TRIGGERnometry - Are Politicians Even in Control? - Steve Hilton

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

Steve Hilton is a British and American political commentator. He served as director of strategy for the British Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2012. He hosted The Next Revolution, a weekly current affairs show for Fox News from 2017 to 2023. He is the founder of Golden Together, a non-partisan organisation working to solve California's problems; a subject he also covers on his podcast, The Steve Hilton Show. We are proud partners with GiveSendGo - a world-leading crowdfunding platform that believes in free speech. Go to https://www.givesendgo.com/ and raise money for anything important to you. SPONSORED BY: AG1. Go to https://drinkAG1.com/triggernometry and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They sincerely believe that it's their patriotic duty to stop these, I think it's phrased with these, so here today, gone tomorrow politicians from doing their sort of crazy schemes. Immigration is a very good example of this because it is an issue on which the same promise is made by success in government. I know, it's amazing. And then nothing gets done. There's this building rage. Yeah. And it's coming out in all sorts of unpleasant ways, but it's done in the name of compassion.

I think that is basically the central kind of theme of almost everything that's going wrong. Hey guys, Trigonometry needs your help. We took a big risk creating the show. And for us to keep doing the incredible work that you all love, we need your support. That's the only way we're going to stay independent and create content that you won't be able to find anywhere else. There is no other podcast where you'll hear interviews with Nigel Farage one week and the next week you've got Aaron Bastani, the founder of Left Wing Show Navarra Media, on the same platform. You know the mainstream media aren't honest. You know they've been caught lying again and

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us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. Steve, last time I was in the US, you and I met, we went for a drink, ended up being 10 drinks. Minimum. Minimum 10. We had a great time. And you were telling me some horror stories about why the British government can't get anything done. So I thought you were going to start with the horror story of how we tried to get that drink. And there was some like, do you remember there was an amazingly bureaucratic person in that bar where it was Salt Lake City, wasn't it? It was one, and it felt like been back in the UK. I know, it's just ridiculous. There's endless sort of, you're like, no, you can't sit there

but it's a very good segue into the story of the bureaucracy in the British government. Yeah, that was the sort of thing that really was an eye-opener. You hear before, you know, I'd been involved in politics before then and, you know, anyone who reads the, you hear about the bureaucracy in the civil service. And people who'd worked. government, including Tony Blair, who I'd met before the election in 2010 when David Cameron became Prime Minister and I was working for David Cameron. And in preparing for that time, I went to see Tony Blair to get his advice. You know, he'd been Prime Minister and so, you know, it was useful to learn. And he warned about the bureaucracy and that was amazing to hear from him.

Well, he said, I don't want to misquote him. So these aren't necessarily quotes, but he said, and it was a long time ago, I mean, it was over 10 years ago, but he said that, he said, don't, I remember he said, don't underestimate how strong the feeling is on the part of the senior civil servants, that they sincerely believe that it's their patriotic duty to stop these, I think his phrase was these, sort of here today, gone tomorrow, politicians from doing their sort of crazy schemes, and that they are, the guardians of the national interest. That is sincerely what they think, and you've got to understand that before you go in. So that was the first kind of really, that was an eye-opener, actually, coming from him. But then when you get there, I mean, it's just, I mean, there's so many aspects to it. But the most interesting thing, I think maybe let's start with this, which was where I really started to dive into exactly what was going on was pretty soon, I guess, I don't know, a couple of

months into the government. And remember, it was a coalition government. And in a way, that was really interesting because it wasn't like normal where a party would have a manifesto and they run in the election and they win. And then they sort of kind of do what they want. There's no requirement to do everything you say you're going to do. And in fact, a lot of voters get pissed off because they say the governments don't do what they say they're going to do. This was really interestingly different in that the Conservative Party, David Cameron, was the lead, and we didn't get an overall majority, so he wanted to do a proper coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.

And he, and like a really long-lasting one, he didn't want it just to be a kind of short-term, will you vote for this bill with us or whatever. It was like, I want to sit down and negotiate an agreement about what we would do as a country. of coalition government for the five years of a parliamentary term. And that was really interesting. I hadn't really been done before.

And so it was hammered out. And we had this document and actually, you know, like unusual for a government. We had a plan for what we were going to do. And it had been agreed. And it was called the coalition agreement. And we published it. So you think, well, that's great because now we have a set of commitments that we've negotiated.

And that's the plan for what we're going to do. And pretty soon it was just this. interesting revelation where we became aware of the government announcing things. Sometimes you just hear them on the media, which we either weren't aware of or didn't really agree with. And it was just this interesting phenomenon where you think, well, hang on a second, we are the government. And so what's going on here? And so I was just interested in that process. And so our team in Ten Downing Street, we did a little analysis of all the different things. things that the government was doing over the period of, it's about a week, I think.

We took all the announcements. And some of them are big and some of the small. And they're all done through this process called, I think it's request for policy approval or policy clearance where the minister's right to their colleague, the cabinet committees, and say, I want to do that. I'm the education secretary. I want to make this change to how schools are run or whatever. And if no one objects, it goes ahead.

And that's really how it all works. And then we looked at all of that over a certain period and said, well, how much of that is actually implementing the coalition agreement, the actual thing we're supposed to be doing? And over the course of whatever the period we were looking at, the answer was 30%. So 30% of what the government was doing was implementing what it supposedly was the main thing. So what's the rest of it? And it turned out that I can't remember the exact way around, which is a long time. ago, there was another 30% and there was a 40%. And one of them was implementing EU directives.

And the other was just random things that the bureaucracy felt needed to be done that weren't in the coalition agreement and they could have been maintenance of existing programs or whatever. So it was a real, you know, I admit that 70% of what we were doing was not actually in the coalition agreement. I find that horrendous. The fact that we have unelected bureaucrats who, the, The government are directing them to enact policy a lot of the time and they just look at them

and go, no, mate, I don't agree with it. Which is basically what you're saying. Well, and the other thing that was really interesting was the process that they use. So I just mentioned this, the letter writing. And actually there's a phrase for, by the way, this is like maybe it's all changed, maybe it's all been sort of. This is, in a sense, it was my experience, ancient history, you could say. No, over 10 years ago.

And the phrase that was used was right round. And so, we'll do a right round. You write a letter that goes round. And it's not the whole cabinet. It's cabinet committees. That's the sort of mechanism for how policy gets made. And again, people might think, well, policy is made in Parliament. And we have legislation that goes through Parliament.

That's true. But most policy that actually affects you and affects people in their daily lives, that sort of, it's not an input, it's not legislative, it's not new legislation, it's just the administration of government. And so that's how there's this thing right round. And when we looked at that process, it was amazing, because it was just, it's just almost a sort of definition of what you might imagine as sort of paper-pushing bureaucracy, where it's literally a sort of paper, I mean, it's emailed now, but it's sort of documents, long documents, many of them, and it's a covering letter, I'm the minister for whatever, here's my, I want to do this. And it's sent

round to all the other members of the committee. And it turned out that the rules were these. They had 48 hours to respond. And if there was no response, that was considered to be agreement. And so it was this absolute kind of bureaucratic racket of churning out this stuff that no one has time to read and also there's an incentive not to respond. Why? Because if you don't mess up your colleagues thing that means when you want to do something

they let it pass. So basically everything gets passed all the time. There's no objection and the lack of objections taken as approval. So it's an amazing process. That's how stuff got done. It was very interesting. I remember at the time Michael Gove who was education secretary at the time. He was the only one that seemed to read the stuff. That's comforting.

Right, no, and object and sort of step in and say, sorry, I don't agree with that. I remember there was one example which was, what was it? Was it Andrew? Somebody, I'm sorry, I can't read it. It was like someone, one of the cabinet ministers proposed that every government building would have to develop in consultation with state,

all the usual jargon, and publish a suicide prevention strategy for people who were, you know, potentially committing suicide from their building. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, just the sort of classic thing that, and you may say, who cares, whatever, but all this stuff just takes up time and it accumulates and whatever. And I remember saying, no, why should we do that? I don't agree with this, you know, so he would be, you know, he would challenge it. But mostly, the culture was not to challenge it. And you had 48 hours and that was considered approval. So, like, we tried to kind of put some spokes in the wheels of this machine turning around. So, for example, we extended the period to like, I think, six days.

And then we also tried to create a form, I don't even know whether, however this long this lasted, which was just as a kind of nudge to make them think about it, which was to sort of sign off. This is the part of the coalition agreement that this proposal is implementing, just as a kind of, to make them realize that's what they're supposed to. to be doing. But in the end, none of this really matters. I mean, you can't slow it down. That's why, you know, I was much mocked and derided for this, but my conclusion, and especially from another little exercise we did, which was cutting red tape, every government comes in and they say,

we're going to cut red tape, it's too much red tape, cut the bureau, slash bureaucracy. And none of them do. Like, it's just been the story, it just gets worse and worse and worse. Red tape, bureaucracy, and it's easy to issue this stuff. But when you're a business, trying to implement it, it's a nightmare, makes you life of misery, waste time and money and gives you a headache, and it's just, you know, ridiculous. So we wanted to do something about that. So we had this kind of approach to it, which was rather than going in like every previous government and say, well, let's try and find the things that we want to cut.

Why don't we have a different kind of mindset, which is let's review, let's look at everything and choose the ones we want to keep and assume that everything else is gone, just as a kind of, so you set the default, that less regulation. And I just remember the first meeting, I just thought we're sunk because it was, they divided all the regulations on the books like tens of thousands. I think it was like maybe 29,000 sets of regulations. They went through diligently and put them into, and we had different categories, you know, consumer protection, environmental, whatever. And we had a process for each one. And we had the meeting.

And I think we started with consumer protection. It was in Oliver Letwin's office, I believe, maybe for, yeah, Oliver Letwin. And we all sat around the table, and the officials from that department came in with their sort of document, which was here, you know, with the list of all the different regulations. And it was supposed to be color-coded for the ones we're keeping and the ones we think we can get rid of. And I remember looking at them, and most of them were, I can't remember which way. It was round, red or green. I said, oh, so these are the ones that we're getting rid of.

No, no, no, that's what we're keeping. There's like two or three that they felt we could get rid of. So I just thought, okay, let's go through it. So we went through. And I remember we had almost the entire meeting just on one, one thing, which I remember what it was. It was because it was just, I just thought, I can't believe this. It was regulations about flammable pajamas. Yeah.

And it was a specific regulation about flammable pajamas. I think it was either men's or women's, I can't remember. And I said, well, why can't this be covered in a general duty of you? We had this long conversation about it. And I remember the official from the Department of, is it trading industry? I can't remember whatever it was said. Well, actually, we had like half an hour discussion just on that,

whether we could, whether we read. Just on pajamas. And it was one gender, it was either male or female. I mean, I guess today you'd have to have a, that wouldn't even be, you couldn't even have that conversation about male or female pajamas. Too triggering. But it was, it was at the end of this whole discussion

about either male or female pajamas, the official, I remember, never forget it, said, well, actually, to the, extent that there is an interest in this from the public, I think the pressure would be to equalize it and to add regulations for female pajamas or whatever. Honestly, we had this whole conversation about the flapping of pajamas and going in front of a fight. It was mad. It was like a parody. And that was the first meeting. And I just thought, this is it. They know how to sort of grind you down. And there's always more of

them than there are a view, and they can always generate more paper, and you'll never win this battle. And that's when I came to the conclusion that the only way that you would actually do what all these governments promised, which is to have less regulation, decentralized power, and so on, is to massively reduce the number of civil servants. Or kill them. The only way. And so that led to a whole process, which was parroted in the media about me wanting to fire most

of the civil service, but kind of yes, actually, because in, not because they're doing a bad job, but because actually it shouldn't be so centralized. You shouldn't have this giant bureaucracy of just this, the tentacles reaching into every single aspect of life. It just feeds on itself, even if they've got good intentions, which they do. I'm not, you know, doubting their, and each individual person that they're bad, you know, I'm not saying they're bad people with bad intentions, just the cumulative effect. It's just this nightmare for people businesses and societies a whole. Steve, you're really

smiley and happy. You love in California. Of course you are. But as I listen to you as someone who lives in the UK, I'm fucking furious. Well, I think you should be, actually, because this is what, okay, especially the last few years. As you said, I'm here in California, I'm focused on not just US politics,

actually California politics. And California, you know, we're the fifth big, we're a bigger economy than the UK. And there's a lot going wrong. All right, man. In California, to fix, do you know what I mean? So it's like a big thing and that's what I'm focused on. But, you know, I obviously keep an eye on UK politics.

And it seems to me that things are really stuck. That's what it feels like, like for years now. And I don't want to weigh in too strongly because I don't follow it closely. And so I may be getting things wrong. But it does feel like you just have one prime minister off for another and it's all like, what's actually happening? I mean, where's the energy? It just feels very stuck.

Nothing really gets solved. Some of the problems seem to get worse rather than better. And I think a lot of it is to do with this fact that the machinery of government is really broken. And acknowledging that, I would imagine that a lot of civil servants are very left-wing or left-leaning. Again, nothing wrong with that if those of your political opinions, fair enough. but the problem comes when you see yourself as a protector or guardian of the UK and someone comes in with a policy that they deem to be right wing and you say you're not going to enact it,

then what you were doing is subverting the will of the people who have elected that government. That's exactly right. And that's what Blair felt. I mean, you know, he said that. And so I think he said it publicly. I don't think I'm revealing anything sort of, you know, greatly, confidential, but it's exactly what you say, because that's the theory and the theory of

governance is that the politicians are elected by the people and the bureaucracy faithfully implements what they do. But if that's not the culture, and again, I don't think it's even necessarily that they may not even be aware that that's what they're doing, but there's this sense of, it's almost grandiosity, I think, that like, well, you know, we've been here, we know how it works, you can't possibly do that. There's definitely a lot of that. And so you were known as a bit of a renegade, you know, you'd turn up a downing street in your shorts and all of that, right? So you have a go at cutting the number of civil servants. How did that go? Well, look, I mean, I'll just say a few things, which is, first of all, I was only there for two years. So I was there

from 2010 to 2012. Secondly, looking back on it, I think I went about that job in a hopelessly unprofessional manner, to be perfectly honest with you, in the sense that I, or you could say naive, I don't know which way, you know, but now having started a business here and taught at Stanford at this great organization called the D-School, the Institute of Design, which really tells you, which teaches you a methodology of how you make change happen, how you innovate. So I've learned a lot about how you do that. And I think we went about it. I went about it as a bit of a bull in the China shop, to be honest. And so I definitely don't want anyone to think that this is some great story of a thwarted hero and a terrible, you know, I think that I could have approached

it much better. But I don't think anything happened. I mean, I remember, to be perfectly honest. I think that we ended up in this, there's, Francis Maud was the minister and ran this process, the civil service reform process. And, you know, it was just a lot of meetings and everyone's saying the right thing. But in the end, like, as I said, I came to the conclusion that it's, it's, it doesn't, reforming it isn't the answer. You have to cut it. And there was no appetite to do that at all, like zero. And in fact, some of the, Francis Maud was very good. And there were some real successes of what we did there, which he led. For example, I mean, people maybe not that interested in it,

but the government digital service was actually really good. And they automated a lot of things and saved a bit of money and made interacting with the government of certain things like renewing a passport. I think, you know, stuff like that better. And actually that is seen as a model for the world. I've talked to people here in America who think that's amazing what happened there. So it wasn't all bad, but I think that fundamental, you know, culture, arrogance, really, that this is the machine and this is how it has to operate. I don't think that

was affected at all. I don't think there was any reduction in headcount. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they've done it subsequently. I don't think so. We'll be back with our guest in a minute, but first we wanted to quickly tell you about our partners, GiveSEN GO. If you need to crowd fund but don't want to hand over your money to face this big tech corporations, then we recommend using GiveSendGo. GiveSengo is a leading crowdfunding website where thousands of people in the US, the UK, Australia and Canada raise funds for anything from business ventures and medical expenses to personal needs, churches and funeral costs. On GiveSendGo, you can raise money for whatever you need. We've met the people at GiveSengo

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And now, back to the interview. Let's look at a subject like illegal immigration. Yeah. Which is very contentious. And there's going to be people on the left who look at it, a particularly, should we say, a moral lens and all the rest of it. And I'm looking at successive Home Secretaries, talking tough, but ultimately failing to curb illegal immigration. Do you think this is the reason why?

I think it's not the only reason why. It's part of it. And it's also the, but what I don't understand, by the way, is why this hasn't been solved since leaving the EU. I mean, that's like one of the main arguments. So I truly don't understand. why it's still an issue in the sense that the whole argument was we have control of our borders, so we don't need to worry about. I mean, the argument before was, well, we can't do anything about this because they're using asylum as the entry point, as the justification, and you can't do anything about that because they're the International Court of Human Rights or whatever. There's a whole sort of network of laws, international laws, and our hands are tied.

You heard that a lot. And someone like Michael Howard, who's very unpopular, in some ways, very much admired by others, but he was very tough on crime as a Home Secretary and tried to do stuff and was very frustrated by all this stuff that they had to deal with. I mean, I thought the whole point of leaving the EU was that that was something that you could then take control of, and it seems to me that they haven't really pursued that aggressively enough.

Maybe they've got a good answer as to why not. I think that the... It's that... But I think the current... what I can tell, the current Home Secretary seems to be the most prepared to be unpopular in confronting these things, probably since Michael Howard. So maybe she'll figure something out. But I think Francis points, Steve, is that unpopular as she may be.

That's the main achievement that she's generated. Hasn't actually made anything change. By the way, my sense is she's genuinely trying. Yeah. So the question for us, and that's why I said it's infuriating hearing what you're saying. Because ultimately, whether I agree with the current Home Secretary or disagree, the idea of democracy is that we vote for a government, and that government then goes and implements the things that we vote for. Now, of course, that isn't what always happens. We all accept that. But immigration is a very good example of this because it is an issue on which the same promise is made by success in the government. I know, it's amazing. And then nothing gets done. Yeah. And again, why is it important?

Look, David Cameron used to put this, I think, maybe he got it for Michael Howard, because he worked for Michael Howard, which is, it's people are generally pro-immigration, right? They're, you know, I'm the beneficiary of immigration, you know, like, we all are. We all are. Right. And so, and I always say twice over, you know, my family from Hungary to the UK, now here I am, I'm a new American citizen, et cetera. So very much pro-immigration. But, and I think most people are. But only if they get a, that it's controlled, that there's a sort of, just as... And that it's fair, see. And it's a fairness, exactly, that there's, it's a reasonable system, and it's fair and controlled.

And the minute that you lose control, that actually generates the, exactly what you don't want, racism and xenophobia and all the things you don't want, because it kind of naturally spills out when people feel that it's all just chaos and, and not properly managed. So there's a really, it's really important to get a grip of it. And the fact that successive governments haven't, I agree. I think it's, and it's totally reasonable to be furious about it, because either don't make the promise and just say, sorry, there's nothing we can do, right? This is just the modern world. I mean, look, some, by the way, that's basically what's going on here in America, where there's not really any attempt to stop migration. I mean, they barely even pretend to try. And it's all well, the root causes and there's lots of violence and gangs in El Salvador. I'm going to interrupt. You're in politics. Can you explain to the ordinary person how that's possible? Because you and I are both old enough to remember when Barack Obama was talking tougher than Donald Trump on immigration.

There was a moment like yesterday when everybody agreed that countries need borders. People like us, first generation immigrants, second generation immigrants, everybody understood that countries need to control immigration. And in the West, in both countries, yours and ours now, we keep voting for governments, and they don't do it. And a lot of people are now going to the, you know, it's the globalist conspiracy, whatever. Yeah. Because how else can you explain this? Yeah. It's totally, I mean, look, it's exactly right that they, and, you know, by the way, not just, I mean, there's some amazing video, actually, that I saw.

Nancy Pelosi, who was the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, a revered figure on the Democrats. She's from California, from San Francisco, and there's this amazing video of her from the 90s talking about, in terms that would be, like, if Trump said it, would be, you wouldn't even believe he'd said it. It sounds so kind of, you know, anti-immigration where she's talking about, did you know that, you know, whatever, like 10% of the best. babies born in San Francisco hospitals and the children of illegal immigrants. We can't have this drain or, you know, amazing. That's Nancy Pelosi. Hillary Clinton and all these people, totally in favor of a border wall, not that long ago, voted for it, many of them in Congress. You know, so it's totally changed. I think it's part of the general, which you cover so well, and you know much better than I do, that general kind of shift to this really superficial version.

virtue signaling kind of mindset on the left, which is, oh, we mustn't say anything that comes across as racist or mean or xenophobic. And if you have controls, then people who are suffering will be denied that, you know, that whole mindset, I think has taken over. And it's just this culture of, it's a sort of lack of seriousness about the issues. It's just saying, yeah, we can just be nice to everyone. Of course we want to be nice to everyone. In our lives, we want to be nice. We don't treat people with respect and be kind and so on.

That's true, but it's not, you know, you have a situation. I can't speak to the British situation, but here in America, like total chaos in border states, plays like Texas and Arizona. Now you have the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, saying the just a few tens of thousands of illegal migrants arriving in New York being taken there on buses, tens of thousands will destroy, that's his word, will destroy New York City. There is 1.7 million, there's actually 1.8 million last year, illegal immigrants that are called gotaways, where they're not even recorded. That's 1.8 million. He's saying tens of thousands will destroy New York City. You have places like

there's a city in Arizona, Yuma, Arizona. 250,000. thousand migrants in that one city. That's more than through through. I think the population's only about 90,000. You know, it's completely overwhelming. And it's just a lack of seriousness just to say, well, we can't put anything in the way because it's, I mean, I think it's this obsession with not wanting to appear in any way racist or mean about anything. Again, I'm like you. I never thought I'd say these words. I'm just listening to this, Steve, and I'm getting so angry. It's an abdication of responsibility.

You can tell we don't live in California. No one here is angry. No matter what's going on. You're just happy. Because it's nice. I mean, look, the thing is, I tell you that whether or not it is, but there's a lot to, I know you talk about the UK,

but there's a lot to be angry about him. If you walk around, anyone who comes here, you know, we'll see it's, do you know that phrase, it was J.K. Galbraith, the economist, wrote that very famous phrase about critiquing capitalism, talking about private affluence public squalor. Yeah.

That's basically what you have in California now. Because you've got this incredible wealth and squalor. And I think people are actually getting more and more angry about it. But still. Yeah, no, no. And there's something that's actually something I want to talk to you about. But we'll move on to that later. The thing, look, I get very angry.

I'm very angry about this. And I'm also very worried because this is what the problem is, Steve. Democracy, if what you're saying is, and I believe it's true because it makes sense, then the reality is democracy no longer works because you're electing people who are essentially powerless because of these bureaucrats, which then means that people lose their faith

in the democratic system, which means that our entire way of governing no longer works, which means that something serious and drastic is going to happen because people are going to get more and more angry and deservedly so. I really agree with a lot of that analysis, is that there's this building rage. Yeah.

And it's coming out in all sorts of unpleasant ways and sometimes constructive ways. But generally there's a sort of real, and people talk about polarization and whatever. But there's just a lot of anger because of basic things going wrong for people. And so you look at, I don't know, again, I can't speak to the exact UK experience,

but, you know, like everyone's sort of, you know, politicians saying everything's great, the economy's great, we're doing this, growth, whatever. And like, everything's more expensive. I can't afford this. You know, it's just a basic things of daily life are a hassle, expensive, it's a nightmare. You know, those are the sort of realities for people. And I do agree that the machinery of government feels completely inadequate.

And in terms of delivering what it's supposed to do, which is translate these problems. It's easy to write the problem. I've written lots of speeches and things. You can write the nice things and they sound attractive. But I think if you keep going down this cycle of making the promise and not delivering, then you're just going to get more and more rage. I mean, one conclusion I came to was, which I feel very strongly about decentralising power. Because I think that that is the way to really deal with this problem,

which is that actually one way to deal with the problem, which is that if you put, like, truly decentralise it so that you can feel that your vote or your decision-making really affects your life. So I was really interested in the idea of neighborhoods as a really, you know, a sort of of different unit of government, not just local councils. If you look at local councils, I remember going through this, in some of the biggest councils in London, you know, the boroughs, they're like millions of people nearly, you know, some of them, maybe more, I can't remember exactly, but, you know, a lot of people, really big.

So that's big government. I mean, that's not close to the people. So really giving control over what goes on in your neighbourhood. And I think it's an interesting idea, but any time you talk like this, they dismiss it as bullshit, you know, airy, fairy, all that won't work. But it's not as if their version is working. So I think that we've got to try and solve it. And I think that idea of put, I mean, this, you know, I'm sort of feeling frustrated now because this was really a big part of the idea of that going back to where we started, the coalition agreement. If you read that document, it's full of stuff about decentralizing, putting agency and budgets in the hands of people and neighborhoods. We wanted to have mayors, every elected mayor, so that you could have a figure of accountability,

not just for a big city, but, you know, like in France, they have a lot more decentralization. And so, you know, there's this vision of actually quite a radical re-engineering of government that basically never happened. Yeah, and it's worrying as well, because you look at the states where people are frustrated and are angry, And that led to Trump. Yes, exactly.

You know, and the liberals will, you know, ring their hands and they'll say, this is awful, this is disgusting. How can this man have got to power? This is because people are racist, stupid. No, go, no, because they don't feel that they're being represented. Well, you could say, even more extraordinary, actually, you could say after everything that's happened, January the 6th, everything else, and being indicted, what did it, 91 counts? and all this, they threw everything at him and all the abuse and the entire media, all the establishment piling on for years.

And now he's the frontrunner for the nomination. And there was the poll the other week, a 10-point lead over Biden. A 10-point lead. So you think, well, all these people that have just been, say, well, it's unthinkable. You can't have trouble.

Like, something really serious is going wrong when you get that kind of, you know, result in public. Okay, it's a poll. and who knows what's going to happen in the election next year. But you're totally right. It really is driving a lot of that rage and on the left as well. So in 2016, it was right here in America.

It was very interesting because you had Trump, but you also had Bernie Sanders, who was doing very well. And came out of nowhere. When he announced his campaign, people thought it was a joke, some crotchety old senator that no one had ever heard of. And suddenly he's leading a movement. Young people are super enthusiastic, you know, the biggest grassroots movement anyone's ever seen.

massive, you know, amounts of small dollar donations. You know, Bernie Sanders was really a really big, and still is, really big phenomenon. Your point about Trump and the frustrations is interesting because Michael Malice, who the recent guest of on our show, one of the things he was talking about is how the moment what he calls the corporate press, the mainstream media, attack somebody as being wrong, bad and evil.

Yeah. Now their reputation goes on. It's really interesting. It's a bit like, so it's so funny. The other day I was doing a talk somewhere. Oh, yeah, that's where it went. And I was talking about how here in California, well, I was referring back to learning economics at Oxford,

and I've forgotten nearly everything. But I'm not particularly academic person, but I do remember this one thing called a Giffin Good. And the Giffin Good confounds the normal laws of economics. So like the normally it's like there's a demand curve, I think they go that goes upward, upward sloping demand curve. So the price goes up, the demand goes down, whatever. And it's exactly the opposite.

The cheaper something is with the gift and good, the fewer that people don't want it because they think it's not wrong with it. Or the more expensive becomes more popular. There's the same with that. You know, the more they attack some, the press, the mainstream press attack someone, the more support they get. I was talking about the problems in California, where it seems to be the more that they focus on a problem

and the more money they spend on a problem, the worse it seems to get that's definitely what we've had with homelessness where he's just all around and billions and billions of dollars keep being spent um and why does that happen steve i mean we had tom billy on the show very recently who he's sort of like people aren't thinking about the end result they're thinking often about what sounds right what makes them feel good etc and they're not testing they're not going well let's have a go at this to put some money into this let's see what the result is and if the result isn't what we want, let's try something else and whatever. Yeah.

But, you know, everyone we speak to here, left and right, yeah. Recognises that there's a problem. Yeah. Because it's kind of hard not to see it. Yes. Right? Yeah.

And this is one of the richest, not just states, it's one of the richest countries in the world. Yeah. I mean, there's an early, I mean, if you look at the income per, the kind of income per head, 49 out of 50 states within America, are richer than the UK. It's, you know, like there's only one that's poor. I don't know. It's either Alabama or Mississippi.

I don't know which one. I think it's... No, I think actually Mississippi. I think... Is it... I got, yeah, I think it's... 40, so, you know, it's exactly, as you say, it's very wealthy. Well, I've...

Let's just... There's... Just think about the problem that, first of all, this way, right? There's the stock and the flow. And that's always quite an interesting way of thinking about a problem. So you've got the stock. of people, the people who are currently experiencing homelessness who are on the streets, and then you've got the pipeline as well of people who become homeless. The stock issue is in a way,

in a way it's almost a sort of simpler fix because it's you can, the truth is that most of the people living on the streets, 80% or more, have either one or both of the mental health issues or addiction. Even if they weren't when they arrived, when they became homeless, that's the typical pattern. It's really tragic. Like you've become homeless. And there's many, many stories of people you would say, normal people. Nothing wrong with their life. And then they, because their life is very precarious and they lose their job and then they can't pay rent. And then they live on people's couches for a bit. And then they run out of favors. And then they live in the car. and then they can't afford the car and then they live on.

And that is a very common. And even if you're not, you're totally fine, just poor, and you don't have any kind of drug use. Within weeks sometimes of being on the streets, your target for drug dealing and crime and this absolute stress of it literally sends you crazy. So that's, sadly, what often happens. So you've got roughly 80% mental health drug addiction.

The problem is you've got, you've got laws in place that stop you actually dealing with that. For example, there's a 2016 bill passed, I think it's SB 1380, if you want to. Someone can look it up, passed by the California legislature that makes it, the name of it was housing first. What it does is implement an idea, which sounds nice and plausible, which is the most important thing for someone who's homeless is to get them into housing. And then you can deal with their problems. But you're never going to deal with their problems if they're on the street. That sounds plausible. But what's contained in housing first is a ban on any state. It's illegal for any state program, any program that takes

money from the California government to require sobriety. So you can't deal with the drug addiction. It's actually illegal to solve the problem. So what you see over and over again is people are homeless going into programs, and this is where, you know, $20 billion spent in the last few years only for the numbers to go up. And they're not, they're still addicted to drugs. People who, I mean, I've been to Venice and talked to people who are working on the streets with homeless people. It's like they literally say, the language they use, they have a second home. So we give them shelter accommodation. By the way, for other reasons, costing $800,000 per unit. That's a separate thing. In LA, $800,000 per unit. That's, let's not get into

that. And they're in the shelter, but there's no requirement to stop. using drugs. They're not in any kind of treatment program for drugs. It's illegal to require them to be sober. And so you've got these shelters that are just people sharing drugs, using drug, drug, and then they go out and they often keep a place on the streets. This is what I was told from people who work there, to get the drugs or deal drugs. So that's one thing. Secondly, on mental health, because of previous policies that were aimed at dealing with what was considered to be kind of, you know, nightmarish old mental health institutions, put people into the community and so on, shut down a lot of mental health hospitals.

Then they always cite one flew over the cuckoo's nest. If you don't want that kind of thing anymore, I'm sure we don't. But what you've got now is a massive lack of capacity for mental health treatment. There's a rule, this is a federal rule, that you can't have more than 16 beds in a mental health capacity. So that means you just don't have the ability to treat people on the scale that you need. You have hundreds of thousands of people, mentally ill, drug addict, drug, addicted to drugs, and they're just not getting the treatment. And then on top of that, you've had, this is the one that's probably done the most damage, is a ruling from the Ninth Circuit

called the Boise ruling, which is Boise in Idaho, and it's a particular case. The Ninth Circuit covers the Western States, so California, Washington, Oregon, and so on. And the ruling, it was a particular case that was brought when the city tried to remove someone into shelter, who was on the trees. And the ruling was, you can't do that. It's violating their rights unless the city can provide shelter for everyone, not just for that person, but for every single person who's on the streets. That's the ruling. Then you have homeless advocates and non-profits who make a lot of money out of this whole thing, blocking temporary shelter, for example, a tent or a bet. They know. The only thing that we'll allow is permanent, supported housing.

And so you get into this cycle of, the only way you can get them off the street is if you solve the problem in a big way, but you've got groups locally saying we're going to stand, we're going to oppose it. So it's just been stuck for years. And it's just a total mess, but all of it is solvable if you have the right attitude to just cut through it and say, sorry, that's ridiculous. You know, it's inhumane to leave people on the street. This is the thing that really is the core of it, isn't it, Steve? Which is we are pretending to be compassionate. Exactly. Instead of actually being compassionate.

100%. Because leaving somebody on the street instead of being in a mental health hospital because you saw a movie once, that's not compassionate. That's cruel. Exactly right. Exactly. And saying, well, we can't, you know, I mean, there's someone who's written really well about all this and studied it very closely. Michael Schellenberg.

Yeah, he's great. And so he, I mean, he introduced me to this phrase, oh gosh, what was it? Oh, yes. That if you argue that, you know, like if someone's addicted to drugs, you know, they should get off drugs and get back on a pathway to a sort of reasonable life where they can earn a living and support themselves

and so on and live on their own independently, that that is that's anti-euphoria that's the phrase now that's being used anti-euphoria people have a right to euphoria and who are you to tell them but that's so stupid because it's also cruel your word because it's like that's not a choice

that's what it's you're an addicts yeah the reason you take drugs is not to experience euphoria for those people especially well those people it's definitely there is night take Anyway, think for yourself. But, yeah, true. But you're not lying on the street, injecting fentanyl into your eyeballs.

Addiction. This is like, it's an illness, you know, and so it needs treatment. And that's the compassionate thing to do. And to require treatment. Now, I should say, just, you know, factual context, just the week that we are recording this interview, the California legislature just passed a bill that would make it slightly, easier to force people to enter treatment. It's an update of the conservatorship laws that you can actually act and put someone into treatment against their will. But there's so many other constraints, there are so many existing laws that block that. For example, the provision of the mental health capacity that is very unlikely to me, it seems unlikely to me it's going to

make any difference. But the core point is exactly that. It's this idea of compassion. And I think that it's funny, I've been thinking about that a lot. because it's this sort of softness, it's this, almost this ideology of appeasement. And I always think about it in the context of, you know, raising kids. Like, it's as if we're doing exactly the opposite of what normal people would think is how you just behave in normal life, the way you raise your kids. In other words, you incentivize people for doing the wrong thing and you punish them for doing the right thing.

And that seems to be true in so many different areas. And so when you've got someone clearly doing something and it extends to crime and so on, and it's this desire to be liked, to be, you know, to look nice and look compassionate, it's exactly right. It's so profound that, you know, and that is exactly what's driving the, the immigration situation. It's like we don't want to look mean. And if we turn people away, then we're mean. But it's how compassionate is it to see what you've incentivized? There's unbelievable trafficking of people, child trafficking, children raped on the journey through Central America to get to the border, you know, criminal gangs enriched, people drowning in the Rio Grande every day. You know,

what's compassionate about that? It's completely disgusting, but it's done in the name of compassion. I think that is basically the central kind of theme of almost everything that's going wrong. We'll get back to the episode in a minute, but first, we want to talk to you. you about AG1. If you're a long-time fan, you might know we've been drinking AG1 for over a year now to stay healthy and stave off illness in preparation for whenever our schedule gets really busy. When we use AG1 on our busy America tours, we've found that we feel a real difference to our energy levels and our ability to focus. So my concentration span has gone from two seconds to 12. That's because AG1 is a foundational nutrition supplement that supports your body's

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ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. That's drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. That's drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. Check it out. Now, back to the interview. And do you think the problem is as well, is the fact that you have these people who are constantly up for election every four years, so they want to appear compassionate. They don't want to appear to be the bad guy. So what do you do? Do you talk about the UK or here?

Just everywhere. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to talk about if we're talking about here. But first of all, in that you've got so many different layers of government. And a lot of them are elected every two years. Wow. And one of the issues is actually the districts, the gerrymandering of districts. So fewer and fewer districts, certainly in the federal level, are competitive. So there's no need to appeal to a broader electorate.

It's just your core supporters. And it's a little, I think there's an analogy with what's happening in media to a certain extent. We've got that phenomenon of audience capture, where you sort of, because of the fragmentation and you build an audience and you serve. the audience and you just go down that road and you become more and more kind of boiled down to the essence rather than appealing to a broader audience. And that's happening with a lot of politics, actually. So it's not just the kind of, and for some audiences, they don't want the compassion. They want, you know, tough, but sometimes that can be wrong as well. You know, it's just a, that basic common sense, pragmatic, like, what's going on, how do we solve

the problem? It's just really seems to be disappearing. And by doing this, compassionate approach or false compassion, whatever we want to call it, you're driving more, more people to that gesture that you just made. Exactly. It's the fury because nothing changes. Exactly. And so what I worry about, Steve, is things are looking not great, to put it mildly. Yeah. Where are we going to be in 10 years? Well, I don't, you tell me, I mean, what do you think, like, I mean, I've just been, again, we're taping this just soon after the party conferences in the UK.

I don't know when people may be watching, but there was, I don't know, does Kier Stama offer people, I haven't really been following it. Well, this is the thing, Steve. Is he the great, I mean, Tony Blair, I remember the, you know, it was like really exciting, actually.

Well, this is the point, right? Whenever we have a lefty on the show, we say, are you excited about Keir Stama? No. Whenever we have a right wing on the show, are you excited about the conservative government? No. Interesting. No one is excited about the people that are supposedly represented.

representing them. Right. Because of the things that we've discussed, which is we've kind of, you know, you can only press a button so many times without the light coming on that you stay excited about the possibility. Well, you know what's interesting about that that makes me think, I tell you who is excited here, and I saw thousands of them just a couple of weeks ago at the California Republican Convention. Trump, he, whatever, whatever you think, his supporters are incredibly excited because they believe that he is. is going to, and also they remember that times were better and you didn't have this chaos at the border. I'm just telling you what they say. I mean, people can challenge it, but that's their memory. The economy was better. We were earning more.

We didn't have inflation. We didn't have these wars. We didn't have Putin invading Ukraine and terrorist rampage around the middle. We didn't have all of that. We had peace and we had prosperity and the border was secure and things were kind of good. Was it secure? I'm just not, well, it wasn't. It hasn't been for decades, but you didn't see the numbers you see now.

Yeah, no. But not even close. I mean, I was just looking at some data on the numbers of people apprehended. This is just the ones they know about at the Southern border in America who were on the FBI's terrorist watch list. And it's just incredibly clear. You look at 20, I mean, I don't have the exact numbers to, but this is the scale. It's completely right, what I'm about to tell you. The first year of Trump, 2017, 6, 2018, 4, 2019, 0, there were two zeros, maybe 2020,

1st, 1st year of Biden, 21, 53, 22, 174. You know, just a massive change. And so it's true that it wasn't secure, but it was a lot better than it is now. Anyway, I'm not even saying, you know, I'm not like endorsing one way or the other or saying I'm not validating necessarily what those Trump supporters think. I'm just pointing out that that's what they say. They're excited. And they really are excited. And they believe in him.

And it's interesting when you talk to them, it's interesting to get back to what you're saying, you know, throughout as a theme, was when you ask them, and I have done this, like, why? Why? Because what's really interesting about the Trump phenomenon is the broad range of the support, which perhaps isn't kind of captured in some of the caricatures, which is you've got a massive shift in the demographics of American politics, where the, for example, the Latino vote. And here in California, Latino vote is 40% of these, the largest group. That makes complete sense to me. In California, you have 40% Latino, 30% white, 15% 80%. Asian 5% black, something like that.

And so the Latino vote shifting each election with like 10% towards Republicans. And so and the Asian vote as well. So you've got a lot more racial diversity in the Trump coalition. And it's interesting that you've got people of all, you talk to working class, a lot of working class support. You talk to wealthy people as well. Why do you support Trump? He gets things done.

He made promises and he got it done. That's what they think. Now, people may dispute that, but literally that's what they think. And so that kind of speaks to a real desire for that. That is the number one thing that they say. Well, of course. He delivered his promises. I mean, they don't use that exact term, but like he's, I mean, I've heard it many times. We're just on vacation in Alaska and there's some people there who knew me from my TV thing. We were just chatting. And they were not your what you might imagine as your sort of typical Trump supporter. and, you know, and they were, and in fact, the woman is a couple, and the woman was like she was just not political at all before Trump, and in fact her family was democratic, so if anything, she was democratic. And so I wasn't really interested, but then I saw him, and I thought, you know, this guy's really doing what he said. He said he'd do these things and he's doing it.

And they're all trying to stop him, but he's doing it. It's really interesting that there was this very kind of gut connection to the sort of delivery of promises. Well, this is the thing that I think people have criticized Trump for, which comes back to the very beginning of our conversation, which is some people argue he didn't deliver on many of the things that he promised. And he would argue, and a lot of his supporters would argue, well, the only reason he didn't, it's the deep state.

Well, there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, you could see that, and I, you know, I wasn't involved particularly, and I, I don't, they're on the East Coast, on the West Coast, and I covered it to a certain extent, but it was definitely true, particularly at the beginning. I mean, in a way, they had the Tony Blair problem, but like much, even much because they had no experience. He'd never done it before. He says this now.

He said, I got there, I barely spent any time in Washington. I didn't know how it worked. And I hired all these people that I was told to hire who knew how it all worked. And it turns out they didn't really agree with his policies. And so he had a really overt. campaign of stopping him from doing stuff, for example, on the border wall. They didn't agree with it. The trade policy, the challenge to China, you know, there was a lot of, and I think, by the way, this is one of the reasons that I think, I mean, this is just amateur psychology here, but I just

think it's one of the reasons that it's almost, that he was so kind of demented on Twitter and all the rest of it, because he was so frustrated. It's like, hang on a second, I got elected, I had really simple promises. Why can't we just do it? What's all these people telling me? I can't. And of course, there's a constitutional answer to that, partly, which is that you've got separation of powers,

and you've Congress to pass laws, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But even putting that aside, there was a lot of attempt to frustrate him. But that argument about the deep state, which is a phrase, you know, that people can mock or whatever. But it's absolutely true that it's the same as where we started out, that there's a very entrenched bureaucracy that just doesn't believe in, that has an ideology, and it tends to be more left. I think it's, I think it's more politicized here in America than it is even in the UK. I mean, individually, I found the civil servants in the UK that I dealt

with professional, nice, you know, they were like on some mission to subvert the government. But, and I think they do try to be, you know, apolitical. But, you know, you can't totally put that aside. But here, I think they really, remember that they're all drawn from Washington, D.C., which is an incredibly, I think it's almost the most democratic city in the country. It's like 90% voted for Clinton or something like that. And they will live there. They're drawn from that community. Exema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate-tissapir eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and seven people taking

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new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epgless. Before starting Epgless, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about Epgless and visit atlis.lidlis.com or call 1-800 LilyRX or 1-800 545-97579. Steve, I mean, it's been a pleasure. we could literally talk for the rest of the day. But we've run out of time. Okay, well, I'm sorry about that. People should know that I was late. So the extent that...

He's really integrated into California. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. No, it's absolutely fine. A final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

Oh my gosh. Well, the one thing we haven't talked about at all that I always think is the core to everything is family, actually. I know that sounds, that's probably, maybe you were hoping for more of a jokey answer. No, at all. I think that it's actually the single thing. I always say this, that if, you know, if we could, and I'll say something that sounds glib,

but it's really fundamental, which is if we could just get to a point where every child is raised in a stable, loving home, so many of the problems that we talk about, government works on, we spend money on, we raise tax, taxes to spend on and whatever would just not exist. It's a really sort of deep thing. And actually, that is not something that you can just, that you may just hope for. There are things we can do to make that more likely. Like what? Well, I mean, I've written about them in my books in more human and impositive populaceous, especially more human if people want to check it out. But for example, well, there's a couple of things. So there's, people assume that parenting is something that is just natural and comes easily and so on.

And actually, that is not true, and it's incredibly hard. And I'm a parent of two kids and you just, you know, are you a parent? No. So it's really hard and stressful. I'm trying to get them to get married. What are you doing, man? Yeah, exactly. No, no, but it's rewarding and joy for as well.

Of course, everyone knows that. But it's also really hard. And so you can help people with that. And actually sharing the, you know, there's a whole kind of set of that. I tried to get that going as a policy, actually. But I think it's better done in the private sector. So one of my dreams was to start a business that would offer kind of parent coaching in a kind of supportive, aspirational way.

You know, I think, for example, we can work on that problem. And actually, that would really do a lot to, you know, just keep families together. Because managing those stresses is something that we can help with. And there's a stigma against getting help for that, which is ridiculous. And I think we can do something about it. Also, if you look at the way in which particularly, you know, in the more disadvantaged communities, less money, more precarious circumstances, worse housing and so on, it's even harder.

And so a huge proportion of those issues that you end up dealing with and a vast proportion of government money ends up being spent on, you can deal with if, you know, they're really established programs. We try to get something going. the, what was it called? The, I can't remember the something families program, you know, and it's, you know, giving really hands-on help and at early age.

Here there's something in America called the parent-nourced partnership, nurse-parent partnership. And it's absolutely phenomenally successful. And you have a trained nurse, comes into the house or helps me with basic things. You know, it just transforms prospects for families and kids. And there's other things.

There's loads of absolutely positive, practical things you could do that would save so much money. But again, you're sort of, well, that's not as serious as, you know, tax cuts or whatever. You know what I mean? There's a sort of bias against that kind of stuff. It's a bit touchy-feely and the civil service don't understand it. By the way, I should, now, there's supposed to be a short answer at the end, wasn't it? No, no, no, it's great. I would say the single best civil service interaction I had was with someone in, I think, the Department of Education.

And she was, and you find there are these amazing people who kind of, to certainly accept, maybe languishing because no one's kind of paid attention to their area before. She was a real expert in parenting. And we worked on a program to try and kind of stimulate some private sector response and like parenting, coaching and stuff like that. She was amazing. And I had such great interactions with her because she felt really excited that someone was, you know, engaged in the thing that she really was passionate about and knew

really expert in. And so all I would say is when it comes to family, it's worth paying a lot of attention to. And I don't think the political system does, because it's not as, it's not as kind of dramatic as some of the other things that get talked about and argued about the whole time. But if we did pay more attention to it and talk about it more, I just think we'd have a completely different society. Steve Hilton, thank you very much. Thank you.