TRIGGERnometry - Will Trump's Strategy Work? - Liam Halligan

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Liam Halligan is a British economist, journalist, author, and broadcaster. Subscribe to Liam's Substack - https://substack.com/@liamhalligan SPONSOR. Venice AI. Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/triggernometry and use code TRIGGERNOMETRY to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using code will get you 20% off a pro plan SPONSOR. Athletic Greens. Subscribe to *AG1* and get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D AND 5 Free AG1 Travel Packs with your first subscription. Go to https://drinkAG1.com/triggernometry SPONSOR. Pure Gold. Protect your wealth with The Pure Gold Company. Get your free investor guide at https://pure-gold.co/trigger Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Introduction 03:11 What Are Tariffs? 16:13 China and Russia Relationship 23:00 The Risk Of Increased Nuclear Proliferation 29:29 The Fiscal Reality For Europe 37:57 How Close Are We To Going Broke? 44:22 Is Net Zero Simply De-industrialisation? 54:41 The Reform Party Civil War Between Nigel Farage And Rupert Lowe 01:08:32 What's The Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know, outside of the political hurley-burly, you know, the cool, calm market analyst, they're thinking, well, this is going to cause inflation. This is going to stall the American economy. You've now actually got some really respectable people on Wall Street and beyond predicting a US recession. I think in my bones, he's still using tariffs because he wants to influence different outcomes. He doesn't want Russia and China getting close together, or he wants to help to prize them apart by bringing Russia back at least some way towards the Western orbit. But the rhetoric coming out of China is, unlike. anything I've ever seen in 20 years. If you mess with China in the way he is, then you could do irreparable damage. You could spark military conflagration. That's my concern.

Liam Halligan, I go-to guy for all things economics. We want to talk to you about the tariffs. We want to talk to you about the British economy. And you have a very particular insight into the civil war that's happening inside a reform as well. We'll touch on that at the end. But first of all, let's talk about the Trump tariffs. One of the things I think quite a lot, a lot of us assumed is this is just talk, right? He's going to claim he's going to put some tariffs on in order to get people to do what he wants, but we're not actually going to have tariffs. Is that what's happening, or are we actually going to have a trade war of the kind that people fear? Well, it's the old sage's response to anything that Trump does, isn't it? Take him

seriously, but not literally. This is just a bargaining ploy. And I still think there is an element of that. But in order to be taken seriously, if not literally, he has to at least put some tariffs on for a while. And yet what we're seeing is even though he says, you know, tariffs are the most beautiful work in the dictionary. I love tariffs. His actions suggest that he's actually blowing hot and cold, except it seems, when it comes to China, and that's my proviso. We'll come on, we'll come on to that. So obviously, he's, he talked about 25% tariffs on both Canada and Mexico in his inauguration speech, introduced the beginning of February for a few days, took him off again, Now there's a reprieve.

Now it seems if they come back, there's the goods that are involved in the NAFTA-free trade agreement, which was renegotiated during the first Trump presidency. They're going to be excluded. Maybe car components are going to be excluded because US-based automakers, you know, they use Canadian-made car components a lot. So it seems to be kind of scattergun. But of course, just because Trump has threatened this and is talking tough on Canada, He's compelled, you know, he's convulsed America's relations with Canada and absolutely

revolutionized Canadian politics with a complete outsider coming in as prime ministers, I'm sure we discussed, and his party rocketing ahead in the opinion polls, making up a big deficit. China, he has introduced tariffs. I'm not sure they're going to be removed anytime soon. There was already a 10% tariff under Joe Biden, of course, and Trump doubled that to 20%. and made it more wide-ranging. And he's been threatening, in his rhetoric, a 60% tariff on China. And, of course, he's also threatening tariffs on steel imports from the European Union

and indeed from the UK. Look, just pause one second. One second. One thing that occurs to me is that for our audience and for us as well, who are not economists like you, can you just explain what the point of tariffs is, what the impact of tariffs is, how does it work? And what is the thinking behind imposing tariffs on China and not taking them off? A tariff is a tax on imports into your country, and the historic justification for tariffs is that you're protecting your domestic industries, particularly industries that used to be

called the infant industry argument when industries were in the early stages. But of course, the US steel industry isn't in its early stages. It's been around for many, many decades. So what you're trying to do, you're trying to appeal to domestic voters and domestic interest groups by protecting their market share, by shielding. them from more competitive imports that are made elsewhere. If the imports elsewhere weren't better value, they wouldn't be coming in because the transport costs wouldn't be worth it, right?

But of course, what tariffs do, and the reason why I'm largely against tariffs in most cases, is that tariffs mean that your domestic consumers, your domestic manufacturers, when they buy imports, inputs from a broad, not least, things, basic goods like steel, they pay more for them. So then consumers end up paying more, you generate inflation. That's why we're seeing stock market convulsions in America because, you know,

outside of the political hurly-burly, you know, the cool, calm market analyst, they're thinking, well, this is going to cause inflation. This is going to mean that the Federal Reserve can't lower interest rates as quickly as we previously assumed. This is going to stall the American economy. You've now actually got some really respectable people on Wall Street and beyond predicting a U.S. recession. Well, I saw a tweet this morning somebody saying my portfolio's pronouns, though, was were. Yeah, absolutely, because this is completely, he's not just convulsed politics, he's not just convulsed geopolitics and relations with China, which we must come back to, because for me, this is a really big story here when it comes to tariffs. He's also convulsed, you know, the outlook

for financial markets everywhere, because the old adage holds when America sneezes the world catches a cold. U.S. sovereign bond markets, the treasury market, when the U.S. government sells its debt, the interest rate that markets charge it to, to... to lend to the American government, again, that sets a benchmark for sovereign bond markets and government borrowing costs around the world. But just to talk briefly about China,

I think, I still think in my bones, because this is what Trump did in Trump 1.0, if you like, from 2016 to 2020. I think in my bones, he's still using tariffs because he wants to influence different outcomes unrelated to trade, or at least that benefit the domestic US market.

So, for instance, I do believe he wants help from Canada and Mexico on border controls. And indeed, we've seen the Canadians and the Mexicans jump on that. And indeed, stopping not just illegal immigration across America's huge borders, but also drug smuggling and all the rest of it. We've seen the way he's pushed around the Colombians. You know, he likes pushing around the EU on many fronts, not least when it comes to war in Ukraine, not least when it comes to war in Ukraine, not least when it comes to defense spending, but also when it comes to trade.

Of course, the EU is a protectionist block. I mean, let's just be completely clear about that. He wants the EU to drop some trade barriers. So maybe he's messing with the EU, threatening tariffs there, and indeed on the UK, because he wants us to lower our tariff barriers, and then he can take away his tariff barriers, so it may be a bargaining ploy. All that is, I think, if not legitimate, there's some kind of rationale and justification for it,

if you are the biggest economy in the world. But while you can push around the Canadians, the Mexicans, the Europeans and even the Brits, if you fancy it for a bit, not so much that you don't get to visit the king, because he likes that. You can't push around the Chinese. And he has put tariffs on China 20% now, with the threat of them going much higher, and already immediately China have reciprocated. The rhetoric coming out of China, which we're barely focusing attention on, because everyone's wetting their pants so much about trial.

and of course everyone's rightly focused on Russia, Ukraine, and what's going on in the Middle East. But the rhetoric coming out of China is unlike anything I've ever seen in 20 years and more of watching China. It is literally, if the Americans want some kind of war, a trade war, or any other kind of war, the Chinese will fight. So my concern is that while you may be able to play tariff games with the Europeans and the Mexicans and the Canadians, You can't play tariff games with the Chinese because they don't want to lose face. They don't want to be pushed around by the Americans. And the Chinese, you know, it's in their swagger now, their economic dominance in so many fields, be it rare earths, be it AIs, in their threatening of Taiwan, which of course is the global hub of semiconductor manufacturing. Semiconductors being, you know, pretty much as important now when it comes to global growth as oil and gas, right?

They are the oil and gas of the digital world. And that's before we get to AI, then their importance rockets even more. The Chinese are sick and tired of everyone assuming always that America is top dog. And my concern is it's all the art of the deal and it's all the Donald doing his thing and causing chaos so he can get his own way. But if you mess with China in the way he is, then you could do irreparable damage, not just to global financial markets and global commerce and global trade. trade relations, you could spark military conflagration. That's my concern.

What do you mean by military conflagration? Let's drill down into... I'm talking about China wanting to save face to the extent that they move against Taiwan. That's what I'm talking about. And I'm not alone in thinking that. A lot of security services, people think that as well. So you think that by Trump's posturing and talking and talking about raising tariffs even... He has raised tariffs on China and China have reciprocated. But if they're real.

They're on now. But the possibility of him raising them even more would actually trigger them. And how likely do you think that isn't it? I don't think it's, you know, the most likely outcome by any means. I don't think it's even it's not probable, but

I do think it's a danger. It's a lot more of a danger than it was a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, he can, As I say, he can bob and weave and bait and switch and bait and switch again with the Western world and his near neighbours. But you can't really do that with China. They don't understand that kind of statecraft and they don't want to be seen as someone

else's plaything at this point. Under some definitions now, China is the biggest economy in the world. That's the reality. China is obviously at the centre of this grouping, which is often derided in the West, but actually is of supreme geopolitical importance. the so-called brick economies, which of course isn't just Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa anymore.

It's got the UAE's in there. A bunch of other major economies are now informal parts of that grouping. Just the original brick members, their economy combined is now bigger than the G7 under various definitions. You know, they've got stonking amounts

of currency reserves. They're much, much less indebted than the Western world. You know, to say all this isn't to be some kind of anti-Western Nathar. I'm not anti-Western. You know, I'm English and Irish, Francis. I'm just being a rational analyst,

because I don't see too much rational analysis of what's actually happening. And, you know, I do agree to some extent with the truism so often trotted out at dinner parties that Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally, up to a point. And I think Trump 2.0 is now much more much more belligerent than Trump 1.0. He's much more confident. He feels that he's got the

deep state in America under control. He feels he's got the Democrats and their kind of lawfare, if you like, trying to remove him, well, we'll see about that under control. And he knows this is his last chance, his last crack of the whip. So I think his kind of business wheeling and dealing and gunslinging, I think politics needs a bit of that to some extent, a bit less nonsense, in politics, a bit more economic literacy in politics, a bit more certainly on the fiscal side being realistic with what Doge is doing and so on. But I think his tariff policies are incredibly dangerous unless they really are false. And even if they are false, even if it is a ploy or wheeze, then the Chinese aren't going to take it like that because they're not

going to want to be pushed around. And how much of you do you think this is because of his experiences dealing with the Chinese during COVID with their fact that they were, to put it mildly, opaque when it came to the creation of the virus, how it was spread, etc, etc. And him thinking to himself, right, well, this is payback. I think everyone was opaque when it came to where the virus actually came from, with some honourable exceptions, including myself and one or two other British journalists. You know, I'd talk to, we talked to Sir Richard Deerlove, the head former head of British intelligence in mid-2020 who said COVID was an engineered escapee, i.e. non-Zoonotic, i.e. made in a lab and it escaped by accident. The Chinese didn't deliberately release it, of course, because their

economy was hammered by COVID too. And that wasn't taken seriously at the time. And it wasn't taken seriously because Trump had also suggested it because he was also talking to people in security services. And now it's the conventional wisdom. You know, the Western establishment has all but accepted it in that they don't knock people down who now say it. But when it comes to is that why Trump's doing this against the Chinese? No, he's doing this

against the Chinese because the Chinese are a major economic power that on some definitions is now more powerful than the US. And of course there's a massive trade deficit with China. The Chinese there are more Chinese exporters that need

America than American exporters that need China by the way. And he feels he can get leverage and he feels he can improve the deal. You know, the sort of MAGA T-shirts are now say, you know, you must pay for the privilege of access to the American market. And there's some logic in that. You know, it's still the biggest, most valuable market in the world under most headings, though, of course, many other markets have many more people. Having said that, I think if he pushes China too hard, then he'll find that, you know, the normal rules don't apply. the normal rules that he's used to in the US, in Europe, you have a spat, but then you sort of kiss and make up.

You're dealing with a different psyche in China, and you're dealing with a power in China that's been waiting for a long time to assert its dominance. And they may feel that this is the time to do so. And I don't want to test that hypothesis, because if China do feel that, that's going to send the world into a whole new sphere of geopolitical. pain. Let me introduce you to the people I work with to protect my family against financial instability, inflation and turmoil. For me, one of the best ways to safeguard your wealth is by investing in gold, and that's why I trust the pure gold company. Here's a tip. If you buy UK-minted gold coins like sovereigns, you won't pay VAT when you buy them or capital gains tax when you sell them. All the profit is yours to keep. And the best part, gold is completely private investment.

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or just gain the security of owning a real physical asset, we highly recommend the pure gold company. Click the link in the description or go to pure dash gold.co slash trigger to get your free copy of the investor guide. That's pure dash gold.co slash trigger. Take control of your financial future today. And what would you say, Liam, to those people who go, look, what COVID showed us is that we can't rely on China. China will act within its own interests. We're too reliant on the Chinese economy. We need to prioritize American-made goods. We need to prioritize infrastructure in America. We need to prioritize America first because if we look at the way things are going, is going to become more and more antagonistic

between these two countries. And as a result of that, we need to prioritize America. Well, if we spool back, you know, the overwhelming likelihood is that COVID escaped from a lab that was actually funded by Western powers,

not least the British, the French, the Americans. You know, we were using a Chinese facility because the research into so-called gain-off functions isn't allowed in this part of the world. So we ship, but, you know, scientists do understand there's some merit in it because you can use it to find vaccines and another behavioural traits of viruses, though, of course, that research is dangerous. So it was being done in China for that reason.

So I don't think, you know, we can say we can't trust the Chinese because that happened because we were funding them, frankly. But I think your broader point is correct, Francis. I do think there's a growing sense that we, need to, as geopolitics gets more fraught, and it's not just a Chinese thing, of course, it's at the Middle East and Russia and the West and so on. You know, the Red Sea's currently blocked to all intents and purposes. One of the major trade routes of the world, the court of the world's oil goes through the Straits of Hormers every day, you know, between Amman and Iran

and obviously relations with Iran are very, very fraught. As the geopolitical tensions crank up, I think in general, the dangers with China now really coming into focus, as the principal danger for the West, are coming in to view. I mean, for instance, I think that's one reason why Trump's been more emoliant to Russia, because he is really scared about Russia and China getting very close. That's the biggest economic synergy in the world, right? Between the world, it will soon be the world's biggest oil importer and the world's biggest energy exporter.

Massive explosion of trade between Russia and China. I mean, when Constantine was living under the Soviet, Union, he'll tell you Russia and China were mortal enemies. I mean, when I lived in post-communist Russia, you know, kids were still learning nursery rhymes in the playground that were all about the Chinese are going to come and take us over. But now Russia and China have had a sort of 10-year loving, you know, as the Western Russia have fallen out since Georgia, then Medan, Ukraine, then, of course, the war in Danyetsk, 2015 onwards, which we don't talk about. Then, of course, Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, then Russia and China have just got closer and closer,

and the Russians have been building oil and gas pipelines facing east, right? East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline, power of Siberia pipeline, that's an oil pipeline, the gas pipeline. They've built another big pipeline from the Eman Peninsula in the Arctic, you know, a Russian energy fields that only go to Europe at the moment. That's the only place the pipelines go. And now they're building a pipeline literally across the, the, the, the, Russian landmass all the way to China, a hugely ambitious pipeline precisely to get closer to

China. And the White House is watching all this and Trump is watching all this. He doesn't want Russia and China getting close together, or he wants to help to prize them apart by bringing Russia back at least some way towards the Western orbit. And that's not what you hear about what's going on with the, I mean, let's not call it the resolution, because I don't think this will be resolved for a long time in any permanent way. But that's what's going on with a, you know, ceasefire or approaches to ceasefire we're seeing in terms of Russia, Ukraine, literally as we're recording this interview is going on in Saudi Arabia, right? But I think that's part of Trump's big game plan when it comes to Russia, Ukraine, is trying to re-isolate China because Russia and

China is Kissinger warned us. The triangle of great, you know, America, Russia, China, Kissinger always warned Western thinkers, anyone that would listen, you really don't want to be the one left alone. Yeah. And so just to finish that thought, so really it's Trump's priority is Russia within Russia, Ukraine and those negotiations. If we look at it with cold, hard, devoid of any type of emotion. He wants the Nobel Peace Prize, right? I mean, can you imagine the Democrats are just going to, you know, they're going to have a fit with their leg up, as my mom would say, if their nemesis Trump wins the Nobel Peace Prize. But that's what he wants to do. So he wants to bring some kind of peace. He wants a really good deal for, you know, the vast array of American business interests

that have been sniffing about around Ukraine, you know, since the Soviet Union collapsed. I know that from spending a lot of time before the Soviet Union back in the day. You know, Ukraine is rich in so many ways, not just minerals, but agricultural ability, you know, tech brilliance. I mean, Ukraine is an incredibly well. wealthy country, but unfortunately, and I say this with huge regret, because it's a country very close to my heart, it's hopelessly corrupt. A lot more corrupt in my experience than Russia. I mean, some viewers may contest that, but that's certainly...

I would contest that, because I would say in Russia, the corruption has been nationalized. That's the difference. Yeah, potentially. So all of Eastern Europe is basically corrupt, and the choice is either you have corrupt oligarchs or you have one guy at the top and his team who are all corrupt. I think it's a long conversation, but I think for outside business interests, in Ukraine, the corruption is so unorganized. There's no way to navigate it.

It's unorganized. It's no way to navigate. The corruption in lots of other parts of the former Soviet Union is very organized. It's more organized and more rational, and you're not going to put it on a spreadsheet, but you can navigate it with sophisticated players and profits. I would say in Russia, you know who to give the bribe. In Ukraine, you could give someone a bribe, and then it turns out they had no power to help you. That's sort of how it works. But the big picture, Francis, just to finish

off this section, is Trump wants many things out of the relationship, his relationship with the Russia-Ukraine war. Above all, he wants to be seen as the good guy who does the deal and the Chinese not doing the deal. Because for many months, it looks as if the Chinese were going to come in and sue for peace in Russia, Ukraine. And the fact that it's the Americans leading the global news bulletins on this is exactly what Trump wants. And Liam, we weren't going to talk about Russia, Ukraine, but since you brought up, something I want to ask you is one of the concerns of mine is there seems to be, for the reasons I think partly that you've just articulated, a very short-termist approach to attempting to get a settlement there, which I understand after three years of brutal fighting. Million dead. We want the fighting to stop, of course.

Some people do. A lot of people wanted to carry on, apparently. I think a lot, well, I think that's probably slightly a straw match. in the sense that I think a lot of people want the right deal and they're prepared to continue fighting to the extent that that might contribute. I think a lot of people are naive and idealistic and far less educated than you about this issue. And so they think, well, rah, rah, ra, Ukraine flag and bio,

that's going to solve the problem. But if we're talking about serious people, I think everybody recognizes that Ukrainians did their best very courageously. We gave them not enough support, in my opinion, but whatever we were prepared. ultimately that has ended up with us in a stalemate, more or less, where we are, right? So now it's time to have peace.

The issue that I think is of great concern is that, number one, if we don't get a deal that has permanent security for Ukraine, this will happen again, number one. So we're going to be back in square one. Number two, and this, I think, is even more concerning, particularly with a lot of people who say they're anti-war, and they say the reason for that is they're trying to avoid nuclear disaster. Well, what happens when all the small countries that have powerful enemies look around and go, well, look, America has been very clear. They're no longer the world's policemen. They're stepping back. They're not going to protect you. They're not going to step in and say this is wrong.

They're not going to defend you. Well, how do you defend yourself when there's no police? You have to get the best weapons you can. So there's a risk of nuclear proliferation in that situation, isn't it? I don't think there's a lot in there, France. There's a whole hour of discussion. This is France. Here's the Venezuelan.

It's confusing. You look like you two. Yeah, all foreigners look the same. We know that. We know your kind, mate. Look, it's... The first thing to say, it's a tragedy that we didn't go with the Mintz Protocols

because the Minter Protocols would have left Donetsk, that eastern part of Russia, that eastern part of what is now, you know, Russian-occupied territory, you know, Ukrainian territory, that would have stayed within Ukraine, but that area would have had more autonomy and crucially it would have had a say in any future referendum in Ukraine on NATO membership. They would have had to have a majority as well.

You know, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Ukrainians agreed on Minsk, which would have led to peace, but then suddenly the Ukrainians didn't agree. Historians will speculate about why that was. But I think that would have been the best outcome, retaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Now, of course, as we say, we've had a million dead soldiers and civilians on both sides, of course, the overwhelming majority of the civilians within Ukrainian territory, tragically. It strikes me that given the losses on the Russian side, Russia is not going to give up that territory that it's annexed. So what is a good deal for Ukraine?

a good deal for Ukraine is that its existing, you know, effective borders, given where the war currently is, they're the ones that are guaranteed. I think that's a good outcome for Ukraine and some kind of, you know, decent revenue sharing on a mineral deal, because Ukraine itself hasn't got the way with the wall in the capital to exploit those minerals. So let's hope they get some kind of deal there, which doesn't, you know, completely squander all that wealth and spirits it away overseas. Some of that wealth actually goes back into Ukrainian infrastructure, nation building, and all the rest of it.

But it strikes me that we are now in a situation where we've got this emerging rift between Europe and America, and Trump is going to use that to crank up defense spending in America, and indeed the Europeans are going to use that to crank up defense spending, spending in Europe, particularly the European Union. And this really worries me, Constantin. It's all very well for politicians and others to beat their chess and say, yeah, we're going to just take defence spending from 1% of GDP as it is in many big European countries, big EU countries, and we're going to make it four or five percent of GDP. You know, we had quantitative easing,

lots of money printing to stimulate the economy over the last decade. And now we're going to use some kind of Keynesian war machine building, big borrowing and things. spending to generate economic growth. I really worry about that. And I'm sorry to sound like some kind of, you know, financial nerd here, but this is just how it is. When Germany said it was going to take off the debt break, it was going to massively boost its borrowing in order to ramp up defence spending, you know, the yield on German bonds absolutely spiked up. That's what markets charge Germany to borrow. And Germany is easily the most creditworthy nation across the European Union. And indeed, it bankrolls much of the rest of the European Union through various

dark accounts, something called Target 2, which some of your viewers and listeners will be familiar with, sort of underground plumbing of the European Central Bank and the way countries within the Eurozone help to support one another. Can Europe really afford this without causing another sort of financial collapse like we saw in 2010, 11, the Euro itself coming under threat? And that may sound hyperbole, but I really don't think it is if you look at where financial markets are, because they know if the big European powers borrow and spend, and they spend most of that on defense, well, you know, they're basically creating bits of metal that sit in a warehouse, you know, hopefully never to be deployed.

That is not a productive use of borrowing. It's literally like borrowing money off capital markets when you can't afford to borrow it, when you're already massively indebted, and spending it on employing people to dig holes and fill them up again. Well, this brings us on to the British economy, which is something... It's not going to lead to the growth that the markets want to see to justify the borrowing. I think that's certainly true. I suppose the question that I was going to ask you about the British economy,

but I think it applies across Europe, is, is there a possibility that because of the hard reality... We've been living in Clad Coocahland for quite some time. I think it's fair. Fiscally, yeah. In every way, actually, culturally as well. We've believed all sorts of things that aren't true about men being able to be women and all sorts. I agree.

We've been living in Cloud Kukuland. Is there some hope that what happens as a, I mean, Net Zero is a good example of this, right? It's another cloud Kukuland policy, right? That because of the harsh reality of the world we now live in, where those luxury beliefs are no longer maintainable, we actually start, I mean, I see the Labor Party announcing that they're going to reform the benefit system, that it's too bloated, apparently, suddenly. and there's too much waste and people are trapped in the benefit system as we had Fraser Nelson in this very room talking about only a couple of weeks ago.

Is there some hope that we wake up from this slumber and go, actually, we can't afford to have a military and net zero. Actually, we can't afford to have bloated social welfare systems like we do in Europe and defend ourselves without the American protection umbrella. Is there hope that this is a big wake-up call

for all of us here in Europe and we actually start to go for a productive economy to take the handbrake off ourselves, to take the noose off our neck, frankly, with things like Net Zero. Well, one silver lining in the sort of storm clouds of geopolitics that seem to be looming over us these days is that it may lead to some more realism.

But in my experience of politics and economics, realism only really hits when you have a proper crisis because you can see all the trends clearly that you've just summarised Constantine, and yet, and I can see them, and Francis can see them, and, you know, an objective 10-year-old can see them. But our political leaders can't. A lot of the political media class cannot see them,

because to see them would be to admit that they've been wrong about everything they've said for the last 20 years, and it's offensive to them that even we are listing these issues that you are talking about. So my concern for many, many years has been on the fiscal side, as well as all those other cultural issues that you talk about. I share your concerns on those, but I've been particularly focused on the fiscal side.

And I do worry, you know, think about it. When Blair came in in 97, you know, British government debt was, you know, 40, 50-odd percent of GDP. It's now 100 percent of GDP. We're spending in this country, in the UK, where we're all based, of course, we're spending 10 to 15 billion pounds, month servicing our debt, right? We're spending more on debt service a year than we're spending

on the whole of education, right? Schools, universities, higher education, further education, vocational education. Think of the morality of that. So we're spending more on servicing our inability of our generation to not be able to spend within our means than we are on equipping the next generation to deal with the debt that we are leaving them. And this is radicalizing politics. And I was sitting next to, you know, in my life, I often end up talking lots to, you know, people in the Treasury, people in the Bank of England, real kind of establishment, straight dealing types, people I was at university with, used to be in academia with and so on. And I was sitting with a guy very, very senior in the Treasury, he says, oh, the thing is, Liam, no one wants,

you know, the country doesn't want this austerity, it's never going to work. Because we were arguing about austerity because I was saying under George Osborne from 2010 to 2019 under Osborne and Cameron, it was the years of austerity. And during those years of austerity, the national debt went from, you know, 50% of GDP to 80% of GDP. So where was the austerity? I'm not saying that certain budgets weren't squeezed and certain people didn't suffer, but the state got a lot bigger. And we employed, you know, hundreds of thousands of more civil servants. Well, let me interject one thing on that, because it's very important. important that for people listening and watching this, that we get this,

austerity or the attempt to reduce our spending is never going to be about simply reducing things that are unnecessary. Some of those things that we're going to have to get rid of, things that we like, things that are good. But in the same way that if you have someone, for some reason, your income halves, you're going to have to let go of things. You have to prioritize. It's about being a grown-up, you know?

Economics is a study of scarce resources and how you allocate them, which is why, just if you're a sort of card-carrying, you know, economists who can add up, you're called right-wing because you're just saying, no, you can't actually do that. Oh, you must be evil then because we can't. No, because we can't actually afford it at the moment. But if we do this and we do this, we invest this, then we can afford it. So what did this guy say?

Yeah, this Treasury guy said, oh, no one wants austerity and it's never going to get through. And I said, well, you say that, my friend. I won't embarrass him by naming him. But, you know, I remember 1976. I remember when the UK went cap in hand to the IMF. It was our economic sewers, you know. We were literally bailed out by the Americans.

It was the final slipping of the mask that the UK is no longer a world-class economy. Actually, it's bloated. It's got all these useless nationalised industries. It's massively unionized, very sclerotic place. And it was that crisis and the subsequent political crises of 78, 79, the Windsor Discontent, that led to a real challenge. And Mrs Thatcher was brought in, you know, a wave of popularity to sort it out, be a grown-up.

And people forget, after the 2008-9 financial crisis, you know, the Tories were kind of re-elected with the Lib Dems in coalition. And even the Lib Dems said, yes, we've got to do this. Yes, we've got to be more grown up and we've got to spend less or increase the rate of spending, decreased the rate of spending in order to stop financial markets, blowing the country up. I know people in the Labour Party in Parliament who literally say to me

things like, oh, can't we just abolish the debt markets? I mean, just insane. That's where the level of understanding is. There are people in the cabinet now who argue with me for many years about why we should do quantitative easing for the people's QE.

Let's just print loads of money and give it to people. These are people in the cabinet, as I speak. Oh yeah, because it works so well in Argentina and Zimbabwe and the Roman Empire collapsed because of money printing effectively. But what you'll say is that we're being led by people who are fiscally and economically delusional.

There is a huge amount of fiscal and economic delusion, not just at the top of the British politics, but across almost the entirety of the British media class, in my experience. So the question then is, how close are we to going broke? Today's episode is sponsored by AG1. Longtime trigonometry fans know we've been using AG1 for over two years now to support our health. When the team here are working hard on making trigonometry, we find it's easy to fall back on less healthy habits like caffeine or sugar to keep up with our busy schedule.

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I highly recommend trying AG1. Right now, you can get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and 53 AG1 travel packs with your first subscription. Just go to drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. That's drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. How close are we to going broke? Well, it depends. It's all in our hands, But, you know, we are buffeted by global events because as a country, we have a massive trade deficit.

We are massively dependent on foreign creditors. And we are spending, as I said, tens of 15 billion quid a month on debt interest. So, and a lot of the money we're borrowing each month, right, if you know how to read the financial, the national accounts. A lot of the money we're borrowing each month, we're borrowing to pay the interest on our existing debt. So we're taking a second credit card to pay off the first point. Indeed. Indeed. And there's a lot of that going on. Now, you can fix this. You can fix this. You're never going to fix it by massively, massively cutting spending because in a democracy, that's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. You have to indicate some control of spending in order to satisfy markets that you're serious. But the real ways to get out the kind of fiscal jam that we're in at the moment. And much of the Western world is in, particularly Western Europe. America, not so much. is to grow. You grow your way out of your fiscal crisis. So your debt to GDP, you know, the debt you're servicing and the shouldering as a share of your economy, you make this one go down by making the economy bigger and growing. The trouble is that we have a media class in this country and we have a government. And even the Tories will like this as well under Cameron and Osborne for a lot of the time and under Boris, actually. they want to try and solve the fiscal crisis by taxing more, right? If you try and solve a fiscal crisis by taxing more,

oh, there's a hole in the budget, we have to tax more to fill it. You just curtail the very growth that you need to rescue your economy from the fact that you're in a fiscal crisis. And we're now approaching a spring statement in the UK towards the end of March. My concern is that Rachel Reeves' budget last October, she didn't even bring in tax increases then, though she raised taxes by 70 billion, she raised spending by 70 billion a year, 40 billion of which was extra taxes. She indicated those tax rises will come in in April at the beginning of April, right?

But just the prospect of them has caused UK growth to stall. Our economy is now almost certainly in recession. Hiring is falling at its sharpest rate since the beginning of lockdown. manufacturing is now 10% smaller than it was just a year ago because of partly net zero, but also these tax rises, prospective tax rises. My concern is Reeves, our finance minister, our chancellor, as we call the finance minister in this country, and Stama and the Labour front bench, far, far more left wing, far far far more ideological than Blair's front bench, all of whom I knew well, it's my job.

I was a political correspondent back in the late 90s. My concern is that they are going to double down on the taxes and drive this economy off a cliff. That is my concern. For ideological reasons, it's in their bones that they think if there's a fiscal hole, you fill it with taxation. Taxation increases which are anyway justified because it leads to a fairer society. No, you do not lead to a fairer society by crushing growth and crushing hiring and crushing enterprise. you lower the living standards of the whole economy, including ordinary men and women,

trying to raise a family or not a big wage. So you said the words driving the economy off a cliff. In real world terms, what does that mean? Particularly for the average man and woman on the street. So it means, Francis, well, what we're feeling at the moment, we will live in the UK. Okay, and there's, you know, London's a bit of a bubble. You know, I was recently in the central Manchester.

I was recently up in the northeast, in the centre of Newcastle. In the centres, there's still a lot of buzz. People are going to restaurants. But in the small towns and the small cities, the regional centres, the regional cities, there is a feeling of economic slowdown. High streets are shuttering faster even than they were. Hiring is falling. There are these very authoritative surveys called Purchasing Manager Index surveys.

They're conducted all over the world. They're conducted every month. They're surveys of business leaders what they think is going on and their optimism. And a purchasing manager index reading of 50 indicates the economy is going to stay where it is. Above 50 indicates growth. They're ways of predicting where the GDP numbers are going to be when the GDP numbers come out three or four months after the event. And the PMIs in this country and indeed across Western Europe are pointing down, quite heavily, particularly again for manufacturing, again, in my view, in part because of the net zero

policies which maybe we'll come on to. So I think the UK, and I say this with regret, is probably already in recession because we had zero economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2024. I think that's going to be revised down to negative economic growth. They were preliminary numbers. and we're probably in a situation of negative economic growth, economic contraction in the first quarter of 2025 as well. Two consecutive contraction quarters, that's a recession. And when you have a recession, Francis, once that kind of technical thing takes place,

it then compounds itself because everyone, oh my God, we're in recession. And then people who are on the edge, I might do that investment, I might not, I might open that factory, I might not, I might take on that extra pair of hands on my small building site or my nail bar, my little business, of course. We have so many smaller medium-sized enterprises in this country. They're very sensitive to the economic climate. They employ two-thirds of our people.

They generate at least half our growth. A lot of those SMEs, they are on a knife edge. Is the economy going to recover or is it really going to go down? And for me, a budget at the end of March, which increases taxes even more, will be the kiss of death for a lot of those entrepreneurs in the sense that they will think, you know what? up, I'm just going to not do it. I'm just going to shut up, shop. I'm going to hunker down, keep what I got, and enterprise goes out the window. That's what it would look like. Liam, it seems to me you've painted a very grim yet accurate picture of our economy,

which leaves me scratching my head when I go, well, why are we pursuing net zero? Isn't that just a fancy name for de-industrialisation? Well, a lot of the trade unions in the UK think that. There's a huge rift now between this Labor government and the trade union movement because the trade union movement can see that pursuing net zero the way we are as zealously as we are is massively hollowing out our industry we've just closed you know britain's largest refinery up in grangemouth we've just shut down um our last two last furnaces in wales at port talbot which of course make virgin steel which is very important for defense applications other construction applications it's really hard to

to get virgin steel in the UK because, you know, the red seas closed because of Houthi rebels. It just seems madness to me. Look, I'm all for a better environment and I'm all for moving away from fossil fuels in a way that isn't economically ruinous, but I think the way we're doing it is economically ruinous.

And I think a lot of mainstream politicians now are waking up to that until very recently to even question net zero is to be, you know, you might... You're a climate, you know. You're a climate, you're accused. of slaying the firstborn. You're accused of being Herod, you know? It's crazy. And just the use of the word

denier, I think is disgusting, because, of course, Holocaust denial is a crazy thing and a disgusting thing, but that's the phrase that it kind of tries to echo. You are that unreasonable. No, there are many, many, many scientists

who they just don't get airtime, but, you know, Nobel winning scientists who really do question net zero the whole thing, okay? I'm not here to do that. I'm here to say, I do want a much cleaner environment. I do think it makes sense

over a period of time to move away from fossil fuels. I do believe in renewable forms of energy being better for the world. I think wind is the least efficient. I believe in hydrogen. I think that's a wonder fuel that we are deliberately suppressing

vested interests who are making a huge amount of money out of renewables subsidies are deliberately dissing hydrogen as a viable option. You know, JCB have just built an incredible internal combustion engine that runs on hydrogen, the only emission of which is water, right? So, and if you use renewable winds to do the electrolysis that generates the hydrogen

and industrial quantities, and then use that hydrogen and it emits water, you have perpetual clean energy, right? And that will really undermine. the businesses of lots of people. That's why it's so little talked about. I believe in that. So I'm by no means not interested in this agenda. But what I would say is that unless this net zero agenda, which was introduced in the UK as so many other countries with no debate, it was put into law, it was waived through Parliament, just a handful of MPs protested against it, unless it starts delivering pretty soon for people in terms of cheaper energy bills

and doing less damage to people who are least able to shoulder that economic damage, then the political consensus behind it is going to be crushed. So take, for instance, electric vehicles. You know, we have in the UK the most stringent electric vehicle introduction laws in Europe, even more stringent than in the EU, even though we've left the EU. And at the moment now, I talk to lots of people in the car industry, or they talk to me because they can't get a hearing with many other journalists. journalists, you know, very senior people in the car industry, and they are now saying,

this is going to completely wreck Britain's entire car industry, which employs a million people, right? And then 500,000 more in related industries, often in parts of the country, that don't have many decent jobs, right? You know, the fact that we now have a situation where carmakers in the UK, 22% last year, this year, 28% of the cars they sell must be, pure electric vehicles, not hybrid, pure electric vehicles. But guess what? The punters don't want them. The punters don't want them because the charging

network is really ropey and really expensive. They don't want them because the secondhand market for electric vehicles is awful. They don't want them because in many cases they're unreliable. So carmakers can't actually sell enough vehicles to get to 28%. And under our rules in the UK,

insane, they're charged a fine of 15,000 pounds, you know, getting on for $20,000 US dollars per vehicle that is below that 28%. So what they're doing? They're rationing. They're not making petrol and diesel vehicles ahead of the 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles, which means the new petrol and diesel vehicles are going up in price.

People can't get them. And they're laying off workers. So UK car production, it went down 14% last year. In the first two months of this year, it's gone down another 14% from that much lower base. and the car companies are laying people off. BMW, because of our electric vehicle rules, imposed by Ed Miliband, who is completely out of control and needs to be, I think, reined in.

I think he's actually dangerous with some of his policies at the moment. BMW are now not building the electric mini at Cowley in Oxford, right? Cowley has been a centre of car manufacturing for over 100 years. This is one of the most sophisticated car plants in Europe. And BMW are probably not going to come back. They're not saying that now, but they're probably not going to come back.

And look at the ban on drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea. Again, insane. Because what we're doing instead, France, is even the climate change committee, which is our kind of in-government think tank that has the legal rights to tell ministers what to do effectively. Even the climate change committee says that by 2030 we're going to still use oil and gas for 50% of our energy, it will actually be much higher. Even by 2050, it'll be 25% of our energy, it will actually be much higher. So even, you know, the most woke green civil servants say we're still going to need lots of oil and gas, even if

we hit net zero by 2050. So why not use our own oil and gas? Because if instead of using North Sea oil and gas, by the way, the North Sea oil complex employs about 300,000 people, many of them unionized, which is why the unions are upset. We are importing liquefied natural gas from Qatar and America on ships. That uses five times the carbon emissions

because you've got to pump the gas, right? You've got to liquefy it, which is a very energy-intensive process, stick it on a diesel ship, go 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, re-gasify it here, which is a very energy-intensive process. When we've got oil and gas in the North Sea, to close that down just for ideological reasons,

because Labour wants to appeal to their trendy urban electorates who are very wealthy, is madness. Because they are not only really, now I think, threatening the energy security of this country, they are also hammering their traditional blue-collar base that works in these industries. And that is why that blue-collar base is increasingly, looking for alternative political representation. And on that very subjectly and well done. The segue was beautiful. There was a party until very recently.

There was very clear about its opposition to net zero and lots of other things that that very blue-collar base that you're talking about. It feels very strongly about. And this was summed up perfectly by a friend of the show, a friend of ours called Jeff Norcois, great comedian, who said, how the fuck... Great podcast, what most people think.

And what he said is on Twitter, how the fuck is there a civil war in a party with five MPs? What the hell is going on in Reform Liam? Thanks to today's sponsor, Venice. Have you ever wondered what chat, GPT and Claude are doing with your conversations? We already know that Alexa listens in and suggests products based on what we say. And meta retargets us based on everything we click on. But think about what we share with AI, our ideas, business strategies, personal, thoughts, sensitive questions, and so on. And here's the kicker. This data isn't just stored.

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in the description of this episode and using our code trigonometry. That link is venice.a.ai slash trigonometry. And now, back to the show. Reform, what's incredible, and I'll say this on your podcast because it's not said often enough. Again, I'll be accused of being a fascist

for just making this observation. But in my experience, the betting markets are much better predictions of what's happening in politics and indeed lots of life than the polls and certainly the newspaper commentators. And for many months now, reform have been favourites

on many of the big betting sites to form the next government in this country. That is an astonishing fact given that this party barely existed just before the election in July 2024. It is, of course, led by Nigel Farage, who has been on the scene of British politics for well over a decade,

under UKIP, one of his previous party incarnations, they won the European election in 2014, the first party to win a national election in the UK that wasn't the Tories or Labour for over 100 years. So he's an incredible economic, he's an incredible political communicator, and while a lot of people don't like him, a lot of people, increasing numbers of people really like him

and really like his party. But you know what? because Nigel Farage knows that the key to reform getting into government isn't going to the far reaches of the British electorate on the right. What he needs to do is he needs to convince people who were previously conservatives and people who were previously Labour to vote for him. He needs to convince them that he's not racist, that he's not an extremist, that he's not so-called far right, that he's just a grown-up.

And that's why he's come to blows with another of the five MPs, a guy called Rupert Lowe, who's not a politician. He's a businessman. He used to be one of the owners of Southampton Football Club. He's a very successful businessman. He, like Farage's MP for a coastal seat in the east of England, Great Yarmouth and Clacton, respectively, both seats with quite a lot of less well-off people with respect to them,

quite economically marginalised. And let's be clear, Rupert Lowe is to the right of 19. Farage, particularly on immigration, Rupert Lowe wants to deport lots of people, which is what AFD wants to do in Germany. And Nigel Farage thinks that's a bit strong. That's a bit strong for a mainstream political party in the UK. And that is what the essence of this distinct,

this rift between them is about. Is it? Because a lot of people will say it's about ego. Oh, no, of course. No, of course it's about ego. But that is what, that is the hill they decided to fight. I mean, the policy and ego is all tied up in politics, isn't it? Sure. We've had both Rupert and Nigel on the show.

I think the thing about deporting people, I'm pretty sure Rupert wants to deport illegal immigrants. So why is that an issue? Like, don't we all want illegal immigrants deported? I think a lot of people do, but I think mainstream British politics isn't capable of coping with that. Really? Yeah, I do. But isn't that, like, I'm an immigrant. I want illegal. I don't think people should. would come here legally and then be allowed to stay. It depends, doesn't it? It's all about degrees, isn't it?

Yeah. I think a lot of people, you know, if you've just arrived, then I think it is increasingly becoming a mainstream thing to do what Australia did, which is to have third, you know, third country processing and so on. I think there's quite a lot of support among the silent majority for that. But I think the distinction between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe is, you know, when? Because under the British rules, if you've been here for five years, you know, you, you know, you're almost certain to get what we call leave to remain.

You become normalized. And that's the way we've been coping with the influx of illegal immigration. We've just been letting those people sit there and then eventually there's some kind of amnesty in effect. And they have their papers normalized even though they came here illegally. And that's why so many do. That's the model, isn't it? That's why they risked their lives doing this crazy thing of going across the busiest shipping lane in the world, which is subject to all kinds of schools and weather surges,

which is the English Channel, right? It's only 21 miles, but as we've seen, lots of people have died. But Rupert is much, much more adamant that people should be deported, you know. Even if they're in here like 20 years. I wouldn't, he hasn't put a number on it. It's all about adjectives and degrees and so on.

But of course, eventually it's about ego. And everyone knows in politics that if you take on Nigel Farage, he will find a way to beat you. He is the ultimate political street fighter. There are a lot of people in politics and parts of the media that are very law to him. I personally think Rupert Lowe is a decent man. I think he's conducted himself very, very well. I think he's a very talented orator.

I think it's great. We're getting, you know, talented business people giving up their time to come into politics. In many ways, I applaud him. But I think he's been a little bit naive thinking that the way to take on Nigel is to go to the papers and moan about Nigel, that is not the way to take on Nigel Farage. And, you know, in the end, yes, Rupert Lowe is popular on Twitter, or X, as we must now call it, of course,

but he doesn't have nearly the following in the country that Farage does. Farage is a national figure, because he's been doing this for so long. Rupert Lowe is getting, you know, great feedback on X with a couple of hundred thousand followers. But, you know, if people walk down the street, then, you know, with Rupert Lowe, very few people are going to know he is. Walk down the street with Nigel Farage,

as I've done many times. We've been broadcast a lot together on GV News and elsewhere. I've known him for many, many years as a journalist. You know, walk down the street with Nigel Farage, and you'll be mobbed. And years ago, years ago, it would have been largely abuse. Now, the majority of my experience,

the majority of people that come up to him, they want a selfie with him, they want to shake his hand, young people. He's got this huge, huge following on TikTok. He's the only mainstream British politician actually has used TikTok. And so with huge respect to Rupert Lowe, I think he's bitten off more than he can chew. It's interesting you say that because the concern for a lot of people isn't, look, I say this with

all respect to both men, I don't care about Nigel Farage, I don't care about Rupert Lowe, I don't care about reform, I don't care about the Conservative Party, I don't care about the Labour Party, I don't care about the Lib Dems, I care about the country. And the concern for a lot of people, the concern for a lot of people with this is the following. Forget about Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage. If this is how Nigel runs a party, I'm not saying this is my position, by the way. I believe in strong leadership. And I think people have to follow the leader as much as that's possible.

As much as that's possible. But the concern for a lot of people that I'm hearing is, well, if Nigel Farage can't run a party of five MPs, how is you going to run a party of 200 MPs? And if the moment anyone, you know, challenges the way things are done, they get what's Rupert's had, which by many people's reckoning is unfair treatment, you know, being accused of things that you may or may not have done. And also, you know, pretty nasty stuff. One of the things that people are put now is got early onset dementia.

You know, this is pretty low-grade shit. You wouldn't enjoy someone saying that about you or me or anyone else, right? So the concern for people who don't care about the personalities but care about the country is how is reform going to be a credible challenge to the two mainstream parties, which they have a real shot of doing? Oh, definitely. If they can't keep five people on the same fucking team. I agree with you. It's pretty edifying.

There's a lot of people in the media, a lot of professional political observers, they're pretty disappointed because reform have been going so well. They've been connecting with parts of the electorate they weren't previously connecting with. And now they're having this super, you know, ridiculous Mexican standoff, right? Having said that, with huge respect, I do think that's a kind of bubble view, which is uncharacteristic on this podcast because you guys are so good at getting out beyond the bubble. Yet two or three percent of the country have even heard of Rupert Lowe. That's the reality.

That's the reality. Now, I'm not saying that among his supporters, he hasn't got at least some of the electricity that Nigel Farage has. He has. I've seen it. I've been, you know, as a journalist... I'm making a different point. As a journalist, I've been to reform rally. No, I understand. Most voters out there, for them, reform is Nigel Farage, and they're going to vote for Nigel Farage anyway.

Agreed. Agreed. However much the Westminster bubble throws at reform for being dysfunctional. But the argument is different. My argument is different, which is as this thing carries on, reform have less than four years now, around four years until the next election. They're going to have to have a party of 300 people, some of whom are going to be the Rupert Lowe's and etc. How is the concern for, I think, a lot of people who are paying attention. Yes, I understand Nigel is huge in the country. He is undoubtedly, and Rupert isn't understood. But how is a party that reacts this way to any challenge to the current structure going to manage that situation if they're going to be a credible alternative?

I think that's the test. I think most voters don't care about a rift. And obviously, if Rupert Lowe continues to be a thorn in Farage's side, tries to set up another party. or whatever, then, you know, that will be a pain in Nigel Farage's backside. But is the media going to carry on reporting it? Is it going to become an old story? We'll see.

It's all to play for. You know, Rupert Lowe may get a load of money behind him, and he may cause a big noise, and you may have some massive split in reform, and a lot of the political establishment would love that to happen, and they're waving the fans, the flaming the fans of that and desperately trying to make it happen. But your fundamental point is absolutely correct, though. have to professionalise. And that is what I'm seeing they are trying to do to at least some extent.

So they've brought in a young Sri Lankan chairman who's a very successful business leader, Zia Yousef. He, you know, he's part of this row between Nigel and Rupert, trying to get Rupert out for whatever interneissime reason. But as well as doing that, Zia Yusuf and his team are doing a mass screening of candidates. They're going to run candidates in each of the 650 constituencies. They're taking premises and a lot of the constituencies, building constituency offices. I'm seeing that in the part of the country where I live, very much a Tory stronghold, where reform are really pointing down deep roots. There are lots of defactions at the local level. And I would say, you know, I hold no candle for reform, right? I'm not, I've never pinned my

colour to any, I've never pinned my colours to any political party. It's not really in my nature. But I would suggest that reform, they're five MPs. Yes, they got five MPs only, but they got 14% of the vote, right, in July 2020. For in the general election, the Lib Dem has got 71 seats on 11% of the vote. This is a weird voting system. Reform have five MPs now. Maybe they're going to have four if we're at low leaves. By the time of the next election in 2029, that's when it is.

They'll have 10 or 15 because of defections and because of by-elections. by elections when MPs die or resign in between general elections and in our system, there's a one-off election in one constituency that the whole political class focuses on for a week. So I think they are going to build their support in Parliament. I think they're going to go from 10 to 15 MPs. Once they go to six MPs, they get something, what we call short money, which is a Westminster Convention. They get money to actually help them be an opposition party.

they are screening candidates like crazy. I know that Zia and Nigel and deputy leader Richard Tice are absolutely focused on getting a candidates list that is shorn of quotes the nutters because so many crazy people are attracted to new political parties. So let's see. I still don't think the political mainstream

realizes what's happening. They haven't clocked the fact that on the betting markets reform are, they're not odds on, but they're favorites to be form the next government. That is an incredible thing. And when we look what's happening across Western Europe, it isn't

unusual. AFD could easily win the 2029 election in Germany. They just came second, doubling their vote. They're being shut out by the SPD, who just got their lowest vote ever, and they're still going to be in government. If indeed Mertz of the

CDU and the SPD can actually form some kind of coalition. I'm not sure that they they will, we'll see. But this is happening across Western Europe. I think the UK is slightly behind and our form of, you know, hard right party, if you like, is always

going to be a bit more moderate than that. Because I think we are just generally a more moderate country than the French, the Germans, certainly than the Italians and the Spanish and the Greeks. Thank God for that. But I do think reform are coming and they're coming hard. And I think

these squalls and these internal war is because everyone can see, cricky, we could be in government and the prizes are coming into view and so that the venal politics and as you say, the egos, the clashes are getting more intense. That makes sense. And by the way, I should say we did invite Rupert on the show, but he wasn't available to come on this week. Anyway, we'll ask you the last question. We'll head over to Substack to ask you our supporters questions and we'll wrap up. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we

really should be? Before Liam answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure you click the link in the description, head on over to our substack, and you'll be able to see this. Can the US increase GDP per capita through additional on-show investment to offset or outpace the inflationary pressure caused by tariffs? Could we be better off in practice if major continental regions had each maintained internal self-sufficiency and traded mainly within themselves? I think we should be talking about what's going on. across mainstream Europe. We don't do that enough in the UK. European, mainland European journalists know a lot more

on people about British politics than we do about their politics. I think it's absolutely fascinating. I think the German election was absolutely fascinating. I'd like to see, you know, as somebody who voted leave, I, you know, I remain absolutely fascinated by continental European politics. I think it's really, really important. We're so focused on the US, understandably, because they're kind of our cousins in many ways. But I think the impact of European politics on British politics is just as important these days. And of course,

again, despite the fact I voted leave, I'll always point this out, while America is our biggest trading partner, we still trade a lot more with the European Union than we do with America. So I want to see us focusing more on what's going on mainland Europe. And Liam, I'm delighted to say that after me badgering you for about two years, you are starting a substack. And I think that's fantastic because your economic analysis absolutely top-notch. Anytime I'm doing any TV show, I always call you up and steal your ideas and then say them in my own way. So I'm delighted that that's now available. You've bounced around all sorts of different places, but your economic commentary has always been right up there with the best of it. I'm super delighted you've got a

substack. The link will be in the description of this episode for people to check it out. and it'll be great for people to be able to access that directly. And head on over to Substack where we ask Liam your questions, including possibly ones about mainland Europe. See you there. Would getting people of different lines of work change things? And if so, how do we get these to the top of the food chain?