How to Fix Britain | Reform MP Richard Tice on Rebuilding the UK

Richard, are we seeing the death of the UK right now?

No, hopefully not. But we are at a pivotal moment, a sort of complete confidence crisis. And at every level, people are getting poorer, people are getting financially poorer and socially, I think the country is getting poorer. Culturally, the country is getting poorer.

And how's that not the death of the UK then?

Because, look, I'm a businessman, I come from the real estate world and I've run businesses and I've seen where a good business can be ruined by a bad boss in a couple of years, but a business that's literally gone into bankruptcy can be turned around by a good boss in two to three years. So the UK is going through a very difficult period. It's going to get worse, I regret to say, but it is absolutely salvageable and it just requires courage, leadership, belief and a great deal of hard work. But it's absolutely doable. And here's the best bit of all. I think that the common sense majority of the country are waking up to how serious things are and want this sorted and want this to turn around and will help turn it around.

How do you think Labour have done in their nine months tenure?

So, just over a year ago, I invented a new word that may or may not appear in the dictionaries, Starmageddon. And it was a bit of fun at the time and I didn't think, well, it can't be that bad, but actually it's been far worse and they've had a catastrophic start. By the admission of people who are Labour supporters, everybody is shocked just how appalling that start has been. What we all failed to realize is that this Labour Party is led by people who are deeply, deeply socialist, Marxist, and they basically want to smash down anything that smacks of success, of achievement. And you just see it with, with their attack on Independent Schools, for example, putting 20% VAT. No one in the world has ever taxed education.

Surely that's the last thing in the world.

Charitable object.

Yeah.

And by putting 20% VAT on school.

Fees and they put business rates on the schools and business rates clearly went under the radar, which went on the.

Radar, but that's significant. So what's happened is that already tens of thousands of parents are pulling their children away from the schools, schools are shutting.

My daughter's school shut three weeks ago.

Right, there you are. And it's an absolute catastrophe. I've been very involved as a governor of state schools, academies and independent schools, and perfectly reasonable for Labour to have said to the independent sector, you guys are Doing really well. We've got some challenges in the state sector, particularly among special educational needs for children, where you've got a real specialism in the independent sector. So could you give us some more help? We need you to get stuck in, enhance the whole academy process and we need a bit more of your. We need some more capacity from you. We need some more of your best practice shared in schools. Tell us what we're doing wrong and help. And the independent sector would have loved it, would have rolled with it and everybody would have been a winner. Instead, they've basically tried to smash down what is good. And so you're going to have state schools, class size is growing as people come from the independent sector, you're going to have more pressured teachers in the state sector and you're having hundreds, or if not thousands of redundancies in the independent sector. The whole thing's a complete disaster. So, yeah, that's just one example.

What other examples?

Well, the budget was, first of all, you had the winter fuel, essentially sort of withdrawing that from pensioners.

How much was that? They withdraw?

So they wanted to save about £1.5 billion.

Didn't they just send 18 billion to Mauritius?

Well, they are. We'll come on to Mauritius in a bit. But in reality they might save 500 to 700 million in the overall scheme of spending drop in the ocean. In terms of what the message it sent to pensioners was, basically, we don't like you, we don't think you're going to vote for us. The sooner you die, the better. And we're going to take 300 quid off your winter fuel allowance and, you know, that's.

And energy's gone up a lot in the last five years.

Yeah. Come on. So that was the first thing they did. Then the school fees, then the vat, the budget. And the thing about the budget is that they came in claiming they were going to be a rock of integrity and transparency and the stability and we were going to fix the foundations. Well, based on the reaction of the markets, hasn't been very stable. I mean, the bond markets are very angry. And in terms of fixing the foundations, Well, I mean, growth is collapsing around our ears, job vacancies are going up, businesses are stopping investing. I know business that's just decided not to employ its usual annual quota of 200 apprenticeships. Just think about that impact on young people, just from one business because of the extra cost of the national insurance increase. And confidence is everything. The confidence has been completely shot. So, yeah, it's a disastrous Start with regard to energy. We promised the bills would come down with all this renewable energy. The absolute opposite is happening in April. The energy suppliers are forecasting the energy price cap will go up 5% on top of the, give or take, 10, 11%. It's done since last summer. So the bills are going up and they will continue to go up. I call it net stupid zero. It's the greatest act of financial self harm ever imposed on a nation by the morons who've been running this country from the top, from the two main parties. And that's one of the things that we at reform will turn around when we win the next general election, which is the plan.

Have a sip of coffee on that. So right now in the UK I've been a business owner 20 years, as you know, I've had 20% VAT on top of what I sell. Then it's 25% corporation tax, it's net more than 40% income tax. That 100 to 125 grand bracket is 60%. So why you're just going to stop at 95 and you're never going to go above that. Now it's 15% national insurance. So their rise, I have 100 staff, their rise put 100 grand on my overhead at 15% margin, you know, you. And then inflation and then the increase in pension contributions. I probably have to earn a million pounds more in my business to net the same. Then there's business rates and then there's all these little bits that go under the radar. They call them lots of different words, they're basically taxes. Why would anyone stay in the uk?

Well, this is the point. So I created a slogan about a year ago. I said you've got to make work pay at every level and you've also got to make risk taking pay for entrepreneurs that employ people that do crazy stuff and work insane hours and sometimes fail, but sometimes hopefully succeed. And that's the point. If it doesn't pay to go to work, don't be surprised if a whole bunch of people say I'm not going to bother, I'm going to sit at home claiming some form of anxiety, stress, mental health and get paid to sit at home. And it's a catastrophe at every level. And so we have to change that. We have to change the culture in this country where actually hard work is seen as a good thing. Making money is a good thing. Taking risks is a good thing. You do realize the biggest risk in life is never taking one.

If you don't risk anything, you risk everything.

Right, exactly. So taking risks is a good thing and sometimes things go wrong. It's called life.

And that's why we have the limited.

Company structure to employing people is a great thing and it's hard work. But you can't then burden employers with huge responsibilities from day one, which the Labour Party imposed. So you've got to engender a real entrepreneurial sense of activity, particularly amongst the future generations. People coming out of school, deciding whether or not to go to university and that's another whole topic. Way too many people are going to university. One of my bugbears and just create that sense of, do you know what, I'm 18, I've got a mad idea, I'm going to give it a go. And all your mates say, yeah, great, well done. And there's a sort of, in America, you're not really an entrepreneur until you've gone bust at least once. Here you go, bus once. And I mean, you're castigated forever. It's like hall of Shame. Hall of Shame. And you almost never get out of it. And it's complete and utter nonsense. As long as you've got integrity. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. So we've got to change all of that. But it's absolutely doable. What it requires is competent people who've been around the block, who've made some money, had some good decisions, grown businesses, made mistakes, learned from them and then said, you know what, I'm going to get stuck in and help run the country and turn it around. And that's the sort of person I am.

And yet we seem to be exiling those people. What is it now? 20,000 millionaires have left since 2020. UBS predict it's going to be half a million. A friend of mine who's a billionaire left and to Monaco. I know loads of people have left to Dubai, all saying the same thing. And then someone who's pretty much at one time was the richest man in this country, but decades ago who moved to Monaco, wanted to come back and they slapped him with a 50 million pound re entrance tax. Why are we vilifying and exiling successful people left, right and center?

We should be doing exactly the opposite. Which is why one of our key policies is you basically scrap inheritance tax. Both my parents have died. It's a grief tax. It's an absolute horror show. Everyone who's been successful, you then spend ludicrous amounts of time and discussions with accountants, valuers trying to sort of, you know, play the game. It's a. It's ridiculous. Scrap the whole thing. And you could say to really successful people, maybe look above a certain level, could you give a, a donation to a charitable or set up your own charitable foundation? You can play things like that, but fundamentally just you want people to grow businesses, be successful and then hand it down to future generations and keep investing, keep growing. Take the family farm for example. Farms are generally asset rich, cash poor and they're about long term investment, growing it, getting better, growing the farm. And this family farm tax is, is a catastrophe. So that's just another area amongst all of the other hues of tractors of tractors including some friends of mine and lots of my constituents. Boston Skegness is a big, big constituency, one of the most fertile constituencies for agricultural produce in the country and full of family farms are raging at this. I know people who've scrapped plans for a new 300 grand tractor. Another mate scrap plans for a million pounds expansion of his strawberry growing business under polytunnels just said sod it, why should I? And all of this stuff just has a massive knock on effect. The agricultural machinery dealerships and all of that having a, now having a really tough time, literally just like just turning the switch off. So these are the things that labor have got badly wrong after years of soft. I call it consocialism. Another word I invented about the the Tories, they pretended to be conservatives but actually they governed like socialists and they grew the size of the state and didn't celebrate doing well, kept taxing more. And you've ended up with this situation. You know, we've got the, got the highest taxes for 70 years, we've got the highest government spending, much of it wasteful. Another huge topic for 70 years, the most regulations for 70 years, the highest national debt for 70 years and the lowest growth decade for 70 years. And that's before you add in the impact, the pressure, the downward suppression of wages by mass cheap, low skilled immigration. And that's before you add in the lunacy of net stupid zero. You can't grow an economy like that. It's just not possible. No one's ever done it, no one will do it. And when we turn those things around and they're all doable relatively quickly, you could see a dramatic turnaround of the fortunes of our economy. And at the end of the day, if people feel that they're going to be better off the end of the week, end of the month, they've got more money in their pocket at every level, then you start to make progress. That's the key.

Leads us perfectly onto what do you think about what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing in America?

Well, it's amazing because he secured a huge majority in both the presidential election, but also in the Senate and the House of Representatives. So he's got a full mandate, which I hope and think will mean he can govern full on right until the end of the four year term, as opposed to becoming a lame duck at the back end. And look, with Elon Musk and others, he built a big transition team, got his plans sorted. I think they're going to go gangbusters, I really do. I mean, drill baby, drill is a fantastic slogan. If you've got energy treasure under your feet, for heaven's sake, use it. Don't be so daft as to leave all of that value underground. It's owned by us, the taxpayer. So they're going to be growing at 3 to 4% a year. They're going to be cutting the size of the state, Americans are going to be getting better off. And over here in the uk, we're going to be looking across rather enviously saying, hmm, how did they do that? I wonder why? Let me tell you, it's very simple. They've got cheap energy, their own energy that they use, and then they have cut the size, they're cutting the size of the state, which we need to do dramatically here and we can do, and I know how to do it. And then you've got to get rid of daft regulations. You just want smart regulations and if you do those things all of a sudden you can dramatically bring taxes down and then hey presto, growth, growth. But here's the key point about making people better off. What you want is bubble up. So our key economic policy was, the first policy I designed three and a bit years ago was to lift the starting point at which you pay any income tax to £20,000 from 12 and a half grand. So for someone on modest incomes, that's an extra 30 quid a week net in your pocket. That's real money to help pay the bills, the rent, the mortgage. And that for many people will mean it's better off to go to work 40 hours a week than only work 16 hours a week and claim the rest on benefits because you've got back pain or something else. And that's the idiotic situation we're now in. There are many people trapped on a cycle of benefits. Straight part time working and it doesn't pay to go to work. Utter lunacy. We want a world leading benefit system that, of course, genuinely provides a safety net for the vulnerable, the genuinely disabled and sick. Many disabled people want to work and can work and do work brilliantly, but some can't. And a genuine safety net for those who've lost the job, who are looking for work. But I'm pretty blunt about this. You know, we are the party of the workers and the strivers. We are not the party of the shirkers and the skivers. And there are too many people now who are in the latter bracket in the UK and they've got to be told, sorry, folks, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

You mentioned you know how to reduce the size of the state, so could you let us know how big the government has become? And I guess you perceive it's very wasteful and what you would do to sweat it down to a sweet Jew. I also imagine not just the cost of all the people, but the layers of bureaucracy and friction involved in making any change. So can you talk about that?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you talk about the cost and the bureaucracy. I mean, the cost and time and effort of, for example, on inheritance tax from the valuation of the probate department, you don't need any of that, just scrap it, just bin it. Create activity and growth. But the ultimate example, and having become an mp, we've got all sorts of whistleblowers from different departments emailing us. I mean, it's actually way worse than I imagined. So in the election, I said, we've all got to just save a bit. So at home, we're all saving five quid and 100. Right. Small businesses, we're saving five quid and 100. Well, when you're running a government, you've got to save five quid and 100. That's 50 billion quid, proper money. People said, you can't do that, you can't do that. I now realize I was actually being too conservative, too cautious. And when you learn that the clowns building HS2 sort of railway to nowhere, they decided it was a good thing to spend a hundred million pounds of our cash on a concrete tunnel to look after the bats. Now, I'm not a great bat lover, but many people are. I'm sure they're great things, but you don't need to spend 100 million quid on a bat shed when what you could. I mean, I put a tweet out. I was so enraged, I put a tweet out, Dear bats Richard, here we're putting a train line through one side of the wood. Would you mind awfully if you could like move yourself to the other side of the wood because we can't afford 100 million pound batshed. Love Tycey. I mean it's just insane. And the guy running HS2 said he would do it again. That level of waste and an abuse of taxpayers cash, £100 million on a concrete tunnel, that doesn't help the bats and will make no difference whatsoever. I mean that is, in my view, that's negligence. The bloke should be put on trial, should be sent to jail for abuse of taxpayers money. It's grotesque. So that's just one mad example and.

There'S lots of that wastage all over.

The place and it's, it's cascading into us the moment we don't know what to do with some of this stuff. The. All this dei, Diversity, Equality and Inclusion legislation. Well intentioned. But actually, maybe, maybe you just tell everybody we're all equal. We're going to employ people based on, on your ability and qualifications to do the job, not on your shape, your size, your gender, your skin color, your sexuality. No one gives two hoots and just learn how to do the job and roll your sleeves up and do it well and be a team player. So this DEI has completely taken over big business. It's completely taken over the government.

Well, they're unwinding it all now in America, aren't they?

They are unwinding it in America, which is a great thing and it leads to a total collapse of productivity. So for example, there's something like 600,000 more people working in the public sector than five or six years ago. And yet productivity is going down. You can clearly see the public services do not work as well as they did five or six years ago. So simple things like the 2010 Equalities act, well intentioned. Being completely abused by a whole load of folk. Sometimes something is so broken you can't tweak it, fiddle around with it, scrap it, bin it, start again. And that's just one example. And that would save businesses huge amounts of time and nonsense. Another example, gdpr.

Oh my God.

Which basically means those ridiculous cookies that pop up on your phone or your tablet every time you try and go into a website. Drives you bonkers. What on earth do we need that for? We don't. It's mad EU legislation that drives us all bonkers, costs an absolute fortune, achieves the square root of zip. Scrap the whole thing. You have a very simple short law a couple of pages long that says you can't sell someone's data without their consent. End of story. It's all you need. Job done.

I went through that GDPR nonsense.

I mean, and if you get rid of that, you see, then you don't need a whole department called the information Commissioner's office or whatever, a whole load of people complaining and playing the game. All this stuff achieves nothing. It doesn't make anything. It doesn't do anything. It just irritates entrepreneurs and creates bungling bureaucracy. And what it does, it makes work for lawyers and the like. And there's nothing worse than lawyers and accountants running a business or running a country. Oh, we've got a lawyer running this country. Funny that. I mean, look, we need the odd lawyer here and there. And if anybody's listening, who's a lawyer, I love you, really, but it's just at the end of the day, advisors advise, directors decide, entrepreneurs decide. And it's the same in government. You cannot have a government that is run by civil servants and lawyers. They can give the advice, but you need people running departments and running the country who've actually got the courage to say, nonsense. We're going to do this stuff and we're going to do it now. We've listened to the advice and yeah, do you know what? Someone might sue me. Well, look forward to seeing you in court, pal. But we're going to do this stuff and we're going to make people better off. We're going to make the country confident, we're going to make it grow and we're going to improve people's lives.

Why can labor not see this is it? Do they fundamentally believe that it's the state that's the creation of everything as opposed to the entrepreneurs? I mean, that is a very.

Yeah, it's a whole different philosophy, which is that the state knows best and the state will tell you what to do, when to do, and you will, you will comply. And don't you dare step outside the box of.

But the state doesn't have any revenue without the people of the state. It doesn't build anything without the entrepreneurs that build it.

Don't worry about that, my friend. No, no, no, just. We'll just take it straight out of your pocket. So if, if, if you've earned a bit, then we'll take a bit more. We'll take a moment because, because obviously we, the state, the socialist state, will spend your money better than you will. We will be able to get better value, we'll negotiate better contracts than the New World. And of course you and I know that's complete and utter twaddle. But that is the view of the socialist Marxist. Wow. And so they, at the end of the day, look, governments are there to, to do stuff that individuals and communities can't, like build a huge motorway or defend the nation with armies, run a police force for example, or even, even that sort of thing. Actually you could say, well actually that's under question. You've got lots of people now employing basically private security forces to protect areas because the police are failing to do it. So even that sort of thing is starting to break down. But fundamentally the role of government is to do stuff that groups of individuals can't do. And governments can fund things, but they're always very bad at managing things. So I quite like the joint venture model where for example, people are getting very excited, quite rightly about some of the utility companies being ripped off, the water companies privatized, and they basically didn't put in smart regulations. And so the whole system got ripped off by some pretty aggressive global private equity groups. But what you could do is say, well I'll tell you what, if it's a monopoly like water industry is, or the electricity transmission network or the gas transmission network, why not have a 50, 50 JV where you say, look, we'll have 50% public ownership, we'll have 50% long term pension fund ownership, British pension funds on behalf of British pensioners, but privately managed by smart people. So when they have a good year, pension funds benefit on behalf of British pensioners and the taxpayer benefits. And you can give a good bonus to the, to the bosses running the company. When it has a bad year, we will take it on the chin. But you can invest long term thinking and you're aligned. Okay, that's what I call a win win situation in a monopolistic type environment. So that's where the government can say, look, we'll help with the funding long term, but we need someone smart to manage it. And the truth is you don't get smart entrepreneurs running civil service departments. Which brings me on to another way that we should change the way we run this country, which is what they do in America. When you get a new secretary of state for a department, he or she will bring in a good bunch of people from the private sector for whom it's their civic duty. If you get the call up to go into the administration, you're going to take a pay cut for a few years. It's your civic duty. You go in, you get stuck in, you help out poacher turn gamekeeper and then you go back into private sector and it's a tick in the box on the cv. We need that here. New Secretary of State should bring in 20 or 30 people from the private sector to run the department, to kick some backsides and to make stuff happen. Government's been elected, got a mandate, it's going to get it done and we don't want people blocking it in the way. And I think we've got to be really. We've seen how the Civil Service is a major block. It was a block on Brexit, it was a block on getting stuff done, a block on getting rid of daft regulations. Even the Labour parties now realizing they're a block. You've got to say to these people, listen, folks, we've got an agenda. We've been elected to do it, we're going to do it. Either you're going to get behind us and do it, or in the nicest possible way, you're best off going and getting a job, otherwise we're going to fall out. Come back to the beginning of your first question. Is the UK done for? No. If we adopt this form of this sort of bold, courageous leadership, and that's what is required, otherwise, yes, we're done for.

So give me a statistical percentage likelihood that reform win the next election. Don't be biased.

Well, I was quite struck last week when someone at a business dinner said to me, the next election is yours to lose.

Well, I mean, you've got the popularity at the moment, haven't you?

So we're leading the polls. There's another YouGov poll out today saying that we're just. I think we're 26% Labour, 25 Tories at 21. Look, give or take, you've got three parties trading somewhere in the 20s. First of all, it's great for interest in democracy that you've got a new player on the block with some new ideas, some new people that is in the mix, so that people can say, well, at least they're having a debate about stuff, challenging the status quo. I may or may not like what they say. Here's the other point, though. You don't have to like someone to vote for them because you think they're going to make you better off. A lot of people voted for Donald Trump not because they liked him, because they thought he would make them better off, as opposed to the alternative. And I think the likelihood is growing by the month because people can see what we are. They can see we've got a courageous plan and life would be Boring. If you agreed with everything, you don't have to agree with everything we stand for. But if you agreed with 70 to 80% and if you said, overall, the two main parties have messed it up. Right, let's give these guys a go. They have been around the block a few times. They've got a track record of success. They're talking a good game. Well, okay, let's give them a go. So I think the likelihood is growing. We've got council elections this May and I think we can do really well in some of these councils. Obviously quite a lot of the elections have been cancelled, which is shocking. Only dictators cancel elections, not democracies. But anyway, then we've got devolved nation elections in Wales and Scotland next year. We could win Wales. Think about that. It's been labour for 20 plus years. We could win Wales. That would be remarkable. And if we get that opportunity to run a council, to run a devolved nation and do that, well, then we can say to people, actually, we can do this stuff, let us run the country and we'll sort it out, turn it around.

So what your chances? Give me a percentage.

Right now I'm bullish. 60, 40. I'm a buyer.

Wow, gotta be bullish. So what would be reform's main policies to get this country growing? This recent budget should warn you that your pension is not safe and secure and they're coming for your inheritance. Do you even know how much is in your pension or where your pension is invested? Add to this the recent inheritance tax grab on your pensions and the risk of a market crash. You probably didn't know this and I didn't until recently, but physical gold can be added to your pension pot. Gold is inheritance tax free and has grown 700% in the last 20 years. You probably know from my content I'm investing heavily in silver and gold and that's why I've partnered with Direct Bullion. Myself and Nigel Farage are brand ambassadors and direct bullion can help you with gold to protect and grow your pension. I buy my gold and silver from direct bullion and I don't earn any money on any purchases of gold or silver if you buy direct from direct bullion. So if you go to robmore.directbullion bullion.com you can get a great price on your silver and gold and you can get the pension gold investing guide completely for free. As you know, I don't do many strategic partnerships and when I do, I do them with people who are credible who've been doing it A long time who invest in things that I invest in too. And gold and silver's going wild. I'm investing heavily in gold and silver and I recommend you check out robmore.directbullion.com.

Fundamentally, we've got to make work pay at every level. You've got to lift the starting point at which you pay income tax so that it pays to go to work. That is absolutely critical. We've got to make it much easier for entrepreneurs. So getting rid of daft regulations, lifting the starting point of paying VAT, let's say to 150 grand at current levels, getting rid of daft regulations like IR35. Small businesses are the lifeblood, the entrepreneurial energy of the nation. So you've got to make that a really positive attraction. You've got to scrap inheritance tax, got to retain the wealth creators here, attract back a whole load of people who've left, attract in lots of investors and really successful people who might say, yeah, actually, you want, I'm going to pay up front for the right to live in the UK and benefit from all that's incredible about the uk. And then you've got to reform all the public services. You've got to be brave enough to say, for example, on health care, still free at the point of delivery. But as we started to talk about the last election, do you know what, if you can afford to pay a bit more for your health care, we'd quite like you to, to ease the pressure on the the nhs. So we'll give you a bit of an incentive to ease that pressure on the NHS by taking your health issue health aware. So we could give you basic rate tax relief if you go into self pay, right, still free at the point of delivery before anybody gets all terribly upset. And we have a grown up debate about how we do health care in this country. So none of this pathetic nonsense that is just juvenile that we had before the last election. 24 hours to save the NHS. Grow up. Literally. We've got 8 million people almost on our waiting lists. 8 million people. If you go independent, you can get a hip replacement in a fortnight. Might take you six months on the NHS. I've polled it. 80% of people don't care. Two hoots who cures the pain sorts out the issue. Just get me pain free, please. So the NHS comes back to this point, they should be buying lots of consultant appointments and operations and capacity from the independent sector, which would then mushroom in size and grow. Competition drives down prices, drives up quality. So we should reform the Way we do health care, I repeat, still free at the point of delivery. So labour are just beginning to come to the to us and attack us on health care and they're wrong, they're going to get stuffed on it. So that's that. We've got to freeze immigration, okay? There's no point growing an economy at 1% a year, growing the population at 1.5% a year. You're still getting poorer per person, folks. Okay, we've got 9 million people economically inactive in this country, 5 million people on out of work benefits, right? We need to get train up our own people and motivate them to get back to work. And sometimes there is a bit of carrot and stick and so we've got to get our own people back to work. So the only net zero we want is net zero Immigration, smart immigration is a great thing. Highly skilled, highly qualified people who come to the UK and say I'm going to integrate, I'm going to work and I'm going to learn the lingo. Brilliant. Well, welcome aboard folks. But you can't bring 10 dependents who are not going to learn the lingo and not work. That doesn't work for anybody. And big business has got away with conning politicians in the last 15 years to say we need lots more cheap, low skilled overseas labor. That's an excuse not to invest in capital equipment. Very simple. If you can't afford the labor, you got two choices. You either pay more for the labor or you invest in capital equipment to replace the labor. It's literally how the combine harvester was invented. So I'm not accepting all of this stuff we rely on. We have to have more Labor. In the 1980s, when the economy was growing at 2.5 to 3.5% every year, our net immigration was about averaging 30 to 40,000 a year. It's now averaging 3/4 of a million a year. Right? Big difference. And guess what? The public services worked, health care worked, social care was in a much better shape than it is today and people were people getting better off. So actually restricting the size of the population, restricting the supply of labor makes the people who are here work harder, be more productive and better off. And that's a good thing. So we do that and then we scrap the scrap the lunacy of net zero, which is killing jobs, it's killing industries like our steel industry, our automotive industry, our chemicals industry, and therefore it's killing growth and it's killing our economy.

Why?

Why? Because it's leading to much higher energy prices. So we've got the highest electricity prices in the developed world. Our electricity costs three or four times more than in the us. The US is growing two and a half to three and a half percent a year. We're not growing at all. We're flatlining. The primary reason is that we're uncompetitive. So we're uncompetitive in, in steel, for example. And we're all businesses use large amounts of power if that power is very expensive. If our gas is very expensive because we're not using our own gas, you'll hear a load of nonsense. Oh, gas is sold on the international markets. So whether we use our own or buy it elsewhere, it doesn't matter. Garbage, right? Why is American gas a third of the price of our gas? Because they use their own gas. Long term procurement contracts, they keep it domestically. This stuff is not rocket science. We are being lied to on a colossal scale. I'm going to ask you a question, right? Lots of people are told, oh, we've got to worry about CO2 levels. What percentage rob of the atmosphere is CO2?

I don't know.

Are you worried about CO2?

I didn't listen, in chemistry.

I have a guess.

I'm gonna guess it's low.

I need a number.

Oh, you're gonna make money.

You forced me to a number earlier.

Yeah, but on something you're an expert.

In, you basically have a guess.

7%.

Good man. For having a guess. Slightly embarrassing on the result because it is 0.043 of 1%. Okay.

Yeah. So it's nothing.

It's, it's nothing. Right? It's in a, in a, in, in Wembley Football Stadium. It's like two people. No, it's not, it's not even that. It's like a couple of limbs of a hundred thousand people in Wembley Stadium, right? It's just a drop in the ocean. And it wouldn't, it would make no difference if it was, if it was, if it was 10 times more, it would make no difference. The quantity of CO2 in a greenhouse is two or three times that level. And lots of people spend lots of times in greenhouses. This whole thing is insane. CO2 is essential for life because without CO2 there's no photosynthesis, there's no plant growth. We all die. It's as simple as that. So I'm not worried about CO2 levels. We've been sold a massive lie. Vested interests are making an absolute fortune.

What are the lies we're sold and what are the vested interests?

The vested interests are making A fortune by saying, for example, consulting on how to reduce CO2 and there's a difference between CO2 and carbon. But all of these wind tub wind turbines and solar panels, they're all subsidized, billions of pounds a year. And those that are involved in those industries, they're making fortunes out of huge subsidies. Mrs. Smith in Boston, her energy bill is double what it was five years ago in real terms, net of inflation, double. And people are struggling, people are struggling to pay the bills. So at every level, it's making us uncompetitive and it's an outrage and we're going to scrap it. And Donald Trump is scrapping it. He's pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and they're going to grow gangbusters. And look, we all care about the environment, but this arrogant assumption that the two key drivers of climate change, which has happened for millions of years and always will, the two key drivers of it is the power of the sun and the power of volcanoes. Do we seriously think we can stop the power of either of those things? If you get to net zero tomorrow in the world, how long do you think it is before sea level, which some people are worried about, stops rising?

You're not asking me, are you?

To ask me? I am sorry, I'm putting you on the spot.

You are. No idea.

6 months, 12 months? 10 years?

I'm guessing it's more from what you're saying.

The experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say if we get to net zero tomorrow, they do say, with high confidence, which is reassuring, that it's somewhere between 200 and 1,000 years before sea level stops rising. In other words, firstly, they've not got a Scooby clue. Secondly, in areas where you have got some issues around sea level defenses, maybe it'd be a lot cheaper to use a bit of concrete, bit of steel, bit of cement, bit of aggregate, make the concrete and build some sea level defenses. So in my constituency, we've got some old defences that are 70 year old. They need sorting out in the next 20 years. Well, let's do that. Hell of a lot cheaper than thinking you can stop the power of sea level. This is, this is an absolute outrage, what is being imposed on this nation whilst China is building a new coal fired power station every single week. I mean, it's insane. Coal consumption and production is at world record levels, world record levels going up 2, 3, 4% a year in places like China and India. So you cannot make this stuff up. And it annoys me so Much that rich, powerful vested interests are ripping off decent, ordinary folk and pensioners. And if we scrap net zero and we didn't have expensive energy, then you wouldn't need a winter fuel allowance because your energy bills might be dramatically lower. That's how you make progress.

What about the state of London? Because it feels much less safe than it used to. A lot of people talk about, you know, they're getting their phone stolen or their watches stolen. What's the state of what was once the greatest capital city in the world?

And it still can be restored to that status of the greatest capital city in the world, but it's not at the moment. We've just got to be honest about it. Look, it's. It's not a safe place. And people are leaving London, they're leaving the country. I walk on the pavement now, close to the building, to reduce the risk of a cyclist coming up and trying to nick my phone. I'm slightly addicted to my phone, so it's really hard not to be looking at it all the time. But I'm utterly conscious of it and in certain areas now, I won't use it. And I'm now genuinely looking at buying a strap. You can get these straps so that it's much harder to nick out your hand. What a mad state of affairs. Knife crime is, is off the dial. I mean, thankfully, we don't have, like they do in America, you know, huge levels of gun crime, but we've got a. We've got a knife crime epidemic, a machete epidemic. You got to be really blunt about it, I think, and you've got to clamp down really hard. It's. It's the only way.

It is the problem in the police. Is it the funding? Is it the. I guess, the weakness of leadership? Why do we not punish more for crimes?

It's a combination of all those factors, so there's no deterrent. People don't think they'll be caught. If they are caught, the chances are they'll get a slap on the wrist. And you might need 30 or 40 slaps on the wrist before you might get some form of custodial sentence. And it all takes too long.

Which basically makes crime virtually legal then.

Correct. And so then. And there's a thing called broken windows. So you've got to sort crime out at the lowest level. So every single shoplifting offense should be prosecuted and no ifs, no buts. And if people commit crime, actually there has to be a sanction, whether it's custodial or whether it's community, whether it's actually going around and painting out the graffiti that you've just put on or. Or whether it's. There has to be a sanction for everything so that people take pride in their community. Just the other day my other half saw someone. She spotted this bloke walking into a Tesco store and he just. He just literally looked like a shoplifter. And you can tell there's a certain type. And I'm not a great fan of hoods and masks, bluntly. And you know, why would you need a hoodie and a mask on if you're walking into a Tesco's when you're not in a pandemic or all the CO2, maybe. Okay, so this geezer looked like a shoplifter and sure enough she just followed him and there he was, stuffing the chocolate into his pocket and just walked out. So she told the security guard, that bloke's just nicked a load of chocolate. The security guard says, I'm not allowed to do anything.

He's the security guard.

Security guard in the Tesco's?

Yeah.

So what's the point of a security guard if he can't do anything, right? Literally. Turns out it's in their contract, they're not allowed to do anything. So, dear Tesco's, why are you employing security guards if they're not allowed to do anything? Maybe you should have the alternative, which is, and I've got quite familiar with this recently, that the security guard should actually apprehend the guy, carry out a citizen's arrest and Tesco's and all the other stores do what they are legally entitled to do, which is carry out a private prosecution of every single shoplifter, every single one of them. And if the state judicial system can't cope, then you know what, let's be creative. Let's say I'm going to build a whole parallel judicial system for shoplifters and you're going to be in court that day, right? And you're going to get a sanction. And maybe the same for knife crime. The custodial system, the cps, the courts are completely gummed up. Do you want allocate some money and build a whole separate line of judicial process alongside be entrepreneurial about how you solve this problem, because otherwise we're never going to turn this stuff around. And people have to understand you can't walk into shops and just load up your pockets. And because people now see other people doing it, you, you're getting all sorts of people who don't Who've got the money they don't need to shoplift. But they're sort of saying, well, Jimmy's doing next to me, so I might as well have a go. And that's how societies cascade down. And then you get, oh, Tommy over there is carrying a knife, so I'll carry a knife. Jimmy's done some graffiti over there, so I'll do some graffiti.

And this is the broken window.

This is the broken window.

Is it Giuliani?

It was Rudy Giuliani, the early 90s in New York, and he turned around what was perceived as a basket case of a city in good order by a broken windows policy. And where you say everything matters from the. From literally from the ground up.

So one small broken window.

One small broken window, right? Repair it. Graffiti, clean it up, litter on the ground, pick it up, bins overflowing, empty them, all of this stuff. And it's a community thing. And everybody gets stuck in. It's our community. And, you know, Nigel Farage has got a brilliant new sort of slogan for reform. Family, Community, Country. So if you and your family are working hard and achieving and becoming better off, then you're contributing to your local community. And if all the families in that community are working hard and getting together, your community is becoming better off. If you care for that community and if you're better off, then you can do some stuff for the community on a sort of pro bono basis, whatever it is, some charitable activity, helping the local church, helping the village hall, whatever. And if the community is better off, and if all of our community is better off, guess what? The country becomes better off. So you build it up from the grassroots, individuals as families and, you know, families are. We should celebrate the family. We need to give tax incentives to families because we need more children, we need to increase the birth rate and so that all of these things are interrelated. But that's how you build a sense of confidence and pride and give it a positive example to your children. Create a family, build a local community, and that's how you build a great nation.

Is it difficult to be a. A businessman and a politician? Because like you said, you want people with business experience in doing their bit, but if they've got to take a pay cut, how could you balance being an entrepreneur and a politician?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think that having sort of sat in parliament for a bit, I think it should almost be obligatory. If you're not a minister, actually, you should have a second job. I want you to be doing something in the real world, so that you understand some of the specific issues that are a problem, that are a pain in the backside, that annoy us all, that you can see where things are going well and you can go back to Parliament and say, this is working well, folks over here, this is a problem, we've got to sort it out. So that's point number one. Point two. If you've got a track record of success, then actually the nation should build on that. The end of the day. There's an old expression, if you want something doing, give it to a busy person. Chances are they'll get it done faster because they know how to delegate and just get stuff done and have the right reporting structures. You know, I'll try and I'll get myself into terrible tribe.

Please do, please.

But, you know, probably, look, if you want someone to run a big business, you know, you're probably not going to go to the local job center and employ someone who's never had a job. They're probably not going to know what to do. Some people say that's a bit harsh, but that is the bottom line. And so I think that we do need more successful people, not just in the world of business, some of the best people in the charitable sector, some of the best people in education, some of the top head teachers, bring them into the Department of Education, that sort of thing. That's what I say about bringing in real experts to run the department, kick.

Some backsides and I'm sure they'd want to help.

They do. What they don't want to do, though, is bang their head against a brick.

Wall and nothing happens.

And nothing happens. And for them to be perceived as window dressing. And that's what happens at the moment.

Right.

So people get frustrated and leg it after a year, year and a half, saying, I can't make a difference.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I do think that we need more successful business. Look, I always had an interest in current affairs, always had an interest in politics and I sort of said to myself, I'm going to try and make some cash and then give a bit back in some shape or form. You never quite know you got stuck in and things happened and we just seem to be making a bit of progress. So, yeah, I think we need to. And I don't think it's good enough for successful people. I'm a great fan of people making money, but you've then got to do something with it. What's your legacy? Have you created a. Have you helped build a village hall? Have you given something to to build a legacy in your community, whatever it is, you've got to do something with your success. Don't think it's an unreasonable view on life, but the way you want to encourage people.

But at the moment, success is not encouraged exactly, in this country.

And so. And it's. It's sort of frowned upon.

And taxed to death.

And taxed to death. So people say, well, I've been taxed so much, I've got nothing left to give charity, and I'm just going to leg it because there's too much grief out there. So that is. That's bad. We've got to turn that round. Philanthropy is a great thing in America. People give away way more than we do over here as a percentage. Way, way more.

So we're good for time, are we?

Yeah, we're in good shape.

Yeah.

And I think we need to encourage that. But it's a whole mindset and I think. But again, I'm truly optimistic that with the right leadership, with the right common sense, that this is all doable. It really is, because there is a core to what it means to be British. There's a core to our values, to our traditions, which is still respected all over the world. There is just something in the brand. The danger is that we could lose it. People are looking and saying, you guys have got such great heritage and such a great brand, but what's up with you? You're having a problem, folks. And I think. But I think we can get it back. There's a. I know it's a bit quaint, but we invented the game of cricket. And the thing about cricket is that it's a great game. It can be very competitive. I play sort of in my youth, I was a wicket keeper, and you can have banter at the crease between, you know, the wicket keeper and the batsman, but ultimately the umpire's decision is finally. And there is that gentlemanly sense of fair play. When the finger goes up by the umpire, you don't complain, you don't shout and scream at the ref or the umpire. In the game of cricket, you accept the decision and you walk off. And that sense of fair play encapsulated by cricket is actually a sense of our British values, just a sense of, yes, we can be competitive, yes, we can tease each other, but ultimately we've got a sense of decency, of compassion, of trust, centered around our Christian heritage. Our foundation is as a Christian nation.

Are those values dying in the uk?

They are under serious threat and we have to have the courage to say, we've always been a Christian nation and we always will be, we can welcome people from other faiths or no faith, that's your personal choice. But when you come to enjoy the great privilege of living in the United Kingdom, you respect that Christian heritage, you respect those British and Christian values that I think are deeply intertwined. And you say, yeah, I want to be part of this, I want to help grow it and extend it, and that's fantastic. But in the nicest possible way, if you want to operate under a different legal system, as opposed to the English legal system, if you want to operate under Sharia law, that's not going to happen in the uk. If you want Sharia courts, there's plenty of other lovely countries that you can go and enjoy Sharia courts in. But it ain't gonna happen in the uk and we put that in our contract. Last year, in the general election, I had the courage to start talking about this stuff.

Do people call you racist for doing that?

No, they don't, actually. I get huge appreciation. We get huge appreciation for just having the courage to say, this is who we are as a nation. This is who we are as a bedrock of values. This is, this is our Christian heritage. And folks, it's a good thing and it's always going to, that's the way it's going to remain in this great nation of ours. And we might have a few people who's having a bit of a wobble about it, but, but that's, it's, it's, it shouldn't need saying, but it does a bit like. And again, this will upset a few folk, but there are only two sexes and there are only two genders, male and female, boys and girls. And I get the biggest round of applause at campaign events when I tell that as a fact. And that's one of the reasons now why we are getting huge support amongst 14 to 24 year olds.

When my son came back from school, my son is 13, this was maybe two years ago, he's 11 years old, he came back from school and he said, dad, there are 57 genders. That's what they'd been taught in a private school and like, each to their own. I'm gonna say, but how is that not confusing as anything? I couldn't handle 57 options of anything, let alone what my sex and identity is.

And I'm just not having it. I'm just not having it. There are two genders because do you know how the word gender, how it started out?

Don't ask. Me questions again, Richard. I failed on them all.

Gender started out because when you're sort of creating forms and box ticking in the uk, the middle classes were a little bit sort of, you know, he had the word sex, male or female, and that was a little bit sort of, ooh, don't want to talk about sex. So let's create a new word, gender, male or female. I mean, that's literally sort of where it starts. Right. I'm being a bit cynical, but. Yeah, but you see where I'm going with this. There are two of each and, you know, if you want to dress in a different, different sex, well, that's your call. It's not for me, but I'm just not having all this nonsense that you can be a cat on a Monday, you can be a fox on a Wednesday, and, and something else on Friday. It's just, it's a nonsense, it's ludicrous and it's this, it's a sign of, you know what it's a sign of? It's a sign of a decadent society that's lost its way, that's become complacent in, in everything where people haven't got the courage yet, it's become too easy and people haven't got the courage to say the difference between right and wrong. And you've just got to call this stuff out. I'm just not having it. We're not having it and the nation shouldn't have it. And in most sensible countries around the world, they just won't tolerate this, this, this gibberish.

So I've got two main questions and then we'll go quick fire. So why is it that we're taxed on what we earn and we're taxed on what we spend, we're taxed on what we buy and then we're taxed on what we sell, we're taxed by our state and then we're taxed by our council or county, and we're taxed when we're alive and we're taxed when we're dead.

We certainly shouldn't be taxed when we're dead.

But we are.

But we are. So that's double taxation. Look, to run a civilized country that protects its nation, you have to have some tax, okay? The key thing is, however you tax people, let's do it smartly and let's, as a government, spend taxpayers money because it's not government money. And that's a key thing. We have to understand.

I get triggered when I see government funding Always tweet about it. There is none.

It's the taxpayers cash that they've basically entrusted the people running the country or the council to spend on their behalf. And the natural assumption is please spend it well. You'll get it wrong a few times, fine. But however you tax people is less important than how well you spend it. Because if you spend it well and do a good job, then you don't need to tax people unnecessarily. So it's the way you spend it that's the most important thing. Stop wasting it. Encourage competition. And that's the critical thing.

People make out though, that, you know, we need all this money, but in reality we're just wasting so much. If we wasted less, we wouldn't have touch as much.

It's much more simple than that. Who will spend a pound? Who will spend a pound in your pocket better on your behalf? Will you spend it better and get more value for that pound and, and negotiate a good deal with the local coffee seller or the local ice cream seller? Or will the government spend it better on your behalf?

Well, this is the fundamental problem, especially if they haven't run a business, it's not their money and they don't have the taste there.

You see, people spending other people's money won't spend it as well as how you spend your own money. And so that's why you should always try and ensure that it's the private sector that is spending money. That's why my model of a joint venture, when you're running sort of big, is a better model where you say, well, actually, I'm going to get the best of both worlds.

Okay, so I've saved this question for the last main question. I'd love your thoughts on this. Andrew Tate says he's running for Prime Minister and he says he set up a political party called Bruv. What do you think about that?

Look, it's a free country, believe in free speech, he's entitled to do it, but it's not going to go anywhere because he doesn't know what he's doing. And, but fundamentally competition's a good thing if he thinks he's going to appeal to a certain bunch of folk. Yeah, there's obviously the issue of, of the, the alleged crimes that he's, he's, he's been alleged to have committed and things, and I'm not going to get into that, but fundamentally it's really hard and it should be hard putting yourself forward in the world of politics and say, I can do a Good job running a council or running the country and you should be subject to scrutiny. And naturally people are going to, are going to want to examine people really carefully and that's what is happening with us with reform and that's fine. I've got nothing to hide. So we're making progress in a first past the post electrolyte system as we've got, it's even harder. But ultimately people look at the various options and say, yeah, okay, these people have got the best chance of doing that. With regard to Andrew Tate, it might have garnered a few headlines, caused a bit of a laugh, but it ain't going to go anywhere.

So quick fire round. What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

I bought a property in an auction and I'm a property guy without seeing it, basically without really knowing. And fortunately it was okay. So that was, that was an old fashioned punt.

Was it big numbers?

Well, it was a long time ago, but it was just it for inflation, so that was a bit bullish.

So you just bought a property blind?

I bought a property blind.

Still own it?

No, I owned it for three or four years, invested in it, made a bit of money and I probably slightly overpaid for it, but I made some money. So it wasn't a disaster. That was probably. That was a not recommended procedure.

What's the most disruptive thing someone's ever said or done to you?

Most disruptive?

This show's called Disruptors.

It is called Disruptors, of course, that's a great question. I think it's the quantity of abuse that we get. If you go into the world, if you put your head above the parapet, you're gonna get a whole bunch of stuff and I can deal with it. I've got a lot of scars on my back, but it's the impact on one's family and kids that that is really difficult. So, yeah, just the abuse that comes in that's pretty disruptive because then they start to say, a, they're worried for you and B, they're worried for, well, this could impact on my own job prospects because they've got the same surname. So you get into all of that stuff that's pretty disruptive to a family. And it's why most good people who are tempted to go in politics ultimately decide I'm not going to, because they're so hard. Because the disruptive element on your character, your finances, your family, your children, your other half is so brutal.

What's your biggest failure or regret.

Financially? I think my biggest regret was, was When I was in dubai back in 1997, I saw a model of the plans to build the Hong Kong for the Middle east. And I thought to myself, be good to open an estate agency now in Dubai. And if I had done, I would have made a proper fortune. So financially, that's probably a slightly humorous regret. And biggest failure. We've all got them. I don't know what was my biggest failure. I'll have to come back to you. There's plenty of them, though.

Okay. If Reform don't win the next election, would that be a failure? Maybe for Britain.

I think it would be a great loss for the uk without question, because I think the country is. We're spending more than we're earning, and if you keep spending more than you earn, you end up going bust and the country's going bust. So we. We have to change course. And it would be a. That actually probably would be ultimately the biggest failure we've got. We've got to turn this round. And I can't see any of the other main political parties with any credibility being able to do that.

And final question. This show is called Disruptors. What does the word disruptive mean to you?

Oh, I think challenging the status quo with bold, wild, often mad ideas. Brainstorming is a great thing. You've got to have the mad ideas that people just lob onto the table, and every so often, there's one that's absolutely brilliant. I mean, imagine if. Imagine if people like Bill Gates hadn't come up with the idea for Microsoft. Imagine if they hadn't come up with the idea for PayPal or other such disruptive ideas that completely changed the world. Steve Jobs with Apple with the iPhone. These were massively disruptive ideas. James Dyson with his new version of the Hoover. These. These disrupted the status quo that nobody thought could be done, but have ultimately changed the world and for the better.

So are Reform the most disruptive UK party?

Yes.

Perfect way to end. Thank you, Richard.

Great. Thank you. This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs stand out through podcasting, video and social content. Visit disruptivemedia.co uk to learn more.