Modern Wisdom - #361 - Darren Grimes - What The Right Is Getting Wrong

Episode Date: August 21, 2021

Darren Grimes is a political commentator and a YouTuber. Conservatism might be the least sexy political viewpoint there is. The righthand side of the aisle is hardly setting anyone's pants ablaze and almost of feels like a movement that should come wrapped in a flat cap and a smoking jacket. Is this just the way things are? Expect to learn whether olympic athletes should be figureheads for politics, why Darren still receives so much Brexit hate 4 years later, whether UK Political Commentator Celebrity Boxing could be a successful business, the reason that young people aren't seduced by Conservative politics and much more... Sponsors: Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount & Free Shipping on awesome vegan meals at https://vibrantvegan.co.uk/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Check out Darren's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX469QlvW5gdPCMek-d-kuQ Follow Darren on Twitter - https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Darren Grimes, he's a political commentator and a YouTuber. We're talking about the problem with conservatism. Conservatism might be the least sexy political viewpoint there is. The right-hand side of the aisle is hardly setting anyone's pants or blaze, and almost feels like a movement that should come wrapped in a flat cap and a smoking jacket. Is this just the way things are? And is it healthy for a functioning democracy to have a political discussion online, which is dominated by one side that is far more glitzy and glamorous than the other?

So today, expect to learn whether Olympic athletes should be figureheads for politics, why Darren still receives so much Brexit hate four years later, whether UK political commentator celebrity boxing could be a successful business, the reason that young people aren't seduced by conservative politics and much more. No matter what your political inclination is, the goal should be to have a country and a world that is well-run, and everyone can agree or they should be able to, that that means that both sides need to be competing and working as well and effectively as they can. Like the left probably could do with stopping from

focusing on identity quite so much. That would probably mean that a lot more people would take their proposal seriously. And the right probably does need to get with the times a little bit more and try and update its talking points to be more interesting. Maybe today there's some ideas that might help. Or maybe it's just too Northern Lads talking about stuff they don't know. But now it's time for the wise and wonderful Darren Grimes. Thanks for watching! Darren Grimes, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having us. I'm dead excited about this one, I must see.

Two Northern boys today. Exactly. The way it works. Hashtag, Brexit reality is trending at the moment and people are upset. Is this your fault? Have you done something here? Do you know what? I don't think it is my fault this time. I can't say I've spent that much time on Twitter today, but I don't think it's me.

There's always some form of Brexit reality, right? Despite the fact there's a global pandemic, sort of wreaking havoc across the globe as we speak. And supply chains have been through its fantasy a little bit of rough and tumble that Brexit gets the blame. It's just the way things work. On Twitter, it's a cesspit of FBPE

remains sort of circle jerkery. I'm afraid Chris, that's the be all. And then all of that. It feels like you're still kind of one of the big public enemies around the Brexit debacle. I still had my head at my ass when Brexit was happening. I was actually flying back from some foreign country while the vote was going on. I was watching it live because there was nothing else at four in the morning with the time zone that I was in. What was your role in this? Why do people have sort of distaste or

some circles of Twitter have distaste for you when Brexit comes up. So I set up a campaign from my bedroom in Brighton. I was at Brighton University at the time and that was 2015, December of 2015. And I set up a campaign called Believe and it was a liberal minded Brexit arguments that were there to cater to a younger audience, which I thought was being sort of a little bit left out of the debate in the argument. I thought there were actually legitimate arguments to make from a classical liberal perspective that simply weren't being made by the vote leave campaign. So anyway, I set this up and I had just recently left the Liberal Democrats after that because I thought I can't get away from the fact that this party is unapologetically pro EU and I couldn't understand why, frankly, I just I think there are legitimate Liberal arguments for leaving the EU.

I certainly think in many ways the EU on the world stage has been pretty damn protectionist and not very internationalist in its outlook. The whole idea of I remember one advert in particular where they had a there was a man dressed up in Asian garb and there's this woman who was fending them off and a sort of man who looks like he's in sort of I don't know Saudi aristocrat dress fighting off this EU superwoman. And that was an advert calling to basically to try and parrot this idea of the EU as the protector of the EU from of EU countries of the EU 28 at the time from the rest of the world. And I thought, hang on a minute, how the hell is that compatible with any of the arguments that, you know, the Lib Dems parrot every two minutes about being inclusive and all the rest of it, if anything, that's

exclusive. So I thought about this and I thought, well, this is entirely incompatible with everything that I've heard so far. I thought I was a liberal at the time. I'm not, um, but I didn't know that. I was quite in my infancy of my political journey at the time I would say. And anyway, I set up this campaign. And I think it was pretty quick, actually, the Venom and Vitriol. I remember the day after the vote, I had precious little sleep. I had been campaigning for the official campaign for the last two days out and about, you know, handing out leaflets and knocking on doors and all the rest of it to try and get out the vault. And I went into the channel for Studio the day after.

And I was met by Sarah Morrison, who used to be. She was under Ted Heath, former leader of the Conservative Party, former Prime Minister of this country. She was his vice chairman of the Conservative Party. And I met her and I thought this is very exciting, you know, meeting such a grand character within the conservative history. And she was utterly vile. I'm afraid there's no other way of putting it. She said, they basically across that panel said, I am thick, uneducated. I don't know. I didn't know what I was voting for. I clearly have, I guess, betrayed my generation. clearly have, I guess, betrayed my generation, and that my arguments weren't worth hearing. And that, I think, I'm afraid to say,

has been what the last, what, five years now, have all been about, which is this sort of contempt for those of us who are conservative-minded, who quite like our country, who quite like our country, who quite like our monarch, who quite like our flag, who quite like the fact that we should make decisions in this country and that we champion that around the world, that sort of message of being the mother of parliaments, that democracy. And yet all of these things, I think just sort of, you're, you're derided as being a complete Neanderthal, you know, an idiot that doesn't know what's good for them. Let us decide for you. That's what you've been doing all

along. That's what you've been voting for. You did that with Blair. You did that with Cameron. You've been doing that for years and years. How dare you think you know what's good for you in your community? What specifically is it about you that you think triggered that talking point? Because more than 50% of the country voted to leave. So there's a lot of other people that could have been on the end of that particular stick. Yeah. So there's 17.4 million people voted leave and 14 million in the last general election vote at Tori and you wouldn't know that would you buy the narrative and much of what you

hear from the media class. But I think the contempt for me, I think that I'd go as far to call it hatred, there's a lot of people out there that I think it's to say, do not like me, you only have to scroll through one of me tweets and look at the mentions to get a get a flavor of that. God help you Chris when you post this interview. But I think it comes down to this. I take a fair few identity boxes. I'm gay, I'm work in class, I'm from the northeast, and all of these things, I did an arts degree, admittedly I dropped out of it, but I did. All of these things suggest that I should be a man of the left. I should belong to the left.

I should recognize that the Tories aren't for someone like me or that our conservatism or Brexit. They're not for people like me, you know, progressives own people like me, whatever that means. You know, this is a assumption that we're one, hermodian, a smass. All gay people, all trans people, all women, all, you name it, this rainbow coalition. We all think exactly the same way. When that's obviously complete not a fast, it's a complete not nonsense. So I think the hatred comes from that. It's the fact that I've never known me on place. It's the fact that I've dared have an opinion and I've dared go against the grain in that as well. You know, grandson of a minor as well, how dare I not recognize what Mrs. Thatcher did, the county Durham, you know, that I've heard that before. So there are many threads to it. I think it's ultimately though, there's an element of snobbery to it.

It does feel like a heterodox position now to be a young person, under what 40 and lean right and I only found out not long ago that 20% of the UK population is on Twitter that's it. So even as you say when there seems to be these pylons and it's like everyone on Twitter hates this person, not everyone on Twitter believes this thing, you realize that that at most even if 100% of people on Twitter were doing it, would be one in five of the entire UK population. Yeah, exactly. But it does feel like a heterodox position to be young and right leaning. Absolutely. And that's been a phenomenon, that's been going on for a little while now. But I think Brexit has sort of sped that up by a factor of 10. Look, I think all not, it isn't lost with conservatism, though, and I'm not as pessimistic

as most people. I think conservatism as this sort of philosophy of love as the late and great Roger Scrutin once decided called it. I think ultimately what's going to happen is the left are getting so extreme right the left are pushing things as far as they possibly can where the public are going oh hang on a minute mate what's going on here and I think young people eventually will will have a similar sort of view will come to ground and say actually I really don't like what is it I think is a been incredibly divisive.

And actually, I'm tired of this. And we're at each other's throats that you wouldn't believe at the moment. And it's a really, really nasty environment. So yeah, you're right, but there are so many young people who get in touch with me and say, I'd love to have conservatives come and speak at my university, but every time I try to do that, it's like clockwork, the invitation will be issued. Students that don't like this particular speaker, it could be a democratically elected member of Parliament to conserve the MP. They'll find out about this. They'll kick up a fuss. And the invitation

will have to be cancelled because of the fact that the venue has been lost. So you can't even hear and I said I repeat 14 million people voted Tory in 2019. You can't hear from a democratically elected representative of the people. In a university I was supposedly all gust universities. So to me it's well, it's no wonder that people aren't here and conservative viewpoints in universities and young people, the young people that aren't going to uni, you know, they're out there working hard, they're out there doing their jobs, they're out there making a living. So I can't, it's no surprise to me, I'm a freak in that sense, right? It's being hyper plugged in to political debate and all the rest of it. I recognize that I am not normal, but I think we'll get there eventually because the left

are really, really stirring the pot at the minute, and I think that's going to have some really nasty repercussions in the sense of people will just say I've had enough with this I'm up to here with this because we're not electing these people yet. They still keep winning power They're still winning the cultural arguments. They're still everywhere in pop culture They're still everywhere in political culture. They're still everywhere in media culture And I think people are crying out for diversity of thought and media culture. And I think people are crying out for diversity of thought. And that's the only form of diversity that I'm afraid to see isn't acceptable in this day and age. I think that you're right that there's an interesting paradox going on here that as in the

UK specifically, the support for the left politically in terms of how we're getting on in elections appears to be declining. And yet if you were to look at what's published in the media, it doesn't seem that way at all. But I'm less hopeful. I'm not sure that I agree about young people being, it may be having five or ten years and then then being able to turn around and see that this is actually more divisive than it is supporting because the signal that a lot of the left-leaning articles are putting off at the moment is that if you are for the left, you are for compassion, it's acceptance, it's tolerance, it's a lot of buzzwords that just sound very easy to

consume. And man, I think up until I was 27, 28 and then probably still now, I'm bro-sizing my way through all of this, but I think that those sort of words just triggering you in a much less emotionally mature brain, oh well, I want that, Stormzy, Stormzy supports fucking whatever, he supports Keir Starmer, that must be the right thing, Amber from Love Island, she supports Keir Starmer because I'm going to take my political advice from someone that went on reality TV.

Hi, hi. So, yeah, I, um, I don't know, man. It'll be interesting to wait and see, but I certainly think that one of the reasons that the talking points are effective with people that are young is because you want to do the thing that seems like it's good. Your ability to be skeptical hasn't fully developed yet. And I said that as someone that has to work very hard at being skeptical, not very conspiratorially minded, really struggle at sort of poking holes and being disagreeable with people's arguments,

because I presume that most people are telling the truth. And when you just stepped out in adulthood, your parents have looked after you for 18 years, you finally released into the big wide world to either have a job or go to university and you think, well, mum and dad looked after me, most parents, they looked after me, they told me the truth, therefore probably most of their adults not only tell the truth, but also know what they're doing. And it takes a lot of time for you to realize, hang on, the competence that I gave to my parents and presumed that they had actually doesn't exist with everyone else in the adult world. I think you're right. I think to a certain extent at least, because that's a tale as all this time. Conservatism has always had this problem. As I described it earlier, conservatism is the philosophy of love. It is this idea that I actually quite like

what we've done here. I want to protect it. I want to know what we've done here is something that's disempowering to a particular group. But what if what we've done here is a mistake? Well, then, so I would say section 28 was a mistake, right? But it was a conservative, David Cameron, I'd apologise for that in the, obviously, a little while later, but certainly in my political lifetime. And there

is a recognition that that's a mistake. There is a recognition of, well, actually, maybe we shouldn't have done that. But that's all that's what politics is all about, right? I think there are certain things that within the conservative tradition that I wouldn't have been supportive of and some that I am that For example, I think on environmentalism, I think in communities like this one, we are sacrificing or about to sacrifice so many working class jobs on the altar of the green. I've just seen a report the day on hydrogen saying that actually it's more than it was something that a staggering number, a percentage point, more dangerous by one measure than gas boilers. And you just think, have we thought any of this through? There's just

this narrative that some technology is coming galloping down the hill, that's just going to save work. And all of a sudden we're going to be able to have energy aplenty. And you're like, what is this? What are we doing? Why are we setting arbitrary targets? Why don't we just say, right, yes, we want to aspire to have cleaner air. We want to do that for a multitude of reasons, but one of them being that actually polluting our air with this poisonous stuff and affecting the wellbeing of some of the British population probably isn't a net positive thing to do and therefore we want to do something about that. Fine, I accept that with my full heart.

What I don't accept is telling work and class people that you can't have cheap food, that you can't have your holidays people that you can't have cheap food, that you can't have your holidays, that you can't have your car, that you can't have your energy bills cheaper. All of these things, right? That you're going to have to pay to have your gas boiler removed. No, no, no. I say all of that is a nonsense because we are what 1% of global CO2 emissions. And the likes of China and Germany are still pumping out coal like you wouldn't believe. So no, I think it's a complete fantasy

and it's virtue, signal and frankly, that's what they're trying to do with this. And you mentioned it earlier, I think the problem with the environmentalism within the Conservative Party, within Boris's current number 10 operation. A lot of the thinking is, well, this makes us look nice. We are the nice people. We can be the nice people.

They're never going to think you're nice, we taught, wake up, buttercup, right? They're never going to think you're nice. Conservative and conservatism aren't meant to be seen like that. And there's a reason for that, right? You can hold up as an environmentalist, you can hold up a bannessain, I don't know, resist, right? And you think, oh, resist, that sounds very exciting,

that's quite tantalized, and I'll have a bit of this, where I to do a protest right now, I'd stand up with a sign saying, steady, you know, steady on, steady as she goes. Should we really be doing this? Think again, question mark. Very exciting. Very exciting. Very exciting.

There's hardly anyone on the street that's going to be like beep and the horn at me, is there, and saying, well, maybe to get out the way, but not to actually say, I want to join this person's movement. And that's the problem conservativeism has because it says, you know, we actually want to look back through history. We want to actually see what's working and what isn't. We want to actually think about things before we do them. We don't want to say, okay, there's a problem here. Let's do the most drastic thing possible. Let's cut out, cut off our sort of energy intensive nose to spite our face as we're doing in steel manufacturing, cement manufacturing, all

of these things, the fast of what we've done in Northumberland, right, we've said we're not going to open a coal mine with about 250 high-scale high-paid jobs, but we are going to get the coal that we need for those bloody big wind farms, the wind turbine things, and for the cement and steel that we need for Boris Johnson's level and up agenda from the likes of Russia, the Russian Bay, from the likes of Australia. Far flung countries, I love Australia, don't get as wrong, but the idea that we should be important things from Russia, do you really think they're doing things cleaner than we could do it in this country with open cast coal mining, with safe practices, you know, it's gone other days of me granddad going deep down a pit and not being able to fully extend his arm

because he's been down there so long and just all of these things, the inconsistencies and it's all, as I say, just a virtue signal. And it's going to hurt people. It's really going to hurt. And I think there's a really important point, Chris, really quickly. I think that what we saw in Australia in their last general election, where the Labour Party was supposed to rumble, right? They were, they were, every poll put them ahead. And it, they turned around and said, in places, up in the mining communities in Australia, there will be job losses, right? Because of our climate change targets. And the people in mining communities in Australia said, well,

actually, I'd quite like to keep my job, thanks, I'd quite like to keep pride over what I do, pride in my life, pride in my community. And they lost the election. I think that's going to happen. It could happen. Here in this country, I really, really do. So I agree that tradition isn't sexy. It's very hard. It's very hard to glam up shit that's been around

for 300, 500 or a thousand years. This quote from Donald Kingsbury that I love and he says, tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Take the solution away and the problem often comes back worse than it ever was before. And I agree, man, as I've got older, I think that reinventing the wheel and trying to go for a total upending change is just, we don't do it in any other form. Elon Musk hasn't decided to try and create a rocket that can immediately go to Mars. He's incrementally made improvements to an existing model that he's made. I can try this, we'll try this. And he's the most revolutionary guy

when it comes to this technology. So I think, yeah, you're always going to be on the back for it when it comes to advertising because there's just not as much sort of pizzazz going on when it comes to conservatism. And inevitably as well, that's good. You know, for a TikTok generation that likes Instagram and stuff like that, and you've sort of got this bumbling full Boris, and he's like, all I'm cool and his brother's going inside out, and he feels like sort of old England. I see, especially if you're a working class young person. I see why that's not tremendously seductive. On the other hand, you've got Dave, the rapper, he'll tweet something. You think you're Dave, like Dave says it. So I'll do what Dave says. So yeah, I do get that, but it'll be

interesting, man. I think the UK, the UK is an interesting case study because we're so converse, at least in terms of what the polls have showed to what happened in America. If America had had the same Trump whitewash that we'd seen an equivalent sized landslide to the right, um, I think that there would have been a really good case to make that look all of this sort of identity, woki stuff. It's just, it's not resonating at all with the electorate, but the flying the ointment, the massive, biden-sized flying the ointment, is the fact that that didn't happen. And that, I think, has lent four more years of credence

to more critical race theory, more divisiveness, so on and so forth, stuff like that. And yeah, man, you see it play out in everything now. I mean, did you see, here's another thing, I know it's recent, you see this video out in everything now. I mean, did you see, here's another thing I know it's recent. You see this video of the weightlifter Sarah Robles being asked about Laurel Hubbard? Yeah. So she got asked, what do you think it's this symbolic day where progression and the first

trans athlete is now competing on the stage with you. And there's three female weightlifters in the 87 kilo category that I think must be the same category and maybe one down. British girl, there's Sarah Robles and another girl and there's a nine second silence and then she just leans forward and presses the button and goes, no thank you. And then stops what we thought to that. Well apparently they had actually asked and said don't ask us any questions about that particular topic. So it could have been to be fed them. It could have been a, you know, next question. I'm not, but it did look amazing when I first watched it and didn't know any of the background behind it. I thought, you know, good for use

because it's not fair, good for use. And this is a topic that actually I've fallen out with a fair few of my conservative party friends in the LGBT Tory or whatever it's called now. I'm not sure it is called that anymore. It's LGBT, lalalalala. I don't even know what that alphabet soup actually represents anymore. But anyway, putting that to one side, I've fallen out with a fair few people over this very topic and it's quite sad really because I've never really understood why people aren't willing to hear you out because I actually think that my view on this once you scratch below the surface is actually quite nuanced. And it comes from, after watching, believe it or not, after watching a BBC whistle-blower report,

it was BBC News Night, and they had this most fantastic expose of the NHS Tavastock Clinic, which is the NHS is the England's only gender identity clinic, basically, for kids. And there were kids that were evidenced in this in whistleblower reports from people who had resigned from this clinic, which is now, by the way, in special measures, it's under investigation. And they had heard from kids getting younger and younger, and each time the case for medical intervention supposedly getting stronger and stronger.

And these kids were saying things like, well, you know, I just don't like my body. Well, some parents got coming out and saying, I would prefer a trans outcome over a gay outcome. And you hear some of these stories. And I actually felt really upset. I actually felt the people who are calling me, you know, transphobic online and things like that. I don't think that's right.

I think for some of these kids, you know, transphobic online and things like that. I don't think that's right. I think for some of these kids, you don't need medical intervention. You need a hoax we taught, you know, you need, you need some, you need to actually be able to sit down with someone and have some therapy and discuss these things. And if in the future, you know, when you're old enough, and you can decide to have a life change and life altering medical procedure like that, I've got no problem with that whatsoever. You know, if that's going to make you feel better, feel happier, feel more at home in yourself, then happy days.

And that's the same position as someone like JK Rowling. She only said the only thing she said was that she has deep reservations about what's going on as far as self-identification is concerned. So you know if you Chris decide that you are now Christine and in the gym tomorrow you're gonna walk into the girls' changing room and have a good old time in there, then she said I think that's going to present some problems. And most people at home watching this will be thinking, well, I agree. But if they're not, I asked them to look a bit deeper at what

she was saying, because in this essay that she published on our website that caused much hysteria, she actually was saying, I was a victim of domestic violence in the past. I had to use a women's refuge. To me, single sex spaces must be protected. And I know people, you know, places like this, there's a lot of alcohol misuse. I've no one people go that have gone through domestic violence, horrible as it is. And you just think I cannot imagine a more vulnerable position, one for children to be placed in. We've seen over recent days a therapist who volunteered at Childline for the last five years, James Sessis, he's lost his position as a volunteer for and his degree, his qualification, from the crime of actually saying, well, I think actually we shouldn't be just a firm and that these

kids have gender dysphoria. We should actually be seeing them. Well, I want to have a few sessions with you. I want to talk things out and see if there are anything else that's underlying your, the issues that you feel that you have in at the minute. And you think, well, again, that's sensible. Jacob Rowland's saying, I really worry about sex segregated spaces as someone who had used them myself, as someone who had used women refuge myself. And you think, well, again, that sounds sensible. But these people are derided and cancelled. J.K. Rowlan hasn't been cancelled because he's too rich to be cancelled, too successful to be cancelled. But someone like James S's has been. For saying actually, I'm too worried about the kids I've seen that are getting younger

and younger. But the sort of methodology that's been pushed at them is getting more and more severe each time. I definitely think that there's a difficulty in justifying how someone that legally can't have sex is able to change their sex. That to me seems like, look, if you're not trusting them to ponder, I must stop you there, sorry. Well, I mean, those two words used to be interchangeable. Yes, those people who want to change their gender are too young to have sex, but can change that gender.

That seems like you can't give somebody responsibility over one thing that is an immutable change for the remainder of their life and another thing that is going to happen in any case. I don't know, that seems backwards. I think the interesting thing about the Olympics question for me was that there is no place in the world which is not open to being used as a platform for political debate. But like, look, I know a lot of weightlifters. They work really, really, really hard.

It's an incredibly fatiguing sport. Their central nervous system is almost always fried if they're training close to maximally in the build up toward a competition. They're probably not spending that much time thinking about the finer points. And even if they were, even if they have done it, these people are good because they're athletes. They're not supposed to be the insights for sense-making at level 1000. That's not why we go to them. We go to them because they're able to lift everything. I don't know. I just feel like there was gymnast as well that did the Black Lives Matter fist at the end of her

Gymnastic routine and you think well I don't know like What sort of an example? I can't work out if that's a good example to set For young athletes that look you have a platform and visibility therefore do it or if it's like look Get on with doing your sport Like be good at the thing that you're supposed to be there for Absolutely. I mean the the Hubar, for example, I think, calls into question so many things, Hubar, of course, lost, right? Hubar didn't actually qualify and get through to become a medalist. And I say, well, you know, God bless those girls that did, and women that

did, because it must have been, you must just be thinking how unfair. I feel so sorry for the key weas that didn't get through that Miss Hobart took the position of because I think ultimately biological sex is an immutable fact. You know, I I'm born a man if I decide that I want to live life as Dorine and I have medical intervention to go about that. I'm still going to be a biological male. I still have gone through puberty. I still have all of the, well, probably you more than me, Chris. Let's be honest about this, but you know, I still have more strength than a male, a female counterpart. So there are so many ways in this cause into a question of fairness, and that's where I'm at on

all of that. But on the politicization of sport, that's a really, really interesting one. I've got myself in a some-hot water about criticizing sports and not too distant past. And it is an interesting one. And I think the BLM Fist is probably a naked attempt to get some sponsorship deals. You know, you can find yourself in a nice cover to graze in your face and young people think, oh, good, goody, goody, this is virtuous,

how amazing, how fantastic. Even though, of course, that symbol, the fist, has been a symbol of communist terror and tyranny throughout history. Communism, of course, been an ideology that has been responsible for murder, unique throughout the world, billions, not millions of people.

And yet still, apparently this is the new symbol of progressive virtue signaling politics. Did you have a second thought about the tweet that you sent to Marcus Rashford? Obviously, you're someone who's been the target of some pretty mean stuff online. And I imagine that if you'd just failed on a very tall stage and you'd gone online, there's almost a zero-pcent chance that Marcus did see that, but I'm sure that it wouldn't have made you feel good if the equivalent had happened to you. Have you reflected on this?

Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think that's a fair criticism. I think that I certainly wouldn't have enjoyed that very much. But everything that happened with Marcus, that sort of little run that he did up to the ball. And it was just like, it's the showmanship, it's the, it's the, the, the, well, of course, the politics, which we're discussing, we can discuss.

And, and people saying, well, are you must be pro, staff and children? I mean, Chris, I went to school on, I had free school meals myself, right? We struggled my mom got divorced when I was still at school and she had a remorchage the house and everything where we're going through financial difficulties had to turn to a food bank at one point. I'm not someone who isn't supportive of charity and isn't supportive of looking after kids. I am someone who's critical of, I think, getting a bollish in what is slowly happening, the abolishment of the role of the parent, that really worries me. And I think that's increasingly happening actually.

There's now a sort of a view that even getting your kids eyes tested, oh well, the school should do that. That's the school's responsibility. Teaching your kid a read, no, that's the school's responsibility. There's this, I guess, devolving of your responsibility as a parent. If you're not willing to teach your kid how to read, you shouldn't be a mammoth dad if you ask me.

That's my view, and some people won't like that but at this point I couldn't care less. But yes, the one thing I do regret is the tone, I guess, of that tweet. The I guess it could have become across as being mean spirited. But I still I'm afraid I still stand by that I don't like politics in sport. You know, I want Rashford to be winning for England. I'd like him to be doing a little less winning for Manchester, but apart from that, you know, I'd like him to be doing his sport playing because you're right. This politicization of everything now. I mean, the BBC this morning posted out from

BBC women, the BBC women account, quite why there's a BBC women account, I don't know, but they posted out saying that is it right? So, sort of asking for questions or a comment on the debate about shown children pornography to teach them about consent and other issues. Didn't someone from GB News get annihilated about this only last week? Yes, I think so. There's been a fair few little bits about this out and about. I think the reason why the BBC actually ran this is because it was someone, it was Amber Rhodes daughter had tweeted something that had effected it and I think a good idea to teach kids about consent, you know, would be to do this, to advocate and it's quickly deleted.

Does, does porn assist with consent? Like what, what do you highlight highlight like how does porn teach anybody about consent? I think they're I think they actually contained within this thread I it was an illogical thread. I mean an actual thread on Twitter and It basically said well, there wouldn't be any choking of things like that and you think my god Was any would anyone really propose that with bends with cakes with children? What what will do we live in? What sick twisted reality? That also presumes as well that choking can't be consensual, which is also wrong. Yes, of course, but I still think that children shouldn't be exposed to those beings. Porn and children, just like if you're thinking, if anybody that's listening to this is thinking,

If you're thinking, if anybody that's listening to this is thinking, got this idea about sort of porn, children, I might tweet about it. Just that. Those are two of these sort of red boxes. And you're like, no, if those two things are in the tweet, just don't put it out. There's the final ultimate taboo is anything around underage kids and sex. Like it is, it is the one that no matter where you stand, there is not a single person that's going to be on your side.

So doing that just seems like it just seems so dumb. And then yeah, for BBC three, or whatever BBC women to tweet out about, you're like, what are we achieving here? Like really? I mean, I don't know, man, I don't know. Here's another one. So Twitter again, Owen Jones trending today.

I've had an idea, because I come from an events background. How do you feel about UK political commentary celebrity boxing? And then maybe Owen Jones Douglas Murray, because I'd pay very good money to what's going to happen. You on this very show were talking to Douglas about his exercise routine, about what he's been doing with his arms, and that he's got some pretty serious arms. I really think he could take on Jones on. Not that I've been admirer in Douglas's arms with any great depth, win-kwink.

But I think that's probably a good idea, can he idea? Because actually, the problem is with people like Owen Jones and others like them, they're just not willing to engage with people on the other side of the argument. They think that I go back to Roger Scruton, again, actually, which is Roger Scruton said that I don't think the left are evil, I just think they're mistaken. And that's the difference between me and the likes of Owen Jones. He genuinely thinks that people like me are evil scum at the earth. That's a nice distinction. It's a nice distinction between Males being purported from one

side about the other and ignorance or negligence being purported about the other side back. I think that's probably a pretty good way to characterize it. It is. It's a nice way. I mean, they would argue that actually it's the other way around, probably, right? You know, these well-meaning virtue signal and tosses I was about to see. But, you know, each to their own, I would be more than happy to meet with all Jones and have a paint with him and a discussion with him. But I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. and have a pint with him and a discussion with him. But I doubt that's gonna happen anytime soon. Little Naz X is got new song out,

which is kind of like the gay male equivalent of WAP, of the WAP video. You've seen this video? I haven't seen the video I'm afraid, nor I have seen the WAP video. Right, okay, so it's kind of like that, but it's in a prison and it's all men instead of all women. And Lil Nas X and his backup dancers are completely naked,

and then there's sort of blurred over the top of the areas that matter. And I was just quite surprised because when WAP came out, that it was so provocative, and maybe the lyrics were tiny bit more provocative, but yeah, it sort of created this fewer online about women being empowered by their own bodies and stuff like this and not being an object for the male gaze. It's sort of where retaking control

of our personal sovereignty and stuff like that. And we haven't seen the equivalent with a man also doing it for the male gaze. We haven't seen the same with that. I don't really know why. And I wondered, given your sexual predilection, if you had a unique insight into this. I think with gay men, there is a lot of deep rooted shame with a lot of gay men still.

I think there's a lot of a sense of, actually, and one thing I find quite sad is this idea that I think there's a lot of gay men who are going to get very deep here. I'll get me violin out. There's a lot of gay men who don't think, for example, they don't recognize any form of self-worth. I think they could do with listening to a lot of your sort of motivation and positive think in mantra. Because I think there's a lot of your sort of motivation and positive thinking mantra,

because I think there's a lot of people who have been made to feel shame throughout their life. I think that's Alex. My brother's generation, he's a ETA is younger than I am. I think my brother's generation have had a different at school to what I did at school, and that's a pretty fast trajectory. You know, things have changed at breakneck speed. So I think future generations won't have that problem. Whether or not you need to, do I need to bring, sort of show off my bits, dangly bits to feel liberated? I don't, I don't necessarily think that's, that's true. I think to feel liberated, I need to feel like a ordinary member of society, that's why I support it same sex marriage. I want to be as boring as a lot of you straight people, right? I want

to be able to walk around and I come from that, I guess, all tradition of gay men that actually just want to be boring, that actually just want to, they would say that I'm pandering to being heteronormative, I think, is what they call it. And I'd say, well, no, I just want to live life. I just want to be accepted by society, be a part of society. And I don't think that it's necessary to put out music videos like that. I'm just not sure what you're getting from it to be honest with you. So I understand the desire not to have your sexuality as the first and foremost part of your personality.

Like I definitely understand that. I think the thing that was quite interesting was, uh, summit Douglas said on the show, they said, you realize that you have true equality when you have to put up with the same level as shit as everybody else. And that lack of special treatment, I actually think quite, at least, I only found out about this video seven days after it was released. It's had like 200 minutes, some ridiculous number of views. It's number two trending on YouTube at the moment, and it's been out for a week. I only found out about it in the sauna chatting to a mate yesterday.

So it's completely slipped by me, and I'm usually fairly active online looking for interesting stories. So that was like, okay, well, cool. That is a rapper releases a music video and in it he's naked and he's gay and his fans care, but nobody else does. I'm like, right, okay, that's progress. That really does feel like progress. Nobody gives a shit. Like that's the level, in difference, is the level that everybody should be aiming for

with equality, I think. Yeah, I mean, there's a certain extent to which I think we're sort of taking things, everything is sex these days. You know, you've got love Island, you've got what, too hot to handle on Netflix, you've got these music videos, you've got... I just sort of think there's probably such a thing as too much sex, right? I'm not sure why we are so obsessed with this now. To what extent the sort of I guess children are being you know brought up I remember we used to watch music videos in the sort of common room at school to what extent we did have a common room and

You would watch them back to back and I'm thinking God the kids that are watching music videos these days, you know, back in my day when, I don't know, the sugar babes were bopping about on a stool. It's quite different these days when people are, I don't know, patting themselves and you just think, good God, what are kids watching? So I'm turning into a very old fart. Maybe this is part of the reason why increasingly people are needing, there's an insight that some young people need to learn about sex sooner. I mean, taking the pawn thing out of it,

like kids are being sexualized sooner because it's at the forefront of everyone's conversation at the moment, but then it doesn't really seem to be about the thing that everybody's actually bothered with. Like no one's ever actually talking about how to find a good relationship, about how to make it work long-term. Which ultimately is, like, yeah, sure enough, you need to find someone sexually

who's compatible with you, you need to work out what your sexuality is and so on and so forth. But all of that is in service, presumably, with you actually finding someone that you're going to be happy with. Because if you're still playing the dating game at 50 years old, not many people are going to look at that and consider it a still playing the dating game at 50 years old, not many people going to look at that and consider it a success in the dating world. So all of this is in service of basically relationship building, but I'm not hearing anybody talk about that because two conservative, two-old school marriages and archaic institution, it's heteronormative, it's patriarchal cisgendered, it's oppressive.

Yeah, I certainly think in sex and relationship education, you should be talking about those normative, it's patriarchal cisgendered, it's oppressive. Yeah, I certainly think in sex and relationship education, you should be talking about those things. You should be talking about, well, this is how people in a normal, love and relationship are actually trekked because, you know, I mean, the number of kids at my school that had to drop out for a bit

because they'd ended up pregnant, you know? And you just think, God, that's one, that's no life for that, that Ben, right? So he was going to be brought up by a child. And I hope they're all right, of course. I wish them well. But there are so many ways in which I wish in schools. We weren't talking about, well, this is, this is, I don't know, this is what a trans person is. This is, I think there was an example with trans penguins or something or gay penguins or something like that. You can't escape the fact

that gay people exist in this day and age. You know, you turn on Netflix, you turn on your chat show, you turn on whatever, you're going to see that gay people exist, right? I'm not sure schools need to be doing it. I think what schools do need to be doing is actually saying the kids, you can be something, you can achieve something with your life, especially in areas like this, you know, you can actually, if you work hard, if you stick in at school, you can achieve something. This is a country where you can still do that, where hard work actually has results, meritocratic. Instead of thinking, which I think to a large extent for a lot of my life, I did as well,

which is, you are stupid, you cannot, you know, there's no point in trying. I remember my maths teacher saying it was,, you cannot, you know, there's no point in trying. I remember my maths teacher saying it was, when you fail, when you fail, it's not going to be my fault. It's going to be on you. It's the most passive, aggressive maths teacher that I've ever heard of. Oh, absolutely. But I stuck with this for obvious reason, but then another, and the, you had these stupid waste of time, sort of cancel us that would come in and say,

oh, what is it you want to do with your life? And he said, oh, well, with, you know, if those are your projected grades, you're not going to get into a university and stuff like that. Now, I think we're sending, as it happens far too many people at the university, but I'd still like to kids to like that. Now, I think we're sending, as it happens far too, many people at the university, but I'd still like to kids to hear that,

if you wanna do that, you can do it. You know what you've gotta do though? You've gotta stick in, you've gotta work hard, and that means revising at home. That means not going out and about with your mates, getting drunk in a park. Not saying I did that. And all of these things, you know,

that's not thinking about girls and boys quite so early, that's not all the rest of it. I think there's a real problem with aspiration, with kids and communities up and down the UK. Definitely, the UK, man. So I was having this conversation with an American and we were talking about one of the problems that the American culture has is when these young kids get older because the American dreams still very much sort of is alive. You can be whatever you want to be,

the sort of American dream is still yours. Even if that dream is kind of changing, I think the encouragement's still there. Whereas in the UK, it's a lot more tall poppy syndrome. You know, coming from a state school, if you talk a little bit differently, if you sound a bit differently, if you have different interests or whatever, like it's a tough road.

And what you get from the advantage that you have in the UK of that is that you don't ever believe you're on bullshit, but the problem is you don't ever believe that you can be worth anything. Exactly. So you do get two sides of the coin. We're brought down to earth, and this is why I think you're seeing the super progressive Talking points just not land quite so well in the UK because we're quite salt of the earth people generally

Especially the place that mean you are from you know the northeast of the UK. No one's bothered about that It's when you're concerned about your next paycheck and keeping the lights on, you don't have time to worry about gendered pronouns and bathrooms and stuff like that. But the disadvantage you get is you don't have as much encouragement. And that's something for the people that have got younger brothers and sisters, like, that's your role. I'm an only child, so I never had the opportunity to do that. But that's your role, 100% to be the person that gasses them up. Like, tell them that they can do stuff because they can. I mean, like the number one desired job of primary school kids now is YouTuber. Like, that's the most desired, not policeman, not fireman, and you know, maybe we're making this

situation worse, but I definitely think that if that's the case, then you literally can do it. Anybody can do it. There's like kids that are making millions, reviewing toys and stuff like that. But I bet that there's still the same tall, poppy syndrome challenge going on there. So yeah, that's, if I could change something about the UK, one of the top parts of the culture that I would do is this desire to mark or sort of drag people down

that do non-typical pursuits. Absolutely, definitely. And that's why we need to start talking about more things like technical education. You know, one of my brothers works in distribution for a supermarket, you know, pulling out loads from factories and things like that all day long. And he's in and out of work like that. And for someone like him, he would have really been able to benefit from a technical education and it's interesting that you mentioned being a single child because I actually think, you know, a lot of my, what I'm passionate about comes from my experience with watching my brothers

who have gone through exactly the same upbringing, but with very different sort of pursuits. And so for him, technical education, and I think for me, other brother, grammar school education, you know, there are, I think it's, I'm so passionate and so of the view that school choice and a diversity within education is the way we go about actually,

you put light-minded kids together and you say, all right, well, you're interested in this, you're going to be passionate, you're going to give it your all. That's fantastic for kids. Let's do more of that. And let's give people the chance to actually think, I'm not stupid, I can actually, I am good at something. You know, there's something here I'm passionate about and make them feel that they can do something and achieve something with the lives because far too many people in places like this and it's it's utterly horrible. I know a fair few people from school who have gone into just, you know, basically being alcoholics or drug addicts and it's sad to see. It's so sad to see.

Too much porn. That's the problem. Too much porn. Well, maybe it's the porn, I too much porn. Too much porn in school, I think that might be. That might be a big part of it. I've been thinking a lot recently, I put it tweet out earlier on saying,

I want to bring someone on the show, and Josh Rogan has reached out to talk about China and sort of their long termterm political and global plans. But can you imagine what do you think is the difference between the culture of the UK and the USA over the last 16 months that has occurred and the culture that Russia and China would have wanted to happen if they wanted to begin the disintegration of those two countries. Yeah, well, a culture that's basically eaten itself, where at each other's throats, it really does feel like that. It actually feels like the sort of environment tonight, I've heard this said before, the sort of environment that you'd expect before,

the sort of environment that you'd expect before, especially in America, civil war, where people really are, a delegitimate, I guess, the delegitimization of an election. You've got people arguing over that, of course. You've got people arguing over Kamala Harris, as one of the most unpopular vice presidents in quite some time. That's a really interesting statistic, I think. There are so many ways in which hatred of the flag, like self hatred of the flag, like that's literally the symbol of your country. And a symbol of for many people throughout the world who really, really want to be a part of American life, American values,

who look at that flag and think, oh wow, the freedom and liberty, you know, when my grand ad served in Korea in the 50s and alongside the Americans and Australians and Gerkers and a few others, but he looking at the American flag, looking at the our own flag, looking at the Union Jack, I dare say that they looked at those flags and felt immense pride in what they were doing. Because look at South Korea now, it's a beacon of freedom of hope and prosperity. And you look at them in North Korea, a different example, and you think, wow, life there, not for me, going to be honest, looks pretty grim, pretty tough, pretty horrible, and you think, well, don't you granddad, I'm proud to know you, man. And you think, you look at the petulant prats

today, turning their backs on flags, like the two of those I've just mentioned, the American or the UK flag. We have a period of self-lawment going on at the minute that'll have the Chinese and Russia rubbing them hands with glee. They must be delighted by this. They must be thrilled. That's the only way I can describe it. Hatred, there is a deep rooted resentment of your own country, and I don't understand it. And that's why I say conservatives and miss the philosophy of love, because there is certainly none of that on our side at the argument. It seems to be exclusively coming from the so-called progressives.

And to me, there's an often progressive, there's nothing that's going to lead us forward about this self-lawment, about this, everything my country does must be bad. And Douglas has said this before, I think he said it on your show, where if someone, if a person that you know does not have your best interests at heart, says to you, Chris, you should be doing X, you should be doing this. I think what you're doing now is really bad. Bit shy. You're going to say, oh well, I'll take that with a pinch of salt me because you don't have my best interest at all. I think that's exactly what we should be doing with these people who sneer at our flag, who do not wish our nation well,

who seem to want to see it fail at almost any opportunity. It's like gaslighting, like nations, nation-sized gaslighting. You're being taught, like, I'm hitting you, but I'm only hitting you because I love you. And then it's almost like when you get that Stockholm syndrome of the person, they say, look, like I stay with them for this reason.

And it just appears to be self-perpetuated hatred coming from somewhere. And I found this out. I can't remember who it was that I was speaking to, but I've found out that the largest black lives that pro black lives page on Facebook before BLM was started by the internet research, internet research agency in Russian. Like it was, it, that was who began the page. So you think, okay, what are the chances that at least, let's say that it's 10% of the last years,

violent and vociferous problems have come from those sorts of agents. What if it was the first 10%? What if that was the pebble at the top of the avalanche and then you just allow people to do the social media thing? So going back to the England football analogy, the way that the press decided to perpetuate narratives about racism after the match. Now, I don't want that... There's idiots, absolutely more on the people that decided to tweet that stuff online or contact the players or deface murals and stuff like that. But I don't feel too good about what the press did either because all that did was they said, look, the headline of we played well, but unlucky we didn't win. It isn't going to generate that many clicks. But look at

these closet racists from Romford and Blithe and Carl Isle and all of these working class towns, we always knew that this was the case, and now they finally had their opportunity to do it. And then to perpetuate it for days and days and days, you think like, well, what's this achieving? Like, do you think this is for the betterment of the country? Is it educating people on racism, or is it using fringe examples to limbically hijack people,

and then after you've limbically hijacked them, are you just creating more divisiveness within it? I mean, you did see a really good response. Maybe you could say, from that, you saw this sort of beautiful presentation on Rashford's mural where people went and they made this really sort of nice display where it was fixed and people showed love. But I think you probably could have got away with that with just one story. I don't think you would have needed to keep it going for a full week Well, actually the Rashford memorial the Rashford Murrell rather memorial is is actually important because of the fact that the police had to release a statement saying that they didn't think that it was racism

There was no sort of racist graffiti on the the mural and it's just like you take bad penalties or something. Something like that, I don't know. It wasn't me, I promise. And you look at these things, and you think, well, hang on a minute, because this was, this was going round and round on Twitter. You had people stand next to this mural on then bendydney, black lives matter, posters, and things like that. And you're thinking, well, hang on a minute, it had the police have just told whether it had subtle to do with racism. And I had everything to do with some, you know, some silly bugger, just graffiti and it probably being a bit miffed about the funny match that it just being played in. And you think, well, why would they do that?

that it just being played in. And you think, well, why would they do that? Hmm, that's interesting. And it's, it's to stir up that divisiveness. It's exactly what we on the conservative right get accused of all the time. They stir and up of hatred. You know, oh, you're hate, hateful speech and all the rest of it. I'm sorry, but I think the ones that are stirring up hatred here are those trying to perpetuate that they push this narrative of racist old blighty, you know, post Brexit Britain backwater that it is, racist backwater, doesn't like immigrants, doesn't like people footballers that play well like Marcus Rashford, which is it's palpable nonsense. I mean, the number of people, if I look back throughout my life, I kind of think of many examples where I've heard of

racism directed at footballers because of the fact that people don't seem to care much about the color of the skin of the footy players on the pitch. They just care about the fact that the footy players know about what their colour, no matter what their sexuality, they are good on the pitch. They can perform well for their teams. That the colour of their skin, their immutable characteristics, has absolutely sought all to do with their performance. And you think, is it country like that racist? And you're right, all of the examples of racism tended, they seem to come from abroad. You know what I think it was even BBC Newsnight that looked into that and found those statistics. And then you look a bit further and you think, well, hang on, what's going on here? Why are they, why are

people doing this? Why is this happening? Why is my country having this?" You know, as you say, all of these newspapers, there was a collective sort of circle jerk of hysteria over this stuff, saying nasty Britain, horrible racist bloody. And that's, we have fallen to such a large extent if we genuinely have pockets of society, those that are publishing the news stories, those that are tweeting, those that are, and you mentioned there that 20% of people are on Twitter, you mentioned that earlier, 20% is actually quite disproportionately high if you compare it with the likes of India for example, if you compare it with other economies, It's actually

quite high. There are a lot of British people on it compared to other countries around the world. And you think as far as the cultural clout that Twitter has in this country as well, tweets will end up in pay as, right? Tweets will make news. Tweets will decide the headlines of stories. And you think, why are these people so self-law them? And that's something I can't answer. I was going to say, have you got any impression about why? Because I understand, in the first instance, that limitically hijacking people is good for traffic.

Because things that you really agree with are things that you really hate both Shit that you're gonna click on that makes sense But it just feels like there was it felt like there was more going on than that It was just so perpetuated over and over and over again. I don't know whether it was a slow week for news Maybe maybe they genuinely do the people in the BBC or the the Guardian or whoever's commenting on this stuff Maybe they genuinely do believe people in the BBC or the Guardian or whoever's commenting on this stuff. Maybe they genuinely do believe that this is such a righteous cause, that they do need to continue talking about it

because people need to know and they haven't known enough just yet. And I mean, that's the best interpretation. This sort of oddly paternalistic view of the world. And then from there, it's just like China and Russian agents and share bots all the way down as far as I can see. It just gets potentially worse and potentially worse and potentially worse. And yeah, man, I want to find out about this, about this China stuff because the small insight

that I've had into what Russia is doing at the moment is terrifying. And it just feels like, it feels to me like there's something else going on. It feels like my real world experience doesn't match up with the things that I'm seeing on the internet and the stories that are being noted. Like, I've met a million people on the front door of nightclubs. I've watched a million people going in out of events that I've done. I must have seen I've watched a million people going in out of events that I've done. I must have seen maybe two things that are racist ever that's in 15 years, a million people. There is no sample size that's going to be bigger than that. And I stand on the door, so I see when the black bouncer drags a white customer out for being too drunk or having a fight or snogging someone in the corner or whatever. I see when that happens. And this white guy, or we could be in reverse,

has got every reason in the world to be very, very angry at this person. They've just lost their night, they've away from all their friends, they've had a little bit of booze. And even in that sort of the most base, unfiltered version of ourselves, like the least gracious nature of ourselves comes on nights out, even then,

I don't see it. I'm like, if that's not the situation in which it's going to happen. So I don't know, I just, I really think that the last 16 months, one of the main things that I've learned is to be increasingly skeptical, not only of the people that are in power, but of the things that I see in the press. And this may be like, the, you know, the Michael Manus is the world a mess to me and going, you were an idiot. Like, why were you ever believing this in the first place? But again, like, you know,

if you the sort of person that's a bit orderly and has faith in institutions, you don't think that there's something to bring up. You don't usually consider that, maybe they don't have my best interests at heart. But like, holy fuck man, like this last year has completely eroded any of my trust in legacy media and in the people that are supposed to be in power.

But it's interesting that you mentioned that that line there about middle class people who are paternalistic because it just strike me as a really patronizing view. Like, oh, well actually what racial arguments and tensions need is me to patronize people and say, I know what's good for you. I'd like to hear more conversations from Black mothers, for example, in the likes of London that are saying to these middle-class liberals who are clutching their pearls and saying, we must stop, stop and search because it disproportionately affects certain communities in this country. There are mothers who have been interviewed about this stuff. And they're saying, I like

stop and search. I want stop and search because actually it's making me feel like my child is safe that my child might actually stand about a chance of coming home tonight. And you look at, you hear that argument, you, the fear, imagine fear in that your child's not going to come home because they're going to be stabbed today. Imagine being a black mother of a young kid and realizing that the potential reason that your now dead child didn't make it home is because somebody sat in West Minster or somebody that was at the Guardian put enough political pressure on to say this is discriminatory. And again, like it does come back like it's for me, the more that I think about it, especially over the last year, there were certain things that needed to be done very quickly. There were things that required rapid and

un-um-um-molested progress in order to be able to keep up with the pace of change that was happening in the world, but it doesn't need to be spread across everything. And I really do think, what was-what did your science say? Steadie on or something? Well, what-yeah, steady, just the word steady. Yeah, so I do think, you know, test things or what? I mean, have you seen this refund the police now? So the studies came out in America that said that last year murders are at an all-time high from the last 30 years. It was a 20 or a 25% year on your increase largest since the mid 90s and So far this year, it's 15% up on top of that. And all of the researchers, every single one of them seems to agree that police presence is the best way to reduce homicides. And I mean, the number of police officers in DC that have killed themselves from that one force.

I haven't seen this. What's this? They've got involved with the capital, what happened at the capital building with the, I guess, storming of the capital building. There have been at least five, I think it's six now, suicides of these police officers killing themselves. And you think, what sort of thing are they, what sort of abuse are they getting? And I, that sort of has me thinking, who in their right mind would want to be a copper in this day and age. You know who in their right mind would want to do that? It doesn't it strikes me as eminently sensible that police officers in this day and age quite like the fact that they can some of them at least and this isn't a stress is not the vast majority of them, but some of them can sit in offices, registering

non-crime hate incidents, the most orwellian thing I've ever been part of really, or ever fallen victim of. And I sort of think, good God, you people, you don't deserve any of this, the stress and the shit frankly that you have to put up with on a daily basis. No wonder you'd rather sit in the office and I don't know, tick off, non-crime hate incidents and look into them and say nothing to say here, gov. You know, this sort of stuff is cartoon. I think the priorities of the West have, across the West even, have become so far removed from the actual concerns of people on the ground. You know, I've just mentioned there, people really concerned about

the kids coming home on a night time, especially in places like London. You've got kids in Scotland, man, who aren't leaving school with the ability to read and write. And you think it's 2021, I don't know why I've just looked at the time, it's 2020, and you've got kids leaving school in an ability to read and write. And they're talking about independence and things that's far and around with this sort of thing. The priorities of many politicians and these sort of influences in the middle-class liberals with the perpetual guilt I think it is, I've met so many Italians, you know, who really are, there's always so petition. It tends to be, then this isn't all of them, of course, but many Italians, there's this idea of guilt, like, oh, I should feel ashamed of my, of what, the accident

of birth that led me to have such wonderful privilege in life. No, you shouldn't. You should just go out there and do something with your life. You're happy. It's downstream from that. So let's say that this person, but genuinely I'm asking, this person is born, they have this skill, how does that change the way that they behave? That manifests itself in them being sort of very patrician in outlook. So you know, like, oh, I know what's good for people. They should do X, Y and Z. And there's this sort of very patrician in outlook. So you know, like, oh, I know what's good for people. They should do X, Y and Z. And there's this sort of idea that actually people don't have agency over their own lives in that. You need people like us who can actually do it for you,

who can tell you what's good for you and all the rest of it. So they think they're doing good, but actually they're not, then they're really, really being quite condescending to people. And if there's one thing I've noticed, especially in the Northeast, as you will well know, there is nothing that people like worse than feeling that they're being spoken down to. And I think that's why the political class got such a punch in the nose in 2019 in that general election, where large suites of voters who have never voted a Tory before said, you know what, I'm going to get you this time like, I've had enough, how dare you talk to me like that. The anger that I heard over the last five years, my inbox being flooded

with people saying thank you so much for what you're saying. I can't believe I'm being spoken down to in lectured like this patternised, like this. From what is essentially a middle class, technology, a middle class view of saying things like, well, we need to go back to you being told by Tory Topps what's good for you. And if you see that on the climate change debate as well, right? We're going to, oh, you can't, that gas boiler love, no Sheila, we're going to pull that out for you, pet. Don't worry, how much, oh, don't ask questions like that, 20 grand, how much? And you think, what the, is going on here? There is so much. I think that, there are so many problems in the world and I think most of them are down to middle-class liberals who feel guilty.

That's my theory, actually, strongly so. That doesn't surprise me that that's your theory. Yeah, I, um, I don't know, man. I was talking the other day to JPC as needs to be a life coach and he was saying that empathy is actually a very narcissistic emotion because when you're caring about other people in that way, what you're presuming is,

without me, your life is going to suffer so much. And that, I think, that sort of, maybe there is a little bit of guilt of being born with more access to resources or a better education and stuff like that. And perhaps that does trickle down to these people thinking, well, what I need to do, what my duty is,

is to bestow this gated information that me and my friends are the only ones that we have access to. But the dumb thing is, especially, you know, coming from a working class background and state schools like we both have, like, I arrived at university and met people from private school for the first time. I'd never

met anyone from the private school really prior to that. I'd just been at state schools. And I looked at the people who arrived at Newcastle Uni, a red brick, a proper university. And I saw just as many, if not more, fuck ups come from the people that had been away at boarding school, come from the people that had been away at boarding school, like, uh, Pockelington, Hymers, you know, all of these, like, sort of middle Yorkshire, really expensive schools, boarding 30 grand a year plus, and they came, they came and they were just as fucked as everybody else. Like, they didn't have, they didn't have their stuff sorted,

at all. And, um, yeah, presuming that levels of education imbue you with some sort of better moral sense, I think at the very least is probably inaccurate and actually might run in the opposite direction. Oh, yeah, absolutely, because what you quickly find, right, is with, and I've noticed this as well, I hadn't met anyone really until I moved down south until I went to Brighton. Anyone that went to private school, because I'd worked in, the only, my jobs were working in a supermarket and working in a hairdresser's, right? You don't meet many people that went to private schools in those sort of lines of work.

And I thought it was like another world. And you think, you talk to some people and they're just they're so infantilized because they haven't had a and this isn't I'm generalizing massively and I've got many friends who went to private schools and they are not like this but there's this sort of infantilization where the kind of a person that I assume you're talking about at Newcastle Uni would be the sort of person that is like, oh my word, there's this look how cheap the drinks are, right? There's this sort of new castle man, three travels for five pounds 50 catch up, come on. And they're

like bends in sort of sweet shops, right? And you're just, you're like looking at them like, what world have you been living in? Like, what world have you experienced? So I think that you're right. There's definitely a minority of people that were like that. And the worst culture that I saw, and this may trickle down to when they become adults and perhaps they get into positions of power and maybe they go into journalism and become influential in that way or something. The thing that really, really riled me up was when everything felt a little bit like a game, it was the individuals to whom everything felt like it, nothing was taken seriously because

the subtext of that was I will be able to either pay or talk my way out of some sort of a problem and It all felt University and some of the situations kind of all seemed a bit like like a summer holiday To them, you know, right. I'm just here for a while like I'll fuck shit up. I don't really care. I don't need to act virtuously and But I'm just here for a while, like I'll fuck shit up, I don't really care, I don't need to act virtuously. And you know, fortunately I ended up in living with four of the guys, I think all of whom went to private schools, but I was finding the ones that I really resonated with. And there was an equal, if not greater, number of people who had these sort of, and you

know, you could have people that didn't go to private school went to state schools, but had quite a privileged upbringing, maybe they were from London, perhaps they were from, you know, just somewhere that seemed, yeah, a little bit more walled off, a little bit more protected. And they didn't do well, like they didn't do well at university, they weren't prepared well for the world. And if they did manage to get themselves into positions of authority or power influence, I wouldn't want that impacting the way that the country goes.

Fair play, if you can game the system, if you can fuck around at uni and you can still come out of it with the right connections or the right degree that gets you into the right place, like, you know, more full anybody that doesn't do that because you've had tons of fun, but I still don't wanna follow you. I still don't wanna trust the things that you say

and I still really, really don't want you follow you. I still don't want to trust the things that you say, and I still really, really don't want you to be influencing the culture. Yes, absolutely. And I guess there's an element of, it's not what, you know, write it to, you know, and there's a sort of, I can fall back on Daddy's connection, so something like that. And again, this is a sweeping generalization, as I say, there are some absolutely bloody, fantastic friends that I've got who have not had anything like a silver spoon in their life. You've got people like all of these schools that have been there on scholarships, for example, who

I've had so much time for in the world. But I think you're right. I think there's an extent to which you think, well, and that's what we've seen with Trump. That's what we've seen with Brexit to a limited extent. I still don't completely buy that. This was just a rejection of sort of middle-class technocrats. But I think there was a large extent to which it's saying, well, you people have been telling me that you know what's best for me for goodness only knows how long, you know, since the in the 90s, the Clinton said basically said, well, liberalism is what we've achieved and liberalism is what's going to deliver for everybody, so we as middle class liberal technocrats will do quite well in telling you what to do.

Thank you very much. And we get to all the way to 2016. And of course, the big divides happen with Brexit and with Trump, where you've, you've got people turning around to them and saying, well, you've been running the country now for X amount of years. And how good of a job would you say you've done? Right? The financial crash. right? The financial crash and all the rest of it. And I'm suffering and my, I'm seeing my livelihood squeezed. I'm seeing that the things in prices in shops and all the rest of it are going up, but my wages are productivity in this country is not going up. Why is that? Why are you not doing anything about this? And a desire to actually send a message and actually have their voice heard, I think that's one thing I've heard more than anything else

over these past few years, which is I want to actually feel that I am being listened to, that I, the voiceless silent, we hear this silent majority, actually hearing the voices heard for once. And that I think is a theme that's still going on now that's still resonating with people. And I'm afraid to say that I really don't think that Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party at the minute are doing much in the way of that. And I think that eventually Boris is

sort of bumbling around a bit like as does shop and trolley with only three wheels, right? He doesn't always ask from his elbow. And there's no sort of anchor, guide them, you know, where you can't say that about Blair, you can't say that about Maggie Thatcher, you can't say that about some of the greatest politicians that have been in the top job in this country. But I mean, they weren't going through a global pandemic. That's true. That's very true.

But I think at this point, though, where a majority of people, especially those who are statistically more likely to be susceptible to the worst elements of the coronavirus, have been double vaccinated. We're still, I think, at this point, applying a sort of, well, there's only one game in town in its coronavirus. And actually, the only other game in town, despite this government being elected on a pledge and a promise to level up, seems to be one that's going to achieve quite the polar opposite.

That's going to achieve level and down. And that's this stupid net zero target which I am happy with it. I'm so I'm pretty about it. I've got on the show soon Patrick Moore. Right okay yeah. A hundred green piece. Uh huh. That's going to be interesting.

Yeah he's written a new book and he was on trigonometry not long ago and yeah he reached out, he's fascinating man. But yeah, I don't know dude, I think the next few years are going to be hopefully quite interesting in a good direction. I just think, for me to be the one that's encouraging people to be skeptical because I've always been so trusting and it really does feel like this year has completely eroded that away. And yet if we can have more people that are a little bit more rational questioning whether or not this is the right thing for us. Steadie. Yeah, steady. Steadie. This is going to be Darren Grimes is steady.

Well anyway, Darren Grimes, ladies and gentlemen, people want to check out your stuff where should they go mate? They can just call it Darren Grimes.com and all of the links and everything they need and all be on there. Perfect, thanks mate. Cheers. you