Dan Wootton Outspoken - DEBATE THE SPECTATOR'S MICHAEL GOVE BANNED: BIRBALSINGH VS TOMLINSON ON RACE & INTEGRATION

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Dan hosts the heated conversation between Britain’s strictest headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh and right-wing political commentator Connor Tomlinson that The Spectator’s Michael Gove BANNED from the public on integration, race and ethnicity in modern Britain. To watch the Uncancelled After Show for exclusive extra content EVERY weekday, sign up at: https://www.outspoken.live LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos every day: https://youtube.com/@danwoottonoutspoken?si=-2BhmEbBSN1fyESS?sub_confirmation=1 ---------- Find the full audio show wherever you get your podcasts: Apple — https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dan-wootton-outspoken/id1762436723 Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/19Ltoneek2MSPL10CpSA1J?si=8f6d84e2db56448c ---------- Follow Dan on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@outspokendan Follow Dan on Twitter: https://x.com/danwootton Follow Dan on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danwootton/ Follow Dan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danwootton/?hl=en #DanWootton #DanWoottonOutspoken #news #outspoken #uknews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No spin, no bias, no censorship. I'm Dan Wooden. This is a special edition of Outspoken and you know it has been our week of the clash here on the show where we debate the biggest issues in the world. But today's episode is a little bit different. A conversation, not a clash, but won the MSM and specifically the spectator didn't want you to see at all. We're joined by Britain's strictest headmistress from the famous Michaela school, Catherine Burbill Singh, and host of Tomlinson talks on YouTube and subsubter. Stack, Connor Tomlinson, as they're about to get into round two of a conversation that was never released to the public. So do stand by for that. No Greatest Britain or Union Jackass this week because of the clash, but the Royal Uncanceled Aftershow continues as normal over on

substack at www.outspoken.live. So now, let's go. The whole point of the independent media is to deliver unfiltered conversations and analysis that you simply will not get from the crooked, corrupt and censored MSM. And today is the perfect illustration of that. We are hosting the controversial conversation that the spectator didn't want you to see. Indeed, they have gone to great lengths to hide the footage of a debate hosted by its editor Michael Gove and our two guests in the studio, Britain's strictest headmistress from the famous Michaela school, Catherine Berbilsing, and host of Tomlinson talks on YouTube and substack Connor Tomlinson. After filming the debate on immigration, integration and British identity in September last

year, and promising Connor that it would be released uncensored, the spectator's bosses reviewed the final footage and decided it would never be released at all. Well, you know, there's no censorship here at outspoken, no spin. no bias either. So that is why today we are giving Catherine and Connor total freedom to have that very important conversation. So will integration succeed? British historian Robert Tombs seems to think so. As at a conference on how to save England last year, he said that the solution to immigration, integration and sectarian voting was to quote clone Catherine Berbel Singh, because if you've been her Michaela school and have seen little girls with headscarves on reciting Kipling and singing

the national anthem, you think that becoming English is possible if you want to do it, and if you're encouraged to do it, and if you're required to do it. But one person who disagrees with that philosophy is Connor Tomlinson, who wrote an article after the conference insisting that you can't make someone British and you can't learn an identity. He says this integration myth must end. Catherine then began to weigh in on the conversation on X, leading to this invitation for her and Connor to participate in the discussion moderated by Gove on the issue of multiculturalism and integration.

Both parties said they enjoyed the conversation, and it was conducted with respect we are told. But I think these few months on, it's even more important that the conversation censored and covered up by the spectator is now seen by you. So thank you both for being here to recreate that discussion. But of course, it will be much more sound because Michael Gove is substituted with me today, which we both love. So, Connor, I'll start with you. Why don't you think integration can succeed? And why do you take umbrage with the almost universally revered work of Catherine at the Michaela school?

Well, thank you very much for hosting us both, Dan. I must say, I enjoy it. Is it like deja vu? Again, significantly more sound than the unheard studios. So I wanted to say first of all, and I said this in the previous discussion we had. Yes, but we didn't get to hear that. So you're going to have to repeat yourself. I do not take any umbrage with the exam results and the like that Catherine has been able to achieve,

especially considering the disastrous education system that is only getting worse under Bridget Philipson. So the debate itself or discussion or disagreement is not necessarily about a philosophy of the education system. My contentions were threefold. And I think it's taken on renewed importance since we had our first discussion because not only as, as Kemi Badenock said at Arc, that Catherine's work is her model for the muscular liberalism she would like to see become the driving philosophy of her Conservative Party, but because Suella Braverman, who, as she mentioned in her speech, as Reforms New Education spokesperson, said, the McKaylor School is her model for what she would like to see throughout education.

And so it's pertinent per that quote that you read out at the start, that political parties across Britain are looking to the Michaela School as a model not just for education, but hopefully for their education, assimilation and cultural cohesion strategy. And so my concerns were threefold. First, the version of British identity that is put forward as being practiced desirably at Catherine's school is indistinguishable from liberal pluralism,

which allows other identities and other faiths to proliferate underneath it like an umbrella. The second thing I said was, I am not confident it's going to work. For the precise reason, as Robert Toom said, if girls are reading Kipling and seeing God save the king, but they're still doing it in Muslim garb, that means that they have inherited a comprehensive worldview, Islam, from their parents, but you can substitute in with plenty of other religions as well. And they may well be participating in the culture that I have inherited as an Englishman, but we don't know in which way they're going to do it. And we don't know if

that is going to have a stronger hold on the way they see the world than their inherited culture, their inherited faith, their inherited family dynamics. And the final concern I had was, if it does work, then it generates a brand new governing class with an excellent education as provided by Catherine that means that you then have a new generation of politicians of immigrant heritage who will then govern over an increasingly fractured society where we are approaching a state of being a minority. And we've already had that in, which he's Sunak and Priti Patel and Kimi Badenog. And all of these people, Rishi Sunak included, has been upheld as an immigrant success story. Yet what did you do when he was in government? He opened the

doors to India. And so it shows that there are still these ethnic and cultural and religious loyalties that persist despite a good education, despite going through all of Britain's institutions and assimilating. So ultimately, I'm quite pessimistic. Catherine, why is he wrong? Okay, well, let's, I've written down here just what my original problem with Connor was, but, you know, I've just quoted you here from what you wrote about us. I'm surprised it could fit on one sheet of A4, to be fair. Yes, it's true. You said, well, no, well, you said quite a lot in the two videos that you made on us

and then also in your substack. You said what Berbberl Singh and the Michaela school model represent is a replacement of Britain's traditional high trust homogenous self-governing spontaneous order with an authoritarian headmistress state to make new tribal minorities and the besieged host majority play nice. So that, I suppose, sums up sort of what you just said?

Yeah. Okay. And I think, I don't think you really know schools. I think that while you sort of say, yes, it's great that you've got these GCSE results, there's a reason why we've got the GCSE results that we've got and why other schools are faring so poorly. And I think this includes schools that are mainly white, schools that have lots of ethnic minorities, kids are kids.

And it doesn't matter what color they are and what religion they are and so on. They need structure and they need order. And I think you are unwittingly actually just very progressive and very much on the left in the way in which you describe what children need. the idea that children shouldn't require order and that you've got this idea that there's this spontaneous order that happens if you put two toddlers in a room with a toy when there's only one toy, it doesn't matter if the toddlers are black or white,

they will hit each other in order to get the toy. And we as adults, you know, our school is very similar in terms of its approach to the parish schools of the 1800s. And this idea that I'm authoritarian rather than being in authority, the distinction is often misunderstood by those on the left that they think that I'm this authoritarian. And actually what you're saying resembles precisely what the leftists are always accusing me of. And as you know, the leftists will accuse me. They'll say, how dare I even come and speak to you? And, you know, they attack me for that.

And despite me disagreeing with you, I'm going to come into it. to you because I don't agree with the left in refusing to talk to people. I think it's really important that we keep channels of communication open so that we can find where we disagree. And what I'm hoping to do today is to try and persuade you that children need order and structure and that they used to have it in this country and that nowadays, I mean, let me just give you a few stats. In particular, stats in Scotland might be of interest to you because Scotland, of course,

is 93% one. And so if you're going to say, well, actually, this is the problem with ethnics being in the country. Well, in Scotland, one in four of the violent incidents that are reported to the police happen between child and teacher, right? One in four, it's a child attacking their teacher. One in three kids in Scotland leave primary school, not having achieved the basics in maths or English. across the UK, you need 20% to pass your maths GCSE. One in three kids don't manage that. You need about 20% to pass your science GCSE.

One and three kids don't manage to reach that. So I'd say there's something bigger going on here that you're sort of fixated on this whole ethnicity point when in fact we need to look at our schools and what our schools are doing. You name all of these politicians who are brown or black, But what about the white politicians? And why are you not questioning why all of these politicians,

whatever color they are, react as they do, perhaps, and actually not the ones you've mentioned. I think those ones are very pro-patriotism. For India. But no, for this country. Michaela is a reaction not to ethnicity or multiculturalism. Michaela is a reaction to the failure of patriotism and the failure of culture in this country.

And we are reestablishing an unoblishing an old-fashioned traditional culture that ought to be in all of our schools. Let me give you another stat. In 2008, 75% of teachers said that they should, they have a duty to teach children that we should be ashamed of this country. That's 75% of teachers in 2008.

In 2004, 80% of children felt that they, of young people, felt that they could be proud of the country. 20 years later, in 2024, that number has been reduced to 40%. So we went from 80% to 40%. That's no wonder when three quarters of the teaching population is trying to teach the children to be ashamed of their country.

Those teachers are not brown and black. Those teachers are white. So what you should be asking yourself is what is going on in our schools? Why is the country in such a position where it sort of hates itself? Because that's really important when it comes to cohesion

and everyone being able to get on with each other. And I just don't think you look at these points and consider them, really. Well, you haven't read my other work. Or, for example, I gave a speech at the Family Education Trust after you, but you weren't there. And I did actually cover those sorts of points. So I don't disagree. The reason I think it's farcical to say I am on the left

is because I do not buy into the anthropology that liberalism shares with. the same Marxists that have populated teaching unions and are, you know, out there marching. I don't mean the liberals. I mean the leftist identitarians. That's who you have lots in common. They're the same group. No, no, they're not. Hang on. Because the fundamental premise of liberals and Marxists is that they all start from the original position of we are all the same. That we, there is one governing philosophy, one way of life, which is suitable for all human beings. And so if we,

just level all differences between all human beings and deny all differences between all human beings, then we'll all live in John London's imagine. And the communist have a much more violent way of doing this, which we both oppose. But the liberals believe that if you construct a society from schools to the state in such a way that everyone has a shared pluralistic identity, that you base this identity on things like tolerance and free speech and the rule of law and playing cricket and other sorts of things that the Department of Education cooked up under our mutual friend Mr. Gove, then everyone can live alongside each other and sing-combeye-ar. And so when I use the word authoritarian there in the quote that you read out,

I didn't mean that authority is wrong. I'm a big believer in hierarchy. I mean, it would be a bit weird if, as a Catholic I wasn't. What I was saying was a culture is enforced at Michaela, which has then been used as a prescription for the culture writ large to solve our problems of multicultural ethnic tensions. And that is a British identity that you rationally sign up to by singing the national anthem, learning a curriculum. And importantly, as I wrote in my piece and I said in my video, which you didn't quote, but that's fine.

That's premised on making certain compromises that you said at Arc in 2023 need to be made in order to, quote, make multiculturalism work. And that includes enforcing the children to not eat any meat in case it offends Muslims or in case it offends Hindus, Sikh dietary, It means that you had a lengthy lawsuit for which, again, you have my sympathies and you were on the right side of that. Don't be wrong. Because Muslim students organically started praying in the playground. And so rather than saying Islam isn't welcome in our school, he said all religions are welcome in school. Now when Kimmy Badenock says, this is the muscular liberalism I would like to base the country on. No. We're a country. I don't know about what Kimmy says. I wouldn't call us a muscular liberalism. I'd call us that we're British, which is a very different thing for liberalism. You're not sure, but Britain, sorry, Dan, I don't want to interrupt. If you were to adopt a child, you and your wife were to adopt a baby from Nigeria, let's say.

And you were to bring up the baby in your household and send your child to a school that was patriotic and did teach all the sorts of things that we do at LeCala. And you and your wife were to be the way you are with your child and talk about the history of the country, the culture of the country. You would eat, I don't know, breakfast with baked beans and you would watch. Mr. Bean and you would read Wordsworth in Shakespeare and you would go for drives in the rolling hills and you would there would be a love for England in your household

are you telling me that that that child would not be brought up as a British child is that what you were saying no no they would be brought up as a British child and they would not be British? But there's well they would have they would have they would have they would have a British passport they would they would be administratively British but that does not mean that they are in distinguishable from people who have English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish heritage,

which is what Robert Tooms had said. So hang on. Hang on, no, no. That child, because that child is black, would not be just... No, it's because that child is Nigerian. It's not because they're black. But it's your child. You've brought up that child.

Yes, but that doesn't mean they suddenly become English. Well, okay, so what is it that would be so different about that child? Let's say you have a biological child and then you have another child and you bring up both of them. Because one has my heritage. And that makes one. what difference in terms of the way which the child behaves. It doesn't make a difference in how they're treated. Allow me to explain.

Just because you have a different heritage doesn't mean that we should treat one another with more or less moral consideration, just like I'm not impolite. You never have been on or off camera. No, no, I'm saying how they behave. How would they be any different? Oh, one is more likely to have a frame of reference for the heroes that they are being taught to revere than another. Because the other one, by dint of having different heritage, has an addition.

obstacle to overcome to consider themselves a part of our national family or even my own family. It's your child. So I don't understand. Okay. Okay. But the other point that I was making was that when Robert Tooms used your school as an example of how to overcome the barriers for integration, he said you can learn to be English if you are required to do it.

And indeed, if you're encouraged to do it. Now, first of all, your school does not have Christianity as an aspect of it, which Britain does. Right? Always has. We wouldn't be in England without Christianity. by the venerable beech. So to say that your school is British, well, that misses a fundamental aspect of the culture. But also, no, you cannot become English, no more than a man who puts on a dress can become a woman. Catherine, can I just ask you about that because I think it's

interesting for people to know a little bit about your background, because a lot of people won't, because you have Jamaican mother, is that right, Indian, Indian father. Guineese, Guineas, Indian heritage. Okay, Guyine's father with Indian heritage. And born in New Zealand, raised in Canada, and when did you move to the... I came here at age 15. At age 15. Do you feel with that mixed heritage that you are English?

Is that what your identity is? Well, it depends on what you... Like, I'm quite happy to just call myself British. I understand, actually, you guys saying, look, there is an English ethnicity. I get that. And I have to say that when, you know, growing up in the 80s, all black people in Britain, when we would have conversations, you'd say, oh, I met that English guy and everybody knew you meant that white guy. Yeah. It was perfectly acceptable and normal to consider English to be white.

And not racist. And it wasn't racist. It was fine. I do think that things, because things have got very heated these days in, in the country with regard to the race issue. And I do think that has to do with mass migration. and the numbers. And I think that when demographic change is so large and also so fast,

that that is a problem for any country. So I understand that. And I think that, unfortunately, because that happens, we then have created this situation where actually I think race relations have got much worse in this country than they were. As I say in the 1980s, it's more just a sign of respect for the country.

I don't have to go around saying, I'm English, I'm English, I'm English, I can say I'm British and recognize that there is an English ethnicity. However, I would insist that if you had two children, one you had adopted at birth and she's black and then you have another girl who's white, that they would be very much the same because you were bringing them up. Now, where I might understand what you're saying is, yes, but if parents have come from somewhere else, then they're not able to bring the child up in the same sort of way. And so that I can understand there would be some, there would be a difference.

But you bringing up a child, I have to say, I don't believe skin color or ethnicity carries culture. I think culture is created in the environment in which you are brought up in. By who? By everybody. So it is simply not the case. So that's the nature not nurture argument. Yeah. So it is simply not the case that only parents have influence.

on their child. It is that your teachers have influence on you, your environment, your peers, the media, all of this has influence on your child. And in the Muskela School, do you see any differences between children who are ethnically English and those who aren't? No, I wouldn't, over my years of working with children, no, I don't distinguish between children of different races and religions. And you guys know that there are so many white people in England who think very differently to you. In fact, the vast majority of them think differently to you.

And so you need to ask yourselves, well, why is that the case? Like, what I don't understand is why you all aren't actually saying, why is there not a Michaela in Blackpool? Why are you not thinking, wouldn't it be wonderful to have, while it's true that we are secular, I would argue that our values are very much based in the Christian heritage of this country. This is, and I feel we're getting away slightly from. And I don't think Christian heritage would encourage some of the things that you believe, actually.

Okay. Well, we'll, given that you aren't a Christian and I am, that will, and I think this is part of the problem of why attentions are so bad. you saying that to me will take on the aspect of condescension. And I'm not saying I interpreted it that way. But it goes very much the same way for people who are of immigrant heritage saying, let me explain to you how your culture and your identity actually includes me. And that is what is getting a lot of people's backs up. And this is why, I mean, I've never been impolite to you.

But there is a discourse, especially since I'll debate the previous one, where there is a lot of heated and inconsiderate rhetoric going from people who feel their backs are up against the wall demographically, culturally. They feel like they're losing possession of their country. And so they are being indiscriminately rude to people of other heritage who are actually on their side and say, oh, you're going back just like the rest of them.

Now, I'm not doing that. But the moment you start to say, you want to actually a Christian or you're... I didn't say you weren't a Christian. I'm just saying some of the things that you're saying, I'm not very Christian. say that therefore I am insufficiently living up to Christianity.

It's the same as people say... And I'm saying some of the things you're saying, I don't believe a Christian. Now, we can discuss that. I mean, at the end of the day, we're all about free speech. I should be able to say the things I think. No, no, we are. I'm not saying...

So you should not be so offended as to not discuss the matter of the thing. I'm not saying the... What do you think Connor is saying that isn't Christian? I think that Christianity of all the religions very much wants to hold a hand across the divide

and very much help the others across that divide and it isn't just about I want to look after my own and that's it which I think is one of the extraordinary things

about Christianity. I was brought up in a Christian household so I'm very familiar with Christianity I went to church you know for many many years and as I say

the values at Michaela are very much grounded in the heritage of our Christian culture here and resemble the parish schools of the 1800s in Britain. But it's still, can I, sorry, I just, I don't want to interrupt. Whereas the spontaneous kind of thing that you talk about, about this spontaneous order, is the kind of thing that progressives push.

I don't think it's true. I think that sort of thing needs to be taught. If I can lay this out, because I have found it difficult to finish this sentence, I must say. First of all, no, I wouldn't say your school is particularly Christian when it enforces secularism. And other religions are not reconcilable with Christianity.

The truth claims that they make are mutually incompatible. So in order to have British culture, it's not Islamic. It's not Hindu, it's not Sikh. And so we shouldn't be giving quarter or at least equal consideration to that with the faith that built the country.

But getting away from Christianity, not wholesale, because it is important, but getting away from that, I wanted to make the point that yes, we should treat children with equal consideration because, in a very Christian fashion, we should treat all people with more consideration. But I am very pessimistic about the prospect of achieving integration with one generation even at your excellent school, Catherine. And that is because you have got populations who think individualistically by a matter of lineage

and custom and habit versus populations that come from very clannish countries that have cousin marriage rates have upwards of 80%. You also have... I mean, whether or not it can be successful, I don't know. But that's the important thing. And this is why people... No, hang on, hang on. But I have to think about what we're...

Because what is your solution? Let me finish one minute. You're going to put all of us on planes and send us home? No, no, no, but people are telling you that because you're immediately talking past it. You're not addressing their concerns. Because you're going from... Well, they're here now, so there's nothing we can do.

So... No, that's not what I do, actually. I've spent my entire life doing something. No, no. I've built something. I've done something. I know you've done something. I know you've done something.

I actually do something in the country that makes the country a better place. Hold on. So, whereas I'm wondering what it is that you do, to be honest. I mean, look, you know, I've lots of respect for you. Well, it doesn't feel like it at the moment, actually. But the fact is that we all have to think, how can we contribute to the country in such a way to make it better?

I have spent close to 30 years transforming the lives of children and transforming the education system in this country, to make it better, not just in terms of the way in which we all get on with each other, but also in terms of how you teach and exams and making children into better adults. Now, and I've been really successful at that, and yet you've spent a considerable amount of time attacking me and my school, the one head mistress who was out there fighting for Britain and for patriotism and for a British history

be taught properly, for things like singing God save the king and reciting Kipling, you denigrate that and sort of say, oh, how ridiculous reading Kipling. But the fact of the matter is that it's not happening anywhere else. And there's a reason why

the various politicians who you haven't mentioned, who are actually white, who they think very differently to me, and they are the ones making decisions about the country that you don't like. Yes. And rather than try and think, well, what is going on here?

Why are they doing that? I will tell you that that is because of what's going on in our schools. And the way in which the country is, refuses to sort of stand up for itself. I have already addressed that. Well, you're not addressing it now. And when you talk about me and talk about Michaela, you don't address it at all.

Because they're demented communist liberals. And the reason that I'm speaking about this is because... But how did they become that way? Yes, because the education is poor. I agree with you. I agree with you. No, you can't just then run rush. No, no, no, the reason I am. I'm not running roughshod. What I'm saying is the reason I focused on this example is because this is an internal conversation on, let's say, the right or the patriotic side, as you've said, as to what kind of society do we want to build and how do we want to build it? And the fundamental thing you missed out when you said, demographic change disrupts societies because of scale and because of speed.

the one thing you missed out there was permission. Whoever asked for it. Nobody ever asked. That might be true. No, no, no, no. Hold on. Look, you're talking as if it's 1900, and you're this grand master of the universe.

This is what you like things to be. We are where we are. What are you going to do, Connor, to make the world a better place? This is what I just said earlier, is why people are angry at you and are being far more acerbic and vitriolic than I ever have been, is because I said earlier,

you come across and say, well, it's happened now, so we've got to deal with it, right? Yes. That's exactly what you just said. This is what people are angry about, right? Deal with it. No, hang on, hang on. What else are we going to do? Hang on.

What are you doing to help the country? What are you building? What are you running? What are you, you know, when I listen to Steve Laws talking to Andrew Gold. Yes. And Andrew Gold, whose family has been here since before the 1900s. And he's saying he's going to send him to Israel. In what way is this helpful to anyone?

No, I agree. I don't have Steve Vors' position. Okay, so what is your position? My position is we create a sufficiently impermissive, cultural environment so that people who do fit in can stay. Organically, that will be a very small number of people. The rest can leave. So who fits in? People who recognize that the English, the Scottish, the Welsh and Irish should possess their own country.

They have interpersonly good relationships with them, They're not living in sequestered ethnic sectarian clans, like we just saw in the Gorton and Denton by-election, and who, yes, defer to the Christian heritage of the country, do not seek to make special accommodations for their own cultures and their own faiths. There you go. Okay, so would you then raise all the mosques and the temples to the ground?

I mean, I'm just trying to understand. I don't think we should have them in the country, yes. Right. So you would knock down all the temples and the mosques. Would you deny everyone the right to wear whatever dress they might want to wear? I would ban, I would ban, I would ban face, I think it should be encouraged. I'm sure you agree that the, the track suit trend among white British people is not very noble. But I would ban face-failing practices like the Nicarbon Barker, obviously.

Okay, but other ways of dress you would allow? Is it just the burqa that you would? I suppose one would have to. But it would be the case that in our public life, other faiths and other cultures would not get a hearing. And then organically, if people feel that they do not fit in there, that their dietary requirements... Can you say not get a hearing? What do you mean? They don't get political representation.

They don't get funding from the state. They don't get constant promotion on broadcast networks. And you don't get to... Should Luton look like Luton? That's the fundamental question. Should Birmingham look like Birmingham? Should Bradford, like Bradford, should they be recreations of Pakistan and India? Should there be little colonies

of immigrant heritage populating our major towns and cities should the native people of the country be minorities in their own cities? Is that a problem? Yeah, I don't think that that should be the case. I would agree with you on that. So if you don't think that should be the case,

then what do we do about it? Yes, but I don't think that it requires knocking down all the mosques and the temples. Can I just ask about, dig into a little bit about the lawsuit? at your school that Connor mentioned. Because is that or was that an acknowledgement by you in some way that there are aspects of Islamism that don't fit with day-to-day life in the UK?

And I wonder what you think, for example, about the fact that now we're seeing Premier League football games stopped because of the Ramadan fast being broken. There are now English people who are booing that. Yes. And you obviously said no to that in your school. Yes. Which suggests that you think it isn't a good part of the culture in some way. Yes.

So I think that there are, look, the country needs to know what it is. And that's part of the, that is the biggest bit of the problem, right? I don't think that ethnic minorities are the biggest part of the problem. I think the biggest part of the problem is that Britain doesn't know what it is. And that in the 1980s, it was the case that, Britain knew more what it was. And that over the years, Britain has forgotten that because our teachers, but not just our teachers,

everyone has become very ashamed of Britain, both with regard to its colonial past, but also with regard to the way in which the working classes have been treated. And, you know, there has been an intellectual culture. A.S. Neal in Summerhill School, or you look at Foucault or you look at John Dewey, American. all of this progressive way of thinking

has been pushed onto the people. And again, I would say they haven't asked for that. But the fact of the matter is is that the intellectual elites have pushed this progressivism on everyone. And so everyone has ended up thinking things that they never used to think. And so the culture of the country has changed

and culture matters. But I just... So with regard to the prayer issue, yes. Because you didn't want the Muslim call to prayer taking place within your school. But neither did lots of our Muslim families. So you've got one Muslim family. But should it be allowed out there on the streets, though?

Yeah, well, I mean, that's for the country to decide. At my school, I'm the headmistress. So I did not want that happening. And the reason I didn't want it happening was because it would have divided the children. And I don't believe in dividing children according to race and religion. I mean, there are all kinds of logistical reasons for that,

the way in which we do lunch. Again, the vegetarianism, why is that? Because we don't do canteen lunch. We all share the same lunch together. That doesn't happen in other schools. In other schools that are actually liberal, our school is not liberal, what is liberalism? The freedom to just do what you want. You do you.

You live your best life and so on. So everyone takes their plate of food. They eat it. They leave it. The cleaners perhaps have to clean up. It's all a bit of a chaos mess in the canteen in most schools. That isn't the case with us. It is very much, we call it family lunch.

and we all serve from the same pot of food. And I want the flexibility to be able to move kids around very quickly at the last moment. I want the flexibility of kids sitting with each other across races and across religions. Unlike the vast majority of schools, if not all schools that have a lot of Muslim kids that all serve halal food, I did not want to do that. Therefore, I made it vegetarian. In fact, it was an act of resistance rather than capitulation, as you would suggest. No, I said compromise, not capitulation.

Right. Well, either way. I would just ban halal. Yeah, well, the thing is, you speak as if you're a guy behind a keyboard, not somebody who's actually worked for the state, not somebody who's spent nearly 30 years doing this. Hold on, hold on, Catherine. There's a reason for that. Do you know why?

I would just ban halal. Well, I'm a headmistress of a school. I know. I need to figure out what I'm going to do. Hold on. You're saying that I speak like I'm a guy behind the keyboard. Why do you think that is? Because you're a guy behind the keyboard.

Okay, why do you think that is? I don't know. You chose to do that as you're living. Yes, because the country has been ruined since before I was born by the same people that we dislike. And so I felt compelled to involve myself in the political process in order to improve it. Why do you think I haven't gotten further behind the keyboard? I don't know. Because even on the ostensible right, there is an insistence to promote minority politicians in order to make the case for integration for the sons and daughters.

of mass migration which was voted against. There is still DEI on the right, okay? One political party has launched fairly recently, headed up by Rupert Lowe, and is not engaging in that DEI process. And for simply saying that British identity is derivative of heritage, they have been called Nazis by reform and the telegraph.

So there is a complete call on sanitaire. By brown and black people or by white people? Both. Both. Both. Both. Hang on both. Both.

I don't attack everything. Right. So can we talk about the whites then, please? Because you never mention them. Hang on. Hang on. No, I actually do. Like, Kirston was a complete traitor. And he might have English heritage, but he's still a traitor, right?

That doesn't matter. Okay. And I mean, it was Nigel Farage himself who was attacking Restor Britain. What's your view of this new political party led by Rupert Lowe? Well, I have to say, I do think Rupert Lowe's a bit naive. It does sound like he's sitting in the pub and making things up as he sort of goes along. When he says things like... parents should be able to take their children out of school whenever they want.

Again, I sort of think, have you ever worked for the state? Do you know what it's like running a school? Do you know what that will do to our schools? When he says, NHS car park should all be free, again, I think, have you ever worked for the state? Do you know what it is to run a car park? It's the sort of thing that you say in the pub or you say behind a keyboard, instead of actually having had decades of experience of actually running something

and doing something and seeing what is required in order to make things work. Sometimes you will have to make compromises. Sometimes you will end up in court. So you asked me about the mom who took us to court. It was fascinating. I had to have very few conversations with our Muslim families. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of them, by far, were extremely supportive of the school. One of the dads, actually, one of the Muslim dads wanted to come in and give assemblies to the kids to say to them that he'd grown up in five different Islamic countries and that he'd never prayed at school and that this was totally ridiculous.

It was a ridiculous demand and how dare this family be taking us to court and how he was hugely supportive of the school. And the fact is that this idea that ethnic minorities are this and the whites are over here and the ethics are here, it's the picture that's being painted

that is not accurate. But that's not the picture that I'm painting, so you keep mischaracterizing my position. Allow me to ask a question, if I may. Or two questions. If Britain were majority Muslim, would it still be Britain? No.

Okay, right. if Britain were populated up and down the country with schools that practice the Michaela doctrine. I mean, we don't disagree that your curriculum is vastly preferable to the kind of nonsense that I know Greenwich Council forces its schools to do, for example. And makes a huge difference to what the kids believe and who they are as people. That's important, right? Let's accept that premise. Okay, fine.

Let's say the entire country were covered in Michaela schools. Yep. But the entire population were Pakistani. Would it still be written? No. Okay. So this is the fault line that we are addressing. It is not that the Michaela School is some sort of immoral institution for its curriculum

or even its discipline methods, though I don't think I would have gotten on very well with it because I'm very rambunctious, as you can probably tell. It is, do we accept the current pace of demographic change and thereby cultural change that organically results? Or do we stop it and reverse it? And the people against stopping it and reversing it, including Reform UK, including the Conservatives, including Robert Tooms, use your school as an example for why we have this as a sort of strategy so that we don't need to resort to stopping and reversing it. Because let's put it this way.

Why would demographic change be a problem if using the Michaela curriculum, everyone could learn to be English? Because you acknowledge the demographic change comes. Well, as I've said to you, I've already acknowledged that I think demographic change cannot move at the speed that it is going. also at the numbers. Yes. I think that immigration works successfully when it's in smaller numbers. And when the country knows what it is, the fact is that Britain doesn't currently know. And that is a problem.

And I would lay fault with the liberals. The liberals is a microcosm. Yes. For that. Exactly. So there we go. There is strength at Michaela. Yeah, exactly.

I embody that strength. And sum it up. Sum it up. What does Michaela? represent as the microcosm of the country. The values that basically have their heritage in Christianity, although we are a secular school, but we believe in children being responsible for themselves.

If they don't bring in their homework, they're responsible for that. It's not somebody else's fault. They have a duty towards other people. If you get a detention, you don't just let yourself down, you let all the children in your class down, you let your form tutor down, you let your head of ear down, and your parents down. We believe in service.

to the community, to the country. So the 11th of November is a massive thing for us. In many schools, they don't even bother doing the poppies. All of our children will be wearing poppies. All of us do our two minutes silence. That week we do assemblies, all about how grateful we should be to those young men who gave their lives

and how lucky we are to be in this country. And so there is a gratitude and a respect for the country that all of us have, that I would say many young people do not have now, whatever their race, whatever their religion. The reason why you are finding it such a struggle generally in trying to say some of the things that you want to say in the country is because so many people, whatever their race, whatever their religion, feel they carry this sort of white guilt.

They've been taught a history of their country, which is perhaps not accurate. they've been taught to feel ashamed of their country and those stats that I just told you about teachers and how things moved from 80% young people feeling proud of the country in 2004 to in 2024, that being reduced to 40%. There's a reason for that. And what I don't, I think you miss out on is the fact that, yes, mass migration has happened more recently. Yes, I agree with you that the scale and the speed is too much. But that overlaps with the exact time that teachers, schools and the entire country have become so ashamed of themselves. And so you are experiencing not only the results of mass migration, you are experiencing the results of a country that has been apologizing for itself,

both through its school system, through its media, and through just through everything. And culture is just strategy each culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? Culture is everything. And which is why I firmly believe that if you were to bring up a black child as well as your own biological white child, that those children would be indistinguishable. Because her being black makes no difference. Well, it wouldn't be indistinguishable. And again, it's not her being black.

It's that she does have Nigerian heritage versus someone having English heritage. But what does that mean? Okay. Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, unfortunate reality among Afro-Caribbean populations there is a much higher rate, for example, of psychosis. So that leads to, you know,

sort of attacks that we saw on the Huntington train-stabbing or Vado Calicane or something like that. So you're going to use these few exceptional examples to say that the girl that you would bring up would not be just like her sister? No, I'm not using it to say this hypothetical girl. I'm saying this is why populations with different heritage are different. It stops them from being indistinguishable.

You use the word indistinguishable. Those two girls, yes. I think they would be indistinguishable. Apart from the way they look in terms of their skin color. We're not talking about my hypothetical adopted family, because we're not talking about a hypothetical here. We are talking about an experiment that has already been run, and we're seeing the dividends paid, right?

We're already seeing the, I think, organic division, unfortunately, along ethnic and sectarian lines. I don't think the Gorton and Denton by-election, for example, with the Green Party successfully galvanized the Muslim community was because the Green Party artificially injected division into the community. I think they capitalized on existing ethnic and sectarian loyalties

in the community and just said, hey, we're the party for Muslims who are going to steal white people's stuff, why don't you vote for us? So I think if you have this mass demographic change, you organically get these ethnic, sectarian divisions because the reason the countries,

the people that, the reason the countries are, the way they are, of the people that came from it to here, are because in sufficient enough numbers, They act like that country. So it doesn't, I think it doesn't, it's not the Michaela School's strategy is itself bad.

It is that. Not only do I think it will not work at scale, with the demographic situation we have at the moment, but it is being used. And you said, this is why you have so much difficulty saying the things you say. I don't have a problem saying it to left-wingers at all. I'm always happy to debate them and, and eviscerate them. The problem we have, actually, is getting a hearing on our own side.

And that's because the people who are in institutions, like Freddie says, unheard that cancelled our debate previously, like The Spectator, like respective political parties, is because they are inhabited by people that you say have experience, but I say wreck the country, who have the philosophy that, well, yeah, mass immigration has happened. Yeah, we did it against public consent. But actually, we don't need to stop it. We don't need to reverse it because we have the model of integration embodied in the Michaela school. So it's okay. We're just going to integrate everybody. And it's not going to. And it's not going to. it's not going to work, then leads to a completely different way of doing politics,

that all of the respective political parties poised to take power, and all of the people controlling institutions which have rendered me just an ignorant young man on his keyboard, it leads to them either reassessing their priors or needing to get out of the way. I think you give us far too much credit. I don't think that every politician in Britain is making the decisions they're making because of the Michaela school. Prominent ones are verbally citing you. Yes, they might be saying. Michaela is this lovely school. I mean, Suella Brabaman has been put in charge of education.

Of course she's going to talk about Michaela. I mean, they're not going around. These politicians have not made their decisions on what they should do with immigration because of Michaela. I mean, we're just one little school. I mean, this is ridiculous. Look, the fact is, one out of every five people in England are ethnic minority. Those children are going to school. We've got to think about what we're doing. Now, I am an expert at being a headmistress. I'm not an expert on immigration. I do agree with you. that speed and scale matter. I don't, to be honest,

I don't even know what the specific positions are of the various different politicians that you're talking about. Obviously, you disagree with them, but that's sort of none of my, like I'm not part of that discussion. I mean, I'm just saying, schools should be more like Michaela.

Why wouldn't we want schools to be more like Michaela? Because for all of those ethnic minorities in the country and all of those white kids in the country, it's important that we teach them to be patriotic and to put the country first. Allow me to give an illustrative example. So final word, Connor. Okay. John Gray wrote for the new statesman.

John Gray is a liberal in the way that you would recognize the term liberal being used. And he said, in future, we have two choices. We can either go down the route of sectarian division and elect someone like Reform UK, and he thinks that they're way too harsh for him. I think that they're, you know, still liberal pluralists. Or we can create a British identity that includes, includes everyone. We can be liberal and pluralist. And in order to do that, we have to be muscular in our liberalism. So we need metal detectors outside of Westminster Cathedral, for example,

which weren't needed for the thousand years that existed. We need to be more punishing of people who disparage different groups. So we need tighter restrictions on speech. So it's either you go down the route of exclusion or you go down the route of essentially creating a that looks like the Michaela school because they believe it's a successful example of integration. I'm saying, I don't think it will work at scale, and it's also not desirable, because actually I don't want my identity that I've inherited, redefined, to encompass lots of people who do not live the same way and do not believe things that I believe, who were not invited here in the first place, to stay.

And so the alternative to this is just to say, we should be quite chauvinistic about our own culture, and we should say it's not compatible with Islam or Sikhism, or Hinduism or the tribal subcultures of the Indian subcontinent. And so if you want that, you should leave. Well, absolutely fascinating. I am so delighted we had this discussion, which

was censored by the spectator. I have been fascinated. I think you're both patriotic people coming from different points of view, and it was absolutely brilliant here. Connor Thomanson, the host of Tomlinson talks on YouTube and Substack and Catherall Berville sing, the strictest head mistress in

Britain who runs the Michaela school. Thank you so much for re-creating that debate. Okay, we are moving over to Substack now for the Royal Uncanceled After Show. So at this stage, we come off YouTube and move to our own platform to continue the conversation.

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