TRIGGERnometry - Iain Dale on Conservatism, Immigration, Tax & the NHS

Episode Date: July 30, 2018

Radio presenter Iain Dale (@IainDale) discusses British politics, conservatism, section 28, running as an openly gay candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, radio, immigration, Tommy Robison, Brexit, Islam, tax, the NHS and a lot more with the guys at TRIGGERnometry. Find us 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 (@failinghuman) 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

Okay, hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you. If you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects, they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our fantastic expert guest this week is an LBC radio presenter.

Ian Dale, welcome to Trigononaution. Hello, hi. Thanks to you. Thank you so much for coming on. I was about to introduce you as a conservative radio presenter. And then you said, no, no, no, let's have a conversation about it. So why didn't you first of all tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are and then we'll get into the whole conservative, not conservative thing?

Well, God, how do I start? Why did I start off? I studied German, believe it or not, at the University of East Anglia, was intended to be a German teacher. Languages were my thing. It's the only thing I was good at at school. Could I just interrupt you there? As a former teacher in, well done and avoiding the profession. Do you know, there's part of me that wonders whether at some point,

I mean, I was 56 yesterday, so there is still time. But I've always thought I might go back to do it. Don't. It certainly wouldn't be in a secondary school. I couldn't cope with that. Anyway, I got into politics at university and ended up working in the House of Commons for a couple of years for a Tory MP back in the mid-80s when politics really was great fun. And then I had a succession of jobs in lobbying. I was a financial journalist.

I opened a political bookshop in Westminster, became a publisher, and then got into broadcasting, and that's how I got into LBC. So that's the sort of potted history. And I've always been politically interested. I always remember my grandmother said to me in about 1974, never trust the Labour Party because they always spend more than they can afford, and Michael Foots are communist. She was certainly right on the first one.

And I actually started off as a liberal. And I would say I still am a liberal in many ways. We did a project after we done our O-Levels in 1978 at the end of the term, and it was on local politics. We had to meet the local Liberal mayor of Saffron Walden, that's where I grew up in Essex. And I was really impressed by her, so I joined the Liberal Party for six months. And then I saw a speech by Margaret Thatcher, which I assume must have been at the 1978 Toy Party Conference. And I thought, well, I agree with every word she said. So I then switched to becoming a Tory.

and I stood for Parliament in 2005 in North Norfolk with the electorate fought back. I always wanted to be either an MP or a radio presenter. Was it a close race that one? No. You know that. Sorry, I didn't mean to rub it in. I don't accept it. What I did was, I applied to be the candidate in North Norfolk, which you think of Norfolk as quite a conservative area, and it is. And it had always been a conservative seat until 2001 when the Liberal Democrats, Norman Lamb, won it both of them. I think 483 votes.

So I thought, well, I can win that back. But it soon became apparent that, I mean, he was very, very popular. He'd fought the seat three times before. He was very well-known, good constituency MP. So it was quite difficult to differentiate myself from him. He's a little bit Eurosceptic for a liberal Democrat. And to all intents and purposes, was a sort of fairly moderate conservative voice. And I always remember one day in February 2005, canvassing in one of the coastal villages

called Overstrand, lots of big houses, you'd have thought, natural Tory voters. Every single one of them that we knocked on the door said something along the lines of, well, we really like you, but Norman's such a nice man. I remember going home that evening saying to my parlour, this is just not going to happen. I think I probably knew that way before that, but that really brought it home. And on the night, I lost by 10,600 votes. So that was a bit of a blow. I did try again in the next parliament, but I took two years out to start a new business.

You can't really apply for seats while you're doing that. And I left it too late. I nearly got Bracknell. But, yeah, it just wasn't to be. So after 2010, I thought, no, that's it. And when I got the job at LBC, I didn't renew my Tory Party membership. So that's why I didn't want to be introduced as a Conservative, because in many ways I'm not anymore.

I voted Liberal Democrat in the last local elections in Tomodry. Partly because, and you'll know because you live there, it's a very corrupt local council. They want to spend £90 million on a new civic centre and try to pretend to the electorate, it's not going to cost them any money. Well, of course it is. On social issues, I'm much more left-wing than I used to be, partly because of my radio show, because I hear people's experiences. If you have people telling you day after day how awful the bedroom tax is

and what the effects on them or universal credit, it does shift your preconceptions a bit. And so I can see the logic of the bedroom tax, but the way it's been implemented just hasn't worked. So I'm still, from an economic point of view, very sort of dry and right wing, I guess. I voted leave, so I'm a complete Brexit here. But on a lot of issues, I'm not your stereotypical conservative voter anymore. It's such a fascinating point you make about having your mind changed by listening to people talking. This is what we try and do on the show. And we find that it's happening less and less people actually having genuine conversation

and being able to change each other's minds. So that's such a great point. Was there a particular moment when you thought, well, this is the one story that kind of changed my mind on this or some other issue? Well, I've been doing radio now on a daily basis since 2010. So I don't know how many people I've talked to in all the shows that I don't know what to calculate it one day, I suppose, but it will be tens of thousands. And they've all got stories to tell, some of them very emotional stories. And I remember one particular phone, and it wasn't that long ago actually on Universal Credit, which you think, oh God, a phone on use of Universal Credit, how can that be interesting? And I can't say I ever relish doing benefits, phonies, because they can be slightly...

get people phoning in saying, well, it's all these spongers in taking out taxpayers, money and all the rest of it, or you get the opposite. Now, on this phone in, I had three mail callers towards the end of the hour who phoned in and they all were crying. And you think, well, they're not acting. Something's happened in their life in their dealings with the Department for Work and Pensions that has driven them to the brink of despair. And there are subjects that people phone in and they're incredibly emotional and it's I mean I can be a very emotional person I mean I'll cry at Emmerdale so it doesn't take much to set me off and I've talked about I mean when my mother died I've talked about that quite a lot and broke down once

and I've got no I was going to say I've got no embarrassment about sort of showing emotion but in some ways you do because you're supposed you've got a professional role to transact so you don't want to be known as sort of the crybaby presenter all the time. But there was one, I can't remember what it was. There was one time, I know what it was. It was Lee Rigby, who was murdered in Woolwich. I was on air when that, just after that happened. And a couple of days afterwards, I think it was,

I suddenly got flashed on my screen, the statement from the Ministry of Defence issued on behalf of his, it's either his girlfriend or his mother, I can't remember. So I started reading this out. Now, normally I would read it to myself before I read it out, which kind of kills the emotion

a little bit, but I read it, and I got to the bit which talked about his children, and I just completely lost it. And I went silent, I mean, everyone listening could tell that my voice was choking, and I literally went silent for two seconds while I sort of gathered myself. And that was about seven minutes before the end of the hour.

And then just before the end of the hour, I apologise for that because I said it was very unprofessional. I'm sorry it happened. And the text and Twitter feed just went mad saying, why have you apologised? We were doing the same. See, I can feel myself doing it now. They said any normal person would have done that. Why do you think that as a radio presenter, you shouldn't show us that you're emotional when we're being emotional? And that was quite comforting because I could have got...

I mean, you're not on the radio to emote. You're there to do a job and to read what's in front of you, if you've got something to read. I had an incident the other day where we were talking about gay conversion therapy, and I had a guy right at the end of the hour who lived on a council estate in Yorkshire. He was probably in his 20s,

found it quite difficult to articulate what his views were initially, but once he got going, he was fine. and this was leading up to the end of the program and I stop on 59 minutes past the hour and then Nigel Farish comes on to do his talk up at 5815 he told me that he was thinking of killing himself that night well put yourself in that situation

well what as a radio presenter do you say to him at that point because you know that one word out of place and it could be seen as encouraging him to do it obviously wouldn't mean it to be and also obviously offcom intervene and you potentially lose your job. And all I could think of was saying, well, Ryan, stay on the line, I'll talk to you after the show.

I've just got to finish the show and I'll come into the gallery and talk to you, which I did. And it was fine. And we ended up having a joke about he was, said, oh, are you going to watch the World Cup match tonight? So I said, yes, I am. He said, I like watching that, all those men in their tight shorts. So I'm right. You sort of think, well, has that done the time?

trick has that sort of, I mean, I don't think he genuinely really meant that he was going to do it. But I did have another instance, years ago, Bill on the M25, I will always remember it where he was, he convinced me that he genuinely was thinking about doing it. And I kept him on for 20 minutes. And I mean, I'm not a trained, I mean, I did do, I was one of the counsellors on Nightline at my university, but I'm not trained to talk people off, off the edge. So all you can do his talk. And I kept thinking to myself, how do I get him, how do I stop this conversation? I can't remember how I stopped it. Anyway, I asked him to speak to my producer when I finished. And then he phoned in the next night and told us that he had tried to kill himself. I think it was with

pills. And then, but then he thought what I and Laura, my producer had said to him, and then he called 999 and obviously survived. That sort of shows how radio is such an intimate medium and you do have this one-to-one relationship with people and that's why I love radio. I don't particularly like doing TV which you'll think is ridiculous thing of the amount that I've been doing over the last six months but I don't enjoy TV in the same way that I enjoy radio because you don't have that connection with the audience that radio gives you. A lot of the time with radio what is amazing.

with it is like you said the connection. I do a lot of talk sport and talk radio and people tweet in. Shame on you. A direct competitor. We don't think of it that way to be honest. We do. We have ten times the audience. I'm enjoying this.

Suddenly I'm going to come out of it feeling diminished. But anyway, but what is amazing is how people tweet in and go, oh, lovely to hear your voice again and then they have a chat with you on Twitter. and sometimes you get the opposite. Like I'm very pro-Ramean and I got called by one of the Twitters who follows talks about. I got called a cocksucking terrorist sympathiser because I said... Sounds reasonable. Because I said I didn't think Brexit would be a particularly good idea.

Well, as we both know, that happens on both sides. I mean, I've been involved. Yesterday was my birthday and I spent virtually the entire day on Twitter arguing Brexit with people. Why am I doing this? But I must win. Well, there is part of me that would love to just say, do you know, I'm not going to talk about Brexit anymore because if I'm bored with it,

God knows what other people must feel like. But going back to this unique relationship, it's, I mean, I've, I sometimes, if I get abuse, I mean, people send in texts, and what they don't know is that I see their phone number at the bottom of the text. So sometimes if I get particularly horrible ones, I text them back saying, by the way, just so you know, I've reported you to the Metropolitan Police. Of course, I haven't.

But they don't know that. And they usually say, oh, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean it. I was just a spur of the moment thing, Ian. I really like you. I think you're a top presenter. And it is astonishing the things that people will say to you via social media or text. Whereas if they were sitting next to you, they just wouldn't dream of it. It's incredible.

I mean, some of the terrible things you've tweeted me. You're not saying them now, are you? That's my job. I'm sorry, he is Russian. He can't help it. Exactly. He hasn't said any of a shock. But it is incredible what people will say.

Like, we're doing the show, the kind of stuff that people will put online about us or I guess, just like for no reason whatsoever. Well, you wait till you see what comes after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to. But anyway, coming back to politics, I was interested that you saw. I was interested that you said that you worked for Tory MP in the 80s when politics was fun. Yeah. Still fun.

What does that mean? What do you mean about politics being fun back then? I think it may be just because of my age. In your 20s, you see things through a very different prison than you do when you're in your 50s. And it's like the World Cup, when we lost the World Cup semi-final last week, I mean, yeah, I was disappointed. But I didn't feel at all emotional about it. But in 1990, when I was 27, losing to Germany, I was in a hall with 800-year-old. insurance brokers watching this and 800 grown men in floods of tears.

It didn't affect me like that this time. And politics, maybe it's because I'm looking at it now from the point of view of an outsider rather than an insider. And when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, you kind of felt things mattered. There were big issues in the 1980s that really mattered, the Cold War, which people now completely forget. And the economy, in the late 1970s when I became first politically interested, I mean, it was just a basket case. And people don't, 27% inflation.

I mean, people don't remember that anymore. So that was what drove me to get involved in politics. And I just felt part of it, whereas now I'm not part of it, apart from interviewing politicians all the time. And I think I look at it in a very different way, slightly more detached. And people keep saying to me, well, do you? not want to stand for Parliament again? No, I don't. I've got asked to stand as Tory for Mayor of London the other day, purely because I've got quite a bit of name recognition in London. And I said, I would rather stick hot nails down my knob than run for Mayor of London.

Well, why is that? Because I've kind of been there, done that. I still think politics matters, but if a good friend of me said, should I go into politics nowadays, I would advise them not to, which is a terrible thing. When I told my mum that I wasn't going to stand for Parliament again, she cheered. And I was thinking, well, she ought to be really sad about that because you ought to be proud that your son wants to do sort of public service. But she took the view that if, I remember in 2010, she said,

well, you could have got caught up in that expensive scandal. And the truth is, of course I could have done, because many people did, through no fault of their own. It was the system. Some people did through their own fault, it has to be said. And she didn't like all of the public. scrutiny. She knew because I was gay that I would have had much more scrutiny than maybe others. So I am sad that I've never been an MP because I think I would have liked it.

I think I'd been good at it. But it wasn't to be. In looking back at the 80s and especially with Thatcher's government, I mean there were some things that they brought in which were homophobic. If you think about the, I can't remember what the section was called now. Section 28 in schools. Was there not part of you as a gay man that saw that and thought, hang on, that is, I don't agree with that in the slightest. Well, at the time, this was in 1988.

And I'm probably going to give you too much information here. I was 26 and I knew I was gay, but I'd never actually done anything about it. And I remember logicalising this to myself, if that's a word, on the basis that it was designed to prevent the promotion of homosexuality, whereas the narrative now is that it was designed to prevent any discussion whatsoever. Now, I think that probably was the effect of it because teachers were sort of nervous about, well, if I talk about it, does that count as promotion? Now, I don't believe it's the role of teachers to promote anything to their class, to their children. So that was how I sort of rationalised it at the time. I mean, looking back, yeah, I would not have been, knowing what I know now, I would not have supported it.

And I think that has clouded every single discussion about the Conservative Party and homosexuality ever since. And even now, virtually every month, in one of the gay magazines, there's always an article about the wicked Tories in Section 28, forgetting all of the progress that the Tory Party has made on that issue, which I played a very, very small part in that. I remember when I was selected as a candidate, I was the first openly gay candidate to have been selected having told the selection committee in terms that I was gay. Now, I was slightly forced to do that because I'd forgotten that I'd agreed to speak at some gay fringe meeting at the Tory Party conference. And I remember the Association Chairman of bringing me up saying, we've got a little bit of an issue in that

people have seen that you're speaking at this event, and he knew I was gay anyway. And I said, why is that an issue? Well, it's just that people sort of aren't very happy. And I said, OK, well, I'll address it in the next, because by that stage I got through to the second round of the selection. So I'd done my speech, done my questions and answers, and at the end, I'd actually primed somebody in the audience to ask me the question. and they worded it rather beautifully.

They said, is this an issue that means a lot to you? Because they weren't allowed to ask if I was gay. So I prepared a statement, and it was quite a sort of tear-jurker in a way. And it was sort of, well, many of you sitting in the audience, you will know people who are gay. You may not know that you know people that are gay, but it could be your dustman. It could be your hairdresser.

It could be whoever. But does that affect the way they do their job? Does me being gay affect the way that I would do my job? And I mean, I got standing ovation at the end of it, and they selected me with a 66% majority. Now, bear in mind this was North Norfolk, not the most liberal area in the country, to say something. So I thought, well, good on them. And they haven't let it affect them. They've judged me on what they think my abilities are, and they selected me.

Now, the electorate didn't take that for you. And some people have said, well, do you think that the majority was so big because, I mean, some of my opponents obviously sort of promoted that I was gay because they knew wouldn't go down well. I think there will have been some people that didn't vote for me because of that, but I don't think it was, I think it was mainly because they knew that Norman Lam was a really good MP. So I've never blamed my defeat on that. And then, sort of subsequent to that, you've had the Conservatives introduce equal marriage. And I don't think, and although quite a lot of Conservative MPs opposed that, I don't think there would be many Conservative MPs now, if it came back, if somebody put down a motion to repeal equal marriage,

I'd like to think there will be no Conservative MPs that voted for that, but I'd be surprised, if there were, I'd be surprised if it was more than five. Now, I think people need to accept that the Conservative Party has come a long way on these issues. In some cases, sort of being dragged and screaming, but we are where we are. And I think it's about time that people acknowledge that. And what would you say to those people who say that the Conservative Party is in inverted commas, the nasty party, the party of austerity, the party who demonises the poor,

the party brought in the bedroom text, which, let's be fair, has caught a huge amount of suffering to working class. I don't think that there are any politicians in whichever party that deliberately bring in policies because they think they will harm people. That's not how it works. You really would have to be a pretty nasty individual to bring in a... Take Ian Duncan Smith and Universal Credit and Welfare Reform. I remember back when he was leader of the Conservative Party

and he went to this councillor state in Glasgow, Easter House, and he was profoundly moved by what he saw there. I thought, well, this has been a Labour Council for 60 years and they've left these people in this state. They've had the chance to improve their lives and they've done nothing. So I mean he could argue that Labour Party was a nasty party for doing that. And I remember he came to visit me when I was a candidate. We went around a drugs rehabilitation centre.

And I listened to the conversations he had with drug addicts. And there was one of them there that knew his cousin. And I mean, it was quite an emotional conversation. Now, that man is not motivated by hate or spite. He genuinely wanted to reform the system to help the kind of people that he'd seen in this kind of. and I've seen them in my sort of political life. These are states that whichever political parties have just left to rot because they know

that the people generally don't vote very much, so they feel that, or the political strategists feel they can be ignored. Now, so I think he was motivated by the best of intentions. How do you though do meaningful reform of the welfare system, which is so incredibly complex, it eats up so much public money, I think it's a really difficult challenge. So when you, I think all parties have agreed that universal credit is a good idea, trying to bring all the benefits into one. But clearly there have been terrible issues in how it's being implemented.

Now, who do you blame for that? Do you blame the politicians? Do you blame the civil servants who effectively, I mean, the politicians will say to the civil servants, right, this is what we want to do, tell us how we do it. Now, in the end, the buck does stop with the Secretary of State. There has to be somebody who's formally accountable to it. But he wasn't served well by his civil servants. And it'll also be a lot of people who say, how dare he and Dale Blaine are civil servants.

Well, sorry, civil servants do get away with an awful lot in this country and are not held accountable for it. We do have some very fine civil servants, but we also have some very, very incompetent ones. And it's about time that we recognise that. And when there are systematic failures in one. happens, they need to be called out. And yes, blame the politicians all you like. But in the end, there are many more people to blame as well. Well, if you ever do run for Parliament again, there'll be a constituency of votes you're not getting as the civil service.

It's not going to happen. I'm kidding. They really isn't. But coming back to Francis's question, I mean, I'm an outsider in this country. I'm an immigrant. I came here when I was about 12. I keep reminding you of that, mate. Well, I keep reminding myself, it's just fact. But it's like a given to me that the Tory brand is a toxic brand. And yet we've had a conservative-led government for years. How does that happen in a country which supposedly hates the Tories? Yeah, we have a Tory government. Well, we have a shy Tory phenomenon, don't we?

People who don't tell the opinion pollsters that they vote Tory. I think there are still people feel, I don't know, but they feel shame or embarrassment about voting Tory. I don't think anybody should be ashamed of who they vote for. It's like UKIP would never identify in the opinion polls until 2014 really because the opinion polling companies never picked them up I think it's the same with Donald Trump in America that there are a lot of people that just didn't tell the polling companies that they were going to vote for him so he a lot of people felt

that he was going to win but all of the so-called experts didn't see it coming and then what there are howls of sort of disbelief afterwards and still are I think People always contrast political parties and they compare whether they think they're actually capable of governing. When Tony Blair was leader of the Labour Party, people felt that, I mean, I never voted for him, but he didn't scare me. He didn't sort of frighten the electoral horses in the way that maybe Neil Kinnock did or maybe now Jeremy Corbyn does with some people. and there is a phenomenon of sort of stick to nurse for fear of something worse. And that's Theresa May's biggest asset at the moment, where, I mean, when this goes out, she may not even be prime minister,

but she has survived so often because there is no alternative, really. And there's nobody waiting to take it. Well, there are plenty waiting to take over, but there's no ready-made alternative. And people look at Corbyn. I mean, why is Labor not 20 points ahead in the opinion polls? when you've got probably the most incompetent Tory government, wasn't since the last one.

I mean, they should be 20 points ahead and under Tony Blair. They were. I mean, John Major, I think you can compare to Theresa May in some ways or his government because there was complete chaos in the 1990s, again, over Europe. But Labor just cannot seem to break through in the way... Now, they keep saying, oh, but we did so well in the last election campaign, we went up by 10 points or whatever.

Yeah, you didn't win though. Even though you keep trying to pretend you did win, you are not in government, get used to that. And they can say, oh, well, it'll happen again in the next election. We'll put in another time. Well, it doesn't work like that. And I do wonder now whether we've reached Pete Corbyn, where the novelty has worn off.

When do you ever see Jeremy Corbyn doing anything nowadays? He doesn't really do any interviews. Before he was elected Labour leader, I would interview him every two or three weeks on my show. And he was always, if we couldn't find another Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn was always our backstop. He would cycle down from Islington and come into the studio. And I got like a house on fire with him.

You knew exactly where I came from. We had some really good discussions. Since he's been Labour leader, not a single interview. And that's because Seamus Mill and his director of communications clearly thinks that we're all fascists and therefore must be avoided at all costs. But I think that's a real problem for them. Because if you are, as lead to the opposition,

you need to be out there fighting the good fight. Now you can talk to your momentum rallies till the cows come home. But you're not persuading anybody new to vote for you by doing that. You are just confirming the view that you're a bit of a lefty, that sort of centre-ground people

can't trust to be in government. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase.

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the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado green mattress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Oh, you mentioned about his,

about the people behind him who run his campaign. Do you think part of the reason why they don't put him in front of people like you is that Corbyn does have some pretty dodgy values? For instance, he's refusing to criticize the government in Venezuela. Now, my mother is from Venezuela, and I know firsthand, the terrible atrocities that are happening there. And I used to vote Labour, and the fact that he refuses to condemn them,

I would never vote for God. He doesn't just refuse to condemn them. I mean, he and McDonald actually have praised Maduro. Yes. Now, I don't understand all of that. I really don't. But I don't think that's the reason why they won't do interviews. I just think that they think they can bypass

the mainstream media now and use Facebook and social media to get to the people that they think they need. Well, I think they're wrong on that because you've got to have a sort of multifaceted approach. Bear in mind that old people are the ones that actually turn out to vote. And all this, the fantasy that at the last election, it was the 18 to 24 year olds that pushed the Labour vote up. They did vote in slightly larger numbers than before. It wasn't actually. It was a 25 to 45 age group.

But if they can tap in to older people and they've got a tremendous opportunity to do this now, that's how they could win. But they show no sign of looking at doing that whatsoever. And just going back to Venezuela, because I find it absolutely baffling when I talk to Labour voters. I go, but you do understand that he's in support of Maduro. And they're like, yeah, but it doesn't really matter, does it? And it's a long, I got told by one person, yeah, but it's very far away, isn't it? It's a country of which we know nothing. Yeah.

So, I mean, why do you think that? Why do you think that it's so reprehensible for him to come out and support? port of Maduro? Well, I mean, they kept praising Chavez and saying, well, this is what socialism can do. They were actually using the Venezuelan economy as a model for what they would want to do. Jesus fucking Christ. And now that the Venezuelan economy, I mean, it's probably the most basket case economy in the whole world at the moment, they now, of course, blame the Americans for that. Yeah. Now, I can't quite see how that works, but that's what they do. They've always got an answer and they will never, ever admit that they're wrong on Venezuela.

But the electorate in many ways discount that. You're right, just as they discount the fact that he used to meet with the IRA, just the fact that they discount the fact that he met with Hamas. He's cultivated this image as a sort of gentle old uncle figure and he has become a bit of a cult. That's L in that way. And it is a fascinating thing to watch. I think his strings are pulled entirely by Seamus Miller, John MacDonald.

I don't think he's got an original thought in his head now. He believes exactly the same as he believed in 1985. Now, that's a good thing in some ways, that we like consistency in politicians, but he hasn't adapted to the modern world. And he can never bring himself to say anything positive about America, about Israel, but he will always find positive things to say about Russia, about certain countries in the Middle East

that you and I might find reprehensible. He used to take money from press TV. Admittedly, I did a few programs on that as well, but I think I was paid £75 for doing three programmes, and he was paid 20 grand. He's never said, well, in retrospect, I was wrong to do that, and I really deprecate the Iranian regime's views on homosexuality and all the rest of it.

It's never done that. And I find it very strange that he can utter supportive words to that kind of regime and treat Israel with the contempt that he does. Now, Israel gets a lot of things wrong. I'll be the first to admit that. But it is a democracy. It is a fairly liberal democracy in terms of social issues. But you'll never find him acknowledging that.

Do you think he's unelectable? No, I think the conservatives are doing their best to make him electable. and because of what's happening on Brexit, I think there are a lot of conservatives who will, well, I know there are because they tell me all the time on my program that they either won't vote conservative or they won't vote at all.

And I mean, my partner is a good example. There's someone who's not really that interested in politics, but sort of listens to the Jeremy Vineshaw on Radio 2 and that's where he gets most of his current affairs knowledge from. He said to me the other day, is it true that Brexit might not happen? And I said, well, I don't, I think it will happen, but there are lots of people who are trying to make it not happen, including lots within the Conservative Party. And so, well, if it doesn't happen, I will never vote Tory again.

And he said, not only that, I will never vote again. And I've had so many people say this, and particularly people who may be voted for the first time in the referendum, because it's somehow, on either side, it somehow enthused them. And I get a lot of calls, texts, tweets, and people say, well, if we're betrayed on this, I shall never take part in a democratic. process again. And that is extremely worrying because it leaves a gap for someone like Steve Bannon, who we were talking about earlier, who said on LBC yesterday that Tommy Robinson was a great British hero and that there will soon be a revolution in Britain. Now, Paul Mason, who I normally don't agree with on anything, he tweeted that he thinks that when Tommy Robinson comes out of prison, he will get huge American funding to start up a sort of tea party type organisation to try and rip down the UK political establishment.

And I thought, Jesus, I agree with Paul Mason. He's absolutely right on that. Now, what a frightening prospect that will be, because whatever you think of Tommy Robinson, I actually try and ignore him, I don't have him on my show. But whatever you think of him and his views, he is an incredibly articulate. human being and to many people will be quite plausible and when you are in a time of political turmoil it only takes one demagogue to really pull the whole sack of house of cards down now whether he would be capable of doing that I don't know I mean Nigel Farage is now saying that he's going to get back into politics because he thinks that we're being betrayed by Brexit now whatever you think of Nigra Farage he is not the Tommy Robinson

type figure. I have a lot of time for Natch Farage. I take over from him every evening on LBC and I've known him for 10 years so I think I know him reasonably well I mean he does say a lot of things that I disagree with but he does believe in democratic politics

so I think that's quite a boring development. It's interesting what you say about Tommy Robinson because we had a guest on the show a couple of weeks ago who's a YouTuber who's done conferences with Tommy Robinson and things like that and one One of the things he told us, I don't think he was in the interview, but we went for dinner

after. He was saying that one of the things that you experience when you are with Tommy Robinson is that there's a huge number of people who will come up to him, they'll take a look to the left, take a look to right, make sure no one's watching, and then they'll come up to Tommy Robinson and shake his hand and say, thank you very much for what you're doing. There is a huge undercurrent that I don't think anyone is quite explained or understood of people feeling deep resentment and frustration in this country. Where do you think that comes from?

I think it comes from a feeling that politicians have let people down. That's always been there to an extent, but because we have social media now, it's so much easier for people to let people know what they're thinking. Twenty years ago, if Mrs. Miggins from 32 occasions at Avenue Scunthor, wanted to vent her spleen over something, she'd write to the Scunthorpe Courier. Now she can start a blog, she's got Twitter, she's got Facebook, all sorts of different mediums to make her views known. Now, that's a really good thing in many ways for democracy.

It enables people to feel that they're taking part in the democratic system. But it's also a great danger, because if they feel that they're taking part, but the politicians are letting them down, that fuels a feeling of resentment. And in the end, if politicians continue to let people down, I mean, who knows where that leads? I mean, look at Italy as a good example. I mean, okay, maybe Italy isn't the best example,

because Italy has always had political problems. But I doubt whether this current Italian government would be there without the power of the internet. I mean, the five-star movement is essentially a creation of the internet. Led by a comedian, by the way. Really? Yeah. Founded by a comedian.

There's a future for all of us. And you know it's not well-run if it's founded by a comedian. Well, it's Italian. It's definitely not well-run. But do you think part of what's happened with Tommy Robinson, Part of what is happening with Brexit is the fact, immigration is a major issue in this country, and mainstream politicians have always felt an unease with tackling with it, and dealing with it and talking about it openly.

Yes, I think until about 2003, 2005, that was probably the case. We talk an awful lot about immigration now. I mean, people keep saying it's a subject that politicians try and sweep under the carpet. It's not at all. I mean, I am as wet as a lettuce on immigration. I have no fear of immigration. I think that generally people who come to this country come here for a reason,

and that is because they see a country where they can do well in. If you are a Syrian asylum seeker, you come to this country, presumably, because you think it can offer you the sort of things that Syria cannot at the moment. And people say, oh yeah, but they should have stopped in the first.

country in? Yeah, that's the system. But they come here, partly because a lot of them will be able to speak English. And we should think it is a real, take it as a real compliment that they've chosen our country rather than France, Germany, Switzerland, wherever. And it's not because they think we have a loose benefit system. I mean, there will always be the odd person who comes here for that reason. I mean, it's the human nature. But 99% of people come to this country for the right reasons, whether they are asylum seekers or whether they're economic migrants. And in both cases, they're making rational choices, which if you or I had been in that situation, we would probably do exactly the same thing. And they're taking terrible risks to do it. So I look at it, and again,

this is something where I think my views have become much more liberal since I've been doing my radio show. And from time to time, I'd say once every two or three months, I will devote an hour to asking immigrants to this country to phone in and explain why they've come here and what it's meant to them and with the view of trying to persuade those people who think that all immigrants are on the take to just pause for a second thought and think well you've heard what these people have said do you really still believe that they're all evil people come to bombers or whatever now that's all I can do as a radio presenter but I think that's almost a public service I think every country has to have control of its borders.

We clearly do not have control of our borders as long as we're within the EU. I think it's a fantasy to think that the number of immigrants is going to be reduced to tens of thousands after we leave because the economy will always need new people. If we're not training people to do the right jobs, where else the company is going to get them from? Now, in many ways it is a scandal that so many of NHS nurses come from abroad. So many of the doctors come from abroad because what we're doing is we're stealing them from countries that actually really need them

like the Philippines or Indonesia but they're not going to stop after Brexit I mean Brexit doesn't mean that they're not going to come here anymore Indonesia is not in the Europe yeah well indeed but nor are people from Europe going to stop coming here I mean the figures are out this morning I think showing that the net immigration to this country has slowed from Europe it's the lowest since 2013

but we still have a net inflow of people of 102,000 Now, I don't see that changing after Brexit at all. Yes, the numbers might come down marginally, but we're not going to get to this mythical tens of thousands target. And that's where, again, people lose trust in politicians, where they stick to a target which they've never achieved and which they know they can't achieve. And Theresa May is the only one around the cabinet table who still believes in that target. All of the rest of them don't.

And what Sajy Javid should have done right from the start when he became head secretary, he said to the Prime Minister, we're abolishing this target. she would have had to agree to it because you're never stronger than on your first week in a job and she couldn't have afforded for him to resign straight after Amber Rudd. And I think he has made moves in that direction, but maybe not going as far as he could have done. But let me put the counterpoint to you on immigration, because I totally hear everything that you've said about it and myself an immigrant. But on the other hand, I sense that there's a level of which immigration becomes, I don't

mean unsustainable necessarily economically, but our ability to integrate. people into our society while preserving social cohesion within that society is limited. I give you an example, right? So I'm from Eastern Europe. I'm from Russia. It's very common in Russia or in other parts of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland, all these places, for people to sit down and have a drink in the park on the bench. That's how they do it, right?

That's how we do it. You don't go to the pub. You don't have pubs necessarily. In this country, the culture is different, right? Now, in the last 10, 15 years, 15 years ago it would be unheard of for people to be sitting and drinking beer on a bench and a park in this country. It would be completely unheard of unless they were homeless usually, right? Nowadays, you walk around whether it's central London or Tumbridge Wells where you and I live,

it's very common to see lots of young men sitting on a part of bench drinking beer. That, I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but that is just a visual reminder of how quickly the country has changed. Now, there might be people who are troubled by that or concerned about that or who feel that that's a reflection of the fact that society has changed in a way that they're not comfortable. What's wrong with that? Well, I think generally we have a really good record in this country on integrating immigrants. I mean, what a lot of people are really talking about are brown people.

Let's face it. Polish people are not brown. No, I know they're not. Which is why I gave that example. So Romanian are Polish people. It's more acceptable to have white immigration than brown immigration. But not for me. That's not my point.

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I just want you to address my point, which is. not the racism, but the actual thing of people changing the structure of society. I don't think that many people would have a problem with the example you've given. There might be some. I think what people have a problem with is that particularly the Blair government allowed so many people in all at once from Eastern Europe. Definitely. And there wasn't the infrastructure there to support them. I think people accept immigration if it means that their children aren't going to suffer for lack of school places. or they think that in A&E they have to wait longer, all of those sorts of things.

And I think we haven't got enough housing in this country. So people naturally say, well, if we haven't got enough houses, we can't let more people in. I mean it's a perfectly logical thing to think. It doesn't mean that they're racist necessarily. Some of them will be, some of them won't be. So that's where, again, politicians have let down people because they haven't provided the infrastructure for the numbers of people that have come in. But I think generally in terms of integration in this country,

I think we've done a pretty good job. If you compare particularly, I mean, you compare us with France. So you look at the immigration that's happened in France over the last 20 years. And there are genuine ghettos in France where literally French people, indigenous French people, are scared to go. Now, there may be one or two areas in this country that you could give that description to, but I couldn't name you more than two or three. There may be one or two northern towns where, for whatever,

reasons, a particular section of the population has decided to settle there, and it's almost sort of there aren't any white families in those areas anymore. Now that is something that should, in my view, should not have been allowed to happen through the local council or whatever. They shouldn't have allocated those particular areas. We're talking about effectively immigration from Pakistan and Muslim countries here. But that is not widespread in this country. And I think, but we do also have to recognize that, I mean, we're sitting here in West London. If we walk down the street, I don't notice someone's color when I walk down the street. If I hear somebody speaking a foreign language on the tube, does that bother me?

Of course it doesn't bother me. I'm trying to think, oh, what language is that? I find it interesting. If you live in a market town in the middle of Devon, where you probably don't see a black person or a Chinese person for months, you, it's, it is something, I mean, I remember once when I was walking down the high street in Cromer on the North Norfolk coast, and there's a black man walking the other side of the street. And I was just sort of looking and watching people and they were all staring at him. And that wasn't because they were racist, some of them may have been, it was because he was different.

And that's what people find a challenge. And that's why people find different cultures quite challenging. when they don't understand them. A friend of mine a few weeks ago, friend was saying, we've got a Muslim family moved in two doors down. And I said, yeah, and? Well, you know.

No, you tell me. Well, you know, I mean, it's... And I was really quite shocked by this conversation. And then, of course, two weeks later, ran me up again. And of course, they're now in each other's houses, having cups of coffee, very friendly. But he'd never met a Muslim before. Now, that's the church.

challenge for society. How do you address that in all of the areas where it is still a novelty to see someone of a different skin colour? And I take your point about, well, nowadays it's not necessarily skin colour, but that always used to be the case. And for many people, I'm afraid, still is. And I think the internet and I think television has actually helped in this and that it normalises things and people don't feel the threat maybe that they sometimes used to from mass immigration. And it's a bit like a gay thing. Eventually, people do,

when they meet people who are gay, they realize that not all gay men want to shag every gay man they meet. Or every man they meet. Yeah, every man they meet. What was that? No, I just, no, you've got that right. So, and it's the same with,

it's the same with, I mean, just like Muslims. So not every Muslim wants to bomb you. There'll be a very small proportion. But they will still say, oh yes, but the others might sympathise with them. Well, once you get to that level of argument, you can't really win it. Well, isn't that what Madjinawa says your fellow LBC presenter? Isn't that exactly what he says, that there's a small group of extremists

and then a very large group of people who do sympathize with them? Well, I have never met a Muslim that sympathizes with any, form of terrorism. That doesn't mean to say they don't exist just because I've never met them. But I think, I mean, we all judge people by, I suppose, the people that we meet in our lives. And I mean, I've had a couple phone in on my radio show. And whenever there's a terror incident, and I've covered quite a few of the terror incidents

because they broke within my show. And I would always encourage Muslim callers to phone in to tell me what they think. Now, they shouldn't have to do that, really. but it's important for the rest of the listeners to hear the condemnation and from time to time you'll get I can only think of two incidents in eight years where I've had somebody phone in

to effect, not support necessarily but to show more than a degree of sympathy and understanding with what's happened and I let them have it because I can if it was on the BBC I couldn't but I can and it's quite a powerful position to be in when and again all you I mean I remember one was a female Zainab her name

was and I kept drawn for about 20 minutes because I thought it was really important that so she understood or I tried to explain to her why I thought what she was saying was completely wrong and it ranged from a huge it wasn't actually necessarily about terrorism it was on quite a few social issues but it's quite that's partly why I love the job because you do have the opportunity at least to try and make people think again, even if you're not going to necessarily change their minds, you've got to get them to question what they've been told by their parents. Because I remember saying to her,

your parents should be ashamed of you for teaching you this, which is quite something to say to somebody. And very teacher-like, can I just say as well? Yeah, you've let yourself die. It's your own time you're wasting. But I think a lot of fear of immigration. It does come from a fear of the unknown. and I explain it through children.

I remember when I was teaching, I was teaching four-year-olds. And I sort of did this experiment just for myself, really, and I put a big bunch of crowns in, and they were doing colouring in. And they were colouring in happy. And then I got a big,

I grabbed a big load of the crowns, and I moved them over to the there, and I saw how they dealt with having a smaller number of crowns. All of a sudden, that's when the argument started to happen. And they started arguing, and there was pushing, and they were shoving,

and all the rest of it. and then tears. Now, don't you think a lot of the fear of... You're basically a child abuse. Yeah, yes. That's why I do it. That's why I did it for 10 years. But do you not think a large part of the fear of immigrants coming in

is brought in by austerity, the fact that people see our services getting reduced. The fact that we see the NHS, whether it's right, whether it's wrong, are starting to shrink and die and being privatised and being taken away from it. It's a lot of old bollocks. I mean, you look at the money that is now spent on the NHS. It is infinitely bigger than it used to be.

She's just got another 20 billion, but apparently that's not enough. You don't solve the problems in the NHS just by throwing money at it. We should be looking at the systemic failures of the NHS, but we can't because we are obsessed by this fact that the NHS is loved by everyone and therefore cannot be changed. I mean, Anne Whittickham, who Donkeys years ago, was shadow health secretary. She said at the time, and nothing has changed in the last 20 years. She said we're looking to have a 21st century NHS using a 1940s bureaucratic system.

And we don't have an NHS. You'll only have an NHS, a national health service, when somebody in Berwick-upon-Tweed will get the same level of treatment on whatever as somebody in central London. It's all a post-code lottery on so many different issues. Now, I don't want to privatise the NHS. Nobody never believes me when I say this, but I don't want to privatise the NHS. But this pretence that it's being subject to whole-scale privatisation is rubbish.

Under Tony Blair, sorry, under John Major, 4% of the NHS was effectively privatised. Well, it wasn't even privatised. It used private sector resources. Under Tony Blair, that went up to 5%. And under David Cameron, it went up to 6%. Now, you could see. say, well, that's a 50% increase on what it was under John Major going from, I mean, if you want to be propagandist, that's a, that's terrible, it's a 50% increase. But 94% of it isn't.

And I don't really see that changing very much. And this idea that somehow in healthcare, the private sector is evil, most of us use private sector dentists. Pharmacies are all in the private sector. GPs are effectively private sector contractors. to the NHS. Most of the countries in Europe, I forget America, because everyone said, we don't want an American-style health system, no, we don't. But if you look at Europe, they aren't embarrassed

that the French or the German system uses a lot of far more private sector input than it does in this country. So the whole debate, to me, needs to be reframed about, well, OK, if we were starting from scratch, how would we do this now? And then once we've decided that, and let's have a proper national debate on it. Once we've decided that, well, let's see how we can get there. That doesn't mean to say we dismantle everything that is in the existing NHS. But everything is so complicated now. There's no wonder we have thousands and thousands of bureaucrats and

administrators in the NHS because the systems are so bureaucratic that they have to be there. So you say it's all down to austerity. Well, what was the, what was the, what was the alternative to the so-called austerity program that George Osborne carried out. We're still borrowing 50 billion pounds a year. I mean, if you believe that there's a magic money tree that somehow magic's up this money that we can sort of get from nowhere, fine, but we saw the result of that in 1970s with 25% inflation. And then in the 80s, the result of that was massive unemployment. The good old fun days, as you talked about, fun days of politics. I'm kidding. Yeah. Let's not go back Yeah, let's know. But it's interesting to me because on the one hand, you make a very good point about austerity, and I actually agree with this idea that it was completely unnecessary and ideological, I think it's completely wrong. On the one hand, but on the other hand, we earlier talked about your experience of talking to people about things like the bedroom tax. So how do you bring these two things together? This, on the one hand, the need to reduce public spending, they need to borrow less with the fact that when you reduce public spending, people suffer. Well, look, politics and government is.

all about choices. When you fight an election, you have a manifesto, which says, well, this is what we're going to do. And then when you get into government, you've got a certain amount of money, I mean, you can borrow more money, obviously, but you've got a certain amount of money and you have to decide how to allocate it. And you have to be responsible for those choices that you've made. And a Conservative government is inevitably going to make different choices than a Labour government. Now, at the moment, we have a Labour opposition that thinks it can spend, spend, spend, or they're making it all sorts of problems. across all sorts of different government departments.

Well, if they do ever get into power and they try and implement those spending pledges, well, the long-term effects of that, there'll be a short-term feel-good factor, particularly in education and the NHS probably, where people say, oh, isn't it wonderful that we've got all these extra resources? But in the long term, because all politics is cyclical,

the chickens will come home to roost. Now, I don't pretend I would have necessarily made the same choices, the same choices as David Cameron and Theresa may have made. But that's because all individuals will make different choices. And I would not have made some of the cuts in some areas that were made. But the amount of the NHS hasn't been in financial terms, the NHS has not been cut. Local government services have been cut, social carers being cut, quite happy to accept that. But you've picked the wrong one on the NHS, I'm afraid.

Do you think we need to be more mature about how we think and talk about politics? I think you make this point about certain things that are going to have to be cut, right? I think so few people actually accept the fact that political decisions will have negative consequences. No, and we also have a media, which particularly on the BBC, if you listen to the Today program, I would say on average, in a three-hour program, they will have seven or eight lobby groups, pressure groups, come on to explain why the government. should spend more money on X, Y or Z. Now, I don't think that's particularly responsible. I mean, there are reports that come out every single day complaining about this, that or the other.

And yeah, okay, they said, well, they've got to fill three hours of news. Well, is it really news that the Royal Society for the protection of whatever demands that another $5 billion is spent on something? In some cases, it would be. But these desires for more money are entirely natural. but they never counted. You'll get John Humphrey's interviewing a Treasury minister saying, isn't it outrageous that you won't spend the money

that this particular pressure group wants to spend? But he will never quiz the pressure group on the fact that the money isn't there. It'll just be, well, why do you need to spend this money? Yes, that's a real problem, isn't it? Thank you very much and goodbye. Now, as I say, I don't think extra money is a money, always the best way to solve systematic problems within a particular sector. Sometimes it will

help a reform, but not always. And yet the constant cries for more money from the left are just based on the fact that they want to soak the taxpayer. They think that none of us are paying enough tax, particularly the rich. Well, what classifies as rich in London nowadays? Well, according to the Labour Party, it's somebody who earns 70 or 80,000 or 80,000 pounds. Now, if you're on 20 or 30,000 you clearly do think that somebody who's on 70 or 80,000 is rich. But try telling someone who's got a family of two paying mortgage in London that 70,000 pounds means that they should pay a top-rated tax. I think you'd have a bit of a job to do that.

And in the end, in the 70s, there was this word called incentives. And so many people felt that the tax system was working against them and that they were being unfairly treated, but they just bugged off to other countries, there was no incentive for them to stay in Britain. And I can see a point soon where that's going to happen here. I think the current government is in danger of that, where if they bring more people into the 40p tax bracket, which they're threatening to do to pay for this $20 billion for the

NHS, I mean, it's outrageous that somebody who's on 41,000 pounds a year is paying an effective tax rate of well over 50%. Now, I would love to see a law that actually banned any future government from taking more than 50% of someone's income, because I think it's just criminal. Why should somebody have to pay more than 50% as money that they've earned, and it is generally earned income. Now you can do it. Unearned income, fine, you can make a case for that being more.

But you can't tax people till the PIPS squeak because it will have long-term effects on the future of the economy. I think one of the things that people are very critical about when it comes to taxation is these big companies like Amazon or Starbucks who get away with seemingly paying nothing. I totally agree. And to be fair to George Osbourne, he actually did do something about that, which I mean, Gordon Brown didn't, has to be said, but George Osbourne did. Now you can argue, has he done enough? Probably not. But they're apparently getting 14 billion pounds in which they wouldn't have had before.

So that's something. But I totally agree with you. Some of these big corporates need to be addressed. And the thing is, they've always got tax lawyers who will always find another loophole. One will be closed and then another one will open up. And somehow the inland revenue have got to try and do more to do that. They've employed a lot more people to look into this and to try and tackle it. You're never going to eliminate tax evasion or tax avoidance, but you can actually do something to mitigate it.

Do you don't think that's also an issue of political will? Yes. Because a lot of these people who are not paying the taxes, they're in cahoots with the politicians. They're friends. They go to the same dinner, cocktail parties and dinners, and they meet on the same yachts with Russian oligarchs and all the rest of it. And your family, concert. Yeah, my family, exactly. Yes, because all Russians are oligarchs.

I'm going to phone into your radio show, experiences by immigration. Yes, I came to this country to buy mansion in Chelsea. So, but do you not think that's what, the big part of why Amazon and Google and all these companies can avoid paying tax? There was always a lot of chatter about the fact that David Cameron's former chief of star, Rachel Wettstone, well, she Michael How is one or the other, but there was this little group of people around Cameron that all went off to work for Google or Uber or wherever. And I think that was, I mean, it certainly gave the impression that people were in cahoots. Do I believe that David Cameron or George Osborne changed government policy because they knew someone within?

I'd like to think not. I mean, I do wonder how Uber get away with what they do. I mean, it's partly because there's a whole generation now in London of under 30-year-olds who wouldn't ever think of taking a black cab because they always take Uber. And that's why, in the end, when Sadiq Khan didn't renew their licence, I always knew he would in the end, because there would have been a big backlash against that.

I think there are sometimes relationships between politicians and people in business and the media which are unhealthy, which leave the public to think that there might be things being done inappropriately, even if there aren't. I mean, I have this a little bit when I'm interviewing politicians that I know. And I've worked out that if I interview a politician who's a friend, I tend to give them a harder time

because I'm conscious that there'll be people out there who say, well, he has given them a soft time because he knows it. David Davis, good example, on the day after he resigned. I did an interview with him. And I knew I was on a hiding to nothing. But the news of Boris Johnson's resignation broke

just as we were halfway through this interview. So that gave a good news line out of it. But Gillian Reynolds, the radio critic of the Sunday Times, She said that that was a really good interview because I knew him and I asked hard questions. He gave coded answers. Now she doesn't, has never liked me particularly. She described my voice as being whiny on one occasion, I mean as if.

So that was, I really was very grateful that she wrote that. And then I was talking to David on the phone a couple of nights ago and he said, I did five interviews that day, ITV, BBC, and then Julia Hartley-Brewer and you, and he said, and to be honest, I thought your interview with me was terrible. And I thought he meant I'd been asking sort of really bad questions,

and it was genuinely a bad interview. But a journalist I know DM'd me and said that he'd run into David on Friday, and he said, I can't believe it, I did all these interviews, and the two people that my friends, they gave me the hardest time. And I thought, well, good, because I did my job then.

And I do find it interesting that when I first started doing this, I did find it difficult to interview people I knew. And there was one time, I interviewed Rob Halfon, who's a lovely guy, MP for Harlow, is a really good campaigner. And he was doing a campaign on something, I can't remember what it was now. But he clearly didn't know his staff.

And I absolutely roasted him. And then later that evening, my phone went off, and I saw his name appear. I thought, oh shit, here we go. And he, so I said, hi. He said, I just want to thank you. I said, what? And he said, because you taught me a lot in that interview

that I should not go into an interview, not fully briefed, and you were absolutely right to do what you did. Not long afterwards, I interviewed Priti Patel, and it was the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected to leave to the Labour Party, and she'd been put up by the Conservatives to comment on it. So I just said,

Priti Patel, your reaction to Jeremy Corbyn's election. Well, he's a danger to our nation. He's a danger to your family's economic security. And off she went and there's all these pre-prepared lines. And so I just let her finish. And I said, well, aren't you going to congratulate him? It's not my job to congratulate him. And I said, be polite if you did. And I've never interviewed her since. Now, Rob Halfone had a really adult reaction to that. She didn't. Make her that what you will. Interesting. Well, our time is running out. So before we insult you and never bring it,

before we insult you to say something that means you'll be like Pretty Patel and never speak to us again. The question we always like to finish on is, what is the one thing you think that no one is talking about that we ought to be talking about? God. I could say something, try it like mental health, but we kind of are talking about mental health now. And that's certainly one thing that when I was doing the evening show in LBC, I mean, we got a real reputation for that. making a phone in on depression interesting is sometimes a challenge, but boy did we do that. We got shortlisted for an award for mind for doing that. But I think we are talking about it now in 2018,

in a much more different way than we did in 2010. What subject do I think we should be talking about? Well, I mean, I'll go back to the NHS. I mean, we are talking about the NHS, but we're not talking about it in any meaningful long-term way. And I would love to see a proper national debate about the future the NHS because we're not having it. It's become far too politicised, which is inevitable when we spend one in six pounds of taxpayers money goes on the NHS. People say, oh, well, maybe you should just

have a non-political board that runs the NHS and not have any politicians involved with it. Well, I actually want politicians to, they've got to be accountable for the money that they're spending on my behalf. So you can't take politicians out of running the NHS. So I think that's, That is a national debate that we should have and possibly also on how West Ham can win the Champions League. Yes, I'm a West Ham fan. Are you? I'm indeed, yes.

Let's end the interview right now. This could take about half an hour. I don't agree with signing Wilshire, but that's the 10. Oh, I do. Really? Well, that's where it's probably going to kick up. See, we could do another hour. This is the end of our show for the rest of humanity.

Indel, thank you so much for coming on. Twitter at... At Ian Dale. You have a podcast. We have the podcast. I do it with every week with Jackie Smith, the former Labor Home Secretary.

It's called For the Many. And we talk about the political events of the week. But it's quite a fun podcast and very, very smutty because she has got a filthy mind. Wonderful. There you go.

And you're working on the book as well? If you want to talk about a with a clitoris, she's your woman. Too much information. Well, that is quite literally ticked every box. In so many ways. Yeah, absolutely.

We're also writing a book together, well, editing a book called The Honourable Ladies. And it sounds quite dry, but it's a collection of biographies of every female MP that's ever sat in the House of Commons. Because at the end of this year, it's the 100th anniversary of Nancy Astor being the first woman to take her seat. So the first volume goes up to 1996. There's 168 different essays, all written by female politicians or academics. The second volume, which goes from 1997 to 2018, has got 3908. in so you can see that the difference in numbers that there are now and they've got some fascinating stories as a female Tory MP from the 1950s called Patricia Ford who turns out to be the

step-grandmother of Bear Grills. Wow. Who knew? Who knew? Who cared? What a great way to it. But actually finally, if any Russian oligarchs or any other people want to phone into your show and give you some grief, how do they do that?

They do that between 4 and 7 on LBC. It's very easy to do. I actually do know a Russian oligarch, believe it or not. Do. And it isn't you. I'm too young to be an oligarch. I'm an oligarch. I'm an oligarch son, kind of age.

Yeah. Do you have one of the sort of like super boy racer cars that you drive around Knightsbridge? Yeah, it's a voxelastra. Yes, that's exactly what it is. With a broken tail line. Yeah. So between 4 and 7 on the LBC.

Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. For the moment. That may be changing. Oh. We've got an exclusive here. We do indeed. And on that note,

thank you very much for watching. If you've enjoyed it, please, please tell a friend. Give us a review on iTunes. Five stars, please leave a nice comment. If you want to follow me, I'm at Failing Human. I'm at Constantine Kission.

And remember to subscribe on our YouTube channel and there's a little bell thing next to a subscribe thing that will make sure that you get the videos, you get notified of the videos when they actually come out. Thank you very much. We've had any day.

He's been great. Thank you so much for coming on. Can you say you've had me? We have had you. Well, that's coming later. Thank you very much for coming. That's the payment. Thank you very much and goodbye. See you next to me.

Jesus Christ.