TRIGGERnometry - We Deserved To Lose - Kemi Badenoch

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

Kemi Badenoch is the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK. SPONSOR. Pure Gold. Protect your wealth with The Pure Gold Company. Get your free investor guide at https://pure-gold.co/trigger SPONSOR. MUD\WTR. Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR with code TRIG at https://mudwtr.com/TRIG 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 08:00 How Do You Deal With The State Of The Conservative Party? 15:50 Pure Gold Advert 17:20 Reform Are Now Higher In The Polls Than The Conservative's 22:50 How Do You Deal With Illegal Migration? 29:07 What Level Of Legal Migration Is Acceptable? 32:27 Which People Should And Shouldn't Be Allowed Into The Country? 39:48 ShipStation Advert 41:17 Immigration Policy 43:46 When Did Politicians Lose Their Spines? 47:52 What Has Happened To The UK? 56:24 Net Zero 58:44 MUD\WTR Advert 01:05:39 The Civil Service 01:14:06 What's The Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We got it wrong on immigration. I'm not here to tell you that actually it was all fine. So would you leave the ECHR? If we have to, yes. But what I'm not going to do is say, we'll leave the ECHR, and then we'll work it out later. That's what we did with Brexit, and look what happened. But what I'm not going to be arguing is,

should we have $75,000 or $76,000? But the question isn't that. It's a fake, it's a fake debate. It's not a fake debate. It's not a fake debate because the question is, should we have 1.2 million people? No, 1.2 million is way too high. Let's work our way down.

Should it be 800,000? Should it be 700? Where is that line? And what we saw at the last election, and granted, yes, we deserve to lose, was people giving us a kicking, but not liking the thing they got instead. I think people voted for reform

because they looked at the Conservative Party and they went to quote, something you said in the speech, talk right but govern left. I'm trying, but the problem is you're not, answering my question, right? I have answered the question. No, you haven't.

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So why give your family less, when they can have the best? Add Egglands Best Superior Nutrition to your next grocery list, better taste, better nutrition, better eggs. Kevin Badenock, leader of the Conservative Party. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you, Constantine. It's great to have you on the show.

And you're positive. Yeah. Been meaning to have you on the show for a while. It's great to have you on. Before we get into all the political chat, you know, one of the things that always troubles us with politics is someone just pops up and suddenly they're a person and you don't know anything about them. You don't know their background, etc. So who are you? Who am I? So I am someone who believes that conservatism needs fighting for in the world that we live in. And when I talk about conservatism, I mean traditional conservative values, the importance of family, but also things that used to be considered liberal values, but which helped make this country great. You know, equality under the law and treating everybody equally.

I got into politics for many reasons, but one of them. was that I hated identity politics. And I could see that society, or certainly the state, was beginning to create a hierarchy of groups and people, which is not right and certainly not going to build cohesion. And I wanted to fix that. But I also am someone who is very worried about the West and the future of the West.

I'm worried about the next generation. I was born in 1980, so I'm 45 now. And I look at what life was like, like for me growing up, and I grew up in two places. I grew up here, but also in Nigeria, with a brief year in the US. And I remember being, the 80s being a glorious time. I was there when Ronald Reagan was president. And it was always a good future. I remember being in my 20s. And if I was depressed, it was because there were so many opportunities and I didn't know which one to take. That is not how young people feel today. They are despondent about the future.

They think that the climate is burning, planet is burning, they don't have a good job, and if they do, they still can't afford enough to, you know, get a mortgage, or they've got, you know, so much debt from university that they don't even know where to start. And we haven't been giving them hope and optimism. We've got to start talking about the declineism, the managerialism that I think is bringing the West down. A lot of what I just call uns seriousness, there is a lot of uns seriousness. and we've just got to get our mojo back. That's why I'm doing this.

And I think everyone who watches our show would absolutely agree with everything you've just said. However, the massive problem, it seems to me, for you and your party is that the immediate and obvious counter-challenge to that is, well, your party's just been in power for 14 years and we still have identity politics. We have people being arrested for tweets

under that government and the new one. And all of the things you're talking about, they didn't really seem to get better over the last four years. They're getting worse now, of course. So, you know, what do you say to that? I would say, look at Donald Trump. When he was president, all of those things were happening. Identity politics got worse, you know, issues with free speech.

And often it's about learning what went wrong. My party made a lot of mistakes, but the party's under new leadership now. I am the leader. when I was in government, I was fighting all of those things, which people hated. And when I was doing it, I wasn't getting thanks for it. I remember in the middle of COVID, when everyone was talking about how COVID was killing ethnic minorities and, you know, Labour MPs were shouting about how this is a death sentence for black people. I said, hang on, we're going to look at what's happening.

We need to stop this nonsense. We had a report that looked at what was actually causing it, multi-generational households, the jobs that people did. And also, we, we, we, made sure that we got out a report that looked at what was going on with race in the UK and who was really suffering it was white working class boys and I went out there and spoke up for them and what did I get in exchange being called the the black face of white supremacy so I fought all those things self-ID would be law now in Scotland if I hadn't stuck my neck out people were calling me a transphobe or a homophobe but I don't care about those things I don't care about the insults I believe that we do the right thing. And I can see the things that we did that went wrong. I know why they went

wrong. And why? Tell us. I want a chance to fix it to fix them. It's the same thing that's been going on. It's been going on for decades, not just in this country, but it's been going on for decades. It is politicians telling people what they want to hear instead of telling people the truth. And so they make announcements without figuring out how they're going to deliver it. So I'm an engineer. And my training is, before you start saying what you're going to do, look, if you're feasibility, you have a plan, you draw it up. But you look at something like net zero. I was in the chamber that day. I was a backbencher, a relatively new MP, but I've been an MP for about two years. And this thing is announced. There's a 90-minute debate. And I stand

up and I ask, okay, lots of kids are going to love this. You know, school children, my constituency were always writing about it. But how's this going to work? And I was dismissed, waived away by the minister who said, you know, in due course, the plans will come. That minister, I hear now works in the green sort of lobby and industry. But we put that into legislation and said, well, we're the first people to put this into legislation. And then we started looking at the plans. That's too late. That's the wrong way around. And that is why we now have net zero policies, which Labor is doubling down on and making worse,

that are not going to deliver net zero and will make us poorer or deindustrialising. Same thing with Brexit. I wasn't even an MP when we voted in the referendum. I voted leave because I thought actually if Europe wants to go in a particular way, why don't we just step off here and we stay close but we do our own thing. Getting to Parliament the next year, there's no plan. Triggered Article 50, you know, lots of talk about leaving the EU and becoming a minister, I kept trying to force my colleagues, let's have a plan,

not just announcements. I ended the supremacy of the European Court of Justice in Parliament, end of 2023. I also did a whole load of deregulation, not as much as I would have liked. Some of it was just quite tough, needed more time. But the criticism that I often get is, well, why didn't you do more? And I tell people that if I wasn't there, we would have got a whole load of hot air, and nothing would have happened because people kept saying, we're going to scrap everything.

And I would ask, well, how are we going to scrap everything? scrap everything. What about this thing that everyone loves? And it's that kind of mindset that needs to change. We need to stop making promises with no plan. If people tell you they have a policy with no plan, it's just an announcement. And that's what we're seeing with Labor. Agreed. I suppose the reason I'm putting this question to you is not so much that I'm trying to pin you to the wall. The bigger concern for me is the stay of the country and the future of the country. And the reason I'm asking this is that if I'm a conservative voter, I'm listening to this. I tell the story at dinner parties a lot

because people react with both shock and laugh at every time. Shortly after the last election, I happened to be... This is 24? Yes. I happened to be in a room with a bunch of people, one of whom was a Tory MP. And I asked him, why did you lose the last election? And he went, oh, we lost it to the Lib Dems.

We went too far to the right. Now, yes. Just so you know, that's not why we lost. I know. And so does everybody who laughs just as you did in that story. But my point is, you can say you were a great minister who did all this things, and let's accept that as given not even disputing that.

You're in charge of a party that's full of these people, the people who failed to do their jobs, the people who promised things they couldn't deliver, the people who think they lost the last election to the Lib Dems. How are you going to deal with that? So a lot of people will be speaking from their own personal experience, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the bottom line is that I am the leader, and the party always takes the shape of the leader.

It doesn't mean that everyone in the party suddenly becomes a zombie who is going to agree with the leader. But leadership is about forging a path, taking people in a particular direction. The party under David Cameron was very different from the party under Theresa May, different from the party under Boris Johnson, and so on. So you have to look at the person at the top, and then you will understand what's going to happen. of course there are always going to be people who disagree. But one of the things that I think the Conservative Party did well for a long time was be loyal and show that when a decision is taken, we all go that way. There were many things, many, many things that I was unhappy about in government.

But I had the battles behind closed doors, not out in front. And what happens when you step outside and start telling everyone how terrible it is, is that a lot of division is created, people then just, just park your party to the side and say these people are not fit to govern because they're always arguing. So creating unity behind a proper purpose is absolutely critical. That is what I am doing. Everybody's forgetting. But this time last year, you know, we were all at each other's throat.

So that's certainly what it looked like in the papers, which over-egged things. People were talking about putting letters in, getting rid of Rishi, and who was plotting leadership, you know, leadership battles and so on. I was often named in those things all untrue. And we've gone beyond that. And I think that that's not an easy thing that should be recognized. But I need to make sure that I take the party with me. But the other thing that I'm going to do is make sure that when the next batch of people come in, that they are people who agree with this new way of thinking.

We are not the Liberal Democrats. We are the Conservative Party. We're the oldest and most successful party in the history of Western democracy. but that doesn't mean we're going to be there forever. The liberals used to be a big party, and they died out. And the liberal Democrats are not even the inheritors of that tradition. There's something completely different. We need to get serious, not be complacent.

And I think a lot of people assumed that we would always be the party of the right. And so let's try and move a little bit left and get these other voters. But actually, many of the people they were trying to win over would never vote for us in a gazillion years. You've got to look after the people who share your values first. That, in my view, is how you rebuild a party, rebuild that trust, and then you can get a chance to deliver for the country. Kemi, do you think you're going to actually be able to rebuild that trust because there are a lot of voters in this country who are done with the Conservative Party?

People that I speak to, the people I would see as a traditional conservative voter, including people like my mother, who voted conservative all her life, first generation, she says that she wouldn't vote conservative again in her lifetime. And for someone like me who knows my... That is a shocking statement. It is, and it's always depressing when I hear those things, but I will never give up, and I'll never give up on those people.

Because those people voted conservative for a reason, and they did not see us demonstrating the things that they were voting for. In fact, quite often, when I was out knocking on doors, people would tell me, I'm voting for you, not your party, because I know you're a good egg, or because I know you will do the right thing. and we need to start demonstrating what that authentic conservatism looks like. But the other thing that I tell people is that this is not strictly come dancing or, you know,

I'm a celebrity, get out of here. What you vote for you have to live with. It's not an award for the Conservative Party for being the right kind of party. And what we saw at the last election, and granted, yes, we deserve to lose, was people giving us a kicking, but not liking the, thing they got instead. Not voting conservative gives you some other options. Labor, which people hate now, Lib Dems, who are well to the left of Labor, not a serious party. You can vote reform, but voting reform last time got more labor. And what I see in a lot of places is anger mostly

from people who were conservative voters who definitely did not want the Labor Party, voted reform to give us a kicking and now have things like VAT on private schools, things we would never do things like the winter fuel payments being taken away, and just all sorts of things. You know, the farms tax, for instance, it's just an immoral tax. It's so wrong. And what I want people to know is that we are doing this not for ourselves, but for you. And we got this wrong.

We got things wrong. But the party's under new leadership. We're going to tell hard truths. We're going to do things differently. and we're not going to shy away from tough topics. And rebuilding trust, in my view, it's like a breakup. If you break up with people, you don't just say, your next boyfriend or your next girlfriend is shit.

You come out and say, I'm sorry, and I'm going to be better, and you make yourself better. You make yourself a better product, in my view. And there's no point complaining about reform or labour. We are in a competitive political environment. When you're in a competitive environment, you make sure you are the best. and that means that we need to get cleaned up

and offer people a credible alternative. But, Kemi, you said because people voted reform because they wanted to give the Conservative Party a kicking. I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think that's the case, Kemi. I think people voted for reform because they looked at the Conservative Party and they went to quote something you said in a speech. Talk right, but govern left.

Yes, yes. I think that is also true. But this is why I say the Conservative Party is under new leadership. I talk right and I govern right because that's what I believe. I am not in any way an admirer of left-wing politics because I've lived under what left-wing politics delivers and it's pretty horrible. I lived under socialism. It didn't call itself socialism and it was with soldiers. Everything was run by the government.

It was terrible. No electricity, no water. And people assume that it's just developing country, you know, malaise. it is countries where there are no property rights, no freedom of speech, none of the things that help make countries, especially in the West successful, you know, countries like Japan, we need to start talking about what creates prosperity, what creates a secure high trust country. And that's what, that is what I'm offering. Let me introduce you to the people I work with to protect my family against financial instability,

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future today. That may be what you're offering, but I think very much now that reform has all the energy behind it. And I saw an opinion poll recently which said that reform, was actually higher in the polls than the conservatives. That is a massive blow, isn't it? Considering the fact that reform was, I mean, it was created, what, barely a year ago, a year and a half ago? Well, reform is a new iteration of what was Brexit Party, what was UKIP. In 2019, we were at 9% in the polls,

and the European elections were won by the Brexit Party by a country mile. So I have seen this before. In the 1980s, the SDP was polling, over 50%, 50%. And they were saying, go to your constituencies and prepare for government. An opinion poll is a snapshot of how people are feeling in the moment. An opinion poll is not a general election. And what I need to do is the job that people have given me,

as be an effective opposition, hold Labor to account, get them to course correct. And we've got to do that across the board, not just on the issues that lost us the election. On education, for instance, I've been able to force a U-turn, not enough. But we've done that because we pointed out and exposed a lot of the rubbish that they're doing to academies. They're going to destroy education for the next few years. And it's going to take some fixing. Which party is going to be able to fix that? You know, we need to look at what the offer from the other parties is.

I managed to get them to have not a national inquiry, but some inquiry on grooming gangs, which they were not going to do. Hold on. Was that you or Elon Musk that forced that? Well, it was me. At the end of the day, Elon Musk. is not in the chamber. And if you want to wait for Elon Musk to make Labor do things, I think you'll be waiting a long time. We need to look at what happens in Parliament in this country. And I can't just sit back and hope that Elon Musk is going to save things. There's lots that we've done on winter fuel, for example. I talked about the farms tax. One of the things that we're trying to raise more

awareness of is what is happening with business. Businesses are closing at an unprecedented rate. People are leaving the country, not just millionaires, young people, all. the sparky, entrepreneurial young people are saying there's no future for me here. The tax is too high. The national insurance, jobs tax, as we call it, crushing business. Someone has to speak up for that. Elon Musk is not going to do that. I like his tweets as much as anyone else, but I've got a job to do. And I can't give up and say, well, reform is doing all right, so I'm just not going to do anything. I've got to make sure that I'm working every second of every day to do that. And that often means quite a lot of stuff that's behind the scenes. It can't always be in front of a camera.

a lot of the groundwork requires deep thinking, a lot of preparation, a lot of meetings, building that coalition of support across the board. And I agree with you, but I also think there is an element here that people feel betrayed, Kemi, and they feel betrayed about immigration. Because in 2016, look, Brexit was essentially a referendum about immigration, where the country said we want immigration lowered. A conservative government said we are going to lower immigration. that's the reason we're going to pursue Brexit

and then you've had immigration practically doubled. People are furious about it and I think that is the main reason they're flocking to reform. Immigration, if you ask reform, sympathises, reform voters is always the number one issue. But it's the number one issue for Lib Dems and also Conservative, surprisingly.

We got it wrong on immigration. I'm not here to tell you that actually it was all fine and we do need to rebuild trust. But the immigration system went wrong for lots of reasons that only we know about. Labor are bringing in a bill next week that's going to make it easier for illegal migrants if this is to gain citizenship. So let's deal with the problem that's in front of us. I know that we made mistakes in the past. And in government, certainly, I was arguing that this was going too far.

When I became a new MP, I had, you know, my constituents, you know, high class research institute saying, we can't get the right people, can you help us? And we lobbied for a points-based system. You know, let's not have a cap. Let's just have the brightest and the best people here. And then it'll be great. What happened? Low-skilled migrants with dependents.

And we allow our system to be exploited by people who are willing to take advantage of it. You need very hard-nosed people monitoring it. And that's not just ministers. I say this as a former minister. Ministers are often the last people to find out what's going on because you only know what the civil servants tell you. and we had a system that took about a year before we found out what had happened. And after that, we started tightening things.

We tightened things in 2023 and 2024. Not enough too late years. But we know what went wrong. And that's why I've been talking about having a hard cap on visas. We need a hard cap on visas now legally. We also need to change the rules on indefinite leave to remain. This is a big loophole. It's just a conveyor belt for people having the rights to stay here permanently.

We've also got to look at a lot of. of, you know, the legal system, ECHR, judicial activism. So would you leave the ECHR? If we have to, yes. But what I'm not going to do is say, we'll leave the ECHR, and then we'll work it out later. That's what we did with Brexit, and look what happened. That is what people keep doing. They shout stuff, and they have no idea how they're going to deliver it, and then it's too late,

and then people get betrayed. No, that's fair. I suppose the question is, what are the circumstances? For example, look, I'm guessing you were born here, right? So you're not an immigrant. I wasn't born here. I'm an immigrant. But all of us have an immigrant background in our family, right?

All three of us. And I don't think there's anyone in this room who thinks we should close the board and not let anyone in. And I agree with you, we should welcome talented and driven people because we need them. And they are contributors to our society. But the thing that I think irks everybody is the idea that we've got tens of thousands of people coming into this country illegally. And so when you say, well, we will if we have to, I guess, I know, it's an obvious question, but what's the right level of illegal immigration?

So the reason why I say if we have to leave the ECHR, we will, is because other countries are able to deal with this illegal migration issue without leaving the ECHR. And I saw from the inside what happened when we tried to cordially leave the EU, the level of obstruction, all the things that people hadn't found. thought about Northern Ireland Protocol and so on. So there are things in our domestic legislation, like the Human Rights Act, that we need to change. There are things like indefinitely to remain, where if we fix that, then we will massively reduce the number of people who have rights here. One of the reasons why immigration went up is because a huge number of people just left

work in 2019. We're not talking enough about the worklessness that's going on. People not working. And then businesses saying, well, we need more, you know, we need more immigrants. We can't find people in the UK. Let's deal with the source of the problem. And that's how you get a coherent approach. But let's also deal with the fact that we have, I mean, an open border might be an exaggeration,

but we have a porous border. We have people coming here on boats, among other ways, landing on the beaches and ending up in a taxpayer-funded hotel. How are you going to stop that? So we need to have a deterrent. That was what we were trying to do with the Rwanda scheme. and the election was called, after we got the legislation through, I think really Rishi was trying to make the election a referendum on Rwanda. That's how I saw it.

And in the end, it was too late. But without a deterrent where if you come here, that doesn't mean you're going to get to stay here, we will not be able to reduce the numbers of people. It was even working. Ireland said that it saw an increase in people coming to Ireland because they heard the Rwanda scheme was coming in. Labor have scrapped that.

So we have no deterrent. And maybe it should be a different country like Rwanda or whatever. But to not have any deterrent at all, in my view, is just not serious. I agree. But your deterrent is you come here and then we send you to a different country. That's the deterrent? Yes. Knowing that you will not get an automatic right.

People know how to work the system. They know, you know. Why can't we just turn the boat around? For several reasons. I have spoken to people in the Navy who have given reasons why they wouldn't do it. They worry about loss of life. They talk about sailors. British sailors are about saving lives, not losing them.

Turning the boats around without loss of life very difficult. There might be a way. Where are you taking the boats to? France. That's their territory. They can impound our boats. Do we want to go to war with France? Not really.

It's the British tradition. Well, that's certainly not my policy. But the other thing is they also have this problem. You know, I was in France recently. They have the same problem. There should be some cooperation. We were paying their money for cooperating, not working, but this is a problem that needs a deterrent.

It needs us to get serious. We shouldn't have people having access to GPs at the front of the queue when they're illegal migrants. People know how to work the system. A lot of these people are not asylum seekers, are not refugees. So we need to crack down on those who are exploiting the system. Your deterrent doesn't sound like much of a deterrent, with all respect. And, you know, this is where I always bring up the case of Australia.

as I'm sure you know, they had a legal immigration problem on boats. And then in 2013, they elected a government led by Tony Abbott. Last year, I think the number of people who came into Australia legally was 74. And that's because they have a very strong deterrent. Yes. And our deterrent model is, our deterrent policy was modeled on Australia's. But also, and Tony Abbott is a good friend of mine. I've spoken about this with him. He was one of the people who endorsed me along with Ron DeSantis. So I've spoken about this. with people all across the world. Australia has places.

That's why we had Rwanda. It's the same thing. We don't have a little island just off the coast of the UK that we can just take people to. Australia is also very far away from almost anywhere where the mass migration is coming from.

So it's not exactly the same. They also have different waters. It's not like the channel where it's very close to another country's territory and so on. I've looked into this. There are lots of complications.

We are working on this. We will get a plan. It'll be better than what we had before, but we need a deterrent. The small boats crisis is part of a global mass migration problem. I was in Italy two days after the island of Lampedusa had 8,000 people arrive on it. That island has got 5,000 people. So Georgia Maloney is doing everything she can. She's being obstructed.

The issue is there in Germany. We've got to look at this as a global problem. But we need to make sure that we don't create lots of enticements in our country. that means that once people get here, they can slip away. You know, detention centres, for example, do not hold people the way I think they should be holding them. Some people are allowed to move around freely. They can disappear. Yes, that might impact their asylum application later.

But also, if they know the system, if they've got phones, they have friends or family, they can just disappear into the economy. We've got to look at all those things. It means more policing, for example, more focus on ensuring that the people, People who are here are here for the right reasons. And they're here. If they're fleeing somewhere, they're genuinely fleeing. They're not cutting the queue and jumping to the front of it across people who have actually done it the right way and are waiting to come to our country.

I agree with you on that. I know. It's totally not fair. And what about legal immigration? Because it seems to me that we face a conundrum. On the one hand, as you say, there is business demand for more people to come and fill jobs. On the other hand, I think we'd all acknowledge that the British public are very concerned about the level of legal immigration too. So we've had over a million people coming to this country in one year.

What do you think is the right level of immigration? Now, I know you don't want to commit to 83,422. I respect that. But ballpark. Where should it be? At the moment. Not forever, but at the moment. What I've always said is that numbers matter.

but culture matters more. We keep talking about the numbers of people coming here. We don't talk about the people who are leaving. And this is the thing that terrifies me, that it's the ship of Theseus. If you have 100,000 doctors leave and you get 1,000 unskilled migrants, your net migration numbers, they're fantastic,

but your country is not better. We are not looking at the real thing. Who is coming into our country? Why do they want to be here? I remember coming back to the UK, age 16, and thinking this is an amazing place that why would anyone not want to be here? I know the pull that the UK has, but we have to make sure that everybody who is here buys into what the UK is about, and they're not trying to turn it into wherever it is they came from. I don't want this country to turn into Nigeria or India or wherever.

I wanted to be the place that we all love. And that's something that we don't talk about. Once upon a time, immigration happened in small numbers slowly so that people were absorbed and assimilated into society. And it wasn't because they took a citizenship test or government regulations. Society did the integrating. Now we're all told, you can't say this, you can't say that, the moral and cultural relativism, everything is fine,

nothing should be criticized. And then we're seeing the most extreme things happening. Manchester bombing, hearing that the security guard didn't want to ask a question because he thought it might be racist. We're just seeing this all over the place. This is not how you run an immigration or an integration policy. And that's where we need to be.

Arguing about, well, should they be 80,000 or 70,000, it should be whatever we can sustain for the long term. It's different. If people are having children in this country, we will not need people. If people aren't having children, then we have a problem. so birth rate comes into it. But what I'm not going to be arguing is,

should we have 75,000 or 76,000? But the question isn't that. It's a fake, it's a fake debate. It's not a fake debate. It's not a fake debate because the question is, should we have 1.2 million people? No, 1.2 million is way too high. Let's work our way down.

Should it be 800,000? Should it be 700? So at some point, we won't know. What I'm saying is that we know we don't have enough houses for people to put in. We know we don't have enough GPs. we need to look at and have a proper plan for what is a sustainable rate of growth

for the UK. That work has not been done. And what I'm not going to do, as I said earlier, is just make an announcement and go, well, I think it's about this much. It's just not serious. It's way too fine. Let's come back to the other point you made, which I think is a very good point, a point not enough people make.

And I think I'm really glad that someone like you is able to make it, actually. And I think we live in this, I think it's a tragedy that we live in this world, But the fact that you're a black woman makes it easier for you to say this in the same way that I'm an immigrant makes it easier for me to say. But it shouldn't. I know.

That's why I think it's a tragedy. And I'm glad you're speaking up about that. I think it's great that you're doing that and using that ability. But the difficult issue is you're saying we should bring in certain people but not others. So the inevitable question there, as you, I'm sure, appreciate it is, who should we not be bringing in? I remember being asked about this on the BBC, where, The culture there is everything is the same. We shouldn't be bringing people in who are not interested in integrating.

And we can see the pattern of where that lack of integration comes from. And we need to pay attention to that. What's the pattern? So let's use the grooming gang scandal as an example. There was a report written in the 80s about the group of people who came from a particular region in Pakistan due to the floods. we needing workers here way back in the 60s. But even there, they were not integrating in the culture there, very insular backgrounds.

And I remember describing them as, you know, coming from peasant backgrounds, peasant farmers, and so on. And no one was listening to the story about the victims that I had talked about. It was all about whether I should have used the word peasants or not. This is the kind of fake conversation I think we end up happening in our media. We need to look at the pattern of who migrates well or who does well, who are the good patterns of migration,

where did the bad patterns of migration come from? This is one of the pieces of work that I started in government. The first report that came back did not answer the question that I wanted. It was part of that race and ethnic disparities report. We need to look at what makes people successful. And yes, it can be things like whether or not they speak English, that's not enough, but it's also about what it is they want to do here, why they want to come here.

Are people just creating the same communities that they've come from here, No, we don't want that. But that requires everybody, teachers, neighbors, vickers, to be involved in making sure that people integrate. What we can't do is say, you know, we don't want, you know, this list of people. No, we can't do that. But there are countries, actually, where we can even just look at the reciprocal arrangements

and see that these are not places that think and behave like us. They are not places that embrace liberal values. And I think that what we need to do is look at places where the pattern of migration and integration is high. That's a piece of work that needs to be done. But it's very, very obvious, like the example that I gave about grooming gangs, where people that came from that region ended up carrying out these atrocities. And instead, they were described as Asian grooming gangs or Pakistani grooming gang.

This is how we hide what's really going on. We've got to do a lot of work to really drill down. And we need to make sure that we have a policy that is different for different places. We used to have that. You know, the rules that you have to follow if you're coming from countries that are very different from the UK are often tougher than what you need if you're right next door in Ireland or France. But let's look at who is coming in. How old are they, for instance? If people are much older, they're obviously going to be less likely to be net contributors. There's a whole raft of things that we can do. But I've said that I'm not announcing policy early because we need to do the work on it. I have strong views about this.

We have values and principles. We need to test what works. We need to test what's feasible. What could we do? Certainly initially, within the legal framework that we have now. Otherwise, we'll just end up arguing and fighting about things. And when we know what we need to do, sweep away the things that are causing problems. But I'm not going to have a list of here in my favorite countries.

And this is where we want my group up. But that is what you're saying. You're saying there are countries who are in our neighborhood. I'm saying we need to have principles and rules that we can apply. And there's differential depending on where the people are coming from. That was what the points-based system was supposed to be. But it didn't work. So we need to look at why it didn't work.

All I'm trying to do is get what you're saying converted into more accessible language and slightly more precise so that people have clarity about what it is that you're saying. What I'm reading, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I just want to just translate it. What I'm hearing is you would like to have a system based on points, among other things, that differentiates between people who are different ages, different educational backgrounds, different geographical locations. So people coming from certain parts of the world

might have a stricter regime applied to them than people who come from France, for example. Is that what you're saying? You can't tell all of those things at the border. Sometimes it's after people arrive that you do that. That's why I'm talking about how a society integrates and assimilate. And you can't stop every single person. But if you can focus on the majority, the problem will get solved.

That's how migration used to work. And we need to look at why it was that years ago, people would assimilate into the country well. What has changed? Do that work and then figure it out. That's what I'm saying. It's not about picking groups of people because that just ruins the conversation. And what I'm trying to do, in the same way that you said that because I'm black, I'm able to talk about things, I don't think it should be that way. I am trying to create the space so that we can have a civilized and decent conversation.

I'm trying. Yes, but I don't mean, I don't mean. I'm trying. But the problem is you're not answering my question, right? I have answered the question. No, you haven't. What's the question that is not answered? The question that's not answered is, is the points-based system that you're suggesting,

is a system that effectively adopts the mantra that you gave us early in the interview, which is the idea that all cultures are the same, that all people everywhere have the same views and beliefs? No, no, no, no, no. Culture matters more. That's what I said. Okay. That's what I'm saying. So if you think that there are certain parts of the world

we should apply different criteria to, is that part of... But that's the reason why I said that if you look at the region within... If you had had a blanket Pakistani... Yeah, I understand. You know, a veto. You'd miss out on loads of people who are doing great things in the country

who've come here. It's about looking deeper than that. These things are not just at national level. I think that the work needs to be done. for us to have a policy on that. And we don't want people who think child marriage is okay. We don't want people who think we should have blasphemy laws. We don't want people who think that gays or women are not equal human beings

and should be stoned to death. But you can't test for that at the border. So what are you going to do? This is what I'm saying. You can have society enforce it. But the reason why you're asking me, what are you going to do? Because you believe that government should do everything. No.

But this is the thing. That's not what I'm asking. But that's what I'm saying. government can't do everything. We need other people to get involved. We need society to do this. That's what used to happen before. I agree with you.

If you say that the government needs to fix everything, you start to get people, but that's what I'm inferring from what you're saying. No, you're wrong about that. But you start to get people feel that it's got nothing to do with me. This is for the government. That's not what I'm saying. Well, you said, what are you going to do?

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Go to shipstation.com and use a code trigger to sign up for your free trial. At shipstation.com, code trigger. Shipstation, make ship happen. Your point about integration is well taken. We have to integrate people and encourage people to become part of this society. I am one of the people in this country is banging the drum for that as much as you are. I think that's fair to say. What I'm asking you is about immigration policy, and that is the job of government.

And what people in this country who are watching this interview would like to know, I know that you've got time before the next election, you're trying to work out detailed proposals, I really respect that. But I'd like to know, and I think they would, the direction of travel. Are you going to attempt to implement a policy that looks at different places and says, well, we want more people of this kind

than fewer people of this kind, and we want to make sure that they're not like this, but they're like that. That's what a skills-based system is. So why won't you just say that? I did. I said we had a points-based system, but it didn't work. So we've got to look at why it didn't work.

We've got to look at why it didn't work. It's not just about saying, well, this is what I'd like to see and so on. We need to do that work. That's what the Conservative Party is doing now. But I've told you the direction of travel. Immigration is too high. We need a hard cap.

Indefinitely to remain needs to be sorted. Numbers matter. Culture matters more. We need all of society to integrate. That's what I'm talking about. But if you want me to say exactly what the Border Patrol person is going to do when someone rocks up in which form it is, we're not there yet. And we're not going to be there for a long time because we need to fix problems now. We need to do the detailed work.

We need to have an argument. we don't talk about these things. You know when I say creating the space for us to have this conversation? We don't talk about things at this level. We just say, you know, well, what's the number? It's because I get that question a lot. Well, what's the number? What's the right number?

You can't give a number. Tens of thousands. We gave another number, hundreds of thousands. Giving a number is not solving the problem. It is yet another announcement, not a policy or a plan. And the party is under new leadership. I'm doing things differently. It means that sometimes people won't hear exactly

what they like. It means the truth has to be said, even when it's difficult, that we've got a global problem here. UK's got to look after its national interest. That's what I'm about, looking after our national interest first, not as we see with Labor, the international law regime. That's why they're giving away the Chegos Islands. That's why they didn't like Brexit. And there's still, for instance, opportunities from leaving the European Union that we haven't taken. This work needs to be done. We've got to start looking at the future and not just having the same conversations. Kemi, there's one element of this

you've touched on, which is you talk about making the space to make these conversations acceptable, and I agree with you. Also, I think, why do you need to do that? When is it that every politician of all ilk of practically either

side, apart from a select few, lost their spines? The whole purpose of politicians was to be able to have uncomfortable decisions and make, unprofitable decisions, and make uncomfortable conversations and make unpopular decisions. You don't get to lead and be liked universally.

It's ridiculous, isn't it? It is, and I completely agree with you. You were preaching to the choir here. But why, I think the interesting question you asked is why did people lose their spine? And that, I think, is really at the heart of what's going on. When, in an easier age, before Parliament was televised and you just heard it on the radio,

people didn't recognize you in the street. You know, the Prime Minister would walk the street. People didn't know what he looked like. It was a lot easier to say what you thought. Now we have an extreme version of that where every single thing you say, almost every minute, is put out there. And the agro, you know, speak colloquially, comes immediately and quickly. And it's very difficult.

A lot of people can't deal with that. And so the next natural question is, well, if they can't do it, they shouldn't be in politics. But people vote for, and I've seen this happen at local level, they vote for the nice person who says the things that they want to hear, rather than the person who's going to tell hard truths. So what I'm doing right now is the difficult path to getting us back to, you know, to higher polling numbers, more credibility with the public rebuilding trust.

Telling the truth is not the way to be elected. It's often telling people what they want to hear. But I love that Thomas Salko quote, that if you want to help people, you tell them the truth. And if you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. The average person who gets elected now is often someone, maybe, you know, they've done some nice work in the community. They're not thinking about national security. They're not thinking about how we deal with Russia and Iran or China. They're not thinking about food security.

They're thinking about potholes and, you know, how do we fix the church? or if you look at it, you know, you listen to the questions that people ask in Parliament, you know, will people celebrate, you know, the people who ran a marathon in my constituency and so on. It's sort of like a little local champion. And that sort of thing does not create brave politicians. So we need space for some of that bravery.

That when people say difficult things, they're not all ripped down. And when people agree with them, they get some support. And other people just see the things that happen to people like David Amos. or people like Joe Cox and think, this is too much, I don't want any part of it. This is what happens when you are, as David Amos was, very pro-Israel, for example. Or in the case of Joe Cox, the person who went after her, you know, was, I don't know. I think whether it was mentally ill or on the far right, people think, well, maybe I shouldn't say anything that's too tricky.

This is wrong. We need to be in a place where people can speak and know that something horrible isn't going to happen. And even when you see these things occur, the politicians generally will talk about social media rather than Islamism. It's because people are afraid. They're afraid. So we've got to find brave people.

And once people know the risks, they often become afraid even when they were brave. So those of us who are prepared to speak about what needs to be done, become fewer and fewer. And I want us to stop this cycle. I want to recruit brave people who understand how the world,

works, how the system which used to work for us 30 years ago doesn't work now, how do we change it? Those are the people that I'm asking to join the Conservative Party, because we are a party that knows not just what's wrong, but also how to solve them. So in that spirit, uncomfortable truths, what's happening with this country? Because the average person looks around, they may not be political, they may not be tapped into what's going on, but every single person who I talk to who wants to talk to me, wants to have a conversation, is going to meet what's going on. Things are going wrong here.

And they may not be able to put their finger on it, but they know. Yeah. So what is going on? We are living in an era of managed to decline. And this is what I said to Kirstama today. It was quite interesting. We had PMQs today. And every time I've got PMQ,

so it's going to be a long answer. Every time I've got PMQ, I get about 50 people saying, you should ask this thing. This is the killer question. and almost all of them will not be killer questions. People said, you know, ask a question about his voice coach, ask questions about Chega.

So you try and put those things together. But the thing that I was asking about is the thing that really terrifies me, that we keep making laws and decisions that are de-industrializing the UK, that are taking away capacity, institutional memory, how to build the memories and the, you know, the learnings that we've had for generations, and we're making ourselves poorer. So today, you know, I talked about how these oil and gas fields, which we had approved in government, should go ahead.

There's a court case with extinction, rebellion, and all these people have fought. And the judges said, oh, it was unlawful for them to have a license. Of course, it's not unlawful. But you have to fight these things. And we've just got into a system where, well, we can't do anything. The courts have said this, the courts have said that. The government needs to fight it. And when it doesn't, things disappear.

businesses are leaving the North Sea oil and gas sector. We are losing money. Jobs will disappear. We'll see more poverty in Scotland if these things don't happen. That's what worries me. And yes, we can talk about some of the Westminster bubble issues, but not having a job, not being able to feed your kids, not having a house, not being able to heat your home.

That's what really terrifies me. And that's where the managed decline comes from. If you don't have a government that has a vision of the future that is hopeful and optimistic, that can't fight even the tiniest thing. I mean, I'll give you an example. There was a band called Kneecap, which we were giving music grants to.

Don't ask why the music grants were a scheme, but I became business secretary, and this was something that we were doing. I thought, fine, we give money to, you know, struggling artists. And then I found out that one of the bands was a very anti-British, you know, promoting violence band. It was sort of pro-IRA, just really, really violent. stuff. And I thought, well, okay, that's fine. I believe in free speech. But free speech doesn't mean

we need to pay for it. Why is the government paying for this? You know, it's going to pay for, you know, something nice. And I canceled their grant. They took me to court and the election happened. What happens when Labor comes in? They don't fight the case. They just let it through, though we don't want to fight this. So when you won't fight a little thing like that where you're sticking up for Britain, you're not wasting taxpayers money, you're defending, you know, violence against people, if you can't fight that little thing, how are you going to fight a Rosebank? And this is what I mean, that Labor can't negotiate.

Whether it's on reparations in the Commonwealth, whether it's on the Chegos Islands, they lost this AstraZeneca investment, 450 million pounds. We negotiated that. We've got a great deal. They've lost it. They just keep messing everything up. And that's what we're going to have over the next four, five years. It's managed

decline, and we have to stop it. So what you're really saying with the managed decline is that this is ideological? I think, I don't know whether ideological is the right word. I don't know whether ideological is the right word. It's a mindset problem. It's a mindset problem. It's, it's, there are some people who believe that the UK is always going to be amazing.

And so we can give loads of money to foreign countries and we can get lots of people in. We're so rich. Everybody come in, come and enjoy, come and enjoy the wealth. It's a mindset that is complacent. I've lived somewhere that's had these policies in the extent. extreme and it was terrible. So I can see where this sort of behavior takes you. You look at the history of a lot of countries that went down the tubes. Argentina is now getting fixed by Malay. They did a lot of nonsense with public spending. You just spend money. You borrow endlessly. You go

bankrupt. You don't create freedom for enterprise because growth and prosperity doesn't come from government. It comes from business. You crush business, tax, tax, tax, all sorts of nonsense regulations where they can't do anything normal without getting a call from the council. And you kill what makes the country great. And that's what I want to stop. Labor does not get that at all. And instead, what we see with them where it does become ideological is the politics of envy. These people are socialists, the socialism. Why are they putting VAT on private schools? Yeah, it doesn't affect lots of people. But there are most people who go to private school aren't that wealthy. You know, I knew of a hairdresser who took her kid out because the 20% was just that

bit too much. And then they're changing what's happening with education, removing the freedom for schools to, you know, set their own curriculum, hire the best teachers. It's because they don't want the people who know how to get stuff working, doing things. They're listening to the unions. The unions are writing laws. They're writing education bills. They're writing the employment bills. That's where the ideology comes from. And who are they punishing? People who don't vote for them. They're punishing farmers. They're punishing pensioners. They're punishing small businesses, family businesses, because they're not traditional labor voters. That's where you see the ideology in terms of who they're picking on. But the rest of it is just complacency,

this legal bureaucratic mindset that creates no growth. And when I say ideological, I'm also thinking as well, how much of it is them thinking to themselves and putting forward the idea that the UK is evil? We are a country which has profited from empire, we have made trillions, therefore we owe to give, for example, the Chegos Islands back, etc., etc. This white guilt that a lot of white middle class people carry. That's definitely there, but it's not just white guilds. It's guilt and foolishness and just socialism.

It's just the new evolution. You can smuggle socialism in if you get it to wear the clothes of something that looks nice. A lot of socialism now is, you know, a lot of the extreme stuff that went on diversity and inclusion, for example, it's socialism through the backdoor. Net zero de-industrialization, the government buying all the railways and so on. It's socialism coming back. But what you're talking about in particular is it's just a very peculiar thing to certain Western Anglophone countries. Most countries aren't like this, this sort of self-loathing of we're so terrible. Most countries are chess beating, even when they're terrible countries, you meet people from there.

They say, we're the best people in the world. We're fantastic. There's something particularly interesting about the British mindset that it's susceptible to this in some quarters. I think George Orwell wrote about, you know, the left-wing intellectual would rather steal from a port box than sing God save the king. There's something there, and it does manifest itself, not just in the Labour Party, but in the Liberal Democrats. And this is, you know, to the point that that Conservative MP was talking about, that the one who said it's not reform, it's Lib Dems. I can understand sometimes why some of my colleagues talk about the Lib Dems in that way,

because there's 70 Liberal Democrats in Parliament. They're 14 times as many Liberal Democrats than Reform MPs. There are even more MPs from the Independent Alliance, which one on a sectarian sort of platform, there are more of them than there are on reform. when you look at the numbers of who is making decisions in this country, we now have the most left-wing parliament we have ever had. It's not just the 400 plus Labour MPs.

So 70 Lib Dems, SMP, Independent Alliance and a few others, the Greens. It's, you know, it's awful in there. And we're the ones doing the bulk of the work. You know, it's all very well, you know, popping up here and there and sending tweets. But the work that's going to save this country is hard graft on, legislation, sitting in committees, going line by line through all of the nonsense that Labor is doing. There's only one party that's doing that, and that's the Conservative Party. You mentioned Net Zero. Is that compatible with prosperity?

It depends on what you do with Net Zero. So I think that we need to make sure that we leave a great environment for our kids. I don't want my kids living, you know, in a smog fest, you know, polluted country or city. So things like... biodiversity, for example, I think that's stuff we should do, but let's do it with farmers, not just impose weird and random stuff on them. Net zero, I think, could be solved by, you know, technological innovation. Let's see what we can do with that. But why 2050? Why not 2051? Why not 2049? It's an arbitrary date. So we need to look at what's working, in my view, and we need to do it on a no-regrret basis. So what I mean by that is that we don't know,

for sure that if we get to net zero, all of the problems with climate change, which are real, will be solved. So I'm not a climate change skeptic. I'm a net zero skeptic. And if we can't fix it by getting to net zero, what else have we got? Have we moved to, you know, renewable fuels? Because one day, someday, the oil will run out. Maybe it's 500 years time. But have we moved enough to be able to sustain ourselves? What have we done for the future? Have we created better cities, you know, cleaned up a lot of the crappy places that are not nice to live in, have we fixed air pollution. Let's do other things as well. But what we have now is this zealotry where it sounds like it's absolute zero and people want to take us to the Stone Age. I mean, that's just,

that's terrible. And this stuff about being world leading, I find a bit disingenuous because you're not going to be world leading if you bankrupt yourself trying to get to net zero. Nobody is going to follow us into poverty. So whatever net zero plans we do have have to make sure that we become more prosperous. No one around the world is going to copy us into how to become poorer, even if it is reducing emissions. That is something I'm very sure about. And you can look at what's happening in India or in China where they're opening a coal-fired power station every five minutes and we're outsourcing our stuff there. We are de-industrializing. And this is terrible. Where are we going to, what are we building for the future? What are young people going to have? So it's not compatible.

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It's not compatible with prosperity then. It's how you do it. It's how you do it. But net zero is just a phrase. It's what is the plan behind it? Well, net zero is not a phrase. It's an agenda to reduce our carbon emissions to net zero. Well, yeah, well, that's what the only way to do that is to do what we're doing, which is shipping our industry to other countries. Well, I don't think it's the only way, I don't think it's the only way to do that. Is it the only way to do that by 2050? Maybe. That's why I say, why the date, where are we trying to get to? Do we know that it'll definitely. solve those problems. But we've got to look at everything in the round. But if we just talk about net zero the phrase, then there are a lot of people who don't know the arguments that you and I are discussing, who just hear climate change skeptic, these people don't believe in the environment,

I'm not going to vote for them. And we need to make sure that the platform that the Conservatives win on is a visible centre-right platform. But it has to be one that is on the common ground, not just, you know, this whole, I don't buy the centre-ground thing. It's not linear. It's more than 3D. It's got to be on the common ground where the bulk of people are. And the bulk of people, you know, you get outside the cities flooding everywhere. Why are places getting flooded? Many people believe that it's climate change and they want to see us solving it. Now, well, you could pick an adaptation strategy, for example. You could look at technological strategies. You could look at a whole bunch of things. So the conversation again has got to expand beyond

just net zero. Let's look at all the things. things that we can do. But let's not bankrupt ourselves. Well, that's what I'm saying. But if our electricity prices are four times what they are in the US, how are you going to run into the show? Yeah, that's crazy. But, you know, the US also has a net zero agenda. And they're not no, they do not. They do not have a

net zero. But you would have heard, Biden talked about net zero, but they still had their electricity prices less than half of what hours were. So let's look at what we are actually doing. Do we need a boiler tax, for instance? Do we need all of them? Look at the policies in detail.

If you just look at the headline, you won't get to the root of what is causing the problem. Well, in America, they believe in producing energy and making it cheap. Exactly. Right? We do not. That's where we should get to. Do you believe that? Of course I do.

That's why at PMQs today, I'm talking about making sure that we keep our oil and gas fields open. Because even if you want to get to net zero, gas and oil are part of that transition. Net zero does not mean absolute zero. Too many people think that absolute zero is where we're going. You can still have fossil fuels and be net zero. But what we are doing where we're not thinking about these things properly, not having proper plans, is the issue. And we need to start talking seriously about that.

Because there's also the other element of it is going, if all you're doing is making your country poorer, the Chinese aren't doing that, the Indians aren't doing that. I was talking to an economist who was saying to me, if you're looking at current projections, Poland's going to have a higher GDP than us by 2030. And for 2035, it looks like the Romanians are going to beat us. And they're looking at this going, well, this is just suicide, isn't it?

That is why all the things I'm talking about are about how we create prosperity in our country. What are we doing on education? Because if you let the education system change to where Labor's taking it, we're going to have more people not knowing what's going on. What are we doing on employment? What are we doing for business? we're getting people back to work? How do we stop ourselves from de-industrialising? Give those license applications to those oil and gas fields. Kirstarmer could do it like that. He could,

but he doesn't want to. We are the only people who are going to expose that. But yes, you're right. If we carry on on the trajectory that Labor are taking us on, then yeah, all those countries will become richer. And that, I do not want to see that. We need to fight for our country. And have you won these arguments within your party? Yes, because I made those arguments in the leadership contest. And it doesn't mean that everybody is going to agree with every single thing that I say. I didn't agree with every single thing that every leader of the Conservative Party said. But if you can show that you've got a vision for how we're going to make the country better and you can show that you've got a plan, here is the way, and you do it in a way that

isn't just shouting at people or dictating to them, then they will come on board. And one of the things I said I wasn't going to do was just dictate things like leaving the ECHR. I do think on balance we're probably going to have to leave. But what I wasn't going to do was say, we're leaving the ECHR my way or the highway. That would just have split the party, that Lib Dems would have been the opposition, and we could have had a great conversation

about the ECHR, but nobody would be holding Labor to account right now. I have a responsibility as leader of the opposition to do the job that I've been given. It's not an easy job. Everyone who's done it before me has said, this is the toughest job. I am actually enjoying it because I love a challenge, and I love an argument, as you can see,

from the times that we've had here. You know, I love it, and I love being challenged. I don't mind you asking me tough questions about immigration because it gives me an opportunity to talk to all of your listeners who can hear what I have to say directly, and then they can make up their minds. And that's why I'm in politics. You know, I love fixing things.

And being an engineer is always going to stay with me. I want to fix stuff, but we've got to have a plan. We've got to do it properly. And it's not just chit-chat and making announcements and striding across the world stage. It's hard graft. It can often be very difficult. and you've got to be brave.

And I'm not scared. I will always be brave about these things. There's one part of the problem and the challenge that you're going to face if you get into government. France is speaking from experience. Yeah, exactly. Tell me about your experience.

What happened? Which is the civil service. Because many politicians that we've had sitting in your seat and people like Dominic Cummings have spoken about this as well going, look, it's all very well. You get into power and then you try and get the

civil service to enact policies and they simply refuse to do it. Or they off-fuscate and you're going, what is going on? What is the experience that you had specifically? I was taking the pitch. Francis has zero experience in politics. You look traumatized.

I was thinking about my teaching career and then I got a PTSD prospect. So I remember at the last party conference I made a joke and I said that 10% of civil servants are magnificent and the other 10% should probably be in prison. You know, leaking official secrets, obstructing ministers and so on.

And there was this big hoo-ha that said, I want to put 50,000 people in jail and so on. But the point I was making... We don't have the prison for a start. He'd have to release sex offences. Definitely not doing that. But the point I was making is that we shouldn't put all civil servants in a bucket.

There are some great people who work in our civil service. they are more frustrated than you or I are by their colleagues who are obstructing because they have to live with them constantly. And I remember talking to one official who was so good and she was complaining about the, you know, some of these diversity policies, how they were actually unmeritocratic and how, you know, there was a scene in the civil service that was very worried about self-ID and all the pronoun stuff that they needed to get promoted. I said, why don't you speak out about it, you know, that I will support you, I will give you cover. And she said, yeah, but

what happens when you're gone? The ministers change all the time. What if there's an election and I get a new minister? What's going to happen to me? There's not going to be anyone to protect me. So we need to empower the good people. We need to make sure that when we have stuff that's he's doing, we bring the good people forward. And we also need to be able to sack the people who are not good. At the moment, ministers cannot sack because that creates, um, it's a lot of It affects civil service impartiality. So the performance management system needs to change to one where people who don't perform do get sacked.

I remember asking my department, how many people have re-sacked since the department started and I was told none ever. And I thought that that was extraordinary. You know, people might be encouraged to leave or voluntary redundancies, but actually if there are bad eggs in any organisation, and that includes Parliament as well,

they should be removed. You need that performance management system. You need incentives. And when you have the right incentives, sometimes the incentives are pay, sometimes it's freedom to make mistakes. When you have the right incentives, you can have people delivering. But I also think that we need more politics in the civil service, because the civil service has already been politicised. All of these impartial and neutral organisations, these quangos, regulators, they've all been politicised. And politicians have been giving power away. You know, we'll make this independent, we'll make that independent,

And we have so little power now. We certainly did as ministers. I'd want to do things. I thought, you can't do that. You know, Bank of England, the Competition and Markets Authority. You know, we've created legislation that's given power away to independent organizations. And it sounded good at the time. But actually, what it means is that the democracy is sticky.

You vote for things and it's hard to make it happen. If it isn't to a quango, it's, you know, a court decision. You look at what we're dealing with on borders, for example. endless sort of court obstruction. You look at this Rosebank and Jack Dorr, oilfield issue. That's court saying, no, we want to do net zero. We've got to get some of that power back. And it's really important because when you look at Gen Z and their faith in democracy, it's shaky, to put it mildly. There's a lot of Gen Z. I think it's something like 52% who are favoring a strong man authoritarian in order to get things done. and as somebody who has seen the effects of that firsthand, that is terrified.

They might settle for a strong woman as well. Democratically elected. That's the one thing that I'll never give up on. I lived in a place that had soldiers and strong men, and you'd see people strung from Lampost and dead bodies in the street. The reason why young people are saying this is because they haven't seen it. and this is why those of us who have seen these things need to protect what is so special about here.

It's very easy to think that, yeah, what we just need is a strong person and then they'll give them the what for. But what always happens with these revolutions is, and we saw this with many countries during the Arab Spring, we saw it in Libya, we saw it in Syria and so on. So something worse takes its place.

Democracy is the worst possible system until you've tried all the others. You know, or there's a phrase to that And we need to start reminding them of what the consequences are. And once you lose it, you know, go to Iran and see what happened when they got the Ayatollahs in. Once you lose it, it is so, so hard to get it back. And we have to protect what is special about the UK. There's one piece of that that I will disagree with, which is the job of, I think, all politicians across the board now,

is to make sure that democracy is the least worst system. Yes, absolutely. And the problem is that a lot of people, it's not just that they don't know, the consequences of the things you're talking about, which I think is very true. We don't appreciate enough in the West how fortunate we are to have what we have. It's a complacency. Absolutely. But on the other hand, we have got to make sure that young people in particular have a stake in our society.

Absolutely. If they don't, well, they might say, well, maybe this is maybe a few people stringing from a lamppost. If you civil servants hanging from a lamp post, maybe it's worth it. So that's why politicians really have to. We've got to, you know, you're absolutely right about that. We have got to give young people home. We have to. It's why I say the net zero has got to have no regrets.

If you're pursuing a policy like that, then what are you doing on, you know, building homes? Where are the cities of the future? Where are the great jobs? And a lot of these jobs that we're hearing from these net zero plans, it's junk, you know, the chairman of, you know, great British energy said that they'll get, you know, a thousand jobs in 20 years. I mean, it's just extraordinary. We have to, we have to get serious.

And I can see why some people will say that, you know, they look at, you know, the Gulf and you can look at the UAE or even Saudi, and they're growing. They are taking growth seriously. And I remember speaking to a Saudi minister because I remember hearing about what Saudi Arabia was like and could see for myself last year how it was changing. And I said, what made you carry out all these changes. And he said to me, our young people were not coming back. They were going to the US. They were going to the UK. And they were not coming back. And we needed to make sure that we gave them a country that they wanted to come back to. That is what the UK needs to do. And at the moment, we're just thinking, yeah, it's fine. And you listen to Labor and they think, well, you know,

don't forget to shut the door on your way out if you're leaving. That is not the right attitude. We need to make our society attractive, not just to asylum seekers and economic migrants, to those people who will help continue to make it a great place. We're going to go to questions from our listeners, which they've already submitted. But before we do, we always end with the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Kemi answers a final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack.

The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Will a Tory party work with reform to build actual conservative values into the system? When can we expect a detailed immigration policy from the Conservative Party? How will you encourage more traditionally left-leaning voters to view you as the best option for the country at the next election? What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be, I think, is children on social media. I have very strong views about this. And I've been reading a lot of Jonathan Haidt.

He wrote this great book, The Coddling of the American Mind. and he's got a substack. His substack is free, just so you know. He's got to... That's very left wing. Can I just say that? His substack, it probably has advertising. Kenny, you're right.

You're supposed to pay for money. I'm not reading it. I'm not reading it. I'm listening to your free podcast on the Spotify that I pay for, by the way. So I am paying for something. But the point I'm making is that Jonathan Haidt talks about what is happening to young people,

girls in particular, what's happening to attention spans. And I see it with my own children, as they're getting older. I used to let them watch TV in the morning because it meant I got like an extra half hour, 45 minutes. And we had to stop the TV time. First of all, because they're not even watching proper stuff. It's all YouTube and they're going on the internet. Why should you happen to go ask me?

Yeah, I'm not. It was coddling. It was not you. They were watching. They were watching scary stuff like Poppy Playtime and so on. I would go into that, but they were watching things, and I could see it affecting their brains. And my husband and I said,

we're just going to have to give up on this sleep and just cancel morning TV time. And they're not having access to the internet, and this is not even social media. My son started playing chess, it's getting good at it, my youngest daughter is drawing. It's just, it changed. And I thought to myself that I'm on my phone the entire time.

They see me on the phone the entire time. And they've got into the, this world where the screen is everything. They don't know how stuff works. And I'm hearing this across the board. And when I was young, not AIDS, but when I was young, I knew how to fix a computer. I knew how stuff worked.

They think everything is a screen and you just touch and swipe, touch and swipe. And we are losing memories of how things used to be, of what's real, what you can touch. You know, it's scary. And we're forgetting what used to be. And I see myself, certainly the 80s generation, as the last generation that remembers what analog was really like.

And my kids don't get analog. You know, I mean, this is so bad. I said something, and my five-year-old said, what's the DVD? And for me, a DVD is still new technology. She said, what's a DVD? And I had to draw it, and then I had to go and find a DVD. I said, this is a DVD. And she said, oh, okay, you play music on it.

And I was like, no, that's a CD. And it's fine, technology changes. But the thing that's really worrying about social media is the effect it's having. And I could see the effect that, you know, internet, TV streaming was having on my kids. Social media and what it's doing to people's sense of self-esteem

and how they see the world. I think it's one of the reasons why a lot of young people are so desponders. I don't think the UK is a racist country. But now, if you are on social media, you can get lots of horrible stuff from a small number of people, people who aren't even in our country.

And you can start to think that stuff, is really bad when it's not. I think social media colours the view of what the world is really like. And the addictive side of it, you know, it's just not for,

it's not for kids. I think that we will lose the future if we don't minimize the amount of time that they spend on it. And it is no coincidence that China, not just bans Facebook, but it restricts TikTok for Chinese kids. I think they get about 40 minutes.

They pump educational programs through the algorithms, and then they pump junk or they allow junk to be pumped to the algorithms for our kids. That's very worrying. All right, head on over to our substack and make sure you pay for it, unlike some people. Yeah, we're not left wing. No.

To watch, rather, can me answer your questions? Would you establish an Elon Musk-style Department of Government Efficiency? If so, who should be the British Elon Musk?