TRIGGERnometry - Nigel Farage - How I Took on the Establishment and Won

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Nigel Farage is a British politician, former leader of The Brexit Party, broadcaster and political analyst. Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishon. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. An interesting guest we have for you today. It's Mr Brexit himself. Nigel Farage. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here in Brexit Britain. You started off very non-partisan there, Nigel. Well done. But listen, it's great to have you on. I just set the table a little bit and get our cards on that table. Francis and I both voted Remain. There will be a lot of people who watch the show who love you.

There'll be lots of people who watch the show who hate you. There'll be lots of people who watch the show who are sort of in the middle between those two. But I think for us, the way we feel about it, if someone is objective about your career, they would have to admit that in terms of achieving your results, now people may hate the results you've achieved. But you've been one of the most successful politicians. in my lifetime, certainly. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit about where that comes from, because you've had to fight.

You know, when you're standing there next to the candidate for the monster raving loony party and you're closer to him than you are to winning that election all those years ago, what is it that makes you tick and keep fighting and keep going? Well, I think once I was quite normal because I, you know, I left school, I skipped university because the boom in the city had started. You know, Thatcher had been elected.

There was the development of something called the yuppie. And I thought, yeah, I like the look at that. I want to be a yuppie. So I skipped university, went to work in the city of London, worked on a place called London Metal Exchange, which, as I've always said to people, we used to work very hard up until lunchtime every day. Thereafter things to disintegrate pretty quickly.

And I played golf. I was a four-handicab golfer. I got married, young, had kids young. And I was all set, really, you know, to stay in the commodity business. And the real ambition was to make money and live as high lifestyle as I possibly could. Politics, current affairs, what I'd always cared about those things passionately. You know, I mean, growing up through the 1970s, seeing the three-day week, doing homework by candlelight because of the power strikes, seeing inflation gets nearly 30 percent. then seeing this woman, Mrs Thatcher, appear as if from nowhere, become Prime Minister with a radical new agenda.

So I'd always cared about politics and current affairs. And the funny thing was, working in commodities, you know, very much a global business, copper, aluminium, all these things. You know, politics and current affairs affected those prices. Politics and current affairs were what we talked about all day long. And I was an avid free marketeer, you know, a great believer in Reaganomics, in much of what Thatcher stood for. I mean, I could see the downside of it, but I thought we have to have these radical reform. We have to take this medicine. So I always cared about all of these issues hugely, followed, you know, what happened in Parliament very closely. But I'd never had the slightest

intention, even to stand for the local council. I thought, no, no, that's not for me. You know, politics is for the Oxbridge set. You know, I'll let them get on with that. I'll get on with what I do. But what dawned on me in 1990, and we did a day on the exchange, it was 5.5.30 in the evening. We were, you've guessed it, in the pub, in the city. And this, of course, is before almost anybody had a mobile phone. And, you know, one of the young lads ran into the bar from the office, into the pub from the office, and said, we've just joined the exchange rate mechanism. Now, that was the means by which we peg Sterling against the basket of European currencies, mainly across the Deutsche Mark. And that was a precursor to us joining what we now know as

the Euro. Now, I won't on trigonometry tell you the Anglo-Saxon words that I used on hearing this news. But I simply couldn't believe it. And the next day, going to London by train, the Conservative Party supported ERM, the Labour Party supported ERM, the Liberals supported ERM, the TUC supported ERM, the CBI supported ERM, and pretty much every single national newspaper supported ERM. And I looked at this and I thought this is going to be a disaster. we are at a completely different phase of the economic cycle to Germany and the central European economies. We are very much a services economy. They're much more a manufacturing economy. I could see that the 80s boom had come to an end and that negative equity was appearing in property prices.

I could see that a bust was coming. And I just thought this is going to be a disaster. Well, for the next two years, I bored the life out of 80s. anybody that would listen, you know, in the office or the trade coming home from London. I mean, wherever I became an ERM bore. And, of course, it was all borne out because the madness of what happened in September 92, when interest rates doubled just to keep the pound up and stood inside the exchange rate mechanism. And that year was the year of record home repossessions.

That year was the record year for small. business bankrupts. And I thought to myself, I don't know what it is, but I could see something that the political class couldn't see. And I realized that establishment status quoes form around a set of ideas. And this is true, not just the politics, it's true in science, it's true in business, a status quo forms around an idea. And group think takes over, or lack of proper thinking, over. So I'd seen that experience. I'd been right about it. And then, you know, hard on the heels of that, we had this thing called the Maastricht Treaty, which is when the European community became the European Union. And I watched the Tory rebels in Parliament, you know, do their best,

fight a rearguard action. But in the end, John Major put it down to a motion of confidence. And, of course, like good little boys, they all went and supported the party and voted for the very thing that they'd said would be an economic and political disaster for our nation and its independence. And I thought, this is really odd because in my village, people don't support this. In my village, people want to be friendly with Europe and trade with Europe and not be governed by it. And I just determined then, in 93, I said, you know what, I don't care. I really don't care, even if I'm the only person that votes for me, as a matter of principle, I'm going to fight these so-and-sos.

So I put myself up for a by-election. I did beat screaming Lord Such, only by 148 votes. I beat David Such by 100. What a lovely bloke he was. And all my friends and family said, but surely this experience must put you off. You know, it's impossible to take on the establishment. And I suppose then what kicked in,

was an absolute belief that I was right and just sheer bloody-mindedness. And so I never stopped. And I kept campaigning in 1994, 95, 96, 97, I never stopped campaigning. I never stopped, you know, going out, speaking in village halls. And if I got an audience of 30 or 40, I'd be thrilled in those days. And I kept on battling away. And then the big opportunity came for me.

And that was in 1999, when for the first time in the history of this country, a national election was contested on the basis of proportional representation. And so I got elected to the European Parliament in 1999. And as a result of that, you know, you start to get invited onto question time and these programs. Although, I mean, I was treated, you know, I mean, by the Dimblebiz and all these people as if I was on sort of day release from a lunatic asylum, you know. So really, that's the story. The story is the consensus establishment had decided this was our future for the next foreseeable decades or forever. And I just felt they were wrong. I was right. And I always, in the bottom of my heart, felt that actually Middle England didn't agree with any of this. So it's nice of you to say that I've been very successful in achieving my goals. And I have. I just wish it hadn't taken 27 years. Well, I was going to ask you, on a personal level, you talk about the political conviction, which I think everybody would recognize. But is there a part of you just likes pissing people off Nigel just a little bit,

just winding people up a little bit? Is there a part of you that's that as well? Oh, enormously. I mean, I was very lucky. I really was lucky to go to a good school and to be taught by some great people. and the older guys that taught me who were all, you know, they'd all driven tanks or flown spitfires or whatever it was or they played cricket for England, an amazing group of people we had at Dulwich teachers. And, you know, the good ones taught us question everything. Don't accept anything at face value. Question everything, debate everything. And I think, you know, during my teens, I sort of took that to the nth degree,

often of articulating positions that I didn't believe in at all, just because I enjoyed getting the reaction back. Although nothing could prepare me, I suppose, for becoming the pantomime villain of the European Parliament. I mean, you know, amazing. You know, when I got up to speak and sort of 500 people started booing, now most human beings would not want to live with that experience. Most human beings would temper their ideas

because normally people like to fit in. Normally people like to feel a sense of belonging. But it just didn't matter to me. And in the latter years, I mean, in Brussels particularly, you know, coffee shops wouldn't serve me, pubs banned me, restaurants wouldn't allow me in. I mean, that's how far it went. And yet I took it all as a compliment.

I thought, I remember in 2014, And that was the worst of it. 2014 was the worst of it in terms of the press. And it was just unbelievable. I mean, for standing up and saying that I thought the foreign aid budget was being badly spent, for standing up and saying that I thought actually the untrammeled free movement of unskilled labour was really not helping working people in Britain, pushing down their wages, damaging their access to public services.

I looked back the other day at some of the interviews I was doing with Sky News and the BBC back in 2014. I mean, you really would have thought for all the world that I was heralding, you know, 1930s German-style fascism to come into Britain. I mean, that was the level of hostility to my ideas, and they've now become mainstream ideas. Anyway, it was difficult. And I remember one morning, one Sunday morning in 2014, the phone rang here at about 7am. And it was my lawyer. The lawyer was ringing on a Sunday morning, but this can't be good.

And he just said to me, Andrew, he said, do you know what? Don't buy the newspapers. Don't have a look online. Just don't read any of it because it will damage your confidence. And I took his advice. And as the years went on, I just didn't read any of it. I certainly didn't look at Twitter and see what people were saying. I stuck to what I believed in, what I knew to be true.

I did my absolute best, to be honest with people, about what I thought Brexit meant and what some of the downsides might be. I did that all through the referendum campaign as well. But it was tough to withstand it. But I never forget, in 14, getting a letter written in spidery handwriting. And the man said, Divis Farrish, I'm 93 years old. During the war, I served in Obama command. He said, and I can tell you, you only start taking heavy flack when you're getting me of the target. And I never, ever forgot that letter. The establishment were literally terrified of me. Brussels, perhaps even more so. And so I learned to enjoy my own company because nobody else wanted to be seen or talked to. And even, you know, you go to the

supermarket, you know, going around, you know, the local waitros, buying the essentials, you know, gin, tonic lemons, that sort of. And, you know, and people would look like, God, I hope the neighbours haven't seen, I spoke to it. It was as if this sort of mantle of being the devil was put upon me. So there must have been something slightly unusual in my makeup to make me endure it. And, you know, if I'm being honest, I can laugh about it now. Some of it was pretty tough.

And Nigel, we talk about, you know, something, you know, experience has been very tough. had a lot of epithets being held against you, far right, racist, etc., etc. In your own opinion, why do you think it is that people have hurled these epithets at you? Oh, I think that when you challenge orthodoxy, rather than examining whether the criticism of the orthodoxy is valid or not, you seek to dismiss the other person with abuse and insults. It was the great Gandhi, wasn't it, who said about the campaign for Indian independence from the British Empire. You know, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win.

A complete refusal to deal with ideas and a belief that just by hurling abuse, you can destroy the other side. And I mean, Cameron tried. It was quite funny, actually. Cameron tried it. Cameron was on with Nick Ferrari on LBC. He was asked about Nigel Farage and UKIP. Oh, he said a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly. Now, that was quite a wounding thing for a Prime Minister to say about a party that I led. But actually, it helped us because people could see how unreasonable he was being. You know, everyone said, oh, Farage stands for this, Farage stands for that.

Well, have you ever ever actually read what he's actually said? And it was as if people were choosing to interpret what I'd said rather than actually reading the words. And, you know, the truth of it is that nation states make their own laws. Nation states have their own courts. Nation states control their own borders and choose who they think are fit and proper people to come and settle in their country. I mean, these were all perfectly reasonable, sensible points of view, but were demonised because they challenged the establishment. And I, you know, I would say this to anybody that tries to, you know, paint out UKIP and what it stood for in that racist way. You know, I was the only party leader who banned anybody who'd ever been a member of the British National Party from even

becoming a member of UKIP. You know, I drew that line within my own party. And do you know something? In 2006, Nick Griffin had quite a big tailwind behind him. You know, a lot of dispossessed, white working class who were very unhappy what was happening in their communities and started to vote for Nick Griffin. Once I'd drawn that line that we wouldn't accept B&P members and supporters, But if you were holding your nose and voting BMP as a protest but didn't agree with their outright racist policies, you could come and vote for me. And they did. I think I did more. I mean, here we are. Here's the funny thing about my critics. I honestly believe I did more to stop the rise of the far right in this country than any other individual. And I really mean that. And Nigel, do you ever look back on the campaign with UKIP and also with Brexit and go, I made a misstep here. I gave ammunition to the people criticising me. Do you know something? On those days, you know, during election campaigns,

on those days out in the road, on the road, you know, I'd go to a market town in Staffordshire, all right, for argument's sake. You know, I do a streetwalk about going the betting shop, go in the pub, you know, you know, meet people in the town square. And I would then probably spend the next three to four hours being interviewed by local newspapers, local radio stations, you know, local broadcasters on, you know, YouTube or whatever else it would be. I mean, I gave more interviews than anybody ever, because I had to do that to propel this party into the public's consciousness. You cannot, you cannot do thousands of hours of interviews. you cannot speak hundreds of thousands of words

without sometimes making a mistake. Of course. We're all human. We're all bound to make mistakes. We're all bound to say things that we think after was, oh, well, that wasn't very bright because I know how they're going to portray it.

So, of course we make mistakes. But what I would say, and what I do think came through to people, whether they agreed with what I was saying or not, I like to think that I put the message across in a very clear, succinct way so that people understand what the message is. And I think I managed to get that through. And I also think that people felt, again, whether they agreed or not,

that what I was saying, I genuinely and sincerely believed in. Yeah, and the other thing I think people felt, and this included people like me who at the time on a completely different side of the argument, was that you were being subject to different standards than everybody else. You were being unfairly treated by large sections of the media. And, you know, frankly, maybe if they'd not done that, you might not have been as successful. Do you think that's possible if they just let you on the shows

and didn't treat you as this sort of weirdo? You know, it's very interesting. I was talking yesterday, to a little commentator, who made the point to me, that in the 2015 general election, when UKIP got four million votes and one seat. You know, UKIP got more votes than the SNP and the Lib Dems and Plied all added up together and one seat.

Almost that sense of injustice at what had happened within our system, I think propelled even more people to vote leave in the referendum of 2016 that would have done before. So yes, I think there are a lot of very fair-minded people out there who don't like bullying. who don't like unfairness, and ironically, I think you're right. I think the worst they behave, the more unreasonable they were, I think in many ways, the more it galvanised support behind me yet. 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.

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when I became politically aware that was talking about immigration. Why is it that immigration is such a taboo subject in this country? and if you come out in favour of limiting immigration, and that immediately paints you as being far right and all the rest of it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think I've long believed that the greatest intellectual

that we had in post-war politics in Britain were he not pal. I mean, hard to disagree with that. I mean, the man was extraordinary. The man was brilliant. The man was very far-sighted. And if I look at what he was saying about the common market in 1972, it's all come true. But the speech that he gave in 1968,

the speech that became known as the Rivers of Blood speech, I think it was so ill-judged in terms of its tone and the way that it was allowed to be interpreted, that it almost put the tin lid on having a sensible immigration debate for decades after that. And I think that, did real, real damage. When I was first elected in 1999, on all of my election literature, the word immigration didn't appear. Didn't appear. Why? Because net migration into Britain was averaging about 30,000 a year. It was still at a level that concerned some people, but it was, let's be honest about it, it was pretty manageable. And I looked at things in the late 90s and I compared assimilation, integration of different communities in the United Kingdom and compare it to France and Germany

or the Netherlands or anywhere else in Europe. You know, we'd done this better than anybody else. We really had done this better than anybody else. So I didn't even discuss immigration. And the same applied in 2000, 2001, 2002. When I saw, saw, when I saw that what Blair had done was to open the doors effectively to the world, but then especially to open the doors to eight and then 10 former communist countries, some of whom at minimum wages that were seven, eight times lower than the British minimum wage, some of which had not made the transition from being communist states to free Western economies. And when Mr Blair told us that 13,000 people a year would arrive as a result of this, I thought

this is the moment. This is going to become the issue. So I made a very big call in 2004, a very big call. I said that millions would come. I said huge numbers would come to Britain. I said it would have a very damaging effect on the life of lots of ordinary people. And so that was the moment. That was the moment that immigration became.

part of my political fight. Why does it matter so much? Well, of course, it doesn't matter if you're a cabinet minister. It doesn't matter if you're rich. It doesn't matter if you're a big business owner, because it means cheaper nannies, cheaper gardeners, and cheap labour. But it matters hugely to everybody else, because we did unquestionably see compression of labour, crises with our primary schools, just not simply being able to cope with the numbers, and, you know, disjointed communities where, you know, the numbers coming in that spoke foreign languages or from different cultures was so fast that we weren't getting that level of integration that we need to have a settled, happy society. So without immigration,

well, there were two things, actually, without immigration and without the internet, the UKIP would have remained a fringe force in British politics, but those two things propelled it to where it got to. And Nigel, all three of us, I came to this country in 1995 from a former Soviet country in Russia. And I remember actually the point that you make, the levels were so low. No one really cared about immigration. I think the public concern about immigration at the time was about 3% in 1995.

It changed when you got here. It changed when I got here, absolutely. I single-handedly ruined it. But you understand, I mean, coming from your background, you understand what I mean. Yeah, countries like Bulgaria and Romania, which are so much in the grip of organized crime, you know, the sensible thing to do would have been to be cautious, but we weren't. And of course, I was called all sorts of things for daring to say less at this. But that was how ordinary folk felt.

And you know yourself, having come here in 1995, that, you know, You would not find a country in the European time zone more welcoming and more open than this. In the world, Nigel. In the world. I make this point to people all the time, all the time. Britain is one of the most tolerant welcoming places in the entire history of the human race. And that really was what shifted my thoughts on a lot of this stuff because I saw after the referendum in which I was a very strong remain supporter at the time, suddenly the explanation for

why Brexit happened was that everybody. in this country was racist, and that's when I went, no, that isn't true. That's not my experience as a dark-skinned immigrant in this country. Yeah, that was disgusting. I mean, let's be honest about it. You know, talking to you guys, your remainers, but your Democrats, you accept the result. That's great. Of course. You know, that's how it should be. But frankly, the behavior of large sections of our elected politicians in Westminster to completely refuse to accept the result of the referendum to denigrate, as you've just pointed out, those who dared to vote against the establishment view. And then every attempt to prevent it from happening or make us vote again,

I honestly think that in a hundred years time, we will look back at the history of this period and school kids will be taught. It's one of the most shameful episodes in what is supposed to be a democratic country. So did you get what you wanted, Nigel, because we've got Brexit. We got the Australian-style point system that you were talking about, right? We've got a Tory government, but the numbers of people coming into the country are the same as they ever were. Oh, yes. I mean, look, you know, the Conservative Party are not a Conservative Party. I mean, there's just complete misnomer. And Boris Johnson and the sort of posh boys around him, they don't regard immigration as an issue. They used it briefly in the

referendum, very briefly in the referendum, because it suited their purposes to do so. And you're right, net migration is still running at very, very high levels. And we also face a very big dilemma as to what to do about Hong Kong. And I say big dilemma, because, you know, I am very concerned about the influence the Chinese Communist Party is having upon the free world, upon his own world too. And yet, you know, what would it mean if 300,000 or 3 million people came and settled in the United Kingdom from Hong Kong? So I think that is the time when the immigration debate will be back on. for the moment, for the moment, the conservatives are able to get away with something, which is the public perception is that because of Brexit, we've dealt with the issue.

The truth is we haven't. The truth is we haven't. And, you know, you ask me that question. I mean, the truth is that you never, ever get everything you want in victory. Sometimes losing's easier. It's a bit like trading the markets. You know, you've got a position on the markets. It's going wrong.

You can't sleep for a week. You get rid of the position. You take your loss. You feel almost a sense of relief that it's over. When you've got a winning trade, you always say, oh, I should have done it in a bigger size. I should have got out a bit earlier. Victory is never perfect.

But look, when I see what's happened with our withdrawal from the European Medicines Agency, and the fact we've been able to act in the interest of our own people with the vaccine rollout compared to the absolute shambles in Brussels. That, I think, that I think will be the lasting testament as to why being in control of national decisions and having those decisions made by people directly accountable to us is a better way of doing things. So, look, I'm not happy about the fishing deal. I'm very unhappy about Northern Ireland being cast out.

There are some ridiculous things going on, you know, with goods at our borders. But overall, overall, we're in a good place. And, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? Just a few days ago, we've learnt that the 25% tariff on Scotch whiskey, something that really hurts. You know, Scotland's got enough economic problems without that industry, with nearly 50,000 people working in and around Scotch whiskey, that because we've left the European Union,

we've been able to negotiate that tariff being suspended. So I think there are lots of arguments and lots of reasons that will say to us as the years go by that Brexit was the right thing to do. And I think those debates and those questions will now be asked in European capitals as well. And what do you think is going to be the future, Nigel, of the European Union? Do you think that they were going to go on

and become this federation of European states, which is what they want? do you think that the kibosh has been placed on it because of the pandemic and the fact that a lot of these countries have their own, uh, Brexit or whatever, it may be movement to leave? Well, they've already gone a long way, haven't they? I mean, you know, think about it. You know, why is the speed limit for lorries on our roads 56 miles an hour? Because it's 80 kilometres. You know, that was set in Brussels. You know, why is it that our swipe cards are going up in value? Because we've left the European Union. We're now free to choose

our own limits. I mean, the extent to which already the EU governs people's lives is pretty extraordinary. I've always taken the view that the greatness of Europe as a continent is the incredible linguistic and cultural diversity that exists within it. You know, drive a thousand miles across the Midwest of America. I mean, every gas station is the same. You know, everything's the same. You drive 100 miles across Europe. You meet completely different people eating different types of cheese. I mean, that's the beauty of Europe is that it is so diverse. And provided that it's democratic, it'll be a peaceful Europe too. And I think, I think in many ways, post-1945, and I mean, don't forget, we weren't occupied, were we? We didn't live through

what many of these people lived through in two world wars. Occupation, massacre of tens of millions of people. And the conclusion that was drawn was that the existence of nation states had led to these terrible wars. So what we have to do is to abolish nation states, but at no point to tell the public, that's what the plan is. I mean, that's where the EU started.

And it's not the existence of nation states that causes war. In fact, you're actually more likely to have wars if you have a remote, you know, bureaucracy that you can't vote for and can't remove. Provided nation states are democratic, you will have peace. I can't think of a single example of two mature functioning democracies going to war with each other. And that is something I think we should be thinking about very, very hard when it comes to the future of Europe. Nigel, and moving on now, talking about mature functioning democracies, one of the things that I think will probably disagree most on is your mate Donald Trump.

Now, I don't, no one here on the show has this sort of instinctive aversion to him where he's the devil incarnate and whatever. But I have to say, and there's plenty of people who are fans of Trump who watch our show and we have the same respect for them as we do for the rest of our audience. But were you not troubled, Nigel? You just talked about how the establishment in this country refused to accept the results of the referendum. Were you not troubled by Donald Trump's rhetoric about the fake news election? The election was stolen.

It was all the fraud resulting in people being in Washington resulting in people storming the capital. Poor woman got shot over it for really nothing. They were never going to change anything. Did you not regret in any way your support for him in that moment? So let's talk about double standard, shall we? Yeah. Let's talk about double standards, beginning on November the 8th, 2016. And for the next four years, the Democrats, CNN, and the New York Times did everything they could to delegitimize Trump's election victory.

I agree with you completely. I agree with you. I agree with you. It was endless. Let me just pause you there, just for one reason, which is we've covered all of that on the show a lot. We've talked about BLM and Antifa violence a lot. This are all things on which we can agree, actually. But Trump, what he did after the last election,

do you not think that was also irresponsible? Look, I said in mid-August, right, in mid-August, I was on Steve Bannon's show in Washington. He said, what's going to happen with the election? I said, well, before the virus, I thought Trump would win by a landslide. I said, but now what I can see for the first time in American history

is the mass transfer to postal voting, to absentee postal voting. I said, I'll tell you what I think will happen. Trump will win on the day comfortably, but lose as we get the count back over the next few days. I have witnessed at first hand how the postal voting system

is wide open to fraud and abuse in this country. I've seen it. I've complained about it for 20 years. It is not a safe system. It's why France effectively has just stopped it completely. Was Trump right to question the integrity of postal ballots? Yes. Was he right to point out that somehow the Republican Party had won seats across the state legislatures, had won seats in the House of Representatives, and that somehow this mass vote for Biden in the big cities looked anomalous. Yes, of course, he was quite right to do it. Was it, given the feebrile atmosphere that was around,

was it wise to do a rally on the 6th of January in Washington, D.C.? No, I don't think it was. But I, again, I mean, the way that that speech he gave that day was twisted and manipulated by the media was quite something. You know, he said to them go in peace. Some of them chose not to. So, look, yeah, I do think the 6th of January rally was a mistake, just given how fibrile it was.

but I think he is in many ways the most misquoted, the most misinterpreted political figure that I've ever seen. And I tell you what, right now, if you live in London, right now, you are getting letters almost bullying you to go onto a postal vote register. And I think this election integrity is going to become a massive issue in both British and American politics. But do you not think, Nigel, that some of Donald Trump's rhetoric was inflammatory, and as a result, that riled people up. And in a way, you could argue that

type of backlash was inevitable after you spent months questioning the veracity of the election. I think if you look at his words, if you look at his words on the day, they weren't. However, however, I think Rudy Giuliani's words were very questionable. Yeah, very questionable indeed. The thing that troubled me about it is well, Nigel, you know, we've had plenty of pro-trumbes. Trump guests on the show, and we give everybody a fair hearing as we've given you. But with Trump, when that happened, I started to get a sort of cult of personality vibe off the whole thing, how some people were reacting, people were claiming that it was actually BLM infiltrators who'd stormed all of this sort of crazy stuff. And that's when I went,

hold on a second, these people, some of these people really believe all this crazy nonsense. and that troubled me. Did that trouble you? Yeah, I never brought into any of that, and you wouldn't expect me to. No, of course not. You know, I said two days after the election, I said, however hard the Trump team try to overturn this result, they will not succeed. Knowing the abuses that take place for postal voting and proving them are two different things, you're talking to somebody that lost a court case in 2019 over postal voting in Pederbra. And so I always thought, I always thought that he would lose, and it wouldn't be possible to prove it.

Look, you say culture personality. He has, he's brought together the Republican Party in a way that no other human being could have done. He's broadened the appeal of the Republican Party in a way that no other, no other leader has been able to do. and you know you look at the rising share of black and Hispanic voters now turning up voting for Trump and the Republican Party you look at the class base you know many more working class people voting Republican than we did before now I know that I know that in the middle class suburbs they find him a little bit rich for their for their diet but whichever way you cut this you know I've seen it I've seen it on the ground this This guy has a level of personal support that is phenomenal.

And we're now moving into a new phase. And I think this is interesting, guys. So when Hillary lost in 2016, the Democrats effectively did not have a leader for the next few years. Schumer and Pelosi would speak for the Democrats. CNN and the New York Times effectively became the opposition. What you've now got is a leader of the Republican Party. party in place as an opposition leader.

And I think, you know, you saw his opening speech at Seaback, and I think he's going to prove to be a very, very effective opposition leader. I really do. Do you think he's going to run again in 2024? Do you know something? Every U.S. president that goes into the White House, when they leave after four years or eight years, they've aged about 30 years. They've virtually stretched out after the experience.

Trump looks fitter and more energized, you know, now that he did in 2016 when he went there. He, I mean, he will face a choice, won't he? He will certainly lead the party up to the midterms in 2022, all right? I'm absolutely certain of that. He will then have to decide whether he wants to do it again or whether he wants to become the kingmaker. my sense of him and who he is and the love him or hate him, the phenomenal drive. I mean, this guy is just amazing. I mean, I know a lot of people that work for him.

I mean, none of them can even keep up with him. I mean, he's just extraordinary. My sense is that he intends to run again. Francis, how is your cyber security? I've got a virus from an unnamed website. You're not alone, Francis. During the pandemic, British online infrastructure has faced an astronomical rise in targeted cyber attacks, which is what I'm sure happened to you. That is dreadful. What can I do to defend myself? That is where pockets seem come in. They offer businesses like ours a special solution that alerts us to hackers, crackers and malicious employees.

Like Anton. Not only that, they are the only seam provider to offer pay-as-you-go cyber defence for companies. They're British-based. Absolutely. And they're from Doncaster, so they need the work. I mean, you say that. Actually, they have kept their prices flat during the pandemic to make sure companies can get the protection they need.

Pocket Seam are offering Trigonometry fans a 10% discount. All you've got to do is hit them up by email at info at pocketseem.co.uk. And make sure the subject of that email is Trigonometry, and they will give you your 10% discount for managed cyber security. That email again is, M-F-O- at P-O-C-K-E-T-S-I-E-M-D-C-O-C-O-U-K. And don't forget to have trigonometry in your subject line so you get your 10% discount. Can I just say if you need that spell, you really shouldn't be running a business.

And Nigel, we've seen Trump lose the election. We've seen Brexit come to fruition. This has been all under the umbrella of right-wing populism. I don't know if you agree with it or if you disagree with it. But do you think that particular movement that you and Trump work the helm of has now run its course and we're now going to see a different political movement take the helm? No, I don't at all, actually. I mean, it's called right-wing populism, but actually a lot of the policies aren't right-wing at all.

And a lot of the supporters. I mean, look at this country. Who were the people voting, who were the people turning up for you giving the Brexit party? Lots of them. Old Labour voters. You know, I was like the gateway drug for Boris Johnson, wasn't I? Once they'd broken that link with the Labour Party, they were okay to move on and vote Tory in 2019.

No, I think that one of the lessons of the great shocks with the Brexit vote and with the Trump vote is that the liberal establishment learnt nothing from it at all. They are intent on continuing to pursue the same course. They've added to it a new level of wokeery that leads so many people just shaking their heads and wondering what's going on. So no, far from it.

I think this movement that says the capital cities are out of touch with flyover states or Middle England or whatever the equivalent in the end is going to be in Italy or France or Germany. No, no, no. I think Trump losing was kind of a hiccup along that path. I think politics, Western politics, has fundamentally changed, and I really believe it'll go on doing so. And moving on now to China, which you, I think you would say, is the next big

issue of our time. Could you explain why you believe that and what are the challenges we're going to face with China, in particular led by the CCP? Well, I mean, if we, you know, if we talked about a country that imprisons hundreds of thousands of one of its minorities in re-education camps that actually enforces sterilisation on rather large numbers of women. I mean, that alone, if we were to raise as an issue for somebody that might be a great trading partner and friend of ours going forwards,

the red light would go up immediately, but it doesn't. We have the handover deal with Hong Kong. where their autonomy was supposed to be guaranteed to 2047 and where democracy is literally being snuffed out with every week that goes by. And yet, we say very little. We have the origin of this virus that has done the world so much harm. And yet no one dares really criticize the extent of cover-ups that clearly took place in Wuhan. Why is it that China is able to buy up mineral resources, to gain influence in our country, to be allowed to be part of the 5G network, at least initially? Why is this all happening? And this is my take on it, all right? They have very cleverly subverted,

many of the ruling classes of our country. And I'm talking about senior civil servants, senior political figures, big businessmen and women. Just look at the advisory board of Huawei over the last five years. It's a roll call of all of those people. And, you know, the Prime Minister, I mean, he has a father that has a very good relationship with Beijing and and with the former ambassador in London, a brother that, you know, has worked for Goldman Sachs in Beijing, now works for them in Hong Kong. And when he's asked about the arrest of the democracy activist says, we must understand this is China now, he's got another brother that when he was university's minister, twinned, Reading University, with one of the technology colleges in China. I mean, is it any surprise that Boris declares himself to be a sinophile?

Because all the influences around him are pro, China, which is led by the CCP. So I just think that the more we talk about this issue, the more appalled people will be. I mean, for example, if I order on Amazon, right, it does not tell me when I'm buying a product where it's made. So it's quite difficult for me, even not to buy goods from China, even if I want to. you know, the Belt and Road strategy that's been outlined very clearly by President Xi, you know, that is an attempt to take over the world. And it's happening without much comment. And I think that poses a great threat to us.

I really do. I find it interesting as someone who comes from the Soviet Union. You know, some of the stuff that the Chinese are doing now to some of their citizens of what happened in my country. But at that time, people didn't really know it was happening until Solzhenitsyn came out and wrote the Gulag Archipelago and Word finally got out. But now we know, and we still seemingly don't care. Is it just the economics, Nigel? We're so tied in that, frankly, the ordinary consumer in the West, yes, we sort of care about the Uyghurs, but we want the cheap iPhone.

Well, actually, some of the polling on this is very interesting. You know, some of the polling is beginning to show a shift where consumers are beginning to say they are prepared to pay a bit more, not to buy goods from China. But it's quite difficult to avoid them in many areas, particularly, if the origin of manufacture is hidden, as it is with so many online sales. There is a shift going on, but it's not been more rapid

because very few people in high command in our country are prepared to say so. And not in every case, but in many cases, the self-same people that were happy to sell us out to Brussels are happy to sell us out to Beijing. Nigel, well, before we move on towards the end of the interview

and ask our typical last question, I was just, what do you make of Boris Johnson? Well, look, you know, he's a jolly fellow. He's quite good at spreading around a bit of optimism. So you make him sound like a dog, Nigel. tears you up sits on your lap I mean a new wallpaper that's causing all the trouble I mean I

have honestly got no idea what he stands for none absolutely no idea what he stands for he certainly isn't conservative in any way he pretends to be an election time but he's sort of a metro liberal really isn't it yeah and that's kind of where the Conservative Party has gone.

It was exactly that under Cameron and Osborne. And I always think, when you look at the sort of coterie of people, I mean, Cummings was an exception, but perhaps, but when you look at the coterie of people, you know, around Boris, you know, we kind of are back to the Oxbridge posh set running the country. And I think they're really very, very disconnected. But hey, they said they'd get Brexit done. It's imperfect, but they have.

They've got everything wrong with the pandemic, everything wrong, and yet the vaccine is saving them. But Boris's greatest attribute, and it's really back to Napoleon, not wanting good generals, but wanting lucky generals, is that first Boris Johnson, had to face Jeremy Corbyn. And now he's got some bloke called Starma,

who most of the electorate couldn't pick out of a lineup. So there is no real effective opposition. So I suspect that he'll be Prime Minister as long as he wants to be. And Nigel, does that mean we're in political crisis then, if we've got no effective opposition? I think politics is permanently in crisis in many ways. Yeah, I mean, look, the Labour Party needs to decide what it is. And you can see that Stama tries to ride both horses at once.

They've got to work out what they actually are. You could argue, you could argue that far from being in crisis, we're in a period of relative stability. You know, we had crisis, didn't we? Perpetual crisis, really. From 2016 to the end of 2019, it went on and on and on and on. We're now on a period of stability. That doesn't mean we'll get good government.

It doesn't mean we'll get good scrutiny. But the odd thing is that large sections of the electorate just don't care anymore. They've lived through the emotional trauma of Brexit. And frankly, what do they want to do? They want to get out of lockdown, get into the sunshine and enjoy their lives. politics has slipped way down people's agendas from where it was. So we are in for a period of relatively quiet politics. It's possibly no bad thing, to be honest with you, given how heated it has got.

But Nigel, thank you for coming on the show. We've got one final question for you, which is always the same, which is what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? The indoctrination in our schools. And it's not just in universities. it's not just at secondary level. Actually, from the ages of seven or eight, there are all sorts of very pernicious ideas,

being fed into the minds of young children about this country, their identity. And I think we need to have a good, honest, open debate about it because I'm very disturbed by some of it. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. Francis and I will have a lot to say, and a lot of questions to ask you. That's an issue we cover a lot.

And what you're really referring to is the culture, culture war, the battle over gender identity, the battle over our history, the battle over the heritage, the way we should think about Britain and the rest of the West is in a sort of balanced way, or do we only focus on the negatives? Why do you think that is such an important issue? Because I think we're poisoning the minds of our young children. I think we're not just poisoning them, but we're also, as a direct result of all of this, divided. everybody up. You know, Martin Luther King, who I think we all admire, not just for his oratory, which was, my goodness, me extraordinary, but for his message. You know, I want my four children

to be judged, not by the colour of their skin, but by the contents of their character. And now we're saying, ah, you're black, you're in that group, you're Asian, you're in that group, you're transgender, you're in that group. We're dividing everybody up. We're not bringing people together and to try and tell white people that somehow they are guilty and on some of the wilder fringes of academia, but somehow the United Kingdom, Great Britain. I mean, you know, we're as bad as Nazi Germany, according to some of these people. This is Marxist poison that has been fed into the minds of young people. And of course, its goal is to bring down the state entirely, to bring down capitalism completely. And yet, it's not being opposed

because we don't have people in politics robust enough to stand up to this stuff. And you know, you've seen it, you've covered it. You know, I mean, when, I mean, it goes beyond schools, for good to say, when senior police officers take the knee to an organisation that wants to defund them, I think we've got a bit of a problem. So yeah, I do think the whole culture war stuff, I think it is desperately important that we fight this and if we don't we'll finish up with a society

bitterly divided and with more enmity than we've ever seen before and on that upbeat note thank you very much Nigel for coming on the show if people want to follow you where's the best place to do

because you have a YouTube channel now as well don't you? They can get me on YouTube they can get me wherever they like I'm everywhere Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, websites Google me. I'm there. Okay. Nigel, thank you very much for coming on. It's been a great pleasure chatting with you.

And thank you all for watching. We will see you very soon with another episode or a live stream. All of them at 7pm UK time. Take care. See you soon, guys.