Inside the Russell Brand trial with Lucy Reade, and a path to Europe

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1:07hello and happy thursday everybody happy this day everyone this is the two mats podcast brought to you by the wonderful subscribers of the new world magazine do join them um we are joined this week with uh by lucy reed our colleague from the new world who um welcome lucy welcome hello very happy to be here who's um well you've had a great week lucy in his in terms of journalism because you've written our uh big lead story on the russell brand trial because you spent how many days were you that you spent an awful long time at the trial didn't you i don't want to think how many days i mean i didn't go to every single day and some people some journalists did and you know they deserve the real audits but yeah and most days for the the majority of the trial and you've written i mean i think it's an astonishingly good piece of journalism about well i mean the headline is your your uh disbelief really and your shock that actually this reckoning came to pass do you want to tell the listeners why you felt like that yeah i mean so i would never want anyone to think that i didn't uh believe that russell brand would be found guilty because i thought he was not guilty i absolutely believed that he was um sitting in that courtroom listening to the testimonies of these incredibly brave women I feel it was impossible not to believe them and thankfully a jury agreed with me but I think just the last few years um sort of if we think about the pendulum swinging back from the Me Too movement sort of the rise of the manosphere um that sort of of cultural rhetoric I guess I just thought there's no way that this that justice will be served and And also, you know, some of the most powerful men in the world have been also accused of very similar crimes to Russell Brand.

3:00And they're still, you know, the most powerful men in the world. And so I suppose I was very, very nihilistic and pessimistic about the whole thing because I just thought that our society and our politics was going in such a bad direction with no return that this would truly be too good to be true. But I was wrong. Thank God. yeah when when the news broke how did you how did you feel uh you know we've described it as a shock but as a young woman because obviously that was you know why we sent you we sent you one because you're a brilliant journalist but also wanted a female take on it and as a young woman what um what emotions ran through you when you heard the news that you'd been found guilty i mean i was with um ruby mitchell who is a digital protection journalist with the new world and we were in the queue to get our lunch um uh and we just suddenly came through on um on our phones from the you know news notifications and we literally both jumped for joy we were like jumping up and down in king's cross station concourse um because we were just couldn't believe it and i truly thought i i can't describe to you how much it felt like a gift i think almost not that it should be by the way i think it's it's kind of sad that i'm even sitting here saying thank you so much to the jury for believing these women because that's what should be these they should believe them i think that says a lot about where society and where feminism frankly has gone in the last couple of years that you even feel grateful grateful to people for actually doing the right thing but that is how i felt i felt grateful and um i was absolutely cobsmacked i was lost for words for once can i ask you lucy um and congratulations on the piece it really is something else um but i i i hear what you say because i can actually remember when um the day that um the new york times piece on harvey weinstein um broke which sort of i guess it kick-started the me too movement as we generally understand in 2017 I was just checking this morning the date.

5:12It was the 5th of October 2017. So it's, you know, nine plus years. Next year will be the 10th anniversary. And you were talking there about the way that culture swings. And I thought that's a really important element in all this, because at the time there was a sense this is a big change and it's going to be hard and there's going to be lots of setbacks. But something has changed fundamentally. And then you realize, looking back over the last nine years, how you can't rely on norms, cultural norms. Perhaps you never could, but you certainly can't now because the energy seemed to drain out of me to relatively quickly.

5:54And then I think a very important thing was Trump's re-election in 24, which seemed to sort of give a kind of pseudo legitimacy to the Manosphere and to the Tate brothers. And Russell Brand himself surfed that with his reinvention as a MAGA figure on Rumble and appearing at all sorts of MAGA events. Anyway, my point, I suppose, is that one of the things that this has caused me to reflect upon with some sort of concern is we can't rely on norms. Norms won't do. So coming out of this and perhaps we can talk, of course, about David Williams as well. But but specifically on the brand thing, are we are we are we going to have to be much more systematic and structural in our approach to this?

6:45Absolutely, Matt. I think that that's one of the biggest lessons that we kind of need to learn. A lot of people are speaking because it's sort of feel it is a coincidence, but it feels karmically sort of goes together with the US midterms where the Democrats absolutely stormed the elections. and you know it feels like Trump was basically shown the door by a lot of the American electorate so you know I kind of say in my piece it's like two men Brandon Trump who thought that the world was theirs to play with relentless narcissists to the very end sort of being being shown no that the book does stop at some point eventually and that does feel like yeah maybe the pendulum is swinging back but one of the things that I think the lessons that need to be taken from both sort of the democrats and a lot of the i would say proto me too movement is not to forget how we went back last time and i think that something that we are seeing now and again again not to touch on it too much control we'll talk about it later but with a lot of the sort of walliam stuff that's being talked about now a lot of people rooting through things from the the mid-2000s going this joke that joke um you know this article that article of course we should always look back and try and learn and be better from our past.

7:59But I think that instinct to really, really rake everybody of the coals for everything that was said 20 years ago, say that everything, everything that was culture in the 2000s is responsible for Russell Brand raping people. Well, Russell Brand is responsible for raping people because he raped them. Of course, it didn't help that we had a lot of lad culture, but I think to go so puritanically in on things like comedy, like free journalistic expression i just think we should be careful because this is exactly how we ended up with the pendulum swinging so easily back last time with a lot of young men feeling quite frustrated that oh well comedy is illegal now and you can't even tell a woman that you think she's attractive yada yada yada of course people took that to a very ridiculous extreme with the likes of andrew tate but that's why it was so easy for the likes of trump and tate etc to kind of go to them and go isn't this me too isn't this me too stuff a load of crap don't you think and I think that's because we were so bloodthirsty and I think we have a right to be bloodthirsty I think we have a right to want to to bring to to hold to account people who have you know been responsible for massive injustice but I think we have to remember how to keep people on side and how to keep the actual systematic wins of putting people in prison um holding people to account in a real legal tangible way is the priority not a whole online culture war where we're suddenly like haha we're in charge again we're gonna make you all feel really evil for ages yeah because i mean i was just thinking that um i mean two i don't think it's too granular too quickly but two things that i've discovered in the last couple of days that really shocked me actually was i remember hearing from some friends who were involved in it that the creative industries are setting up this new uh watchdog the creative industries independent standards authority rather a mouth or um um what i didn't realize was that um it was voluntary and so you don't have no none of the creative industries have to start you know i think lisa nandy might do something about that but at the moment you don't have to be regulated by it so that's that was kind of a bit of shock and the other thing was that um it's only since april this year that sexual harassment is expressly a qualifying category for whistleblowing.

10:19So in other words, things which, and this is my ignorance, is that I would have thought in both cases, the watchdog was compulsory, and of course whistleblowers get protective status. Well, they have now. But I think to your point, it's easy to think that we've moved into a better space, we look back at those terrible jokes, and we think, isn't it good that we're better now? Well, are we? I mean, is there a safety? Are there structures where women can actually go formally and especially people who are working in a freelance capacity, which is very common in the entertainment industry and get those protections?

10:53And the answer is a bit, but we need a lot more. Yeah, absolutely. Matt, did you? have well i was i was going to say on your previous point about um the pendulum swing and not not being too archaeological in our outrage you know and digging and and trying to resist the the instinct and it is it is tempting i have to say when especially when people that you actively don't like um on the political spectrum or you know you don't like the way they go about things and you find, oh, well, they were hugging Russell Brand 15 years ago. It is tempting to say, nah, look, you know, but that's wrong. However, there is also something about the permissive nature of media towards men like Russell Brand.

11:45And there's a spectrum, you know, and obviously Russell Brand is at one end of a spectrum. But that spectrum, it's not as binary as, oh, he's a rapist and he's easy to identify and he's anomalous to what was going on. Because I lived through the 90s and the noughties in mainstream media, in national newspaper media, and some of it was a horrible place to be, you know, really vile. It's interesting to note that I think Russell Brand was awarded Shagger of the Year by The Sun as recently as 2012, right? So, you know, we're talking just a little over a decade ago. and I wonder you know you're a new and you've been a journalist for what a little more than a year or so you know yeah yeah a working journalist yeah um I just wonder how do you how do you feel literally about journalism today and working in media today as a young woman do you feel it is a place that's well I guess my question is is media out of sync with the rest of society or is it just the same now well that's quite a big question because I think there are some places in which media is out sync of society purely because it's quite a big echo chamber.

12:54And that's not even on the subject of, you know, women's rights or anything like that. I just think in general, a lot of industries like media, like politics tend to be echo chambers. I would say I haven't, it's quite interesting. I mean, I have certainly grown up in a different era. I wouldn't say that the misogyny faced by women today is anything like the misogyny of the 60s, the 70s. I would say it's a different kind. I would say there's a lot more of an insidious element to a lot of modern misogyny. Do you mean that the misogyny is better hidden these days? I think it's better hidden, but I also think it's very different in that.

13:41How do I put this? I think I'm generalizing a lot here, So I don't mean to offend anybody who actually did live through this. But I feel like a lot of the misogyny of the past was based on the assumption that women were just full stop inferior in every single way. And that's why it was OK to not pay them the same or, you know, give them jobs or, you know, not allow them to really work outside the home or to speak to them in a certain way, in a patronising way. And that is awful and is terrible. I think what a lot of young men now experience is that they've grown up in a world where that had kind of been reckoned with.

14:13like if you think about men who are my age in their sort of early mid-twenties they would have grown up you know with this mantra of actually women can do everything men can do when we're you know women can be ceos they can be presidents they can be prime ministers they can be whatever but the misogyny still exists we did enough to bring women up to the same you know maybe economic legal equality of men in this country at least but i don't think we did anything to address the root causes of misogyny so i do think there's this feeling of you're still inferior but I'm resentful of you for actually being able to progress.

14:44And it breeds a different type of hatred. If you look at the sort of Cornell case, which is happening over in the US, what is really sickening about that is that Jane Doe, the female complainant, in this case, you know, is not, as we might say, the perfect victim in that she did consent to some sexual activity with some members of the fraternity house. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, there's an article on the New World about this. Um, but you know, she was then proceeded in her, um, testimony. She says that she was proved to be gang raped by several members of the fraternity, but because she had exchanged text messages talking about, Oh, let's take ketamine.

15:22Oh, I'm excited to do this. Men were, well, some men were absolutely furious saying, this is what women do. They lie about being raped because they love to ruin men's lives. Women already have everything. They already get better jobs. They already get DEI'd into having better degrees. And now they want to ruin our lives. And a lot of the discourse that you saw online about Russell Brand was exactly like this, was so-called male journalists, of which there were quite a few outside the trial and for the Tommy Robinson trial, you know, just just just free thinkers, you know, not in the mainstream media talking about how this was a trial by media.

15:55This was a trial with no evidence that was completely grounded in false delusional accusations. And this was proof that women have the upper hand in society, that we're cracking the whip and we can just at a whim send a man like Russell Brand down to prison. Honestly, one of the funniest things about this is it's a horrible notion, but there were people outside holding a sign when he was being sentenced saying Jesus, Jesus was crucified for telling the truth. and so is Russell Brand being. If there was a big establishment put down, first of all, what is Russell Brand saying that's so dangerous to the establishment that they have to take him down?

16:31Second of all, I don't think the way to do that is via a sexual assault slash rape trial, which are notoriously hard to secure prosecutions and sentences for. I think it's quite a convoluted way to take someone down, isn't it? Yeah, a mad conspiracy. And, you know, I think we should also make the point that this case, the David Williams case, which, you know, obviously we have to say he completely denies any wrongdoing. But all of these exposures are the result of journalism as well. You know, and I should make the point almost uniformly by women journalists, which is karmic, if nothing else, you know.

17:17yeah absolutely and i think that's what has been so sort of a little bit frustrating i've spoken about this a little bit before but um i was uh so on very first day of the of the trial i was sat next to um this freelance blogger who was who's very nice i don't mean to sort of disparage him but he had said that he was a was a court reporter um and i've since looked at his account and it's mainly just retelling things that happened in american court cases which are often televised anyway so you know make of that what you will but um at a few points he asked me like oh did you hear what she said just then or blah blah blah and at one point i looked over and he was writing down full names of of the women and i was like no no no no no no no you can't do that you cannot do that and he's like okay and then he changed them to like miss and then their surname and i was like nope and he said what if i gave them fake names like i'm genuinely not making this up this is what he's like what if i gave them pseudonyms i was like you can't say anything that would lead to any sort of identification um it's completely illegal um and he was like oh well that's just going to make the prose on my blog look really like jumpy i keep having to say the alleged victim they complain and i was like well tough shit that's the law i mean it is an amazing thing to to compare and contrast now the legally bound journalism that goes out through official outlets and what happens on social media now i mean i mean somebody in our office said who's this mystery celebrity you know two days and everyone laughed and said are you serious you don't know everyone knows you know yeah and there was so many there were so many accounts on on x who were publishing things that the judge had said we were not allowed well at least the newspapers were not allowed to publish very flagrantly um you know flaunting attempt of uh contempt of court laws and they're just not held the same standard as as traditional media outlets are and you know everyone's sort of patting themselves on the back now a lot of these internet sleuths these internet hangmen really going yeah we took down russell brand yeah yeah no you didn't the first of all the women who came up and spoke out firstly were the ones who took down russell brand secondly the journalists ross em from the sunday times um plenty of others who were relentless in the pursuit of this and the lawyers who secured this they did it they went through official time that's kind of what i was saying about when to matt d's point about do we have to be more systemic about it this time it's like we can't just do what we did nearly 10 years ago with me too which is just to trial by internet every single time and assume that cancel culture which is a very nebulous thing anyway as we've seen by the fact that someone like johnny depp is currently having a big london premiere but less said about that the better um a very nebulous thing internet cancel culture no it's not internet detectives into internet journalists who get these things done it's real journalists real lawyers real people who actually make these changes so yeah i absolutely agree i think that real journalism needs to be given up absolutely it needs to be given its flowers for this one good on on volumes um it's interesting because um i actually hadn't caught up with the it i'd read the guardians um uh coverage after the the um the threat of injunction was was removed and um and perhaps people who haven't been following the the case you know briefly the background was that Williams had threatened alleged that he was likely to take his own life if the stories came out anyway it came out in the Guardian and it appeared initially that there was no illegality involved and then I watched the ITV documentary and actually there is a case involving a woman who's using the name jade yeah where she was um she's alleging that she was involved in um you know sexual assault uh by uh volumes when she was 15 which is which is an offense now the reason i mention that again is just come back to the point that this all seems to me to be a structural mess you know we have and you wrote this brilliant in the piece about russell brown which is this you know really egregious uh character who was the defense attorney ian winter casey a dreadful man who as as he wrote you know confronted ros irwin of the sunday times and you know i i hope you're pleased with yourself and i think he's reported himself to the yeah the bar uh because he has to because otherwise someone else would anyway um but but now we're in we seem to be in a in a in a in a gray area about where next one with Walliams' case, because the first thing is, you know, Lisa Nandy's having in the the culture secretary is having in all the broadcasters next week to talk about regulation and so on.

22:10But there is also the potentiality, it seems to me, for the Crown Prosecution Service to look into potential criminality. But as you say, it's all it's all down to a combination of excellent journalism. And then there's the rather sort of blunt instrument of social media pylons. Now, to Matt Gay's point, you know, brilliant journalism and three cheers, and three cheers for the women who persisted. You know, Ros Oman, I think, began with Charlotte, began this in 2019. You know, amazing with the Russell Brown case. But it just seems to me that the whole thing is far too stop-go. And we need a Louise Casey or someone to really suggest a structure for and not just for the media and entertainment but across the board for all this because we're nine years in and we're no really no nearer are we no but you know to say something positive about sort of structural change well you just brought in winter who was brand's guest which i'm sure listeners will probably seen um perhaps some of uh what defense's case was i was gobsmacked by it i mean i knew it was a rape case i knew that there was always going to be a certain amount of oh well how could you be truly certain you know you had had a lot to drink which is still you know a bit nauseating but it is the defense's job to be fair he went above and beyond what i think the defense's job would be in terms of trying to i suppose get components of rape to recant or to get holes in their story he was saying things like why didn't you scream why didn't you fight when it's been proven by psychologists that there are so many different responses to fear such as fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

23:56You know, he's going, why don't you scream? Why don't you tell anyone in the five seconds afterwards? You know, asking some of them, oh, well, you did fancy him. Did you think you were going to be his girlfriend and you were upset that he didn't call you the next day? Or, you know, you had previously agreed to do this, that and the other. So surely you were up for anything. I was so shocked by the fact that this was being wheeled out as a legitimate defence. And part of me was really worried that the jury was going to go, well, you know, fair enough. So pleased that they didn't. I think it does say a lot that we have kind of moved on a little bit from from that.

24:32But to your point about sort of systemic change, Mark Rowley, who is chief of Metropolitan Police, I believe, says that it was a completely unacceptable line of questioning and it be far too close to victim blaming. And that actually the Crown Prosecution Service is going to look into kind of putting more limits on that. And the government has also said that they're going to look at the rules around it as well. So that is something positive structurally, I think, to maybe come out of it. yeah the law um is also an interesting um element in all of this because of course it's been used i would say abused in both the brand case and the uh david williams case obviously the williams case by this kind of uh slapping an injunction to to try you know without any great success to try to close it down based on him saying he was going to kill himself um and that being knocked down which was good but i would question that the reason you know the validity of putting that injunction in the first place seems really suspect actually i'm a little bit more troubled by the case of the shillings lawyers who tried to silence some of the young women who had been attacked by russell brand threatening them with um well threatening one of them as i read it with uh saying you're going to commit contempt of court but if you go public with this as almost putting the the uh cart before the horse suggesting that if you go if you accuse him of this there will be a court case of which you will then be in contempt because you accused him of this now that now shillings and this by the way again um written by a a woman lawyer and i I just sort of thought, God, you know, really, couldn't you find something more productive to do with your time, you know, than actually push down young women who are the victims of sexual abuse?

26:27But anyway, we all make our choices. Shilling's sending out these letters to close people down. It's perfectly legal, perfectly rational thing for Russell Brand's legal team to do. But I think if we're talking about structural change, it seems to me there's a place to go to, to put in parameters about what cannot be closed down. We've got defamation laws in this country. We've got contempt of court laws in this country. People have rights to anonymity in certain cases where they're accused of certain things. But for celebrities, powerful, rich people to be able to deploy massively expensive legal firms like shillings to close down 19 year old sexual attack victims seems to me to be a real place we could start and stop that practice.

27:18I don't know if you agree with that little rant. Absolutely. Listen, Lucy, tell us about your encounter with Russell Brand's dad. yeah so this is kind of the most bizarre moment because so yeah as i said i was at southwark crown court which i mean i go into this in peace but it was an absolute shambles of a building um no disrespect to anyone that worked there by the way they were all lovely i had some great chats with the staff there but you know it was just the the electricity would kind of go out and uh you know there was this it was very like a sort of comprehensive school from the 1970s like about to be bulldozed vibes and um the the most sort of irritating part of that as a journalist was that microphones used by the uh the lawyers were quite faulty and so it'd be really annoying if they'd said something quite quite damning and um i mean i wasn't doing a day-by-day report but for those who were you know they'd be like shit you know they'd miss that and one day it was in the lift and there were a few of the journalists and we were kind of talking about about like oh did you the bloody microphones were on the fritz again you know oh god this this cause falling apart whatever whatever and this small older man wearing wearing a hat who i actually assumed was there for the tommy robinson trial because he looked closer in age to a lot of the acolytes of robinson um said oh it's a bloody disgrace and i thought he was talking about the state of southwark crown court so i kind of turned to him and was like trying to make polite conversation it's like as we were walking out the lift and I was like oh I know like there's just it's you know they need to be better funded these courts don't they and he went no I'm talking about the trial it's it's a sham that lawyer and then he's sort of ranting and the bit that he said that I was genuinely like lost for words at was you know I'm his dad then I realized who it was I'm his dad I was there you know you could get on a train and with him and two stops later there'd be 30 40 women clamoring over women would throw themselves at him he was the victim of predatory women um to which i was just like oh okay and then like i think i pretended to take a phone call and uh people might have seen that immediately after sentencing ron brand left so that crancourt and quite a lot of journalists sort of went after him microphones asking him what he thought and he was saying oh russell's the victim or it's i i think at one point someone said what do you have anything to say to the victims and he went what russell um it was yeah i know it was just quite surreal as a sort of interaction but i think if anything it emphasizes just how on top of each other everybody was i mean there were lawyers the the defendants the journalists the like in public were all kind of standing together waiting to go in like it was a dentist's waiting room it was really interesting i mean the strange thing obviously he's his dad and you know so you can perhaps forgive him for just believing in his son, right, on a fatherly level.

30:12But it does represent a theory that's held by lots of people, actually. And you see it bubbling up on social media that, you know, that they deserved it. And, you know, I can't help thinking of the reality around Hillsborough to this day, you know, that people still, a lot of people still in their heart of hearts, oh, it was the Liverpool fans, you know. And it doesn't matter what evidence you're presented with in these cases. people will cling to their prejudices that that it was their fault you know and uh that that is that is just a very tragic side of human nature i'm afraid i mean i think you're absolutely right with that with that comparison and i think what you're even more correct about is a lot of the people who are defending brand um online or in person or whatever are not even necessarily implying that these women weren't raped you're absolutely right they're implying that yeah they might have been but what did they expect and that was genuinely almost the line of questioning of ian winter kind of what did you think it was going to be all petals and cuddles and you know hissing and cuddling it's russell brand you know didn't he didn't you know he won the sun shagger of the year and um yeah so people kind of going oh yeah if you're russell brand and these women are throwing themselves at you you're not going to go a bit mental uh get pull the other one so you're really telling on yourselves there guys but i mean it was kind of a piece that a point that I make in the piece which is that that line of questioning of well you knew that he was uh you know horrible to women you knew that he was very promiscuous I mean why wouldn't you assume that he was going to rape you it sounds so ridiculous saying it out loud and when I've sat in the courtroom hearing that being leveled at these incredibly brave women I kind of realized how deeply ingrained that line of thinking is because I've thought that about myself about other women about oh god well you know i know that's horrible that's really awful and i'm you know i hope you're all right but really why would you go back with him you know what kind of jokes he makes you know what he's done before and this assumption that we are responsible for preventing the crimes committed against us that the rape or sexual assault or sexual harassment is just something that is going to happen to you like getting sunburn if you don't put enough cream on so it's really on you if you don't necessarily you know anticipate it or you're not on your guard enough or you don't do this that and the other and it was only really when i sort of heard it being said in the strip lighting of a courtroom that i realized like this is a ridiculous line of questioning but unfortunately hopefully the jury's verdict does something to change that about sort of rape culture in our society but i think as you rightly point out so many people are so keen to victim blame and almost offend to justify that maybe it's not quite gone can i uh lucy is if we're to going back to what you were saying earlier about generational dimension to this and um listeners will know that lucy um co-presents with james baller an absolute must listen podcast called touching grass and if you haven't listened to it you should because it's brilliant um but one of the reasons i enjoy it is because it reminds me how dramatically culture has has changed and we're living in a digital and also post-covid environment and i think that one of the things the Russell Brand trial showed and I was, you know, trawling through MAGA podcasts in a sort of post-midterms context and I was really you know, it never it seems to amaze me how you can still be shot by MAGA world you know, there was Megyn Kelly saying this is a stitch-up, you know Matt Walsh devoted a whole hour to saying this was the establishment in the UK just just finding a way as you say I mean there are better ways if you're going to stitch someone up than through a rape and sexual assault trial but anyway just that there's a there's a there's a completely new social context out there which is different to the one that Matt Kay and I grew up in and that yes as you said women are in a different space now and they're occupying more positions of seniority and heads of government and so on, heads of companies.

34:21But if you like below the line comments, people who are following driven by the algorithm, in some respects, the context is is more vicious, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the sort of point I was making before is this idea of not only our women are inferior, they are now also, you know, that sort of incredibly ridiculous paradox about anti-semitism that jews are simultaneously controlling the world but also you know this this sub species obviously completely disgusting racist nothing but it's a kind of a long-standing thing of how well how can they be both you know in the minds of anti-semites but i think that's what women are for a lot of modern day misogynists they are simultaneously idiots um you know sheep um sub species weak whatever but also they have manipulated themselves into these high positions of power is these positions where they can ruin men's lives with rape accusations um you know there are people who genuinely say that for example the lindsey clancy trial which is now going to a retrial um the fact that a lot of women sympathized with clancy because she did suffer from postpartum psychosis um sort of saying yuck i look i also asked for a lot of help and i didn't receive any you know this is something we might need to look at which i think is a very fair point to make people were you know a lot of far-right men were genuinely arguing this is reason why the 19th amendment which is in the u.s the allowing women to vote moment should be repealed because women can't be trusted with information because women are idiots and you know look at them given the chance they'd let a murderer walk free because they feel sorry for them you know women are emotional they're controlled by the uteruses they're blah blah blah so it's that you kind of have a mix of old-fashioned misogyny you know lines that you trot out from the 20s or the 70s but on top of it you do have this idea that and they've worm their way sexually manipulated themselves into hyper that's always the line as well whenever a woman is is powerful she's slept away from for the top she's a sexually manipulated it all up and the manosphere yeah i think is so many things post-covid so many young men left alone in their bedrooms nothing to do except go on the internet and have parasocial relationship with someone like hs ticky tocky or andrew tate it's a substitute for community it's a substitute for sexual validation that you know i'm gen z people having less sex people having less relationships partly because of covid partly because of cost of living people maybe can't afford to go out move out the parents house whatever you know people people as men young men are taking that quite difficultly because they're like i can't you know get a girlfriend i don't have any friends i do this it's all women's fault i hate them and and it is causing a problem i mean i it's a very bad habit of mine go on incel forums sometimes just to like make myself feel really angry and the way i just genuinely can't even explain to you how they how they see women there's a man called victor valentine who was given a sexual prevention order in cheltenham i think earlier this year he had spent so much time on these intel forums reading sorry to interrupt just explain to some of the listeners won't know what an incel forum is but yeah what that is yeah i mean that just kind of that's really interesting to me that for me it's one of the most common words in like young people's vocabulary an incel is uh what they would call involuntary celibate which essentially means that they are celibate not by choice but because women evil women refuse to sleep with them and they set up these online forums sort of pages where they can talk to each other where they sort of breed hatred and uh if you ever have the misfortune of coming across one i'm sorry but you know some of them genuinely i'm not joking really believe that the government that there should be mandatory uh government provided girlfriends like that the government should give young men that's a thing That is a real thing that a lot of people believe in, that it would solve male suicide rates, that it would solve sexual violence, because if they weren't so pent up and frustrated because the government gave them a girlfriend, then it would all be solved.

38:10This is a real, genuine political alignment that exists because people feel so aggrieved that they have been done wrong by the likes of stuck up women who won't sleep with them. And, you know, these incel forums just sort of breed that. And this was a man, Victor Valentine, as I say, who'd read so much about this, about women enjoy rejecting men. They enjoy humiliating them that he went out and he just punched a woman square in the face. Literally just walked down the street and punched her in the face for no reason because he hated her so much. And I don't really know how this relates to the Russell Brand thing, because he is like the totally other end of that spectrum.

38:44You'd think that incels would hate Russell Brand because everything they're not. He's a chad. A chad is an incel term for a guy who gets the women, which about 10 years ago they hated chads. but now they like them because i don't know but russell brown you know he gets all the girls he he would have them throwing themselves at him you'd think that the incels would hate him but no they sympathize with him because they think that if they were in his position he'd have they'd have raped people as well they'd have sexually assaulted people there is no there is no um realistic political psychological element to this that is justifiable it is purely a hatred of women and it's one that's pathetic and it's something that i'd say about both incels incels and hypersexual sexual assaulters like russell brand the scale of their appetites is pathetic that's what's something that really stood out to me in the trial witnesses who sort of come forward to talk about brand's behavior in the 2000s about how he approached women and sex and how brand himself spoke about it on the stand it was pathetic and it's like you could say he was good looking you know he won you know shagger of the year he went through and all that and he so obviously comes from such a deep place of simultaneous narcissism and deep self-loathing insecurity the only way he could ever marry the two together was just by using women like objects things for him to to luxuriate in the attention of for five minutes before discarding them like a piece of rubbish and it wasn't like sitting there and watching this mastermind criminal at work this oh god how do you get away with it for so long it's like you are a sad pathetic idiot and i think that's just from both scales from the incels to the russell brands of the world they are pathetic can i can i just ask um do you think if russell well i guess my question is is another russell brand possible now um and i'm talking specifically about somebody like russell brand somebody so brazen and out i'm not obviously people men will rape and men will sexually assault and that will unfortunately go on forever but somebody so outre and it's kind of with hindsight obviously a level and actor is that possible do you think i'm not sure because i saw something very interesting i can't remember who wrote it so i will apologize that in the 2000s the mask that predatory men hid behind was campness or you know there's that clip of david walliams saying to xoobrand isn't a wonderful smoke screen that everyone's looking at now to matt lucas yeah matt lucas yeah you've got it's you know second to look back at now because you think they're joking but they're obviously not and um a lot of people a lot of young women now say that the smoke screen that men behind hide behind is wokeness that a lot of sort of modern i'd say woke figures on the internet i don't want to name any names for fear of implying anything who are actually some people have reported are actually really horrible in real life really nasty to women do a lot of things i mean this is quite a common thing that a lot of leftist commentators will do where they'll want to say something very overtly misogynistic but they know that they can't so instead of saying women they'll say white women because that makes it a little bit more like palatable to an audience but anyone can see through it that it's like no you just want to say something about women you're just trying to make it look a little bit more progressive but the regardless i think that it's possible there would be another russell brand and that there's somebody who kind of uses a smokescreen of look how safe i am to be around because i'm so right on or i'm so such an ally to this that and the other but is secretly going through but i think that we have different um i think we have a different culture in terms of how you would get away with it today in terms of is there another russell brand i think it's quite interesting that both brand and walliams although obviously he does deny allegations so let's make that clear a lot of this is coming out much past the zenith of their fame like yes rossal bine was making a bit of a comeback in the form of like maga and you know christian content but he was just it was just ridiculous to say he was ever at the height that he was in like 2010 say and same with walliams like yes he's a multi-millionaire with his children's books etc but he hasn't been on telly or done anything really that famous for the years now so you know both is it the case that only these allegations or these court cases or whatever can come to light when these men's power and spotlight has waned enough so it's no longer enough of a danger there could be someone right now who is on every tv show on every talk show or internet advert whatever who is doing the exact same thing but they're just simply too famous and too everywhere and make too many people too much money i think that is the real problem here yeah their value is yeah volumes and yeah volumes and brand weren't making many people that much money anymore um so to those who may have been protecting them or shooing away or sending out these these as you say these ndas these these legal letters suddenly the um the impetus just the incentive disappears but we might not know till 10 years from now whoever is currently at the peak of their stardom suddenly it's like okay well we'll finally yeah we'll let all that come out so is there going to be another russell brand probably yeah i just don't know i don't think we know what it looks like yet right um listen thank you so much well thank you for for sticking through yeah i mean fairly orduous arduous task um sitting through listening to uh any criminal trial can be hard going but i imagine that one had its moments of real um toughness so thank you for doing that thank you for writing a really terrific piece we've put it in front of the paywall folks so go and if you're not a subscriber but go and read it.

44:22Yeah, read it. And this is the kind of stuff we like to do. So read it, enjoy it, and then subscribe. But Lucy, thank you so much. And listen to Lucy's podcast with James Ball, Touching Grass. If you like our podcast, and I'll say something, because I've got a tendency towards being patronizing towards young people, but if you want to understand young people a little bit, it's really good. It's really good. If you happen to be in your late 50s, as I am, and want to sort of get an angle on what the next generation is talking about, thinking about touching grass is fantastic. And even if you're not, even if you're not, it's good.

45:02Yeah, no, it's excellent all round. Yeah, it's not just for old. It's not just an OAP service provider, you know. Quite the opposite. It's not a freedom pass. No, that's just a subscription to the new one. that but uh yeah yeah some episodes you might walk away understanding young people even less or wanting to understand them even less but you know that's the crops we all have to bear thank you so much for having me yeah no thank you lucy touching grasses on all good podcast providers thank you lucy and um listen matt and i will be back after the break for a quick chat about well a big event coming up um next week on the 20th of november the uk eu summit where So, well, we think it might be a moment.

45:50It might be a moment.

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48:00Welcome back, dear listeners. This is the Two Matts podcast brought to you by the subscribers of the New World magazine. Just to repeat where you can find more conversation with the great Lucy Reed, who we've just enjoyed a good chat with, visit her Touching Grass podcast. And you can read her most weeks in the New World as well, so subscribe if you don't already. Right, Matt, next week, November 20, UK-EU Summit. Yes, and it's a good day to talk about it because Burnham is against all those people who said, oh, he's not got any sort of foreign policy chops. he's the only g7 uh head of government who's been at cop 31 today yes um and then he's fly should be there now um as we're recording this is is flying to dublin for the the meeting of the european political community now the epc has only been going for years it was emmanuel macron's brainchild people might remember that only a few days after he became prime minister starmer hosted a meeting of it at Blenheim.

49:06And it really came into being in response to the Ukraine war, which was a way of getting the whole European community, not just the European Union, together to support Ukraine. But we're told that Hamish Faulkner, the EU minister, has been having loads of bilaterals. And Antonia Costa is co-chairing the meeting. He'll be meeting Burnham the 20th next Friday in Brussels for the proper summit. And I just thought, well, I wanted to ask you really, which is, you know, that I feel anyway, that there is the and we've said this a bit on the pod, but it's worth sort of hammering away is that there is change in the air on this of a really encouraging sort and how you're, you know, as the person that founded the New European, now the new world, how you're feeling about where we go next.

49:59Well, thank you. And as you know, I'm writing a piece for next week. Yeah. Well, sort of trying to lay out what I feel. We don't have a sort of new, this is the voice of the new world sort of position. I'm always happy to tolerate and embrace, actually, the counterpoint to other arguments and any argument I feel. But I think if there's one issue that unites pretty much every columnist in the New World, it is that we should be in the EU. And obviously the challenges ahead are how, and you wrote a brilliant piece about the inevitability or the necessity of a referendum when you lay out the facts.

50:42And I was running through the comments on your article in in the new world. And there's a lot who agree with it, Foursquare. And there are a few saying, no, this is terrible. We should just go back into the single market or whatever. You know, we can't go through a referendum. I noted David Cameron saying we shouldn't go there because it'll be long and hard and difficult. So which I thought, well, that's good because I don't really want David Cameron's endorsements on certainly not on stayability. You know, the man who tossed it all away the minute he blew it for the nation. So I've been trying to put my thoughts down.

51:17And there are some things that I've been thinking about a lot. One is Andy Burnham's, well, in one place his courage to throw into the conversation, as you described it, you know, throw himself on the third rail of talking about freedom of movement. Yeah. But there's another danger, I think, which is his repeated assertion that he won't move ahead of the people, you know. And and I kind of think, you know, who does that mean? Who at times like that doesn't think of Demosthenes, you know, and his famous, famous edict that just as a general marches at the head of an army, you know, a wise politician marches ahead of the issue.

52:00and his actions create the event rather than his actions having to respond to the event. And I kind of think Burnham, really, the truth is the people, if you believe the polls, if you believe the sentiment, are so far ahead of his thinking already or his open thinking. They're almost off the horizon. You know, he needs to catch up. And his courage in talking about laying out the potential of a return one day is only actually courageous in the context of the shit show that's preceded him. You know, it's an obvious thing to say. You know, any objective citizen would say, well, we're in a mess. It's not gone as we thought it was going to go.

52:45The sentiments of the nation has shifted massively. We should reappraise and we should reappraise in a transparent way. I mean, I think the theme as I'm as this piece is emerging and I'll send it to you ahead of publication so you can straighten it out for me. But the theme, the themes never. Never touch our Presidente's prose. One is, obviously, we're obsessed with a return to the European Union. But I think when you look at it objectively, that in itself is not even in the top five priorities of what this country's got to get. You know, a list that I've put together, and it may subject to change, is that there has to be, if I'm Andy Burnham and I'm sitting, what do I want to achieve?

53:36I want to achieve a renewed sense of cohesion in UK society. We have a disunited kingdom, and I would want to try to reverse that in some way. Well, how would you do that? It's got to be around some form of transparent, honest, national conversation. The second most important thing I would say is the prospect of a literal disunited kingdom, of the United Kingdom falling to bits. And I think that has got to loom large in his thinking. A restoration of trust in politics, that has got to be a central tenant of Burnham's premiership. The reversal of the prospect that the next generation is going to be literally poorer than this generation has got to be ahead of all of the considerations.

54:31and of course the defense of our nation and so you know and the looming threat and the fragility of our security in this new world but so all of those things i think are much bigger and much more important than the tactical return to the european union but i think the return to the european union enables and unlocks all five of those it's so funny you as you were saying that list and i agree to every single word i was thinking tick tick tick tick tick you know everything is helped but nothing put it this way matt certainly nothing gets harder by by no well i'm part of the european union i think that i mean i completely agree with you he can't when he said talks about bringing the public with him um as long as that means everything is subject to a referendum i'm fine with it right But if it means a kind of incrementalist approach where he doesn't take any risks with some bits of public opinion, because, as you said, you know, the majority of public opinion is way ahead of him, then that's not good.

55:39So I'm hoping that he'll continue to be, frankly, ahead of the curve in terms of the political class anyway. Yeah. The Cameron remark is is interesting. I think you're right that what David Cameron thinks is not sort of incredibly important to our return to the European top table. However, what struck me about it was, well, you know, he was actually the in effect, the leader of the remain campaign. Yes. So it does. It tells you that there will be speed bumps ahead because out of the 48 percent that voted remain, clearly not everyone we can. We can't rely on everyone on the centre right who voted remain to vote joint.

56:25I still think it would win. I'm not that concerned, but it is interesting. And it's a distinction from George Osborne, who said we should already have gone back into the customs union, for example. Yeah. But I think your your your point about binding this cause into everything else is kind of the point, which is I think the reason he leapt on the freedom of movement third rail, which seemed so counterintuitive, you know, reckless even was actually what he was doing was going, well, you sold Brexit on the we can bring migration down. Right. That was kind of the let's face it. That was a core pitch.

57:07I mean, I know there was you're going to get more money for the NHS, but it was about immigration in the end. Of course it was. And Romain refused to engage on that, which was a disaster. But what he was saying was, look, you know, we've lost control of immigration since we left the European Union. If you want to if you want greater control of immigration in a way that's both humane, but also, you know, works, you need you need to be thinking about this. And I thought, oh, that is interesting because it suggested to me exactly what you said, which is he's he's thinking, how can I do this without just sort of making it a separate silo?

57:44which is right now today I'm going to talk about crime and tomorrow I'm going to talk about Europe. No, everything he's doing from, for example, the social care reform, which is so central to his his whole ethos, his whole e-day force as a prime minister. Well, you know, we all know that that the way that immigration works and social care supply side employment is intimately linked. So that's just one trust. As you said, there's a huge job in in getting trust back. And that will be part of I mean, in a way, that's kind of the great task for progressive parties around the world is how do you at the moment you have a situation where trust in institutions and politics is in the gutter and the populist right trades on that because they don't care about government.

58:41You know, that it suits them that people don't trust government, whereas progressives need the public to believe, at least to a certain extent, that government can work to their benefit. So that is this huge task. And it's it's built into this, which is how does he do this with and it'll be against the backdrop. We all know this of the Mail and the Telegraph saying it's a betrayal, you know, and all the rest of it. that's a given so he has to do this uh in a way that is clear that he's not um uh launching an elite restoration project he's doing something which is to the benefit of the country and the benefit of all and to the benefit of all the things that you said the good news is and i don't know if you agree i think i don't know if you'd agree with every word we're saying but i think he basically in terms of general trajectory this is my impression of what he's trying to do would you yeah i well i hope so i hope so i mean and we'll find out soon enough we will yeah so the the paradox for me the most difficult part for me is the first element i mentioned which is a sense of cohesion in the country right and the counter arguments are that and you don't have to be you know um david cameron or nigel farage to make this you can be perfectly reasonable to make this and say are you mad do you really think opening up the brexit argument again is going to engender some sense of cohesion in the country all it's going to do is drive us to the barricades again and that to me is the central problem and where i'm hoping his political genius and i haven't got the answers but i'm hoping he does or certainly the wherewithal because there are models elsewhere that you can point to about how a a a beneficial national conversation takes place right and it doesn't take place in the pages of the daily mail or indeed even in the pages of the new world it needs to take place somewhere more meaningful where people get a greater understanding of all of the the facts the reality are given space to make up their mind in an informed way and i realize this even as i'm saying it sounds fantastically idealistic but unless that does happen i feel we will end up going back to the barricades and more so yeah i feel that just because the other the other side of the the risk to me is that just because we are now you know that 48 % is now whatever it might be, 62 % or whatever.

1:01:23Yeah. That the same complacency that affected us back in 2016 will affect us now. I agree. Because we think, oh, it's the will of the public. It's a canter. Well, maybe, well, you know, maybe you are one of those members of the public who think really hard about these issues and have waded up, made up your mind about what's best for the nation. maybe you are quite reasonably somebody who has got a life and and thinks about other things and could be swayed one way or the other when push comes to shove yes by populist language and stuff so that that i think that sense of um oh you know the people it's the will of the people that we need to really put scaffolding around that and make sure that those people feel utterly affirmed their sense that this is has been a wrong turn is is is accurate and right yes exactly because um i think it's quite easy simultaneously to recognize what to me is just sort of manifested the cases which is that it hasn't worked it's a disaster we'd be better off if it hadn't happened and we certainly need to be back at top table in some shape or form accepting that um the europe that we would be part of, again, is very different to the one we left, but that's a different point.

1:02:48And also this very important point that you said that I think that people can simultaneously feel that, but also feel that they don't necessarily want to commit the, in a way, what was really damaging was what followed the Brexit vote, which was years of the political class going completely bonkers and not concentrating on anything at all other than Brexit. And I think this will be the most powerful argument the antis have, which is they can't claim Brexit has worked, right? That would be silly. They can say the, oh, it hasn't been tried properly yet, which, you know, Marxists used to say about communism, but no one's going to buy that.

1:03:29But what they might buy is, do you really want five years of parliament just talking about this is that what you want that i think will have some traction so in order to get past that you need to have the point you started with which is this affects everything so if you want better health care if you want a migration system that works if you want um people to be uh you know able to get good jobs and an economy that works we need this um and the other thing i think which is how you persuade people out of very entrenched positions is becoming one of the kind of existential questions of our time.

1:04:06And I'm very interested in cult deprogramming, which is how do you get people out of cults? Right. And the answer invariably is you expose them to someone who has left one. So you say if you want someone to stop being a white nationalist, you don't send them someone who's a, you know, a diversity is our strength person you said them someone who was spent five years in the east end working for combat 18 who's gone oh my god this is terrible yeah to confront them and say actually this is why i was wrong this is how i can help now you can't do that with millions of people but the people the change makers in this will not fit too fine a point in it not be us yeah there'll be there'll be people who you know actually have the courage and i don't see a lot of them just yet but they may come burnham's start may help people to get people out into the into the open to say you know what you know really we do need to talk about this and i was wrong and it's okay to be wrong because people get it wrong and all of us get it wrong about some things yeah but until we've got a sort of cohort of people saying this is not 2016 guys i get why you were angry then but the questions you asked then quite legitimately have not been answered by the solution that leave offered so let's have a rethink we need that kind of voice in the debate and i so um i i'm hoping that it what i'm hoping is that it doesn't just lead to the old trench warfare yeah no i agree And that's going to be difficult.

1:05:42By the way, Matt, I mean, Nigel Farage has already started his campaign. Yeah, yeah. He's already started. Lies are already coming out. The lies of it will cut, you know, there's another bus ready to spray painted with this number that is going to cost 41 billion pounds a year to be part of the European Union, that we're going to have to join the euro, that the floodgates of mass migration will open again with freedom of movement. none of which is is it's all absolute true uh bollocks but but he is uh he's already coming out that so in in some regards you know again we're we're already behind the race um so anyway our little bit you know we obviously the new european launched the week after brexit and um and you know i was really struck uh i'm grateful to alistair um campbell at the cadogan hall Actually, just let me mention, because you started this whole conversation with, do I sense the mood has changed?

1:06:43Yes. I look back at the very first article I wrote in The New European, and it was explaining what it was all about. And the very first sentence was, walking in London the day after the vote was like walking through the world's biggest funeral parlor. Everywhere there was a sense of bereavement. Everywhere a sense of bereavement was palpable. And that was definitely true in London, right? So but in London the week before last, when we did the Cadogan Hall event with Alistair launching his book Percivillians, which, folks, you can get a free signed copy of when you subscribe to The New World. I love it when he does that.

1:07:19The newworld.co.uk forward slash two mats. People came up to me afterwards. Lovely subscribers came up to me afterwards. And the phrase that got spat up time and time again was it feels like the tide has turned. And that's more than a poll. I feel like that there is a different mood as well that people are, you know, the polls swing back and forth and they're kind of anonymized and people get phoned up by YouGov or whatever. And they say, yeah, I feel this. It's different when you're talking with mates or people you don't know and you've just met or you're in the pub. And I think that has changed.

1:07:56And I think it's changed quite recently, actually. Maybe it's coincidental with Burnham that there's a sense maybe that is his opening gift is that he's sort of opened up a bit of optimism about that. This doesn't have to be tortuous and a terrible trial that actually we can make another decision that everyone, not everyone, but the country will come along with. And we can move beyond this and look back. Yeah, I mean, the only gift that Brexit has given us is that this time around, we're no longer defending the establishment. Yes, yes. Right? I mean, there's nothing, nothing. It's the only good thing about Brexit I could think of.

1:08:36But, you know, so we are, and that in turn creates a massive opportunity because Clinton always used to say we're in the future business, which is who owns the future, who controls, not controls the future, but who defines the future. well this is an opportunity that this will be won or lost on how the extent to which we can frame it as the future yeah if we if it gets framed and our enemies will frame it as a restorationist project going back to 2016 turn overturning the democratic will all that that's coming you know we just have to that's in the share price we have to say no you know even if we brexit never happened but we were where we are now, we would want to join the single market, the customs union and so on.

1:09:22That's the case for doing this. It's not retribution. You know, we're not Donald Trump. No, it's not really retribution. This is not a way it's not really litigation. And that will require quite a lot of restraint because there is some, metaphorically speaking, some very punchable faces involved in this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, part of Farage's shtick, which will be um because it's a necessary appeal the big chink in farage's armor is um well you know it's a mess obviously the economy's gone down if you look at any you know the obr the um goldman sachs they all agree you know somewhere between six and eight percent of gdp you know there's nothing good about it right um but so farage's opening line is well brexit has you may be one of those people that resents how brexit has been executed and i'm one of them you know but he's got to explain why couldn't yeah brexit be why wasn't it a success that he said what it's not this it's not just because the politicians were idiots although many of them were it's because it was an insoluble problem you know that that this this referendum threw up and he's got to that's where we've got to put to him you explain why uh brexit hasn't worked um and how it could work you know that's on him but the but the but the that's part of it but the the bigger part of it is this is going to be great do you see my point is it totally yeah you know it's not just we're right there oh no 100 i know you're not saying that i know you're not saying I'm totally saying what you're saying.

1:11:06What I'm concerned about going forward. No, I know you're I mean, you know, you're you're you're you're at the helm of this argument. But there are people, let's be honest, in in in the sort of joint space who are straining at the leash. Yeah. To get their own back. And it's natural. I get, of course, it's a human instinct after 10 years, you know, to want to bury them. And to some extent, that engine is helpful. Just off the top of my head, you know, as you outlined it, I was just thinking, you know, it's like when if you have a really shit holiday, everything goes wrong. You know, you've booked a nice holiday.

1:11:49Yeah. And you hope it's going to be great. Everything goes wrong. The hotel was falling to bits. You couldn't get a sunbed. The food was shit. You got diarrhea. And it just went on and on. You couldn't wait to get home. Brexit tours. Now, the answer to that is we'll never go on holiday again. The answer to that is let's book a better holiday. Let's go on a better holiday. And that's there's your slogan. You know, got to do that. All right. All right. Enough for the moment. I have to go and finish this article. So, yeah. Thank you, dear listeners, for listening to the two mats. Buy a copy of this week's newspaper.

1:12:23There's a great cover. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the artist We Fail, But he does these very startling, quite nightmarish illustrations. And he's done a fantastic one of the Trump White House and all of the sorts of inspired by the shining. I love it. Inspired by the shining. And look out for it on the news, newsagent shelves if you don't subscribe. But it's quite the cover this week. It's getting quite a bit of attention on social media. So go and get a copy of The New World. The only way to assure your delivery of The New World is, of course, to subscribe. and as an introductory gift you'll get that free signed copy of Alistair Campbell's Per Civiliance.

1:13:02Go to thenewworld.co.uk forward slash 2mats. That's the number 2 M-A-T-T-S. Thank you as ever to the third Matt, Matt with us for producing the show. Thanks Matt. And until Sunday when we'll be back with our regular Sunday morning Q &A. It's goodbye from me. It's goodbye from him. Goodbye.

1:13:40We'll see you next time.

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