#051 - The Coming Economic Collapse with Steve Baker & James Van Straten

Summary

The Peter McCormack Show – Episode #051: "The Coming Economic Collapse"

Guests: Steve Baker & James Van Straten

Date: 17 February 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Peter McCormack is joined by Steve Baker (former MP and monetary reform advocate) and James Van Straten (Bitcoin strategist) for a candid and urgent discussion about the UK’s deteriorating economic situation. The conversation covers the unsustainable debt liabilities of the UK government, the out-of-control welfare and pension promises, the housing crisis, and the corrosive effects of inflation and poor political leadership. With both guests providing inside and outside perspectives, the panel covers the structural and cultural flaws of the British economic system, the inevitable reckoning for public finances, and the parallels between the current moment and previous periods of societal upheaval. They also discuss Bitcoin and alternative monetary systems as escape valves, the parallels with previous technological revolutions, and the glimmer of hope in new political movements and technology-driven change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The UK's True Debt and Looming Bankruptcy

• Steve Baker sets the tone by warning the UK's fiscal position is far worse than officially acknowledged. The country is "headed to bankruptcy within about 10 to 20 years" when factoring in off-balance-sheet liabilities (unfunded public and state pensions), bringing the real debt "about fourfold" higher than reported. [00:00, 28:52]
  • Quote:

  "It’s not just the stated national debt, it’s the 2.8 trillion of public sector pension liabilities that we haven’t funded and the 5.6 trillion of state pension liabilities that we haven’t funded. That increases the national debt by about fourfold. And this country is headed to bankruptcy within about 10 to 20 years." – Steve Baker [00:00, 28:52]

• The panel laments that no mainstream political party is prepared to articulate the true scale of the problem or propose hard solutions.

2. Failures of the Monetary System & Leadership Paralysis

• Baker recalls warning speeches in Parliament about the corrosive effects of easy money, cheap credit, and currency debasement—foresights largely unheeded by political colleagues [03:54].
  • Quote:

  “After 15 years of studying these matters... there is no way to change the present monetary order until the ideas behind it have been tested to destruction. And I do mean tested to destruction.” – Steve Baker [04:18]

• He raises the risk of disillusionment with democracy and potential for strongman politics given widespread distrust and the system’s failures:
  “Polling of young people who thought democracy had failed. Let’s have a strong man. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s just remember some history here.” [02:36]

3. The Housing Crisis: Generational Divide & Lost Opportunity

• Housing is central to economic malaise and intergenerational inequity.
  • Previous generations bought houses on one salary; now, even dual earners struggle to get on the property ladder.
  • “Dual salary now... almost impossible to get onto the housing ladder. That fragmentation... society breaks down.” – James [15:16]
  • House prices have far outpaced wage growth, with asset inflation driven by money-printing.
• James advocates Bitcoin as a more promising store of value, framing UK housing as overvalued due to unsound money.

4. Comparisons: The Internet and Bitcoin Adoption

• The panel draws a parallel between initial dismissiveness of the internet (by the likes of Bill Gates) and prevailing skepticism about Bitcoin.
  • Adoption barriers with the internet were minimal and utility was immediately visible, while Bitcoin adoption involves "financial jeopardy" and stigma from legacy media. [10:44–12:20]
  • Peter: “Difference with Bitcoin is... you have this financial jeopardy... you’ve been fed all this propaganda... it’s this high risk, volatile asset...” [10:57]

5. Main Parties: “Managed Decline”, No Real Alternatives

• The consensus is that Labour and Conservatives are indistinguishable and have both presided over continual national decline.
  • “There’s a broad acceptance that Labour and Conservatives, there’s not much difference between them... managed decline.” – Peter [23:35]
• Steve Baker:

  “Labour are going to fail. It’s going to create a massive problem, a real problem in people’s lives. The question really is Kemi or Nigel Farage—one of the two... has got to cut through all of this and with charisma and resolve rise to the real challenge.” [30:27]

6. The Dysfunction and Waste of Modern Government

• The state is criticized for its size, waste, and lack of accountability.
  • “When you have a 22 billion hole, I think about how I run a business... I go through the bank account... and we cut things. Ministers don’t do that.” – Peter [54:45]
  • The procurement files exposing wasteful and bizarre spending are called “shaming” and illustrative of systematic rot [53:23].
• Media and journalism are called out for failing their watchdog role, now being bypassed by independent investigators and social media [57:38].

7. The Elite and Political Class: Underqualified, Unaccountable, Underpaid?

• Discussion on the low pay of top government officials, effect on talent, and perverse selection incentives [20:50].
• Steve: “People don’t do it for the money... but the only test for getting elected is can you get elected, can you get selected by a political party?” [21:01, 20:21]
• Populist parties are described as offering “the answers people want to hear... but it leads to ruin.” [42:22]

8. Structural Barriers to Reform

• Entrenched interests and complexity stymie change—on topics like net zero, energy policy, and public sector reform.
  • “If you want to get rid of net zero, you’ve got enormous vested interests who will turn up and say we’re all gonna die in the fires of climate change...” – Steve Baker [80:12]
• Manifestos are described as “another fraud” due to timing and lack of honest, detailed budgeting [59:18, 60:50].

9. Bitcoin, Investment, and the Younger Generation

• Younger generations are boxed out of property and investing in alternatives like Bitcoin.
  • “Continue buying bitcoin and renting, and then in a couple of years time 1 Bitcoin will be the average house.” – James [18:52]
• Traditional investments like the FTSE are described as stagnant or negative over real terms, pushing value-seekers to Bitcoin [91:49].
• Peter: “If my career had been pretty similar... but there had been no bitcoin, I would probably own a second house now.” [90:15]

10. The Demand for Authenticity, Political Realignment, and Hope for Renewal

• People are “craving authenticity” from politicians, with Reform and other parties gaining traction by offering forthright messages [45:28, 46:05].
• The fourth turning theory and historical cycles are discussed as a framework for the current instability [47:56, 49:27].
• Steve, repeatedly: “We need higher quality political leaders... we are headed for bankruptcy unless someone is honest about the challenge.” [82:53, 30:52]
• “There’s a kind of age of libertarianism dawning... the state needs to do less,” but the public remain addicted to “free stuff” and few politicians dare level with voters [97:22, 97:25].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This country is headed to bankruptcy within about ten to twenty years.” – Steve Baker [00:00; 28:52]
• "Few MPs spoke. It's complicated and they just don't understand it... [they] complain about their bins... or the trees down the street.” – Steve Baker [17:04]
• "The only thing that matters to the government is reelection." – Steve Baker [20:21]
• "The general public want lower taxes and higher spending. That is fundamental." – Steve Baker [41:47]
• “If Malay can go into Argentina and fix Argentina, if Bukele can go in El Salvador and fix it, every country can be fixed.” – Peter [24:56]
• "I think we're on the precipice of some form of revolution." – Peter [47:56]
• “The state is not an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are in the private sector with categorically different incentives.” – Steve Baker [30:52]
• "You want growth? What we need to do is reduce friction in business, reduce tax and make it easier and less expensive to set up business." – Peter [69:15]
• "Libertarianism can't sell because people love free stuff." – Steve Baker [97:25]
• “We need better politicians and I don’t see where they are coming from.” – Peter [98:36]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 – 02:36: Steve Baker explains the UK’s real debt and imminent bankruptcy.
• 03:54 – 06:22: Steve’s 2014 speech on monetary system collapse, Bitcoin, and alternative currencies.
• 10:44 – 12:20: Parallels drawn between the Internet adoption curve and Bitcoin; stigma and hurdles.
• 13:32 – 16:19: Generational divide in personal responsibility and housing access.
• 16:19 – 18:52: Discussion of the UK housing market, money supply, and asset inflation.
• 24:09 – 25:47: "Managed decline", public disillusionment, the possibility of change.
• 28:52 – 30:52: Return to the bankruptcy thesis, why neither main party has the courage to address it.
• 41:46 – 42:22: Why UK politics is trapped in a fantasy of low taxes and high spending.
• 54:24 – 56:14: Government waste, procurement disasters, analogies to running a business.
• 69:15 – 70:22: Taxation and energy policy strangling small business and entrepreneurship.
• 80:12 – 81:28: Complexity and vested interests make reforms (e.g. net zero) so difficult.
• 87:15 – 88:23: Consensus, groupthink, and why "more of the same" persists in mainstream media and government.
• 94:17 – 94:39: The hope that change can come from self-education and new media, not politics.
• 97:22 – 97:52: Why libertarian policy is almost impossible to sell to voters.
• 100:10 – 102:30: UK’s 61,000 BTC reserves; prospects for Bitcoin policy in the UK.

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Tone & Style

The conversation is frank, passionate, and at times wearied—laced with both cynicism (about the state and political class) and hope (for a new age of authenticity and individual empowerment). Steve Baker brings insider experience and history, James provides a sharp outsider/investor perspective, and Peter guides the conversation with relatable examples, humor, and genuine frustration. Swearing and sarcasm ("It's all bollocks") add emphasis, but the tone is fundamentally solution-oriented, with a repeated call for honesty, courage, and a return to sound money and authentic leadership.

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For Listeners New to the Episode

• The UK’s economic position is far more perilous than the headlines suggest, with massive unfunded pension debts and no political will to confront reality.
• The housing crisis is a core manifestation of money-printing and mismanagement—exacerbating generational injustice.
• Both major parties are complicit in the current malaise, and rising movements (and technologies like Bitcoin) are both a symptom and a response to the crumbling status quo.
• The solution will require radically higher standards of honesty, accountability, and authenticity—in politics and media—and, potentially, a social and economic reckoning before a new order is possible.
• Listeners are encouraged to inform themselves, demand better, and not cede ground to cynicism.

Transcript

[Steve Baker]

Really what somebody needs to do is turn up and say this country's heading towards bankruptcy. It's not just the stated national debt, it's the 2.8 trillion of public sector pension liabilities that we haven't funded and the 5.6 trillion of state pension liabilities that we haven't funded that increases the national debt by about fourfold. And this country is headed to bankruptcy within about 10, 10 to 20 years. And but until a politician says, and we've got to make hard choices, we can drift forwards and default on the welfare state so that old people with no other means of support end up going without their pension, without health care, without social care, or we can start taking the hard choices now to get all this under control.

[Peter]

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[Steve Baker]

Delighted to be here. Thank you.

[James]

Thank you for having us.

[Peter]

No worries, James. So on the way down. Well, actually, interestingly, last night I was messaging Charlotte Gill talking Charlotte Gill from the Doge files. I think they're also working with the procurement file people and just looking at this huge amount of waste in government. And I was just thinking it's quite good timing based on what we spoke about, that we wanted to talk about. I think we're at this time where there's so much transparency and access to information. There's a real disappointment about the performance of government domestically, internationally that I think. I mean, Steve, you talked about it in one of your speeches in Parliament. You talk about this big monetary order experiment. I think we are at the tail end of this. And we're now not only questioning economic policy, the relationship between economic policy and money and what is money, but I actually think we're also at a time where we're questioning government and the role of government and what do we want government to be? Because it's clearly Fucking failed.

[Steve Baker]

You know, after the global financial crisis. Because I am, of course, the oldest one here, the Gen Xer. After the global financial crisis, as soon as people would listen to me, because I was going into Parliament, I was making speeches saying, we're heading into CR, but in 2010, as I'm getting into Parliament, this is not the crisis behind us. This is about the crisis we're going into. Because it was obvious to me that the global financial crisis was like the first real appearance of cracks in this giant monetary experiment we've had, of overspending and covering it by debasing the currency. And, to be honest, no surprises. I don't like being increasingly proven right, but it is what's happening. And easy money and too much government is corrosive of everything. It's corrosive of virtue. And I'm afraid it's coming now to bite us. One of the big problems is, where are people gonna turn? Are they gonna say, oh, capitalism's failed. Let's have socialism, communism? Are they gonna say, well, we should have massive state collectivism? What we need is a strong man to save us? Cause to my amazement, there was polling of young people who thought democracy had failed. Let's have a strong man. They think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's just remember some history here. What we need is honest money and sort out our institutions and stop wasting other people's money. So we've got to try and be, in a sense, radical and yet moderate.

[James]

You did that in 2014, that speech in the Houses of Parliament on easy money, cheap credit, and what that will lead to with a housing bubble or even worse, with the credit expansion that was actually in the first slide. I don't know if we want to show it, but you're one.

[Peter]

Look at you. Who is that, baby?

[James]

But what's incredible.

[Peter]

Hold on.

[Steve Baker]

When was this problem is basically 2014 too much money? It's always been the same throughout history. Governments used to want to fund wars. Now, for all good, moral, decent, humanitarian reasons, we want to fund health, welfare, and education well beyond what the public will pay in taxes. After 15 years of studying these matters, and now having made it to the Treasury Committee, I'm ever more convinced that there is no way to change the present monetary order until the ideas behind it have been tested to destruction. And I do mean tested to destruction. And it's an extremely serious issue. But it will not change until it becomes apparent that the ideas behind the system are not tenable. We should welcome the Chancellor's recent interest in cryptocurrencies and making London a real center of financial innovation. Imperfect and possibly doomed as it may be. Bitcoin shows us that peer to peer, non state money is practical and effective. I've used it to buy an accessory for a camera. Perfectly ordinary legal product. It was easier to use than a credit card and it showed me the price in pounds or any other currency I like. It is becoming possible for people to move away from state money. So what I would like to see is every obstacle to the creation of alternative currencies within the ordinary commercial law removed. We should expand the range of commodities and instruments related to those commodities which are treated like money, like gold. So exempt VAT and capital gains tax. And it should be possible to pay tax on those new monies. And we must not fall into the trap that the United States has fallen into of obstructing innovation. Finally, Mr. Speaker, we are in the midst of an unprecedented global experiment in monetary policy and debt. It is likely, as Philip Coghan set out, that this will result in a new global monetary order. Whether it will be for good or ill, I do not know. But as technology and debt advance, I am sure we should be ready for a transformation. Society has suffered too much already under the present monetary orthodoxy. Free enterprise should now be allowed to change it.

[Peter]

That was 11 years ago.

[Steve Baker]

I rest my case. I can't believe I said that. That was me, wasn't it?

[Peter]

11 years ago.

[James]

How expensive was that camera then?

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, don't ask me now. I can't remember what it was that I bought. I used purse to buy something indirectly from Amazon.

[Peter]

The hell is great.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, thanks. It's gone a lot grayer.

[James]

It was a couple of hundred dollars for a bitcoin route there.

[Steve Baker]

Don't. Just. James, don't. I bought 0.8 of Bitcoin for €500. And then back in, there was a little bubble and a little peak in the price and I sold just after the peak, thinking that's it, Bitcoin's done.

[James]

Yeah, that would have been just after the peak. The peak was around 2013. So 12.

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I was on the money Athletic.

[James]

It looked empty there. Where was everyone on lunch?

[Steve Baker]

Or it was. I think it was a Thursday, so people tended to not have to. It's not mandatory to be there for those sorts of debates. But can. Why do. Why do MPs do anything? It's because their constituents are asking them to.

[James]

Do they do anything?

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, they do loads. They do loads. Mostly what they're doing is trying to cope every day with the tidal wave of correspondence from constituents. But of course, the irony is that that tidal wave of correspondence is likely mostly produced by the effects of the flawed monetary system that we have. So, you know, we were talking before we started about increases in crime and desperation. Well, why does that happen? It's because people haven't got the money to pay the bills, buy a house, and so increasingly people fall into crime.

[Peter]

So yeah, why did you spot it then? Because that was five, six years after the global financial crisis. So we'd come out of that.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Pre Covid.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So what, what was this? What you've seen during the financial crisis, what were you seeing here?

[Steve Baker]

Well, what I saw was I left the Royal air force in 99 to get into software in the dot com boom, Crucial point dot com boom. And it bust while I was doing my MSc in Computer Science at Oxford and I thought, why has everyone made. Why has everyone made the same investment mistake at once? And a friend handed me Ludwig von Mises, Causes of the Economic Crisis and Other Essays before and after the Great Depression. And I read it and I thought, well, that makes sense, that makes sense. Why don't politicians and economists change the monetary system to solve this problem? So I thought it must be wrong, therefore. And that started 25 years of studying the monetary system. So when I was at Lehman Brothers, boom, boom, boom, bust. I thought, I know what's happened here. So the global financial crisis to me was easily predictable from an Austrian's point of view.

[James]

Like, could you say like what you were observing back then? Obviously Mike Shashi and all those tech companies were like the result of that boom and bust. But again, that was just cheap credit going on and just like a frenzy of just cheap money. Well, yes, or cheaper money.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. So I think what we're observing really was that there was just a hell of a lot of money to be made in the software sector. And it crucially, I think wasn't just cheap credit, it was the emergence of the Internet as such. I mean, we are, I am definitely old enough that when I started as a Royal Air Force engineer Officer in the 90s, we didn't have email, you know, we had standalone computers and Bill Gates thought the Internet wouldn't amount to anything. You know, that was the mid-90s.

[Peter]

Well, you would remember the first time you used the Internet, right?

[Steve Baker]

Gosh, do I remember the first time I used it? I think I do.

[Peter]

Do you know a time of no Internet?

[James]

No.

[Peter]

Yeah. That's a weird thing because I was about 14, I was at school and our IT department got the Internet. We had a lesson where they showed us the Internet. So I remember being shown the Internet.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, you are a bit younger than me because I was in the Air Force and I went to Norway and they had the Internet in Norway in a way that we did in the uk.

[James]

Do you see a correlation between, like you said, Bill Gates dismissing the Internet and then people now dismissing Bitcoin? Do you see a correlation between the two?

[Steve Baker]

Well, yeah, I think it's a pattern that you think, right, to identify it. Yeah. I mean, I think that people do tend to dismiss what they don't know. They're stuck in groupthink and something comes along that surprises them and they'll ryer around trying to say this isn't relevant.

[James]

And then what year when the Internet emerged would you say that that narrative flipped, being like, okay, the Internet is actually a positive on society, we can leverage it. How long was that?

[Steve Baker]

Well, that's a good question. I'd have to go back and check when Bill Gates was saying the Internet wouldn't amount to anything. But I think really by about 99, when the tech boom was really going.

[Peter]

There'S definitely a difference. So there were people who dismissed the Internet publicly, but the, the to access the Internet for the first time was low friction and went as soon as you used it, you wanted to use it again.

[James]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So I remember that time I got shown it and then I did a search for this band Corn. I was reading to this new metal band and found their music. I mean, it took too long to download. And then I remember when we got it home and I would use it, and then I remember at university using it to email my friends. There was no friction really to use it, apart from download speeds, but you got an instant benefit from it. The difference with bitcoin is, is that you have this financial jeopardy that's involved whereby you, you have to want to learn about it, then you have to get some. And you've been fed all this propaganda from terrible mainstream media reporting that this is for terrorists and pedophiles and drug dealers and that it's going to die. And the price, I mean, only the other day we, my football club, we're trying to merge with another club and we did a presentation at a fans forum and I got questions on bitcoin because we're the Bitcoin club. And one of them is like, well, what happens when bitcoin goes to zero? And so people still have that expectation and they don't. I was going to say they don't need Bitcoin. Everyone needs it. They don't think they need it and they think it's this high risk, volatile asset that's used by criminals. They don't truly understand it. Whereas the Internet, you didn't have that financial jeopardy. You just went online and did stuff, you found information, you messaged people. And so as a user, it was a different level of friction.

[James]

Yeah, I think it depends on the person. You are like going back to Michael Saylor, who leveraged it and bought all These domain names, strategy.com, hope.com and just saw an opportunity to take it. I don't know. For me, I saw bitcoin emerge in 2017 and I was like, looking at how I can accrue wealth. I've always found money fascinating. I've always found investing interesting. And I thought, how can I get on the property ladder? Obviously, that's in your throat, in your face. 24, seven in this country. And it was like, the only option is to get out half a million pounds worth of debt or try and accrue value in some other way. So I don't know. I think it depends on the person.

[Peter]

Not everyone's like you, though.

[James]

No, but it's an interesting theory. And then you speak to people, even in my generation or generation below, and you can see them really stuck. You can see like the marriage, age going up or not having children and all these crossroads where what you should be doing in your life. And I think it just, it's. I think it is personal responsibility. We can all complain that the country's going to. It's the government's fault, but I think if you are that person, you just have to take that personal responsibility and just do the best you can do.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, well, so this is, to me, so interesting because you hear so much complaining from my generation older about younger people and it's not been my. It's not been my experience with younger people at all, if I may say so, James. You know, I mean, what an amazing, exemplary thing to have said. But the impediments against young people taking responsibility and doing the things that actually they want to do, like buy a house and have kids, Those impediments are absolutely huge now, not least house prices. And that's the thing I've found really changed in the last 14 years. When I was first elected, you could talk about liberty in the abstract and now you're not breaking through till you've talked about housing.

[Peter]

Yeah, the housing one's really interesting because I bought my first house it was 100,000 pound. It was an Ender Terrace, three bed and my dad lent me ten grand, five grand for the deposit, five grand to furnish it and I was probably earning 40, 50 grand a year. Getting a mortgage was fairly, fairly easy. Yeah, you probably similarish experience.

[Steve Baker]

I don't really want to tell you what we did. We did something different but you, you.

[Peter]

Could get on the housing ladder, you chose to and then you can get on.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

Well there was a way.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, the way we did it, I hesitate but we, we saved, we saved and saved and saved through an endowment policy. So we were moving around, living in the Air Force and then as my wife left the Air Force, she had a sum of money as she left and I worked in the city and made a bit of money in the city. So we bought a house as we left the Air Force.

[Peter]

But you could get on the ladder, you wanted to, you can get and that. So just. Sorry. Going back to my dad's generation, everyone could get on the housing ladder if they wanted to. Yeah, everyone had a job. Yeah, A pension. They got interest in their bank account and they could get a mortgage or get a house. I don't know.

[James]

If you're on the ladder, what did your mum do?

[Peter]

Because my mum didn't work most of the time.

[James]

Same with my mum. It was a one person salary. Could look after an entire house, you could live comfortably and the mum could stay at home, look after the children. And that kept that nuclear family that core. And this is kind of where it's completely fragmented now where, where both people have to work actually, if you aren't with a spouse, it's actually almost impossible to get onto the housing ladder. So it's like that fragmentation that I believe in, that cynical way that they want to try and break that nuclear family, have both people out to work. That allows you to essentially inflate housing even more because it's a dual salary now. And I think that's just where even more of society breaks down.

[Peter]

I don't know if you've got on the ladder, but I know for example, Connor, he's been looking, he's the generation below you. The house that I bought 20 years ago has over doubled in price. It's 220 grand now. So, you know, but the wages haven't increased by the same amount. It just fundamentally haven't. For him to get on the ladder, it's. Yeah, I mean, look, you just see it here.

[Steve Baker]

It'd be really interesting to plot over that M4 outstanding. The broad Money supply in sterling. I did it years ago. I did it years ago. And you could see that in the period from 97 to 2010 the money supply tripled. But the broad pattern of the money supply tripling, this great acceleration was followed by house prices and more than that, the distribution of house prices across the uk. You could see that the further away from London you went, the less pronounced the acceleration. And it was just so looked like a correlation.

[Peter]

This points to one of the problems I think we have with democracy right now is that I think the culture wars existed because it's an easy thing to debate, to convince people of argument and get a vote. Actually trying to explain these economic theories to people and get votes, it's very hard.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. So you asked why There weren't many MPs in that debate and few, few are still, you know, very few spoke. It's because it is complicated and they just don't understand it and they're not really sure why it's important because somebody else is complaining about their bins famously or, or the trees down the street or whatever it may be.

[James]

Sorry. What's interesting about those two charts is you look at it on a nominal basis, in a real terms basis. So that bottom right chart was the nominal basis of the.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[James]

Of the currency. If you look at the top left in real terms adjusted for inflation, which obviously no one ever talks about. Housing's been clobbered over the last few years. So when you said, yeah, so I started renting literally a couple of months ago, moved out of my parents home and my, my theory was pretty much in Covid was do I buy a house at low interest rates or just buy more bitcoin? So I took my deposit money during COVID bought Bitcoin and congratulations. Yeah, in theory it was a great decision. But I, I thought about what the long term implications are where you print 40% of the money supply drop rates to zero and you're thinking, okay, inflation's just going to take off at some point, therefore interest rates are going to have to rise and that's just going to absolutely squash property. But I just don't think anyone won it just for the opportunity cost of investing in a, in your primary residence in real estate, the, the cost now of doing up your home or water, energy, it's all gone insane. And then the easiest thing for me to do is to continue buying bitcoin and renting and then in a couple of years time 1 Bitcoin will be the average size, the average house. And I think there's a chart actually a bit further down, which is my favorite chart.

[Peter]

Just the housing price.

[James]

Yeah, housing priced in bitcoin and yeah, that one and this one just flabbergasts people. They think that bitcoin is just this speculative risk on asset. And when you actually think about bitcoin being that new money and you start pricing it in housing or any other asset, everything just gets clobbered against it. So look, you take a long term time frame in London, it's what, just under 10 Bitcoin for a.

[Steve Baker]

It's a hell of a play this though, isn't it? Search for yield. It's a hell of a play. And I'm just thinking all those years of the Treasury Select Committee, I was on the attitude that the Monetary Policy Committee would take the bank of England and they are really the establishment. Right. And they hate bitcoin. I mean, I remember the governor, the current governor is telling the committee on the record, you know, basically to the words, the effect of don't buy bitcoin, you should expect to lose all your money. That was their attitude.

[Peter]

Well, this is the thing that I've really struggled with, Steve, is we gradually do more and more political interviews on the show. Right. Is the massive amount of incompetence and lack of understanding of economics within government. And I think it existed and still exists within the Conservative Party, definitely worse within the Labour Party. But we've essentially put incompetent, low caliber people in charge of what is the UK's one of its biggest companies, which is the government. If you treat it like a company.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. Well, of course it's worse than the company because the incentives are so radically different. It's worse than the company.

[Peter]

Yeah, because they have unlimited money.

[Steve Baker]

But the only test for getting elected is can you get elected, can you get selected by a political party? But I'm afraid the easiest solution to that is people. And I've said it before, I say it again, people hate me for it. If you want to solve that problem, what you have to do is join a political party and ask candidates the question. Because unless you filter out the candidate at a selection meeting, nobody else is going to.

[James]

I've always thought that the Prime Minister with these top jobs should always be paid the most amount of money.

[Peter]

I agree, I agree. I don't. Why are we paying politicians 90 grand a year? We should be paying them half a million pounds a year.

[Steve Baker]

But honestly, people don't do it for the money and there's no shortage.

[Peter]

But they will if it's half A million pounds.

[James]

Sorry, one. Just on that, I just saw that the, the, the MPs got a two, two and a half percent pay rise.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[James]

How is that worked out? Like, who discusses that percentage pay rise? And is there a whole process to go through?

[Steve Baker]

There is a process and it's independent of MPs. So when I was first elected in 2010, again, so much time has passed, there'd been a massive scandal over expenses because for years, MPs, instead of biting the bullet and voting themselves big salary increases, had lower salaries and then they got allowances and they were buying themselves all sorts of things on allowances and they weren't business costs.

[Peter]

We all do it.

[Steve Baker]

Well, we all do it, but people were buying, like the duck house came up and things like that. And it was so shaming, especially for those of us who were trying to go in and sort out. It was a total distraction from the real problems that we've been discussing about. So MPs pay, pensions and business costs were all put into the hands of the Independent Parliamentary standards authority. So MPs now absolutely do not decide their own pay or pensions or business costs, but nobody's ever satisfied and IPSA decides. So it's kind of good and bad because on the one hand, at least MPs are hands off, not deciding their own pay, but on the other, you still get it in the neck because people don't like the decision of IPSA. After all, MPs are paid about three times median wages last time I checked.

[James]

And it shows how bad median wages are. Yeah, the average wage in the UK is like 35,000, which is basically almost like poverty levels. I don't know how you.

[Peter]

Well, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[James]

Not poverty level, but like, okay, fine.

[Peter]

But like, if you see real poverty, there's not a poverty level.

[James]

No.

[Steve Baker]

Tough though.

[James]

It's. It's really hard. I don't know how you can do that. Like.

[Peter]

Oh, no, we've done. Like I say, Colin wanted to buy a house. We did the math on buying a house. Energy bills, having a car. Yeah. Went through it all. And you probably can't get on the House of ladder at 35 grand. It's not poverty, though.

[James]

No, it's not poverty. But, Connor, don't buy property, buy Bitcoin.

[Steve Baker]

What I would say about it is that what we see now is the relationship between median earnings and the cost of living is radically discoordinated. The cost of buying a house, the cost of energy, the cost of water, the cost of food soared up. Not just in the UK people blame Brexit. It's not true because the cost of food soared further within the EU and it's crazy. And we ought to be. Politicians ought to be asking serious questions about why. But of course they never ask a serious question. They just blame each other on partisan basis.

[Peter]

But how do we get. Well, I say how do we get fundamental change? I think fundamental change is happening. I think there's a real reality at the moment that people are looking for something different. There's a. I think there's a broad acceptance that labor and Conservatives, there's not much difference between them. There wasn't much difference between Blair and Cameron. There isn't much difference between A KE Starma Blair and Cameron. We don't see drastic difference on ideology and policy. We're just. And we don't see a difference on outcome with just this continual decline. Yeah, I think, I think the reality is.

[James]

I call it managed decline.

[Peter]

Yeah, managed decline. But managed decline to me says they are engineering at a client. I think it's. I think it's different from that. I think it's.

[James]

I just think that China.

[Steve Baker]

Who's they though?

[James]

Who's they government or just anyone that's in. In the power that they can make changes. Like you see the US like I've never seen. I've not been interested in politics at all. But to take a. An interest in what Trump and his administration are doing is incredible. And if the. The issue actually is if the US can't fix their issues and take meaningful change and reduce the debt levels and the debt to GDP being the strongest country in the world, then there is no hope for us.

[Peter]

Yeah, I see them as two different scenarios, treat each one independently. If Malay can go into Argentina and fix Argentina, if Bukele can go in El Salvador and fix. Every country can be fixed. Every country has been through challenges and fixed itself. But the managed decline, the problem I have with that is, I've said it myself, but when you say manage to client, it's almost someone has a plan to manage the kind they want it. I don't think it's that. I think it's a lack of integrity, a lack of backbone, lack of intelligence, lack of ability to make tough decisions. But that creates opportunity because you get to the point where people are pushed to the edge. I think we've been pushed to the edge now. We've had a global financial crisis, we've had Covid. We've had people lose their businesses, our public services are in decline. We think crime is up it feels visibly up because we see videos on Twitter of kids running into supermarkets and nicking everything.

[James]

You've seen all the security tags on all the products.

[Peter]

Now we've got taxes are up, real world wages are down. It's all bollocks. And I think that creates opportunity and the opportunity has opened the door for reform. Whether people like them or not. They are saying, here's an alternative message.

[James]

People have an issue with that.

[Peter]

Yeah, but what it is, this isn't pro reform. I'm just saying they've created an opening by not separating themselves as parties. And reform have come and said, well, here's a different message, we'll do it differently. Whether they can or can't, whether they're full of shit's a different thing. But that's democracy playing out. For those of you out there who want to protect your Bitcoin, I want to tell you about casa, the lead in Bitcoin security solution and a solution that I use for my Bitcoin and my football club's Bitcoin treasury. Now, if you're serious about protecting your bitcoin, you will need a rock solid security plan. And CASA gives you just that. With their multi signature security and key management services, CASA makes it easier than ever to take control of your Bitcoin without ever having the risk of a single point of failure. Now, they offer multiple levels of protection, all designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind. And that works even if you're not a tech expert. So don't leave your bitcoin security to chance. Go to Castle IO and check out the services that I am using today to protect my Bitcoin so you can protect your stack and sleep easily. You can find out more at CASA IO, which is C a S A I that is Castle IO. This episode is brought to you by Bitcasino, the world's first licensed bitcoin casino. Now, whether you're into slots, table games or live casino experiences, Bitcasino has it all. And they have lightning fast transactions, no deposit limits and no waiting on withdrawals. You can enjoy gaming the way it was meant to be, seamless and secure. Now, Bitcasino, you can play with Bitcoin, making your experience faster, safer and more private. Plus, they offer some of the best rewards in the industry, from bonuses to loyalty programs to keep the fun going. Now, if you're looking for a top tier gaming experience, head over to Bitcasino IO, which is B I T C A S I N O IO that is Bitcasino IO. And please remember to gamble responsibly. Zappo bank is the world's first fully licensed and regulated Bitcoin enabled bank. Zappo Bank's all in one app allows you to secure, transact and grow your Bitcoin and you can also earn Bitcoin daily with interest on your savings for both BTC and USD as well as get cash back on all your card spending. With over a decade of experience in Bitcoin custody, you can trust that your assets are safe with Zapo Bank. They blend no hold security with military grade Swiss bunkers and strict regulatory oversight to ensure your funds are always protected. And as a member you'll get a dedicated account manager who can guide you through their products and help with everything you need. Now if you want to find out more, please head over to zappobank.com forward/w d which is X A P-O-B-A-N-K.com wbd.

[Steve Baker]

Since you've said it, I'll say it. They're full of this is so you look at what they put down on the table as their manifesto going into the election. It was not fiscally responsible. They were spending too much and and spending more and cutting taxes. So Nigel and his party have not faced up to what's going on, and my party plainly hadn't either. But somebody's going to have to drive me crazy so that 2010-15 parliament these issues were my main topic, which is why I made that speech and no one was listening. Well, not really, no. It was too hard to listen. We already had austerity, but we didn't really have austerity. But really what somebody needs to do is turn up and say this country's heading towards bankruptcy. It's not just the stated national debt, it's the 2.8 trillion of public sector pension liabilities that we haven't funded and the 5.6 trillion of state pension liabilities that we haven't funded. That increases the national debt by about fourfold and this country is headed to bankruptcy within about 10 to 20 years.

[James]

I'd argue already insolvent, but yeah, yeah.

[Steve Baker]

But until a politician says and we've got to make hard choices, we can drift forwards and default on the welfare state so that old people with no other means of support end up going without their pension, without healthcare, without social care. Or we can start taking the hard choices now to get all this under control. And until Kemi or Nigel says that and puts down a manifesto which sorts it out, we are heading to bankruptcy.

[Peter]

Can I ask you something. This kind of radical fix can't happen under a Labour government.

[Steve Baker]

Ideologically, it's inconceivable.

[Peter]

It's inconceivable.

[Steve Baker]

It's their ideology which is failing, which is big government, social democracy.

[Peter]

And am I right in thinking, look, I'm not a leftist, I would never vote for Labour party, but am I right in thinking is that the best time for a Labour Party to come in is at the start of a boom or the end of the boom to do a bit of redistribution and bullshit and then they fuck it up and then we get a Conservative party and essentially this Labour Party is coming in at the worst time for a left wing party because we're broke.

[Steve Baker]

In the long term it might do our country all the good in the world because they are going to fail terribly. They've got no answers to this problem. They believe in something called the entrepreneurial state. It's a joke. The state is not an entrepreneur. The state's the state and entrepreneurs are in the private sector with categorically different incentives. So Labour are going to fail. It's going to create a massive problem, a real problem in people's lives. And the question really is Kemi? Because it is going to be either Kemi or Nigel Farage. One of the two of them has got to cut through all of this and with charisma and resolve rise to the real challenge that the state spends too much money beyond its means through taxation. Taxation's at its limits and crushing private enterprise. What are we going to do to return to growth? Live within our means and flourish for the long run. Now, a plan has been written book called Return to Growth by a friend of mine, Lord John Moynihan. It's about a 15 year plan, though it's going to take a hell of a thing to get through that.

[Peter]

Well, just. Sorry, just on that as well. So if, if we're saying the two potential candidates for this is Kemi and Nigel, my observation at the moment is Kemi hasn't come in hard enough, swinging hard enough with radical enough policies. I actually couldn't really tell you what she fundamentally stands for yet. I don't think there's. As a casual observer, there doesn't appear to be a fundamental difference between her and Richie. There just doesn't. There may be because you're closer to it, but an outside deserve. But I'm not seeing enough. And Nigel has the support, he has the growing vote, the growing size of the party, the interest, but perhaps doesn't have the team around him. Of the policies that will work, is that a fair similar?

[Steve Baker]

I think it's very valuable feedback for her to receive. My sense of Kemi is that she is a proper Thatcherite Tory, like me, a classical liberal to libertarian. The problem that Kemi's got, that Nigel hasn't, is that she's got 121, well, 120 other MPs to manage. And if she were to turn up and say, right, the triple lock's got to go, we've got to back the Labour Party in removing winter fuel allowance from better off pensioners, We've got to put all public sector pensions on a pay as on a sorry, a contributory basis. Because at the moment it's pay as you go funded out of tax. We can't afford it. So all civil servants now are on a defined contribution penalty pension. If she were to turn up and say all of those things, there'd be so much pushback from electors that her 120 members of parliament would probably remove her. And what she has to do is so entrench herself that when it comes time for her to say those things that I've just said, she's not removed by her MPs and replaced with someone else who they think is more likely to get them reelected. That's the tragedy of the party.

[Peter]

Doesn't the party need maybe to actually do that and keep going through that pain to realise they're so far from what people want from a Conservative party?

[Steve Baker]

Well, I would prefer that we didn't do that. But look, I put it in the public domain. If I'd won my seat, I would have run to lead the Conservative Party and I would have been saying these things, but I lost my seat. So boohoo.

[Peter]

Maybe you should join Reform and go and fix their policy.

[Steve Baker]

There's no way I can do it. They're too popular. Too many people in Reform hate my guts. They don't like I compromised in the end to bring the EU round to an end and people hate my guts over it. But it was necessary. And that's another story for another day. I want to know what James thinks.

[James]

Yeah, no, that I think our generation just fundamentally don't care about anything within the politics. We're so out of it. We're just focusing on how we can just improve ourselves. But I think it's more that. It's more the monetary policy in the bank of England side. Like, a couple of weeks ago, the bank of England introduced a new repo facility.

[Peter]

Explain what that is.

[James]

It was essentially for them to provide emergency liquidity in return for guilt. When there's another guilt crisis and it's at the bank's discretion, in the actual notes, it said when there is a guilt, market stress or dysfunction.

[Steve Baker]

In other words, it's Ponzi scheme money printing, right?

[James]

Oh, yeah, like no other. And it's to provide the insurers, the pension schemes, the LDI investment funds who are levered up on this worthless stuff. And this is the stuff that I look at. And then you talk about the politics side of it and it's all kind of smok mirrors and you look at the actual fundamental issues and it's like Covid it, just the entire system continues to be backstopped. And then the signal again for me at the moment is gold is at all time highs. I know, you are a gold bug.

[Peter]

Or.

[James]

Which is great because I believe in the fundamentals of gold. And then you listen to Bailey's speech on gold and they're trying to push down that there's no shortage of gold in London. The lorry drivers are taking X amount of time to distribute the gold out. And you're just looking at this and it's just insane. But no one in the wider economy wants to really talk about it and we're just so focused on this.

[Steve Baker]

And I would say, though, I'm not necessarily a gold bug, I'm a money reformer.

[Peter]

No, no, don't be sorry, but I.

[Steve Baker]

Am for the denationalization of money, which is the title of Hayek's book in the 70s when he'd given up on states actually getting, getting good money in place. But I'm pro bitcoin and I'm pro gold.

[James]

So then my other point to the UK yield. So Liz Truss obviously infamously crashed the economy with yields the 30 year, was it 4 and a half ish percent? Yeah, that's a great chart.

[Peter]

Explain the chart we're looking at for people listening aren't watching the video.

[James]

So, yeah, the debt, the government bonds, is across the a curve from short duration to long duration. And this is just the 30 year, which is the long duration of government debt. And supposedly you get paid out 5% to hold this government debt. But again, as we've Talked about, the M2 money supply grows at 8% a year, or CPI inflation compounds at a much greater level than that. So in October 2022, when Liz Truss came in with her budget or her policy, you can see how yield violently moved up in such a short amount of time, which is more catching the economy off guard than anything else. And then we had the whole infamous lettuce fiasco and we kicked her out. And then as time goes on over the next year or two years, that Rachel from accounts has actually sent yields even higher. And I think this is what people miss, where the bank of England or central banks around the world are cutting rates, which only really impacts the front end of the curve. But because of our inflation, that's completely embedded in society, because of our deficits, because of the lack of growth, the yield, or the bond market saying, we don't believe you. This is bullshit. And yields are going higher. So they're now starting to march the UK as an emerging market country.

[Peter]

It's great for Liz in some ways because there's a lot of people who've come around, not everyone.

[Steve Baker]

I texted her the other day and said, liz, I never thought you'd rehabilitate yourself. And you have. Congratulations.

[Peter]

Well, so what was really interesting is, I mean, we had her in here. We had the interview. We did the interview. I read the book beforehand. And look, I think everyone tells their own story.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And they. I'm sure they do. But what was really interesting is when the people started commenting or dropping because we get emails after shows and people said, I never realized what happened. I didn't realize what was going on with the civil service. I didn't realize what Liz was trying to do. I think most people just read she crashed the economy. She had to go and look, the.

[James]

BBC did a really good job of that.

[Peter]

Look, there might be some explanation, Steve, that in hindsight, maybe it should have been managed differently, done in a different way. But I think a lot of people realize she knew what the problem was, like you did, and she tried to fix it.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. So there's a few things here. One is the structure of the bond market, which we probably ought to avoid, but this thing called these ldi, this leveraged investment in bonds. And so the bond market was very vulnerable. The second.

[James]

Sorry, that was because of COVID where everyone. Rates obviously get dropped and everyone's mandated to buy these bonds. And then as soon as the rates go up to 5%, these bonds are effectively worthless.

[Steve Baker]

Nightmare. So that was an issue. There was also the second point is she put in place a massive bailout scheme on energy, and energy's another bugbear. But that was a big state spending scheme, so she needed to borrow a lot of money. Kind of a socialist scheme, ironically, from Liz. But that's the trouble with practical politics. It forces even somebody as ideologically free market as Liz Truss to do a big bailout scheme to try and enable people to keep heat in their homes. And the third thing, and I hope Liz will forgive me, but the way that Liz handles people is not perhaps ideal. I would recommend everybody reads how to Win Friends and Influence People because we're all the same. We don't like to be told we're wrong. But Liz turned up telling everyone, you're wrong. You're the blob, you're this, that, that, and that's not how to handle people. I would turn up and say to civil servants, I, I, I recognize that you are talented people turning every day to do a good job. And unfortunately, ministers have been giving you the wrong instructions. We're going to change the instructions that you've been given. But I want to say thank you for all the hard work you do. We're now gonna change direction and if you treat people like that, they might stand a chance of coming with you. But if you turn up and say you've been doing all the wrong stuff for years, they will kick back. And I'm afraid she treated people wrongly and they kick back.

[Peter]

Rachel Reeves, based on your experience of being in government, she's taking the blame for all of this. She's at the coal phase. But in reality, how much of this is directly her fault? Or is she just being forced to implement what the party wants?

[Steve Baker]

Well, it'd be very easy for me to just blame her for everything. I've been watching her closely for a long time. Cause we were both elected in 2010. I don't think she's up to the task.

[Peter]

I agree.

[Steve Baker]

I mean, I don't think she is. But you know, the treasury has a large number of civil servants who've been doing this stuff for a long time and they basically, they do know that they've got to try and prop up the government spending. There are a lot of liabilities, there's a lot of money that's committed to being spent. They've got to somehow raise it from taxation and borrow, borrowing and keep the merry go round going. So there's an awful amount necessarily of inertia just through spending commitments. So she is very trapped in what she's doing. The issue really is how do we get a set of politicians and a government who are absolutely resolute in changing direction in a way that everyone can buy into. Because it's not just civil servants. It's not that civil servants are opposing it, it's that the public, what the public want in aggregate, I'm afraid Is lower taxes and higher spending.

[Peter]

Yes.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. And that is fundamental. But a lot of people don't like to hear that. But, you know, as Bastiat said many years ago, a French writer. Yeah, I know the law, the state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. And people say to me, oh, Steve, stop blaming the electorate. It's like, sorry, it's a democracy. If you vote for politicians who offer you the fantasy of low taxes and high spending, you will end up with a lot of borrowing and then you'll end up with a lot of currency debasement. And that's how we've got to be here.

[Peter]

But you've then also just explained why people are now switching to reform. Because they're offering lower taxes and they say lower spending.

[Steve Baker]

Boom, there you go. And that's why I'm not going to reform. That's why I keep taking the heat of pointing out where Nigel's going wrong. Because Nigel is a populist. He gives people the answers they want to hear. And the problem with that is it is popular, but it leads to ruin. And I'm just waiting for the day, please, Nigel, turn up and say, we've got to cut the triple lock, the winter fuel payment. We've got to go on to define contribution for civil servants. And by the way, we probably can't afford the state pension. Going to better have a chat. Well, I have got his number, but I'm not sure it'll take.

[James]

You want to call him? One loudspeaker.

[Peter]

Do you know my favorite politicians? My favorite politicians are the ones who are critical, highly critical of government as an institution. So Liz is pretty good at that. Yeah. When she was here, she was saying the reason she likes, like bitcoin is because it reduces the power of the state. A politician who says they support things that reduce the power of the state. I think I fundamentally understand the problem with the state. I've been going back and watching old Ronald Reagan interviews.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Really good ones, actually.

[Steve Baker]

He's amazing.

[Peter]

He's amazing. He was talking about the size of the state. Oh, yeah. This is a great interview. Yeah. Have you seen this one? I mean. Yeah, go on, stick it on. Con, management and budget in Washington, that's responsible for the budget. Putting the budget together cannot even tell you how many boards, commissions, agencies, bureaus and departments there are in the federal government. But all of them can pass regulations.

[Steve Baker]

And those regulations have the force of law.

[Peter]

And the difference is when you break.

[Steve Baker]

The law, you're innocent until proven Guilty.

[Peter]

When you break a regulation, the fellow.

[Steve Baker]

That charges you with breaking the regulation, you're guilty.

[Peter]

You want to take him to court.

[Steve Baker]

And prove you're innocent, that's up to you.

[Peter]

And all of these are things that, that, yes, we can trim the budget. There's enough fat in the federal government.

[Steve Baker]

That if you rendered it, you could wash the world.

[Peter]

Is that you were the. I mean, it's beautiful. Yeah, it is.

[Steve Baker]

But the thing about Ronald Reagan, he's. He made it attractive. That's what I love. I, I hate the angry politician who makes it unattractive. Or I don't hate him, but I don't like the style. But we got to make things attractive.

[James]

Yeah, I think it was just a different time and everyone just doesn't have the time anymore. Everything's just like a circus. It's that high and low time preference. Everyone now is at such high time preference consumption that it's just like head above the sand and just like worrying about what's going on.

[Peter]

No, I think there's a demand for this. I think people want an honest politician.

[James]

Do people even know what they want?

[Peter]

I think one thing people are craving is authenticity. I think we're in the world. We're not in a world where you can hide shit anymore. Everything is exposed. Everything that's private becomes public. Every scandal you've committed privately will become public. We're now seeing full exposure of all the public spending, which, by the way, we need to go through some of that because I've got questions and I just think people are crazy in authenticity. I think Hollywood, the Hollywood elite, people are starting to turn away from them because they're all perverts and weirdos. I think, I think same in music and culture. It's a bit like football.

[James]

I've completely turned off.

[Peter]

Yeah, it was like Oliver Anthony when he came out with Anthony Oliver.

[James]

Oh, the referee.

[Peter]

No, no, no, no, no. The. Who's that singer? He did the Rich Men of North Richmond. Was it Oliver Anthony?

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

And that was an authentic song and people liked. I think people want authenticity. It's why the mainstream media's dying. Look, I. Steve knows I've been trying so hard. I want to get, get people from labor and conservative on this podcast. It is impossible. Anyone for reform will come on, they'll go on podcasts, they'll have a three hour conversation. You know, they will be authentic. I think people are craving authenticity because it's with authenticity you can create trust.

[James]

That's why Trump, I believe, won or for One of the many reasons he was going on the podcast, he was on Joe Rogan for three hours. JD Vance was on for three hours. And it just appealed to that younger generation. And I think they got like, the biggest turnout of young generation voters. It was just amazing.

[Steve Baker]

Amazing. Yeah, incredible.

[Peter]

Because they got authenticity. Yeah. Whether you think Trump is full of shit. He's on there having a conversation about the economy and then mma.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

Vance is on there talking about his family, you know, talking about when his kid met Trump. You know, you just can relate to them. You can. And, you know, what do I see about this is why. I mean, I disagree with our fundamental policies. And everyone rips me this, but I quite like Angela Rayner when she's raving on Ibiza. I'm not like, that's normal. I'm seeing her doing something normal, but you don't see enough normal stuff. And I want more. I want more normal for my apologies.

[Steve Baker]

Next time I'll turn up. Not in a suit.

[James]

That was the first comment I said to him, I'm underdressed.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. I'm trying to. I'm trying to inhabit the Privy Councillor, but I should turn up in my motorcycle gear next time.

[Peter]

Yeah, but. But I think there is that. I think that's what there is a demand for, because you can't bullshit us anymore. No one trusts anyone. And I think if you've got some authentic, honest politician who stood up there and said, yeah, we're crap at our jobs, we're lying to you, we can't manage politician.

[James]

Trump's not a politician. No, he just says it how it is. And I think that's what people want now.

[Peter]

Well, I think it's coming. So I've got two or three friends who I've made because of doing a podcast, fairly well known people that I'm having regular private conversations now who are frustrated, really getting to the point where they're, yeah, people are happy. They're happy to pay tax, but what they're not happy to do is pay tax to see their money thrown away like confetti and then it go up. And so I think that we're. I think we're on the precipice of a. Some form of revolution. I don't know the shape it takes. It's maybe just descend.

[James]

But do you ascribe to the fourth turning theory?

[Peter]

Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah, of course.

[Steve Baker]

What's the fourth turning?

[Peter]

Basically, the good times create weak men, weak women create bad times. But this one is in every fourth turning, you get you get degenerate behavior because of the good times. You get degenerate behavior, government out control and eventually you have some form of crash, usually a war, which obviously is not the outcome we want.

[James]

And this theory backdates hundreds and hundreds of years. But every 20 years you have that one turning, two turning, third turning, and then after the 80 to the hundredth year it's that fourth turning scenario. But it all breaks down where it's not apples for apples. But it's just interesting because it's obviously generations that move up to like my generation are going to be the main earners of society. We're very heavy in AI and tech and we're just not gonna put up with how this like the system works because it's just how we've been brought up. Everything's just very antiquated and slow. So that's just the kind of things that I think it's just automatically when generations get older, boomers start to retire, all the, all of these things start to change.

[Peter]

No, there's a chart. If you search for fourth turning, there'll be a chart. Neil Strauss, Neil Howell, sorry, Neil Howe and Strauss.

[James]

Generational theory.

[Peter]

I would say Neil Strauss, but it's Neil.

[James]

Yeah, I think it's.

[Peter]

No, don't quote me on that. You are correct.

[James]

Okay.

[Peter]

Neil Strauss wrote the Motley Crue book. Right.

[Steve Baker]

So it's a very interesting thing about the point you said about the generation. So can we just take a moment, think about generations. You're a bit, quite a bit younger than me.

[Peter]

I think we've got four in this room.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, but you know, if you're like my age 53, you're starting to think about retirement. Now I've probably got 15 years, but in the next 15 years I need to try and make enough money to have a comfortable retirement. That's what I'm worried about. I'm going need healthcare to be there for me and so on. I don't have kids, but friends my age are now starting to think about the kids leaving home. Are they going to be able to find somebody to marry, get home? But it's like becoming vicarious at my age. You're worried if you're, you are, you've probably bought your house or you're close to finishing paying for it. But you're thinking about retirement. But I bet you're not yet, Pete.

[Peter]

Well, no, but I am, but in a different way. So I don't intend to retire. Like something like this is a different kind of job. You can do it. It's like a hobby future. Yeah. So hard. Last 20 years, especially last 10 years. Yeah. 60, 70 hour weeks endlessly to try and build a life. What I worry about is I look at, I look at that kind of retirement period in 10 to 15 years time and our government going to do something to wipe out my savings. Can they wipe everything I've done?

[Steve Baker]

Well, they can, yeah.

[James]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Because I, I remember when I went to Venezuela and I stopped in Colombia beforehand and I went to this like a dinner and I met this guy from Venezuela and he talked to me about how essentially not overnight, but figuratively overnight, all his savings were wiped out. He had savings, had money in the bank and it was just wiped out and he had to move to Colombia and start again. And I just think, can government do that to us? I mean, I was in Malawi recently and they had a 50% currency devaluation. I mean that is catastrophic. Can we see a situation where we have a 10, 20, 30% currency devaluation in our country? Of course we can.

[Steve Baker]

There's absolutely no doubt. What does that mean? The same government that locked us down in our homes can do that to us? Yes.

[James]

They printed 40% of the money supply in weeks. They can do whatever they want.

[Peter]

Con. Can you go to the list of images there, by the way? I just want to show Steve this. It's. Yeah, it's that, that bottom, that one there. If you can get that image up.

[James]

Yeah, Neil Howe.

[Peter]

Yeah, there you go. So the first turning. High era of promise, belonging, sense of shame reaches. I can't.

[James]

I can.

[Peter]

Conformity rewarded. Public debate over means. Second turn is the awakening era of euphoria. Defiant sense of guilt rises. Individual elevated. Private space reinvented. Cultural calendar reset. Gender distinctions narrow under protective parenting. Then you get the third turn in the unraveling. This is the autumn fragmentation. Midlife. Social demand for order reaches. As political supply, order falls. End of separation anxiety. Sense of guilt reaches zenith. Principle individuality rewarded. Public debate over ends not means. Society can fill but not do. Midlife is powerful in culture. Gender distinctions are narrowest. And then yet the fourth tone, which is your crisis era of survival gathering and sense of shame rises. People ashamed about what they did to avoid guilt. Group elevated. Public space reinvented. Political calendar reset. Gender distinctions widened. Overprotective parenting. So we're apparently in the winter now we're in the fourth turning.

[Steve Baker]

I think we probably are. Yeah. I think this is an unraveling.

[James]

Yeah, I won't go into the gender distinctions, widen that part, but.

[Peter]

Well, I think we've all seen that we know what's going on there. So I think one of the big signals now is that. But it's quite interesting because democracy is forcing something different. And whatever people think of Trump, we don't need to have that debate at the moment. But this closing of USAID and then the unraveling and the transparent exposure of where they'd been sending money, this confetti everywhere, and I think that was just a signal for what's going all through the federal government. But now we're getting our own version here, which is really super interesting. And so, Con, do you want to get up that Twitter account? Have you been looking at this?

[James]

The procurement files?

[Steve Baker]

So shaming to have been an MP when this has gone on, talking about shame in that fourth turning stuff. But I'm looking at it thinking, how on earth did this sort of thing happen under a conservative government? Which ministers were involved in this and who signed it off?

[Peter]

Well, so what, I mean, what I wanted to ask you, Steve, was how does it work? Does each department get a budget and then people just apply for that budget and they just distribute it?

[Steve Baker]

It's very complicated. And as far as I can tell, Members of Parliament and even ministers are held quite distant from specific procurement decisions because, of course, propriety is always comes into it. And it's a good point because obviously if a Member of Parliament were to be handing out taxpayer money to their own supporters, that would be a different kind of scandal. But somehow our procurement system, excluding politicians, has resulted in outrageous spending decisions. I couldn't believe it when I saw Porsche's Bought to Give Unto the Prison Service of Albania. It's like, how. How. Who thought that was a good idea?

[Peter]

Europe, the gay porn bill, got 840,000 perverse collections, building Europe's queer and trans archives, 136,000.

[Steve Baker]

But this was. This was the sort of thing that I used to complain the EU was funding. I remember standing up in the Commons to complain about a nomadic dance troupe receiving taxpayers money. And then you find that we've been doing it too, but it's insane.

[Peter]

But when you have it, when you talk about a 22 billion doll hole, I think about how I run a business and I, you know, football club as an example. Right. My football club is similar to government in that it's results driven, not profit driven. So you're doing your best to not lose money. And what happens is at the end of each month.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Line by line, I go through the bank account and I put each spend into a category.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So we might have, I don't know, match day costs, we might have marketing, we might. And I see everything that goes through. And then we have a board meeting the start of every month and I go through with everyone and say, what's that? Why did we do that? And we cut things.

[Steve Baker]

Ministers don't do that.

[Peter]

Yeah, but if somebody did that in government, how much would they save?

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, well, they should do it partly. The numbers are so big. I mean, if you're running, I mean, the Northern Ireland office is a relatively small department and when I was in the Cabinet Office, that was in connection with Northern Ireland, but. So I've never been, say, a DWP minister. But the line items are so huge in the department for work and pay.

[Peter]

But surely somebody could go and go, I mean, you go through most of this. Do we need to give 841,000 to research the Europe that gay porn built? Probably not. I mean, if he wants to go and research, good luck to him.

[Steve Baker]

One of the things about this. So look at a figure like £35,000. That is somebody's median pay. But from the government's point of view, that is the tiniest little blip. Officials wouldn't think of bringing a 35,000 pound decision to a minister.

[Peter]

But hold on, that's the problem. Because when I'm running again, I go back to a football club, I'm looking at the cost we're buying a burger for and can we get it 10p cheaper and still maintain quality. Great.

[Steve Baker]

This is why Liz and I and others are very critical of the institution of the state as such, because it is so big that the things which really matter slip through the cracks.

[James]

But I think it all just comes down to accountability. And so, like, if you don't manage your costs, your club will dissolve.

[Peter]

Yes.

[James]

And your businesses will dissolve. Like, there is no accountability. They've done a shit job. That's it. Like. And they're only in there for four years. So I don't know. Do you think that we should. They should be there longer, longer term, so they can have a longer term time frame. But there is no accountability. So even if they do the shittest job ever, it's like, oh, well, the media.

[Peter]

The media is. So this is where. I think this is why we're in an interesting time. I think media has failed us. This is the job of journalists. Journalists should be out there doing this work and exposing it and they haven't. I mean, it's been there, the procurement file's been there and suddenly Charlotte, Charlotte Gill yeah, Charlotte Gill has done the work, done the investigation. This is why the Internet's so great, this is why podcasts are great, this is why Twitter's great. Because anyone who's independent now can go up against, go up against the BBC in the sky and the Guardian, the Telegraph and go, here's my research, this is what I found. I mean, Charlotte is exploding and she deserves it because she's done a brilliant job. Essentially a free market.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, yeah, she's done an absolutely terrific job. But in terms of the media, look, everybody's only human, they're all respond, responding to incentives. So politicians, left to their own devices will actually serve their constituents and whichever constituent is shouting loudly today will get the MPs attention. But that means you do spend your time on the bins which ought to be emptied by the council, end of. And, you know, whatever the latest controversy is at the hospital, and on and on it goes. But MPs left their own devices will go where their voters tell them, because why they want to be reelected. But their voters very rarely, they may now be getting in touch saying, why was a million pounds spent on the Abundance Project, enhancering cultural and green inclusion and social prescribing in South West London to address ethnic inequalities in mental health that may now come up to that end.

[Peter]

What does that even mean?

[James]

Yeah, but their answer is, wasn't on my watch. I can't do anything about it. It's out of my control.

[Steve Baker]

So that's what the hideous truth is, is that that is probably true. And there was, there's a state statement that bureaucracy is the, is the government of no one. You know, democracy is government for the people, by the people of the people. But democracy is government by no one, because bureaucracy, bureaucracy is government by no one because it becomes so huge. But yeah, we are going to have to go through it like a dose of salts at some stage.

[James]

Yeah, get Elon Musking.

[Peter]

Because what I mean, one of the ideas I like is pre election, every government produces their budget, then they don't win election, then just do a new budget and lie. Where's your business plan? Where's your budget? How are you going to run our country? I don't want a manifesto, I want a businessman and a budget.

[Steve Baker]

So, okay, so you want a different manifesto then? Because a manifesto is supposed to be a fully costed plan of what we're going to do. That's what I mean. The manifesto is another fraud, really. So when, when you're, when you're the.

[Peter]

Cat, let it rip.

[Steve Baker]

Steve, let me tell you how it works as the candidate. Yeah. There's a legal process that you get your on the ballot paper so that James can go and put an X next to Baker. That's what we're looking for. But you're standing for election as the Conservative candidate on the Conservative manifesto. Do you think that the Conservative Party and all the other parties release their manifestos before or after nomination close. So nominations closing is when you as the candidate.

[Peter]

After.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, after. So you've put your name on the ballot paper and it cannot be taken off before the party shows you what you're standing, the basis on which you're standing for election. And it means because. Well, because they don't want any. They want it to be. What you can't have is Steve Baker looking at the manifesto and saying, I'm not standing for election on that basis and withdrawing his name because then it's a national story. And so they give, they put the manifesto down. So it's just too late. If you're a candidate, it's too late. You're already nailed on. It's a power play. You're already nailed on to support that manifesto and there's nothing you can do about it except what's called an election address, where you can sort of try and exempt yourself to the electors. But basically it's a way of co opting some very, very awkward and recalcitrant candidates to force them to adopt the party's platform. But it's an abuse really of people of good faith who are trying to stand for election on a reasonable platform.

[Peter]

So what would you change? How would you change the process?

[Steve Baker]

How would I change the process? First thing we've got to do is be really honest up front about what we're going to have to do. So when the leader stands to lead the party, they should be saying, we're going to balance the budget and go for growth. And that's going to be really painful. And this is going to result require us to do this. They've got to win election as the party leader on that basis. And then all the people who didn't vote for them because they didn't like it, they've then got to go around, talk with them in detail for a long time. Because remember, if you want to lead the party, you've got to carry the members of Parliament first.

[James]

You say promote growth. Let's be honest here. Even in the Tories, for 15 years we had zero percent interest rates and there was no growth growth. So like, where, where Is this growth coming from that?

[Steve Baker]

So that, that. But where it's going to have to come from is entrepreneurial activity based on sound money. Yeah.

[James]

And in the budget and it's not like I even read the budget or anything but I'm pretty sure they put a tax on the entrepreneurs. I think they get like a, like a certain levy, they tax them but they just. Again, I'm probably wrong but they lied in their manifesto saying that we're not going to put up tax, we're not going to put up national insurance or council tax on any of that stuff and they have. It's like, how is that allowed?

[Steve Baker]

Well, well, indeed. So it's a political problem. So labor undoubtedly deserve to lose. They. I would be, but I'd be banned to say that. They said they wouldn't put up taxes on working people but then they put up national insurance which is a tax.

[James]

On working and then those employers can't afford to pay the employees so either they have to let them go or there's no pay rises and it's just like a. They just don't see the second third effects of what they do.

[Peter]

James, have you ever set up a business business?

[James]

No, I was self employed for a few.

[Peter]

Can you access the cafe budget? You've got access to Avenue. I'll show you something. So this is a job I was literally doing yesterday. Right. This was be eye opening for you. So sorry to bore everyone who's heard this a million times listening, but I'm opening a cafe in Bedford for our football team.

[Steve Baker]

Lovely.

[Peter]

We want a club shop in the town. We want to advert for the town. You know there's big rail bed for stickers on the window. But a club shop won't make enough money money. So we make it as cafe as well. And so you sell coffee, sandwiches, donuts and that plugs the gap and it does a job. I did the budget yesterday. Connor will find it for you. All right. I don't know, we might not put it on screen for the people watching because I don't know how much. Right. Yeah. So if you go into finance. Hey, you're doing an arcade budget. No, no, it's in a place called the arcade. Oh right. So this is.

[Steve Baker]

Is.

[Peter]

So this is the budget. Right. So this is my capex. So I get a designer. That's fair. So legal on the lease. So I've spent nearly 7, 400 pound upfront just to get the lease through. Right. The, the refurb cost is about. I don't know what's that coming in about 80. Well, take off the VAT, it'll be about 60 grand, which is fair. That's a full refurb of the facility.

[James]

Yeah.

[Peter]

All furniture in again, that's capex, so that's fine design. Signage, computer equipment, dishwasher in the machines. That's all your capex. 100 grand of capex. Totally fine. That's our capital expenditure. If you go down into our costs. Right. So if you scroll to the right con, but can you get the left column in? Well, I can do it from here anyway. So my rent is 1200amonth and my service charges. What's the. That's a, that's a quarter, eight, seven, four. A quarter. And insurance is fine. Then I have to, Then I got my alcohol license. Right. Fire safety again, bins, all that you expect. No, this is the one where, where are my business rates?

[James]

17,000.

[Peter]

17,000, yeah. So basically, basically 18 grand a year is a tax I have to pay before the business even opens, before I have to pay it, before we've taken, taken any money.

[James]

Per year.

[Peter]

Per year. And you pay it monthly.

[Steve Baker]

It's absolutely terrifying.

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah. And so if you think, yeah, you know, I've got to take. Let's run through it all, the website, cleaning, blah, blah, blah.

[James]

Must be what, 50% of the GDP.

[Peter]

Of Bedford Insurance, music, license, blah, blah, blah. But if you go all the way down con. And so then we got our staffing costs. But if you, if you, if you scroll across to the right, now these, so you can see in the blue section, the first row is my capex. So you get to depreciate these costs. So the refurb I can depreciate over 20 years. So really my actual cap, my capital expense on my P l is essentially 531 pound a month. But my opex, you can see it's 5,100amonth. About 1,600 of that is my business rates. Okay. Then you throw in my staffing costs. How much of that staffing cost is national insurance? So if you look at, then the total cost for running this thing, say it's about 17 grand a month. I would say three to four grand of that is government costs. And so if, then if you go. We've put in different kind of projections on things we could sell and at the very top end it would make five grand profit a month. But when we actually first run the budget, it. We were at a loss. Take away all government cost, we'd be profitable. Yeah, it's easy, it's this business without any government cost is easy to make profitable. Now I'm not saying we can get rid of all government costs, but let's just get realistic about this. If you go into the town centers, I put out a tweet the other day, the absolute state of Bedford town centre.

[James]

It is like most high streets.

[Peter]

But get rid of business rates in the town centre even for local business, leave them on for the change. Your cost of your subways. But local business, how many people will go and open a business?

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, yeah. The problem is the state always puts itself first. It does, but partly why but if you're the council.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Steve Baker]

Where's what is overwhelming your budget is social for adults and children. And of course when we look at the spending side of this realistically, all of us would like vulnerable people with no other means of support to be taken care of. The problem is going be to be how and who pays. Now Theresa May tried to get adult social care shifted onto the, the house you own. And we very nearly lost the election to Jeremy Corbyn over asking people to pay for their own social care out of their house. Which is of course a hugely inflated house because all the stuff we've talked about. But you, but, but it, it, it's this, this is, this is where the populism's got to come out. So I'm not criticizing you now, I'm criticizing the populace. But they, they gotta be realistic that it's social care that's overwhelming.

[Peter]

Council, let me explain the taxes though, okay. The taxes on a business because people think there's just direct government tax the business rates. But con, if you go back to that budget, there's two things I want to show you because you, all you're looking at is how you can reduce your expenses and how you can boost sales. If you go to the tab at the bottom, go to my menu. So this is interesting. So every single thing item I'm selling is on the left. That pink area is my price. I go to the right corner of that. These are all my input costs. So the coffee, the milk, the sugar, if you go back on. So you look my input costs on a, I don't know, let's say a flat white is 81p of which I recover 2p of VAT. But I then list it at 3 pound 50 I have to pay 20% of VAT. Okay. So on a 3 pound 50 cup of coffee where my input cost rated one piece, I actually make 2 pound, what's that? 2 pound 12 profit. So that is A real problem for retail businesses in a town center because you're essentially losing nearly 20% of what you charge to pay back to government. Now go back to the budget car and I'll show you a couple of another Interesting.

[James]

I guess this is why restaurants failed.

[Peter]

This is another thing I'll call a tax. Scroll up. Right, go down. Sorry, go down. Go to where the energy costs are. Oh, I call this a tax. So if you've got gas and electric, scroll to the right con. So I'm going to be paying nearly a thousand pound in gas and electric but these are probably the highest, if not one of the highest energy costs in Europe. It's another tax on I call it. The reason I call it a tax, Steve, you might disagree with this is because I think government is directly responsible or can directly influence the price of energy. Oh yeah, so it's another high cost.

[Steve Baker]

One of my big campaigns was against net zero because it's so outrageous.

[Peter]

So let me just throw into this. I am trying to create a business where I've got high business rates, I've got to deal with vat, I've got new employment laws that they want to bring in, I've got higher national insurance. And then throw in a cost of living crisis where people have seen their budget squeeze and less people are going to be buying cups of coffee. It's hard to create a business. So me, me as somebody who operates businesses knows if I was in government I'd be saying, well if we want growth what we need to do is reduce friction in business, reduce tax and make it easier and less expensive. Set up business. People want to set up businesses but every shop that's closed in our town centre is a business that has failed.

[Steve Baker]

And in the meantime, let me tell you what's happening is a professor called Matsukato has come up with this idea of the entrepreneurial state and that's what's driving labor. They want the state to be an entrepreneur to get growth by spending your money. Well, it means that the state we should all have, basically it means the same old socialist nonsense that we've always had is that people think if you give the state more money it will create growth by doing things. And it's an absolute nonsense.

[Peter]

I'm a better allocator of capital than the state.

[Steve Baker]

100%. Totally agreed.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[James]

On the net zero stuff I actually bumped into Ed Miliband in my local high street.

[Peter]

Oh yes, no you did. Is, did you say hello?

[James]

He was getting a bagel standing outside and I saw him. I Was like, should I do it, should I not do it?

[Peter]

Absolutely. Please tell me you did it.

[James]

And 100%. He was obviously walking off, going on his bike, net zero. And I literally got up to him, it was on a Sunday. And I went up to him, I was like, because I've got all charts and data on my phone, literally willy nilly. And like on one of the PowerPoint slides we've. It will show, I think it's like near the top or. I know the number. Slide number nine. It shows the UK energy against European countries and our spot electricity prices that are just going.

[Peter]

You zoom in on that con. Okay, so we're the most expensive, but a lot of them have failed as well.

[James]

Oh yeah.

[Peter]

Has Hungary kept their energy costs down?

[Steve Baker]

Well, they've got a very right wing government, so I expect they've just not bothered with the Net zero stuff.

[James]

Yeah. And yeah, so I went up to him, I showed him these charts, I showed him the chart below. Slide number 10 in terms of curtailing wind energy. So all that wasted energy that we have on wind that could just shove a bitcoin miner there and that will recruit, that we accrue bitcoin. And I said, what do you think about bitcoin? And he goes, oh, it's nonsense, it's useless. But even if it is nonsense and useless, you're accruing 30 Bitcoin a day on average. Then just sell it.

[Peter]

What's a billion a year? Is it we're spending to turn off. Off the. To pay them to turn off the wind?

[James]

Yeah, something.

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah.

[James]

1.7.

[Peter]

I had. I know, I know.

[James]

Oh, sorry. And then the conversation ended. It was like a five minute. And he was like, why are you coming up to me on my Sunday? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, this is my day off. I was like, this is also my day off. But like I give a. About the country, like I want to. I want to do something. He goes, next time don't be so rude and abrupt. And I was like, you're.

[Steve Baker]

You're ruining my life. This is of course a politician's nightmare because we're all only human too. And I've got a bit of sympathy with Ed on this because on a Sunday you are just trying to have a day off. But of course my real sympathy lies with James, that Ed's ruining the country with his crazy ideas.

[Peter]

But isn't it a case. Look, if you become a politician, you accept when you're in public, you're always at work.

[Steve Baker]

Well, Absolutely, that's right, yes. So if you don't want to be interrupted by the public on a Sunday, don't go out of your front door. The only exception to that is, like, I go to church and I had to say to my friends at church, I'm so sorry, I really. Please give me a break. I don't come to church to discuss public policy, but this is the thing.

[Peter]

We need to stop putting idiots in charge of very important decisions. I know you're not a fan of reform, but credit to Rupert Lowe. He was. Sat here the other day and I asked him about Bitcoin and I don't know if you watched it. I did, yeah. I mean, look, he says, I don't know a lot about it, but he said. We told him about it, we explained the curtailing of wind, that you can put the miners in there, that you can turn that into money. He was like, this sounds great, you should come in and talk to the party about it.

[Steve Baker]

But, you know, I.

[Peter]

Sorry. It's a test, though, on repertoire.

[James]

He said that he doesn't take the MP salary. The salary.

[Steve Baker]

Well, that's lovely for him, but, I mean, I couldn't have afforded not to take it, because I've got to live, got to eat.

[Peter]

But it's an interesting point. If you had more politicians who don't. I think the politicians who don't like smog did.

[James]

Does he take the salary?

[Steve Baker]

I think he did, but look, again, again, who do you want to be an mp? So can I just say something about Rupert Lowe? I don't know him, but everything I've seen about him, he's a great guy. As far as I can tell, he's a great man. Be a brilliant Conservative mp, but I hope he won't, mind me saying, and there's nothing ageist in this, it's just that he is. Where is he on this low? He was born in 1957, so he's 68 now. At the next election, he'll be 72, and the one after will be 77. So however brilliant he is, it's not very likely that he's going to be the Prime Minister who turns the country around. And this is what we're slightly up against, is we've got to get people like James's age to stand for election. Yeah, exactly. So, boom. I knew you'd say that.

[Peter]

I've thought about it.

[Steve Baker]

Well, I'd love it if you did. But this point about salaries is. I would have loved to have gone into Parliament a wealthy man of independent Means I wish I had, but I didn't. Instead, I was about to start a company in the financial sector and instead of doing that, I went. The dot com bust happened, but I went into Parliament. If I'd waited another 10 years and made my millions because one of my supporters actually made his millions in a similar business, if I'd made my millions and gone into Parliament an independently wealthy man, it would have been lovely to say, I don't take the salary, but.

[Peter]

Forget the take the salary. If you go into Parliament as an independently wealthy person, do you think it changes your own incentives and therefore it changes the way you approach things?

[Steve Baker]

Well, I, so I personally, I went through Parliament in a way that was completely neglectful of my own interest. People made this. Not like that. But about 2015 I had an MP saying, But you're a rich man, Steve. I said, what do you mean? Of course I'm not. Well, the way you behave. And that's the point. Right, right, people. I was so independent. I was so independent of mind in my policies and whatever the consequences are, this is right. People thought I was independently wealthy. So you're probably right that if you're an independently wealthy person, you can go into politics and just do what you think is right. So maybe we should say you can only go into politics if you're independent.

[Peter]

No, no. But going in a service versus going in as a career, I think there are like, if I did it, it would be a service. I don't need the, the salary. I do it because I, I would want to fix things. I'm not going to do it. But if I, I did do it. But I just thought that was really interesting is what Rupert said is like, that sounds interesting. Come and talk to the party about it. My friend Freddie new. I mean, you know Freddie. Yeah. Freddie has opposed, approached labor, he's approached conservatives. He said, you're literally leaving money on the table. They won't even have the conversation if they're busy.

[Steve Baker]

That's what it is. They don't realize the importance.

[James]

You know the question that you asked me about starting my own business, if you look at that front bench in labor, none of them has started their own businesses.

[Peter]

Well, most of the Conservative front bench hasn't either. Yeah. And, and I think, I do think.

[Steve Baker]

That'S a problem, for what it's worth, a couple of times. But I've never made a mint out of it, unfortunately, actually.

[Peter]

But they don't understand the policies they're doing are making running business harder. They're making people leave the uk. They are crushing the hopes and dreams of the middle class. And it's just this continuation.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Through doesn't matter whether it's conservative Labor. It's happened and something has to change.

[James]

You know Peter Lane, the CEO of Jacoby.

[Peter]

Yes.

[James]

So he created an etf, Bitcoin etf. Etf wanted to list it in the uk. Obviously the FTA say no, so he had to go and list his ETF on the Euronext in the Netherlands. And it's just. They'll stop. Okay. That was a bitcoin specific thing. But they will stop innovation and growth pretty much at all costs.

[Peter]

I've had three bank accounts closed down because my podcast was about bitcoin. Honestly, they've closed.

[Steve Baker]

It's outrageous, it's tyrannical. But can I just say one thing about this? Right, the curse of people thinking things are going to be easy. I know that when Cameron Osborne went in they thought there'd be a lot of low hanging fruit for cuts and it turned out there wasn't really. Everything was difficult and people were born in and then labor thought they were gonna go in and there was gonna be easy things they could change. And then I'm afraid I keep hearing Nigel Farage say that things would be easy if only the conservatives would try. Like leaving the this is a curse. Everybody thinks it'd be easy and I wish people would go into politics thinking this is going to be really hard.

[Peter]

But which bit of it's hard? Is it the getting through the cuts? Is it convincing the do the cuts? Is it convincing the nation?

[Steve Baker]

It's almost always interests.

[Peter]

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[Steve Baker]

You want to get rid of net zero, you've got enormous vested interests who will turn up and say we're all going to die in the fires of climate change and it's completely unrelated to the science. When people suggest we're going to immediately within a few years, the world would be incinerated. It's nonsense. And yet people will say it. But again, the nonsense that's talked about wind power power. It's true that once the turbine's built, it's relatively low cost to get power out of a wind turbine. The problem is, I've just said when it's built, the capital costs of wind power are huge. And more than that, because they're massively subsidized through what's called contracts for difference, which hardly anyone understands. I'm sure the three of us do, but basically it guarantees the price you get. But it's no point asking members of Parliament to explain what a contract for difference is. They haven't got a clue. And then the House of Commons library produces a brief on it all and can completely omits all that stuff about subsidy. And then we wonder why MPs take the wrong decision. It's because that's what makes it hard. It's a bit complicated, imperfectly briefed and with massive vested interests advancing very frightening and complex arguments which people can't take apart. And that's the sort of thing that makes it hard.

[Peter]

What do we do then?

[Steve Baker]

What we have to do. Basically.

[James]

Buy bitcoin, opt out.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. Buy bitcoin, opt out. Yeah.

[Peter]

It. Yeah. But I don't want to be that guy who leaves the country. I've got three friends leaving at the moment.

[James]

I'm gonna be that guy.

[Peter]

Three friends that did. Three wealthy friends who are at different stages of leaving. Yeah, but are all leaving. And. And. And every one of them is the same reason.

[Steve Baker]

I'd love to know where these millionaires are going.

[James]

They're going to Monaco.

[Peter]

Portugal.

[James]

Portugal. Milan. And Dubai. Dubai. And there's a third one.

[Peter]

One. No, Italy. People are going to Italy.

[James]

Yeah, Milan. Milan.

[Peter]

Popular place.

[Steve Baker]

But you know, all these factors that we're talking about, if they crystallize in a truly great unraveling, because that's the. This is an unraveling that's happening. But when it really crystallizes, there's not really going to be anywhere to escape from the consequences. Because what I fear is a collapse in the fiat money system, the post Bretton woods fiat money system. But I'm afraid I think however much bitcoin one has, no one's going to escape the consequences because the supermarkets will end up being empty of food if money's collapsed.

[James]

This was my thinking that great that I've got all this bitcoin and I'll be fine and everything like that. But it's also, again, it's the second and third effects. Like, do you actually want to be in a society where it's completely crumbled and the morale is so low, you just look at everyone just completely depressed. It's like, do you actually want to be a part of that society anymore?

[Steve Baker]

Do you know what the crazy thing is that we need. That's the answer to this, is high quality political leaders. And I don't like to admit it really, but it is because in the end we've got a society with institutions dominated by the state. The people who control the levers of the state are politicians in democracies.

[Peter]

Who do you genuinely rate? Who do you look out on in Parliament? Go, they're really fucking good.

[Steve Baker]

Peter, Shall I Tell you the true answer. As I said, if I'd won my seat, I would have run. Why would I have run? Because I don't look at anyone else in Parliament and think they'd do a better job than me.

[Peter]

Yeah, but that's a different question right now. Who do you look at and go, like, I hear good things about Nick Timothy.

[Steve Baker]

Nick Timothy is a real statist. I mean, he's a real statist. He was the architect of Theresa May's disastrous electrum. And this is one of the problems. People become the rising thing. There's a bit of charisma and they say the right thing on a hot button issue and then people think they're great. But Nick Timothy is, I'm afraid he is a real status 630 MPs.

[Peter]

Is there anyone you're looking at? And go, go.

[Steve Baker]

Well, it'll have to be Chemie. Chemi will have to be really good.

[James]

Okay, on slide 7. Sorry, on slide 17. I think this is really interesting and it's the biggest wealth disparity gap since 1929, which was the Great Depression. And it just shows that where we are now in society, where they will backstop the entire economy at all costs, like every single moment. And that just creates the, that divide. And that's kind of where I see, I don't see a great collapse or anything like that. I just see the state continue to interfere and the asset prices continue to just inflate well ahead of money supply. And I think that's just where we're going to.

[Peter]

Yeah, I mean, look, I've been to high inflation places and they're never what you expect. I went to Argentina and I expected to get to Argentina and see poverty everywhere and people struggling. And if you would just drop there and you didn't know that it was a high inflation country, you would have no idea it was a high inflation. The restaurants were full, people are milling around, going to work. I didn't see much homelessness in Buenos Aires. And look, I'm not naive. I know there's crime and there's, you know, in the suburbs there's issues. But. But it wasn't obvious. It was a bit more obvious when I went to Venezuela. But at the same time, people find a way of surviving. We will find a way. It'll be shit, but we will find a way. But, but the reason I won't leave is I want to be part of change. And I think you're right. We need good politicians, but we need to do a lot more work for calling out the shit.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, we do. But there's. So I just. I have a book club for. Fighting for a Free Future is a project that I do. It's got three things. The substack, the book club, and also a community to help boost voices like these and the think tanks. But a thing we have to remember is that the vast majority of people are rationally disinterested in questions of politics and public policy. They got their life to get on with and they vote once every five years. The trick is to create a terrain of debate, which is why your podcast is so important and why I'm doing this work. To boost the think tanks, we've got to create a terrain which is a different conversation so that people like journalists start asking questions of politicians which we approve of. And then the national conversation becomes a conversation which we approve of. And then the vast body of people who do not normally pay any attention to politics and public policy go, well, actually, I prefer Kemi. I prefer Kemi to Keir Starmer. We'll have a Kemi government. The trick is to create the whole set of circumstances whereby the only way that Kemi can win an election is by offering policies which we have been talking about and approve of.

[Peter]

Where's the gaps in. Where's the gaps that are stopping this happening?

[Steve Baker]

It's reach into the public. So I mean in the end, in a democracy, the public vote, it's about reaching the public. It's really the mass media. People deride the mass media, but the mass media still is the mass media media and also coherence. So one of the downsides of X and so forth is there's no, there's no editorial on it. Now editorial is good and bad, but it means that you end up. You do end up with fake news and nonsense on it. And Community Notes is only a partial sort of rebalancing of it. But you. That what is really missing is the mainstream media like the BBC and Sky and others, they've just got such group think they think they're impartial, but they're only impartial within the bounds of the group think that they all share.

[Peter]

Yeah, I watch. I watch Questions every week and I like it as a show.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, it's entertaining but.

[Peter]

But it, yeah, it's entertaining but it shows me how the politicians themselves are thinking. But it also exposes how low caliber they are. There's no real, real frosty. It's still a little bit culture wary and they all seem a little bit afraid to actually put a foot forward and say something interesting.

[Steve Baker]

I always refuse to go on. I always have, because it's a lot of travel and just to get booed.

[Peter]

So, hey, I'd love to go on, just throw some fucking shit at them all. But then the other thing is everyone's going to now is the rest is politics. I mean, their top 10 shows every week in the UK, they're usually about five of them, but it's just the two of them crying about Trump constantly and rationalizing the bullshit of the state constantly.

[Steve Baker]

And yet it's popular. It's really scary, isn't it? It's scary that so many of our fellow citizens think that that is the answer. More of the same.

[Peter]

Yeah. More of the same. Yeah. But I mean, my question to Rory and the warmongerer would be, well, we're living in a world that your era created, so why are you rationalizing this? We want something different.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. So I've done a lot of work with my great friend Professor Paul Dolan, who's a behavioral scientist. Now, he's of the left, but that's partly why we're working together. Cause we take different perspectives. But his behavioral science insights are so interesting. But people are so hardwired psychologically for group think and not to change their mind. They'll reject immense amounts of evidence and not change their mind.

[Peter]

Oh, it's so frustrating. I mean, it goes back to the point on Bitcoin, the amount of conversations I've had with people about it. And they still resist. They still. And you get the same questions. My favorite one is, am I too late? And I always say, well, I'm not selling mine. And this is why I'm not selling mine. And I just. But once you get somebody in there, all these other conversations become super easy. We start talking about problem with state, super easy. Problem with central banks, super easy. Problem with inflation. Once you get them over the bitcoin hurdle, every other conversation is easy.

[Steve Baker]

It's just. There's a great video on this. Sorry, there's this SATs versus fiat thing.

[Peter]

Is that Joe? Brian.

[Steve Baker]

It's absolutely brilliant.

[Peter]

He's coming to the conference.

[Steve Baker]

Oh, great.

[Peter]

Yeah. I think he might do our opening keynote, actually. Have you seen that video?

[James]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

I mean, the guy's. The guy's brilliant, but it's still. It goes back to your question about the resistance of the Internet. It's entire. They both have a resistance, but it is entirely different. This is a much bigger hurdle to get people over. You know that like, the guy asked my question to me and Said, well, what about when bitcoin goes to zero? And you know, I'm saying to him, he does it mathematically. I'm worried about Fiat go to zero.

[Steve Baker]

Can I ask James something, as you said, about buy bitcoin opt out, how prevalent do you think that that attitude is?

[James]

And it's non existent.

[Peter]

It's.

[James]

There was a, there was a stat on UK investors against European investors in terms of equities and property and obviously majority. I can't remember the stat. It was an overwhelming majority will just invest in property and not invest in equities. And I've got a slide on the FTSE 100 on one of them.

[Peter]

I think, well that's funny you should say that. That's why I said to Connor on the way down, if my career had been pretty similar, James, but there had been no bitcoin, I would probably own a second house now, maybe even a third house. That's where everyone put their money. There's no point. When I bought my house, I got the biggest mortgage possible so I could hold more bitcoin. Bitcoin.

[James]

So it's, it's interesting because of all my work and all my intention has always been on the US market. So I, I recently got appointed as a bitcoin strategy advisor to a UK public company called Coum. They were actually the first publicly traded company to hold Bitcoin or crypto as a Treasury asset. So my job is to advise them on their bitcoin treasury strategy. Similar to like what Dylan LeClaire is doing at Meta Planet.

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah.

[James]

So they trade on the Aquis Exchange and I had no idea that the FTSE and the Aquas Exchange don't even have like an options market. Like the, the equities market in the UK is so antiquated to the US market and it's just kind of been left out. So like for example, the, the ftse. So I think the blue is just in nominal terms and it's up 20% since 2008. But then you adjust it for, for like that's in pounds. So you adjust it in the red line which is in dollar terms. So obviously pounds continues to get weaker. You then adjust it for CPI inflation even worse. And then you do the real rate of inflation which is the M2 or the, the money supply and it's down 60% since 2008.

[Peter]

Damn.

[James]

And again, it just shows that everyone has just kind of not. No one thinks about equity investment or again my generation or the above generation. It's all property and it's a way of the government keeping that money within the system. And they don't want the money to leave the system. Obviously, that's their hatred towards bitcoin, but it's the.

[Peter]

So property is a capital control.

[James]

Yes, massive. But that's the same with China, though. That's why the property market in China is the biggest asset class in the world, bigger than the US Stock market. And therefore they can't allow deflation or money to leave the country.

[Peter]

So is investing something you and your friends talk about? He's the youngest generation we have here. Yeah. My friends will ask me about bitcoin, obviously, with your link, but are people talking about. Do you know if any of your friends are investing in the stock market or property or.

[James]

I doubt it very much. They're uni studios. They're just trying to buy beer, but.

[Steve Baker]

They're just trying to buy beer.

[Peter]

But they're asking about bitcoin. They are, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

[Steve Baker]

More when the price goes up, they're.

[Peter]

Like, all right, so you're doing all right.

[James]

Do they ask how much student debt they're in at all? Is that even a question?

[Steve Baker]

No, I ask them.

[James]

I'm usually laughing at them.

[Peter]

Yeah, well, that's, this is the really interesting thing. So Conor quit uni in the first year and it was of art foundations. He had. He's left with no debt. He now has a job and earning, you know, okay. Money and has invested. I'm not gonna tell how much. But by the time his friends leave with uni, he'll have zero debt debt. He'll have a job and a career that pays, and he will have his investment in his future. And he's, he, I would say he's in a.

[James]

You're light years ahead of your mate.

[Peter]

Light years ahead. But he's got the compound position ongoing.

[James]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And that's, that's been a. Yeah.

[James]

It's also the connections and everything like that that's the most important thing where out of university you don't really develop the connections where you need to have and. Yeah, that's just the smartest artist move.

[Peter]

Yeah, but it's really, it's really interesting that, like the four different generations of the positions and you could, you could measure us all by the housing position. Yeah, but, but I, I, I always find it, I always find it really interesting, that university decision now, because I regularly advise against it because, but, but I, I will ask the question, what course? Yeah. When they tell me the course market, if it's a doctor, I wouldn't Say no, no, just go be a surgeon without going to university. Of course you have to. And if you want to be a lawyer or account or whatever. But yeah, marketing, no fucking way should go to YouTube.

[James]

But the free education now online is amazing. Like everything that I've learned is self taught. It's Twitter or anything like that. Again, Michael Saylor has hope.com, anything that you want to know on Bitcoin or Macro. It's all there. And yeah, it's. You don't need these state run programs anymore.

[Peter]

Well, you learn by doing. Yes, you learn by doing.

[Steve Baker]

It's amazing to hear you say that. I mean that's, this is where the hope actually comes from. You know, we're talking about change. Change. The hope comes from people informing themselves and demanding better from their politicians. That is where the hope comes from in a democracy. I mean, politicians will follow the polls and when the polls change, politicians will change.

[Peter]

Do you think we are in or entering a radically different time? I feel like we are. I think a lot of the unsettled way that people feel, whether it's finance or the economy or politics, I feel like we're in a period of fundamental shift. Yeah, that isn't obvious. I think before we've had obvious fundamental shifts with industrial revolution and agricultural revolution. When I've read back on them, it feels like people understand the radical shift that's happened. I feel like we're going through one, but people don't really understand what it is.

[James]

This is the technology wave and this is what Jeff Booth talks about with the price of tomorrow, the deflation versus the inflation. And this is where I don't know if politicians can grasp the, the credit system that we are in, the fiat expansion, the necessary need for that nominal growth. And you've got the, got the credit expansion against a deflationary force, which is AI and technology. And they're just converging now against one another. And that's what I think a lot of people completely miss. And technology is growing at such a rapid pace that we don't really even understand it. Like three years ago, I think OpenAI ChatGPT, GBT started and the progression of where we are now is just incredible. So I think that's the biggest change to me is the credit expansion against a deflationary force. And that's why the system doesn't work anymore.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, that's been a long term issue though, because computers have been around and they've been the same deflationary force. But you say, do politicians understand it? No, they don't remotely understand.

[Peter]

Are we going through then a political revolution at the moment? Is that maybe what we don't understand? We think it's technical, we think it's finance, but it's really a complete revolution in politics.

[Steve Baker]

Isn't all of the above. I think it's the case that contemporary politics and political systems can't remotely keep up with the accelerating pace of change. Then Douglas Carswell and Dan Hannon wrote a good book on this years ago, 2007, about changes in democracy. If you just search democracy, Hannon and Carswell. But I'm afraid what it means is the state needs to do less. I mean, there's a kind of age of libertarianism dawning. But anyone who thinks that the state can keep up with this accelerating pace of change is kidding themselves. And we are going to need to adopt much more free structures in our society to cope.

[Peter]

Why is libertarianism so hard to sell within government?

[Steve Baker]

Because people love free stuff.

[Peter]

Stuff.

[Steve Baker]

Well, government is just within government.

[Peter]

It's just.

[Steve Baker]

There we go. The plan by Hannon and Carswell, it's very, very good. Very little of it was done, but some of it didn't work to be fair, like elected police and crime commissioners. Some of them are quite good, some of them aren't very good, but it hasn't really revolutionized policing for the better in this country. So some of it didn't work. But I'm afraid anything to do with democracy, if the public don't participate, it will fail.

[Peter]

Yeah. And that connection between the public and democracy is failing. I mean, voter turnout was incredibly low last time.

[Steve Baker]

You know what, when people say, well, don't vote for it, don't vote for politicians, it only encourages the bastards. Yeah, I've heard that before.

[Peter]

Hold on. Did you say to me, whoever you vote for, the government wins, the government always gets in? Yeah, you told me that.

[Steve Baker]

And that is the thing, right? Whoever you vote for, the government always gets in. That's. My dear old dad used to say that. But that is really the point is that there's going to be a government at least vote. So that's the least worst of the available options. And you know, so I'm afraid I am a strong advocate of participation in democracy. And the reason is the government always gets in and it's always going to do things and it's a good idea to try and make sure they're the least worst things that can be done.

[Peter]

Yeah, I just. We're going to need better politicians and I don't.

[Steve Baker]

We definitely do need Better politicians. But again I stood for election because I thought emigrate monostand I thought at the time there's not really anywhere to emigrate to that would be immune these problems. I don't want to be moaning about it. So I stand for election but I'm slightly conscious I might be self validating here. But you know the reason I wanted us to do this podcast is because like James's generation is to. To whom we owe the duty really. Because I do feel that the people in their 20s today are really, you know, they're clearing up a lot of mess and actually people in their 20s, it seems to me are very often and so diligent and sensible. They're not like my parents generation in the 60s and 70s. You know I read an obituary the other day of people partied wildly well beyond anything I.

[James]

Well no one can afford partying anymore. This is why all the nightclubs are shutting down. Well, I wasn't a big proponent of partying anyway but that's kind of the again the second and third order effects that people can't even afford to go to a pub, get a beer. It's like inside their house flat and just drink, get cans. It's just a whole different. The shift has completely change, change now.

[Steve Baker]

It'S crap and we should just be doing better than this.

[James]

But that's why we said that the 70s, 80s was the best time. It was that free moment and it's just not that anymore. It's the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

[Peter]

Well then we all have a duty to do something about it. Yeah. Anything else we've not covered that you wanted to, either of you.

[Steve Baker]

There's so much to cover.

[Peter]

I know we went from HIV to same.

[James]

No, I don't know, it's just, I think I'm just wondering when there's going to be some form of bitcoin policy within the uk. I think that's kind of something that I'm waiting for. You can see within the US even with the stablecoin legislation that's coming and I was speaking to Steve before this, that you've got really high yields in America and Trump's actively spoken about he needs to reduce the 10 year treasury and how they're going to do that is through the stablecoins and tether and usdc. We don't need to get into the. If they're a CBDC or anything like that. But Tether, the third biggest buyer of three month US treasuries.

[Peter]

It's nuts, isn't it?

[James]

They're the 20th largest sovereign, if they were a sovereign. 20th largest sovereign buyer. And that prolongs the Fiat Ponzi scheme, essentially. But they are finding ways for crypto to come into the system where we're screening, screaming for anyone to buy our bonds. I have no idea why you would. And they need to be priced at minimum, 10% for anyone to buy it with a brain. And I don't understand. Well, I do understand, but I don't understand why they can't just allow the innovation. Allow where Bitcoin needs to be within the system.

[Peter]

Yeah, we do still hold 61,000 bitcoins.

[James]

That was actually one of my questions. And Freddie New has actually asked this question multiple times to people who holds that 61,000 bitcoin?

[Steve Baker]

I'd love to know. I might write to my own MP and ask her, because my MPs now Treasury Minister. So I might write to her and ask her.

[Peter]

Maybe they've lost the private keys.

[James]

I wouldn't be surprised.

[Steve Baker]

But somebody will know. But I wouldn't put it. I wouldn't be able to put it past them for it to be some junior official at the bank of England. And nobody else really understands bitcoin, so it's been left in their hands.

[James]

Well, in the US, you've got the court martials that hold around 200,000 Bitcoin. They were trying to actively sell it before Trump got in. And obviously that whole bitcoin strategic reserve. Are we going to. They're going to just move that over to the. The treasury and then that becomes the de facto strategic reserve.

[Peter]

It'd be very easy for them just to say, oh, we need some money. Sell it. There's £6 billion. There were dollars.

[James]

Bloomberg started it. That there's that black hole, lesser. Let's sell the bitcoin. And then obviously everyone was like, don't.

[Peter]

Do not sell the bitcoin.

[James]

Like, this is the one thing that we have and don't do the Gordon Brown. Yeah. Mistake.

[Peter]

Who did we steal it off?

[James]

Can't remember. One of the best things the government.

[Peter]

Did, they didn't do a lot of good. All right, well, look, James, it's great to sit down with you. I don't know how this came about, but I like it.

[Steve Baker]

It's because I met James and I listened to James talking about the state of the country and I thought, this is quality. And I thought, I just want to get on a podcast and listen to James and agree with him. And I don't think I've disagreed with James on it.

[Peter]

I don't think any of us have, really. I mean, look, this is why if we had a bitcoin government, there'd probably be a good party because they would recognize what we recognize and try and fix some things.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah. But no, I don't think that I'm going to embarrass James now. I don't think there's any doubt that James is one of the best brains in bitcoin.

[Peter]

Right.

[Steve Baker]

I mean, his columns and articles are absolutely outstanding. And I consider it a great privilege to come on your podcast with James and talk about these things.

[Peter]

Steve, you can come on this podcast whenever you want, mate. Really appreciate him. You.

[James]

Cheers.

[Peter]

I used to live in your constituency. That you.

[Steve Baker]

Did you vote with me?

[Peter]

No, I didn't vote when I was in.

[Steve Baker]

Oh, you bastard.

[Peter]

I didn't. We. But not when I was living there, though, because I would have been 18. So we're talking.

[Steve Baker]

It's a long time.

[Peter]

It was before I was 26, 28 years ago. It changed a lot since I left. They. They did the big development in the town center.

[Steve Baker]

I'm going to forgive you because you.

[Peter]

Weren'T there when I was a. I did like living in Wickham for a short period of time. Anyway, thanks, guys. Guys. Bitcoin for the win. Thank you, everyone, for listening. See you all soon.