[laughs]

Uh, look, there, there's, there's, there's many factors.

The parents not supporting the teacher.

The moment a kid does something bad in the classroom, misbehaves, whatever, very frequently when you get the parents in, the parents will grill you and back the kid, number one.

Number two, teachers don't really have any power over children, so if a kid behave-- misbehaves, they misbehave in the knowledge that nothing will happen to them very frequently.

Also, as well, look, there's a lot of fantasy and a, and a lot of untruths being spoken about teaching, where people seem to think that teaching is just about going in, inspiring a class, and that's it.

But the reality is, unless you have structure, unless you have proper behavior management policies in place, kids aren't going to be able to flourish.

What, what do you make of that, Francis, and what can be done about that?

way.

Thank you very much.

And it goes right into the history of the Green Party, how it's turned from being a party which was focused on environmental causes to something completely different and, in my opinion, far more sinister.

You can go and check that out there.

So they've defected to the Green Party.

And the Green Party are effectively left-wing populists.

That's what it is.

nose.

Right.

Well, look, I think Andy Burnham is right now at the peak of his popularity.

And the reason he's at the peak of his popularity is because he hasn't brought in any discernible policies.

Because the moment you start doing that, that's when you're going to start alienating the party and the public.

But more pertinently for him, it's the party.

Because what you have currently with Labour is you have this broad coalition of people, which ranges right the way from... hyper-liberal progressives on the far left.

Also, you've got the Islamic vote, right the way through to centrist dads who are a little bit more right of centre than you, Geoffrey.

He's just doing the basics quite well for now, right?

It's just kind of totally counterintuitive, but it shows how protective people are about reputations and perception and that kind of thing.

But it's also...

And I'm going to sound like a bit of...

Can I swear? I'd rather you didn't, but if you must.

Right, OK, OK. Look...

Say flip.

OK, I'm going to sound rather arrogant here, but when they did it, I was like, do you know who I am? Like, this is a literal worse person to do this to.

None of them dared think outside the box.

So, you know.

Yeah.

Look, but it's...

And I'm so grateful that we've got each other because as the show has got bigger, as we've said things, we've made the occasional misstep, whatever that may be, both him and me, just the ability to go, mate, just what's going on? Is this a mistake? Did I misplay? I said the thing that I said, was that the wrong thing to say? Why was it the wrong thing? Can you please explain to me? Just that, have that ability to just have a back and forth with someone keeps you sane.

And I look at all you guys, like yourself, Chris Williamson, Joe Rogan, And I have a real deep admiration for you because I don't know how you do it, mate.

I don't know if I could do what you do on your own.

It's a profoundly lonely job in some ways where you're always kind of looking over your shoulder and then people are going to be, and they've got a point.

What kind of person? What makes someone do that? I have to think that most people wouldn't do that and weren't doing that, but there were people doing it, weren't there?

Do you agree with that argument?

Do, do I agree with that argument? I think it's, I, I agree with one facet of it, but, but I think it runs deeper.

I think that after 14 years of a conservative government, which in the words of Kemi Badenoch, talked right, governed left, when people said time and time again, democratically, we want immigration lowered, when they voted for Brexit, and Brexit was tr- was, let's be honest, it was, they tried to throttle it, they tried to thwart it, they tried to stop it.

People are very, very, very angry.

And by the way, this comes from someone who voted remain.

But when the, when the ref- results of the referendum came in, I was like, "Well, people voted against b- uh, the European Union.

I have to accept it, and we move on because that's democracy." Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in my camp, as it were, who didn't agree with that, and what they tried to do is they tried to derail a democratic vote.

My prediction is he's still going to end up almost as hated as Starmer.

Do you think that there is an element of hypocrisy or double standards here? Or do you think Nick's got a point that he does need to clean up his act to some extent?

Two things can be true at once.

What I will say is, number one, we need to let the investigation take its course.

And then we will deal with the results of that investigation, whatever they find.

If they think that Nigel has done something wrong, then he should be punished.

And if he hasn't done anything wrong, then he should be allowed to carry on his political career.

I also think as well, you know, those who, shall we say, live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

While we're on the subject of state regulation of free speech more broadly, shall we talk a little bit about these plans which were unveiled recently by the Labour government to effectively try and boost public service media, so your BBCs, your Channel 4s and so on and so forth, on YouTube, on social media, the idea being that particularly in times of crisis, in times of unrest, in times of political controversy... that a thumb would be put on the algorithmic scale to make sure that the hello bbc and channel 4 news were being put into people's news feeds were propping up prominently in order to combat the misinformation that is supposedly swirling and warping the minds of of voters out there this is something they put out to consultation youtube clearly aren't particularly happy about it encouraging their own content creators to make their voices heard on all of this but uh Francis, what have you made of this kind of recent part of the of the labor war on quote misinformation that we've seen?

Yeah.

So yeah, let's start with that.

So let's talk about Batley Grammar School.

Um, this was a case a few years back, whereas, where a teacher was using, uh, the, an, an image of Muhammad in order to explain, uh, the no- ex- how to, how to put it, to explain, um...

I'm trying to think the, the best way of putting it.

So i- he was t- he was talking about forbidden images essentially, and he was... and he used an image of Muhammad.

There was an uproar about it.

Well, they're not-

Well, then I-

...

it feels as if in the UK there's these kind of tripwires, and you know where the tripwires are.

And you know that if you get too close and it goes off, there's very real repercussions for you, for your friends, for your family, and I, and I think we all know that.

And the worry, as the Batley Grammar case highlights, is that with the right set of circumstances at the right moment, y- your life could be changed forever.

Mm.

A swastika on the bagel shop.

And you think to yourself, our response and our attitude, what does that actually tell us as... about our society? And what does it actually tell you about the trajectory of where we're going? And what does it actually tell you about who we are as a people? It's not like we don't understand what, what happens when anti-Semitism rises.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look, uh, what we're talking about here, I think are different things.

You talk about...

You're talking about limits.

What are the limits within society, and the responsibilities for your show? Both myself and Konstantin, the, the more our platform...

And we s- we talk about this a lot.

Yeah.

Tell, tell us what you did.

So the way that we talk about teaching is, like a lot of things in our society, is fundamentally dishonest.

The reality is when you're a teacher is you need to be the top dog in the classroom.

You need to be what the people, the manosphere would say the alpha in the roomOtherwise, if they're not gonna listen to you, if they're not gonna follow your instructions, what you're gonna have is chaos.

And if you have chaos in the classroom, not only are kids not safe, but fundamentally they won't learn, and they'll, they'll-- you're just, everybody's just wasting their time.

So I knew then when I walked into that classroom, I had to be the number one.

I had to ma- assert my authority if there was to be any chance of turning this class round, because they had a teacher in there for several months who was failing, and as a result of that, the bond between teacher and student had fundamentally broken.

Yeah.

... where do you fall on this issue?

I mean, to me, the problem is, is once you inject that idea into society, then people are going to see it everywhere.

I mean, that's just the reality of it.

And this idea that you judge people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character, is an incredibly dangerous path to go down.

And it doesn't matter in what field it is.

Now, obviously, the, the Henry Novak case is horrifying.

It's horrifying in what it exposed about the police, but it's horrifying be- also due to the nature of the crime itself, and it's horrifying because the victim was so young.

... why should people not become teachers if it gives you that opportunity to make a difference in that manner?

Hmm

...

in parts of East London where there was real deprivation.

So when we talked, uh, there was never really that much wokeism because most of our kids were on free school meals.

Most of the kids, if they got into school, it was an achievement.

One of the kids that I taught, this was in 2008 when I was actually, I didn't, uh, I was a teaching assistant at the time.

It was in a school in Balham in South London, and one of the boys was friends with a boy called Billy Cox.

Mm.

Mm.

White working-class men are all like this.

You know, straight white males are all like this.

Black men are all like this.

And you're going, hang on, that is the most stupid way of thinking.

And this is what I'm very grateful for teaching because what it taught me is that, and was constantly reinforced to me, is number one, people are individuals.

We all know that, but you need to be reminded of these things 'cause of the way we've been gaslit in society.

Yeah.

All good.

You know, a, a friend of mine told me this story about how he was in a pub in London preparing for a gig.

And he was just having a drink, and there was this crazy dude next to him with, like, a pile of papers, like talking to himself with wild hair and just putting ...

He's like, "Fuck, man.

There's another homeless dude.

Like, so annoying.

Like, why is he in the pub?" And he was just, kept trying to write, and the guy was like...

Discipline

They have to behave.

Yeah.

They, they have to behave.

They can't do what Maduro did.

And what's interesting about when Maduro was captured is nobody really mentioned that much about his wife.

But a lot of people say that his wife was the brains behind the operation because Maduro, there's clips of him that went viral on TikTok and Instagram and on Twitter as well, where he was doing speeches, and he had to do basic mental arithmetic, and he couldn't do it.

This guy was a bus driver.

[laughs]

And then other people, like maybe J.K. Rowling, Graham Linehan, have had it so hard from people and been cancelled in a sense.

It's a really good question, Andrew.

I think there's a couple of factors here at play.

Number one...

the issue of sex is actually really important.

If you are a woman talking about this, you are going to get far more flak than if you're a man.

For the simple reason is that women have less of a physical presence.

They kicked him out of the

house.

Yeah.

I mean, his superpower, and I think this is everyone's superpower, actually, is he doesn't pretend.

I mean, he plays the sort of bumbling English guy to a certain degree, but that is pretty much who Louis Theroux is.

When you see him interviewed, that is Louis Theroux, really.

Yeah.

What's your issue with Hollywood at the moment?

Uh.

Now you think to yourself, "Right, if you classify Nigel Farage and the people who vote Reform in the UK, which may well win the general election, which may well be the biggest political party, and already represents a sizable portion of the UK, you're effectively advocating violence." And it's incitement to violence as far as I'm concerned.

But because she's on the far left, she's deemed to be a good person, that's somehow okay.

Whereas if Nigel said something like that along those lines, you know that people would be like, "This is a fascist, this is evil, this is disgusting, you shouldn't say that."

Yeah.

But you know, in different, like, I remember in Venezuela, I ...

This is quite a depressing story, but in p- places like South America, they are far more comfortable with death than we are.

Like, I remember, I met this girl at this party when I was 18 years old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, but you know, look, I remember when I was teaching, and I was, I was teaching in schools that were super deprived, schools that where the kids, a lot of them would come to school, they didn't have food in their bellies, et cetera, et cetera.

And there was a, there's a agency in the UK called CAMHS, which is Child and Adult, uh, Child and Mental Health Services, and I remember that we had so many kids who had problems, psychological problems, particularly if you grow up poor, deprived, you know, you'd seen horrible stuff when you were a kid.

You had, you know, maybe, like, a brother who got involved in gangs, who's now in prison, a father who was never there.

There were so many kids who had this need and that you had, they had conditions which were undiagnosed, whether it's something like dyslexia or, like, your brother got, was murdered, you had some form of PTSD, and you had this, you know, this agency which brought counselors in, which brought s- psychologists in and psychiatrists who were experts at dealing with kids.

And I just remember because of austerity, you know, this t- this agency got cut after cut after cut after cut.

It was totally unavoidable, a totally avoidable war, and they wanted to start one.