Speaker 1The Telegraph He's a man without a plan. Was Andy Burnham's performance at PMQs his worst yet?
Speaker 2The PM gets full marks for answering more questions and in quicker fashion, but it was shallow and full of fumbles and stumbles.
Speaker 1Well, things can only get better, right?
Speaker 2He doesn't have a plan. And people might find it very endearing. People might think, oh, he's one of us. Look, he struggles his way through this. But no, I'm sorry. I think the country's crying out for a statesman who can string a sentence together. Now, Tim, we have the Burnham bingo card, which we like to consult every time PMQs takes place. And we've noticed something. We've noticed that in campaign mode, we had things like mentioning Oasis and the B Network and Fair Deals and Devolution and the 70s and Thatcher. And actually, we've now moved into a new era where rather than campaigning, the prime minister is actually expected to govern the country, which seems to be proving quite difficult for him. And that we need to replace some of these with things like National Care Service. Yes. A 10-year plan, Louise Casey. But the trouble is that even if we did tick them off the list, he can't tick these off his list because he's claiming to have done stuff that hasn't actually happened.
Speaker 1Yes. I was looking forward to mass marketing these. Burnham bingo cards and making a lot of money out of them. And as of today, we could cross off references Thatcher. He did do that. We could say devolution. That did come up. Look at what we did in Manchester. There was a question about trams. But it is interesting how some of the language has changed. But as you say, it is not an evolution from the language of campaigning to the language of government. It is an evolution from campaigning to almost cricket silence.
Speaker 2Yes. Japanese silence, you could call it. Somebody once described Boris Johnson in this vein during COVID. Somebody who had been extremely decisive during the campaign with the help of Dominic Cummings and others obviously wins a decisive victory in 2019. Then when put on the spot of actually having to run things, seemed to be caught in some kind of limbo. And so what would happen apparently at cabinet meetings, is that he'd go around listening to everyone. Yes. And then everyone would expect him to then take the call. I mean, we're used to this, aren't we? When we're in conferences in news and you turn to the editor and the editor says, right, well, I want to do this, this and this. Yes. And what they were left with the rest of the cabinet was what was described as a Japanese silence.
Speaker 1And a good editor or boss usually goes into that room already knowing what they want to do. Exactly. They listened. They are willing and open to be persuaded. If they're wrong, they take advice. But a good boss knows their own mind. And very often operates on a kind of prejudice and a raw instinct. This is what my people want. So you instantly reject certain ideas out of hand because that's not what our voters want. But you know your own mind. Now, we could just run through this PMQs and point out all the stylistic embarrassments. The constant erring and umming, getting words wrong, mixing up East and West Scotland. Here is one little bit, which is him talking about events in Poland.
Speaker 3The UK stands with the people of Poland, as I've assured Prime Minister Tusk.
Speaker 1Now, you can understand you've only just become Prime Minister. You're not on top of where Poland is or who runs it. OK, fine. I get that. I get that. But what we want to establish here, this is our thesis, is that all of this muddle, this strange, vacuous, ambling quagmire, this inequality to Andy Burnham, actually reflects the complete absence of a plan.
Speaker 2But no, I'm sorry. And so this constant going on about a 10-year plan would be rather more convincing, were it not for the revelation, and this is what Kemi Badenoch started with in her inquisition, across the dispatch box, if it wasn't for the revelation that, actually, Burnham is having to bring in consultants to help him with his plan.
Speaker 1Let's hear that clip.
Speaker 4Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister entered Downing Street promising a 10-year plan to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism. Is it really true he has so little vision for this country, he needs the Boston Consulting Group to write it for him? Do you actually
Speaker 2have a handle on what consultants actually do? Because my impression of them, and I'm so sorry, do write in. If you are a management consultant or any kind of consultant, except a medical one, I know what you do, write in and tell us what you do. Because my impression is of it, and I think this is a telegraphian view, that it is people paid a lot of money to state the bleeding obvious.
Speaker 1Yes. I've always thought management consultants are people who come in, look around the office, say, change the curtains, change the carpet, sack half the staff, and you're done. Yeah, exactly. And one of the joys of AI is they themselves are now losing their jobs. Right. Because you can just AI how to run my business better. You don't need someone to come in, unless you're the government. Yes. In which case, of course, you need the personal touch. And it is a very personal touch. Because the man who works for Boston Consultancy Group is someone called James Purnell. Ah. Former minister under New Labour. Yeah. Then worked for the BBC, now works for Boston, and a best mate of. Of the prime minister.
Speaker 2How cosy. Isn't it amazing the incestuousness of the Labour government? Yes. It never ceases to amaze me that either all married to each other, all running businesses to get. Well, they don't run businesses, do they? Let's be perfectly honest. Let's put it this way. All have previously had roles in think tanks together or in unions. I mean, it's just one big love-in over at Labour, isn't it?
Speaker 1Yeah. But you could ask, if you are left-wing and you're motored by progressive instincts and by yourself. If you have a sense of class struggle and history, why do you require a super posh consultancy group to come in and help you to write your 10-year plan? Now, the government has insisted they only use one consultant from this group. But the left of the party feels that is one too many. Because if the plan is to nationalise everything, regulate and raise taxes, he'd only be bringing in one of these nasty capitalist consultancy firms. As for the state of the plan itself, which is at the heart of Kemmy Badenoch's. That's a good question. As I reported here last week, the government was considering kicking the plan out to the new year and not presenting it before Christmas. If they had done that, it would have been very embarrassing because it would have meant that they were conceding that Annie Burnham had been elected without a plan and even with several weeks in office, couldn't cook up something. But, embarrassed by that, they have now confirmed, the Prime Minister has confirmed, that the plan will be announced prior to Christmas. But, it can't. It can't contain all the spending commitments that would make the plan worth having. We are going to get Alan Milburn's report on NEETs and reform of getting young people into work, sure.
Speaker 2We're getting that next week and we'll be covering it on The Daily Tea.
Speaker 1But here was a crucial slip from the Prime Minister when he talked about what will be in the plan.
Speaker 3Baroness Casey is conducting her review and can I urge him to put that point to Baroness Casey's review and I further can say we'll have cross-party talks on the. On this very issue, adult social care before the end of the year.
Speaker 1But Baroness Casey is not due to report on the state of social care until next year. And when social care reform was sold to us a few weeks ago, you remember the Prime Minister in a care home talking to all those people? Yes. He said this is a bipartisan project. I'm going to be led by the evidence and I'm going to invite her to tell me what we should do and then I'll have a big conversation about whether or not we do it. In other words, it's not a plan.
Speaker 2No, it's just an idea. It's a concept. It's an ambition.
Speaker 1But it's his only idea.
Speaker 2But can I also just to hark back to our how the editor runs a newspaper analogy because that's all we know. The other thing that happens is that just as an editor knows what the headlines are or what he wants them to be in advance in a way, he knows the direction of travel of his media organisation. The reporters also come armed with ideas and notebooks full of stories, right? Yes, of course. My other problem with this let's bring in Boston Consulting is shouldn't the consultants in all this be your cabinet ministers? Do any of them have any ideas at all as to how to run the country? And again, back to the conservative criticism of them is that they're all woefully inexperienced have never run anything in their lives and completely out of their depths. You do actually look at that front bench and I appreciate them on the other side of the fence. So I probably would say this, wouldn't I? But I'm not sure I've seen a bunch of more inadequate looking people in my life. Right. I don't have that much confidence in any of them.
Speaker 1No, you don't mean your good friend, Bridget Philipson, who was taking questions as Women and Equalities Minister beforehand and she looked very happy to be able to say that Russell Brand, a man, had been sent to jail. One down, 36 million to go.
Speaker 2That's right. She may be cut from the all-men, a potential rapist cloth. I think she did. You'll remember it, won't you, from Shirley? Because it's Alison Steadman's character who comes out with that phrase. And then Shirley Valentine goes, even the Pope? And Steadman goes. goes, especially the public. But listen, Bridget aside, and I think actually Lucy Powell's rather woeful performance so far as education secretary actually makes Philipson look like some kind of political genius. But the point is, you're having to go outside even cabinet to try and formulate a plan. And I think that's quite disturbing. So we have that going on in the background.
Speaker 1Meanwhile, the head of the civil service gave a big speech yesterday, which the prime minister attended, in which she laid out her plans for reforming the civil service. So as Kemi pointed out, this is someone telling you what should be done. By the way, this all has shades of Keir Starmer, right? Doesn't answer the questions at PMQs, doesn't have a plan. And also, as the prime minister did today, keeps referring to due process. So when Kemi Badenock asked about the fate of Rosebank, jackdoor drilling has been permitted. Rosebank still has not been. He kept referring to it as a quasi
Speaker 2legal process. Well, that's just an impressive way of kicking a can down the road.
Speaker 1It's exactly what it's exactly what Keir Starmer said. And the thing is, whenever ministers say that, you can tell they're aroused by the legal bit of the phrase. But the more important one is quasi. Yes, exactly. The point being that, again, there is a political decision to be made, because as Kemi noted, this government has greenlit drilling. In fact, it's going to court to be able to drill around the Falklands. Yes. But it insists upon respecting the quasi legal process when it comes to drilling in the North
Speaker 2Sea. And why is that? And we come back to the central premise of this podcast. It is because, first of all, Andy Burnham appears to be obsessed with focus grouping any decision that he doesn't actually end up making. There's the irony. Let's go and put it out to focus groups, see what they think. Then tinker around the edges, but not actually take a decision. Then say to people apparently internally, oh, well, I can't take a decision on drill, baby drill, because of the optics, in inverted commas. So then you've got a degree of pandering to both Ed Miliband and indeed his replacement, Miata Fanbula, at the Department for Energy and all the rest of it. So we're basically going around in circles. And again, what makes this even more astonishing, and you're right to say it's just continuity starmer, this man has got a massive majority. Yes. And yet still he seems to be. Completely frozen and unable to really move on anything. So he keeps on saying he's taken the big decisions. At one point, he said in PMQs, that he had stopped the boats.
Speaker 1Yeah. What? He also claimed that this was one of the most popular budgets of our lifetime. Oh, yes. I don't know what that's based on. But the key thing being there was nothing in that budget. Kemi may not describe it as a do-nothing budget.
Speaker 2It was the most popular budget of that lunchtime. I mean, that's just about it. Come on. What are
Speaker 1you talking about? It didn't have anything in it. You're right. He has a massive majority. But you do think, looking at them, that they're always thinking ahead to what happens to that majority next. And that's where the Lib Dems come in. Ugh. Now, if we were. But this is important. If we were to have a Lib Dem bingo card, there would be just two words on it.
Speaker 2Well, funny enough, Tim, Graham Pack, regular correspondent to The Daily Tea, has provided us with a Lib Dem bingo card.
Speaker 1Uh-huh. Would you like to reveal what is written on the grid? OK. The words include Trump, E-U. Trump, E-U. Trump, E-U. Trump, E-U. It's just Trump and E-U.
Speaker 2Also, I love that Graham is providing for several mentions, not just one, even though Davey's only granted two questions.
Speaker 1And it's bigger than a normal bingo card, too. It's just those two. Now, this week, he didn't directly reference Trump, but he did a little bit by talking about the politics of race. It's in the same ballpark, right? And what he was referring to here is the controversy that we've discussed on this show. It's not much of a controversy. Really, it's just a personal opinion of Suella Braverman's that being English has a racial component, that she is not English because she is descended from people from Asia or
Speaker 2whatever. And to be fair, we had somebody point out to us that if you go on the census website and if you try to enter your ethnicity and your nationality as Asian English, there isn't a drop-down box for that. There's only a drop-down box for Asian British.
Speaker 1Yes. Yes. So, Josh Babarindi, the Lib Dem. Lib Dem MP has said, "You should be able to do that. You should be able to tick a box saying I am black English or Asian English." His point being that he is ethnically English. He just happens to be a black English person. Now, of course, the counter argument to this is pull the other one. What you're saying, therefore, is that Englishness is not a distinct ethnic or racial category. And by insisting that people can be black and Asian, you're saying that the historic English peoples. Yes. do not have that unique claim to that particular label. This is angels on the head of a pin. Yes, it is. And I go back to. And I know when I say this sort of thing, people just think I'm running away from the question with a kind of bourgeois affected horror. I genuinely just don't care. No. I just don't care, but.
Speaker 2Well, we have spent quite a lot of time on it just because it speaks to a wider piece. And I went to Katherine Birbalsingh's book launch last night, and she's launched this new book saying diversity. And she said that diversity is not a strength. And her argument is unity is a strength across all class, ethnic, and other barriers. Well, yeah. And she made the point, just to be clear, that obviously there are distinct socialist identitarians on the left and ethno-nationalists on the right, and that actually we should avoid both extremes.
Speaker 1Woke left and woke right. Exactly. Is the point. To all of this argument, I just want to say I'm not convinced that a lot of people having this debate know what the word ethnicity means. It is not a racial word. It does not mean race. It encompasses culture, language, history. Anyway, I don't even want to discuss this. No, fine. But the Lib Dems have found extra life by jumping on this issue and making this point about can we rewrite the census? And of course, Ed Davey then raises it at PMQs, and you could see Andy Burnham light up when it was mentioned. Oh, he loves this kind of stuff. Why? Because one, it's a chance to have a fight with the far right, and second, and most importantly, it is. It's free. Yes. And when your national debt is over three trillion pounds, when public sector borrowing is up, when growth is sluggish, the one thing you really want as a socialist is something you can do that makes you look virtuous, that doesn't cost any money, and adding an extra box to the census just absolutely does that for you.
Speaker 2It ticks the box. But listen, this is also what he will class as a little fix. It's a little fix. Yes. It will make your life that little bit better. A little bit better. So it's the clamping down on people playing loud music on transport. It's give us five minutes longer to park in a private car park.
Speaker 1You can pay two pounds to sit on a quiet bus and fill in your census.
Speaker 2Help us find the end of the sellotape.
Speaker 1It's like last of the summer wine.
Speaker 2Make tomato ketchup bottles more functional.
Speaker 1I can hear the Hovis music, the Hovis ad music, while people are sitting on their cheap buses in silence, filling out their census. So the first thing the Lib Dems raise. Is the politics of identity. That's free. He'll have that.
Speaker 2By the way, did you notice that he did use that opportunity to suck up to Kemi Badenock by saying, you know, the conservative leader should be credited with handling it. Because he is, I know he's basically in bed with Burnham, but he's keeping, I don't know, he's sort of keeping a sort of pillow and duvet available for Kemi Badenock, if at the end of the day, the numbers fall that he has to actually do a deal with the Tories.
Speaker 1Yeah. And he calls the Lib Dems as the main opposition to reform, which is a way of saying to Trump and the global far right. So that's the first one. And again, as I say, so Burnham's thinking forward to a future coalition, all racial politics. I can do that with the Lib Dems. And then the second thing was the EU. Will he rejoin the single market? And Burnham's answer on this, I think was very significant.
Speaker 5So will the prime minister do the single biggest thing to cut welfare? And help young people into work, grow the economy by joining the single market?
Speaker 3Prime Minister. Well, I know is the answer to that today, Mr. Speaker, we are, we are honouring our manifesto to have deeper ties. There is the prospect of a deal with Europe that could add up to 0.4% to GDP.
Speaker 1Today. Today. So maybe tomorrow. Indeed. Maybe tomorrow, in which case that's something Ed Davey can work with. It's something green voters can vote for. It's a very, it's not exactly clever, it's so simplistic, but it's a signalling to soft left remainer voters, vote Labour and maybe your dreams will come true.
Speaker 2Yeah. Although they're unlikely to, aren't they, because so far we've got a calculation that any EU reset, which is happening at this big summit on November the 20th, the greatest day of Andy's life. Andy Burnham's life, seemingly, is going to cost us 25 billion over the next decade. And by the way, if we do rejoin the EU, it's probably going to cost us about 40 billion a year. Yes. Which won't pass any tests, not to make a field one or any one.
Speaker 1Point number 106, why he's the same as Keir Starmer, by the way, we should be grateful we even saw him today because he's flying off to the pointless COP summit to discuss the fate of the earth in Turkey. And then after that, he's going to a European summit in Dublin. I don't forget.
Speaker 2He'll be flying from Manchester to London to take the connecting.
Speaker 1I mean, I think I, you know, wine, wine, just number 10 north, I think we're going to get get number 10 Ankara. Yes. Number 10 Abu Dhabi. Number 10 Brussels. Let's just have a number 10 anyway because he's hardly ever here.
Speaker 2By the way, Davy was a bit sly, wasn't he? Because he tried to dress up a question about the EU by cloaking it in a question about welfare, but actually it had nothing really to do with welfare. And by the way.
Speaker 1Oh, it's young people. It's young people. The implication being, by the way, you won't find a job here. Why don't you go over there?
Speaker 2Well, he was going about it's all the Conservatives' fault and it's all down to the jobs tax and we've got to bring the welfare bill down. And then, of course, I just wanted to make sure I hadn't gone completely doolally and I just checked, well, how did the Lim Dems vote when it came to cutting the welfare bill in July 2025? Yes. They voted against it, Tim. Yes. Shock, horror. We've got to bring the welfare bill down, but when actually invited to bring the welfare bill down, of course, we're not going to do that. Yeah. It's so disingenuous, isn't it?
Speaker 1So, as you've mentioned it, Mr. Davey, maybe I will rewrite the census. As you've mentioned it, Mr. Davey, maybe I will rejoin the single market. What a good idea. And as you've mentioned it, Kevin Badenock, maybe I will reform welfare in a way that actually spends more money and is more generous and enlarges the state. In each of these issues, you have the horrible growing suspicion that he has only thought about it when it came up. Yes. And that his answers are essentially to affirm what has just been said to him
Speaker 2without any clear plan of how he would get there. He resembles a GCSE drama student who isn't quite across his lines. Do you know what I mean? Is there somebody, Louise Haig, like giving him prompts off stage? And also, can we just talk about, oh, bless him, sexy Jezza, Compo, Jeremy Corbyn, who.
Speaker 1Lest we forget the former leader of the Labour Party.
Speaker 2He's wearing a white poppy, Tim. Goodness me. There's always one.
Speaker 1There's always one. And ironically, the correct word rhymes with banker.
Speaker 2Yes, it does. He raised Gaza.
Speaker 1He raised Gaza. Of course he raised Gaza.
Speaker 2On behalf of the good people of Islington North. Right. And horrible things. Because that is their key concern right now.
Speaker 1Horrible things have happened and are still happening in Gaza. He has every right to raise it. Yes. But the presence of the white poppy, it just, it drives me mad.
Speaker 2Again, I looked that up and I remembered the debate back in the day about whether he would wear a white or white poppy. Or red poppy to the cenotaph. And a Labour Party spokesman had to confirm that he would indeed wear a red one. But now he's reverted to white. We also had his old mate, Diane Abbott, stand up and I think credit her own mother with. Oh, building the NHS. The entire construction of the NHS.
Speaker 1Brick. Bri Brick.
Speaker 2Her mother was a nurse and we commend her for her service and her duty. But at the same time, I'm not sure whether she was alongside Bevan. Yes. Or indeed digging the foundations of Guy's and St Thomas'. I was on a train
Speaker 1this morning. It might have been nationalised. It was running late. And it was full of the usual farmyard noises of a morning commuter train. People watching telly loudly, having loud conversations, people listening loudly to music through their headphones. And a gentleman came on the speaker and said, just to remind you ladies and gentlemen, in five minutes' time it will be 11am. And I sit there thinking, are they really going to do it? Is this carriage in 2026 going to go silent? Or has Britain just died? And then we hit 11 o'clock and the train was eerily quiet. Yes. For two precise minutes. And then it went back to loud music, loud TV and loud conversation. And I thought, we haven't changed. No. We're still the same country. Now, wearing a white poppy to me is the equivalent of, of when everyone's doing the silence saying, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be silent. No. Because war is terrible and we mustn't celebrate it or mark it. It's not about you.
Speaker 2No. Or indeed, wearing an anorak to the cenotaph. 2018 Armistice Day. Corbyn wore a grey hooded waterproof anorak, 79 pounds from Marks and Spencer, over his suit and tie rather than a formal
Speaker 1black overcoat. I don't know if, I'm not going to judge someone's choice in clothes, but when it comes to things like poppies, I understand and sympathise strongly with the anti-war pacifist argument. I really do. But this is one of those occasions when you just fit in because it's not about you.
Speaker 2It's not about you. Yeah, not today, love. No. We've got a little bit of an update on the whole Walliams situation. He now faces police investigation over the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl. He denies all the claims against him. We must point that out. And also, so far, he has not been charged. He has not been found guilty of anything in a court of law. So it's very, it's tricky this because people are trying to make comparisons, myself included, because I wrote a column about it this morning. Very good one. Between David Walliams and Russell Brand. And there is commonality there because of the environment in which they worked, because of the period of time in which they operated, because of their sense, I think, of acting with impunity, and because of the blind eyes that were turned by many around them. So there are some striking similarities, but at the same time, Russell Brand is a convicted and imprisoned rapist, and Walliams has not been even accused of rape, so we need to stress that. What do we make of Jonathan Ross, who we quoted yesterday, he had appeared at the Comedy Awards in 2004, and made a joke about the awards being 15 years old and rather drunken, and therefore likely to go home with David Walliams. Now, he made that joke. You said that wasn't an appropriate joke to make, basically, about underage sex.
Speaker 1I don't mind whether a joke is appropriate. Most jokes are not appropriate. No. That's not my point. My point is that it's so specific and on the nose, and it's so gross, that it isn't just an innuendo.
Speaker 2It seems to betray some inside knowledge.
Speaker 1I mean, I know he now denies this. Yes. And he says he didn't even write it. But knowing what we now know, it sounds more like the kind of joke that people tell at weddings about grooms when they're trying to embarrass them by sharing something they wouldn't want their parents to hear.
Speaker 2He has said, the joke was submitted to me by the Comedy Awards scriptwriting team, and I believe that the punchline was a reference to the fact he had publicly dated younger women, exaggerated for comic effect. It's also a tasteless joke that I would not dream of making today about anyone, but that is besides the point. Had I had any reason to suspect that it might be referring to actual events, I would not only have refused to use it, but I would have not felt comfortable continuing a personal or professional relationship with him. I would also like to think that I had acted upon that knowledge because I was reflecting on it thinking, well, Ricky Gervais had made some jokes about Leonardo DiCaprio's predilection for dating much younger women. Is that true? But he's never dated, yeah, but I'm talking about women in their 20s when he was in his 50s. Yes, yes. That's a complete, I mean, he likes younger women. Having a whole debate, I went below the line on my comment piece and people are saying, well, what about Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith? Good question. Again, look that up. They met when she was 13 and Wyman described her in his autobiography of resembling a woman at that age and then they get married when she's 18. That hasn't come back to haunt him, should it? I mean, nothing illegal took place. No. So, you know, some people are saying, hang on a minute here, is Walliams the victim of some kind of witch hunt allegations have been made? He denies them. There's also a whole dialogue going on about what some of these women appear to have approached him. This whole, well, if you fling yourself at a celebrity man, what do you expect? To which the response is surely, well, most celebrity men or most people, most men, one would hope, would not abuse their fame and take advantage. You would hope that with great power and privilege came great responsibility and accountability, wouldn't you?
Speaker 1There is, there is a distinction that I think some people who are expressing scepticism or cynicism are trying to cling on to, which is between behaving badly and behaving criminally. Yes. And we don't want to put people in prison for being creeps. For being creeps. It's striking how much of the language around both these cases has been quite Victorian. It's about not just criminal behaviour, but also this sense that they've broken certain social codes around the way that you should treat women. Now, I happen to agree with that because I'm old-fashioned in my views about sex and morality. But I didn't think this society was. And it's so interesting that now we're going through this period of reaction a bit like Me Too. We reach for these old Victorian standards that we had disregarded. And much of what we're asking men to do sounds to me a little bit like chivalry. We're asking men to show respect.
Speaker 2Well, I don't know if that's a Victorian standard or whether it's just a good old-fashioned British value. I mean, we don't expect people to abuse their position even though we're well used to stories of it. If becoming famous suddenly meant that you could indiscriminately bed anyone you wanted, even if some of them didn't really want to, then everyone would be doing it. We've got a kind of concurrent problem here because on one hand. Everyone was doing it for a while. Some people were doing it.
Speaker 1I wasn't doing it.
Speaker 2And people in showbiz, what we know is, we know two things to be true. First of all, that the showbiz world is quite sordid, that it does evolve abuses of power. Not just sexual, but probably, you know, a degree of bullying, a degree of underlings being pushed around because the talent is so important. Now we've added an extra layer into this that, again, we always knew that where you have women throwing themselves at men, you will also have men abusing women because they've been given a greater opportunity to do so. That isn't to victim blame, by the way. It's because they are in an environment where seemingly things are going on behind closed doors that the rest of us suspect but don't know about. And by the way, we can't necessarily report on unless we have evidence of it because these rich and famous people have got very powerful lawyers to shut down any lines of journalistic inquiry, which is why we ended up with this injunction in the first place. Quite a few people are saying, well, if you knew this about Brand back in 2007, why didn't you write something? Well, we didn't have victims coming forward. We can't just write things on the basis of one person's say-so. And figures like Brand, like Walliams, have always traditionally been quite litigious. Yes. Look at the work we had to do on Philip Green. Yes. Look how we had to work on that to get it together and get it to land.
Speaker 1Well, not just litigious. Richard Osman, the writer and presenter, has made a very interesting argument. He's pointed out that. Yes. He's pointed out that we know that Brand was probably confronted with what he'd been doing around 2018. So he had known for bordering on a decade that this was coming. And Osman's argument is that he didn't just mount a legal defense. He mounted a cultural defense. Yes. By going on podcasts and speaking to people who would sow this idea that there's a conspiracy out there. You can't trust things you hear. Britain has become a police state. So that when the accusations. When the accusations finally came around, there would be a constituency of people, now on the right rather than the left, who would rush to his defense and say, well, this is selective and arbitrary and hypocritical. So Osman's argument is that he saw this coming and everything, a bit like Jimmy Savile, with all his charity work, everything was designed around cushioning himself against that accusation. I just think that what you're describing there, I don't disagree with you. But from the point of view of a traditionalist, it's clumsy, but for want of a better word, to me, this whole culture is in the sewer and has been in the sewer for a long time. And I just sometimes find it a bit surprising when the culture suddenly decides to clean up. So for a while, Russell Brandt was celebrated for his attitudes towards sex. They made movies about it. Hang on, let me make this point. No, I know, I know. But the culture, the culture celebrated it. David Walliams was on this talent show. And. And would say the most elude and disgusting things. And again, the culture laughed at it. Jonathan Ross told jokes. But it's not just that. If I wanted to right now, I could go on this phone and I could watch hardcore porn. Sure. If I wanted to right now, I could go on this phone and I could arrange a hookup. And I could go and have anonymous sex. Yes. The whole culture is saturated.
Speaker 2Hang on a minute, though. You could have done that back in the 60s and 70s by just visiting Soho, point one. Yeah. Point two. You say the culture encouraged it. This is the great irony. Because while these two were feted by the show business world, while the likes of Channel 4 and the BBC and publishing houses were bending over backwards to publish their books. I'm telling you this now, as is often the case with the hugely celebrated figures. The vast majority of the public thought they were both a couple of clowns. Most people look. Most sane, ordinary people. Well, that's why I'm saying the culture. who embrace British values. I'm not saying the people. Even traditionalists looked at Brand and said, geez, that's a wrong'un. Most people looked at Walliams and thought, he's very peculiar.
Speaker 1Everyone is haunted by guilt and the fear of justice. Even a sociopath like Jimmy Savile clearly was acting in a way that he did because he knew that things would catch up with him. So it's so interesting how even people who might externally persuade themselves that they're completely free of any kind of moral judgment, privately, internally. They're eaten away by it to the point where they would design their whole lives around trying to escape it. I just think, and I wasn't referring necessarily to the whole public, I'm just saying the culture. I find it strange how a culture, one minute says, everything is fine, you can do whatever you want and look at this, it's hilarious, and then suddenly it autocorrects. It just suddenly goes, right, no, we didn't mean that. In fact, we're going to put that man in jail now. That, I find that.
Speaker 2Did everyone say it was okay?
Speaker 1No, I'm talking about the culture.
Speaker 2Yeah, but did the culture say it was okay? Yeah. I mean, that's. No, it did. It celebrated it. Do you mean because of the comedy awards joke just going ahead?
Speaker 1It was Brand's entire persona. He literally, newspapers awarded him Shagger of the Year. And what. Tabloids did. Tabloids, yeah, we didn't. But I think what's been lost sight of here is sex is fun, but sex also has profound psychological and emotional qualities to it. And what our society has tried to do is divorce sex from love. From love and relationships and, of course, from procreation. Sure. It has tried to push the idea that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. And some powerful and predatory men have taken advantage of that. But I think society has done harm to itself as a whole by devaluing
Speaker 2sex and not
Speaker 1realizing that it is actually. It's not just safer, but it's better and it serves a moral quality if it is between people. It's adults in committed relationships. And for too long, our culture has been saying that's not the case. And this, I think, is one consequence of it.
Speaker 2But then now you're taking a stand against, you know, shagging in. Back in the day, Warren Beatty was renowned, wasn't he, for bedding hundreds of women. I mean, he slept with apparently everyone in Hollywood. Look at somebody like Mick Jagger, you know, and the Marian faithful stories back in the 60s and 70s and all the rest of it. There is a distinction to be drawn here. I mean, if women want to go off. You might find it morally repugnant, but if women want to go off and shag a load of blokes, they can. If blokes want to go off and shag a load of women, they can. The point is here, the distinction is drawn at consent. Yes. And it's drawn at the age of consent.
Speaker 1But consent isn't enough. It's not enough because of the damage, the psychological and spiritual damage done by this culture. Just saying that if someone said yes to it, that doesn't. That's not enough. If you turn society into a rolling orgy, at some point. At some point, someone's going to get hurt. Yeah, of course. And by the way, it's usually the women. And I'm not blaming them for it. In the same way that you say I'm calling the shagging morally repugnant, I'm really not. I understand. It's fun. I'm just telling you, it can have consequences. And I think our society doesn't tell that to young people. It tells them about disease consequences. But how often in society do we say to people things like, don't cheat on your husband. Don't cheat on your wife. It'll ruin your life. Don't have sex with random strangers. I mean. Okay, if you want to, fine. But just be aware it'll have some kind of damage to you. We don't have that conversation anymore.
Speaker 2But most people know that deep down because they are seeking monogamous relationships. They're seeking their future partner for life. Yes. They're seeking to home make and have children and all the rest of it. I mean, we had that startling CSJ, Center for Social Justice, figure last week that young men were 26 times more likely to live with their mothers than a partner in 2026. Because marriage rates have fallen by 90% in that age group. And that's partly because of an over-sexualized culture.
Speaker 1Okay. But. Young men don't understand what women want. They don't understand sex anymore. They have a pornified understanding of it.
Speaker 2I totally agree with all that. And I do agree with you as well that in the fallout from all this, it's always women that get hurt more. Because there's a complete and utter imbalance with the perception of a man. That might be promiscuous with the perception of a woman who is. And consequently, there is always more of an ability physically and otherwise for a man to overpower a woman than a woman to overpower a man. Yes. Which is why we get very few cases of women raping men. Yeah. So I agree with all that. But I'm saying that the difference in these cases is that certainly in the case of Bram, we know a line was crossed because he's in prison for 10 years. Yeah. In the case of Walliams, let's see what unfolds. He has not been found guilty of anything.
Speaker 1Yeah. And what I'm saying is if you take the criminal element out of it, I also believe that sexual anarchy and promiscuity by themselves do do damage. And at the very least, they do not provide people with what, as you say, they are deep down in their soul really seeking. Casanova dies alone, effectively imprisoned. Guilty, allegedly, is the character in Carly Simon's song, You're So Vain. Yes. He's a tragic, lonely, self-absorbed narcissist. And as for Bram, not only is he now in prison, but by going inside, he is depriving a wife of her husband and three children of their father. So the consequences of his sin are not just harm for him, but also the people around him.
Speaker 2We'll be back tomorrow, 5 p.m.
Speaker 1We'll be right back. ♪ MUSIC ♪
PodcastTranscript AI