The END of GREAT BRITAIN? with Triggernometry's Francis Foster | "YOUR WELCOME" #416

Summary

YOUR WELCOME with Michael Malice
Episode #416: The END of GREAT BRITAIN? with Triggernometry's Francis Foster
Recorded: May 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Michael Malice sits down with Francis Foster—comedian, former teacher, and co-host of Triggernometry—to dissect the ongoing political chaos in the UK. The pair chart the fracturing of Britain's party system, the crumbling of old political alliances, the country’s class divide, and the pathologies of education that Francis documents in his new book, "Uneducated." Across a lively, often darkly funny hour, Malice and Foster share sharp insights, biting analogies, and unforgettable stories from the frontline of British life—both political and educational.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of British Politics: Fractures, Populism, and New Alliances

• Malice's UK Political Timeline [03:10–09:15]
  • Outlines a century of UK’s two-party system: Labour (left) vs. Conservative/Tories (right), with Liberal Democrats as historical outsiders.
  • Describes the recent implosion: Tory vote collapse; Labour’s local defeats; rise of Farage’s Reform Party and the Greens; historical Labour loss in Wales.

“The two of them, you know, went back and forth for decades... In 2025… Labor lost a majority of the seats that were up. The Conservatives, I think, came in fourth. And now the Greens have started picking up the slack.” — Malice [06:53]

• Burnham’s Ambition and Labour’s Infighting [09:15–16:18]

  • Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester, maneuvers to trigger a by-election and stage a leadership challenge to embattled Labour PM Keir Starmer.
  • Complexities: Burnham isn’t currently an MP; Labour’s heavy losses in “red wall” constituencies.
  • Francis points out essential context: “They have been Brexiteers voting against immigration… [Labour] are the party of the liberal elite.” — Foster [15:09]

• Rise of Populism and Realignment of the Working Class [16:22–19:29]

  • Comparing UK “red wall” voters to US “Reagan Democrats.”
  • Farage’s Reform party speaks directly to blue-collar disillusionment, echoing Trump’s base.

2. Fragmenting Political Parties, Trust Crisis, and EU Re-Entry

• Labour Party Dynamics & Electoral Mechanics [20:23–26:31]

  • Discussing the mechanics of Labour leadership challenges, party base dynamics, and increased risk of a hard-left resurgence.
  • Notable figures: Angela Rayner (mired in tax scandal but retains grassroots appeal).
  • Francis: “What Burnham has also done… is made a lame duck prime minister, turned him into a dead duck.” — Foster [18:22]

• Collapse of Public Trust & Voter Rage [28:43–35:39]

  • Francis: “Labour are done. They haven’t been able to control the border. The economy’s a disaster. They haven’t tackled the debt. Our economy is sinking.” [28:43]
  • Both speakers agree: unlike Canada, Britain’s population has lost faith in the system.
  • Anger at failed immigration policy and political betrayal fuels the rise of outsider parties (Reform, Greens).

“People in this country are so angry, they feel so betrayed. They feel so disgusted. That’s the reason you see Reform, and that’s the reason you see the Greens.” — Foster [35:07]

• The Brexit Effect & Rejoining the EU [35:41–39:28]

  • Starmer’s and Burnham’s flirtations with rejoining the EU seen as political suicide, especially in pro-Brexit strongholds.
  • Malice: “If I’m Faraj and I’m the Reform candidate, I have a clip of Burnham saying I’m going to rejoin the EU. This is kryptonite.” [37:12]
  • Foster: “The fact that they were talking about this openly is, quite frankly, insane.” [39:12]

• Class Divide Post-Brexit [41:18–42:39]

  • Labour’s leadership is portrayed as sneering at working class Leave voters (“racist and evil”), further alienating its base.
  • Malice: “If you vote the wrong way, you’re not just wrong, you’re a moron and you’re trash.” [42:10]
  • Foster: “It was that you were racist and evil. Marriages literally ended because of Brexit.” [42:41]

3. Britain’s New Political Landscape & The Fate of Labour and Conservatives

• Collapsed Coalitions & Centrist Drift [45:24–50:04]
  • Both major parties—Labour and Conservatives—are breaking apart among populists, centrist technocrats, and social liberals.
  • The Liberal Democrats described as “lovely but pointless”—centrist, non-populist, neither left nor right [49:51–50:04].

4. Education in Crisis & Foster’s “Uneducated”

• Foster’s Book and the Grim Reality of UK Teaching [53:02–62:13]
  • Inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s honesty, Foster wants to give an unglamorous, truthful account of life inside British schools.
  • British inclusion policy leads to complex, resource-constrained classrooms: “Inclusion is getting the autistic kids, many of whom are non-verbal, and putting them in the class as well. That’s inclusion.” — Foster [54:34]
  • The rationale: budget cuts, not genuine educational benefit. Underqualified teaching assistants, lack of trained specialists.

“It’s an act of profound cruelty under the guise of inclusion and kindness… ideas that sound kind and sound good, but really they’re just glorified cost cutting exercises.” — Foster [57:54]

• Teaching is compared to survival; burnout is systemic: “Broken systems create broken people and ultimately broken outcomes.” [59:27]

• UK teachers rarely last more than five years; experience and mentorship rapidly drain away [61:21].

• Stories from the Frontlines: Trauma and Humor [69:02–78:23]

  • Foster shares harrowing stories of teaching amid gang violence and poverty in London:

    • On trauma: “A lot of the classrooms… these kids were facing unimaginable challenges… for a lot of kids, it was survival as well.” [71:55]
    • On a student’s dire predicament: “He looked me in the eyes and he said the words to me, ‘Because they’ll murder me.’” [74:15]

  • Book aims to balance tragedy and humor: “You will laugh. It’s mostly funny with the occasional bit that I talk about that is tragic and awful. But mainly it’s funny.” [78:23]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The only thing worse [than talking to ordinary people] is talking to podcasters as you know.” — Foster [33:30]
• On party branding:

  “The Liberal Democrats… despite their name… are not the equivalent of people on the left of the Democratic Party in the US. The Liberal Democrats are like the Michael Bloomberg people… We just want government to work well for everybody.” — Malice [48:32]

• “Broken systems create broken people and ultimately broken outcomes.” — Foster [59:27]
• A near-book-title:

  “It was originally meant to be called 12 years a teacher.” — Foster [67:08] “Under no circumstances will we be publishing that book with that title.” (Publisher) [67:20]

Lighter Exchanges

• Malice, on beauracracy: "'Michael, can you not win this time?' She literally said those words… that should have been the title of my autobiography." [62:13–65:25]
• On inclusion in schools:

  Malice: “You're learning from the teacher at home... Unless you're doing a group project, which is also hell on earth.” [55:24]

Emotional Resonance

• Foster, always checking on an at-risk former pupil:

  “Every month, I check his name… to see if he’s okay… It hasn’t come up with his name yet.” [76:04]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:10–09:15] — Malice’s British political timeline and collapse of the two-party system
• [15:09] — “They have been Brexiteers voting against immigration… Keir Starmer literally went down on one knee with BLM.”
• [19:29] — Francis: “Turned [Starmer] into a dead duck. Prime Minister.”
• [28:43] — Foster: “Labour are done. They haven’t been able to control the border.”
• [35:07] — “People in this country are so angry, they feel so betrayed.”
• [37:12] — “If I’m Faraj… I have a clip of Burnham saying I’m going to rejoin the EU… This is kryptonite.”
• [41:18–42:39] — On class dynamics and Labour’s contempt for working class
• [53:02] — Foster introduces his book “Uneducated”
• [54:34–57:54] — UK education, inclusion policy, and resource strain
• [61:21] — “The average teaching career in the UK is five years. People leave.”
• [69:02–74:30] — Trauma stories from teaching in London

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Where to Find the Book

• Francis Foster's “Uneducated” is available at uneducatedbook.net.
  (Malice’s graphic novel: unwantedbook.com)

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Tone & Closing Vibe

The episode is unflinchingly candid with a foundation of biting wit and gallows humor. Both hosts take aim at platitudes, pointing out the dysfunction at the heart of British institutions—while keeping the conversation human, sometimes hilarious, and sharply observant throughout.
Concluding with Foster’s heartfelt and darkly funny reflections on his time teaching, the show leaves listeners with both concern and curiosity for the future of Britain and its education system.

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Final Note:
Fans of Malice’s irreverence and Foster’s wide-ranging insight will find plenty to digest—no need to be steeped in UK politics to appreciate this heady mix of history, commentary, and offbeat storytelling.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

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[B]

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[A]

It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Folks, my new graphic novel, a tall tale of the old Westland new wave is out for pre order now. I've been working on this for 25 years. It's a dark comedy with a shiny exterior. Please check it [e-mail]. Good afternoon. Michael Malice here. Let that be your welcome for the next hour. You guys are in for a treat. We have my dear friend Francis Foster. He's half of Trigonometry, the podcast you all love and love to hate and hate to love and hate and all the good things in between. Francis, you have a new book out which I'm excited to talk about because it's about you having been a teacher and why no one should ever do it. And it's called Uneducated, which is kind of funny because my next book is called Unwanted. But before we get into that, because I think the educational system is something that is crucial for everybody and also it's crucial in a political sense because it makes basically the generation and the leaders of tomorrow, I want to talk to you a bit about what's going on in British politics because I think you are very much kind of a moderate minded approach. You speak to people of all areas of the political spectrum on your show, from far left to far right. You guys get criticized for having this person or that person, but it's like we have a lot of people on the show that we don't agree with but I think Americans should appreciate how deranged British politics are at the moment. And I don't just mean people getting arrested for Facebook. So let me see if I can. Let's. You're the teacher. I'm doing my five minute story. Let's see what kind of a grade I get. Okay. To bring people up to speed.

[B]

So red pen is out.

[A]

Yes sir. Green pen is for crazy. Red pen is for edit. Grammar. One second. So for close to a century or over around a century since the days of Lloyd George, someone. Do I get points for knowing who that is?

[B]

You did.

[A]

The British political system was basically a binary. You had the Labor Party which was described the left wing party or left of center party. You had the Tories, the Conservative who were the right wing party. The two of them, you know, went back and forth for decades. And in third and a consistent and persistent third place was the Liberals, later became the Lib Dems. The high point of which was in the election with David Cameron. What was that? 2010 where they met. Yeah, yeah. When Nick Clegg in they started having debates between the party leaders. Nick Clegg, who is the head of Lib Dem did. Was regarded as a superb job. The Lib Dems had the balance of power. They got enough seats and they had a coalition government with the Tories which hadn't been a thing I think for a century beforehand. From 2010 to 2024 the Tories ran the UK. They went through several prime ministers in order. David Cameron, who was I think clearly a moderate kind of Internet globalist kind of figure. He's certainly no Trump, to put him mildly. Theresa May after him, who was very much of the moderate ring of the party. After she called an election and did much worse than she was expected, she was forced to go by her own party. Then you had. Was Boris Johnson next.

[B]

Bojo was next.

[A]

Boris Johnson. He was regarded as from the right wing of the party. He had an election where he ran with the head of the left was Jeremy Corbyn, a figure which is not really analogous to anyone in the States. It's like Bernie Sanders, if Bernie had no sense of humor and was much more of a Trotskyite than someone who liked civil liberties, which I think Bernie, I think people would agree is fairly solid on that issue. The Tories had their biggest electoral victory in I think a century. The so called blue wall. Sorry, red wall. Red wall is the opposite there which are areas where have been voting labor for decades. Voted for the Conservatives in Part because the Labor Party had turned its back on the labor and the working class and became a party of, you know, shit libs and elites. And what was very odd then, after Boris Johnson was driven from office, Liz Truss was PM for like a month. She put forth a barely, you know, libertarian budget with the mildest of austerity. She was driven from office. Rishi Sunak then took over. He's like Mitt Romney without the. He's like Mitt Romney, but all the bad qualities of Mitt Romney magnified, I think is fair to say. And then in 2024, there was an election and here's where things got very bizarre. Because the labor vote only increased by one or two points. The Tory vote got split in half, so they went from like 40 to like 22 or something. Something crazy. Nigel Farage's party Reform got a huge percentage of the popular vote. Very few seats. Because in the uk, whoever is first past the post, meaning whoever has the most votes in a certain constituency, get the seat. So if it goes 40, 30, 20, 10, that 40 will get it. Or if it goes 30, 20, 20, 20, you know, whatever. So you had labor, despite having their smallest share of the vote, you know, in historically had 400, I think 11 out of 650 seats in 2025. You had local elections. Labor came in third or fourth. It was Farage first, then the Lib Dems, then Labor and Conservatives third or fourth. Something unimaginable. American politics or the Republicans. Democrats in any election, let alone nationally, would be in third and fourth place. Just a couple of weeks ago, it happened again at local elections. Labor lost a majority of the seats that were up. The Conservatives, I think, came in fourth. And now the Greens have started picking up the slack. And from, you know, it's funny because Americans always, or in politics general, it can't get any worse. You think, here's Starmer, who's the pm. You can't get any worse. The Greens are a coalition between, like Antifa and Ilhan Omar. It's just the worst people in politics coming together. And now things are a precipice. West Streeting has quit Keir Starmer's cabinet and he is trying to become the first gay pm. We don't talk about Ted Heath in this context. And there's a big question for the Labor Party. Do we go left to where the Greens are? Do we try to attack to the center? But all polls now have British politics where you have, oh, and in that those local elections, they lost Wales, the Labour Party lost Wales for the first time in a century. Well, Wales had been strongly labor for a century. Now the Welsh Nationalists pled. Cymru came in first, kicked them out of this, the Welsh Parliament. So now all polls in the UK have Farages reform in a clear first. And then you have a second tier of Conservatives, Labor, Greens and Lib Dems, all like a point or two apart, which is something that has never happened before in the uk, Certainly has never happened here in the us and no one knows what the future of the UK holds. How. How do you grade me?

[B]

I think that's an A. All right, it's not an A. You missed out a key element.

[A]

But it's Brexit.

[B]

No, the key element is so Wes street team, the Health Minister left the Cabinet and said he was leaving the Cabinet because he had no faith in Keir Starmer's ability to win the next election, which is accurate. Nobody has any faith in Keir Starmer's ability to win the next election. I doubt even Keir Starmer has the faith in his own ability. That's part of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle. There is also a man called Andy Burnham. Andy Burnham is the mayor of Manchester. Andy Burnham has had designs on the Labour Party leadership for a long, long time. He has already had two failed bids to become Labour leader. Now Andy Burnham is seen as the. Shall we just say, the king in waiting. Now, to run for Prime Minister in the uk, you need to be a member of Parliament. So you need to represent what is known in the UK as a constituency, an area of basically a portion of the electorate who vote for you in a certain area. For instance, Kensington. Kensington has all Kensington west, whatever it is. That group of people vote during a general election and they vote Conservative, labor, whoever it is. And then that person is their representative in Parliament. It's called their Member of Parliament, their mp. Now, there's a slight problem because Andy Burnham wants to be the leader of the Labour Party, and therefore Prime Minister Andy Burnham is not an mp. He's the Mayor of Manchester. So he can't be mayor of Parliament. There is an area of northwest, the northwest, which is called Ashton and Makerfield. Ironically, it's actually where my dad is from. It's a very white, very area. It's more widely known as a part of Wigan. People might know Wigan because when George Orwell wrote about the positive poverty and misery of the British working classes, and he could go to any town in the uk, he went to Wigan. So that's what we're talking about here.

[A]

Yeah, the book was called the Road to Wigan Pier. This is before Orwell was Orwell.

[B]

Yes, absolutely. And it's a seminal text in British modern British literature. So what's happened now is the MP for Makerfield has stood down. This is triggering what is called a by election. And a by election is when an MP leaves for whether it's illness or death or for any other reason, or they stand down, as in this case, it triggers a byelection. And what that means is there is an election to see to elect a new mp. And that is what is happening now. So Andy Burnham is going to be the Labour representative and he wants to win in order so that then he will go on and he will trigger a challenge to Keir Starmer. Now this is where it gets complicated. We're really getting into the weeds.

[A]

Wait, before we get to there, there's one point I wanted to make which I learned about yesterday, which is fascina about the idiosyncrasies of British politics. Please correct me if I'm wrong, Teach. You can't legally resign as an mp. So technically what happens is, I think you. You are assigned in some ministry or something like that, which means you can't be in two things at once. So tech. And that declares the. The vacancy

[B]

that I don't know.

[A]

That's. I just learned about this. So it's very weird. It's like you can't be a member of. Let's suppose this is not a good analogy. Like I can't be a member of the CIA and Congress, for example. Right. I don't think that's true. But let's pretend. So what happens is, since I can't quit Parliament, the CIA director just gives me. Technically I'm a secretary of the CIA, which automatically means I'm not a member of Congress anymore.

[B]

So.

[A]

So that's their way to work around the law. Isn't that interesting?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, and that. I haven't heard anything more British than that.

[A]

Right. Don't get me started on Black Rod.

[B]

Yeah, it's so pointless. Black Rod is. Michael is not talking about his predilections, he's talking about something else.

[A]

Yes, I was.

[B]

Anyway, so. So this is a plan for Andy Burnham. Andy Burnham wants to trigger a by election. Andy's plan is to therefore win the by election. And then in the Labour Party, in order to challenge the leader of the Labour Party, you have to get 20% of Labour MPs to endorse your challenge, sign a letter and a declaration to say that they no longer have faith in keir Starmer. They 20%. There are, I think off the top of my head, 403 Labour MPs in parliament at the moment. That means they need 81 members of parliament.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now we've skipped over the fact that he has to win the by election. Now, as you to in your opening monologue, which was very good, a tick with a red pen, as you have alluded to in your monologue, that ain't going to be a foregone conclusion because what we saw in Wigan, that is the red wall. You do not get more red wall than Ashton in Makerfield. And as we've seen, the voters in Ashton and Makerfield belong to a community who have been sold down the river year after year by Labour, then by the Conservatives. They have been Brexiteers voting against immigration. They had a conservative government who in the words of Kemi Badenok, the current Conservative leader, talked right, governed left, which means they were gaslit. They said time after time after time they wanted immigration to be lowered. Time after time government said of course we will lower immigration. That hasn't happened. They now have a Labour Party which isn't the Labour Party of old. It's very much what your Democrats are. They were the party of the blue collar guy once upon a time, the factory worker. They ain't that. They are the party of the liberal elite. Keir Starmer literally went down on one knee during 2020 with BLM. There is a famous picture of him on one knee. This does not go down well in Ashton and Makerfield right now. Andy Burnham, by all accounts.

[A]

Can I say something? Are you familiar with the term Reagan Democrats?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So for people who aren't, who don't know this labor for in the same way that like DEI and the Democratic Party America are pretty much interchangeable, that if you are someone who's for di, if you're not for the Democrats, maybe for the Greens, but you're certainly not going to be a Republican. Right. For decades in America, unions and the Democratic Party were basically interchangeable hand in hand. Like the Democratic Party was powered by the unions. They still in many ways are especially teachers union. And what happened in 80 and in 84 was the rise of the so called Reagan Democrats. Because these were union people who for the first time in years, decades, felt that there's some in the Republican Party who hears them, understands them. Reagan people don't realize this was the first union president to later become president of the us. He was president of Screen Actors Guild. So this was A sea change moment with the rise of the 60s in the Democratic Party, the old left, the labor, many of them started voting Republican and certainly many of them are Trump fans to this day. So what Farage has done is he's taken a dump on the Tories and spoken to the equivalent of the Reagan Democrats, these blue collar historical labor voters, and being like, guys, I see you, I hear you and I'm here for you. And they're very much responding in kind.

[B]

Absolutely. So this idea that this is going to be a foregone conclusion for Andy Burnham, which the Labour Party seems to think will happen judging by their actions, to me is outstandingly arrogant and quite frankly, completely lacking in any real type of understanding of what is actually happening on the ground. Now, Faraj, who is the leader of reform, has said they are, and I'm going to quote, throw everything at this by election and by all accounts, from the research that I've done, the current person that they've got looks very talented. He's from the local area, he hasn't been parachuted in. He is a very smart guy, working class, a plumber from the local area, born and bred, has incredible cut through with the people there. Andy Burnham has a hell of a fight on his hands. And what Burnham has also done and streeting with their actions is made a lame duck prime minister, turned him into a dead duck. Starmer. What little authority he had, what little presence he conveyed with his speeches has been completely destroyed. We are in a political crisis. This country is in a crisis. Politically, it's in a crisis. Economically, it's in a crisis. Societally, we are completely screwed. And this has just made everything worse.

[A]

Well, you missed the big part.

[B]

Oh, go on.

[A]

You can laugh all you want, but this is very key to what you just said, which was in recent months there was another by election and Andy Burnham wanted to stand for it and Keir Starmer blocked him from being the labor candidate. And if he had been the labor candidate, he certainly would have done fairly well if not won. And instead, for the first time in British history, a by election was won by the Green Party. And she was, it was this crazy, you know, she's, she's red hair, but she's functionally a blue hair who coalitioned with the Islamists and they took the seat. So, so Burnham could have been in Parliament already, but Keir was too smart for his own good. And now he, at this time, he's not going to fight Burnham being the nominee because he doesn't have the clout

[B]

to do so absolutely. And I should. Yeah. And well done. And so now. So now what we have in Parliament, it's, and it's very interesting is we have a fracturing of the political parties. What you're seeing is, is populism on the left, on the right. And now it's kind of happening in the center with Burnham. And we're going to see what.

[A]

Sorry, there's another part of this puzzle which neither of us mentioned, which is very. This is how Jeremy Corbyn became the labor mp. Because if there is an election for the Conservatives or Labor, how their bylaws work, whatever the term, the rules, whatever the term is, that vote doesn't go toward the MPs, it goes towards the base. They are the ones who are picking. So Jeremy Corbyn, who again is this moth ridden old school Trotskyite joke, and he's certainly not have the prestige. I don't know if that's. But Keir Starmer certainly looks like he could be running a business. Like if he was in a movie, he could play that character very well. Jeremy Corbyn could not. But the thing is, because Corbyn stood for the leadership of the Labour Party and the vote went to the base, the base of Democratic Party would happily vote for a Bernie over an Amy Klobuchar, for example. Like, they want that kind of radical ideologue. So it's not at all a given that if Burnham gets his 80 seats and he stands for the leadership, that some rando from the left of the Labour Party can't be like, well, hold on a moment, I want to represent the Corbyn wing and then that base will put that person in.

[B]

Yeah. The reality is, however, the Labor Party is so short of political talent that the only people I can really see, unless there's somebody else I may have missed, the only ones that I can really see are Burnham and Streeting. And Streeting. By all accounts, from what I can see, has done a fairly good job as health minister. He's been quite successful in getting waiting times down for the nhs, has alluded to the fact that he would throw his weight behind an Andy Burnham.

[A]

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[B]

Well, there's a slight. And it's good that you brought up Angela Rayner. So people who don't know Angela Rayner. She was our former deputy prime minister. Angela Rayner had to resign because of irregularities in her tax, particularly when it came to her housing situation. Now, this was a problem not only because there are regularities in her tax, but also because she was. Drumroll, please. Housing Minister. Okay. Which you can see is fairly untenable in the position that she was holding. I have a slight amount of empathy for Angela Rayner. Because our tax laws are so archaic and complicated, nobody can actually figure out what it is they're meant to pay, how much it is or even how to pay it. Nobody really knows. And the whole thing is a complete farce. A couple of days ago, she paid back £40,000 to HMRC, our tax services, and she is now in the clear. But that very much still hangs over her. She said in a public statement, I am not going to run for the leadership of this party. However, if people want me to run, then I will.

[A]

That sounds like she's running to me.

[B]

Yeah, but that is a stain that is fairly indelible and I don't know how sympathetic people look on it.

[A]

Francis, it's a problem for me or for you. If I'm a leftist and I don't have a leftist voice, I don't care that this broad, you know, had some issues paying off taxes on her mortgage when she paid it back and now she has a clean bill of health. I mean, look at, look, look at Trump. Every Trump fan forgot and forgave what he did during COVID or said, I was actually really Biden. You know, I remember very vividly. I'm never following this guy again. He pushed the jab, he's blah, blah, blah. And then 2024 and they can't get enough. And what he did with COVID in my opinion, is far worse than what she did with her. As you yourself said, you're not an Angel Rayner fan, particularly, but you're like, I don't really blame her. It's not like she was, you know, you're stealing, you know, millions of dollars from widows and orphans and lining her pockets. She paid back her tax and it's fine. So I. Where I disagree with you is I don't think the leftists, which are a very powerful force in the labor base, are going to be happy rubber stamping Andy Burnham.

[B]

No, but also, you also have to. Look, what we're talking are the ideologues. And you have a very good point. You have a very good point. But also, there is a rich vein of pragmatism which lies at the heart of every political party. And going to be a lot of people, I think, who are going to look at Burnham who is a photogenic, charismatic man who is able to deliver a message, who is likable. And they think maybe this is the guy who is going to succeed our second term. Now the reality, he isn't. For me, it's changing. Deck chairs on the Titanic. Labor are done. They. They're done. They haven't been able to control the border. The economy's a disaster. They haven't tackled the debt. Our economy is sinking.

[A]

I don't understand this. What do you mean that they're done? They have 400 seats in parliament. They can. All of this stuff is irrelevant in terms of if they have the power or not.

[B]

How do you mean?

[A]

Meaning, like, if I'm Keir Starmer, right, and the economy is collapsing and the borders are wide open, if I want to. They were. People in America are going to be shocked to hear this. They haven't heard this. They were talking recently of saying, we're going to abolish the jury system for several types of crimes because the backlog is too big. So rather than, you know, putting more judges or more courts or whatever, throwing money at the issue to be like, we want to have rape. Britain is the home of the jury system. It is the home of the idea that we are equal and we're going to be judged by our peers and not. This was a huge stepping forward in UK of the people versus the aristocracy and. And the king having. They're. We're going to be judged by our fellow man we imported here, and we're not going to be judged by some lord whose, you know, great grandfather, you know, conquered some area. And now they were talking of pulling that back point and there was pushback for it, and I think they dropped it for the moment. But things like blasphemy laws against Islam, they still have the votes. That's what. So when you say they're done, I don't know what that means.

[B]

I mean, that they're not going to win the next election.

[A]

Oh, sure, but that's five years.

[B]

That's what I mean by they're done. But what Labour are currently doing is they know they're not going to win the next election, but in their desperation to gain power, they think that by getting rid of Keir Starmer and putting in Andy Burnham that suddenly they're going to become more palatable to the voter. But the reality is the voter has been betrayed time and time and time again. And they do not want labor, they do not want Conservative.

[A]

Okay, I'm going to disagree with you a little bit. Okay, I'M going to steal me on the other side.

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

If you look at Canada, which I think is the country that's probably culturally closest to the uk if you had to pick one, you had Trudeau.

[B]

You have no idea how offensive that is, but carry on.

[A]

Well, what country would you say is closest culturally to the uk?

[B]

I say Canada. No, I don't think we're. Australia maybe.

[A]

Okay, so can it be second?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I just, I keep just seeing Trudeau in my mind and I get really angry.

[A]

I don't blame you for being angry, but point being, you had Trudeau and his Liberal Party. They were collapsing in the polls behind the Conservatives and Pierre Poliev, whatever we pronounce it, and they just pulled him out. They put in John Carney, who is clearly much smarter than Trudeau, in my opinion, much more effective and therefore malevolent. He not only rang the bank, ran the bank of Canada, he also ran the bank of England at one point. They put him in. Yeah. He won the subsequent election, which Trudeau was on track to lose catastrophically. And now in Canadian polls, the Liberals, his party, have a double digit lead over the Conservatives. So this stuff works.

[B]

Okay. But we're also not acknowledging the Trump effect. Okay, the election, sure.

[A]

But my saying is that Trump, they had the election, Carney won it and since the election his support has, has gone through the roof.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

People love a scapegoat in politics. Oh, it's not my fault that like Republicans do. This drives me crazy about like Conservatives. Oh, it's not our fault that the budget is exploding. It's those Democrats. And the second you have a Republican president and a Republican Congress. There isn't even an attempt to cut the budget by back to where Trump was the first term. There wasn't even an attempt.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Well, we're addicted to debt and spending other people's. But that's because we all want things for free and we're addicted to it, but addicted to lies. But let's. That's all being. That's all true. But let's go back to the. I, I think the UK population is different, okay. Because UK and, and I make it. I, I do this wherever I go. I seek out regular, ordinary people and I talk to them and I ask them.

[A]

Hell on earth.

[B]

Well, it's true. The only thing worse is talking to podcasters as you know.

[A]

Fair point. A plus.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So that being the case, I. There is a real anger and as well Canada doesn't have the issues or from What I know of illegal immigration that the UK does.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And those issues with illegal immigration and the inability or the lack of desire, however you want to frame it, from successive government to actually close a border has infuriated and angered ordinary people to the point where they not only feel that the parties have lied to them, they feel completely betrayed. Yeah, I would. A Conservative. There was a Conservative. There was a Conservative dinner hosted by a publication in the uk and there was a very senior Conservative politician. I was in the audience. We were invited to ask our questions. And my question to him was, don't you think you owe the British people an apology?

[A]

Oh, dang, Francis. Okay.

[B]

Haven't been invited back to that Conservative dinner.

[A]

What did he say?

[B]

And that was. So my point is this.

[A]

Wait, wait, no. What did he say? What was his reply?

[B]

Yes, we do.

[A]

Oh. Oh, wow. Okay.

[B]

Yeah, we do. We have failed. And the point is. But my point is something else. My point is people in this country are so angry, they feel so betrayed. They feel so disgusted. That's the reason you see reform, and that's the reason you see the Greens. And I. I just don't see it. I don't see it. I think Canada is different in that they still have faith in the system.

[A]

They do.

[B]

There's very few people have faith in the system.

[A]

You and I both missed another important key part, which talk about taking a dump on the voters. West Reading has said explicitly that if he becomes PM Prime Minister, he wants to rejoin the European Union

[B]

again. And this is quite. Well, there was also a clip of Andy Burnham saying this that went viral on Twitter. So I don't know if you've seen that. And he was hoping to rejoin. He has since rode back from that and said he's not going to, because if he stuck to that, there is nobody in Makerfield who will vote for him. Nobody.

[A]

Wait, wait, hold on. I got to interrupt you. I got interrupted because this. You dropped the bomb, and I wasn't aware of this. And I want to. I want to pause here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because, you know, we think of Hillary in 28,008 and Jeb Bush in 2016, where they were anointed by the party to be the next thing. And they basically were measuring the curtains in the Oval Office, and it's like. And the voters were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. I haven't pulled the lever for you yet. And people found it very offensive and understandably so. So, Raj. And this is an area, by the way, where they just recently had local elections and Reform swept it. So this is an area that has already demonstrated that they are happy to vote for reform. If I'm Faraj and I'm the reform candidate, I have a clip of Burnham saying, I'm going to rejoin the eu. This is kryptonite.

[B]

Yes. Because what that shows, and for people in America, what that shows is that they're not for working class people, they're anti democratic and. I'll explain this to you.

[A]

And dishonest.

[B]

This showed how demented Labour were in the Brexit years. Do you know what Labour's policy was on Brexit? After we voted to leave, they wanted

[A]

to have more and more referendums until they got it right.

[B]

No, it's. It's not as bad as that, but still demented. Bearing in mind that Jeremy Corbyn in the 70s was a euro skeptic, which is basically, he's pro. And Jeremy Corbyn hasn't changed his political opinion since he was 17 years old. So he's still pro Brexit. There policy during Brexit was, we're going to have another referendum to see if the British public want a second referendum. Okay?

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

So essentially it's the best of three, which is utterly moronic. And the reason they were decimated in the polls so in the general election of 2019, was because of that policy. It was shown to be utterly out of touch, it was shown to be undemocratic and quite frankly, it showed a sneering contempt of the ordinary voter. And when you. Particularly when you consider that Labour purport to be the party of the working class, now you have Burnham and that clip has come out and then Streeting has said that he wants to rejoin. We are already so screwed in this country. What? We're now going to talk about a second referendum.

[A]

Whoa, whoa, hold on. I don't think they were talking about a referendum. I thought they said they were just going to do it.

[B]

Well, yeah, that. Point taken. They were going to do it. They were just going to do it and ignore it. So the fact that they were talking about this openly is, quite frankly, insane. Now, Burnham, like I said, has rode back from this and said he doesn't want to do it.

[A]

There was. There's an analogous situation here. Tom Daschle, who at different points was the Senate Majority Leader, minority leader, was the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate and he was running against John Thune, and I don't remember they're north or South Dakota. I apologize to people at home. And there was a Clip of Tom Daschle just saying the word. And Thune's argument was, tom Daschle has sold out the state. You know, he's a DC insider, blah, blah, blah. And in north. In the Dakota's apologies again, this means something. You know, they're not exactly an urban area. They're both, you know, sparsely populated. And there was a clip of Tom Dashiell saying, I am a D.C. resident and I don't remember what show is from some interview, whatever, blah, blah, blah. John Thune's people played that clip 24 7. And the head of the Democratic Party in the Senate lost his seat. Something which I don't think had ever happened before, hadn't happened, haven't happened in decades, had happened before. So I, I'm seeing the tea leaves and I'm. It's not just that. If the. I feel, and please correct me if I'm wrong, if I were just simply a Labor Conservative person who had been against Brexit and thought we are better in the EU than outside the eu, that's a position people can wrap their heads around. But if I'm like, oh, we should rejoin the eu, oh, I changed my mind. It's that bait and switch which so many voters are exhausted by including with Trump in many ways. And that is much worse for him than if he had simply been. Brexit was a mistake. The EU is good. Here are the advantages of the eu. You may not agree with me, but this is how it would have helped Great Britain if we had stayed. That case is much easier to make.

[B]

Absolutely, absolutely. And it shows that Burnham is part of a Labour Party, which is not. It's not working class. Because it's very interesting. Because then we have to bring a class. We have to look at this through a class lens, which you don't really have in the us And Brexit was very much on class lines. Working class voted for Brexit. The middles and the upper middles and the elites remain. Now, of course, that was a broad generalization, but it proved to be true. And a lot of the problem with Labour is that they were openly contemptuous of their working class base who voted for Brexit and were sneering and wanted to ignore their democratic wishes.

[A]

But can I say something? Because people need to appreciate it wasn't. It was that it was like many ways, like Hillary 2016, if you vote the wrong way, you're not just wrong, you're a moron and you're trash. So it wasn't simply like, I'm Worse than that.

[B]

Okay, it was worse than that. It was that if you voted for Brexit, not only were you a moron, you were trash. I mean, you didn't need to say that. That was obvious. It was that you were racist and evil.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Marriages literally ended because of Brexit. There is a man somewhere in this city who is waking up in a bed sit because of Brexit.

[A]

Can I tell you my. One of My favorite top 10 tweets of all time?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There was some leftist, I don't remember who it was. And he tweeted out the night that the because Brexit vote was fairly close. It wasn't double digits in favor of.

[B]

Yeah, 48, 52.

[A]

Yeah. So it was fairly close. And someone tweeted out and the early returns, it wasn't looking so hot for Brexit. And someone tweeted out, right, it looks like we've got this sorted. If I wake up to Nigel Farage's smiling face, I'm going to end myself. And someone just replied, wakey, wakey, with this cute picture of Farage smiling. It was so great. But I. The thing about what's fascinating about labor is, and this has never happened, I think, in either the UK or the US You've never had, where someone has had such a small share of the vote, having such a huge share of government, because even though Trump had fewer votes than Hillary, it wasn't that much of a disparity in terms of the outcome, you know, like he had. So. But here they had like what, 20 something percent. But they have 2/3 of parliament. They never had, they had the mandate on paper in that they have the numbers. They never had the mandate in terms of the vote. And it's kind of interesting, that situation. What are you supposed to do? I've got the numbers, but I don't got the, the support in the people. In a way, Keir Starmer was screwed.

[B]

Yeah, he was totally screwed. And also he could never hope to do and to put in the legislative policies that this country needs because it would go against the MPs and the interests of some of the. Over a lot of their constituencies. For example, we've got a huge welfare bill in this country which is unsustainable. We spend more than we earn. Somebody is going to have to cut the welfare bill. That is a very tough sell for a lot of Labor MPs who are representing very poor working class people in constituencies with very high rates of unemployment. What you're going to tell them that you're not going to stop giving them free money. Well, you can tell them, but the likelihood is you ain't going to get reelected.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And that's one of the problems that Starmer is facing. You've also then got the left wing nutbags of the party who will do anything they can in order to keep the borders open. Because having a closed border is discrimination and it's racist against oppressed minorities who are coming here, who are fleeing war, terrorism, etc. And that is the problem he's facing. One of the problems of Labour and the Conservatives, but Labour especially, is that it's an unsustainable party because it's too broad a church. You look at it, you've got old school Labour. So the blue collar guys, the people who are pro Brexit, working class, traditional, patriotic, the old left, you've got them. You've got the people over here who are like, whoa, you know, I can be a butterfly tomorrow if I want. You've then got people here who are the center left who are pretty interchangeable from the conservative center right. They're pretty much exactly the same. And then you've got everything. And then you've got the people who are like, no, we want to rejoin the European Union and we must do that and it's essential that we do that. And then you've got these people at the end who are pro Brexit. So you're looking at this, what's the word I'm looking for this unholy alliance. Alliance, what it is, It's a group that is fracturing in front of our very eyes and Starmer has been desperately trying to hold them together. So you know the butterfly people, well, they're all going to green right. You've got old school working class who are going, I don't like Starmer because he's u turned on everything and he's weak and I really don't like the butterfly, genderqueer, pan frying, whatever they are people. So we're going to go to reform. Then you've got the center left who are looking at it going, well, we could stick with Starmer, but actually many of them are going to the Liberal Democrats. So the entire coalition is just crumbling in front of your very eyes. And by the way, if you look at the Conservative Party, I mean this has already been decimated. But with Conservatives, you've got the center right who are basically the center left and they could be Tories or whatever else. A lot of them are going to go to the Liberal Democrats. You've got the right wing libertarians who are very small in number. They're tiny, but still, nevertheless, they're a proportion of the labor part of the Conservative Party. They don't know where they're going. They're really lost. Then you've got the working class conservatives who make up, who have always, particularly under governments like Thatcher, who have always been staunchly pro Tory and their business and their small business owners, they're going to reform. So the whole thing, the whole political edifice is crumbling as we speak.

[A]

I want to. I. It's funny sometimes when people who are uninformed reply to my tweets and it's just physically painful. So when I was tweeting about the local elections earlier this month and how the Lib Dems were doing great for third party, they were coming in second and some boomer was like, how are the level Democrats doing so well? Or just a lot of blue haired people in this country? I'm like the lib. Just to clarify, people in the audience, the Liberal Democrats, despite their name in the uk are not the equivalent of people on the left of the Democratic Party in the us. The Liberal Democrats are like the Michael Bloomberg people, maybe like the Mitt Romney type people. People who are like, we just want government to work well for everybody. They are left of center, to be fair, but they're not ideologically so. And they are really kind of just make the subways work and have the nhs, the health service deliver results. They're probably the least ideological and in fact, which was very bizarre. Ed Davies, who's. Or Davis, whatever his name is, who's the head of the Lib Dems on local election night, said, we're the only party in the UK that isn't populist. And I'm like, that's a very odd rallying cry. But that's where they are. Is that correct what I just said? Yeah.

[B]

I mean the way that I would describe the Liberal Democrats is they are lovely but pointless.

[A]

Yeah. Right. But they're not hardcore leftists as the name.

[B]

No, no, they're kind of, they're very kind of center. Center left.

[A]

Right. Yeah. The name is a misnomer. Yeah.

[B]

The only thing that you know about the Liberal Democrat Party is that I used to fly for them when I was in my early 20s.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

He gave me a book on art forgery. I found myself drawn to these old masters. How did these artists take paint from a palette, arrange it on a canvas? I began to unlock the secrets. I was a storehouse of knowledge. Of how to create an illusion, present it to a experienced expert, manipulate his mind and convince him, and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine. We flooded the market with my paintings and I couldn't believe what I did. I couldn't believe it. Then the dominoes started falling. And eventually, eventually the FBI were led to my door. They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me, but they never actually got you.

[A]

At this point, you've sold a lot. You've got like a million dollars in cash. You sold One painting for 717,000. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? And how are we having this conversation?

[B]

I guess that's the greatest story of all.

[A]

To hear how Ken Perenni made millions in art forgery, dodged the mafia and the FBI. Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger show and check out episode 282 in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening. Now let's get back to the show. Speaking of your youth, I want to talk about this book because please tell me a bit about it. Because I think education, if people ask me so, when I say I'm an anarchist, which I am, people think, oh, you hate all government equally. That's not true at all. Because I'd much rather government be providing food for poor kids than bombing poor kids. You know, they're both government. I do not regard them equally in any sense at all. And I'm glad that hunger isn't really a problem in America now. Overfeeding is a problem as well, But I like the idea that no kid has to worry about having a meal tomorrow. That's an enormous step forward in terms of civilization. But when people ask me what's the first thing I cut, I say public government education because I think it is a literal prison for children and the only place many people ever encounter violence in their lives. And I think it's insane how so many people on the right or the center hand over their kids to be raised by those who despise them and are surprised when the kids end up despising them. Tell me a bit about this book and what got you into writing it.

[B]

So what got me into writing it is Anthony Bourdain, who is a bit of a hero of mine, when he wrote the book Kitchen Confidential, said the words, I didn't want it to be the best book on being a chef. I wanted it to be the most honest. Okay, I've read books about education. I've watched programs about education, what it's like to be a teacher, and you're sitting there with your partner or your mates and they're all going, oh, is that what it's like? And you always ended up rolling your eyes because. No, it's an idealized version or it's a glamorized version. Captain my Captain Dead Poet Society, you know, Dangerous Minds. How do I get through to these kids? White female teacher wearing a durag, in the words of Bill Burr, doing a little dance.

[A]

Can I say something? Because I was just watching a compilation on YouTube of teachers losing their minds in class. And it was the first time in my life, maybe it's because of my advanced age where I felt sympathy for the teacher because I'm like, hold on a minute. I'm someone who's 30s, 20s, 40s, 50s, whatever age I am. And I've got a room of these pieces of crap. Teenager, teenagers. And even if half of them are great, which is not possible, we all know teenagers. This is my hell. I have to try to keep their attention and keep them engaged and answer their smart ass questions. And for the first time, like, you know what? I'm surprised more of these teachers haven't gotten homicidal with these kids.

[B]

Yeah, it's, it's a ferocious. So being a teacher, this is a reality. You get given 30 kids in a classroom, it's everything from the kid who's got the potential to go to university, maybe even Ivy League, right the way through to kid who's so dyslexic he can't even spell his own name. And in the uk, we practice inclusion. And what inclusion is, is getting the autistic kids, many of whom are non verbal, and putting them in the class as well. That's inclusion.

[A]

Well, hold on. So I went to Stuyvesant, right? This is something key to what you're just saying. And I remember this very vividly when I was in high school. So to get into Stuyvesant, you have to take a test which functions basically as an IQ test. It's gender blind, colorblind, race blind. Everyone takes the test. It's, I think it's free. Whoever gets the best scores gets a Stuyvesant. So it's really as meritocratic as you get. And I remember my history teacher, and he was a big leftist and he was going on about inclusion, about how you have all the kids of different intellects in a room together. And he goes, the argument is, you know, the, the slower kids learn from the smart kids. And he goes, I never understood what the smart kids are supposed to Take from the kids who can't even talk. And I don't even think kids. And I don't think ever in any classroom, even if everyone's identical, they're really learning from each other. You're learning from the teacher at home. You're not doing. Unless you're doing a group project, which is also hell on earth. You're not really learning from each other. Like, it makes no sense on any level.

[B]

It doesn't make any sense on any level. But you know where it does make sense, Michael?

[A]

Where?

[B]

Budgets.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[B]

Course. If you include. If you put the autistic kid in the classroom, turns out you don't have to have a special needs school with specialist teachers, which are going to be

[A]

expensive because it's a specialization.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Oh, how awful.

[B]

And things like having running electricity and running support staff and running administrational stuff and the operating the other operational costs involved in running a special needs school.

[A]

Oh, my God. You know, I'm such an elitist. I never thought of it, but what a disservice to these kids.

[B]

Two, four. And then what they do is they would give them what's called a teaching assistant. And what a teaching assistant is, is a lady normally in her mid-40s or 50s, who would be paid minimum wage, have the most basic of training, and they would be there to support the kid. And I wouldn't say it's a blind leading the blind. It's something. It's. It's worse than that because she doesn't know what she's doing. So actually, if you don't know how to support these kids, a lot of the time, you're probably actually causing more damage, more harm than good. And the teacher. I was never trained to teach autistic children. That's a very, very specialized form of teaching.

[A]

I thought that's your entire podcast. Am I gonna call Constantine? I. I've got things way off, man.

[B]

Look, I learned on the job. What can I say? But so what actually happens is it's. It's an act of profound cruelty under the guise of inclusion and kindness. It's very similar in many ways to what we did with mentally ill people when we closed the mental hospitals, like in the 80s, and what Thatcher did in my country, because we were doing what is called care in the community. Isn't it better that we have these people with profound mental and psychiatric disorders away from the cruelty of the hospital, and then they can be amongst other people, and then other people, they'll be supported in their own homes? Well, obviously, that is A stupid idea and it's failed on the most basic and profound level. And you can see it on the streets of London, just as you can see on the streets of Austin, Texas or D.C. or LA or wherever it is. But it's these ideas that sound kind and sound good, but really they just glorified cost cutting exercises.

[A]

So the subtitle of your book is Telling People why they Should Never Become a Teacher. Right? Yeah. So I want you to, if you were speaking to someone who's going to university or college, whatever, get trying to get an education degree, what do you wish you had? If you sat them down and you had a few minutes, like, listen up, kid, here's what I wish I knew. What would you tell them?

[B]

I would say it's wonderful that you're idealistic. It's amazing that you want to make a difference in people's lives. These are all incredibly noble traits and thoughts and impulses that you may have. The problem is you will always be a part of the system. And when the system is broken, as the education system fundamentally is, broken systems create broken people and ultimately broken outcomes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you can fight against the system, as many of the best teachers do, and you can succeed in spite of the system and not because of it, but eventually it will wear you down until you will have no option but to leave. Or you do what other people do, which is you then go further up the. You know, go further up the ladder and then you will become a deputy head or a head. But you're not teaching at that point. You're just a glorified administrator.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you will have a sell by date as a teacher, I will guarantee you that.

[A]

Or you'll be dead inside.

[B]

Because we. You went to Stuyvesant. I've heard of Stuyvesant. It's a very, very good school. I'm sure you had teachers who literally changed your life, Michael.

[A]

Oh, yes, of course.

[B]

And teaching is an incredibly difficult skill to become good at. It takes years. It takes about eight years to become really good at teaching takes about eight to 10 years before you're really good, before you become that teacher that we. The ones that changed our lives and that we all remember with great fondness. The average teaching career in the UK is five years. People leave.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

They leave. So what we have is a brain drain from education where the brightest and best leave all of the time. And obviously that's a problem, but one of the problems is the loss of skills that we have and we see the police force as well. Another broken institution in the uk And I talk to coppers all the time, and they say, part of the problem that we see with the police force in the uk, and we see it in education, is the old guard, the copper or the teacher who has done 30 years, brilliant at their job, a font of knowledge. The ones who could take aside the young kid or the upstart and go, look, you're doing it a bit wrong here. You're great. But you tweak is do this, do that. We've lost that entire skill set.

[A]

I think when you're young, it is hard for you to wrap your head around how bizarrely counterproductive bureaucracies can be because you assume, all right, maybe some people are going to be lazy, it's going to be slow, maybe someone's going to be difficult. It's hard to imagine how deranged some of these rules are. And I'll give you an example from my life. This is really a fun story. I don't think I ever told this before. Bucknell, where I went to college, university, they had this kind of fund for, you know, clubs for people to. They wanted people to be creative and, you know, form organizations, do things. So I. I did my own newspaper, right, or newsletter, whatever you want to call it. And I did the first issue and I went to the printer on Market street, the only street in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and I got my receipt, it got paid back. I did the second issue, right, paid for it out of my pocket, because I think there was a time sensei, I don't know what it was. And then I went to get it paid and they go, yeah, we can't reimburse you because you didn't get approval ahead of time. And I'm like, well, hold on a minute. You. You see that? Here's the receipt. I'm asking for this here. So I'm not putting in my pocket, you see the product, right? So there's no scam here. And they're like, sorry. Like we all had. There was a council, a group, we all talked about it like, we can't do it. And when you're in college, that $200 was a huge amount of money for me. And I sat there and I'm like, the point, ostensibly this is when I was blue pilled and believed in the word should is that you have this money to encourage people to create culture at Bucknell, and the rule is pushing in the other direction, and you don't seem to care. So me being a Russian and smart is I got approval For a third issue, I got the money, pocketed it and got my reimbursement that way. And here's the coup de resistance, coup de grace. Afterwards, there was a bingo night and it was in the lunchroom and there was, I'd say, 150 people. So your odds of winning are low. And I won one of the games and I got the prize and then I won again, which is statistically 1 in 10,000 or something like that. And it's that same who was on the. And she was nice, by the way, but she wasn't a mean person. She was. She was apologetic, which I don't care, give me my money. And I went up to get my second prize and she goes, michael, can you not win this time? You know, or something like that. She literally said those words, which until I hear them now saying out loud, I realized how cool it was for someone to say to me, that should have been the title of my autobiography, Michael, can you not win this time? And I just said, I think I was nasty about it, like, give me the watch or whatever, some crappy product and I take it. Or the gift certificate, it was different certificate. And she goes, thank you for being nice. And I left. I'm not going to win a third time. And. But that psych bureaucracy. I'm sure as a teacher, it's 10,000 times worse because you're dealing with kids and you want the rules to be fair and by the book. So it's getting even more of a nightmare.

[B]

Yeah, it was as a teacher. You have to be a teacher, you have to be a social worker, you have to be an administrational assistant. You also have to. And this was the one that really drove me mad. Every six weeks we had to change the display in our classrooms. So not only did you have to do all of this, you had to be a fucking designer at the same time. And then I remember sitting there going. And they were saying to me, in one. In one. In one meeting. Yeah, Francis, the. You know, the, you know the designs that you're doing that are taking literally hours of your time. I'm like, yes. They went, well, we need them to be 3D. We need them to be 3D. I'm like. So there were. I remember there was one day at like 11 o' clock in the evening, I had a display board for slavery. Of course I did, because we were studying slavery in the classroom. And I was there at 11 o' clock in the night, literally stapling paper chains to my wall.

[A]

Wow. So I guess you knew what it was like to be a slave.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. They probably got better pay than we did, mate, but.

[A]

And fewer beatings.

[B]

Yeah. Better conditions as well. But here's. But here's the other thing, actually. Here's. I. I haven't told this before, but the book, it was originally meant to be called 12 years a teacher.

[A]

No.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Did they not let you.

[B]

The head of Hodder and Stoughton, the managing director, said, and I quote, under no circumstances will we be publishing that book with that title.

[A]

You know, I'll tell you, a similar story happened to me, which. When I sent out a book proposal for Dear Reader, my biography, autobiography of Kim Jong Il, and I get credit for this and I don't deserve it. And I'll tell you why. One of the people wrote back, oh, this title is racist. And when the agent told me that, I was very taken aback because they thought I was making RL joke about, like, the Asian accent. And I'm like, hold on, hold on. I said, they say kim Jong Il and Korea and US Imperialist. You're thinking of a Chinese accent. And to equate them just because they're both Asian, is the actual racism here to regard all Asians interchangeable? The title came from Jane Eyre because, sorry to spoil Jane Eyre to everybody. The book ends with her saying, reader, I married him. And I thought it was such a bizarre artifice to have the narrator directly address the reader. And that's where I got the title. And to this day, people think it's a race thing. And if it was, I'd own it. I have no problem with it. Just like I owned a slave back in a previous lifetime. But it's really kind of bizarre what triggers people and what doesn't trigger people. Let me ask you this. When you were writing this book, was it. I'm not using this word loosely. Was it traumatic? Was it cathartic? Because when you're young and dumb, like, we were all dumb when we're young and powerless and confused, and the thing we're sold and the reality don't mesh, you always wonder, is it me or you get confused? It's really a disquieting situation. How was that writing process like for you to go back to that era of your life?

[B]

There were things that happened in that period of my life because that when you're in the middle of it, you don't. Because teaching is about survival. It's about every day there's a new club, there's a new class. Every lesson, there's a new lesson and you're just trying to get through, particularly in the early stages of your career where you don't have the skills or the presence to be able to navigate some really tricky classes. I taught a boy who was friends with a kid called Billy Cox. This was in 2008, I think, and your viewers can look up Billy Cox. Billy B, I, double L, Y, space Cox C, O, X. Billy was a 15 year old boy who, the allegations were that he was connected with gangs. We don't know, but that's what people were saying. Billy was in his bed. One morning, two men walked into his flat. 15 year old boy. And he was gunned down in his bed by two men who subsequently left his flat and walked out. These men, by the way, they have never been. There were two men were charged but they were never brought to trial because the Crown Prosecution Service didn't think the burden of proof was sufficient to bring them to trial. Billy died in his 13 year old sister's arms. Oh God. I taught one of his best friends. Okay. And I was in the classroom when I saw his best friend and I didn't know that he was very good friends with Billy and I saw him literally collapse in tears. And I wrote about it in the, in the book. And a lot of the classrooms that I taught in were. These kids were facing unimaginable challenges, particularly from gangs, from the violence in, in, in London and the fact that they grew up single parents.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In poverty, no dads. And the effects that fatherlessness has on boys in particular. And it's only looking back on it and writing about it that you understand the, the. I'm struggling for the word to describe it, but this kind of maelstrom of emotions that you, that you were existing in every day because it was survival for the teachers, but for a lot of the kids it was survival as well. And you don't really realize that because that's just the waters that you swim in at the time.

[A]

Yeah, that's, that's a very good way of putting it. And it's, it's funny because I think back on every class I had, there was a kid who was smelly, right. And just kind of like, you know, bad hygiene, whatever. We'd all make fun of him. And then you have to realize as an adult that kid what their home life was like. If they're this neglected at school that. You know what I mean, it's not like they're coming home and they're, you think that they're going to have a life similar Yours. Not that I had great upbringing, but I certainly ever lacked for food or warm water or something like that. And I was watched after. And that's when as an adult you're like, oh, so that kid's life was hell at home and then it was hell at school. And it's, it's, it, it's, it's.

[B]

What can you say, you know, look, there's another story. There's a boy that I spoke about that he was incredibly. This is when I retrained and did primary and I taught primary in a very deprived part of East London Primary school. And I taught the last year of primary, so 10, 11 year olds, I taught this one boy, he was really difficult. Dad was in prison, he was really challenged. He was a challenge. Every day was a battle with this kid just to get him to do work, just to get him, keep him in the classroom. But we, we kept him, we got him through his last year, primary school. He left, he had a younger brother in the school and he used to come back to pick up his younger brother at the end of school days and he would get expelled from one school to another to another school. And he came to see me just to say hello and he was on his bike and I said to him, hey, Dylan, how are you? He went, been expelled from another school. And I was like, God, Dylan, where are you going to now? And by the way, I should have said that there were rumors that this kid was in a gang. Never know for certain, but that's what the rumors were. And I said, oh, Dylan, where are you going to go to now? He went, oh, I'm going to go to a school in Stratford, part of East London. And I said, well, look, fresh start, clean slate. You're a bright kid, you know, you've got a lot about you. You can do something with this, you know, why not see this opportunity to turn over a fresh leaf? He looked me in the eyes and he said the words to me, because they'll murder me.

[A]

Oh, God, Then he's not joking. No, because he knows where the bodies are. He has the receipts. Yeah, they can't let him.

[B]

No. And what? Impregnate what made me, made me. What this taught to me is you grew up in New York.

[A]

Well, hold on, hold on. You're yada, yada. What did you say to him?

[B]

What did I do? I simply referred it up and I was just, I, I was stunned. I said, you need to tell someone. We need to. I referred it to the authorities, the people. I said, we need to talk to your mom and all of this stuff. And I referred it up the chain of command, which is all I could do, right? That's all I could do. And up the chain of command, try and get people to come and talk to the mom, try and get to the social, all of these things. And what it made me realize is that. And I already knew this anyway, you're from. You're from New York. I'm from London. There are many New Yorks and there are many Londons.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's right. Well said.

[B]

And the New York that you lived in and the new. The London that I've lived also lived in different Londons in my life. The London that I now live in is. It's very nice. I go for walks, I go for coffee, I meet with my friends, we go to bars and restaurants. It's great. The London that Dylan lives in is profoundly different.

[A]

Well, you don't know.

[B]

It's in the same area.

[A]

Do you know what happened to him though?

[B]

No. Every month I check his name, I put his real name in Google and I check to see if he's okay.

[A]

And

[B]

it hasn't come up with his name yet. Oof,

[A]

man. You can see why I call you Eeyore. Francis. Why don't you give the viewers the URL so they can buy the book directly? Because I'm very intrigued to learn more.

[B]

So the URL, what was it that we. I forgot now. What did we call? What do we get the URL?

[A]

The book. Okay, so let me explain to people at home, this boomer that I'm trying to deal with. I set you up perfectly and you failed. F F see me after class. So I told Francis, I go, look, get a domain name so that instead of having to remember Amazon.com G blah blah blah blah, all these letters, they can put the domain name in to get the book. And France is like. Because everyone watching here, if you put in cadre cremex.com C R E M e, you will see a surprise. And France like, well, don't I have to put up together a whole big website? I go, no, have the domain name to have it resolved to the Amazon page, pronouncing it correctly like you do, and then they could order the book directly. And you're like, that's wonderful. And I suggested a domain name and it was taken. And then I suggested a domain name that would be easy for everyone to remember and you, the author, do not remember it. So if people are interested, they could go to unwantedbook.net uneducated book. Sorry. Unwanted book.com is my graphic novel. Unwanteduneducatedbook.net is Francis's book. I'm excited to read this because I feel like there's so much propaganda about the long suffering teacher. And I'm sure a lot of it's true how difficult it is, but to have someone who walked away from it and who actually went there with good intentions and tried his best. I'm sure. And a certain point, like, screw this. I'd rather be a jackass with a microphone and then try another day with these kids. That says a lot. And it's. And it also says a lot about the future. And I don't think what it's saying is necessarily a good thing.

[B]

No, no. And I also want to make it clear I've. I wanted this to be funny as well. It's a very funny book. It also speaks about horrific lessons that I taught where the kids won and I lost and I lost miserably. And it's very funny. And it's. Anyway, it's. You will laugh. It's mostly funny with the occasional bit that I talk about that is tragic and awful. But mainly it's funny.

[A]

All right, Francis, I'm excited to get it. And those soaps of mine you have. We're running out of time. What has been your favorite part of this interview?

[B]

Seeing your wonderful little face, Michael.

[A]

My wee face.

[B]

Your wee face. I miss you, Michael.

[A]

I miss you more. And you are welcome. At first I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was to trying transported to another place. Pluto tv. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows and they were all free. Truth is, it's just so Beautiful on Pluto TV. Free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow,

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