Suella Braverman | Why the UK is in Crisis

What's honestly the state of the UK right now? Honestly, Honestly, honestly.

I think we're in a crisis, frankly, economically, in terms of our culture and identity, in terms of our public safety, and I worry for the future of our country and the next generation.

What is the culture of Great Britain now? Is it great anymore? Like you say, culture. I don't actually know what we are anymore.

I think that's a really good observation because I think over recent decades, the obsession or the cult of multiculturalism has led us.

You called it a cult.

I do, yeah. Because I think there has been a left wing inspired obsession with multiculturalism, that diversity is our strength and that know people should come into our country at unlimited levels and everyone's welcome and it doesn't really matter what the impact is on our society, on our resources, on our culture, on our community. And I think decades of that approach have led to injustice, scandal and a weakened sense of what it is to be British and what it is to be a proud, cohesive society.

So all those things you said about cults, scandals, multiculturalism, funnily enough, I've got them on my questions list. Let's talk about economically first. And because I have a theory that the economy is perhaps the most important part of our country, some people say, oh, yeah, but health care is. But you have no health care if you don't have a good solid economy. So why is the economy so broken, I think. And was it your party's fault?

Listen, I was, I think, the first Conservative MP to say sorry after the defeat last year at the general election. I stood on the podium in Fareham where I was declared the winner. And one of the first things I said whilst we were losing across the country was, I'm sorry, and I'm sorry because of some of the failings of the last Conservative government. There were some things which were good, but there were some things which we really failed at. And when it comes to the economy, I think it's a mixed picture. Listen, we inherited a deficit of 10% in 2010. We saw unemployment almost double when we came to office in 2010, public sector net borrowing was out of control. And so we had to take really difficult decisions under David Cameron, George Osborne, and that's why there was austerity, lots of constraint on our public budgets and our public spending.

You did have 14 years, though.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that the result of that approach was we got the deficit down, unemployment fell, we actually created. We've had a jobs miracle in the last 14 years with high levels of employment, record levels of employment under the Conservatives, which is the best way out of poverty and the best way towards economic growth. Could we have cut taxes more?

Absolutely. Isn't that what Conservatives are supposed to be?

Right. And the pandemic really came along and kind of changed the whole format because up until the pandemic we were, I think, you know, our record on the economy was, was good. The pandemic kind of really changed all of that. And there were record levels of public spending. We, we paid people to stay at home through the furlough scheme. We were over, I think we overspent, we overcompensated and we overreacted to the pandemic and in a way that we can only tell with hindsight, and that has come at huge economic cost that we're paying now. So the, the tax Burden reached a 70 year high under the Conservatives, largely because of the pandemic and that was on our watch. So in that regard, you know, there's an economic fallout. So I think it's a mixed picture when it comes to the economy now, where we are in spring 2025, where we've had nearly a year of this Labour government, I think things are getting really bad for the economy we're seeing.

They're worse than a year ago.

Oh, without a doubt, absolutely. I mean, listen, the Labour government is taxing people to the hilt and the most important people in many ways to our economy, wealth creators, job creators, people who produce our food, people who are entrepreneurs, workers, you know, self starters, innovators. No wonder we're losing thousands of business people, you know, a month, a week from this country because the UK is rapidly becoming a hostile environment to entrepreneurs.

So what do Labour not understand when they call to tax the rich or keep putting taxes up on the rich and they see 20,000 millionaires leave and what did like the richest man in the UK just left? Lakshmi Mittal. I put a LinkedIn post and there were so many people saying, I'll shut the door on the way out and obviously much more nasty things. This person has generated hundreds of billions in gross revenue for this country. He's gone. The Livingstone's now going, these are the richest people in the country. And there seems to be this, well, we tax the rich. Rich are greedy rich hoard the money, get rid of them. But why don't people understand that if you get rid of all the wealth creators, then you only have the middle and working class left to tax and so their tax burden will go up? How do you attract finance and how do you build buildings and how do you create more jobs if all the job creators and the builders and the innovators are all leaving? What do labor not understand?

Labor see the economy in quite binary terms and they think they are taxing the rich. Right. But what they're actually doing is they're taxing even the people who are just working class, middle class. They're actually affecting in a punitive way, very vulnerable people, pensioners. They're actually stripping away the winter fuel allowance from pensioners who may well find themselves on the poverty line. This, this is the problem with labor. They think, let's tax the rich. The rich can afford to pay more tax and we don't care if they leave the country. But actually that approach has, is, is so misguided that they actually end up penalizing the one man band and the small business owner who has scrimped and sacrificed and strived for decades to set up a little cafe on the high street and employs 10 people and really struggles to make ends meet, but provides a really good service, is an entrepreneur, is providing jobs, is creating a great amenity for the community. But they are up under extreme pressure because of Labour's measures on national insurance, for example, on legislation and more bureaucracy that Labour wants to impose. And something that really illustrated this to me was a few months ago when I was sitting in the chamber and I was in the debate on the Employment Rights Bill. This is Angela Rayner's flagship piece of legislation.

Like full employee rights from day one.

Absolutely.

You hire someone who's just going to sit and squat in your office and do no work and you can't get them out.

Yeah, exactly. And I was listening to the debate and I was listening to the Labor MPs talk about how wonderful this debate was. And a lot of the tone of their contributions to the debate centered around the bosses are really bad and evil and we need to provide dignity to the exploited workers and this bill is going to restore fairness in the workplace. And I actually stood up and I said, listen guys, you are, you're in the wrong decade. This is 2024. It was last year 2020, not 1984.

And it is 1984.

The bosses, the bosses that you describe as evil and demonizes, exploit, exploitative, are actually providing livelihoods for their workers, are providing services for their customers, are generating revenue for our country through taxation. We depend on employers and bosses and companies and the private sector for the growth in our economy. And if you keep attacking these, these people, we're all going to suffer because I tell you what? They're not going to hire the very workers that you claim to be standing up for and that's going to lead to more unemployment and that's going to lead to more hardship for, for many millions of people. And what have we seen as a result of the changes that labour have made already? Hiring rates have plummeted in recent months because no boss, no employer wants to take the risk on a new employee because the rights will be. This bill hasn't actually come into force yet, but it will be very difficult for employees to, for employers, sorry, to, to. To, you know, they might hire someone. You don't always know if they're going to be the right person.

The hiring process is a lottery. I have a hundred staff, I've probably hired a thousand people. The hiring process is a lottery and people now can use AI Chat GPT and come up with the perfect interview answers to all the questions. Some people are brilliant interviews and then that's the day it all starts to go down. So, yeah, it is a, it's not an exact science.

Yeah. And as an employer you need flexibility and time to assess if someone is right for the role. You know, on day probation period. Right, exactly. That's, you know, an interview is insufficient. Even two interviews or three interviews are not enough to judge whether someone is going to be a good member of your team. And this employment rights bill will give employees many more rights from day one, rights that they previously had to. They only accrue after two years in the role once they've actually proved themselves. And that's going to make it very hard a lot of this. You know, people are going to be able to bring grievances for unfair dismissal much more often and it's going to make hiring a legal minefield for employers. So that's one area where they are really increasing the amount of bureaucracy and red tape on employers. And of course we've got the increase to employers national insurance, which is costing many businesses, many small and medium sized businesses, businesses that I meet in my own constituency affair in Waterlooville, sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds and it may make the difference between, you know, life and death for some of these businesses.

So I can actually give a real life case study of this. I just don't understand why Labour don't understand this. I'm just going to keep banging the drum. I have 100 staff. So the national insurance increase worked out to us between 850 and £1,000 per staff member per year. So it's about 100 grand a year since Lockdown. Our margins wobbled and went up and down, but overall they're a bit down. So we need to probably make an extra 700 grand to net the 100 grand. So we've already, for the last three years, been looking into AI, and we had an emergency board meeting after the National Insurance rises and we're like the Employee Rights Bill, the National Insurance. Our strategy moving forward has to be to hire less people and use AI for the not just thrival, but survival of our business. So that is our reaction to their apparent support of the workers. Sometimes I wonder if this is just pr, like, you don't even need. You don't even need a degree. You don't. You could. At 16 years old, you could work out the logic of this. And everyone I know who's in business is saying the same thing, well, we'll just get AI, we're going to hire less, we're going to move our money abroad, we're going to go to Dubai where, you know, the taxes are less penal. So that's the National Insurance, the employee rights. So I guess when you've dated two or three times, you don't yet know if you want to marry that person because you don't quite know. They could be a narcissist, you never know. And I can tell you this, it takes six months to know if a staff member is right. For them to know if the company is right, it has to be equal. But for you to know if they're right, it's what it takes. And now if that's going to be removed, then people are. Employers are going to be stuck with unproductive people. Their HR bills are going to go through the roof. So then they're going to want to hire even less people and use less, use more AI. And we were talking outside about, do they not know this? And of course you, sir, thought they do know this. Should we just be straight? Do they just hate success? Do they just hate entrepreneurial people? Are they bitter about it? The schools they went to, you know, the fact that they're wealthy, do they just have a consumption mindset? What is this?

I think they have. Many of those people around the Cabinet table have not. Their political views have not really developed since their kind of student sensitivities when they lend Marxism, basically, and they've all. That's a kind of. That's infused throughout today's Labour Party. I actually don't see much big difference between Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves's politics and Jeremy Corbyn's you know, Keir Starmer wears a suit and looks quite professional and he was a lawyer. But actually, you know, both of them combined and judging by their actions and their decisions, they're as socialist as they come.

And Quasi was on the show, he called them far left socialists. Nigel Farage was on the show, he called them far left socialists. Apparently now they. That when they went into Downing street was told by someone who knows the place very well and saw it with his own eyes, they pulled down all the pictures of the premier previous prime ministers and put up all these socialists.

Yes.

Would you agree that communists, even communists.

Rachel Reeves has put up a portrait of one of the founding members, a lady member of the. I don't know what her name is, I'm not interested in her frankly. But one of the ladies who was a founding member of a communist party or branch or something like that in the car.

Do people not. Do people not study history and understand what happens in communism?

No. And again, the BBC has just come under attack for whitewashing communism. They've got a.

How do you mean whitewashing?

Well, they've got a kind of educational video on the BBC about what is communism. They omit to mention that millions of people have been killed at the hands of communist regimes and communist leaders throughout history and that it's actually led to brutality and oppression and the violation of human rights at huge scale. They've just described it in a very sanitized. And what might come across to the. Someone who doesn't know about communism as quite innocuous and actually quite good. I mean, this is what I mean. I don't think we are teaching enough about the evils of communism. Communism has been a brutal movement in our history and it's something that I think that people overlook.

Wow.

Yeah, look it up. The BBC was they. They described communism without mentioning the loss.

Of life and the fact that they're.

Dictatorship under Stalin and various communist leaders. I mean even today look at the communism around the world that still exists. You know, China is an interesting one. You know, there is a, an element of capitalism because there's a, you know, there's a lot of enterprise but it is a communist regime as well. And there's, you know, total violation of freedom of speech that it's effectively a police state. The Chinese Communist Party is the powerful, all ruling, all reigning organization in China. There's been mistreatment, abuse and torture really of minority groups. This is what communism brings to the world.

Wow. So I've got some questions on some of the Things you said. And what I also want to make sure we do is towards the end of the show talk about some things we think that are positive.

Yes, yes. We can't get all doom and gloom.

Well, I mean we have to, I believe we have to talk about the reality. You have to start there. But maybe I'll ask you what policies you might put in place or what things you might do to lift the economy. I mean low tax, low crime seems like a good place to start, but I guess that. I understand that. Anyway, I want to talk about you being Home Secretary. I mean you must know some stuff as Home Secretary. What are the biggest threats to this country? As someone whose job was in some ways to protect our country.

Listen, I think. Well, as Home Secretary you're responsible for three main areas. The first one is immigration and border control, the second one is policing and the third one is national security. And they're all really complex, really emotive and you know, have huge implications if things go wrong. And in, to a large degree there are excellent people working on the front line. We, you know, MI5 and National Crime Agency, you know, the thousands of people who wear the badge for the police forces around the country and people who work in the immigration sector trying to enforce our borders are, are, you know, really hardworking. They're brave people. Being a police officer is not for the faint hearted.

Oh, do you know what? Every time I see a police officer I say thank you for your service. Must be the worst job in the world. No idea why they do it.

Tough job. Their motive. I tell you, I've met, I've met now probably thousands of rank and file police officers all over the country and they're motivated by, I mean this will sound like a cliche but it's very inspiring and no, but they want to save lives and they really want to keep our country safe. And it's simple, it's inspiring and it's very, it's noble and people are really motivated by that and they, they, they work antisocial hours, they make a lot of sacrifices in their personal life. Very often they put their own safety and sometimes tragically their own lives at risk and sometimes they've lost their own lives in, in action.

Isn't divorce rate one of the highest in the police force as well? Isn't that like if you want to have a long marriage, don't marry a police officer? Is it one of those, I don't.

Know that statistic but I wouldn't be surprised because it puts a lot of strain on the person at a human level. So it's, you know, I have nothing but respect for anyone who signs up for. For that role. You asked what's the biggest threat, I.

Mean, or the biggest threats to the uk?

I mean, I. I would actually say that. I think. Listen, we've got. I. I think immigration is really the biggest crisis facing our country at the moment. More than the police forces fast growing immigration. Yeah. Because I think it has so many ripple effects on our economy, on our public services, on our country, and I think it's out of control. It's a level we've never seen before and it's. We urgently need to get a grip on illegal migration. We just saw this weekend a thousand people come into the country illegally on the boats.

That border problem this year, something of immigration.

Yeah. The number of people coming into. Into the country under Labour is on track to far exceed what previously went on under the Conservatives. Now, I'm not defending our record because we fail to stop the boats, but I think the level of people coming in illegally into our country, breaking into our country, is a national security crisis. We don't know who many of these people are. We lose track of them once they get into the country and many of them go on to harm our country. There is a public safety issue. I talked to police chiefs around the country when I was Home Secretary. They were many, a few of them in city areas were telling me, you know, the drug crime, the gang crime, has now is largely being perpetrated by people who are here illegally. There's statistics which have come out which have said that a quarter of all sex crimes are committed by foreigners. So you can't divorce the issue of immigration from public safety, law and order, national security. The two are very, very heavily interlinked.

Wow. And because then we've got this big scandal about the rape gangs at the moment, you put your head out there, you know, have you ever had. Do you worry about your own safety?

I have had death threats and threats of violence against me, my family. Yeah, definitely. Particularly when I was Home Secretary, because I spoke out against grooming gangs. I spoke out against the.

So you knew about it back then?

Yeah, When I was Home Secretary, I. I was very exercised by the scandal and injustice of the grooming gangs. And I went to Rochdale and I went to Rotherham and I met with some of the survivors of these rape gangs. They're now young women and they told me very graphic terms how they were targeted as teenage girls. They were vulnerable girls, they were targeted, they were abused, they were raped. Their lives were dead. Some of them became pregnant out of it, and they're now in their late 20s, their 30s. They're survivors. They're very inspiring women because they've overcome this ordeal, but some of them still don't have justice. Some of them. Some of these perpetrators, these rapists have still not been brought to trial.

So our Labor.

It's a scandal.

Our labor stopping it from coming out. Are they basically covering it up?

I. I think. I think. Listen, they. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to shine a light on the injustice Keir Starmer has branded.

Has this become political because it might affect votes and councils and things because of.

I. I think labor doesn't want to confront the inconvenient truth of the rape gangs or grooming gangs, because it challenges their view of multiculturalism. Actually comes back to that issue of multiculturalism. They don't want to upset the Muslim community.

Are all the rape gangs Muslim communities?

No. So in Rochdale and in Rotherham and in many of these northern towns where the rape gangs took place, the perpetrators were predominantly Pakistani Muslim men in some of these places.

Yeah.

And we've got to talk about race when we talk about grooming gangs, because it's an absolutely essential factor, and that's something that the left doesn't want to talk about.

They don't want to call you racist, you mean?

Yeah, exactly. They're scared of being called racist. And that is exactly the reason why some of these women are still waiting for justice. So what happened was this is, you know, going back to decades, actually. Even when labor were in government, this was happening. There were whistleblower police officers who were trying to get something to happen. So, you know, gangs of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men targeted white girls in some of these places, like Rochdale and Rotherham. They did so because they had a perception that white girls were amenable and that they were the kind of target that they wanted to focus on for racial reasons. Then they abused these girls, they raped them, they humiliated them, and it became a known secret in these towns. Police officers knew, councillors knew, teachers knew.

Why was no one doing anything about it?

Because they were scared of being called racist. And police officers and those in positions of authority who could have done something to get justice turned a blind eye out of fear of being called racist, out of fear of upsetting minority communities, out of fear of destabilizing community cohesion. And that fear was paralyzing, and it's led to decades of inaction and that's why we still don't have justice for some of these victims. So it's absolutely crucial that we need to talk about race, because it was race or the fear of being called racists that stopped people taking necessary steps to, to seek justice. Parents. There are instances where parents of the victims were telling the police and they were arrested. In some instances, some of the girls were arrested as well and put on trial. You know, it's so distorted that it's, as I say, I think it's one of the biggest national scandals that we've seen in this country.

And so that's why you think the biggest threat to the UK is multiculturalism?

No, I think the biggest threat to the UK is, I mean, it's, I think there are lots of big threats to the, our country right now. I think immigration, mass and out of control, rapid migration is a, is posing us with a, a huge challenge.

Why can't labor see that?

I don't think that. Well, they, they take the view. Labor will take the view. I mean, listen, Iette Cooper a few years ago stood up with a placard saying refugees welcome. They are. They stopped our. I mean, it. You couldn't make it up. I know. And she's now in charge of stopping the boats. They are the party that scrapped Arawanda plan on their first day in office. Aranda plan, Arawanda deterrent, which meant that, you know, if you arrived in the country illegally, you would be detained and removed to a safe country like Rwanda. They scrapped that instantly. That was a deterrent that would have worked. In fact, we're seeing the Americans now start to remove some of their illegal migrants to Rwanda. Just, just a few days ago, it's been confirmed publicly that the American government, as part of their crackdown on illegal migration, is sending illegal migrants to Rwanda where they can be accommodated, resettled, treated humanely. You know, they can get jobs, they can lead their lives. Rwanda wants people because they have a. They want to increase their population. But our Labour government, in all its wisdom, scrapped the deterrence. So no wonder the numbers of people coming into this country have shot up under Labour because they know they've got a free pass to get into the uk. So this party is not serious about border control. No way. No.

So I was on GB News and we had a two hour panel and one of the things we had to comment on was the £700 million that Ibis have made in their 51 hotels being paid by the government to house them with asylum seekers. And they get PlayStations cooking lessons, guitar lessons, the list goes on. Why?

Why? So the, the, the reason, if you keep distilling it down to the core and fundamental reason as to why that's happening and oversimplifying it, but the reason is the European Convention of Human Rights. So what happens is the European Convention of Human Rights is an international treaty that we signed up to in the aftermath of World War II. It was a good thing. And in that document and they're like, you know, most other European countries are members of it and we all signed up to it. In fact, the UK was one of the founding members of it. You've got Article 2 which says everyone has the right to life. I'm not going to disagree with that. Article three, everyone has the right not to be tortured. I'm not going to disagree with that. Article six, everyone has the right to a free, fair trial. Not going to disagree. All these sorts of things which define a civilized society in the aftermath of World War II, that was definitely the right thing to do because they wanted to prevent, the allied countries wanted to prevent a rerun of what they'd just seen in, in, in Germany. Fast forward to the 20th century, to the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. And the human rights, the European Convention of Human Rights has become so distorted and, and, you know, contorted that now people who come into our country illegally and may well pose a risk to our public safety or our national security will rely on some of those articles like Article two, Right to life or Article three, the right against torture, to prevent our government from sending them back home. So as Home Secretary, I came face to face with this problem. I couldn't deport foreign paedophiles because they would rely on the European Convention of Human Rights. And their human rights were more important than your human rights or the human rights of the law abiding majority. I couldn't deport foreign terrorists because their human rights were more important than your human rights. I couldn't deport foreign drug dealers. And we are unable to deport as many people as we would like to because a lot of illegal migrants rely on the European Convention of Human Rights in court. And combined with our very litigious legal ecosystem, with activist judges in the UK and in the Strasbourg Court which adjudicates the European Convention of Human Rights. We have no chance as a government in deporting illegal migrants at, at any effective scale.

Wow.

As long as we're a member of the European Convention of Human Rights. So you say, why do illegal migrants or refugees get a free television and guitar lessons, did you say?

Yeah, cooking lessons, guitar lessons, PlayStation.

Right. So they, there's an obligation on the government to accommodate anyone who comes to our country illegally, even if they're. Regardless of whether we think they're illegal or not. And so that's why we have the problem of hotels in this country because we've got a duty to provide a home for these people. And we've run out, we've actually run out of bespoke asylum accommodation. We used to, we do have, you know, specified asylum accommodation centers generally around the country where traditionally the people coming into the country were, they would be applying for asylum and in the interim they would be accommodated at these centers. We've run out of all of that because the numbers are so high we've now had to hire hotels and overpaying them and you know, it comes. The Home Office will pay a hefty price because.

Well it's not the Home Office that's paying, it's the taxpayers.

Absolutely, yes, they're paying with taxpayers money. Exactly. For these forms of accommodation because they have a legal obligation to provide accommodation. And then it goes even further. So people will say well I need, I need to have, you know, I need to have special, special facilities at this accommodation. And if you don't provide me with these special facilities you're violating my human rights. And I mean every, almost every week the media reports absurd cases where we're not allowed to deport people because of frankly ludicrous claims. There was one case where very high.

Profile Pakistani criminal, I think. Was it 7, 7 who he tried to basically blow up Birmingham. He wants to go sign himself off to leave and they, we can't let him leave because of this.

Right Act. Right, right, exactly.

And we've, we've, it's £120,000 a year of taxpayer payer money to keep him in the prison.

Well, it's £5 million a day, £6 million a day of taxpayers money to accommodate all the asylum seekers that we have in this country.

Six million a day.

A day.

Wow.

Shocking. And that could be going to our schools, that should be going to our hospitals, it should be going to our pensioners. No, it's going on hotel costs for asylum seekers because we've got a number which is out of control.

So my, my sister's husband's brother has a bike shop and he said he's like, he's making quite good money out of it but he's appalled. He says the amount of asylum seekers that come in and they've just got government money to buy loads of nice bikes and they're just all coming in, buying loads of nice bikes with government money like this is taxpayer money.

It is. There's huge exploitation of the system. And the problem is because of the legal. The laws that people can game. Once someone steps foot into the country, they'll get a legally aided lawyer so they don't have to pay for a lawyer. You're paying for a lawyer. They'll get accommodation which is paid for by you. They'll get healthcare paid for by you if they need it. They'll probably work illegally as well and they'll be able to stay in the country pretty much indefinitely. And many of them abscond, so the Home Office will lose track of them and so we won't actually know where they are eventually. And so we are unable to deport them. And that is the reality of our immigration system at the moment, because we're not deporting people quickly enough. They come into the country, once they get into the country, they're. They're kind of able to stay here to a large degree.

And is it true if someone steals something under £200, it's not registered as a crime?

Well, that's the shoplifting issue. So, I mean, shoplifting is, I'm afraid, an epidemic in this country as well. We have.

It's not a shoplifting, is it? Because they have machetes. So I can turn to a lot worse than that.

Yeah, we need to. I mean, so, I mean, you need to be charged.

If you steal something for a fiver, surely you stop it at the grassroots.

I agree. I agree. So our policing, I, I do think there's a. We talk a lot about cry, we're talking a lot about crises, aren't we?

But I do think we've got things to talk about.

We've got to be honest about the state of the country. No point glossing over it and saying everything's amazing, because we're not going to fix the country. Our country needs to serious fixing. If we're going to have economic growth, if we're going to have a safe place for our children to grow up in. If we're going to have prospects for our country, if we're going to realize the potential of our country. This is a great country. The history of this country, what this country has brought to the world.

It was a great country.

The British people are a great people. They have a genius, they have a. A fairness, they have a sense of decency, they They've brought so much to this, to civilization. Their forefathers fought for freedom and now.

All the successful ones are moving to Dubai.

We forget the greatness of the British people and there's so much potential for us to be an amazing country if we strip back the arms of the state, if we just free people up to start a business, take a chance and maybe fail, but maybe try again. You know, our attitude to, to business in this country really could do with changing. I think we penalize bankruptcy and insolvency and failure in business far too harshly compared with the American approach. Yeah, you know, they have a very different approach to if you start up and it doesn't quite work, it's, you know, you can, it doesn't really affect your ability to start up again. And you know, it's we, we make starting up a business something that other people do or something very complex. It takes a very long time to actually set up a company on companies house compared to other countries. You know, the bureaucracy required.

The limited company actually was a brilliant invention. It's supposed to protect, limit the liability of the startup entrepreneur. But a lot of them are remortgaging their house and putting the money in. You have to give personal guarantees now a lot of the time if you're borrowing money. So the business goes down where you're trying to employ people, your whole life goes down.

Yeah, exactly. It's ruinous.

There's no. You can't get a grant anymore.

Yeah.

You can't get really a loan.

Yeah, it's really, it's, it's a, it's brave to start a business up anyway.

Might be stupid now.

I hope people still, if they've got an idea and they have a passion for it, they should be enabled to go ahead with it. We, our state is far too big in this country.

You mean the government, the civil service.

The government, the public sector, the wages, the size of our public sector, the arms and the organs related to the public sector, the quangos, you know, it's just proliferated.

So it's consuming a lot of the tax revenue already. Like the national debt is consuming a lot of the tax revenue already.

Yeah. And we are not, you know, we've got to challenge these things. And so if we were to restructure.

Our country, the thing with labour is.

There'S so much better that we could, so much more we could do.

So what, do something like Doge and come in and slash some of the overhead, make the government more lean and agile. You'd be up for that there's billions.

Of pounds, billions of pounds that are wasted. Of course there is through stupid projects and government funding where it's not necessary and needless regulation and organizations that become white elephants and just more kind of hotbeds of left wing activism. Frankly, we don't need half of it. So something like Doge, something like, yeah, an approach to really streamlining government expenditure and the size of our state is much needed in this country. And galvanizing entrepreneurialism, the private sector investment, venture capitalism. And that requires, you know, overhauling our tax regime. We need to, I mean we should be lowering corporation tax, not raising it. How, how, how do we in encourage foreign businesses to come into this country? We should be making it a climate that says, yeah, Britain is open for business and we want to support you and we do that by cutting corporation tax. But I don't think that's going to happen under Labor. We should, we should, we should have done it when we were towards the end. Unfortunately we raised it in the last few years of our.

Yeah, I know, I felt it.

Yeah.

Myself. So let me read you this. I knew Dubai was going to come up, so I went to Dubai. I go there quite a lot at the moment. And I went there and I interviewed a very famous car creator out there called Supercar Blondie and she's like, rob, I've not paid tax for 20 years, I've just started to pay it this year. She said there's also this like creator initiative that they're doing in Dubai where basically any entrepreneur or creator. Yeah. Come to Dubai, we'll help you find a studio, we'll part fund if. I mean it's really smart. That country is run by entrepreneurs. Now I know people say there's human rights issues, that's another subject, but that country is run by entrepreneurs and the economy is thriving out there. You can put your 50 grand watch on the table and someone will go and give it to you when you leave it there. Whereas here you get your arm cut off for your watch. So anyway, this is the comparison. Income tax in Dubai, zero in the UK at the highest rate, 45%. National Insurance in Dubai, zero in the UK, 15% now for employers, VAT in Dubai, 5% in the UK, 20% corp tax in Dubai, naught to 9% depending. So they even like, if you start it's naught and it moves up. And then in the UK it's now moved up to 25, as we know. Capital gains tax in Dubai, it's naught in the UK, it's 10 to 28. Inheritance tax in Dubai, 0% in the UK, 40% property tax in Dubai. The buyer and the seller halve it, which I think is a good idea. The 2% each in the UK, it's 5 to 12%. Isn't there a model there that we can sort of look at? I get they've got trillions of oil wealth, but, like, is there not a model we can start to listen?

I mean, it's not rocket science that, you know, that lower taxation leads to greater revenue from taxation. That is the Laffer curve.

It is the Laffer curve.

It's a very basic formula because beyond a certain level of taxation, people stop working hard or leave. It's not worth it.

They stop working or they leave. Yeah, yeah.

And actually on income tax levels in this country, you know, if you look at the thresholds, the thresholds have become punitive and disincentivizing for people. Not just at the high level, but.

Meaning even at a very low rate of earning, you're paying a high rate of tax.

Absolutely. I think it's catching now. 40 is catching.

Yeah.

Police officers and nurses and teachers. So in a way, it was never designed to. Because.

Because they have thresholds up and inflation has wiped it out.

Fiscal drag has been.

Is that what they call it? Fiscal drag? I just. To me, it's just stealth taxing.

It's another way of putting it.

Yeah, exactly. They don't have to change anything and by not changing anything, they increase the tax.

Right. So why would you work longer? Why would you go for the promotion?

Why would you just leave to Dubai if.

If you're going to be taxed really.

In America, to get to the highest brand of band of tax, I think you need to be earning about 700 grand in the UK. Above 50, you're pretty much in the highest band. And, you know, some Gen zers are getting a bit mocked because they're like, I'm not. I'm going to work for anything less than 40 grand. Well, 40 grand's not a lot of money anymore.

Well, average salary in the country is about 35, 38,000 pounds.

So the real rate of taxation on 40 grand, when you include what you buy and what you sell, is 48.1%. Because you. You're taxed on what you earn, but then you're also taxed on what you buy.

Yeah, this is what I mean. The government is gobbling up the processing everywhere, people's hard work and endeavor, and that is very dangerous because there'll be a nasty Surprise for Rachel Reeves and the government that they'll soon find that people are not playing ball with them and that they're actually upping sticks and leaving, which will leave the government with a very, very serious problem of how to generate wealth. And they can't just keep taxing and taxing and taxing and they can't. Well, what she'll do is she'll keep borrowing.

Of course, the only other way for.

Them to generate revenue, change her fiscal rules, which is horrendous for the UK balance sheet and our standing in the world and our resilience to any economic shocks. And that is a recipe for disaster.

People need to be warned because they don't know. But, you know, government borrowing is basically increased taxation.

Yeah.

Because we're.

Because to service it is horrendous. It's £80 billion a year that we pay just on the interest of the debt, which is in the trillions. So I think, you know, it's. It's going to get worse under this.

Government and then when you speak up about it, you're in trouble. You had a little incident, didn't you, with you. Your Cambridge University.

Yeah.

I guess you were sort of semi cancelled, semi canceled. Yeah. Do you want to tell me about that?

Well. So. Well, listen, I'm. I'm no stranger to provocation or.

You're on disruptors.

There we go. Exactly. It's a compliment to have been invited onto such an esteemed podcast. Listen, I think about this time last year, I was nearly arrested for giving a speech with someone, Nigel Farage. We were both in Belgium. We were both in Brussels.

Yeah.

Giving a speech last spring. And I was there to talk about human rights. It's my. My interest and why we need to leave the European Convention of Human Rights. As I set out earlier. And Nigel. Nigel was there and we were speaking as part of a conference and the mayor of Brussels got wind that we were speaking and he sent the police to the conference to shut down the event.

Wow.

And there were hundreds of police officers who turned up at the event. They barged their way in and they were standing at the back of the hall while I was speaking. I. I did think that they were going to arrest Nigel and myself, actually. Thankfully, we weren't arrested. They backed off.

Right.

I like to think that I scared them off, but maybe. Maybe it was Nigel. I don't know. We were. We were a double act and we. We fended off the thought police. Anyway, so we nearly got arrested just for speaking because we were branded the mayor of Brussels. Who was a, you know, a left wing.

So you branded.

He thought we were far right politicians who were coming to speak in Brussels and he didn't want us speaking and he, he sent the police down to get us. The conference organized, organizers actually challenged him through the courts.

Right.

And they won, so he had to back off. But. So we nearly got arrested.

Yeah.

And then fast forward six months or so I was due to speak at Cambridge. Cambridge Union. Yes, the Cambridge Union or Cambridge University Conservatives. I say it was Cambridge Union, I think. And, and we were told. Was it Cambridge Union? Can I speak to someone?

Of course you can, yeah.

Cambridge University. It was a Conservative Association. Sorry, it was. Gosh, this. Yes, it was Cambridge University. Right. Sorry. I was due to speak at Cambridge University Conservative Association. That was it. And a few days before the event, a pro Palestinian action group at the university started to organize a protest outside the event and they sent flyers round and it went on social media and says, come on, come and you know, protest against Braverman. Braverman's a genocide apologist. Or she, she's a, you know, Israel apologist. For my views on Israel, I'm a very, I've been staunch in defending Israel since October 7, even beyond before that. The police thereafter advised us to cancel the event because the threat posed by these protesters was one that they couldn't manage. And on the back of that advice, the event was cancelled. So yeah, literally the event was cancelled. I was canceled, I guess. Yeah.

Wow.

Because of the mob. Yeah, they, they, they attempted to silence the police, said well, we can't really deal with this. And they got their way and the event was canceled. And we were just, I was just going to talk to a group of students privately with all civility, just about politics and about topical issues in a very inoffensive way. And we had to shut down our event because the protesters rights were more important. And I think that's an actual very sad reflection of free speech on campus, which I think again to overuse the word is in crisis. I think if you look at some of our universities, anti Semitism has gone off the scale and you know, it's very, very dangerous for many academics or students to voice what would be considered center right views on some of. In classes, in, you know, in academic papers, just generally. And there is a, there's a real challenge to freedom of speech within our universities today.

So do we actually have free speech in the uk?

I would say that we have a crisis of free speech in many, many examples. There are too many examples now where.

People like people being jailed for social media posts.

Exactly. It's a great example of where free speech has been seriously challenged.

We've got overrun prisons.

Yeah.

And we've got rape gangs that everyone knows.

Yeah.

But we're putting people in jail for social media posts.

Lucy Connolly, for example, the lady, she should not be in prison now. She put something, it was in a.

Facebook group, I think.

Yes. She put something up on social media. It was wrong what she put up. The comment was offensive and rude and vile. But she took it down pretty quickly and she apologized. She's serving a sentence which is many months long. I think it's something like 12 months long. She's. Yeah.

Why do you think she put in prison for that?

Because I think many people, the justice system, I think we have two tier justice in this country. If you are on the right and you express right wing views, you can expect to get the police put, you know, issue a non crime hate incident against you for saying a man can't be a woman or for saying something like. Like what Lucy Conley said or, you know something, you, you can expect non crime hate incidents, you can expect to be cancelled. You can expect the full force of the law. But if you're on the other side, if you're shouting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Which is an anti Semitic chant. It is calling for the elimination of Jews. Then the police will stand by and they won't do anything. If you're saying anything on the kind of left of British politics. Yeah. There's a band at the moment, nicap, they've just been very brazenly, brazenly saying, encouraging their audiences to go and kill Tory mps. There's been very little. I think the government was funding them. This government was funding them. I mean, but, but they're on the left so they're more socially accept, more politically acceptable to those in power. You know, it's, it's two tier justice and freedom of speech under threat.

Wow.

People self censure. People don't want to speak the truth anymore in our country. They're scared of the implications. You can lose your job. So it's repression for saying you don't believe in white privilege. You can lose your job for saying. Thankfully, maybe not since the Supreme Court judgment, but for years people have been cancelled for saying a man can't be a woman. They've had, they've been sacked. There've been high profile employment tribunal cases because people have lost their jobs for saying, I don't believe that a trans woman is a real woman and, or things like that. And there's been a serious, an extreme, chilling effect on our freedom to express ourselves, I think, in this country. And that's been facilitated by our institutions, the police, our laws, the universities, and the kind of cancel culture that we see in this country.

Wow. And what do you mean by creeping blasphemy laws? 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. 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.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 into. And gold and silver's going wild. I'm investing heavily in gold and silver and I recommend you check out robmore.directbullion.com.

So I think we, we have here. So we don't traditionally have blasphemy laws in England in English law.

And, and is that part of the demise of Christianity, do you think?

No, that's because we have a culture of liberty in this country that you can criticize and question and challenge religion. And part of our historic convention has been that people are free to criticize Christianity, the Christian church or the Church of England, but in some religions that is not acceptable. And they don't like receiving criticism, particularly Islam. And so There are some MPs who are calling for blasphemy laws. They don't want to allow any challenge or criticism of aspects of Islamism or Islam that would be a blasphemy law.

Right.

And the government is currently considering whether to introduce a blasphemy law. Now, they say, no, we're not going to have a blasphemy law, but they are very sympathetic to it. Many labor mps are calling for blasphemy laws to protect, to prevent and criminalize any questioning of Islamism and extreme Islamic fundamentalism that would, you know, talking about the, the rape gang scandal might be considered blasphemy under such blasphemy laws. I think it would be very, very damaging for our freedom of speech, for our justice, for our. For our liberties if a blasphemy law were to come into force into this country. In many ways, we, we do have some kind of. In practice. There have been instances, let's say this, there have been instances where the police particularly have actually enforced a kind of blasphemy law. They've, they don't want to allow any kind of challenge to some religions. There was an incident in Wakefield a few years ago where a child accidentally scuffed a Qur' an in a school playground. And the police got called in. There was a kind of. The local imam got called in and the child's mother had to apologize for the child's actions because it was considered blasphemous for. Towards the. The Muslim religion. So there was, you know, that. That's a kind of de facto blasphemy approach being applied there. There's a teacher in Batley. The teacher in Batley is an infamous incident where teacher showed a image of Muhammad and has been in hiding for several years because of the backlash from the local community. Legitimate, reasoned questioning or challenging has been seen as crossing a line for some people. And that is a. Poses a serious threat to freedom of speech.

So we've got a few things going on here. We've got the economy, we've got multiculturalism, immigration, freedom of speech. And I want to come to. We've also got a bit of the lawless state. They're my words. And I want to come into how we solve those in a moment. I'd love to hear.

There are solutions. That is the. That's what we must go take away from.

I'm an entrepreneur. There's a solution for everything.

This is not a. This is not an irreversible. No decline.

Yeah. So before that, though, I want your honest thoughts on reform. Nigel Farage and if you think they've got a chance. What do you think? I mean, they're popular, aren't they? Well, they're polling well.

I look at those polls. Yeah, they're polling very well and they've got some electoral tests this week and they seem to be quietly confident. I think that they might win the by election in run corn. They might really secure some big victories. So I think that reform is a serious problem for the Conservatives and I very much respect and understand those people who vote for reform. They are furious with the Conservatives.

Well a lot of them are previous Conservative voters, aren't they?

Right.

Yeah.

And they are livid with the Conservatives because of our failure largely on immigration but on other things we didn't tackle.

Woke well, high culture. Yeah.

We didn't lower taxation, we let the state proliferate to, you know, unsustainable levels. We so many things. So they are furious with us.

Yeah.

And for many of them they can't forgive us and they are patriots, they are common sense people. They are decent, fair minded people who believe in the greatness of our country. They want, you know, a, you know, proper, they want proper border control, they want lots of things we've been talking about. They want a police force that works, they want, they want to see a gp. They just want public services that can work. They want, they don't want much, they just want a country that works and a country that's proud of itself and has rediscovered its self confidence and they feel let down by the Conservatives. So I very much understand where they're coming from and why they are voting that way. I'm not going to be one of those people who kind of comes on and says they're swivel eyed loons or as one of my former Concerned Party, you know, David Cameron described them all as people who were voting for Brexit I think he said were swivel eyed loons or fruitcakes or something like that. But no, these are not, they're not far right, that's what I'm saying. As Keir Starmer would describe people, you know, who care about grooming gangs or whatever, you know, so I, I, the, the, this has all been caused out of the Conservative Party's failure.

Yeah.

Had we done our job, had we just kept our promises to cut migration, cut taxation, tackle woke, restore confidence to the police, we, we wouldn't reform, probably wouldn't exist. So we bear the responsibility. It's up to the Conservative Party to fix ourselves profoundly fix ourselves and regain the trust of millions of people. That's the task ahead for the Conservative Party.

Do you think there would ever be a situation, not like a coalition but you know, where there would be some combining of the parties?

It's very early to predict that kind of thing because we're very early in the electoral cycle. We haven't got a general election now for a few years. But if things don't really change in terms of the polling, of course, if, if your objective is to get rid of labor, that will necessarily mean.

If your objective is that. I mean, politicians can be quite careerist, can't they?

They can be, yeah. I mean, I. My main objective is to get rid of Labor.

Yeah.

I.

So you personally would.

I'm horrified by the prospect of another five years of Labor.

Right.

And if there were a reform coalition, a reform conservative coalition, I would support that, Right? Absolutely, yes. At the time of the next general election.

Wow. And what do the Conservatives need to do to become more popular again?

There's a lot. There's a lot we need to do. We need to regain trust, fundamentally, because I think the problem for our parties, we had 14 years, and at the end of those 14 years, immigration was out of control, despite Brexit, despite countless manifesto commitments. And I'm not even talking about the boats, I'm talking about legal migration. This is where the unforgivable issue is with the Conservative Party. We promised time and time again to cut overall numbers of immigration, the visas. And we did exactly the opposite. The numbers, the net migration figure between June 2022 and June 2023 was estimated at just under 700,000. That number was revised upwards to 900,000. That's net migration in the space of.

12 months, when all of our services are underfunded and broken and ruined anyway.

And so people don't trust us, right, when we say, well, we're going to do this and we're going to. Now we're going to cut migration. You can trust us now. And it's, that's the difficulty for us. There was. There was such big failures. I mean, I, I tried, I, I had this conversation very regularly with members of the cabinet. The Prime Minister, Rishi, at the time, I said, listen, we've got a chance. We're out of the European Union. So I, I came into the Home Office in the October of the. The autumn of 2022. So the figures were already out of control. That June, the number of visas issued had reached a record level. Over 1 million work and study visas had already been issued. It was totally wrong. And I said, listen, we've still got time, we've got potentially two years to turn the tide and we could go back to the electorate and say, yes, the numbers did go up, but we exercised Our newfound powers, now that we're out of the European Union and we lowered migration. And the problem I came up against was that I was a lone voice and pretty much everybody else, particularly Prime Minister, they didn't agree with me. So they believed that more immigration was better for the country, I. E. Better for the economy. And so I couldn't win the argument. And that's why. That's why we saw the numbers get to almost a million in the way they did, which was a grotesque breach of trust.

So. So in your role, did you fail the government or did the government fail you?

Listen, I've got to take responsibility. I'm not here to pass the buck. I was Home Secretary. I tried. I made the case. I went in with a very clear agenda and objective and I said, listen, this is how we can do it. I had a plan. We can raise the salary threshold, we can reduce the number of dependents that people can bring in. Because what. One of the big reasons for the rise in the numbers has been students, students and workers coming in, but they'll bring, on average, two dependents, right? Spouse and a child. So it's, you know, it really rapidly and very quickly puts the numbers up. There were so many things we could have done and the power was in our hands. We didn't need to pass any laws. We wouldn't need to worry about the House of Lords or the European Court of Human Rights. We wouldn't need to worry about the courts. It was pretty straightforward to implement these changes. So I wasn't able to persuade the Prime Minister. And the way our government works is you could be the best minister, you could be the cleverest, most charismatic minister. But if the Prime Minister doesn't back you and agree with your plan, it ain't going to happen. That's how our government works. Angela Rayner. Angela Rayner doesn't want to build 1.5 million homes. Just read in the papers today, she, she thinks that target is unachievable and.

She'S going to failed forever doing this.

That's because Keir Starmer wants to target. She hasn't got a say on that target. It's. She's got. She's got a choice. Do I shut up and put up with what my Prime Minister wants or do I resign? She's choosing to stay in cabinet and abide by what the Prime Minister wants. What the Prime Minister wants is what happens, and that is what dictates the policy direction of any particular government. It's what Keir Starmer wants is what will Happen. It's not what Yvette Cooper wants personally. Yeah, she can influence and she can come and present a plan to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister can consider he might like the idea and then if he adopts it, it will happen. But Prime Minister gets a veto on everything. And I was basically vetoed by the pm. So you can't get things through. So you. You're in a. It's in a. You're in a really difficult position. And I was in that position for about a year. I was kind of battling on the inside and blocked. On trying to cut migration, on trying to stop the boats, on trying to, you know, restore rigor to the police. And so there's. Yeah, you've got to take personal responsibility. Maybe I should have fought harder with the. With the Prime Minister or tried harder. But at the end of the day, if the Prime Minister doesn't want to do what you want to do, it's not going to happen. So, you know, I think it's a. The Conservative government's failure that. That's. That's where the blame lies and we need to own that and accept responsibility for it. And it will take a long time to regain the trust of people because there's. It was a very bad. What happened.

So do you think then that the entire political system needs an overhaul?

I think there are aspects of our political system that do work well. So I think generally that our democracy is in very good health.

Do you think?

Yeah, I do. I think we have.

There was two Conservative Prime Ministers that the people didn't get to choose. We didn't choose Liz Truss, we didn't choose Rishi Sunak. We had no vote in that whatsoever.

I take that point. But equally, in our elections, they are generally free and fair. There's no corruption. Okay, well, in our election, in our.

Electoral system, though, can't we. We can choose Conservatives or Labour.

We have a first past the post system, which means generally, although that is under challenger at the moment, we've got a third.

Well, this is what I like about reform.

They are.

Forget what reformer challenger party. Yeah. Challenging the system itself, surely has got to be good.

I think you're a supporter of disruptors. They are disrupting the political system right now.

They are.

And that is forcing.

Surely it's forcing you to step up.

Exactly. It's forcing the traditional parties to up their games.

Yeah.

It's not a bad thing.

Challenge and competition, pure capitalism, when it.

Works properly healthy, is a healthy dynamic. I agree.

And so you think we've got reasonable democracy Here.

I think, I do think we do, I think we have a very active democracy. I don't think it is generally tainted by corruption or by, you know, big business in the way that it can be in America. For example, if you look at other countries, you know, whole swathes of population, populations are denied the vote. And here we, you know, everybody has the chance to vote. And I, I trust the integrity of our electoral system.

Okay.

You know, Donald Trump says that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. You know that there's no question that any general election in our country has ever been stolen. So you know, we, we are, we have, I think we do have a, a democratic system which is not easy to get into. It's difficult to break into the first past the post system. But I have confidence, I have confidence in our democratic system.

Okay, so you're happy with the democratic system. You're not happy with how many people are in government, how bloated the state is?

Yeah, I think we have a very bureaucratic, slow moving, civil service. Sclerotic.

Yeah, I like that word, sclerotic.

Civil service and establishment. Yeah, I think we have too much overhead. There's too much orthodoxy. There's a lot of group think, right. There's a Westminster elite bubble that's to some degree detached from the real world. Actually take immigrant immigration is a great example. There's an orthodoxy in Westminster that more immigration is good because they think it's better for the economy. The obr, how do they work that out? Oh, this is, this is a, this is taken as read in Whitehall. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the kind of watchdog of the treasury, works on the basis that more immigration is going to be good for revenue and good for the economic growth. That was one of my battles. I had a battle with the obr. I said listen, you're in that, in that assumption you're overlooking the costs because predominantly low skilled, low wage immigration is not a benefit to the economy. That is going to be a net cost. When you take into account Social Security.

To dependence with them, the use of.

Public resource, public services, that is a cost. The pressure on housing and inflating house prices, that is going to be a cost. You're overlooking the impact on GDP per capita because as the population gets bigger, GDP per capita keeps falling, which is.

Surely the most relevant metric, isn't it?

Absolutely, yeah. So, but, but they would say, oh no, you're wrong. We think that if you cut immigration, if you cut net migration, then we're basically, you're going to cut income into the country. And so you're not going to be able to afford a tax cut. That's basically the view that the Office of Budget Responsibility takes. It's the view that the treasury takes. It's the view that many of. It's a view that the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, took. So they believe that to be sacrosanct as a view. That's a group think view, it's a liberal view and that is totally detached to what people in my Constituency Affair and Waterlooville think. It's detached from what communities around the country are thinking when they see a hotel accommodating hundreds of migrants on their doorstep. It's cut off from the real world. And that's one example. Woke. WOKE ideology is another example. You know, there were senior civil servants who took the knee, there were police officers who took the knee. Keir Starmer took the knee at the time of the BLM riots. There were politicians coming out and saying, I'm sorry, I've got to confess to being a beneficiary of white privilege. Yet that's an example of this WOKE ideology that's taken over that suggests that, you know, all ethnic minorities are somehow victims and intrinsically, you know, to be supported and all white people are beneficiaries of white privilege. The gender ideology that's taken over a lot of our institutions, whereby we saw the NHS and clinics under the NHS deliver irreversible and life changing medical treatment to young people who were going through gender dysphoria. We've seen cases where people had surgery, where they had mastectomies or they had testosterone. They were girls and they were put on testosterone at 15, 16 and they're now in their 20s and they regret it and they said, I didn't want that. But it was the NHS that ruin their bodies. That's groupthink. That's part of this bubble whereby the, the latest kind of progressive fad is adopted and promoted vigorously, whether it's on views on immigration or other politically correct causes.

Wow.

And they are, I think the, the distance, the ideological distance between those in Westminster and those on, on the street, in the, in the pub, in the, in the factories. Working hard for our country can sometimes be enormous.

And do you think the tide changed when Trump got in power? Do you think there was a global shift in the woke ideology? Now, he's not a perfect human, nor is musk, although I think personally at the moment, they're a net benefit to society with where it was going. But do you think that was the shift Globally, where wokeism. That was the start of the end.

I think it's. I think the Trump presidency is definitely having an impact on the uk. Yeah. When it comes to the way that we are viewing some of these progressive causes and hopefully it will signal the high watermark for some of these fads. I think that.

I mean, like, remove removal of DEI. I mean, in the NHS, the DEI officers get 90 grand salaries and there's a massive need for employing and they won't employ white doctors and nurses. Get rid of them. I mean, that's a good saving straight away, isn't it?

Definitely.

Middle management bureaucracy gone.

Yeah. Scrap the DEI industry.

Yeah.

We've got this cottage industry that's basically grown up over the years. I just wrote about it in the paper about why we need to scrap the Equality Act. The Equality act is the root cause of much of this, this DEI culture that we've seen. There are whole parts of the legislation in the Equality act that permits a form of discrimination against white people or against men in the form of positive action. There are sections in the law that say an employer can prefer a minority applicant for a job, for example, if they want to further the rights of minorities and they want to support, you know, kind of minority groups. That's discrimination against people who are in the majority. And that's allowed under the law as we have it in the Equality Act. We have a duty, a duty placed on public bodies. It's called the public sector equality duty contained in the Equality act that obliges, obliges Minister to Ministers to always take into account the equality implications of their decisions. During the pandemic, Matt Hancock, who was the House Secretary of Time, you know, it was a crisis. He hired Baroness Harding to run our Test and Trace scheme. So it was a crisis, it was a novel situation. Things were moving very quickly. That decision was challenged in the courts and it was found to be unlawful because it breached the public sector equality duty. Because in appointing her, she was a very qualified lady, she had a lot of experience for the role. In appointing her, Matt Hancock forgot to look at the equality implications of appointing her for the role. And because of that, it was deemed unlawful. And because of this public sector equality duty organizations in the public sector, but it's infected the private sector overcompensate. And that's why you have diversity champions and you have unconscious bias training. And basically political correctness is entrenched in a lot of our public sector and much of our private sector.

And then the result of that, as an employer of 100 people is reduced productivity. If you can't pick the best person for the job, you've got to pick the person for the job to hit a quota. You can't increase productivity.

Yeah.

So you have reduced productivity.

Reduced productivity, which is reduced revenue, which.

Is reduced tax revenue.

Right. And much more bureaucracy and like red tape and training, meaningless training that you need to put your staff through to tick a box, which is going to be checked by some regulator somewhere.

Wow.

It's a massive industry which has grown up over the last couple of decades. Started with labor, conservatives failed to kill it off.

And Trump's come in and he's just slashed the whole lot.

Right, right, exactly. And maybe we will start to see a reduction in some of the worst aspects of this stuff. I mean, the recent judgment from the Supreme Court about gender ideology is. Is not obviously influenced by Donald Trump.

Woman is a woman who knew biological sex. Yeah. Who knew.

Thank goodness we've. Thank goodness we've got clever judges to tell us these complex. Answer these complex questions for us. But, you know, well, at least for Keir Starmer, because he wasn't sure until the Supreme Court clarified what a man. What a man was and what a woman was. But, yeah, so we. That might make things better for the public sector. But the, the gender, the gender ideology problem has been. Been around now for the best part of a decade. There's been. There has been, you know, the Equality act has been a problem. It's been a part of the problem, actually, because trans women have used the Equality act. So biological men.

Yeah.

They've used the Equality act to say, well, I'm entitled to play in that women's team, or I'm entitled to go into that women's changing room. Equality act says are I'm protected. They've used it. It's been a. There have been some good things. You know, it means that discrimination is unlawful. We shouldn't unlawfully discriminate against people. But it's got so many problems. There are so many problems that it's caused and it's corroded our national sense of togetherness. It's distilled people into groups based on your sex or your gender or your race or your religion, when we should be British. If you're a British citizen, you should be just judged on your merit and your individual worth. I'm not going to judge you because you're a white man or because I'm an Asian woman. I should be judged on my intrinsic abilities. That's. That's what a meritocratic Fair society looks like not one that says, well, we've got some boxes to tick, we've got some quotas, and we're going to penalize you, a white man, in favor of an ethnic woman. It's unfair. It's actually condescending and patronizing and it generates unnecessary resentment. And that can't be. That is a bad recipe for social harmony.

So let's talk about some solutions.

Solutions. Okay.

I'd love some sort of broad policies that if you ran the show, but I've got a few little ideas I just like to run by you. Let me know what you think. So a flat tax, the same for everyone. So myself and my entrepreneur friends, we all have chats. I was talking to my friend Daniel Priestley. He said, well, you know, I've got millions in the bank and I'm leaving it there because I want to pay the income tax. And I'm in the same situation. He's like, rob, what's the number? What's the number where you just pay it, you're happy, don't need to look into loopholes, don't want to go to Dubai. You'll just draw all the money out. I said 25%. He said 25%. So all of us entrepreneurs here are saying, if we got a 25% income tax, assuming all the other taxes aren't really high, we just draw all the money that we're storing that we're not drawing, probably flooding the economy with loads of money. And, you know, whether you earn 20 grand or 20 billion, you pay a flat 25%. What are your thoughts?

Well, I mean, it's attractive.

Is it naive?

But I do think there are some virtues to a progressive tax system. I mean, where would your threshold be? So does that mean that even someone on the minimum wage.

25%. Sorry, let me make a little Palia.

What do you mean?

Right. I would have threshold whereby you don't pay any tax up to 50 grand.

Right.

So, you know, like, if trickle down doesn't work, why don't we enable them from the bottom up? So at the moment, there's loads of people on benefits. I know because I do my TikTok videos. I go and talk to a lot of them and they say, well, there's no point getting a job because I got my house paid for and if I get a job, I lose this benefit and I'll earn less. So I say, instead of bringing in tax at 12 grand and ramping it up and 50 being you go into the highest tax band, nothing to 50 grand and then 25% from there. I reckon a load of homeless people are going to go. Well actually I know I can work and it's now more beneficial to me. I'm going to. And those that are gaming the welfare system will probably stop it. What do you think to that?

Well, anything that incentivizes work and makes work pay.

We're about half the nation aren't working at the moment, aren't we?

We've got a ridiculously high number of people on out of work benefits. It's surpassed 2.8 million in terms of long term sick for example, which is a record that's actually a hangover from COVID It peaked during COVID and it's just never, we've never got it down since. But at the moment it is too easy to claim benefits.

Okay, so zero to 50 grand, no tax, 25% for everyone above, even the super rich.

What do you think and do you calculate that that would cost us? Costs the government in the cost?

Oh, I'm sure it would.

I mean it would lead to a fall in tax revenue, wouldn't it?

Well, it might lead into an initial financial tax in revenue. Yeah but I imagine all those billionaires that are thinking of leaving may now stay. All those millionaires that are hoarding their wealth because they don't want to give 45 of it away when they draw it would draw it. So I mean, you know, you'd have to be a very good numbers person to figure out the.

Yes, I think it would probably be a, an initial net cost. But I think anything that simplifies our tech system must be how many jobs. It would definitely do that.

I mean the tax code, my accountant tells me the tax code is right. How many pages is it? Thousands of pages. How many people are employed just to justify the tax code? Well, most of those are gone. There's a good saving there.

More people could do their own tax return perhaps, couldn't they?

Well that's another thing. Half. We've got what, 12, 15 people in our finance department. We have to employ half of them for VAT and tax returns which is basically us paying for them, for the government.

Yeah. So I think that anything that simplifies our tax system must be part of the solution because we have an over complicated tax system right now which has led to a prolific industry that services tax payment and something which incentivizes work and investment. So if a flat tax were to do that. I don't know enough about it, but if it were to do that, then it would get my support.

Okay, great. What about incentives, grants and support to start a business? Protection for failure for business and you know, like the golden Visa thing that Trump's done, having some good incentives. London used to be the tax haven of the world, didn't it? And now everyone's going the other way. So what about some incentives to start business and to bring innovation and entrepreneurs and millionaires and billionaires into the uk? What do you think of that?

Oh, absolutely. Listen, we don't do enough of that. And there are great examples of economies around the world where they've adopted exactly that approach.

Argentina are killing it, aren't they?

Israel actually. Interestingly, there's been a lot of, historically a lot of funding, seed investment for high tech companies, which is why they are now a leader in the world. For such a small country, small population, you know, in very challenging circumstances, let's put it, they've actually, they are a real outlier and punch above their weight when it comes to producing innovative high tech companies, very successful companies which have revolutionized technology around the world. And that's because the government in previous years took a specific policy approach of investing and supporting new companies. So, yes, I think we need to do a lot more of that. And, and as we reimagine how we think about entrepreneurialism, as I was saying before, you know, we've got to make, we've got to make it less daunting for people to start up a business. It's got to take less time to set up a company on Companies House. There needs to be less paperwork and less bureaucracy for people who want to start out. And if they fail, because let's face it, most businesses will fail initially and it takes an entrepreneur, a few goes before they succeed. We need to bank in that, that, that process of failure, actually learn from failure. In America, there are whole conferences which are held where they learn about business failure and they invite people who have failed in their businesses and they say, well, what are the lessons that we can all learn from your experience and how can other businesses avoid the same mistakes and, you know, evolve on from where you, where you, you know, where, where you went wrong? I think that's very encouraging that that culture is, that's positive and I don't think we quite have that here.

No, I agree. Okay, so what would be the top three policies you would implement then to make Britain great again?

Great. Yes, exactly. We've got to get everyone chanting that in our country. Listen, first of all, I would pull out of the European Convention of Human Rights. I think that is absolutely essential if we're to regain control of our borders and our laws. Because currently, even though we left the European Union, we are still controlled by a foreign court in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights. It's a politicized court, it's an interventionist court. It stopped the flights from taking off to Rwanda and ultimately we have no chance of controlling our border as long as we're a member of the European Commission of Human Rights. So that would be policy number one.

Yeah.

And that, again, that's simplifying it, because there are other things you need to do, like change the judicial review and the courts and other immigration enforcement. I would also rapidly cut legal migration and, you know, to very, very low levels, to the tens of thousands, to zero levels. You know, I'm not quite sure what the figure is, but it's got to be an incredibly low number. It cannot be anywhere near a million or 600,000 or 700,000. And we would do that by raising the salary threshold, putting a cap on the number of workers, foreign workers, that we had coming into our nhs, into our labour market. And we would start reskilling and upskilling our domestic workforce. And it's two sides of the same coin. You cut the number of visas, but you must make sure that the labor market needs are met by a domestic workforce. And the millions of people who are currently claiming out of work benefits are a good place to start.

Yeah. So legal migration, cutting it, and then with all the people out of work, what are you going to apprentice schemes and make it harder to get on benefits and just draw as many people back to work as you can?

Yeah. I think you'd have to have a much more rigorous system of administering welfare. It's, you know, in many aspects, it's far too easy to claim out of work benefits and it pays more benefits, pays more welfare, pays more than getting a, a minimum wage job. And that can't be right. So we need a system that reverses that dynamic and that actually work, whatever job it is, will always pay more than welfare, because that's what is the deciding factor. That's what talks, that's what will make the difference for the average person in terms of their choices.

And then what one major policy might you implement to improve the economy?

Well, I am, I am. We need to cut taxes. So raising the income tax thresholds, I would definitely want to do that. I've argued for that in the past, because too many people are paying far too high a rate of income tax, which is A disincentive on a low salary. Absolutely. And then even at the higher end, again, you know, it's not an incentive anymore to go beyond a certain level. I'd cut corporation tax and I'm in favor of scrapping inheritance tax as well, because I think it's unfair that people are taxed twice, basically. And it's an intrinsic part of our society that people who've worked hard and saved and sacrificed and pay tax should want to leave something for their children.

Do you know, this sounds very much like a reform policy. I mean, there might be a job for you if they get, if they get in power. It sounds very similar.

Well, actually, I don't think there's. I think there are lots of similarities between the Conservative Party and Reform. A lot of the people supporting Reform have been lifelong Conservatives. I've met many of them on the doorsteps in the last 12 to 18 months and they've told me as much. And in my own constituency, I've lost count of the number of doors I knocked on where people said to me, suella, I've been a lifelong Conservative, I think you're great, but I can't vote Conservative anymore because of the betrayal. So there's a lot of similarity. Instinctively, politically, socially, there's a lot of overlap.

Okay, I've got a couple more theories. I have a theory that maybe some senior politicians should be on a bonus scheme where they should have probably a slightly higher salary. Some of the senior politicians, because they don't earn a lot of. I saw, you know, some of the second, third, fifth highest paid. They're in the 120 plus few little bits. It sounds like a lot to people, but it's not a lot. When you're getting death threats and when you're away from your family all the time and when half the population hate you. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, so I understand how all that feels. So what about, you know, fixed fair salary? But they have their targets and if they fail, they lose their job. If they succeed under budget, over time, they get bonuses. I like the private sector.

I think there's a difference between public service, particularly being an mp, and the private sector. I don't think you can draw the comparison between.

Well, but the private sector generates all the money for the public sector. The public sector spends all the private sector money.

Yes, that's the difference, of course. And taxpayers money more generally. Yeah, but I think people. I think the MP's wage is far higher than the average salary. The average salary in our country is less than £40,000.

I mean being an empty, huge job, isn't it?

It is a huge job. It's a seven day a week job. It's very long hours. Lots of people make sacrifices.

People have been murdered for being an mp.

Very true. Yes, absolutely.

They're hated. You get death threats.

It's very true. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna advocate higher salaries for mps. I think, I think by comparison, by comparison it is a high salary and I think there are lots of.

Okay, so what about bonuses, rewards and penalties?

Hard to enforce that and measure it. What is, how do you deliver? How do you measure?

You've got to, surely you've got to start with the open mindedness. I mean getting on the moon wasn't proven, was it? You know, Steve Jobs once did a speech when a computer was the size of a room and he said, we will make a computer the size of a book. And now we have a MacBook and a computer that used to be the size of a room when no one had foreseen it was the size of a book. So I think we can start the conversation. By the way, if you disagree with me, tell me I'm an idiot. You've got more political experience than me. But you know the thing with the British economy or the economy as our politicians run it is it's not a real economy. And I'll tell you why. Because in a business, if you trade knowingly, insolvently, that's illegal. And if you don't balance your books, you lose money or you go bust. If you have a negative balance sheet, and that's knowing you can be struck off as a director for seven years, you can go to prison. You have to put your own money in. And I have a friend who put 3 million of his own money in last year into his business because that was what they lost. Whereas any politicians come in. Well, it's not a real economy, it's like a toy economy. It's like Monopoly. And we can leave the national balance sheet in -3 trillion and there's no consequences. Do you hear me?

What you're talking about is you want a way of holding politicians to account.

Yes, to do a good job, rewarded for a good job and penalized for a bad job.

And where that's coming from is your sense that there is no accountability.

Well, they're not spending their own money for a start. Yeah, so you say. So hard to have accountability when you're not spending or investing your own money.

So you don't feel that the current electoral system provides that accountability. Because I would say the account of count, the kind of accountability that you're seeking in your question is provided for through our electoral system. As we saw very vividly last year, people were not happy with the Conservative government. They rejected us. And so that is the biggest symbol of our democratic accountability is how seamlessly political administrations change overnight. Rishi Sunak was out, Keir Starmer was in number 10, because that's what the British people expressed very vocally. And so I think that is a more effective way, don't you think, in terms of.

Well, I mean, people getting.

Yeah, I, I accept that, you know, several months on, a lot of people are having buyer's regret and buyer's remorse and feeling very let down by this government. But that can happen all the time. What you're saying is you'd want another election, an earlier point, to be able to express that. But then I think that that comes with difficulties as well. So I do think our democratic system as it is, whilst it's slow, slower than you might like, it does allow you to get rid of the people who are not performing. Basically. The concerted government wasn't performing. The British people got rid of it.

Okay.

Because I think it's very difficult to maintain a rigorous integrity of some kind of system that you're suggesting. And I, I think it's. It. Being an mp, being Prime Minister, being in the Cabinet is not the same as a private sector job. You should be motivated, but I mean, label by public service.

Okay, I hear you.

And, and it's not about money. Actually, for me, it's not about money. I know I have to live and I need a salary. I'm not in this job for money. I'm not in this job for kudos or status. I'm in this job to make a difference and have an impact and serve the country that I love. And so I think once you kind of add remunerative elements to it, I think that slightly distorts that motivation. That's the motivation for most MPs as well. I'm not, I'm not special in that regard. I think that.

Okay, well, in the last, in the last 15 years, I think we've royally up this country. I mean, by your own admission, Conservatives did a really bad job. And by your own admission, labor are making it worse. So the current system isn't working, is it?

Well, I think that there's a question about the quality of our politics, politicians.

Well, then if you paid them well, you might give out Equality.

I can, I think I could. I can see why you say that. Yeah. But it's a very, It's a diff. That's a dilemma.

Everything.

I don't want people coming into politics for money. I want people coming into politics because they really love our country and they.

Want to serve it. But people come in like that and then the system ruins them, taints them. I mean, look at Boris, like, so the system isn't that. There are, there are. There seems to be a reasonable amount of careerist politicians and all right, okay. If it's not for the salary, it's for the after dinner speaking and the book deals afterwards, because there's a lot of that going on.

Maybe I take a, A romantic or view of it.

I. Ideological.

Maybe I'm too ideological. I like the fact that. But it's public service that motivates people to very often make a sacrifice in their salary. They may well be able to earn more in other jobs and they've chosen to give that up for our country.

I won't chase you anymore. I made a case for high quality MPs to get paid more and Suella rejected it.

I am not calling for MPs to be paid more.

No, you're not.

I'm not calling for MPS to be paid more. And I, I just think when you look at the average salary, I just think. I don't.

But you're not. You're running the country. You know, you get disproportionate. The people who run the companies get disproportionately more money than, you know, the factory workers. And I know some people think that's unfair and I know that the gaps got bigger and that needs to be sorted out. But you take more risk than a lot of people who earn the average salary. You get death threats. You have, you know, you put your entire life on the line. That's serious. But that's fine. We're discussing, we're discussing. And we don't have to agree on everything. No, no, we don't.

And essence of disruption. We agreed on everything. Then it wouldn't be very disruptive, would it?

No, it wouldn't. So I'm going to, I'm going to throw another one to you. What about in. We had a board of UK and some overseas successful entrepreneurs who are very closely linked to policy, certainly economic, and were taken seriously as advisors by the government. So I get the theory that if you bring in a billionaire or an entrepreneur into government, they've got the bias of wanting to make profit And I know sometimes there's a disconnect between public and private. So here's my theory. You take people like maybe Richard Branson or maybe in America, Ray Dalio, who seem to be pretty open that they're in the season of their life where they'd like to give back and do something for the people. And there's plenty of billionaires giving all their money away. You know, die with zero is a thing for these billionaires. I, I admit not all billionaires you'd want in your government because they're going to change the policy for their benefit. But there surely is 12 elders who have got 70 years experience like Richard Branson, like Ray Dalio. There's John Caldwell, I know him well. He seems to have, you know, good motives. I think surely we can find 12 of them. Those 12 people are surely gonna change the economy cause they've run billion pound economies. What do you think?

Are you auditioning for a job?

Are you gonna see more? I, I don't hit the business advisor.

To the prime minister threshold.

Yeah, well, I, I openly admit you wouldn't want me in my local council because I just change all the planning laws so I could do a load more real estate development because I have a lot of real estate. I openly admit that I, I don't want to be a politician, I want to be an entrepreneur. I will, I don't mind lending my voice to people in council to help them make the planning laws a, a less bloated because you know, we just developed 159 tenant block in the center of town and that thing was just run down and we, we've got 159 tenants in it now and we developed it and we put our own money in at our own risk. And the planning took so long, it should have taken 18 months, it took five years. There's 24 different departments. You've got to get through, you've got to get through the noise, the conservation, the this and then that.

Did you have to appeal anything?

Oh, we went through rounds and rounds and rounds of it and you know, you walk down the, some of the areas in the high street and a third of the buildings are empty and in disrepair and there's graffiti everywhere. And we're putting our own money at risk and turning these buildings around. We've just bought another one, a bank in the center of town. We'll develop up, we'll make it look lovely, but it's virtually impossible to do. So. Yeah, I would give some advice and counsel as an entrepreneur but I probably wouldn't be a politician because I'm an entrepreneur. I mean, can you be both?

Well, listen, the last Conservative government had a lot of entrepreneurs around the cabinet table. I'm very proud of the people who are very experienced business people. Experienced and successful business people.

Were they listened to in the Conservative Party. Were they listened to?

Because some of them were in very influential positions. I mean Jeremy Han was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was. Had a phenomenally successful business.

I Was he the one that was putting all the taxes up? Because like, like you said, conservatives were putting taxes up, not down.

Yes, we were. Yes. But you know, it was on the, in the aftermath of COVID Okay. And there were lots of.

Is there a case for it? Is there a case that the second and third lockdown that was somewhat of a crime against humanity or at least there should have been a case in, you know, investigation into that we should.

Not have locked down in the way that we did.

It was, I mean I can forgive the first one because no one knew what was going on, you know, and I have some empathy. But I think after the first one, the second and the third just killed so many businesses. I said at the time, and by the way, I got shut down on Facebook for saying it, but I said, you know, this will, this will have a ten year implication at least and people will be leaving the country and taxes are going to go up.

Oh wow. Gosh, you had a crystal ball and you saw.

Well, I thought it's pretty obvious where's all the money coming from for furlough? The taxpayer.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, all these bounce back loans. I knew people that were getting bounce back loans that didn't need them or were gaming the system. Where's. Who's paying for that? The taxpayer.

I don't think we should have done after the first lockdown. I agree. It shouldn't have gone ahead again. And the effect on the economy, devastating. And it's going to take us still several years before we recover. The effect on children's education.

Yeah, there's a whole generation we've killed work ethic now.

Yeah, well the number of people who are off work because of sick leave peaked during the pandemic and it's never really got bound down back to pre pandemic levels. So it, and we're five years on it did. It was a catalyst really for you know, a non working kind of streak in our society. So children adversely affected and you're seeing that trickle through the system where children who were locked down and not Able to go to school, have had, you know, a really have suffered. Their education has suffered. Their social skills have suffered. Especially for younger children who weren't able to interact and gain important social skills from being at school.

Or the small businesses that had to show.

The small businesses that had to shut.

The leisure industry that got wiped out.

Yeah. There are restaurants and hotels that haven't recovered. The, the kind of, the, the lack of humanity. There were people who couldn't be with their loved ones while they died and they couldn't go to hospital wards when their spouse of 50 years was dying. I mean, I just think there's a. Couldn't go to funerals. People weren't able to physically participate in the funeral of a close relative. We can never repeat those mistakes again. There will be another pandemic. This is the thing. We've got to learn these lessons because there will be another pandemic probably in our lifetimes. And we need to be prepared for next time because this, these lockdowns were an overreaction because we didn't really know what we were doing. No one really. I was in the Cabinet at the time Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. I saw the, the kind of. The real dilemma, to put it mildly, that everyone went through. You know, he didn't want to lock down, so why did he instinctively was against lockdown? Because we had a scientific class and a media frenzy that was in favor of lockdown. And when you've got professors and so then epidemiologists and scientists telling you you've got to lock down, otherwise you, Prime Minister, are going to be responsible for a hundred thousand fatalities. It's a very brave politician who says actually I'm going to go against this scientific view. And it was wrong. We were bamboozled by the science and the science and there was a. The science or the government scientists signed up to a pro lockdown view. Now I'm not, not going to pass them up because ultimately politicians are responsible, but that's the reality of what happened. The political instinct that many members of the cabinet, I mean Rishi was Chancellor, he didn't want to lock down because he saw the implications like you did on the economy and he was focused on that. Boris didn't want to lock down, but it was the scientific pressure that forcing.

Him into the lockdown supposed to be able to make strong.

I think it's really easy to say that.

Well, of course, five years later, of course.

And in the midst of a crisis in. When, you know, you look at the.

Second one and the third one the first one. Fine.

Yeah.

I mean, you've said we shouldn't lock down the second and third.

The second one and, and the third one were harder to defend.

Yeah.

Because we, I think the evidence was much weaker for it and we'd gone through.

Yeah.

The kind of. The nightmare scenario and arguably we didn't. We didn't need to repeat. We didn't need to repeat it at all. It was far too damaging. The. The costs far outweighed the benefits.

Yeah.

And we're paying the cost. We're still paying the price.

Yeah.

So I think. But we need to be prepared for the next pandemic. We mustn't. We just got to be much more pragmatic and realistic and we've got to think about, seriously, the impact on civil liberties. I mean, it is mad to think that the government passed laws to say that people need to stay at home and they can only spend a certain amount of time outside and they can. They can only congregate in certain groups. For the government to intrude so heavily and actively into our private lives was. It's looks like madness now when we look back on it, thanks to what we know. And looking at other countries, you know, Sweden took a very different approach. You could arguably say that they. Their approach was better.

Yeah.

What I'm very worried about is this inquiry, the COVID inquiry that's ongoing at the moment, where they're trying to answer some of these questions. But do you know what's really worrying the COVID inquiry? And looking at the line of questioning and the kind of evidence that is coming through, I think it's probably going to conclude that we didn't lock down soon enough or for long enough. This is another example of the groupthink in Westminster that kind of takes over otherwise pretty sensible people. And I, I think that, that there's a very vocal school of thought that says actually we should have locked down sooner and for longer.

Wow. Final question.

Okay.

Paint us a beautiful future of the uk. Let's finish good and finish strong. How come, you know, we bring. Bring brat? How can we bring back Britain? How can we be positive? What is there to be positive about?

Listen, there is. There is a bright future available to us if we work hard for it. And the Great Britain that I would love to see that I know can exist is one where everybody, regardless of what school they went to or where they come from, is able to realize their potential and they take personal responsibility for it. And they know that working hard and striving and an attitude of Service and pride in their community and contribution, not entitlement, is what will give them success personally, but also will enrich the country. And that we've got a much more vivid sense of togetherness and pride in our country and love of our country and gratitude for our history. And, you know, that we wave our flag with pride, not embarrassment. I go to so many other countries around the world and there are whole motorways where they have their national flag, you know, set up along the motorway and every, you know, all houses will all have a flag post and they're so, they all know their national anthem and all the children in school sing their national anthem every day. And they, they are beaming with pride and joy when they talk about their country. And they, they have a sense that their country provides excellence and quality. And we don't have that at the moment, but I know we can have in the future.

Well, everything you said I really like. Just like what it's like to be an entrepreneur. Personal responsibility, work hard, take agency. Sounded like you were creating a culture for the uk. It was not really a policy, it was a culture.

A culture that we can all buy into.

Yeah.

Something that is unifying and that says we're a positive country, we're an aspirational country, and there's so much like we used to be, like we used to be. And that we can really offer aspiration to everybody. Because I, I. What saddens me sometimes is people do work hard, they are aspirational, but the state gets in the way.

Yeah.

And the culture gets in the way. And there are obstacles and there are setbacks and there are problems that are actually caused by the government or arms of the government. And I don't want this people to be held back. I want people to be liberated and empowered.

Amen. What a perfect way to end. Thank you very much.

Lovely to be here.

Thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate you.

Thank you, Rob.

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