Cancelled Journalist on The Collapse of Free Speech & State Censorship - Mike Graham

Mike, does free speech exist in the UK right now?

I don't think so. There are lots of things you can't say.

12,000 posts a year, people are arrested. More than any other country by 300%. More than China, more than Russia, More than that.

Sure.

What is the honest state of the UK right now?

Number one, immigration. You know, they're talking about putting a mosque in the Lake District because not enough Muslims go to the countryside.

And what do you think about that?

I think it's totally insane. Do you give the state the power to say, you can't say that? Do you know, I don't really have any regrets.

We all do.

If there's anything to regret, I regret. If I caused anybody any pain.

What's a secret you've never shared or a story you've never told? Mike, does free speech exist in the UK right now?

I don't think so, would be my answer, because there are lots of things you can't say.

What, like?

Well, funnily enough, I actually did this the other day on my show. I started slagging off women's football because you can't say that women's football's crap because you immediately then labeled some kind of misogynist or somebody that doesn't understand, you know, women or. You know what I mean? So it's not. And so by that, I mean, nobody's going to stop me saying it now because I'm on YouTube, but I couldn't really say it when I was working in the kind of what you would call the mainstream media. I mean, I don't know if you've seen this week the. The row between Simon Jordan and any Aloku who is a women's footballer who used to. Used to play football and is now commentator. And there's been a big row because basically quite a lot of people have had a go. And if you remember, Joey Barton had a go at her.

Yeah.

And was immediately kind of, you know, slapped down. So I think people are frightened to say things. And so therefore, if they're frightened to say things because of what the consequences might be, then that tells me there isn't free speech because you shouldn't be frightened to say things.

Well, I mean, there's. Surely there's some things you should be frightened to say.

I'm not sure they should.

Violence.

Well, yeah, but there's already rules against that. I mean, there's already a law which will kick in if you start inciting violence, you know, if you start telling people to, you know, go and commit crime. Or, you know, go, you know, start a riot or something like that. You know, there's already criminal codes that deal with all that.

But it also seems if you share your opinion, you can get arrested.

Apparently so. Which would also

posts a year. People are arrested in the UK more than any other country by 300, more than China, more than Russia.

Sure. And in Essex, I think it's right to say that there's something like. It's a. It's a funny number, but it's something like 1.2 people a day are arrested for something that they've put on social media.

And what do you think about that?

I think it's ridiculous. I think it's totally insane. You know, why is it happening? Because I think for two reasons. We've got a sort of. I think woke is an overused word, but we've got a sort of woke establishment which is left leaning, which has been kind of infecting and inveigling its way in to what would otherwise have been quite normal spaces. Like the police, for example. I mean, we talk to people all the time who say, you know, the college of policing is a really, really bad place to be if you want to learn about policing, because all they want to teach you about is, you know, diversity and inclusion and, you know, making sure that you protect protected people, vulnerable people. And they don't actually talk to anybody about arresting bad people for committing crime. You know, they talk about offending people. They talk about, you know, you've got to go around and talk to this guy because somebody's reported him for being offensive. You know, he's written something on a message board or he said something on Facebook and therefore the police will physically go around to your house and say to you, we're just advising you this is not a crime that you've committed, but we're just advising you that you've caused some offense because of something you said. And we're just telling you that now that can only be an intimidatory maneuver. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't seem like if you're.

Doesn't seem the best use of resource.

Well, it doesn't. If you're a police officer, you should be, you know, in charge of arresting people who've committed crime. You shouldn't be going to people's houses who haven't committed a crime and then admit that they haven't committed a crime and then spend half an hour explaining to them why you're there. Seems odd, doesn't it? And it's. It's relatively recent. I, I don't know when it started, but it's kind of crept up on everyone and suddenly now more and more people are being affected by it. And despite the police issuing all sorts of edicts, they keep saying, oh, we're not going to do that anymore. You know, we're not going to go after people for committing non crime hate incidents or whatever. And you think, well, it's already on the tin. It says non crime. Why are you even looking at it? Why are you even talking to people about it? You know?

Yeah, I think if I'm right in saying anything under £200 in theft, basically don't worry about a crime.

No. And, and probably other, other quite serious crimes quite often result in no jail time, you know, which I know is a separate issue, but. Yeah, I mean locking people up for, for tweets is, is insane, it seems to me.

Yeah. Wow. So I want to come back to the left leaning government in a moment, but what else? So you can't criticize women's football. What else couldn't you say when you're in mainstream media?

Well, you have to be careful about how you say things, let's put it that way. You know, I don't know if we're going to have a law against Islamophobia. Right. The labor government don't seem to be too sure whether they're going to bring that in. They don't seem to be too sure if they bring it in, what it will say. People are very nervous about that.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think you should be able to criticize Islam. I think you should be able to be blasphemous about any God really. You know, anybody's religion is for me a matter for discourse, a matter for debate, a matter for ridicule at times. You know, but people can get themselves into quite a lot of trouble either with their employers or with their colleagues or, you know, in organizations or they might be sued, you know what I mean? There's just, I think people generally might be overreacting, but there's a lot of people who would not criticize illegal migrants, for example, coming here. You know, it's fairly obvious and there's statistical evidence to back it up. That, and people are now beginning to say on the right that, that, you know, there, it's very clear that quite a lot of the people coming here illegally on small boats are criminals and they commit criminal acts. And we see it pretty much every week. We see sexual assaults, we see rapes, we see Murders, you know, but everybody always has to say, but of course, it's not all of them. You know, it's not all of the asylum seekers, because obviously that would be wrong. But it's a fair few and the statistics are not in their favor. But I would say there are still people in. I mean, I was watching the interview with what's his name? The Man United. Yeah.

So Jim Ratcliffe just came to my head.

Yeah. Just went out of mine. And it's my age. And you could sort of hear that he was. I think it was on Sky. And you could kind of hear a slight intake of breath when he said, you know, we've been colonized by immigrants. And Keir Starmer, of course, being a complete and utter idiot, can't read the room, never mind the country, starts demanding that he apologize.

Well, I've just seen the update that he's apologized for any offense he might have caused. Some.

And see, he will have had to say that because he's probably worried that maybe his business might get affected.

Right. He won't mean it, will he? No, because why would he have said it in the first place?

But also, people agree with him. You know, I did a show this morning and, you know, certainly everybody in my audience said, you know, why would. Why should he apologize for that?

Well, like you said, it could really affect his business and his brand.

That's right. Because people are under pressure, not only from inside of their company, for example, if. If they don't own it, he happens to own it, so he's in a slightly better position. But he may have received a few phone calls from people saying, well, we're not going to stock your cars anymore, or we're not going to help sell your car, or, you know, we can't be associated with your brand because you probably are racist. Because people get called that, you know, and people are frightened of being called racist. And so there are things around race that they don't say.

Wow. So has it got easier for you to speak your mind now you're independent?

I don't worry as much about it. I mean, everybody. I mean, I was quite outspoken anyway, and I would often have to be sort of reined in. But you did occasionally have to go and, you know, have a conversation with somebody about something that I'd said.

Well, so what does this mean when you say reined in by the bosses?

Yeah.

What would they say?

They'd sometimes ask me to be a bit less kind of. I used to be quite sort of punchy sometimes and quite. And I used to swear a little bit here and there and they didn't really like that very much. You know, they're a bit terrified of Ofcom, right? Because not only is Ofcom a regulatory body that can complain about things that you're doing, they can find you and, you know, nobody likes to be fined. And some of the fines can be quite expensive. So I think that also has a. A kind of deleterious effect on free speech, because, you know, if. If in doubt, play it safe. If in doubt, if you're worried that this might breach some OFCOM guideline, don't do it. Because commercially speaking, if you're running a radio station or a television station, GB News, I think, suffers from it as well. You don't want to be paying money to them. You don't want to be, you know, you don't have to report into your chief exec who says, why have you just been fined 20, 000 quid? You know, what on earth is going on? What's. What are you. Right, what are you doing? You know, we haven't got that kind of money to play around with because, you know, it's expensive. And so I think that has a, you know, that has a kind of slightly chilling effect. And at the moment, anyway, I know they're trying to get a hold of YouTube, but at the moment they don't control YouTube, so there's no, there's no reason to be worried about.

So Ofcom are trying to regulate on YouTube.

They want to. Yeah, they've sort of stated that, I don't think. And the trouble is, knowing this government, as we do, I don't think they would be against that, because you then start to get into all these online safety bill situations and conversations about, well, what exactly is going to be allowed? What exactly is it going to be possible to talk about without somehow breaking the law? I don't know anyone that knows the answer to that. No, you know, wow. And. And they're doing it on the basis of protecting children. And you kind of go, right, but if you, for example, want people to prove how old they are before they use social media, which is another aspect that means everybody who wants to use social media has to prove who they are. And I'm not against verifying people to make sure that they exist and they're not bots and they're not just troublemakers and they're not just horrible, ghastly individuals, because there's quite a lot of that going on. And I don't think that's a good Thing, but I don't really want the state to have records of everything that is said on social media and by whom.

Well, I wonder if they've already got it, though.

Well, it was interesting for me when Elon Musk changed the way that Grok was, you know, making images because he was threatened by the labor government. I never thought he would do that, but he did do it. Yeah. Because Starmer threatened to shut down X, which when you think about it, is quite chilling as well, because X for me is. Is the place where I do most of my kind of business, if you like, in terms of. Not money, but in terms of ideas and shaping opinions and getting other people's opinions. You know, that's. For me, that's the most. And I know it's not for everybody because younger people prefer Tick Tock or they use that Snapchat or something like that, you know, but for my, sort of. For my business model anyway, X is kind of the place where the news breaks first, where you can get people's reactions to things quicker, where. Where, you know, relatively famous people and important people have accounts and so you can find out what they think.

Yeah. You know, but it was only the images part, wasn't it? I don't think he's going to bend over on.

Well, yeah, well, you say that, but.

Well, I hope.

Well, this is the thing. I mean, I didn't think he would bend over any of it because, you know, Elon Musk, I suppose, like many of us on Twitter, is a much more punchy and sort of vivacious guy. You know, he's always putting up these, these.

Yeah, it's aggressive tweets.

Yeah, he's quite aggressive. Got tweets about, you know, how Britain's finished and it's screwed and it's buggered and all the rest of it. So I really didn't think. I thought, at least I thought he would take him longer to come to that conclusion. Yeah. But, you know, it's not like he needs the money. I don't really get why he did it. You know, again, there's a problem with taste and decency. I mean, I used to say in the old days when football hooliganism was a thing and football chance were a thing, and they still are to some extent. You know, they. Some football chance are pretty horrible. You know, when Manchester United play Liverpool, the Man United fans make jokes about Hillsborough. You know, the Liverpool fans make. Make jokes about the Munich air disaster. It's not very nice and I wish they wouldn't do It. But can you stop them doing it? I don't know. Can you arrest people for doing it? They had this problem in Scotland, actually, when I was up there, because the snp, when Alex Salmond was first minister, decided that they wanted to crack down on sectarian chanting and sectarian imaging football between Celtic arrangers. But they ended up getting themselves into a sort of cul de sac because it ended up, by their definition, somebody waving a Union Jack was committing a sectarian offense. And somebody waving an Irish tricolor, which is the sort of Celtic mode of support, was also doing that. And they thought, well, we. And then they thought, well, we can't arrest 50,000 people chanting up to my knees in Fenian blood, you know, and again, it's not very nice, but what do you do about it? And do you give the state the power to say, you can't say that, you can't sing that song.

Well, where does that end, then?

Well, where we're going, which I think is not a good place. I mean, I've always believed that Britain has never had free speech. Seems to be worse now, just because there's social media. But anyway, I lived in America for 10 years where you literally do have free speech. You can say anything you like. I remember one night, funnily enough, it was. Now, I'm going to struggle to remember his name, spurs player who had a heart attack. If you remember saying, no, not him. It was. It was earlier than that. It was in a club game. Right. I can't remember his name, he's a black guy. Anyway.

Yeah.

And he had a heart attack on the pitch. They were lucky. There was a doctor in, In. In the house and they managed to save him and they defibrillated him and all the rest of it. Yeah. And obviously it was a big story and people were tweeting about it and, you know, how brave he was and how great it was. There was this one particular guy I remember, and he was in Texas making really horrible kind of racist posts about, you know, wish he died and all this kind of stuff, you know, and people were like, you know, mate, you've got to stop this. You know, we're going to send. The police are going to come around. And the guy just went, police aren't coming to my house in America. They don't. They don't have control over why, so I can say what I like. And he's right.

And what do you think about that?

Again, it's not pleasant, but I don't think the state should have a role unless you're breaking the law. And you might argue that he was breaking a law here if he was saying racist things. But you're not going to go across halfway across the world to arrest somebody for breaking the law in your country. You know, for example, I know a lot of people have re registered their Twitter accounts in Germany for some reason. Apparently you get more protection if you do that. Right. I'm quite sure why. Yeah, I'm not aware of the ins and outs of all that, but. So it's quite a very complicated kind of area, you know what I mean? Yeah. And because of what we could see happening, it seems to me that you're much more free to speak out, whatever your opinion is in America than you are here.

And what do you think the motives of the government, the Labour government are at the moment?

I think they are nasty, I think they are suppressive, I think they're oppressive, I think they're holier than thou. I think they want to sort of shape Britain in a way that, that it isn't at the moment. You know, they want to make it into a place where in their eyes, it's a bit like a sort of jumped up council, you know, making it illegal for you to say certain things, making it illegal for you to do certain things, you know, making you pay more for. For things that you never were asked to pay for. I think they'd like to stay in power for as long as they possibly can. I think they know the game is up. I think they know that if they, they have, they, if for some reason, which I hope does happen before 2029, if they have an election, they're, they're toast. They're not going to win it. And the way things are going. I was talking to somebody today on my way over here. The wheels have just come off Starmer now, you know, he has no authority, he has no power over his own cabinet. And the guy I was talking to, who's quite an important sort of media figure, said, you know, he's going to have to start sacking people because it's the only way he can regain any kind of authority. And if he doesn't do that and somebody resigns, then that's the sort of beginning of the end. And I think despite that, when we saw his performance this week at Prime Minister's Questions, he's getting more aggressive, you know, he's getting defensive, you know, he's, he's making out that, you know, it was just an oversight, that he happened to promote somebody to the House of Lords. Who was a supporter of a pedophile, convicted pedophile, in the same way that he knew about Mandelson. But for him, that's no worse than Partygate, for example, you know, it's no worse than a bullying allegation. Well, it's a lot bloody worse, actually. You know, and they have this kind of assuredness that they're doing the right thing, which is always very dangerous, I think, you know, they think they're morally superior to people on the right who disagree with them and they think that therefore, in the name of whatever it is, goodness or, you know, morality, they are allowed to do whatever they want and they're allowed to tell you and I what we should do. But of course, they're less morally authoritative than, than anyone because they're all up to their necks in sleaze and corruption and greed, like all kind of champagne socialists. You know, people have been forgetting, I was talking about this week that, you know, less than a month in, when he was prime minister first In July of 24, you know, we discovered that he's having all this sort of largesse given to him by Lord Ali. You know, letting him use his flat, letting him use his house, letting him, you know, buying, letting Lord Ali buys clothes, buy his wife's clothes, you know, getting freebies to Taylor Swift concerts. I mean, you know, it, it just didn't stop. And it took him a long time to kind of understand that that was wrong. So you think, well, you know, where's it, where is your moral compass? Exactly. You know, you don't just take freebies from people and not give them anything in return. And we never really did find out what Lord Ali's role was inside of Downing street where he had a pass to go in and do whatever he wanted, you know.

Wow.

I think they're dangerous. Yeah.

Well, back to labor in a moment. What opinion today would get you cancelled tomorrow?

I'm not sure I can get canceled. But again, I mean, YouTube has rules. It's not a completely sort of open arena. They have words that. I mean, I'm still learning about YouTube. You know, it's not something I know an awful lot about, but I know there are certain words that if you say them, you can certainly be demonetized if you, you know, have certain opinions. And it happened, in fact, to, to talk when I was there during COVID you know, they canceled the channel because of some things that were being said. Right. Without any kind of reference to the management, without any reference to the, the, the, the, the talent on air. Just come in one day and channel was gone. Wow. You know, no warnings. None. And it was three strikes and you're out, I think. But I don't. I'm pretty sure on, on this that nobody got, you know, a note from anybody or an email from anybody. Because the problem with a lot of these social media companies, Facebook, Twitter, I guess Tick tock as well, you know, you can't find anybody to talk to. No, no, really, it's really difficult no

matter how much you spend with them.

Yeah.

They don't care.

I had, in my early days I had an overnight show on talk sport called the Independent Republican Mike Graham. And we had a Facebook page which somebody started up and I'd actually, it got quite busy and it was quite lively and we. I actually gave it to one of the guys who'd started up and said would you mind monitoring this and moderating it? Because I haven't really got time because it got too big. And I, I woke up one morning, it was gone and Facebook had canceled it because somebody had said something that they didn't like. Wow. And the page. And I tried to find somebody to even email to ask them about what. What was the reasoning, what was said, what can we do about it? You know, can we resurrect it? La Couldn't find anyone to talk to. So, you know, once you're in that space. But you're not sure what. Whether they can cancel you. I mean, I, I don't know. I think straight out racism probably Ironman uptracks is what I was accused of. You know, can probably get you canceled from the mainstream if you like. I mean, you saw what's. I mean, David Walliams has been canceled pretty much now by Harper Collins because of his behavior, which again is.

Do you think that was fair?

I mean, at the end of the day they're a private company. They can do what they like. I suppose the question is whether companies have a duty of care to the person who they're canceling to check out whether, you know, what is being. What they're being accused of is actually right.

Well, it doesn't seem like people get that grace anymore. Not really there it's trial by social media. Yeah, it's canceled first ask questions.

Well, it's now prove yourself to have been pure rather than the person accusing you.

I guess.

So the burden of proof is now on the Cancer league if you like. Right. In the same way that Russell Brand. I was talking to somebody who knows him quite well as a friend of his who says you know, no matter what happens to Russell Brand in a court of law, he will always be now known as a rapist. Yeah. Whether he's ever raped anybody, I have no idea. I haven't asked him. I don't know. Friends of his say that, you know, it's not something that he would do. But the point is that the damage is now done. I mean, he's been able to carry on, and he has a very successful business. And a show on Rumble became independent. Became independent.

Yeah.

And as long as they're still those places to go. And I believe Rumble is. Is. It's not, again, something I know much about, but I believe Rumble to be a relatively kind of safe space, if you like, for people who want to say controversial things. But I think it's quite easy now to be canceled by, you know, what you would call the mainstream media and. And, you know, the. The film world, the, you know, the. The work, the theater world, you know, comedy. Comedy clubs. I mean, we've seen it happening with Graham Linehan. We've seen it happening with quite a lot of people up at the Edinburgh Fringe. I think there was a. There was two comedians I spoke to who were canceled for being Jewish, for example, weren't allowed to come perform because people were complaining. And one of the things that gets used a lot, particularly with live events, is, oh, you know, we've had a threat of, you know, demonstration. We've had a threat of disruption. We don't. We haven't got. We can't afford the security. You know, there's a myriad of different ways of saying, you know, sorry, you can't come here.

I guess that feels like a bit of a paradox because like you said about HarperCollins, They're a private company. YouTuber, a private company. It's their channel. If there's a comedy show, it's their gig.

Yeah. I mean, nobody has, I suppose, the absolute human right to say whatever they want on somebody else's platform. And I guess that is. Is just kind of common sense in a way, that the person who runs the platform is going to make the rules. Whether it's. Whether it happens to be, you know, the BBC or whether it happens to be talk sport or whether it happens to be, I don't know, the O2 networks of. Of, you know, theaters. Unless you're actually so independent that you can do it yourself, we're all at risk, I guess. Yeah.

You know, I. I remember when lockdown happened, that that C word you couldn't say on YouTube for quite a while. You can get Covid. Yeah. Couldn't get that out.

Right. Well, I think that was part of the problem with talk being. Being banned, because it was always conversations about.

Right.

Those kinds of issues.

Yeah.

And about masks and about vaccines. Yeah.

You couldn't say that word.

No.

Couldn't say the V word. And you couldn't say them on Facebook because I was talking about it was blowing up, as others were. And then all of a sudden, everything's gone. You can't get a video up. You can't. Nothing's getting any. Any views. And I remember just thinking, this has been engineered.

Yeah.

And no, no, no, no, no. And then as soon as Trump comes into power, Mark Zuckerberg's like, oh, yeah,

you know, he's literally lying on his back.

Yeah. The government told me to.

Yeah.

And admitted that they suppressed a load of.

Well, I used to get. You know, because I used to quite often post from YouTube when. In the early days when Peter Hitchens was. Was there, and he was always very robust against the lockdown and. And, you know, sending people to work from home and all that. At the beginning, we used to have quite good rounds about it because I was like, at the beginning, I said, come on, Peter, you know, it's four weeks. You know, just kill your jets and, you know, we'll be fine. As time went on, obviously, I kind of came around to his way of thinking, but they would. I would post our interviews and they'd put a kind of explainer on it to say that, you know, some of the information in this interview, whatever they called it, is not verifiable, is speculative, and none of it was. And I'm like, hang on a minute. You know, between us, we've got about, you know, 80 years of journalistic integrity and experience. Who the hell are you? Some spotty, you know, intern from. Yeah. In Silicon Valley, telling us that we don't know what we're talking about. Well, we do, actually, and as it turned out, we did. But it used to really irritate me that they would do that. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. Well, I think this Verify, BBC Verify. Feels a bit ironic.

Very ironic, particularly given that the woman who runs it, Mariana Spring, I think her name is, faked her own CV to get the job, you know, and you kind of go, sorry, how does that work? It's ridiculous. And the only thing they don't verify are stories on the BBC which are all wrong. They only verify other people's stories. And you kind of go, what exactly is your seal of approval here? Who gave you know, who died and made you boss, you know, so the BBC are in terrible trouble. Wow.

I want to come back to the BBC.

Yeah.

But I'd like your version, the truth of why you got fired from Talk tv.

Yeah. Well, people keep asking me to tell them the truth. And, I mean, I have told it quite a few times, and I. It's sort of. I'm hoping at some point or other it will go away, but. But, you know, I appreciate. I appreciate you. You have to ask me.

Yeah.

The truth is that I was fired because I wouldn't cooperate with their request, which was to take my phone and forensically examine it for a very long period of time where it would be out of my control, which I wasn't willing to give them permission to do. Right. Because I had been hacked. As far as best I could tell, I couldn't prove it. And again, it came back to me having to prove my innocence rather than them having to prove my guilt, you know, and it started off friendly enough. They said, look, we just need to. I showed them the phone. I showed them that the Facebook log showed that I hadn't posted it. I showed them that the picture that appeared wasn't on my phone either. And they said, okay, well, just to kind of satisfy ourselves, we'd like to see the phone. Because you can check a phone for its history. You know, there are software programs you can run it through, and then they could find out if something was deleted or if it was taken and then disappeared. You know, they could have done all that. But it then became a kind of a legal battle because we couldn't agree the terms of how they would do it. First of all, we couldn't agree the terms of who would do it. They initially wanted their own law firm to do it, and the law firm was only a law firm that they used. It wasn't like a law firm that was used for anybody. Anybody else. They were the only client. So I felt a bit, you know, uneasy about that. So I had spoken to a cyber security specialist who helped me to kind of look through the phone and see if there was any clues as to what could have happened. And there were one or two, but nothing conclusive. And he suggested I talk to some lawyers because, you know, at one point I asked the management, you know, do I need to get a lawyer here? And they were like, no, no, that's fine. You know, And I went, right. And as soon as I spoke to lawyers, they said, under no circumstances give me your phone. You know, because they're asking to see into your life, basically. I mean, I've had an iPhone since the iPhone 4 came out, and everything that's ever happened to me is on it, right? Including pictures of my kids, my dog, you know, maybe my girlfriends, you know, it's not something that you want to immediately give up. And. And they said, oh, we only want to look at two specific time periods, you know, and we won't look at anything else. And I'm thinking, well, you say that, but how do I know? They wanted to physically take the phone and my iPad and investigate it for overnight, for nine hours. Right. And mirror it. So they would have had everything. And by the end of the conversation, they were then asking for access to my emails, access to my WhatsApp conversations, of which there were 300, 3,000, I think. Wow, WhatsApp messages, right?

Yeah.

And I've talked to. I'm a journalist, you know, I talk to a lot of people that I don't necessarily want anyone to know who I'm talking to. I have. Apart from anything else, confidentiality comes into it, you know, so we basically went backwards and forwards and it took quite a long time because quite often my lawyers would write to them and say, you know, can we do this? They would wait two days before they come back. So I said at one point to my lawyers, I said, well, why don't I do a forensic investigation of my own phone? And what I'll do is I'll hire a company, you can be involved in it, which is completely neutral, which is a very respectable company, which is what I did. And they did a report which again showed that I hadn't made the post, the picture had never been there, was never deleted. You know, the phone was clean. And we gave them the report and they said, it's not good enough. They refused to accept it, you know,

so how do you think they wanted you out?

I think so. I think there were two things going on. I think, you know, what's. What subsequently emerged was that the people had been apparently complaining about some of the things I'd been saying on the air. They didn't like some of my views, you know, because there's quite a lot of woke people in. In the news building who work for different outfits. You know, I've said this before, Harper Collins, when they all came back from being off for 18 months for Covid, when I'd been in there every day, asked for my show not to be broadcast on in the lift, which used to happen because, you know, I was always going on about migrants and how terrible it all was. So there was def. I think there were two schools of thought. One was the people who knew that I was very valuable to the station and they didn't think I should be let go, that I think their voices were drowned out by those who thought that I was a bit controversial and I was a bit, you know, right wing and maybe a bit unpleasant.

Do you feel any resentment?

No, not really. Because I'm not like that, you know. I've been fired five times in my life. Never for being any useless at my job, by the way. Right. Usually for. In newspapers, in particular, usually because I was part of a regime. And then the editor would get fired and you kind of all get swept out alongside it, you know. When I was at the Mirror, I was working for Piers Morgan. He got fired and then they sort of came for all of his lieutenants.

Yeah.

One way or another. Same thing happened at the Express when I was there. I got fired up in Scotland Talk 107, which was a radio station that I was running, because I was basically just costing him too much money.

What, in fines?

No, not in fines. Funnily enough, I don't think we ever got done. But more in terms of just. I was like, we're running a new station here. We need to, you know, get decent people in, pay them reasonable amount of money, have reporters, you know, do all the things that you want to do. And in the end, after I left, they turned it into a kind of a. What I would call a music station without the music. And they would talk about, you know, what's your favorite biscuit? And stuff like that. And, you know, people shy away from controversy, then politics. And, you know, that was the beginning of what I could see was a kind of just a suppression of some ideas, you know. Yeah. Like Tommy. There's a guy called Tommy Sheridan, I don't know if you're familiar with him, who used to be the leader of a socialist, Scottish Socialist Party. Right. And he was a good mate of mine. We. We. You know, I'd given him a column on the. On the Scottish Daily Mirror. And so when I. And then he got embroiled in a. In a lawsuit with the News of the World. He got accused of being involved in all sorts of, you know, shenanigans, threesomes, you know, hotel sex, Bloody, bloody blah. I hired him and we got ourselves right on the front page of the Edinburgh Evening News as a result of hiring him, and a picture of him with a mug that said Talk 107 on it. But he was a very controversial character and he would say some things that people didn't like. George Galloway, similarly, was a guy who used to do a Sean. Talk sport, funnily enough, and then he would do other stuff in Scotland, you know, so they just, I think they wanted an anodyne sort of, you know, and it's really hard to grow an audience with, with talk radio. Talk radio and speech radio as well. It's really difficult because advertisers don't like it.

Right.

And advertisers won't come in if you're too controversial. So in the commercial sector, that makes life very difficult because you can never really make any money. Right. You know, it's a bit different now because you can start making money from YouTube and other places. But, but back then there wasn't, there was none of that. Right, so. So, yeah, so I don't, I don't feel resentment. I mean, I think that the difficulty at talk was that, you know, there was always pressure from inside the building. You know, it was the sort of bad boy of the, of the organization. You know, people would kind of go, you know, here come the talk guys. You know, they're all a bit, they're all a bit right wing because, let's face it, the media class now is, is bit like the establishment is pretty sort of woke and pretty left wing. And, you know, they've all been to university and they've all been to nice schools and most of them are quite well off and they come from nice homes and they can afford to be, shall we say, less concerned about their lives and less concerned about how their lives are being altered and being affected by what's going on around them, you know.

So what do you think the word woke means?

I think it's, I think it actually is. Is a word that, I mean, because it doesn't happen so much now, but when we first started using it as an insult, people who on the left would say, oh, yeah, but I'd rather be woke and be regarded as a nice person and a kind person and somebody who cares about compassion and, you know, sharing and, you know, tolerance and all of that and all of those nice words. Whereas I think a lot of people would identify themselves as that because they, they think it's, it's, it's, it's a better way to be. They think that if they say they, they're, they're nice, that means they're nice, but of course it doesn't because an awful lot of them are bloody horrible. You know, I mean, look at the. What was happening in Brighton at the weekend where people were going around knocking on people's doors to see whether there were any Jewish people living there, you know, and this is the kind of. The be kind, you know, pro Palestine people are always demanding rights for, you know, human beings and, you know, treat people humanely and they're literally carrying out a sort of, you know, version of Kristal knocked in in a British city, you know.

Yeah.

And I think that we can see from the way that the labor government's operating, there's some pretty horrible people in there, you know, and I find the right Tend to be more tolerant and just more actually inclusive, you know, So I think woke is a bad word, it's an insulting word. And I think the people who would identify as being woke up do it because they think other people will. Will see them in a good light.

Yeah.

As opposed to actually what the truth is.

And now you're independent, how's life changed?

It's great, actually. I'm really happy. I don't. I. I don't know why. I was quite grumpy towards the end when I was at Talk and I. I can't explain it, and it's not because I didn't enjoy the job, because I did. And I worked with some great people, many of whom are still my friends, you know, but there's something about building a business which really appeals to me, you know, When I first started out in journalism, I was doing a few shifts in Fleet street when I was about 21, 22, and there was nothing going on, there were no jobs, you know, there were still printing unions who would occasionally just not print the paper. And so you would think, I won't get a byline of the papers. Then the paper wouldn't come out. Times was on strike for like a year nearly. So I went to America at 23 and started my own business. Actually, no, I tell a lie. I started working for a magazine, then got fired, but that's because I crashed a car. I was only 23, an idiot. And I wasn't supposed to be working for that company because I didn't have the right visa and all that sort of thing. And I'd gone there because I had a girlfriend who was American. And so I thought, well, I'm not going back to Britain with my tail between my legs, having only been in nine months. So I thought, I'll start a freelance news agency, which is what I did. So I ran my own business and sort of, in those days, it was easy because There was no Internet, so I mean, I could get the New York Post on, on a sort of, you know, Monday night at 7 o' clock or something and then there'd be a great story and I'd just ring the newspapers in London and sell it to them.

Yeah.

So I've kind of gone full circle because now I'm running my own business again and it's really satisfying, it's really amazing to watch it grow. We've, we've had some great figures, much more so than we thought. We've only been going like just over a month. We've got like136,000 subscribers. We've got, I think we're just about to surpass 7 million views and we're making money and it's like, this is amazing, you know, and also the shows are really good. The reaction to them is really good. People who've followed me over from, from Talk love it. You know, they say it's, it's actually a better show, it's more relaxed, it's funnier, you know, so I'm not, you know, a lot of people have said to me, and you probably will ask me the question, I don't know. But you know, there are some people that you don't get on with in on the right, you know, there are people that you have rows with, you know, now that you're independent, you know, you should all be on the same side. And I'm like, well, no, that's not what independent means. Independent means independence, which means I have my own thoughts, I have my own opinions, I have my own motivations, I don't have to be in a box with somebody else. That's why I've left, you know, because in the end with, with Talk, I kind of. We kind of pushed them to make a decision because for a month I didn't know what they were going to do and I wasn't making any money, you know, and I have quite an expensive lifestyle and I was like, I can't afford not to work. So. So yeah, so I, I say to people, I don't have to agree with everybody on the right. I mean everybody, right, doesn't agree on everything anyway. And it's surely much more healthy for us to have a disagreement about something and to talk about it. That's where I am, you know, so. So yeah, life has, has changed in as much as I'm not getting up quite so early as I used to. I used to get up at 20 past 4, I get up at 5 now. Because the studio is quite close to where I live. And yeah, it's just, it's just a very. So far it's been a very enjoyable experience. Slightly nerve wracking at times, you know, at the beginning, because you're kind of going, well, what happens if, you know, we don't make any money? And what happens if we get demonetized? And maybe had a problem last week because the original setup of the channel was done by my producer, a guy called Pooch, and so it was all in his name. But then we formed a company and we had to change it. So having got it monetized in, I guess, December, they suddenly started all over again and they said, well, now we have to demonetize you and, you know, move it all across to the new company. And we were like, well, can you not. We managed to find somebody to talk to YouTube in America, or can you not just switch it all over? No, no, no, we have to, you know, leave it. So we had a few days where we didn't make anything right. And you kind of go, at some points I was thinking, what if, what if they don't ever make it monetized again? What happens then? You know, and so there's, there's those kinds of sort of issues, I suppose, bumps in the road.

Do you feel more free to speak freely?

Yeah, I think so.

You think so?

I think so, yeah. I mean, like I said, I was quite outspoken anyway. I mean, this morning, for example, I called Kirsten. I'm a wanker, which he is.

Aren't they singing that in the football stands?

They're singing in the football stands. They're having to block it out of the darts coverage because they're doing it there.

You know, I think he's playing in my head right now.

Yeah, you can't help it. And you know, you know as well as I, when you're speaking sometimes, particularly on a live show, I, and this is what. I never said that word on Talk because I knew it was a bad word, but I think I called him a twat once and that I, I sort of got a call from the, the boss to say, you know, can you rein it in a bit? Yeah. Because Ofcom could come after you for something.

Right.

You know, Whereas this morning I said, I said. And I said it in a way which was kind of. I said, you know, he's just. I don't know why, why is he such a. I know I shouldn't say this, I shouldn't say it, but I'm gonna say he's a wanker. And everyone kind of laughed and. And the audience reaction was great. And then they started sending in messages with the way. With the same word in it to make me read it out again. So, I mean, you know that. But I'm a great believer in. In Howard Stern's approach to life, who, when he was sort of became independent working for Sirius and he got taken off mainstream kind of radio, he said, after a while, we kind of stopped swearing because there was nobody to rebel against, in a way. Right. So when there's nobody to upset. And I think there's a part of me that quite likes upsetting people, you know, because you get a better reaction. Yeah. And, you know, the one way to find out what somebody really thinks is to make them angry. Right. And then they suddenly say what they really think of you. Right. And I'm quite good at it.

Yeah.

I'm quite annoying. And so I think I felt somehow when I was at Talk, well, I felt myself more kind of angry, and I don't know why. And I'm not sure if it was just that I was there too long, because I'd worked for the company for, like, 18 years in all sorts of different varieties, you know. Yeah. Having joined Talk Sport, working overnights, weekends, I'd done pretty much every slot that talk radio started, you know, and. And I just feel more relaxed now. Right. Just generally. Yeah. And. And sort of generally happier, which, again, I can't. I can't really explain it.

Why do you think Kia Stamos a wanker?

Well, he's a liar for a start. He tells absolute, outright lies. I mean, they all do. They keep going on about the fact that they're reducing hospital waiting lists, which they're not doing. You know, we've got proof that they're actually paying hospitals to remove people's names from the lists. Wow. Who have either died because they waited so bloody long for the operation, or they've gone private, or they simply, you know, have just given up. And they're paid. They're actively paying hospitals for that. They talk about, you know, turning the corner and making you feel wealthier and, you know, putting more money in your pocket, and it's all bollocks at the end of the day. And I think. I think he might be pathologically kind of mentally quite unwell because he must know that he's not telling the truth. I mean, you know, even just look at the Mandelson situation. You know, he made out that he didn't know all of the things that he now knows about Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when in fact he did know. And it's now been proven that he knew and it's now been proven that he was briefed about it all. And yet he did the thing that he did and then he didn't even stand over it, he denied it. And the same with this latest mate of the pedophile in Scotland. You know this Lord, what's his face burn? Is it? No, it's not burn. The guy who's, you know, he's in the papers today because Prime Minister's questions yesterday he was again saying, well he misled me, you know, and this is the guy who's supposed to have been the premier prosecutor in Britain, you know, head of the Crime, Crime Prosecution Service. And apparently he's more gullible than anyone you've ever met. And if people lie to him, he doesn't know they're lying. And I said the other day, it's a bit like him admitting that, you know, he's now sent a million pounds to some guy in Nigeria who sent him an email and said, you know, please send me a million pounds, I will immediately return it to your bank account with interest. You know, he's almost, he's trying to convince us that he's that gullible. And I think, I think he genuinely doesn't like what I would regard as the Britain that I want Britain to be. I think he doesn't like it.

No.

And he doesn't, he doesn't have any time for, he's quite arrogant. He doesn't have any time for people who disagree with him. He got very defensive enough and, and worked up when he was attacked by Cammy Badenock yesterday. And I think he's just, he's not somebody who comes across as in any way genuine. Nobody knows what's going on in his head really or what he believes in. You know, we had a, we had a reel the other day of all of his flip flopping around everything from we want freedom of movement, so we don't want freedom of movement to, you know, we're not going to put any more taxes up. Well, we have to put more taxes up. You know, there's so many instances of that and I don't think you or I would have the brass neck to, to do that. You know, you have to surely have some belief system. You have to, there must be things that you, that you want to, to do. He's the Prime Minister of the country. He's got a great deal of Power. But he doesn't seem to understand Britain or British people.

Well, I want to come back to your vision for Britain, but first, where do you. What is the honest state of the UK right now?

Can I swear you can say whatever you want.

Is, Is it?

Yeah.

Is it that? Is it? As a lot of people are saying it, yes.

I think it's not irredeemably, but it really is in about as bad a place as I can ever remember it. I'm a bit older than you and I lived through the 70s. Right. And the 70s was a very different time to where we are now, but it was a very different country as well. You know, we had the three day week. I used to go to school one morning a week and that was it for a whole term. We had, you know, power cuts every day. You'd have an hour of electricity in the morning to have breakfast an hour in the evening. The rest of the time you sat around in candlelight. There wasn't really anything to do. It was quite a poor country. There was strikes. All the people, they weren't burying bodies because the grave diggers were on strike, the bloody bin men were on strike. So there was piles of rubbish everywhere, rats running around.

Like in Birmingham now?

Yeah, like in Birmingham now. But it was a much more, what I would call sort of together country. It was a much more homogeneous country, for want of a better word, you know. Yes. There were people who had come from other, from other, from other countries and other nations. We've always had immigration, but nothing like it's got that. It's got to now, you know, where now. I don't think there is a kind of a single unifying force in Britain. I think there's an awful lot of divided forces going on and there's a lot of people who are very upset and angry at what's happened to their country. And so with all of the kind of similarities with the 70s in terms of the fiscal situation, the money, high taxes, you mean, High taxes, but also just the general kind of debt, you know, because that was last time we had to go to the IMF to ask for, for a handout to stop the country from literally going bankrupt. I was talking to Liam Halligan the other day, the Economist, and he said if we went to the IMF now for a bailout, they haven't got enough money. Wow. Because we're in that much debt and I just don't think that's you. You can't continue like that. You know, if you were running your household like that. You'd, you'd be in debtor's prison. You can't just keep going, I'll just borrow another 20 grand, which is what they're doing. Yeah. You know, except it's 20 billion.

Yeah.

Every month. And I think people genuinely feel, not in all parts of Britain, but in a lot of parts of Britain, that it's not a Britain that they recognize for all sorts of reasons, you know, because it's kind of unfashionable in the, in the establishment to be proud of it. I mean, look at the way people act around flags. Look at the way people act around, you know, anyone who speaks up for British tradition, you know, or speaks up for what happened during the British Empire and, you know, all of those things that, that we should be proud of. I was talking to someone the other day. They took, they were taking part in. I think it was Layla Cunningham. She was talking about how she went up to the Oxford Union, had a debate, and the debate was about whether Churchill was a hero or not. And she said, of course, the, the debate result was that he wasn't. And you sort of go, so that's, that's the prevailing view now, that Churchill was a monster and that he didn't save the country from a horrible fate at the hands of the Nazis, you know, and I think it's going to take an awful lot to get it back, really.

Well, I want to finish on solutions. Okay, but first, what are the three biggest problems in the UK right now?

Number one, immigration. Yeah, absolutely. No question, because from that everything else flows. For example, there was a stat that came out the other day that something like 750, 000 people have registered with the NHS in all sorts of different parts of the country in, in. In the most recent times. And one of the reasons why the NHS is failing, for example, is that there's too many people here and there's too many people accessing. And again, all of that is flowing from the fact that we've got too many people coming into the country because it's been completely and utterly unchecked for years. You know, immigration is also leading to other problems with integration. Some parts of Britain have become ghettoized to a point where, you know, what you might call traditional British families have moved away. You know, and again, that was never the case in, in, you know, people say, oh, the East End used to be very Jewish or it used to be very Irish. And, you know. Yeah, but not to the point where hardly anybody else lived there, you know, whereas now you go to the East End, you got a white chapel, you know, they've got the underground signs in Urdu as well as in English. Yeah. And there's a huge mosque there. And again, we've been a very tolerant nation for a very long time. And. And when the first. I remember when the first mosques went up in London, it was Regent Smart mosque when I was a kid in the 70s, and it was a kind of curiosity and you would watch. And I used to go to school near there and you'd watch the. The people, the. The men going there on a Friday because they're not allowed to drive a car. So they walk. They're all walking up Finchley Road, effectively by Lord's cricket ground. And it was, you know, nobody had a problem with it. Everyone was like, oh, it's kind of interesting. Beautiful building, you know, great big dome. Never seen anything like it. Now, you know, they're talking about putting a mosque in the Lake District because not enough Muslims go to the countryside, you know, so. So there's, you know, there's a criminal problem, there's a. There's a health service problem, there's a housing problem, there's a fiscal problem with councils, for example, you know, because we. We saw a story again the other day that social care, which is not just for immigration purposes, but. But social care is a problem for all councils because they haven't got enough money to look after people. But on top of that, they're also having to look after vulnerable children who are coming in from other countries who are declaring themselves to be children who might not be. There was one case, I think it's Hampshire, who in 2021 was spending nothing on social care for immigrants. Now they're spending 24 million a year. Wow. And you just think, well, again, that's unsustainable. So the economy is, I suppose, the second thing. But again, it all flows from the first thing, you know, and I think, actually because of who's in power at the moment, I think socialism is a real problem, because socialism doesn't work and it doesn't and has never worked anywhere.

You know, the idea of other people's money.

They do, and it's a hackneyed old phrase, but it's true. Yes. But, you know, look at people like Zach Polanski, you know, who I think is a total clown.

I had a question on here about him.

I think something weird is going to come out about him. I've just got.

Well, it already has. It already is weird. Well, past times.

He certainly is. Although he, of course, denies the Whole breast enhancement thing says that, you know, that was a newspaper taking him out of context. I'm not sure about that. But.

But they want to abolish landlords. They were completely open borders.

Yeah.

Like, where did this guy come from? Where's his political history?

Like, well, do you think that's. Because.

Is that a reaction to maybe, you know, some far right. It's like, well, I don't understand.

But it, but it seems to be a lot of young people who are kind of, you know, radical have been radicalized by education, by university, by, you know, hanging around with their friends only like gen seers or Jen setters, whatever you want to call them, apparently struggle with having friendships with people who disagree with them. That was a stat that came out the other day. Wow. And so they've been kind of. They've literally been brainwashed, these young people who are now early 20s, you know, funnily enough, slightly younger people, like my youngest son, who's 19, is quite right wing because they've kind of, They've kind of rebelled against that.

Yeah.

You know, but this sort of the world that has been created where it's almost impossible to. To approach a woman in a bar and ask her if she wants to drink. You know, I mean, if you did that now, I mean, I don't do it anymore because when I'm a bit too old for that sort of stuff. But, you know, that was. That's how you used to meet people. You'd go up to a woman in a bar and talk to her and say, or a man, how you doing? You know, would you like a drink or, you know, something like that, or can I have a cigarette? You know, that's all, you know, you can't do that anymore. They've sort of created this problem for, for an awful lot of young men, I think, you know, who don't know what to do about their sexuality, don't know what to do about how they're supposed to be interacting with other people. And apparently, for example, a lot of young people don't have kids anymore and don't want them. A lot of them not having sex. And so again, back to immigration. You've got a whole lot of people coming into the country from elsewhere who are having loads of kids. And again, that will only have a bad effect, I think, on, on traditional, what you might call Britain, which again is. Is a sort of. It's a dirty phrase, you know.

Yeah.

People. I mean, you talked earlier about fright, people being frightened. People are frightened to talk about, you know, what's traditional British values? You know, people like, if you watch Question Time, which I don't very often, you know, there's this kind of intake of breath every time anybody says something which is considered to be, you know, off piste. And, you know, goodness me, you know, you. You've said something a bit racist there. I don't know. I think it's a terrible state of affairs.

And how about Sadiq Khan? How's he being the mayor of London?

Terrible. I mean, I've heard you. I was, yeah. I live in London. I was born in London.

So you've seen it.

I've lived through, you know, like I said, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. I moved to America in the 80s.

What's going wrong in London?

Well, so much. How long you got. I mean, the transportation systems are terrible. The Tube trains have not been properly invested in for years. You know, the Central Line now is the worst of all where it's covered in graffiti. I mean, on. In New York subways, they only graffiti the outside of the trains here. They do now do the inside of the trains.

Wow.

There's a massive problem with. With traffic. You know, he's trying to convince everybody that he's making the air cleaner, but he's not. Yeah. You know, the road system is absolutely screwed. He's got cycle lanes, bus lanes, crime massively up, even though he pretends that it's down. Homicide went down slightly, I think, this year, so they were all crowing about it. But everything else, you know, knife crime, sexual assaults, shoplifting, theft of mobile phones. I think something ridiculous, like 60,000 mobile phones a year get stolen. Wow. I had back window, my car smashed in for no apparent reason about a month before I got fired. I still don't know whether that had something to do with what happened. It's dangerous, London now. You know, you see gangs of kids roaming the streets. You know, I go to Oxford street quite a bit. I go to a gym, there's around about Selfridges. And you see these kids on bikes, you know, riding them, you know, doing wheelies on them, really intimidating drivers, you know, kind of going right up to taxi drivers and swerving around them. There's a kind of lawlessness about it all and you never see any police really to speak of. And my daughter lives in Dubai. She's a bit older than my two young sons. But, you know, I have to say to her, when she comes home or comes back to London, I said, just be really careful because she's used to just putting her phone down. On the bar or, you know, putting her handbag over there or, you know, people are getting stuff nicked all the time. Yeah. And I think he has completely, in a way actually caused more division than he's, than he's, than he's solved, if you like, because he's so objectionable. He's deliberately obstructive. He doesn't answer questions when he has his sessions of, you know, mayor's questions. He gets asked all the time by Susan hall, the leader, or he was the leader of the Tories and also by the Reform assembly member, you know, to account for whatever it is. And he just never answers. And so I remember there was an exchange, you might have seen it between her and him, Susan hall, where she was asking him how is it possible that with all these, you know, Pakistani grooming gangs up and down the country, there's never been any in London. And I don't think she actually used the word Pakistani. And he started goading her to say, why are you asking me that question? Why? And it's obvious why she's asking the question. He just wants an answer. And he was trying to make it sound as though she was some kind of racist for even posing the question, you know, and he makes it very clear that he doesn't really like white people very much. You know, they have an event in Trafalgar Square every year for Black History Month or something like that, you know, can you imagine having one for White History Month? They wouldn't have one that would be considered racist. But Black History Month's fine, apparently. It's weird. Yeah. You know, but that's considered normal and he's considered to be. I mean, until relatively recently, he was thought of as maybe a candidate for Prime Minister by the people in the labor movement, you know, but I think he's ruined London and I don't understand how he keeps getting re elected. I've never met anyone that voted for him.

Right.

Not met anyone, no. And, you know, there are, there are many allegations around sort of, you know, shall we say, irregularities in, in sort of postal voting, that kind of thing.

Wow.

I can't say because nobody knows, but it seems a bit unusual that, you know, you get in every black cab and if you ask the cab drivers, have you ever had anyone in the cab that voted for stick on they go, no. Nobody knows anyone?

No.

So it's all a bit strange.

Would you say the biggest cover up in the UK is right now?

That's a good question. I think it's, it's. I Think it's, it might be the labor kind of situation now with, with Mandelson and the whole kind of Epstein files, the Andrew stuff as well, you know, because I've spoken to a few royal sort of experts who say this is, this is a lot worse than you think. Wow. You know, in terms of. And some people make the argument, you know, Andrew may not have done anything illegally, might be a sleazy son of a. But, you know, what did he actually do? You know, if Virginia Gifray was in Britain, that wasn't an illegal act that he committed because she's not underage in Britain but she was underage in New York. I just get the feeling that whatever part Mandelson played in, in the Epstein world and he seems to have been involved in it for a long time, I think that that will turn out to be a devastating story for an awful lot of people who will not only lose their livelihoods but their reputations as well. And obviously the massive cover up is the grooming gangs because of what we know the police didn't do and because of what we now know the police did do in some cases where they actually not only didn't help the girls, actually also helped to abuse them in some parts of the north of England, you know, because it was all done in cahoots with the councils and the police and, you know, they were all sort of in league with each other.

My wife scratches her head on a daily basis because she just says to me all the time, why can't we just have a decent leader? Why can't we just have a good human, you know, someone who cares, who isn't careerist, who has good values.

Yeah, who.

And we chat about this. I just wonder if someone like that would just get eaten alive by the political system.

Yeah. I think the system has become so corrupted by the way that it's been kind of. I mean, the Tories are no better by the way.

I mean, don't get me wrong, they started it all. You gotta.

Yeah.

You know, I would have voted for them before but they definitely started the decline.

Yeah, no question.

Yeah.

I mean ever since the days of David Cameron and well, Tony Blair really. I mean you've got to go all the way back to where it all went wrong. I think it was the Blair government which initially in 97, a lot of people had a lot hope for, you know, they saw it as a sort of new beginning. John Major was finally kicked out. He was a bit old and tired and gray like a Spitting Image puppet and suddenly Tony Blair was this young guy with a young family, children running around, you know, in Downing Street. And it all sounded very kind of wholesome in a way. But we now know things about Tony Blair that would suggest that he's very far from wholesome.

Like what?

Well, like him having an affair, supposedly with Rupert Murdoch's wife, Wendy Deng, and supposedly, you know, not being very discreet about it, even while he was being friends with, with, with Rupert, you know, and just his general redefining of Britain because he started a lot of that, you know, the creation of the Supreme Court, you know, the whole kind of defenestration of what you might have known as the Civil service. Because again, back in the day, in the 70s, civil service was kind of small c Conservative. It was run by probably what you might describe as old fogies, you know, but who were very kind of sensible and, and stable. But we've now got, you know, this mad collection of, again, brainwashed individuals who have come out of the education system in this country who care more about diversity and inclusion and all of that than they do about the actual job, you know, and we've got more people working the Civil Service now than we've ever had. Yeah. And there are some who say they're the real problem because they control everything. Right. And even if reform do get in, will they really be able to do anything about that? I don't know.

Well, I want to come to them in a moment. Let's go positive now.

Okay.

How do we restore broken Britain?

Well, I think let's start with the civil service. You know, I think you have to put people in charge of things who will fix the problems. Right. So you have to start by identifying what the problems are. If the problem in, for example, the Ministry of Defense is that they haven't got enough money, they're not spending the money. Right. Then look at where they're spending the money. You know, I've told this story before, but a veteran that I know who speaks to people who are still in the forces said, you know, they're obsessed with things like language, they're obsessed with, you know, training. They're obsessed with, but not in a good way. They're obsessed with, you know, making sure that everybody kind of passes muster. So it doesn't really matter if you're a bit overweight, doesn't really matter if your eyesight's not that great. If you got flat feet, you can still come into the army. And they don't mind if you identify as, you know, some kind of non binary gender you know, it's all about that. It's not about fighting people. It's about making sure that words like manpower don't appear in, in sort of, you know, service manuals and every barracks is, is kind of. What's the word? Inclusive and welcoming and, you know, everybody should be treated with respect. And it's like your job is to go out and kill people, you know, let's start with that, right? And maybe give you some decent boots and some decent guns and enough bullets so you can defend yourself, you know, that kind of thing. The Home Office, you know, riddled with people who will hold up and, and, and probably deny justice to people and who will vigorously fight to kind of ensure that government policy isn't carried out, you know, whenever anybody, you know, we've got a case this week. I talked about this morning. Shabana Mahmood was taken to court this week by 16 asylum seekers, illegal migrants who are fighting against the one in one out scheme. And they'll probably win because it turns out that despite her supposed knowledge of the law, what she's attempting to do is illegal. And so they'll probably win compensation, they'll probably get to stay in the country for the rest of their lives and we'll probably have to pay for a house for them. You know, fix the problems, you know, start deporting people as soon as they arrive illegally, you know, stop allowing people to come into the country on business visas and work visas and then let them overstay. You know, it's not like we haven't got enough people to do all that. We've got thousands. There's something like 27, 000 PRs in civil service. Wow. Doing what? Exactly.

You know, the thing is, turkeys don't vote for Christmas. It's not going to be easy to get them, is it?

No. And they've proven that they can be very difficult.

Well, Liz Truss said she they pretty much ran the country, didn't she?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think she's probably right. There's no reason to disbelieve what she says. I mean, Dominic Cummings came in and said he was going to cut a sway through Whitehall and look what happened to him.

Yeah.

You know, he didn't get anywhere near them.

No.

You know, last seen running out of Downing street with a box, you know, which was one of the more strange sort of images from the COVID days. I just think we've somehow allowed them who work for us to think that they're in charge of us. Right. And that goes for local Councils as well as national government. You know, they all, they all seem to think that they know better, that they're entitled. You know, it's all our money that they're spending.

Yeah, I like, I don't like it. I find it ironic when you see government spending, you know, government money. There is no government money.

No, no, it's all our money.

Yeah.

And they kind of make out that they're doing us a favor when they, you know. Oh, we're handing pay rise to doctors. Why? Yeah, exactly, you know. Oh, well, you know, they've, they feel as though they haven't been treated properly. And inflation's been going up. Well, inflation's been going back down, but yet now they want another 26%. You know, I read a story the other day. Teachers, there's something like 1100 teachers in this country getting paid more than125,000 a year. Again, it's our money. I'm sorry. You know, I don't think. I'm sure there are many great things about being a teacher, but I don't think the job is worth 125 grand. We shouldn't be paying that kind of money to people like that. No.

And is this back to your point about socialism being the problem? Is this the fundamental problem, that socialism believes that the government financed the state as opposed to understanding that the workers, the employers, the entrepreneurs and the builders actually finance the state?

Well, they clearly don't understand the principle of growth. Economic growth. They don't understand it. They think they call it investment in the economy. You know, when they give a bunch of money to some eco friendly, you know, wind farm company who are just literally creaming the money off the top and paying it to their shareholders. Wow. But they're apparently doing something good because they're investing in the green economy. No, they're not. They're taking our money and throwing it in a bin, literally. Because all that's going to happen is that we are then going to be asked to subsidize that business either by direct injection of government money, I. E. Our money. Yeah. Or we're going to be charged another surcharge on our electricity bill in order to let these guys get wealthy and meanwhile they're generating nothing.

Yeah.

In terms of actual wealth, in terms of, you know, they're only getting free money from the government. And I've always said if you, if the government has to subsidize something, then it's not a viable business, so let it die. You know, I thought, I think they should Let the banks go back in 2009, you know, when old Mandelson was busy tapping away to Epstein about what the latest monetary policy was going to be coming out the treasury, you know, they should have let the bank of Scotland die. They should have let Northern Rock die.

Well, this is how capitalism works. You know, you get the best rise to the top.

We shouldn't be subsidizing banks who later turned around and basically stupped us for it. Yeah.

Who are for profit corporations anyway.

Yeah, I know.

You know, sometimes we all need a bit of a lesson. If we lose a little bit of money in a bank account, well, then that's our lesson. We choose our bank more wisely next time or we don't choose a bank.

Right. You know, some investments may go down as well as up, as they say on the TV ads, you know, but we. Why are we bankrolling it?

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't make any sense. No.

Wow. Will Reform and Nigel Farage win the next election?

I think so.

Do you want them to?

Yes. Yes. Because I think we have to break the.

The cycle, the two parties.

The two party system. Yeah. I mean, I talked to a lot of former Tory voters who said they'll never vote Tory again. I think labor are, you know, basically shooting themselves in the head and they're, you know, going to do very badly, I think, in May, in the election, local elections, they're going to do. I don't think they've got a chance of winning. Although some people say that they shouldn't be underestimated in. In Gorton, in Manchester, that I think, you know, by the looks of things, they might not even come third. The labor government. I think people are sick to death of being lied to. And I know that there are those on the right who say that Reform aren't any different. You know, they're just the same. You know, Farage is having to kind of taper his original views and he's having to become more mainstream, and he kind of is, and I get that. But I think he understands that, you know, there's a huge tranche of people in this country who are in the middle somewhere. You know, they don't want to be intolerant, they don't want to be horrible, but they also want to get their country back on an even keel. And if he goes too far to the right, I don't think they'll vote for him. And so I think he has to kind of balance that somehow. And I think he's a very good orator. I Think he's a very good politician and, you know, some would argue, and I'd probably be one of them, that he's had a huge influence on British politics ever since he's been involved in it. People say. People used to say, you know, oh, he's never won an election. Well, he has now. And they've now got eight MPs. And I think they need to. I mean, their big problem is going to be finding enough decent people and. And not many nutters, you know, making sure that, you know, they haven't got any kind of former members of the BNP standing for. You know, that's. That's an issue, definitely. And also their policy on lots of other things maybe needs to be fleshed out a bit, but I think it would be. Be good for the country if they got in. But the trouble is, again, you've got this left blob of. Of people. I mean, I think that one of the Civil Service unions has come out and said, you know, reform, win the next election, we're all going to go out on strike, which is not going to work for them. And there are still people who think they're a racist party, who think they're far right and all of that. You know, the sort of the media establishment, so they've got to win them over as well. But in a way, it's kind of what Tony Blair did in 97. You know, they were very clever at the Labour Party. You know, they went to the newspapers, they. They got the Daily Mail on side, they got the sun on side, they presented their kind of plan of action. And as. As a government machine, Blair's government was actually pretty efficient. I mean, it was really too efficient, in a way. Yeah. But they had always previously had a reputation, labor, of being kind of irresponsible with money. A bit kind of, you know, a bit too socialist, a bit too left wing. Blair kind of did. Got rid of all that. They got rid of Clause four. They got rid of the kind of the militant section of. Of the party and expelled a lot of people. So they've got to kind of take on that kind of scale of. Of revolution, in a way. Yeah. And if they can do that, I think. I think that'd be good. Right.

What's one law in the uk? If you could change it yourself, you would.

H. That's a good question. One law. I think it's the. I want to say something about recycling, but I don't know that there's really laws in play. But I mean, people have been Prosecuted for recycling stuff. Wrong. Right. Which is part of this kind of mad local council agenda. You know, down in Sussex, where my kids live with their mother, the council got so spiteful about people misusing the. The bins for the. They took them all away. So now you have to go to the dump. This probably sounds really trivial to you, right. But this is the kind of thing that really pisses people off. You now have to go to the local dump and you're probably paying five,

six grand a year for your council tax.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's going up, you know, and they said it would go up if they didn't get a loan. I think down in Sussex particularly, they've taken out a 70 million pound loan or something because they said if they didn't do that, the council cycle have to go up 10%, you have to book a place at the dump. If you get to the dump and you haven't booked a place, they won't let you in. And if you're a tradesman, you have to pay to go in and dump stuff, which is why there's so much fly tipping going on. Because we've got a very untidy country, I think. And I would. I would like to see that change. I would like to see that clean up somehow. And I know even as I'm saying it, it's starting to sound a bit trivial, but it's quite important. I mean, it's the sort of. The standard of living and the way we live, I think is important.

Yeah.

And you mentioned the Birmingham Binstram, and it's horrendous.

Isn't that the way, was it the New York mayor. Start the broken windows.

Yeah. Giuliani. Yeah.

Giuliani staff. True. With. Get rid of the graffiti, start the small bits, tidy up all the low level crime.

Yeah, definitely. And make people proud of their community. Yeah, again. And you know, we've always had a litter problem in this country. People just. I mean, it drives me insane. You get people throwing things out of cars. You know, you drive down the side of motorways and there's just litter everywhere. It's horrible. Yeah. You know, so I haven't really answered the question very well, but I. It's okay. That's your answer. Yeah. I think something in that area, you know, stop going after people for trying to do the right thing. Yeah. And go after the right people who were doing the wrong thing. And that would improve a lot of people's lives, I think. Yeah.

You know, what's a secret? You've never Shared or a story you've never told?

There's a lot of those. There's a story that. That I have told that not many people know. So unless you really become a bit obsessed with me, you probably would know. I've only ever voted once, right. In my life, and that was in 1979, when Thatcher swept to power and I voted Labor.

Wow.

So. Wow. I got that wrong massively. And it was partly because I then moved to America and I lived there for a while, and then when I came back, I constantly was living in places where it was such a massive majority, it didn't seem worthwhile. Right. And then as time went on and I became a bit more of a kind of maverick columnist and broadcaster, I actually. I thought to myself, you know, it's actually better not to vote for me because I can feel less affiliated to anyone. Right. You know, it's a bit like. Like not having a football team. And I was a talk sport. People used to go, who do you support? And I was like, don't really support anyone. Well, how can you be a football commentator? Then I went, because I can be forensically clean. I'm not tainted by loving Arsenal or Tottenham. Yeah. You know, and I go the same way with. With political parties. I don't. I don't want to be affiliated with any particular party, so I don't want to vote for any of them. And that way I feel as though I can be more critical and I can be more kind of honest.

Even with what you just said about reform and how bad you think labor are doing, you still wouldn't vote.

No. Right. Wouldn't vote. And PJ o', Rourke, who's one of my favorite writers in America, satirist, kind of libertarian, said, don't vote, only encourages them, you know. Yeah. And some might say that I'm wrong about that. And I should, you know, because the fact that few people vote now, particularly in local elections, is maybe how we ended up where we are. Yeah. If more people voted and actually bothered, it might be better. But I don't know.

What would you say is your biggest mistake or regret?

Do you know? I don't really have any regrets.

We all do.

I don't really.

We all say we don't, but there's always one. I mean, there'd be something you'd change or something that hangs over you.

I don't think so, because, I mean, even when it all happened last October at Talk, you know, and I thought, well, there's not really much I could have changed about that. There's not much I could have done.

But that was so obviously better for you. I mean, I've had lots of people like Lawrence Fox and Dan Wootton who went through it all and it was horrible. And their life's so much better now. They're independent. Look how well Dan's doing.

Oh, I know. Amazing. Yeah, amazing. And he was really helpful to me, actually, during that period.

Yeah.

Which is why I went and did the interview with him, you know.

Yeah.

Because I've known Dan a long time and yeah, he's. He's been very encouraging and been great, but I genuinely, you know, I'm very. I'm. I'm generally pretty happy. I've got four kids who are all brilliant, they're all wonderful. I got divorced. Right.

A regret or a mistake?

It was probably. If there's anything to regret, I. I regret if I caused anybody any pain as a result, you know, but, you know, happens and I. I'm a believer in fate to some extent and making the best of things. And I wasn't a very good husband, you know, to my first. I've only been married once, but I had two kids with her, and then I've had the two younger ones with somebody else. And I've not been a very well behaved partner, basically, you know, Is that all right? But it's not really a regret. It's just the way I am. But if I've ever caused anybody pain, which I know I have, that I suppose that's a regret because I don't ever wish to. To do that. And I've always been reasonably honorable about the financial side of all of that, you know. But again, it's, it's, it's not. I wouldn't change it because I am who I am because of what's happened to me. Yeah. And because of what experiences I've had in life, you know? Yeah.

So this show is called Disruptors.

Yeah.

We've been disrupting for 10 years, Mike.

Have you really?

Yeah, we have.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'm ashamed of myself then, because I didn't know that.

Well, I'm ashamed of myself that you didn't know.

You don't look old enough, to be honest. Yeah.

So 1350 ish episodes.

Wow. Now, so you must be doing pretty well, too.

Oh, I mean, it's all relative, isn't it, Compared to who and what.

Yeah.

But, yeah, we've had a few billion views and listens.

Amazing. See, that puts my whole kind of excitement to shame, doesn't it? Because I'm going, we've got 7 million.

No, no, no. But. But how quickly you've done it. Yeah, you know, I. I follow you, obviously. And how quickly you've done it.

Yeah.

And that's like. It's easier, but it's harder. Harder in the sense that there's a lot of competition and there's a lot of things you need to do. Yeah, but the algorithms are a bit more kind to the new channels. But, no, I mean, I've only ever been doing this kind of 10 to 15% of my time.

Right.

And, you know, I felt like I might be dangerous if I put all my time into it, but I have my property portfolio and I have my other business interests.

Okay.

Which need my attention. Yeah, yeah. So this show is called Disruptors. What does the word disruptive mean to you?

Disruptive means it's a good thing to me. I like, are you disruptive? I am disruptive. I mean, I often say to people, the reason I got into journalism, one of my pet hates, actually, is the way that journalism has now kind of deteriorated in this country, where people are no longer curious, you know, particularly the Westminster sort of bubble lot, you know, the people who cover politics on a daily basis. There's with. With one or two notable exceptions. They're all kind of in the same club, and they don't really want to disrupt anybody, and they don't really want to have to be told, sorry, you can't come on the Prime Minister's plane, because, you know, he wrote that piece that wasn't very nice. And they don't really want to be shoved out of the, you know, the garden press conference because, you know, they've fallen out of favor. And I got into journalism because I like being a bloody awkward, you know, I like going up to people who don't want to see me and asking them questions they don't want to be asked. You know, that's my thing.

Yeah.

So disruption is great as far as I'm concerned, you know, immediately. One of the things I used to love to do is just interrupt people, particularly, you know, on radio shows, you know, because it really. It really puts them off. Yeah, they don't like, you know, they really don't like it. Let me finish. You know, and I just keep doing it and. Because I find it funny, I find it amusing, I know the audience does as well.

Yeah.

So, yeah, disrupt as much as you can. Yeah, definitely. Because it's. It's. It's our duty, I think, because otherwise we end up with people like Starmer and his band of, you know, gits who think they can tell us how to. How to run our lives and tell us what we can do and what we can't do. Yeah, you know, we. We didn't give them permission for that, so, you know, disrupt them all you can.

Mike, thanks a lot for coming on the show.

Really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. Thank you very much, Sam.