TRIGGERnometry - Paul Embery on Lexit and Why the Left Has Abandoned the Working Class

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

In this fantastic episode with Paul Embery (@paulembery) we discuss: -The Left-Wing Case for Brexit -Why the Left Has Abandoned Working Class Voters -The Crisis in the Fire Service and the Trans Agenda Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is the show for you. If you're bored with people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. In Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our brilliant guest this week is a Blue Labor Trade Unionist and a columnist for unheard. Paul Embry, welcome to Trigonometry. Good to be here. It's good to have you here. The first question we always ask is just tell our guests and our viewers rather and our listeners a little bit about who you want. are, what's been your journey through life. How are you here? Okay, well, I'm a firefighter by trade. I've been a firefighter since I was 22 years of age. I sit on the national executive of the

fire-agasy union, the FBU, although I should probably make clear that some of the views I might express now may not accord with some of the views of the FPUs. Oh, I'm looking forward to this now. That's an early disclaimer. I've been a trade unionist all of my adult life. I became a Unionist at 16 years of age when I was stacking shells in ASDA. I'm the national organizer for trade unionists against the EU. And as you mentioned, I'm a columnist for the unheard website as well. So professional troublemaker then. That's a problem. That's a good description. That's probably a good description. Well, it's good to have you here. One of the things we really wanted to talk to you about is the left-wing position for Brexit, because Francis and I both voted Remain.

Because we're good people. I'm off. That is the running joke on the show. But we've always been keen to speak to people. What we try and do in the show is actually speak to people who have different views as much as we can as opposed to just talking to people who have the same view as us. So you're a left-wing Brexiteer. Hold on, let me just get my milkshake.

What is the left-wing position for Brexit? Because the reason I ask this is we've had a bunch of people on the show who are pro-Brexit. And the main criticism that we get always is why do you keep getting the right-wing is on Brexit is all about right wing. It's all people who hate immigrants. It's all people who, you know, want to destroy beautiful diversity and progressive tolerance in this country.

So you are a trade unionist. You come from the left. You know, you are undeniably left wing. So make the left wing case for Brexit for us. Okay. Well, until fairly recently, the position of opposition to the European Union was always a mainstream position on the left. It's only over more recent years that much of the left has turned into a bit of a fanatical club in favour of the EU. So if you go back a little way, you can look at people like Tony Benn and Bob Crow, the General Secretary, late Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT.

And Jeremy Corbyn. And John MacDonald and Peter Shaw and Barbara Castle and real big hitters like that in the Labour movement. who were opposed to the European Union, predominantly because they saw it as what it is, an anti-democratic and anti-socialist institution, an institution that embeds austerity, embeds deflationary economics. And, you know, the view of people on the left is that actually, as socialists, we are in favour of things like public ownership, whereas the EU is much more geared towards privatisation. We're in favour of investment, even at times of recession and when the economy is flatlining, whereas the EU, particularly if you look at what it did to Greece, is much more in favour of a kind of neoliberal approach to these sorts of things.

And from the point of view of socialists, you've got to be able to elect and remove the people who govern you. That's a fundamental principle. It should be a fundamental principle for anybody on the left. that actually the people who are making your laws and the people who have a large say over your economy must be accountable to the people. And in many cases, they're not. I always remember the five questions

that Tony Benn used to ask. He said, whenever he met anyone famous, he used to ask five questions. What power have you got? How did you get it? In whose interest do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?

Must have been a popular guy. And it's that, He became a national treasure, of course, in the end, didn't they? But back in his hey day, in the 70s and 80s, he was absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And it's that fifth question, you know, how can we get rid of you, which goes to the heart, I think, of the debate about the European Union. You've got to have power over the people who ultimately are making your laws. And in many cases, directives and regulations come from the EU, which members of Parliament have no say on.

and we as citizens of this country have to abide by. You can then get into the more technical details and talk about things like restrictions on state aid. So at the moment, for example, there's a huge debate around whether we should nationalise British still in light of the problems it's been experiencing over the last few days. And actually, if you look at EU regulations,

we can't do that because they have, because it's so in favour of market forces, they have to have what they call this level playing field. So state aid from countries which give in their view an unfair leg up to particular companies is wrong. In fact, in 2016, the EU fined the Italian and Belgian governments for trying to rescue failing steelmakers by baiting them out. You've got things like the Stability and Growth Pact, which says that member states

cannot run a budget deficit of more than 3% of GDP. Now, anyone who sort of understands economics in terms of the right approach to tackling a flatline in economy and a recession, what Maynard Keynes taught us in the 1930s, is that that actually you need to maintain levels of investment during a recession. Because if the government cuts and slashes at a time when everybody else is doing it, no one's going to create a recovery. So it's the government's job to sort of hold the line. And that stability on growth pack makes it very, very difficult to do that.

So in effect, they've ruled out Maynard Keynesian economics from the EU. And then you can look at the mass unemployment that's taking place across Europe. You can look at the renewed tensions that have appeared between particular companies, countries, Germany and Greece, for example. So all in all, this idea that the EU is some progressive, benevolent, democratic organisation, which is in favour of workers and in favour of the interests of ordinary people, is a total and utter nonsense. And the left-wing case was always built around some of the stuff that I just said.

But now, unfortunately, so many people on the left seem to have fallen in love with it. Firstly, two questions. Why is that? Why have the left fallen in love with it? Because, you know, I'm in the comedy industry where everybody's left and woke and all the rest of it and we're all great people and we all hold hands and all the rest of it.

Number one, and number two, why is Brexit perceived as being a right-wing issue? Or a right-wing, you know, movement? My assessment of why they fell in love with it is I think if you look at the change in the Labour movement towards EU fanaticism, which it really is bordering on now and away from EU scepticism,

That started to take place in about the late 80s. Before that, as I said, an anti-UU position was always very much a mainstream position on the left. But the left, and particularly the trade unions in the late 80s, had been battered by Margaret Thatcher, to be perfectly blunt. Trade unions had been neutered as a result of restrictive trade union legislation. We'd seen the defeat of the miners. The Tories were looking like they could govern for a very long time. and so because of that, the left were looking for, if you like any, port in a storm and over the hill rode the EU.

And at that time they had sort of left-leaning bureaucrats, the like of Jacques DeLaw, who was an EU, I think the president of the EU Commission. And in a very significant speech, he delivered to the TUC, the Trade Union Congress in the late 80s, he sold the idea to them of a workers' Europe. and many people on the left thought, right, we need the EU's protection as some sort of ballwalk against thatcherism. And the truth is, it was just a load of tosh because the EU has never been particularly in favour of workers' rights. If you look at most workers' rights that have come about in this country, they've come about as a result of trade union struggles through the UK Parliament following trade union struggles. Minimum wage, trade union recognition, health and safety law, equal pay, all of that stuff came about as a result of struggles by trade unions in this case.

country. The question about why Brexit is perceived as a right-wing project, I think largely because of the things I touched on, because there are so few people on the left now who articulate an anti-EU position, it's almost like we've abandoned the field to the right. So it's not surprising that if you see so many people on the right who are arguing in favour of Brexit and so few people on the left, I think people will infer from that that actually it must be a right-wing project. But it really isn't. I mean, under the surface, there are trade unionists and people on the left who will put their head above the parapet sometimes and argue back. But, you know, one of the arguments that was made to me is that there's no such thing as a left-wing exit from the EU because the Tories are in charge and there's no left-wing exit so we should remain. To which my argument, well, there's no such thing as a left-wing remain either.

You know, if you look at the EU and the way that it's increasingly taking democratic powers away from national. government. He's heading now for, you know, possibly for fiscal union as well as monetary union. And if you look at the way that neoliberal economics have becoming more and more embedded within the EU's DNA, if you like, the very idea that by staying in the EU, you know, we're going to create socialism is a nonsense. Now, you know, I don't describe myself as a lexatier. I don't think there is a left-wing exit. Clearly there's not. It's the Tories who are negotiating it. The Tories are going to remain in charge. at least for some time after we leave the European Union. But my view has always been that Brexit clears the path, if you like, for a radical Labour government to come along at some point in the future, hopefully, and to be free from the straitjacket of EU regulations and directives

and to actually be radical in some of its economic programme. So my view is that socialism before Brexit is impossible. It has to be the other way around. Brexit itself isn't a panacea, but it has to be a step on the path for me. What I find interesting with this Jeremy Corbyn thing, him coming out, we're recording this the day after the European elections and they'll probably go out a few weeks after.

In which no doubt Labor have stormed it. Yeah. I've got my vote, so, of course. Clearly. I doubt that very much. But this narrative about Brexit being a right-wing thing, Jeremy Corbyn yesterday tweeted, and you criticise him for this,

that the only way to stop the far right is to vote Labor. And I think what he was referring to is, you know, the Brexit Party, essentially. They are the far right when, in fact, I would argue many of, very many of the people who voted for the Brexit Party yesterday are precisely the kind of people that the Labour Party used to represent. It's completely and utterly insane and, in fact, dangerous to just dismiss anybody who you don't agree with as being some sort of fascist or being on the far right. And my view is the way in which the terms such as fascist and far right and racist have been frankly completely debauched over recent years and devalued,

means that people who actually not that long ago whose views would be regarded as pretty mainstream. So, for example, wanting to leave to the European Union. and now being dismissed as, you know, people supporting fascism and the far right. And I find it genuinely disturbing that actually, you know, there are still people alive in this country who fought against real fascism. People who fought in the second world, what against real fascism? What real fashion fascism is about is the total dominance of the state and the leadership over the people. It's about government dominating every area of activity, social and economic. and, you know, the idea of the supreme leader, no dissent, you know, no pluralism,

no room for alternative parties to speak out. And often tinged with hardcore racism, as we saw with the Nazis. And it means white supremacism, and it means Holocaust denial, and it means jackboots, and it means, you know, people with those sort of ultra-nationalist, sentiments. The idea that people who are voting for the Brexit Party or even the leaders of the Brexit Party, the candidates of the Brexit Party, Anne Whittaker, Claire Fox, Nigel Farage, I disagree with Nigel Farage on most things, disagree with Anne Whittaker on most things. But the idea that these people are fascists in that sense or on the far right is completely

bonkers. And I just think it debases our political debate. And it's dangerous because, you know, We saw, just as an example, we saw yesterday when, as you say, the election, the early European elections were taking place yesterday, we saw an old guy, 80 years of age or something, sitting outside a polling station in Hampshire, wearing the Brexit party rose at. Turns out that this guy had served in the armed forces for 22 years. And he was attacked by someone throwing a milkshake or a yogurt covering him with it. and allegedly according to reports screaming fascist and then cycling off now. There would be a cyclist, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it would have to be a cyclist, wouldn't it? Yeah, lock them all up. But, and this is what that sort of hysterical language leads to, unfortunately. The minute you allow a narrative to develop where anything that is, you know,

mildly right wing, centre right of centre, whatever, is dismissed as being at the extreme end, then you're giving an encouragement to people to say, look, that guy's sitting with a rosette, he supports fascism. Why? Because Jeremy Corby tweeted that we've got to vote against the far right today, because other prominent figures on the left are saying we have to defeat fascism, because David Lammy is calling Tory MPs Nazis because they support a no-deal Brexit. That's the arena we're getting into, and it's sinister, and people need to stand up against

this sort of language, because, A, it's factually incorrect and just nonsense of it. itself and be it's dangerous. So the question I'm going to ask now is this, is that Farage is widely seen to be fascist or have links to fascism, you know, or certainly hard right parties. Is there truth in this? You know, because this, when I was talking about it online,

people are like, how can you defend Farage, how can you defend Brexiteers? This is a man with links to the far right. He's mobilising a wave of hatred, all the rest of it. I mean, my assessment of Farage is that he is a hardline Thatcherite. That's my view of him. I suspect that he was perfectly comfortable inside the Conservative Party when Thatcher was in charge. In fact, I think he was a Conservative Party member probably around that time.

And he is an old-fashioned Thatcherite libertarian who believes that private enterprise should pretty much run everything, believes that there should be low taxes for the rich, doesn't want trade unions to get above their station, believes in rolling back the frontiers of the state, believes in small government, letting the free market rip, all of that kind of stuff. I oppose him on all of that stuff. Everything I've spoken about and written shows that I oppose him on all of that stuff. And in fact, just on that point, you know, you look at his, as I said, he's a libertarian, really. That's his political philosophy, which is about. small government, government not intervening in the economy, getting out of the way and letting

people run their own lives, letting private enterprise dominate, etc. In many respects, that's actually the opposite to fascism. That small state libertarianism, I don't agree with it, and I don't like it, but don't tell me it's fascism, because fascism is about the total domination of the state over every area of our lives. So, no, I don't, I refuse to say that Farage is a fascist. I refuse to say that he's a racist. You know, if you look at some of the stuff that's been going on with UKIP recently, Farage, to his credit, it has to be said,

left UKIP when it started going in a direction where it started straying into supporting Tommy Robinson and got Tommy Robinson on board as an advisor. Now, I've got no time for Tommy Robinson at all. I think he's a racist rabble-rouser. Really? Why do you say that? Well, because I think his record shows that he is.

And I'm someone who has argued, as you know, that actually you shouldn't fling the word around casually. If you make that accusation against someone, I think you need to be able to stand it up. I think if you look at Tommy Robinson, there's videos circulating of him online where he's particularly disparaging about Asian taxi drivers and uses the word Paki in relation to what he assumes is a Pakistani taxi driver. You don't use that sort of language as far as I'm concerned unless you harbors. feelings of racism. I think he's pretty sinister in terms of his backstory. He's been convicted of various stuff. He's changed his name for whatever reason. I think he genuinely does have dubious links. So I've no time for Tommy Robinson. And as I said, Nigel Farage actually walked away from UKIP because of its developing relationship with Robinson. So, you know,

yes, he's on, he's clearly a right-wing factor at Farage, but I refuse to buy into the idea fascism and racism. And where do you stand on, and I know, but I feel it's important to ask this question about the whole milkshaking thing, because I just thought it was pathetic and pure old, but there is a large swave of the left who go, no, that is a way to deal with these people. You mock them, you cover them in liquid, and then you make a fool of them. Before your answer, I just wanted that, I saw a graph. I think it was from one of the polling groups in the UK which showed what percentage of which voter group approved of milkshaken and at what level. And Lib Dem and Labour voters, 27% of those approved of it. It was 6% of conservative voters

and I think overall across the country was like 18%. So it's clearly a liberal labor thing. It's interesting, isn't it? Because the very same people who over the last year or two of been lecturing us about the need to tone down our language, about the need to engage in more constructive political discourse, to be fairer in the way that we talk about our politicians. Don't use words like traitor or betrayal because if you do that, you're raising the temperature and leaving them exposed to vulnerable attacks. the people who condemned those on the street who heckled Anna Suebury outside Parliament, the people who told us to moderate our behaviour in our language after the terrible murder of Joe Cox seem in some cases to be the same people now who are saying, oh, it's only a milkshake, get over it, this is political theatre, you know, these are politicians on the stump, they've got to expect a bit of criticism.

No, I think it's appalling actually. I think it shows that you've run out of arguments. If the only thing you can do to challenge a politician who at this moment arguably is probably the most popular politician in the country, whether we like that or not, the only thing you can do is to douse him in milkshake, then actually you've probably already lost the argument. And let's be honest about it. It's a way of shutting down political debate because they know that the minute they throw

a milkshake over somebody. And of course, milkshake never killed anyone. We know that. He probably is not going to injure someone. Bear in mind, you're saying that in Islington, there's a lot of lactose intolerant people.

Well, I've worked it for 20 years. I stick out like a sore thumb. But what it does is it drives people from the public square. So, you know, with the example of Farage being milkshaked, he was immediately, I was going to say, whisked away.

That's a pun. He was escorted away. And you should use that. He was escorted away. And, you know, the opportunity to speak to hundreds of people in Newcastle was taken away from him because somebody had decided to throw a milkshake on him and that was it. He was gone. And actually, my view is if you're trying to do that sort of stuff, if you're trying to shut people up, if you're trying to close down public debate by physically assaulting people at the same time as attacking others for being fascist, then you probably need to look in the mirror. You know, I'm all in favour of politicians getting it in the neck in terms of verbal debate.

I'm disturbed at the snowflake tendency in our country, which thinks actually, you know, you can't be offensive. You can't push the boundaries. You can't be too critical towards people. You mustn't upset people. Politicians hold public office. They've got to get out there. They should do it more. They've got to get in front of people.

They've got to listen to people's concerns. I'd like politicians, frankly, some of the people in Westminster to go to the people. to go to the town square in places like Mansfield and Stoke-on-Trents South and listen to people and listen to people berating them. So I'm all in favor of politicians being exposed to the public,

but you draw the line at any sort of physical assault because it's wrong in principle and it shuts debate down and it's designed to shut debate down. It's a strange world we live in where the people who advocate the sort of political violence, which I think is what it is, are the ones that call themselves progressive.

I don't see how it's progressive to stop people from talking. What I found scary about it, to set aside the security issue where if someone can throw a milkshake on you, they can throw acid on you, whatever else it might be. The thing I find really scary about it is that essentially we are now in a position where I can't ask this question. Well, you're saying, were we starting to justify political violence? Is that the way you're going to go? Well, the thing is, what I recognize out of what happened during the EU

campaign and the milkshaking and all this is the people who've been running around calling everyone Nazis and fascist, which I always thought they were doing as a kind of exaggeration. They actually believe that. They actually believe that they're milkshaking baby Hitler. That's what they think, which is why they feel is justified. I think that's right. I think people, because the narrative has been allowed to develop that actually, if you're on the right wing of the Tory party, for example, you're a member of the ERG.

group or something, then by definition, you're a Nazi and a fascist because this is what some people in the media and some people in parliament are calling you, then actually people will start to believe it. People who maybe not actually be aware of the real history of fascism and what it really means. I mean, I read a tweet a little while ago where someone said that they were living in Spain. They were a British citizen, but they were living in Spain. And there was a people's vote march in London.

And someone tweeted, in all seriousness, it was a she. She tweeted that she was flying back to London to take part in this march because it was important for her to defeat fascism. And that's what this government in Britain was. And I thought, hold on a second. Once upon a time, people from Britain went out to Spain to fight real fascism. and now they're coming back to fight imaginary fascism. That's the level of hysteria that the debate has reached.

And I just sort of try and say to people on the left, look, what you need to understand is when you use this language about people, because when Jeremy Corbyn, for example, says vote against the far right today, people take from that, that he's not just talking about Nigel Farage. He's talking about the whole of the Brexit Party and anyone who might vote for the Brexit party. So people who are inclined to vote for the Brexit party, in many cases, traditional Labour voters,

and in fact, I think a recent poll showed that 47% of Leave supporting Labour voters, Labour voters normally were going to vote for the Brexit party. So when you use language like that about people, do you really think you're going to win people back? Do you really think that actually you're going to win hearts and minds? When you show no inclination to understand what it is that has driven, people to stop voting Labor, for example, and to start voting for the Brexit Party. This is a party that is completely without any sort of political program. People are prepared to vote for it in their millions on this particular issue.

When you get a situation like you had during these big Brexit party rallies that have been taking place over the last few weeks, where Anne Whittickham can go to a working men's club in Featherstone in West Yorkshire, which is a bad. out as typical a Labor heartland as you could ever wish to find a former mining town and, you know, get applauded to the rafters. Anne Whittaker, you know, a right-wing Tory, when she's going to places like that and being embraced, then people on the left have got to understand that they've got a serious problem.

I tweeted it's the equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn going to the Henley-on-Thames branch of the Women's Institute and being cheered to the rafters, it just wouldn't happen. And if it did happen, it was probably something seriously wrong with the Conservative Party, if that was happening. My fear is that there are actually some people in the Labour Party who don't want to win those hearts and minds who, frankly, do believe that large parts of what you might call the traditional working class in this country in those sort of post-industrial areas are racist and reactionary and nasavist and old-fashioned, and frankly, we can do without them. And I think that attitude has probably been emboldened by the 2017 election,

even though Labor didn't win it. It picked up large swathes of that kind of middle class remain supporting constituency. And one place is that traditionally it would never have won places like Kensington and places like Canterbury. And what I say to people in the Labor Party, you know, I've been in the Labor Party. party for 25 years. What I say to people in the party, look, it's all very well. It's great to win places that you don't normally win. If you're winning places like Kensington and Canterbury, great. But actually, what you need to remember is we lost places like Mansfield to the Tories, an old mining town. We lost places like northeast Derbyshire and old mining constituency.

Stoke-on-Trents South, Walsall North, traditional Labour heartlands, which have been Labor since time immemorial, who, after seven years as it was at the time of Tory austerity and cuts, are actually swinging to the Tories and away from Labor. And you saw a real swing to the Tories in some of those sort of post-industrial heartlands. The C2Ds is there known, which is the occupational working class, voted Tory, a majority of them voted Tory. The middle classes flock towards Labor, the working classes flocked towards the Tories. Sixty-one percent of Labour constituencies voted for Brexit. If you look at the 45 target seats in England and Wales that Labor needs to win in order to form the next government, 35 of them, four.

voted for Brexit, as did 16 of Labor's 20 most vulnerable seats. So, you know, my view is the Labour Party, if it's going to be successful again, if it's going to win power again, needs very quickly to re-engage with those heartlands which it has lost over recent years. And by demonising these people as racist and fascists, then you've got no chance of doing it. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep. Specifically getting more of it. Better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers.

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Go to avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. But, and just to make your point, I don't think the Labor Party are interested. And I talk to a lot of people, you know, sort of the middle class, metropolitan elite as they're known, who are Labor voters, and they don't seem particularly interested either. And to me, when we had Peter Hitchens on,

he made the point that essentially this Labour Party, they don't represent them. So what you're leaving in those areas is a power vacuum, in my opinion, where you get someone like the Tommy Robinson's of the world who come in and go, look, they're not listening to you, and he's right, they're not, I will. I think actually that's broadly true. I think if you look at the membership now of the Labor Party, the data on the membership was released about a year or so ago.

And it showed that 77% of Labour members fall into that occupational middle class ABC1 category. Many of them are sort of university educated graduates, many of them live in the south of England, many of them in London. And the party, and I think it's something that predates Corbyn, by the way. You know, Corbyn's got his faults, but, you know, I think he's right on a lot of stuff. I think he's absolutely right to argue against the politics of austerity. But in terms of, you know, cultural connection, the Labour Party is losing those communities. And I think you're right. There are some people in the party who would be prepared to sacrifice them.

I think if you, you know, you look at the Gillian Duffy thing was a big thing for me. You know, the 2010 election, Gordon Brown, the Lemberton. Prime Minister was out on the stump, went to a traditional Labor heartland, Rochdale, working class constituency, was confronted by this woman, Gillian Duffy, who had been a Labor Party supporter all of her life, and buttonholed the Prime Minister and just expressed concern in not terribly aggressive terms by any strategy imagination, just expressed concern about what was happening in a community, about the impact of rapid and large-scale immigration. and the pressure on services, etc.

And Gordon Brown obviously was mic'd up and privately said to someone, she was just a bigoted old woman. And in fact, that was what he did is he said publicly what many people in the upper echelons of the Labor Party feel privately about those old working class communities. I say that the Labor Party treats the working class now like some embarrassing elderly relative. It wants their votes at election time, but it doesn't want to be seen in public with them. with them and you know he's is in many respects ashamed of them another example Emily Thornbury MP for Islington South where else I mean I know Emily very

vaguely and I like her and I respect her but she she did the during I think 2014 the Rochester and Street by-election where she was out campaigning and she saw a sort of modest home and there was a white van parked outside There was St. George's flag on the hanging from the roof or something. And she found this so noteworthy that she felt the need to tweet it with the caption image from Rochester. And again, it just showed a complete disconnect between the priorities of ordinary working class people, many of whom should be tribally labour because that's how their parents voted, that's how their grandparents voted. and the sort of, as you said,

the sort of metropolitan, liberal, university-educated elite who just find those people a different breed and can't relate to them at all. And I think there's a real debate beginning to break out now in British politics, not before time, between people, including people on the left like myself, who are arguing for a return, if you like, to a more communitarian style of politics which, you know, respects people's affinity for place

and for their sense of belonging and for the concept of community and family against this what has become now the dominant ideology amongst large parts of our establishment, not just on the left, certainly on the left, but not just on the left, which is a much more sort of liberal, globalist, open borders, cosmopolitan worldview. And I think it's a debate that's been encapsulated very well by David Goodhart, who's one of our former guests. Right. Okay.

Well, I think David has captured the debate really well, and he's talked about how he was disowned by his North London tribe himself because he came from this sort of very liberal background. And he wrote some years ago about the impacts of mass immigration in working class communities and how the liberal establishment just didn't understand that people's concern about it wasn't driven by racism or hostility to migrants, but was just driven by the disruption and the violation that, you know, very large movements of people were causing to their sort of sense of place and their sense of belonging.

And he's written about how we've got, in a book particularly called The Road to Somewhere, how we've got a governing class in this country, which is part of what he calls the anywhere breed, which comes from this very liberal, globalist, cosmopolitan university-educated background, who make up about 25% of the population, but actually exert a much greater influence well beyond their numbers across the political debate, across political discourse, across our institutions, our governing institutions. And the somewheres who make up about 50% of the country, the rest are in-between calls them in-betweeners, but the somewheres who make up 50% of the country who are on lower wages, who are often in poorer housing, who have fewer

skills, less opportunity in life, who are much more likely to be impacted by things such as free movement in terms of the impacts on their wages and local services, etc. And it's these people who increasingly feel disenfranchised and disconnected from the political system. And those people are crying out for a much more communitarian approach to society. And these are generally people, as I say, who are not opposed to immigration. And in fact, my view is that we are still in this country,

despite what some people say, we are still one of the most tolerant countries in the world. Most people are open to the idea of immigration and rightly so. They just want the thing to be managed properly. They don't want a situation where you have open borders where a government says, you know, we've got free movement and invariably newcomers will gravitate largely to, you know, already hard-pressed working class communities, where the property might be cheaper, etc.

And just the governing class says to people, well, it's great. This is cosmopolitanism. This is multiculturalism. And we'll probably be better off in terms of GDP. So just accept it. Just get on with it. Actually, I think it shows a profound misunderstanding of the priorities of working. class people, the idea that they are prepared to see a fundamental change and rupture to their

local community as a result of globalization and open borders simply because they might be a tenor a week better off. It's almost a Thatcherite argument saying the economy comes before everything. The economy comes before your sense of belonging before your sense of place. And what they've done through doing this is they've toxified the entire argument about immigration. So, you know, whereas most people, I think, are happy to have immigration, just want the thing managed properly and are tolerant and say, look, once migrants are in the country, they should be treated equally, they should be given fair access to jobs, they shouldn't be exploited, we should oppose any sort of racism. The debate has now gone to the extreme where if you say you're opposed to open borders, people on the left here, oh, you're an anti-migrant, you're some reactionary, some nativist, that's. That's the level of, and I deal with these people every day. I deal with them in my union.

I deal with them through social media. They are not open to a serious, nuanced debate around this issue. They see things, dare I say, entirely in black and white. And as an immigrant, let me just add this. You know, I completely agree with everything that you said. The one thing we were talking before we started an interview that really pissed me off, actually, during the Brexit campaign was this country and the people of this country being smeared as racist xenophobes.

When I know for a fact in my own experience and many people that I know who are immigrants in this country would tell you, as I told you, this is one of the best places in the world to be an immigrant. But you're right, I think, that there is a section of the left that has gone so far off the deep end. I mean, you look at America,

someone like Alexandria Casa Cortez talking about how if you don't want open borders, that makes you racist. Having an immigration system is racist. And you just go, these people are insane. I mean, and you must be tearing your hair out because, I mean, I don't really see how with that trend that you're talking about happening within Labor, I don't see how Labor is ever going to win back the working class, well, ever again. It's going to be very difficult, frankly. And, I mean, just on your point about tolerance, one thing that struck me is just after the EU referendum in 2016, the Sunday Times, I think it was, ran a poll where they asked people,

whether EU nationals who were in the country before the referendum should be allowed to stay post-referendum. And what that poll showed is that 77% of Leave voters, leave voters, said yes, people who were here before the referendum from the EU should be allowed to stay. And that's my experience of speaking to leave voters, that they're motivated by a fundamental sense of fair play and not by racism. And the picture that's been painted of them as people who just want closed borders and people who, I mean, Vince Cable said the Leave Vote was driven by people with a hankering for nostalgia and empire and they don't like non-white faces around the place and they want to see Blue Passports, a complete caricature. The Leave vote was driven by people who wanted self-government and sovereignty and a return to the spirit of community and democracy and belonging. those sorts of things. And the interesting thing actually is that since the referendum, those things have hardly been discussed in a lot of the public debate. The things that actually drove the vote, including, you know, control over immigration, much of that has just been

dismissed. And what we've had instead is a very kind of dry technical debate about the customs union and the single market and the Irish border. All of that stuff's important. Of course it is. but the idea that people went into the polling booth and said, you know, I'm against the customs union. I'm going to vote. Fundamentally misunderstands why people voted so many in such large numbers in the way they did. And in fact, in many ways, in many cases people voted for the first time in their lives. Because I think people had sense that in general elections, they felt they couldn't get fundamental change in general elections. That actually on some of the, on some of the key issues, such as a.

EU membership, for example. The parties, the mainstream parties were all over peace and what's the point in voting in general elections because they're all the same. We're going to get the same sort of government, whatever happens. I think with the EU referendum, actually what they saw was here was an opportunity to put a missile through the political and economic system to really disrupt the status quo and to say to the establishment, look, you forgot about us and this is the punishment that you are now going to get for forgetting about us.

And in many respects, you know, I've argued that in many ways it wasn't necessarily just an anti-EU vote. It certainly was an anti-EU vote, but it wasn't driven just by opposition to the European Union. Less still was it driven by opposition to the continent of Europe. And people often conflate the two, don't they? They say, if you're against the EU, you're against Europe, actually the two different things. What it was in many respects was a vote against the political establishment in this country. you know, the people saw all of these people lining up, the mainstream political parties, Cameron and Osborne, arguing, you know, the banking industry and, you know, the CBI and people like that,

big business, who they felt had actually made their lives difficult over recent years and were in many respects responsible for their predicament and were now desperate for their vote. And people thought, actually, no, I'm not going to vote the way that you want. I'm going to do this because you've forgotten about me. and this is the lesson that you're going to get. And it was, I've likened it in some ways to, to a general strike. We haven't had one in this country since 1926. Not that some of us haven't been trying to work.

But we haven't had a general strike since 1926. But it was like a general strike in the sense that people, I think people knew that if they voted leave, it would create some turbulence in the country, certainly in the short term. And probably accepted that it might, hit them in the pocket a bit again in the short term. There's a debate about whether Brexit will be better economically in the long term. But I think people felt that, you know, some of the

disruption to the money markets, whatever, might make us poorer in the short term. But it was a price they were prepared to pay because they knew it was the only weapon that they had and possibly might ever get in their lifetime to make their political masters set up and take notice. Very similar to workers going on strike. And I say that as a trade unionist. You know, you know if you go on strike, you're not going to get paid. You're going to get hit in the pocket. you know it's going to disrupt operations. You know you're going to be attacked for it, but you sometimes feel that actually that's a price worth paying

because in the long term, it might lead to a better working environment. It might lead to better conditions inside the workplace. And that's what people felt. They knew that it was going to create disruption, but equally they knew they had to make their political masters sit up and take notice. And the really interesting thing is they still aren't sitting up

and taking notice. you know, the political establishment in this country, in large parts, he's doing everything it can to subvert the vote. And actually, people voted leave because they felt the political establishment had stopped listening to them. And that political establishment has spent the last three years proving them right and trying to undermine the vote. And my fear is that actually if you do block Brexit or if you have a second referendum, the forces it would unleash in this country from people who say, right, you know, you've shut off any democratic mechanism. I've got lot for expressing my view or for affecting change, you're now leaving me with no other option

but to take to the streets. And I always say to people, look, democracy is like a pressure relief valve. If you shut that off, the pressure doesn't go away. It just breaks out elsewhere, and that's the danger of subverting the vote. The one story that I always use about Brexit as to why Brexit voters aren't racist, I remember in 2016, I got a campaign. cab from one gig to another. And the cab driver who drove me was a black cab driver who was a black guy. And we were talking about it. And he goes,

I'm going to vote leaving. And I said, that's interesting why. And he went to me it's because the government don't want me here in London. And he went, I'm not saying that they don't want me here because I'm black. It's because I'm an ordinary working person. They don't want me here. They don't want you here. They want this to be like Paris. And that they have all the liberals, all the very wealthy people in the center, and the rest of us can travel in. Well, it's really interesting because if you look at the data from the referendum, I mean, if you listen to the media and to liberal commentators and some of the mainstream politicians, you would think that every person from a minority ethnic blackground voted remain.

And in fact, the data shows that about a third of BME voters voted leave. And in some cases, if you drill down a bit more, you see that some of their motivation was opposition to free movement. And because many of them had come from the Commonwealth in the 50s and 60s and felt that actually EU free movement was unfair because it gave a leg up to predominantly white people who were European. Whereas if you're a nurse from India or something or the West Indies, you have to jump through more hoops. So there was this sense that there was a profound unfairness about EU free movement amongst that section of the BME community. And if you look at, you know, if you look at some of the data, if you look at some of the towns and cities with high BME populations, places like Slough and Bradford and Birmingham, they all voted by a majority leave.

So, so the idea that, and again, it's totally patronising to suggest that black and minority ethnic people can only vote remain because obviously, you know, Brexit voters are all racist and they couldn't line up with them. I mean, my own in-laws are Anglo-Indian. My wife's Anglo-Indian family came from Calcutta back in the 1960s. And many of them voted Leave because actually they look at the country. I mean, I was speaking to my mother-in-law about this recently, she looks at the country she arrived in in the 1960s.

And of course, there was lots of racism around much more so than today. But actually, they developed a fondness for the country. and they became settled in the country and they established their home in the country. And in her case, she didn't like the way that the country is being managed and didn't like any more than other working class people the way that the country has been thrown

to the four winds around globalisation and the way that is now dominated by people with this sort of liberal globalist world view. So she was very much in favour of voting leave. So we do need to challenge this myth that people from a minority, ethnic background, by default, must be remain voters. It's completely. It's an interesting thing on the economy as well, because I remember I host things every year at an economics and comedy

festival where they get comedians to host discussions between economists, politicians, etc. And I remember this, on your point about everything being about money, everything being about the economy. There was an economist there who kept talking about the fact that the communities that will be hardest hit by the economic impact of leaving the EU will be precisely the ones that voted for it. And I can. kept saying to him, I hear what you're saying, but they know that. And they voted to leave anyway. People quite often prepared to accept an economic hit if they get something else that's more important to them. And he just kept ignoring that question. I kept putting to him over and over and

eventually he just threw his hands up and well, well, I'm an economist. So that's what I'm going to talk about. It's a very sort of dry scientific way of looking at what is in many respects a much more human debate around what drove people to vote leave. And yes, as I said earlier, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of working class people. You know, the idea that they are driven just by this Thatcherite philosophy that it's all about the economy. It's all about whether we can make a fast buck out of something. Just because people at the top might see things that way, it doesn't mean that people at the bottom do. And I despair sometimes when I hear Labor MPs say, well, nobody vote.

voted to be poorer? Well, as I said, first of all, there's a debate around whether Brexit will make people poorer or not. I think it's an opportunity actually to be a lot more radical with the economy when we're free from the EU and actually to weight the economy much more in favour of working class people. But actually, aside from that, how do they know that people didn't vote to be poorer? As I said, before, people going on strike. I've been on strike three times in my career as a firefighter. I knew that certainly in the short term I was going to be poorer every time. I was going to not be paid. It was going to be harder that

month to pay the mortgage. But it was absolutely right in my heart what I was doing because I was fighting for better pay or I was trying to defend my pension or I was challenging the government trying to make cuts in the fire service. And all of those things outweighed

the short-term impact on my pocket. And for the vast majority of firefighters who went on strike on those occasions they had exactly the same sentiment. So I say to people, just be careful about saying that nobody voted to be poorer. Because if you believe that, then effectively what you're doing is just dismissing working class people as being motivated entirely by money.

And that was why Thatcher approached the economy in the way that she did because she thought that was all that people were interested in. Of course, having money takes this thing out being poorer, someone once said. But actually, for many working class people, that sense of place, that sense of belonging, that sense of community, the principle of self-government. the principle of sovereignty, the principle of being able to control your own borders, and being able to resist, you know, the onslaught of globalisation and deindustrialisation, that actually means a hell of a lot to people, and it's something that money can't buy.

Paul, I'm going to ask you quite a difficult question now, and I apologise for this. We had Dr. Steve Davis on, a brilliant interview, if you haven't seen it, check it out, from the Institute of Economic Affairs. and he said that what Brexit is as a catalyst for the death of two-party politics. Do you think what we're witnessing now with Corbyn and the way they're abandoning their working-class heartlands as a slow death of the Labour Party, in a sense there might be a new movement or a new party like the SDP coming forward representing the working class? I think it's possible, but I think we've been here before.

maybe not in such a serious way, but I think as a nation we've been here before where it looks like another party may break through. It looks like the death of two party politics. You could think, for example, in the early 80s when the sort of old SDP broke away from the Labour Party and there was a surge in the polls and they did really well in by-elections. And then before too long, everything kind of went back to normal. but I do think there's probably more chance of it now simply because I think there is, and I think this is probably been a consequence of the referendum, that tribal loyalties as they were are breaking down more and more. I think if you look back to the 1980s, you know, working class people by and large

voted Labor because they knew that the Labour Party represented them, spoke for them, even if they didn't always agree with it, even if they didn't always like its leader. the Labour Party speaks for the working class. The Tories speak for the rich and the bosses, and we have to be Labor. My dad was Labor, my grandparents were Labor. That was people's motivation. It was very tribal for people.

I think now that tribalism is wearing a way, and because of the referendum, people felt able to vote Leave, for example, whilst knowing that they weren't helping the enemy, the Tories, because there were Tories who were lining up for remain and leave. There were Labour people lining up for Remain and Leave, probably less so leave. But they felt able to vote that way without thinking, I've betrayed my class, I've betrayed my parents.

You know, they've always voted Labor. And I think increasingly with the way that Labor is becoming this kind of bourgeois, metropolitan, liberal, very sort of youth-obsessed London-centric party, there are people in the country who are looking at the Labour Party now and thinking, that party just does not want me. That party is ashamed of me. That party speaks for a different type of person now and wants a different type of person. You know, someone with any sort of traditional views around, you know, if you like, small C conservative views, which many working class people have got. You know, this small C conservative thread runs through working class communities in terms of their approach to issues like the family and their affinity for their country, patriotism, their approach to things like crime. immigration, things that are completely dismissed as reactionary and right wing. But these people

who have these traditional views, there was never any inconsistency between holding those views and being a proud Labour Party supporter. And the Labour Party, once upon a time, wanted those people. Nowadays, we talked about Duffy, we talked about Rochester. Nowadays, the Labour Party is embarrassed by people like them. And I think the danger, which comes back to your question, is that actually you do leave those people open to the forces of the right, you leave those people open to the forces of populism. And I've got to say, I think it's something that isn't just happening in Britain. You can look at the Rust Belt in America where they voted for Trump in such large numbers. You look at the Gilles-Jean movement

in France, where people have got together and said, actually, we want to fight for great democracy, for economic justice, for national sovereignty. They've been completely ignored by the left in Britain, by the way, the internationalist left in Britain, which will support every international struggle by workers elsewhere because it's the right kind of struggle, but the Gilles-Jean, you know, don't quite tick the right box. And you see throughout Europe the rise of, you know, what some people would dismiss of nationalist movements. But I think actually if you just dismiss them as populist nationalist movements, you know, reminiscent of the 1930s, you make it a grave mistake because in the 1930s, that kind of ultra-nationalism was a very expansive,

aggressive nationalism. It was about dominating other countries, about invading other countries. Nowadays, the nationalist movements in Europe are just about defending their own space. They're not interested in going elsewhere. They just want to defend their community and their culture and their democracy, etc.

And that's why, unless we try and win the hearts and minds of those people, then they are going to be, you know, they're going to be potentially drawn by forces of the right and by other populist movements, and it's going to be very difficult to win them back after that. We've got about five minutes left, Paul,

and I wanted to ask you something completely different to what we've been talking about, which is just to tell us, you've talked a lot about austerity, and obviously you're a former firefighter, and you still work in that area. Given what we've seen in this country over the last eight to 10 years,

what is the state of the fire service in this country? Well, this is really an unwritten story, it should be getting much more coverage than it is. The fire service in this country is being absolutely decimated. It's being decimated as a result of 10 years of austerity, and people are paying for it with their lives. I mean, that's not scaremongering. We're seeing now a rise in some places in the number of deaths from fire.

We're seeing a rise across England in terms of response times, in terms of the time it takes a fire engine to get to the scene. of the fire. Those response times are at their worst for 20 years. We've seen huge cuts from the government. We've seen 12,000 firefighters jobs go over the last decade. That's a huge number of frontline firefighters taken out of action. We've seen scores of fire engines close up and down the country. And we've seen a cut of government funding to the fire service of about a third over the course of that time. And it's a really, really serious situation because, you know, the behaviour of fire doesn't change over time. Fire is just as much.

a threat now to people as it ever is. And the argument that the government used to defend, the use is to defend the cuts, well, there's been fewer fires over the last 10 years, you know, which, which there has, but actually you can't base a fire service around the principles of supply and demand. It has to be done on the basis of risk. The supply and demand argument, for example, would say, well, you shut the fire station at Heathrow airport because there hasn't been a serious incident there for the last, you know, God knows how many years. We don't use it. Just shut it. Well, no one would do that because it's a about whether or not you've got the resources in place to be able to deal with the risk,

should something happen. And that should be the approach to fire cover generally across the country. So, you know, it's a real important issue because people's lives are at stake as a result of it and people need to hear about it. And what's the morale like in the fire service? I mean, it's really tough at the moment because, you know, firefighters feel that they're fighting a constant rearguard action. They're trying to defend their service against cuts from the Tories.

They're trying to defend their pensions. The Tories try to rip up their pensions and there's been a struggle over many years to try and defend that. We haven't had a decent pay rise in the fire service for the best part of a decade, even though the fire service does a lot more work in terms of the broad range of work than it's ever done before. We do a lot of work in the community now. We're not just about racing to fires when they happen. go out to people, we do fire safety work, we teach them about the dangers of fire, etc. We fit smoke alarms in people's houses to make sure they're as protected as possible. But we've

seen really paltry pay increases over the last 10 years and I know people who have left the service and gone off to be trained drivers because the pay is better in that industry. And it's completely unacceptable. You know, firefighters put their lives on the line every day to defend their communities and all they ask is to be treated fairly, to be fairly paid and to make sure that they have the right equipment and resources in place to do their job. And it's not happening and that obviously impacts on morale in a big way. And as a former teacher, the teaching profession is the same, although we do tend to go on strike far more than you know. We love a strike in the teaching profession.

Also you don't risk your life. Yeah, I'm not. I used to teach in you and mate. I risk my life every single day. I went school in Dagnum. sure. All right. Well, we're out of time. So we've got one more question for you, man. What is the one issue that no one is talking about, that we should be talking about as a society?

I think a big issue, controversial, but it needs to be said. We are called trigonometry. There we go. So I'm in the right place to say it. I think what I would describe as the abolition of womanhood, to be perfectly honest, I think we are seeing an attack. on womanhood and women's rights through an approach which seeks to abolish the sexes in some way

by saying that people now can effectively just self-identify as whatever sex they want and that society has to accept that and the law has to accept that and that if you don't accept that then you're some sort of bigger. and some sort of reactionary. And I find it extremely sinister, I have to say. And I'm very much in favour of people living the lives that they want. You know, if they're not hurting other people, I'm perfectly happy for people to identify as they want,

to dress as they want, to worship who they want, to eat what they want. But when the government intervenes and says that someone, for example, who is a man, has the anatomy of a man, can wake up one morning and identify as a woman and potentially have access to women safe spaces because the law interprets that person as a woman. Anyone who doesn't accept that interpretation could be arrested and prosecuted. I find it pretty Orwellian, to be honest.

And it's almost like we're now saying there isn't a definition of women. And I say to people who challenge me on this, define women for me. And they get into all sorts of muddles because they can't because they know if they did, they would have to accept that actually, you know, the sexes are different. And I know many decent women who have been on the right side of equality struggles throughout their entire lives who are really seriously concerned at this and have said, well, hold on a second. We didn't fight for years to, you know, get advances in terms of women's privacy and dignity and security in public spaces and workplaces, etc.

only for you to effectively come along now and say, well, there's no difference between the genders and you're entitled to use each other's facilities and you have to treat this person as a woman even though he's got the anatomy of a man. I find it disturbing. I find it's sinister. I find people try to close down the debate on it just by shouting accusations at you when you try to discuss it. And it's not, for those reasons in many respects, it's not being spoken about as much as it

ought to be. And it's a debate that needs to be had. Well, it's a good point. Let's dig into it for a couple of minutes, Francis. I don't want to just leave it hanging. We've had a few people on the show and talked to them about it. And we've also had a transgender woman on the show. We had India Willoughby on the show to talk about this.

So let's dig into it because I hear that argument a lot. And I have to say instinctively, I agree with it. But the argument about women's rights being taken away by having this, the one safe space that people often talk about is bathrooms, right? And there are two issues I would kind of pick up that. Number one, the easy solution is. just to have cubicles for everybody, then it's not an issue. Another thing is, if you were a sex offender, a male sex offender who wanted to get into a

woman's bathroom, you can do that without self-identifying as a woman now anyway, right? So I don't really, give us a bit more on where you think this is something that has an impact on women's rights. Well, I think in terms of the example you use, if someone tried to do it now, they could walk through the women's into a women's... I've done it a couple of times by complete action. Yeah, I've heard the rumors. You could sort of go into...

And thus ends the show. You could go into the women's bathroom, but actually, you know, you could be challenged and someone could say, actually, you've got no place in here, you should go. I think if you say, effectively, there's no difference between the sexes and people should be entitled to...

And there's a debate about whether people would be entitled to... trans people would be entitled if they self-identified to use the spaces of the other sex. And the fear is that if they do, then actually you can't challenge them, because if you do, you're discriminating against that person. And even if the government does say, well, we are going to preserve, you know, safe spaces, there will be exemptions in terms of bathrooms, et cetera. What we're seeing is a creeping acceptance among institutions, you know, firms, et cetera, that because they don't want to be accused of discrimination, then they just let

it happen anyway, even if they did have the right under law to say, well, no, this is an exempt safe space. So there was a story recently, Topshop in London, where I think somebody tried to access either the women's fitting rooms or the women's toilet or something. And Topshop would have been within its rights under law to say no, but just completely capitulated when there was this Twitter storm saying that you're discriminating against people. And I just, I just think it's, and I think sometimes you have to think personally, I mean, I've got a young daughter. Would I want my young daughter to be in a changing facility with somebody who had the anatomy of a man, but identified as a woman? No. Absolutely not under any circumstances. And I would

challenge anybody who said that I should have to accept that. I mean, I totally accept that people who are having, you know, a personal crisis around their gender and their identity need compassion and people should be sympathetic towards those people and understanding towards those people. But it shouldn't extend to effectively saying that there isn't such a thing now as sex, as biological sex, you know, it's kind of disappeared and we are who we want to be. and society just has to pick that up and run with that. I think that has really disturbing implications. And on that non-controversial notes,

we shall end it, we shall end the interview. If people want to find you online, Paul, where is the best place to find you? What's your Twitter or the rest of it? My Twitter is Paul Embry, as in my name, Paul Embry. I'm pretty active on Twitter. I write a column for the unheard website from time to time. I go on the unheard website.

You can see some of my stuff there and disagree with it. and or agree with it you might. And so those are probably the two best places to go to. Yeah, Paul is very active on Twitter. I follow him with great interest. As always, follow us. I just wanted to give a shout out to a couple of people. We've had a couple of PayPal donations from people who I will not name

because we don't want their names to be tarnished in public by association with us. But thank you very much, guys. You're really making us, giving us an opportunity to keep the show going. And buy soup. Soup. Do you eat soup? Yeah. Of course I eat soup.

Soup and soy. That's you, man. Soy latte is pretty. Hence 10 comments now. I'm a soy boy. Carry on. What do you have in your tea? What do I have in my?

It's not the point, mate. That is the point. Every time we go to a fucking restaurant, do you know what Francis does? Have you got any non-milk alternative? I don't speak like that. Yeah. I don't speak like that.

Have you got any non-dairy alternatives, mate? There's nothing more than almond milk latte. I'm just soy shaming you. Yeah. Anyway, follow us on all the social media at TriggerPod. click the bell button next to subscribe button if you haven't already subscribed. And we'll be back next week with another episode while I'll shame Francis for something else. Absolutely.

Leave us a review on iTunes. Tell everybody that you can about it, all the rest of it. Constantine, you're a donut. What have you forgotten to promote? Oh, yes, I am doing my Edinburgh show in August. It's called Orwell that ends well. You can buy tickets. There's a trailer on my Twitter profile.

Francis will be doing a couple of shows here, at the Bill Murray in London here in London at the Bill Murray as well. Check that out. In late August. Yep. So come and see me then. Yeah. And thank you guys for watching the show. Is there anything else you wanted to say? No one's listening by this. No, no. Everybody is switched the fuck off. Well, to three people. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week. Bye bye. This episode sponsored by IP Vanish. IP Vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be

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