Reaction to Alastair Campbell, Nigel Farage and Andy Burnham as PM

0:00Right, I'm gonna level with you. I'm not a gamer, even though I look like one. I'm not gonna pretend I've been grinding through RPGs between recordings, although I have strong opinions about which Final Fantasy was the best one. I think it's Japanese and I think there's a sword. That's genuinely everything I know. But our social media guy showed me this app and I genuinely thought, that's quite clever. It's called Snacksy. Basically, game publishers need new players and they're willing to pay to get them. Snacksy just passes that money onto you. You play games you were probably going to play anyway, you own coins, and you cash them out for real rewards.

0:35PayPal, Amazon, Netflix, gift cards. If you prefer gaming credit, you can redeem for PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo, or cash out your Ineva wallet. I've got no idea what that means. actual money, not just points that expire. It takes a few minutes to set up. You open the app, swipe through the game offers, pick something that looks decent, play it, earn, redeem. That's the whole thing. There's a signup bonus worth up to$10 if you use our link, which is in the description of this episode. That's S-N-A-K-Z-Y, Snacksy. Click the link in the description to get started. And when you sign up, use the code TRIGGERPOD.

1:14That's T-R-I-G-G-E-R-P-O-D to claim your$10 bonus. And the app is mobile only, so click the link from your phone, not your laptop. Really, we're just trying to talk to people and find out what the truth is. And that's what, you know, with Alistair, that's what we did. It's also what we did with Nigel Farage. If they're making an argument that you don't think it holds water, it's not consistent. then you can't just let it go. You have to challenge it. We have a new Prime Minister now. He will save the country.

1:53Mate, I can't. What about us? Do we get a say in it? The way the current electoral system works is basically you've got children voting for how much candy they're going to get. Yeah. That is the thing that terrifies me the most. You've never seen a country go broke. You've never seen hyperinflation. You've never seen it when things get really bad. And I'm telling you, it's terrifying. All this Andy Burnham looks, he's got nice hair and he wears a T-shirt and he's from the north and he's a nice guy. All of this is about to evaporate because he's going to be confronted with the reality of government.

2:34Francis, good to be here with you. Welcome back. Thank you, mate. Delighted to be here. It's been an interesting couple of weeks. It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Last week in particular, I thought, summed up everything we've been trying to build here when in the same week we interviewed Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spokesman, director of communications, now host of one of the biggest politics podcasts in this country. And then soon afterwards, we interviewed Nigel Farage, who's been under the cosh a fair bit and put some uncomfortable questions to him, but nonetheless had the usual respectful conversation that we tend to do with all our guests.

3:11And that really is what we're trying to do, have people from across the spectrum on the show. And if they make sense, they make sense. And if what they're saying doesn't quite make sense, we probe and challenge and we see what happens. Well, that's it. And the thing that I always wanted to create, and you did as well, was the fact that we never wanted to be, despite what people may think, like a right-wing channel. I was never into it. It just happened naturally. It just happened naturally, mate. Do you know what I mean? But no, we never wanted that because the moment you create a channel which appeals to a partisan audience, what you automatically do is you give up your independence.

3:49You give up your independence of thought. And we never wanted to do that. We never wanted to be on any train, whether it's a left wing train, the right wing train. Like you take, for example, Trump. There were things that we agreed with Trump, but there are also things that we've been publicly pushing back on. For instance, the Iran wall. Neither you nor I think that is a good idea. We both think that it's actually a mistake that will have grave long-term consequences globally and economically. So I was really pleased with that because what it sends is a signal out to people that if you want to come on a show where you will get challenged, but you'll get challenged in good faith, this is the one place where you will come on.

4:34We're not going to straw man. We're not going to misrepresent. we're going to hear what you say, and then we're going to push back accordingly if we disagree. Yeah. And to your point about left and right and all this stuff, I have to say, first of all, it's great that Alistair came on. I think it's great that he came on. And I respect him for that. And I think it's to his credit that he was able to come on. And one thing that we've tended to experience in the past when we get people on from that kind of worldview is very often if you find that there's a flaw in their argument and you make a powerful counter argument to what they're saying, their reaction is to get nasty and to get personal, to start attacking you, to start trying to smear you, et cetera.

5:19He didn't do any of that, which I really respect. And I think that was great. But the challenge is when people are saying things that don't make sense you have to you have to push back on that and sometimes people think that we are not you know somewhere in the particular spectrum where they'd like us to be for their own reasons you know people want us to have certain views so they can agree with us or they want us to have certain views so that they can dismiss what we're doing really we're just trying to talk to people and find out what the truth is and that's what you know with alistair that's what we did it's also of what we did with Nigel Farage, by the way, you know, asking him questions about the financial allegations and all of this other stuff.

6:05And I think what was interesting to me is that the difference in approach is really not a consequence of how we go into these conversations, but what we get back. Like you can say what you want about Nigel Farage. He actually addressed our questions. You might not like what he said. You might not believe what he said, But the fact is he addressed the questions that we were putting Whereas with Alistair it sort of felt like you were boxing jello Like you're trying to hold on to something solid So that you're having the same conversation And that was difficult Yeah, and look, this is what people I think sometimes people look at the content and go Well, but with this guest you were one way Like you said, in this guest you were another way But what we want to do is be intellectually consistent If they're making an argument that you don't think it holds water, is not consistent, then you can't just let it go.

7:02You have to challenge it. And you have to get to the crux of it. Otherwise, it's going to be fundamentally unsatisfying for everybody involved. Because that's actually how you get to resolve issues. By getting to the crux, by getting to the core, by going, look. Like we talked about with Alistair with populism You make a very good point when it comes to the banking crisis 2008 Of course that's contributed to populism Practically I'm sure there wouldn't be one person actually who would disagree with that And of course social media has contributed to populism No one would disagree with that But also there is other parts of the equation that we need to address And we need to be intellectually honest We're only talking if we talked about social media And the banking crisis That's only one part of the pie And there's other parts of the pie That we need to talk about We need to talk for instance about Mass immigration The government response to COVID Quantitative easing Printing all of this money The fact that where I did an interview with Dominic Frisby He said that in real terms The pound sterling has been devalued By about 40 % since 2020 Now, you could say, well, Francis, aren't you overstating the case?

8:24Maybe, maybe Dominic's stats aren't completely correct But then you look at the way it feels when you walk into a supermarket Just when you go and buy a steak from the supermarket It's now£11 You thought, hang on, that was£6,£7 even three, four years ago So all of these things are contributing And we need to be honest about this Because if we're not being honest then we're essentially failing the remit of the show. It's the Francis Foster test of the economy. How much does organic steak at Waitrose cost? Yeah. It's gone up a lot. Lots of expenses. No, I agree with you. And I think one of the things that we were able to explore is the extent to which there is a certain current of thought which just very blindly and I think incuriously says the problem's not the problem.

9:16The problem is the people who are talking about the problem. And it just seemed to come up over and over and over again that there's this perception that populism and the frustrations that lots of people feel erupt from nowhere and are used and managed and amplified by bad actors. That was the argument that Alistair was making, which you can always say it's true to some extent. But ultimately, as I said to him, if you dealt with a problem, there would be nothing to exploit. Of course. And it just doesn't feel to me like that portion of the political spectrum is willing to have any conversation sensibly about that reality.

9:59And the reason they support reform and other parties, by the way, left and right, is that they are very fed up of the realities that they are experiencing, which is the product of decisions that were made by politicians. That's a fact.

10:17And that's just something that I think it explains a lot, actually. I'm being slightly inarticulate here, but I think it explains a lot about the way our debates are being had, because it just seems like there's lots and lots of people who have absolutely no curiosity about why it is that their political opponents have a huge rise in popularity. I mean, if you think about, take the bigger context. Forget about the current, you know, Starmer, Burnham, whatever. and just look at a bigger context. Imagine you are Alistair Campbell. You are the director of communications for Tony Blair, who comes in in 1997.

10:55And his government is in power until 2008. And eventually the Labour government gets voted out in 2010. At that point, there is no Farage party, really. It doesn't exist. I mean, Nigel Farage exists. His attempts to get elected exist, but he's irrelevant, effectively. There is no right-wing populism in this country. There's no left-wing populism at the time in this country. You have New Labour and you have the Conservatives who are on the ropes. You have the Lib Dems who are actually quite prominent at that time. And in the time since then, which is only 16 years, 15, 16 years, the entire political world has been completely transformed.

11:32And yet we are being asked to believe, I think quite incredibly, that that complete transformation of this entire thing is simply a product of the fact that evil populists came along and started misleading people. Well, that's just not a sufficient explanation for the state of the political climate that we're in. It's just not, objectively. That can't be the only explanation that works. And it's fair to say, yes, as you mentioned, the fact that we're getting poorer, or we're still poorer today than we were, at the point of the financial crisis in 2008. That's a big factor. But you can't not also acknowledge that the huge waves of mass immigration, and particularly the absolute joke of the asylum system and the illegal immigration that we now have, is not radicalizing people, of course it is.

12:28And there just does not seem to be a willingness to accept that. And what there is an unwillingness to accept, it's, I always remember in Venezuela when I saw Chavez come to power, But people don't talk about this enough. The reason Chavez and his brand of left-wing populism was so popular was because there'd been government after government who had done the exact same thing. It doesn't matter if you voted left or right. You've got essentially corrupt politicians coming in, doing nothing, robbing the country blind. The country would then degrade even more than where it was the year before and the presidential term before until people felt that they had no other option but to elect Chavez because it couldn't get any worse.

13:13Well, unfortunately, it got a lot worse. It can get worse. It can. And absolutely it can. But if you look at the UK, for how many years did the population in this country vote and demand that immigration be lowered? Time after time after time What was Brexit really? It was really a vote about immigration And lowering immigration And not only did they ignore it They tried to thwart it They tried to subvert it So what you're essentially saying to a populace is It doesn't matter who you vote for Kemi Badenow We talked right, governed left Well, you gaslit a nation for year after year after year after year.

14:03So people will go, why would I vote conservative? Why would I vote Labour? I'm going to go and vote for reform, green, restore, whoever it is, because they haven't let me down yet. But I know that if I vote for you, you will definitely let me down. And that is not an unfair position. Let's be brutally honest about it. No, of course, it's totally understandable. But where Alistair is right, I think, and where we agree with him is that not all of the people who claim to be the champions of the people are necessarily going to have the policies at least that will deliver them. They may even be well-intentioned.

14:43But there is, on the left, there's a delusion that you can just keep raising taxes and suddenly all the country's problems will be solved. Gary Stevenson has found himself rather unraveling his credibility and reputation in the last few days. But even now, I see in our comments, I mean, I did a video sort of detailing what is wrong about his worldview. And you see comments from people going, yeah, well, at least he's right about the wealth inequality. Well, first of all, actually, that's not true. The evidence is that wealth inequality has been very consistent for some time. But even if it were, and I totally understand that people, lots and lots of people are particularly locked out of the housing market.

15:21It's something we've talked about a lot. but they'll still say, well, at least he's got the diagnosis right, which is very, very good populist tactics. You describe accurately what has happened, but then the solutions that are being offered, in Gary's case, it's a wealth tax, which we know would just make things worse. It would mean that normal people end up paying more tax because you chase out all the rich people. What we should have in our country is as many rich people as possible, so the rest of us pay as little tax as possible. That's what we actually want. And likewise on the right, you know, there's, you and I both agreed that, you know, anyone who's here illegally should be removed.

16:00And that's a big job. It's a big job. We've got a million illegal immigrants in this country. And at the moment, we're removing about 10 ,000 a year. We're chipping away, mate. We're not, though, because we're letting more in than we're deporting. Right. Yeah. No chipping away. So it's getting worse. That's the point I made to Alistair. Even if we stopped letting anyone in and deported people at this rate, it would take a century. to do it. And of course, that has to be done. People who are here legally should not be here. They should be removed and we should have things in place to encourage not only them to leave, but actually people who are just net takers.

16:38If you are here from a foreign country, you're not a British citizen, you shouldn't have any access to benefits. And the moment you take that incentive away, lots and lots of people will leave by themselves. But there is this idea on the populist right, that the moment you achieve that, the moment you deal with the issue of illegal immigration, which by the way, will be very difficult. It needs to be done, but it'll be very difficult. Suddenly Britain will be transformed into this like magical universe of milk and honey. No, it's going to be Enid Blyton part two. Yeah. I'm not convinced that that in itself will solve this country's problems.

17:14You have to have a credible economic policy. You government, to the economy. You're going to have to work with the civil service. Sorry. You're going to have to short for some of them to leave, but that's a big job in itself. So you have to have rational evidence-based policy that's actually going to work. But the populist model is simply to shout about how bad it is and how badly you've been let down and how you got here. And you see that on both left and right. And that's a really good point. And whilst you were talking about that, an idea came into my head and I want to explore it with you because I've just had it.

17:51So it may not be a good idea, but let's play it out. It seems to me populists on both left and right are in love with silver bullets. They think that if they solve this one thing, everything will be better. On the left, it's inequality. Inequality is huge. I'm not denying that. I think that it is one of the major issues of our time. I think it's incredibly serious. Sure. But if wealth inequality, if you somehow get the magic bullet for that, we've still got a whole host of other problems in this country. Yeah. And again, with the right, mass immigration, illegal immigration, it's a huge problem.

18:31It's a huge problem, and it's contributed to some really, really serious issues within our country, within our communities, the stability of our country. I agree. But the idea that if you have a silver bullet that solves that, the rest of it is going to be perfect. I'm like, guys, come on, we need to live in the real world. And unfortunately, this is the issue because when you are the outsider, when you're a disruptor, it's very easy to come along and point fingers at people and go, this is wrong, this is bad. It's like walking in on someone's relationship or someone's marriage and going, oh, you're not doing this right.

19:07You're not doing that. Yeah. All right. That's easy. What's actually difficult is to try and fix a relationship from the inside. I'm just pointing at one thing and going, well, you know, you do this and you do that. Come on, we actually, we're adults here and we need to start thinking about balanced solutions that actually you can execute in real life. Yeah, and this is why, you know, we invite every single leader of a political party in this country of prominence. We either have already interviewed them or are actively trying to interview them all. Zach Polanski dodging us so far. Ed Davey dodging us so far.

19:44Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham dodging us so far. And Rupert Lowe. Every time we interview a politician, the comments are all saying, when are you going to interview Rupert Lowe? It's not up to us. He agreed to come on in February. Still hasn't made it happen. And, you know, I'm hearing a lot of things on the grapevine about how it's actually a reluctance on this part because he doesn't want his arguments interrogated. I don't know if that's true, but that's where we are. Most people think they're informed. In reality, they're selectively informed. Modern media doesn't just tell stories. It quietly decides which ones you never hear about at all.

20:18That's why I use Ground News. It's the only app that compares how the same story is covered across the political spectrum and show you what whole audiences are not being told. The Blindspot feed is one of my favorite features. Every day, it flags upwards of 20 stories that are being ignored either by the left or the right. Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry. Take this story. A major US poll found that Republican voters' confidence in Trump's economic leadership has dropped sharply during his second term. That is not a minor data point. If you only read right-leaning publications, you would have missed this completely.

20:51On the other hand, look at this. The UAE drops UK from scholarship list over radicalization concerns on university campuses. That's a significant story. Yet coverage from left-leaning outlets was almost non-existent. Ground News puts all of this in one place. Headlines, bias breakdowns, ownership, and context. So you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told. Go to ground.news slash trigonometry to get 40 % off their unlimited vantage plan. The same one we use. And stop being managed by the media. And look, I really do think that if you are a politician, a major politician, I don't think the mainstream media is the place anymore.

21:33that if you want to get your ideas across in the most effective way possible, where you're not going to get interrupted, you're not going to get straw man, you're not going to get misrepresented, you're not going to get talked over, but what about this and what about... No, you will come on, you'll get a fair hearing, and you are going to be heard and listened to by a broad cross-section of society. I remember when we started this show, and the comedians in the comedy industry were like, oh, it's all right wing, it's all straight white men. I went, no, no, it's brilliant. They didn't laugh. Anyway, we'll move on.

22:05But the people that I meet when I'm walking around London, they are people of every creed, colour, hue, background, profession, gender. It's all everybody. And they all hate you. And they all hate me, exactly. Equally. Equally. Some were equal than others in the words of George Orwell. But that's why I'm so proud of the platform that we've built. Because you can have access. And we will be fair. So if you want to come on, if you want your voice to be heard, if you want your ideas to be challenged in the fairest way possible, and you're given time where you're not felt like you're rushed or we're going for the soundbite or we're going for the clickbait, this is a place to do it.

22:51It is. I agree with you. But I also think we are somewhat victims of our own success because, as you say, we challenge people. We ask them questions, whoever that is. when it was Kemi on the show, Kemi Bednock, we pushed her pretty hard. Nigel Farage at times, especially the last interview, we had to ask him about all these financial allegations and we dug pretty deep. And now, you know, that was a world-exclusive interview, by the way, for the very reasons that you say, which is for a lot of people, they know they're not going to get a fair hearing in the media. So they will come to us because they know we will ask them the questions that need to be asked, but we'll do it fairly.

23:28So there are people who are willing to do that, But the incentive structures of the Internet are such that it actually doesn't quite make sense. So Nick Fuentes was another good example of this when we offered to interview him. He was interviewed by Piers Morgan, but he wouldn't be interviewed by us. And the reason is it actually makes sense. For Nick Fuentes, if you're someone who's controversial, so to speak, you either talk to people who are only just going to listen and agree with everything you say and not going to push back, which people do a lot, or you want to go on a, if you're Rupert Lowe, you want to go and be interviewed by Emily Maitlis because she's going to be so, so irresponsible with her behavior and so confrontational and so unfair and so biased that just by turning up and being normal and answering questions and being quite robust in defending your point of view, you achieve a lot of success.

24:20Well, what you don't want is people who will listen to you and give you a fair hearing but will not be unfair in their challenges, who will challenge you on the things that you need to be challenged on. That's the most difficult interview to actually do for a lot of people. And so maybe the appetite is not there for that. And, you know, you see it every time we interview someone like Deborah Francis White or Alistair Campbell or whatever. It sort of feels like it's going to be harder to get other people on after that because they see that, you know, if they don't have good answers, it's going to come out.

24:55Yeah, and I think that's a real danger that what the internet will descend into, and you can make a very cogent argument that it's already getting to that place, is where people just talk to people that they agree with. And that's a really bad place for our society and for our democracy to be. Because we need to talk to people that we disagree with. Otherwise, how are we going to find out ideas that are bad? We've all got bad ideas. We all think dumb things. we've all got ideas that are great but actually this part of your idea isn't great and it needs sharpening or maybe you just need to get rid of it or maybe you need to actually acknowledge that the person sitting in front of you who you disagree with might very well have a point and therefore you need to update your thinking and as a result of that become a more rounded thinker but if all we do is just go on pods where people agree with us we're never going to get to that place.

25:51And now all that's going to happen is we're going to get more and more political polarization. Because people can say things that are simply bad ideas or factually incorrect, but if no one's there to push back on, then these things are going to be seen as truth or facts. And like I said, that's unhealthy. It's unhealthy for the internet, but far more importantly than that, it's really unhealthy for us as a society. Yeah. And that's why then there's an open an invitation for all the party leaders in the UK and lots of other people that we often invite on the show to come on and discuss these issues in a fair way.

26:26We'll see what happens. Well, we absolutely will see what happens. I mean, that's not the only thing that's happened this week. Obviously, the football. I did a little video. Yeah, you did a video explaining with very, very good arguments, factually based, why the Argentine football team is full of cunts. Yeah, exactly. And do you know what? They were really on board with it. They heard my arguments and they were very much open to my persuasion. I enjoyed reading the comments. They were mostly in Spanish. But you know, what was interesting is I think one of the most prominent comments under that video I saw was an Argentine going, if you said this about anyone else, you'd be called racist.

27:08And it's like you can't criticise someone's football team anymore for being cheating twats, which is what they are. I mean, the England game was atrocious. And then they kicked off in the final because they're terrible losers as well. Yeah. And they literally punched a Spanish player who, full fair play to him, walked away. Another one they grabbed and threw on the floor. This is on the final whistle. And then when Spain were lifting the trophy, they, as a team, turned their backs on him. You just go. And everyone's like, oh, but Messi didn't do that. Yeah, but that's like saying, all right, here's a family of sex offenders and this one's all right.