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Dec. 2, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1054
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Hi folks, welcome to the podcast The Lotus Thesis for Monday the 2nd of December 2024. I have the pleasure of being joined by Ben Habib.
Hi Ben, how are you?
I'm very well indeed, thank you Carl.
Thank you for having me on.
I was really looking forward to this interview, I have to say.
It's been a long time coming, hasn't it?
So obviously you guys won't know, but we've had massive scheduling problems.
I've been trying to get Ben on for ages and it's just every single time someone's schedule fell through, but finally It's my fault, I think, actually part of it.
I was trying to organise it to start with, wasn't I Karl?
Anyway, enough of that.
Yeah, but I had the same problem on the other end.
But anyway, so today we're going to be talking about what Brexit meant and why it hasn't been properly followed through on, Keir Starmer's apparent turn towards the right, which I'm very suspect about, and why Ben decided to leave the Reform Party, which I'm sure nobody has any strong opinions on.
So, okay, so let's begin talking about Brexit then.
So, as I understand, you've been a Brexit supporter for the entire time that the topic had come about.
You joined the Brexit party and you were a prominent voice among the right-wing commentariats about Brexit, and you don't seem to have ever backed down from that position.
So, would you like to give me a quick summary as to why you're a Brexiteer?
So, I was actually, being frank, I was a mild Eurosceptic.
I'm a businessman by background, and I was a mild Eurosceptic.
I knew that I didn't want to be part of the European Union, but I was running my business and getting on with life.
And I didn't campaign for Brexit in 2016. I did donate to Vote Leave, which was the appointed, you know, the anointed campaign group by the government.
But the thing that...
Got my attention was Mark Carney saying things like, if we vote to leave the European Union, we will need to put £250 billion aside in case there's a run on the banks.
And George Osborne saying things like, a million people would lose their jobs, 75,000 jobs would be lost in the city, we'd go into an immediate deep recession, and he would have to apply austerity, which is actually what you never do if you go into a recession.
You actually let the state Come to the rescue of the economy.
And that got my antenna up.
And I kept thinking, well, these guys aren't telling the truth.
They're actually outright lying.
And Mark Carney, who's meant to just be the government of the Bank of England, shouldn't have a view on Brexit.
He should just react.
To what political circumstances are thrown at him.
He should not be offering up his opinion.
And so I got the impression then that the establishment was moving against a perfectly legitimate question, which was, do you want the United Kingdom to be a member of the European Union?
And I wrote, as one does, I think, I don't know what your political journey's been like, but mine started with writing furious letters to the Financial Times.
Can you believe it?
To the Financial Times?
I can't believe it.
Mine was basically writing furious letters and putting them on YouTube.
I was nobody, you know, I didn't have anywhere to go.
I didn't even appreciate then that the FT wasn't, you know, on my side of the debate.
I just kind of thought everyone was a sort of honest broker.
Anyway, I started off by writing these letters, Telegraph as well, obviously.
And then Theresa May got elected, appointed rather by the Conservative Party's Prime Minister.
She said all the right things.
You know, no deal's a deal.
No deal's better than a bad deal.
Nothing's agreed till everything's agreed.
It's just about managing and so on.
And I thought, right, fine, she's got it.
And I vacated again.
And then...
Excuse me.
And then, of course, she didn't deliver Brexit and I got increasingly anxious about what was going on.
But at that stage, I was a Tory donor.
And I went to a lunch with Michael Gove.
This is too much detail.
No, no, you please.
I won't hear it all.
So I went to a lunch with Michael Gove.
Sorry, I'm a bit ill this week, so I apologise.
But if you're a Tory donor, and I was a member of something called the Renaissance Group, you pay an amount of money per annum, and you get to have lunch with a cabinet minister once a month with no more than 10 people present.
And my first meeting was with Michael Gove, who, for me, was a Brexit hero because he campaigned for us to leave the European Union.
And as a businessman, I asked him, well, you know, if we don't get a good deal with the EU, this was in June 2018, If we don't get a good deal with the EU, what are your no-deal plans?
Are you going to deregulate, cut taxes, rocket-propell the British economy so that we can take any hits we might get from the EU? And he said, no, no, no, we don't need any Plan B. I said, what do you mean you don't need a Plan B? He said, we're going to get a good deal.
And at that moment, the balloon went up for me.
You know, these guys don't know what they're doing.
Either they don't know what they're doing, or they're going to screw us.
And then, of course, it became evident that Theresa May wasn't in good faith.
She wasn't going to deliver Brexit.
And then I heard about the Brexit party through someone I worked with, and they said, would you like to meet Nigel?
And I thought at the time, ooh, Nigel, right-wing, xenophobic, do I really want to meet him?
And of course...
But I said, yeah, sure, absolutely.
I don't mean to laugh, but looking back, why can't he be the Nigel Farage I was promised?
But, you know, as a businessman, having, you know, been quite institutional all my life, anyway, I met Nigel, and of course, Nigel's none of that.
Nigel's very affable, very good intellect, certainly not a racist, and so on.
And we talked about his new party, the Brexit party, and I said, well, I'll do whatever I can to help.
And before I knew it, I was standing in the bureau elections in May 2019. And sadly, I haven't been able to look back since.
It's been a sort of full-on political...
I've been on the same...
I say I'm on a political journey.
I'm learning more and more about politics as I go forward.
And I'm getting less and less impressed by those who govern us.
And, you know, and which is why I know that we now need, which is why I'm acutely aware that the country is facing what I call an existential threat, constitutionally, democratically, economically and culturally, and we need a 180 degree change in the way the country is governed.
There is no doubt in my mind that so many people are converging on that same perspective for a good reason.
It has to be that there is something to it.
Just a quick aside on the Brexit thing.
I'm not a businessman, nor am I an economist, but it strikes me that we have the corporate tax rate that's twice that of Ireland, which is right next to us, which strikes me as a very poor strategic move.
Why aren't we undercutting them?
I mean, it's absolutely absurd.
And if it is a bad strategic move for the United Kingdom, you can imagine how awful it is for Northern Ireland, which operates an open economy across the island of Ireland with the Republic.
And they have a tax rate, or they had for many years of 20%.
And the Republic of Ireland has a tax rate of 12.5%.
And all businesses...
If offered the opportunity to work in Europe, would always choose a lower tax rate than a higher one.
And businesses were sucked out of Northern Ireland.
You know, we tend to think of Northern Ireland as a poor province, which it is.
It's the biggest deficit province in the United Kingdom.
But that's very significantly due to the fact that it has an open economy with the Republic, and the Republic has half the tax rate.
And so just to put that into context, last year, the Republic had 24 billion pounds in corporate tax revenue, 24 billion pounds.
And I think their economy is about a sixth the size of the United Kingdom.
And we in the United Kingdom had 60 billion.
So when people say to you, we need to raise tax rates to make more revenue for the Exchequer, they're talking garbage.
If they slash tax rates, they would attract more businesses like the Republic of Ireland has, and they would gain more corporate tax revenue.
The exchequer would get richer.
And this is what Liz Truss tried to do.
And she got ousted by a kind of internal coup, didn't she?
She did.
So, you know, one of the bizarre things in my mind is that economics shouldn't be an ideological.
We and I had a discussion about the word ideological.
But economics shouldn't be driven by ideology.
Economics, I think, should be driven by a pragmatic recognition of where the country is at any particular point in time, and you adjust your economic policy accordingly.
So, for example, if we were at war, If we're in a world war, for example, I would endorse completely very high tax rates and demands made on private enterprise and individuals because we're at war.
But we're not at war.
And we do nevertheless have the highest tax burdens as a proportion of GDP since World War II. And we also, as it happens, have the highest debt burden as a percentage of GDP since World War II. And the policies which got us to this position are the policies which need changing if we want to reduce the tax burden and reduce the debt burden.
But instead of changing direction, the policies that got us to the position are the ones that the establishment continue to wish to foist on us.
And Liz Truss It may have been a slightly ham-fisted attempt at changing the direction of travel, but she recognised she had to change the way the country was governed economically, because we were being overtaxed, the state was spending too much money, and we needed to row back the state,
row back spending, Thank you, Mr Blair.
Cut Liz Truss off at the knees.
They didn't like the change in direction.
They didn't want the received political governance wisdom, if you like, to change.
And they couldn't tolerate her agenda.
She did make some mistakes.
You know, she didn't have to offer up a cut in tax rates for the most wealthy people in the country from 45%.
I think she was going to cut it to 42.5%.
She could have left that alone.
The optics of that was bad.
But Liz Truss's idea on the economy was basically the right one.
Cut taxes, reduce spending, and liberate the private sector.
It really drives me crazy, because just from anyone who had the best interest of the United Kingdom in mind, to have essentially a very close competitor, English-speaking first world country, with half our tax rate, that has an open economy connected to the United Kingdom, I mean, Like I said, I'm not an economist.
I'm not a businessman.
I'm not anyone other than a concerned onlooker.
But I'm looking at this and thinking, okay, but this is surely strategic suicide.
We are allowing our competition to completely undercut us and destroy the temptation for people to invest in the nation.
Yeah, that's precisely what happens.
And AstraZeneca, I don't know if you followed a couple of years ago, maybe even...
Not very closely.
As a year ago, AstraZeneca, instead of developing a new facility in the United Kingdom, decided that they were going to go to the Republic of Ireland, and they cited the tax rate.
And of course, they're not wed to any particular country.
They'll go to the country which has the least regulations and the lowest tax rate, so they can make the most profit.
It's the same with all of the Silicon Valley tech giants.
Every single one of them has their headquarters in Ireland.
And so any interface anyone in Britain has on a professional level with any of the major internet services, the social media giants, they're all in Ireland.
It's all Ireland.
When you get paid by YouTube, it's Google Ireland has paid you however much.
And it's for exactly that reason.
There's just no reason not to.
And what this is doing is making Ireland a very rich and prosperous country, which is great, but that's not us.
Why are we...
We should be doing it.
And, I mean, Rishi Sunak, you may have followed, tied us or was trying to tie us into a minimum 15% corporation tax rate agreed with the OECD countries.
And why would you do that?
Why would a nation state...
Whose one economic tool, fiscal policy, is so critical in the way that you run that nation state, why would it give up a fiscal tool in the pursuit of some kind of harmony with its neighbours?
Global trade is not a kumbaya experience.
Global trade is a competitive one.
It's meant to be ruthless.
It's meant to be ruthless for the benefit of the British people.
And so we should keep all our Armory, if you like, economic armory at our disposal in the pursuit of getting richer as a country.
And this is, I mean, you talked about Brexit.
Brexit was a cry from the British people, not just to leave the EU. It was a cry from the British people to stop governing the country through global liberal principles.
Economic, cultural and constitutional.
And it was a cry of the British people to recognise we are the United Kingdom.
Can you please start putting British interests first?
That's fundamentally what it was.
And we want to be governed by people in this country.
We want to be able to hold them accountable.
We want to be able to boot them out when they get it wrong.
And we want those monkeys to do what's best for us.
Honestly, the reason I've got this map of the referendum up I agree with you, but I think it's a very English phenomenon as well.
The left-behind parts of England, in particular, are the most Brexiteery places for a reason.
But even then, England and Wales, generally, I think it was kind of almost spiritual.
We shouldn't be governed by someone on the continent.
No, we shouldn't.
And by the way, we still are.
I know.
And this is the point.
And it's not just the EU that's governing us, as I'm sure you're better aware than I am.
We have multiple global institutions and international treaties, as well as domestic bodies, which neuter our ability to govern ourselves as a democracy.
And these are the things that we need to be fighting against tooth and nail.
This is where Blair was so evil because he set this train in motion in many ways.
Well, the EU goes back before that.
But the hollowing out of our democracy, the pursuit of international treaties, the abrogation of Local governance in favour of international institutions.
All of that started with Blair in the way that, you know, we're now, you know, the speed at which we're now...
We're kind of enmeshed in this strange sort of spider silk web of quangocracies.
We are, yeah.
I think Liz Truss is the best example of someone's come up to that and said, okay, I'm just going to push through it.
And no, you're not.
It's very deeply entrenched.
Strangled her.
And it's going to require legislation to remove, clearly.
And so they were never going to let Brexit happen.
And that's why I think it's very important to recognize we didn't get Brexit, because only if we got Brexit, which means genuinely cutting our ties with the European Union from a regulatory perspective,
Genuinely removing their laws and their ability to influence our laws, only then would we be free to push back against this global liberal order and indeed the quangocracies, because you'd pull the rug out from under the feet of all these people.
And some people say, oh, Ben, that's so risky.
We would have ended up in a trade war with the EU. Well, my response to that is, well, let's have the trade war with the EU. We can win it.
We can win it.
Deregulate.
Cut taxes.
It would have forced our government to do what's right for the United Kingdom.
A trade war would have been cathartic for the United Kingdom.
We would have got rid of so much baggage that we carry unnecessarily.
It would have been so brilliant if they'd cut corporation tax to something ridiculously low.
I mean, A, as someone who owns a business, I would have appreciated it.
But it would have been just an unleashing of the country.
Optimism would have returned.
Which is what Trump's about to do in the US. Exactly.
You know, what Trump has said, he's going to ditch net zero, which is highly expensive for energy and for businesses and for families and households and everything else.
He's going to deregulate and he's going to cut taxes.
Simple.
It's really not very complicated.
It's not complicated.
And if the UK doesn't follow suit, we're going to be in a real pickle.
Because capital is fluid.
Global capital is fluid.
It will leave the UK. It will leave the European Union.
And it will go to the States.
Because it will find a much...
Pleasanter experience, then.
And we're going to have such a good example in another English-speaking country that we're very close to politically, where they're doing the exact right thing for themselves and we're doing the exact wrong thing for ourselves.
Absolutely.
And yet, we're trapped in this...
Again, it just feels like this kind of gossamer webs that are just, oh, no, you can't do that.
It's like, but I think if I just tense my muscles, I could.
And for some reason, they're like, yeah, but you're not allowed to do that.
No, we can't do that.
Just don't.
Just this narcotic effect...
Yeah, but we're just going to raise your taxes now.
So it's just more difficult.
Everything becomes more difficult.
It looks like doom and gloom on the horizon just because they're not prepared to release the gentle hold they have on us.
They're slowly pulling us back into the loam until we just dissolve into nothingness.
And it's like, no, I just don't want that.
And they don't seem to understand the benefits that...
Encouraging your own population to actually go out and get something done does.
I mean, this would be steel sharpening steel.
You know, okay, we become more competitive.
We become better.
This is a pursuit of excellence.
Okay, well, what's that do to the Europeans?
Well, that makes them up their game as well.
Absolutely.
And so suddenly...
Competition is good.
Everyone is getting better.
And yeah, exactly.
Competition is a fundamental good that, for some reason, the international liberal order is just completely against, which you would think that's weird for liberals.
They were usually very pro-competition.
I remember when Sunak was at a conference, I can't remember if it was a G7 or G20 or something, he tweeted, obviously in a moment of euphoric, collegiate emotion towards his fellow world leaders, he tweeted saying, we must not compete with our friends and neighbours.
Signed to that effect.
And I thought to myself, you just haven't got it, buddy.
We can cooperate with them, but we must compete with them.
I mean, I'm constantly competing with my friends in a genial way.
Absolutely.
Once you've got a fair and established set of rules that everyone agrees to, competition becomes fun because now everyone knows no one's going to get screwed, and they're going to do their best, and someone's going to come out on top, but that's okay.
No one loses out, really.
It's just everyone gets a bit better.
Anyway, I don't want to focus too much on that because it's just one of those things I find very innovating.
I just wanted to talk about it.
But anyway, so I found the Lord Ashcroft Poles, just to linger on Brexit a little bit more, very fascinating, because of the reasons that people gave for voting for Brexit.
I don't know if we can get this up, actually.
Make this a bit big.
It's quite small.
But why the Leave voters voted to Leave?
The number one principle was decisions that the UK should be made in the UK, which is obvious.
So, essentially, English radicalism.
I think it was Paul Mason that made this comment on GB News or something.
He was like, look, English radicalism has always been based around self-determination.
Yeah, of course.
England's been a sovereign nation for a thousand years almost, so of course it's obsessed with it.
But the second one was regain control over immigration on our own borders.
And that, I think, is the thing that people are most disappointed with Mr Johnson about.
How could you do this to us?
What were you thinking?
But we haven't got Brexit.
That's the point.
You know, we're still being governed by the same liberal global mindset.
You know, technically, what happened on the 31st of January 2020 was that we left the institutions of the European Union.
We left the Parliament.
I left the Parliament.
The Brexit Party left the Parliament.
I bet they were pleased with that.
You know, we left our position on the Commission.
We left our position on the European Court of Justice and so on.
But we didn't give up the laws.
The deal that Boris Johnson, he did two deals with the European Union.
The first was the withdrawal agreement.
And in the withdrawal agreement, he left Northern Ireland behind.
It's something I've been fighting very hard.
The effect of leaving Northern Ireland behind is not just Northern Ireland being seriously compromised.
It also created a grappling hook, a regulatory grappling hook into the flesh of the rest of the United Kingdom, into Great Britain, basically.
And so we are being tugged Through the Northern Ireland Protocol towards the EU and Starmer is using it to justify getting closer to the EU on phytosanitary and sanitary conditions and so on.
He will neuter our ability to chart an independent economic path using the protocol as his excuse.
That's what he'll do.
And that's partly why the protocol was designed the way it was designed.
So even if you don't really care about Northern Ireland, I happen to care a lot about Northern Ireland, but even if you don't, even if you care really only about Great Britain, you still need to get rid of the Northern Ireland protocol because it's a grappling hook into Great Britain.
So we did that.
And then the second deal that Boris Johnson did, the trade and cooperation agreement, which came a year later, required us, still requires this country to align with state aid laws in the European Union, such as they were on 31st December 2020.
Competition laws, employment laws and environmental laws.
And of course, under environmental laws, one of the passing shots of Theresa May was to embed net zero on our statute books.
And the way the environmental alignment with the EU is framed in this new treaty is that we're not allowed to regress from any domestic environmental laws, even if those domestic laws have future effect.
And of course, net zero is all about getting to net zero by 2050. And so it's a future effect.
Are you with me?
Oh, yeah, completely.
I hate it.
I'm getting angry and trying to contain my phrase.
So under the trade and cooperation agreement, we are not allowed to ditch net zero.
People don't realise that it's not in the gift of our government any longer, whether or not we get rid of this incredibly self-harming policy.
It's signed into international treaty.
And the other things he signed us up into, which I find horrifying, See, So if we want to leave the ECHR, which is a reform UK policy, which is something Robert Jenrick also said he wanted to do, we would have to terminate the trade and cooperation agreement.
See, I didn't know this.
Yeah, so this is very interesting.
So all roads take you back to getting Brexit done properly.
You want to protect our borders, you've got to get Brexit done properly.
You've got to ditch the Trade and Cooperation Agreement before you can really get out of the European Convention of Human Rights.
So, I mean, what this is doing for me is putting the scope of the Conservative betrayal into perspective.
Because a lot of people, I think, have been fooled by Boris Johnson.
I think a lot of people thought, you know, he's going to get Brexit done, you know, it's oven ready, and essentially what we've done is sold out 1.6 million British citizens in Northern Ireland, left them to rot with, I mean, just the most uncompetitive position we could put them in, and said, right, that's your problem, you're on your own, enjoy being immiserated by the Republic of Ireland through these unfair, well, not even unfair, but just through Us holding you back competitively.
And then for the rest of the UK, you're not going to get the thing you voted for because of the agreement that we signed, which we could have been much more aggressive upon.
We should have been much more aggressive about it.
I mean, I'll let you into a little...
It's not really a confidence anymore, but I'm going to let you into this.
One of the arch negotiators of the trade and cooperation agreement didn't know that he'd bound us into a non-regression obligation on net zero.
He didn't know it.
And I was challenged by A peer in the House of Lords, as opposed to a piss head, but a peer, if you get the, that was a joke, on whether or not I was right, because one of the architects of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement had contradicted me.
So I took a photograph of the provisions in the TCA, sent it across to this peer, and I got a text back a few days later, oh yeah, oh yes, no, yeah, we are, we are committed to non-regression.
So even one of the architects of the agreement didn't know what the agreement said.
What do we do?
And I'll just quickly rattle through what else is in the agreement, very quickly.
So through that agreement, we're also committed to funding European Union military development, the European Defence Fund.
So that is for the creation and implementation of European hardware and software, military hardware and software, on an interoperable basis.
We, the United Kingdom, are funding the creation Of a European Defence Union.
And Starmer, I'm sure, wants to take us into that EDU. And it's not like NATO, where it's lots of different independent sovereign states coming together and cooperating.
The European Defence Union will be under Brussels.
We will be giving up our independent defence capability.
Now, Boris Johnson didn't sign us up into that precisely, but he signed us up on a path towards that.
He also signed us up into the European arrest warrant.
So, a court in Romania, for example, could issue an arrest warrant for a British citizen, and there's very little a British court could do to protect that British citizen.
Now, you just think about that for a moment.
How in any shape or form is that Brexit?
I mean, I'm trying to be charitable.
I'm trying to think of a way to be charitable about this, but I just...
I didn't follow Brexit very closely after the referendum and after the Boris government because the general attitude from the mainstream was, okay, well, we've kind of lost on that and so we'll capitulate.
And so I assume, well, it can't be too bad.
And I've got other things I need to look into, I've got other things I'm more interested in studying.
And now I'm glad I didn't, because I would have been raging about this every day of my life.
Like, this is obviously, essentially, a way to tacitly and slowly, by degree, scupper the entire project.
Absolutely.
And you know, we say quite rightly that the United Kingdom doesn't really have a written constitution.
Well, I would say two of the most important constitutional documents in the UK now are international treaties over which we, the British people, have no control.
The two treaties Boris Johnson signed because they constitutionally determine our constitutional framework.
In so many areas.
And we can't ditch net zero.
We can't get rid of, do with state aid that which we wish to.
We can't buy British first.
Did you know that?
We can't, our government can't buy British first.
In areas of strategic military importance, there is a carve out.
But if our government wants to go to tender on something that isn't of strategic importance, we're obliged to tender with European Union member state firms on an equal basis.
That ain't Brexit.
It was all about buying British first.
And so I'll just say this one last thing on Brexit.
If we got Brexit, if we genuinely became independent of the European Union, we would set the country on a path that you and I both wish to set it on.
It's like, you know that game, is it called Django or something?
Jenga.
Jenga, not Django.
That's a film, isn't it?
Jenga, where you pull out a bit of, you know, if we pulled out the trade and cooperation agreement and the withdrawal agreement, the whole thing would come crashing down and we'd become independent.
We'd be forced to become independent overnight.
And that's why Brexit was so critical.
And it's so sad that we didn't get it.
And if we just had a government that actually wanted this, because I think the main issue is that none of our politicians really wanted this to happen.
This was a massive upset.
Even those ones who campaign on Brexit, you, I mean, like the Michael Goves, the Boris Johnsons, you can tell that this isn't really in their DNA. They're actually quite liberal internationalists themselves.
They would rather go on as they have done up until this point, and it would require a complete change of mindset from a new government that came in that was quite aggressive and bearish on this.
We're here to fight, actually.
We're here to fight for a future that...
It's a possible future, but it's not being realised because of the kind of torpor that has come across the country.
But I think that would wake everything up.
Suddenly the energy would be back.
Suddenly Britain would be back.
I mean, they always talk about being a world leader and competitive in this, that, and the other.
But we're not in anything at all.
Possibly poverty, I don't know.
But things are really going downhill, and everyone can feel the degradation of the country.
We're just walking around it.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Absolutely.
And, you know, it's a tragedy that we haven't taken advantage of it because, you know, we all should know, or I think we all know in our heart of hearts, that regulations made in Brussels are not made for the benefit of the United Kingdom.
It doesn't even need to be said.
It doesn't even need to be said.
So the fact that we're taking regulations from the European Union means we're just self-harming.
Yes.
And we should be, in fact, inflicting the harm on them via fair trade and competition.
I guess we'll leave Brexit there because, honestly, it's infuriated me.
It's just very, very frustrating.
Let's move on.
I'm sure that you've seen and everyone else has seen that net migration into the UK has been revised upwards.
It's the second time they've revised it upwards, isn't it?
It is indeed the second time they've revised it upwards, because last time they said it was something like 650,000.
And, I mean, as if that is an acceptable number.
I know, quite.
That's an insane number.
We're broadcasting from Swindon, which is about 270,000 people.
Swindon is a massive town.
It's absolutely gargantuan.
And yeah, 650,000 was supposed to be the acceptable number.
That was revised upwards to 740,000 and recently it was revised upwards yet again to 906,000.
Net.
So every year about 700,000 people leave.
So we're probably looking at over a million and a half people who were let in in one year under the quote-unquote Conservative government.
And this was a chart that just went upwards over the last five or so years.
So basically it looks like the Conservative government willfully let in over six million people in five years.
That's exactly right.
Yes.
And that's the way to look at it.
The net figure is trying to distract us from the real rapid change in our demography.
The gross figures of what you have to look at.
And there has been a dramatic increase in immigration in the last few years, none of which was needed for the economy.
None of it was needed for the economy.
The notion that we would have somehow economically collapsed without all these people coming into the country is absurd.
In fact, I'd say quite the opposite.
I say we're being seriously economically challenged.
Well, we've covered this many times on the podcast, and on the plus side, the narrative that mass immigration provides economic growth has been resoundingly disproven by the lack of economic growth that has coincided with the mass immigration.
We are about to head into a recession.
Britain's economic growth has been completely flat for all this time, and we're now starting to get the bill.
We're starting to find out that we paid nearly six million pounds on asylum seekers.
Notice there's a nice sleight of hand that's always played as well.
We can maybe get rid of the asylum seekers.
Okay, but the million and a half people who are let in are not asylum seekers.
They're just people who are looking for economic opportunity, and if you're looking for economic opportunity, Why come to Britain?
I don't know.
But they're not the same.
Actually, Carl, I'd say many aren't even looking for economic opportunity.
They're looking for benefits.
Absolutely.
I think we've got to be straight about what they're doing.
And we know that a third of them are just dependents.
They're registered as dependents.
A third of them are students and another third are here for work.
And it's like, right, so two-thirds of these people really ought not to be here.
Absolutely right.
Let's be fair.
On the economic argument.
And there are various metrics that have come out recently that show that this depresses wages.
It's preventing economic growth.
It's causing a massive growth in state redistribution and spending.
So the taxes have to go up.
The £22 billion black hole has to be filled.
And even then, I'm not even going to go into it because obviously that's...
Nonsense.
But the point being, it's obvious that immigration is the reason that Britain is decaying.
It's costing us too much.
It's filling our towns and cities with strangers who are not paying their way.
The infrastructure is overburdened.
There is no free money for anything.
I mean, it's impacting us at every single level.
So, as you say, economically, it's burdensome.
The NHS is being pressured because far too many people in this country, they keep saying we need, you know, foreigners to man our NHS. But actually, there are many more foreigners using it than there are manning it.
Oh, my God.
So just a quick thing.
This is a point I have to make to leftist commentators all the time.
It's like you do realize that these people who come here are people.
And sometimes they get sick too.
Absolutely.
And so you are just compounding the problem and saying, okay, well, we need now more people.
And, I mean, we've had a population growth since the late 90s of probably somewhere north of 15 million people.
If immigration was the solution to the problem, why isn't everything brilliant?
If the problems aren't being caused by immigration, well, why aren't things just...
We should be living in utopia.
Yeah, so our public services are all burdened.
Our housing stock, which we're not building enough of, or we're certainly not even able to repurpose that which we've got because of net zero and other onus obligations, is incapable of dealing with the number of people in the country.
We're paying our benefits.
You know, we've got one and a half million foreigners effectively on benefits in the UK. I do.
And so that is a benefits bill of somewhere...
I've heard estimates of 10 billion.
I think it's more like 15 billion.
Just that alone.
And then you've got the thick end of 8 billion a year on illegal migrants.
You're talking about...
You know that fictitious 22 billion black hole that they're talking about?
You could fill that instantly by removing immigrants on benefits and removing people who shouldn't be in the country in the first place.
And, I mean, it's just bizarre.
It beggars belief.
And...
There are going to be people who will say, well, the services have collapsed, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, look, okay, even if that is all true, we can't continue on like this, right?
So even if they haven't collapsed right now, on the current trajectory we are on, they're going to collapse.
We're going to arrive at a point where the NHS... I mean, there are 7.5 million people on the NHS waiting list.
And that went down by 200,000 and that was heralded as a great victory.
It's like, oh, so there are only 7.3 million.
And, I mean, the budget...
So Rachel Reeves kept identifying the 22 billion so-called black hole for her reason to do all the tax rises.
The budget that she announced actually is 45 billion pounds in tax rises and another 32 billion of borrowing on top of that.
So she's basically going to spend 77 billion pounds a year extra and The burden of all that taxation is already showing its effect on the economy, where all the indicators now in the UK economy are pointing towards recession.
And if we end up in recession, she won't get the £45 billion in tax revenue she's expecting, but her spending will still stay the same, which means our borrowing is going to go through the roof.
It's already through the roof.
It'll go even more through the roof.
And what will happen then is that interest rates will have to go up to try and attract money into government coffers.
As interest rates go up, people will still, investors, private investors, will be looking at the UK and going, well, I'm not going to invest there because actually they've got to...
They've got a borrowing requirement which their government can't fulfill.
Their economy's in recession, so I'm not going to be investing in the UK, which means sterling will fall, and sterling's fallen already 7% against the dollar.
That means even though they're putting interest rates up, we're going to be importing inflation in a recessionary environment, which means they'll have to put interest rates up even more.
Can you see where I'm going with this?
Oh, absolutely.
We're going to end up...
This is crazy.
This is crazy.
It's a death spiral.
It's a death spiral.
We're heading into...
It's an economic death spiral.
And it seems like such an unforced error.
There's no reason that we have to be in this position.
No.
And so, I'm genuinely, genuinely concerned about this, but what can I do?
And so, one of the things that people noticed the other day was Keir Starmer speaking about migration.
Now, I found it very interesting that he was prepared to lay this at the feet of the Conservatives, because It is the Labour Party that began the experiment in mass immigration into the country, and Kistamer, I think, would probably admit to being a Blairite, so he would admit to being the heir of this project, which David Cameron and the other Conservatives have been as well, and Boris Johnson for some reason just ramped it up on steroids.
And Keir Starmer accused them of running an experiment.
He essentially adopted the far-right perspective on immigration into the country.
Now, I'm mildly sceptical about his far-right credentials in this regard.
What do you think?
Well, I don't like the expression right wing because I think it misdescribes those of us who simply want the country's interest to be put.
You know, if you want the United Kingdom to do well, you're somehow right wing, you know, apparently.
So I don't like that.
But I mean, it's a complete lie.
Obviously, of course, he's doesn't.
He's not right wing.
Of course, he doesn't really care about immigration.
Keir Starmer I mean, let's just get one thing straight.
Keir Starmer is anti-British.
And I don't say that because I want to be inflammatory or because he doesn't identify the town in which he was born or whatever.
It's because the policies which he wishes to adopt are firmly of that liberal global order where British citizenry is...
is no more important than immigrant citizenry.
And you may have noticed, Karl, I'm sure you would have done, that they now, in order to avoid using the word minorities in the country, they're referring to them as global majorities.
So we should welcome In the spirit of democratic inclusion, we should welcome the global majority because they're the majority.
Are you with me?
I'm feeling that maybe I'll become a leftist and start talking about how we're being oppressed by the global majority.
Yeah, we become the minority in our own country.
Okay, well now I want minority rights.
But obviously preposterous.
So he's anti-British.
He doesn't care.
Literally Davos man.
He is literally.
He said he preferred Davos to Westminster.
He wants open borders.
He doesn't give a damn about the illegal migration as far as I'm concerned.
And he'd be very happy to be governed by Brussels.
We know that.
We know exactly where his heart is.
And if you want to be governed by a foreign power, if you don't want to protect your borders, if you care as much about foreigners as you do about your own people, you're not British.
You're not really pro-British, are you?
I mean...
That, to me, is not in any way controversial.
That's self-evident from exactly the premises you've laid out.
There are going to be lots of people who will claim that that's not true, and will claim that you are somehow being exclusionary.
But I just don't see the argument.
I mean, he really seems to...
I mean, he spent his entire legal career defending foreign murderers.
I just...
I don't know why he has sympathy for those people, but absolutely no sympathy for, say, British pensioners who are currently freezing to death during a court snap.
Yeah, and we said, you know...
I mean, I noticed this straight after the Southport protests and riots.
Of course rioting's wrong, let's just say that.
A statement of the obvious before someone accuses me of stirring up a non-crime hate incident.
Obviously rioting is bad, but there were many people out legitimately protesting against the causes of the breakdown in our society coming, you know, the principal cause being mass immigration, the breakdown of our law and order and, you know, protection of British people.
Legitimate protests.
And instead of taking on board their legitimate protests...
He categorized everyone as far-right, because it's a pejorative term, which is also why I don't like using the word right-wing, because the minute you accept your right-wing, it's a hop and a skip before they categorize you as far-right, if you're with me.
I completely agree.
But he categorized everyone as far-right, and he literally directed the criminal justice system to...
Fast-track them through.
Fast-track them through, find them, detain them, put them in custody, don't let them out, throw away the key.
And then we had the famous case of Peter Lynch.
I'm moving on.
No, no, please.
You know, 61-year-old grandfather who said some nasty things to the policemen, had some conspiracy theories up on a placard.
He was accused of violent acts.
And the only evidence offered up against him was non-violent for reasons which are not clear to me.
Maybe he didn't have proper legal representation.
He pleaded guilty.
He got two years, eight months.
And a couple of months later, he hanged himself in prison.
And so a man is dead.
Because Keir Starmer politicised the criminal justice system, and he did it because he is of the liberal global order where he wouldn't have any truck with the criticism that the protesters were making of mass immigration, which is a perfectly legitimate protest.
I completely agree.
And the fact that Starmer, on the very first day, almost the first words out of his mouth, were to stigmatise and call them far right.
That is, right now, they are the political enemy, and I will deal with the political enemy.
So hang on, you don't know who these people are, Kit.
Absolutely.
These people are afraid, you know.
And like you say, they have bad legal representation.
Every single one of them pled guilty.
It's like, okay, but I'm looking at, you know, that bricklayer from, you know, Liverpool or something, and I'm thinking...
Has that man ever spoken to a lawyer in his entire life?
He doesn't have a lawyer on retainer.
Like, he's probably never seen the inside of a courtroom.
He doesn't know how this process works.
And so some government appointed lawyers just come along and said, look, if you just plead guilty, the whole thing will be over really quickly.
You'll get like three months in jail.
Whereas he hasn't actually done a thing wrong.
He's not guilty of a crime.
And so pleading guilty to what he's being accused of, he could doubtless have proven that he wasn't guilty.
And yet now he's in jail and now you get a Peter Lynch.
It's a tragedy.
It's a tragedy which needs investigating.
Peter Lynch's death.
It's almost predatory.
That's the point.
It's almost like a predatory act.
And so that's why I say he's anti-British.
Because what those protesters, again, a bit like Brexit, what the protesters were saying was, please put our interests first.
We don't want to be assaulted by people who've come to this country illegally.
Help us.
And mass migration.
Help us.
Please help us, the British people.
Yeah.
You know, far from being far right, I would, if I were to put money on their political disposition, the people who were protesting, I'd say traditionally, probably, they voted Labour.
100%.
And you'll notice that all of the protests were basically in Labour heartlands.
Were they?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
The protests in Liverpool went on late into the night.
Liverpool's been deep red for a long time.
But it's all across the north of England where it's all the Labour heartlands.
It's literally like a cry for help from the traditional Labour voter saying, look, we are afraid in our own country because you've brought people over who do not care about us, do not respect us, do not like us, and we've had 20 years of very negative community relations with.
And you've taken the side of this new community every single time.
And now look at what's happening.
And so, I mean...
And the policies as well.
Tony Blair introduced it.
He started it with the Companies Act, Section 172, which was the beginning, I think, of stakeholder capital, capitalism, which was requiring businesses in this country to have a view for social justice.
You know, businesses should just be amoral entities which exist to employ people and make money.
And he introduced this concept of social justice.
And on the back of that social justice concept, they have created progressive discrimination in favor of minorities.
And that progressive discrimination now manifests itself not just in a two-tier criminal justice system, but in a two-tier society.
Every single institution in this country is encouraged to hire ethnic minorities over the majority white folk of this country.
That's the only way to put it.
Every institution...
Whether you're educational establishment, armed forces, public services, private sector, whatever you are, wherever you are, you're encouraged through the regulatory framework.
This is not a please do this.
This is a regulatory thing.
You have to report on it.
My company has to report to the London Stock Exchange.
The most egregious example of this was the RAF, saying that they kept getting useless white male applicants to be pilots.
Well, how were they useless?
Well, they weren't useless in flying planes.
That was not the issue.
Of course, they were going to be brilliant pilots.
They were useless when it came to totting up the diversity figures and accounting for the diversity of the RAF. It was like, well, sorry, you're in Britain.
I couldn't tell us, yeah.
And, of course, the impact of that is that you get rid of meritocracy.
And you get rid of meritocracy is the beginning of the end of your country.
And, you know, do we really want anything other than the best RAF pilots?
We just want the best pilots.
It doesn't matter what skin color they are.
But if you're coming from a perspective that is, as you described, anti-British and actually pro-global, pro-European, actually maybe you do want Britain to slowly degrade in quality and standards so that they aren't actually a good example to other people on how things ought to be done, which is historically what Britain has actually been, I think.
An example of why high standards matter.
Because, I mean, if you just look at almost anything, actually, that Britain has been involved in, we've almost always been outnumbered or outfinanced or outgunned in some way, and yet we always come out on top because we have the highest standards.
And this has just been a perennial narrative for the British people that, okay, we are small, but we can punch way above our weight if we want, and other people could do the same if they wanted.
And we're in this position now.
Yeah, I mean, what we've done, very sadly, I'm digressing slightly, but that ability to punch above your weight comes from self-confidence.
And we've damaged our self-confidence as a nation because we keep attacking our heritage.
It comes from...
Inculcating aspiration, a belief that if you work hard, you will be able to make money, do well for yourself, do well for your children, and so on.
And that's been neutered by high taxation, high state intervention, and inability for businesses to do well in the way that we used to be able to do it.
The eschewing of excellence in the pursuit of equality.
Instead of leveling up, everything's actually being leveled down, and we see that through the VAT being imposed on private schools, for example.
And then this completely anti-British attitude where it's, you know, we're people of the world and so the entire world needs to benefit from our largesse.
No!
It's the British people who need to be protected.
But ironically, if we take the British Empire as a model, yes, the entire world will benefit from our largesse if you allow us to be excellent.
When we are excellent, actually the entire world does benefit and we feel better about everything.
Everyone gets more wealth, more health, more longevity, more food, more prosperity.
We actually did create all of these things when we were unleashed.
Absolutely.
And just if I've got time to say it, you know, I was born in Karachi in 1965 in what I would call the tailwinds of British Imperial India, even though it was Pakistan.
And it was a fantastic country into which I was born.
Wide avenues, clean avenues, the water services worked, the sewerage worked, the electricity worked.
Better than Britain in 2024. The buildings, frankly it worked.
I believe it.
It was safe.
The buildings were all in great order.
The legacy of the British Empire, contrary to all the lefties' view of the British Empire, was a phenomenal legacy.
And the people with whom I grew up were very proud.
Pakistanis were very proud of the British Empire.
They're not so now because the whole narrative has changed.
And, you know, there are all sorts of other reasons.
Decades of indoctrination.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But back then...
People were very proud of their British legacy in Pakistan.
And I am still, even though I was born in Pakistan, I'm very, very proud of the British Empire.
Why would I not be proud of the British Empire?
It is through the empire that I have the great privilege, frankly, of being in this country now.
My dad did marry an English lady.
But he wouldn't have met her if it hadn't been for the British Empire.
It's the same for my granddad on my father's side.
He came over from St. Hamina to help with the war effort against the Nazis in World War II, met a British and English woman, married her, and that's how I ended up here.
Obviously, he was very much the same.
He was very proud of the Empire, very proud of the country.
The idea that we can just sit there and go, okay, well, we'll let...
I don't know whether you saw, but the writer of horrible histories came out and said, yeah, no, I hate Britain, I hate the empire, I always have.
It's like, but why is it on the BBC writing our histories then?
You know, that can only be a deliberate pattern and agenda of subversion.
And no one who had the country's interests in mind would ever permit this.
This guy would never have been anywhere near any kind of position of influence.
And yet, my son watches Horrible Histories, he's like, oh, I really like this, Dad.
It's like, yeah, but you don't see what I see in it.
I see, yes, you know, like Nelson is actually like a weak coward or something is how he's portrayed.
I mean, they're indoctrinating.
He's one of our greatest heroes.
What are you doing?
They're indoctrinating our children.
It really is, and I despise it.
But okay, let's leave that there, because again, it's making me very angry.
It's making me very angry thinking about all of this.
Right, so the final thing I thought we'd talk about is probably the most timely and most sensitive, which is you recently announced that you've left the Reform Party, or at least stopped subscribing to the Reform Party.
I'm not even sure how the membership works, actually.
Yeah.
You put out this very measured and reasonable statement, and I think it was about 12 minutes long, the video, so it's a very calm, reasonable explanation of what you felt had gone wrong with not just the party, but more the direction of travel, the direction towards the center of politics, moving towards the left of politics, and why this you didn't think actually satisfied the desires of the electorate.
And I'm of the opinion that basically it's a mistake for the Reform Party to try and move into an already very crowded sort of centre-left field.
And you got quite an inappropriate backlash to this, I think, from Nigel Farage himself.
I'm going to read a few quotes because I just wanted your comment on this because, again, just to be clear, I didn't feel that this was a fair characterization of you at all.
So GBNews tell us that he described your departure from UK as a champagne moment and the absolute icing on the cake.
In an interview in GB News, he claimed that you'd become increasingly critical, stating that you'd attacked him more in public than the Labour Party have, and that you're very bitter, very twisted, and it's very sad, and the fact that you walked away is frankly a huge relief.
And no doubt it is a huge relief, otherwise he wouldn't have said it.
And I think he also sang, The Sun Has Got His Hat On, hip hip hip hooray.
But I am not aware of having attacked Nigel.
At all, personally.
Neither am I. I've watched many of your interviews.
I mean, I do think that there is a much better line for Reform UK to be taking on many policies, for example, calling Brexit out for not having been done, as opposed to accepting it's been done, but it's been done badly.
You know, you end up in a really difficult conundrum without, you know, leave that aside.
But, you know, I don't accept Brexit's been done.
I can't at any level accept it because Northern Ireland has been left behind.
I think that we must have mass deportation because anyone who's in this country illegally should be deported, detained and deported.
And if you can't do it quickly, then you take whatever time it requires to get it done, but you get it done.
Just as a quick side though, wasn't that in their manifesto that they were going to remove illegal aliens?
It is, but there isn't a declaration to remove all illegal aliens.
Right, okay.
And I'm very worried about the rate of demographic change in the country, because that is the other side of the same coin, which is doing so much damage to the culture and integrity.
I say integrity of our society, that's actually grammatically incorrect, because society requires a settled...
Culture.
And what we've got, we haven't got a society in this country anymore.
We don't have a society.
We have lots of different communities, all coexisting, and sometimes less harmoniously than at other times.
And so we don't have a society.
And I see the rate of demographic change as...
Part of the reason our society no longer exists and why multiculturalism is so damaging is because of the rate at which people have come into the country, amongst other things.
And so I've got, you know, a few issues on that front with Reform UK. And also the party isn't democratised.
There is no kind of check and balance or broad body of people that appoint the leadership and so on.
It's a company owned by Nigel and Richard Tice.
And Nigel has said, to be fair to him, that he's going to democratise, but it hasn't happened.
And some of the statements coming out have been misleading, in my view, about what they're going to do.
But can I just leave all of that aside for a second?
I think what Reform UK is squandering If I may say so, is the ability to really galvanize and broaden and galvanize the movement it started.
That frankly Richard and I started.
Richard started and I joined him in this endeavour.
4.1 million people voted for Reform UK and they voted for Reform UK because they want a 180 degree change in direction for how the country is governed.
We've talked about it at length in this interview.
And by moving towards, I think, a position where Reform UK thinks it can appeal more to the mainstream, What it's forgetting is that the mainstream is a very crowded area politically.
You know, you've got Liberal Democrats, Labour, Conservatives.
They're all there.
Greens, SNP. There are a plurality of left.
I mean, you know, I suppose reform wouldn't be as far over as they are.
But, you know, I think in the pursuit of sanitizing itself, in the pursuit, I think, frankly, of recruiting Tories, Reform UK is at risk of turning its back on the movement it created and at risk of not growing that movement, the movement being turned off by it.
And it's opening up a very wide gap because Kemi Badenoch is not going to be able to take the Conservative Party I don't like the expression but she's not going to be able to take the Conservative Party to the right because she's got too many one nation wet Tories in it.
Apparently she's very close to Michael Gove.
Yeah, that's what I've heard.
I mean, some people say she's not, but anyway, she's going to have a devil's job moving the Tory party to the right.
Nigel, it looks to me like reform is heading towards the centre to garner support from the Tories and to recruit Tories.
That means that for those of us who are really pro-British, who really want an agenda that changes the way the country's governed, that there's a huge political gap being opened up There is.
I didn't get the data up on this one.
I think it was on the previous one.
But I was looking at the numbers the other day on the 2024 election, and out of 48 million potential voters, only 28 million voted.
And I personally characterise our politics as quite far to the left and rather anti-British.
And I suspect, although I don't have hard data to prove this, that a vast amount of disillusionment with British politics is that, frankly, patriotic, nativist people don't feel represented by any of these parties.
And so when Nigel Farage...
He does well in interviews when he's being interviewed from the left, but as soon as he's interviewed from the right, you get quite a bit...
Like the Stephen Edgington interview recently, and there were a couple of others, where he essentially...
Just sounded like a conservative politician.
Oh no, we're not going to do anything about mass immigration.
We're not going to do anything about Islam.
I mean, what's he going to do about the quangocracy that's currently keeping this nation ensnared?
All of this he's been incredibly weak on, and I just don't understand why.
And then as soon as anyone brings this up, he essentially ejects them from the grace of his party and soldiers on without them, creating a large number of people who are very valuable allies whom he is not taking into consideration whatsoever.
Why is he like this?
Well, I mean, I think it's deliberate.
I mean, the only way I can explain it is that I think he wishes to recruit Tories.
He wishes to take the Tory party over.
I mean, he put out a letter.
Look, I don't want to have a go at Nigel.
No, of course, sir.
I don't want this to be having a go at Nigel interview.
No, no, no, sure.
But, you know, I just get it out there, people watching.
But he sent a letter, as a matter of fact, to 1,300-odd Tory councillors who are coming up for election in May saying, you know, please consider joining Reform because you're going to lose as a member of the Conservative Party.
And I can see some rationale for it because he wants to develop a ground game for Reform UK. But if you take on Tories on a wholesale basis, you become the Tory party.
And in the pursuit of recruiting them...
He's giving up on the very policies, principles, philosophy that got reform its 4.1 million votes, that gave people some hope that this country may now have a change in direction.
And so, I mean, I think we need to just look at what is opening up and how our movement, to which I feel very obliged because I was in part, you know, helped create it, How our movement reacts to what reform is doing.
Maybe we need a new political force to engage with that movement and represent that movement.
I am definitely coming to the conclusion that there needs to be some kind of big tent party that understands itself to be consciously and foremost pro-British.
I'm prepared to say things about Nigel that you're not prepared to say.
I've spoken to many people over the years who have had this kind of problem with Nigel.
He seems to feel that his ego is under threat and his position as the kind of leader of the right in Britain is constantly under threat by talented people and so he stepped on many people to get to where he is today but This, I don't think, is sufficient.
The fact that reform are trailing in the polls when both the Labour and the Conservative parties are at their nadirs, I don't know how they could become less popular than they are, and yet Farage is still not beating any of them.
is remarkable and the fact that when we had the local council elections a few weeks ago and reform I think got something like four out of how many hundred it was and the Conservatives picked up loads and it was like well hang on a second how is this happening Nigel?
and he had to ask councillors to defect to him and none did or one did I think And it was like, okay, but that's a tremendous embarrassment.
That shows a profound amount of weakness.
And the fact that you are stood in an ivory tower saying, okay, you can come to me now.
And it's like, well, why would they?
Like, they've already committed and you're kind of...
You're letting the moment pass you by because of your inability to build a coalition of people who want to work with you.
And now you're, you know, Richard Tice disavowing the Unite the Kingdom rallies and any other commentator, Gawain Towler.
There's no level of loyalty there.
There's no level of incorporation there.
I didn't understand the Gawain Towler sacking.
I don't.
I mean, Gawain's been such a loyal servant of the movement.
And he still is.
Yeah.
But the point being, there's a vast wealth of talent and Energy that's being gatekept out of reform and like you say, they're going towards former conservatives who lost.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't understand it.
And I mean, look, it's nothing personal.
I'm certainly not bitter and twisted, by the way.
I didn't think that for a second.
I don't think anything.
I mean, just one thing about me for people for viewers is I'm a businessman who's run my own business most of my life, a small business.
When you're a small businessman, You have no time for bitter and twisted experiences because...
Believe me, I know.
You know what it's like.
Yeah, I do.
You have to be looking, how do I keep going?
How do I keep going?
What's the next step?
How do I protect myself?
How do I promote myself?
How do I make this thing work?
How is my business going to succeed?
That's all I'm interested in.
I'm only in politics.
This is going to sound quiche, but it's true.
I'm only in politics because I feel the country is facing an existential threat at multiple levels.
And I am only interested in finding solutions to save the United Kingdom.
That is it.
I completely agree.
And this is why I do what I do.
This is why I don't have a giant ego that runs away with me.
I'm actually not a very...
I'm not a person who's very interested in being on the news.
I actually hate it whenever...
I've got a Google alert set to my name so I know when they publish something about me.
Every time it comes on...
The other day, Jess Phillips was attacking me.
I was like, I'm...
Why?
What have I done?
I haven't done anything in, like, five years.
What's going on?
I'd wear that as a badge of honour if Jess Phillips...
Well, yeah, sure, but it's just...
That's not what I want, you know?
Okay, if you're the sort of person who wants that, then fair enough.
But, like, you know, you could have a well-structured, well-organised hierarchy that Nigel would be at the top of, and then they would have layers of activists and, you know, and close advisors and things like that.
But instead, he surrounds himself with just a handful of people who all seem...
Okay, but not brilliant.
But also, there's a kind of fragility to the Reform Party that I think, well, as soon as Nigel...
Frankly, I don't think he's going to win the next election on the current trajectory that he's on in the big numbers that he's expecting to do.
But honestly, I thought six months ago that he would be capable of.
I think the fragility that exists in the Reform Party means that essentially he'll get 30 seats or something.
But then Nigel's going to be 65 and say, okay, I'm just going to pack it in.
Well, that's the risk with him owning and controlling the party.
And then the whole thing just collapses.
There's one point of weakness.
Exactly.
If that point of weakness breaks, the whole thing's gone.
And it's not like Nigel hasn't done this before with UKIP, with the Brexit party.
He doesn't have a history of this.
And I'm not even bothered about Nigel.
You know, OK, whatever, Nigel.
I don't care.
But I know lots of the activists on the lower levels that he relies upon.
And I know that they're good people.
Like, I've spoken to various functions where, essentially, it may as well have been a reform function, even though officially it wasn't.
Because they're all like, well, no, we know that he's not great on this, but it's the only thing we've got going.
And I'm just...
I feel that he's going to be like, and this happened when I joined UKIP, a lot of people were genuinely disappointed with how Niger treated them and not taken into consideration the amount of time that they gave up and effort that they gave up.
I mean, I'm deliberately not talking about this in a personal context because I actually don't mind being treated badly.
That's fine.
Treat me as badly as you wish to treat me.
Stay true to the cause.
I mean, Nigel, if he stays true to the cause, can call me anything he wants to call me.
I couldn't care less.
Yeah, Nigel, if you're doing the right thing, I'd be like, okay, well, it's weird, but, you know, whatever.
Absolutely, whatever.
Absolutely, I couldn't care less.
I'm thick-skinned.
That's fine.
So, I mean, I just, you know, let's just hope things get better with reform or something emerges which garners that movement, grows the movement.
And delivers the result for the British people.
Delivers the vote that we had in 2016 for us to be an independent, proud, sovereign, democratically governed state with strong borders.
I mean, it's simple, right?
Those people are still out there waiting for political representation.
They still voted for it.
And I just thought we'd end on...
You've written an article in The Express recently.
Yeah, this morning.
Yeah, this morning.
I thought, again, if it was addressed to anyone else, essentially, other than Nigel Farage, I would say, well, this is a fair critique and a reasonable critique that ought to be addressed.
But you were saying that you think Nigel will see this as a personal attack.
Yeah.
Well, he described me as having attacked him personally.
And so he does obviously see the criticism.
And I have been making criticism.
You know, I want the party democratized and I want, you know, policies to change.
But I think he does see criticism as personal attack.
So I suspect he'll probably see the article as a personal attack.
It isn't.
Nigel, if you're watching, it's not a personal attack.
Ken, one of the things that I think Nigel fails to understand is a lot of the people who he...
Exiles from his orbit are fans of his.
They're people who like him.
I've been supporting Nigel Farage for years.
And I don't like to be like, okay, but, you know, actually, how many conservatives do you really need?
You know, aren't you looking at those as the sort of, like, the people who failed the country?
And, you know, you should be raising up a bunch of people.
I mean, what Nigel should be doing, forget about everything we've discussed, what Nigel should be doing is gathering around him All the really great thinkers of our movement, including people like yourself, if I may say so, and others, you know.
But there's such a wealth of talent.
There's such a wealth of talent.
I won't name names because then I'll have to go on naming names until I've named everyone.
But there's a massive wealth of talent.
All desirous, all recognising the threats the country's facing, all desirous to do well by the country, and only in it for the country.
And he should be gathering those people around him and promoting them and listening to them and understanding what it is that needs to be done and making a fighting force.
We should be a fantastic strong fighting force.
Very much in the way that Trump has done recently.
You look at all of the people that Trump's been bringing into his campaign, into his administration, and you realise this is taking on the sort of Avengers-style mimetic quality to it.
It's like, oh, hang on a second, there is a revolution happening here.
There is a revolution happening in the States.
And we can have the same thing here, but Nigel Farage is...
Well, maybe he'll do it.
Maybe he'll do it.
Maybe he'll watch this interview and go, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that.
Maybe.
I'm not going to put my money on it.
But the point is, I think that the potential is all there.
And okay, if Nigel Farage isn't going to pick it up, well, he's not going to be around forever.
Maybe someone comes along afterwards and does it.
Yeah, well, I think there are many great and good people in this country who want it done, and then it just becomes a matter of bringing them together.
How do you bring them together?
That's the challenge, and then you do it.
You know what I've found is people are actually a lot more open to have discussions and form friendships in this sphere than not, actually.
I've not had any problems getting guests on here.
I've not had any problems going to Other people's shows.
Everyone has been very, very lovely.
Very few out-of-control egos, actually.
They seem to be accumulating in reform.
But in every other way, everyone's been completely level-headed, completely polite, and concerned about the future of the country, primarily.
And so I'm actually mildly optimistic that if someone were to do something, then people would flock to the banner quite easily.
Shall we go to some comments?
We've got lots of people who have left lots and lots of lovely comments.
Such a great conversation, great episode, top-notch guest.
I wish Ben all the best in whichever direction he goes.
He's a huge asset to our side, meaning our movement.
I'm going to skip over most of the praise for Ben comments.
Let's go to the critical ones.
I don't know if I have any of those yet, but there's just a long list of praise.
Oh, that's very kind.
I will let him know.
Kevin says, Okay, I said I'd stop reading the random comments.
But as for the trade war of the EU, Kevin agrees.
I haven't seen any of those.
What's going on with the EU Commission?
Well, they've just got a new commission and they're all pretty awful looking bunch, I think.
Oh, are they?
Yeah, Vaudelaire is still at the top.
Oh, is she?
She's as awful to behold as she was before.
Absolutely.
But it's completely correct.
I mean, I just don't see how we could lose it because as a single centralized country, we could move so much more nimbly than the European Union.
I mean, look, I understand that after World War II, we needed some kind of settlement in Europe to prevent another world war, to bring nation states back.
You know, we were ending empires.
That's what was happening.
Empires have long ended.
We don't need these kinds of global constraints anymore.
We need to be nation states.
I want, for what it's worth, France to be a strong, independent nation, Germany to be a strong, independent nation, Italy, and so on.
And we can all cooperate.
But we all have to be ourselves.
Yeah, and that's really not a controversial or difficult position to adopt either.
There's nothing contradictory about it.
Like, I like our foreign neighbours as they are.
I don't need to have regulatory power over their internal markets, right?
I've got some issues with the French.
But on a sentimental level, yeah, I want them to be the French because I need someone to hate in the future.
If they stop being the French and start speaking Arabic, I don't know why.
I did French in school.
For Christ's sake.
The point being, it's about self-respect and respect for the other nations around you and yeah, of course I have respect for these people and I want them to have respect for me and then we can deal with one another as equals.
Absolutely, as equals.
Yeah, with a knowledge of, an experience of one another.
And a respect, even if it's grudging, a respect for each other.
Colin says, the biggest problem with Brexit is that hardly anyone involved in the negotiations wanted it to succeed.
Yeah, absolutely.
And in the governments afterwards.
Again, the fact that we're so, just like we've got hooks in our skin holding us down, it's just horrific.
Theodore says, the establishment refuses to abandon the economic and other policies that got us into this bad position because it's so ideologically committed to them that they have to insist that things have only gone wrong because they haven't done those policies enough.
So this is an issue that I am genuinely concerned about, is the mediocrity of the people in charge.
What are your views on that?
I couldn't agree more.
I think the mediocrity is, you know, I said I've been on a political journey.
Part of the political journey, not in an ideological or philosophical sense, but in just the recognition of how...
Discovery.
Discovery, yeah.
I've been on a journey of discovery.
And what I've discovered is that the vast majority of our parliamentarians are not qualified to be in parliament.
They're morons.
The business secretary has never been in business.
There's not a single individual in the front bench who's been in business.
Rachel Reeves, the HR or...
Yeah, Reeves from Accounts or Rachel from Accounts.
Yeah, from Accounting.
It's like, how is she in charge of the economy?
I know.
And Keir Starmer is hardly our best and brightest.
So that's why Nigel's got this great opportunity, or there is a great opportunity, to get some really fantastic economists into the party, get some really fantastic military experts, get some people who understand the environment, who can debug the whole net zero nonsense and make the case.
Are you with me?
Oh, completely.
Get doctors who understand the NHS, get them round you.
And they've all been sidelined by the mainstream anyway, so they're eager, they're chomping at the bit to say, no, give me something that I can use to advance what I believe to be the truth about this thing, what is in our interest to advance.
And show up all these lazy parliamentarians who stand in contempt of the people.
And they're lazy experts who are never properly challenged on many things.
Like, who was the doctor who did the modelling for the COVID lockdowns?
Ferguson or something like that?
It turns out, you look at him, his modelling has been terrible.
His modelling has been terrible for years.
And surely there must be a scientist in the country who also knows about data modelling or whatever it is, and can say, well, look, he was wrong consistently on all these things.
He was wrong on that.
We really should be listening to something else.
But they were always going to lock down.
Oh yeah.
It became, it was an ideological thing.
It was.
They were going to lock down, and it was part of that liberal, you know, liberalism champions the individual, so the majority had to be locked up to protect every individual.
I always had my suspicions about this, because you see that Boris was, from the WhatsApp leaks, you saw that Boris didn't want to lock down, but the The sort of apparatus around him just continually just loomed over him until he just capitulated.
And then Boris looked haggard after having done it.
He looked like, I mean, I don't know, I'm not going to suggest that Boris Johnson has a conscience, but he looked like something was playing on his mind afterwards.
It seemed to really affect him.
I mean, if Boris Johnson is one thing, he is a freewheeling Englishman, isn't he?
And so it probably goes against his grain.
Yeah, exactly.
His natural disposition is, of course we're not going to do that.
We're just going to have to take it on the chin, which was the correct approach.
And yet, here we are, locked down from the experts, like, worm-tongue-like, you know, whispering in his ear, maybe.
I don't know.
Again, maybe I'm giving Boris Johnson too much credit.
But I think the people who did it, did it for reasons that are not about health.
Who's the communist woman who was part of it?
She's got an estate in Wales or something.
But she's an open communist and she was a part of the committee as well.
I just don't trust these people.
I think this is actually a power grab from the global technocracy.
It wasn't, you know, lockdowns was an invention of China.
So we were taking our lead from a totalitarian regime.
It just doesn't make any sense.
And it kind of looks in hindsight as if they put out a bunch of fake videos about people collapsing in the streets and scared us.
And do you remember Jeremy Hunt speaking in glowing terms of the Chinese authorities when they were nailing people into their flats?
Well, he is married to a Chinese...
But I mean, what a remarkable thing for a member of the cabinet to be talking about nailing individuals into their flats in glowing terms.
Yeah.
The whole aspect of the sort of international liberal technocrats has been one of veneration towards China and the Chinese Communist Party, and I really find that deeply suspicious.
And for some reason they're in government.
Anyway, moving on.
Fuzzy Toaster, great username, says, The problem with competition in their mind is someone loses, and to them, a world where someone specifically loses is a world where someone is discriminated against unfairly.
Yeah, it means there can be no winners either.
That's a great point.
We're all equally mediocre, which is deeply unfair.
It's deeply damaging, but it's more than that.
It's also pathetic.
It's genuinely pathetic.
I used to be very proud of being an Englishman, because I was like, yeah, well, look at how great we were.
Look at how hard we worked.
Look at the challenges we overcame.
And now, if someone says, okay, well, show me an Englishman, we get a picture of Keir Starmer...
I mean, you know, there's something genuinely spiritual about the malaise that's upon us at this point, and I find it genuinely despicable.
Anyway, Jimbo says, Well, it goes further than that, Jim.
I mean, they have the force of law behind them.
I mean, the concept of a hate speech law seems to be applied only against the white British population.
And I don't ever recall seeing an example where someone of a minority group is prosecuted under hate speech.
But if you have...
It's taken me a while to figure all of this out.
I'm not sure I've quite got that, but if you have a regime which progressively discriminates, in other words, it promotes minorities over and above and to the detriment of the majority, you have to have curbs on free speech because you've got to shut the majority up.
And this whole progressive discrimination, this liberalism, is In opposition to democracy, because democracy is the majority interest.
We talk easily about being in liberal democracy.
I don't know if people really think about it.
You know, that liberalism stands in antagonistic opposition to democracy.
And sometimes it's a healthy antagonism and through that competition can come good.
But at the moment, liberalism is winning and democracy is losing badly.
And we've got to go back to the majority interest.
And you can tell this through the stigmatization of the concept of populism.
Sorry, I thought it was majority rules.
Absolutely.
What are we talking about?
Are we talking about an aristocracy?
But we're no longer in the mindset of majority rules.
It's the individual that has to be protected and promoted.
Well, this is a point that David Starkey makes very eloquently.
The very concept of liberalism has become transfigured from the individual against the state to the minority against the majority.
And so the purpose of liberal human rights now is to protect minority groups against just the culture, as in not anything necessarily oppressive, but just the acts, the normal habits and behaviours of the national homogenous majority.
That's what liberalism is for now.
And that's why it's breaking our society.
Exactly.
That's why it persecutes the majority.
The homogeneity is being broken down.
Yeah, absolutely.
Everything it can to reduce this cultural power, I suppose you would call it, is under attack.
And this is why you get strange things where, like, you know, we're going to do a historical representation of Anne Boleyn.
Yes, she's an African woman.
Why?
Why are you doing this?
Why?
But if you realize that it's all about trying to reduce the cultural prestige and power of being part of the majority group, oh, that makes a lot more sense, actually.
And now it becomes a kind of teleological mission for the left to do, which is why they do it everywhere they go, and they do everything they can in their power to do it.
And it's just like, okay, but I don't want to be under this kind of psychic attack by the left, actually.
I don't want to feel dispossessed in my own country.
Thank you very much.
Not controversial normally, but radical right-wingism where we are now.
um Uh, Rebellious says, so immigrants are the global majority.
Doesn't that make it even more important to protect the local minority?
Here but the British, of course, but applicable to any nation.
It's like, yeah, actually, I agree.
The thing is, in previous series, this wasn't an issue because travel was more difficult.
But since the mass adoption of the aeroplane, travel becomes very, very easy.
Except these people aren't coming by plane.
They're making the journey by boat and then on foot or A lot of them are coming by plane.
Some are coming legally and then not leaving, you mean.
Well, the majority are.
The millions who are coming here are coming by plane.
You wouldn't, in previous eras, have this issue because, like you're saying, it takes a long time to come by boat from wherever.
But now, in the era of mass transit, we need to have a serious conversation about Essentially the sort of collective metaphysical property of a nation.
Like, you know, Frenchness belongs to the French people.
And this could be if, you know, 100 million South Americans move to France for whatever reason tomorrow.
Okay, well the concept of Frenchness has been deprived from the French people because the South Americans are not going to replicate this in France.
This is a real thing that is actually happening that we need to think about that hadn't come up in previous eras because you just didn't get this kind of Almost kind of diffuse population movement.
In ancient history, populations moved as groups.
The Goths are invading the Roman Empire as a giant group.
It happened en masse, and it was a war.
But that's not what's happening now.
It's much more porous, and yet it's still happening, and yet it becomes something that's necessary to think about.
The presupposed collective property of a nation, which was their patrimony, Well, this can be put under threat in times of peace through perfectly legal and, on an individual basis, legitimate thing to have had happen.
Well, if you do that enough, we've got a real concern here.
I don't want to labour the point.
No, but that's what we've done.
We've done it too much.
And it's a real thing that we have to accept.
Omar says, I moved around a fair bit during my childhood, so I probably should have picked up on this sooner.
But even if net immigration was zero, a high turnover of people means that fewer building long-term connections.
It's no wonder we have so many problems with integration.
Yeah, and the question of integration could only ever be addressed by deliberately privileging the majority group.
It's the only way to integrate.
Yeah, there's no incentive to do so otherwise.
And it's crazy that we can't do that, but of course that would be discrimination, and we can't have that, and so we can never have integration.
And that's the rule that they've created for us.
So, terrible.
Caroline says, If Nigel had come out after the riots and said, I don't agree with the violence, but these people are people who have been pushed to the breaking point and we seriously need to address their concerns, reform would have won the entire North.
Instead, he went along with the far-right thug narrative, and there are many who will not forgive him for that.
What do you think?
I mean, I feel a bit sorry for Nigel in the post-Southport thing.
Because they were saying they were the Farage riots.
The Farage riots.
And he went very quiet.
I don't know if you noticed that.
And I think if the establishment is accusing you of having caused riots, it probably is quite frightening.
You know, it probably is quite frightening to have been Nigel Farage at that point.
But, I mean, I take the point completely that we've got to...
We've got...
We're sadly...
Someone's got to be very, collectively, individually, we've got to be brave if we're going to win this.
And it is a fight we're having.
We're having a fight.
And we need to be brave in that fight.
And I know Nigel says that there's a massive cover-up going on about Southport, about who knew what, when they knew it, and so on.
And if there is a cover-up about it, then I think it needs to be revealed.
If only there was someone with parliamentary privilege.
Who could reveal it in Parliament?
Absolutely.
If only we had someone like that, Nigel.
Again, just...
And like you said, I do actually empathise in some ways as well.
Like you said, Nigel, because of the size of his profile, has become a lightning rod for...
I mean, according to Farage Rice, that's just not true.
That's an obvious lie.
Nigel Farage was not responsible for the riots.
Decades of failed multicultural policies and mass immigration and a willingness for the establishment to look the other way when atrocities have been committed.
That's what's responsible for them.
The riots could have been prevented easily by Starmer getting up and saying, Look, I understand your complaints.
This was an absolutely horrendous, horrible, horrific thing that happened in Southport.
It was a second generation Rwandan who did it, instead of pretending it was a Welshman.
You know, when you say Welshman, you think of someone who is a farmer and has an unnatural affiliation to sheep, you know, and you don't think of a second...
I'm just kidding.
I know, I know, I know.
You know, you don't think of a second generation Rwandan who's been effectively made into an extremist.
He was an extremist.
That's what he was.
And if Starmer had gone up and said, I recognise this, this is what's happened, and I'm going to put my, the British state is going to put a protective blanket around the British people, this is never going to happen again, there wouldn't have been any riots.
There would have been people cheering.
People would have been cheering.
His approval rating would have gone sky high.
Absolutely.
God, he got the point.
Yeah, but that's exactly the point, isn't it?
It's not recognise the moral legitimacy of the concerns of the people who are in fear because they are worried about their children being murdered, Keir.
It's really not an unreasonable fear.
It's not a political fear.
It's not we hate foreigners.
It's we're worried about being killed, our children being killed.
And this is coming directly in the aftermath of someone murdering a bunch of people's children.
This is not unreasonable.
Again, I do blame Farage, but I do empathize with the fear.
Like you say, you know, okay, you wanted to be the big boy in the right wing, Nigel.
This is what you signed up for.
Trump would have come out and just been like...
Exactly.
Trump would have come out and essentially owned it.
I mean, to be honest, if I were Nigel, I think what he should have done is...
In a very nice room, sort of a Cambridge-style library, just given a very calm and reasonable address, as if he were the Prime Minister.
He should have said, look, and given the speech that Keir Starmer ought to have given.
And essentially acted as if he were the Prime Minister.
And that would have calmed things down.
Because, okay, Keir Starmer, our government is currently occupied by a bunch of globalists who hate us and want us destroyed.
But at least there's someone waiting in the wings who hears us and is prepared to carry the torch where it needs to go.
But he didn't even do that, and it was just like...
I think after he was accused of being the cause of the rights, I think he just went quiet.
It was too much for him, I think.
And the last comment.
As a critical friend of reform, I've found that standard reform voters get very defensive whenever you criticise reform, even from the right.
Have you found this?
If so, how do we get them thinking critically about reform for themselves?
Just a quick thing, I actually found them not being very defensive.
I found them accepting of the criticisms I've levelled, but kind of rolling around saying, well, what can we do?
It's the best we've got.
What's your experience been?
Well, I think you have to roll your eyes if you've got no mechanism by which to change, to give effect to change.
And that's why I've been pushing this democratisation of the party.
And democracy, it doesn't have to be a pure democracy, with everyone being able to direct Nigel in the direction they want him to go.
We're not going to become ancient Athens.
No, exactly.
Everyone has a vote on everything.
But you could have a body of very capable people that act as a kind of pool of intellectual talent for Nigel.
Say a hundred people which offer up their ideas to him and they in turn garner ideas from the broader membership and there's a kind of pyramid approach to how information is passed up to the leadership.
It could be a representative democracy.
It could be.
Exactly.
These people in the middle could represent the movement and offering up not just The policies and ideas from the people, but also offering up candidates and sifting through the candidates.
And this body, this theoretical body of people could also then be the voices for reform.
He could have great military experts, health experts and so on going out banging the drum for reform.
It would take a lot of the burden off of Nigel's shoulders.
It would.
It could be a phenomenal force.
I really think it could.
And I'm very frustrated that this is a missed opportunity.
But on that point, we're actually five minutes over time, so I have to say we're going to have to go there.
But Ben, where can people find more from you if they want more from you?
Yeah, so this is why I'm really bad.
The only thing I know about is my Twitter tag, which is at Ben Habib 6, the numeral 6. But I do have at Ben Habib 6. Yeah, that's it.
But I'm on Facebook, I'm on YouTube, and I'm on Instagram and TikTok.
We actually do have the links to your socials.
So what we'll do is we'll leave them in the description of this podcast.
Go and follow Ben on them.
Ben, thank you so much for having me.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's been a brilliant conversation.
And we will see you all tomorrow, folks.
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