'The French attack France' | James O'Brien - The Whole Show

It is three minutes after ten and you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

That breaking news from Australia may turn out to be of a piece with the conversation that we were already poised to have

about a sense of peril, of jeopardy. And it's funny, isn't it, how much louder conversation about Russian interference in Western democracies has become

even the Mail on Sunday joining in I think at the weekend and you know ultimately

nothing would please the Kremlin more than to see some form of

societal breakdown in the West and listen don't put this at the top of the list of things to think about

this morning but there is a a simple point to be made about how much

of what we see is fermented online whether we're talking about the Farage riots in this country

whether we're talking about the pogroms and what have you in Northern Ireland and elsewhere

whether we are talking about the masked thugs turning up outside RNLI stations

It's all sort of fermented and latterly organized online. And we know for a fact that an awful lot of that is state-sponsored

It's coming straight out of Russia. But as I say, I don't want to put that at the top of your contemplation list today

I think we'll start with 2011, when in the city that I have called home since I was in short trousers was the scene

And there were other cities and towns across England that saw looting and arson

five people died during the 2011 riots which which began after um a man called mark duggan

was killed by the police um violent clashes with police followed and and police vehicles

with a double decker bus many homes and businesses um it kicked off in in a hideous way and copycat

violence then unfolded in birmingham bristol coventry derby leicester liverpool manchester and I think Nottingham

And I need to remind you of that because a little bit of me looks at events in France

over the course of the weekend and thinks, good Lord, thank goodness that could never happen here

That could never, and it kind of has happened here. Although, and this may sound like I'm clutching at straws

it is usually, if not always, when we see violence on the streets of our city

this kind of violence, It is usually sparked by perceived police malfeasance or by provocative and usually racist politicians

There is usually a different blue touch paper deployed than the one or the ones plural that we are seeing in France

I don't know how reassured you are by that. I don't know whether you're reassured by it at all, in fact

Can I tell you something? I can't actually remember whether I've told you this before

but it always pops up in my memory on days like today

I think the questions that we're nudging our way towards will involve

are you qualified to explain to me, someone who is supremely unqualified

the difference between the UK and France when it comes to public demonstration

or indeed rioting. We are two countries divided by, well, the English Channel, most obviously

but profound cultural differences as well in how we are policed. That phrase policing by consent applies here

doesn't apply there. I mean, I don't know. I'm, again, beginning the week with a big ask for you

The differences between the two countries, between the two neighbours, that perhaps put the events of this weekend into some sort of context

If you can help me with that, you can book your place on the switchboard now. You know the number 03456060973

There'll be three questions. That'll be the first. The second will be, could it happen here

Could the same thing happen here? Motivated by concern about the cost of living crisis

I don't know who would provoke it, actually. I don't know who would agitate for it

You can see relatively small outbreaks of hideous violence, but they're normally promoted by racist politicians in this country

I don't know that cost of living in the state of schools is going to bring the masses to the streets of the United Kingdom

not least because the kind of people that are prone to protest in this country don't seem to be educated at all in many cases

Some of them, I believe, struggle to spell RNLI, even as they turn up outside lifeboat stations

to call upon the volunteers to leave people to drown in the sea

And then the third question may well be, what do you think the French are protesting about

Because, again, an awful lot of answers to that question are going to be defined by what social media you're following

as opposed to the news. So I remember in 2011, I was still quite wet behind the ears, wasn't I, as a presenter

We're going back 15 years. No one really knew who I was. I had quite a big following on Twitter

but nowhere near as big as I had when I left. And back in those days, I was very rarely shocked by social media responses, right

As in completely taken aback by my failure to predict or expect or factor in what would subsequently happen

And I can't remember the exact words. You'll have to forgive me

But I essentially encouraged young people not to go out and riot, because if you were caught and arrested, and I think there were about 3,000 arrests in the end up and down the country

If you were caught and arrested, then it would put a mark on your record that you would struggle to wash off much later in life

A relatively well-meaning and certainly a kind of warmly motivated intervention

If you're thinking about going out and rioting, please think again. Something like that, because if you do get into trouble

and, you know, we ended up locking up people for stealing a bottle of water from a shop and things like that

If you do get into trouble, the trouble will massively outweigh outweigh whatever benefit you accrue or whatever cause you think you're serving by going out

to riot. And it was probably the first time I found myself looking at my phone and sort of going

whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened? And I can't even remember what the numbers were like because

as I say, things changed so much in the intervening 15 years. But at the time

I'd never seen anything quite like it. I was coming under attack from all sorts of corners of the country for being

I mean, I don't think we even knew the word centrist then, but for being out of touch for being condescending for being patronizing for being an idiot I mean I don want to sugar the pill I mean and words that I can repeat on the radio Although within the old parameters of what was acceptable and not acceptable on Twitter

before it became a sort of Nazi bunker. And I still don't get it

I understand unhappiness. I understand dissatisfaction. I understand inequality. I kind of understand elements of the French relationship

between the state and the population. If you think we've got issues with the gulf

between the expectation of the population and their willingness to pay for it

then, you know, let me just introduce you to France. Hold my beer, you might say

as France then weighs in with a historic dependence on the state

an expectation of the state from the cradle to the grave that makes the welfare state in this country look positively low-fat

and yet the simultaneous objection to taxation and being expected to pay for it

as the wealth of a nation diminishes and the expectations of a population do not

you create precisely the sort of tinder that you're seeing here. I don't mean the dating site, Keith

Precisely the sort of kindling that you can see igniting in France

over the course of the weekend. That's background to this. Of course, racists will pretend that it's all about immigration

And Emmanuel Macron will claim that it's all about the far left

The far left will probably claim that it's all the police's fault for being violent

And for my money, anybody wearing a mask surrenders some of the natural defenses or presumptions of innocence

Whether you're wearing a mask because you're an anarchist, whether you're wearing a mask because you're just happy to go out and do some looting

or whether in this country you're wearing a mask because you don't want your mum to see you

protesting outside a lifeboat station. It doesn't matter. The minute you put a mask on in a functioning democracy

the expectation of protections from that democracy diminish somewhat, a little, I think

I think. I don't know. We'll talk about that maybe. We'll talk about that. 13 minutes after 10 is the time

So what are the differences that British people need to understand about the French population and the British population

03456060973. If you are in France or you know France well, I don't have a particularly sophisticated question for you

You don't have to do that question about the differences. Just tell us things you think might be helpful

It's not really a normal radio show this. I don't even know if we're going to book anybody in France to talk us through events because normally we can do it for ourselves

You can do it for us. So things we need to know in the UK as we try to plot a course between the misinformation and quite possibly the disinformation as well

So I think Donald Trump's already trying to blame it on immigration. Like I said, that's what racists will always do

Emmanuel Macron is crediting or blaming the far left for the violence

Most impartial observers seem to acknowledge that these were largely peaceful protests

The phrase you need to know is jeûne et jeûne. It's a lovely little juxtaposition there in French

Jeûne meaning young and jeûne meaning yellow. Just one single vowel. And of course, Young is the protest that began as an objection to the state of education

That's again, isn't that the first massive example of the difference between Britain and France

Could you imagine state school pupils in this country? Maybe you could. Could you imagine students in this country marching, not rioting

The rioting is the extremity of this phenomenon. But could you imagine students in this country protesting and striking over the state of their classrooms or the paucity of their teaching

I don't know. Maybe you could. I currently can't. But my engagement with full time education is a long way behind me

So the differences between us, the differences between the British and the French when it comes to this form of protest and indeed this this form of policing

and then the question of what we need to know on this side of the channel

about what it's like on that side of the channel not just in the context of this weekend's violence

but sorry the jaune is the gilets jaune the yellow vests who were I think essentially

were protesting about fuel weren't they a few years ago when they first came to prominence

that if you drive around in France you are required to keep a high visibility vest

in the trunk in the boot of your car and it became the uniform, if you like, of people protesting

Originally, I think about fuel prices and subsequently about the cost of living

So they're far from a left-wing movement. Quite often they seem to be flirting with the right, the students perceived as left

So Jeanne Young, Jeanne Yellow, the Yellow Vest perceived largely as right-wing

merging this weekend to protest against the status quo. And that, of course, has bubbled over into violence in many, many, many French cities

So those two things going on, we had protests, didn't we? But again, we did have student protests over tuition fees

And maybe it's going to turn out that the difference between France and Britain is nowhere near as reassuring as I currently want it to be

But I want your help with this. I want your insights. And then the question that anybody can answer, and you don't need to have any knowledge of France whatsoever, pas de tout, could this happen here

If you had to choose between a racist riot and a riot about the cost of living and the state of education that spills over into violence

then you'd probably choose the latter unless you were a massive racist. But could it happen here? And if not, why not

What is it that we are doing differently? What is it about this country that perhaps feels different

And let's be clear about one thing, because there is always a danger in these moments of hyperbole

France is a wonderful country and the French population historically are dedicated

to liberty, equality and fraternity even as you look at Marine Le Pen's

extraordinary high poll ratings and remember the hideous roots of the party that she leads

A party so far right that Nigel Farage used to claim he could never do business with them

or he would never be able to sit down and break bread with them. Of course, Nigel Farage saying something

is absolutely no indication whatsoever of how true it is or how likely what he describes is to unfold

But he did actually go to the trouble of saying not that long ago that he could never, never countenance any form of alliance or agreement with them

They were far too right-wing. Plus, I change, as the French say

I just want to get a sort of better picture of what's going on

And give me one more minute, Keith. Sorry, mate. I know I've overrun a bit today. I'm trying so much harder to be better, but I want to go straight to the phones after the break

The people I think of are the shopkeepers, oddly. I just think of the shopkeepers and not the people, forgive me for being a little bit

underground but not the people that work in the Apple store They weren there by the way the violence conducted against windows and the looting against property But I think of someone who you know

runs their own little business. I thought of this during the London riots. They see their own shop burnt down

or they see their own street. You know, you've done absolutely nothing to contribute to whatever it is

that is being protested against. And yet you get punished for it

So what Macron was trying, somewhat in vain to appeal to at the weekend when he talked about shame and disgust and ordinary

people. He talked about French people doing this to France. That's why I find it frightening

It's not a word I use very often on the radio, frightening. I think sometimes you expect me not

to be frightened by the things that frighten you as I work through the reasons why we shouldn't be

frightened. But this kind of violence is frightening because, of course, it's almost

self-harm. When Macron talks about the French attacking France, he's sort of describing an act

of self-sabotage. You are attacking yourself when you do this. It might not feel like it as you hot

foot it home with a stolen laptop in your backpack, but you are attacking the money that will be needed

to pay to repair the damage that's been done will come from you or your parents' taxes

You are attacking yourself when you riot like this. And I don't know whether I'm too old and

grizzly now to even acknowledge the possibility that sometimes the pressure cooker over heats and

and behavior like this becomes inevitable I don't really buy that to be honest with you

especially not if you're wearing a mask that is just deliberate agitation and or opportunistic

criminality there's a lot there to dig into I hope you will join me in trying to work out what's

going on whether it could happen here and what the key differences are between French democracy

and British Democracy. 03456060973. And I should tell you, if you're in France

the reports we're getting are a little bit salacious and sensational. Perhaps you could

tell us whether or not now is the time for sensationalism and salaciousness, or whether

we are perhaps being fed a slightly exaggerated account of what has gone on in your home

It's 21 minutes after 10. I'm James O'Brien. You are now free to call me

James O'Brien on LBC. 23 minutes past 10. Two corrections already necessary on this programme

I love, I know I sometimes tease you for getting exercised by the things that are not necessarily as important as the main thrust of the phone in conversation that I'm trying to have

But I do actually love it because I think I'm probably more like you than I would necessarily like to admit

So the two mistakes I've made already today, the first to Katie. jaune, please, James

It sounds like blown, not john. That's from Katie in deepest, darkest rural France

And yes, France is a wonderful country. I've lived here for 16 years and I wouldn't dream of going back

So the gilet jaune, jaune, gilet jaune. Oh, no, it's turning into awnings

Awnings. And the other one from Kev, who points out that the gilet jaune

is kept inside the car, James, not the boot. At least no one has complained that I nearly said trunk

It has to be within immediate reach of the driver when breaking down or in case of accident

And that's from Kevin, who's in Cumbrian, but judging by his surname, is at least Gaelic in heritage, if not currently

Anyway, speaking of Gaelic, Alex is in Toulouse. Alex, what can you tell us? Hello there, James. Thank you for taking my call

Bienvenue. Bienvenue. I have spoken to you before on sort of... Yes, I remember

and the first thing I was going to say is thank you for someone else

for mentioning your pronunciation the yellow I was taught French by a Yorkshire

accented former England rugby fullback so if my pronunciations are a little off kilter at least I know how to

spell it anyway on we go on we go you were asking about sort of

basic things that well are different Distinguish. Distinguish. Distinguish. That's a good word

Well, my passport, I'm sort of quite older now, but my passport used to call me a subject of the UK

In France, I'm a citizen. Okay. It's as simple as that. And when I vote, it actually comes through as citoyen à voter

Very simple. As I put my, you know, the mayor will say that, or his or her person managing the box

And similarly, in the education I had in the UK side, it's always a bit what you mentioned, you're part of a long line of history, etc, etc, da, da, da, da, da

Yes. In France, it's my republic. This republic is my republic. It belongs to me as a citizen. It's mine

So the very relationship between, what's the word I want, between resident and state is fundamentally different

Fundamentally, and it's very difficult to explain because it's something which is very much inside you

Yes, exactly. Gosh. Similarly, you're taught in, you know, well, I was taught again UK side

a bit what you said in terms of demonstration, keep your head down, but I soon ignored that

Yes. But in France, you're actually taught, as it's your republic, this is your right to demonstrate

Now, this is not a violent demonstration, okay? Yes. But it's your right to make your voice heard

In fact, it's almost your responsibility as a citizen to make your voice heard

So that's all of that one has to put on one's, you know, to absorb

And then the other very important thing to remember is constitutionally. People always think, well, you know, there's a republic and there's a United States

no, in the US the constitution is sacrosanct and it's done as amendments

Well, I think we need to introduce the past tense at this point. The constitution was sacrosanct, Alex

Quel dommage. Well, the constitution did allow to rule by presidential decrees

just thought that nobody ever would. Yes, fair point. but in france we have what used to be known as the nuclear option probably still is known

which is we can get a new constitution the mechanisms are there and it's happened last

time happened under de gaulle and it can either go through the senate and congress and uh well

both houses etc and two-thirds vote or the president some people don't think does have

the right, others he doesn't have the right, but de Gaulle thought he did have the right. Gosh

To put in a new constitution. So this is absolutely fundamental. We haven't even mentioned the fact that the Republic was essentially born of revolution

which is going to be a big underpinning factor in everything that you describe

So there's a phrase in English that you probably will be familiar with, that if voting changed

anything, they wouldn't let us do it. That's not the conviction in France

In France, they actually believe they can change things, but not necessarily by voting

Well, this is the other thing. I once had to go and give a lecture in Toulouse at all Well lecture is a big word Talk in Toulouse is on non It wasn the University of Mirai

Because the concept was quite weird for the French. And afterwards, an incredibly nice French professor took me aside

He said, Alex, I need to tell you something, which is changing France has never come without violence

Gosh, okay. And I've thought about that over the years, many times, trying to shoot him down, and I haven't been able to, I'm afraid

So that is also bubbling underneath. And there's also the realization, I mean, Mélenchon did put forward, and it wasn't really sort of, it didn't get anywhere

the notion of a sixth republic, etc., that it was time to think about that

but many people i know here and family etc believe that the fifth republic the structure of it the

mass centralization the power of a presidency is maybe not the republic that we need for the future

okay so so there are tectonic plates potentially shifting uh underneath what's happening how and

Forgive me for steering you back to the slightly more primal question

of how worried are you personally? No, not at all. No, because you're used to this

I mean, I think you're Anglo-French, aren't you? You're French-British. So this is plus a change, you might say

if you had a limited vocabulary. It's also the thing that you touched upon while I was waiting

which is that I remember my brother, who was a journalist, telling me whenever you see a photograph remember that 10 000 photos have been rejected

yeah that's a beautiful fact i've kind of done a clumsy version of that myself when i've talked

about picture desks going through all of the uh options they've decided not to stick on the front

page but i mean that but yeah and and when i go through the statistics i i see numbers that are

actually reflected by what happened here in 2011 albeit for very very different reasons no not even

a sort of frisson when you saw the tower in Limoges come down under

fire, come down in flames? No. You know, it's that's rather personal, which is

I just don't really get attached to buildings personally. Fair enough, some people are. Let's not mention

statues. 10.31 is the time. Alex, thank you. Thank you very much indeed

That is the perfect beginning to the phone, and I was hoping to have. And now I'm

supremely confident that we are going to have it. Not least because we're already halfway through it. Here's Dominic Ellis with your headline

James O'Brien on LBC. It's 10.34, and I think that we've already established one

probably more than one, major distinguishing difference between the French population and the British population

Alex absolutely knocking it out of the park there. And I'm also noting my inbox full of people of French extraction

or in France, expressing an absence of worry. I thought that might be

the one thing Alex said that other people might object to, but everybody. Elise, I'm just going to say lots of

random French names now and you're going to think I'm making an hour. I just go, Elise, Jean-Michel, Clément

Jacques, Frère Jacques, Jean-Pierre, they're all getting into it, but genuinely, we are not worried

exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. A quick word of sympathy to Clément, whose message to say

I can't believe I'm not allowed on your show because I spoke to Nick Ferrari earlier. What a waste

of a phone call that was. Nonsense, Clement. I'm sure that you made

a brilliant contribution to the programme. But yes, be warned. And that surprises me

And that is a big difference. There's the biggest difference established already. I mean, the clever stuff

about the difference between being a subject and a citizen. And of course, it says citizen in your British passport now

but you are still a subject. We are a deferential nation. We are a nation of four-lock targets

When somebody dares to challenge whether they actually realize they're doing it or not

When somebody dares to challenge the know your place philosophy that runs through British society, certainly English society

I think a little less so in Scotland and possibly Wales. But the idea that you should know your place, you are deferential

you are a forelock tugging capped offer, it's baked into our psychology

It's extraordinary. Most people don't even realize it, but they are capped offers. They are forelock tuggers

and they are subjects of a monarch. We live in an incredibly rigid social hierarchy

One of the reasons why Prince Harry comes in for so much jip is that he kind of was supposed to be at the top of it

and rejected it, which offends the sensibilities of everybody who's been conditioned to accept their place in the hierarchy

Massive difference between the French and the British or certainly the French and the English

I don't know if we've got the time or the space to add in complexities of Britishness

to our comparisons with the French. Historically, the old alliance, and don't correct my pronunciation of this

the old alliance was between Scotland and France, often united in enmity against the English

But that's what I mean by saying I don't know if we've got the time or the space to introduce such complexities

Right now, three questions, really. What is happening in France? Could it happen here

and what are, underpinning both of those questions, what are the key differences between the two populations

Jonathan is in Croxdale. Jonathan, what would you like to say? Hi, James. Very nice to speak to you again

I'm very faithful. I will never phone any of the other presenters

You are allowed to. You just can't get on with... Well, I think it's only this show that has this rule

but you can't then get on with me that week. Yeah, well, following..

We've spoken a number of times. it's probably for other listeners it's probably not very obvious but I am a French citizen

albeit I'm currently in a pit village in County Durham but yes following on from what you were

saying about the British the only successful revolution we've ever had or unsuccessful

revolution was the peasants revolt where famously the king gave into the demands of the peasants

and then reneged on it, had their leaders killed and hundreds of them strung up

I think there's a new film about it with Andrew Garfield in it, actually

at the moment. Oh, really? Yeah, I think so. I think it's set. I think it's 1381

What Tyler, isn't it? Yeah. I think it is. That's a very nice coincidence

I think it's literally out. He started in my film, Boyer. Just say that again for people who don't realise what a big deal you are

Well, my full name is Jonathan Trigel and my first novel has just been released as a modern classic

actually this summer. It was Andrew Garfield's first movie so that's a nice coincidence

Your phone rang went down. Your first novel has just been released as a what? As a modern classic

which I think is another way of saying I've got old. No, it's not. It does feel a bit like a lifetime

achievement award, doesn't it? You're thinking, well hang on, my lifetime's not over yet

And reminders of the title of the first novel, Jonathan. Boy A

Boy and then the letter A Boy A has been a modern classic

That's an amazing achievement Congratulations Thank you. You divide your time between England and France

You talk about the history of revolution and the history of rebellion making a difference

And you do believe that's sort of baked into the modern French DNA, as it were

I do massively. I mean, a lot of British people will think, they'll think of a French revolution or the French revolution

but even those early ones were actually a series of revolutions because, of course, the king was reinstated after Waterloo

but obviously France doesn't have a king now. So he was then deposed again

But even in cities like you have the Paris Commune, where the Parisians sort of seized control of their own city

and held out the army for, I think it was like six or eight months before they literally brought in cannons to bust down the walls

The same thing happened in Lyon, where a lot of the rioting, with the city I know very well

a lot of the rioting was going on over the weekend. and they burnt down the tourist office

How do we distinguish? Because some people listening may be balking slightly at the idea that this is..

I mean, I know you're not suggesting that this is all, all being the crucial world, part of some noble, rebellious history

There are a lot of opportunistic thugs out there. There are a lot of anarchists, and there are a lot of criminals and looters

So how do we know the difference? How do we make sense of it

You have got a coalition of those people. So as you said before, you've got students from

it started off with students from the Banlieu, which tend to be poorer areas on the exterior edges of big cities

And then I think the other students really came out in solidarity with them

and were obviously accused by the right-wing press of being champagne socialists and stuff for caring about the people

whose education wasn't going as well as their own. but you know France does have a great history of solidarity as well you know that's it is still

technically a socialist country even even though it's obviously changed a lot in the structures of

that um and do you say you you sorry you've got the gilets jaunes who are as you were saying before

much more right-wing they they tend to be from small towns they tend to be more sort of your

Le Pen voting itch. So they really have nothing in common with

the students who are protesting and you've then got another element where you have people

who just will join whatever protest there is and make havoc with, you know, there's the

sort of black front who are sort of anarchists and they will

riot on any given, they'll riot if the football team wins they'll riot if fuel prices

have gone up, they just love rioting You know, France has 25,000 specialist riot police officers who do nothing else, the CRF

They do nothing else except be on standby for whenever the next process is going to kick off in a bad way

How much? Two questions quickly. Number one, I presume you share the, well, I'm going to use a French phrase if you don't mind, Jonathan

I presume you share the sangue foie of my other contributors about this

That if it was in Britain, we would all be very, very worried. but in France it's kind of a lot more normal, for want of a better word

Yes. I mean, Leon's known much worse riots, even in recent years

It's in the vocabulary of public behaviour. And then I suppose, secondly, the question about deference and the point Alex made

Again, as someone with a foot in both countries, do you recognise that, that we are deferential

Absolutely. Yeah, no, I think the British have almost been cowed. we've been taught to accept that we can't change anything

whereas in France it's the very opposite. Oh, interesting. The education and the evidence of your own eyes and ears

shows that you can change things. Like 1968, you know, the whole country was changed by those revolutions

Ironically, the people who were students then are now the people who are sort of very comfortably

you know, latter middle-aged, with their very heavily protected pensions, which is kind of what the young people are saying

Hang on, guys. You know, remember when you were out protesting for a better world

and you made that better world and now you seem to be sitting back with your slippers on going

well, job done, you know, we've got our share. Thanks very much. Is anybody in France, do we know

trying to blame it on immigration and or asylum seekers? Because I've read what Marine Le Pen has had to say

Even she hasn't gone there. Obviously, all the racists in this country and sadly they've got their own TV stations and political parties now will do that

But is anybody in France trying to make it about immigration or ethnicity

Only, as you say, people further to the right than Marine Le Pen

That's a thing. Of which there are a few, unfortunately. But yeah, I saw some tweets that had been massively inflated by some tech AI giant

who happened to be French blaming it on race. That's the only place I've seen it

And he obviously had his own agenda, which was fawning to President Trump and trying to give the MAGA crowd something to retweet

Of course. I mean, the Banlieu, by their nature, the places where the first very peaceful protest started

being poor areas, are more likely to have a higher ethnic mix

than wealthier areas in the centre of town. You know, it almost goes without saying

But when you get out of the cities, the diversity disappears. Oh, yeah

You go further into the rural areas. Okay, go on, sorry. Sorry, to an extent

I was going to say, I mean, France has, I think it's very close to 10% of the population is Muslim

which a lot of people don't really realize. You know, it is a very ethnically

mixed country and there's surprisingly little friction. A lot is made of the times

when there is. Yes, of course. But, you know, So it is, as you say, it's correct to say that if you go into a little village in the middle of the countryside, it's much more likely to be white

And indeed to have pictures of Marine Le Pen or back when I was last, Bridget Bardo up in the south of France

And of course, I mean, for people, I'm sure people know this, but the number of countries, Muslim countries that were until relatively recently

technically French is going to be a large part of the reason why the population of France today is Muslim

But you obviously can't sustain your racist positions while also acknowledging recent history

Jonathan, thank you. And congratulations on Boyer becoming a modern classic. Two callers, both, of course, with a foot in both countries, which is not necessarily a precursor to answering the questions

But I don't know how we can confidently explain whether or not the likelihood of it happening here can be addressed without some knowledge of whether or not, of how different we are or are not from France

I don't know why that took me so long to say. I only needed about four words. James O'Brien on LBC

important distinctions between rioting and looting and protesting and the nature of media is such that the that the rioting and looting will receive infinitely more coverage despite involving a tiny fraction of the totals protesting the violence gets the coverage

That isn't a criticism, by the way. It's inevitable. It's kind of man by its dog as opposed to dog by its man

A million people marching peacefully through a city may get no media coverage at all in the great scheme of things

But if 200 of them decide to tear down a statue or set fire to a bank

then all of the cameras will pile in on that position and all of the subsequent coverage will look at it

But nobody is excusing, defending, or even really explaining the opportunistic violence

What I'm fascinated by is the French sans-fois. Is that one all right with you, all these pronunciation pedants

You know, I used to be a pronunciation fascist. I used to believe it was wrong to even fascisti

I used to believe it was wrong to even attempt to sound authentic because no one says Paris, do they

No one says, oh, I'm going to Paris for the weekend. So why should I pronounce jaune, gilet jaune, like a French person does, as opposed to just reading it phonetically in English

Nobody says, oh, yes, we had a wonderful weekend in Barcelona. The tapas were sensation

No one does that. You don't adjust your pronunciation to copy the native pronunciation most of the time

So why do we do it with other things? It's just weird, I think

Don Quixote is my favourite example. Since when do we say Don Quixote

If you're speaking English, it's Don Quixote. It is. Don't look at me like that

It's Don Quixote, Paris and Barcelona. And it's Gillets Johns. It's Gillets Johns are protesting

The Gillets Johns are... No, all right. I'm going to struggle to keep that one up, I grant you

But don't be too pedantic about it. Tracey's in Cambridge. Tracey, what would you like to say

Bonjour James. I've been really nervous and you've really made me laugh as a retired languages teacher with that last little bit

C'est seulement moi. C'est seulement moi Tracy. C'est seulement moi. Thank you for not making me feel so nervous

Oh my pleasure. And I hope I don't make a fool of myself on the radio. Of course you won. But I am an old lady and maybe I'm looking back at the past with rose-colored spectacles

But I taught as a language assistant 35 years ago in Lille, sorry, in DF, and it was quite a deprived area

And then I went on to work for a transport company, and my job involved going all over depots all over France

And this was 30-odd years ago, Lille, Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg

and I remember particularly in the southwest and south of France being deeply shocked at how explicit

because the Front National was very, very strong there, still is in my view

And the racist comments were explicit. They were made in front of second and third generation colleagues

and I just remember being very shocked by it. And I'm now concerned that that has permeated into the UK currently for all sorts of reasons

I'm not being partisan. I'm not saying it's solely far right or solely far left

But our language has changed in this country. In France, you are a citizen and you're encouraged to use your voice

And I've agreed with all your previous callers about deference and subjects and so on

However, it fills my heart. It makes my heart go cold when I listen on the news as a matter of course, pretty much, that if someone commits a crime, their ethnicity is mentioned

And then I look at protests, you know, against the RNLI and the small boats and so on

And actually, there is a vacuum of power in both countries. There is a weakness in education systems in both countries

And the rhetoric has changed here. And therefore, the similarities concern me

And I worry that it could happen here. And yet the rioting in France or the protests in France have got nothing to do with the far right

No, but I... And they've been hijacked at the extremities by, I mean, anybody who's wearing a mask or being violent is a problem

But there's no, because I agree with everything you've said about the poisoning of discourse in this country

although I would be entirely partisan about it. It's a direct consequence of things that were unleashed during Brexit and very, very carefully nurtured and promoted by Nigel Farage

And, of course, as we learned last night on ITV, pretty much all of his colleagues

Although I'm sure lots of them would still deny that they were racist while not taking any meaningful action against all the colleagues that are

So I don't quite see. I mean, I can imagine far right

We don't need to imagine them. Far right riots here and pogroms and the Farage riots after he tried to turn that hideous murder in Southport into a political opportunity by spreading the lies being disseminated by various other far right figures

but I don't see a parallel between what's happening in France this weekend

and what might happen here in very different circumstances undertaken by very different people

I think where I see it is, and again, I'm in my early 60s

You said you were old. You said you were an old lady, Tracy

Let's get rid of that for a start flipping. You're practically a spring chicken, a spring poulet

Un poulet de tonton, voilà. But when you look back 30, 35 years, I think there was a..

Let's not go back that far. When I was teaching, right, I worked in a multi-ethnic..

It was a single sex school for boys. So there were a lot of ethnic minorities there

And there were things that other boys would sanction each other on

if it was said, to protect their mates and so on. Oh, that's nice. I'm not always, but, you know, life's not perfect, but it was done

And certainly, you know, as a teaching staff, we were very strong on any form of racism or bullying in that fashion

So I think that is increasingly difficult now. Yes, I do, too. But that's not what the riots in France are about

That's the only thing I'm quibbling with you on is that the riots in France this weekend have got nothing to do with racism

They are not racists. They're not racist in essence. They're not anti-immigration protests

The people wearing masks are largely wearing masks so that they can go and loot a local Apple store, not so that they don't have their faces attached to the fact that they're trying to encourage the drowning of refugees

But, yeah, there's something in the there's something in the idea of of the guardrails coming down, Tracy, some of the traditional guardrails coming down

And what interests me is how largely unconcerned people with one foot or two feet in France are about this because they see it as being they see the protest, the mass public protest as being part of their ancestral DNA

And factored into the mass public protest is the is the violence on the extremity If it bleeds it leads was the old journalistic adage And that why we focusing upon the violence whereas in fact the big story socially is a growing discontent at the state of the Fifth Republic

And, of course, Marine Le Pen is poised to capitalise on that because, like all far-right populists, you just come along offering up easy solutions to complicated answers, to complicated questions

And that's why some of the people on the far left are probably too stupid to realise that they could well be helping to usher in the far right

Tracey, I look forward to your next call to the programme, but I want to squeeze in one more before the news, and that's going to be Tim in West Hampstead

Tim, what would you like to say? Bonjour, monsieur. Merci beaucoup, Tim

Merci beaucoup. I'm a great fan of yours, and it's the first time I've got on

but to be as quick as possible. Thank you. The big difference that hasn't been mentioned is we are the only country in Europe

that has a totally divisive educational system. France, on my French side, which I didn't know I was until I was 11

I'm a war child, my father's a French peasant, my English family are posh

When I went to France from boarding school and met my rallies, I could not believe unconditional love was expressed

And in England, the taboo subjects at table, sex, politics and religion, never talk at dinner because it's considered rude to be seen and not heard

I'm 84, so I remember all that. In France, those are the only things worth talking about

So you have solidarity, which is classless. Whereas here, you get the minus strike

I remember meeting a guy in a pub. I was doing the West End and this busker came in

The problem with this country is deference. And I went, oh, yeah, what's that

He said, well, all those Jarrow marchers, they walked all that way and bugger all happened

They tugged their forelots. Well, they did. I mean, they kind of got – I'm looking at the Peasants' Revolt as well

and Ket's Rebellion in Norwich 200 years later. I mean, it just doesn't work even if it happens in this country

I did a play about the 1830s peasants uprising in the home

counties here, Captain Swing a wonderful play and what happened to them, they were asking for half a crown

a week, a minimum wage and they sent in the red coats and the rest

were sent to Australia and that's only 1830 I was going to say the Peterloo massacre just a few

decades after that up in Manchester there is hierarchy to do with our class system

but there is a class system in France though No, but there's more to do with money

Parisian is the scum of the earth if you're rural French. You have 75 on your car

The worst insult I heard was I was filming down there. The hotel manager saw some posh-looking young people

and he said, they're not French people. They're Germanic French. And he meant Parisians

And I thought, oh, my God, I'd never heard. So there is a sort of bourgeois manifestation

And my father could play both games because he was from rural Savoy, Savoy, and became a Parisian

And I could see it. It was like a commedia. If he was with certain people, his body language would change and he would sort of put on a sort of camp game

So he's a bit of a chameleon. But the French, you know, Europeans can do that

Yes. They're not stuck in a background and a heritage of identity in the same way that we are

Do you see what I mean? I see exactly what you mean. It's classed as a straitjacket, really, isn't it

It's classed as a compartmentalisation. And woe betide you if you try to break out of the place that you were allotted more or less at birth

I tell you what I'm fascinated, though, by, if I may. How did your parents meet

Well, they met. It was before the war. My English family were posh, arty people

They lived in rural France. They knew Gertrude Stein. They knew all that. And they went to the local lycée

And my mother fell in love with the local lad, became pregnant. The Germans started coming through, so we had to get out

and I was born in Lisbon on the way out in 42

and my father joined the Free French but when my mother got back to England

she discovered London, a very romantic and she was very beautiful and she dropped my father like a stone

and used to refer to him as that awful common little Frenchman

and my brother and I, we would we met all her boyfriends

they were all officers, they all had flashy cars you know, MGs with hoods

and all that. And I didn't meet my father till I was 11. And when we met him, we loved him

I was going to say, you had a relationship with him, a proper relationship with him. I've got a whole lot

of half French, I mean, totally French half sisters and brothers from his other marriage, you know

Oh, how lovely. And I'm very happy because my son, I've broken the pattern with that and my

son communicates with the French family and all that, you know. There you go

But it's interesting because having worked in almost every town in England

you see the caste system. I mean, you know, it's apparent. I know, but it's invisible at the same time

It's obvious and invisible at the same time. I tell you what, Tim, the French have probably got a word for that

And if the French haven't, then the Germans will. I could listen to you all day. I'd sense you're a thespian

Ah, yes. Yes, you're... Are you still working or have you hung up the grease paint

I'm available. God bless you, Tim. Thank you. It's 11.03. Six minutes after 11 is the time

Why does it always fall to me to do this stuff? That little nugget in Dominic's news bulletin there about Reform UK

claiming that the former director of this, that or the other, is the one who's going to carry the can for all the racism and misogyny unveiled in that ITV documentary

Why does my brain work in this way? Why is it always me that can spot the gaping holes in almost anything that comes out of either that man or that party's gob

I shall share more on that with you shortly. But trust me when I tell you, all is not as it seems

Seven minutes after 11 is the time. OK, this is a little bit weird because now what I want to do..

I want to have exactly the same phone-in that we just had, except all in England

Do you see what I mean? Or in, this is confined to England, but I don't want you to confine your contributions to England

We will extend it to the whole of the United Kingdom. It's one of the consequences of devolution

Nobody thought about this when they introduced the Senate and the Scottish Parliament

Nobody thought about the damage it was going to do to nationwide phone-in shows. so much now is divided regionally

so much is devolved not as much as Andy Burnham wants to be devolved but so much is devolved that if you talking about health or education or lots of issues you are because you taking your lead from Westminster inevitably you kind of excluding Scotland I

can't just say to all my listeners in Scotland how grateful I am to you for for running with that and

for not resenting it too much and for allowing me the benefit of the doubt that I am just as

interested in your lives as I am in anybody else's but that when we turn our attention to a story

like this, the reason why it has such an English flavour is because the children's commissioner

as appointed by the British government, is the children's commissioner for England and Wales

And this is the same conversation in a way. I want to know about differences

between experiences. The 10 worst places for children to grow up, the hardest places to grow

up. And this is a proper report. This isn't some nonsense that's been put together by a lobby group

pretending it's a think tank or by a commercial operation trying to draw attention to its own

products or efforts. This is the Children's Commissioner set to unveil the report later today

acknowledging that every single local area in England has work to do to make lives better for

children, but that in some communities, the situation is dire. Now, one of the things I like

about Rachel D'Souza is she doesn't pander or appease, but she does diffuse the obvious and

lazy responses to things. So she will say later today, not for every child, not everywhere. So

when I tell you what the worst places to grow up in this country are for children, she's already

he said, not everybody and not everywhere. For example, the place that comes second

I live in that borough. So the second worst place in England, I live in the borough. I don't live in

the town. So I live in the London borough of Hounslow. I used to live in the leafiest corner

of the London borough of Hounslow. I did most of my child raising in leafy Chiswick. I now live in

a less leafy, but for my money, an infinitely preferable. I'm going to start a West London

war now. The West London postcode wars began in 2026 when James O'Brien accidentally let slip

that he considers Brentford to be massively superior to Chiswick in every conceivable way

But Brentford is more diverse, both ethnically and socio-economically. It's being gentrified at

the moment. I think that is a direct consequence of me moving in. But it is technically in the

London borough of Hounslow, and Hounslow comes in second. To give you an indication of how

Waffa Thin. There you go. Is that pronunciation all right for you? How Waffa Thin

the distinctions can be. That's why it's called a postcode lottery not a town lottery

The fourth nicest place to live or to raise children in this country

is about a 20 minute walk from my front door. So you go in one direction

you're in Hounslow. You go in the other direction you're in Richmond up on Thames and you go from

one of the worst to one of the best places to raise children in this country. I think this stuff is really important, but I'd like to go a little bit beyond the statistics

For example, in Blackpool, Lancashire, you're 27 times more likely to be missing education than pupils in Lambeth in South London

And you are 46 times more likely to be excluded from school than if you are a child in Wiltshire

in Portsmouth we see the lowest access in the South no, in the whole country to post-16

education, while Derby in the Midlands, where I was born has the highest rates of children

do you do this or is it just me? they're always looking for a link with everything

I did this before I had this job I'm not just trying to sort of make you think

oh Jay knows what it's like, his first house was in Doncaster I've got this weird obsession

we're trying to create a connection with so many different corners of the country

But I was born in Derby. I'm not making it up. That's got the highest rate of children who were neat

7.1% of all the children in Derby are going to grow up to not be in education, employment or training between the ages of 16 and 25

You head over to Nosley near Liverpool. You have got just fewer than one in three children getting a grade five or above in English and maths

So that's less than 33%. what do you think the percentage is in Richmond upon Thames

70. It goes up to 70%. That's almost exactly double. And then you've got safety as well

One in four children in Croydon in South London say they feel unsafe

That's higher than anywhere else. You hop over to Bedford, it's fewer than 7% of children feel unsafe

So here are the worst places in England to raise a child

I'm going to do it in ascending order because I am very much of the top of the pops generation

so number 10 is Medway number 9 is Sunderland number 8 is Liverpool

number 7 is Leicester at 6 Peterborough at 5 Halton 4 Nottingham

3 Bradford 2 Hounslow which is sort of flying the for the South East isn't it

and then in first place Middlesbrough those are the 10 worst places

in England to raise a child the question I'm going to ask you is not English

specific, it is experience specific, so you could be in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland and still be able

to answer the question that I am going to ask you and then do you want the best ones, do you want the nicest places

10 is Wokingham, 9 is Central Bedfordshire 8 is Leicestershire, 7 is Haringey

6, I think Haringey used to be a byword for loony left excesses, didn't it

They must have been doing something right during that period. Seven is Haringey. Six is Cheshire West and Chester

Five is Hertfordshire. There's a north-south divide here. Not completely binary, but it's notable, isn't it

Four is Richmond-upon-Thames. Three is Surrey. Two is Merton. And at first place, the best place to raise a child in this country

is Cheshire East. I want to know what the differences are this is why I said we were going to have the same phone in

this hour about the differences between parts of England that we had in the last hour about the

differences between England and France but this is not a difference in DNA this is not a difference

in attitude or history this is simply the difference in experience the difference in

experiences. So I have led, as I tell you, whenever we turn our attention to subjects like this, I

think it's incredibly important that I tell you where I am without telling you that I, without

I can't expect you to tell me stuff about yourself without telling you stuff about myself. And it

comes very naturally to me. I have not had, by any stretch of the imagination, a difficult life

Difficult things have happened to me and to people that I love. But when it comes to sort of

socioeconomic privilege or advantage, I have no complaints. I've grown up and lived almost

exclusively in very, very nice areas. I think probably technically. A state I was living on when my oldest child was born was somewhere that

then taxi drivers didn't go to. Now you're looking at, I think

every house on those streets is worth over a million pounds, and they're tiny little houses

So that was the cusp, if you like. Right at the top, if you're familiar with that part of West London

there's an estate called the Mozart Estate, which has quite a very bad reputation

and there's a sort of estate of little workman's cottages next to it, which used to be almost exclusively social housing

and they've now been turned over increasingly to right to buy, which is how we bought ours from people who'd bought it from the council, yada, yada, yada

So that was an urban environment, but I loved it. And the only reason we moved further out of London was because we couldn't afford to buy a bigger house in Zone 1

So we moved out to Zone 2 and then I think Zone 3. So boring stuff out of the way

I've never lived in an area that felt poor. I lived in nice areas where we were cheek by jowl with less privileged people

I've lived in areas where, like any big city, probably anywhere in the world, but especially in London, you can have enormous poverty, cheek by jowl with enormous wealth, probably never more so than in London

whichever part of London you're in you know I read a lot about the gentrification of Canary Wharf

and some of the communities down there that watched these enormous skyscrapers

rise up from their midst and without any visible or measurable improvement

to their own existences when some of the biggest fortunes in the world

some of the biggest commercial fortunes in the world took up residence on the banks of the River Thames

and the people whose families had been there for generations got none of the spoils and education didn't improve

None of the things that you might expect to come with gentrification

reached some of the people that had been there all along. But what I want you to tell me is

and there'll be people in Medway and Sunderland and Liverpool and Middlesbrough and Hounslow who recognise that they grew up in a tough town

but who had happy childhood. I hate the sort of idea that because it's a rough area or a difficult area, then everybody is a victim

But it is different. It's a different experience. And I want you to come at it from both angles

I'm going to struggle with my job here because I can't really think of things that will surprise or shock you if you grew up

and this isn't about private school we've done that before this is simply about where you live

and of course the fact i went to boarding school means i don't really have the same relationship

with with where i lived that i that i have with where i live now so my childhood was was a weird

one wasn't it really because i spent half of it in in boarding schools but if you if you grew up

or you've raised children you don't have to have grown up there in in an area where educational

attainment is very low let's make a list educational attainment is very low where children routinely

feel unsafe you grew up in an area where you didn't feel safe right or you're raising your

children in an area where children generally don't feel safe so low to no education personal

unsafety, feelings of unsafety. That's probably the most frightening of these statistics. The

poorest access to mental health support teams. Now, that doesn't just, of course, apply to the

children who need help. Leicestershire is in the top 10 least challenging places to grow up

but has the lowest access to mental health support teams. Hampshire, which is a great place

to grow up by most measures, is actually one of the worst when it comes to how long you have to

wait for mental health treatment. So the things that will surprise the other side

That's what I want to think about. And I suppose in the same way that the best contributors to the

last hour of the program were the dual nationals, the people like Tim and Alex and others who were

half French and half British. In the same way, perhaps the best contributors to this conversation

will be the people who have had experience of both. Maybe you grew up in a really rough area

and I apologise for that word, but it's the only one I can think of in shorthand

And you're raising your children in a nice area. So I'll tell you what I'd love to know, because your perspective is perfect on this one

The things you can't quite believe are normal for your children that would have been unthinkable or abnormal for you

Do you see what I mean? And vice versa. So you are set for life by the time you're 14, probably

with a few glorious exceptions most of us are on the path to where we're going to end up

at a very early age and these sort of experiences formative experiences

are hugely important hugely important people from my side of the tracks

people born into privilege not epic privilege by any stretch of the imagination

and neither of my parents were but relatively speaking I was privileged

an awful lot of people on the right side of these divides like to pretend that it's down to hard work

or natural gifts It absolutely isn't. It's all about luck. You would be biologically exactly the same person that you are today if you'd been born into a wealthier family and gone to Eton. But you would be externally a completely different person

and I've said it's not about education it's not about private education

so if you were born in one of the roughest parts of the country you would be biologically

exactly the same person if you'd been born in Richmond upon Thames or Merton

but your life would be completely different and because your life had been completely different

you would be a different person you know this is the most interesting thing to me

over all the things we talk about together you would be a different person

if you had led a different life you would be a different person and i want to know about the

differences that you can describe to the rest of us what what what don't people who grew up in

middle class areas what don't they know what is going to be most surprising so it doesn't have to

be one of these 10 you can self-identify as having grown up in a rough area okay and and that is a

great way of course to bring Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland into the conversation. But you grew up in an area where children don't feel safe, where educational attainment is low

where mental health access is poor and you face more challenges growing up. What are the big

differences? What are the big challenges that people like me have never experienced personally

I want to get this right but I've already wanged on for long enough so I'm handing it over to you now. All right. Don't let me down. 0345 6060 973. What do people who have had relatively comfortable

lives not understand about uncomfortable lives from childhood, uncomfortable childhoods? What don the rest of us know understand or appreciate Because you can begin to fix these imbalances until you understand the differences It 23 minutes after 11 James O on LBC 25 minutes after 11 is the time you are listening to James O on LBC

Listen, sometimes I take ages doing a set-up, and I still get to the end of it and think I haven't nailed it

And sometimes I think I don't need to do any more monologue on this. The question's really, really obvious

I haven't nailed this because it seems a bit stupid. but we're talking about children who grew up in really difficult areas

the worst places for children to grow up, and we are wondering essentially what that's like

and how you would explain it to somebody who grew up in one of the best places to grow up

I've got mates who had very different upbringings, and education's crucially. They're all from loving homes

But education, different, and expectation different, And sometimes I'll say to a friend of mine that, oh, we did that at my school

And they'll say, you would literally have got your head kicked in at my school if you'd done that

So those differences are interesting. But I want to know about more, more than that

And it's not what's defined by what's going on behind your front door

It's defined by what's going on beyond your front door, the rough area, the difficult area

And now you don't live in an area like that. You can't quite believe the difference

I hope I'm pinning this down. Jo's in Forfa in Scotland. Jo, what would you like to say

Hi again. Hello. Hi. I feel like I'm fairly well pleased with this because I grew up in Nottingham

and I've moved up to Scotland almost two years ago now. I've got children ranging from 11 down to 2

So the eldest one went through the English education system and now she's in the Scottish education system

So it's vastly different in a good way than the English education system

so I grew up in a fairly affluent part of Nottingham but then when I moved out of my house

when I moved out of home I moved to probably one of the worst areas in Nottingham

because that's what I could afford and that in itself was a massive wake up

I went from being in a... But you mean if you compare your childhood to your children's childhood

you have more in common than sets you apart? Oh yeah, yeah

I mean, well, now I do I mean, when we were in Nottingham, where my daughter was going to school, wasn't the roughest area, but it had some children

It was literally next to the roughest area. So you stayed in... Sorry, I misunderstood you. My apologies

No, I'm apologizing. Don't you apologize? You stayed in one of the less salubrious areas when you became a parent, after you became..

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's what I could afford because it's ridiculously expensive to live in Nottingham

I lived in what used to be Europe's biggest council estate, so there was a lot of people that didn't work

There was a lot of people that, I mean, I remember spending one Christmas day with someone with those little annoying motorbikes

literally going back on the boards outside my house because they had an argument with a neighbour on Christmas Day

Yeah. So it was... And how did it affect your children, even though they come from, you know

an essentially middle-class background, as in you? What would be the difference between where they are now

and where they were then? more so with my elder yeah go on

she was getting quite angry so she's 11 now but she was growing up really fast

so she was wanting to do make up and hair and talk about things that she necessarily

shouldn't be speaking about when she was 18 or 19 years old that's not a socio-economic thing

what was she angry about you not letting her no no just life

she came home just angry at people and things, anything and everything

she could be angry now. And I get that it's, you know, hormonal girl things as well

No, it's not. It's space. Is it space? Is it that idea of not having any... Because I was going to take the mickey today

out of some bits of advice that Gwyneth Paltrow gives on leading a better life

because they struck me as self-evident and obvious. And it's like, spend some time with nature

eat nourishing foods. And I just caught myself in the nick of time

going, no, this is actually really good advice just because I know it all. yeah yeah i mean so your daughter gets angry because she hasn't got space mentally and

physically emotionally yeah yeah i mean the school was pretty overcrowded as well so she

didn't have the time so her classrooms were you know 30 35 kids which i know is average but

when we moved up here you get lost she's literally well she's literally got 73 children in her entire

school yeah that's from one extreme to the other and what difference have you seen in her

she's she's calmed down she's much more chilled she's much more that's it that's all i need from

you that's a wonderful starting point this in that because it's it's exactly

what i can't articulate it's that sense isn't it of of pressure yeah it's put upon you because of

the context that you're in the environment that you're in and it's going to be really hard to

articulate but you can see the result of the pressure definitely yes yeah i mean even my

middle child he's five now he's just started primary school when he was in nursery which was

incredibly overcrowded versus now where he's got all the space in the world he can go out i mean

the big thing between the english education and scottish is is the emphasis on life skills i feel

anyway um so i feel like it's much more how to be a good human being how to pay your bills how to

you know do the practical things in life versus sit there and learn all of which would make you

less angry yeah i'm getting a bit torn on this education thing because some of the measures by

which we judge academic success england is performing really well probably as a consequence

of what michael gove introduced something that i've always listened to teachers deride and and

and criticize and condemn and will continue to do so but but at the same time you know i do worry

about children churned out by that kind of sausage factory of academic achievement who are not

learning all of the things that you've just described and the better equipped you are for

the world outside school the less likely you are to end up a neat and the less likely you are to

end up frustrated and angry so it's about pressure this conversation it's about the pressures that

are brought to bear upon young people and their parents children and their parents in the country's

least salubrious is a terrible word. What word would you use? 84850

Because I can say poorest, roughest, toughest, toughest. Toughest is okay, right

If you're raising children in the toughest parts of the country, what will the rest of us not understand, appreciate, or even know

0345 6060 973. Dominic Ellis has your headlines. James O'Brien on LBC

35 minutes after 11 is the time. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC, where a report today will reveal the hardest places to grow up

I wonder whether I should just have said, did you grow up somewhere that you now know was a really hard place to grow up

And then you just tell me what it's like in a way that I won't know

I grew up in a lovely place to grow up. I raised my children in a lovely place to grow up

What does it mean to you? What are the things you think of? I grew up in one of the hardest places to grow up What do the rest of us not know I think that the question It one of the questions although I enjoyed the answers so far Martin is in Kingston

Martin, what made you pick up the phone? Hello, James. Yes, I grew up in the Midway towns

Chatham in particular. We used to have a dockyard. Just for some context, I'm 62 years old now

And when I was at school, I went to a local state Catholic school

and most of the kids went into the dockyard back then and it was pretty grim

I don't know if you've ever been to the Medway towns, but it's not pretty

It's ugly. And I guess that kind of really used to have an effect to me

when I was a lot younger, when I lived there. And when I left school, I'm dyslexic

so academically expectations were low and I didn't disappoint. So I ended up going to catering college to learn to train as a chef

and even after one year in industry, I thought I can't do that for the rest of my life

And going back to your point of being lucky, I went down the job centre, the internet wasn't a thing

and I found a fully funded course. Maggie Thatcher was in power at the time

and I got paid to go and retrain in business and IT

So I've been in IT project management for the rest of my career

and without that, I would not be living in sunny Kingston. Kingston. And, you know, when you walk around

Kingston upon Thames or Richmond, you mentioned, they're just so beautiful places, aren't they

Yes. Tell me about that. So tell me about where you grew up, because this is..

I think this was touched upon with the last caller about the sense of a 10-year-old girl getting angry, or a young

girl getting angry, partly as a consequence of where she lived. This is the

perfect example of the thing I'm trying to pin down, that if you don't

know it, you're not ever going to know. I mean, so you just feel differently. You're the

same person biologically but you feel differently because of the world that you're inhabiting

absolutely i mean i think for me when i used to walk um the streets of uh chatham are basically

lots of terraced houses very small terraced houses yeah normally two up two down type type places

very small very grim um and why grim why do you say grim because the estate i was describing earlier

which has now been enormously gentrified they're two up two down little little old workman's

cottages, but they're nothing, they're not remotely grim, they're chintzy now, and so

what do we mean by grim? I hope I don't sound silly. No, no, I think the

disc repair, so I'm guessing the places you're talking about have all been

painted in nice bright colours and they all look very, very pleasant. If you go onto

Rochester Street on Street View, which is where I used to live, and just have a look at

the houses on that road. How much of that is chicken and egg, do you think

How much of that is you know the old broken window theory that if one thing is allowed to slide then everything else

will follow i mean why would people not take i always think of it's a bit naff but working class

communities in the northwest of england taking great pride in scrubbing the front step and things

like that when what's changed there do we think why would some communities not take more pride in

their surroundings than others some people we're talking about yeah i mean it's a march up my

my childhood, we weren't wealthy, right? So it was literally lack of resources. You know

if you wanted to do something, you needed money to pay for it, right? And you haven't got the money to pay for it, you're not going to do it. I guess it's as simple as that

And I guess the other psychological impact that place had on me was the desperation

You know, I can remember as a young teen thinking, crikey, how am I going to get out of this

place you know i i really wasn't happy with the with the environment that i what was different

about you then why were you like that um i guess because you got you don't you can't be what you

can't see when i worked in norwich the car company that we used used to drive guests back that had

appeared on the trisha program and do you remember the trisha on itv it was like a precursor to

Jeremy, what's his name? Jeremy Kyle. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was pretty Victorian

It kind of turned people who had not had great lives into almost sort of cannon fodder

for the amusement of daytime television audiences. And some of the drivers would tell me stories

about picking someone up who didn't own any socks. You just thought, why don't you wear

I don't have any socks, or driving them home. And they wouldn't know where they were until they got to like two or three streets away

from their own street because their universe was so tiny that they couldn't really conceive of getting out of it

whereas you, from a very early age, wanted to get out of where you were. Why do you think that was

I think it certainly was an ambition in the sense of I couldn't see myself

living in the Medway towns for the rest of my life, so I was focused on doing everything I could do

to get out of that place by whatever means I could deploy it

but why do you think that was? Why? I just didn't want to live like that

So you knew that there was something different. One of the things that pops up in full disclosure all the time

is this notion that you don't know there's anything particular about your childhood because it's the only childhood that you know

So it's Gary Kemp this week who grew up in proper working-class circumstances

in Islington, and yet he almost didn't like me using that language

You can hear it in the interview because it sounded as if I was criticizing his parents and I wasn't because it was he

But they were just poor, you know, sort of outside toilet type poor

And and you don't know that you're poor when you're poor until you get a little bit older, until perhaps you go to a slightly more mixed or diverse school

And you meet people whose parents are in the professions. You become aware of social distinctions and social divisions

It's fascinating, isn't it? And some people perhaps never do. Andrew puts it well, you don't look after a place that doesn't look after you. And some people

pointing out that housing associations and social housing would once have had a responsibility to

care for properties, which doesn't appear to be the case so much anymore. Thank you, Martin. I'm

fascinated by this. You know, it's a variation on my favorite conversations of all because it's

path not taken. It's the sliding doors, if you prefer a more modern

ogy. Celine is in Wollington in Surrey. Celine, what would you like to say

Hello. I was basically saying that I was raised in Hackney, in Stoke

Newington, which was a very rough area in the 70s. And we were regularly mugged

going back to and from school by other kids from school. and it was just a normal thing

so we stopped carrying money me and my brothers we stopped carrying money altogether which meant that we had to walk

to and from school every day that's something when we once moved to

So you mean you didn't carry money including your bus fare? Yes

So you would leave the bus fare at home so you had nothing to hand over to the kids that would want to

so it used to be dinner money as well I mean you used the word mugged

and I in my very middle class cliched way I conjure up an image of something

slightly more sinister than just being robbed of your dinner money or your bus fare

But it never happened to me so I don get to introduce a hierarchy of what traumatic and what isn That a terrible thing to live with day in day out That was what we knew

Yes, exactly. Exactly. That was it. Vigilance. Hypervigilance. It's not good for you

The fight-or-flight syndrome kicks in. The adrenaline starts pumping. The cortisol floods your system, and you don't know that that's abnormal because it's happening to you routinely

All the time. Yeah? Absolutely. I mean, we've got a lot of fitness because we were running back and forth all the time

Silver linings. Silver linings, Celine. Absolutely. I mean, my children, we raised them in Wellington

Moved to Wellington and Surrey once we married. So that could easily have been in the best places, right

The top ten best places. Well, Surrey is. The whole of Surrey gets in at number three

Congratulations. Yeah. A lot more greenery as well. Yes. I mean, the other thing was

the teaching was based on the lowest common denominator. So in those days, we had the CSEs and GCEs, which were before they were merged with the GCSEs

CSEs were the lower offering. GCSEs were the higher offering. So we were only able to do CSEs, which meant once I left school, I then had to do another two years to get my GCEs

So it was two years behind my peers. So that's a poverty of expectation

Yes. And that was simply because of the cohort you were in, the school you were in

There wasn't the time or the inclination to actually work out who might benefit from a better education or a different education

It was one size fits all as a consequence, probably, of resources and what have you

But that's no comfort to you when you're being consigned essentially to an academic scrap heap at quite an early age

Exactly. Yes. Wow. Yes. And your children and the differences that you see now

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. they I mean they're all grown up as well now

but they were aiming for this guy all the way through when they were at school they hated it

absolutely hated it why did you put a thick rabbit school why did you put a thick rabbit school

but I think now that they realise that they did get a leg up

they were ahead of a good 80% of the country I would have thought

and no fear no fear like endemic to their childhood being frightened and this does have nothing to do with how loving your home is some poor kids are

going to be frightened of going home because they've got abusive parents but you could have

the most loving parents in the world and you're frightened because it's croydon where children

report the highest levels of feeling unsafe one in four children living in croydon feel unsafe

and in wallington that figure is going to be in the low single figures oh absolutely i mean the

funny thing is that my three daughters all went to grammar schools in Wellington. My son didn't

want to go to a grammar school, so he went to a school in Troy, which was very different, very

very different. But that was his choice. He was happy with it. He's still happy with it. He didn't

want to go to grammar school. You don't know, do you? You don't know what's happening to you at

that age? You don't know that this isn't normal, that feeling frightened isn't normal, or that there

are other kids of the same age growing up in other parts of the country who have absolutely no

concept. I wonder what it does to you. And I've asked everyone this, so I'll ask you as well

why did you want to stroke manage to, I'm going to say get out, it's not the ideal

formation of words, but why do you think you were so conscious of this difference that many people

probably don't even know exists? I think it was more to do with the fact that I wanted to

live in an area where we'd go to the parks without being mugged

Simple. We'd go for a walk. And you knew that those places existed

You knew that those places existed? Yes, we did. Yes, we did. When we were, I mean, this is a completely separate issue

our parents used to run a shop, so they would run a shop. On the weekends, they would give us, I don't know, 25 pence or 30 pence

It was four of us brothers and sisters. And we would just travel on buses all day around, all the way around London

so we knew a lot of London who would spend the whole day out

would have some money for London That's Horizons, that's such a little thing that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about

because the children who were growing up in the best places to grow up

would never feel that there was any purpose to be served from

travelling around because where you were was lovely whereas you knew somehow that where you were

wasn't lovely, not least because you're getting mugged for your bus fares on a regular basis

on your way to school, so you just want to go and have a look at... It's almost like the face-up to the sweet shop window

but you've got your own sweet shop. Celine, thank you. 11.48 is the time

Other things, there's one there. Like literally the difference that a bus ride can make

A bus ride. Just driving around on the top deck of a bus and going, flipping heck

This is nice. And you take it back to the caller from Medway, just seeing houses that didn't look run down

seeing whole streets and communities that didn't look rough or frayed around the edges

and thinking, God, I wonder what it's like to live somewhere like that. Do you know what? When I grow up, I think I would like to live somewhere like that

And some people it lands and for other people it doesn't. And for the, I think, probably the most sympathetic people of all

it lands, but they don't manage to do anything about it. Hey, smart speaker

James O'Brien on LBC. 11.51, you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I don't know why, but I do know why I find this stuff so fascinating

But I'm going to Angie and Barnett next and then Andy and Basingstoke

If you have brains like mine, you'll have clocked immediately. That's ABAB. Angie and Barnett, Andy and Basingstoke coming up next

And room for this. I may carry on. Simon Marks is with us at half past 12. Inevitably quite a lot going on in US politics

And we need to catch up. A few people wondering why we haven't gone in harder on that documentary that was on telly last night

It's because they didn't really, they didn't do what I call the roast potato syndrome

Do you know what roast potato syndrome is? Keith, you must know what roast potato syndrome is

You save the best till last. So when you're eating your Sunday lunch and your roast potatoes are probably your favorite bit

And if you save them till last, they've got all lovely and mushy with the gravy

You've got the carrots out of the way because your mum made you eat the carrots. And you sort of just got like one or two roast potatoes left over at the end of Sunday lunch

And in many ways, that's the best bit of the whole meal. I didn't know whether ITV News were going to go roast potatoes on this Reform UK racism expose, and they didn't

Most of the worst offences and indeed offenders had already been released previously

And we did it at least twice last week, having a proper look at that

The racism, the misogyny, Farage claiming that he was vetting people while also doing everything he could to keep a racist in position as a mayoral candidate

I mean, everywhere you go, hideousness, including one chair of a local branch

explaining that Nigel Farage has learned over 30 years of being in politics, how to essentially publicly pretend that you are opposed to racism

while privately allowing it to fester and foment in your political party

as if it were going out of fashion. So I will run through some of my favorite

including his former director of communication saying I was racist every single day at school

and Nigel Farage joking. I think for the first time about those hideous allegations of Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism while he was at Dulwich College in a way that makes it sound as if he is actually admitting that it happened

I may have misconstrued what I heard in that clip, so I will play it to you and let you decide

But what I did not misconstrue was lots of people laughing at him trying to sort of make light of the fact that many, many, many of his contemporaries at Dulwich College have accused him of making..

I don't even really want to repeat about Jews being gassed in concentration camps and the Nazis more generally

So we will run through those before close of play today. But in the meantime, this is perhaps another question you might like to answer

It's called a postcode lottery. So let us call it a rough postcode and a nice postcode

what are the biggest differences having now had experience of both a rough postcode and a nice

postcode in the context of childhood what are the biggest differences what are the biggest differences

for a child growing up in a rough postcode versus a nice postcode what would you point out first or

foremost 0345 6060 973 Angie is in Barnett Angie what would you like to say hello there I just

I just wanted to tell you a little story. I started off in a council estate in Tottenham, in North London

until I was six years old. It was fine. My dad left us, and we were in a two-up, two-down

and that was fine. But what happened then was I started getting bullied by local kids

who were rubbing dirt in my face, telling me I was this, that, and the other, unmentionable

My mum spotted it. She challenged the parents. She got beaten up

she got into a fight. It was really rough. It was proper rough

That sort of thing would not have happened in Chiswick, I can say, with a fair degree of confidence

Children get bullied, but the idea of a ruckus between adults as a consequence of childhood unpleasantness

that to me speaks to an environment that you were living in as opposed to..

It was definitely an environment, but it was also an environment where at school I was really happy and I saw no color

We were and I look back on photos of my class and I was one of very few white children

And that was not something I saw. OK, it was not something I observed or had an issue with

When I was beaten up by these kids, my mum saw me out the window. She saw me saying, I'm going to get my dad on you if you don't leave me alone

Leave me alone. My dad's 11. He'll do you in. Because I was just, I had no clue

I was very tiny. Basically, she ended up, I know, right? She ended up doing a very canny council swap

And we ended up in a council flat in Highgate on North Hill in London, which was incredibly wealthy

Suddenly, I was transported into a local state primary where I was like a ruffian, apparently

Yes. Although I wasn't badly behaved. To the point where my headmistress took me aside and said to me

I know for a fact, Angela, that you were the one who stole the stickers from the assembly from my drawer

That's the sticks, doesn't it? And you weren't, to be clear. No. And I said, no, no, I didn't do that

But you were the poor kid in the class. But what she then did was she said to me, it doesn't have to go any further

Don't tell anyone. bring me 50p tomorrow and everything will be fine

call it quits so I went home and told my mum my mum came up

she went to the Hornsey Journal she publicised it and absolutely I just want you if I can

I mean I'm going to have to wait for the autobiography Angie I think which I will read with bated breath

but the biggest difference is if you could I mean regular exposure to violence

I mean you've described prejudice in the other school the Highgate school

but what, I mean, in terms of raising children and the day-to-day experience of a child

what would be the biggest difference? Personal safety? Yes, I guess so

And I later then grew up in my council flat but with middle-class friends

Did reasonably well but ended up in a friendship group where they all had money later on when we were teenagers

and I went out and did a sandwich round and paid for myself to take time off and sit with them in the park yeah and and again i mean

being conscious of of the differences but preferable i think to to being in a place or

living in a light living a life where there was a constant threat of danger i wonder if that's the

statistic we should have picked up on a little bit sooner that that idea that the areas where

children feel least safe and just as a reminder especially if you joined us a little late in the

conversation the um these are not cast in stone so you could be in the top 10 worst places to be a

child and on some of these measures you'll actually be performing quite well and you could be on the

top 10 best places um but on some of these measures you'll actually be performing uh quite badly so

so um it's not binary but it is i think probably fair to say that personal safety is going to make

a difference to your childhood experience on the kind of scale that anyone..

Even if you went to a posh school and you had violent teachers, it cuts

very, very deep. But if you were living in constant fear of random violence from

other young people while walking to and from school, I wonder if you ever stopped

looking over your shoulder. James O'Brien on LBC. Two minutes after 12 is the time

Middlesbrough, Hounslow, Bradford, Nottingham, Halton, Peterborough, Leicester, Liverpool, Sunderland, Medway. That doesn't quite have

a kind of Gilbert and Sullivan ring to it. And that's because they haven't been put together

those ten places for reasons of lyrical felicitousness or felicity. They are the ten worst places to grow up in this country

Middlesbrough, Hounslow, Bradford, Nottingham, Halton, Peterborough, Leicester, Liverpool, Sunderland and Medway. The ten best places to grow up are Cheshire, East, Merton

Surrey, Richmond-upon-Thames, Hertfordshire, Cheshire, West and Chester, Haringey, Leicestershire, Central Bedfordshire and Wokingham

and quite a lot to get through this hour so I'll take a few more calls on this

Simon Mark's joining us at half past twelve and we need to run through

because somebody has to the sort of most hideous hits from that ITV

news investigation into Reform UK being and I know this is a little bit dog bites

man but they do like to pretend otherwise absolutely riddled with racism

and their misogyny. I checked. I think I did come up with that phrase on Friday

If you go to bed with a racist, don't be surprised when you wake up with a misogynist. The two positions go absolutely hand in hand

There's so much of American politics is demonstrating on a daily basis at the moment

But that documentary made alongside hard cash productions by ITV News has to be largely ignored by right wing media

because they have spent so long telling you that Farage is a stand up guy

and that reform are not remotely racist. They just got legitimate concerns So we will come to that Four minutes after 12 is the time It an ITV exposure documentary that was on ITV News not an ITV News documentary Apparently it important I

make that distinction because goodness knows what might have happened if I didn't. The reason that I want to stay with this is because the question does what it doesn't often

do on this program. It actually got easier, not harder over the course of the hour. so if you have experience of both the best places to grow up and you don't have to confine yourself

to the places the towns that i've just read out the best places to grow up and the worst places

to grow up this might sound like a silly question but i promise you it isn't what are the biggest

differences what are the things that you wouldn't know unless you had had experience of both worlds

the things that as we often explore on full disclosure my podcast interview series

you don't know until you're older that there was anything particular about your own childhood

you know you can be a little lord fauntalroy and you have to be of a certain age before you

realize that not all children have an have a have a life or have experiences as rarefied as yours

and similarly you know if you if you are growing up in really difficult circumstances and everybody

else around you is growing up in very difficult circumstances you've got no way of knowing that

these circumstances are difficult until you start knocking about with or encountering people who

have grown up in circumstances that are not difficult so what are the differences the big

differences that perhaps and i'm going to give you a little bit more homework so i want you to tell me

the differences that will affect your future the differences between the best places to grow up and

the worst places to grow up that will actually affect your future almost change the person that

you are potentially or or definitively um i'm not doing a long introduction on this one so you can

get in touch now on 03456060973 and he's in basingstoke andy what made you pick up the phone

cool there's a lot to get get your head around on that that brief introduction there fill your boots

mate fill your boots i phoned uh i phoned up originally uh i grew up in medway in the bit

like the previous quarter, actually, in the late 70s, early 80s. Terrible unemployment

That part of the country, the dockyard closing, there were a couple of manufacturers closing as well

So there was, you felt that there was absolutely no hope for anyone at all, of our age, you know, leaving school in the 82, 83 time

I went in the Air Force, actually, which helped because it meant a mix of other people

But all that, I think, as I was saying to the lady there

I think the biggest thing was you didn't realise how bad it was until you properly moved away

Yes. I grew up on a really rough council estate in Strood and Rochester as well

So we saw that it was just the general towardiness. And, you know, you go back now

I've taken my kids down now. We live in Baselstoke now. It's a really nice place, Baselstoke generally

It's got countryside. It's got a good town. It's got everything you could need. It's interesting how many people are mentioning countryside

Well, I mean, it's countryside down where we were. Well, that's what I was about to say

but you would not access it in the same way. When you say rough, when you just..

Because I'm not being facetious here. I genuinely want to hear what your answer to this question is

You say it's a rough estate. What do you mean? We lived in low-rise flats

We had two tower blocks literally opposite where we lived. They were demolished not long after I moved away, actually

just because they were in such poor condition despite everything. Do we mean the actual infrastructure

the fabrics of the building was crumbling kind of thing? The whole thing, yeah

It was just never had any money spent on it properly. I mean, as kids, again, being kids

we'd go and play in the lifts. They always stank of unpleasant things. Yes

There was a park had been built when they put the flats up, I guess

It was just surrounded by concrete. Everything was concrete. Everything was grimy

There was some crime going. I was a little bit young, probably to realise quite how much there was

but it was just generally awful, just not a great place to grow up, really

You've done a brilliant job of describing rough. How did you become aware of the fact that things didn't have to be like this

Or did you? Well, yeah, no, I did. I think I was lucky that I had some really good school friends

as I became an older teenager and I joined the Air Cadet. So I started to see a little bit outside the thing then

And then I started to join the Air Force and you meet some people from different places

And I met the ex-wife. She came from Baserstoke, actually. And I came to places like this and you realise

wow, the world isn't all grey and grimy and derelict and broken windows and..

That's so stark, isn't it? I mean, that idea. And so how old were you then, late teens

Yeah, yeah, yeah, late teens. So I joined up at 17. Yeah, right, got it

So until then, so you had, again, as with other callers, there was some sort of impetus inside you to get away

but you didn't know, you knew what you were getting away from. You didn't know what you were heading towards

Very much so. I think, well, we knew we were getting away because I didn't want to be unemployed or go on a YTS scheme

that was at the time of the YTS schemes and 25 quid. And, you know, it was just the education down there

I mean, I went to a standard comprehensive school. It was, there was no, certainly, I think

because of the single parent family in the council area, just felt, well, looking back now

I don't think the school had any aspirations for people like myself either

So that didn't help. Well, like Celine, we said that thing, that poverty of expectation

If nothing is expected of you, then you don't really come to expect much of yourself, do you

Yeah, very much so. I mean, to get some money to go, we used to work in markets and stuff

and Gravesend Market and Rochester Market and stuff, just as kids for a couple of quid a day or whatever you could get

It was just the way we lived, though. Yeah, well, except I don't know

It's funny, because you knew nothing else, and I know nothing else but my childhood

Until people like you and me have conversations like this one, I need to observe, or at least acknowledge

that it's not hard to understand how a lot of these areas become the most rabidly anti-immigrant

even though they don't have high levels of migration because their poverty of experience

Someone comes along and says, oh, it's because we're giving all the money to all the immigrants. And then they become persuaded that it's got nothing to do

with dockyards shutting down or a lack of public investment or Tory governments ripping out the heart of social housing

and other social capital issues. So there's a reason why Medway and other areas like Medway

are really fertile hunting grounds for far-right politicians, despite not actually experiencing the things

that far-right politicians are causing all the problems. Just one thing on that, James

I was going to say to Eleanor, I guess, I don't know, was I've taken my kids down there a couple of times

I've got older kids. I've got two 15-year-old twins as well. And we went down there about a year ago now

and I said, oh, I'll show you where I grew up. And they just couldn't believe how grim it is even

It hasn't got any better, hasn't got any worse. But it just amazing You used to live here This was normal Why did you do that Well partly because for me just to go and see if it still like it was I guess

You know, just the old, you know, just, wow, this is where I grew up. But also, I think I was just keen for them

to see what the other, what can be like, you know? And almost to encourage them to work hard at school

I was going to say, did you want them to know what the other side of the street looked like

And we do that all the time, to be fair. we do try and keep them balanced and stuff like that

I mean, we're not well off in any sense, but we're much more comfortable than I would have been at that age

And you just want them to see what the other side of the coin is and how other people... Because it gives them a bit of a sense of appreciating what they've got

but actually helping others as well, you know? It's hard, isn't it? I suppose the younger they are

the harder it is sometimes to inculcate those things. But who knows what seeds are being sown by those sort of experiences

I mean, they were shocked then by what they saw because it was so different from where they grew up

from what their experiences are. Yeah, they think it's almost funny that it's still that bad

I used to go and play down by the river on the pier and stuff

which is all derelict now. It was derelict even then, I think. And he said, well, he used to go, yeah

And now they go to the skate park or they can go to the town and pass

and it's all fine. There's something to do. But the kids growing up there, the kids growing up where you grew up

have still got NAF all, really. Yeah, yeah, very much so, yeah. And we wonder why

It's funny how much this conversation echoes elements of the last conversation

about the rioting in France, dispossession, disillusionment, just very different attitudes to it

The third D would be deference. We're deferential. Essentially, we've had hundreds of years of conditioning

telling people in the circumstances like the ones Andy describes that that's where they belong. You should know your place

And that's why perhaps two things then happen to a society. Number one, you become exceptional if you break out of it

as Andy did. And number two, you become very, very, very fertile breeding ground

for racist agitation. Claims that the reason why your area is so unsalubrious

has nothing to do with lack of investment or being let down or abandoned

and everything to do with the immigrants that are getting everything that should by rights be yours

which is, of course, a blatant lie. But especially if you're a bit right-wing

It's a heck of a lot easier to get your head around the idea that foreigners have taken everything that you should have rather than the people that you're voting for taking it off you and giving it instead to people who are already much better off

It's 12.14. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC where we're looking at the difference essentially between growing up in a hard place

Maybe that's the only word we needed. Growing up in a hard place and growing up in an easy place

and the difference it makes to you as a child and then subsequently, of course, as an adult

It's coming up to 12.15. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

James O'Brien on LBC. 17 minutes after 12. Still no sign of the letters Nigel Farage was sent

by former colleagues at Dulwich College defending him from the accusations of anti-Semitism

and Nazi sympathies that so many of his other contemporaries have gone public with their memories of

But here is, I think, the first recorded event of him or the first recorded instance of him actually joking about being accused of hideous anti-Semitism and racism by people he was at school, by people that he was at school with

Nigel Farage takes to the stage. It has been a truly astonishing year

But I tell you what I do know and what's really important

is to do things in life that matter, it has to be fun as well

It's got to be fun. And I do put in the office, it is fun. There's lots of banter

Some of the banter, I've no doubt, I'll get a hard time for in 40 years' time

Behind closed doors, they seem to be laughing at the schoolboy racism allegations Farage is facing

Yeah, jokes about gas chambers. Yeah

And that, of course, is speaking directly to the question of whether or not these are bad apples

or whether or not the real revelation would be going undercover for a year at Reform UK

and finding people who weren't racist or misogynistic or both. Here's an example of some of the banter

that they're all having such a grand time chuckling about. I just apologise to that

Yeah, that's what he's doing. if David Lamb is taken. He's not too happy with it, Mr Traitor

No, I'm sure, but we just need to do it and move on. Yeah, I agree. Turn him out properly

Yeah. You could text him. He was showing a bit of... a bit of sock

I'm sorry, it's probably a good one here. Yeah. Stop using his rear app

That's the problem. But later, Reform's Director of Communications said Chris Parry should have been dismissed

Is he looking... He goes up to me. He keeps my ****. Who decides if these people stay or go as at night

The, um, yeah. Yeah. Someone who's in some room for Chris's statue

It was a concerted effort to try to get everything. Somehow he comes on. And the banter continues

because the reason why Faris didn't think that this bloke, who was hideously racist towards David Lammy

and got handed his sandwiches wrapped in a road map later anyway

was once a rear admiral. So there's snobbery there as well. if it's somebody posh or somebody that's held a prominent high status position, Nigel Farage

would defend them. If it's somebody from, should we say, the wrong side of the tracks or from more

humble beginnings, then they'll be tossed under a bus immediately, which is what happened to the chap

who was recorded saying that you can't be a Muslim if you're British, which must have come as

something of a shock to, what's his chop, Zia Yusuf, who has a made-up job title within the

organisation after having given them lots of money. Back to that Chris Parry bloke, the man

who made the very racist comments about David Lammy and the fact that even they know what

they're doing when they don't know they're being recorded. ITV's undercover reporter then meets

with Ed Sumner, Reforms Director of Communications, who warns her how far she'll need to go to defend

the party. They're talking about Chris Parry. He was Reform's mayoral candidate in Hampshire

a former Royal Navy officer who said online that British-born Labour MP David Lammy should go home

to the Caribbean where his loyalties lie and question the loyalty of eight other black and

Asian politicians. I suppose if you're questioning the loyalty of all black and Asian politicians

then Sueli Baverman is going to be quite perturbed by this, as indeed is Nadeem Zahawi

And not to mention that Zia Youssef bloke, who I don't think is technically a politician

but certainly sort of behaves like one, and sundry other characters in his setup

who don't seem to understand what it is that they're lying down in bed with

And speaking of lying down in bed, remember, if you go to bed with a racist

you wake up with a misogynist. something that Sarah Pochin who of course famously feels sick when she sees black and brown faces on the television apparently lacks the wit to understand I a press officer I passing in January

Oh my God! I can't f***ing f***ing put that up! We so need women press officers

Yeah, they are so f***ing chauvinistic. I go out on all the shows and go, oh, that's lovely

Oh, so welcoming! What do they do? Well, they just exceed you, if you're a woman

There's a bit of a bell issue going on. And if you're wondering why they seem so unperturbed or unoutraged or unoffended by all of those allegations

dating right back through Nigel Farage's life, but some of the most hideous, of course

revealed when former school friends came forward under their own names to recall the anti-Semitic abuse in particular

and racist abuse that they had received. You sort of wonder, is everybody in the outfit comfortable with that kind of thing

and the answer would appear to be yes. Here's someone called Gawain Towler, who is often regarded as the sort of more respectable face

of Nigel Farage's various operations. He's been with him for years. You've probably seen him on telly

either defending Nigel Farage or claiming that there's nothing to see here

and, you know, but not usually publicly saying things like this. Sophie and the team go for drinks after work

They're joined by Gawain Towler. He's worked closely with Nigel Farage for over 20 years

and is a member of Reform's board. Sophie asks him about the allegations facing Farage

How do you deal with stuff like the... Like with Nigel and the Dalit politics

How do you come up with a line for that? I've looked at my time at school, my stay-lady

and I feel right. Hello. I would embrace this every single day. Yes

He gets a friend. For you? Yeah. Yeah. I would embrace this every single day

Sophie asked Taula if he thinks his old friend Faraj really did abuse fellow pupils

Do you think he did terrible about God? Well, the thing is, there's a lovely line by Vigie Woodhouse about him

Apologize. So you can apologise, people who are mad at you. Don't care. And people who don't matter, use it against you. You can't apologise. You can't. But it will be used against you

I was at school, so I believe it was an artist. School children, they're nasty. But you can't apologise. So you apologise. It just opens the whole world

I'm sure he's the same. So make of that what you will

Do you think he actually did make jokes about gas chambers and abused Jewish pupils and, well, you can't apologise

and then having the audacity to cite P.G. Woodhouse, who was a complicated character

but whose evisceration of English fascism in the person of Roderick Spode

was absolutely and remains absolutely first class. that's all from the documentary

although as I said the reason why we haven't gone in harder on it today or deeper

rather is because we did twice last week and most of the

worst offences were contained within the pre-broadcast clips that were released by

the programme makers who were ITV exposure alongside hard cash production so it was

interesting to hear someone who has had Farage's ear for years explaining why

they can never apologize, why they will never apologise. He subsequently told ITV News that as a child

he held views that were wrong and he is appalled by them now. He was not at Dulwich

and has no knowledge of what was said there. Of course, all the people

that were at Dulwich, apart from the anonymous ones that have apparently sent Nigel Farage a letter

all the people that were there who've gone public can remember what happened and are adamant that it was

well, gross, frankly. 12.25 is the time. back to childhood although from a rather different perspective

the differences if you like between growing up in the best places and growing up in the worst places

and what the people lucky enough not to grow up in the worst places

still probably and without our help will never understand about what it's like growing up in the

worst places. David's in Hellensboro in Scotland. David what would you like to say

Yeah just really I grew up in a very rough area of Glasgow, inner city Glasgow

I know that's not on your statistics. I've been bending over backwards to say you don't have to be in the statistics

It's about words like best and worst and poor. But let me, speaking of words, immediately ask you to tell me what you mean when you use the word rough

Because it might seem like a stupid question, but for people who don't know what that's like, it isn't

It isn't stupid. No, absolutely. Well, I grew up in the inner city of Glasgow in the 80s during the kind of heroin epidemic

where the, you know, those hypodermic syringes and the playgrounds where we used to play

you know, the violence was obviously kind of endemic. It was everywhere you looked

So that's very much what I mean by a rough area. I remember when we were kids

we had to move in the middle of the night because we're drawn afoul of some local crime family

which had started from just a playground tiff, you know. So things like that, you kind of live with that trauma

and you take that into your adulthood and you don't realize it is trauma when you're in it

you know, you don't... It's hypervigilance again, isn't it? It's thinking, it's looking over your shoulder all the time

metaphorically speaking. You do. You grow up with eyes in the back of your head

you absolutely do, and I'm lucky enough now that my wife and I, we live in a very affluent area

on the west coast of Scotland, and we moved out of that and we've got two young children. My eldest daughter's eight, and the worst

crime she can possibly think of is theft. She can't envisage a

worst crime than that, and I love that for her. I love that kind of blister lignance she has

Of course you do. At the same time, you don't want your child to be too sheltered

but I hope she holds on to that innocence as long as she can. Because you can logically understand theft

I've got something. Someone else has taken it off me. But violence is something you need to witness

You need to be exposed to, to even acknowledge. God, that's incredible, isn't it

The existence. What do you think it did to you? I mean, just like you said in passing that it does its state

Can we put it into words or not, do you think? You never really lose that

If you grew up in an inner city like that, you never lose that having eyes in the back of your head

You're always hypervigilant. And I think that kind of gives you a level of anxiety

that you don't realise is there. That someone who hasn't experienced that

they don't have that. Do you know, there's another story that we were thinking of getting onto

and I'll probably do it later in the week, because I'm fascinated by anger and a reported increase this week

in the angry middle-aged men being arrested on suspicion of violent crimes

and lawyers now coming up with a new descriptor for grumps, grievance-ridden urban midlife perpetrators

which is a little bit throwaway. But I think that if you've got that anxiety in your background

it can turn into fear quite, turn into anger quite quickly. It does, yeah

And I have to put my hand up to that. I'm quite, but my friends and family will say

my temper can sometimes go from zero to, and the point of an eye. And, you know, I'm not saying it's because of my experience as a child

But it might be. It might be. It may be. Yeah, I mean, it's fight or flight or whatever we want to call it

but you get wired when you're young. You get, you know, your wiring is done when you're young

And if your wiring is to go from 0 to 60 on those very rare occasions

where it happens at a rate of knots, then it may well have something to do with what was wired into you

at a very, very early age. Yeah, precisely. And therefore, the consequences of this kind of inequality and experience actually resonate far beyond the communities in which it takes place

And the most suspects, just in case we do come on to it later in the week, in the 35 to 49 age group were found in 2025

It is it is rocketing more and more middle aged men becoming violently angry

That's something I'd like to explore, but again, not from the way that some people explore bad behavior if it's not committed by white people

I'd like to do it in a way that actually perhaps helps, A, understand it and B, undo it

Something else we must do this week, if we can, is find out how some of the people that Nigel Farage reportedly abused in an anti-Semitic fashion

how they feel about hearing him chuckling about it in a room full of people who also think it's hilarious

Yes, I guess a nasty experience at the best of times without the bloke apparently responsible for abusing you, thinking that it is now sort of comedy material

Or I think they like to use the word banter, don't they, to describe racism

Half past 12 is the time. Matt Hewitt has your headlines. James O'Brien on LBC

It's 1234. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. I misread that. My apologies

The work that we've been doing with Combat Strasser Charity, which you probably know is very close to my heart

That's going out this week. We'll be doing that this week on LBC. Not as I foolishly just said

at least you're not finding fault in my pronunciation. Not next week

I read last week's announcement. Someone who would never make a mistake like that

not least because he never seems to be off air at the moment, is Simon Marks, LBC's Washington editor

And this week, LBC's Ben Kentish substitute. So late nights for you, mate

Late nights coming up, but happy to be here this lunchtime. Well, thank you for squeezing us in. Of course

To your packed schedule, what's at the top of the list today? Well, I mean, I think we've got massive developments now in the rapidity with which Donald Trump is forming an alliance with Vladimir Putin and in which Vladimir Putin is capitalizing upon it

because the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Vladimir Putin is proposing a three-way meeting

alongside Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping on the fringes of next month's APEC summit

which is going to be held in Shenzhen in China. And essentially what Putin wants to do is to turn that into a modern-day version of the 1945 Yalta arrangements

that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin drew up to redraw the maps of Europe

He wants the three of them to sit down on the fringes of that APEC summit

and carve up Ukraine and force an agreement on Zelensky, on our prime minister, on the other Ukrainian European allies

before the G20 summit that takes place in December that Donald Trump will be hosting at his golf club in Doral, Florida

This is a major historic moment for the possible creation of a new kind of three-way axis between Russian President Vladimir Putin

American President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Stop it. I mean, this is big stuff

We've sat here a million times and said, you know, how bad can it get? How deep will it go

what would it take for some of the cheerleaders in this country of Donald Trump to acknowledge that

they were wrong, not just wrong about everything, but I mean, complicitly, spectacularly, hideously

epocally wrong about everything, because there is no depth to which he will not go. He hasn't

agreed to this. But the simple fact that Vladimir Putin is talking about it speaks of an emboldening

the likes of which we didn't think we'd see in our lifetime. Well, I think Trump absolutely will

agree to it. I think the biggest question of the three is whether President Xi Jinping will agree

to it because he has an agenda for the APEC summit already established, which is designed

you know, very, very heavily to focus on China's role in the Asia Pacific region

although there's an indication, and we've not heard this from Chinese government officials

publicly, but there's an indication within that Wall Street Journal report that the Chinese have

said they might be up for it if Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agree that this is a good idea

I mean, the man who, of course, is now completely on the back foot is President Volodymyr Zelensky

And he certainly appeared in an interview on NBC yesterday to understand how bad things could get for him and his people, because he clearly sees a movement now by President Donald Trump to establish a U.S. alliance with Russia, not just in terms of trying to force the dismemberment of Ukraine, but also an economic alliance

because it's clear now that that diesel deal that he did over a week ago with Vladimir Putin

is only the beginning of Donald Trump's aspirations to engage in broader business with the Russians

And he is tired and fed up with the Ukraine issue and the sanctions that are in place in the United States

getting in the way of that business. Take a listen to what Zelensky said yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press

If it's without the United States support, it's very difficult. But if United States will support Putin, I mean, it's unbelievable

It's tragedy. It's historic mistake and big tragedy. That why I think that I don want to live in illusions but I think that we have to be pragmatic If United States will take officially will take the side of Russia of course if these two countries will be together

of course, of course we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand

I mean, that is a chilling prophecy from Volodymyr Zelensky for anybody that cares not just about Ukraine's sovereignty

and its viability as an independent nation, but also who worries about the possibility of Vladimir Putin wrapping things up in Ukraine, securing access to the Crimea and the eastern section of the country, and then moving on to whatever his next target might be

And as we heard last week from the head of the British Army, you know, he clearly thinks that some sort of conflict is coming and that there's going to be a conversation led by the prime minister with all of us about what lies ahead

He was clearly sort of seeding the clouds for all of that and saying that the country needs to be ready to consent to the British Army's intervention when it needs to come against enemies and also to support the British Army in any efforts that it is required to make

But this development reported first today by the Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch publication once again, raising huge questions about exactly where Donald Trump's loyalties lie, I think is the clearest indication that we have seen yet that for Vladimir Putin, speed is now of the essence

He wants to take advantage of Donald Trump right now and try and get all this done

Because he thinks the midterms are going to do for him. So he wants to try and cash in all of his chips

before the midterm results come in. And Trump, I mean, who knows whether Trump is kind of having his strings pulled

or his ego flattered or just his sort of corrupt soul massaged

It doesn't really matter because we touched on this last week, I think

or the week before. The stories, you don't know it's going to happen until it happens

but the stories that get under your, my now, not yours, my professional objectivity, or that's not quite the right word

But the stories that hit you somewhere much deeper than professionally, hearing Zelensky there talking about, and you think of the sacrifices that the Ukrainian people have made

You think of the noises made by their allies across the world about how the support would be resolute

And it just never really occurred to anybody properly that Donald Trump would end up 100% on the other side of the argument

I don't think it even occurred to Zelensky, did it? No, I don't think it did. Certainly not at the beginning of this conflict for a minute

I mean, remember that the Biden administration always said as a mantra, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine

In other words, there could never be any discussion about settling this conflict without Volodymyr Zelensky or his successor sitting at the table and representing Ukraine in those talks

And what Donald Trump is essentially saying now is everything about Ukraine without Ukraine

We're not going to get Zelensky involved until we've agreed to this kind of 1945 style carve up of European borders that will then be presented as a fait accompli, not only to the Ukrainian people, but also to all of Ukraine's European allies

And the reason why I think Putin sees a real opportunity here is because you've got this one-two punch coming of the APEC summit in Shenzhen in China coming up next month

And both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have already agreed to attend that. So all three of those leaders will be there, obviously, including President Xi

And then a month later, you've got the G20 summit in Florida to which Vladimir Putin has been invited by Donald Trump

So a huge opportunity to carve this up, do the deal around the table if the Chinese will agree to the conversation in November and then present it at the G20 summit as a completely done deal in December because we know President Xi is going to that G20 summit as well

And all of this happening at a time when the United States has restricted intelligence access to Ukraine, either the US government or Elon Musk, depending on who you believe, restricted Ukrainian armed forces access to Starlink and Starshield

You've got Donald Trump cancelling the Russia bit of the Russia sanctions bill that was named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham

And you've also got the Americans pushing Europe now, saying to European governments, you need to start buying Russian gas

So this is a seismic shift. It's hard to see how it is stopped

Well, and also it's hard to see how our government at a time when it's preparing for the budget and it's got all of these competing issues juggling for attention on its front burner, how our government keeps up with all of this and joins other European countries in trying to derail it, I think starts looking like it is going to be very, very difficult

Indeed it does. Listen, this is me, James O'Brien now, not Simon Marks, but I'm going to remind you of a few headlines that appeared in our media not that long ago. Niall Ferguson, a historian whose work is often printed in Murdoch publications

Niall Ferguson, I was wrong to call Donald Trump a would-be tyrant

Jacob Rees-Mogg says he would prefer Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Boris Johnson says Trump back in White House is what the world needs

Justin Webb, who still presents, of course, on the BBC. Beyond the bluster, Trump may be making America normal again

Simon Case, former cabinet secretary. If Trump succeeds in reinventing government, expect his plans to be the global blueprint

all of these people offering up words of varying degrees of warmness

whereas perhaps not the full extent of the moral depravity has been clear from the very start but most of it has how do people push back how do people let find out after the break

actually Simon I always like having you in the studio I'm going to maximise my access

it's 12.45 James O'Brien on LBC 14.48 is the time Donald Trump

is a genuine friend of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer must roll out the red carpet

for the 47th president of the USA this is a huge opportunity to be grasped

That's Nigel Farage. Boris Johnson says Trump back in White House is what the world needs

I've just mentioned to you a BBC presenter who was cheerleading for Donald Trump

in a way that oddly never excites or invites the ire or the disapproval of the Daily Mail

and other right-wing newspapers who had the vapors when I did a few shifts

over at the BBC. Lots of you sending me reminders of colleagues here at LBC Towers who have been similarly upbeat

and laudatory of Donald Trump. over the years, even resorting to dismissing those of us who could see much of what was on the horizon

as suffering from something that they used to call Trump derangement syndrome. Boris Johnson

using a column in a newspaper this weekend to pretend that he had never, ever, ever been on the

same side of history or events as Donald Trump. Before we get on to J.D. Vance's latest humiliation

if that's the right word to use, I don't want to move on from this just yet, Simon, because

it is impossible and that's the problem with hyperbole isn't it is that we have reached many times

in recent years for words that we never thought we'd deploy while describing western democracies

we've reached you know I sat here with Anthony Scaramucci not long ago

and I used the word depravity and Anthony Scaramucci sort of looks as if

he wanted to pick up on that and I thought this might be a bit awkward he obviously is a little bit uncomfortable with

And he said, I'd go much further than that. He said, I think you're being too kind. But the idea of the US president carving up the world in connivance with the Chinese and Russian leaders, dictators, essentially, and certainly in Putin's case, war criminals, it's actually not a lot else for us to say, because normally we'd say, where does this lead? How does this end? Can it be stopped

This is utterly uncharted territory. Yeah. I mean, you know, it is Donald Trump's dream to be welcomed into the club of people who do precisely that

And I think he will love the concept that this is being equated with Yalta, for example, back in 1945

He wants to be welcomed as an equal by men like... Way to go, but then Potsdam later in the year

I mean, they carved the world up. The Americans, the Russians and the British carved Europe up, certainly in that post-war settlement

And the important thing about Yalta is that it was at the Yalta conference that Roosevelt and Churchill conceded that Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union would have primacy over the Eastern Bloc

It was Yalta that essentially created the geographical divide that fueled the Cold War

And and so the notion that Vladimir Putin has this opportunity potentially and it is potential because the Chinese may turn around and say, actually, we don't want this entire APEC summit being overshadowed

So there's more chance of the Chinese saying no than there is of the American

I think there's no question there's more chance that the person that will say, I'm not so sure about this, is President Xi rather than President Putin or President Trump. But, you know, President Putin and President Trump might meet just the two of them on the sidelines of that summit. Remember, by the way, that the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is also planning to be there

So there'll be more opportunity for Donald Trump to sit with another dictatorial leader that he admires and gets along with extremely well

So this is this is whatever happens, you know, whether it's the three way meeting or simply Trump and Putin meeting together

This is going to be a major, major issue, and it sets the stage for it being way too late, even for the most reliable and sort of prostrate of Trump whisperers, NATO Secretary General Mark Ruter, to travel to the White House and think that he can claw Trump back from the edge of the abyss and somehow prevent him from embracing Vladimir Putin

I think the gene is now completely out of the bottle. All the talks that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been having with Russian officials, the confidence that is being expressed by Kirill Dmitriev, who is Vladimir Putin's special envoy for investment in Russia, who is speaking glowingly about the possibility of this meeting happening

You know, the Russians and the Americans want it to happen because they want to do business with one another

And the real geopolitical business that Vladimir Putin wants to do is being welcomed back into the acceptable family of nations by an American president who is willing completely to overlook two things

One, the intelligence that Russia has been sharing with Iran that may well have contributed to the deaths of American service members in the Iran conflict

Trump took to social media again this weekend to insist, absolutely, even if they are doing it, they're not doing it very much

And secondly, to overlook the fact that Vladimir Putin is wanted for war crimes by an international criminal court whose jurisdiction, Donald Trump, viscerally and utterly rejects and has sanctioned leading members of as a result

Apropos nothing in particular Donald Trump also this weekend offered an endorsement for Benjamin Netanyahu in the forthcoming Israeli election shortly after illegal settlers in the West Bank attacked both Western diplomats and an American photojournalist The latter attack even prompting Trump ambassador in the United States of America Mike Huckabee to offer a full

condemnation of what's going on there. So I suppose the nicest thing you could say about

the cheerleaders for Donald Trump over the years, and here's another one, Johnson says Trump re-election

would leave global woke-or-arty trembling. Former PM says he believes US support for Ukraine

would continue and praise his former president's willingness to use force is that he's been telling us who he is for a long time

And just one word about the beating up of Heidi Levine. One word about the beating up of Heidi Levine

a photojournalist with the Washington Post. Netanyahu described it as an alleged incident

Hearsay. It's on tape. You can see it. You can see it all over social media

So Marco Rubio intervened over the weekend with a relatively lukewarm intervention

but at least said, you know, this clearly happened and we mustn't see another incident like this take place again

And then, of course, we got the Trump endorsement. And the diplomats being attacked as well

The party told you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final most terrible command

And there it is. It didn't happen. But I'm watching it happen. J.D. Vance, who might, of course, be next

Well, let's talk about that, because as we get through the midterm elections, which are now in just over two weeks' time

and it seems very evident that the Republicans are going to lose control of the House of Representatives

and possibly also the Senate. I think it is important to remember that as soon as we get through the Thanksgiving holiday

at the end of November, the American political conversation is going to shift

to the 2028 presidential election. We're in this rotating election cycle. Now, as soon as 2026 is done

we'll all be talking about 2028. And who is going to succeed Donald Trump

Well, clearly, J.D. Vance wants it to be him. He held a town hall meeting on Friday with CBS News, a network, by the way, that is increasingly itself prostrate before the White House, even though it is still, for inconceivable reasons, the BBC's official media partner in the United States

And J.D. Vance was confronted by a man whose wife lost her life while she was serving with the military in Iran. Take a listen to this exchange between Joey Amor and J.D. Vance and ask yourself if J.D. Vance has really got the capacity to become America's next president

Mr. Vice President, my wife, Master Sartre Nicole Amer, gave her life on March 1st, 2026

I am damn proud of my wife, as you should be, and the five soldiers that stood next to her

that died alongside with her. They understood what they were doing. They understood the sacrifice

that they were potentially giving. You understand that oath. I understand that oath

though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures

that led up to that there's a failure in the leadership and I want to know how this administration is going to start

holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love

so Joey first of all Look, I owe, and the whole country owes your family a debt of gratitude that is quite literally impossible to repay

I won't pretend that anything that I say is going to make it better or easier

but I hope it helps a little bit to know that your wife was a precious human being who served her country honorably

and I'm never going to forget about her. I'm never going to forget this conversation, and I want to continue this conversation offline

offline because that raises the second point. When you talk about failures that were

that we were implicated, the administration, the Department of War, whoever you want to say

was implicated in, I want to know about that stuff. Because if there were failures

and I don't doubt there were, I just, this, literally the first time I've heard of this

is this conversation. First time he's heard of failures in the leadership of the Iran war. Now

You could construct a version where he's saying it's the first time I've heard of specific failures relating to the incident in which Mr. Amor's wife and other service members lost their lives at the hands of some sort of an Iranian attack

But the notion that that was the response and to say, I need to hear more about these failures of leadership when they have been so evident since February the 28th, the moment that Trump launched his war on Iran without any plan whatsoever, thinking it was all going to be over in a weekend, without any thought being given to the possibility that the Iranians would blockade the Strait of Hormuz

leading to the economic dislocation that is costing Republicans dearly on the campaign trail in America

and costing us all dearly here in the UK and across Europe

The notion that that was the response that this man who lost his wife in Iran received on television

I think is just for J.D. Vance's presidential aspirations, quite a problematic moment

And here we still are talking as if the old rules still apply, as if the old standards still matter, as if the old consequences for conduct will still land

And they might. We might be circling back to a place where actions have consequences and everybody agrees on the rules of the game, even as they try and hack the bones of their opponents on the field of play

I don't know. And I don't know what is going to happen in the meantime

But I do know that what Donald Trump has said and what Vladimir Putin has said in the last week is historic, historically awful

Sorry, I'm late for Sheila Fogarty. If you missed it, well, you know the score. So Simon Marks is in for Ben Kentish from 10 o'clock tonight

Ben Kentish is in for Tom Swarbrick from four o'clock today. Sheila Fogarty is in for Sheila Fogarty now

Thank you very much