hindsight oh well you should have done that you should have done that but there were people

00:27:01.320 for example on lockdown there were plenty of people saying this should be done a week or 10

00:27:07.200 days earlier than it was um and i think that would have been that that was the main error that was

00:27:13.560 made um the fact that he was out of action for a month six weeks the fact that i think he's still

00:27:20.300 suffering from the after effects of that and i think this is leading to speculation that i mean

00:27:25.900 if he does get the free trade deal and say the economy has gone back to a semblance of normality

00:27:32.020 by the middle of next year it's entirely possible that he might think well i've done what i came to

00:27:38.060 do i quite fancy the thought of earning millions of pounds for being an ex-prime minister i don't

00:27:43.660 think he's enjoying it as much as he maybe thought he would i mean how can you enjoy being prime

00:27:49.860 minister at this kind of time it's not like being in a war although people make the war analogies

00:27:57.260 it's not like fighting a war and I just get the feeling that it's not the job that he thought he

00:28:05.180 was going to be doing and so it wouldn't surprise me if by the end of 2021 I mean his Dominic

00:28:13.100 Cummings father-in-law I think was suggesting that he might go before Christmas I can't really

00:28:16.380 see that but it wouldn't surprise me at all if by the end of 2021 he thought or maybe into 2022

00:28:22.840 he thought okay i've done what i came for um let's give someone else a chance that's unusual

00:28:28.020 for a prime minister to give up office voluntarily but boris is an unusual politician so nothing

00:28:33.980 nothing would surprise me i don't think he's done overall as bad a job as his critics would

00:28:40.380 necessarily say um but i i think if you were marking him it would be quite hard to go above

00:28:46.840 a b minus and that's probably being kind and in there's quite a few people who said that he was

00:28:52.440 quite weak during the black lives matter protests he wasn't particularly visible and when you know

00:28:59.060 the statue of church was being defaced he should have taken a stronger position

00:29:02.840 upheld you know law and order do you agree with that i think it's really difficult for a conservative

00:29:09.560 politician on those issues because whatever you say is going to be taken down in evidence and

00:29:15.600 used against you um i think things were mishandled in some of those i mean to my mind the protest

00:29:23.060 shouldn't have ever gone ahead anyway given that we were right in the middle of the serious part

00:29:28.340 of the pandemic and all social distancing rules just were ignored interesting that this week of

00:29:34.440 course and it will be a few weeks by the time this goes out but pierce corbin uh fined 10 000 pounds

00:29:40.420 for breaking the better Corbyn the better Corbyn starting from a low base there I'm not so sure

00:29:46.560 about that uh the madder Corbyn the madder Corbyn but uh but but I mean he did the same thing as

00:29:55.360 as the BLM protest he went out and organized and participated in a public protest I think the the

00:30:02.880 difficulty here and I found this when all this was going on and I was covering it on the radio

00:30:07.360 every night i knew that one word out of place if i if i'd sort of made any derogatory mark about

00:30:16.220 remark about what was going on i mean that that would have been a really serious thing i mean it

00:30:20.800 was it was if you're a politician or a broadcaster on those things you are one word away from losing

00:30:27.660 your job or ending up on the front page of one of the tabloids um and i was very careful to try

00:30:33.140 and distinguish between the black lives matter movement and the black lives matter organization

00:30:38.660 as we were yeah but that gets lost in translation it does the people and i i don't know if you saw

00:30:48.120 i i had a call one night from a woman called denise in enfield and she took me to task for

00:30:54.540 what i was saying and so that i was looking at it through that my white middle class prism which i

00:31:00.580 took exception to and we had quite a bit of a ding dong about this and then i i'd sort of let

00:31:06.020 her talk and she was then saying well of course what you don't get is the black people we don't 1.00

00:31:10.280 get the same chances that white people do and i said well no i do understand that and and she

00:31:16.100 said there's a black woman it's even worse um and then she's saying of course on your radio station 1.00

00:31:21.300 you've only got one female presenter you've got no black presenters at all i said well 0.83

00:31:25.960 well, Majid Nawaz is not black, but he's Asian Muslim.

00:31:30.400 And she just signed Rachel Johnson, so we got two. 0.86

00:31:33.780 And then she said, yeah, I wonder how she got the job.

00:31:37.160 And I said, well, she didn't just walk through the door 0.96

00:31:39.920 and come into a studio and broadcast.

00:31:41.280 She's actually been, she's about four years,

00:31:43.680 I know that she's been doing auditions.

00:31:45.260 And she wasn't just offered a job for the fact

00:31:48.020 that she's the prime minister's sister.

00:31:49.800 She actually had to prove that she could do it.

00:31:52.040 But again, that's got nothing to do with skin colour.

00:31:54.120 No, it hasn't.

00:31:55.200 But she said, I wouldn't get through your front door.

00:31:59.180 And I thought to myself, do you know what?

00:32:00.560 You're right.

00:32:02.000 So I said, okay, come and present the program with me tomorrow.

00:32:04.800 Because there was something about her that I thought.

00:32:07.500 And we ended the program.

00:32:09.960 And I was thinking all the time I was saying this.

00:32:12.940 Because I said, don't you think I've made these points to the management here

00:32:15.540 that we need to up our game on this?

00:32:17.860 I said, I have done.

00:32:19.220 And as I was saying, I thought, I've probably gone a bit too far here.

00:32:22.720 And I said at the end of the conversation,

00:32:24.720 well, if I lose my job, if I'm not here tomorrow,

00:32:27.640 Dinesh, it's going to be your fault.

00:32:29.280 She said, oh, can I have your job?

00:32:31.200 I said, well, come in tomorrow.

00:32:31.860 I did see this, yeah.

00:32:32.960 Come in tomorrow.

00:32:33.680 And she's been coming in for an hour every week

00:32:36.200 or every fortnight since then.

00:32:38.120 Now, we're not going to give her a job just because of that 1.00

00:32:41.660 and just because she's a black female. 1.00

00:32:43.660 She's got to prove that she can do the job

00:32:45.680 because believe it or not,

00:32:48.040 sitting behind a microphone for three hours a night

00:32:50.760 is not just sitting there and having a little chat with somebody you've got five things going

00:32:55.080 on in your head at any one time you've got to be able to handle a breaking news story a terror attack

00:33:00.060 and not go to pieces you've got to be able to handle mh-17 being shot down over ukraine

00:33:05.600 and that's the only thing that you know you're going to rolling news mode and that's the only

00:33:10.040 piece of information you've got and your task is to keep people listening but not bore them to tears

00:33:15.460 just by repeating the fact you've got to talk to experts on it you've got to actually have an

00:33:20.380 understanding well what i mean how does a plane get shot out of the air at sort of 20 000 i can 0.99

00:33:24.620 tell you all about it i mean people think that i must be sort of like a pig in shit just sitting 0.98

00:33:31.440 there doing what i love doing talking but you're you're constantly thinking right i'm interviewing 0.96

00:33:35.480 the cabinet minister next what's my first question i'm talking to somebody my producer's talking in

00:33:41.420 my ear um all sorts of things are going on and at the end of the three hours you are mentally

00:33:47.040 exhausted i mean you're physically exhausted sometimes depending on what kind of program

00:33:50.740 you've done um so you can't just sort of give anybody a job just because they think they can

00:33:56.960 do it um but and i do i have talked to enough people on the radio over the last 10 years

00:34:04.160 of uh black heritage of asian heritage to know that there is discrimination whether it's conscious

00:34:10.360 or subconscious there is if your name is undabiningi you are less likely to get a job

00:34:16.180 interview than if your name is Francis that is just a fact there's no point in us denying it it

00:34:22.700 is a fact and that has to be addressed and we're not being fair to people if it isn't addressed

00:34:27.320 I don't think we're a nation of racists there are racists among us we all know that but I do think

00:34:32.720 there is there is a degree of subconscious racism in a lot of people people who don't like to think

00:34:38.800 that there is it's the sort of I'm not a racist but kind of syndrome so I have a lot of sympathy

00:34:44.180 with some of the aims of the people who were demonstrating in some ways but i can't support

00:34:52.020 a movement that wants to defund or abolish the police depending on who you talk to um or abolish

00:34:58.180 capitalism i'm sorry i'm not going to say that i can support that organization and one of my regrets

00:35:03.720 is that um when this was all happening right in the first week um we had a minute's silence for

00:35:11.520 george floyd on lbc or on all of the global radio stations and i was given a statement to read out

00:35:17.960 um after this which in retrospect i think i should have said well i want to amend this because

00:35:25.600 it didn't wholly reflect my views yet i was the one i was the messenger and what was that

00:35:32.120 discrepancy i can't remember the exact details but i do remember at the time thinking well

00:35:36.480 should i sort of challenge this but the problem is it was being read out on every other global

00:35:41.400 radio station but what was the gist of it is what i'm getting well i think it was about the

00:35:46.160 organization as well as the the the general aims um so you were sort of being asked to declare your

00:35:53.600 support for the organization well it was it was me on behalf of the whole organization right and

00:36:00.320 it was i i just i think in the end came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't worth the fight

00:36:06.360 But, I mean, that was also not long after Nigel Farage left,

00:36:10.700 and it sort of played into this narrative that developed on Twitter

00:36:13.880 that sort of I've gone all woke and all the rest of it.

00:36:17.840 So looking back, possibly I should have done that a little differently.

00:36:22.780 And we talk about the death of nuance,

00:36:24.240 and you said that broadcasters, not just yourself,

00:36:27.240 everybody in the industry had to tread very, very carefully

00:36:29.880 when it came to discussing the Black Lives Matter organisation.

00:36:33.680 and if you made one misstep you'd be cancelled why is that why do you think it is that we've

00:36:38.860 come to this point where you can't make a legitimate criticism of an organization without

00:36:44.000 you well i think i can now but i think it would have been very difficult to do that

00:36:48.740 when it was all going on um i did i mean i did say that i thought that statues shouldn't be

00:36:55.400 pulled down all the rest of it i didn't think that was a particularly controversial thing to say but

00:36:59.320 but others did um uh and i did feel where that would end because i thought that it may well be

00:37:05.760 that over the whole country you might get statues being taken down i mean there were people wanting

00:37:11.240 to take this churchill statue down where where does this end charles moore's got a really good

00:37:16.280 piece in the spectator uh today where or maybe it's last week where he's talking about i can't

00:37:21.600 remember the guy's name but somebody who the british museum have now hidden away and he went

00:37:27.240 through what this this is somebody from the 1600s um what he had achieved but he had married

00:37:33.620 somebody who was the daughter of a slave owner i think and it was sort of guilt by association

00:37:42.400 and charles was saying well i mean if really that is where we're heading i mean this is why would

00:37:47.840 anyone donate money to the british museum if they think that they're going to sort of be trashed in

00:37:52.340 300 years i mean it's it is a very dangerous path that we've gone down here and i'm glad that it was

00:37:59.620 just that one statue that came down um and i'm sure there are i mean it is a difficult one just

00:38:06.060 from a moral point of view um i mean i'm sure there are people in germany who think that statues of

00:38:12.040 hitler should still be allowed to stand where do you draw the line everybody's going to have a

00:38:17.280 different place where they draw that line and i think the issue on the statue was certainly for

00:38:24.220 me i don't know whether this was the case for you but for me it was not so much the statue itself

00:38:29.040 it was the method by which it was taken down if the people of bristol had democratically voted to

00:38:34.280 remove it uh great i mean the people of bristol entitled to have any statue they want or don't

00:38:39.100 want but just randomly walking up to a statue that you personally dislike and pulling it down

00:38:44.340 with a mob, I don't think that's how it should be.

00:38:46.440 I mean, you know, my ancestors suffered from the policies

00:38:50.880 implemented following Karl Marx's work.

00:38:54.000 There's a statue of Marx in London.

00:38:55.640 Do I get Francis and Anton, we go and pull that down?

00:38:58.620 We're not that competent.

00:39:01.040 I'm just going to say, I'm going to need someone in us

00:39:02.780 to handle the wrong.

00:39:03.500 You could probably handle Gandhi, though, 0.96

00:39:05.040 because, I mean, Gandhi was a racist. 0.88

00:39:06.460 Yeah, absolutely.

00:39:07.440 But, of course, nobody, well, very few people would suggest

00:39:10.580 that the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square should come down.

00:39:12.640 There were a few people on Twitter.

00:39:14.380 Well, maybe there were.

00:39:15.200 There always are on Twitter.

00:39:17.720 But it's very difficult to be consistent on this.

00:39:22.160 But my worst fears weren't realised on that.

00:39:25.160 I mean, the demonstrations that happened in London,

00:39:27.120 I thought, were generally well handled.

00:39:33.020 There was violence in a couple of them,

00:39:35.200 but there always are because they generally get hijacked

00:39:37.420 by the usual suspects.

00:39:39.440 although i think the one in white hall uh i think it was the second one i mean that was on a

00:39:45.640 different scale i think when police horses were attacked and all the rest of it um but it's still

00:39:51.840 we're still at a point where it's actually still not really socially acceptable to question anything

00:39:57.080 on this and that's not a healthy state of debate and what about you bring up the the particular

00:40:03.740 riot and with the horses being attacked police woman being knocked off a horse hitting her head

00:40:09.220 I mean, I personally, to me, that looked like a riot, that particular one.

00:40:13.380 And it was reported by the BBC as being largely peaceful.

00:40:17.960 And that was something that a lot of people picked up on.

00:40:20.840 Well, it was largely peaceful.

00:40:23.760 I mean, most of it.

00:40:24.980 I mean, if you divided up the time, you could...

00:40:28.160 Well, World War II was largely peaceful by that sort of way,

00:40:31.220 because most of the time soldiers weren't fighting.

00:40:33.300 They were sleeping, they were eating, they were sitting around playing cards.

00:40:36.820 But on a six-hour demonstration, there was probably about an hour at the end where it got a bit hairy.

00:40:44.980 I mean, I'm not defending it.

00:40:47.520 If I was a BBC executive, I could happily defend describing it in that way.

00:40:53.620 But I think they were a little bit, not just them, though.

00:40:59.200 I think Sky were exactly the same.

00:41:00.880 they were quite reluctant to give the full picture

00:41:05.560 of what actually went on there.

00:41:07.540 Well, the reason I bring it up is at the moment CNN,

00:41:10.400 I don't know if you've seen these,

00:41:11.680 I've shared a couple of them on my Twitter,

00:41:14.580 where there's a guy standing in front of a burning city

00:41:17.100 going peaceful demonstrations, you know, all this sort of stuff.

00:41:22.860 And it does seem to me potentially that the fear

00:41:25.800 that you are talking about or the concern

00:41:27.580 that one ought not to criticize this thing, one ought to be extra careful, means that people are

00:41:38.100 hesitant to report reality. Now, maybe the reality is maybe you're right, that they were mostly

00:41:45.080 peaceful. But that isn't how we report riots. I mean, or violent demonstrations that have a

00:41:51.980 measure of violence if for example brexiteers had gone on a march or a protest in which 27 police

00:41:58.960 officers were injured i don't think that would have been reported as being largely peaceful no

00:42:03.420 no i think you're right um i think part of the problem here it's difficult to know what to

00:42:10.040 believe when you see pictures from demonstrations protests riots whatever how do you particularly on

00:42:16.800 twitter how do you know that it's actually from that particular one there have been so many

00:42:21.180 examples there was one last week i think where it purported to be from a particular event and it

00:42:28.560 turned out it was from something two years ago and this is where the fake news thing really comes in

00:42:34.340 because um i mean i've retweeted a couple of things and when i've just found out afterwards

00:42:41.480 well that wasn't what actually happened so then you apologize and delete i mean i was i don't like

00:42:48.040 deleting things on twitter because it looks as if you're trying to step up taking away

00:42:51.780 responsibility from yourself but because if you explain well actually that what i'm sorry i tweeted

00:42:56.680 that because that wasn't what it was people don't see that bit they just still see the original bit

00:43:01.180 so it's always a very difficult decision as to whether to delete or not no i mean that is the

00:43:07.380 problem isn't it is when it when it comes to something like twitter when you retweet something

00:43:11.480 that you believe in you turns out it's not what it initially appears but do you think we're in a

00:43:17.560 very worrying situation at the moment in with public discourse because i'll be honest with you

00:43:22.600 i'm quite worried about it yes i think we are um and the only the only kind of negative comment

00:43:30.160 i've seen on twitter about my book is somebody saying well yeah you've diagnosed all the problems

00:43:34.440 and but you haven't really come up with that many solutions and i said well did you actually get to

00:43:40.120 the end of the book because i've got 50 ways we can improve public discourse now if i'm honest

00:43:44.740 in retrospect should i have included those within the narrative i don't know but i think in the end

00:43:52.220 it is us as individuals that are going to be able to change this or not i know i've moderated my

00:43:57.280 behavior on twitter where i mean i i would get involved in ridiculous twitter spats and someone

00:44:02.120 once said oh ian does such a nice guy on the radio but on twitter he's an absolute beast 0.63

00:44:06.640 and they were right so i mean i've tried to change that because i'm not an absolute beast

00:44:13.020 i could mix it up with anybody i i can if i have to have a really loud debate with somebody i'll

00:44:19.860 i'll do it but i think we just have to try and calm down moderate our behavior and just try and

00:44:27.220 be a little bit nicer to each other i know this sounds like sort of kumbaya and sort of hug a

00:44:32.440 hoodie and all the rest of it but in the end i mean we're going to end up in a very very dark

00:44:37.320 place soon if we're not careful and how far on the path do you think we've gone and do you think

00:44:43.320 we can turn back i'd like to think we can um that's a no well sometimes it takes something big

00:44:54.500 to uh really make people sit up and think about what what they're doing and i think it does put

00:45:02.600 responsibility on people in the public eye a little bit where and people do tend to take their

00:45:08.200 i mean everybody has heroes and role models and all the rest of it and if they see their hero or

00:45:13.160 role model acting in a particularly bad way then they're more likely to imitate it and i do think

00:45:21.700 also and i i don't think i have put this in the book but i do think schools have a role to play

00:45:27.360 here in teaching kids how to handle social media and maybe they do it i don't know i'm not i haven't

00:45:34.520 they don't no well they ought to because i mean they do teach about safeguarding i know that

00:45:39.920 but this is more than safeguarding this is this is almost what when i was at school we would have

00:45:45.600 had a couple of hours each week a sort of general studies lesson where you civics is what it used

00:45:51.300 to be called and that's i think where teachers need to actually teach people about the art of

00:45:59.320 public discourse and how to debate and i'm not sure there's enough of that going on in our

00:46:03.760 education system at the moment no well absolutely not and certainly but we talk about the art of

00:46:09.880 debate i don't think politicians have got the art of debate in many cases you see the way they

00:46:15.240 interact with each other you look at question time now i mean what is question time but just a

00:46:20.460 series of people talking over one another as you know yourself well it is um i mean i find

00:46:29.640 i did any questions last week and it it's an oasis of calm compared to the television version

00:46:37.160 and the last time i was on which was a year ago now um i mean i nearly walked off the set because

00:46:43.540 i was just so disgusted at what was going on and um if i had done i mean it would have created

00:46:49.780 such a massive storm and i'm glad i didn't i did do it on good morning britain um a few months

00:46:55.420 afterwards because i was in the middle of a pincer movement from two people on the left

00:46:59.740 and i thought you know i've got better things to do than waste my time i i listened to grace

00:47:05.140 blakely for um about a minute and a half saying what she had to say i then got nine seconds out

00:47:11.860 before she interrupted me and then the guy to my left interrupted me as well and i went to speak

00:47:17.860 again and then they started i thought sod this for going the soldiers and i mean as i was getting up

00:47:23.120 i thought oh should i do this um but i have absolutely no regrets about it because i think

00:47:28.040 it did it it drew a line in the sand certainly for me so i'm just not going to put up with this

00:47:34.420 level of impoliteness and rudeness and what was the feedback like on that including from the

00:47:41.060 producers themselves very interesting um i mean i had to as soon as i because i literally walked

00:47:47.560 into the green room got my coat got my bag walked out to the car and i was i was furious and i people

00:47:54.000 say i flounced out i didn't actually i was very calm i walked out but i was very angry and the

00:47:59.760 producer sort of ran after me as i got to the car i'm really sorry really sorry and i said well

00:48:05.140 these things happen but and if you don't want to come on the program again quite understand but

00:48:08.920 i'm just not putting up with that oh no no don't worry don't worry and um the two presenters texted

00:48:15.700 me afterwards say really sorry we should have stepped in but we didn't and I then spent three

00:48:23.020 hours driving to Norfolk didn't look at Twitter I did put out a tweet saying well I can't remember

00:48:29.120 what I said but sort of hashtag kill Piers Morgan well it wasn't Piers Morgan sort of thus far and

00:48:34.500 no further and 90 percent of the tweets were supportive even people who don't agree with me

00:48:42.660 politically but then what i've worked out is that whenever i'm in the headlines for that kind of

00:48:49.380 reason or any reason the way the left think they can get at me is to retweet the video of me on

00:48:55.080 brighton seafront in 2013 when well according to their narrative i beat up a pension

00:49:01.080 doesn't sound very good does it well exactly um what actually happened and i i go into exhaustive

00:49:09.660 detail in the book on this because i don't i don't hide away from it um i actually pulled the

00:49:14.580 protester by his rucksack straps away he then tried to punch me missed the momentum of that

00:49:21.400 sort of made us fall over but according to them i wrestled him to the ground you will find no

00:49:28.160 evidence anywhere of me punching him kicking him doing anything apart from trying to restrain him

00:49:34.300 from getting into the TV picture

00:49:35.920 because my author Damien McBride was being interviewed.

00:49:39.720 But the left have edited this video

00:49:41.800 to make it look far worse than it was.

00:49:43.700 So they just retweet this video.

00:49:45.580 Whenever I'm in the headlines, that's what they do,

00:49:47.100 even though it's seven years ago.

00:49:48.820 And so I just blocked them. 0.99

00:49:50.220 I mean, I really couldn't give a monkey's arse 0.98

00:49:53.000 how many times they do it 0.99

00:49:54.320 because I know what happened.

00:49:56.760 Most normal people can see what happened.

00:49:59.860 And, yeah.

00:50:01.760 But going back to the incident at Good Morning Britain,

00:50:04.300 And don't you find their apologies a little bit disingenuous?

00:50:07.140 Because let's be fair, they engineer that.

00:50:10.380 They create that atmosphere.

00:50:12.180 That's what they want.

00:50:13.400 So then you get the clips which go again

00:50:15.420 where we talked about at the beginning of the issue. 0.99

00:50:17.020 Mate, shut up. 1.00

00:50:17.480 I want to get back in Good Morning Britain. 1.00

00:50:18.920 I've done it like four times.

00:50:20.440 You've done it enough now, mate.

00:50:22.360 You see, I totally get why you say that.

00:50:25.200 And I think there is an element of that

00:50:26.460 in most of these types of programmes.

00:50:29.300 But I do it every Friday morning at 6.30am

00:50:32.600 with jackie smith former labour home secretary and we do the for the many podcasts together

00:50:37.020 which people like because we do get on and even though we come from different political angles

00:50:42.780 we have a laugh we in 210 episodes we've never fallen out um we analyze the week's news and it's

00:50:50.940 all very good natured and we we do it on good morning britain as well and the viewers really

00:50:55.720 like it you don't i don't think people at 6 30 people don't want a barney do they i mean i don't

00:51:01.580 really watch breakfast television but i mean if i did i don't think that's what i'd want at 6 30

00:51:05.820 in the morning every time they get me on that's exactly what they want yeah this is what i was

00:51:10.700 going to ask you about that do you think that they apologize and we're getting into the weeds

00:51:16.320 but i think there's a bigger point that goes beyond that particular incident which is more

00:51:20.380 about the media in general which is they apologize to you because you made a stand and it became

00:51:26.000 clear that a line had been crossed but if you just sat there and took it like a good little boy

00:51:30.580 they wouldn't have even noticed that something had occurred well maybe i mean look i i'm in their

00:51:39.260 position so i you know because you come on my cross-question program sometimes i mean sometimes

00:51:44.640 you do have to step in and say what i mean david starkey um who has been on the show several times

00:51:51.200 i mean he kind of knows that he goes on these shows and a performance is expected of him and

00:51:56.360 The other three guests who are on the show,

00:51:58.500 I don't know, have you been on with him?

00:52:00.080 No.

00:52:00.580 The other three guests on the show know

00:52:02.420 that effectively it's the David Starkey show.

00:52:05.220 And on each occasion,

00:52:06.840 I have had to pull him up for something

00:52:08.520 that he's done or said,

00:52:10.380 which won't come as any surprise to anybody.

00:52:13.920 I mean, I can't remember what it was last time,

00:52:15.860 but it was quite a sort of misogynistic thing

00:52:19.720 that he said.

00:52:20.280 And we had a very sort of feminist left-wing woman on. 1.00

00:52:24.120 and it was quite offensive and i just and i just said david you cannot say that you just cannot

00:52:31.060 say that judging by his face it was quite funny please apologize and to be fair to him he did

00:52:38.320 um but you know the great thing about david stark is that um he he just is gold dust in terms of

00:52:46.120 engaging even if you hate him you kind of you want to watch him there was one time we were talking

00:52:51.920 about um there was some story about pornography I can't remember what it was and he gave a very

00:52:59.080 erudite answer to it and I was about to move on to the next person and I just saw him lean into

00:53:05.080 the microphone saying but of course Ian as you know I love a bit of pornography

00:53:09.860 you know he's very funny David we had David on the show prior to the whole yeah Darren Grimes

00:53:21.580 thing and actually on our show he didn't say anything out of line at all um he was very

00:53:27.200 entertaining i mean he's obviously darren grimes is a much better interviewer he managed to get

00:53:32.320 him to say something super offensive but that actually that speaks to again a broader issue

00:53:37.360 which is what do you do now because we're so quick to judge people and to cancel them obviously

00:53:43.020 on your show you just pull people up and you say look you shouldn't say that or that's inappropriate

00:53:46.900 or whatever but what what do we do with with with someone like that who makes you know who's

00:53:52.460 a great historian a fantastic man in many ways but in some ways goes too far or says things that

00:53:59.180 might have been acceptable 50 years ago when he was growing up but aren't now

00:54:02.920 how do we handle that as as as a well i got caught up in this because i had seen um darren

00:54:10.780 grimes i think had tweeted that they were raising money for his reasons project and i like darren

00:54:16.780 i think he's a good guy um sometimes can be very naive i think he would admit that himself

00:54:21.720 um so i went on the crowdfunding page and put 100 pounds on thought nothing more of it

00:54:28.900 and then 10 minutes later somebody tweeted i can't believe ian dale is supporting this

00:54:35.400 after what david stalke said on this interview because i hadn't even seen this interview i

00:54:39.780 didn't even know it existed but it had been on the internet for a couple of hours but i just

00:54:45.040 hadn't seen it so i watched it oh my god and i thought well darren you really should have

00:54:52.480 challenged that but he didn't challenge it and i think i mean darren himself said that

00:54:57.560 starkie's always been one of his heroes and i completely get that and i think there was a

00:55:01.300 degree of being a little bit starstruck there um and i was like really getting serious dogs abuse

00:55:09.280 for this and i thought well i'm not going to sort of get the hundred pounds back i think actually

00:55:12.780 Darren Grimes is a good guy it's a it's a reasonable project and um but I had to in the end

00:55:19.900 I thought well I've got to condemn what David said so I did um and I thought I'm never going

00:55:28.880 to be able to have him on my show again because of this but I have you still feel that way no I don't

00:55:34.740 that's interesting so what was it for you I think what what changed it was David's apology now to me

00:55:40.140 it was a bit too late he should have immediately done it but it was two or three days after after

00:55:45.080 a couple of organizations have basically disowned him and um i mean david is actually a fundamentally

00:55:51.640 kind person very kind yeah and um i remember interviewing him at edinburgh last year and he

00:55:58.600 was i think he's the only one to get a standing ovation at the end and bear in mind as you well

00:56:03.100 know both edinburgh audiences are not exactly right-wing audiences no but he was very emotional

00:56:08.960 very personal talked about his partner's death and all the rest of it and i mean i like to think

00:56:15.340 i have a reputation of standing my people when they're going through difficult times

00:56:19.140 and i mean david sent me um an email after reading what i'd said and he was i think he

00:56:25.920 was quite upset that i had said what i'd said and i said well look you said it you've got to own it

00:56:31.960 you've got to take responsibility and you can't expect people to rush to your defense for something

00:56:36.380 as awful as that um and anyway i am going i'm having lunch with him in a couple of weeks

00:56:47.080 and um i wanted to come back on the program at some point because i don't believe in uh

00:56:54.860 cancelling people for i mean it was it was an awful thing to say and i'm not trying to

00:57:01.500 minimize it and i'm sure if he does come back on the program i'm going to get a lot of abuse for

00:57:05.760 that well my shoulders are broad enough so it was the apology that changed it for you

00:57:12.040 yes if he hadn't apologized i don't think that i could have justified but i'm curious because

00:57:18.020 there were some people who were like well he just made a mistake or something well he did

00:57:22.860 make a mistake but it was a mistake that was i mean okay it was he was david likes to exaggerate

00:57:31.460 to make a point yes and that was i mean okay that's not a sin to do that but it was just that

00:57:37.300 the way he did it it was the timing of it as well yeah that nobody could defend it and i think in

00:57:43.820 the end he absolutely realized that no no my point i don't think he did it sure no i agree with you

00:57:48.560 my point is for some people there are some people like he did nothing wrong there are also people

00:57:53.300 for whom it was so egregious in their minds that you don't come back from it the apology doesn't

00:57:59.960 cut it like yeah he apologized as you say a little bit late but you know he's racist that's it done

00:58:06.880 dusted bury him now sort of thing well i don't belong to that school of thought in this case

00:58:12.700 i'm sure there might be other cases i mean if if somebody in a similar interview had said uh

00:58:19.160 i don't believe the holocaust happened i don't believe any jews died in the holocaust i'm sorry

00:58:23.820 never want to have anything to do with you again um i don't think that this was on that scale

00:58:31.140 and i'm not i'm not minimizing it it was a terrible thing to say um but in the end somewhere you have

00:58:39.960 to draw a line and do you think broadcaster's positions have become more precarious over the

00:58:44.560 years or do you think you've always been treading a fine line as a broadcaster you're always treading

00:58:48.720 a fine line not just on these issues um if you are if there's a terror attack and you're going

00:58:55.040 into rolling news mode um there is a line of speculation which you can't really go over even

00:59:01.040 if you are sure that it is a particular group that did this you until you've got some sort of

00:59:06.420 evidence you can't do it and i have seen broadcasters cross that line in the past because

00:59:11.100 they've got nothing else to say they've only got something to speculate on and that as i say is when

00:59:15.920 you really earn your money and i'm not a trained journalist i'm not a trained broadcaster but in

00:59:21.740 the end i've got to rely on sort of 30 or 40 years of experience of knowing what you can do and what

00:59:27.580 you can't do and so far i haven't sort of stepped over over that line and the parameters of what you

00:59:34.580 can do and what you can't do have they become narrower over the years in terms of what in terms

00:59:39.620 of what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable what is acceptable to say and what isn't acceptable

00:59:43.800 decision i think that i mean we are governed by ofcom rules on on certainly on words that you

00:59:51.300 can use and that you can't use i think there's been a little bit more leniency on on that side

00:59:56.400 um but if you take the example of mental health i do a lot of programs on mental health issues

01:00:01.040 and there are words that um 10 years ago would have been quite acceptable to say on the radio

01:00:06.380 which aren't now um and i don't think it's it's not just political correctness here it's actually

01:00:14.240 just common decency in the i mean if you think about it we all use the word nutter or for somebody

01:00:22.020 who's got mental health issues that actually is a really horrible word to use i remember pulling

01:00:28.360 up nick clegg for using it once live on air um and it and i explained why it wasn't a word that

01:00:35.580 we should really use in polite society and he's oh no I quite understand and then the next day I

01:00:41.700 saw him use it in another interview the same way and you might think well that's being totally

01:00:46.040 oversensitive but you you do have words have consequences and although I'm not going to say

01:00:53.600 any words should necessarily be banned I think the Ofcom rules on most swear words for example

01:00:57.320 are utterly ridiculous in that I can't say bollocks on the radio but I can say grollocks 1.00

01:01:02.840 And everyone knows what I mean. 0.99

01:01:04.160 And I do that. 0.97

01:01:06.280 And you can't use the word bitch anymore. 1.00

01:01:09.140 Do you mean to describe a female dog? 0.99

01:01:12.900 I don't know the answer to that. 1.00

01:01:14.920 If you want to call someone a bitch, just say they're a female dog. 1.00

01:01:17.020 I can't say that, oh, well, before I came here, 1.00

01:01:19.780 I heard constant bitching about Frances.

01:01:21.920 If I do that, the producer presses the dump button.

01:01:24.540 It's outrageous.

01:01:26.000 And they did that to me not that long ago.

01:01:29.140 And I said, don't you ever do that again. 0.98

01:01:30.500 I said, if I was calling a female politician a bitch on air, 1.00

01:01:34.520 absolutely, I never would. 0.99

01:01:37.100 But if I did that, fine.

01:01:39.080 But not when you're using it in that kind of context. 0.97

01:01:42.200 It's utterly ridiculous. 0.51

01:01:45.340 But we have also seen examples. 0.93

01:01:47.760 There was that quite well-known example of the radio producer

01:01:50.440 or the radio presenter who temporarily lost their job then reinstated

01:01:54.160 because they doubted the existence of white privilege

01:01:56.960 or they criticised it.

01:01:58.060 It's a guy on Manx Radio, wasn't it?

01:01:59.560 Yeah.

01:02:00.500 well see to me that is that is a debating point right i mean i think it's unquestionable that

01:02:06.560 that uh particularly white males do even if they can't bring themselves to admit it do

01:02:15.460 get white privilege i do think that there is a case for that but to actually question it doesn't

01:02:20.800 mean to say you should lose your job and you've got it in the bbc where ian lee lost his job as

01:02:25.720 breakfast presenter on three counties radio for um arguing with a woman caller who was basically 0.60

01:02:33.020 saying she was a devout fundamentalist christian type who was saying terrible things about

01:02:39.040 homosexuals so ian lee took her to task for it and called her a bigot now if i'd done that on lbc 0.89

01:02:46.840 my boss would praise me for doing it he got the sack for it that's really interesting isn't it

01:02:53.260 Well, Ian, on that note, before we ask you our last question, perhaps, you know, why can't we all just get along?

01:03:02.320 You've given a list at the end of the book of 50 things.

01:03:05.560 But what do you think, you know, you said that we as individuals have to solve this problem.

01:03:11.480 so if we as individuals were to do one or two things each to really start to to dial back the

01:03:21.700 rhetoric to to start to be able to have conversations and good faith again what would we be doing well i

01:03:28.080 think two things one of which i've already really covered but one would be um to calm down take your

01:03:33.500 time reflect a bit before you respond to anybody where where you feel the sap rising just stop for

01:03:40.960 a few seconds and think do i really want to say this do i really want to get into this fight um

01:03:46.960 and second of all i think just to try to accept that somebody else is entitled to have a different

01:03:54.520 opinion try to understand their opinion try and understand where they're coming from with it try

01:03:59.640 and understand why they argue what they do because as i said before if you if you don't try to

01:04:04.820 understand how can you argue against them apart from just saying you're wrong i don't care what

01:04:09.440 you say you're wrong well you need to articulate an argument you can't just get away with with 0.77

01:04:15.920 just saying you're wrong or you're a dickhead or whatever um even if it's true you might say that

01:04:24.360 so i mean there's there's no this is not rocket science i mean this is um i mean it was actually 0.54

01:04:31.640 comparatively easy to come up with 50 ways i always hate these things when people do lists

01:04:35.800 of 29 ways you could could you think of the 30th one but yeah i could have gone on to 100 i suppose

01:04:41.400 but in the end you have to stop somewhere but i think you're right really it's about a sort of

01:04:45.580 self-discipline yeah about restricting yourself from your inner demons taking over and running

01:04:50.960 amok yes it is and look i'm not a saint on this i have tried to i've i mean i was on jeremy vine

01:04:58.660 the other day with jemma forte and she was basically saying that boris johnson was terrible

01:05:04.820 you got this wrong you got that wrong and any fool could have worked out that that wasn't going 0.84

01:05:09.000 to i said hang on a minute why don't you actually stand for election you happily come up with all 0.69

01:05:15.340 this criticism but and i probably went over the top a little bit of my tone and what i have to

01:05:25.000 accept as a 58 year old white male no no i am 58 i know it's difficult as a 58 year old white male

01:05:31.580 when you argue with a woman on television it's not a good look if you even look as if you might 1.00

01:05:38.000 be slightly losing your temper yeah um and i mean i have to do panels now where there's two or three

01:05:46.020 women and i just generally then sit there smile sweetly and speak when i'm spoken to because i 1.00

01:05:52.100 know what it looks like if you get involved in a in a sort of feisty debate which if it was three

01:05:57.240 other men you wouldn't hesitate in doing but that's the world we live in nowadays constant 0.99

01:06:01.820 is russian he doesn't have any of those that's why they bring me on good morning britain just

01:06:07.080 shout at the women yeah yes let me tell you why you're wrong be quiet woman it is my turn by the 1.00

01:06:13.200 way that powder that you put in my water earlier that's why he hasn't touched the water very very

01:06:21.040 prudent uh yeah it only works in hot liquids apparently yeah racist only works in hot liquids

01:06:25.760 I don't drink teal coffee so I'm safe

01:06:28.880 you are safe

01:06:29.660 but we have as always one final question for you

01:06:33.520 which is what's the one thing

01:06:35.080 we're not talking about as a society

01:06:37.020 that we really should be

01:06:38.320 West Ham's prospects for next season

01:06:41.040 would be one

01:06:41.800 absolutely

01:06:42.620 but I'm going to introduce something now

01:06:47.140 which you might find a little bit uncomfortable

01:06:48.680 in the book

01:06:50.640 I write about a time that I was

01:06:52.980 nearly raped

01:06:53.600 and i didn't really think anything about writing this because it it didn't traumatize me at the

01:06:59.820 time and it doesn't traumatize me now um but the observer rang me up and so they they were doing

01:07:05.300 an article on a tv series called i will destroy you and there's a male rape scene in that so they

01:07:10.800 said can we do an interview with you about this so i spent about half an hour on the phone to them

01:07:15.840 and the article wasn't about that at all it was just about me which was a bit of a shock

01:07:22.860 in a way um so i then did a phone in on it and i'll be seen the following night for two hours

01:07:29.320 and the number of men that phoned in say yeah this happened to me or either happened to me

01:07:35.300 or nearly happened to me or my mate or whatever and i do think this is something that society

01:07:41.980 doesn't really talk about we've got a lot we've had a lot of taboos in society and this is kind

01:07:46.500 one of the last ones i think 12 000 men were raped last year um i think only about a thousand

01:07:53.660 of the cases ever got to court i don't know how many um actually were convicted uh the average

01:08:00.880 how long do you think it takes for a man who has been a victim of a sexual assault whether it's

01:08:07.700 by and often it's actually a straight male that is doing it um really yeah how long does it take

01:08:16.000 for a man to tell anybody about it on average i'm gonna guess like 20 years 26 years yeah wow

01:08:22.800 now you think of the mental health aspects of that where somebody is bottling up inside and i know

01:08:27.760 several people that this has happened to it just in my sort of circle of contacts and i think well

01:08:34.080 if i know sort of it's probably four or five what about the ones that i don't know and you think

01:08:42.520 well this this is something that needs to be addressed and there's a charity called survivors

01:08:48.360 uk which i've now kind of adopted and sort of if i give money to charity they they get it because i

01:08:53.840 think this is a really big issue that i mean people don't want to talk about for obvious reasons it's

01:08:59.580 a very uncomfortable subject but it's also i mean there's also and again i've i've the day one of

01:09:07.060 the national newspaper commissioned me then to write a long read feature on it which in the end

01:09:11.900 they decided not to run which i was a bit annoyed about because i spent a lot of time writing it

01:09:15.840 researching it so i've actually put it on my website now um and i i just think that it's

01:09:23.740 something that people need to understand that it happens and it's not just men on men it's actually

01:09:31.560 women on men as well bizarrely i mean okay it's slightly more difficult for a woman to rape a man 1.00

01:09:36.980 but there is a lot of um i mean if we just think of the sort of me too things about sort of

01:09:42.340 female employers groping female staff or making inappropriate comments to them

01:09:47.120 um i remember back in the 1990s where i was um i mean a woman that i worked with just grabbed my

01:09:57.820 crotch now imagine if i as a man did that to a woman that didn't traumatize me at all i just

01:10:04.040 said do you think that's appropriate um mo mola when she was northern ireland secretary at a

01:10:09.800 labor party conference she had a picture taken with me and my partner we were running the 0.90

01:10:13.440 bookstore and she stood in the middle of us put her arms around us and started kneading our buttocks 1.00

01:10:18.060 that's sexual assault oh again i didn't i thought it was quite funny at the time but in today's

01:10:26.500 environment you can't call it anything else so there's so many issues around this that i think

01:10:32.920 we shy away from talking about so that's very long-winded answer to your question no but it's

01:10:36.560 a very good answer and if anyone i'm sure there will be people in our audience who unfortunately

01:10:41.220 have had this sort of experience survivors survivors uk survivors uk should they should

01:10:47.380 reach out to i mean have a read of the article it's on iandale.com and i mean i literally had

01:10:53.480 dozens of people contacting me on twitter about it and saying well i thought i was the only one

01:10:58.320 and you can understand why well the uk's most prolific rapist was actually a man who wrote

01:11:04.540 yeah absolutely right well that's a nice way to end yeah it is cheery as ever cheery as ever

01:11:12.180 thank you so much for coming back enjoyed it thank you for having me back it's a pleasure

01:11:15.720 to have you back i recommend everybody gets the book why can't we all just get along uh it's

01:11:21.200 fantastic read and it's an audio book as well in your voice i read the whole thing the interesting

01:11:26.680 thing is i've had a lot of people who say they've read the physical book but they can hear my voice

01:11:30.580 in every sentence which is actually the biggest compliment they can pay me unless they don't like

01:11:34.940 my voice it is really a great read because you've woven your own story into into the way they talk

01:11:40.120 about things but thank you for coming back uh thank you for watching and we will see you very

01:11:45.180 soon with another brilliant episode or a live stream which all go out 7 p.m uk time thank you

01:11:51.440 very much guys see you soon

01:11:56.680 We'll be right back.

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TRIGGERnometry - September 13, 2020

Why Can't We Just Get Along？ - Iain Dale

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