The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 164. Zack Polanski: Do The Greens Have What It Takes?

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Why has Green party membership exploded since Zack Polanski became leader in September? What radical economic reforms is he fighting for? Why have the Greens stopped talking about the environment?  Alastair and Rory are joined by Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, to answer all this and more.  Gift The Rest Is Politics Plus this Christmas - give someone a whole year of Rory and Alastair’s miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. Just go to https://therestispolitics.supportingcast.fm/gifts And of course, you can still join for yourself any time at ⁠therestispolitics.com For Leading listeners, there’s free access to the Wordsmith Academy - plus their report on the future of legal skills. Visit https://www.wordsmith.ai/politics To save your company time and money, open a Revolut Business account today via https://get.revolut.com/z4lF/leading, and add money to your account by 31st of December 2025 to get a £200 welcome bonus or equivalent in your local currency. Feature availability varies by plan. This offer’s available for New Business customers in the UK, US, Australia and Ireland. Fees and Terms & Conditions apply. For US customers, Revolut is not a bank. Banking services and card issuance are provided by Lead Bank, Member FDIC. Visa® and Mastercard® cards issued under license. Funds are FDIC insured up to $250,000 through Lead Bank, in the event Lead Bank fails. Fees may apply. See full terms in description. For Irish customers, Revolut Bank UAB is authorised and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania in the Republic of Lithuania and by the European Central Bank and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland for conduct of business rules. For AU customers, consider PDS & TMD at revolut.com/en-AU. Revolut Payments Australia Pty Ltd (AFSL 517589). Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Producer: Alice Horrell Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen Head of Politics: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. This episode is brought you by Wordsmith. A.I. And increasingly, of course, in all the organizations we work in, we can get massively slowed up by the paperwork, the processes, the forms, the legal advice. And that's why, in business today, it's all of us, legal teams. companies are facing a choice, lead the AI shift or risk being left behind. And companies like TrustPilot, Deliveroo, SkyScanor are already leading the way,

with Wordsmith AI alongside them. It's like giving every lawyer an invisible paralegal, somebody who knows their history, drafts the first pass and frees up hours for complex work. Wordsmith handles the routines so that the lawyers can focus on the bigger issues. Crucially, this isn't at the moment something that's replacing lawyers. something that's taking out the more boring routine task so they can really use their expertise, their experience, and their human judgment in the law. And it wasn't built in Silicon Valley. It was built like so many great things in history

in Scotland, now benefiting companies worldwide. Shifts already happening. Wordsmith is helping legal teams around the world with clarity and confidence. There's free access to the Wordsmith Academy, plus their report on the future of legal skills, visit wordsmith.a.ai slash politics. Welcome to the rest of politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. And we are with Zach Polanski,

who is the recently elected leader of the Green Party and is making something of a name for himself, both on social media and also in terms of driving up membership of the Greens, and is therefore becoming quite a central figure in our political debate. Political experience thus far, mainly in the London Assembly, but it is actually from the north, from Manchester, Jewish, gay, and somebody now who is beginning to stake out a position on the left of politics, which is perhaps well beyond just the environmental issues that first brought the Green Party to kind of public attention in the UK. So thank you for being here. Thank you very much for having me.

Well, I love the introduction. Thank you. And, Zek, let's start with your childhood. Tell us a little bit about the young Zach Plansky, where you grew up, what kind of world you grew up in? So I was born in Manchester in Salford at Hope Hospital, which is a nice slogan already. Grew up in North Manchester. It came from a place called Hope. Indeed, exactly.

I need to work on that, but I think there's something there right there. I grew up in a Jewish community, so I went to a Jewish school. I then went to a secondary school where it was private and I was on a scholarship. I was really badly bullied at that school. One thing I do want to say, though, without tangencing too much, is the head teacher of that school wrote to me recently and said two things. One, we've put in different safeguarding measures now for LGBT kids in particular. Would you like to come and visit? I'm hoping to kind of find out what they're doing.

And two, you wouldn't believe how much media have written to us to ask about your days at school. And we've chosen to keep your anonymity or to, you know, to keep you safeguarded. So thank you very much. And was it the gay issue that led to the bullying? Yeah, I think it was hugely that. And also, yeah, it wasn't so much anti-Semitism at that point, although it was certainly more internal to have gone from a Jewish school to suddenly being a school where not everyone was Jewish. And so that brought beautiful things with it in terms of different communities coming together. But I think I definitely felt a sense of being kind of a fish out of water.

And when did you come up? When did you? About 14. So it was pretty, pretty young, not to my parents, but to the school. And I think it was a sense of, I'm being bullied anyway, don't have any friends in that school. might as well just tell the truth. And it's interesting because it's not a million miles away from some of my media strategy at the moment

with some of the more kind of hard right stuff where they just come at you over your smile or the gaps in my teeth and you just go, actually, if you own it, how can anyone attack you? Like, I love my smile. They can talk about it as much as they want. I think it's often a distraction from actually talking about substance or policies.

And I think some of that developed. It's hard to go, this was a significant event in your life that made you the politician you are. And you always say politicians do that And I always just think, it sounds like bullshit to me. I think we're an accumulation of lots of different experiences. It's interesting. I can swear right, sorry.

And also, it's interesting, one of the first things you said there was you came out, not your parents. What was holding you back on that? Yeah, so my parents got divorced when I was 11. They're quite private people. So I'm cautious about talking about that divorce too much. But in terms of the experience on me, it was pretty devastating. I had a journalist.

I won't name them yesterday who asked me like four or five times what the experience of having divorced parents was like. And I was like, it was like it was a. awful. And they were like, can you tell me more about that? And I was like, you can speak to pretty much any kid of divorced parents. I'm sure sometimes there, you know, the divorce goes well and the kid is fine. But generally, it's not a good experience for anyone involved. And I think the particular thing, it was just a very logistical thing. I had a father in South Manchester, a mother in North Manchester, who weren't talking to each other for a while. And so just long bus routes of,

you know, an hour and a half at weekends of staying with one of them for the weekend and then on on Monday. I'm not pretending this is unique to me, but what it was was alongside being gay, alongside not feeling like I particularly belonged at school. It was just kind of a mess of experiences. Everything changed when I came out. And actually, everything changed when I was disinvited from staying at the school I was at. And suddenly I went to a public college, which Danyas in Marple, started to study drama, met my tribe. Being gay was no longer a kind of secret or a bad thing. In fact, I was the coolest kid in town because I was gay. And Russell T. Davis's queer as folk was just coming out.

And so I think it was a real moment where being gay was seen as a superpower if you actually owned it. And I remember that time being incredibly thrilling. Tell us a little bit about your Jewish identity. So you chose actually to change your name to become more Jewish from the names that your parents had. I have a bone to pick with Mr. Campbell on this. I know. I know you do. I get your point. I get your point. If I've defended you over that, because I didn't know the full story.

Yeah, yeah. And I think what you said was totally fine. And I think it's also right to us for the full story. I think the first thing to say is it's a very common experience to lots of Jewish people. So go right back to my ancestry. We're in Latvia. Very Jewish town. In fact, I think entirely Jewish.

Gets displaced because of the pogroms. Again, a very common story in Jewish ancestry. End up in Ukraine. Again, that feels particularly relevant at the moment. More pogroms. So we flee again. Then fleeing the Nazis and then end up in the UK. Now, the really interesting bit about the,

this story is I grew up knowing this story, but I've been told that we changed our name to evade the Nazis in Germany or Poland. Then a few years later, find out, no, actually, it was when we arrived in the UK, it was to evade anti-Semitism in the UK. Interestingly, it turns out it probably wasn't Polansky. It was Polinsky. And again, a very common experience of Jewish ancestry that because the documents are written and they're rushed, they say different things on different documents. But once I'd change my name once, it's like, I'm not changing it again. You're not going to do it again. And then also just on the name change, because people then go, well, what about your first name as well? Because I went from David to Zach. And really it was two things.

The main thing was I had a stepfather who I really didn't get on with, to put it lightly, who was called David. And people used to say to my mom, oh, is this big David, a little David? And suddenly I was like the little version of this man. I absolutely, he's dead now. So I'm careful with my words because he's not here to defend himself, but that I didn't get on with. And so it just felt important to get a new name. Just to explain to those who didn't hear what you were saying there when you said, the other point to be it would be, I was talking about Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. I mean, I've got other bones picked.

I'm sure you have. We'll get on to those. Calling himself Tommy Robinson, and I said on the podcast, never trust somebody who changes their name. And you've given the reasons. Okay. Very good. I'm glad that's all we have.

It wasn't really the right. You're going to go. Back to you, Roy. Back to you. So I was actually going to talk a little bit about your Jewish identity and how that's helped you to understand the views. of some Jewish people in the UK that they feel they're being unfairly criticized over Gaza and that some of the criticism of Israel they feel is anti-Semitic.

It'd be interesting to hear how you, as somebody who is Jewish, very strongly Jewish, wants to identify strongly as Jewish, went to a Jewish school, speaks about the two different sides in Gaza and understanding views of different communities here. And just on that, I really quote me, of all the criticism I've received in my career as a politician, the most vicious has come from so-called mainstream Jewish communities. Yeah, absolutely. I'm interested in that as well. Yeah, so I guess if I start from beginning of the question and I'll come to this bit,

which is, as I say, I grew up in a Jewish school, I felt strongly connected to Israel. I've never actually visited Israel, but I think, again, it's a very common experience in Jewish communities that you grow up knowing that Israel is the place that people fled to with the exact stories I was just talking about, about Jewish diaspora and displacement. And that was until fairly recently, actually. And then around, I think it was 2019, 2020 had just been elected for the London Assembly. And a group got in touch with me called Breaking the Silence, which is a group of ex-IDF soldiers who were speaking out against the occupation.

This was before the terrorist attack on October 7th and before the ongoing genocide. Obviously, things did not start on October 7th. This is a whole history of struggle and oppression. And I sat down and listened to them and I felt myself getting defensive over what they were saying in the meeting, just internal feelings of this is so different to the narrative that I've grown up with and the narrative of Israel needs to be defended. Israel's under attack all of the time. And narratives, there's always a little bit of nuance and truth and everything.

But just listening to their experiences and just knowing as I looked at them and, you know, I had questions to ask, then none of my questions made any sense. None of them were coherent because actually everything they said I knew was true. And actually what I've been doing was denying it to myself because of the uncomfortability of sitting in that moment and the uncomfortability. of your worldview or things that you really believe changing. Now, I should say it's not that, you know, I grew up in Jewish school, but it's not like I was a huge defender of Israel,

and it would have been fine if I was. It's fine for people to change their mind. But it wasn't even that strong in me. It was always something that I'd just pushed down, as was not my thing to talk about. And I hadn't had a lot of media interviews at that time. I wasn't even an elected politician, but even in that run up to the election,

I remember being asked a few times about Israel. And my answer always was that I'm Jewish. I'm not a Jewish politician. I'm a politician that happens to be Jewish. and I'm not here to answer questions about Israel. And some journalists reasonably would say, but it's a country in the world, you must have opinions. I said, that's fine, as long as you ask me about my opinions on other countries,

but you can't expect me as a Jewish person to be an expert on Israel. I've now changed that a little bit. I don't think it's a responsibility of any Jewish person to speak out against Israel's ongoing crimes. But I do feel like as an elected politician who has a leadership role and is in the Jewish community to have spoken out against the genocide in ways that are nuanced, and complex, but recognize that the genocide for me is not complex. It's not me saying that.

It's pretty much every scholar of genocide around the world saying this and the UN. And just the final thing to say, so I can see you dying to come in, is it's interesting. There was an article yesterday that came out in The Guardian that showed the amount of British Jews that have moved to the Green Party and interestingly to reform. I think the headline was slightly misleading, because the disparity is much more significant for the Green Party. So I was taking a position that I didn't necessarily, in fact, I thought would be unpopular in the jury. Jewish community from experiences I've had. But I think it's a politician's job to tell the truth and not to always go to where people are at, but to say, this is what I believe. I'm listening

to you. I'm not lecturing you, but I'm not going to shift what I believe. And let's work together through narrative to bring you to where I think you should be. But it turns out that's been happening anyway since 2024, more and more Jewish people in Britain are saying, I'm deep and uncomfortable with what's happening in Israel. I'm going to speak out against it. One of the things that Alastra and I experience is a very, very large extent of criticism. I mean, in my case, from close Jewish friends of mine who say, I don't want to listen to the podcast anymore, you talk far too much about Gaza. And I wonder how you think about that and how you deal with that. I mean, effectively what they're implying is that we're one-sided that we talk too much about Palestinian suffering.

We don't focus enough on Israeli suffering. There's a lot of emails that Alastair and I get saying, what's the alternative? alternative and the assumption is that everything the IDF did was necessary. And I find it particularly difficult when I'm dealing with people who I've known since I was a child and who are close friends of mine and who are now refusing to listen. I mean, how do you deal with that when you're in Canada? Yeah, I think it's horrendous for anyone to be going through any suffering. And I think that's the first thing to come from is a place of compassion.

I think there's a legitimate criticism that I could talk about Sudan more. And maybe we can now. I also think there is a difference here, one, because I'm Jewish. Although, again, to repeat, I don't have a responsibility to talk about Israel. I've chosen to not allow people to use other people's Jewish identity to say that everyone is defending the Israeli government's, again, ongoing genocide. So it felt important to come in there. I think the second thing to say with that is, so I have a podcast myself.

There's an episode that's about to come out with a woman called Rachel Shabby, who wrote a book about anti-Semitism. And this is two Jewish people having a conversation about anti-Semitism. You might notice that I'm a quick talker. I think Fasner just prefers to communicate. And as long as people understand, me, which I think they do, I don't think it matters the speed you're talking. I noticed when I was doing that interview how slow I was talking and how slow she was talking. So I called it out,

not for her, but I said for me, I'm choosing every single word right now carefully that I'm speaking like a politician, not the human being that I normally pride myself on being first and the politician afterwards. And the reason why I'm doing it is because I'm so aware that in a conversation about Judaism and Israel, we can be called anti-Semites so quickly. if we just step on the eggshell that's somewhere. Now, I think it's good for people to be considerate. I think we should all consider our words. And I do consider my words.

But it shows the kind of internal fear I had that even as a Jewish person speaking to another Jewish person, I thought I don't want to say anything that is endlessly clipped where people go, see, he's Jewish and he's an anti-semit. And I think it's the culture that has been bred in this country, and not just with anti-Semitism, but lots of different issues, where people are terrified to talk about the issue for fear of offending someone. Now, before I sound like I'm going on a kind of cancel culture gone mad tangent, I'm not at all. I think people should be compassionate and respectful, and I think there's red lines about how we should talk about things and how we engage with things.

And how do you respond to those people who say that you're a Jew-hating Jew, anti-Semite? How do you deal with that when people say that to you? I can tell you what I do on my best day and on my worst day. On my best day, I take a deep breath, I engage with them, I have a compassionate conversation where it doesn't come from judgment and I'm listening and I'm not. trying to win a point. I rarely do that. I've done it before and very often it feels like it's not coming in from good faith. And so when someone's attacking me and I feel like they're just trying to score a political point, I meet fire with fire and frequently they lose. That's quite a match-hit statement. Indeed. But on this particular issue, I feel very strongly

about it. I'm really proud to be Jewish and to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism actually as a Jewish person makes me feel less safe in this country. So what do you actually say when you're, you're sitting here with somebody who makes that accusation? What do you say to them? Well, I think it's an absurd accusation because I'm really proud of being Jewish. I do lots of work with the Jewish community. I'm always very happy to visit a synagogue or a community space. There's an amazing group called Namod, who are a group of British Jews against the occupation.

I often go to meet with them during festivals. We break bread together. We sing together. I'm not religious, but we pray together in terms of the tradition of praying together. And that's a beautiful community experience. I am outraged that there are British communal organisations. In fact, I'll go further. We have a chief rabbi who I think has more than overstepped the mark on many times,

where he's not speaking for the British, Jewish community. He's certainly not speaking for me, but I don't think he's speaking for the wider community. He is clearly speaking in the interests of defending the Israeli government. Now, as a personal view, he's totally entitled to do that, and I'm totally entitled to disagree with him. But as someone with the role of chief rabbi to politicize what's happening in Israel as a defence of the Jewish community in Britain, I think is deeply damaging in the same way as so many things within our politics where politics and people's ideas and personalities get mixed, we end up in a dangerous place where institutions crumble.

So, Zach, I think we're at risk violently agreeing on this subject. We're strongly sympathised with your position and your predicament on something. I was very interested, though, in something where we might get more disagreement or be more controversial. I'm sure we can find it quite easily. Put your politicians hat on, which was your sudden. reference to cancel culture, which I think is a really interesting question. Because I teach in an American university where this stuff is absolutely raw. We have people being deplatformed for seeming

too pro-Israeli, de-platform for being too pro-Palestinian, people's visas taken away, academic sect. It's really difficult or has been over the last few years creating university spaces where you are able to say, we're going to have some idea of freedom of speech. We're going to tolerate people having quite offensive different views here because I really need to allow students to try to hear different opinions and feel safe in the classroom. I mean, unfortunately, I sometimes feel teaching a little bit like I'm walking on eggshells and I have to choose, you know, if I'm teaching British colonialism, I have to choose every single word so carefully in case. Well, to bring it closer home, Roy and I were in Glasgow the other day. And Michael Goh was due to

speak at the Glasgow University for a debate about the Middle East. and was advised in the end, probably best you don't come because we can't necessarily guarantee your security. So he, because he's got very strong pro-Israel views. So I just wonder what you think about that as well. Yeah, so let's start with Michael Go, because actually he edits the Spectator,

and they recently awarded me Leader of the Year. And I had a real moment where I said, you know, that's actually a very flattering, lovely thing to say. I also have no intention of engaging with the Spectator. They pretty much put out hit pieces on me literally most days, and most days they're about personality things and not about policy. So I don't have a lot of time for that publication.

At the same time, I recognize as a politician, I don't want to just talk to people who already agree with me, always want to be stretching out both what I believe and understand and what other people believe and understand. And I've really had this conversation on the podcast because when I first initially started it, I was going to invite people I vehemently disagree with and have debates with them because I know that's what people want to hear

and it's interesting and it stretches me and it stretches them. And for the first few podcasts, I just stayed in what I would say is, a kind of more pleasant environment for me. I just got people in that I really respect for their expertise. And I just thought, what would it be if a politician just sat and listened to people who are smarter on the subject than they are in a way that I would take a briefing? But actually, I'd just take the briefing publicly and ask the questions I'd ask privately by asking them publicly. So I'm educating and activating the kind of base who are watching me. And as I got a one month into

it, I just thought, I spent so much time on other media organizations having these awful conversations where I'm not really getting my point across because I'm about to be interrupted in 30 seconds. And I've got very agile at dealing with that. And I love the compliments. But it's also, it's not a nuanced way of dealing with it. It's trick ways I learned to deal with it where we're not really talking about the question. I just get out of the question. Everyone thinks I've dealt with it brilliantly. And then we move on. And so I've decided to keep that podcast as a place where I can have these more nuanced conversations because people are telling me over and over again how lovely it is to listen to a podcast. And I imagine they get a similar feeling with this one where

People disagree respectfully. There isn't the shouting and the arguing that drives kind of traditionally drove content and social media. But actually, people are enjoying just as much hearing more complex conversations about difficult issues. So that's the first thing. I think there's a space to cancel people and go, you're not even canceling them. You're just not inviting them in the first place. And you're going, actually, this is a space where you're not necessarily going to find something that offends you or you find difficult. It's just going to be a bit more nuanced.

But is it not wrong that Michael Gove can't express his views. All three of us disagree with a lot of what he's talking. for, but that you can't go to one of Britain's best, most famous universities safely and make a point because there's a fear of violence. And why did you not immediately say that? That was rather odd. You gave a two-minute answer and you avoided immediately saying. Well, this is what I was exactly going to get to because I wanted to reference why I didn't accept

a Spectator award and apparently Judy Hartley Brewer collected it for me, which is excellent trolling. Sure, yes. The reason why I didn't accept it was I thought, you know, it's not a space that I want to go into. So that doesn't mean, this is why I want to get. to universities, that's different. I think we've all got choices about what we listen to, where we engage and where we go to. As a politician, though, or at a university, I think it is

important to stretch yourself because you always want to be having new ideas and listening to new ideas. So in a university, I think we're getting to the difference between someone's belief, which I think people can believe what they want, no matter how offensive, and someone's action of behaviour. And I think when it moves into the places of harassment or where someone this feeling unsafe. And I accept that you're saying as a lecturer you feel unsafe. So this has to work both ways. How are we treating each other and how we're creating spaces where we can have nuanced and complex conversations where people can be offended? But crucially, the most marginalized person in the group, we're making sure that their space is a space where they feel

free to express themselves and they feel free that they're not being personally attacked and they don't feel unsafe in those space. Those are complex, but I believe that we're big enough and smart enough to do it. Okay. So you're now a politician. You're the leader of a party, which, you know, a few years ago was seen as a bit of a joke, and now is maybe seen as a bit more seriously. You had recently a German Green Party leader who became foreign minister in the German coalition government. You're on record as saying, I would not want to have any relationship with Donald Trump. Let's just say... Well, there's more nuance to that. Okay. Tell me the nuance. Well, I'd want a diplomatic relationship with Donald Trump. So I actually was much more nuanced what I was saying. I was saying the state visit was outrageous to roll out red carpet, the amount that was spent on security. That's different to a diplomatic relationship. I'd definitely have a diplomatic relationship with any president, any prime minister. I've been criticized by some on the left because I included Israel in that. But what I would say to that is if you don't have a diplomatic relationship with another elected official,

are you going to war with them? Are you invading? Like, I don't know what it looks like if you don't have a diplomatic relationship. That diplomatic relationship doesn't definitely not mean your best friends or you're sharing arms or even necessarily you're trading with them. It just means as simple as, are you speaking to them? Are you listening? And by the way, I include President Putin in that, for which again, I've been heavily criticised for. But it seems genuinely sociopathic to me or certainly xenophobic to kind of look at any other world leader and go, if they were willing to come to a table, I wouldn't come to that table, no matter how much I detest their politics, no matter how much I might condemn the violence and the invasion and the horrific massacres that they're inflicting on people.

the idea that I wouldn't come to the table, well, what is the other solution other than military action, which I always think has to be the last solution. So I don't think any of those things are in contradiction. I can't stand Trump, to be clear. But I'd still have a conversation with him, absolutely. Fine. So your first sort of political party was the Lib Dems. Were you ever tempted by Labour? No. Because? Proportional representation, which is the main reason. Okay, that was the positive of the Lib Dems? But was there anything about a Labour Party, the Labour Party's values and traditions and history that attracted you at all?

Yeah, the Trade Union movement, I think I was definitely always interested in because that felt to me, you know, I just said proportional representation, what I'm really talking about is democracy and grassroots movements. If I can rewind one minute back to even before I got into the Lib Dem, so I was working as a community theatre actor doing something called Theatre Review Press. So this began in the 1970s. Obviously, I wasn't there in the 70s, in South America, in the favelas, some of the poorest areas. and it was where actors would go into a community. And the audience weren't allowed to be called spectators. They were spectators. So they had to be involved in the theatre that was happening. So they would watch scenes of oppression that they had described.

And then Beowal called this rehearsing re-revolution. He would say to people, don't complain, don't moan. What would you do if you were in this situation? And how can the community support each other? So you would do it over and over again until you'd rehearsed how you would challenge power and authority. So when I was doing it as an actor, interestingly, I was working with migrants. It's working with disabled people. And actually I did one project with Amnesty International

with ex-Israeli combatants and ex-Palestinian combatants, which was my first kind of foray into some of the Israeli politics as well. I was doing all of that, and I loved it. And to my colleagues who still do that, I think it's some of the best work you can do. And I also felt like it had reached a point where, despite the fact it seemed collectivist, what I was really saying to people was if you're empowered enough

and articulate enough, you can get through anything. I was working with a group of black women where I was looking at them And I was thinking, the system is so fundamentally broken, you can be brilliant articulators of your position and you can ask for allyship. But the system is fundamentally broken in terms of the inequality towards you. And so you basically saw Labour, Tory, the establishment parties as essentially being top down, the creators of that system. Yeah, I felt like they were fundamentally authoritarian.

I still very much feel that. That actually, if there is a moment of true democracy and grassroots, that's seen as chaotic and unwieldy, and politicians don't like that because they're not in control. There's kind of that lack of McAvellian, you move this piece, then they move that piece. I'm someone who really, really enjoys a space where actually, I guess it's maybe coming from creative arts, where things are happening that are unexpected, and I'm just responding to them with my values and working to take people with me. You made one of the most eccentric decisions in the world.

You joined the Lib Dems in 2015, right? So this is post-Cleg, this is post-the-betrayal on the tuition fees. This is post them going into coalition with the Tory government. I mean, who joins the Lib Dems in 2015? Quite. So there's two things here. One, I absolutely believe the myth that a national economy is like a household budget. And I think that's one of the most fundamental metaphors in politics that needs to be eroded.

Such a power. Well, and interestingly, the people... But you believed it. You believe we need to balance the budget. So other than doing this Theatreview Press work, I had no party political experience. In fact, I used to be ashamed to say it. but I've started to own it. If you'd ask me a few years earlier, who the leader of the opposition is, I wouldn't have known.

I was so uninteresting party politics. I just thought it was nonsense. The only thing I saw, which I think is for lots of people, was prime minister's questions, two people screaming at each other, no sense of compassion or value or anyone actually caring about things, but just theatre. And I thought, if we're going to create theatre, let's create theatre, that actually means something. So 2010, Tory Lib Dem Coalition comes in, austerity comes in, tuition fees are implemented, election comes in 2015, the entire country punishes the Lib Dems, and you join the Lib Dems.

Why? Well, I remember visiting the Occupy movement, so that must have been, what, 2009, 10, and being really interested in what they were doing, but then being tuned off as soon as it started to talk about party politics and winning over electoral politics, because I remember thinking, I'm really enjoying the kind of the grassroots nature of people coming together and having citizens' assemblies and meeting together. So then I got disconnected from it. Anyway, the real answer to your question is Tim Farrell.

which is at that time he was seen to be the leader of the left, as in he was going to be this big new thing for the Lib Dems. And I was so excited when he was elected. I thought everything's going to be great. Day one, he can't answer the question if gay sex is a sin or not. I remember feeling pretty disillusioned. Few months go by, then there is a military intervention in Syria or a planned one. There's not going to be a vote on it. It seems to me fundamentally undemocratic that our elected representatives aren't not going to vote on things, particularly from the background.

come from, which is community theatre, which is about empowering grassroots. I say to the Liberal Democrats, as a member, what can I do to make sure there's a vote? And they're like, just nothing. You know, they're going to do what they want. So I challenge Ed Davy, of all people on this. And effectively, then there is a vote later on. But I think there's this kind of increasing sense that there isn't true grassroots democracy here.

I then meet Sean Berry and Natalie Bennett, two former leaders of the Green Party. In fact, there's a better story than that just before that. So the first time I meet Natalie Bennett is because I'm doing a debate for the Lib Dems. No one from a Lib Dems wants to debate for the Lib Dems. I'm tremendously inexperienced. So I had my first debate with Natalie Bennett and Keir Stama. Oh. And we have about 20 debates together because Keir's not yet an MP.

So he's getting around Camden. Is this one you're trying to get elected in Somerstown? Yeah, yeah. It's all around that same time. So you're all campaigning together in North London? Yeah, exactly. And we're having these debates. Well, campaigning against each other.

And you've somehow, you're not campaigning together. And were people saying, wait a sec, you're from Manchester. Why are you running for the London Assembly? No, because I've lived in London for ages by that point, almost like 10, 15 years. And I think there's a sense of London that people are transitional and we accept people. But what was really clear to me at those times in those debates, Natalie was really, really impressive. Like, there was so much she said that I thought, I really, really agree with this. And kept going home to my partner and saying to him, they're really right about everything.

And Kirstama? Kirstama, so one of the first debates we had, in fact, my very, very first debate ever, he got booed by the audience and I got cheered and I think it was a sign of things to come. He just kept refusing to answer questions in a very kind of legalistic, very long, monotone ways where the chair would be like, you're not answering the question. Was this an all-party hustings type? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, totally politically and experienced, I didn't know a huge amount about what I was standing for,

but knew that proportional representation in particular was the thing I really cared for. I was there to go get people to commit to proportional representation. Turns out I didn't need to convince Natalie Bennett at all. She was completely all over it. I've had lots of conversations with Natalie since about why was the Green Party not talking about proportional representation? I would have gone straight to the Green Party. She said back then we used to get 10 seconds of airtime, if that.

Are we going to talk about something that was quite abstract at that time, a voting system that meant nothing to people? Or I'm going to talk about the climate crisis, or indeed back then she was talking about Syrian refugees, which again was another thing in those 2015 debates, seeing Natalie Bennett talk about Syrian refugees where I thought, I've never seen a party leader talk about this issue. And the very final thing was I met a Green Party member who I ran against at the London Assembly who said, you are so much more a green.

Everything you're saying means you should be in the Green Party. Here is a ticket to Green Party conference. It's totally free. Go along. You will find the people that you feel like is your natural. home, the rest is history. So you become a green, and one of the criticisms that comes your way sometimes from some of your party colleagues is that they don't think you focus enough on the issues that makes the Green Party kind of what it is. So was, was there any part of you that

was tempted to go to COP in Brazil? Well, the first thing I'd say is that yesterday for the third time, there was a poll where we have overtaken the Labour government and we're in second place. Since I was elected leader, we now have 170,000 members. That's 100,000. new members since they've become leader. I think people know that the Green Party care about the environment. In fact, when polling comes out, amongst other parties, we have a most trusted party on the environment. It's obvious. But on the bigger picture, the debate is, it feels very strong to me, and I say this all the time on the podcast, is it feels like he's going backwards, not least because of Trump, not least because some of the big leaders didn't go to COP, and also because

net zero is coming under pressure. I just wonder if you don't feel a greater responsibility to be to be a leading figure within that debate. Oh, there's a huge responsibility there. I mean, the climate crisis is an existential threat. There's also the nature crisis. We live in one of the most nature depleted countries of the world. And I often say to people, if we lose nature, that's gone. Nothing else matters.

We're all dead and we're gone. COP, though, is more complicated. You're not a fan of the COP process. Well, I think if a COP process didn't exist, you'd have to create it. So we need a mechanism for people to come together. It's in the same way that I have criticisms of the European Union. But I still think Brexit was fundamentally the most catastrophic decision. this country has ever made both economically but also socially and culturally.

And it's an imperfect organization. I think all of those things can be true at the same time. So I feel the same about COP. But also, so I went to COP 25 in Glasgow because obviously it was just a train ride. There was one panel where I was asked to speak and they paused the panel to put an advert behind me, which was for an insurance company selling water security across some of the poorest nations on earth. And I think it's undoubtedly true. I'd say the same thing about the Labor government, by the way, that it's been so corporate controlled.

There's so much money invested interests is now in that organization. There's no meaningful conversation happening in that space. That does not mean that you throw it out. And this is one of the biggest challenges I find about reform and Farage, by the way, because people compare us in terms of the things that we talk about. And I think the comparisons are pretty ludicrous. But I think the biggest difference is he wants to destroy our institutions. He's delighted that the BBC is under fire right now.

I think he'd be delighted if a House of Commons started to a road and we had different systems. I fundamentally believe in democratic institutions. I think the problem is the vested interest within those institutions mean they're not working for the people. They are working for the elites. But the way that me and Nigel Farage talk about elites is very different. He literally is the elite. He's a former city trader who pretends to be a man of the people, but he's man of the wealthy people. He calls himself a populist.

Populism for me, in fact, the word populism means the 99% versus the 1%. He's literally representing the 1%. So in the same way Farage calls himself a patriot or Tommy Robinson calls himself a patriot. They're not patriots. There's nothing British about hating your neighbour or wanting to stoked vision in this country or selling off our assets to foreign investors. Patriotism is caring about your community. Patriotism is about caring about the environment and wanting to protect it and not sell

it off to fossil fuel giants. So the environment is a huge issue and it's one that I take really seriously. And I think when inequality is so deep, you've got to meet people with their living standards with food on the table, heat in the homes, which is all linked to the climate crisis. That's causing food insecurity. It's just not the first place you come from. The first place you come from is people are tired and exhausted. Their wages aren't going up.

Food prices are going up. You are being screwed over. It's a result of political choices. Let's make different choices. Okay. Zach, Rory, quick breaking. Then back for more. Hi, everybody.

It's Dominic Zavrick here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away. And I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History. which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment

when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class

that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now,

whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1970. a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you?

Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Revoluted Business, the all in one business account to manage your finances. Our world runs on exchange, trade, tax, tariffs, the quiet machinery that keeps everything moving. And everything is moving faster now. Ideas, goods, people, crossing continents. and seconds, but money still takes the scenic route, tripping over red tape and hidden fees, and that's where Revoluted business comes in. Over 30 currencies sent to more than 150 countries at the same interbank rates that banks

use during market hours within plan allowance, no mystery markups. You can hold exchange and pay from one place. Local account details means clients in New York, Sydney or Dublin get paid fast without the waiting or the worry. Business across borders done the way that politics so rarely is efficiently. Open a Revoluted business account today by scanning the QR code on screen or via the link in description and add money by the 31st to December 2025 to get a £200 welcome bonus or the equivalent in your local currency. Feature availability varies by plan, offerer available for new

business customers in the UK, US, Australia and Ireland. Fees and terms and conditions are So, Zach, I was talking to a small group of your supporters. You don't mean because I've got a small group. No, I just haven't been talking to a small group. Who were anxious about being reassured about what you actually think about corporations, capitalism, money. They feel that you're going to right wing. To right way?

To right wing. I'm baffled too. Sorry, Karen, please. Just reassure them. Okay, so they feel they don't hear you talk enough about radical redistribution. They don't feel that you talk enough about nationalization. They don't feel that you talk enough about completely rethinking the capitalist economy here and globally, that you're not talking enough about global social justice. What would you say? I'd say, listen to me for more than 20 seconds because you're pretty much describing my entire political platform.

I thought the question was going to come the other way that they felt like I was too radical left or something like that. I'm a socialist. I believe the Green Party is a socialist party. I don't put that label front and center because I think that means different things to different people. And I think can also put people off. And I think that's legitimate. So then I think the job is to say when you're talking about socialism, what are you talking about? Let's start with the water companies.

We have water companies who are pumping sewage into our water and charging us extra for the privilege. Some of those water companies, their profit margins, are bigger than Shell. And they would say the water company stuff is too mainstream, right? Okay. Should we do energy companies? The capitalist system in general, companies in general, corporations. The capitalist system is exploitative, is extractative, it's poisoning our rivers. So the water systems is also poisoning our minds.

Some of the anti-migrant rhetoric that we have heard have all come from a government that refuses to challenge multimillionaires and billionaires, refuses to challenge these same corporations. And instead is picking on the people who have done the least to cause the crisis. in one of the biggest acts of cowardice. And I really believe Shabana Mahmood's comments in recent weeks are vile and they're disgusting. And I don't use those words lightly. I think the fact that it's not just migrants, people of colour in this country right now, tell me constantly that they feel like they don't belong,

that there's a conversation happening that feels pretty insidious, that they feel like they're being demonised and marginalised. Don't just feel it. They literally are. International capital structures? Globalisation? I mean, globalisation is more complicated because there are benefits of globalisation. We've just seen Mamdani elected in New York.

And I think there's this really exciting moment. My team just this week I've met some of his team to have a conversation about what does kind of cross sharing notes look like. I think the right have done that for a long time. Those kind of links around frankly fascism. I don't think they mean sharing notes for Mamdani. They mean global capital structures. No, no. But my point is, we need socialist links.

So another person I spoke to last week was Janice Farifakis, looking at what does socialist internationalism look like? what does it look like when we dismantle these corporate structures, which, you know, there's lots of criticisms of a wealth tax, one of the number one policies I'm calling for that absolute nonsense. People can't just move assets. It's not been proven not to work in other countries. We've got Norway, Spain, Switzerland, somewhere with lots of wealthy people. One criticism, though, I do think is legitimate, is that we need a global wealth tax. And ultimately, you don't create a global wealth tax unless you have global structures

who will work together to make this happen. I think you can make that happen anyway, but to come to the point of your question, absolutely, we do need to dismantle the huge corporations that are, I mean, it's just obvious. Even as I'm saying it, it feels like what I'm saying is so bloody obvious. I say it all the time. It is global corporations that are destroying our planet that have bought off politicians like Donald Trump, who has no interest in anything but Donald Trump, his own vested interests, and will protect his billionaire mates. And so I don't believe you can challenge anything sustainably, either on the environment, the planet or inequality. unless you challenge wealth and power. I'm definitely not calling you a liar, Rory, but I would say when you say that my supporters, I think that people who probably know less than 1% about me because I'm pretty sure anyone who's ever heard me speak or even watched me doing an interview

would know that the politics I'm looking to do is a radical transformation of the economy. I would imagine that there are people within the Green Party, perhaps in the more rural constituencies who are sort of, you know, perhaps to the, they would perhaps be to the right of view. perhaps see you as being as being too left-wing, but just what does that?

Can I answer that, though? Yeah, sure. Because I think a key point is inequality hurts you wherever you live, whether you live in a town, a city, village, or a countryside. And in the countryside, like, I remember one time Jeremy Corbyn was talking about rural bus routes and he was kind of laughed at by much of a media as if this was a niche issue. When you go visit those market towns, which I do frequently, I used to say, you know, is there a bus every few hours?

They're like, are you joking? Every few days? And I'm like, if you can't get something as basic as a bus, that affects employment, but also arguably more important. It affects your family relationships or just people you want to go see and grab a bus with. So those rural green parties, when I talk to them at the moment, they say that there's not just double the people turning up to the local party meetings since I was elected. It's sometimes triple or quadruple. There's a real surge of interest. Now, I'm not complacent. Lots of people at local party meetings does not necessarily win you elections. And we know that.

We've seen examples of that. But it doesn't hurt. And I think there's a narrative sometimes, though, that my platform could put off rural communities, but actually evidence is showing over and over again the rural communities are saying, we need to challenge wealth and power. And the farmers, by the way, the Green Party, the friends are the farmers, we cannot pit ourselves against the people who are crucially important for food security, who understand the land. And yes, there are some farmers who are the same multimillionaires and billionaires we were just talking about. But 80% of farmers are tenant farmers. They're people who are also being screwed over by the supermarkets in the same power system where a renter can be screwed over by an unscrupulous landlord or a property

developer. It's all the same pattern. Okay, let's say that we're speaking around the time of the budget. Say you were presenting the budget rather than Rachel Reeves, tell me how this wealth tax works and whether you at least understand that there might be a risk, given the system that we do have, which you're not going to change overnight, that there will be plenty of people who actually do contribute a lot of tax, do actually hire people, employ people, keep a local economy going, that they decide, do you know what, last straw, wealth tax, they don't want us, they don't like us, we're off. Is that a problem or not? This is where we need to really differentiate between the small business workers, the small businesses, your hairdressers, your plumbers,

who we absolutely need to protect their vital part of a thriving local economy, and people who are earning, and in fact, they're not earning it. They're making more money in their sleep than any of us could earn. I shouldn't make presumptions about people's income or wealth, but I'm talking more generally. because it's in assets. When people get incredibly wealthy, they put that money into assets because they can't spend all that money even if they could. They could take their assets elsewhere. Well, not if their assets such as buildings. And I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be truly wealthy.

Because actually, when people are living in poverty or they're just poor in the more general sense, they have to make decisions based on their finances because they're always having to think about it. When people are incredibly wealthy and they live in this country because they love this country, They love culture in this country. They love the, I was going to say the food. I don't know if anyone else truly love the food in this country, but I love living where we live. We don't just move because of a small tax.

And so let's go on to the wealth tax. It's a tax on 1% tax on assets of £10 million or more or a 2% tax on assets of a billion pounds or more. It's also important to say this is not the only measure. So we also need to bring capital gains tax in line with income tax. The reason why that's important. What would that mean raising capital gains tax to you? Well, at the moment, so Rachel Reeves raised it over last

budget, but it's still the lowest in the G7. So you'd raise it to the top race of capital gains would be? I think that's exactly where we need to go to, to the same rate as income tax. Which is... Well, it's 40% at the moment is an income tax. So it would be banded. But the reason why that's important... So somebody passing on their house would pay 40% of capital gains?

Well, I think that's where you need to look at measures as well. This is all holistic. But the point of the principle is if you're someone who is cleaning a building, you could be paying more tax than the person who owns that building, which comes to. So the next measure as well, which links to the last question you just asked me, national insurance on investment income. Because actually, again, a landlord who has paid off their mortgage can be paying less in tax than the renter who is renting off them.

All of those things don't have to be that way. There is also political choices. Now, to come to your question more widely, I think though, when you start to recognize, again, that a national economy is not like a household budget, you start to get to conversations about spending multipliers. Now, all of this means is that every pound you spend on the economy, you're getting getting money back. So HMRC would be the first place to start because people go, well, wouldn't people just avoid tax? And like, well, let's make sure we employ people to make sure

they don't get away with the loopholes and everyone pays their fair share of tax. Also, the green economy, for every pound you spend on the environmental measures or on net zero, you get a pound 88 back. Interestingly, the one place this doesn't work is on the fence. So every pound you spend on defence, you're actually getting less money back. We know we spent 15 billion pounds on nuclear weapons and on Trident, and when there was a test last year, the weapon didn't even work. It just plopped into the sea. We also know that Donald Trump has the kill button on that weapon, so we don't even truly own it. So I think it's about fundamentally restructuring an economy where, yes, we worry about our national security. It's really important the country

is defended, but we don't outsource that to Donald Trump. We work with our European neighbours instead. And more importantly, we actually spend money on health care, on education. You haven't told me what you would do standing up at the dispatch box as a Green Party Chancellor now, how would you create this entirely new system without unplugging yourself from Europe, which you believe in and support, and from a global economy, which whether you like it or not exists? Well, we have a sovereign currency in this country, so we can still work with Europe, and we should rejoin the customs union immediately.

It's absolutely outrageous that we're not, but we would still be in charge of our own finances. And so it's about investing in our communities, and it really is as simple as that. And that hasn't been done for a long time because of this metaphor, that we have a budget deficit. But actually, when we're talking about a deficit, what we're really saying that is a deficit to the Bank of England is money in our public services. And actually, if we have a surplus, that's a deficit to our public services. And this can sound truly radical to someone if they've always kind of just heard the one idea of how our economy works. But actually, this came from Thatcher. It came from neoliberalism. And then the BBC, maybe a few years ago,

started to challenge it. They started to say, let's have a conversation about deficits and debts and what they truly mean. And they were doing some pretty good work. And then they went very quiet. And then now they are absolutely reinforcing that old myth. And that myth is so broken. I had a debate earlier this week with Jeremy Hunt. And I was just really aware of like,

we're just operating in a completely different paradigm frame. So the question... Hold on the paradigm frame. So let's say you're doing the budget, you're also doing a king's speech because you have to operate within the system that we have, okay, to change it. What pieces of legislation do you have to bring forward?

in a King's speech to make... So like we did the Bank of England Independence in our first Green speech. What's the scale of change that we're talking about and how do you bring that about? It's easy to say, well, we ought to win support for it.

But then you've got to make the change in legislation as well. So what are you going to legislate for? What are the specific changes you make to the way our economy is run, to the way our system works that will allow you then to say this is the world that we're trying to create.

Well, what I'm saying now doesn't require a whole lot of legislation. We can get for legislation. But first thing we need to do, is abolish these nonsense fiscal rules. The only fiscal rule we should have is the rate of inflation should be watched as much as you have physical resources in your space.

So that we can borrow more? Well, we don't even need to borrow more because we have a sovereign currency. So ultimately... So we can print more. Well, you talk about printing more, but actually what we're saying there is investing more.

So creating the money that we're going to get back. It is a false economy to underinvest in our national health service because what we do is we get a sick population, which is exactly what we've had. We saw this during COVID. I know today you've been discussing the COVID inquiry.

We didn't put the measures in place. We didn't invest. And our economy has badly been hit as a result. Ultimately, investing is bringing that money back into the economy. And the reason why this can sound controversial is because we have had politicians for decades now that have had a big systemic change of moving public money to private wealth. To come back to your question, Rory, to fund corporations and ultimately to say to their lucrative contracts and people they know, we saw this with the PPE scandal.

But it's not just PPE. It's happening every day. It's happening with the hotels with migrants, where money is being. put into private companies, rather than saying, what is the role of the state? We saw this with the Attlee government. We saw this with this mass investment to actually go, let's have the state intervention here where we actually care for people, we have compassion towards people, and government take responsibility for the lives of people. And by the way, that's brilliant for the economy. Every time that it's been done, it's great. And the last thing I'd say,

because it's your question really about printing money, is we're really talking about debt-to-GDP ratio there. Japan has a 270% debt to GDP ratio. They have significantly better living standards than we do. These are all awful measures. GDP, even the guy who designed the idea of GDP, says this is a terrible way to measure the health from the economy. What's the central fundamental difference between Japanese debt and British debt? What is the fundamental difference? Well, the big point is that we have our own sovereign currency. The fundamental difference, so do the Japanese, but what's the fundamental difference between why Japan can do that and Britain can't?

waiting for you to tell me. Well, fundamentally, because the Japanese are borrowing from themselves, right, there's a huge amount of savings investment remaining internal to Japanese markets. How much are we paying every year on debt interest? So here's the question. How much are we spending every year on debt interest? Well, we don't need to, do we? How much are we spending?

Boring from yourself? So who are you borrowing from? I'm just trying to work out how good you are on the numbers. How much are we spending every year on debt interest? So actually, of all people, Richard Tice has been saying the same thing. During COVID, we gave loans to the back of England. You can't give me a rough figure on how much we're spending on debt interest. Well, there's 70 billion pounds that we owe to the Bank of England, but we don't actually owe that money.

You mean the debt or the deficit? The debt. Okay. The debt is much. Sorry, the deficit, sorry. Okay. We are spending $100 billion annually on debt interest, right? Is it 11% of everything?

Debt interest. Huge amount of money. Right. So one of the things I suppose I'm getting at is... No, but why I'm getting straight back at you is we don't need to spend that money. So that money has been created as an idea. We're spending that money straight back to ourselves. We do need to spend that money now because that is how we borrow the money.

from the markets to fund the things that we're funding. And so one of the reasons why, and I know you're not happy with the sort of economic performance and the performance more generally of the Labour government, one of the reasons why they do have to be conscious of the market reaction to something like a budget is because if they get it wrong, the markets lose confidence

and the costs of borrowing and then go further. And we end up spending even more. So that's why I keep saying, how do you get from A to B? Well, and so now we're really going to the root of the question, And I think it comes to all of what Rory was just saying. Because I think we're operating in different paradigms. I don't think the market should be dictating democratic decisions.

I think the people we elect and governments and fundamentally the public. Right, but that's why I'm saying. If you get elected, you're one of the members of the House of Commons that can make these changes. What are the changes that you're going to have to make that actually take us out of that system? Because my sense is that it's a lot harder than you think. Oh, it's definitely, I mean, it's not hard than I think. I know it's hard. I know none of this is easy, but I didn't get into politics to do the easy things. What I would flip the question round, because sometimes people have the tone of voice that sounds like, oh, you know, this is ludicrous and so radical. What's radical is what we've got right now, which has trickle down economics, which has been proven to fail over and over again. And so we need a different system. I'm not an economist. I'm not going to pretend to be an economist. What I am, though, is someone who listens to brilliant economists and a whole range of economists. and listens to ideas from around the world. And what I know is that our system is broken.

It's not working for anyone. Sorry, it's not working for multimillionaires and billionaires who are telling the story about our system. Rather than getting into maybe an argument about this, tell us. You told me like 20 minutes ago that I wasn't radical enough. Tell us which economists you're listening to. Who are your intellectual influences here? Brilliant people. So Grace Blakely, Richard Murphy, who's been doing a lot of work on this.

Gary Stevenson, who I know you've had on recently, James Medway or James Medway. Lots of different economists, though. A lot of the time it's just reading the stuff that they're talking about. And I think there is a consensus that the neoliberal model has broken and it's not worked. Consensus where? From people like Gary Stevenson? Or where's the consensus? Where's the academic consensus?

I think the academic consensus is among economists who aren't working for the government. I think they're all looking at government. And you see Gary Stevenson as a sort of pseudo-academic economist? I don't think he's pseudo-academic. I think he's literally an economist. That's his job. What about you mentioned? It's not his job.

He's a city trade. He studied an undergraduate degree in economics. Right. Okay, he's not a professional economist. But I think if you do a degree in economics, it's fair to say you're an economist. Where are the people with graduate level degrees and economics that you're focusing on here? Where are the professors? Where are the people who, for whom this is their academic speciality?

So this underlines some of our conversation too. We're not in government right now. When you're in government, you have an entire civil service to go, here are our principles. Here's how we get to the exact questions that Alist is fairly asking me about what does the legislation look like and how do you make this happen? I think the point to do right now is to get the principles. Can I highlight something that I think is interesting? So I did a debate the other night with BBC.

I came off stage and a woman came over to me. And it's a story I'm hearing lots. It was lovely. She said, my four kids are so happy with what you're saying. You're giving them hope again. They're feeling really excited. And I said to her, that's your kids. What about you?

And she was like, I think you're brilliant. I think you speak with compassion and values. But I'm not convinced yet that what you say is doable. And what I need to see is the practical shift of how to make those things happen. and it's a criticism or a challenge, I totally accept that absolutely needs to happen. People need to be able to ask questions and there's more and more detail about what happens. But that happens once you've established the principles, and I feel like this is what Gary was saying to you too. Once you've established the principle that there's deep inequality, that a lot of this is because multimillionaires and billionaires are hoarding wealth,

then what you do about it is an open question, but let's establish for principle first. My final sort of contribution is. What I feel is that story that you told about somebody who was Jewish and had done theater performances about Israel and Palestine suddenly having to be confronted with the reality of what was happening. From that moment where you sit down and you listen to Israeli soldiers talking about war crime is a conversation you need to have with professional academic economists. you need to create that space. And I suspect just as you went from your 2015 Lib Dem belief in austerity, balancing the budgets to where you are now, which is the Gary Stevenson world. I think there's another journey of discovery here. I think there's a space of intellectual.

So can I go for two responses? Okay. We can always discover more. I accept that challenge. I'm always happy to talk to people. been a London Assembly member for the last five years. We have investigations pretty much every week where people come in, people you would describe as mainstream economists, and I listen to them.

And then I challenge them. And then when I'm having those private conversations with them or even in public, I can hear they don't quite understand the paradigm shift I'm talking about because they've not discovered yet. So that's not me saying I hold the ultimate truth or you hold the ultimate truth. I think there's absolutely truth and we can always discover more about economics. What I am saying to you, though, Rory, is the frame that I think you have

is the frame that we've seen for decades of neoliberalism or even capitalism whatever word you put on it it is so fundamentally broken and destroyed and is getting worse and it's time for us all to have a discovery a lot more quickly. Something's that radical though, I mean so, that radical

and you may be right. Look, I think it's radical. I think what's radical is to carry on as we are. It's crazy. Let me vote what I'm saying. Let me just go to say. We can all feel huge problems in New York. liberalism, huge problems in what's been delivered. But articulating what that alternative is, I'm going to this getting at this slightly when he's talking about legislation. I'm getting it slightly when I'm talking about numbers. We're all getting at it when we try to talk about

countries that have tried to do it on the radical scale. It's nothing radical about Norway or Spain. Radical is Cuba, right? When we actually see people trying to fully challenge the full capitalist model, it's generally not going very well. Now, that may be because there's a global conspiracy against Cuba, stopping them doing it. It may be that if you really want to make an argument that radical, you need to have the numbers, the academic economists, the arguments, the legislation, the package. Otherwise, we can all agree there's something wrong in the current system, but it's very difficult to believe you've got there. Well, I've got one word for you. Okay. Investment. Let's talk about the cost of inaction. This is particularly prevalent in the climate

crisis. People will say it's very, very expensive to spend on the climate crisis from getting to the arguments we've had. It's a lot more. expensive not to spend on the climate crisis. We've had reports after reports about the cost of inaction in terms of floods and wildfires. And the beauty here is investing in the climate crisis. If we insulate every single home in Britain that needs it, that would reduce people's bills, vital in the cost of living crisis, would reduce emissions, vital in the climate crisis. And crucially, it could create hundreds of thousands of jobs that could be in the public sector in trade unions where people are being paid properly, treated with dignity and care. And the reason

why I'm giving that example is you could say, what's that going to do to do to debt, what's that going to do to the deficit? Or how much is it going to cost? And how much is it going to cost is a fine question? But the next question is, how much does it cost if we don't do it, and actually investing in it is creating money, is creating an economy. I'm just talking about basic keenity. The only way to answer that, Zach, if you were Keynes, is by knowing how much it would

cost, how much it would cost not to do it, and what your projected rate of return is. And the problem is you assume that it's going to return. You don't actually have the numbers. You can't tell me how much it would cost. You can't tell me what the cost of inaction would be, and you can't tell me the cost of return. This is just faith. Well, two things. So we're not in a general election, so I don't have a cost of manifesto in front of me, which I think you both agree is a perfectly reasonable assumption.

Second, though, what I can tell you is that investing in it is bringing money back. So it almost doesn't matter how much it costs. It's the fundamental that you incentivize the goods, you disincentivize the bads. And that's for principle, whereas at the moment, we have it the other way around. I went to Sheffield the other day. I got a train. It cost me nearly 200 pounds. If I'd flown, I obviously wasn't going to fly,

but if I'd flown, it probably would have been much less. That's not natural order. That's because we are subsidising kerosene, the jet fuel, more than we subsidise train travel. Now, could you grill me on what those exact numbers are? No, you can't. I'm going on Laura Kuhnsberg on Sunday for the budget. By then I will have done the budget work,

and I'll be able to give you numbers, but I'm not come on the podcast today to give you numbers on that. You feel you've got to prepare for Laura Kuhnsberg. Well, because I know this is another green interview. I can go with the future. It's about a podcast now, I can give you the number right now about how much it's going to cost, and that would change in a month or two. My point is when I go on Sunday about this budget,

I need to know the numbers because I'm going on a conversation on Sunday. I guess where this conversation is going in a sense is this sort of, and this is what policy is often about, is whether there's ever a gap between idealism and pragmatism, between really wanting big change and then knowing how you get it. So, for example, when you were talking about the environment there, and the climate crisis and the need for investment in that. Roy and I argue about this a lot,

because I actually think pragmatically and the idealistic... I was about to say that. It's a false binary. No, okay. But I think Ed Miliband is combining the two. You've got a lot of criticisms of Ed and what he's doing because he's not being, if you like, purely idealistic. He's not saying everything that you want has to be done in this way because he knows pragmatically it's very, very difficult to get that within the system. than we've got. I know pragmatically, if we don't tackle the climate crisis, we're all gone.

So it's not good enough to get a gold star or do just enough. You've got to do what's necessary as a start, and I'd like us to be genuine global leaders. So first of all, you don't think we are. Airport expansion, you can't say that there's a climate crisis at the same time that you're expanding aviation. By the time this podcast comes out, we'll have a decision on Rosebank. In fact, I can say this, so you can have it in the bank. If they have refused, I'll explain Rosebank in a second. If they have refused to expand Rosebank or open it up, I will give total credit to the government. That's the right decision. The Rosebank oil field will have the cumulative emissions of 28 of the poorest income countries altogether. They will say it is about

jobs, but for the last 10 years, jobs have over halved in North Sea oil and gas. The jobs just aren't there. And actually, we've taken most of the assets too. There isn't that much oil left. Is it legitimate within the decision-making process that are making now, given they've got trade unions coming to them saying jobs, and given that they've got a local community that has, you know, been pretty prosperous for much of the last few decades and is now maybe worrying about its future. Is that at least a legitimate argument to make within the whole? No, because there's an ideal and pragmatic solution, which is to recognise that the fossil fuel subsidies were giving to those same organisations could be used.

And Carla Daniel, the Green MP for Bristol Central has a bill about this coming to talk about legislation to use that money to invest in training and the new jobs in green investment, renewable solar and wind. So I don't think there's anything ideal or pragmatic. In fact, the opposite of telling people everything's going to be okay. And we saw this with the minds, just pretending things are going to be fine, and then shutting them down. I think we've got to be honest with people that we need the new jobs of the future. But you can't just announce them.

You've got to work with the trade unions for workers and say, look, this is a situation on the table. Be honest with people. Treat them like adults. And say, with this money, we want to co-design with you, how we can train you, how we can make sure that you're in a job that feels purposeful. And make sure that people have lives where they feel they're embedded. in communities rather than having to work for petra state countries or states. Now, you mentioned Caledonia there who does have a seat. You don't have a seat.

Presumably, you're going to be leading the party into the next general election. Presumably, you're going to try and get a seat. Yes, absolutely. And I'll just be interested in what you're thinking about is because you've got to try and think of a seat that you're going to win. Yeah, for sure. What are the kind of overall ambitions for the next election? And what are you personally doing to try to get into the right place, to ensure that, you know, you probably will be in Parliament.

Yeah, I would have had an answer for you a week ago, and more interestingly, I don't know what my answer is now, so we'll explore that. I would have said between 30 to 40 MPs, and that was pretty ambitious to go from four MPs to 40 MPs. The rate that the Green Party is shooting up in the polls, the rate of membership, the by-elections, we won one last night with, I think, a 19% swing up,

where Labor went down 19%. Somewhere like, Walthamstow, Stelachrys's seat, Greens went up, I think, 18%. She went down 18%. There's very clear correlations here. I definitely want to run for a seat in London. And that's just because there's a coherency about the fact that I'm a London Assembly member under proportional representation. So any Londoner, I'm already there elected representative.

So I'm going to tell the truth. I'm obviously looking at numbers and going, I want to make sure that it's a seat that feels right in terms of the story that I'm telling. But also there's 39 seats across England and Wales where Greens came second place. So those are the obvious place to start. It is interesting to note, though, that Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsey in two of our rural seats, they came fourth and fifth place to come first place. In fact, Ellie Chowns had the biggest swing in the country. If you took Ellie Chowns' swing in North Herefordshire and put it on any seat in England and Wales,

there's no seat of Green Party can't win. So what that tells me is if you have the right narrative, the right candidate, because she's an excellent MP, and the right resourcing. And resourcing is a real, real issue here. So when did you decide which London seat? So this weekend, I'm going to something called Path to Parliament, which is where we have hundreds of people who are going to be the new generation of green MPs. And we've reached out to communities. And I'm really excited that some of the future MPs might not even be members yet because there are people when I'm going to do outreach that we're selecting and then they become MPs because they got excited by the Green Party.

So I'm not in any major hurry to do it because actually the message I want to send right now is the Green Party are growing and we want more people in. I don't want us necessarily to select from just for people we've got as brilliant as some of those people are. I want us to keep growing as a mass movement. Is there a part of your brain that's moving towards a rematch with Kirstama had to head? I mean, it would be tempting. Obviously, things are more complicated in that seat for lots of various reasons. But yeah, it's definitely not off the table. Is there any part of you?

I get you that Labor's not your tribe. But is there any part of you that worries that Nigel Farage ends up as Prime Minister? Yes, you can say, I wish we didn't have the voting system that we do, but we do have it, ends up as Prime Minister because of the impact of your party upon Labor. So look, I'm a very smiley politician. I have lots of joy in life and I'm really, really enjoying the work I do. I think it's also important to point out the severity of this moment for so many people, for working class communities, for minority communities, for trans communities, for the disabled community. Labor are handing this country on a plate to Nigel Farage. They're offering

no alternative. And in fact, when Farage says jump, they're saying how high. And not only is this morally repugnant, particularly with their views towards the small boats at the moment and people seeking asylum, it's also politically incomprehensible. If people wanted low-fat reform, they vote for Nigel Farage. He's literally there, that's full-fat reform, sorry. Kirstama is offering low-fat reform. He's offering no real alternative. And so I don't think the question to me is, are the Green Party going to split a vote or are we going to get in the way of Kirstama? I think we're really getting to the point where you could say to the Labour Party in Kirstama, why are you getting in the way of the Green Party's

hopeful alternative. But you just said that the height of your ambitions might be 30 to 40, maybe a bit more, but that is nowhere near being able to form a government. So with that, and I'm sorry, this is the non-PR system we live within, there is the possibility that that is what finally opens the door to Nigel Farage. Well, the prefix I give to this is let's have a PR system. If Kirstarman was truly worried about this and if he's going to keep saying, vote for Labour or he'll get Nigel Farage, we should turn to him more collectively we and say, will give us proportional representation and then people can have a vote that actually matters. That would be better for democracy.

By answering your question within the frame we're in, I don't think it's a legitimate argument because Nigel Farage has shot through the polls with the politics of hate and despair. The Green Party is shooting through the polls right now with the politics of hope, with community and tangible policies to make a difference to people's lives. What is Labour Party's offer? What is the point of Kirstama at this point? It just seems to be to occupy number 10 as a holding ground for Nigel Farage.

We don't need to wait till the next general election to have this debate. Let's have this debate with the country right now, and I'm pretty sure the country will go. I'd rather be with the party that actually want to change people's lives for Green Party, rather than be with the party that just wants to entertain Nigel Farage and be a version that's just sad about it, but doing the tough choices. Why are they always tough choices for working class communities for disabled people? When are they going to be tough choices for multimillionaires and billionaires? It's time to tax for rich.

Zach, final one for me, presumably the most likely scenario is we're going to end up with a Labor-Green coalition. the election. I think that's very possible. You're going to be going to be going to be going to be 10 Lib Dem, 2015 Lib Dem experience. I think it depends on who the leader is, by the way. I said it's possible, but it does depend on the government. Well, you wouldn't do it here.

No, absolutely not. I think this is a man who ran on the coattails of Jeremy Corbyn and then ditched every pledge you could. He's a man who's kept the two-child benefit cap, the disability cuts. You might not have kept the two-child benefit cap by the time we're talking hopefully. And also the genocide in Gaza, I think he's so deeply untrustworthy and so deeply lost the trust of the British public. I think it would be incoherent to win seats challenging him

and then go and now I'm going to work with him. A future Labour leader though is not off the table because that would be foolish because I don't know who that future labour leader is. Very good. Thank you, Zach, so much your patience. Thanks so much. I've really enjoyed it. Lovely. It's been politely. What was for Fraser used?

Disagreeably. Yeah, yeah. It was on the verge. It's on the verge. He was less harsh with you than he was with Michael Gave a few weeks ago. I'll take that. Certainly less harsh than I was with Rachel Reeves. Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Thank you again. Bye-bye. So, Alistair, what did you think of your friend, Zach Polanski? I suspect, you know, you're the first time I've met him. You know, I suspect there was a sort of certain kind of brimance going on. I don't think quite sympathetic. Is that because you're spending your time hanging out with Grace and therefore you're increasingly getting your left wing as you get older,

more and more green curious? Well, he's definitely quite popular within the Campbell family WhatsApp group. No, I think he's, look, he's interesting and he has, without a doubt, made an impact. And what do you think about his manner in his sort of presentation? You talk about a bromance with somebody I've literally met for the first time, I think. He's smaller than I thought he was going to be. Now, I'm not saying that's important or not important, but it was interesting that he said he felt I was an advantage to him because he comes across as being bigger on television. Look, he's very articulate.

He's got a very nice manner about him, but I did think he was weak in two areas in particular. One was, I don't think he, and maybe he's thinking, well, I'm not going to be prime ministers. I don't need to have to do the same work other leaders have to do. But I didn't think he had a very good argument about how you actually get from A to B in terms of the change you make. What would a Green Party king speech look like? And I thought in relation to the economy, I didn't quite feel he had a grasp of some of the details he was talking about. I was completely staggered. I mean, I began by being very, very sympathetic towards him.

The initial stuff was, I thought, lovely, where he reflected on how he got things wrong and how his position had changed, very moving his account of being Jewish and his instinctive defense of Israel and how that had been changed. And I loved that these stories about how his position had changed on things and how he was honest about the fact he used to be a Lib Dem and sort of, I guess, Lib Dem in the era of austerity and now a Green Party person. But I was horrified, horrified beyond belief on the economic stuff. It's not acceptable. Guy's got almost 20% of the vote in some of these polls, right? He could be part of a coalition government. I mean, I stopped calling him out on things because it got so mad. But this is, this is paying attention, right? He didn't know at all how much we're paying on debt interest,

100 billion pounds a year we're spending on days, twice as much we spend on defense. He needs to know that. Number two, he doesn't know the difference in the debt and the deficit, right? Just to explain for most listeners, right, just in case other people are not. Am I being rude to listeners in having to explain this? I presume most of our listeners, no, right? The debt is the total amount you've borrowed. The deficit is the amount you're adding to it every year. Thinking that our debt is 70 billion rather than our deficit is underestimating the scale of our debt about 15-fold.

And then he didn't know what the top rate of tax was. So, I mean, the fact that he's talking about changing taxes when he doesn't know the top rate of tax, I didn't even call him out on that. He said it was 40% around the 45%. Is it too much to ask that if you're proposing to be leader of a party? And he said to me after us, oh, you were very unfair.

I wasn't ready for those questions. I'm an actor and I can, you know, I can get up on those things. And if I'd had a bit more warning, and for goodness sake, he's claiming to reshape our entire economy. He's got your entire family WhatsApp group going out there saying, let's vote green.

You don't want to go with Labor. You can't make assumptions about my family WhatsApp group. I want to say. At least 20% of the British public. And his economic advisor is Janice Faru Fackis. I mean, I was that I almost thought. I mean, so I didn't want to be,

I mean, obviously it got a bit scratch. there. And normally I reserve my scratchiness for the Michael Gives this world. But this is not good enough. This is not serious enough. If this is where British politics is going, no, no, no. Well, I think it'd been really interesting to hear what people think about this because I think they will agree that the first half was, he came over as really interesting, articulate, quite inspiring in his own way. But I think once we got into detail, it was pretty weak. And I think both of us reached a point of thinking, well, there's no point going round and round. When you mentioned Yanis Varifakis from Greece, I thought, are you really going to take

the Greece left as your socialist economic model? I don't think that's very, very sensible. But I didn't realize you'd had that scratchy exchange afterwards, because I think if you're standing, no matter what level you're standing for, for election, you have to be able to answer pretty basic questions about economic management. By the way, you are probably. the person they, somebody had in mind yesterday who tweeted, all these, they actually talked about lobby journalists, all these lobby journalists going wild. I know you saw it because

you commented there was this very effective piece of communication by a young Labour MP called Gordon McKee where he was using biscuits, bourbons and custard creams. To illustrate the debt and the deficit. And to explain why Japan's debt is less problematic at Britain's debt and why it's ridiculous. Which is a point you'd made. Ridiculous to compare the 250% GDP to a debt ratio in Japan to the UK situation because our debt interest rates are much higher and that's partly because of who owns that debt. Yeah. So Gordon McKee posted this video and he got a lot of traction and amongst the replies

or somebody say all these lobby journalists going wild for a little video by a Labour MP, the same people who criticise Zach Polanski for his kind of, you know, colourful way of communicating about the economy. But you presumably would argue Gordon McKee, Good communication? I liked it. It was wonderful. It's exactly what I want in politics.

It was funny. It was appealing, but it had an incredibly serious, quite complicated point to make about the debt, the deficit, debt to GDP ratios, which is relevant to the budget and what needs to be done. But I suppose if you were from the far left, you might say you would think that, weren't you? Because it was a relatively conventional economic analysis. Exactly. Yeah. So what Zach Polanski is saying, I guess, is much closer to the kind of Gary Stevenson. view of the world that as centrist dads do not, just do not understand the scale of change

that's needed, an entire system that needs to change, which is why I kept trying to push him on, well, you inherit the system that you've got and how are you going to change it? What are the laws you change? What are the more as you change? And the reason I was slightly cheekily pushing him on international capitalism and Cuba and all this kind of stuff is that to actually do what he's talking about, the full Gary Stevenson, Yan is very, Yana's very, very, at fact is let's challenge the entire capitalist system, let's put in wealth taxes, etc. You have to control your borders, right? You have to start thinking about things like capital controls, otherwise you have enormous capital flight. And he's not being clear about the fact that you'd have to

dismantle Britain's relationship to quite a lot of international economic structures if you wanted to go on the full left-wing, radical Cuban vision of how to manage your economy. Maybe we're at that point in our politics where most Nigel Farage on the populist right and Polanski on the populist left. And it's interesting how he calls himself a populist and defines populism as the battle between the 1% and the 99%. That's not populism to me.

Populism is Trump. Populism is Farage. Popularist Johnson. It's exploiting problems rather than addressing them. So I think it's a danger for him to go down that track. But boy, he's going to be crossed with our summary, I can absolutely guarantee once he's heard this summer,

there is going to be a little video coming from Zep Kalanski saying particularly that I'm a real monster and a hypocrite. Yeah, but if he's got a sense, which I think he has got a sense, he'll go away and reflect on it and think the next time I'm doing an interview about the economy, I've got to have better answers. And that's what he should do. But anyway, I wonder if we're reaching that point now, because the polls are where they are and this sense of labour being in real doldrums, etc., where the scrutiny on Farage and Polanski in terms of policy, Farage at the moment, is happening in terms of his past and Nathan Gill and all that. But I wonder if the scrutiny

on policy is finally going to crank up because that's what's been missing. That's what the populace always get away with. Very good. Well, thank you for that. And thank you, Zach, for coming on. It was brave. I really liked you on the first half, but something's got to happen on the economy. Hi, it's Dominic here from The Restis History. And here is that clip that I mentioned earlier. The other thing is something else you get some Grantham, and that's the Methodism. And actually, this to me, I think this is one of the absolute defining things of Thatterism. It's the tone, the moralistic evangelical tone. Yeah, and the low church tone rather than the high church tone.

Completely. Margaret, as a girl, had to say grace before every meal. She had to go to chapel three or four times on Sundays. Her father, as a lay preacher, went on and on and on about hard work, individualism, thrift, clean living, all of this. And this is what I think makes her politics different. There is a moralism to it, a low church moralism, that is totally unlike anything that any other Tory leader says before.

So in 1984, an interview with The Times, I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end, good will triumph. I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10,000, and he would never have said anything like that. It's unthinkable. Also, I mean, what's interesting is that it's giving to the left what the left often give to the right.

It's casting the left as evil. and the writers virtuous. And usually it's the other way around. Completely it is. I mean, you see this reflected in her archives, which are online at the Thatcher Foundation website, which is brilliant, by the way, this amazing digital archive.

You can see all the notes that she would handwrite for her conference speeches. And they'd be full of all the stuff about, you know, the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life, you know, life is struggle.

Her speechwriters would cut all this. God, this is bonkers. But it would find its way in one way or another. And I think you're absolutely right. She thinks socialism is not just wrong. She thinks it's morally, it's evil. It's corrupting. And people in 70s Britain, you know, they're used to thinking,

socialists are well-meaning and idealistic. Maybe they're a bit deluded, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, she doesn't think that. She doesn't think they are well-meaning idealistic. She thinks that they're doing the devil's. work. Yeah. And that's what makes for her admirers, it's so invigorating and for her critics.

I mean, if you're on the left, right, and you're used to thinking yourself of yourself as the goodies, to be told, actually, you're not, you're the bad people. It's insulting. And it's why, I think, one reason why people take it so personally when she sort of wades into battle. If you want to hear more, search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's all but Peston from The Rest is Money. I've just had the most gripping conversation with an economist Nick Bloom from Stanford,

who's published a very influential paper on the costs of leaving the European Union. He and his colleagues calculated that leaving the EU has cost us 8% of our national income, our GDP. That's 240 billion, more than we spend on the NHS every single year. What's really striking is that his numbers are now the numbers, being used by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, when she talks about the advantages of getting closer to the EU. So if you want to know how damaging Brexit has been and whether that 8% number is robust, whether it's real, join me for the latest episode of The Rest is Money.