TRIGGERnometry - Ex-Marine: We Lost in Afghanistan and We're Losing at Home Too

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

James Glancy served in the Royal Marines as a Captain during the War in Afghanistan. | Our Trusted Gold IRA Partner is Augusta Precious Metals. Text TRIGGER to 35052 to get your free info kit. Sponsor: Qualia Senolytic. Go to https://Qualialife.com/TRIG for up to 50% off and use code TRIG at checkout for an additional 15% off. Sponsor: Express VPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger/ to get 4 months FREE Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Not only do we lose that conflict in Afghanistan, but we left a huge amount of weapons and capability in the country, and the Taliban are more powerful than they were in 2001. Not only that, we have imported tens of thousands of people with the same ideology as al-Qaeda or the Taliban into Britain. We have a force of around 40,000 Islam. who hate this country, that number is more than half in the British Army. James Glancy, welcome to Trignometry.

You have a fascinating story. Royal Marine filmmaker, Brexit, party, MEPA, lots of different things. But the one thing we really wanted to talk to you about is you mentioned in your movie, actually, Afghanistan, that you sign up for the Royal Marines and a week later, 9-11 happens. You end up going over to Afghanistan, which at the time you thought, was just a war and a good thing to do. And now you feel like not only did we lose that war, we're actually importing some of the people who beat us into this country. I mean, if you think of our reason for going there, it was because of 9-11 and you had the Islamic movements

around al-Qaeda hosted by the Taliban in Afghanistan. We went there to, remove those people and to try and kill that ideology. And that felt like the right mission, the right thing to do because clearly militant Islamism or Islamo-fascism, as it's also known, is an ideology which is fundamentally incompatible with the West of our way of life. Now we are in January 2025. Not only did we lose that conflict in Afghanistan, but we left a huge amount of weapons and capability in the country, and the Taliban, who we went to fight, are more powerful than they

were in 2001. They didn't even control the whole country in September 2001. They controlled the southern part of the country. The North was helped by the Northern Alliance. Now the Northern Alliance doesn't exist. They control the entire country. And they controlled the entire country and they'd be completely re-armed. And all those extremists, okay, maybe not under the brand of Al-Qaeda, but they still exist and they're able to operate freely in that country. Not only that, we have imported tens of thousands of people with those, the same ideology as Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, extremists, Islamists, into Britain. And they live here amongst us on welfare in British taxpayer and paid housing subsidised by us in our country. I think it's 2020,

the Home Office figures for the number of people on the terrorist watch list, so Islamists on the terrorist watch list numbered just over 37,000. That was the last time they reported the figure. They don't report it anymore. Bear in mind, we've cut the British Armed Forces from when I signed up. I think the British Army is 105,000. Now it's around 72,000 and in decline. So essentially what we're saying is, we have a force of around 40,000 Islamists who hate this country,

who will be monitored by MI5 and security services in this country. That number is more than half than the British Army. So to answer the question, do I think it was the right thing to invade Afghanistan? It was the right thing to go there. But this is not just a conflict lost. This is a societal loss.

This has been a game-changing for Britain as a nation. And you mentioned militant Islamism. You're someone who was on the sharp end of that, on the one hand, but you've also been to Afghanistan and I'm sure traveled more widely in the Middle East. What is militant Islamism? Right, I think, when I say militant Islamism, I mean, the, if you think of the implement, the full implementation of Sharia law,

which is what the Taliban claimed to be doing, which is the brutal suppression of women's rights, the adherence to strict Islamic codes, including punishments, extreme punishments, for anything from adultery, which will result in and stoning, the cutting off of limbs for theft, the strict adherence to child education only really based on the Quran, so no freedom of thought or freedom to access information outside of Islamic teachings. And I already mentioned the suppression of women, but we're talking about an

extremely religious society. Obviously, there are no elections. Everything is run, by the mullahs or run by Islamic preachers in a very authoritarian structure and it's a very highly militarized state controlled by oppression

far a far stricter interpretation than you'll see in Iran which is a Shia but obviously the Taliban are Sunni but that's what I'm talking about the extreme implementation of the Sharia and

extreme implementation of Islam. That's what Afghanistan is. And a lot of people in this country support that. In fact, there are some very popular podcasters in Britain who support that. People within the Five Pillars organization, which will be familiar with, some of those people have travelled recently to Afghanistan and have interviewed senior members of the Taliban. James, can I pause you there? Because, there's people going to be listening who's going to is a prick up, or they're going to go, what is a Five Pillars organization? So for them and for me, can you explain what it is?

The Five Pillars is a Islamic network in Britain that represents, I would say, the more extreme forms of Islam and essentially like a pressure group and a media organisation. And I don't know too many details about it, but all I know is that they very much support the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Taliban-run, Afghanistan. And just to continue this is militant Islamism conversation. Why is militant Islamism, in your opinion, a threat to us and a problem for us? Well, I mean, Islam in itself,

there are different forms. It's like Christianity or any religion, and the most extreme form of it is completely incompatible with a liberal democracy. you know, it doesn't believe in free and fair elections. It doesn't believe in rights. It's attitude to things that have become agreed upon within the West, the attitude to whether it's homosexuality towards women working to freedom of expression, freedom of speech. It's completely diametrically opposed to that.

In the same way as we wouldn't allow, we don't, allow fascism to flourish because we believe it to be an extremist ideology. The extreme forms of Islam, militant Islam, or islo-fascism, as it's also known as, is completely incompatible with a fair, free liberal democracy. And yet, it's flourishing. And it's gained strength as a result of the conflicts of in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's been turbocharged. And I think The really important thing to remember is that bin Laden, this was bin Laden's design. He ensnared trapped America into doing this. He knew that by cause, through the 9-11 attacks, he knew if he could commit an atrocity

that forced America to react in such an extreme way. He could draw America into the Middle East, into Asia. and that would turbo-charge the fanatical elements of Islam. And he has been proved 100% right. That is a very interesting point. So looking back now, do you think the invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake? The way we went about it. Well, you know, the first phase, there would have been troops on the ground in 2001.

So that would have been, so September, the 11th happened, November, December, it's widely reported that US and British troops went on the ground, I think starting a background, working with the Northern Alliance. And that method of working with Afghans that wanted to get rid of the Taliban was successful. So getting rid of Al-Qaeda, their bases, forcing them to flee out of the Toribor caves, wherever they went. they killed large numbers of them. That was successful. Then 2003 happened, which was the invasion of Iraq. And then we started to re-concentrate on Afghanistan, only about 2006-7 when I went.

Now, to me, it's not about, we of course should have hit those training bases and cleared them out. But what we went into, which was a new phase of nation-building, trying to make Afghanistan a liberal democracy. a country which is society's hundreds of years behind Western or even other Middle Eastern societies, we should try to impose our own values. I think that was the mistake. But if you take a bigger step back, you essentially had these neo-conservative views. And Tony Blair was very much part of this, was of liberal intervention, that we should be intervening in any state that we think is oppressive

or doesn't align with our values, and we should try and impose our way of life on these people. that was the mistake. Because what it shows is a complete disconnect from reality from those people who think you can suddenly swoop into a country which has never had any form of democracy and just implement it and it's all going to be hunky-dory. Yeah, and you know this is one of the big problems of the British mindset is, we might have lost the empire but we still want to tell people what to do. Whether your left wing or right wing, we still want to impose our values and our thinking onto everybody.

We even see this in the foreign office today through what was diffid, but SCDO now, our foreign aid programs will be telling African nations. And I was recently briefed about a program where, you know, we're telling them about LBG, TQIA rights. We're telling them about all sorts of liberal issues that matter to us. whereas these people are more worried about feeding themselves or about their security, say, in Iran. But we're still pushing our values onto these people through development programs. And I think that mindset that we must be telling other societies

what to do and how to be is all pervasive in the British and now the American mindset. And we've got a massive inability to think, we've got huge numbers of problems in our society. We should probably just withdraw from the world a bit and sort our own country out before we continue to tell people what to do. It's also quite antagonistic as well, because what you're essentially doing is going over there

and lecturing people about the things they're doing badly. And they're quite, I'm sure they think to themselves, who are you to be doing that? Yeah, I mean, look, and I would have been part of the problem. I was young, I was excited about serving. I, you know, I loved the country. I was absolutely adored by the scenes in 9-11. I believe we're doing the right thing

and I wanted to go and fight I want to go and fight these bad people. There's something I want to come back to is how you can have a perfectly decent conversation with an Islamist or a member to Taliban because I have done that. But, you know, I believe these people were evil and we wanted to, you know,

we wanted to show them or get rid of them. You know, we wanted to change them. That was the original the mindset we went over with. We didn't go there with a mindset of let's understand a society. And we didn't really think whether we should have been there trying to do what we're doing. And very few people question that, especially in the military.

And I reckon I had a bit of an epiphany in around 2008. And my second tour of Afghanistan, we were, I was in what was called Army Support Group, which is a part of the Royal Marines. We had these Viking vehicles, which were designed for amphibious operations. and they were inappropriate, they were very good to go around the desert, but they were very inappropriate to when the conflict changed and they started using IEDs, improvised, exposed to devices because they would destroy these vehicles. But in the early phase, we were able to manoeuvre around the desert in southern Afghanistan and getting fights with the Taliban. And

it was really enjoyable as a commander to sort of have this sort of freedom of maneuver to fight. But I remember working with the Green Berets on one particular operation and they had a target. They wanted us as maneuver and fire support. And we maneuvered into the position. They went in to try and get this target. And there's a little bit of a firefight. And then we started getting mortared from the other side of the Helman River from a place called Kalia Gaz, which was a sort of Taliban bad land. And then they thought one of the mortars was to the south of us in a different village. And the American Greenberry, the he had had communications, which I think with either B-52 or maybe a B-1 bomber and another,

a number of platforms. They would have this stack of close air support. And there was, they, they think they identified one sole mortar that was every sort of two minutes dropping a mortar and it was quite close, but it wasn't effective. And they caught, the guy called the, the fire control officer or the, um, the fire control officer or the, TAPE, which is the guy that talks to the aircraft, called in a 2,000 pound bomb bracketed by two 500 pound bombs on this compound. And we were all excited.

People had these rudimentary cameras because no phones back then. I think it was before GoPro's. Everyone's excited. This thing comes in, boom. Huge explosion. And the American sort of whipping and everyone's going, yeah, come on, brilliant. And then about two minutes later, as the dust was settling on this village, I just saw what

looked like a family, a woman carrying things in their arms and just leaving really slowly. And I just thought, it was the first time I thought, we just used completely, or they just used completely unnecessary force to deal with one person mortaring us. And I just thought, we might not be the good guys. and secondly, if somebody did that to my family, where I grew up in Oxford, not too far away from here, I would vow to kill them for the rest of my life, all of them. I would fight them for the rest of my life. And that was the moment I thought, we're not going to win this. We are so far away from home. What are we doing?

And there was a really powerful moment in your documentary, which I encourage everyone to go and watch. I think it's fabulous, where you said the words, we betrayed the Afghan people. Yeah, I did. And what I mean was that by that is they would always say to us, our partners, you're not going to leave, are you? You're going to stay with us? And all the politicians and the military gave these big pledges will stay the course. It takes 20, 30 years. And knowing, because it's going to be a long time to change this country

to get it standing on its own two feet, it was going to take decades. But the people giving these pledges, politicians that are elected in five-year cycles are saying, yeah, we're going to stay with you. You know, you can't give that commitment in a democracy. Military offices that are on tours of six, 12 months are giving this pledge, we're going to stay here, don't worry your partners. They don't have the authority to say that. And anyone that looks at history of liberal democracies engaging in overseas conflict, let's look at Vietnam, you know that eventually that the election is going to get fed up of this. It's costly in lives. in money and you know that we will withdraw. And the Taliban knew this as well. When I say

betrayed, it wasn't, I suppose in hindsight, it's obvious that we were going to leave Afghanistan. It was the way in which we did it, in which we pulled the rug under the feet of young people. So if you think a lot of Afghan population is below 30, unlike our ageing population, it's a very young population. So a large majority than would have been born since 2001. They were born into the hope that we gave them through the huge amount of economic aid, the security instructor that they could live in a different way in the cities like Kabul, al-Aabad, Mazar Sharif. Those places, they could go to university. Women would go to school, at the university, you know, you'd have beauty salons and shops for women can shop for a variety of things. And it was an amazing place to

visit when I went back in 2020 before the withdrawal. And by announcing that we're going to leave, or the Americans announcing in May 2020 that we're going to leave by 9-11, or September 11th, so quickly, it just shattered the country and meant all those people that had come to expect us to stay for a bit longer were forced to very quickly evacuate and emboldened the Taliban, emboldened extremists. And that's what preceded or caused the complete collapse of the country and the Taliban to take over.

And so, of course, we were forced to try and help the people, the good people that we had built up, that we'd given hope to, and I stepped in as many veterans and people did in Britain and America, try and get these people who shared our values, shared our vision, try and get them to safety.

because they would be the first perverse people to be taken into the torture chambers of the Taliban, tortured and then executed. So we sold them this vision and then we just turned our back on them. It was a great betrayal. And I fear the same could happen in Ukraine. At trigonometry, we value expertise and integrity in everything that we do. That's why we've partnered exclusively with Augusta precious metals in America. Having met them personally, it's obvious to me why they're the best in the business. Their expertise and commitment to transparency make them the ideal partner for anyone who's serious about protecting their wealth.

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in your documentary, one of the things that happened is you weren't really filming anything about the withdrawal because you didn't know it was going to happen. You were there filming the documentary and then the withdrawal started to happen. And one of the things that became immediately clear is everybody knew before the withdrawal happened that the Afghani security forces, the police, they had no chance against the Taliban, right? They weren't being paid. They weren't they weren't necessarily as just capable of defeating the Taliban on their own. They all kept saying, we need your support, we need, right? So do you think that when the Americans, President Biden, made the decision to pull out,

he would have been advised that this was the likely outcome? Why, I think it's very important that we start having conversations of people in the decision-making process in America. I don't think that's happened. I don't think really we really know the decision-making cycle of what they knew and what they didn't. I think the fair assumption was that if we give the Afghan military and government no support, they will survive for about six to nine months or to the following year or limited support. I think that was the CIA interpretation of it.

Nobody thought they would fail immediately and it would collapse immediately. immediately. But what difference does it make? Okay, let's say it's six months. The country's collapsed in six months instead of two weeks. What difference does that make? Well, it makes a difference on people escaping. Yes, I suppose that's true. And a smoother transfer of power. I mean, look how quickly Syria has collapsed. No one predicted that would happen. I guess what I'm saying, James, sorry, you're absolutely right to point out that there would have been the opportunity to get more people to safety. What I mean is from the bigger picture perspective, from guys like you going over there to deal with al-Qaeda and the Taliban

20 years on, if we pull out, you'd want all of that blood and treasure and everything to have actually been worth it. And for that to be the case, you would have had to leave the country in a sustainable, better place. There would have been a way. What was the way? Well, you have to leave a small number of troops,

special forces, advisors, intelligence, people there as a deterrent, keep Bagram airbase, and you still have to supply a large amount of cash to the Afghan government in order to keep certain areas of Afghanistan free from the Taliban. So assume the South has gone, that was always going to be Taliban territory. I think the strategy could have been to essentially balkanize or split up the country, not a popular view, but we could have kept some areas free.

What that would have prevented would have been mass population movements, mass numbers of refugees going into Iran, going into Pakistan, making their way to Europe. It would mean that there were safe places for women for ethnic minorities because Afghanistan is a melting pot of cultures and ethnic groups. That should have been the strategy. Support the Afghan government, however bad and corrupt. is to secure parts of Afghanistan where people want to have this way of life because they don't want to have, they didn't want to have this way of life and the government in all parts of

Afghanistan, specifically places like Kandah, Helman. That's what the strategy should have been as how do we prevent complete crisis? Can I ask a really stupid question? You mentioned that the Taliban have the heartland in the south and we went in to get. And we went in to get rid of the Taliban, from what I remember, right? You went in, you literally went in to get rid of the Taliban. 20 years on, you were saying, well, we just have to accept the Taliban and control this entire part of the country. So, well, why is that?

Why couldn't we get rid of the Taliban? The thing is, when I first went to Zyphka-Nus on 2006, and then when I went, you know, six, seven, eight, 11, 12 was when I was there. If I'd asked what was the mission, if I'd ask that to my troops, they'd have all given you different answers. Because when we didn't go to, we went there to get rid of Al-Qaeda. Yeah.

You know, the Americans got rid of Al-Qaeda very quickly or pushed them out. Okay, yeah, they're embedded in pockets around, especially up in Uruistan and Kuna, on the east of Afghanistan. But we were very effective at that job, and we were very effective about pushing out the Taliban government.

They went to Quito, went to Pakistan. But the reality is the Taliban are an ethnic group in southern Afghanistan. They are the Pashtuns, and that extends across into Pakistan as well. And a lot of people believe in their ideology. So you can't exterminate a people. And the misconception is, so we didn't go to fight the Taliban, we went to remove them from government,

and what we should have done was work out a sort of way to include them in the future of Afghanistan, done. The Pashtun people, the hardline pastions who are, who believe in Sharia, or there would have been a federal way to have worked. But we did, but I think it was Donald Rumsfeld, was it Donald Rumsfeld who, who is dead now, but he did not want to include the Taliban in any form of Afghan government. In the same way they did this debarification in Iraq. We We won't include any of them, and that ended up in the creation of ISIS. If you don't accommodate some of your own enemies in the future of the country, when they have a big stake, there's huge numbers of them, then you essentially, we allowed the Taliban to recreate itself as a resistance force to our occupation.

James, do you think as well, because I think there's one part of the puzzle that people never discuss is the rampant corruption, within the Afghanistan government. And you look, in your movie, actually shows this really tragically. These guys who were protecting the walls of the Kabul. And you look at their equipment. Their equipment was terrible. And trillions upon trillions of dollars was pumped into this country. How much of this was the people at the top just creaming off the money?

Well, I mean, again, it's one of those things that has been swept under the carpet. It's that huge amounts of money is in Dubai and officials have, you know, I know one family, Afghan family who have an apartment or apartments in the Birch Khalifa. That's not cheap real estate in Dubai. And now the Taliban have distilling loads of money. They've got apartments in Dubai. in Qatar and some of them are sending their daughters, would you believe, to be educated. But so, of course, corruption was huge and a massive problem. And I think it's something we

struggled to get a grip of. How much of a problem, it was systemic. I think that was one of the, that's one of the greatest issues you're dealing with when you're trying a nation build. But I think that was the main problem. Why, the mission creep, the mission creak from removing al-Qaeda or moving or ensuring that Afghanistan was a place that terrorism couldn't flourish. Essentially, that was the main mission. And then it became, well, to do that, we need to rebuild a new country. That being the concept, so we now need to fight Taliban because they're going to stop a new nation flourishing. But we failed and all that. So the corruption thing has been a huge issue, and it resulted, what I physically saw was soldiers in the South not being paid.

Ghost armies. So commanders or regional governors would say, I have 5,000 troops here. So I'm drawing the salaries of 5,000 people. And yet, when we traveled around Kandahar, we never saw a body of men larger than maybe 90 to 150 troops. There should have been a core of Afghan National Army troops in Kandahar. There should have been 7,000, but the governor said, well, there's probably about 1,000 Afghan troops covering a huge area, an area, I mean, probably almost the size of whales between Kandahar and Helmand, just a thousand troops, and there were meant to be 7,000. So, you know, the deceit and lies of the Afghan partners or the Afghan government was systemic. And I don't think, I would like to know, did America, did the CIA a,

know when they say we've built the Afghan National Army up to 350,000, did they know that it was probably only really nominate, really, they really had the capability of about maybe 75,000 troops and of those who are actually any good and wanted to fight, maybe that was 25,000, because some really did want to fight and a lot of others didn't. What did we know? We don't know the answer to that because there's no inquiry in Britain, and I'm not sure there's going to be an inquiry in the USA about this. Because to me, corruption is like a cancer. Once it's allowed to spread, it corrupts everything and it destroys a society. So, I guess my question to you is, with this rampant level of corruption, wasn't this project doomed to failure?

Yeah, it was, but at the same time, it's a medieval society. And I don't mean that to denigrate Afghanistan, but parts of it are the way it lives and operates are hundreds and hundreds of years separated from the way we think. So we're there trying to teach them things and to operate in a way which is completely alien to them. So what do you mean by that, James? When you say medieval society, what do you mean?

Okay, so you think a typical remote village in Helmand province, or Kandahar prior to 2007 or eight wouldn't have had electricity or if they did have electricity, it would be because They were stealing it from a power station from the Helman Valley or the Helman River where

there was power coming down from Kajaki Dam. So they would live, a lot of them would live mainly by subsistence, what they could grow, or would have a small amount of money from crops that they could sell or opium in order to buy food. There might be in that mud compound. So they'd make their own house out of mud. There's obviously no sanitary facilities, no education for women. They would be confined to their compound.

And the children would be educated at a madrasa, so would receive religious education. And that's the way the village would operate. You know, the person controlling that village would be the mullah. The most important is a religious person, and very few of them would travel outside. They might travel to neighbouring villages, but it would be run on a tribal,

These are very tribal families, obviously, marry within the tribe. So the power is within the tribes and subset of the tribes. And so these are things that we might recognize this from maybe the Assini in Britain. So prior to when the Romans came to Britain, we were a very tribal nation in Britain. Now I'm not an expert in this, but we would be, Britain wasn't an entity as a, as a it was tribal. And I think that that's what parts of Afghanistan are like. You know, they don't see themselves as Afghan. They're part of a certain tribe. The Pashtun or? Well, yeah, but pasture, but below that, you know, the family names, the

pastures to fight each other. They're brutal to reach each other in the South. So, and there is a very good book, a friend of mine wrote Ben Aitchison, the Pashton tribes of Afghanistan. You know, it breaks down. Even further. So I think you probably lead to look at Britain, pre the Romans to understand what we're dealing with. And now sounds like it'd be quite difficult to get democracy going in that sort of environment. And that's why it was absurd. I remember like some general talking about, we're opening an internet cafe in Helmand.

And I just think, you think back, is this serious? We're opening an internet cafe in Helmand. I mean, obviously the computers aren't there and it doesn't exist anymore. But that's the mentality. We can liberalize these people and educate them from... Imagine going back in time saying to Yersini, we've got the Human Rights Act now, guys. What do you think of this?

You can't put two and two together. It's delusional is what it is. It's completely delusional. And now that Afghanistan has fallen, if we just go at a macro level, when we look at it globally. What effect is that having on our country, the US, the Middle East, because it's going to have shockwaves which are going to reverberate?

I feel like Afghanistan's being massively brushed under the carpet. And then we've had another distraction, which is Ukraine. It's not a distraction. It's an important tragic conflict. But it's allowed us to try and find confidence in our foreign policy and potentially our armed forces because we, this is a great, loss what has happened in Afghanistan. And why do I say that? Not because strategically Afghanistan is in any way important economically to Britain. It's not. It's thousands of miles

away. But because it has the signal that's sent out to the international community and to our adversaries is that we are incredibly weak and America is weak and can be defeated. The signal that the evacuation of Kabul sent out and the fact that Biden announced that, it without consulting Britain is that if anyone thought that we were a poodle to America before 2020, it's very clear that we have absolutely no influence on American foreign policy and we just get dragged around. You know, it's very embarrassing for Britain. But when I joined the military or if I think back to the 90s, the reverence of which the British Armed Forces was held and were the best in the world, were undefeatable, was clearly being broken.

And by concentrating on a land warfare, on counterterrorism, we orientated our armed forces towards that type of conflict whilst ignoring core capabilities for interstate warfare. Meanwhile, China has been building up its military. Russia has been watching. So our ability to conduct, to protect ourselves and to invest in that equipment just didn't happen. And so our armed forces have declined to an embarrassing state.

It's truly tragic what's happened. But then you think, you know, we went to fight Islamism over there because it was mainly in Afghanistan. And yet at the same time, the British government and Western governments have allowed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people with those views, with those cultures or really extreme Islamic views to come to our country. So where before the problem was over there? there, the problem has now been imported to Britain in 2025. As I said before, we have huge number

of people on the Home Office terrorist watch list. But we've imported millions of people from those cultures to our country. We fundamentally changed the nature of Britain. All the while, we were sending our young men and women to fight a futile campaign. So the ramifications of the loss and the societal change has happened as a result of massive migration, because we've been destabilizing regions, forcing people to want to leave those countries and seek a better life in the West, which you can't blame them for. I don't think the ramifications, people, people were just starting to understand it and we're seeing a reaction and return of right-wing politics and parties across Europe. But I don't think we've fully understood just how

catastrophic the loss in Afghanistan and Iraq has been for the West. Can I come back to the epiphany that you had when you used? saw the Green Berets drop that bomb on to deal with the mortar. We had a friend of ours Kelsey Shireen on the show. She's a Canadian veteran. She served as well. And we had a very interesting conversation with her. One of the questions that I asked is, is the West ever going to win another war? And the reason I ask this is we've got superior technology. And I'm sure we've got great training. And it's not in any way to denigrate the service of you and people like you. But I guess if war is hell and China and Russia have no problem doing exactly that thing,

right, is the, and you mentioned, you know, Vietnam and the fact that eventually democracies get fed up of the body counts and the body bags and all the rest of it, are we ever going to win another war? Well, what is war in a limited small war? So, you know, we got involved in Syria Leone, which actually proved up to be quite successful against a small rag tag group called the West Side Boys. Could we even prosecute that type of operation now? Back then we had a Navy which could deploy force overseas. We've got rid of HMS Ocean, which is our amphibious platform. We've got rid of our HMS, Albion and Ball Works. Our ability to deploy even limited force like we did back then in 2001. We don't have that anymore. Could Britain win a war? Absolutely not,

because we don't have an industrial base. We're closing down our, we've closed down our coal mines, our steel production. Or the method, you need logistics and you need industry to support warfare. Because of net zero fanaticism, we've closed down our industry. And if you look at it really war, to win a big, large-scale war, it's about your ability to produce weaponry en masse and throw it into the grinder. And then it's about your ability to recruit people that want to fight. Now, I'm not sure the current generation of Brits really would want to fight or fill any cause they're attached to.

And then you have this big problem that we've imported so many people from different cultures. You probably find that you need a massive home guard anyway to control them because you'd have riots or conflict on the streets anyway. I don't think we are a united nation as a society or even have an identity that we could find a cause that we unite to fight against. So Britain itself, could we fight and win a war? it depends what the cause is well the answer is probably no I think that's why we're trying to orientate ourselves to say well we're always going to

fight as part of NATO which there's no such thing as NATO about America. NATO's future isn't assured under Trump I don't think we just fully fully understood just how significant change in society and Britain has been and in the West

But the short answer is no, we probably couldn't win a war. Could we retake the Falklands? No. Although Argentina is probably not capable of taking it itself. There are, what is the armed forces for if it isn't to win a war or defend ourselves? I think these are fundamental questions we need to start asking ourselves. Give me one minute to tell you about Cenolytics and why they're being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your. physical prime. As a middle-aged man, middle-aged man, who wrote this script?

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What you've gone through, and you've done it very well and very methodically, all the words that keep coming into my head are self-s, this is self-sabotage. We've absolutely crippled our society, our ability. to defend ourselves, our social cohesion, our sense of identity. Well, that's exactly what's happened over the last 20, 20 years. Since 1997, we have 100% undermined our international credibility, our armed forces, which have been in decline, our industrial capacity, our ability to protect our borders, to deport people that hate this country, have been completely undermined by things like the human

rights at the ECHR, our social cohesion's been under a mind, our national identity has been undermined. All these things have virtually disappeared. The level of self-sabotage continues to play itself out week on week. At the moment we're talking about, we are now giving away a strategic asset in the Cheagos Islands, which is the British Indian Overseas Territory, which has a US base there, a base from which you can launch nuclear bombers or F-18s or other aircraft, which actually were involved in the war and terror back in 2001 onwards. We're now giving that away for no good reason to the Mauritians who don't have a legitimate claim over it.

But it's an act of self-sabotized by this Labour government. Why are they doing that? You say for no good reason, what's... So what's happened is the Mauritian government has launched a claim in the UN, saying that they own, they should have sovereign territorial rights over it because a bad deal was done

when the Chegos was split away, or when the Chegos or the islands during decolonisation, when Britain was handing back territories, we kept the Chegos and the Mauritius formed government and they claim that they should have it.

It has been in Britain, it has been Britain's sovereign territory for 200 years, but what happened was a group of human rights lawyers like Philip Sands Casey, whose friends with Kier Stama, have gone into bat for the Mauritian government at the UN and taken Britain to court to say that Britain should give back or should give away the Chegos to Britain. Now the UN sided with Mauritius and then ruled in a non-binding ruling that we should give the Chegos to Mauritius.

who you've got to remember that the United Nations is infiltrated and heavily influenced by China, by Russia, by Venezuela, lots of countries that hate us and want to undermine ours and American power. So that ruling could have been ignored, but for some reason, Liz Truss and James Cleverly decided to start into negotiations before they were quashed by David Cameron. When Labor came into government, they secretly reopened negotiations in order to give it away as quickly as possible and announced last October that their deal have been done. There's been some complications with that, but this week it's going to be announced that we've signed to give away. We're now paying the Mauritian government,

$9 billion over the course of 100 years, to rent back that base, the Diego Garcia base, from the Mauritians. So sovereign treasury we own, we're now going to pay Mauritius for that base. to rent it off them once we're going to back. This is what I mean. When you talk to self-sabotage, that is against the British national interest.

It's against the strategic interest of our biggest ally, America. It makes no sense whatsoever. And it also means that if you give Mauritius sovereign control of the Chegos, because it's an island archipelago, the Chinese could potentially put their own base on there. And there's nothing we can do about it. How much of this, James, do you think is ideology? A lot of its ideology. So if you look at the, if you look at Blair and you look at a lot of the Labor Party,

and you go back to when they were at university, they were just leaving university. A lot of them were Fabian Socialists or members of the Conservative Party. So actively anti-the-West, actively anti-Briton, wanted to see decolonization. So that tagel. Wait, members of the Conservative Party. So there's not much difference now.

There's kind of interchangeable at this point. They were Fabian socialists who were members of the Communist Party. Communist part or maybe were Fabians or former communists and they advocates either social democracy by taking over the institutions and egalitarianism. And it's essentially, it means taking over the organs of power and undermining Western values, conservative values, Christian values, and creating this international order based on egalitarianism, socialism. And that is basically what has happened. So they're doing equity at the global level.

Yes, equity at a global level, and that's what's undermining Britain. That's interesting. But coming back to my question about us being able to win a war, I think your point about Net Zero doesn't get emphasized enough, actually. We can't make our own steel. How are you going to fight a war if you can't make your own military-grade steel? Well, it's apparently going to be able to make woke steel. Woke steel, well, I'm sure that will help.

That will help in the woke wars, I'm sure. There are electric blast furnaces. I hope that works. but I am for electrification and cleaner forms of energy, but I'm not for it at the expense of British security and British industry. And what seems to have happened is the argument for ensuring that we can defend ourselves and maintain critical industries has just been thrown to the side for net. zero zealotry. And the reality is we still require these elements. We still require industry.

We've just outsourced our carbon emissions overseas where we can't regulate it. It's absolutely extraordinary. And, you know, that this argument, the argument is very rarely made by rational people. I find it extraordinary that the Conservative Party rushed to net zero and sacrifice that is willing to sacrifice our industry and security. And I think we're paying the price of that in high energy prices, which is making our whole economy completely unproductive and uncompetitive. So again, it's another act to self-sabotage. It is. You know, when I talk to people like yourselves who've served, the act of warfare is the most realistic thing there is. That's where all of the nonsense goes out the window, ideology, you are rooted in practical reality, because if you're not,

you're going to lose, people are going to die, things are going to get awful. To me, what's happening is our elites are now just completely detached from reality. I cannot get my mindset in how government operates. And I do think we're going to need something, not sort of a revolution the way government operates to rebuild Britain. Otherwise, we just seem to be on this precipitous decline in the same way as Rome and Greek civilizations are. That's what it feels like. It feels like at the end of days now.

Everybody that's capable, intelligent, that has aspiration, it feels like they're leaving. They are leaving. It doesn't feel like it. They are leaving. They are leaving. They are leaving. But, and I've looked at this.

I did look at going to America. America. But ultimately, I fought for this country. I have buried friends, young soldiers. I love this place. My great granddad fought on the Somme and at Paschendale. My father, my granddad served in the Remy. My father served in the Parachute Reservant. I serve in the Royal Marines. You know, we're not flight animals. I'm going to stay here and fight. I will probably get back involved in politics in the future. I want to help rebuild this country. And that does. mean we need to fight against what has happened, basically since 1997, the self-sabotage has happened in this country. We need to rebuild all our institutions, our armed forces, we need to deregulate, and I'm not going to run away. And I would encourage anybody that cares about this country. I understand you want an easy life, you want to make money. Come back here and fight for it because it's worth it. And the grass is not greener in America or in Dubai. You know, very quickly the regime could throw you out of of Dubai. Come back here if you're clever and bright and sort this place out. Well, I appreciate that

message. It's one of the reasons we're still here. I personally, I've never fought for this country, but this country gave me a lot of opportunities. And I feel very grateful and I feel a duty to stay and try to do something about it for a period of time. But if this shit continues, I don't know how you're going to convince people to stay. But on the positive side, or rather on the constructive side, at least, you say we need to fight. And I think there are millions of people in Britain who will happily fight. But I think what's missing is a clear understanding of what it is that we need to do. So with your more practical how on, what do you think are the changes that we actually need to implement in this country? Yeah, lots of people are good at

diagnosing the problem. I've said a few things. I probably don't, I'm not as eloquent as some people are saying what's wrong, but very few people are good at articulating a plan. And that's what we need to get intelligent, capable people from industry, policy makers who understand what we need to do to rebuild our economy, to turbocharge ideas and things like AI, the future, to turbocharge our energy infrastructure. So we get cheap energy, whether that's mini nuclear reactors, whatever that looks like, we need to get those people together and say, what is it we need to do and what stands? in the way? What regulatory nonsense or bureaucrats in the way and build a set of ideas in every field from education? How do we give everybody the opportunity to get a world-class education so we invest in children of the future? How do we restructure defence so we have a good number of frigates, destroyers, or rebuild the Royal Navy, so it's a capable force once again. Every

walk of government, every walk of life, we need to get people together, right. writing concepts of policy papers, putting those together so we are ready, when we get rid of this Labour government, to implement that plan. But it's not just having that plan. It's also working with people that understand the problems of government to wash away bureaucracy. And I think Dominic Cummings really articulates it very well, just how difficult it is to change to get anything done in the government. The vaccine task forces, whether people agree with vaccines or not, is not the issue here is the ability to fast-track something and make something happen. The amount of red tape in the way of stopping the creation of those vaccines, they were able for a period of time to do that,

to make something happen quickly. And I think we need a mindset that Britain is in, we need a crisis mindset, that we can't just slowly reform and allow the system to carry on as it is. We need a massive, great reformation on the way we do government, the way we do politics and the way we implement it. That has to happen. It does have to happen. But I think ultimately it will always start with the economy. Because when we don't have money, none of this is going to be possible, right? And that's why I think not enough people understand the negative impact that net zero is having on our economy is overwhelming, because energy is part of everything that we produce. And so electricity, I think energy prices in this country are four times what they are in the US.

When you go to fill up your car, you pay twice as much as an American does. So all of that is included in the cost of everything that we make. And that's why I keep emphasizing the zero point. I think none of this is going to be possible until we let go of this obsession. I really, I don't see how it's going to work. And I think the one thing as well that people don't talk enough about is how utterly demoralising it is for the average person when you're always skint. And you brought into a system which promise you, you get a job, you'd work hard, you'd be able to earn money. And all of a sudden,

the things that were affordable a matter of years ago are now completely unaffordable. Well, we're poorer now per capita than we were in 2007. Yeah. And that is why there's such frustration with immigration, because people see other people coming over and getting housing and getting benefits and even giving private health. It's fostering resentment. On top of that, being told to hate our history, hate who we are, being told all the time we're racist, this, that and the other.

That sense of depression that we have in Britain, although I feel it lifting as a result, genuinely as a result of Musk buying Twitter and as a result of Trump getting elected. And Malay, there's a sense that there's a different way that is emerging around the world. what's exciting. Yeah, but with the energy thing, I think, you know, I love wildlife.

I make, I've made some wildlife documentaries, I love nature and some people might say, oh, you're an environmentalist. And I don't like care about planet Earth, you know, we should, we should protect it. But again, we have this, this sort of colonial mindset that we in Britain, if we do net zero, it will change the world. No, it won't because we are responsible. No one gives a shit. We're responsible for less than 1% of emissions, global emissions.

I think people don't understand how irrelevant Britain is right now. And that is the same in the environment sphere. Yeah. You know, there is no point sabotaging ourselves on the altar of net zero because it won't make any difference whilst India and China building coal fire stations every week, every month. Yes, they are investing in renewables, but those are the places that need to be solved,

not making it more expensive for people to heat their homes in Britain. But I don't understand how that common sense message hasn't broken through. We haven't won the argument. We have to win the argument. By the way, it's not 1%. If you include the stuff we outsource, it's more like 2%. Still totally irrelevant. Because it's outsourced.

It's outsourced. But we are still responsible for it because we're importing and back. But anyway, you're completely right. You're completely right. And the reason is we haven't won the argument. and not enough people have been willing to make the argument because they're all terrified of being called a climate denial. And climate denier is just like racist.

It's something people use to smear people who are pointing out very obvious things that are really material to the well-being of this country and the people who live in it. It's an important point about climate denial because I am not. Right. Climate change is real.

No, we can debate about why that's happening. But one of the reasons Donald Trump has come in, coming into office and saying, I want Greenland, is because the northern passageways are open because Arctic ice is in decline, because the climate is changing very rapidly. So I think it's very important to make the point that the climate is changing,

but Britain can do very little about it by making ourselves poorer. The solution to climate change can't be poverty, is what you're saying. No, exactly that. Yeah. Watching Netflix without using ExpressVPN is like paying for a gym membership, but only being able to use the treadmill.

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it's a luxury belief because they're not the ones who are being affected by it. If every month you're just about scraping by and then suddenly your energy bills go up fourfold, you've gone from just about scraping by to not making it anymore. And that's cumulative. What I don't understand is like if you think about this, what do we need to our country and become a leader in green technology. Well, we should be invest in green technology, but we should also keep, we should keep using the energy resources we have in the North Sea. No, cheap gas for now until we trans, until those technologies are ready to take over.

We should be using, we should have a strategy that backs every horse. Yes. We should be investing in nuclear. But right now, Miliband is saying, no, just the green energy, regardless of the cost. Yeah. And this is one thing I think people on the right actually don't appreciate nearly enough, in my opinion, my humble opinion. You know, we talk so much about immigration. And the problem of illegal immigration absolutely needs to be dealt with immediately, should have been dealt with 20 years ago, frankly. Completely unacceptable what's happening. The fact that we spend a gazillion pounds every year, it just shouldn't be happening. And mass immigration legally isn't where the people of this country voted for.

So again, those things are totally legitimate and need to be dealt with. But what I always say to people is, okay, well, let's imagine we've achieved this great British dream of deporting the illegal immigrants and cutting immigration. Is our country actually better off when that's happened? You will feel better, but the country isn't going to be better off. We're still going to be poor. We're still going to be de-industrialized. And so until we start talking about economic growth, all of this other stuff is, it's just a way to win elections, but it's not actually going to change the country. It's the danger of populism.

Just because it might be right to deplore Islamists of people here illegally, that doesn't solve Britain's fundamental problems whatsoever. We should do it, though, but it's not the only thing. It needs to be done, but what about rebuilding the country? And that is my biggest fear about populism. it's not trying to build a stronger Britain's stronger future. It's not dealing with how do we make Britain great again? Supporting people won't make Britain great again. We need to put the building blocks again for growth.

And we can't afford non-forces unless we grow. And I don't feel these tough questions are being answered right now. Definitely not. And I think that's a conversation that's important for those of us in the center and the center right to keep having over the next three or four years. Because when I look at Donald Trump, when I look at Malay, when I look at just these things, what I see is people coming in with an inspiring message. And deporting illegals is necessary, but it's not inspiring. No one gets up in the

morning and thinks, oh, thank God, my life is so much better now. I mean, there's a few people who do. There's a few people. There's a few YouTube channels, mate. There's one of the YouTube channels, you're right. But I think what I'm saying respectfully to those YouTube channels, I think what they're ignoring is we need an inspiration. vision. And I think the fact that you don't have to be poor and your children don't have to be poorer than you were actually is the inspiring message that we need right now. The fact that we can grow our way out of this, but that means being really honest about why we are where we are. And that's why I'm optimistic because I think things are going to get so bad, things are going to get so bad

under this Labour government now. And it's not because they're Labor, the Tories were just as useless for 14 years before them. Things are going to get so bad now over the next five years that I hope to God a lot of people actually open the rise. Yeah. And just another thing, another bug bear of mine on the right, I've seen the AFD talking about this, are we going to get rid of all the windmills? Just because Net Zero is barking, it doesn't mean we go and then tear down windmowers or stop the electrification process or vehicles. There's some crazy, crazy things do come out, do come out of the right. But, you know, that, that positive, I am positive, but I don't think we've hit rock bottom yet in Britain. We will pretty fucking soon. And it could be

an IMF bailout. The combination of what's really going to change things, especially in the polls right now for reform, Labour and the Conservatives are going to be the next terrorist attack. And a serious recession. That could be as bad as 2008 or a possible IMF bail. out. That's going to be the game change. That's going to be the thing that really flips British politics. I think it's going to be a moment where, to use football parlance, you lose the dressing room. And it's when the British people actually realise that the salaries that they make just simply can't cover the bare essentials. Infrastructure, it's already crumbling, but it starts crumbling at a faster rate. Our elites become more and more detached, and they buy more and more

into these demented ideologies until it becomes, like you say, rock bottom, unsustainable. But it needs to, it's got to, unfortunately, from what I've seen, it needs a moment where everybody just goes, hang on a second. And that moment is never pleasant.

You do realize Britain hasn't had austerity yet. No, no, of course not. This made up term by George Osborne, 10% cuts in departments. The national debt is so extraordinary that there is going to, to be a point where we may be forced into real, real austerity. And it's not going to be pleasant.

No, that would be like Greek levels of austerity, which I just don't think. That's why we need growth. Because really, the levels of debt, the Western countries are running at this point. The only tolerable way to get out of that situation is to grow, is to grow. And that's why we have to abandon these luxury beliefs, as Francis said. But do you see credible leaders with a plan in the current political landscape that are going to lead us to the sunlit uplands of growth? We will see. I think we've got some time.

There's time before the next election for things to take shape. I know speaking, I speak to people across the political spectrum and politics. Labor are terrified of reform. The conservatives are terrified of reform. And even if that doesn't lead to a reform victory, that will force the two mainstream parties to change their policies is the hope. is the hope. And then if that doesn't happen,

then you're absolutely right. You're going to get a wave of populism and you're both right. It's not going to be pleasant. But that is what happens when you ignore the people for a very long time. And I won't be crying tears for the people that suffer because of that.

I really won't. They're the ones that did this. So these are somewhat dark times for our country. It's why I ask you if we're ever going to win another war because what I really feel is what you said, which is we've lost the will, I feel. But the question is, are we, have we lost the will or are we just waiting to be inspired? That's the question, isn't it? Well, I flip this round as, why do we need to fight a war? What is it? Who's threatening us? The answer is, we're not relevant

enough to be threatened right now. We're not important enough to be threatened. So stop this mindset for a long period of time that we need to follow America into any conflict. Okay, we've got with responsibilities to NATO, which is as a offensive pact. But my readout on the Ukraine-Russia situation is Russia wants Ukraine because it is part of its old empire, part of the USSR, and it does fear the expansion of liberal democracy east, which has, of course, happened. I don't think Russia would ever invade Britain. Russia has never invaded Britain. We have invaded. I think Britain's invaded Russia twice. Well, a fort there during the American Revolution and, so it's Russia, Russian Revolution,

and of course, in Crimea. So, you know, we've got more form from invading them. But what are the, what are the reasons for us to get involved of a war? Maybe some of our dependencies, like, for Falklands or places like that could come under threat. But Britain will be making a conscious choice to get, I believe, to get involved in a conflict. And we need to step back from that. Oh, totally. I certainly don't think anybody wants us to get into a war. But I also think that weakness creates opportunities for that to happen.

Do you see what I mean? But it's the British mindset to get involved. For example, we're sending a carrier group. to, well, a carrier group, a group of the Royal Navy around one of our aircraft carriers will be sailing out to China for freedom of, to demonstrate freedom of navigation around the South China Sea and to try and show some sort of moral support towards Taiwan. But it just seems an extraordinary whereby at a time where we have destroyed our armed forces, our economies, you know, rock bottom Rachel Reeves is going cap in hand to China to beg for some sort of trade deal and come back with nothing.

It seems extraordinary that we would be trying to prod this enormous Chinese nation and armed forces with this pathetic carrier group, which is going there to demonstrate freedom and navigations. I think this sort of playing at foreign policy, we just need to withdraw it because we can't do it anymore. Well, what you're saying is we need to get our own house in order. And I think every person in Britain would recognize that. It's just a fact of life. And then once we have, we will be able to do the things in the world that we feel we need to do. But the first thing is we've got to get our own house in order.

And so, as Francis said, preaching to other people about how they should live their lives. That's a good note to end on. It's a good note to end on. James, it's been great having you on. I recommend everybody checks out your documentary Afghanistan and follows you more broadly. Before we head on over to substack and ask you questions from our audience, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before James answers the final question,

at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The links in the description where you'll be able to see this. I'm wondering how united the Taliban is. Is there some kind of inner conflict between them? Afghanistan is often referred to as a graveyard of empires. Could it be that a lasting solution in a, inverted commerce for Afghanistan may never be achievable.

Initially, I was going to say we haven't had austerity. I think probably the most controversial topic which is being engaged in in America is the subject of how we do of mass immigration. I don't mean the current levels of immigration. I'm talking about the mass of immigration that's already happened, which is, you know, we've had apparently over 12 million people come to the country since 1997. It's too large for them to all. to integrate and we have separate communities. What do we do about that? They're talking about

deportations in America. They're talking about, they call it remigration in Germany. I think they're going to have to be a conversation of if people are in this country who mean to do us harm, won't live by our laws, are here illegally, or have absolutely no interest in integrating into our way of life, into our culture, that's going to have to be dealt with. That's going to have to be some sort of resettlement program. I think that's the thing that, well, certainly the mainstream parties, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, won't deal with.

And it's really controversial to talk about, but it's just a fact that we had this Boris wave, millions of people coming, a million net each year for the last three or four years. They can't all stay. And that's going to have to be dealt with. It's a complicated subject because you included a few very different things on that. So deporting illegal immigrants, I don't know anyone who would disagree with that. But it sounds like you're talking about something that's more broad. Am I right?

Not necessarily because there were different bands of this. So how many illegal immigrants do we have? Do we know? I mean, there's estimates of over a million. That's a large number of people. If we've got a population of 68 million. Beyond that, if this concept, this concept, of indefinite leave to remain, it means you can come here on a visa. And if you're here for five

years, if you manage to stay here for five years, you can apply for indefinite leave to remain, which means even if you don't offer anything to society, you're not... No, you have to be like working or doing other things, right? Like... Yeah, but you could be getting on a relatively low-paid job. And then for the rest of your life, you and your family can bring more family over. You then can benefit from welfare. Indefinite leave doesn't allow you to bring family over. You can't bring your grandmother because you're an indefinite leave. I know this because I had indefinitely.

But you could still remain here and claim benefits the rest of your life. I don't know. I never claim benefits. I don't know. I imagine so, yeah. But that's the point is that we've become a host country where people can come here. I actually don't think if you are not a British citizen, I don't think you should be able to claim benefits at all.

No, but those are the things. things I'm talking about. Yeah, that's what we need. I don't advocate. I don't like, you know, this the AFD remigration thing. There is something sinister about that. But the way you control population or you get people to leave is you don't offer freebies. Yes.

People here to work. But this is why I'm digging into this with it. It's not because I disagree. I just don't know exactly what you mean. And the reason I mentioned this is our friend Winston Marshall, he had a guy on from the Heritage Foundation on his show. I think he was from the Heritage Foundation. I hope I'm not misremembering.

And they were talking about Donald Trump's promise to deport illegal immigrants. And even this guy who's very close to the policymaking was basically saying, look, we can get rid of the illegal immigrants who've committed a crime and maybe we can get a few more. But I don't think even Donald Trump is going to have, you know, immigration officers bashing down an American citizen's door because granny came illegally. Do you know what I mean? And dragging her out and sending her. her back.

So I guess the question is what is it that you mean specifically? Well, it's definitely welfare culture, but it's not as immigrants. It's British welfare culture. Yes. But we can't get rid of British people because they're on welfare. So at least let's not give immigrants welfare. I think if we cut it for British people, but we've also, as you said, we shouldn't be paying. We're not an international charity.

Britain has no money. And if you do that, if you take away, if you say for foreign people, you're not having free housing and you're not, you're not, you're not. we're not having benefits, you will see a lot of people move. Yes. And I just, no one's ever explained to me why, why foreign citizens should receive welfare in our country. Even if they're paying to the system.

I was a, I was a foreign citizen at one point. I never expected to be taken care of. Now, at some point, if you've proved that you fit within this country and you become a British citizen, then you are endowed with the rights and responsibilities. And I think it's important to hold my hand up as a breakfast here and say, one of the big things the Brexit side did not really think about is that freedom of movement within the EU meant that young people will come here and work and then go home. And that we haven't really come up with a better solution from that.

People are coming from all the countries around the world with different values. They're coming here and they're not going home because once they get indefinitely to remain, they do claim benefits and then we're stuck with them and then they don't integrate. So it's an issue that we need to address. and I am not opposed to some form of, and say freedom of movement, but a visa system with EU countries, with like-minded people, young people that were skill sets. You know, that's complete taboo if you discussed that with some brexitiers.

But we need to be way more open about and have these open conversations. We also need a political class that is actually willing and unafraid to tackle these subjects. And the reality is with the vast majority of them, they simply don't have the backbone to do that. the amount of times they will be, you know, there'll be one thing in private and another thing in public is quite frankly sickening. It's scary. But that's why you ask, is there an issue that hasn't been discussed? I think, I think it's, it's a, this, this is the discussion of what do we do with the wave that's come, you know, some are going to stay, some can't stay, and how do we create a system that works in the future? No one to me has presented a good solution. Not yet, but I'm sure, I'm sure we will feel our way towards one over the next few years. James, thanks for coming. Head on over to Substack, where we ask James your questions.

As a conservationist, could you offer a perspective on the importance of ecology or biodiversity to our planet, aside from the issue of carbon and climate change, etc.?