TRIGGERnometry - The Authorities Failed Those Girls - Julia Hartley-Brewer

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

Julia Hartley-Brewer is a conservative British radio presenter, political journalist, and newspaper columnist. Follow Julia on X: https://x.com/JuliaHB1 SPONSOR: Pure Gold. Protect your wealth with The Pure Gold Company. Get your free investor guide at https://pure-gold.co/trigger Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ 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. 00:00 Introduction 03:46 Does The Government Really Care About The Grooming Gangs? 17:24 Why Is The UK In Such A Bad Place? 27:31 Pure Gold Advert 29:00 Gen-Z's Lack Of Faith In Democracy 35:25 Julia's Thoughts On Reform UK and the Conservative Party 45:19 Are Labour A Centrist Party? 52:42 Politicians Are Treating Us Like Children 54:43 How Do We Get Out Of This? 01:12:14 What's The Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social workers wouldn't go to his home without a police escort. That's how dangerous they believed him to be. Oh, but let's leave him free to walk the streets. All of the signs were there and nothing was done because he didn't fit a category. I mean, there's such a failure on every single count, on both of those major stories, both of which involved terrible tragedies, terrible things happening to little girls. Grooming gangs were known, known by not doing it, no one knew,

were known by the authorities. even killed. People keep forgetting that. Some were even actually murdered. And yet there were times when these girls were found themselves prosecuted. So why is that happening? This episode sponsored by IP Vanish. IP Vanish protects every device you own. Your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi. Stream with added privacy. Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83. percent off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your

privacy with IPVanish. Julia, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much. It's been a very long time. It has. Well, it's not because we don't like you and we've asked you on. I've been busy. You've been busy. Been busy. Here you are. A lot to talk about. And a lot of very serious things to talk about in the last couple of weeks that, you know, the grooming gang is obviously exploding that conversation. We've had the Southpour. murder or sentence. What have been your takes on the last few weeks? I don't know.

I don't know about you. I've just been blown away by the whole thing, depressed by the whole thing, and incredibly incensed and angry by the whole thing, the abject failure of pretty much every single authority in our country. I mean, there's such a failure on every single count, on both of those major stories, both of which involved terrible tragedies,

terrible things happening to little girls, where there were 13-year-olds being raped. for years on end, gang raped by rape grooming gangs, or in Telford and Rotherham and Rochdel and it turns out another 45 other cities and towns across the country, or it was those little girls who were killed by Aksuribacana in Southport, and the other eight who was stabbed, oh, by the way, you know, the other sort of, you know, 20 odd who were in the room who somehow escaped, well, with just the mental scars, not the physical scars.

And in both of these cases, they're very, very different. And yet exactly the same issue, which is British authorities, whose job it is, whose job it is to keep us safe failed. And they failed again and again and again and again. But don't worry, guys, we're going to have inquiries of some kind or another, not necessarily the big public inquiries to Southport that we all think we need and do need. But we're going to have other inquiries. We're going to have investigations.

and lessons will be learned. Like it's a knife's fault. It's definitely the knife's fault. I think it's all down to Amazon. I think this country, our authorities, think that everything is down to nasty things being sold on the internet and hurty words on the internet.

And if you could just solve that, we'd all be fine. I think these people are so deeply wrong. I think they are immoral in terms of their failure to do the job. Because you know what, if you can't do that job, you have no bloody business pretending you can because people's lives are at stake.

And I think sometimes, I think, I can have work out, are they mad or bad? Do they just not care about, you know, people's lives? Are they so desperate to virtue signal and not say the wrong thing and not be called a bad word and to still go to the North London dinner parties they want to go to? Is that their concern? Or do they genuinely believe that if only Axel Rulipana

didn't have to wait an extra nine days to buy a knife from Amazon that the Southport attack wouldn't have happened. Or if only people didn't say nasty things about Pakistanis, then we would have been able to tackle the grooming gangs led largely by men of Pakistani heritage. It's always about words, it's about stuff on the internet, it's never about the actual problem. Do you think that's because, look, I think they do care.

I think it's hard to imagine a human being, although some exist, but it's hard to imagine. Most people. It's hard to imagine a government made up of people who don't care about little girls being killed. I imagine... You say that. You say that.

But let's go back to Southport. No, not Southport. So let's go back to the grooming gangs, okay? So for years on years, in dozens and dozens of towns and cities across our country, for 10, 20, possibly than 30 years, grooming gangs were known, known by... Not doing it, no one knew.

We're known by the authorities, known by the police to be going out, to be drugging and giving alcohol to... and threatening and grooming young teenage girls in care, in difficult circumstances, and then having them gang raped, tortured, beaten. Some were even killed. People keep forgetting that.

Some were even actually murdered. Young girls were turning up back at their care homes, bloodied and bruised. They were being taken to hospital pregnant. Some girls had to have surgery. They'd been so badly injured. Are you telling me? Are you telling me?

There were all these people who cared, the doctors and the care homes. workers and the social workers and the police and the council leaders and the council. You're saying they care, but they just didn't care quite enough to stop it. Could you imagine any of us? I like to think any of the audience watching this, my audience at Talk TV. I can't imagine any of us going, well, I'm worried about my career and paying my mortgage, so I won't do anything to try and stop this.

I can't imagine. I don't see how you can have any morality and not stop that. Well, on that issue, we had Maggie Oliver, the police whistleblower. Wonderful, MacGiola. Yes. Who did give up her career. She did. And she also talked about the fact that one of the comments that I can't remember who made,

it was either another police officer or somebody in position of authority, said that, oh, these girls, they should have just been drowned at birth or something. Wow. Because of what, because of how worthless they were considered. Well, they were slags, weren't they? They were hauls and slags, you know. The idea they were underage prostitutes. There's no such thing.

There's no such thing as you're a victim of rape. If you're under 16 and you're having sex, particularly with a man who's old enough to be your father or grandfather, you're a victim of rape, end off, nothing to discuss. And yet there were times when these girls were found themselves prosecuted, taken into a police cell, and the men who were perpetrating this evil against them were let off. I don't know how you can say, well, most people,

well, they might have been good people, they weren't good enough. In the interest of fairness, as somebody who has actually taught and taught in deprived areas, it is systemic, because let's say you notice bruises, on a little boy's body, you were taught refer it to your line manager, your line manager will then refer it up. So you have done your job. And all you can do is your job.

And if the bruises keep happening, you go to your line manager, what's happening about it? But you don't have that much power, particularly if you're at that echelon of the chain. No, absolutely. And we saw in the Sarah Sharif case, you know, she was taken out of school. When the school started nosing her bruises, a little girl who ended up being murdered by her father and her stepmother, they took her out of school. Well, first of all, they put her in her head to cover her up. So she couldn't, her bruises couldn't be seen on her face.

I mean, you know, evil people are quite clever at covering up their evil deeds. But the key thing is, if you're in a position of authority, if you're in a position of trust, if you are somebody whose job it is to protect people, if children are coming to you and saying, this is happening to me and you don't do anything about it, if police officers like Maggie Oliver are going to people and say, you need to do something about this, and you choose not to do it because you don't want to stir up community, tensions and all of this. I just think you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.

I'd also like to see your hard drive. I'm serious. I think we, I don't know. What was happening in, you know, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England for all the issues and many other churches as well. It's not just, you know, happening in certain churches. The cover-ups that went on and on

where a priest would be found to have been, you know, sexually abusing or beating or both children in one down, says, oh, well, can you move him somewhere else? This was routine. Oh, well, send him to a woman. Africa. It's okay if he abuses, you know, African children. This was routine in the church for decades. It's fairly routine even now. They'll pretend it isn't, but it is happening now.

We just lost Justin Wilby as the Archbishop of Country because his failure to deal with this stuff, stuff he knew and he didn't deal with. I just, there is just no circumstance when I can see myself. And I think you guys and people watching or listening to this can see themselves going, yeah, I'm going to put my career over saving a child from being abused. I just don't think you have any normal human morality if you do that. Yes. I'm in an agreement with you. And I also think we need to look at the fact that there's been systemic failings as well.

Take the case of the killer in Southport. He went into a school, his old school, armed with a hockey stick, targeting students, had to be tackled to the ground. I think by the deputy head. He literally jumped on him. And you go, so then why was nothing done about that? That is also a very, very serious. He admitted ten times he's carried a knife. He was definitely caught with a knife in school as well.

He was found on a bus with a knife again and again and again. What's amazing is he was sent off to this special schools, you know, to deal with these sort of kids, didn't bother turning up, only went for a few days in total. Social workers sent to his home. Social workers wouldn't go to his home without a police escort. That's how dangerous they believed him to be. oh, but let's leave him free to walk the streets.

I mean, that seems normal. These are the choices we make. And this comes back to, you know, the big debate that's been going on in the last couple of weeks, especially since we learned so much more detail about Axa Rubu Kavana after his, in the sentencing, which was one of the most harrowing things I've ever covered as a journalist. Not even in court, and I've sat in court through some horrible cases as a news reporter,

but covering that on air, reading out some of the details. and I'm in the studio, I've got a 60-year-old ex-military man who happened to be my guest that day, and he and I were both red-eye. There were a couple of times when I just had to say, I'm going to have to go to a break. I can't even, you know, as a mum, I can't read this out loud.

This is just too awful. And saying to people, if you've got kids in the car, you might want to tune out at this point, but we need to get the information out. But the key thing about this, so much information was known and so little was done. And then the whole debate became about whether the authorities would deem him,

as an extremist, was it because he has Islamic material, Islamic Arcada training manual, so was it, you know, which in itself is a terror offence, but whether that was, meant that he was, you know, an Islamist inspired terrorist, no, we thought he had other ideologies, obsessed

it with peer, with white genocide, spoke about that at the school. And this became the big debate. And yet, this is all about words. Everything with this government, and I think the last government as well, is about words, whether it's hurty words on Twitter, whether it's someone saying something that people don't like,

the language you use about a particular issue, as opposed to actions and deeds and taking action against people who would do us wrong. This guy was clearly a danger. He went from a 12-year-old choir boy, Christian Rwandan migrant parents, who was suddenly incredibly troubled, who called childline and talked about,

I want to kill people, what do I do about that? You know, bought knives, you know, beat up others, you know, being in Wendezden school, beat up the kids, his dad was so worried a week before the Southport attack that his child was going to go and commit a massacre at a high school which is what you planned to do. He begged a tax driver not to take him. Now, all of the signs were there

and nothing was done because he didn't fit a category because someone had to tick a box and go, oh, he's a far right terrorist, he's a Islamist terrorist, he's an insult, he said, well, he didn't fit any category. And so the computer said no. That's what happened. The computer said no and nothing was done.

He didn't respond to some of the efforts made by social workers and prevent. So they just kind of didn't bother. Same issue we have with kids who were murdered by their parents. Often again, oh, the parents wouldn't let us in the door. If the parents don't let you in the door, you bash the door down, you arrest the parents, and you take the kid into care. The failure to take action against people who are a risk to us, again and again and again and again,

Every single Islamist terrorist who has committed an atrocity in our streets in the last 20 years was known to the authorities. Often they've been followed by the authorities. They had clear links with Islamist terrorist ideology and they talked about it. They knew people. Nothing was done. So many criminals. Notting a murder the other year. There's a caretaker and two young students killed in the prime of their life.

So many opportunities to prevent those murders from happening. and they weren't taken. This is about joined up thinking and it's about putting the rights of law-abiding people from 80 to eight months to live safely in this country. And the only time we ever hear about civil rights in this country from the authorities is when they're worried about the civil rights

of someone who would potentially do us harm. They're never worried about the civil rights of everyone else. They don't care about those. I just think we've got things absolutely the wrong way around. You know, and you're talking about the words and the obsession with words, I think partly, Julia, it's because you can deal with words. Words is a very easy thing to, you know, you can control them. It's a very easy solution.

It's something that's easy to trot out in front of the television cameras. What's more difficult is to tackle the thorny issues, and in particular the truth. Yeah, basing up to the truth. And it's a dealing with the actual actions. It's hard. I'm not pretending it's easy. I mean, even when we talk about, say, terror. attacks. We don't hear about the terror attacks that have been stopped and the

magnificent work of the security services but there are too many that have not been stopped and there are too many criminals that are not stopped too many mad and bad people who are out about and when you get into the the madness of last autumn where we had the Labour government and the Tory government would have done it if they'd still been in power it was their plan too letting out convicted violent offenders sex offenders included letter them onto the streets because they had to clear space in prisons to put people who tweeted

hurty words in August about the Southport attack to let them put them in prison, some of them for a couple of years. You are in Alice through the looking glass territory. Yeah, and also as well you look at Kier Starmer's

approach to it and the way that he cracked down using the word far right. And I'm thinking to myself, you can only use that tactic once. It's only going to be able to be used once. And after that, it's going to be inflammatory more than anything. Well, I mean, I think, you know, far right, racist, bigot,

Islamophob, all that, that's been thrown at, well, that's been thrown pretty much everybody who voted Brexit. Since 2016, I've been called all of those things. I have none of those things. My audience had called that, you know, if you watch and listen to anything that isn't, you know, the BBC or Sky News, then you're accused of being that. If you say anything that's even fact-based, you know,

you look at like the latest office for national statistic data on population projections and you say maybe this isn't a good thing to add another 5 million people to the population over a 10-year period or pretty much entirely from immigration. Oh, that's a bit far, right? I mean, I'm stating official government facts

and projections and I'm giving a perfectly valid opinion based on the facts as I see them. But that's the thing. They throw this out. We had a report only this week, which we were never supposed to see, a home office review of events post Southport

so not just the Southport attack but also the riots afterwards and it's a review we don't know who wrote it was commissioned by the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper who has now said oh no no it's not government policy no no we weren't going to enact this this doesn't represent government policy then or now

but this is a review that says not only that well we shouldn't just be focused on ideology we should be looking at actions and things so ideology isn't the really the big thing to look at in prevent what part from the fact that 80 or 90% of all attacks in this country, which a terror attacks are from Islamist, 80 or 90% of the deaths from terrorist acts are from Islamists based on that ideology. Of course you should be focusing your resources on that.

But it also said that we should focus more on non-crime incidents, non-crime hate incidents. By definition, not crimes. The non-crime bit is the clue. But the idea that we should be failing to tackle a mad or bad teenager in his bedroom who's planning a massacre in high school and decides to go massacre little children at Taylor Swift-themed holiday club, but you're going to worry about literal non-crimes,

frankly is absurd. I mean, and dangerous and immoral, because it costs lives. But that's what the government has been looking at. So there are people right now on the government payroll, i.e., you're and my payroll, our taxes are paying their wages, whether they were freelance or on staff in the civil service,

who wrote a report, basically saying, yeah, the problem isn't ideology. The problem is, you know, some incels or lone kids on the internet and the hurty words. And, Julia, mad. One of the things I find interesting is you talk about how Labour and conservatives are united in this, really. They largely are. Effectively, right? So why is our country in this position?

God, there's a question and a half. But why is this happening? That's a question that a lot of our and your audience will be asking. It's like, how do we get here? I came to this country in 1995. Look, they're always going to be in a country of X million people, atrocities and people who are violent. And I remember Dumb Lane, very, very kind of, you know, terrible.

But this idea that sort of every few months, there's a massive stabbing in which people are killed or blown up or something. And that kids are stabbing each other? I wasn't a thing when I was a teenager? It was at times, you know, in the early 2000s, there were like the postcode wars. I wasn't a teenager. I guess what I'm asking is something else, which is these terrorist attacks and these incidents like the Southport stabbings. They're definitely happening more now.

So why is that happening? Why is our country in this position? because I hear you, lack of enforcement, look, I know a lot of police officers, I know people in security, so they work very hard. They're tearing their hair out at the failures, yeah. They're tearing their hair out at the failures, but I also think we'd probably accept

that they have a bigger workload on those issues than they've ever had. Why is that? I think there are lots of different social and demographic reasons. I think we have imported a lot of people to this country who don't like this country. What's very interesting actually is the high, rate of sort of violence instance from the children of immigrants.

Many immigrants come to the country who like, you know, they want to make a better life for themselves, all credit to them. You want to prove your family's lot. I've got no issue with that at all. But their children often feel from whichever background, not just Muslim children, many other children, will feel like, I don't quite belong. I'm kind of got a foot in both camps and I don't quite belong in either

and will feel sort of an otherness, a separateness. And that can breed problems. Why is that, Julia, just a bit of, Let's double click on that because we spend a lot of time in America, and I don't see that in America. America's got a very different attitude. Look, you know, I went to school in America. My mother lived there for a bit,

and we used to have to salute the flag and sing the national anthem every morning, my hand on my chest and sing the national anthem. And I said, well, I'm not American. I'm 7, 8, 9. My mom said, yeah, but we're in America. You do what, you know, you do what the deal is there. It's about, you know, you're not, you're not a Muslim. You know, you're a Muslim American.

You're an Arab American. You're an Italian. American, you're African American. It's very much, but you're American. It's a much prouder sort of thing. I think one of the biggest issues we got, and I don't think it's just the demographics, because that's, I don't, I'm not a, I'm not like,

ooh, all our problems come from immigration. Rubbish. No, they don't. There are problems are homegrown. Fundamentally, our problems are homegrown. I think it's in a political, media, academic elite, who, and public sector elite as well. And actually, you can add in quite a lot of the private sector as well. This elite who are just completely out of touch

with mainstream British opinion, I think the vast majority of what most people think in the country, who are signed up to an idea that everything about Britain's past, everything about Britain's values, everything about the white indigenous native population is wrong. It's bad, it's shameful. Our colonial past is terrible. Not only did we colonelize the world and we enslaved people.

Forget the fact that we were the first. empire to end slavery then you get some value points of that no the fact that you know the Industrial Revolution we're responsible we're responsible for more global emissions because we invented the Industrial Revolution oh what the reason why we're all alive right now and not dead because because we didn't have modern medicine and we don't have you know mass production of food and you know from fossil fuels I mean again I always say to you know from Dutch Revolution you're welcome world you're we're they they not we they are ashamed of everything

They're moral and cultural relativists. They think that all cultures are equal. Blacently untrue. Because you know what? There is not a mass exodus of people from Western liberal democracies desperately trying to get to Saudi Arabia, to Iran, to Russia, to China, to Nigeria.

They're not desperately trying to get to those countries. Why not? Because they're coming the other direction. Because we have a superior culture. We have a superior morality. Oh, you can't say that. You can't say that. Well, yeah, I can because it's true.

Because a culture where women and men are equal, where gay men are not murdered, simply gay women for their sexuality, where you're allowed to be your faith or not be a faith, to marry out of your faith, leave your faith. These are basic things, which we take for granted in the West. these are entirely new inventions

and they're inventions of Western liberal democracy and you've got an entire political, academic media class who are very uncomfortable about it. Even though they champion those things and they're all, you know, the trans pride flag-waving folk, at the same time, they will say that that morality that enables that freedom in our country, that that somehow is equal with the morality

and the culture of a country or a religion or a part of the world where none of that is the case. Now, you cannot hold both of those ideas in your head at the same time be a coherent human being, and yet that's what they're trying to do. They are ashamed of our past, they're ashamed of our present, they're ashamed of British people, they're ashamed and embarrassed the Emily Thorbury sneering at white band man with his England flag. How dare people say the England flag, or even the Union flag are owned by the far right? How dare you? They are my flags. They represent my nation. They're embarrassed by everything about.

British people and and I think that's how we got here I think that's how it's all been allowed to happen that lack of confidence in ourselves is why we don't act correctly and strongly enough perhaps on threats and we don't stand up for it because people are embarrassed and again then the urge to virtue signal to say the quote right thing so I don't think you can underestimate you heard to be thought of as a nice person and invited to the right dinner parties how important that is. I remember this. When I learned this, first of all, was, when I

was, I was at the Sunday Express, I was political editor to the Sunday Express, and we were constantly told, like, stuff we were writing about, maybe mass uncontrolled immigration isn't always a good thing. Just going to throw that out there. So this is like, no, yeah, turns out, yeah,

mass majority public opinion now. When I was campaigning for Brexit in 2016, and I would have so many people, I mean, you know, well-known names in the British media and politics who would say to me, but you're one of us. You know, you went to Oxford, you're a clever girl, you're in the media, surely, you know, surely you don't believe in this stuff. I mean, come on, it's like, yeah, I believe in, I believe in your democratically elected

parliaments and governments and self-determination and national sovereignty. And they looked at me like I'd said, I mean, the most evil, awful thing in the world. They don't mix with anyone who thinks differently to them. And if you do think differently to them, you are cast out. Do you think we're in a moment now where this can't hold on for much longer, simply because I think Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter

has changed things. And you can see with the grooming gangs, which is an issue, I think we should be fair, and say it was an issue that was both exposed and covered by the mainstream media for quite some time. Well, I mean, this idea that Tommy Robinson exposed it, No, he's Soddingwell didn't. Andrew Norfolk at the Times, you know, people like Maggie Oliver.

On the one hand, on the other hand, certainly I would say it was not covered nearly enough and consistently for a long time. And what we then saw is Elon Musk and others amplifying the voices of survivors and campaigns, et cetera, online. And so now it's starting to feel to me like because of that freedom, you can't really keep the lid down on all this stuff anymore. I think two things have happened. One is when you've called everyone far right, I mean, then it has no meaning anymore. And people, you know, the Dominic Frisbee, so we're all far right now.

But that's it, okay, we're just going to laugh back at you. Those words, the racism, bigotry, those words don't have the power anymore to shut people down. People, no, I'm not having it, you know. But I agree with you on X and the freedom, I mean, on so many different issues to talk. But I think also there's been an, Emperor's new clothes moment.

You know, suddenly the crowd has stopped shouting for just long enough for us to all hear the little boy go, but the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. But what you've been telling us for years isn't true. You've been failing us. You've been lying to us and failing us, telling us what you think we want to hear and then abusing us. I mean, we've been in a, the British people have been an abusive, coercive relationship with the British state for the last 20, 30 years. We have been, we have been, we have been, we have been sort of controlled and, and pat it on the head and talk, there, there, there, don't won't, no, no, no, we'll deal with

that. Don't you wear your pretty light heads? And then the exact opposite has been done, and we've been gaslighted, and we go, but you haven't done what you said you'd do. Yeah, we have. Yeah, we have. And I just think, I just think there is just sometimes these little moments where everyone goes, hold on a minute. And the truth is out there and it can't be ignored anymore. Let me introduce you to the people I work with to protect my family

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the outraged millennial was like, well, young people, but, and then I thought, well, let's look at it from the perspective of first principles. Yeah. You voted to lower immigration. Immigration hasn't gone down. Well, though, Gen Z didn't vote for that. Yeah, but we voted. They're like 70, no, they're like 30 to 17 year, 27 year old, something like that, yeah. But we voted to lower immigration.

Immigration wasn't lowered. In fact, it was raised time and time and time again. Policies that we demanded have not only been ignored, they have also done the exact opposite. So when Gen Z turn around and go, I don't really have an argument, do you? I do, I do, because as I said, there's a reason why people, everyone talks about

strong around politics, but no one is moving to those countries desperate to make a new life there, they want to come to democracy. As Winston Churchill famously said, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others. It really, I mean, again, one of the reasons I was a Brexiteer. You know, I want democratic accountability. So my thing was,

I didn't think that us not being ruled by Brussels was going to immediately make Britain a better place and get more accountable policies. My thing was, yeah, but when they bugger it up, as I know they will, under Boris Johnson, Liz Druss and Rishi Sunak and Kirstamman and everyone, at least we can blame them and they can't say,

what can I do? Brussels wouldn't let us do it. Those are the EU rules. I want to know, you know, you're accountable to me. I'm a voter. You're accountable to me, not to them, and I want you to act. And when you fail to act, you will be punished, which is why the Tories are not in power and why Labour is in power now. Let me push back from that. So what about, okay, the kid will go, right, what about illegal immigration, Julia? We've done nothing to solve it.

And whenever we've tried to do something, it's a European... That is actually not true. We have processed lots of assignments by granting them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one, they solved it. Then they're not going. There's no more back to us.

The European Court of human rights. Democracy does not ensure that you get everything you want from any government or that they will do what you want. What it ensures is you get to get rid of them when they fail. So, Tories have failed. Labor will fail. Okay, well, who do we choose next time? The Tories aren't going to get back in unless the Tories are believable

that they will actually take on those issues that they've failed in the last 14 years. Reform need to be viable. Realistically, we need to probably see a uniting of the right in whatever form to defeat Labour on that front. Do I trust any of them right now? No, I don't. But you know what? That doesn't mean democracy doesn't work.

But what I found most worrying about that is that you say it was like 52% of young people basically said. They didn't see the point of democracy and our country would do better under a strong man, a strong leader who didn't have to, you know, deal with voters and elections, which is all very well. But again, you can actually have someone who can drive the economy. I mean, look at China under Xi Jinping. The economy is booming forward. Yeah, and sorry about all the people who were in prison and the people in the slave labor camps and people who get, you know, beaten and tortured and disappeared because they talk about democracy.

You know, sorry about those people. People are under a complete illusion. And again, that is part of the whole, the elites, the ruling classes, not defending our values, not defending freedom of speech, freedom of thought. Yeah, remember whoever thought that would be an issue, not defending democracy, the importance of voting, not defending these fundamental basic tenets of Western liberal democracy, thinking that it doesn't really matter, you know, and it does. And these things need defending every generation.

But if you've got a class that are in charge of the national conversation who don't actually really believe in any of those things. If when you do have, you know, the biggest national public vote for anything ever in this country for Brexit, and you, if you're the prime minister now, Kirstama, spend four years of your life trying to stop that from happening to undermine a democratic vote, you're saying that it doesn't matter. I mean, it's untenable. These people think that Donald Trump is unfit for public office,

of what he did to try and overturn the 2020 election. And I would agree with them on that front, even though I'm massively welcome him getting elected this time round, given the options available. Pierre Stama spent exactly the same amount of time doing exactly the same thing. I mean, but apparently he's all right, because he was doing it on the left. I just think there was absolutely an answer to those teenagers

and those 25-year-olds to say that, no, our values and our system is, it's not perfect. But it's better than the alternatives. I do agree with you. But then when we talk, for instance, we interviewed Liz Truss in this very room. And she said that she can do anything because of civil servants. That they try and implement policies and that the civil service rebuff them. Then you go, well, do we actually live in a democracy?

Or do we have this unelected, unaccountable blob? Who are actually in charge? Well, we do. But here's the thing. Let's get rid of them. And I love that's one of the things that. We've told we've got this world-class, first-class civil service. I mean, they kind of forget, you know, your civil servants.

You're civil, so you're not political, and you're servants. You don't get to decide. You advise, you give information to the person who is elected. And we don't have a system where our cabinet ministers are experts in the subject. The civil servants are supposed to be the experts. But then the choices are made by democratically accountable politicians. If they refuse to actually stand by that on both sides, then yeah, they deserve to be ousted. But I would like a Trumpian type revolution.

We literally go, you know, if you're not prepared to do what you're told by your cabinet minister, unless, you know, life is at stake, you know, I'm sorry, bye-bye, go and get another job. That you're not welcome here. And the ability to hire political activists in those roles. Because we have a political activist civil service, but they only only. have one set of views. But even if I agreed with everything that the civil service was generally,

I still would think it was wrong. And with that in mind, I don't see either the Tories or Labour are obviously doing anything about that. And reform are interesting if only in the sense that they seem to be, according to some polls this week,

number one in Nepal. What do you make of them? You mentioned that the only way for them to succeed would be to unite. Well, not only way, but it looks like. It looks like it at this point. It's early on. But the thing that I find kind of interesting is just talking to people on both sides of that divide.

They hate each other as only next door neighbours can. Yeah, absolutely. So that doesn't seem like a likely outcome to me. It doesn't. And Nigel Farage feels like he had his fingers burned back in 2019. We haven't ever forgets. The reason why Boris Johnson got an 80 majority was A, it was up against Jeremy Corbyn. and B, because reform stood down some sort of 250 candidates

and gave the Tories a clear run. Nigra Foward said he had his fingers burnt, and then he wasn't happy with the Brexit deal that Boris Johnson did. Okay, his hands were remarkably tied by Theresa May before that, so I'm not sure that's a completely fair criticism. But fundamentally, he says, no, I mean, no thanks, I'm not doing it anymore. And to a certain extent, the party, as the Tories are now, I can't see how they can actually unite with reform.

I mean, Kenny Bagnock has made it very clear that's not what she's going. But I think also so many Tory MPs are, I mean, they could be Lib Dems. But they could be Lib Dems. But a lot of them went off to be lit Dems. I won't tell you who said this exactly, but I haven't to be. I'll be able to guess. I don't think you will because there's quite a lot of people who fit this description because a Tory MP when I asked him in a private conversation,

why they lost the last election he went oh yeah we lost to the Lib Dems we need to move to the left it's literally like and there's quite a lot of those people and this is when people say to me well you don't win elections anywhere but the centre ground but here's the thing they don't know where the centre ground

they think the centre ground is what is actually an extreme leftist position the British public aren't extremely actually they're quite on the left when it comes to economic policy nationalise this nationalise that you know but loads of public services and things but actually, you know, on culture issues, on things like education.

The British public and on remotely left-wing. Yeah, on crime and justice and immigration. No, very much. Centre-right, but centre-right. We've never had a successful hard-right or far-right party in this country. But by the way, the EU is wonderful and lovely. Yeah, they're far-right and literally, literally far-right, not hard-right, not, you know, anti-immigration parties.

I'm talking properly far-right parties. Do very well. But this is the thing. I just think the conservatives, they stop being conservative. Conservative party members are still conservative. We're not talking about policies that are, that when reform, their policies, there's not a single reform policy that is not something that would be considered completely reasonable 20 or 30 years ago.

So do you see that as the vehicle through which our democracy is more reflective of the views of the public? I mean, it depends, isn't it? What's so different here? from the rest of mainland Europe is our voting system. And I'm a big fan of first-past-the-post. I don't like coalition governments that take six months to put together and can fall apart because the Greens have decided

to leave coalition. No, thank you. I want a government. Here's your choice at the election, you know? This or this. I do think the barriers to entry to become a viable opposition or a government for a political party in this country

is very high. perhaps it's not a bad thing that it's very high. You need to be a serious organisation. I think the financial barriers are too high, certainly, and I don't know what, I'm not quite sure yet in my head what we do do about that, because I'm not a big fan of multi-billionaires funding political parties in that way,

but whichever the parties, whether I support or not. But we've seen, I remember you think back like 1983, because I am that old, the SDP Liberal Alliance, the SDP got a handful of seats, and they've got sort of 20-odd seats between them. with 25% of the vote. You know, and that's easy to do. Lib Dems talked an awful lot about changing the electoral system.

They mention it every now and then now, but with 70 on MPs not so bothered anymore. So I think the key thing for reform, reform are going to need to be around the 30% mark to get a serious number of MPs and be a serious force. But I think they're already, their five MPs, I think already are having such an impact

by refusing to tow quite literally a party line in the Tories or Labour, in not asking difficult questions, in not being afraid of being jeered at or booed or tutted in the commons and just saying the stuff and people want them to say, I think, I mean, certainly for my audience at talk,

they are absolutely hitting the right note. And if they can keep their act together and we don't see some of the sort of selection of candidates that we've seen that's been a disaster in the past, I think they'll go a long way. And I can't see Nigel Farrow being willing to do a deal with the Tories, but I equally can't see the Tories

being willing to go to reform positions, a lot of things, or, crucially, even with Kemi Badernock as leader, who is someone I do like a lot, being thought of as credible on that, given everything they've said before and have failed on. And why do you like Kama Baderna?

Because she actually has talked the talk on some key issues. Trans-ideology and its attack on women's and girls' safety and and rights. She has talked to talk on that, and walked the walk on that and stood up on that, gone out of collective cabinet

responsibility on that. She has also been very open, and again, much easier for her again as a woman of Nigerian descent to talk about cultural issues and stuff and be open about that and we say we need to tackle that and I like her for that.

I'd love to know where she was during lockdown. Where people stood in lockdown is still a big determinant for me. Did you fight against Brexit after it had been voted for? Are you a Democrat? That's simple as that. No. Liberal Democrats. Now, the Liberal nor Democrat.

Done. People who kept quiet on lockdown long after it was blatantly obvious that lockdown, by the way, this was around June 2020. If you were still not campaigning against lockdown in early 2021, I want to know where you were and I want to know your reasoning because unless you were trapped underneath something heavy

and unable to reach a telephone or a Zoom call, then I want to know where you were. It's a good proxy for independent thought, isn't it? But also the willingness to say stuff that's unpopular at the time, but that is right. Yes, absolutely. It's interesting, yes, sorry, I've lost my train of thought. Go ahead.

You can't get the quality of questions. You know what the problem is, and there's something else, that I think, this is actually one of the main reasons I voted Remain. It's not because I didn't agree with some of the arguments for Brexit. It's not because I didn't think that if it was handled capably, it would be a success. They're a perfectly good reasons to have voted Remain. But my problem was, I looked at the, I looked at our politicians,

and I go, none of you are competent enough to be able to deliver this. But you thought the European commissioners were? The status quote for me was better than the calibre. I said genuinely, and I know I popped on it a couple of times because I do think that was a really telling moment in British modern history. There's not a single day when I would not put that in my top ten greatest days of my life. And I've had some great days. But Julia, but I don't want to talk about Brexit, because for me it's done and whatever else.

I'm talking about calibre of politicians. I'm talking about confidence. think, when people talk about the poor caliber of British politicians, and people say, well, when are you going to rob politics? I couldn't tell the line. There's no way. There's no way. I mean, my skeletons in my closet.

I mean, they're mostly out and about, I'm pretty sure. I just think it's a terrible, terrible life. I mean, I can see a point when at some point I go, right, I'm done. I'm going in. I'm going to have to do this. But we criticize politicians, but we don't do ourselves. And also people expect politicians to be, have this perfect squeaky, clean life. Or to never say, well, I don't.

Most people do it. Never to say anything. rightly wrong, never to have a gaff. I mean, I mean, people have such ridiculously high expectations of politicians. And I know they've got, oh, they're paid so much. Not compared to actually a lot very well. They're not paid well. Exactly. They're not. For that job, for that job, seven days a week. I wouldn't do it for ten times what they're paid. No, it's a wrong job. And I think, you know, we have to, you know, if you're not going to stand yourself, I don't think that's a fair criticism. Interesting. I mean, that is a fair. My line on that slightly more

cowardly perhaps is that we should pay them a lot and then we would attract higher calibre people. I don't think it's to pay for people a lot. I think it's a lot for people now. Like, you pay people a million pounds a year. You're going to get a trust. I'm not joking. I don't want people motivated by a million pounds a year. I'd like people motivated by doing some. Because I don't think money is everyone's motivation. Yes. And I don't think it should be everyone's motivation. But people who could make a million pounds running a business. But a lot of these people have. Like, there are loads of MPs on all sides who've actually made a load of money and now they want to go to politics. But then people slack off someone like Rishi.

soon out, oh, isn't it awful? You're so rich. I haven't got an issue with someone being rich wanting to go into politics. So, I mean, that's a harder life. I think it's the life. I think it's the judgment. But we need to be holding them to account for the right stuff and not the stuff that doesn't matter. On that, actually, what I

know my train of thought has come back to me. I've seen some interesting moves from the Labour government in terms of West Streeting and puberty blockers. In terms of Kirstama saying, we're not going to be climate extreme. although I think they probably are.

They are. But at least, but there is a, they're attacking the Tories for immigration. It sort of feels to me like he's trying to reposition his party as a more centrist. You're shaking your head. I think this is all absolute bollocks.

I think the Kirstarmer doesn't believe anything that he says. I don't see how you can be, you know, you can't be a man who claims that 99.9.9% of women don't have a penis, but not 1% of women don't. It means roughly 30% of women in this country. I do this at least once a week on my show. To take a look down, nope, still haven't grown one.

Can't be me? Can anyone else please make a check so we can find these women? This is a man who, a few years ago, voted against a third runaway at Heathrow, which, by the way, has been a political topic, not since the day I started as a political journalist, I hate to tell you 30 years ago. It's been a political topic, literally,

since before I was born, for God's sake. He boasted against it on the basis that, The biggest issue for facing Britain was climate change. This man's an idiot. Well, he's either an idiot or he's a liar. I don't know where. I think he might be both. Well, then we know what he is.

He doesn't think that immigration is too high. He doesn't think there's an issue with male rapists being put into women's prison cells. We know he let the Labour Party in Scotland vote for that with the SMP. There are men in prison right now in women's prison cells. now today in England. That's still happening on his watch. We are in this mad situation where anyone who puts Ed Miliband

in as your, and I hate this job title, his job title is Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary. As I've said to every one of the people in that job, Grant Shaps and others, it's energy security or net zero. Pick one, you can't have both. They are mutually exclusive. We've got a Prime Minister and a Chancellor

obsessed with growth. I mean, we're not going to see gross. Certainly not under these guys. We weren't seeing much under the Tories. You're not going to have growth while you've still got net zero. You have to pick one. Those are mutually exclusive. You're not going to have an AI revolution here when you've got net zero because of the cost of electricity to generate. You need it to be generated for it. All of these things are completely mutually exclusive. Again, they're either too stupid to realize that. That's worrying for people who've got great degrees, great universities. They've been

very successful. Or they don't care that they're lying to us. Both of those, Or there's a third option. What's the third one? They're ideological. They're staunchly ideological, which means. Yeah, which means that you can hold two contrasting. But that's also irrational. On all three grounds, I would say, should not be in public office.

That I agree with you. That said, is that any worse than the Tories talking a good game? Oh, we did get immigration down. Oh, this is always terrible. And then doing nothing about it. And I mean nothing about it. And they're the ones I hold responsible on net zero. I mean, why we've got an entire.

policy to completely ruin our economy because Boris Johnson wanted to get a blowjob from his then girlfriend at the time. I mean, that's basically why we've had a lot of this madness. I mean, it's really that. When you put it like that, it does sound unreasonable. Boris Johnson, wasn't a green zealot before he was with Carrie. I mean, no, feds carry, but no. Boris Johnson doesn't believe in anything. He never has. Boris Johnson is like Donald Trump. He believes in himself. Not to make it crass, but her blowjob technique must be incredible. It's worth ruining an entire economy. I don't think it's worth de-industrialising Britain for, in fairness.

I mean, do you haven't experienced stuff. Sorry, Harry. Sorry, Harry. But that's where we are. Policy made up on the hoof, not evidence-based. Again, ideologically driven by wanting to, I go on about this, but I'm telling you, wanting to be seen as the right kind of person at the North London Dinner Party circuit.

It's so true. There's so much of that going on. And I can't reconcile this. with the fact that what I said to you earlier, which is when I meet politicians and I hear, or maybe it was in a previous interview did, I talked about the fact that when you meet politicians and you really sit down and hear the reason they got into politics.

They're like nice people. They're well-intentioned and they really want to help and they really want to make things better. But at the same time, I can't reconcile that with this. Yeah. It's so pathetic. My view is always, it's like with Ed Miliband, he's got a PPE degree from Oxford the same as me.

He's got no more qualifications than I have in the field. you know, I mean, astrophysics, biology, chemistry, whatever it is, you know, you need to know to understand climate change. He has no more qualifications to me. Neither do his advisers, interestingly. But apparently he thinks, you know,

that two plus two equals 7,024. I mean, he's mad, he's crazy. It's not possible to look at any of these numbers and to think that his policies make sense. The only thing that we've seen changed in the ludic net zero policies, other than the fact that every single year we're going to have a pushing back of things like,

when the gas boiler ban does or does not come in, or when you have to have these heat pumps that, by the way, don't work in housing like we've got in the UK put in, or EV mandates. Everything's going to be pushed back because it's all unachievable and undesirable. But they've managed to change this policy of carbon-free electricity by 2030, 100% carbon-free. Mad.

I mean, insane, unachievable, impossible. even if it was it'd be too expensive, insane. But they've now taken it down to 95%. Equally insane, unachievable, impossible. But that's where we're going, and we're going to be seeing that. It's a lie. They must, on some level, know it's a lie, but they pursue it anyway.

And I think you're right. I think it's kind of a religious celetry. It's Greta Tunberg is our Joan of Arc, sainthood. But we can't continue to be ruled by this. And now people are more and more aware. A few weeks ago, we almost had blackouts because the wind wasn't blowing and the sun wasn't shining and we had to pay two million pounds an hour

for a gas storage station to be put on to make sure that we had enough, we had enough. We are importing gas from abroad to our country so we don't use our own gas because our wind generator is enough or they have too much we can't store it or our solar power isn't enough to keep our lights on. And at the same time,

we've got submarines from the Russian Navy patrolling our seas to check where our cables are, electricity and otherwise, so they can cut them in a time of war. But yeah, in no way is this a national security risk. We're one of the world's biggest economies in the 21st century. We are literally switching off our ability to create our own electricity and other energy. We have terminated our ability to make Virgin Steel. That might be useful in a time of war. do you think? Well, there won't be a war. Sorry, have you seen Ukraine? Have you seen what's

happened in the Middle East? Has anyone heard what Xi Jinping's aims are with Taiwan? We are literally, I mean, we're not cutting off our nose to spite our face. We are literally deflailing our entire bodies to spite our face. You know, when you were talking

about this and you were breaking it down, what it seems to me is that politicians have infantilised all of us. They're not telling us the truth. Yes. They're talking to us like children and we're living in this very nice fantasy world where the youth... Green jobs. Yeah, green jobs where we are going to be able to save the planet. Lead the world. And lead the world. And sorry to say it like this,

but it just ain't going to fucking happen. And we're in a fantasy land at the moment and... We're going to impoverish ourselves and we're trying to impoverish the third world as well. That's what's even more immoral. Not only, not only making it harder for people. Okay, if you're well off, okay, your eating bill goes up, but you can still afford it. Oh, you have to have one less ski holiday. Oh, well, I'm so sorry.

If you're genuinely worried about putting the third bar on your gas heater on, you know, that is the difference between living and dying for someone elderly, okay, or someone disabled. That is that serious. Cold kills. Heat doesn't kill anything like. Nine times more people die from cold than die from heat. It's immoral to make energy that expensive.

What's even more immoral is to tell the people in the developing world, you must not have the benefits of fossil fuel and industrialisation and modern electricity and cooking facilities and refrigeration. You must not have this because saving the planet. It's so deeply immoral. The most moral thing we can do is a plentiful fossil fuels for everyone. Make energy cheap again. The example I always use is in 1947 at the time of partition.

Average life expectancy in India was 32. Today it's over 70 and the reason is they've got richer and the reason is they've been burning fossil fuels. Now you want to tell them half their children need to die in infancy again that that's your moral position? And you want to tell Africa,

which is still at that poverty level, that they have to stay there and we'll give you some windmills. I mean, I can't think of anything more immoral. So how do we get out of this, Juliet? Oh, God. How are these big questions? Well, yeah, I think it's worth asking.

You know, some people I've heard talking about a bounce off the bottom kind of... Do we have to hit rock bottom? We have to hit rock bottom at which point, you know, it speaks to a lot of conversations we've had with people recently where it just seems to both Francis and I that so many of the problems that our societies now face are about a fundamental unwittingness to face the truth. Yes.

And so, but people don't want to. You don't want to hear that there's no... that actually we can't continue to expand our benefits bill. We can't continue to expand our public services necessarily, even though we'd like to. We don't have the money to do that. We could ensure decent health care, lots of other countries manage it

if we didn't expand our benefits bill. I mean, yeah. So, but ultimately, we are living beyond that means and have been for a very long time. And we've been printing money to pretend that that's not happening. That's what we've been doing. And ultimately, at some point, we're going to have to face that and take some very, very unpleasant and difficult decisions

that are going to be painful for everybody. But it just seems like until there's some kind of catastrophic event, no one is going to be prepared to do. I'm waiting for the blackouts. I'm genuinely, I think we are going to head to blackout. They're going to do everything they can to prevent a blackout because they know that that is the point when people go, are you kidding me?

We can't keep the lights. You know, it's a trauma? I mean, someone, my house who was messaging, have you had a problem with your water? Because our water's been cut off. Oh, yeah, you know, Thames Water, we're just doing some roadworks. Maybe it'll be on by the time I get home. But, yeah, what a pain.

You know, yeah, imagine that with your electricity and you gas. For days or weeks on end or the whole country that are happening to. That is catastrophic. Okay, this is catastrophic. So I think there's only a matter of time because if you keep shutting down nuclear power stations and gas power stations, we don't have battery storage and the wind doesn't blow

and the sun doesn't shine enough. And there's some problem getting, getting gas and electricity from mainland Europe, that is what's going to happen. I think that is what is going to have to happen, reality check. In the same way that every time, on the net zero thing,

every time we get close to the mandate, for instance, on the number of electric vehicles being sold, you know, these 15,000 pounds fines for companies for each non-electric vehicle they sell. I mean, it's, again, I keep saying that word insane, but it is. Do you remember, I mean, we're, we're a bit too young for this,

but when we got rid of the horse and cart, there's the main mode of travel and people moved to motor cars. They didn't have to find the people making the holes in cars. They didn't have to bribe people to buy them. They went to the better mode of transport. People will buy electric vehicles when they can afford to charge them and when they are cheaper and blah, blah, blah.

That's not going to happen with mandates and things. So each time these things get shuffled a little bit further away, the heat pump thing, they get shuffled a bit further away. You wouldn't have to have a mandate on heat pumps. If everyone knew heat pumps were working and they gave you cheaper heating and actual heating, you wouldn't have to do any of this. So the reality of the mandates is always the giveaway.

That's where you know. I think we're going to have to have the blackouts. I think we've hit, I like to think, God, I hope we've hit rock bottom. No, on the woke agenda. That's nothing. When you watched a man, not a trans man, but a man who's quite clearly, physically born, biologically, chromosomely, a man,

smashing his fist, into a woman boxer's face. And it was on primetime television for billions of people to watch. And the great and the good was saying, well, that's equality for you. And the rest of us who went, what the actual was that?

There are moments when the reality, oh, well, it's just a weight lift. Does it make a difference? Or it's a tennis bag. No, that was real to women. That was real. I think when we saw that point with Nicholas Sturgeon, it was part of her downfall,

though not the only reason. when we had in Scotland that moment where it was wonderful. Finally the BBC asked a question about trans. I mean, literally, the one BBC journalist you bothered to ask. You know, was a trans woman who was, basically, who is, let's face it, a man, who is a double convicted rapist, should they be in a women's prison with women, often victims of rape themselves? The fact that she talked utter, mindless, gobbledygook and nonsense. It was just nonsense that she was.

spoke. Just totally exposed the madness. All the people have been going I don't know what your problem is, what difference does it make, these trans people aren't doing anything to you. No, no, but when a man who was committed two rapes and is convicted of them puts on a wig and pink leggings over his

large dangly bits, doesn't even but tend to hide anything, fake booths, and then says, I like to be in a women's prison and the authorities say well, yes, of course you should be in a women's prison, Ila Bryson. And then, I mean, and that actually that was happening. That was, that was, that was what's going to happen and it's still happening now.

That's the moment when people go, whoa, sorry, are you serious? And I think you need to... Hold on to where it's still happening now. Most people aren't to where it's still happening now. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But I think we are at that point where people are saying, no, you have to hit the point of peak madness

or the biggest low before people wake up and they can't cover up the double think anymore. You're having that Orwellian moment where it can't, these two things can't both be true at the same time. I think I understand where that sense of... I'm trying to be an optimist. That's what I was going to say. That sense of optimism is coming from.

And I feel it because I think when you look at what's happened in America, when you look at what's happening in Argentina and the Malay, when you look at the freedom to actually express opinions without fear of being cancelled or destroyed on X, etc. It feels like there's a movement of pushback. The reason I'm skeptical that we've hit Rob Bottom is I think our country is in a very different place at the moment to those other things. So to the extent that all of us now live more on the Internet than we do in our country, which kind of is true for a lot of us, I think that I understand the sense of optimist. But I think in the UK, I don't think we've remotely hit Rock.

We haven't. Okay. I do worry about that because the big hope went certainly on the day one of the Trump presidency, the executive all. orders. Again, this is a mind-blown thing. One of his first executive orders was to recognize there were only two genders. I mean, male and female. Yeah. Because by the way, gender and sex used to mean

the same thing. Yes. And in my head, they do still mean the same thing. Call yourself Sheila. I do not care. I'm not interested in what you wear. I don't care. But you're a man or your woman and there are sex-based rights based on these, on the biology, not what you think on a Wednesday afternoon. End off, nothing to discuss. Whether it's sport, prison, jobs,

whatever it is, you know, enough. The fact that we needed an American and president to sign an executive order to establish biological fact as law, I think is really quite scary. My hope is that we are, we've always been downstream from American madness, all the wokeery, the black lives matter,

the trans ideology, frankly an awful lot of the anti-Semitism. Let's call it what it is, not anti-Israel, it's anti-Semitism that is happening on campuses. And a lot of that, we're downstream from that. So my hope is it does flow, but yet maybe America has hit peak sooner. And again, their political system enables that sort of work to change, whereas we would need, you know, Kirstama, well, I mean, he ain't going to do it anyway.

But even if we had Nigel Farrow, she's prime minister, and we know he stood firm on a lot of these issues over the years, again, you're going to have to take on the civil service, you're going to have to take on the NHS, you're going to have to take on the military, you're going to have to take on every single, you know, school. I mean, this stuff is, oh, it's in every, it's in every, corporate PR. I mean, God, it's in my building, for goodness sake. This stuff is imbued throughout the nation now. And

how do you remove that? How do you remove that? That is going to take years, if not decades. I think you have to quite literally outlaw it. I think, no, because to the extent that in HR departments, this is now, there are lots of companies that, you know, for instance, you have to have these DEI policies, you have to actually sign up to, you know, loads of Loads of stuff which, you know, people do not, most average person does not believe in and a non-merit-based sort of policies and things,

to even get a contract with government or with another big company, the ones that have the rainbow landyards and go on and on about this stuff in all of their Western adverts. But strangely, it never happens in their adverts or their social media accounts in the Middle East or in China. Very strange. Or Africa. It can never work out why it doesn't.

The rainbow never appears there, but it never does. So, I mean, I think you'd actually. have to outlaw it. And I think it would be easy to do so. I think separating people by race or by the sexuality or by the, you know, their gender and having a non-merit-based hiring policy or whatever is clearly, clearly against the Equality Act. Clearly. Look, my issue is, Julia, with all of this stuff, I agree with you 100%. But you know what? There's a lot of people who still believe in this stuff. I know. And what's terrible. living from it and it's their interest to keep it going.

You look at what's happened in Scotland with bringing the hate speech bill. Criminalised public performance on stage. People can now, at the home of the Edinburgh Festival, people can now get arrested for telling a joke. I would rather they were being arrested and it was all public than they were being quietly cancelled without any action being.

And you go, well, you know, those are just, we always talk, well, there are consequences. Well, that's your consequence. You get taken off stage. Let's make it more obvious. Let's take it. Okay, let's take it to the limit. arrest people. But you know what? Go before a jury and see what the jury thinks. And also

there's a shadow of blasphemy laws which are being openly discussed. And my worry is not even that these things are being implemented. My worry is that the people that I talk to a lot of people, particularly in that echelon of society, don't see it as a problem. And that's when I get the panic bails and I'm like,

well, this is... By the way, not only do they not see it as a problem, they think you are a problem for seeing it as a problem. Yeah. By the way, we already have a blasphemy law. We already have a blasphemy law. Because, you know, that grammar school teacher of Batley? Yeah. He's living under that law because he and his family have been in hiding out,

hiding for four years for fear of their life. You know, the reality is there's lots of things that we will say about pretty much any religion apart from Islam or go up against, you know, showing a picture of the, you know, a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, you know, with the Charlie Ebdo coverer, you know, you wouldn't do that. now you wouldn't do it because you'd like to stay alive and you'd like your family to stay alive and you won't it is a simple matter of fact you will be in hiding the rest of your life if you do that we have a blasphemy law and the authorities have gone yeah yeah yeah that or it's my case we haven't hit

rock bottom yeah yeah oh god welcome to trigonometry where you get even more depressed than you were coming in however i think in next week however i think your point is actually broadly correct which is there is a sense now in some parts of the Western world that this isn't forever. Yes. There's the possibility that if you elect the right people or the better people of the two that are available to, let's say, if they promise to do this, there is the possibility of doing it.

And maybe it's going to take some time. I think a lot of it needs to take time because people need to know. I mean, again, people need to know what the trans ideology was doing in terms of damaging women's safety and rights. You need to know. You need to know that net zero is going to cost jobs and ruin the economy. No one knows that. No one knows that.

Look, God, I can remember. A lot of times I used to do the breakfast show and talk and I'd have MPs on, Labor MPs in particular. And I would say, okay, just give you a clue, you signed up to this. What percentage, what percentage of, not just right now today, but on an average, what percentage of our electricity do you think it comes from renewables in any average year, you know? A percentage of our energy or energy. And they were like, oh, you know, oh, I don't know. No, no, no, I mean, I'm not going to hold you to one, to the nearest 20%.

Can you give me that? Oh, mutter, mutton, mutt, I mean, nearest 50%. Give me that. They wouldn't know. And I'd say like, it's like four or six percent. And that's of all our energy needs. I mean, even when they talk about electricity, that's only 20 percent of our energy needs. These people, MPs, who are voting on this stuff, who are campaigning on this stuff,

they don't know the most basic facts about energy. production and any energy use in this country. Why would we expect the public do? I mean, I think the role of shows like mine, I have a column for the sun as well, and podcasts like yours, who've been campaigning just to get the facts out. And I remember doing this through lockdown as well.

It was I felt I was on public service broadcasting. It's the proudest thing I've ever done. Wasn't right about everything. There are things that a lot of people would disagree with me on in different directions on my views on those things. But I just felt like, I just want to try and get the alternative views on. I want to just make sure people have got an outlet.

They can hear. I was probably the only journalist on broadcasting who was challenging cabinet ministers week in, week out, actually on some of the policies they were making and demanding, you know, cost-benefit analysis and they're like. People cannot wake up to something if no one has told them they're asleep. Yes. Yeah. It's so true.

And I totally, I'm so glad you are raising this issue about Net Zero in the way that you are because I really see that as it's a set of, luxury beliefs that we simply can't afford anymore. It's the simple as that. It's going to cost lives. Yeah. It already is. Well, pensioners freeze every winter because electricity is too expensive and gases. Well, how much, yeah, the question becomes, oh, that's where our politics gets it wrong. And it brings us back to the start

of the conversation where we talked about, oh, what's the solution to children being stabbed to death in Southport last summer? Oh, oh, changing the rules on what evidence of your adulthood is needed from Amazon when they sell you a knife, right? That's what they think the solution is. And that's when you get to, energy prices are too high. Or how do we subsidise energy prices? What extra benefits, whether it's winter fuel allowance, whatever, do we give some pensions so they can afford to heat their homes and not die in winter?

You're tackling the wrong end of the question. You have completely misidentified the problem and therefore any solution you offer is not actually a solution. And this is a problem I think, in this case, but I get every aspect of the conversation we've had, politicians who have completely misunderstood the problem, misidentified the issue, and therefore any efforts they make to tackle it

are going to go completely and utterly unnoticed. Well, are they either going to do more harm? They're certainly not going to improve things because they haven't identified the problem. To the extent, get back to immigration. Boris Johnson identified the issue as being we don't have control of net migration to our country. If we have control, if it's us setting the numbers,

then that's the solution. So it was okay for him to raise it to net one million a year. That happened under his watch. Those figures didn't come out later. the visas were issued on his watch. Legal visas for people to arrive in this country, to make new lives for themselves. No issue with those people.

No issue with them at all. But that was a deliberate government policy. They weren't illegal migrants. They weren't a shock. They came over legally. His view was, clearly, but we're controlling it. He misidentified the problem. So he couldn't come up with the solution.

The problem was too many people coming to this country, both number-wise and too few skills and too little contribution to this nation. and too little assimilation, misidentified the problem. And I think that's the, in every area, whether it's energy, whether it's immigration,

whether it's crime, they keep misidentifying the problem. How does so many clever people get so much, so wrong? That's what I can't work out. I'm never being a conspiracy theorist. I always say with people on my show, it must be a conspiracy,

whether it's COVID or anything else. I'm like, no, I've met these people. Honestly, I've met them. I know quite long of them quite well. They're not clever enough. They're not clever. The moon landings. No one was clever enough to conspire to do all of that.

But I can't understand how they can get it so wrong. When, you know, we've not got PhDs in these topics. We can see it. It's in black and white in front of us what the problem is. So what are they missing? Is it the will? No, but the will would imply you actually had identified the problem and wanted to do it. Some of them have.

Some of them have. I remember during the Tory administration talking to Tory ministers who would agree with every word you've just said while implementing policies and then shut up about it. Yes. Oh yeah. I remember talking to a lot of ministers that we said during lockdown. I knew we had a third of the

cabinet behind us. I knew. I knew. There were people... None of them said it. Only a few. Weirdly, the person who got the most... Vishisunak was the one person in the group of four who were making all the decisions who was actually fighting, fighting lockdown, ironically. But this is the thing. I mean,

what's the point of being in one of those jobs if you're not going to stand up and be counted when it really matters? Well said. Well, Julia, it's been great having you back. Thank you for coming on. As you know, the last question we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we shouldn't be.

Oh, God, and we've covered so much. We have. We covered so much. Gosh, I wish I'd thought about this earlier. We should have given you a warning. You should have reminded me. We should remind us. What's the one thing we're not?

Well, I say, I don't think we're talking about net zero enough. I don't think, okay, I don't think we talk about demographics enough and the aging population and how we need to make it so much easier for so many people to have, to start families sooner and be able to afford a home and have a family and have the two or three kids that they want and everything that we need to solve in our country in terms of our future economy, paying for the NHS

and actually, and not needing, we're told to import lots of people from abroad and deal with those issues could be solved by, enabling people not to leave university with a load of debt, not be able to afford a home, and not be able to start a family and have the family they want. Our demographics are absolutely drocious, not as bad as some other countries, but that is something that we don't talk about enough,

and that would solve a lot of problems. And you know what? It would contribute to the sum of human happiness. It would do, indeed. And also, when people talk about this woke stuff, I mean, I have a little sympathy fee on people. Why would you be conservative if you've got nothing to conserve? Absolutely.

It got depressing again. I'm sorry, guys. We promise that when we go to Substack, it will be uplifting. Our American viewers just tune in for the Depression Born. All right, head on over to Substack where there'll be uplift. Will there? Probably not. Probably not. Anyway, head on over there now, there'll be more depressing questions and answers. That's why you watch. Yeah, exactly. You love it.

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What frustrates you the most about political representation in Britain? Does Julia think women are in general less suited to politics because of their high levels of empathy, especially for our groups, the planet and criminals? This episode sponsored by Forkful. Most meal delivery services promise healthy food, but look closer, and you'll often find cheap industrial seed oils hiding in the ingredients. Forkful does things differently.

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