TRIGGERnometry - Truss Advisor: "We Squandered a Huge Opportunity" (Colin Bloom)

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Colin Bloom was a Government Advisor to Prime Minister Liz Truss. He was previously International Secretary for the Conservative Party and was appointed Government Faith Advisor by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He is the author of the recently released ‘Bloom Review, Does Government do God?’ a deep dive into the state of faith and religious engagement in the UK. Read the review here: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/independent-faith-engagement-review-call-for-evidence Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The LIS Trust, whatever, whether people like her or not, was offering a different set of ideas about how the country should be run. And she actually attempted to put them in place. Why was she not able to actually stay in power long enough to even see some of those ideas being implemented? There is a social and economic orthodoxy which exists. If a government was to dare go against it, you know, they would be closed down pretty quick. But it did feel a bit strange that, you know, we were up against the White House, we were up against the World Bank, the IMF, the Bank of England, the opposition. There was a huge opposition to everything that she was doing.

You know, when you see this lack of leadership, the lack of spine that we have across all parties, you've got to blame the candidates department. You know, where are they finding these people? A third of our parliamentarians are unemployable, you know. you know, where do we find them? You know, they couldn't run a bath half of them. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a show for you. If you want honest conversations, we're fascinating people. Our fantastic guest today is a recently retired government advisor so you can be honest. And the author of the Bloom Review, Colin Bloom, welcome to Trigonometry.

Thank you for having me. I will say that the review, you are the author of you've got here, you worked on it for four years, as a review to faith in the UK, very interesting subject, some difficult and also interesting questions within that. And, of course, you were most recently an advisor to one-list trust. So we'll talk about all of that.

But before we do, tell everybody a little bit more about your background. How are you where you are? What's been your journey through life? Thank you. Fantastic to be on the show. And I've been listening to trigonometry since, I think, the very, very beginning. Black curtain room? Yeah, I remember.

I remember, I think probably 50 episodes ago, something like that. I remember when this was built. So, you know, and congratulations on all the amazing progress that you've made in this with the podcast. So a bit of background to me. I spent some time in industry. I spent some time working in the not-for-profit sector. But probably the best part of my life, the most productive part of my life, has been in politics. And I was international secretary for the Conservative Party,

director of the Conservative Party. I ran the Conservative Christian Fellowship for a number of years. Boris appointed me to be the government's faith advisor in 2019. I wrote this report. And then last year I worked for Prime Minister Truss for all of seven weeks. And then the report came out earlier this year. And then I've now taken a step back and will be, focusing on other things. And obviously, I mean, look at me, I'm far too young to retire. So yes,

I have retired from government, but I've not retired from life. That's really good to hear. We'll do things, I suppose, in that order. We'll come to the report and faith later. I think a really important subject, actually. But before we do, you mentioned the seven weeks of the List Trust premiership, and I'll ask you the question that I think everybody wants to know, which is what happened? Well, it was fairly chaotic. I mean, that's not a, you know, I won't be breaking any secrets there. Look, and on a personal level, I like Liz. I've got, you know, I'm not going to say a bad word about her.

I think she's a, you know, a very decent, very, very kind person. I would consider her a friend. The time that she had, if you remember, it came after the, came at the end of a very gralling two months of campaigning for who was going to get the leadership of the Conservative Party. That came after all of the chaos of, is Boris going to resign? Is he not going to resign? You know, is he going to stay in office? What's going to happen to the Boris administration? And that came after all of the COVID and the, you know, and we've had, so it wouldn't be, fair to say that just those seven weeks were chaos. I mean, I've been around since 2010,

working either in CCHQ or in number 10 or elsewhere, it's been chaos pretty much since 2015. I mean, I would say that when, no, 2016 was when Brexit happened. And things were fairly well-ordered and pretty well-run then after Brexit, when Theresa May came in and then Boris came in and then COVID and then Liz and then Rishi, that was chaos. I mean, it was literally just fighting fires one day to the next. And I think in the future when the history books are written, we will look back and just, certainly I'm a, you know, I'm a centre-right, conservative, free market capitalist, you know, I mean, that's kind of, I'm not, I'm not ashamed of that, we will look back and go, we squandered not just a huge majority since 2017 after that

election, but we squandered the opportunity to govern, I think, really well since 2016. But what happened with Liz Trust specifically? The reason I ask is, I think on the day that she was elected, Lord Frost was sitting in the chair that you're sitting in. And do you remember that he came in, all Chipper, he was excited, and we were excited, because, you know, any change is exciting. And also, the list trust, whatever, whether people like her or not, was offering a different set of ideas about how the country should be run. And she actually attempted to put them in place. Why was she not able to actually stay in power long enough to even see some of those ideas being implemented? Well, I mean, look, my take on it is that in

August of last year of 2022, I think it was fairly obvious that she was going to win. the leadership election. So those of us that were working on her campaign could see that, you know, the numbers were very strong. And as it turns out, you know, she won reasonably convincingly. Now that vote was only with the conservative members. So there was a campaign that, you know, Rishi's team were going up and down the country, trying to get conservative members to vote for Rishi. And Liz's team doing the same. And the numbers were pretty healthy for Liz. So I'm a hypothesis, you know, I suspect, as I don't know for sure,

but I suspect they knew the gig was up when we did. That was sometime in August. So they went through the motions and said, okay, you know, yes, they drove to the line and they fought to win. You know, they thought that they were, they had to put in a good showing. but they probably knew it was a death march from the beginning of August. Then September comes, the announcement is May Liz Wins. She goes to see the Queen, I think, on the, was it the 5th or the 6th of September?

I think the Queen dies, I think was it the 8th of September? And then we have 10 days of not very much, and then chaos, even more chaos than we've ever had before. And I don't necessarily blame Liz for that. That would probably get me into trouble with some of, you know, my friends who don't agree with me on this. But I think it was inevitable when you've got somebody who is stepping outside of both the economic and social orthodoxy that is, was expected of her. And I make this point, you know, if you were to take all of the G7 leaders of, you know, Macron, Trudeau, Biden, Schultz, Albinazi in Australia. Australia, which is Cinder Ardennes, as it was in New Zealand. There's not any real difference in either social policy or economic policy between any of them.

And they're all, by the way, on the centre-left. So here you've got a centre-right member of the G7 who's saying, no, we're going to cut spending, we're going to lower taxes, we're going to grow the economy, we've got to break with the economic orthodoxy. And I'm no economist, but, I mean, it sounded good, you know, that actually, We can't carry on printing money. We've got to, you know, we've got to do something different because I think as everybody accepts, there is an economic tsunami, which is about to hit the West,

which we're not ready for. And so, you know, that would have upset some pretty powerful people around the world and locally, of course. One second, Colin. Who are these pretty powerful people? Sorry to interrupt, because there'll be people of a conspiratorial nature who say, well, this is the World Economic Forum.

There'll be people talking about shadowy figures. I mean, who are we actually talking about? Well, look, there are shadowy figures everywhere, even in the comedy circuit. Thank you for addressing that of me. But let's not pretend that, you know, that shadowy figures don't exist. It's not a conspiratorial thing to say

that there are shadowy figures. There are shadowy figures everywhere. Health, education, politics, comedy, wherever. But that's not what you mean. When you talk about comedy, you're not talking about somebody who's puppeteering in the background.

You're talking about someone else. I'm not saying that there is, like, I don't think there's some sort of, you know, Geppetto who is a, I don't think that there is one person who is pulling all the strings. And I'm certainly no conspiracy theorist. But I'm saying that there is an orthodoxy.

And that orthodoxy may be unspoken. It may be unwritten, but it exists. and you have to stick to it. Because if you step outside of it, you feel the pain of it. So, and that orthodoxy, I think, you know, is largely economic, but I think it's also,

as I said, I think a social orthodoxy in terms of, you know, progressive beliefs. And I think that, you know, when you have a prime minister that says, no, I'm going to do something slightly different, it upsets the markets, it upsets that orthodoxy, upsets individuals. And you can see what, and it becomes a bit of a feeding frenzy.

I mean, the last days of trust was when she was prime minister, was, you know, I mean, it was everybody was against her. I mean, and maybe, because as I said, I'm not an economist. Maybe they're right. Honestly, you know, Francis Constantin, maybe they're right. Maybe I'm wrong. But it did feel a bit strange that, you know, we were up against the White House, we were up against the World Bank, the IMF, the Bank of England, the opposition, you know, other people

within the Conservative Party, you know, there was a huge opposition to everything that she was doing, which seemed to me out of kilter with what would be normal. I mean, it was just such a such a robust response. To the point that, you know, I think on the Friday, the Chancellor of Quasi Quoting had to fly back from Washington

and he was fired, I think, on the plane on the way over, Jeremy Hunt was brought in, it was too late by then. You know, the gig was up. So I'm not suggesting any conspiracy. What I'm saying is that there is a social and economic orthodoxy

which exists. If you, a government was to dare go against it, you know, they would be closed down pretty quick. And honestly, tell me where is the social and economic difference between this government and that of Biden or Trudeau or Macron or Kirstama for that matter. I suppose the only one that I can think of off the top of my head is Maloney in Italy. In Italy, yeah. But that's pretty much the only one.

But the point is... Well, you've got Hungary as well. Yeah. So Victor Orban in Hungary, he's definitely stepping outside of that. but it's a country with 10 million people. I love Hungary, I love Hungarians. It's not going to rock the planet if they step outside of the orthodoxy. When the United Kingdom, still the fifth biggest economy in the world, still the sixth largest

manufacturer in the world, London, the, you know, probably the greatest capital city, the greatest city on the planet, when that steps outside that economic orthodoxy, you know, it's going to make waves. And as much as I love Rome and as much as I love Italy and as much as I love Hungary, um, You know, we're not talking in the same league. No, good point taken. When did you know that things are not going well? Was there a particular moment where you thought to yourself, hang on?

Yeah, mid-August, I think. No, I would say sometimes, it was, it was very shortly afterwards. And, you know, and I thought that, you know, we were just fighting fires all the time. And party conference came around early October 2022. And by then it was very clear that, you know, we were constantly just putting out fires. And no matter what the party chairman did, what the chief whip did,

what the, you know, what the prime minister's chief of staff was doing, what the other cabinet ministers were doing, it was all, you know, it was all just getting a bit too much. And what were these fires in particular, Colin? Well, you know, so we had, let's say personnel issues with some members of parliament.

Some of them were legacy problems that had come over from from Boris's time as prime minister. But, you know, just getting the support across the backbenchers was pretty difficult. So you're fighting your own party at this point? Yeah, I don't think that's, and I don't think that's necessarily controversial. I think the party was fighting itself pretty much during COVID as well. And Brexit.

Yeah. And certainly Brexit. I mean, the party's position on Brexit was neutral, although the Prime Minister Cameron obviously was, you know, he was in favour of staying. And I often think about, you know, David was a great prime minister, and I really, really like and admire him. You know, I wish he had stayed out of that argument.

I wish he had said, you know what, I'm not going to campaign for one thing or the other. I've got to be the prime minister. The rest of you go and campaign, and fight for your lives, fight for what you believe. And then when the votes come in, I'll implement what you had.

But by this time, he'd already done, I think, two, you know, we'd had two big, you know, national elections. We had the first past the post one, and then we had the, what was the,

what was the other, the Scottish referendum. We hadn't had referendums for as long as anyone could remember. And then suddenly three come along at once. And David supported, you know, remaining. And it cost him his premiership. And I think actually, you know, he was a very, very good prime minister. He was... Why do you say that? Because I don't think that's how people will remember him. And I don't really know what I think about. Why do you say it was a good... Because I'll be honest, So you strike me as a guy who's worked in a conservative party for a long time. You're very nice. You're nice about other people.

Are you just saying that because you're being nice? Or was he actually a good prime minister? If so, what was it that made him a good prime minister? So look, his personal values were fantastic. I mean, there was no scandal around David Cameron whilst he was in office. There's been one little thing subsequently with Greensill. But when he was in office, you know, no hint of, any scandal around him.

He was a good family man. He was a decent man. He was very clear about what he wanted to do, what he wanted to achieve. I thought the coalition, and again, this would get me in trouble with some of my friends. But I actually thought the coalition

did a pretty good job. I quite like Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister and Danny Alexander. Those were like glory times. That was a, you know, there we had a, what felt like, a centre-right political coalition that was doing things. But when then Brexit came along, and of course we've not had stable government since. So when I said Cameron was a good prime minister, you know, he did have an air of stability

about him, you know, there wasn't the rocking of the boat, there wasn't the major scandals, there wasn't the issues that we, you know, that we had. If you remember, he had a, you know, pretty good foreign secretary in William Hague to begin with. And then he won a first time in, I don't know how many years, probably 25 or 30 years, he actually won a majority for the the Conservative Party. We didn't win a majority in 2010. That's why we had the coalition. And the then party chairman, Lord Feldman, fantastic, fantastic man, great boss. And, you know, we're bringing about the kind of reforms that a grown-up political party needed. And then, of course, it all just sort of changes overnight. And Theresa May comes in in 2016. And

And then, you know, there were a lot of people who were very, very against her and against what she stood for. She didn't help herself. And then we had this ridiculous election in 2017. I mean, just ridiculous. We should never have done it. Colin, do you think part of the problem was, I look at the Conservative Party, the majority that you want in the 2019 general election is huge, particularly from the Red Wall. And we've covered that on the show ad nauseum. But the problem is, is that when you then have a prime minister like Liz Truss, saying things like we need to shrink the government, we need to lower taxes,

we need to cut public sector, et cetera, et cetera. That is a message that by and large ain't going to fly in the red wall, which means that you are therefore putting these MP seats in jeopardy. Therefore, if they act in their own interests, they're not going to want to go for it. So I disagree with you, Francis. I think the red wall, if you said to them, do we want to have, more efficient government, do we want to cut waste, do you want to have more money of your own in your own pocket, do we want to cut taxes? The red wall, if you want to put it like that,

those northern sort of labour seats that became conservative, that's their language, okay? We won such a massive majority in 2019 because we had the three Bs. Sorry, the three Cs, not the three Cs. Right, we had, no, I was right the first time. We had BBC. Oh, no, three B's, three Cs, it was BBC. We had Boris, enormous charisma. I mean, you know, so much charisma.

He's shifted the dial on every campaign he's ever been in. And he's, you know, he's a, the most once-in-a-generation charismatic, charismatic politician. Love him or hate him. he's going to move the dial. We also had Brexit. At that time, Brexit was not done. A lot of people were very frustrated.

And we had Corbyn. You know, so we had the BBC. We had Boris. We had Brexit and we had Corbyn. That led to that huge majority that Boris won in 2019. I think if we were to have the election with that, if Corbyn wasn't the leader of the opposition,

the majority wouldn't have been as big. If Brexit had been sorted, the majority wouldn't have been as big. And if Boris wasn't Boris and didn't have that magnetic charisma that, you know, that made him so famous, then the majority wouldn't have been that big. There may not have even been a majority at all, you know, for all I know. But those were the three ingredients that meant that we had this weird landslide that happened. And those issues of more efficient government, smaller government, lower taxes, going for growth, building jobs,

those are exactly the sort of things that people in those northern seats want. Are they... Sorry to interrupt Colin. I mean, Matt Goodwin, who's a regal on the show, who I'm sure you're familiar with, his argument is that the list trust's economic position, which, by the way, I really am a fan of. I do think we need to shrink the size of the state, et cetera,

represents sort of about 7% of the British public. Most people want high taxes because they want high spending. Are you sure that that's really what people in the Red Wall one? I mean, if you say, do you want your resources to be wasted in the way that they have been wasted on these kinds of things? Yeah, I mean, you're leading the witness a little bit. Maybe, but, you know, you've got to think, we are printing more money than we can, we can

end up doing it. I agree with you. I'm just saying, does the Red Wall agree with you? We are borrowing more money. But I think these are mostly pretty down to earth. common sense people, you know, like Jeff Norcott, you know, what do most people think? I think most people think, you shouldn't live beyond your means, you shouldn't have a government that's bigger than what you can afford, but we have been literally high on printing money and borrowing

money that we don't have. And who are we settling? We're settling your children and we're settling my children and our grandchildren with, you know, just unpayable debts. And we have to get to grips with this. So Liz was right. We have to have smaller government, you know, we have to have a low-tax economy. How many politicians have you heard? How many people have you had sitting in this chair saying, we wish the British economy was like, you know, or London was like Singapore on Thames? Do you know how you get Singapore on Thames? Is that you have a much more mature approach to immigration, You have smaller government. You probably pay your politicians a bit more.

You root out corruption. You deal with law and order in a much more stringent way. You deal with asylum in probably a different way than what we're currently doing. So they say the sound bites. This is what we want. But they're not prepared to then do what's necessary to achieve it. And what will be necessary to achieve it, you know, we'll be having a smaller government,

with a much more, you know, much more focused government, taxing less. putting corporation tax up is a crazy thing to do. You want to drive businesses out. I just don't understand where is the conservative in taxing businesses more than they've ever been taxed before. We should be competing in a global stage by having no, come to the UK. You know, if you're a billionaire, somewhere in the world,

you've probably got a flat here in London or you've got a house in London, right? We get precisely zero of all of, of, their income tax. Well, why would you pay 50% or 45%? You know, better to have 5% of everything than 40% of nothing. I mean, any idiot knows this. But we make life very, very difficult for ourselves if we don't use the assets that we have, like London, you know, like, you know, the stability that we are famous for in a successful way. And I think that, you know, we are in danger. If we don't make some big changes pretty quickly, then I think we're in danger

of, you know, creating irreversible problems for ourselves if we haven't done so already. So you say all of these things, which I agree with from an economic point of view. Why am we doing it then? You say that's the, that's the 24 million dollar question, right? It's hard. It requires political leadership. And I say this in my report. there are certain things that, you know, we need to tackle as a nation that is going to require political leadership. It's going to require courage, bravery from our politicians, more than just fine words. They are going to have to see something through to the end. The problem is, is that at the slightest pressure, most of them cave in. You know, you saw this recently with the Ministry

of Justice, and I can't remember what exactly the issue was. It might come to me. where it was obvious that they were going to have to, you know, change attack. It was, I remember, it was the guy who had been convicted and sent to prison and he was innocent. And he had to repay the money that he got compensation. And then they tried to charge him for bed and board for the 20-odd years he was in prison, right? And, you know, the newspaper sort of said, this is outwe. And the Ministry of Justice put out a statement which said, we have no plans to change this. And I was listening to this on the radio and I turned to my wife and I said,

of course they're going to change this. I mean, this is ridiculous. This is typical of what I'm talking about. And sure enough, within a week, the Justice Minister had announced, yes, we're going, we're going to change it. So what are they, they lose on all counts because they look idiotic to begin with for not saying, not reading the political runes and saying, yes, of course, we're going to have to change this.

This is offensive that you would charge this guy. And of course we need to look at it. But then they'd already put the press release out to say that they weren't going to look at it. And then of course, then they have to U-turn. There's nothing more obnoxious to an MP that has to grab hold of the handbrake and do a 180-degree U-turn in the middle of the skid pan,

which is exactly what they did. So they just look stupid. And this is, it's going to require bravery for them to say, this is what we're going to do and we're going to stick to it. And we don't see much bravery, I'm afraid, in public life. We don't see it from either of the two main political parties or any of them. And, you know, I remember, I'm old enough to remember my political hero is Ronald Reagan. And if you ever come to my house, you'll see that we have our downstairs toy.

is got all of the Reagan memorabilia in there. He used to sit in front of a TV screen and talk to the nation. And he was known as the great communicator, you know, the Gipper. And he would say, this is why we're going to be cutting taxes, because, you know, we're cutting taxes, because in fact we will raise more money. And he would talk about things like the Laffer curve. And when the shuttle exploded and he went straight onto the TV

and he spoke to a nation that was in shock about us not how, hiding our, you know, our mistakes, but we do things in, you know, making a clear contrast between Western American values and the values of the Soviet Union. And, you know, he had great political bravery, you know, is a great communicator. And we don't have anyone like that, you know. But here you come to the question that I always ask in this situation, which is, well, I mean, the obvious counter to what you're saying is just from a devil's advocate perspective is, list trust show bravery, and look how that ended, number one. But there's a broader thing going on that I really wanted to ask you about, which is,

I am very concerned about what you're talking about. Not only the lack of leadership, but also particularly on the economic issue, we are not willing to be honest with ourselves, and all we're doing is pushing the problem down the line onto people who are not yet born. That is irresponsible. But the question I want to ask you is, in a world in which any time a prime minister says, I intend to cut spending, I intend to lower taxes, what the media do is they come out and say, well, when you do this, you will kill people. You are killing people. You are a murderer, right?

George Osborne, I was on TV the other day arguing with some woman who called George Osborne a murderer. I asked her when he was convicted. She didn't have an answer. But my, I'm honest, we live in a world in which I don't really know how a politician is ever going to cut spending again, because if you make that decision, you will be saddled with those images that people will be given in their heads by the media. Yeah, yeah, it's a tough job, right? And it shouldn't be for everybody. And, you know, we have this phrase amongst some friends of mine and I, I, B, T, C,D, you know, I blame the candidates department. you know, when you see this lack of leadership, the lack of spine that we have across all parties, you've got to blame the candidates department. You know, where are they finding these people? You know, I would say, I'm being very generous now, a third of our parliamentarians are unemployable.

You know, just like, you know, where do we find them? You know, these people we are trusting to vote on our behalf, to run things. You know, they couldn't run a bath half of them. So, you know, we've got to be much clearer-eyed, much more focused about what candidates we're choosing, you know, and then when they're in government, they need to know that their political leaders, those people who are currently either shadow ministers or ministers or secretaries of state or shadow secretaries of state, have got the spine and have got their back, you know, to see something through. And they need to explain to the public why they're doing it. The public aren't stupid. You know, they're not stupid. If you explain to you, to them, this is why we have to do it. And stick to their lines. I'm sure that, you know, you won't win over some. Of course you're not, you know, but you're never going to win over everybody. But you just need to be able to say, this is why we're doing it. And you know what? It might be unpopular. But you do all that at the beginning of a parliament. You don't, you know,

you might not want to do that at the very end of a parliament. But you need to make these big, difficult, tough decisions and take people with you. I think the public are sick of being taken for falls and, you know, having wishy-washy, here today, gone tomorrow, politicians that are, you know, have no spines. I think they're looking for political leaders. There's a guy, there's a conservative member of parliament, Northern fella. He was Labor, he was a coal miner. Lee Anderson. He's phenomenally popular, you know. Where did he suddenly spring from? What a guy, you know, common sense, says it as he sees it, takes on that book with the megaphone outside Parliament every time he sees him. Now, we need more people with that kind of backbone. I'm not saying

I don't know him and I don't know his politics. I'm sure he's a fantastic fellow. But we need more people with that kind of conviction who are going to stick to their guns and not get pushed around by the latest, you know, fancy Dan, you know, opinion polls that might come to the left or to the ride. Well, I hope that happens. Let's move on to something slightly less controversial, which is, of course, religion. You are the author of the Bloom Review, which is a review into faith in this country, and a lot of the issues that surround that. Before we get into your findings and some of your conclusions, what is faith and how is it different from belief? What is faith and what is the purpose of faith in society? That is a great question. So I've done quite a few interviews about

this report already. No one's ever asked me that. The definition between faith, belief, and religion, I think he's misunderstood. And so in my report, I make a very clear recommendation that government, for the purposes of government, there should be some working definitions of what is religion, what is faith, and what is belief. In simple terms, we've all got beliefs. You don't have to have a faith to have a belief, but you do need to have a belief to have a faith. and religion is you don't necessarily have to have a faith to have a religion or a belief yeah

we have sort of institutionalized religious organizations in the UK and around the world and then you've got people so there's a lot more people who are very spiritual so they would say I don't I have a faith but I don't have a religion a lot of people would say that you know a lot of people believe in God.

I mean, still, the vast majority of people still believe in God. What's the percentage in this country? I think it's in the 80s. In the 80s, interesting. Who said that they believe in God, but it might not be the God of Islam or the God of Judaism

or the God of Christianity or Hinduism or Sikhism. It might just be something they believe in something. But they certainly have a belief in something more than they can see, more than they can touch, something supernatural. It may be well-founded, it may be not. It's not for me to say. Is that faith?

That would be a faith. That would be faith. That would be faith. It would also be a belief. Because I say, you have to have a belief to have a faith. You don't have to have a faith to have a belief. So the humanists, and by the way, Andrew Copson, if you ever want a good guest for your show, get Andrew Copson from the humanists. I like him.

You know, we get on well. He was very helpful when I was looking at these definitions. I don't think he necessarily wanted to be as helpful as he was. very helpful because, you know, he did help me understand that, you know, you can have profoundly worldview beliefs that are not rooted in anything supernatural. There's not rooted in anything that requires faith. You know, people joke that, you know, humanism is, you know, it's the, it's the religion for people that have no faith, you know, it's kind of, because they do have they have an orthodoxy in that sense.

But yes, still, the majority of people in the UK have a faith. It's for the first time, according to the 2021 census, it's less than 50% now a Christian. 7%, nearly 8% I think are British Muslims. And then you've got Hindus and Sikhs and Jews and Buddhists and others that sort of make up that difference. But for memory, I think it's in the sort of 70s of people who say that they have a faith. And, you know, that's very interesting. So when you've got that many people who say faith is important to them, their faith shapes who they are and what they do and why they do what they do,

and yet government is so illiterate when it comes to understanding, well, what is it that makes these people tick? You know, even the basics of what's the difference between a Hindu and a society? Sikh. If a government official, if a civil servant, somebody who's responsible for enacting, writing policy and then administering it, doesn't know the difference between a Hindu and a Sikh, then there's something wrong. And what I found was that faith literacy in government, in the police, in the National Health Service, in prison service, in education, was woefully inadequate. And when faith is more important to, there are more people with faith,

than any other protected characteristic. So you've got more people who have a faith in the UK than are pregnant than our male or female or LGBTI or disabled or, you know, I'm trying to remember what all the protected characteristics are. But, you know, more people have a faith than any of them. And yet, faith is the Cinderella protected characteristic when it comes to these things. And so my argument from the very beginning, and, you know, Boris asked me to do this, because I think he understood from his time as mayor that, and Londonese, by the way, has more people of faith than the rest of the country as a percentage. It's just much more diverse.

That I think he kind of had that instinct. Now, Boris has many things. A lot of people will criticise him, you know, from here to eternity. But he does have an intellectual curiosity, and he does have an instinct which very few other politicians will have. and he, I think, had this sort of instinct, well, look, there is something that there's a disconnect, both as my time as mayor and now as, you know, as Foreign Secretary and now as Prime Minister, that people,

fate is important to some people, and yet we don't understand, you know, we don't understand it as either government or is in public life. So my report is 65,000 words long, you know, it's a big report, 22 recommendations. We did a call for evidence, We had 21,000 responses to it. There's a lot of work that went into it.

An excellent team supporting me from academics as well as some civil servants. And we produced these recommendations which hopefully if either this government or the next, whatever that might look like, you know, will adopt. And I think it will go some way to improve the relationship between government and faith. people of faith and places of worship.

I mean, just take, for example, places of worship. We have tens of thousands of them. And nearly all places of worship in the UK are schools of virtue. You know, whatever your faith, if you go to a place of worship, you will come out of it a better version of yourself, we hope, right? They contribute to the public good, whether it's in the mosque or the synagogue or the church or the temple or the Guadwara. they contribute to the public good enormously.

And yet it kind of runs parallel to everything. Government's oblivious to it. Think of all the youth clubs and the food banks and the self-help groups and the, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous and the Cocaine Anonymous and all these other groups that are run out of places of worship. They do phenomenal work. And I'm very excited by the work that they're doing.

You know, I want to champion them. But, you know, government are oblivious to it for the most part. It seems to be an afterthought whenever they just, just think, oh gosh, you know, we need to, we saw that in COVID, this afterthought, you know, COVID suddenly happens, we need to close down places of worship. Well, we had no way of communicating with, you know, well, who are the, how do we get hold of all the imams and the rabbis and the, and the bishops and the temple elders? How do we get hold of it? Well, you know, it was a, it was an interesting time because you just, you just, you

just saw immediately at a time of crisis, we needed these people. We needed the places of worship to access vaccine centres and to do all these other things that they were doing. But there was no communication, there was no relationship. Colin, a lot of people have come on this show and they've been speaking about the decline of Christianity and the fact that it's having in our society. So would you be able to tell us a little bit about that? Is Christianity declining? And if so, how quickly? Well, it is, and it isn't, right? So within the different denominations within the Christian church, you know, you'll have, I mean, I always think of it a bit like a candle, you know, when you get to the very top of the candle, very high church, and then you've got

kind of different denominations down the bottom. Evangelical church is growing. The evangelical churches is growing, particularly the evangelical church of England churches, the the Pentecostal churches are growing. So some of the more recent immigrant communities that have brought their particular flavor of Christian expression, they are, you know, they're big. The Catholic Church is doing pretty well. I mean, largely, I think, driven by one,

some people in the Church of England feeling that they are, Church of England no longer speaks for them on certain issues of what they see as morality, and also because we had lots of Eastern Europeans come to the UK and they started going to Catholic churches. But it's a mixed bag. So overall, we have a state religion, if you like, in that we have the Church of England. And yes, it would be fair to say that fewer and fewer people are probably identifying, or definitely few and fewer people identifying as being Church of England. However, within that, if you were to have a look at it from a segmented point of view,

the different communities that within that, some are growing like crazy. So if you go to St. Helens Bishop's Gate, just take London. We've got St. Helens Bishop's Gate. We've got Holy Trinity Brompton packed, absolutely heaving. And they've got lots of satellite churches around London. Both of them are doing incredible work, and their churches are full. And yet, you know, you can go to some little parish churches not far from here. You might only get a dozen people in there.

So it's a really mixed picture. But what we are seeing is a lot of particularly Gen Zs and millennials, are saying, well, I might not want to be religious, but I do want to have a faith. And so they are finding a home in some nonconformist or evangelical churches where it is, you know, perhaps more welcoming. It's certainly very different to a, you know, a priest

and, you know, the liturgy that might go on. I mean, some churches are like mini rock concerts. I mean, there would be, you know, the production values. And I love your set, but I mean, they would make your set look positively chill. Oh, I mean. Chill out. And so when you're, when you're, you know, when you look at it in the round, I think in the round, you would say, I would say so in my report that actually faith is in pretty good health. But it's just not what it used to be, you know, and it's certainly not what I think some people in the world.

the media would want it to be. You know, there is a, let's talk the church down, let's talk faith down, you know, it's dying out. There is a sort of a, you know, an orthodoxy of, of, you know, secularism. Do you think that's because the elite classes are populated disproportionately by people who are of that secular worldview? That's an interesting point. Many, many, many civil servants that I spoke to. And if you take our civil servants and the BBC, if you just take those two, people who work at the BBC and civil servants, they pretty much come from the same stock, you know, red brick universities from the home counties, you know, but many of them have a faith. And this is the, this is the infuriating thing. Many of these people would have a faith, but it

would be very private. They would go to their church on Sunday, or they would go to their synagogue, or they'd go to their mosque. And they wouldn't bring it to work with them. but they would bring other aspects of their life, you know, wanting to be very modern and they would bring their whole self to work, whatever that might be. But faith does seem to sort of, there's a sort of a feeling where you've got to privatise it.

And that may or may not be the right thing, but I mean, I'm not convinced that these people necessarily are devout secularists, but they certainly, many of them go along with a secular worldview, you probably just to keep the peace. No one wants to get fired, right, for stepping outside of, goes back to what I said earlier. You don't want to step outside the orthodoxy of what you're in. But, you know, faith is, as I say, in the report, and I think I've demonstrated both, you know, empirically and evidentially that, you know, faith is actually in pretty good health.

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

We have big plans and we'll shortly be announcing exciting new shows and more terrific interviews with huge guests. That isn't going to happen without your help. When you support us, you also get incredible extra content, such as extended interviews with none of those irritating adverts, and they'll be released. 24 hours early just for you. We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear. Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. So what were some of the key recommendations in terms of things that we need to change in relation

to faith? Well, one of the key things. I mean, I've said this in other interviews. But if there was only one, there are 22 recommendations, if there was only one recommendation that this government should introduce and do it quickly, and that is to tackle forced and coercive marriage. So we have thousands and thousands of typically women, not exclusively, British women who are forced or coerced into marrying someone against their will. and it's like it's just as it's like in the too difficult box we can't deal with it you know it's just too hard if we accept

that it goes on that somebody is forced to marry someone that they don't love who they may have never met before then we accept that they're going to be raped sexually assaulted and all other kinds of travesties will happen to them and that should not happen in this country

every prime minister, as far back as I could find, said something really positive. We must tackle the scourge of forced marriage, you know, and we will do something. Nothing's happened. Nothing? Hardly anything. The dial hasn't moved at all. The unit sits between the home office and the foreign office, and anyone that works in government knows as soon as you've got a department that has two bosses, it has no boss. Civil servants work to a minister, right?

and a minister works to a secretary of state. And if the secretary of state says this is a priority, then it happens. If they're suddenly working to two ministers or two secretaries of state, it becomes somebody else's problem and they don't tackle it. And I make a very, very clear recommendation

in the report that government have to get to grips with this. It happens in all communities. There's not, I mean, you know, there will be, I think, some lazy people that will say, oh, it's all in one community. It's not. It happens in lots of. of communities.

And... Can you flesh that out, Colin, because I think you say it'll be lazy people, but I think people who are not that well educated about faith would likely jump to assumptions. So there's an assumption that it would always be within the British Muslim community. And it does happen within the British Muslim community. Also happens in the Gypsy Roma community. There's a traveler community. It happens in the Jewish community, particularly with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

particularly prevalent in the Haredi community there. And there are some very small, and the numbers are tiny, but in some very small Christian groups it will happen in. And then in other communities, where you've got the traditions of arranged marriages. Now, there's a distinction between what is an arranged marriage and what is a forced or coercive marriage. But I personally, passionately believe

that if there is any coercion at all, it's a coercive marriage. So if a dad or a mum says, I really would like you to marry this person, you know, for whatever reason, and the daughter or the son says, no, I like, you know, I like so and so. No, but this would be really good for you.

That is a coercion that is happening. We've also got child marriage that is happening, particularly within the Gypsy Roma Traveller community. And how old are these children? Well, some of them are like 13 years old. And it's happening here in this country. And government know it's happening, but it's kind of like it's just too difficult to deal with.

And why is it too difficult to deal with? What's difficult about it? Well, because you are opening yourself up to customs and practices, which are both some will argue are religious, therefore you're not arguing with humans, you're arguing with the Almighty in whatever shape he comes. And there are practices that in some cases will go back hundreds, if not thousands of years.

And, you know, there will be some groups that say, we've been around a lot longer than this government, you know. Governments come and go, but our faith, our way of life, stays the same. And the impact that it has on women is absolutely obscene. And, you know, some of the evidence that we found and some of the testimony that we received was absolutely heartbreaking from British women who have been forced and trapped in marriages

you know, raped, abused, and no one could do anything, seemingly no one could do anything, even within their local communities. And in some cases, their own mothers empowering it almost, you know, becoming enablers of this crime because it happened to them. Now, I mean, it's adjacent to the issue of FGM, female genital mutilation. I don't cover that in my report because it's not really a religious thing, It's more of a cultural thing. But, you know, it's horrendous that it happens.

And there are laws against it, but it still happens. And what's even, you know, makes it more incomprehensible to me is that there are some mothers that are enabling it because it happened to them and it happened to their sisters. Well, it's going to, you know, and we have to tackle these thorny subjects. And that requires bravery. You know, it requires our politicians to be brave and courageous. They just need to find a spine.

Look, I think everybody here is in the agreement with you. the thing is with this particular issue of coerced marriage is that if the, I imagine it's normally women, if these women report it to the police, they put their lives in danger. And not only that, they're going to be essentially excommunicated

from their community, aren't they? Yeah. And that sense of shunning and excommunication is a very powerful weapon to keep people trapped within coercive, you know, faith-based harm or religious harm, harmful environments. And, you know, there's a whole chapter on harm that is done within faith communities. Look, the vast majority of places of worship are amazing.

The vast majority of people of faith are amazing. They do tremendous work. There are some very, very small minorities. I say there are three types of believers. I say this in the report. types of believers. There are true believers. We love true believers. We can work with true believers of all faiths, good, decent, generous, kind, peaceful people. And you've got non-believers. And most non-believers are fine, decent, kind, generous people. We can work with them. The third group are the make-believers.

And they're the ones that cause us all the problems. It's the make-believers who use their faith as a vehicle to promote themselves or their agenda. You know, they do it for pride or for, you know, for money, ego or status or whatever it might be. And they use faith as a vehicle for these things. And government need to be really discerning, not cynical, but they need to be really discerning about who they engage with, who they talk to within the faith space, not just going for the first person that puts their hand up and says, hi, I'm the local community leader, talk to me. You know, they need to say, no, we're going to be much more discerning about who we're talking to and what we're dealing with. Because there are so many make believers out there. And again,

you know, turning the tables on you guys. They're make-believers in the comedy industry. How many people use their comedic skills for, you know, for non-comedy reasons? Yeah, well, quite a lot of them, unfortunately. The thing that I found really interesting about your report is you were saying that there are certain topics or aspects of religion that we don't talk about

and we don't focus on. One of them is Sikh extremism. There was black nationalism in there. So let's talk a little bit about that because I don't think, I mean, that to me was completely surprising. So, look, number one, when it comes to faith-based extremism, by far and away, both in destruction, quantity, impact, Islamist extremism is still the biggest. and I make the point in my report that we have to acknowledge that by far and away,

the biggest victims of Islamist extremism are Muslims. And I don't think we're quick enough to say, look, yes, it affects us. You know, if there's a tragedy, if there's a terrorist attack, you know, in one of our cities or something, of course, that all affects us. But the day-to-day grind

of ongoing Islamist extremism doesn't affect me, It doesn't affect you two. It affects the majority of British Muslims. Just that chilling effect, that corrosive effect. And I think we need to acknowledge that. And we need to say that, you know, that they are, I think they are the biggest victims of this.

And Islamist extremism has been done to death by lots of other people. So I didn't go into it in too much detail, because I only wanted to put my energies where I felt I could say something different, where I could add something or contribute something that others hadn't done. The second biggest group is white supremacists, neo-Nazis, who will very often use faith as a, they're make-believers, right, as a vehicle to promote their very sinister and very racist approach. And so you have the case of some white supremacists and neo-Nazis,

literally running into mosques, eating bacon sandwiches, leaving Bibles in the mosque, barricading the doors where women are supposed to be coming out of, and just generally being really vile and horrible, and worse examples of this. There are many, many worse examples of this. So, and I'm pleased to say, You know, when Priti Patel was Home Secretary, she prescribed a number of these white supremacist neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations.

And she did a brilliant job at doing that. And I applaud her for her courage in saying, I'm not going to part with this. Because we had lots and lots of Islamist terrorist and extremist groups that were prescribed as terrorist organizations. And she took, I think, a really courageous decision and saying, we're going to go after some white supremacists as well, because what they're doing is, you know, Why is her courageous? That seems pretty normal thing for government to do to go after neo-Nazis. Yeah. I mean, when you put it like that, it ought to be, but she did it. You know, she did it. So who was the Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016? Remind me, it was Theresa May.

Those groups like the Sonnykrieg division and the Luftwaffe or the Atomwaffe division and all these other groups. They're not very, they don't conceal themselves well, did they? They don't. But no, pretty did. And, you know, I'm a good friend of hers. And I think she did, I think she, you know, she was magnificent. And she, she stepped up. So why is the premise is the second biggest? They're second biggest. And then I think there's a massive, massive, massive gap then between the third biggest group in terms of who are they in the UK. And I do say in the report that they are Sikh extremists. Now, the vast majority of British Sikhs, they're relatively small population. The vast majority of them are the best majority of them are the. best of British. They are overrepresented in almost every positive industry you could look for. Home ownership, family staying together, academic results, you know, starting businesses, you know,

they're just brilliant, brilliant people. They're very charitable, they're very kind, they are some of the loveliest people I've ever met. Hiding amongst them is a tiny minority who want and are fighting for an independent Sikh state in India called Khalistan, which is roughly the Punjab. Now, look, I'm almost a free speech absolutist, right? So I take this view and I say it in the report. People can believe whatever they want to believe. You can encourage people to believe what you believe.

You can raise money. You can, you know, you can teach and educate. You can do whatever you like. But what you can't do is be coercive. What you can't do is threaten. And this group, there are plenty of Sikhs, that, you know, have some vague notion that, yes, Khalistan would be quite nice.

You know, they would perhaps argue, you know, the Jews have got Israel, the Christians have got the West, Hindus have got India, you know, Muslims have got the North Africa and the Gulf and Pakistan. The Buddhists have got Sri Lanka and Myanmar, where's our homeland? I think there might be some small view that that might be the case. But they wouldn't dream in a million years of causing pain or suffering or being aggressive.

They certainly wouldn't terrorise anyone. They certainly wouldn't be extreme in their behaviour. And that's fine. You know, you can believe in that if that's what you want. I mean, you know, it's not my business. I'm not Indian. I'm not Sikh. There is a tiny minority who are extremists, and I call them PKE's pro-KKKKU's pro-KKALISD extremists.

And they are aggressive, they are threatening. Who are they aggressive towards them? Other Sikhs primarily. I mean, this is kind of hermetic... Like with Islamists? Yeah, it's kind of hermetically sealed within the Sikh community. I had so many, when we were doing the evidence gathering, so many Sikhs come to me under the promise of anonymity to say, no, our lives are being made of misery.

You know, our goodwara's, that's the goodwara is the Sikh temple, you know, are being taken over by these extremists. You know, they're kind of using our local sort of democratic means to become, you know, take over the running of our charities, of the Sikh charities, of the Sikh Guadwaras. And they're poisoning our young people with some, you know, some really hardline extremist things. And, you know, they've come after me.

They're really upset with me. And they've written all kinds of stuff and nonsense. Usual suspects saying that my report's flawed and they don't like what I had to say. You know, that's fine. But they can't deny that there are lots of Khalistan extremist and terrorist organizations that have been prescribed by the UK, by France, by Canada, by America,

that some of the stuff that you can find quite easily on YouTube and other social media will make a hair curl. I mean, it's really obnoxious and violent stuff. And so, you know, they're on thin eyes if they think that there isn't a problem. There is very much a problem. It was the Khalistanis that blew up the Air India flight. Until 9-11, the Khalistani extremists were the world's worst aviation terrorists, which is why they were prescribed as a terrorist organization.

I mean, they don't like being reminded of these things. It was, you know, it was Sikh extremists. that assassinated Indira Gandhi. It was Sikh extremists that tried to, you know, cut the throat of General Bra, Sikh, I think he was a general in the Indian army, who was shopping in London. You know, they tried to cut his throat.

This was like 10 years ago. So, you know, they can't deny that there's an issue. So we've got a few of them. Quite a few. Quite a few. Why do you say how many? Quite a few. Yeah.

Very same question. Well, I've been surprised at just how many. So if you were to look up even as recently as this year protests outside the Indian embassy, hundreds and hundreds of Sikhs with the Khalistani flags wearing, you know, Khalistan, Zinsabad, T-shirts and things like this, hundreds of them protesting outside the Indian embassy. Even pulled down the Indian flag outside the Indian, it caused a huge diplomatic uproar

because the Indian embassy said, you know, our police didn't do enough to sort of intervene, I think. Pulled down the Indian flag and replaced it with a Khalistani flag. I mean, it would be like, I mean, I don't know what it would be like. Imagine back in the 80s, some Irish nationalists going to Delhi and going to the British embassy in Delhi and pulling down the British flag and replacing it with the Irish one. or the IRA flag.

I mean, it would have that same emotional kind of response that we would have. That's exactly how they're having it. And it's a very live issue. And, you know, I know that my report was probably the first to really put that in the public domain to say, here is a big issue. Now, to answer the second part of your question,

yes, there is an issue with black nationalists. No one likes to talk about it. But there are some really wacky groups. And they, interestingly, prisons are quite fertile places for these groups. Nation of Islam, who you'd be familiar with, mainstream Muslims would say they're not Islamic. Then there's a group who they believe pretty much the same thing, but think that they're Jewish. I think they're called the Black Hebrew Israelites. Yeah.

Mainstream Jews would say they're not Jewish. And then there's a Christian group. And they all pretty much believe the same thing. And most mainstream Christians would say, but they know they're not. And they're pretty racist and they're pretty obnoxious. And I'm not a psychologist. I can have an armchair view of perhaps why some of this might happen. But, you know, they're in there.

I mean, again, all I'm saying in the report is it's not a major problem. But it's something government just needs to have their eyes. particularly in prison because there's a lot of room. Well, this is what I was going to ask you. We've got to wrap up because we're running out of time. But one of the things that does seem to be a problem, and this isn't specific just to Islamism, but forced conversion, you know,

the prison population seems to be disproportionately very religious and that is kind of suspect to me in many ways. So talk to us about that. Yeah, so it is. If you were to take the prison population as a whole, it is much more religious and as a much higher number have a much higher number have a faith than the rest of the country.

Which goes counter to your argument about how faith is good for society. But Karen, I'm just joking, just a joke. I think some of them will do it because they want to have belonging when they're in it. When they're in prison. And I think, but when they're in prison, so there's this idea, there are some wings. And I did a lot of prison visits when I was doing the evidence gathering. And they're grim places. I mean, you know, prisons are not nice places at all, you know.

And the prison staff, I mean, it's a horrible job and I'm, you know, I'm glad that someone's doing it. But you're going some wings and it will be like a Muslim wing and it will be a convert or get hurt. You know, there will be a, there will be a, and most, by the way, most, the vast majority of mainstream British Muslims would be, you know, horrified by this. They would say these people are not, they're not speaking for us, you know. And I, and I, and I buy that. These are, it's basically gangs. These are, you know, you're in the Muslim gang and you'll get protection from, or, you know, you're in the Islamist gang and you'll get protection from, from the others.

These are horrible, horrible places. But convert or get hurt. There'll be a copy of the Quran on your bed and you'll be expected to, you know, succumb. And they're not the only ones. I mean, so there will be other. As I say, you know, there are some evidence to say that, you know, some of the black supremacists will be doing similar, you know, similar exercises. But the whole notion of, you know, I encourage your viewers and your listeners

to download the report and read it. It'll take about eight hours because it's quite a big thing. But there's quite a lot that I have to say about faith in prisons. and, you know, how, and chaplaincy in prisons can be a really positive force for good. And I'd like to see government make some, you know, make some changes to that as well. Colin, it's been an absolute pleasure. The arrow is flying by. We always end our interviews with the same question,

which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Now, I have pondered this, and there were two answers I was going to give. So I'm going to give you two, okay? Allow me. I think the first is the issue of critical minerals, rare earth and critical minerals. This is the new oil, right? Like 70% of Europe's critical minerals,

the stuff that we need for our mobile phones and for, you know, our technology and the big wind farms and things like this, 70% of them are on the, eastern border of Ukraine. Just, you know, I'm not surprised Russia wants it. So critical minerals, rare earth minerals, and the supply chain of them. China have got us by the short and curleys on this. Not just us, the whole of the West.

America has been asleep. Europe has been asleep. We have been asleep. We need a healthy supply chain of these. critical minerals to make stuff. And at the moment, nearly all of that supply chain, 90% of it comes through China, either the processing or the mining of it. And that's a massive problem because it means that they want to turn it off.

We've got a problem. And then the second one is similar. It's state-sponsored industrial espionage. You know, the amount of IP that we have in this country, whether it's in pharmaceuticals or whether it's in defense or whether it's in, you know, high tech or that kind of thing. Intellectual property. Yeah, intellectual property. That is being stolen by other states is eye-watering.

And, you know, my next report is actually on this subject on state-sponsored industrial espionage. And the more I've looked into it, the more I get into it, the more I think this is a massive, massive problem. And people should be talking about it. But no, we're going to fixate with, you know, the latest, I don't know, whatever tabloid issue there might be. There are really big, important issues that are happening right under our nose, whether it's critical minerals, whether it's state-sponsored industrial espionage and other things. A lot of your guests have said other interesting things as well. And we've got to focus on that.

We've got to get to grips with it. Colin Bloom, thank you very much. Head on over to locals where we continue the conversation with your questions. I think this Imam said Leo's got the video of it I'm glad this is on your this is only your... Payal thing.

Yeah.