TRIGGERnometry - Why Digital ID Is Dangerous

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Konstantin and Francis discuss Keir Starmer's plans to introduce digital ID cards. Triggernometry is proudly independent. Thanks to the sponsors below for making that possible: - Protect your wealth with The Pure Gold Company. Get your free investor guide at https://pure-gold.co/trigger - GiveSendGo - the free speech crowdfunding platform http://givesendgo.com/triggerpod. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 - Introduction 03:00 - What Is The Digital ID? 10:13 - Applying The Effect Digital ID Would Have Had At Recent Events 24:12 - If Starmer Tries To Introduce Digital ID It Will Be The End Of Him 31:43 - Digital ID Will Be Used To Monitor Your Carbon Usage 39:40 - The Economic Situation Of The UK 51:06 - We Need To Scrap Net Zero 55:56 - Sign The Petition And Write To Your MP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This was not in the manifesto. We didn't vote for this. They are claiming that this is about illegal immigration. And that makes zero sense. The government is literally brazenly lying to you. They then gaslight you. And another thing that's more pertinent is how safe is this data going to be? Sam is not in charge. We have a government by Blair, who is pulling the strings in the background.

The company that is going to potentially do this, who's a run by? I think it's Ewan. You and... Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Imagine you have this infrastructure of control and then apply it to recent events.

Well, look, let's just have some barriers at the entrance to the area and we'll scan everybody in for everyone's safety. And before you know, you've basically created the infrastructure for the government to punish people or having a different opinion. This is not a left versus right issue.

No. This is about your ability to do things that the government doesn't prove of. It's super dangerous. Relax, relax. This is not an ad. If you're not a fan of ads, but love trigonometry, join the thousands of trigonometry members who get extended interviews, no ads, early access, and the ability to submit their own questions for upcoming guests. Sign up now at triggerpod.com.com.com. Or click the link in the description of this episode.

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like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. So Francis, we didn't plan to do one of these conversations between you and I every week, but they are turning out very popular and also the issues that we feel passionate about do come up once a week now. And over the weekend, out of the blue, by the way,

this wasn't in the Labour manifest or anything. Kea Stama has come out with digital ID cards. Yeah. And I think that's a very important point that you've raised there. This was not in the manifesto. We didn't vote for this. We didn't agree to this. And we were kind of blindsided.

I think everybody was. Nobody really predicted that Stama was going to raise this. And before people go, oh, you know, the Tories would say, oh, we disagree with this. A lot of conservatives actually agree with this. William Hagen, the Times, wrote a piece defending it. Kemi said that this is a debate that we need to have. She is against it, though. She is against it. From what I saw, okay, maybe, but certainly, Chris, the shadow home secretary is another one who says we need to talk about this.

So the idea that this is bipartisan isn't simply untrue. That is partisan. Sorry, there's partisan. It's simply untrue. And also, surprise, surprise. The Lib Dems are in agreement with it. I don't know. I spoke to my Lib Dem MP this morning. He's against it. So that's very interesting. So there are, there is a lot. I don't think it's, it's interesting that we started with this. Let's park the politics for a second. Let's just talk about the issue.

The issue is the thing that actually really matters. And this is, we should probably just talk about what it is. They're basically proposing to have a bunch of your information in one place connected to a digital identity. And these exist in a number of European countries, in a lot of Eastern European countries, in Romania, I think in Estonia and a bunch of countries. And the argument in favor of them is that they make life easier. You can have all your stuff in one place. It also gives the government the opportunity to keep a connection between, you know, your health records and your employment and a bunch of other things. And it's true that, you know, if you get all the information

about people in one place, it does make it easier for government to do things. On the other hand, we have a government that locks people up for tweets, shuts you in your home because there's a bad flu going around, and thinks half the country is far right, quote unquote. And the other thing about it is they're lying about what this is for. And this is the biggest red flag in all of this. They are claiming that this is about illegal immigration. They are claiming that they'll introduce these cards and then you'll have to show them when you apply for a job or when you want to rent a house, for example.

And that will stop illegal immigration. And that makes zero sense. It makes actually no sense at all. We know that there's up to a million illegal immigrants in the country. and the government knows who many, if not most of them are, not least because a lot of them are staying in hotels and private rentals that we're all paying for as taxpayers. So we know exactly who they are,

and yet they're still here. They're not being removed, and more are coming every day. So the reason we have an illegal immigration problem is not that we can't identify them, it's that we're not removing them. And this has got basically, they're just straight up,

the government is lined. That is what are they doing. This has nothing to do with illegal immigration. And this is the other piece about this is this isn't a key Estama policy. That's why it's come out of the blue. That's why it wasn't in a manifesto. This is something that Tony Blair tried to introduce in 2005. He's then created a think tank, which is funded predominantly by Oracle.

And it has a budget of like $150 million or pounds, which compared to a lot of, to most think tanks in this country is like 100 times as much, maybe 300 times as much as most of them, which have a budget of like four or five million. So it's a hugely influential thing for advancing Tony Blair's ideas. And we basically now have what we've realized this week is Stahm is not in charge. We have a government by Blair who is pulling the strings in the background doing this crazy thing. So Tony Blair was still fairly popular in 2005 when he tried to pull it. He couldn't do it. Yeah. And now this deeply unpopular government is attempting to do this. This makes no electoral sense whatsoever. It's just not that it doesn't make electoral sense. It doesn't make

any literal sense. Because if you actually want to control immigration, the illegal immigration, then what do you do? Right. You make sure that we don't have an open border. We effectively have an open border. That's what we do. You actually design or change illegal systems so that we can deport illegal immigrants. We cannot deport illegal immigrants. We've seen time and time again that I think the first flight deporting illegal immigrants from this country left and it was empty. We are in a state where the systems that we have are not fit for purpose. So this idea that you're going to somehow tackle illegal immigration by bringing in an ID card is a fantasy, quite frankly, and also as well, what's really interesting is this is revenue generation.

So every time a company is caught employing an illegal immigrant, they're going to be fined £60,000. Also, in 2023, April 20203, the Home Office did an investigation in which they found two out of every five fast food drivers were illegal immigrants. So already, this is a country just has a 30 billion deficit. We've got a 30 billion deficit. And we've explored this right the way through trigonometry's history, So why we've spoken to economists. We've spoken, we did a brilliant interview of Fraser Nelson, talking about the fact that so many people are unemployed,

so many people are on sick benefits, benefits, sickness, all the rest of it, unemployment. That creates a massive hole. There's only so many times that you can raise taxes in order to plug that. But the reality is there's not a lot of juice left in the orange. We have been taxed up to our eyeballs, and we're getting poorer and poorer and poorer. So what else can we do? Well, let's bring this in and let's look at these companies

that are employing illegal immigrants and let's actually then start finding them because that's another way of generating revenue. It's interesting. I'm not convinced that that's the motivation. I think for Blair and his institute's ideological and also, from what I've read, the company that is going to potentially do this,

who's a run by? I think it's Ewan. You and? Blair. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I mean, so you've got ideological, personal motivations as well. Yeah.

I don't think it's about revenue generation. I think it's about ideology. I think, and Tony Blair is a technocrat. He believes basically that the people at the top need to decide everything themselves. And if you could have total control over everybody, everything would be wonderful. This is a Chinese model. And what's wrong with that? Exactly.

And you can get a lot done is just what you're doing is you're building control infrastructure. That's what this is really about. It's about building the infrastructure of control so that then you can control people's behavior. And you don't need to be a genius and also you don't need to be

on a particular side of the political spectrum to see what a danger this is. So the example I would use is If you are, we have, you know, our origins are very broad from left to right. If you are somebody who's watching this or listening to this, who thinks Nigel Farage is a far right, Nazi, fascist, whatever, unlikely that you're listening to us, but nonetheless, let's say you believe that. Are you sure you want to hand over control of this to someone like him

who's currently on course to be the next prime minister? It doesn't make any sense. It makes zero sense at all that you would want this level of power given to a government that you think is fascistic. So that's one aspect of it. I think it's something that people across the political spectrum can unite around. And the other thing is, just use your imagination for one second. Imagine you have this infrastructure of control and then apply it to recent events.

For example, we just, obviously I went along and filmed at the Tommy Robinson protest and rally. And there was a lot of genuine concern, I don't think for good reasons, that that might become violent. Now, do you not think that if this sort of thing existed, the police wouldn't say, well, look, let's just have some barriers at the entrance to the area. And we'll scan everybody in to make, for everyone's safety, to make sure we know who's in there. And so people know that they've been, you know, they've been kind of registered in so that if they misbehave, we'll know who they are much more easily. the general public will agree to that if the control infrastructure is in place and now you've got effectively

all Palestine action protests let's make sure that anyone goes in there we're scanning their identity let's make sure we know who they are and then before you know it basically the government's got the information of anyone who's part of any movement really and they can go

okay well you are a Tommy Robinson supporter let's make sure we pay extra attention to your Twitter account Let's make sure we double-check your Facebook posts. Let's make sure we look at this. And before you know, you've basically created the infrastructure for the government to punish people for having a different opinion, to track them for having a different opinion.

It is incredibly dangerous. Of course. And there will be people who go, look, this isn't this a bit excessive, constant in just, I know we want to forget about the pandemic. I know the pandemic is a hack topic to some people, but just think back to what happened during the pandemic. A lockdown happens. You're meant to go for one walk a day.

That was it. One walk a day. Now imagine if every one of your movements is tracked. All of a sudden, you could step out and you do your one walk. But let's say your daughter's sick and you all just, you've had an argument with the wife or whatever, and you just want to go for a walk. Well, the moment you cross the threshold of your door, you're being tracked, it could even be. And bear in mind, the bank account's linked to it. So before you know it, boom, your 50 quid fine.

The money's come out of your bank account by the moment you've crossed the threshold. This is giving out to the government data and movements and whatever else, which is deeply, deeply worrying. And the thing that always worries me when I listen to governments is they talk about convenience. Because when they talk about convenience and safety. And safety, but also it's convenience because they look, it's so easy. Why wouldn't you do it? They said, it's just one tap.

It's just one tap. Hey, look, but we're just going to do one scan. Oh, right. But here's a question. What are you going to do with my data? And another thing that's more pertinent is even probably more pertinent, is how safe is this data going to be? We know how safe it's going to be.

Some twat who works in the civil service is going to leave his laptop on a train like they do every week. And then all of this information is going to get leaked to say nothing of the fact that it's all going to go to China. it's all going to go to Russia. And a lot of people will be like, well, your government has all your data already, what you worry about. It's not actually as much about data, although this will bring all your data into one place,

so it will make it easier to steal all of it and connect all the different pieces of data to you. The reason to worry about it is creating the infrastructure where you have to show this thing to access things. Because what that then creates is effectively a structure in which you can be denied access to certain things. based on your identity. For example, as you say, during the pandemic, if you've been identified as a two-walk-a-day person, or maybe you chose not to get vaccinated, well, then you are denied access to X, Y, Z. And I don't remember, in fact, I remember very well, there were people, quite a lot of people during a pandemic going,

well, if you've not been vaccinated, you shouldn't be allowed into a hospital. You shouldn't be allowed this. You shouldn't be allowed that. I do not want to give that power to a government that has consistently proven, not just this government, but an entire political class that has consistently proven itself, not only untrustworthy, but authoritarian every time that there's been an opportunity for them to be authoritarian. And it's not just government as well. Think about the people during the pandemic. The people who were like, do you know what? Why do you need rights? Yeah. Well, was it 10% of people said that they wanted nightclub shut down forever? Permanently.

Permanently. Irrespective of COVID. Irrespective of COVID. I think it was actually 18% at one point. You went up and down. Yeah. So you've got this sway of the population that are authoritarian that really relish telling people what to do, what to say, how to think.

And it's not just that. They snitched. That was the thing that I found so despicable, is that they loved snitching and they loved grabbing any little bit of power whatsoever. Now you were, but back then we were relying a lot of it on human beings. Now, you were giving all that data away to the government. To the government, this is a government, like I said before, that is economically compromised, that really needs to fill this black hole.

This is a way to make money. This is another way to make money. I really believe that. I don't agree. I don't think, first of all, it's not going to make money. Implementing it is going to cost so much money that they'll never make it back. I don't think this is about money.

It's worse. It's worse than that. I know, but I think it's also a part of it, is revenue generation. Look, I have no problem with employers getting fined for hiring and legal immigrants. I have no problem with that. I think that should happen.

Absolutely. I have no problem with the government, and if the government makes money from that, fucking brilliant. The problem is, this isn't going to achieve that. This isn't going to achieve any of that. What it will do is, You won't do anything about the problems they're claiming this addresses for the reasons we've covered.

But what it will do is create the digital control infrastructure, which then lays the groundwork for all your activities and all your behavior to be managed by the government and for you to be rewarded or disincentivized in relation to certain behavior. That is the Chinese social credit system, where if you are a good citizen, quote unquote, you can do things that other people cannot do. And if you're a bad citizen, quote, unquote, you can't even buy a train ticket to go to a different city or you can't drive into a certain town or you can't do it. So this is where it's going. And look, if we lived in a country in which the government had consistently proven itself on the side of civil liberties, if we lived in a country where the government had consistently proven itself responsible with rights and data that people entrust to it,

some of the arguments about convenience and health care outcomes and all of that, they might make more sense. But we do not live in that country. We live in a country, like I said, in which the government and their police authorities arrest comedians for jokes. You want to give them the ability to control your behavior? Uh-uh. No. No.

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of their investor guide. That's pure dash gold.com slash trigger. Take control of your financial future today. Look, I completely agree. And if you look, actually, we interviewed a few years ago, Dr. Carissa Velis, who is president. She is professor of AI and ethics at Oxford University. And she actually made the point that China are scaling back their data collection. They're scaling back. And why are they scaling back? Because they realize it's a security risk.

They realize that inevitably this kind of data will be leaked. So this idea that somehow, and you've used the word again, safety, that we're going to make a better, safer society by giving. giving up all of this data is quite frankly ridiculous because it is going to be leaked and it will be leaked. And if you think about this, you're going to have all your data in one central location. What's the location going to be? It's going to be on your phone. It's going to be, I live in London, mate. My phone's getting nicked every four days. What's going to happen now? If you're going to have intelligent criminals, they take the phone, they go, they're going to be able to access it. All of a sudden,

they're going to wipe your data or take all of it. They're going to take your data, give it to illegal immigrants who will then use your data to get a job and to rent a house. Yeah. And you're not going to solve illegal immigration. This is another thing. During the pandemic, I know a lot of people that got a vaccine passport that were not vaccinated.

Yeah. Because it was very easy to get one of those for a few hundred quid. So you think you're going to stop illegal immigration? What? People who've paid thousands of pounds to get across the channel, they're not going to spend it. extra 100 quid to get Francis Foster's digital ID on their phone. Yeah.

What are you talking about? It's a fucking joke. It's a joke. This is all a complete sham. It's a pretense and it's got nothing to do with illegal immigration. The government is literally brazenly lying to you. I don't use these words often. In this instance, they are simply lying.

That's what's happening. And also as well, we need to look at history. As you know, when was the last time we had ID cards? it was during the Second World War. And look, you go, there was fair enough. We were in a war. It was an existential threat. We needed to know who was here legally, who wasn't.

Security risk. Perfectly valid. When did it get rid of them? 1952. Seven years after World War II ended. And it got rid of them because, and this is a, there were people who are very cynical and go, look, what can the average person do? The campaign to get rid of ID cards started

with a man who was driving down the road and he was stopped by the police. And he had a very humble job. He was a dry cleaner, in fact. And the police asked him to see his ID card and he refused. And he said, we are not at war. And from then, it was a two-year court case before it was revoked.

And that is a very powerful reminder for people, which is it's very easy to give up your rights. It's very easy to say, You know what? We don't need this. Take it. I want to feel safe. We're in danger. We've got, you know, we're threat from under Islamic extremists or whatever the argument it is that you want to make. Here, have it. It's easy to give it up. It is desperately difficult to give it back. Look at things like taxation. They always bring in taxation at moments of crisis or wars. They stay. Look at 9-11. You still can't take a fucking bottle of water through security. You still have to get, like, these things do not get rolled back. And they certainly, if they ever do, they don't get rolled back easily. But if you introduce a digital ID card scheme, that's never going away.

It's never going to get scrapped. Once the government has plowed, you know, 30 billion pounds into it, that is never, ever going away, especially once you have made it convenient, quote, unquote, for people to do certain things. People will just, that will carry on. So I see a lot of complacency about this issue, which is. one of the reasons we wanted to push back on it as strongly. People are saying, this will never happen. There's a lot of opposition in Parliament.

It'll not get through the Lords. You'll this, all that. You don't know that. And if this goes even some way towards completion, it's super dangerous. It's super dangerous. And all it is, it's Tony Blair and his idea, he climbs out of his fucking coffin every

every few years and comes up with some evil scheme. Do you know, have you heard, by the way? I don't know if you saw this over the weekend. There's talk about him being in charge of Gaza. Yeah. As yeah, as if Gaza hasn't suffered enough. I'm all for punishing Hamas, but this is going too far.

Yeah. Anyway, I just think, objectively, he left Parliament as, and was widely seen by, certainly by our generation, as one of the most evil men in charge of Britain ever. And now he's behind the scenes pulling all the strings. And his son is set to profit from it with his business. Like, this is completely unexceptive. It's ridiculous. And it has to be a person. By the way, if

Stama tries to do this, this will be the end of him. We are going to make this his poll tax. We are going to, because this is, not only is it something that isn't massively popular with his own party, there's a strong debate within his own party.

This is very unpopular with a lot of people across the political spectrum. Now, if you look at the polls, you know, it's half and half, blah, blah, blah, but that's because people don't know what this is about. They're being told this is a way to stop illegal immigration. I guarantee you, if we have a national debate about this issue, those polls will change very quickly when people start to understand what this is really about, which is taking control of your life by the government. That's what this is about. And when people see that, I think it's fundamentally antithetical to the Brer spirit. I really do.

Yeah, I look, and we rejected it last time. And this is something that has always been more popular in Europe. There's a lot of European countries I've had ID cards for a long time. Look, it's part of the reason, you know, joking aside, while we've always been apart. We're physically removed from Europe by a channel. Thank God. Exactly. And we've always kind of had that suspicion. And you've got to remember as well. People go always, you know, the government and they see it as kind of benevolent. I hope, but it sadly wasn't the case.

But I hope people woke up after COVID. Wasn't the case for a lot of them, but some of them did. You cannot trust government. Government acts within its own interests. It doesn't act within yours or the individual. And you have to think as well. You've used the example of Farage. But let's say if we get somebody in,

because this country is going down a very dark path economically. It's going down a very dark path socially. It's going down a very dark path. culturally. We know with cultures and we know with societies that when the economics start going south, when people start really struggling, when they start really struggling to do the basics, put food on the table, light the house, keep the house warm, they become more conservative. And not only do they become far more conservative. They become authoritarian. They become authoritarian and they gravitate towards a strong man. Because a strong man will come in and they'll say,

you have been failed, which of course I have. The politicians don't care, which of course they don't. I'm going to sort this out. And in order to do that, I need to suspend your desire to be free for the next X, Y. X, Y. But what do you want? And people will go for it. And people will go for it because they're desperate.

And when you're desperate, you are going to grab anything. You are, I talk to ordinary people from left, right and center. I talk to academics, right the way through to cab drivers, to brickees, to whatever else. though even those who are not political, they all know something is wrong. And there is this slowly rising feeling of panic in this country because we are going down a dark path. And this hastens us in that direction, in my opinion, and it's going to be used for nefarious purposes. Right. And that's why people need like people need to understand. This is not a trivial thing. the petition to oppose this is over 2 million people signed as we speak

people need to speak to their MP, write to their MP. This is not one you can sit out. Like on this one, you actually have to go and do something. Talk about it on social media, write to your MP, sign the petition, and let people know that this is not acceptable. This is not acceptable. And this isn't just a left or right issue. This is, and you know, Carissa Veliz, you mentioned our episode with her.

she talked about one of our super viral clips on our channel is her talking about why more Jews were killed in Holland than were in France during World War II by the Nazis. And the basic reason is the Dutch had very good records of people by ethnicity and the French because of their ideological view didn't. When you collect information in this way, you don't know who's going to be using it and you don't know what purpose they're going to be using it for. And so when we talk about this issue, people have to be really cognizant of the fact this is very, very important. This is very important. So don't just think, oh, the government said it's about illegal immigration, therefore, it's not about, this has got nothing to do with illegal immigration. If you want illegal immigration

stopped, as you rightly said, you close the border and you deport people who you know are here illegally. We're not doing either of those things. In fact, if you speak to insubrication, Siders inside the asylum system, they are now being pressured to approve a lot of, to clear the backlog. Do you know how they clear the backlog? No. They approve all applications. I mean, that would clear the backlog.

But that's what they're doing. Yeah. That's been going on. Yeah. So what you are now having is effectively, they're not dealing with the actual problem and they're using that problem to introduce things that have got nothing to do with solving the problem that they've always wanted to do. this just this can't happen this can't happen and politically this if starma pursues this this has to be

made the end of him yeah and i think it's also because there'll be people and look it's a brilliant example by carissa she was a great guess but people be lying oh man but it's the nazis and that was really extreme and you know how many times has that happened in history the reality it's happened a lot of times but let's just say but let's say let's attack the nazi point it's like but people what people need to remember about the Nazis is we call them evil. They thought they were doing good. They thought that actually what they were doing would bring about a better, healthier, stronger society. This is what you needed to do in order to achieve utopia. Right. Utopians don't go away. That mindset, that type of person still exists. It will continue to exist right the way through humanity.

people on both the left and the right have utopian mindsets. And so if you have that mindset and you think, well, these people are far right, should we just say, these Tommy Robinson supporters, they're evil Nazi fascists. Or these Palestine action supporters. Yeah. Right? If that's your perspective. This is the really important thing to point out here. This is not a left versus right issue.

This is about your ability to do things that they're. government doesn't approve of that are perfectly your right to do, which is go out and protest, go out and have the opinion that people don't like, etc. That's what this is about. Exactly. And so what you then have is that is a government to go who might genuinely believe these things. They might genuinely believe that these Palestine protesters are, you know, they're anarchists and they want to destroy Western civilization. We have to protect Western civilization. Of course we do. The people on the right, they're Nazis and fascists.

They want to beat up and kill ethnic minorities and brown people. Well, we need to protect them. So what better way of doing that than by tracking them and ensuring that by tracking them, no violence and no harm is caused? Yeah, but it's not just that. I mean, we've just released a great episode with Catherine Porter talking about the lunacy of net zero,

which I think increasingly people are starting to understand. is not only is it bad for us, it's making us poorer and less safe. It's actually increasing global carbon emissions. Yeah. Because we have to make things in other countries to a lower environmental standard and then ship them back here. So net zero is complete lunacy, but the Labour Party believe it. Ed Miliband believes it. So wouldn't it be convenient, Francis, if you could have a digital ID that allows you to start your car so you don't need to carry around keys, wouldn't that be convenient? Yeah. Okay. Well, so every time you use your car, wouldn't it be great if you could just tap your phone and then the car starts? Wouldn't that be wonderful? Yeah. That would be wonderful. And by the way, that would allow us to really encourage you to be green. And therefore, we can track how much driving you're doing and encourage you not to do it. Wouldn't that be brilliant? Yeah. Wouldn't it be brilliant if you apply this to everything? You know, what if you too much meat? What if you do this? What if you do that? And before you know it, the entirety of your behavior is now being controlled by the government. People need to understand that may not be the first step once this infrastructure is created,

but that is what will happen if the infrastructure is there. Because if the infrastructure is there, there will be an endless number of ways to make use of it to take charge of your life and to tell you what to do and what not to do. And you have to think as well, the elite's grip on power is weakening. We can see that through the rise of reform. We can see that right the way through Europe, with the rise of dissident insurgent parties. So their grip on power is weakening. They know that it is. They can see that.

So what is somebody whose grip on power is a weakening? What do they want to do? They want to reinstate their power. They're going to cling on for dear life. They're going to cling on for dear life. And what better way to do that than to make sure that all our movements attract?

Because you want to, down the streets of London. Things, infrastructure is crumbling. Crime is through the roof. Everything is dirty. People are angry and they're frustrated. And what is becoming more and more apparent is that governments don't have the answers

to these problems. They just don't. So if you can't solve the problems, then what are you going to do? You're going to solve the people who are getting angry or frustrated or are protesting about these problems. They're going to pretend to solve the problems.

Yeah. And also deal with the people who are upset about it. Yeah. That's your point. Yeah. And you're going to deal with the people who are upset about it because it's easier to deal with, you know, people who go out, you know, wearing an England flag. You know, and arrest them take the England flag off and more of the Palestine protesters, kettle them, throw them on the floor. It's easier to do that than to solve a 30 billion black hole deficit or to deal with any of the other myriad problem. So actually deal with illegal immigration?

Yeah, or to deal with illegal immigration. because either you can't, you don't want to, or whatever reason it may be, or a combination of all of it. Look, in some ways, I actually do hope Stama goes for this because this is suicide politically. This is electoral suicide. If they pursue this, it will be the end of his government. That's what needs to happen here. Yeah. And we're going to keep talking about it.

Like I said, people need to write to their MP. They need to sign the petition and they need to make themselves hurt on this issue. This is not trivial. This is real. It's dangerous and we cannot allow this to happen in our country. Absolutely. And but I think you make a very good point because this could be Stama's poll tax moment. For those who don't know the poll tax, the poll tax came in at the end of Margaret Thatcher's government. And that was a moment where there was riots. People were very angry because they felt it was very unfair. Rightly so in my opinion. And that signaled the end of Margaret Thatcher's government. she was removed by her own ministers

because they thought her position we had become untenable. This is a government which is just over a year into power. There's already been a breakaway party established. Whatever you may think about them and we do lots of jokes about whatever you may say and look, they don't seem particularly well run

but what is undeniable is they represent a suave of the population and a significant swave of the population and it's more than significant swave of the Labour Party. So they're getting remorse. They've been removed. So Stama has gone from a huge majority of what looked like anyway when he came in,

but was very precarious once you started to open the proverbial bonnet of the car. But then as well, you have people who are coming out now and being openly critical of this government. So this is a government that is running on fumes. So what I hope and what you hope is this is the moment where everything breaks, where we go, you know what, this can't carry on like this. That's one of the two options. The other option is they stop pursuing stupid policies and start doing good things.

That would be another good option. I mean, you're looking at me like I'm saying something crazy because I am. Yes. But I'm just trying to make the point. I am not desperate for Keir Stama to end his premiership at this point. Because I actually, I don't think there is a ready to go

strong alternative. Conservatives are in disarray. Lib Dems are not going to be elected. Reform aren't ready. No. They're nowhere near ready. They're working towards the next election or whenever they think that is. But they're not ready now.

So I actually am not particularly desperate for Starma to remove himself in this way. But I just, I tell you, if they pursue this, this will produce a resistance force. of the kind that they haven't seen that will be the end of his government. You, the trigonometry audience, understand how vital free speech is.

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whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th. Look, I actually think you make a very good point, because when people go to me, would you want Starman's government removed? People aren't going to believe this. I wanted the government to succeed.

So do I. I wanted that government to succeed. I do not believe the churn of prime ministers that we have seen from David Cameron. If you think about we had David Cameron, we had Theresa May. We then had, after Theresa May, we had, was it Liz Truss who came? No, no, it was Boris Johnson. Then it was Liz Truss. Then it was Rishi Sunak.

Then it was Kirstama. That is not healthy. If you look at a company, if the company, if we were to invest in a company and you did due diligence and you found out they had eight or nine CEOs in the space of however many years a decade, you'd be like, that is a company in real problems. That is a company that is fundamentally unstable. I am not going to invest in that. Why would anybody invest in the UK? When you look at the churn of prime ministers, that shows that we have got real problems, real problems. And the real problem you keep pointing in, and that's where I really agree with you, the real

problem is the economics of this because one of the things that, you know, you talk about wanting the Labour Party and the Labour government to succeed. Anyone who leads our country, I want them to succeed. And if they're if they're far left, I don't give a share if they're doing things that I agree with. Right. But the problem is that the Labor government's one unique advantage that it had over the Tories is when they were attempting to deal with the wealth. Bill. And you've got to understand this in context, right? Britain, this is a statistic from 2014, so this is probably much worse now. Europe, Britain, Europe including Britain, is 12% of the world's population, 25% of the world's GDP, and 50% of the world's welfare spending. That's why Europe is

in economic trouble, because you cannot run an economy when you are spending four times what your of the population is in welfare spending. You just can't. And this episode of Fraser Nelson makes that point very well. And Labor were uniquely positioned to tackle that problem because unlike the Tories, they're much harder to accuse of hating the poor and doing these things because they hate the poor. But what happened is they tried to cut welfare spending and they couldn't because their own MPs rebelled against them.

And so what we've ended up with now is a government that promised not to raise taxes on working people that is at the very next budget going to raise taxes and working people. And if they don't do that, which they will, but if they don't do that, we're probably heading for the fiscal crisis sooner than we anticipated. If they do do that, we're still heading for a fiscal crisis, but it'll be later. And so the fact is that they haven't solved the big economic challenge, as was obvious they weren't going to. They haven't changed productivity, which they were not going to. And this, on top of all of that, that will be the end of them. And look, we need to be fair as well. This isn't solely Labor's making. No, of course not.

You know, this has been a long time. This has been the proverbial kicking the can down the road for a very, very, very long time. And nobody wanted to do it because what we have is a generation of politicians who are simply unwilling to take some very hard, unpleasant truths. And it's right life. You can go along in your own little delusional world, in your own, whatever it may be, not making the right choices, believing the consequences aren't going to affect you. But let me tell you something. Eventually, reality hits. And the longer you put off reality with your delusions and not wanting to be honest with yourself or others, the harder reality is going to hit you. And we've been doing this for decades. And unfortunately, and

I sometimes think that, you know, people go, oh, you enjoy it. I don't enjoy doing this. I'm proud to be English. I'm, I'm proud. I love this country. And I love being here and I've always had an affinity with here. But I'm terrified about what's going to happen. I'm genuinely terrified, because when this economic crisis comes, I'm not an economist, I think it's going to make 2008 look like a day of a day spent in your overdraft. Well, not least because we are not going to be able to do what we did in 2008, which has helped people out.

We're not going to be able to do that. Nor, by the way, people keep comparing it to the IMF bailout in the 70s. We're too big an economy now to be bailed out. This is the point Alistair Heath made when we interviewed him, right? So it's a bad situation. And look, I completely agree with you, but there is one group of people that you missed out in your analysis

who also deserved criticism, and that's us, the British public. It's not just the politicians. The politicians are lying to us because we want to be lied to. That's why they're lying. Let's be honest about that. Yes.

The British public have to take responsibility and say, we have allowed ourselves to be deceived. the reality is we cannot afford what we are now doing and we are going to have to rebalance our economy and part of that means getting welfare down to a manageable level which will be very, very, very painful. It will be very, very, very painful.

As in your metaphor, you know, if you're an addict, isn't it really painful to finally admit to yourself that you're an addict and have to go through a recovery and all the rest of it? It's really awful, right? It's awful. having to admit to yourself all sorts of things

that we've all had to do at one point admitting that you haven't been as good a husband as you should have been or maybe you were dishonest with somebody that you should have been honest with. Or maybe you were not responsible with your money and now you're in debt or whatever it is.

Those moments are always very painful. But the only way you get out of that problem is ultimately admitting that you have one. Britain has a gigantic problem with overspending and until we deal with that, will not recover. And to use the addiction metaphor, one of the things when you dry out or you go sober is for a lot of people, you suffer withdrawal symptoms. Very unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Heron addicts call it cold turkey. Alcoholics call it drying out. And those are horrendous physical

symptoms that you suffer as a result. And unfortunately, if you have a welfare bill that we have, where people have been used to not working, you know, getting money from the government, not having to get up in the morning, not having to go to work, all of a sudden, for that warm blanket to be ripped away from you, and for you to have then to be faced with the cold, harsh realities of the employment market and what it's like to have a job, people aren't going to respond well to it. They're going to have to learn. They're going to have to learn.

Because the other thing is, you know, the reason, this pretence has been maintained for so long is the British public have been told, oh, it's the bankers, the bonuses, the bonuses, the rich need to pay their fair share, all of this stuff. You and I do reasonably well after seven years of really working hard and struggling and whatever. I just paid my tax bill for the last year. I, if you include payments on account for next year, I'm paying more than 50% of what I earned last year in tax. How sustainable, you think you can take that up to 70 and people won't leave? It's not going to happen.

People who are doing well are already paying a hell of a lot of tax. There is not much more you can get out of them. And the gap is still massive. The debt is massive and there's still a deficit, which means the debt is growing all the time. So you can't fix it by, quote, unquote, making the rich pay their fair share. The rich already pay a massive share of tax. And you're just not physically going to get a lot more out of them. And so we just have to face reality, which is going to be very difficult for people.

But that is the problem. That is the central problem. It is. And what is very, on the one hand, it's actually I find it perversely fascinating and highly worrying. So I was in a she-she part of North London. There's posters on the bus stops for the Revolution Revolution Revolution Communist Party. I was in Islington, very nice part of them. That is the way you'd put it.

Post us for the revolutionary communist party. Absolutely. But you just go and then you look at Zora Mandani. When these things happen and if people don't understand why they're happening, they become more vulnerable to extremists because they get angry and they've got every right to be angry. They feel they've been cheated and of course in many ways that they have. So they're very, very open to someone coming on, to someone coming along, offering simple solutions to complex problems. And that's another danger.

Of course. That's a real danger because the young people in this country are thinking to themselves, well, hang on a minute. I'm working. I don't know. I work really hard. I don't actually get paid. I mean, but let's say, you know, I work. You know, I work.

I don't get paid a lot. What does you? I do get paid. most of it goes in rent then there's bills which have skyrocketed then there's food and I can't buy a house I can't settle down

and at the end of it all what am I going to be left with and then someone comes along and goes well this is a fault of capitalism and actually what you need to do is you need to realize that the socialist project is actually we are all going to be much fairer

and it's going to be much better and then there's nobody on either side putting forward the case of capitalism by the way So all you've got are these people, and some of them are very smart, they're very charismatic, they're very good at tapping into people's anger and resentments, and then that will start to mushroom. And for people who go, oh, it's not, it can't happen here. I've seen it happen.

I've seen it happen in another country. Why can't it happen here? Why can't there be a movement with a very, very, very hard left? And then when you think about if you have a hard left government, they tell you. tend to quite like these type of authoritarian things. Of course. Of course. Rob Henderson wrote a former guest of us. He wrote a brilliant article of, I think, for the free press called The Roval of the Rich Kids.

And his thesis is that people like Mamdani, they're not actually, and this is backed by data and evidence, they're not actually being voted in by poor people. What they're voted in by is people who have done reasonably well, but they thought they would do much better. And this is the phenomenon called elite overproduction. If you have the target, back to Tony Blair, he had the target of sending 50% of people to university, what you then create is lots and lots of people who have both the debts and the expectation that they are going to get the best paying job in the country. And they're just not because half the country can't have the best paying jobs in the country is practically not possible. So what you have is a lot of people

who actually are not that uncomfortable financially, but they're very, very uncomfortable because they don't have the status of success that comes with being at the top. And it's them that is driving a lot of these far left ideologies as well.

So there is that dimension. But ultimately, you know, the one thing that we actually can do without hurting people is scrap net zero. That was the conversation that we had with Catherine Porter. I thought it was really, really special and wonderful. And she's great. And that is one way you can actually do it

without hurting lots of ordinary people. In fact, you would make it easier for them because their household energy prices would fall. Another thing, of course, is people will say, you know, when I had that debate with Jimmy the Giant, we've taken it down because, you know, he wanted us to and he kind of apologized for his behavior. But one of the things he was throwing out there is, you know,

net zero cost X amount of money. Nobody knows how much net zero costs. Yeah. Nobody knows because nobody can measure how many businesses either failed, left, or didn't start because they knew that they couldn't function in a country with the highest electricity prices for corporate electricity prices in the developed world.

Nobody knows what the cost of that was, but I guarantee you it is massive, massive. So unless we create an environment in which people actually able to start businesses, employ people, and then pay very high taxes. But the thing is, you know, I mentioned paying more than half of my income. I actually don't mind. I genuinely don't mind. I don't mind paying 50% tax. I don't. I don't mind.

What I mind is that money being wasted on things and I mind an environment in which doing business is impossible because of everything else that's going on. I've got no problem paying high taxes. If the response to that is good infrastructure, good public services for myself, citizens, a cohesive society, a properly enforced border, that's great. who would really, look, there are some people who don't like paying tax at all. I've got no problem paying high taxes.

If it is aligned with, look, I don't mind paying, you don't make, let me rephrase, you don't mind paying a lot of money for a restaurant meal. Yeah. You don't. No.

If the meal is good. Yeah. That's, so if you want to create a high tax economy, I'm fine with that, provided the high taxes are buying you something. Right now, what they're buying you

is a lot of people on the scrap heap of unemployment who should be in employment and lots of public projects on this fucking digital ID thing. Again, we've spoken a lot about society works by contracts, social contracts to go back to the case of the students.

50% of you are going to go to university. What's a social contract? You're going to go to university, you're going to graduate, you're going to get a good job. Turned out not to be the case. We broke the contract. When it comes to high-tax, society, what's the contract? You're going to pay 50 or maybe a bit more of your salary to the

government, but the government are going to deliver world-class. They love that phrase, world-class, public health, whatever. Sign me up. I'm down for that. Okay, right? But when people start breaking social contracts, especially government, and not just once, but twice, three times, four times, on the most basic, fundamental level. And not do they just break it, this is what gets me really angry, they then gaslight you. They then gaslight you. I had a meeting with someone, and this person is a Londoner. She's a black woman grown up in Brixton. And as I was all walking out of the meeting, I had my phone in my pocket. And she went, Francis, could you just put your phone back in there? She goes, London isn't as safe as it used to be. And I went, Melissa, can

ask you ask your question? Because you're a South London girl like me. You grew up, you run about the same age. You remember this city like I did. It's far worse now, isn't it, than it used to be? She went, of course it is, Francis. Of course it is. It's dirty. It's dangerous. She goes, I worry about my kids. You go on social media. You look at skyrocketing, the stabbings, the muggings, everything. And those are the ones that get reported, because people are so frustrated and angry now. They don't even report crime because what's the point? The only purpose, real reason to report crime is for insurance purposes. That's it.

And then, yeah, I see Sadiq Khan say how great London is. You're gaslighting me. You were literally, the left love to talk about gaslighting. Oh, you could, you know, this is gaslighting, that's gaslighting. Everything's, no, mate, you're gaslighting me because I remember what my city used to be

and this ain't it. And I remember what our country used to be and this really ain't it. So we're just getting gaslighted by a generation of politicians, not just Labor, by the way. We had it with, in fact, Kemi Biedenock. We talked right and governed left. Well, that's gaslighting, isn't it?

Isn't it? Yeah. And digital ID is the perfect example of that, where it's got absolutely fuck all to do with illegal immigration, but they're telling you it is. It's just a lie. They're just lying to. That's what's happening.

They're just lying. So, again, sign the petition, write to your MP, speak out about this. This has to be stopped. it's the only way. And I go back to the example of the dry cleaner who got stopped by the police in 1950

and went, you know what? No. And said something along the lines of this is not the done thing. Which is very British but it just shows because you know, there is a cynicism amongst people and I understand

why there's a helplessness where people go what difference can I make. I'm telling you right now If the more people that actually stand up and say, enough is enough, I'm not going to be gaslit. I'm not going to have these apps that are brought in to track my movements to make everything easier and safer. When we know it's patently bollocks, and by the way, we haven't talked about old people. We've got a geriatric aging population like my parents. How are they going to access all of this?

Well, you're going to get them to do it? It's not going to happen. And so all of these things, you've got a choice now. You have a real choice. What is it that you want to do? Because we see the trajectory. We see the way that this country is going. It's undeniable now.

I don't care if you vote your party or reform or labor. We all know the direction this is going in. So you have a choice. You either stand up and you say no more in a peaceful, appropriate manner. Or you just. Give away even more of your rights. But like we've said before, time and time again, governments will take your rights. You're going to face one hell of a fight to get it back.

It's going to take years and it's going to take legal action. Because once government have got power, they will do everything that they can in order not to relinquish it. It really is that simple. I don't care if you're conservative, your labor, you live them. They want power. Well, we're going to do our best to oppose it. We've invited Silky Carla from Big Brother Watch, who's a regular on our show, to talk about this very soon.

And I hope, yeah, I hope people who agree with us, who hear the arguments who are making act in any way they can to help stop this because that is what needs to happen. And no doubt by next week, there'll be something more outrageous for us to talk about. And if not, then we can, we'll see if we can do this from the gulag, mate.