MTracey podcast - Bantering with Steve Hilton, California GOP gubernornatorial candidate

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Here are some highlights from my recent interview with Steve Hilton, the California GOP gubernatorial candidate. You can find the full interview, alongside Richard Hanania, here. During my segments, we cover a range of my admittedly niche interests, such as Hilton’s background as David Cameron’s chief UK political strategist, the proper role of a governor in weighing in on foreign policy issues like Iran/Israel, and “sex trafficking.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mtracey.net/subscribe

The first thing that most Americans will notice about you is that you have a British accent. They will find this probably quite enthralling, actually. That's one way for it. And I find your background in UK politics to be interesting. And I'm curious how you relate some of that history to your foray and to California politics. You are the director of strategy for David Cameron, the former prime minister. You then came on different sides with him in terms of the Brexit debate. I actually looked up a clip of you on the BBC newscast, the night of the Brexit referendum,

where you were asked by the presenter about this quote of yours that became a little bit notorious, which is that you said something to the effect of, oh, these statistics, they're all made up, I know because I used to do that stuff, meaning you were criticizing the Remain campaign for using cooked up statistics. And so now with 10 years of hindsight from Brexit, and not many of the promises of the Leave campaign, made coming to pass, you know, migration not being stemmed whatsoever. In fact, it radically increased. Economically, it's questionable whether or not the things that were projected have actually

come to fruition. How do you look at that experience and relate it to what you are currently prescribing for California? And could you appreciate how people might look at what you had projected as to these big debates that had rile British politics and wonder if maybe your foresight is not unimpeachable in terms of how it could translate to an American context. Well, it wasn't, it's not about predictions. It's about an argument you make about the world that you want to see. And it's a world where, as we've just been discussing, I believe in decentralized power.

I believe that bureaucrats and centralized decision makers usually make bad decisions with unintended consequences. There's probably no, you know, at the time, there's no worse example of that than the EU. I saw that first sound because I worked in Ten Downing Street as senior advisor to the prime minister. We were seeing endless expansions of bureaucracy and regulation and red tape that was reducing productivity

and keeping income levels down and the quality of life down in our country. And we had a stated mission as a coalition government. Remember, he was a conservative prime minister, it was a coalition government with the liberal Democrats. And I helped negotiate that coalition agreement. And the central theme of it was decentralizing power because we both agreed about that. None of that really happened.

And at one point, this is going, back now nearly 20 years, by the way. So this is a long time ago. But I remember commissioning an audit of the policy making and the rulemaking of the UK government to try and understand where all this stuff was coming from. I mean, literally, there would be moments where I'd go to see the prime minister. And so I had my little office next to the cabinet room and he was on the other side. And I'd say, so we'd hear something on the news that the government had just announced or done.

Not just that we didn't know about it, we totally disagreed with it. So I'm going to see the prime minister who's elected by the people to run the government. And so what's this about? Well, no idea. So we looked into it, and it turned out, to cut a long story short, when we audited the process through which policy gets made, that basically 70% of what the British government was doing had nothing to do with the platform that the two parties and the government were elected on. It's totally undemocratic.

So for me, the whole Brexit argument was about sovereignty, and the decentralized, you know, who exercises power? Should it be distant, unelected bureaucrats that nobody ever voted for? Or should it be the politicians in a country who actually are accountable to the voters who put them? That was what that argument about. Then how is it that migration didn't reduce it all, which actually is relevant to California? No, well, when I, when I hear the word migration. Or unregulated migration cross-border.

No, I understand. The migration that's relevant in the context of California, of course, is that we've now got, as Farid Zakari on CNN pointed out the other day, 1.9 million people have left California on that just in the last seven years because it's so impossible to live here. That's the kind of migration that I think of

when you hear about California, the fact that we've got millions of people leaving this beautiful state because of the terrible policies of the people who've been in charge. In terms of migration in relation to Brexit, you're completely right. So here's how that went down. And again, it was an issue for me of democratic accountability. So in

the 2010 election campaign, when David Cameron was leader of the Conservative Party, and I was very much involved in that, as you mentioned. He actually, this is a very personal pledge from him, made a pledge that he would reduce net migration into the UK from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. He would bring net migration into the UK below 100,000. A very specific pledge.

Now, once taking office, it was very, evident that there were and we've had regular meetings progress chasing meetings on that issue it's a very clear pledge there's a sense of democratic accountability you make a promise to the voters how are we doing in keeping that promise i think that's like a basic thing so we'd have these progress chasing meetings many of which that you know i kind of on various areas of policy i was really my role in that administration i seen advisor was my title was really domestic policy progress chasing that kind of thing and at one point the the officials in the i think it was the home office said, look, there's just no way this can possibly be met in a way that's consistent

with membership of the EU. There are things that you could do to reduce immigration, but it would be pretty self-harming, like students and whatever. The things that you would have to do to try and meet the target whilst remaining a member of the EU would just really be damaging to the country, to its culture and business, and so on. So to me that was just complete, because of course you got open borders migration with the EU is core part of the EU.

So that's really the origin of that. Now, you fast forward to the Brexit campaign. Remember, I'd been living in California. We moved in 2012 with my wife and my son. So I had a book actually that was published. The reason I was involved in that campaign was really because I published in 2015, a book called More Human, designing a world

where people come first. And the theme of that book was decentralization. I applied that argument. It was different areas of policy. The year later, the paperback comes out in the UK. I'm back promoting that. I'm asked, doesn't Brexit really, doesn't the EU really, isn't it a perfect example of everything you're arguing against in this book?

Yes, it is. That's why I'm for Brexit. That's how that came about. Now, the point about migration was exactly as you say, it was a central promise of the Brexit campaign that was led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. A central promise was to take back control of our borders. That was the promise. And you're completely right to say that that promise was not met.

that was because of the failings of the conservative governments from 2016 onwards. Right. So it wasn't a matter of merely taking back democratic control that had been arrogated by the European Union. It was a matter of exercising the democratic control in a way that was... Yeah. No, no. The way I put it is this. Brexit gave the UK government the freedom to implement policies that I was advocating in terms of reducing bureaucracy and so on. Now, That's part one. Give yourself the freedom to maneuver, to act. Part two is you've then got to do it.

So that's the failure. For whatever reason, I mean, the government. And remember that the prime minister who took office after Brexit was against Brexit, Theresa May. She'd voted against Brexit. So you had a prime minister for three years, who hated the whole thing. And then you had Boris Johnson, who

was immediately hit by the pandemic. So it's a catalog of policy disasters. But I completely agree. agree with you that the... And arguably, the most progress that was made in reducing immigration post-Brexit was under the Labor government, a Starmer, obviously very much imperfectly, but there seems to have been more tangible progress made in that direction. I've been, I've lived here for 14 years.

I'm completely out of all of this, so I'm sort of looking across the... Okay, sorry to be too fixed it on the UK. No, but the point I want to make is that I think it's... I think the important point for this election that I'm now running in is what does this tell us about you and how you would be. What it tells you is that I'm a passionate believer in reducing over-centralization, government bureaucracy,

and distant micromanaging of daily life that is to the detriment of people and workers and families and businesses. That is the cardinal sin of the last 16 years of one party rule in California. The number one, look, I'm not. I can talk to you through my specific campaign, my versions of that, you know, reducing immigration.

I can tell you very simply what it is to make our state Cal affordable. $3 gas, cut utility bills in half, your first 150 grand tax-free, starter homes for young families. That's my point, but underlying all of that, how do we- Can I just make to all of those things

and more is to take an absolutely aggressive sledgehammer to the bloat and be around. bureaucracy in Sacramento that is driving up the cost and hassle of doing everything. So that idea, that driving philosophy that I've been consistently advocating all my career, including as represented in the kind of intellectual argument around Brexit, I think is something that people can really believe I'm committed to delivering once I'm governor. So I want to go back to one of your prongs of making California, Californable, California.

Yes, it's a mouthful, it's a mouthful. I don't know how I can. get a New Jersey version of that to be enunciated in a smooth way. But it's bringing down gas prices, right? And this relates to one of the broader roles that you'd inevitably have as governor of California, because that's the largest state in the union, you're going to have a platform to opine on all sorts of international issues. Gavin Newsom certainly hasn't been shy about doing that, whether it's Ukraine, Russia,

or the Middle East, or China, or what have you. And so one of the reasons, one of the reasons, one of the reasons, would think why, for example, when I check today, the average gas price in San Diego is 560, not the sole reason, obviously, but one of the reasons is the current conflict with Iran and the uproar with the Strait of Hormuz. So, and, you know, obviously they're going to be Marines stationed in San Diego, who are now deployed to the Persian Gulf area. So it is within your purview to some degree.

And so I'm just curious, what are your views on the status of that conflict, how it's caused prices to rise, particularly energy prices, and what role do you envision yourself having on international issues such as that insofar as you judge that they intersect with your remit as governor? What else are you going to arrest then Yahoo if he travels to California? So no, I appreciate the question. I mean, the short answer is none. I mean, I'm going to focus on the things that I control as governor, and that doesn't include

the foreign policy of the United States. Now, let's just look at gas prices. is your way into this. And you're right, very high here. But what is it in Texas right now? I mean, when we went, just this couple of weeks ago, we did some events in Texas. And the day before we left, I remember the numbers,

it's 649. We filled up. And right now, the range is between the sort of number you cited. I mean, as I said, I'm on the road the whole time. I see it everywhere. Around 560-ish to 640, 6.50, depending where you're on the state. So this time, it was 649 on, I don't know, Monday.

And we are the next day in Texas, 349. The Iran war is taking place in a world that Texas and California are both in simultaneously. Now, what explains the $3 uplift in California, that's high. I mean, typically it's about gas prices are about $2 higher in California. Remember, before the Iran war, there were 40 states in America

where gas prices were $3 or lower. Most of them have no oil reserves, unlike California, which by some accounts has the second luck. with the Monterey Shale, the second largest oil reserves in the world. The reasons that we have the highest gas prices in the country are Democrat policies. It's not the Iran war because you could have the exact same,

let's say we had the same policies. But we don't. We have $2 higher because of Democrat policies. That I can affect as governor. And that's how I would deliver that promise of $3 gas, the number of components to it. There's the insanity of shutting down California oil gas production, we now import nearly 80% of our oil in California.

We used to be the other way around. Even by its own terms, that is insane. Because where's the oil coming from? There are no oil pipelines into California. If you don't produce it here, you have to ship it in. That's what we're doing. We are now shipping oil halfway around the world from supplies like Iraq.

That's often our number one. It goes between Iraq or Brazil and Ecuador. Halfway around the world, on jobs. giant super tankers spewing out carbon emissions. They run on bunker fuel, the most dirty form of oil there is. So in the name of climate change, we are actually increasing carbon emissions, as well as increasing gas prices. That's something you can turn around. So you have no view one way or another on the wisdom or lack thereof of this Iran conflict.

I mean, there were just three to four American soldiers killed in the past few days. It doesn't seem to be any end in sight. You just don't have a view on whether this is a prudent course of action. I'm running for government of California. I think it's incredibly important to focus on, I mean, I'm not a commentator anymore. Of course, I have opinions. But my job is now to try and win an election

to help working class people in California who are being crushed by the highest cost of living in the country and to try and do something to stop the calamitous exodus of business that I think will turn into a complete stampede if I don't win this election. That's my focus. Now, I've got opinions on everything. I used to be paid to do that when I was a TV commentator.

I'm not anymore. I'm a candidate for governor of California, and that's what I'm going to find. focus on. And that's just the start. So, you know, and there's so much that we can do to reduce gas price. It's absolutely nothing to do with international policies. Number one is California domestic production. Number two is the regulations on the refineries that make it more expensive. I was just at one of the refineries the other day. They have an operation here in Long Beach and also in Louisiana. They told me very clearly it costs four or five dollars a barrel to refine there, $9 here.

I mean, that's just directly the result of regulation. This is the same exact equipment. And same oil is just totally the result of stupid and pointless and regulation doesn't even help the environment to any degree at all. Then on top of that, you've got the taxes. You've got gas tax itself, the highest in the country, that has just gone up. Again, these California politicians like Bacera and Newsom, whatever, going on, oh, we must do something about the affordability crisis. They've just increased gas taxes, right, the highest in the country.

That's about that's 63.4 cents on the gallon. Inflation. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. It's actually a climate. It's ideology driven. It rises with ideology. But mechanically, it rises with the...

No, they pass a legislation to it. They can stop it. Secondly, but the bigger component is the taxes that, again, hidden taxes, is part of what they call cap and trade. And they renamed it cap and invests. That's what's funding the high-speed rail fiasco, by the way. And something else called the low-carbon fuel standard, which sounds very nice.

It's basically just a tax on energy. So there's all these things that we're doing that are just, just deliberately. And again, it's driven by ideology because they want people to get out of cars and either into public transit, cycling or walking, or EVs. Now, you look at that, and what is the...

And they say, oh, EVs, that's the great transformation. Oh, look, we've got an EV. I'm not against EVs. I'm just against taxing poor people to have rich people be able to get them and show off about what great climate worries they are, subsidized on the backs of the poor. And even with all of that subsidy,

With all of that subsidy, today in California, the percentage of vehicles on our roads that are EVs is 7%. 93% of the vehicles on California's roads are on gas or diesel, and they've been completely gouged in the name of ideology. The cruelty of this far-left ideology and the way it hurts. I mean, I see it in people's eyes. We do hundreds of events in the last year on my campaign. It's a completely different scale to any campaign you've seen in this state for 20 years. I've been all over the state, nearly every single county, and hundreds of people coming to our events, mostly regular working people, there's a desperation in their eyes.

They say, you have to win. We cannot go on like this. It's too painful having to make these choices between heating our home or driving or groceries or vacations because of the cost of everything. All of it is avoidable, and it's being driven by ideology. There's a vicious cruelty to these people that absolutely needs to be confronted and defeated. So Gavin Newsom has, for example, he's visited Israel and he's made these grand proclamations. He's not a for a call.

No, but no, but I'm asking, like, would this, would your disavowal of the propriety of commenting on issues like the Iran conflict extend to issues related to Israel, where you had the incumbent governor going to Israel commenting on the hostage situation and so forth, would you would frame from commenting on those issues as well? I would do my job, which is to help Californians. How does going to Israel from Gavin Newsom help a single person kept their electric bill or afford housing or deal with homelessness? I mean, that's the whole problem, seems to me, is that you've got Govonne Newsom, who's only interested in his next job of running for president, is completely uninterested in doing his actual job of trying to make life better for California. I think it's a perfect example of why I wouldn't be like that.

because the fact that we've had a governor who just basically is completely absent and checked out who doesn't care about his job at all is why we're in such a mess largely. Fair enough. So this week Newsom signed an executive order around sex trafficking issues. I don't know why he thought it was so pertinent for him to sign this order this week, but he did. And if you read the actual order, which I had the displeasure of doing, it's so alerted with jargon.

It says that these state agencies must find ways to, quote, integrate trauma and evidence-informed trafficking prevention strategies and awareness into existing behavioral health, child welfare, homelessness, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And interestingly enough, you also have a trafficking, anti-trafficking section on your website. So that's part of your policy proposal. So there seems to be some bipartisan convergence here. I'm just curious how you would distinguish your outlook on this from Newsom's. And why wouldn't we just assume that all these government expenditures around nominally trafficking prevention, which is going to the same kind of NGO slush fund

as so many other subject areas tend to do? And also, how do you define trafficking? Because it seems to be quite an elastic concept. I'm never quite sure what the definition is. I'll give you some examples. So I've spent a lot of time right because it's disgusting. I mean, and by some accounts, I mean, of course it's, goes without saying.

What's disgusting is that California, by some accounts, has become the world capital for child sex trafficking. And a lot of that takes place. Not all of it. A lot of it is centered on one particular part of Los Angeles, Figueroa Street, particularly a three-mile stretch called The Blade. I've been out there with organizations led by pastors

and former military who are trying to find and rescue the children. And so I've seen it for myself, more than three times. And it is beyond belief. And the fact that you drive up and down the street and on every corner, off every single corner, but right there in the open, you have these girls and you can't tell, you don't go up to them, ask them.

But really, seven, eight years old, as well as older than that, dressed like you would expect a sex worker to be dressed in these little girls. I'll give you a, when we say, what is trafficking? This is a real story of a real girl that We rescued. She was 14 years old. When you hear the word trafficking, you think, well,

this is some international thing. The vast majority that we're talking about in California are either Californian, mostly Californian, or American. This girl was from, I think, down there tometula, not far from where we are in Southern California today, speaking Richard. And she'd posted on Instagram that she'd bought some weed or something, and you can say, OK, she shouldn't

have been doing that, whatever. She needed some money or something like that. So she was contacted by someone who worked for one of these, they're criminal gangs, it's a business. And I can help you out. They met up in a Starbucks or whatever it was. And within three hours, she was on the streets on Figaro Street. They changed her clothing.

They put her on the street, gave her some drugs. And thankfully, because there was a sort of quick response, the parents put out notification, the group that I was with happened to see. to spot her, she was rescued within five days. In that five day period, she had been sold three times to different organizations. It's a business, and they see these young girls as,

and sometimes boys as products. Now, it's completely evil and unacceptable, and it's been going on for years and growing. And it's brazen. You see these cars on the, you, Figaro Street, is a long, wide straight street, classic sort of LA long street. And then on the side streets, you've got

people, guys lining up the cars are parked. It's like they're going to a drive-through. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. Isn't that just prostitution, though? I mean, however undignified it may be, I mean, why... Are you not joking? A seven-year-old girl? What?

Come on. You mentioned a 14-year-old. I mean, it's child prostitution. I mean, we can object to it. It's against law. I'm just not sure what makes it trafficking. I think it's worried about concept creep, right? Like, do you think trafficking should apply, for example, in the P. Ditty case?

I don't know if you follow this. I didn't follow it. I want to answer your question, which was the difference between his approach of mine. So I get another story on this. So all of what you describe, that jargon, the nonsense that you see that you accurately characterize Newsom's statement, which is just appalling, reflects a real infection that

gripped this whole area of policy in California and the bureaucracy around child and family services. There's something that's really striking to me. As I just mentioned, I've been on the road, we're doing all these town halls, thousands and thousands of people. And when I went into that, I'd already spent three years traveling California, developing policy, so all the issues, housing, energy, water,

all those things, business, climate, education crime. And so I felt like I knew a lot about what was going on. And true, the stories and the questions you get were things that I expected to a large degree. With one exception, and it's this, I was absolutely stunned and remain stunned by how many of the questions and the issues that are brought to these town halls relate to this policy era somehow in terms of the foster care system of family services, children being taken with it. There's something's gone really wrong in the bureaucracy

here that is a family courts, all of this is just really, really bad. And I think what he's doing in that document is symptomatic of all of that. I'll give you an example. There's the goal that was rescued going back to the child sex trafficking and then put in the care of the state. And then she wanted to go back to her foster mother. And she was 17, and she has a younger sister with the foster mother. And because of some protocol, they didn't want her

going back to the foster mother, so they put her in this trailer part. We went to it. I think it was out with Lancaster or Palmdale, I can't remember, and got this goal because she wanted to leave. She was nearly 18 able to make her own decisions. Why did she want to live?

leave, the trailer park where the government had put her by a paid person who was not her foster mother, because that was a temporary home before they wanted to put her back in a kid's shelter run by family services. Guess where that was? Figueroa Street, right at the heart of where she'd been trafficked since the age of 12. And so she was trying to escape from the government. And so there's something really wrong here. And that's why I think it's such an important area of policy. It's not just the most extreme end of it, which is that, what you see on the streets of Los Angeles, but it's actually this whole system needs complete reform. And it's a pretty hidden problem compared to the obvious ones we talk about gas prices and so on, but it's something that we really need to fix. Steve, conscious of your time. Thank you for doing this.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good conversation. Thanks guys. Excellent. Likewise, like that. All right. Thank you.