TRIGGERnometry - Zia Yusuf - I Make No Apologies For Trying To Save Britain

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Zia Yusuf is a British businessman and political campaigner. He is currently the head of Reform UK's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). | SPONSOR. We use Ground News to escape the echo chamber and stay fully informed. Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan. SPONSOR. Masa Chips! https://masachips.com/trigger and use code TRIGGER for 25% off your first order. 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 00:52 Zia's Story 07:04 What Makes The UK Great And What Should We Be Worrying About? 19:31 Why Has Immigration Not Been Lowered After Multiple Elections And Brexit Demanding It? 27:05 A Growing Fear Of Sectarianism And Islam 39:18 Deporting All Illegal Migrants 47:14 What Reform Will Do To Fix The Huge Economic Problems 53:25 The Chaos At Reform and The Resignation 01:00:23 Can You All Get Along To Deliver For The Country? 01:07:33 Banning The Burka 01:14:49 The War In Gaza And Israel's Conflict With Iran 01:19:13 What's The One Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You said that you were quitting reform because doing that job was not a good use of your time, and then you came back two days later. Yeah, and I regret the tweet on the current trajectory the country is on. It's not a bad outcome. It's a somewhat dystopian one. Number one, we've got to secure the border and freeze net migration for. I thought initially, like two or three years, I think it's going to be longer now. We think there's north of 1.2 million people here illegally in this country. We're going to deport all of them. It is a national emergency.

you're going to drag 55-year-olds who've been here since they were young men and women out of their houses and send them back to a country that they don't even know. Yes, if you are here illegally, I think that does need to be done. You've got a 350 to 400 or four men pages. Are you guys actually going to be able to get along enough to achieve results? That's what I think people are asking. Not all probiotics are created equal. New Ollie precise probiotics are expertly made.

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on an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their crumudgeonly, Marcellus, 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. Dear Yusuf, welcome to Shriganche. It's my pleasure to be here. It's been a long time coming. You were the chairman of reform. You resigned, came back very quickly. We'll talk about that, and all the other stuff there is to talk about Reform UK, which you're again back in. But first, who are you? We often have people from the political world and it sort of feels like, you know, you only know their views, but you don't know who they are. So what's your story? Yeah, so my story, I'm a second generation

immigrant. My parents came to the UK from Sri Lanka in the early 1980s. My father had recently qualified as a doctor. Since then, my mum qualified as a nurse. Between them, they've done half a century of service to the NHS. In fact, my dad has only ever done. NHS work as a matter of principal. So they didn't, you know, I didn't come from money, but they gave me things which I'm very grateful for. They gave me love and they worked really hard to give me a great education. So I got a 50% scholarship to attend a school called Hampton, which is an independent Church of England boys school. And, you know, they, I remember they were both working two jobs and took out a second mortgage to be able to

afford even that 50% reduced amount. And I was born in, Scotland in a little town called Bells Hill. My little sister was born in Truro in Cornwall. My elder brother went to six different primary schools because my dad had to go wherever the work was. So it was a real somewhat archetypal immigrant story. And this country, you know, as someone is born here, I've raised in southwest London in a little town called Hampton and incredibly grateful for the opportunity set this country gave me. So I studied at the LSC. I went to work in the city for a couple of American investment banks and then quit that. after five years, started a tech company, sold that nine years later for quite a large amount of

money to an American bank and was trying to work out what I was going to do next. And Nigel said he was coming back into British politics. I remember when he originally said he wasn't, I was pretty devastated. And I've seen, I'll spend a lot of time in America. You know, we obviously sold to an American company. We had a lot of employees there. So I've seen quite a lot of the world, thankfully. And the United Kingdom remains, you know, we've obviously. And the United Kingdom remains, I be the best country in the world. And I think it can be a powerful, prosperous and poised country again, but it's got to get its act together very quickly. And one thing I've always been reasonably good at is spotting inflection points and trends. You know, in tech, there's the law of the founder

is very big, right? You know, you have Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or any of the, you know, Bezos or any of these figures. Nigel is the ultimate political founder, right? He's singular, I think in terms of his talent. And we've all seen, I mean, you, we were talking just before the camera started rolling on one of your OG viewers and fans right from when you first started. And, you know, you've been talking a long time. If you think about the world when you first started, probably hence the name, that the pendulum had swung, the proverbial pendulum had swung so far to the left. And anyone who's read history knows that that pendulum swings. And it had swung very far to the left.

Nigel said he was coming back into British politics. and I saw actually there was an opportunity for something spectacular and historic to happen. And at that time, if you remember June last year, it feels a long, long time ago, it was a year ago. Reform had no MPs. It was polling at around 11, 10, 11 odd percent. And was something of, it was a pressure group, basically,

to try to get the Tories to be a bit more small-sea conservative. And now, obviously, we are, well, I mean, what Nigel has done as leaders is remarkable. He's the favourite to be the next Prime Minister. And I think, you know, for me, one thing I've always been extremely passionate about, his social mobility, because I think I'm a reasonably good example of that. And again, any student of history knows that as soon as society loses social mobility, it is very short-lived.

And I wrote an op-ed in the telegraph last June when I first got involved with reform. And I said, on the current trajectory the country is on, it's not a bad outcome. The UK's headed to. It's a somewhat dystopian one. I mean, my family originally from Sri Lanka, so no reasonable amount about sectarian politics and what that can do to a society. And I think we have a real binary outcome. You know, that mean which way Western, you know.

I think that really is the case right now. And, you know, what reform stands for is really restoring a social contract, which is hanging by a threat. I mean, it's not even fraying anymore. I think it is hanging by a thread. As I said, my story is someone who is a second. second generation immigrant, hugely grateful for the opportunity set this country has given me, my family, and also, to be honest, really, really aware of the invaluable contribution immigrants have made to this country. Now, that doesn't mean it's a country built by immigrants or even

that diversity is a strength. That is nonsense and really counterproductive for people to be claiming that, and deeply insulting, frankly, to the many generations who have built this country. But obviously immigrants have made a contribution to this country. And I remember, You did a video when you talked to immigration really being, you know, a quantitative point, right? It's something that, you know, a little bit can be good, too much is very bad. When my family came here in the early 1980s, net migration was anywhere between 25,000 and 50,000. As you know, that's been trending at like 800,000 to a million, always revised up by the ONS. Ask yourselves why the O&S has to revise up.

You know when it hit a million? It was revised up from 800,000. These are legal migrants, right? So they're literally going through turnstiles with passports. If you were to ask any major corporation in the UK, how many people in their office at any given point they'll be able to tell you because they've got turnstiles. So there's only one reason why the British government apparently can't tell you

until way after the event. It's because they're consciously making a decision not to. So I think there are many issues with the country at the moment. I do think there is a path to, I don't have kids yet. I hope to have kids. And I want this to be a country that they and their kids and their kids are super excited to live in. And I still think we have an opportunity set for that, which is why I work as a volunteer and have basically dedicated my life to this.

Come back a little bit before we get stuck into all the politics. You make two simultaneous points. And I think it's the way a lot of people feel, particularly people who love this country who are patriotic. You say it's the greatest place in the world. And yet we're headed down this terrible path and we're close to disaster and the social contract is hanging by a thread. So what are the things that make this country great? that you see and what are the things that we are really ought to worry about as much as you worry about them yeah so what makes the country great i think obviously this country invented english common

law which still is the preponderant some notable exception sadly but is the preponderant legal system obviously um the people are amazing i mean when my mom tells me stories about how when they first arrived in the uk and you know they went from you know you know Scotland and Bells Hill through to Darlington to Truro and all over the country and just universally incredibly welcoming, lovely, warm-hearted, warmth of spirit and generous people. Frankly, now I think taken advantage of. So that's the first point. Great dynamism, great talent. I mean, this is the country that played a massive role, obviously, in ending World War II. I mean, think about the Enigma Code and Bletchley Park and has had brilliant, not only brave, courageous people, but just brilliant.

scientists who have contributed so much to the world. I gave a speech at the rally in June last year just riffing through all the incredible things, a jet engine and the television and the computer and the internet, all British inventions. And if you fast forward to today, I mean, this isn't some sort of harking back to a bygone era in an unhelpful way. We still have in this country, in an era of AI, which I know a reasonable amount about, we still have a significant percentage. of the talent density that exists in artificial intelligence. And these people, you know, that's sort of 99th percentile of intellectual capital in the country, more than ever in our species history has the potential to deliver exponential,

incredible economic returns for the whole country. Is that where the problems are, though, because we are chasing those people out at a rapid rate? Oh, I mean, at a frightening rate. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's one reason why. And we can talk about the social contracts generally, but yeah, you know, people, sadly, the people, many people who have the option to leave. In fact, a larger proportion who have the option and the ability to leave are leaving. I'm sure you know people like that. I know people like that. But come back to bring it back to a positive, so many of those people,

I'm telling you, are leaving with a heavy heart and leaving one foot here. And to the degree that they believe reform is arriving. I mean, these are all people, they're not expecting it. I don't believe people move to, I think people move to Dubai from the UK, despite a lot of Dubai. I like going there on holiday, but they don't go there because they're excited about going to Dubai. They might try and justify it's largely because of the tax regime and because they feel, frankly, persecuted in the UK. I mean, one of the really interesting things for me. And it's much safe for over there, Zia as well. A thousand percent.

That's of such a good point because, you know, we're working on some policies at the moment around, you know, tax and, you know, how do you make this place welcome? But you're so right. That's so important. It's not just about the tax regime. I mean, if you look at California, where the richest people in the world, you know, live, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, they don't live in Dubai. They don't live in Monaco, right? It's not exactly a low tax regime in California, but they are celebrated there. Those wealth creators, you know, they're celebrated. In this country, they're being looked down upon and frankly,

made to feel very, very unwelcome. But you're so right about that, you know, in Dubai, you can, you see exotic cars and people leave their keys in the ignition. You know, people leave their phone on a park bench to the big to buy his parks, you know, probably has to. But leave on the bunch. And it's still there when you come back or somebody hands it in. That law and order aspect, I mean, now when people take their phones out

in London, they're grasping their phones. And there's data to back up that human instinct. The chances of a perpetrator of smartphone theft in London even being identified, not arrested, charged, convicted, just identified is sub 1%.

Right. So if you have a north of 99 percent probability of getting away with it. You create an environment where everyone's terrified. So, no, look, these are really important point. And we were talking just before the camera came on about difficult conversations now needing to be had about the social contract. And I think there's the social contract around, just to be real, natives, immigrants. There's a specific conversation about that. Secondly, there's young and old. That's been going on for a long time. And then there's also rich and poor, right? Especially the people who work and are in, you know, working and struggling.

And one of the things you're going to hear reform talk a lot about is unapologetically, Nigel is going to go out and say we're on the side of people who set their alarm clocks in the morning. And I spent a lot of time in Runcorn and Helsby, you know, trying to get Sarah or some UMP elected. And we're knocking on doors and some of the council estates and Runcorn, people were working there. And they would tell me, you set our alarm, we worked really hard. it just feels like we're getting a much raw deal, a much worse deal, than people who are just living on benefits, and they have a much better lifestyle than us. They have more time. In some cases, they have more money. Literally, they have more money in some cases. And then I talked to some people who work in the city who have really sizable household incomes. You might think, well, not too much sympathy, but the phrase they keep using is the same. Why do we bother? You know, even that well-paid couple in the city. And I don't mind saying this. I might not score lots of political points, but, you know, a couple with a meaningful six-figure salary in the city is saying our relationship is fraying at the edges because we struggle to make time for each other. We're both working, you know, 80, 90-hour

weeks. We've got two kids. Even without formidable incomes, relatively speaking, struggling to be able to send our kids to the school we want to go to. And then they see Dubai and they see Singapore. And they just see the relentlessness of the way money is wasted, the relentlessness at which the welfare bill, it just becomes easier and easier. and easier to basically live off people who are the labourer of people who are working really hard. And so, of course, there are people who need benefits and all of that caveat, right? But this country is rapidly becoming addicted to it. The friction level required now post-COVID.

And this is largely a function of what Boris did. Post-COVID, you can see the numbers, right? During COVID, a large proportion of the country got addicted to benefits and long-term wealth, including young people. I mean, it's one thing for somebody who's 70, like my parents, who, by the way, both still work, to be on benefits at 70. It's much more of a catastrophe for a significant percentage. A higher proportion than ever of our 18 to 30-year-olds are on benefits. A high proportion than ever of our 18-to-30-year-olds still live at home with their parents.

Forget about buying a home and getting on the housing lab. Just renting a home is now out of reach, which is why, as I said, to the degree, reform has the ability to turn the country around, and we think it does. it means really focusing on those points. We have to create a social contract that works again between young and old. We have to get people back into work again, raise the bar at which point people get benefits in the first place. And again, you know, there are still, thankfully, a lot of people who work in this country, more than enough to win a significant majority in the first past the post system.

You know, the point even about immigration is most of people in this country just want fairness, right? They don't care about the color of your skin, which God you pray to, or whether you pray to have gone. What they take great exception to is, and I talked about this on question time, but I call it Bond Villain levels of wickedness, which is Section 21 notices being handed out. So these are forcible.

So basically saying to a tenant, you have to move out by the landlord to British tenants, in some cases veterans, in one case I'm aware of, somebody's suffering PTSD as a result of the service they gave to this country, turfed out, therefore, so that that landlord,

generally corporate landlords, can benefit from a five to seven year tenancy agreement from Serco. Five to seven years. I mean, I don't know if you rent, but most people aren't offering up. No one can compete with that. And then 20 to 30% above market rates. So basically free money to these people in an unholy alliance between Serco for the most part and Yvette Cooper. No say in the planning system.

Sorry to interrupt. People will hear the word Serco and not know what that is, what that represents. What is Circo? So Serco is a very, very large company. And look, I'm using them in this particular. example, like my view is there's only so much anger you can direct a private company just doing what private markets would suggest they do. We should direct our anger at the politicians, at the politicians who create this environment. But look, Circo is largely a government contractor,

right? Make huge amounts of revenue and profit and do all sorts of things. So you might see Serco, you know, you might see a man in a helmet and sort of stab-proof vests taking money in and out of a building. You might see them running, I mean, right now outrageously, they're running. army recruitment. So the government is outsourced. And this is part of a broader, you know, my new mandate is the biggest part of my job is this Doge project. And one of the things that we have seen quite clearly is this addiction to just outsourcing everything. I mean, if a country like the United Kingdom is outsourcing, can you imagine what Winston Churchill would say if he found out a private company like Circa was now running army recruitment for the United Kingdom, returning in his

grave? So that's what that company says. They do all sorts of things, which also begs the question, how can you be an expert in carrying money securely and army recruitment? And I think it's actually only very recently they stopped being in charge of our nuclear deterrent. So, I mean, pretty crazy, crazy stuff. All the while, by the way, so you might think, okay, they're outsourcing lots. So they're reducing the size of the civil service. No, no, no, no. Civil service costs ballooning 50% over, you know, recent years at record high costs. And this is, again, when you go back to social contract, I don't think, I've seen no evidence. from talking to ordinary people, that British people have a problem with paying taxes.

They don't. And all the polling actually shows, if you ask people, would you pay more tax to get waiting lists all the way? They'd do it. The problem is that's not what happens. You see endless demands that more taxes paid, quote, how many times have you heard politicians saying tough decisions need to be made? And then you go back to the social contract. And I said this on question time the other day.

British people throughout history have no problem, you know, sacrificing for the great good, more than just paying tax, laying down their lives, including as civilians. And what we're seeing now, though, is endless stream of people coming across the channel, infinite money for that, right? No tough decision things you should make there. No tough decision, just infinite money. Then you see... Can I just stop you there? The news moves fast, and it's not just about keeping up, it's about seeing clearly. In a world where headlines are constantly shifting and narratives change by the hour, understanding how a story is being reported is just as important as what the story is.

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Terms apply. There's going to be a lot of people who are listening to this, not just in the UK, but across the globe's here, and they're going, I don't understand why it is that we had a Brexit referendum in 2016, which was effectively a referendum to lower immigration. We can dress it up anyway we want, but that's really what it was. Time and time again, the British voter has asked that immigration be lowered significantly. Time and time again, a conservative government has said they're going to lower it and it just hasn't happened. What is going on? I think you're being overly generous to the Conservatives. They didn't say they were going to lower it and it went up.

They claimed in five consecutive manifestos that they were going to cut net migration to the tens of thousands and left office with that number in a million. And a million. I mean, it's struggle even if you're deliberately trying to do that to make that kind of thing happen. And, you know, what happened under Boris Johnson was there was a sense of, you know, we're going to, quote, take back control. You'll be taking back control and just open the gates. That's basically what they did. And I think that's one reason why there is so much anger now. I think justifiably directed at politicians of both parties, right? I mean, I said, you know, Labor are basically doing what the Tories did just faster. You might have seen that meme, right?

That's it works. And it is true. It's just objectively true. Almost everything that is appalling that Labor are doing, you just trace back, you know, Chegos. It was the Tories who started five rounds of negotiations to hand over the Chega or something. Like to say, law and order, something that's obviously, I think, a real focus for people listening to this program, people will feel really unsafe. And the reality is that if you keep asking why,

the primary problem there is prison spaces. We don't have enough space in our prisons. Now, you can debate about who's been put in those prisons. Different discussion valid to have. But fundamentally, we do not have anywhere enough incarceration space to house violent criminals, right? And the Tories, over the 14 years they were in government, grew the population by 6.5 million net new people.

Do you know any new prison places they built for that? 411. Now, even if those people coming had the same propensity to commit crime, which they don't, they have a high, but let's part that, let's just say even if they're the same, anyone who's looked at any social science, right, and cross-culturally all over the world, if you have a large population,

a small fraction of that, sadly, will be violently criminal, and a small fraction of that cannot be rehabilitated. Just a reality. So you have to have enough prison space. Similarly, the NHS. How many hospital beds did they build? They left the country with meaningfully fewer hospital beds. And that's a key reason why tens of thousands of people in this country wait more than three days in A&E.

And imagine, God forbid, having to go to A&E and waiting three days. I mean, again, that's a third world statistic, right? If you heard about that, you'd assume it's something on a charity fundraising video. I know people from Ukraine who came here as refugees needed medical treatment and went back to Ukraine to get it because they couldn't wait. I remember you saying that. Yeah. He went back to a war zone to get medical treatment. I mean, look, we're laughing. The reality is it's diabolical, right? It's tragic. We're laughing because it's dark humor. And it's why we're so exercised by this.

And I talk to people who have suffered from that. I mean, I remember actually, you know, listening. So I talked about this on my speech. It was actually, so to be there, this one, I remember listening to a radio show. It was a man who called in who said his mother was in his nine. in her 90s, who had paid into the system, the whole lives worked here, went to A&E and didn't get seen for such an extraordinary amount of time and then passed away. And it's like it was unbelievably moving. And how on earth is that happening when, as I said, asylum hotels, HMOs, infinite money, I just tweeted out, you know, Kent County Council is paying for TV licenses for asylum seekers. Now, look, should this country aspire to be a

United Kingdom does do some foreign aid, right? That does have maybe an allocation of the side. Yes, the current state of the United Kingdom is so far beneath a place where, you know, where any of that should be even considered. I mean, another data point for you, this country is actively, as we speak, sending meaningful foreign aid to Turkey and Vietnam, two countries in which the average 15-year-old has a higher educational attainment in reading mathematics and science than 15-year-olds in Wales. And again, you can't, I don't see how you can look British people in the eyes

and expect them to accept any of that. And we're going to keep exposing this stuff. And we believe we do have a real solution. Which is what? Because, yeah, let's be honest. People like to pretend this is about the political party in charge. The reality of this is when you have a stagnating economy, you're not going to be able to have the things that you want.

Isn't that really why this is? This is all happening? Well, so two things can be true at the same time, right? You know, the pie is not growing and it needs to. We'll talk about that, but that's the gift of politicians. Make no mistake. I mean, this notion that this country couldn't be growing really fast. It can.

And we'll talk about how that can happen. But then it's also how is that pie being spent, right? And in terms of the social contract, I sincerely believe that even if Labour said, look, we're eliminating foreign aid, we've stopped the boat, all this madness is stopping, right? But, and therefore we're going to need to ask you to make some sacrifice. It would be a totally different reaction. Taking the winter fuel allowance from British pensioners away to save 1.5 billion and then announcing climate capture initiatives in foreign countries for billions of pounds.

I mean, it's like the square root of stupidity, right? And again, to a great degree, people have just felt there was no alternative. You voted for the dark blue team. You got the same thing. You voted for Labor. You got the same thing just a bit faster. reform is doing is offering thus far people are buying into this and that's why we had the May the first results that we did historic set of local elections are seeing a viable alternative we've already

we're now in control of 10 councils I've spent most of my time since May the first with those councils and you know the notion that there are immediate quick fixes for everything is for the birds but there are some quite quick fixes right so you know as I said immediately saying we're not going to spend money on these silly net zero projects. I mean, I tweeted out yesterday. Let's take the NHS. So net zero costs the taxpayer $12 billion directly from governmental budgets. You can literally go on departmental website. But the NHS is these insane rules. So they are making their suppliers into the NHS. We're obviously a huge line item. Reach net zero by 2040, not even by 2050, which is already mad and was just concocted by a bunch of lunatic Tory politicians without any

proper debate. They're trying to get them to do it by 2040. And over the next few years, if you're not buying into those demands that they make, which are ridiculous, you won't even be eligible to bid for a contract. And again, we talked about this just before we came on here. None of this Labour cabinet have any experience of running anything meaningful, making decisions, what I call like systemic decisions, where second and third order effects matter. The consequences of the consequences. Yeah, we're not far off, Labor just passing legislation that makes everyone a millionaire. I think we're not far off that kind of mad. No, I'm serious.

That's sort of mad student politician. Well, a lot of people would be looking forward to that. Yeah. Zia, can I pick up on something else that you said? Because it's interesting, you talked about immigration and the native population. And you said, you know, people in this country don't care about your skin color, don't care about background, don't care about which God you pray to. They're very welcoming.

They were with your family. And I think that was all true. But I think we'd have to be honest. And I think you're uniquely placed to talk about this, given your background, is that there is a very quickly growing concern about what you described as sectarianism, but really, there is a fear that as Islam becomes a prominent force in society, you start to see things that people are genuinely very concerned about. A lot of people, rightly or wrongly, I'm not convinced that it's the right link to make, but link the grooming gangs to Islam, and we can talk

about that. But more broadly, you see five MPs now, effectively elected on a Gaza ticket in this country. You see that sometimes they're able to force certain things to happen in Parliament, as we saw some time ago. And more broadly, I think anyone sensible would recognize whether they agree with it or not, that there's a rising sentiment of concern about Islam across Europe now, including within many people within reform. So is it still true that people don't care about which God you pray to? Because I think quite a lot of people are starting to. So I think you're right in the sense that there is growing concern about that, I think justifiably. And the way you've seen government responses to that, even if they're well-intentioned, you can debate that. But they've

not ameliorated the situation. They're exasperating it, right? Exasperating it. And, you know, so, you know, the first thing I'd say is that I was in a vast majority of Muslims in this country, law-abiding, peaceful people just going about their day-to-day lives and care about all the same issues as everybody else, cost of living, the cost of rent, etc. One of the problems we've had is the sheer volume of number of people coming. It's such a short period of time. So let's distill one issue as assimilation, right, and integration, which is not just failing, but I think has failed full stop in certain areas of the country. So so many people have come, as I said, you know, when my parents came in the early 1980s and obviously my parents are made a moderate Muslims,

It was a very small number, 25 to 50,000 per year. You compare that to the 800,000 to a million. So numbers do matter because they reduce the propensity to assimilate an integral. Then you have the composition of the sort of people are coming. A, the sort of countries they're coming from, and then the people from within those countries that are coming. This is a country that is still in the privileged position in which people are risking their lives to come in.

Now, you can debate about who those people are and why they're doing that. but there are still many people who do want to come here. And just like a company that has, you know, people want to go and work for open AI or for Google, they get to pick and choose the very, very, very best and they have exacting standards. This country on the successive governments has literally the opposite, right? So you look at what's happening where it is genuinely easier for a convicted murderer to get into the UK than a Nobel laureate in science. The convicted murderer just comes across in small boats and they'll be put up in a

at the taxpayers time, whereas a noble law it has to fill out enormous amounts of bureaucracy and then still somewhat random. So that's the first point. And where that really manifests itself, yes, is in, you know, one of the interesting things. And if I talk to Muslims in this country and Muslims in the UAE or in countries in the Middle East, they say some of the things that people are able to get away with in this country as a result of two-tier policing, for example, and Tutsia justice, but let's talk about the Tutsi police and one in particular, do no favours for Muslims. Like what?

Well, look, so it is on record that, for example, if there is a protest, which involves largely Muslims, for example, and they, and let me really clear, the right to protest is sacrosan in this country. You know, Muslims are as much right as anybody else, obviously, to protest, right? Let's just caveat what I'm saying with that. But if they're waving some flag that is, you know, an ISIS flag or, you know, some, the, the, um, an emblem of a prescribed organization, the directive given to the police is not to move in immediately and make that arrest,

but to watch it on CCTV and then have a discussion or a debate and then go and move to do it afterwards. And that is ostensibly quite different to the way that other, quote, groups or communities, um, are policed. Now that breeds resentment, right? And anyone who knows anything about psychology or let's say child psychology. Do you have kids? I have kids. Yeah. So one way for sure. If you want to get a kid bullied in class, what do you do? Get the teacher to give them obvious preferred preferential treatment in front of the other kids. Absolutely that will happen. And so other people look at, Muslims even look at this and go, no, we don't want that. We don't want that sort of two-tiered approach. And again, let's even give them the benefit of the

doubt and say it's well-intended. And you can debate that. You can. really debate that because I do think there are some dark forces on the far left in this country that hate the country. But even if it was well intended, it is having the opposite of effect. And if anyone wants to make the counter argument, what I always say is, well, how do you think? Do you think people feel better about immigration in this country today than they did in the early 1980s on average? Obviously, not only do they think it's worse, they think of it as orders of magnitude worse. And similarly, if you talk to people in government in the UAE, they'll tell you some of this stuff would absolutely not be tolerated inside the UAE. So I think there's a great

deal of naivety. It has meant that. And look, they're sort of, let's call it the far right slash Islamist sort of opposite ends of that Gaussian distribution do exist. They basically feed off each other in many ways. I mean, one experiment you can actually do if you're interested. I actually did this. You create two separate X accounts and you start liking different things. You start both ends of that distribution curve, that kind of bell curve, get vicariously traumatized through their social media feed with people of the opposite ends of that community. And so there's a lot of people who are, let's call it, in the middle of that. And I don't mean centrist dad way. I just mean taking the view that, no, I think discriminate

having a view writ large about an entire religion or entire skin color, whatever it is based on the actions of a tiny subsection, is not appropriate and unhelpful. And actually, again, British values. I think that's people's concern. I think people's concern is, to put it bluntly, is that if, A, as you say correctly, as a society, we are tolerating things that even Muslim countries won't tolerate.

Yeah. And if within the agreed to the large body of mostly peaceful, moderate, not mostly, within the large body of moderate peaceful law-abiding Muslims, which are completely true are in this country, is that Islamist fringe that is tolerated by our society. Sure. Yeah. Then the more Muslims you have, the more of the fringes you're going to have. And if you already have 40,000 jihadis on your terrorist watch list, a lot of people are saying, would we have more of this? Why? Because, I'm not saying you're wrong, but explain why there's a cause or

relates to you. So why would having more Muslims necessitate more fringe? Well, if you have, if you buy a bunch of apples and you know that statistically one out of 100 is a red apple. And you don't want red apples, you only want green apples, ideally in your society. Why would you want to buy more apples from that supplier? Well, I forget, so the red, the red apples were the Islamists, right? Okay. So, so you know, So they should have been drinking. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So let's stick with your analogy. So firstly, I think we've got to, from a legislative standpoint, which is all you can do if you're in politics, right? Number one, we've got to secure the border and freeze net migration for, I thought initially like two or three years, I think it's going to be longer now. Certainly by the time, if we reform when, you know, it's going to be several years away for a whole number of years, right? I think that does have to happen. So we have to stop the, we have to halt that for a significant way. that for a significant period of time. So that's the numbers issue. The second point is then

is the composition. And we always hear about point systems and stuff, but we probably don't even have time to get into it. But as you start to peel back the onion of just the sheer appalling incompetence, maybe even malevolence of that Boris Johnson kind of regime, in terms of what was happening there. Basically, if you lied about your qualifications, nobody asked you for evidence and you got in. So there were people coming here to be working care homes with no qualifications. They just lied. And to the degree people did have qualifications, they set the bar so high, but not checking, that they didn't feel like they would apply. So in the end, we got the worst, it was not a good period for the country.

Now, I do think if people are breaking the law, and we obviously have laws around incitement and have laws around prescribed terrorist organizations, those people need to be arrested and they need to go to jail. And to the degree, by the way, I mean, this is the other thing we'll do. We think there's north of 1.2 million people here illegally in this case. country. We're going to deport all of them. Deport all of them. I'll be really clear about that because you get all sorts of noise on social media. Our plan is to deport all of them and we'll direct every instrument of state to ensure that that happens. Are you really? Are you really? Because I've just come back from the US. President Trump is struggling. He's rowing back on a lot of the things because the optics of deporting people who've been in the country. All of them, someone's been here

30 years, you're going to deport them? If they're legally here? So we can talk about the deportation thing. I think the deportation thing is important because it is a national emergency. So if you look at, again, the social contract, having such a large population that is here without the right to be here, and then claiming asylum. And in many cases, getting it. So number one, there's the social contract thing that is just deeply unfair, both on the people who already here and the legal migrants. The second point is, you know, you can always talk about edge cases. And, Trump is, I think, is a different thing. I don't think there's a good corollary to have because I think those protests.

or about a whole number of other things. My point is something else. You're going to drag 55-year-olds who've been here since they were young men and women out of their houses and send them back to a country that they don't even know. This episode is brought to you by Massa Chips. Here's something you might not know.

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important. But yes, I mean, look, to be direct about that, yes, if you are here illegally, I think that does need to be done. And British people expect it. And I think there's popular support for that. One of the massive issues we have in this country, unlike the US, actually, I mean, they have their own jurisdictional issues between states and the executive branch. But we not only have the ECHR, but even leaving that is not going to be enough to stop the lawfare that keeps people in this country. You also have all these UN treaties, the refugee treaty of 1951. So there's a, even if you withdrew from the ECHR, for example, and you'll see this when we publish our plan from a legislative standpoint. There's a law that says you cannot in any way discriminate against somebody's asylum application just because they entered your country illegally.

And that dates back to 1951. And obviously the world was largely, most people were, you know, clambering overboard as illegal. Because it was still recovering from World War II. It's totally out of date. And it means you have these ridiculous situations where you have a Kenyan convicted rapist who's not allowed to be deployed. because he's an alcoholic, apparently, and he might have a tough time in Kenya. You have this insanity of his quote-unquote rights being prioritized over women in this country whose rights should be not to have to live among such a person.

And when I say use every instrument of state, you know, people say, oh, where are you going to send them, et cetera? You know, we are still sending foreign aid to countries that are refusing to even accept the people from their country who are languishing in our jails and are illegal immigrants. So the foreign office, one of the things that will happen is Nigel say to whoever is our foreign secretary, it's your number one priority to secure bilateral return agreements, right? And there will be a carrot and a stick, right? Will we pay some people to leave?

Yes, we will too, right? Because to your point, you know, that that kind of enforcement aspect is, we'd like to minimize that. But you have to enforce it. And, Constantine, if we don't do that sort of thing now, I promise you, the path that country is headed to will be far, far worse. You don't need to convince me. Yeah, look, we agree with you on that. The issue is here as well is that we've had many people on this show, many people, former

conservative ministers who will always make the point, we have tried to do this, but we have been blocked by the civil service. They have put spanners in the works. They have slowed things down. They have made the process, it's more subtle than people think. It's not a downing of the tools, but it's putting something a spanner in the works to make it seem interminably slow so that nothing gets done. Yeah. How was reform going to challenge the BMOF that is the civil service in this country, which is largely left-leaning? So in business, you have a concept of low agency and high-agency people. It's quite common part, particularly in tech.

So the idea of it, so a low-agency person, if you're a CEO or you're a manager, you ask them to do something and you don't really hear anything. And then three days later, you go and say, oh, I've sent an email, no one responded. That's sort of a low agency. A high agency person, you give that same instruction to, and not only do they make it happen, they negotiate some new contract to build a revenue line and a P&L, and they're like building something incredible kind of on their own. And then a lot of people in the middle of that.

Most of those people, without even needing to name names, are very much on the low agency spectrum. And I'm sorry, the buck stops with the politicians. So long as we're part of the ECHR, which the Tories are never going to be able to leave because the party is so split, half the party are left wing, half the party. more spiritually aligned with us. And as I said, even that won't do the trick. The only reason the and the Human Rights Act are cited by these judges is because it's the lowest hanging fruit. As as soon as you take that out, there's plenty of other fruit for them to pluck on in these international treaties. So what we're going to do, just to be really clear about what we'll do, we will

disapply specific aspects in those treaties under UK law. So even the most activist judge, even the judiciary, people say, well, Zia, you've got these activist judges. Okay, let's assume every single judge is an activist. It is incumbent on the politician to set laws that mean even the most activist judge can't screw the British people over. The analogy, when you hear about the British government losing lawsuit, it's like playing a computer game against someone who gets to change the rules. Like, that's a pretty cool feature to have. So the buck has to stop with the politician. Not going to claim it's easy, but we have got a few years. We've got some brilliant people working on when Nigel wins, which is obviously our goal. We need to have this. Why I say we can't just have a majority of two,

or do some pact with some wet Tories. You've got to have 350 to 400 reform MPs, which I encourage you. People are listening to this. You've got to go out and vote for us because we need that working majority. Constitutionally, you know, you use the analogy of the United States.

The founding fathers were very particular about spreading power across the different branches, even the whole Doge thing. The reason why Elon got so frustrated was not because Doge failed. It's because Congress basically decided to pass this massive bill

and the founding fathers put the purse strings in the hands of Congress. The Constitution of the United Kingdom means, and it's unwritten, but the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom flanked by 350 to 400 turquoise-blooded reform MPs who are no uncertain terms about why they were elected, with the right legislation, we'll be able to move at great speed. And this is the work that we've got to do, and I'm not claiming to Horton yet. This is the work that we're doing. We've got some great people, including some, some actually, some formatory ministers, who just want to help us in the background. Some people have had contact with the blob. Let's call it the blog.

And yeah, of course they're formidable. Of course they're powerful. But if we're not willing to take that on and say, yes, not only we're going to take it on, we're going to give them, we have to defeat them. I think that the idea that that is impossible. I mean, if you take the view, it's impossible, then what's the point? Everyone should just leave. It can be done. It can be done with legislation. You know, I gave a speech, you know, a few months ago, I gave a speech in which I said, I was really looking forward to the first phone call Nigel would make, because. I Prime Minister number 10 Downing Street. He'll pick up the phone to the first sea lord and instruct them that not a single, so therefore the Royal Navy, His Majesty's Royal Navy, when shall they're not a single unauthorised vessel crossing the English Channel will make it to our shores, will be a humanitarian mission, etc. Got to beat it. And somebody I know who's very senior in the Navy said, see, I love that speech,

because what you realize is that all you have these mass, all of these layers that just mean that even if the Home Secretary or the Minister of Defense gives an order, you have like nine layers of bureaucracy, and you only need one. And I'm quoting him, quote, one little communist in there to interject and go and tweet something, which is basically what happened on the Tories that said, this is against some law to see, you know, completely unaccountable to anybody, to torpedo the whole thing, metaphorically. I just said, listen, I thought there was a great line in a speech. But the fundamental point is that you have these layers of bureaucracy. You have way to. too many of them. The civil service is way, way too big. And you have a massive deficiency in ministers who are willing to take accountability and ownership and be in the detail and be

high agency enough to say, no, no, no, sorry, who was that? Who just tweeted out that the British people are now, we're going to prioritize some law of the quote unquote law of the sea. And I don't know who enforces this law or which military. And the people who suffer as a result of all of this nonsense and the perpetuation of the status quo of British people, which is why I'm saying,

you know, we talked about this just before the cameras started rolling, the only way these situations can be resolved is by extremely competent, high agency,

patriotic people, basically going to battle in the political arena, and that's what we're going to do. Right. And look, you, let's just be clear about this.

I don't think people actually understand. I'm going to use this word fucked this country is. Yeah. We've been kicking the can down the road economically. We're in the astronomical levels of debt that we are in. The economy is only being kept alive through mass immigration.

If we took that away, we'd actually see what a dire straight route. The health service is on its knees. Cost of living. The crisis, the property crisis, homes crisis. It's a message from the British Tory. Exactly. Come and visit. But you look at all of these things. things. I mean, and what effectively every government has done for the last 20 or so years is

kick these proverbial cans down the road. I mean, if you get in, that is one hell of a job. And it's going to be, you're going to have to go to war with a lot of people. Can you fight all those fronts at the same time? We have no choice. We have no choice. And that's why, as I said, preparedness will be crucial. Labor came into power with like no plan. And I will say this as someone's quite new to politics. You know, a lot of people say, I can't believe Labor in opposition for 14 years and they got in and they had no plans. Like, no, no, no, now I've been in politics. I actually understand that's just the status quo, right? Most people in politics, and I've said this before, are just most MPs, most Westminster, they're just power maximising

them for themselves over the next 48 hours. That's literally all they care about, right? And frankly, in a weird way, I almost despise politicians a bit less because I realize that's what the system almost dictates you have to do. Do you see what I mean? It's like, you're like, If you're not doing that, you almost just get unwound and chucked out. It's almost maladaptive. But we have to fight against that, right? So we can go through each of each of those. I mean, you named it.

I mean, absolutely accurately. National debt closing in on $3 trillion. Economic growth. And we're celebrating 0.7% GDP growth. Still less than the population is growing. Not because lots of British people having kids, but because of net immigration. GDP per capita hasn't done anything in a long time. time. Real wages, the justice of inflation, have basically not done anything for a long time.

So a lot of people feel poorer all the time, because they are getting poorer. Inequality is getting worse, and we talk about that too. And yes, you know, immigration is basically a form of, I call it human quantitative easing. That's what it is, right? And the whole idea that we should be obsessed by GDP instead of GDP per capita is like saying, oh, good news and bad news. The bad news is your wages aren't going up, but the good news is the payroll for the companies going up 4%. That's not particularly interesting to you. So how do we deal with all of these issues? Again, so number one, we have to shrink the size of the state in terms of all the bureaucracy and just the blob and the bureaucracy have become a parasitic ensangulation on the

dynamism of the British people and anything, why we can't build any homes or why there's no nuclear in this country or why, you know, you want to get planning permission to just do some work to your house. It takes forever. So that's the first. first point. The second point is we have to attract, we have to make this a country, which is a great country for people who want to start a business, scale a business, run a business. And be unapologetic about that. We've got some policies that we're going to announce in the coming couple of weeks, actually, to try to restore that social contract where we're saying, no, look, yes, we need to ensure working people in this country, the bottom half of working earners

get a much better deal. But the only way this country recovers, actually, economically, is to welcome wealth creators in this country, not to chase them away, which obviously Rachel Reeves is doing, but you shouldn't forget it was Jeremy Hunt and the Tories who started this whole rhetoric about capital gains being, quote, unearned income and all of that stuff, right? largely, in many ways, I think out of guilt, because a Rishi Sunak's wife. Genuinely, from what I hear, I think that was like a really meaningful driver of their decisions around non-doms. And it's like, what a ridiculous, what an insane way to make policy. But you remember when I said about power maximising the shelves over 48 hours?

So that's that piece. I don't know if you touched on law and order, but that's a massive issue as well. Knife crime. I mean, you've got Sadiq Khan, instead of implementing stop and search, which all the evidence in the world, I bet all the money in my pockets, if he did that properly, would pretty much eliminate knife crime within the period of months. Not doing that. Instead, he's offering free, I've seen those stands where they offer like stab response kits or something. It's really dark. He's offering these, it's unbelievable. So they have these stands where they sort of give you these kits. A bit like you might have a first aid kit in a car if you get stabbed. So this is the level of normalisation now that is happening. A lot of people claim, oh, but Zia, look, the statistics, the crime statistics are going down. Well, yeah, because people don't even report crime most of the time. That's so true. Why would you bother reporting your phone getting reported? It's true.

People tell you, I've looked, I find my iPhone. I've gone to the person house who's nicked it. I know it's inside and the police still won't do anything. Shoplifting is basically legal now, below 200 pounds. So we've got to do a whole number of things. And that's what we're working. We've got some great policy people. We're continuing to build that team.

And we're working with some smart think tanks as well to come in and have a, you know how like Trump did have, you know, we don't have executive orders in this country. But he got quite a lot done quite quickly. If we have the legislation ready to go and we have a way to ensure that the lords doesn't hold things up. I mean, even the lords, constitutionally, the lords are not allowed to hold things up if it was in your manifesto. And that's another thing we'll do very differently to, for example, Labor.

You know, we're going to be very clear about what our plans. answer. And people would either vote for them or they won't. But I don't think you have a choice if you want to enact a pretty transformative agenda. My God, for all the reasons you just mentioned, I mean, talk about living beyond our means. I mean, sometimes we'll get criticized. Oh, your big state, are you left wing or right wings? All these Tories talking to us about scolding us and finger wagging about small state fiscal conservatism and living within your means. You don't know how these people can say this stuff with a straight face. They triple. pull the national debt to $3 trillion in debt, $4 years? You don't have to slate the Tories on this.

We absolutely despise them. Okay. But one of the things that people are going to be looking at you and going, look, you're very slick, you're very sharp, you talk a great game. I'm looking at reform. You've got about five MPs at the moment. You've had the fallout with Rupert Lowe. You've had when the tweet that you gave, which basically offered you immediate resignation. there'll be a lot of people sitting there going, hang on a second. They're at this stage of the game and they're already having fallouts and at each other's throats. How are you possibly going to be able to tackle all the issues that we've put forward when even at this stage it doesn't look like as a particularly harmonious group?

Yeah, so I understand that perspective. I'd say alongside those things, which are true and objectively true, and I accept. So we have also assembled the political party pretty much from scratch over the course of the last year. We've launched 450-odd branches. We've gone from 14-odd percent in the polls a year ago to 31, 32 percent in the polls. Nigel's now the bookmaker's favourite to be the PM. We've got a membership now of closing on a quarter of a million. I think probably already the largest membership in the country.

Labour have now stopped even ever reporting on their membership numbers, unlike us who got them real time. And so look, and then we had made a first. I think obviously we're a spectacular set of results. And we've gone from 10 councillors a year ago to north of 700 now. So look, we're not perfect. Not going to claim that we're perfect. We're proud of what we've achieved. And, you know, what I will say, I'll say a few things, though.

And I don't mind saying this stuff. Like, in order to do the things that you just talked about, we do need to be united behind a strong leader. Just I don't say what the counter argument is that. And the counter, you know, if you want to make the counter argument, I would point you to what the six leaders the Tory has had in like eight years while they were in power. Most of the, you know, I'd never met a Tory minister before I'd come into politics. Now I've met a reasonable number.

And some of them are good people, to be fair, right? And their heart's in the right place. Still low agency in most cases, but the heart's in the right place. And, you know, most of them, it's like, how could you be the prime minister of a country when everyone in your cabinet is not just wants your job, but like once your job ideally this week and is actively working on making that happen? And it's like being a platoon commander and finding out most of your troops are going to try and take you out on that own mission. To do what you, just like with tech companies, the most valuable companies in the world are founder-led.

And I know Jeff Bezos isn't technically still the CEO, but he still kind of is the figurehead. And obviously, Elon is singular. You have to be united behind a leader. Secondly, to the degree that we've made errors, and I include my own error in that tweet, totally accept that and own up to that. Correct them quickly. Well, just so people know, you said that you were quitting reform because doing that job was not a good use of your time. And then you came back two days later. Yeah, yeah.

And I regret the tweet. Yeah, 11 months are largely pretty much no day off. I mean, even off the elections. And the only thing I say that is it just compromises your decision, mate. Yeah, but is it just that, those here? Because I imagine, I'm just guessing here, just spitballing, you correct me if I'm wrong, that you coming in with your business-minded high agency or, approach into a relatively volunteer-based new political party might rub a few people up the wrong

way. It might feel like you're a bit direct, you're a bit harsh, you're kicking ass too much and not being gentle enough. Am I in the right ballpark? Have you pissed a lot of people off by trying to get things done? So no, I don't think that's true, but I do think, so look, number one, I think the results speak for themselves. And I certainly do not take sole credit at all. I was a part of making that stuff happen. I'm not questioning the results. I'm questioning whether... No, no, let me answer. You are right, though, in the sense that generally people in business, who've had successful business careers do not even last very long in politics, let alone get much done, right? I've always been reasonably pragmatic, though, that obviously in politics, it is about, you know,

it's obviously not about profits or anything like that. But what I will say is, I've always been a very results-oriented person. I'm a practical person. And I do believe this is a time-limited mission to save the United Kingdom and return it to being an amazing country. And I make no apology for saying that there really shouldn't be anything that gets in the way of that. And that means that, yes, Reform UK is a very high performance organisation. I think we've been outraised by the Tories 10 to 1 over the last year. Their team is much bigger than us.

Labor's obviously not only got a much larger team than us, but they've also got the whole apparatus of the government. The volunteers have done so much to get this party to where it is. let me really care about that. Millions of leaflets, because we've literally got a portal. They've purchased and distributed millions of leaflets throughout the last year. They knock on doors. So grateful to them.

But I make no apology for the fact that, you know, we had to be results on it. Let's take even candidates. I mean, most people, unless you've done frontline politics and you've built this thing and you've actually understand how hard it is to field 1,600 candidates from a standing stuff, You know, we talk about winning seeds. So in May last year, the party only fielded candidates in 12% of the seats, 12%. And they won three or something seats overall, absolute number.

This year, we stood in 99.8% more than any of the other parties. It was the first time in over 100 years that's happened. And then we won 42% of the seats with 32% of the vote chair, hence demonstrating first past the post, the thing that was supposedly, frankly, has been a nemesis for Nigel over the years. now is working in our favour. We're really proud of that. Look, am I perfect? No. Have I made some decisions that in hindsight I wouldn't have made,

including that tweet, for example? Of course. But, but we're very, you know, we have assembled a political party largely from scratch. We've got an amazing team. We're going to compound and build on that. Now, obviously, David Bulls is the chairman. We're going to have a deputy chairman coming in.

The team is broadening, exactly as it would happen in any other startup. But in the end, it's about the British people. And we fight, you know, I'm a volunteer. I work seven days a week. I'm still doing that. I love what I do. Nigel gives up huge opportunity cost for him doing all sorts of other things. Pretty much a whole reform leadership team. Actually quite kind of reluctant politicians, if you see what I mean. Unlike a lot of, let's say, even Labor ministers, that's the best job they're ever going to get, frankly, right? And so it's

about the British people. This is a time-limited mission. To quote Martin Luther King Jr., it's the fierce urgency of now. And so we had to get those results. If we didn't, imagine we just stood in half the seats, which would still have been a big improvement on last year. Game over, right? Mission over. Tories recover. Maybe they beat Labor next time and we get the same thing again. Net migration at a million. The country's screwed. Well, I guess, see, neither Francis are trying to, like, say you are a bad person or you've done bad things or you've made mistakes. But the concern, I think, for a lot of people, is some of them linked your brief resignation to the fact that you, Sarah Pochin, Is that how you pronounce the name?

She made a statement about burkers, and even though you support banning the burqa, nonetheless, you were critical of that. I guess what people are getting at is, are you guys actually going to be able to get along enough to achieve results? That's what I think people are asking. I don't think anyone is like, oh, these people are bad people. It's more like, are you going to be able to deliver results?

And, you know, you talk about a strong leader. I personally agree with that view, but a strong leader also has to be a, able to bring people along with them. So are you actually going to be able to keep some semblance of order and agreement with it? Yeah. So look, so yes, Nigel is a great magnet for talent. I mean, look, I would say that, you know, some of those people go, Nigel can't work with big

characters. I wouldn't say I'm a shrinking violer. I wouldn't say Lee Anderson would be characterized in a after 11 months. But then, you know, but I came back very, very quickly and in no small part because, you know, I received so many messages. which is, DMs, emails from people telling me how important the reform mission was, and because of Nigel. It just reminded me how important Nigel was.

Not that it's a one-man-band, but he is obviously the singular politician of our lifetimes, without whom I don't think would be, obviously wouldn't be where we are. And he's crucial. We've got to make him the Prime Minister. In terms of harmonious, look, all I can say, and I appreciate you've got to take my word from this, but you're going to see it over the coming months. I mean, my relation with Sarah is impeccable. I speak to almost every day. I was instrumental in selecting her.

She's a formidable woman, exactly the kind of person that this country needs. frankly, I think, in the highest officers of the land. She's been a magistrate for two decades. Again, doesn't need to be in politics. It's doing this out of a real sense of duty, making a lot of sacrifice to do it. I worked as hard as most people to get her elected. And since then, as I said,

I've spoken to almost every day, and I couldn't be more proud of the work that she's doing. I'm on the record of my views about the Berkowitz. I'm going to have a discussion about it. I totally understand why there are many arguments of the contrary about a ban. and I've been favoured probably of a ban of face coverings in general. We come on to wine.

But, you know, we've got a great, the vibe is fantastic. If you had come to the press conference when we announced David Ball, anyone who's actually in that room, you'll notice actually even the mainstream media didn't really have any stories about lots of discordance because it was just obviously not true. I mean, we love working together. Look, of course we're going to have some disagreements, by the way.

We will have disagreements. But people will see, and the proof will be in the pudding over the coming months and years, that we are a team. You know, the analogy I use, I know if you're football fans, but I always use the, I like the analogy of Prime Barcelona, right? So, you know, Leonor Messi, obviously arguably the best player in the world. And there was no Prime Barcelona without Messi. But, and let's create the analogy of Leonor Messi and Nigel. I don't know how many times that analogy has been made, but there was also no Prime Barcelona without Chavi and Iniesta and all of the... these other incredible players around him. And the proof of that is when Messi went to other clubs

like PSG. They didn't win the Champions League or really come anywhere close. And I would use that analogy with reform. So of course Nigel is the brightest star in our galaxy. Of course he is. He's going to outshine him because he's Nigel Farage. I mean, it's always going to be the case, right? But we have formidable people, not just in our incredible MPs, Richard and James and Lee and Sarah, but also I can tell you as someone who is a pretty good, you know, I have an asymmetry of data on the caliber of people who are coming forward wanting to help us from a policy perspective in the background, in some cases for Doge right now, but also people who I think will put themselves forward to occupy cabinet positions. And, you know, let's take people, I mean, we have this

crazy situation. I've always thought, I've spent a long time trying to diagnose the riddle of how does this country have so many clowns as cabinet ministers. Why is it that the average cabinet in our lifetimes has not just been not great, but like a cadre of the most clownish incompetence you'd ever imagine. The kind that you would never walk into a Fortune 100 company and see these people. It's how did we end up with Matt Hancock as our health secretary during the greatest health emergency since World War II? Literally cost, I think, hundreds of thousands of lives, right? I don't mind saying that on the record.

You have Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband between them spending the majority of our 1.2 trillion a year budget. I put it to you could spend a decade scouring this country and find two people less qualified that you would feel less at ease in terms of spending our money. We've not met enough comedians, mate. Well, who knows? You just pop out to the London circuit. You get a lot of people more. You guys are comedians, Richard, right?

And you've obviously become a... But on a serious point, you guys have obviously become really important voices. And a lot of people take you very seriously. I don't want to embarrass you, but take you very seriously as political voice. in this country. Same in the US. Jirogan. I mean, there's lots of cases of this. Partly because comedians tell the comedians, the only way they can be funny is by identifying truths, right? So, look, I realize the reason is, is because in order to become, and this is why the only way I thought the country can be turned around is through a totally new vehicle like reform.

It's because in order to become the leader of one of these legacy parties, the only way to do it is to buy off the most senior MPs and the ranking MPs with the highest officers. of the land. And the people who get into those positions are not there. It's almost like an anti-meritocracy, right? Merit is, you know, in many ways what happens is a highly competent person. What happens is a load of incompetent people coalesce together and get them out, and that works. So again, what we're focused on is, as I said, one step at a time, continue to build our support, saying things we believe to be true, and willing to, you know, and willing to, you know, Nigel, people talk about Nigel, they claim he's a populist. You know,

As someone who spends, I probably spend more time with Nigel than any other human over the last year. And the interesting thing is, never once I can tell you has a decision been made based on a poll. Right? That's not something we don't look at polls, we do, but the decision is never made on that. And the interesting thing with Nigel is he's actually built his career and continues to lead the party based on conviction around something he believes to be true. And if the polls aren't there, he'll go out and make the case to the British people, whether it was Brexit, whether it was immigration. But, you know, he was talking, you know, that billboard with the word invasion on it. Do you have all the flack he got from that?

Now this is, you'd have to go some to claim. Let me look at the Darren Jones controversy this week on question time. So we're going to keep doing that. It's not going to be easy. It's a long way to go before the next general election. But I think, A, people are so disconsolate and feel so betrayed by the two old parties. But B, I think we're doing a better and better job. And we've got to keep doing this at demonstrating to people that we are a viable alternative.

So, Zia, let's go back to the conversation about the Berker, because to me, it feels in some ways it's not just about that. What we're actually talking about is liberal values, because the liberal values that we hold in this country are, you can do what you want, say what you want, as long as it doesn't affect me, and that is your right as a British citizen. I'm going to be honest, I'm not particularly comfortable with the banning of it because it infringes on those liberal values that I think make this country so beautiful and precious. Very few countries uphold those values.

But on the other hand, and this is where the balance of this comes in, as we discussed earlier, a lot of people feel that that is a visual representation of a division, a lack of integration, a lack of the ability for people to connect with each other, to hear each other, to see each other. And so I think everyone appreciates that we're kind of. in this moment when we'd like to preserve our liberal society. But frankly, if you bring in lots and lots of people from cultures who are not liberal, that becomes more challenging.

And that's where the conversations are, I think, is fair. A thousand percent. I mean, I almost only say you've just laid out the... So what... But we are just talking on a podcast. You were actually planning to do something about it. So what's the plan? Yeah, so let me be clear.

Firstly, reform doesn't have the policy to ban it right now. I'm just talking about my own personal view on this. And the reason why it was so interesting what you both just said there is, this is totally a really difficult point. It's a discussion that does need to be had. I mean, that's the first thing. A lot of policies you don't even want to talk about it. I think it is authentically a real trade-off situation

between two really important liberal values, right? So freedom of religion is a really important tenet of English common law and a really important British value. Undeniable. But one has to ask why. And talking about this isn't some far-right. trope thing. I mean, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Austria, Denmark. Yeah, but also Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, lots of Muslim countries.

Totally, totally, yeah, obviously. But I'm even talking about, you know, unless you believe Belgium is some far-right hell scale. There are a lot of people in the British media establishment who are only convinced by the example of Uzbekistan because they think France is evil and which it is. So, well, they do need to stop stopping those boats from coming up. But what's interesting is that on the one hand, yes, freedom of religion is really, really crucial. I totally understand the slippery, slow argument because, you know, one of the things, again, the founding fathers often talk about is when you're passing legislation, you always have to consider, I mean, Thomas Payne had first said it, whatever legislation you pass one day be in the hands of, quote, unquote, your enemy. At some point, God forbid, a non-reformed government might win.

And then how long before that same kind of, once you infringe on that, what about a star of David or crucifix might, you know, all of these awful things could, end up potentially. So I understand that argument. I really do. Secondly, but on the flip side, you know, social interaction in the public sphere, and that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about in the private privacy of your own home, but in the public sphere in Western liberal democracies is facial. It is. That's how I can't. These are really, really important things. And you're right. It is seen as something of a lightning rod and sort of right in the middle of that storm of discussion around assimilation and which cultures are compatible with this. And again, I think it's less of a religious point, a more of a cultural point.

There are many Muslim countries which don't encourage the wear. Or indeed ban it in many cases. There is a security element to it. And the notion that it isn't, is this not true? In Tunisia, I think it was 2019. There was a bombing by somebody who was wearing one. So there's an element of that too. I would say to the degree that I support the ban, it would be a ban on facial coverings in general, right, including, you know, I've seen Antifa Thugs threaten Nigel, threaten our supporters, knocked the tooth out, one of Nigel's security detail. Do you know how many people were arrested? Zero. Not a single, I mean, think about that. One of Nigel's security detail, former special boat service veteran, had one of his teeth knocked out by a masked

on Antifa Thug, no arrest. So I do think that's important. I don't, you know, I would never support a piece of legislation that sort of targets a specific religion again. I think that's not, They're not the right thing to do. But I do think we have to start having these discussions, constantly. If we don't start having these discussions, I think with Sam Harris, you said, if reasonable people don't secure our borders,

unreasonable people will. Whenever you think of Sam Harris, I think that is true. And I think that if reasonable people don't start drawing some lines in the sand, you have to listen to voters. I keep saying this, you know, I went on, so when I talk to some left-wing people who just sort of say universally,

this is a liberal value, it's okay. Well, you can keep saying that in your abstract philosophy class, But if you don't listen to voters, they will get angrier and angrier and angrier. And I can't blame them. And so, again, what reform is here to do is say, again, we're here to speak up for the people who feel like, as you were pointing out earlier, who feel like every time they vote to reduce immigration or support their borders. Not only did they not get what they voted for, they get the opposite of what they voted for. And then insulted. I mean, Darren Jones on question time, sort of telling the audience and telling the audience and telling the.

British people that the majority of the people coming across on small boats are women and children. I'd tell you if someone's sitting next to him. You don't know how they identify. Well, the funny thing is, the numbers are, even by government statistics, that's obviously wrong. But we know that these people throw their passports away and just make stuff up. You've seen, I've seen sort of Victorian sort of clearly men in their 50, who are balding, and we're seeing airlines are apparently under 16. scarily, I almost think that he, in a weird where he almost believed it, these people are utterly

deluded. My sense was not actually that he was sitting there deliberately attempting to mislead. It just doesn't have a clue. And how you could not have a clue when we know for a fact, you know, we've been talking about it being a national security merger. And I've just been talking about this for years, right? We now know that Iranian men came across the channel and our security services foiled a terrorist attack, right? So it obviously is. And, you know, we know, People say, oh, it's relatively small numbers relative to legal number. Yes, proportionally, because the legal number's absolutely insane. But also, we know nothing about these people.

The majority of them are men. The real number we think is actually closer to 90%. And in several periods, it was actually even by government reporting numbers up at that level. So look, we've got to start listening to voters. And again, I say this, as a Muslim, to the degree that there is resentment building against Muslims in this country, which it is, I think. That doesn't mean that this country is full of people who hate Muslims. But that resentment is growing.

And the way you resolve that is not by continuing to pass, you know, blasphemy laws and making it. I mean, again, so imagine you're a teacher and you said, nobody's allowed to say anything mean to Constantine over here. I mean, it would be the worst thing you could possibly hear, right? Yeah. So, look, again, we've got to have real conversations about this stuff. Yeah. And speaking of... that. One of the things has obviously had a huge impact domestically, even though it's happening

halfway across the world, is the war in Gaza. And now the Israeli strikes on Iran and the Iranian response and so on. What is the reform view of that conflict? Well, look, the reform view is Israel's a crucial ally, has the right to defend itself. Hamas is a terrorist organization. The war would have ended very, very quickly had they handed back the hostages. All of that is obviously true. I think Britain has a, in listening to this Labour government, I think they have an overinflated sense of sadly Britain's position and standing in the world. I mean, Israel didn't even tell the British government about the attacks they're about. You have to ask why that sort of thing is happening. You know, even the whole arms sales thing. I'm a very practical person. Whatever

your view is on that, okay, you can say we're going to restrict arms sales. All that will happen is throw, you think there aren't plenty of other countries queuing up to sell arms to Israel. There's one of the few areas we still have some, potentially some ability to influence. And to the degree we want more influence over such things, going back to the point about economic growth, we need GDP per capita in this country growing three to four percent a year over a sustained period of time. We need to reinvest in our military, but also in a smart way. I mean, the way military spending is currently done is still for like wars that happened decades ago because of the powers of a lot of lobbyists.

So that's our view on that. Now, I don't mind saying that you just look at all the polling and the data on this. My personal view is that I think the way in which Israel has prosecuted the war, I think, leaves much to be desired in something. Look, it's a really difficult one, right? Because, you know, Hamas are using human shields, obviously. I think that, and there's obviously a lot of propaganda, but if you just look at the polling, if you're a friend of Israel's, right, as we are, then you have to be able to say things like losing popular support amongst a large. number, for example, British people is not in your interests. And so I think two things can be

true at the same time. And why should we be friends of Israel? Well, I think one of the reasons is because it has historically, so number one, the concept of Judeo-Christian values, I think is important. I say this as a Muslim, it is. It absolutely is. So that's the first point. The second one is, Israel has and is an important strategic ally in a region, which is very susceptible still to the scourge and kind of overwhelmed by Islamist forces. It is true, right? And, you know, things can change in the Middle East very, very quickly. So that would be, you know, another reason. It is the only democracy in the Middle East. And, you know, democracy, as Churchill said, is far from perfect. In fact, it's the worst form of government except for all of the others.

You know, it is a standard bearer in terms of how it treats its own citizens in terms of women's rights and freedom of religion, all of those things, right? So those are the reasons. But again, my personal view is that, you know, some sort of carte blanche, I think in order to be a friend of Israel. So I do worry that, you know, look at all the polling around younger generations with regards to Israel. It's like, you know, we can live in a, I'm a big fan of having difficult conversations, right? And the way, as those pictures keep streaming in, you know, of just utter devastation inside civilian areas. And again, notwithstanding the argument that they're using Human Shield, it's like, it's difficult in those instances when you're looking at those images that are so preponderant. And I get it that there's propaganda and some of it's fake.

But the sheer preponderance of it suggests not all of it is fake. And I think that one has to ask, just as I would say, the British military, right? I think our SAS are being persecuted for doing their jobs as a result of ECHR insanity. But I would say, you know, if reformers in government and there was evidence that British personnel were acting improperly and illegally and, you know, doing awful things, then you have to ask yourselves, why are you better? And I think that is an important discussion to be out. So, again, it's a nuanced discussion. We're great friends of Israel and everything I've just said comes from a place. why want Israel to have support amongst the British people.

See ya. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Before the answer the last question, at the end of the interview, make sure you head on over to our substack where you will be able to see this. I'm a reform member who is struggling to forgive the extreme actions taken against Rupert Lowe. Do you think you owe him an apology for going to the police? How can we invigorate or reinvigorate a sense of national identity, pride and allegiance? I think as a world changes, it becomes more threatening. We're going to need it.

I think it's AI and energy. So as someone as a tech entrepreneur, these frontier AI models are already so advanced that they are, I think, more powerful, like powerful enough to displace a large, large percentage of white-collar jobs. Britain is a service industry. All the models that are used in the UK at the moment are basically used from American companies. I think the speed at which these things are improving, there's obviously the Chinese and the Americans. At some point, it is logical that those countries will say, no, we're just going to keep the best models, the most advanced ones for ourselves. No one else gets to use them. We don't really have any of these GP data centers where they put all these Nvidia, kind of basically the supercomputer cluster. that costs a lot of money are built.

One of the reasons is we have insanely high energy costs, the most expensive energy costs in the world. And to give you some context of how fast we are falling behind in this country as a result of Madden, Miliband and Boris and all these guys, China is installing the equivalent of the entire fleet of energy capacity in the United Kingdom every two to two and a half months. Right? And so AI are the new nuclear weapons, right? They are. It is an absolute. Absolutely. If we carry on the way we are for the next 15 to 20 years, and this is why I keep saying, like, before me to win, we will basically become, I think, a vassal state of the CCP under some sort of horrific eye of saw on AI capable. This is not, I mean, this is where we are headed. What do you mean by that? Because there's a lot of people who don't know Lord of the Rings who are just like, or AI. Yeah. Well, so, so, so historically, being an authoritarian regime was actually quite costly to, like, spy on everybody and know what everybody's.

saying, like with AI, it collapses the cost of authoritarianism. So you could have a camera up there that is able to know us by our faces, exactly what we're saying. You know, there's AI note takers that you go on Zoom and you're like, how the hell did it do? Right. So AI massively reduces the cost. Basically collapses the marginal cost of authoritarianism. And if we don't have our own data centers with these GPUs, low energy prices to be able

to power them, will number one be totally open to cyber attacks. My view is it's obvious from what Trump is doing that they're becoming more protectionist. And because Britain is focused, despite being less than 1% of global emissions and China producing 4.7 billion tons of coal last year, Madden-Millaband is running around, you know, trying to make us basically a poor country by having all these high energy costs. It means it is totally economically inept to try to open these dentist centres in the UK. So we should be investing heavily in building up that capability. A, as a form of defence, but also, unlike nuclear weapons, there was a positive use for these things in order to deliver value for British people. I think

you would automate away a lot of the civil service. I think it would be really helpful in areas, not exclusively AI for the NHS. But I mean, my brother's a radiologist, a consultant radiologist, and already, you know, these large language models have surpassed, you know, human radiologists at scale. So that's something that I think is, A, not being talked about. B, has the prospect to totally change the face of society. And politicians are, I mean, to say that they're asleep at the wheel would be being kind. Head on over to our substack where Zia is going to answer your questions. Will you reach out to Elon for intelligence gathering on the do's and don'ts of heading your own Doge? Or has his recent posts on X against Trump made him too untrustworthy,

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