TRIGGERnometry - “We need to stop relying on the government to solve our problems” - Shaun Bailey

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

SPONSORED BY FORTUNE AND FREEDOM: It's time to take control of your money... sign up for free here: https://subscribe.fortuneandfreedom.com/1954068/ Shaun Bailey is a politician and former journalist. A member of the Conservative Party, Bailey has been a member of the London Assembly since 2016. He was appointed a special adviser on youth and crime to David Cameron from 2010 to 2013. Bailey was selected as the Conservative candidate in the 2021 London mayoral election, coming second to Sadiq Khan. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ 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 (@francisjfoster) 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

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And capitalism has set many more people out of poverty than any other system we yet know of. Have you noticed that black people on the right don't abuse black people on the left? But black people on the left abuse black people on the right. You know, I mean we're not black enough, we're the wrong kind of black, we're coconut, so we've given them they're slaves. It means that white people on the left feel that they can abuse as well. So I remember I had a Labour MP call me a token ghetto boy. Imagine a Republican or a conservative MP, senator, whatever, said those words. People would be calling for their head.

You might hate your boss, but he was the one who risked the money to make your job. It wasn't. You could have to do it. As we explain to our stuff every day. We owe tons of money to China where we should have probably built that financial partnership elsewhere in the world. with people who are much more aligned with our thinking, who are much less out to dominate the world. I think the difference between India and China say,

India want to be a big, powerful country. They don't want to be your boss. China wants to be your boss. Hey Francis, are you worried about inflation? Absolutely, mate. Every time I eat dairy, it smelts me right up. There's bloating, not inflation. What's a difference?

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Simply go to Fortune and Freedom.com. That's Fortune and Freedom.com and sign up for a free newsletter that will help your money work for you. The link is in the description. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a former mayoral candidate for this very city of London.

Sean Bailey, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. It's really great to have you on, man. So I'll let people in on a little bit of insight into how we met. We were doing TV together and we got chatting in the green room. And we don't really have politicians on this show because we don't believe that they're going to be honest, honest conversations. We don't think that's likely to happen with a politician. But you and I had a very blunt and straightforward chat about some interesting things.

And I thought this guy's got some really cool things to say and he's actually prepared to say them. Before we get into them, though, tell everybody who are you, how you where you are, what has been your journey through life that leads you here. Before I answer that question, I'll tell you why, I'll tell your audience why politicians are, real because we punish them when they are. True. And everywhere in the world, we have the politicians we deserve. And if we want better politicians, we shouldn't punish the ones who try to tell us the truth. I think that's an important thing. In the Western world in particular, what we've done is give so much of our responsibility to politicians that we then can get away with stuff. Like the state of our children is not our politicians' fault as our fault, and we need to take

responsibility of that. By abusing them, it means that we can put a hands up and sort of walk off I say it's not awful. And I think it's really important that, especially younger generations, realize you have to take responsibility for the world that you want. If you look at Britain, for instance, Britain is a great nation and has been great for a very long time. It wasn't politicians that made Britain great. It's actually civic activity that made Britain great. And civic activity means that the civilians in the peace have to get involved. But that's my rant. So just before you go on, though, I couldn't agree with you more. It's the ethos of how we think about these things as well, and I think people are now getting the sense of why this is going to be a great conversation.

Anyway, who are you? Apart from that, so what's been going on in my unit? So I'm a father of two. I'm married to Ellie. I have Aurora and Joshua as my children, 13 and 15. I'm a Londoner born and bred. I come from West London, Elabric Grove, around that area. I grew up in a single parent family.

We were very poor, but very happy. I never really realized I was poor until I was sort of into senior school, And then like, because everybody around me was poor, none of us had anything. And we were so ecstatically happy most of the time. I didn't realize. It said you went to school and started thinking, I can't afford a cap a jumper. Those boys are wearing Farras. They're like, Mom, could have Farras?

Absolutely not. You're going to have the plastic school trousers and you're going to love them. And that experience was very important for me because it gave me a slightly different take on the rich, poor thing. I had much less envy about it. It just felt like a problem that needed to be solved. I'd like to believe what's driving me is good outcomes for people, including myself and my family, but not just pure money, because I think that changes how you interact with the world.

It delivers a different kind of fear. And I say all those things, because that let me do what I really wanted to do. So as I grew up, I got very involved in youth work. I then went on and set up my own youth work charity. And I was able to have the conversations with my local community that the social services and the local council either couldn't have or didn't know they needed to have. And I really enjoyed that.

The greatest things I've ever done is family therapy and basically I just delivered people to family therapy. My job club, because it gave the people around me an income to do with what as they pleased. And I ran a football club. I literally don't know the rules of football even now. But what it meant was I could get, at the time,

which was our biggest issue to my mind, fathers and sons and by extension families together to build their own, resilience, their own stories to pass on. And I really, really enjoyed that. And it looks like my community did. But all of those activities were what pushed me to politics. Yes, I'm an elected conservative politician. I've stood for Parliament twice. I ran for mayor, um, year before last. But if you, I would like to believe if you spoke to me for more than 30 seconds, I'm not what you think a conservative politician is, but actually I am what a conservative is. I believe in country. I

believe in family. I'm a churchgoer. I mean, I pray and run around and sing hymns and all that jazz. And I do those things because I live in a country where you're allowed to. And I believe that you should be allowed to do that. My neighbour is a Muslim. I mean, him, have great fun. Our neighbour across the road is a Hindu. And now we celebrate all of our, all of our holidays, as it were. And we do that because we're in this country, which is a Western country that allows you to do that. My son, who's 11 at times, said something really great to me. He said, I love to party. He said, why is that?

He says, and have a party. You know what I mean? It's the whole idea that because we're, you know, rolling around in other people's culture, we can take some of the strength from that. And I like that. But I wasn't bored in that situation. I grew to that situation through going through life.

But my first mentor was a man called Baron Hume who was an absolute socialist. He's a socialist. But he's one of the greatest people I've ever met because he wasn't trying to make me a socialist. All he ever used to do is putting out why he's a socialist. And he used to ask me questions that he thought needed solving poverty, redistribution, and asked me how I would want to solve them.

He challenged me to do that rather than tell me his political belief is the way. And I forever am grateful for that, forever grateful. And what you were talking about there is so interesting, Sean, because you know, you're a conservative politician, but I would think that if you ask most conservative politicians what conservatism is, I don't think they'd be able to answer you. And if they do give you an answer, it's not going to be an honest one. Well, let's check if I can answer.

That's the point. Look, for me, conservatism has two, potentially three areas that you need to focus on. One is the technical conservatism, small government, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. I believe in things like marriage. I believe in things like education. I believe in capitalism, for one of the better term. Now, do I think capitalism has all the answers? No.

I remember a guy saying to me, are you a factor right? No, but I believe she did the right thing in the wrong way. Making a strong community, both family and financial, gives you the freedom to explore things. Like being poor, we often talk about being poor, as if there's an honor in it, right? Being poised grinding. Let's release people from that.

And capitalism has set many more people out of poverty than any other system we yet know of. And that's why I think conservatism, small government, innovation, entrepreneurs, letting people keep their money, all of that stuff's important. And if you flip over to the social side, I would say that conservatism is about the responsibility of adults.

If you see what's happening in most of the Western world, they're infantilizing adults, and by turn we then infantilizing. children even more. The strongest communities in the world have a few things in common. One is they're financially stable. Two is they're far away from the government. They don't need the government. They're basically, most of their interaction with the government's around tax and the law. And I think thirdly, they take responsibility for the education of their children. Now, I don't mean you should educate your children in a vacuum, but you should make sure that your children are being

educate and you should check and then you have the right to check what that education is. You know, I sometimes worry that in the Western world, we are taking all of that education into the formal system, which means that parents have no say on how their children educate, which is wrong because in our tradition and in our legal system, you are legally responsible for your children, so therefore you should be intimately wrapped up in what they're learning. And, Sean, you touch on something that I've been present to for a long time now, which is, I kind of feel like whenever anything happens in our country, whatever that problem is now, we always now, as a society, look to government to solve the problem. And I tell you where that's a problem. So I had a very interesting conversation with a guy on a bus.

I love randomly speaking to London. It's great. It's half the reason I ran for Mayor of London, more people recognize me and are willing to have that conversation. And we were talking about, you know, what has the government done? What has the government done? We're actually talking about drug dealing or a stat. And I said the government's relationship with drug dealing is your enforcement. That's it, right?

Your relationship with drug dealing is, do you buy drugs? Do you have the people in your family buy drugs? What about the children in the world? So I said, then, what have you done about drug dealing in your area? And he said nothing. And he see the bell go on in his head. Oh, he's like, what do you mean? Exactly.

Like if we as the adults in our own world and in our children's life don't do something about the prevalence of drug dealing, nobody can. Nobody can. And he said, yeah, you're right. And we had a big conversation about nobody grasses and all of us. I said, exactly. So if we're to save our children and our neighborhoods from something like that, we have to do something about that. I remember when I used to be special advisor to the prime minister, I probably should have mentioned that. I used to be special advisor to the Prime Minister. In what area? In youth and crime and just across the piece. Because David Cameron was very interested in my take on most things, because he saw, I have no white middle class guilt, which, you know, helps in certain situations because I'm looking at it purely from the effect.

And my politics, I'd like to believe, is of poorer people. How do people who need to work? keep working, get ahead, have a life. So I was often asked, what do you think about this? Should the government be doing that? And the government should do plenty. But it should always remember that it's there to enable, not deliver. And I used to say to David, if we seek to do everything for families,

we will weaken those communities. The community you come from, David, does mostly everything for itself. Now, we all think that's because it has financial means, And that is true. But it's also because it adds the confidence and the historical timeline of doing it itself. Because you can get the poorest immigrant communities in this country, and they do almost everything for themselves.

And then you look at second and third generation, and then you have to figure out how much has this idea that the government should do everything infiltrated that community. And when you've indexed that, you can directly see how well that community is performed. So I'll give you an idea. The Indian community generally, particularly in London, is very independent, very go-ahead. And you've seen that in their level of sickness, in their level of income, everything.

They are a strong, cohesive community going ahead because they have taken charge. They haven't fallen into that left-wing thing of, well, we'll wait for the government to save us. Because the government isn't going to save you. And the other thing, I'd say to people watching this, no government has any money. It's your money, your money, not theirs, your money. And when you view it in that way, it makes you ask different questions. In my world, I would send everybody a bill of what the government has been painful with their tax return and see how happy they are. I bet you the public would ask significantly different questions.

And you say that you don't have white middle class guilt, which means that you can approach subjects in, I'll say probably a far more honest and objective way. What does white middle class guilt stop us seeing? Or what problems does it stop us dealing with effectively? The generality of white middle class guilt means that you're so busy from a right, from a sort of place of trying to help, trying to do things for a community that you wouldn't do to your own. And you make provisions for a community that feel good, but you don't have that problem in your community.

So I'll give you an example. I remember when Tony Blair changed law that your 14-year-old daughter could have an, abortion without you knowing. That is absolutely mental. Mental, mental, mental. You're responsible for this child morally, physically, legally. They're going through one of the biggest situations that any human being can go through and they're allowed not to tell you. So if your daughter will cut up that one and says she's not going to school, you're screaming, she'll get to school, get to school, she's had an abortion, you don't know. I mean, come on. But the reason he could do that

because someone had convinced them all that, you know, children are sexually active, things happened, you can't number them with a child, but he hadn't realised that the children, his community, that doesn't happen to them. Children in other communities, it does happen to them. And by divorcing them for their parents, you increase the likelihood that that will happen. You don't decrease it. So it's a difference between dealing with the symptom or the unintended consequences of something that you've done.

I'll give another example. I remember when Black Lives Matter came to prominence, right? white middle class guilt meant that white people didn't scrutinize what Black Live Matter was about. A Marxist organization. And that's great if you agree and you've looked at it. And I remember when I said, I'm not really on board here, black and white people freaked out. And I distinctly remember, and I use the word, a brother stopped me in the street because he said it to me, that he's a brother. And why I liked the way he approached me because he was basically saying, look, as black people, we need to come together. We've got a fight here.

I said, that's great, but do you feel like these people are forwarding a fight? I said, what do you mean? I said, as far as I'm concerned, if I had a magic wand and could do anything for any community, particularly the black community, I would strengthen family structure. Family, as you know, the sort of 2.4 children version of it, is the single, strongest financial institution we've ever had on this planet thus far. Mental institution as well, and quite frankly, fun. Everybody, black, white, young, old, gay, straight, comes from.

some version of a family. In a black community in particular, particularly in Britain, our family structure has been decimated. More than 60% of black children go up in a single parent family. And that's important for many reasons. But one I'll highlight is if you come from a single parent family, you're that much more likely, significant more likely, five times more likely, to grow up in poverty. Right. So for me, that's enough of reason to try and eradicate that year. forget what others. And I said, on the Black Lives Matter website, their stated aim is to destroy the nuclear family. And I said to him, do you agree with that? And he locked in my boat. He was stunned because, believe you me, he knew his stuff because he was coming from a place that I

recognised of righteous, black, and I get that, I understand that. But he just, he was like, well, what does that mean? I said, it means what it says on the tin. And unless somebody else says it means something different, I can't support that. Because you and I know that we collectively and individually would do better if our family structure better. So either they don't understand our problems or their goal is not for us, but either way, I'm not on board.

And his reaction to me was so emotional that he made me for, this be clear, he didn't tell me I was right, but his reaction made me feel confident because in the newspaper I was being, destroyed on that. Yeah, but it's a case of sometimes in public life, you have to be brave. So the decision is, do I be brave? Do I hide? Or do I absolutely just, you know, join in? And this for me was so important. I kind of decided to be brave. But he gave me the opportunity to test, to go a bit

further with that, because then subsequent weeks, months and year, I was continually asked the question. because obviously people are now trying to use that to trip me up because Black Lives Matter was gaining great prominence. But what was interested in, what was really interesting to me, black people would question me about it. They wouldn't just destroy me. So those who just destroyed me about it, they were never coming my way in that instance

that were never going to vote for me. But it was a sort of 80-20 thing. 20% of people just immediately destroyed you. 80% of people wanted to know why. And I think myself and other people challenging Black Lives Matter has changed what they've had to do and change people's orientation to it. It's really, really interesting, Sean,

the point that you were making there. The thing that I don't get is just when you see a black person or an Asian person, basically an ethnic minority come out and espouse conservative values and say, I'm conservative, this is the way that I think, the racial abuse that they get from the left is worse than anything that I've seen in years.

And be in mind, I grew up in London and South London in the 80s. So I've seen when, race, when, you know, BMP pub down the road and, you know, going with my cousin to watch a football and we got Chase because he's brown. I've seen that. But, look, I mean, where do I start? I remember someone, so I've had, if you watched my Twitter feed, I remember someone from the press writing a thing about Twitter and racist going on Twitter. And she said, I looked at your Twitter feed, and I'm astonished.

You get as much racist abuse from black people as you do white. She was stunned by this. And I said there's two ways of looking at this, right? One, a black person who's desperate to rent your, you know, rent you sort of emotionally in a direction knows that our race in the context of Britain and the context of the rest of the world is very important to us because it has defined a great deal of our history.

And another black person won't realize that they've been trained to do it by people on the left. So I remember saying to a group of students, have you noticed that black people on the right don't abuse black people on the left. But black people on the left abuse black people on the right. You know what I mean?

We're not black enough. We're the wrong kind of black. We're coconuts. We've given in them as slaves. And there was a bit of a revelation in the room and everybody's testing it, tried to prove it, tried to find people doing it and all the rest of that.

And I said, look, it's the kind of really insidious, powerful racism that makes black people useful idiots. Because what white people can do, they can stop us as a group of people having any kind of decent conversation. right because they can get you to tell me that I'm the wrong kind of black or I'm not black I don't understand where it is to be black why what black people should be able to do is what white people do you know Russians Spanish I don't know Italians everybody does they'll have a conversation about themselves and about anybody else without the influence of other people and and having that conversation as isn't as that is an ongoing cross to bear an ongoing cross to bear it's been it's been it's been it's

It's left a real big footprint in my public and political life, because what it also means is it means that white people on the left feel that they can abuse you as well. So I remember I had a Labour MP call me a token ghetto boy. Yeah, imagine for a second, anybody watching this, right, who understands, you know, conservative labor politics or maybe Republican and Democrat politics, Imagine a Republican or a conservative MP, senator, whatever, said those words. People would be calling for their head, yeah? She said it's fine.

But why it's really, really disgraceful? Because what it says to young people, black or otherwise, in the public sphere as it says, if you're black, yeah, don't you dare go towards the right? If you go towards right, we will separate you from the people you love and careful. So what it then means, if you're black, it's much easier to just keep to yourself not expanse into those you, and it cuts black people off from half of the sort of political theory and belief systems in the world. And I'm one of those people who think, no one system has it all right. So therefore, you need to scrutinize a more to cherry pick, and they cut you off

from half. They don't have the right to decide how you think that is terrible. Yeah, absolutely terrible. I agree completely. And Sean, it's funny you were talking right at the beginning about things that you don't often hear politicians talk so much about, which is Britain's a great country that you're proud of and you like and so on. And I feel the same. First generation immigrant. I love this place. I think it's great in many ways. And at the same time, we do have a lot of problems at the moment too. So how do we make sure that we are fulfilling on our potential as a country? I think the big sweep of it is to, in the first place, like ourselves, my problem with the public discourse of the left now is all based on the fact that we're idiots. Yeah, the British goings on, historical, current and future, we're all idiots. I remember someone telling me that we can't have a British Bill of Rights, we can't leave the ECR, all the rest of it. And I had to point out to them, you see, when the Europeans wanted to do something around human rights, who did they call? they called us. They literally called British lawyers. We literally invented human rights. Now you can tell me we may have had the biggest need in the world to invent human rights, but the point is we did. And they trusted us to write that bill. It was largely done by British judges and lawyers. We did it. So the idea that we have somehow forgotten that we won't know what to do when we're on our own is utter nonsense. Actually, there's a good chance we'll do a much better job. Actually, that's actually what will happen because we'll have much less influence. And all the conversations we're having about representation of women, gender representation,

excuse me, LGBT, race and that, we are basically the only people in the world having that conversation. There is no one in Korea or Japan or even places like Italy or France. They're not doing the hand-wringing we are. And what that shows you is it's a live issue for us. It probably always will be a live issue with us. But we do the work. We make the progress. And that's just one arena.

And I say that because we have to believe a little bit more in ourselves. If you look at the nations in the world like Singapore or Japan, who are coming, even the French to a certain degree, they think they're right. They largely like each other. French people think France is great. They'll talk about French histories if it's great. We need to step back and look at our history.

And our history is checkered, but no more checkered than anybody else's. There is no nation on this wall that has more than a fight. in its wallet, right, that doesn't have things that you could point to, right? I'm not saying we avoid them, not saying we pretend they're not there, but it's not a reason to suggest that we're not of no value. And arguably, we've recovered at the greatest speed and have less of a distance to go. And I think you've got to start there. We like us, because if you don't like yourself, it's hard to do anything positive going forward. And the other thing is, it's trust the system. And I go back to a statement I made early on, the great

It's this thing about this country is our civil organizations. Yeah? Let them test it. Let them go around. And yes, we all hate politicians and we think Parliament's nonsense or the rest of that. But actually, our system is definitely the best in the world. And the one very, very important thing about adversarial system, all ideas are tested.

If you're in China and you're high enough up the political scale, you have an idea, that's it. Here, even if you're the prime minister, It gets tested. And if you look back at our history, it's probably why we've made less lurching mistakes. There's been less self-harm of this country the most because their ideas are tested.

And sometimes I see people on the left who want to shut down the bait, you know, push people out. And I point them out, if we did that as a tradition, you wouldn't exist. Because largely this country has been conservative for hundreds and hundreds of years. And they didn't push out the more sort of left-wing socialist debate. They had it and that's why you exist.

And that's why this country is strong. So if you push them out, what's going to happen? What is going to happen? And you show me any individual, any philosophy, any nation or any organisation that's been right about everything and I'll show you a life. Hey Francis, do you like locals? I live in London, mate. So obviously not. The only pleasure I get from the locals is when we share an intimate moment as we watch a Japanese.

Japanese tourists get trapped in a tube door. That is good. But I wasn't talking about their locals, I was talking about our community on locals. You mean the one where you get phenomenal behind the scenes content when you... ...that you, you say, shui, shi, fie, fie... ...when you get to ask incredible guests like Jordan Peterson, Brett Weinstein, Bill Burr, Sam Harris, Adam Carolla, Heather Hying and others your questions. questions. Not just that, you can get supporter-only benefits like trigonometry mugs,

monthly calls with other top supporters and even a regular meal with me and Francis. You also get phenomenal behind-the-scenes footage of our trip to America where we met a whole host of incredible guests and gave ourselves terminal indigestion. We're also starting to do monthly giveaways for locals only. The first one will be signed copies of Andrew Doyle's new book. Plus, you get access to an incredible community of like-minded people who share memes, have fun conversations, and most importantly, you get to make new friends. You can support us with as little as $7 or about £5 a month,

or give us more for the higher tier benefits. Go to trigonometry.locals.com. Go to trigonometry.orgals.com and support the show. Well, I agree with you completely. And as you know, you've read a little bit of my book, which is we were talking about. And that's kind of my message to people here as well. We've got to remember with good people, we've done some bad, our ancestors did some bad things like everybody else's ancestors. But if we want to have a positive vision of our country, we're going to have to believe in ourselves, for sure.

I think that's really important. And it's great to hear you say it. And at the same time, we've obviously got a lot of practical problems happening right now. We've got, we, our national debt is greater than our GDP at a time when the government is about to give away people more money to help them with what is a legitimate crisis, you know, in terms of the cost of living and all of that. How do you see this playing out now with, with the, particularly since 2008, when we've printed so much money, we had the record low interest rates, we've got a massive national debt. Now we're having to deal with the war in Ukraine, the cost of living, all. of that, how does LIS trust survive, let alone thrive? There's a couple of things I'd say.

I think the world is up for, is in line for a big correction. Our sort of historic around about 5% interest rate was workable. It was an interest rate that came from less debt, more interaction. People, and when I say people, I mean, nations, the planet, spent what it had, moved to the theatre system, create amounts of debt, finance, all the rest of that, and that just marching on, it can't... It's not sustainable. Yeah, it's not sustainable.

And it's, it... I remember talking to a kid at the bus stop and trying to explain to him about debt and what we're doing and elements of the environment. And I said, look, it's basically this. You're on a chocolate desert island and you have a choice. You can eat all the chocolate, not be hungry, but drown. Or you can be hungry, but still have the chocolate to stand on. There's a balance here.

There's a balance here. And I think we may have gone far as a planet, not just as a nation, too far one way. When you bring it down to the sort of nation level, we are in as good a condition as anybody to do with it. I'd argue if you rank the world, we'd be in the top sort of 5, 10% to do with the problem. It's going to be painful,

but there's some big steps you can say, please stop printing money. The printing of money, I mean, I've never quite I'm never quite sure Who gets that money? Because I didn't get any of it. Maybe if I got some of it

I'd be a little bit less against, you know, stopping. But that's not true though, isn't it? We all got a bit of it because we all got investment, more investment than there would have been in education and health and whatever. Like, we are just living beyond our means as a country. I tell you why I don't think we got any of it

because we're living beyond our means. So everything that we've got, we're effective you're going to have to give back. Well, our children will. Yeah. One of the experiences of my life for a little while, I had bailiffs. I owed money to people. And somebody said to me, dude, I regret that. And my answer is no. And the reason I say no is because all of the debts I built up were to survive. There was no Ferrari date in there, as I like to call it. There was no luxurious car. There wasn't even a flash coat in there. It was like, I was unemployed for a long time. I was homeless for a little while. It was like, if I don't do this, I'm sunk here. So I never regretted that debt.

I wonder as a planet and as a country, could we say the same? And whatever happens, my grandmother used to say this, you're going to have to pay it back. You're going to have to pay it back. So we should always be planning our finances with that idea that it's going to be to be back. And I don't wish to be political. It's not my thing. I have to be asked to be political.

But on the left, their response, if you see Kirst Stam's response to the cost of living crisis, to the bill thing. It's a sticking plaster. It's a it's going to then need to be addressed again. I remember listening. But it's the same with Liz Trust. Yeah, but the difference with Liz Trust is the one functional difference I think is important is giving the economy, giving individuals, giving business more of their money back. If you if you remember what I said at the very beginning, I believe in entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs make the planet in the broadest sense. It's people who take the risk. It's people who say,

Actually, I think we need rubber. I know we could get some rubber. It's people who say this service would be of use to people who actually put their own money in. And by giving people back their money, we increased the propensity of people to become entrepreneurs from a spiritual level. We let people know that actually we appreciate people who take risk.

There's an economy to bother taking a risk in from a financial level. It's worth you doing this because you're going to get something back. The idea that we can all have the same. outcome with a different input, you might hate your boss, but he was the one who risked the money to make your job. Yeah, it wasn't you. You could have to... As we explained to our stuff every day. Yeah, you might have to get used to that. But this is the point, and like we found, as we've done this, as you know, we have employees now,

and we are basically a small business. This is what the show is, right? It's, I'm not going to lie to you. It's not the easiest place to run a business, Britain. But ironically, it is one of the easier places in the world, if only because we have our ability to raise finance. But the one thing I will say, I said also in the beginning, I'm a capitalist, but I don't believe it has all the answers. And I try to say it like this. Capitalism, right, works for pound coins. It's mechanism to deliver pound coins. It's the human inside that has to make that pound coin do the right thing. So we see lots of businesses in the world, make so much money, right, but not involve in the profit, the people who made that money.

the staff and note that I use the word profit because you can't pay people if you don't have it yeah and one of the things that we've done a lot of is use public money to top up very poor businesses through tax credits now if you receive tax credits and I have in a past keep going I'm not suggesting me stop that no but what we should be saying to people is you can only employ people if I actually have a viable business we should make that the law rather than topping it up because they don't have a viable business. And the way to help people have a viable business is what? Take less of their money from them. If you're watching this now and you're a socialist, I get it. I understand because your socialism

makes you feel kind and there is elements of kindness in it. Right. But the unkind part of socialism is, right, the unworkable part of socialism, the crazy part of socialism is where does the money come from? And I remember being at a debate with a Labour MP and he and I were just on completely different things. Everybody knew and it was fine and he was very decent man. And he was a very decent man. And we had a great, we had a great chat. But he said one of the most poignant things in the room that just made my point for me. He said every time someone proposes a policy, it should tell us who, not only where, who they're taking the money from.

And that's the point, isn't it? Because what happens in our big rich, Western world, it looks like, well, you can just charge the rich. And in many cases, that might be right. But what did they do? They then just cut off who they employ and it does us in. I remember speaking at a school and there was a lot of

councils and stuff and there's all assaulting Tesco's and all the rest of them and Tesco's big business they don't need me to defend them but I said just one thing before you destroy Tesco's

and they're like WhatsApp I said they employ 300,000 people so you destroy one business but how many incomes you destroy I just want you to bear that in mind I'm not telling you Tesco's behaves ethically

I think particularly for small businesses they should pay much more quickly than their total 90-day model. But we are all interlinked. And socialism often, you know, picks out a villain, pursues them, and doesn't realize the connection that has to the rest of us. And that, for me, is, I mean, it's about education.

It's about letting people know how money and finance and economies work. Sean, you made a very profound point at the beginning of this interview where you said, we get the politicians we deserve because we've distinguished. destroy politicians who tell us the truth. And I really agree with you. I think you nailed it on that. We've got this huge debt.

And the reality is, our living standards are going to have to go down in order to pay for this debt. That's what that means. What politician is going to be able to tell that to the British people and survive? None. You can't do that. I think it's ironic

because I think the last time politics was really, really honest, was austerity. George Osborne basically said, if you vote for us, we're going to balance the box. that's going to be painful, or you can vote for the other guy. And they vote for him and Cameron.

And why that's important, because I really do believe in the intelligence of the swarm. The swarm in this country, the voting public. There is an intelligence there. They do get it. And I think politicians and all of us are relying on the public to understand we've got to address this. Ironically, I think the pandemic is helping people realize something needs to. to be solved. You know, we dealt with the pandemic. If you agree with how it was done, whatever, but people do realize something was done, it costs and needs to be adjusted. And also, we need

to have a conversation about what living standards are because there's other things we could do. So, for instance, if the amount of money you pay to live, food, you know, roof over your head and all rest of that, there's some places where a reduction in cost is so much more useful than in another place, you know what I mean? Like having great amounts of disposal income is nice and that's what people chase, but actually having lower cost housing is probably much more important. If someone said to me an extra grand a month, that's fine as long as my housing doesn't cost me an extra £1,000 a month. Do you know what I mean? And I think there's things the government can do to lower the running costs of a person's life. I mean, when I was sofa surfing, one of the great

revelations for me was, this is about lowering my costs. Like, you know, I mean, like, you making my trainers last longer. I used to walk one way to work and all the rest of that. I changed my shift pattern so that I could walk at night because it's just less hassle, less people, whatever. Do you see what I mean? All that kind of stuff. And lowering my costs, we all know.

It effectively increases what you're earning. We might have to do that on a national scale. And that's what I say, ironically, Boris's plan around nuclear and Liz's plan around tax. For me are two of the big possibilities at repairing our standard of living as quickly as possible. But I can't really see a version of events where it isn't painful. And, Sean, this inability to be honest with the public,

is this where this counterproductive, deeply irresponsible policy of Western governments, not just in this country, but particularly somewhere like Germany, I've been talking about this for years, man. You can't make yourself energy dependent on your adversaries, right? But we've done that. We've done that in this country. We've done that. Germans have done it.

Lots of European countries have done it. Why have these countries, our Western countries, made themselves dependent on Russia? Why are we not energy sufficient? We're shipping factories and production to China, where they emit all the same carbon dioxide. They just do it over there and we can say we're green. But look, there's two. One is the broader piece of liberal arrogance. So liberals believe, you know, whoever these people are, 10 minutes with us and they'll be liberals too.

We'll just tell them But you're wrong You're wrong You're wrong You know Start in the war And taking territory It upsets people

Stop it stop it And we believe they'll think Oh We were wrong all along Why don't we do it The Libre That's the real thing You often hear in politics

We should be an example We should be leading the way I really want to say To people Right Who liberals Nobody in Russia Or anywhere else in the world

Gives a monkeys About what we do We could be as green as we like They're looking at the bottom line They do not care what we do. They don't. They might care about the green issues, but they don't care how we get there. They're going to get there their own way. Simple as that. And the other piece was greed.

So what people wanted to do was lower the cost of running their country, ship out some of the pain so they could keep going back to their populace and say, look, how wonderful we are. We're keeping your cost of living down and we're making you green and not really told the truth. You see it with some of the Nordic nations swapping to geo power and their electric cars all the way. all over the place, but they did that through their oil money. All the money they had from their sovereign wealth fund was made in oil, and they made themselves green. And there is a hypocrisy there.

And, you know, that self-congratulately liberal pat on the back means that they won't acknowledge something that's going on. And to make yourself energy dependent is to make the people of your country poor. Governments of all stripes should have spent more time building nuclear and wind and and water. And I want to be clear to everyone. If you're watching this in your green, right,

I want to be very clear in the interim, and that means the next 30 to 50 years, we cannot have green power without nuclear. Because when there's no wind and when everybody turns their kettle on because EastEnders is having a break, right? Yeah, solar and wind won't cover that. Nuclear power, you're turning up.

Isn't it for that. And if somebody telling you that, that nuclear power is dirty, ask them what we're going to do with all the batteries and all the mining from electric cars and solar power, because solar power, wind power will need some kind of storage, that means batteries, that means some of the most horrific chemicals we have on the planet. And when we are producing 20, 30 million battery powered vehicles a year, what are we're going to do with all that waste? And it changes how you look at nuclear power. In the future, I believe we can get way, way, way down the line on fully renewable power.

But the future is a long way away. And in the meantime, you have a lot of very poor people that you have to keep warm and clothed. Now, if you're telling me, your green credentials are worth more than their immediate comfort. I think you need to tell them that as well. It's a very good point. We're looking and we're seeing an energy crisis

and these bills that are coming out are absolutely horrendous. just to look at. We had Nigel Farage in a few months ago just before the Ukraine war, and he made the point. He said, I don't think people understand what is going to happen to them. I really don't. And it's true. So who's to blame for that, Sean, in your opinion, for what we're seeing now? I'd say the political firmament in general, across all of Europe, Putin has always been, for want a better word, the enemy. It's not like last week he lost his temper and changed his mode of behavior. He's not. he's been like for a while and I'm not sure why they thought it'd be any different you know

it's like when I was a youth work I dealt with a lot of gangs and it'd be like one gang saying to another gang here you have our weapons you hold our weapons and then let's negotiate well they have all the aces and they have and what's important is they have a very fundamental ace a very powerful ace and this idea that the rest of the world will just hang back while we're we deal with that, no. If we don't buy that stuff, fine, somebody else will buy it. So Putin's not poor because somebody else is buying that gear. And if you run another country, I remember somebody saying to me, imagine having 145 million mouths to feed. Of course you're going to buy Putin's gas. Who cares what they think in Westminster or what they think in Israel?

And nobody cares. Because you're looking at 145 million people you need to feed. And that's what we're seeing now. And I think in the Western world, in Europe in particular, you know, from the Second World War to now, we felt like we'd answered the international system of behaviour. We felt like we were so financially and militarily powerful that everybody would just do this, as we said.

And in our very honest way, we were also sticking to the rules. It's not like we're saying, you do that and we did it. We're all going to stick to the rules. No, we're not. It doesn't work like that. The human condition doesn't do that.

And what Westerners had started to do is assume that people elsewhere in the world felt the same about the outcome, felt the same about the future. No. And I remember when they asked the Chinese, he's either the interior minister or the energy minister or something like that, you know, about his vision zero over 2050 and all the rest of that. And he just turned around and said, you had a hundred years of Industrial Revolution, it's our turn. And no matter how much warm, sweet words come out of China, no matter how much. they're changing, because they're changing at quite a pace, yeah? That's their driving force.

They're going to have their 100 years. They're getting rich. Now, if they can do that and be green, fine. But if they can't, for them, fine as well. And we see that. I remember telling a green activist who was saying the government's terrible, I said two things. This conservative government has spent more on green

relatively than any other European government. Our CO2 output is more than, is less than half of what Germany is. Right? So I don't agree with that. And secondly, we're less than 1% of the world CO2 output. If we turned off everything in Britain yesterday,

it would make no difference. And then she said that classic thing of, but we should be leading the way. I said, they don't care what we're doing. Some of them are doing, you know, on a short, pure cash basis are doing better than we do. China is spending more on it, but obviously they've got more to do, yeah.

The Americans probably as well. But at no point in any meaning of any significance have they said to themselves, what are they doing in these? They don't care. They don't care. And unless people understand that we have to secure the poor people where we are, use some of our financial might to help the poor people elsewhere in the world, drive the conversation without the idea that people are going to follow us, because that to other people also feels like colonialism.

We will make no decent impact for the world. The thing is, Sean, is that the thing that I'm worried about is that we just keep kicking this can down the road, though, don't we? That's the problem. We're continuing to kick it down the road, and nobody wants to have the very difficult conversation. You're completely right, but what I will say, the history of this country needs must. We will reach a point where we need to do it, and we will do it. And I spoke to a group of kids at a bus stop, and this boy is. telling me about, yeah, but like the world's in a mad stage all over,

bram, this, that and the other. And I was like, let me tell you something. I want to give you a scenario. I said, go on there. And I said, what do you think it felt like just before the start of the Second World War? So not only did they think the world was over, they then had a war, a world war, and quite frankly, it was over. He said, yeah, what's that?

And I said, but they recovered. In fact, they recovered to a spectacular level. If you'd said to the people who went through the Second World War that we as a nation, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, would be in the condition they're in now, they wouldn't have believed you. The point being this, the human spirit is resilient.

Needs must, will act, when we want to act. The one thing where the Green Lobby are correct, yeah, we've got to start having the conversations and actions quickly, and I think those things will happen. But the problem is, because we punish politicians

who tell us the truth, because we have a lot of, the press are all, sort of an in extreme, So you're your guardian reader and everybody's evil is on the right and we must sell our children and make the world green or you're on the right. These people are stupid and we should frack and nuclear and everything right here, right now. Because we can't have nuanced complicated and developmental and resolved conversations in the middle, that's what's slowing us down. And the other thing as well, how finance, everything has become financial. So my reverend, my reverend, for entrepreneurs comes from the fact that if you go back 50, 80, 100, 150 years, entrepreneurs produced things and employed people. And I don't think wrong, I'm not saying the service economy is ridiculous.

But what we've done with this service economy is made everything about the end product, the finance, the profit. And when you build a business, it has a much bigger social footprint than when you just finance. It's fine. And what finance did? finance in the Western world, particularly in this country, has been so successful, it sucked a lot of the talent. So there's people in finance now who, in a century gone by, would have been an engineer, would have been a doctor, but now they're in finance because they thought well.

Most of the astrophysicists that we produce end up going into the city. Yeah, yeah. And that's a shame because it means they're not answering some of the other big problems that we as a country and we as a world face. And do you think that is also part of the problem, Sean, in that? This is my opinion, and tell me what you think. I'd say that our caliber of politicians are some of the weakest I've ever seen in my 40 years on this planet. So if you think about the Thatcher's,

if you think about the Churchill's, if you think about the former big beast of politics. Well, even Blau and Browns are gigantic compared to what we've got now. But the reason, there's two things I'd say. I think every generation laments the people it's stuck with. Like Churchill, it doesn't matter where you are. Churchill did massive things right, massive things wrong, but he was massive for the country. At the time, they treat him like he's an idiot.

I mean, they got rid of him once. You know what I mean? So nobody loves the politicians they have, you know, and that's just the human nature. I think the other thing as well, often a big problem gives you a big hero. If your British problem is what colour is your new car, you're not a hero in your home. If your biggest problem is you're poor and you get that job, you're a hero. And you can, you can scale that up, can't you? So I think actually going forward we're probably likely to see more substantial politicians because we have more substantial issues to deal to deal with. Love Boris or hate Boris, his response to the Ukraine was a big deal. It was a big deal.

And even if you don't believe it, the people of Ukraine believe it, which makes it real. Just do that mean? It's a big deal. So we'll see. And I think he, you've Liz's, the hope for Liz is that she makes enough of a change in the personnel for something different to happen. I think sometimes the immediate history of the Conservative Party has been apologising for not being left-wing enough. Whereas Liz seems like she's going to be a conservative and convince you that you should join in or not. It's a different, it feels like a different paradigm. Sean, you mentioned Ukraine. Do you think that was a wake-up call that the West needed?

to realize this airy, fairy world that you were talking about, however everyone's going to... No, I don't think it was a wake-up call because I'm woken up. You are, but most people were not. No, no, no. I wouldn't be very clear. It's not the wake-up call that the West needed because they didn't respond to it. Absolutely, it's a wake-up call, but they needed to front Putin up properly. You don't think we've done enough? No.

Well, Putin's still going. He needs... Look, the Putin thing for me is powerful because... Because Putin, treating Putin like he's some crazy moron is ridiculous. He's been looking in this direction for a long time. Some of the failing has been on our part. We've kind of antagonised the man. He said, don't come east.

We promise not to come east and then we go east. So he responds. I mean, in his mind, that's a huge justification for his behaviour. I'd argue he'd probably done it anyway. But he'd be sitting in me and said, but you said you weren't going to come east. What am I to do? So away he goes.

And I Putin was asked How would he defeat the West Now if Putin had said I don't want to defeat the West That's ridiculous Then our reaction would be fine But he said oh no

He didn't say that He said I don't need to defeat the West They'll defeat themselves And what that comment shows you He's interested in the West being defeated So are China And other places amongst in the world And our response has made that

It has kept that issue live It's kept it going. It's made it real. If you something, and Putin doing what he's doing in a way in which he's doing, if he gets the outcome that he wants, will strengthen his position. And clearly, we want to weaken his position. And we'll have to see it. And then, of course, there's the ripple effect. If you're China, you're probably thinking, let me see how to respond.

If there's a strong response, I might have to take my thought of the gas. If there's a weak response, I'll charge straight through. the belt and brace thing what is called that China are doing now I mean that Belt and Road That is a really aggressive move I mean short of

A military attack That's the single most aggressive thing you can do I'll just pause you right there Could you just explain to people who don't know about it What it is and also why it's so aggressive So China have Taken much of their huge financial power And they've decided to connect countries

to China, which gives them control over those countries financially. And let's be clear, some of the contracts they're signing with, with countries in Africa, countries in the West Indies, Shalanka, all these countries tie those countries to China and Chinese control. I mean, there's parts of the world where they're deliberately trying to push out Western nations and block them, or circle us in. Half the reason they haven't completed that is because nations like India have now had to sort of push back.

Because India is a huge superpower in its own right, and simply can't accept that. But the West effectively financed that. We owe tons of money to China, where we should have probably built that financial partnership elsewhere in the world, with people who are much more aligned with our thinking, who are much less out to dominate the world. I think the difference between India and China say, India want to be a big, powerful country, they don't want to be your boss. China wants to be your boss. It's a very different thing.

And just one tiny example. So China are building railways in the world, right? And if you're one of those smaller nations that's taken on to Chinese finance, they've financed you, signed up to an expensive deal. But here's the real thing that shows you where China's headspace are. They've made the gauge of the railways unique. So when you renew your stock, you have to go back to China. And what they're trying to do, quite successfully, to my mind,

is build dependency on them. And that kind of international control will mean they can do all kinds of things. It's why Taiwan is constantly worried about its status because China is showing that it's on the front foot. And then you look at things like their development of supersonic weapons, nuclear weapons, the size of their navy, they are,

I'd argue they're being aggressive now, but they're certainly giving themselves the ability to be far more aggressive in the future. Hey, Francis, what do you think is the best way to advertise business. That's easy. All you need to do is spend shed loads of cash on an advert that's going to be promoted on a dying medium light TV. Then simply sit back and watch all your hard-earned money disappeared down the toilet. What about advertising with Trigonometry? Why would I do that when

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Pod.co.uk. Advertise with us and we'll get your business cancelled. Sean, let's come back to Ukraine, though, because you said we should have fronted up to Putin more in the past. And look, in 2014, the game was very clear. Anyone who was paying attention would have known this was going to happen later because he was just testing the waters in 14, right? But what about now? Are we doing everything we should be? Are we doing too much, too little?

I think we're doing too little. I think where basically if you look at Russian history any war that Russia has won has been for attrition and this the longer we just where we are right Putin wins

and he knows that he is much more invested than winning that than we are in not losing if you see what I mean we have to show that we're prepared to really push back by energy dependency of some of the major European powers France and particularly Germany means that we just can't

We have lost before the shooting started in some sense. We'd have to be really brave to win anyway. And that's why I say to people who are like, you know, real sort of liberal softies, yeah, they don't think like us. They're not like you. They don't just want everybody to get on and have a lovely time. They want control. And whatever they're going to do with the control, who knows, but they want control.

and ignoring them, assuming that they'll stop, is giving them that control. Well, as a Russian, I can tell you that's 100% true. And by the way, it's probably true of almost everybody in the world outside the Anglosphere, pretty much. Because in the Anglosphere, we have an agreement, and we're comfortable with our agreement, and that's fine. The mind boggled as to why we think everybody else will be comfortable with our agreement. It just, I don't get it. Sean, you've got this lovely down-to-earth manner about you, and I think it comes from, you know, the way you grew up, your experiences, working with gangs. What did you learn when you were working with gangs? Because when most people think of gangs, they think of, you know, I mean, you could say older people, West Side Story, but it's a media image of a gang.

It's not actually what a gang is like. So what I'm going to, I think, how? going to answer to this is the emotional piece and I'll try to give an example be clear a gang is a business yeah it's a business the currency is money the difference is um psychological bullying yeah and high levels of physical risk yeah i remember speaking to the police minister he's not the police minister now kit my house he's moved on but when i realized that he would be good and he started to get it is when he said to me Sean what i'm planning to do is this the business of, he used the words business model of this gang. We were talking about particular gangs in London.

And I said to him, now you're talking. Yeah. Because what we've been focusing on is the crime. That is now you stop a gang. Gangs work because they make money. You know, I remember talking to a kid who's trying to explain to everyone about recruitment to the gang. He said he got these elders who recruit youngers.

And they were like, really? You know, is it because your family's involved? He said, no, that's their job. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, look, people who run gangs find young, attractive people, pay them to go and find young vulnerable people to be foot soldiers. And they were like, but sure, Matt, that's, I said, listen, short of writing a job description, that's exactly what they're doing.

They're driving around in their cars and they think, that kid's good looking, he's got the gift of the gab. If I give him a grand a month, he can make me 10 grand a month. It's pure business. and when you are in and around gangs for a bit some people in the gang understand that they tend to be the sharper ones and tend to rise and the other ones are just there for poor emotional reasons

it can sometimes be dangerous not to join your local gang I was asked to come and speak to a boy in Croydon who had got involved in a life incident crushing at school really good at school never had no plea and they were like what happened so I went to speak to him and I was like this is a real change in your behaviour He's like, Sean, brother, it's the only way to make sure they leave me alone.

I said, well, like, what, does your local gang have beef or something? He said, no, it's not a beef thing. It's not like I'm going out and I have a kid to see me from a state. He's a rare, we let's get him. It's the kids on my estate. They're basically saying, you're with us or you're against us. So it was like much less physically dangerous to be with them. And people need to understand the complexity and quite frankly, the sophistication of gangs.

And when you understand that they're human-driven organizations in the same way that Google or Apple is, yeah, it helps you understand why. Some people will always concentrate on the emotional piece, which is very big. You know, they'll say because it gives you membership of something bigger than you. And all of that's true.

But you need to look at the whole spread of gang. And I'll tell you a small story. I was with David Cameron once, and we were going to a meeting. And I don't want to give the impression I hung around with that. I didn't. You know, when I worked with PM, you could go like months without seeing him like months.

But we went to meet and he sort of asked for briefing what's going on. And we're going to the treasury and I said, like, we're going to get jumped here. He said, why do you say that, Sean? I said, because, you know, when I used to do youth, I used to do gangs, you see? I said, when people are going to jump, you don't really look you in the eye. And these dudes are not looking at an eye. And you're at a PM, like, they're looking at eye. He said, yeah.

And I said, they're all being, like, overly polite and reserved. If you know, I mean, that's when people spring stuff. And we came out at the meeting. And he said, to me, so Sean, looks like we've just been jumps. I told you, David. And he said, where did you get that from? I said, do you know the funny thing? David's about gang warfare?

He said, what do you mean? I said, this is just a different gang. They're very clean-shaven, well-educated. But they're a gang. They're operating in an emotional space to promote their collective belief and forward their collective wants. And that's a gang mentality.

The only thing is you can guarantee none of these people are going to stab you. And he was quite fascinating. He said, it's really funny. And I was trying to show him. that he actually had much more knowledge about gangs than he believed he did. Because Eaton and all that sort of which group you are a member of who undermines who, who promotes who, much of that is gang.

The special and horrific thing about gang is bullying and violence. But most of it, the personal, emotional politics, people would understand. Sean, you talk about disrupting the business of gangs and mostly that's drugs. Oh, yeah. one of the things that I disagreed with you most profoundly about was when you were running for mayor you were very strong on the enforcement and punishment of drug users side of things whereas we've had a lot of people in the show home but people like david nut for example who who argue very strongly that the best way to disrupt that is to decriminalize the use of drugs

to get people who are addicted treatment and to attack that point problem from that end and to take the money out of the business of drugs. What do you say to that? So let's separate yourself. What I did was focus on white-collar drug use. Yeah. So I went on a building site and his gears are there and I was laughing like because he looked like a boy I grew up with. And I said, boy, I grew up with who smokes too much weed and we love. He said anyway, the drug tests all the time because I drive the crane. I said, yeah. And I thought, hold a second. Why do you get drug tested? Yeah. Because you drive to Ukraine and the guy doing everybody's pension doesn't get drug tested. That's not right. And actually

he buys shitload of drugs, which is driving a drug scene in London. He should get tested too. I then found that American banks regularly do it. So I just made that suggestion because for me, it's a matter of parity. It's a matter of fairness. If the working man in the streets getting drug tested, so should the one who works in a bank. That's the thing. And there's lots of what I see as benefits that flow from that because drug use destroys your mental health. It creates a market that my people are actually dying for. You know, they literally get murdered over it. So I feel it's right. Let me tell you why, David, I'm sure he's a lovely man, but let me tell why he's entirely wrong. Two really big reasons. Everywhere in the world, they've liberalised

drugs, yeah. What has happened is the illegal market has not going away. It's actually grown. What's happened is you get a parallel legal and illegal drug market go together. And because drugs are legal here, you then start to lose people into illegal market. Because let's be clear. Imagine you legalized weed in this country, right, marijuana to the uninitiated. The government cannot sell you skunk. They cannot sell you something that's going to blow your mind, destroy your lungs, destroy your mental health and kill you. So what they'll do is... We can sell you vodka. Vodka is more harmful. Yeah. But vodka takes time and vodka had history on its side. Yeah. If you invented liquor tomorrow, yeah, it wouldn't be legalized in a way it is now.

And if you want to talk about alcohol, what's the single most dangerous drug in circulation on the planet today? Legal, a legal drug? Any drug. Legal or otherwise? I would have thought something like heroin, a crystal meth? No, alcohol. Yeah. For every one heroin added it, there's probably 150.

Well, because alcohol is legal in most places. But that's the point. It's legal. That's the point I'm trying to make it's legal. It's legally available. Price pushed down or the rest of that. What would an entrepreneur do if they could legalize? weed, they push the price down. What is the main driver if the only driver around drug consumption

price? So this is another reason for not legalising. Well, I don't go out and get drunk because it's cheaper. I go, I'll go and have a pint because it's a Friday night and I want to hang out with my next. And you can afford, and you can afford a pint. And the reason you drink the amount of pints you drink is because they don't cost 50 quid a time. If they got 50 quid of time, you drink this pints. That's a fact. Okay. Yeah. So the point is this. So you then you legalize, as you get this legal market, you get an illegal market, and the illegal market grows, because people move from something that doesn't really affect them to something that kicks their ass, and drugs is about an effect, so you have to go in that direction.

That's my first thing, yeah, it does not eliminate the legal market, and the legal market has all manner of sex, trade involved, violence involved, non-taxpaying, and I bring up the non-taxpaying bit, because the other thing is, right, I grew up with a lot of people who dealt drugs, like mostly just so. they didn't have to pay for their own. One or two people I knew along the way were proper drug dealers. And I remember bumping into one of them and we were talking about legalisation. And he said to me, Sean, do you think I'm going to stop selling drugs just because it's legal? He said, are you mad? Of course I'm not. He said, I'll just sell more. He says, for instance,

the people who supply me at a very low rate, a legal business could never match what I'm getting for. I'll start selling. I'll start selling. And how many legal businesses are going to question me is where I got my shit from. And I use those words because the words he used, what I got my shit from? No, I don't care. It's making money. Don't care. So come back to the illegal market. We had prohibition in this country and we're a prohibition in the United States. There's been a lot of Hollywood movies made about that. Is there an illegal market and alcohol in America that's worth talking about? No, but what happens with alcohol is very important that you compare apples and apples. What happened over alcohol, it became legal, right? It was

it was then pursued by the biggest, at the time, some of the biggest businesses in the world, it pushed the price down so far, it became culturally acceptable, and everybody drunk it. Would you want that situation with weed? I'd rather more, I'd rather people smoke weed than drank alcohol, that's for sure.

That's a whole other debate, but the point is, alcohol is much less physically effective, defective rather than weed. There's people now watching this who have a glass of wine every night it probably make them live longer, yeah? There's people who watch it now who collect whiskey,

drink the whiskey, happy, fine. There's very few people who smoke weed where it hasn't had an effect on them. There's very few people who smoke the same amount of weed now that they did when they started, yeah? And why would you roll the dice with young people's health? And I give you something that's a bit more of analogy because it's modern. Look at vaping, right? The amount of young people at vaping is skyrocketed.

Skyrocketed. Why? Because it's cheap because it's marketed to them. Marketed to them. They can get hold of it. And let's be clear, it's illegal for them to have, but they can get hold of it. So if you give people cheap legal drugs, they will smoke cheap legal drugs, which destroys the mental health, destroys their lungs, generates mad amounts of crime. Because remember, what we don't know about our is how much crime, you know, theft, burglary, alcohol drives, right? We probably know a little bit less about that than we do about how much, like, weed, class A drugs drives, yeah? You'd massively be ramping that up.

And that's before you get into the real thing for me, mental health. Sean, this is why people go, are you a conservative? I'm not a... Because what I find funny about conservatives is you guys, you're all into human nature until it hits things like this, right? Because here's the human nature argument on this issue is people are always going to do something to change, to alter their state of mind. Agreed. Right?

Agreed. And to me, it's about what is it that you're allowing them to consume, if we're talking about the level of the government, that you're doing? And as you said yourself, alcohol is the most damaging. It's because it's the most widely used. But also, it is much worse for you than something like weed. No, it's not. Yeah, it is. No, it's not.

Of course it is. No, it's not. Physically, it's much worse for you. Alcohol is. No, it's not. Look, to my brother died of alcoholism. My brother drank himself to death. It took a very, very long time for that to happen. And the reason it took so long is because alcohol affects on you as lower level. Basically, your body can do with it for longer. I was a youth worker for 30 years.

I watched boys destroy their mental health by puffing. And see there's two levels of destroying the mental health. One was psychosis. Like, I can, I can think of at least four individuals that I directly worked with who, this is a word, a sort of street term of use, who are now walking up and down a high street with straws up their nose. Like, you know, you know, visibly in mental distress.

Right. And then there's a much, much bigger crowd that lost any ability to push on in life. So they're what I call the four o'clock boys. They stay up to four, sleep to four, only action is to come out and get some weed. And I remember I had one boy in particular, right? I won't, I'll make up a name for him, right, called Sufian.

And he'd got in trouble with the police because he stole something. And Stufian is not a thief. He's not a thief. He wasn't a thief, but he stole something. So opportunity he stole it. And I said to him, that's a crackhead move. He freaked. You can't call me.

We call me a crackhead for me. He freaked out of me. And I said, Sulfian, what is you going to do with that money? Yeah, like, you know, Sean? I'm living in it. I got things to buy, got a little pair, a little rent, and all that. I said, what's you going to do that money? I said, at least 50% of that was going to end up as weed. And he looked at me, right? He's about to give me both barrels. And then he sort of went, yeah, shit, you're right. And I said, that's why I called it a crackhead move.

Because we don't associate weed with poor behaviour, we don't link the poor behaviour that it drives. When someone takes crack, we link it much more easily, yeah? But we leave. And I said to him, look, your income needs. and I go back to something I said probably half an hour ago. One of the ways to raise your income is to lower your outgoings, yeah? Your income needs are significantly higher. Why? Because you smoke weed. I had another girl that I worked with and her mum was constantly trying to kick out her brother, right?

He joined our football team, got into his fitness, stopped puffing. So I started bump to his sister every night and then, much less agitated, much less chatting about her brother. How's going to go? Yeah, it's all right. She's all right, it's good, it's all right. It's all right. It's all right. What's changed?

She said, I don't know. And I said to him, what's changed? He said, yeah, I pay rent. So I said, so I said, boy, you got, because I used to run a job club. So, so, boy, you got a job. He said, no, no, no. But he said, I've just got a little cash. He said, like, I'll go in the house.

I pay rent. My mum, choose me like a big man because I'm paying rent. So I'm cool. She's cool. So I said to me, hey, pay rent. And he said, yeah, because I don't bun anymore. I don't bun. See, and we're not making those connections.

And I make those connections because I saw it happening. And the only difference between me and the people I grew up with is I don't smoke and don't drink. That's all. And I used to ask a couple of questions. Like, why? I mean, aren't you making my point, which is you are voluntarily choosing not to smoke or drink? Drinking is legal. Yeah. And you make my point, right? Human nature. You said, because sometimes they're not into it to human nature, but human nature exists. And the point is this at some point, yeah, you have to intervene because we all pay the bill, yeah, when so many people have a, a, a, a, a breakdown. Like, yeah, I agree with you on the mental health. I agree with you on. I agree with you on that. paying for the mental health, we'll all end up paying for the physical health in the NHS, and we'll all end up paying for the police health. We'll pay. What I don't understand is in a world where alcohol is legal, and it's perfectly acceptable in this country. And as a Russian, even as a Russian, it boggles in my mind how much drink, how much people drink here. But, right? That's perfectly socially acceptable. Your guy from the building site,

who gets drug tested every day could be smashing 10 pint every night. Yeah, but you can't come to work drunk. That's the first thing. You can't come to work drunk, but you can't come to work drunk, But you could be smashing 10 pines every night, waking up the next day and going to work. And he could say to his boss, I've sunk 10 last night and they'd all laugh and high five. But the difference with alcohol is this is a very important point. When somebody compares that, now I know they're desperately just trying to legalise drugs. Alcohol is historic. When we invented alcohol, right, we thought people were witches.

In fact, we invented alcohol before we invented witches. Alcohol is literally ancient. We didn't know. And I go back to your point, which I think, is very true, people will always seek to get out of their mind somehow, right? Some people do base jumping, some people drink whiskey, yeah, right? You can't take it all away. So we historically have alcohol.

Let's try to control that, keep a lid or not in dealing it. We don't need to add to that part. That will just be my take. Don't get me wrong. I've got with a lot of people who puff all the while, yeah, and they're fine. They're fine. To a certain extent, leave them to it. But don't grow that group because an exponential growth in that group means an exponential growth

in people whose lives are destroyed because of it. And, Sean, what would you say? We touched on it briefly about the illegal activity. By legalising these drugs, you take it away from the gangs. You disrupt their business model. And, you know, you can tax it, you make income off it. Surely it's a win-win. No, it isn't.

You legalise it. You don't take it away from the gangs. What you do is give them a much, much bigger market. Nowhere in the world has the illegal market gone away. What you then do is you provide a way. waiting room for their activity. So if I'm smoking, which the government basically give me menful cigarettes, right? I did meet, said, drug dealer in a rave or my local park. And he said, you smoke that crap. I'll give you something that really set you a light. Oh my gosh, yes. You go

there. You go there. And that's before you get into wood drug dealers then try to seek out legitimate business and short-circuit that situation. Like, brough, you see how much you're paying for your weed? Yeah, I'll get you, you feel like that. The tax man don't know. And remember, bro, like, weeds are cash business, yeah? How's the government know how much you put through the doors this week? They ain't got a clue, bro, I'll get you weed, don't buy that. You'll buy stuff from union either. When you can buy stuff from Derek, come, man, Derek set you up properly.

That's what would happen. And anybody who doubts me, look what happens to all the calves in Amsterdam, what happened in Canada, all those places, that's what happens. You know, drug dealers are some of the most inventive, fearless entrepreneurs in the world. It wish it wasn't the way, but they are. They are clever people. And it won't cease to be clever just because you've legalised. So let's find a way to wrap this up then, Sean, in a way that we're not still arguing. But I actually really respect the conversation and enjoy it. How do we solve the problem of? I mean, because, look, from the sort of like middle-class suburbia point of view, the way London looks to a lot of people now is just endless, people running around with fucking machetes. Around the streets of London. London. Like how do we deal with that? Look, it is still a small enough group of people doing that, mostly around street life drug going on. I noticed I didn't use the word gangs. Gang behaviour is

part of it, but it isn't all of it. I don't want anybody to just write off. It's just gangs. There's more to it than that. But the number is still small enough for us to get on top of it. London is still one of the safest biggest cities in the world. That is a fact. But boy, it needs to be safer, for sure, right? Particularly for people who live here. If you live here and you live in certain places in London, it's very easy to get caught up in it. So we do need to work on it.

And the technical approach would be this. We need to have a plan to get more and more weapons off the street. We need to make it that if you've got a knife, you feel that someone's going to find that, you feel nervous about it. That's the first thing, because that just lowers the opportunity for people to be stabbed. It lowers the opportunity for something to escalate

and has stabbing happened. I dealt with a boy recently who had stabbed someone and he said to me, wish he never had his knife on him. I said, why he said, without the knife, Sean, nothing would happen and he said, now I'm sitting in jail like, it's a madness. I said, but you stabbing him, he said, yeah, I know Sean, but he's saying, I'm having to think how I... He said, in a way, Sean, I did it to myself,

which was a mad admission, you know what I mean? And he said that. So that's sort of where I'm coming from there. Like, get those weapons off the street. The other pieces as well, You have certain communities who've been under such pressure for such a long time, who has talked about as victims, who have been victimized, so have become victims. We need to give them a break.

And a break generally means their young people having some kind of future. And I want to be really clear about it. It's not youth work. I've been a youth worker for 30 years. In my opinion, it's employment. There is no silver bullet to this. Youth work is brilliant. I believe in youth work.

I've given more than half my life over to youth work, yeah. But youth work is like an entertainment. Yes, it can do serious things. I've done family therapy. I've run job clubs. It can do serious things. But what you want is people to be independent of youth work. If you look at the communities doing the best in London,

their children don't do youth work. Don't go to youth work. They do other things. So youth work needs to be as a channel to job. And I just say a job. A job is not be all and end or anything, but it does some very important things. It gives people a wider network.

It gives them access to finance, and it's wonderful for their confidence. I've talked about white middle class. Let's be very clear. I respect the middle classes because what they do is take responsibility, work. And even the guilt part is them trying to sort of say to people, we want to help, we've done well, we want to see you do well, I get it. But ask yourself this. Are you preventing a group of people developing the skills to have something to teach their children?

I mean, are you trying to parachute yourselves in? You know what I mean? How comes poor immigrant communities have done completely well before they got here? Like our parents done a massive thing making the transition here. It's a massive thing. They're strong communities.

What they need is opportunity. They don't need to be patronised. They need an opportunity. And then when you talk about opportunity, people then have to realize equality of opportunity is different to a quality of outcome. Equality of outcome is impossible.

You're right. You know, your cameraman's a better cameraman than me. He will get that cameraman job. You're right. So what you're trying to do is give people some kind of roadmap to some kind of opportunity that they believe and they can move on. Because what that does, that transforms their community over the long term. And then I have things that I'm particularly passionate about that other people are somewhere on a spectrum. I think, for instance, the prevalence of marriage needs to be up. And someone said, it's just a piece of baby. And yeah, it is just a piece of baby. And yeah, it is just a piece of but it is a fact that married people live longer are happier, their children have better than they are, is a fact. The institution of marriage does something to somebody's expectations and their output, so we should do more than that. And of course, where children are concerned, married people make more money, you know, even more than cohabiting people, and married people break up three times less than cohabiting people. That's really important. And when you speak to children, the biggest thing that drives their mental health is their orientation and their parents. Their parents together, their mental health is bad. That's not my opinion. It happens to be a fact.

And I don't say that to make people feel bad. I don't say that to people have to stay together. Don't stay together. One of the things I think that makes marriage valuable is no fault divorce. If I had a magic wand, one of the first things I'd fix is you should be able to divorce someone and don't have to find who was at fault. You shouldn't stay people if you don't want to. But if more people had an expectation to stay together, more people would stay together. It's going to sound bizarre, but Finland have shown us that. The government is supporting marriage in many ways. Their marriage rates have gone through the roof and their social output is also going through the roof. But that's just something that I'm, remember, I come from a single parent family.

So that's, and I've watched my community just be destroyed by drugs and, and, and poor educational attainment and, and gangs and fatherlessness. And my overriding. thing I'd say last is do not rely on politicians to fix your world. I know you think you're not, but every time you ask what the government are doing, that's basically doing that. Try to find something that

in your personal life, in your family life and your broader community life, does something positive and beyond that, join a civic organization, a charity, a think tank that's doing the thinking. That's how we think the country, not waiting for politicians. Politicians are very important. They have something to do

and we have the right to push and cajole them to do it and do that. But don't rely on that. And the last thing I'd say is be wary of what you read and who you believe. One of the best conversations I've had recently is a woman who only knows about me, in her words, through the Guardian. So we had this long conversation, you know, up and down, we disagreed, we agreed. I mean, we literally hugged at the bus stop. She said, oh, it's been stimulated, you know.

She said you're a teeny bit wrong about it. I said, I know your TV. I mean, we high-fired, hugged. It was wonderful. And she said, now I know where I know your name. I read about you. She said, you're the guy I ran from the Mayor of London. So remember, we spoke for like a clear 25 minutes before we reached that point.

And she said, you're nothing like how they painted you in the press. And the one thing I'd say to the country, we are being so handled by the press. Now, of course, I'm about to tell you what being particularly handled by the left-wing press, that that's my particular sort of orientation but we've been handled by the press and the best people in the world the most formative people in the world are the people who question

the people who test not cynics but triers and I met a Liverpoolian the other day and he gave me a term GLT and I was like what's that he said God loves a tryer he said get out there and keep trying and that's what you've got to do

you're trying to grow your your intellect your physical self your relationships around you grow the young people around you and so I keep having the last thing this is my last last one said to me you know Sean you did you for years what what what's the best thing you can do for a young person inspire them a young person who's inspired will never need pushing never need and you don't know and I'm trying to do my own son now and my daughter it's been a bit easier with my daughter because she's 15 she's got a clear vision

of the world my son's only 13 but if you have any young people in your world help them figure out what they like and what they enjoy, slightly two different things, because enjoy, for me, has a little bit more activity, you're doing a thing, because if you can help a child figure that out, you can help them build a future. You know, you can get them to turn up for themselves. But I'm going to stop because I just keep going. Sean, it's been an absolute pressure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that? I am Sean Bailey AM on Twitter. I'm on Instagram.

My Twitter has a little bit of politics on it because, you know, I'm in politics. My Instagram is just me and my kids doing stuff. But it's much more funny. I'm nice action there. And I'm out. I'm in the press. I do G.B. News regularly. I'm on a Dan Wooden show.

I'm very regularly. And I just try to keep in the public eye and have the conversation. And I'm constantly looking for ways to help people be independent. That for me is the goal. Well, Sean, we're going to ask you a couple of questions for all my supporters that only they will get to see. But as always, the last question we always ask on the show is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? The state of education.

We are not, we use school to train and to be training is different to education. And we no longer use university to discuss. We are teaching our children to define themselves as one single thing and then to hate anybody that isn't them. And that is the quickest way to destroy a country. Very well said. Sean, thank you so much for coming on, and thank you for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or a show.

All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. Will Sean be standing for mayor again? He did better than expected last time. Or will he be looking to run for MP, maybe replacing Brosendell?