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Sept. 22, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:49
20220922_piers-morgan-uncensored-does-tough-love-prevent-ki
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Free Elections vs Sham Democracy 00:02:16
Tonight, Piers Morgan uncensored.
Russians flee the country in droves as Putin drafts his 300,000 reservists.
They're worried, but how worried should we be about his nuclear threat?
Truss and Biden clash over Northern Ireland, but could his very existence now be in question as Catholics outnumber Protestants for the first time.
We'll debate that.
And Britain's strictest headmistress is here live to give us a lesson in teaching and in free speech.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well, good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
These are turbulent times for Britain.
The death of our great Queen raised some big questions here about what it means to be British and what the future holds for the United Kingdom itself.
Could the age of King Charles III see an independent Scotland, or perhaps even before that, a unified Ireland?
Personally, I hope not.
I like the United Kingdom as it is.
But one thing's for sure, if either of these countries do redefine themselves, or they both do, they will do it by choice in free and fair elections with results that we have to respect because we respect democracy here.
I think Scottish independence would be a disaster, mostly for Scotland.
But if they do vote to leave, I'll send them on their way and I'll wish them luck.
Same would apply to Ireland.
It would be their choice, and that's the beauty of democracy.
Now compare that to the fake Frankenstein democracy of Russia, a country where the dictator stuffs ballots to give his murderous regime a sham credibility, where government critics end up with Novichok in their underpants if they haven't already mysteriously fallen out of windows.
Russia is now using this pathetic pretense of democracy to justify further genocide in Ukraine.
This weekend it's holding fake votes in Ukraine's occupied east, supposedly on whether the people there want to become formally part of Russia again.
They don't.
We won't need to wait until results tonight, the outcome of this one.
Putin will declare victory.
The delusional leader will spew further lies about protecting the Russian people and he'll again threaten the West with nuclear Armageddon.
The Ukrainians made their choice when they became a sovereign democratic country.
They chose to be independent.
Putin's Nuclear Threat to NATO 00:15:02
They chose President Zelensky in a landslide and he's leading a heroic fight to protect that right to choose.
NATO should be backing him and backing him hard until this fight for freedom and democracy is won.
Well joining me now is nuclear weapons expert Alex Wollerstein.
He's also a nuclear historian.
I'm also joined by commentator and lawyer Paula Roan-Adrian, Talk TV Special Editor Isabel Oakeshott and historian Neil Ferguson.
So a stellar lineup to kick off tonight's show.
Let me start if I can with you Alex Wallerstein because a lot of talk at the moment about nuclear weapons and yet very few of us know much about nuclear weapons.
We know about Nagasaki and Hiroshima and how devastating they were, but thank God we've not had any repetition since.
However, many experts believe we are now on the precipice of potentially having to face up to some kind of nuclear weapon being used by Vladimir Putin, perhaps of the tactical variety.
I don't know what that means in reality.
Can you tell us what is a tactical nuclear weapon?
How big is it?
How powerful is it?
How likely is it that Vladimir Putin may use one?
Thanks a bunch, Piers.
I'm happy to be here.
A tactical nuclear weapon tells you less about how big the weapon is and more about what it would be intended to be used against.
So a tactical nuclear weapon is something like a battlefield nuclear weapon as opposed to a strategic nuclear weapon which might be aimed at a city or a silo or so on.
They tend to be smaller in terms of their explosive output, but smaller here is all very relative.
So the weapon dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, that could be a tactical nuclear weapon today or in the Cold War if you used it against tanks.
And they can range in how explosive they are down to levels that are almost like the biggest conventional explosives we have.
They're still nuclear weapons, but they're generally much smaller than the ones that would be aimed at sort of a city, but they're still pretty powerful.
The whole point of nuclear weapons in a modern society is supposedly for deterrent.
The theory being that big superpowers build up a nuclear arsenal and it deters anybody from using nuclear weapons because everyone gets vaporized.
How likely is it, do you think, that somebody like Putin, cornered, possibly losing now in this war that he has to win, that he may resort to this?
And what would be the repercussions?
I mean, President Biden has said he would respond, but doesn't want to say how he would respond.
What in reality would happen, do you think?
We don't know, and I don't think President Biden knows, and I don't think Putin knows.
And keeping that uncertainty is partially what is believed to maintain this state of deterrence in the sense that it might be a little response, it might be a bigger response.
Keeping him uncertain about what the outcome would be is a deliberate strategy so that it's hard for him to calculate what might be in his interests and that he might hope, whatever he might hope he might get out of it, he probably would have to balance against what other consequences would come.
So the answer is nobody really knows and there probably isn't a doctrine written somewhere that says if he does X, we do Y.
It's the sort of thing that the president or Putin would have to decide under the circumstances.
And that, you know, makes people a little uncomfortable to put it into the decision of a single human being.
The other question, I mean, just on the numbers, Russia has the highest number of nuclear warheads, just under 6,000.
America has just under 5,500.
Then China, France, and the UK all have between 350 and 225.
Obviously, one or two of these things can cause unbelievable mayhem and damage and destruction to people and to infrastructure.
But how many of Russia's nuclear weapons do we think would be usable?
I mean, what actually is the reality of Putin's nuclear arsenal?
So the New START treaty says that the United States and Russia each agree to have no more than 1,550 warheads that are strategically used.
Again, aimed at other warheads or aimed at military bases or aimed at cities or industry and so on.
It says nothing about tactical nuclear weapons.
So they might have many of those.
There's some estimates on how many they have.
So that sort of puts some limits on those big numbers.
In terms of how many would actually work, in terms of how many would reach their target, how many could come into play, we don't really know.
You could imagine a situation in which somebody like Putin wanted to use one small nuclear weapon with the hope of avoiding larger escalation or larger war.
You could also imagine a situation in which they decided to launch everything in a full-scale attack.
In that case, I mean that second part, just to interrupt you, I actually can't imagine that because the idea of a country like Russia unleashing hundreds of nuclear weapons, which would lead to the almost inevitable destruction of the entire planet very quickly, is actually unimaginable to most of us.
I think to war planners, it's much more imaginable.
I steep myself in the historical literature on this, and they've imagined it.
They've worked out how it would work.
They've worked out what it would be, how many they think would die.
But of course, they fought as many nuclear wars as you and I have.
So who knows how much of that would play out in practice?
Right.
Alex, honestly, I mean, fascinating, slightly terrifying, I have to say, but I appreciate you joining me.
Thank you very much.
Let me go to Neil Ferguson.
No problem.
Thank you.
Neil, you're a historian like Alex.
In your estimation, where are we here?
Are we closer to nuclear conflict than the world has ever been?
Perhaps even closer than we were in the Cuban missile crisis?
No.
And this is at this point a much less dangerous situation than the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Remember, in 1962, it was the United States and the Soviet Union that were on the brink of conflict after Khrushchev stationed missiles on Cuba, just off the US coast.
And it was only by sheer good luck that the war we might have called World War III didn't break out.
Actually, an order was given by a Soviet submarine commander to fire a nuclear torpedo at some US surface ships.
Luckily, he had a superior officer on board who overruled him.
And so we avoided World War III.
But it was an extraordinarily dangerous moment, clearly the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.
This is different, and I'll try and explain why.
First of all, the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union.
It turns out that its conventional army can't even defeat Ukraine, never mind NATO.
And the only reason that Putin is talking about tactical nuclear weapons is because he knows he's losing this conventional war.
Secondly, if you look carefully at what he's saying, actually, it's he who is using the nukes as a deterrent.
He's directing his rhetoric at NATO, at the US and its allies, not at Ukraine.
He's not saying that if Ukraine keeps on winning, he'll use a tactical nuke against Ukrainian forces.
I think what he's saying, if one reads it carefully, is that he might use a nuclear weapon if NATO were to escalate its involvement in the war.
In fact, in the speech he just gave this week, it sounded as if he was saying that NATO had threatened Russia with nukes, which I must have missed.
Maybe that was only available on RT.
So this is not the Cuban missile crisis.
These are the bluffing, blustering statements of a dictator who is losing the small war that he thought would be over in days.
And time is running out for Vladimir Putin.
I don't think, to just make one final point, Piers, even if he gave the order to launch or drop a nuclear weapon, that it would be carried out.
And that's a really important point to remember.
He doesn't get to deliver it personally.
He'd need the order to be carried out.
Where do you think this goes then?
I interviewed Jordan Peterson yesterday at length.
And as part of that, he was pretty doomladen, actually, about what he thought was going to happen.
He just couldn't see a situation that didn't end with Putin having some kind of victory and Ukraine having to cede something to Putin.
I mean, there is a scenario I could see here in relation to Putin's speech where he's coming up with all these fake referenda at the weekend, in which he's going to try and presumably declare electoral victory in these fake referenda justifying what he's doing.
If Ukraine was to then attack those areas, which have now supposedly democratically declared themselves part of Russia, would he then use that as the excuse for them attacking Russian land?
I mean, that seems to me a scenario that he could react to.
Well, that might be the rationale here.
The problem is that even as he's trying to organize these sham referenda, he's actually losing control of the territory in question.
It's not like Ukrainians have stopped their offensive operations.
they're ongoing and I think they will press on taking advantage of the obvious weakness and demoralization of the Russian army.
I don't agree with Jordan Peterson's gloomy take.
I was just in Kiev about 10 days ago and met with President Zelensky at a time when Ukraine was winning some remarkable victories east of Kharkiv.
And I think that the Ukrainians have a decent chance of continuing to gain ground because Russia's army is a demoralized colonial force, most of its troops drawn from the back of beyond of the Russian Federation.
I nearly said empire, that's how Putin thinks of it.
And they've suffered amazingly heavy casualties, Piers.
If you look at the death rates that we can figure out, maybe something like a quarter of the initial invading force is now dead.
So I think there's a decent chance that Ukraine can press its advantage in the coming weeks and months.
That's not going to bring peace because Putin's not about to admit defeat and accept that his so-called military operations and epic fail.
It seems to me that the war itself will continue, but the level of fighting will have to diminish.
Both sides simply can't keep this up.
Winter is, of course, approaching.
And my estimate is that this will play out a little bit like the Korean War did.
That's to say, the really kinetic phase will give way to a somewhat protracted stalemate.
There'll never be a peace agreement because the two sides will never agree, but there'll be something like an armistice maybe sometime next year.
And that will be a moral victory for Ukraine, even if it's not acknowledged officially in a peace treaty.
Right.
Let's bring it.
You've been very patient.
Thank you very much.
But you were both slightly recoiling at some of the stuff we've been talking about here because we, you know, having to even think about a nuclear war is actually pretty scary.
I mean, I definitely prefer Niall Ferguson's analysis to the nuclear weapons expert.
But I'm not sure I necessarily am that convinced by his analysis with essentially what he's saying.
And, you know, he is very eminent, and I don't for a minute pretend that I know better than him.
But on the other hand, I just don't think that President Putin is going to be willing to contemplate something that is perceived around the world to be a failure.
And that is the problem.
And this whole idea that, you know, he would have to be, he would need to use a NATO aggression as an excuse.
Well, he invents NATO aggression as an excuse the whole time.
That was why he invaded Ukraine.
It's all a complete fiction.
And if we revert, as Professor Ferguson says, to a kind of long war of attrition, essentially that's only going back to what was happening in Ukraine back in, well, since 2013, 2014, ever since then.
I don't think he's going to be satisfied with that position.
I mean, there's a big debate, isn't there, about how committed we should be as a country, like all countries in Europe and America and so on.
How much should we be invested in Ukraine's victory?
To me, I mean, I like Neil Ferguson, I've been to Ukraine in the last two months.
We've both been on the same train, actually.
I'll talk to Neil in a moment about that.
We've been there, we've met Zelensky, he's a very impressive character.
He could have disappeared from the city, but he stayed.
He's a real inspirational leader.
I got the freedom.
They don't want to give an inch.
No, an inch to Putin.
Zelensky, he's an impressive, strong warrior, more than just a leader.
He is a warrior leading his army into battle.
And he is not going to return.
And do we have a moral duty to give him as much firepower as we can to win this battle, which I think we do, because to me it's a battle not just about Ukraine's democracy, it's a battle for European democracy, for the world's democracy.
And if we don't fight for that, what are we fighting for?
Absolutely.
And I saw a survey recently where it did say that apparently the public would now prefer the government to focus on the cost of living crisis as opposed to what's happening in Ukraine.
And we can understand.
Of course, we can understand that because the cost of living crisis is an immediate concern.
But when we understand why part of the reason that we have a cost of living crisis is because of what's happening in Ukraine, we can do nothing but support that.
Well, I think, I mean, let's bring back Neil Ferguson on this, because to me, this is the crucial link really between the two things, is that a lot of the energy crisis issues we have in the UK right now are driven by this war in Ukraine.
So if for no other reason than national self-economic interest, this is something that we need to see won, because otherwise Putin will continue to control energy through Europe in a very nefarious manner.
Well, I think, Piers, the days when Europe relied on Russian natural gas and oil are coming to an end.
And I don't think they'll return anytime soon.
What's happening right now is an irreversible shift away from Russian gas and oil.
And once Europe and the UK have got through the coming winter, it's not like we'll be going rushing back to Moscow to strike new deals.
Putin's blunder has isolated him from the West in a way that will be extremely difficult to change.
He's now going to be selling his gas and oil at a discount to the likes of China.
I think the question is both a moral one.
Ireland's Path to Reunification 00:07:37
I agree with you, Piers.
We're fighting, it's supporting here a fight for democracy and self-determination, but there is also a matter of national self-interest.
Russia has been a threat, not only to Ukraine, but to the UK.
Its government has carried out assassinations on British soil.
And anything that weakens the regime of Vladimir Putin is devoutly to be wished for and supported.
And there is a real and I think extremely exciting opportunity here to humble the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin.
And this, I think, will be of great benefit not only to the UK, but also to the European Union, which of course allowed itself to become disastrously dependent on Russian natural gas.
So I think there are very strong moral and practical reasons for supporting this war effort.
And notice, Piers, the UK is punching well above its weight at this point.
Its support exceeds the support of many major European countries.
In fact, the UK is really in many ways second only to the US in its commitment, not only its financial and economic commitment, but its commitment in training Ukrainian forces.
It's not just Zelensky who's the warrior here.
No, and I'm completely in favour of what Boris Johnson started, and this trust is going to continue.
Just before we let this go and move on to other stuff, you just went, I read your spectator diary, you just went to Kyiv to see President Zelensky.
You went on the same night train that I took, this 12-hour train right through Ukraine.
They put the blinds down and tell you not to put any lights on, which is quite an interesting conversation at the start of a 12-hour journey.
How did you find it?
How did you find the people there?
I detected a real sense of stoic resilience and determination driven by Zelensky himself.
He basically motivated the people to believe they can win this war.
That's right, Piers.
And to see the nation in arms as Ukraine is today is deeply impressive.
Zelensky deservedly gets a lot of media coverage, but Ukraine wouldn't still be in this war, wouldn't in fact be winning it if it weren't for the fact that the people have come together, both civilians and the military, in a way that very few of us who know Ukraine expected or thought possible.
That's the impressive thing.
It's not just that Zelensky is a charismatic leader.
It's the fact that the Ukrainian people have united and are absolutely resolved to drive the Russians out of their territory.
Indeed, sentiment has become so positive in recent weeks that they're now talking about retaking Crimea, retaking the land that was lost back in 2014.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I hope they do.
Let's take a short break.
But before we do that, I just want to just say that tomorrow night, we're going to re-air my hour-long special interview with President Zelensky and his First Lady, Elena Zelenska, which we ran in July.
I did it in July.
But I think it's been more relevant now than ever, perhaps.
Here's a little clip as to why I think that.
Do you believe you can win this war?
I don't only believe it, I know it will happen.
We will win.
It's a fascinating interview.
If you didn't see it, we're going to air it in full tomorrow night here on Piers Morgan Uncensored at 8 o'clock.
Let's take a short break.
We'll be back to talk about the future of Britain, the United Kingdom.
For the first time, more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland.
What does that mean for Ireland?
We'll debate that next.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
If you're wondering what Boris Johnson's up to these days, well, he's doing this.
Thanks also, of course, to the inspirational leadership of Vladimir Putin.
The inspirational leadership of Vladimir Zelensky.
Forgive me.
Thanks, Boris.
Good to hear from you again.
Well, I've got my pack with me again.
Let's talk about the future of this country now, because a lot of challenges.
But one of the big challenges is the potential, certainly in the reign of King Charles III, for a referendum both in Scotland and potentially in Ireland now.
With this revelation, there are now more Catholics than there are Protestants.
Sinn Féin is the dominant party.
Things are moving quite fast in Ireland, and you could see a situation where they have a referendum on a united Ireland before Scotland has another referendum.
But if they did, I don't actually think that those separatists, those that want to do that, would actually succeed.
I thought that the more interesting statistics, actually, if you read down those census answers, were the number of those who answered about their identity.
Over 30% felt British.
But that's way down on what it was.
And if you add that to those that felt Northern Irish, you get over 50% of the country.
Yeah, but the numbers are falling on that British identity.
But if you're determined to find a negative and a divisive spin on it, yes.
But actually, overall, you've still got the majority of people very strongly identifying either as British or Northern Irish.
That doesn't say to me that that is the ground that is needed to lead to the breakup of the Paula.
What do you feel about this?
I take a slightly different view because for me, I think the shift is going to come from the youth, absolutely.
And I think when we look at the youth and we look at their response in the media, they don't identify as Catholic or Protestant.
It's not simply about religious politics anymore.
It's about who am I and what do I want for the future?
And I suspect that what they want for the future is a unified country to be able to say to the world, this is who we are and this is who we are together as one.
Neil Ferguson, you're a historian.
We've seen massive history unfurling in the last week with a new monarch in this country, the first in our lifetime.
Is it likely in King Charles III's reign that we might see a united Ireland and an independent Scotland, do you think?
It's not inconceivable, Piers, but I wouldn't say it was very likely.
I agree with Isabel's point if one looks carefully.
There doesn't seem to be an enormous yearning for Irish reunification.
And it would be reunification.
It's only a century since the partition that created Northern Ireland as a separate entity from the Republic.
I don't think that's really a key issue, though there are all kinds of problems that exist largely as a result of the way the Brexit deal was done by Boris Johnson.
Northern Ireland in an anomalous situation inside the single market, unlike the rest of the UK.
I think that's one reason that this issue is even being discussed.
And so there's something to be resolved there, but that's the pressing issue, not the reunification of Ireland, which I think is some way off.
As for Scotland, and I can speak with more authority on that as a Scotsman, I think we'll look back and say that Nicola Sturgeon's best shot at independence was in 2014, and that it's very, very hard indeed for the SNP now to argue that Scotland's problems are somehow to do with being in the United Kingdom because the SNP runs Scotland pretty much every aspect of its domestic policy.
And the fact that it's running it very badly is gradually dawning on voters.
The Future of James Bond 00:02:02
And that's the thing to watch.
Well, there's a bigger existential threat than any of this, as far as I'm concerned, and it's this.
Barbara Broccoli, who runs the 007 James Bond franchise, has apparently now come out and said Bond is evolving as men are evolving.
And that the next actor to play the role will continue the work of Daniel Craig, who cracked Bond open emotionally.
They want more, bigger roles for women and a more sensitive 007.
I'm not against bigger roles for women, although I do think get your own spies.
But when it comes to a sensitive James Bond, Isabel...
We don't want it.
We agree on this.
We absolutely agree.
Absolutely want it.
We want some weeping, wailing, whining, victim-playing spy who has not only IQ, but EQ.
No, we don't.
No, we don't.
And come on.
I don't even think you're so impressed.
No woman wants a whiny, weeping Bond, do they, Isabel?
Seriously, no, I think the next movie will have to be called End of Days.
It will be End of Days.
And by the way, no one's going to go and see it if it's all working.
You want James Bond to be a steely-eyed dealer of death, right?
A hard drinker, a hard smoker, and a serial womanizer.
Yeah, but also.
Who has no emotional valve whatsoever?
He doesn't care.
That's the whole point.
And shall I tell you why, on a serious note, why we don't want that?
Because we know how high the male suicide rate is.
Nothing to do with James Bond.
On a serious note, you can't blame that on James Bond.
What we want, we're not blaming it on James Bond.
What we're saying is, great, James Bond is now turning into a real human.
Let me bring in Neil Ferguson on this because you are a historian.
I mean, this to me is almost the biggest threat facing civilization as we know it.
An oversensitive James Bond.
It's a terrifying prospect, to say nothing of the metamorphosis of Doctor Who.
Look, I'm a Sean Connery fan.
I even had the privilege of getting to know Sean Connery.
And I regard Daniel Craig as slightly a feat by the standards of Connery.
So it's been all downhill since Sean hung up his toupee.
Tough Love for Students 00:15:11
I think he has.
Listen, if Barbara Broccoli is watching, and I have been pitching myself as the next Bond, because Piers Brosnan, Piers Morgan, I mean, it's not a massive leap, as I put it to her.
And I do think it's time Bond became slightly older, a little bit grayer, a little bit wiser.
And there's no one less emotional than me.
So I think, job done.
Come this way, Barbara.
Stay with me, panel.
Neil Ferguson, thank you very much.
Brilliant to have you on the program.
Really enjoyed your analysis.
Thank you very much indeed.
Well, coming up, my interview with psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson airs next week and is riveting.
One person who met him before I did in Britain was the strictest head teacher in the country, the tiger headmistress, who is praised and vilified in equal measure.
I'm just not quite sure why she ever gets vilified.
We're going to be talking to Catherine Berbelsing after the break.
She'll be live and unleashed.
Well, welcome back to Pearson Sense.
For those of you who think cancel culture isn't real, no further than Britain's strictest headmistress, Catherine Birbelsingh.
She runs the Michaela Community School in a deprived part of North London.
The school focuses on discipline and manners.
It's called boot camp discipline.
Detentions given for lateness, for eye-rolling, for tutting, for forgetting to bring in a pen.
Quite right, too, you might think.
But not everyone shares that.
You've said to me, you really want to be at this school.
You've said to me that you understand why the rules are here and why you need to behave yourself.
I can't fix this.
Mr. Bullock can't fix it.
Who's going to fix it?
Minus.
You're the only one who can fix it.
Your mum and dad will be so disappointed.
Well, Catherine Birbelsing, I'm done.
Thank you for coming in.
It's great to have you on the show.
You've been at the centre of news again because you invited Jordan Peterson, who I interviewed yesterday, and we're running it in full next week.
We're going to run in a moment, or in a few minutes, a little bit more of that interview about you and the visit actually to the school, which led to you having people report you to the police for hate crimes simply for allowing Jordan Peterson to come to your school, which says everything you need to know about the absurdity of modern society and cancel culture.
We'll come to that part of this in a moment.
First of all, you're the tiger headmistress.
What does that mean?
What is your teaching style if you were to define it simply?
Well, we believe that the adults should be the authority in the room.
Parents and teachers should be in charge.
And that means leading the learning.
It means desks being in rows and the children looking to the teacher who leads the way.
It means high standards of discipline.
So people think, oh, you know, I must hate children because I, and that I must walk down the corridors with whips and chains.
When actually, you know, I'm in school every morning at 6.45 and I don't do that because I hate them.
It's because I love them.
And I know what they need to be able to succeed.
They don't need phones.
No, well, and that's another thing.
So we wouldn't allow them phones.
But in fact, we go more than just, we don't just ban them in school.
We strongly encourage parents not to give their children smartphones at all.
You can give your child a brick phone.
You can still ring them.
You can still text them, but they're not getting unsupervised access to the internet.
So you practice tough love teaching, for want of a better phrase.
Yeah.
Why has it attracted any controversy?
I mean, your results are outstanding.
You take a lot of very deprived kids who don't have any privilege in their lives.
You just had 98% pass rate in your GCSEs, I think.
Many an A-star level.
So you're doing an amazing job helping these kids achieve their potential.
And yet there are people out there who'll be listening to this now and going, this sounds horrible, terrible.
This woman's evil.
How have we got to this place?
Well, I think people think it's mean to give children detentions and to discipline them.
But the thing is, is that if you don't do that, then the children will just spin out of control.
And I'll tell you what's mean.
It's living your life functionally enumerate and functionally illiterate.
And there are lots of people who end up doing that because school didn't do the right job by them and hold their standards high for them.
Are too many schools just too soft?
And is the softness coming from being terrified of this new culture again where people say if you do anything to do with discipline, then you're bullying, you're racist, whatever the excuse they can think of to play the victim.
They play it hard and teachers just get scared.
They don't want to have to operate in that environment.
Yeah, and I don't think that they're just scared.
I think all of our society really encourages us to think like this.
So in order for a head teacher to do things properly, in my view, you've got to be quite brave to stand up to the mob.
I mean, for instance, I invited Jordan Peterson to come and just walk around the school and see the school, just as we have 600 other visitors who come and see the school.
Of all different persuasions, politically and socially and everything else.
Exactly.
Because you believe, presumably, that actually the best education is to have a wide range of different people with different views.
But you know this is completely going out of fashion in our education system.
Universities now, if you deviate even one iota to the right, you get low-platformed, you get shamed, there are protests going on.
This kind of woke cancel culture is out of control.
Yeah, and so that's why, as a head teacher, you've got to be quite brave.
And that's, I think it's a little unreasonable in a way to ask that of ordinary people who are just trying to do a job.
Teachers, my own teachers, for instance, I have to really support them emotionally because they come to work at our school and their friends question their decision to do that.
They wonder what they're doing.
Are they actually, do they not know who they really are?
And I have to support my teachers and they say, well, how can I convince my friends that I'm not a bad person?
I mean, this is completely insane.
I know.
You're having to comfort your staff who are working in a highly driven, motivated environment, which is successful with happy, successful children coming out better than they go in.
And you're having to help your staff because they're being treated so badly by their own friendship groups because they're working in this environment.
It's nuts.
I know.
And the thing is, is that those people say that they want to help deprive children.
And here we are transforming their lives and yet they're highly critical.
And there's some of them who would really like to see us shut down.
We're going to take a short break, come back.
We're going to play the clip from my interview with Jordan Peterson where he talks about his visit to see you at your school, a visit that, as I say, it led to people reporting Catherine to the police for a hate crime just by having Jordan Peterson attend the school.
This is insane and we'll talk about it after the break.
Well, welcome back.
I'm still here with my expert panel and Catherine Burblesing is Britain's strictest tiger mistress head teacher.
It's a great title, I love her.
I gave it to you.
But let's play a little clip from my interview with Jordan Peterson, which airs in full next Tuesday, in which she talks about his visit to Catherine's school and this absurd development when it all got reported to the police.
You went to a school, really interesting school, the Michaela Community School in North London, run by this fascinating head teacher, Catherine Burblesing, who runs a pretty tough school, but has amazing results at this school.
And as a result of you going, she got bombarded with hate from people.
And she took it on head on actually and went, I'm sorry, we're going to keep inviting people with all different views, all different types of people.
And that's going to include people like Jordan Peterson.
She owned it and she was proud that you went to her school.
Tell me about that visit.
What do you think of her as well?
Well, people think of her school as tough and that she's this dragon lady.
And that isn't what I saw.
What I saw was that she was playing a very sophisticated game with her students.
And games have rules.
And if you don't enforce the rules, then the game doesn't play properly.
And every game has a referee because someone has to enforce the rules.
And she's a very, very sophisticated referee.
And she's playing an unbelievably sophisticated game.
And the students are so alert and on target.
Their attention is so well regulated by themselves.
Like, for example, when we walked into her classrooms, we walked into about seven, we were led around by three relatively small kids who were very articulate and together and attentive and polite and focused.
When we walked into her classes, the students didn't turn their eyes away from their teacher to look at us.
There was no buzz of conversation.
They were just focused on their teacher.
And their teacher was focused too.
It's like we could walk in and the whole thing just continued around us.
And that was really something to see.
And fast-paced, man.
The teachers were spitting out information as fast as I've ever heard anyone spit out information.
And the students were reacting like just like it was choreographed.
And the truth is it works.
I mean, recently this school...
Oh, that's annoying.
Yeah, right.
It's annoying for those who immediately howl, this is disgusting, these poor kids and so on.
Oh, yeah, those are the things that I've got.
80% of his students achieve four plus C or more in their GCSEs are very good results, despite being non-selective.
Right, it's a big deal.
A huge deal.
And yet she gets castigated for it, which says to me that my sort of gut feeling that we've just gone a bit soft in our students.
Well, it's annoying when you help out the victims because then there's no one to be like narcissistically compassionate about.
So, and that's certainly the situation she's in.
Yeah, it's quite amazing that she's managed this with kids who are a non-selected sample.
And I asked her, you know, well, how many kids do you have to expel, let's say, for serious misbehavior?
And she said, it's only been a tiny handful.
And I said, well, how many kids can't adjust to the more rigorous pace?
And she said, well, they can all adjust.
And that's what I saw.
I mean, I never saw a bunch of children, a group of children that were more focused and alert than I saw at that school.
And it was really heart-rending in some sense.
Yet by you going there, people actually reported her to the police for a hate crime.
Yeah, well.
Just by your presence in that school.
That's the problem with hate crime legislation.
It's like, who defines hate?
And I know the answer to that.
Who defines hate?
The people you least want to.
So, you know, you want hate crime legislation?
You just better keep in mind who's going to define what constitutes hate.
And then you think about the people you're enabling, these rat finks, these people who didn't learn not to tattletail on their peers when they were children, who run to totalitarian authority to wield their resentful power.
Now that's all part of the legal code.
It's like, well, we'll see where that goes.
Well, we know where it goes.
It goes so that, you know, demented, half-wit, resentful narcissists can rat out Kate Herbelsing to the police.
Yes.
Yeah, well, that's not good.
Not at all.
And who knows where it'll end up.
Well, it's not good.
Paula, what's your view of this?
The tiger headmistress is here.
Yes.
Do you agree with the tough love strategy at this school?
I don't see the word love in that title.
I see tough, but I don't see the word love.
And what I wonder is whether you have changed the physical cane into an emotional cane.
Because what I am seeing is children who are being taught through fear.
There are children who are being taught to fear the authority.
They're not being told, as a panda mum, I think is the opposite, would tell their child, about being creative, about exploring, about understanding, about investigating, about challenging authority.
Well, hang on, Catherine.
Respond to that specific charge.
In order for children to be creative or to think outside the box about something, they need to know about it first.
And that means they need somebody taking charge and teaching them.
And when you teach them, and when you show up every day at 6:45 in the morning, as many of my teachers do, you don't do it because you dislike the children, you do it because you love them.
And if you came to our school, you say you're seeing this stuff, but you haven't been to our school.
If you come to our school and go through the corridors, as Jordan Peterson did, and as 600 other visitors do every year, come to our school, most of them teachers from all around the world and certainly across this country, they come because they cannot believe what they're seeing.
Not just how loved the children are, how resilient and how determined and how ambitious they are, that these are ordinary children from the inner city, and yet they defy the odds.
And we talk about wanting social mobility.
This is how you get it.
All right, as well.
I mean, you talk about fear, but actually, at the heart of this is actually respect.
Respect for the fear.
No, respecting the setting that you're in, respecting that your teachers are there to give you the tools that you need to do well.
And you say that there's no love there, but what better love can you give children than allowing them to maximize their full performance?
And what is wrong with discipline, by the way?
What is wrong with discipline?
Love.
There is no such thing as tough love.
Of course there is.
Of course there is.
It's an excuse.
Do you have children?
Do you have children?
Do you want to show them to them?
Not that that wouldn't make me an expert to comment on that.
No, I'm sorry.
I actually think you do need to have children to comment on whether tough love is not.
Well, she has children.
Sorry, tough love absolutely exists.
Tough love is where you love your kids, but you believe in discipline and you believe in making them respect things like school, things like teachers.
They don't have woeful disrespect for any plank of society that has authority.
That's to suggest that a parent doesn't believe in discipline but has to be tough.
Discipline is something very different.
Discipline can be effective when you respect your child.
Discipline does not respect them enough to make sure to make you want to make them successful.
Tough love is loving them enough to hold the line.
It's much easier to just try and be friends with kids.
And not loving them so much that actually you forget about discipline.
You let them walk all over you.
They get no boundaries, no respect.
They get what they want and then become entitled little brats, which is what happens to a lot of kids these days because they get covered in cotton wool at every stage of their education at weak schools run by weak head teachers.
And finally we get a head teacher who understands this from personal experience and believes that actually tough love is the right way to educate our kids.
And I say hallelujah.
And I'm starting to...
Why Kids Need Boundaries 00:03:07
I just wonder what these children will be like as adults.
I think you can meet them by various Russell groups.
If you go to various Russell Group universities, you will see them.
That's where our kids are who started with us in 2014.
They're articulate, they're kind, they're grateful, they're decent people.
They're the kinds of people.
The thing I'm most proud of is not our results.
It's the kinds of people our children end up being, the adults.
And you see, Paula, if you don't mind me saying, it seems to me you have reached these conclusions without being there, without actually witnessing this yourself, from stuff you've read.
Oh, absolutely.
And on Twitter, you're, to some people, the devil for reasons that completely baffle me.
So I would say you have to have a bit more of an open mind about what they're really doing.
Are you going to go to the school?
I would love to.
I would love to have it.
And I'll bring my three children as well.
Okay, good.
I mean, when we have to comment on what we see and hear.
So I've never been to your school.
Of course I haven't.
And I can only comment on what I understand the definition of a tiger mum is.
And what we know about speak now.
Do I sound like I hate children?
But I haven't said that you hate children.
That's not my suggestion.
You said she hasn't lost.
You said there's no love.
You think I get what I said?
Edric says no such thing as tough love.
You also said there's no love for these people.
We need to be careful.
So there's no love for these kids as well.
And just that saying alone, it's an oxymoron.
You can't have toughness.
Of course you can.
Of course you can.
It's love and respect.
Oh, please.
Now that can flow with discipline, absolutely.
But you can't get it.
But all discipline is a form of toughness.
I think you're making disciplinary words.
Discipline is a form of protecting your child, but allowing them to learn.
So look, I have four kids, and sometimes they're range from 29 to 10.
And sometimes you've got to show tough love.
You've got to be tough on your kids.
You don't give them what they want.
You punish them if they do something terrible.
You're not your friend.
You're not their friend.
You're their parents.
Actually, you can be friends with your child.
I'm friends with my children, but I'm their parent.
I'm not their buddy.
I agree with you.
I'm their parent, but I believe absolutely in tough love.
I would have loved them to go.
Actually, they went to very good schools, all of them.
So I don't criticise where they've been.
But I would have had no compulsion to send them to your school.
If you're not tough with them, then you just let them do whatever they want.
And that's when they're not safe.
That's when they're in danger.
It's for us as adults.
When children push, we push back.
And if we don't do that, we let them down.
And what you don't do, it seems to me, if you don't do this, you don't prepare them for the real world.
The real world is tough.
It's a hard place.
It's full of knocks.
It's really tough out there, particularly now for young people coming out of school and universities.
Probably never been tougher, actually, in my lifetime.
And they've got to be properly prepared.
And mentally, physically prepared.
How can they challenge authority in your school?
We have 40 seconds.
Catherine, how can you prepare kids for the big bam adult world?
Well, you teach them lots.
You make sure that they know how to read, write, and add up and all that stuff.
That can only be done in a classroom where there's some quiet, where you can hear the teacher teaching and where you can be inspired to want to learn.
Building Habits for Real Life 00:00:31
And as Jordan Peterson said, you know, they were regulating themselves.
You build those habits into them bit by bit.
And at the end, we talk about being top of the pyramid.
It's just who you are.
And if you discipline kids for not having a pen, would you have disciplined King Charles III for his outburst about his pen leaking?
Definitely.
Yeah, I think he's going to be.
Good.
He should have been.
He would agree with you, by the way.
Great debate.
Thank you to my panel.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Catherine, for coming in.
Please come back again, all of you.
That was a really good debate.
That's all for tonight.
Uncensored, feminine uncensored.
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