#124 - Zia Yusuf - We Have One Shot to Fix Britain

Summary

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The Peter McCormack Show #124

Guest: Zia Yousef
Title: “We Have One Shot to Fix Britain”
Date: October 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Peter McCormack sits down with Zia Yousef, head of policy for Reform UK and a prominent figure in Britain's emerging “insurgent” political movement. Together, they explore the current socio-political crossroads facing Britain: a historic window to reboot the nation, restore greatness, and reverse decades of perceived decline. They analyze the failure of the established parties, the opportunity and challenge presented by Reform, and the urgent need for serious, principled leadership. Key topics include party politics, polling, sectarianism, immigration, economic stagnation, energy policy, crime, public finance, and Zia’s personal motivations and vision for the country.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of British Politics and the Rise of Reform UK

• Britain at a Crossroads: Zia emphasizes Britain’s “once in a lifetime” chance to turn around national decline, rebirth its confidence, and restore greatness ([00:00], [11:40]).
  • “We're going to get one shot at this... We have a once in a lifetime... opportunity to reboot this country, almost have a rebirth of the United Kingdom.” — Zia Yousef ([00:14])
• Perceived Decline of Establishment Parties: Labour and Conservatives described as obsolete, with Reform and the Greens gaining.
  • Pollsters and media out of touch; polling methods understate non-traditional party support ([05:31]-[08:20]).
  • Growing volatility exemplified by Caerphilly and other results.
• Greens and ‘Insurgent’ Parties: Both Greens and Reform are attracting voters seeking change; mainstream polling and political media are slow to recognize the scale of this shift ([03:35]-[05:31]).

2. Voter Sentiment and Polling Realities

• Betrayal and Disaffection: Lifelong Labour (and former Conservative) voters now feel “betrayed,” shifting allegiances or abandoning loyalty ([07:05]).
  • “The word betrayal kept coming up...” — Zia Yousef ([07:05])
• ‘Shy Reform’ Voters & Polling Bias: Social pressure, particularly in urban/professional circles, still makes some hesitant to admit Reform support, but methodology errors in polling play a larger role in underestimating insurgent parties ([08:20]-[10:03]).
  • Pollsters “herd,” not optimize for accuracy, which amplifies volatility.

3. Party Strategy and Preparation for Power

• Preparing for Government: Reform is proactively building capacity and policy detail as if victory is likely, to avoid the “rabbit in headlights” effect ([10:22]-[11:30]).
  • UK’s lack of a transition period (as seen in the US) means readiness must be immediate.

4. Britain at a Fork in the Road: Optimism & Dystopia

• Two Futures: Zia contrasts the optimistic vision for a prosperous, confident, unified Britain with a dystopian one marked by economic stagnation and sectarian strife ([12:33]-[13:31]).
  • “There's a real fork in the road... On the one side, there is this shining city on the hill. Britain can regain its confidence... On the other side... we're heading for a dystopian one.” — Zia Yousef ([12:33]-[13:31])

5. Sectarianism, Immigration, and Public Policy

• Identity-based Voting Risks: Zia warns of rising sectarianism—where some MPs are elected on religious/ethnic grounds over policy platforms ([14:08]-[16:02]).
  • “What's dangerous... is a situation where in certain constituencies, members of Parliament are being elected... on a platform of a single religion, be it Islam or otherwise.” — Zia Yousef ([15:23])
• Immigration Policy: Argues that large-scale, poorly-integrated migration (particularly non-EU) has stressed British society, with calls for net negative migration and a shift towards optimizing for cultural fit & economic benefit ([16:23]-[19:33]).

6. Economic Challenge: Growth, Tax, and the Wealth Exodus

• Millionaire Flight: Britain losing high earners due to high taxes, regulatory burden, and poor public services ([20:38]-[23:44]).
  • “Britain is losing more millionaires per capita than any other country... That really does matter.” — Zia Yousef ([20:38])
• Law & Order: Crime and perceptions of physical insecurity factor into this exodus.
• Structural Economic Issues: Real wages stagnant, asset-owning class outpaces younger and non-owners, and AI possibly exacerbates inequality ([25:24]-[27:40]).

7. Structural Barriers: Red Tape and Energy Policy

• The High Cost of Doing Business: Foreign investors reluctant to invest in the UK because of tax rates, bureaucracy, and especially energy costs ([27:40]-[28:28]).
  • “Don’t ask me to invest money in the UK at the moment. You can’t invest in that country... nothing is going to change until you change the policies in the UK.” — Peter ([27:52])
• Reform’s Solutions: End energy subsidies, accelerate nuclear, exploit hydrocarbons where needed, implement policies to attract and retain wealth creators and productive businesses ([28:28]-[31:34]).

8. Crime, Decline, and the ‘Normalization of Decline’

• Shortage of Prison Places: A mismatch between population growth and criminal justice infrastructure (411 prison places for 6 million net new people) blamed on Conservative neglect ([33:55]-[34:29]).
  • “The only reason we know that is because a Tory MP actually asked a question in Parliament...411 net new prison places to deal with 6 million net new people. That’s insane.” — Zia Yousef ([34:31])
• Misallocated Justice: Criticizes a focus on “tweet crimes” over violent crime ([34:29]-[36:04]).
• Cultural Shift: British public becoming numb to decline (“normalizing decline”) in everything from petty theft in supermarkets to degraded city streets.

9. Public Spending, Deficit, and Reform’s Fiscal Ambition

• Eliminating the Deficit: Reform's stated goal is to end chronic deficit spending and move towards fiscal discipline ([38:32]-[38:48]).
• Massive Waste: Zia claims “tens and tens of billions” can be cut, especially from quangos, net zero, and “DEI” initiatives; focus must be on waste, not core services ([38:48]-[42:38], [57:03]-[60:48]).
  • “There is enough waste in this country... that is possible [to cut it].” — Zia Yousef ([38:48])
• Tax Cut Strategy: Find which tax cuts most effectively drive growth, retain and attract high-skill, high-net-worth contributors.

10. Regulatory Reform and Long-Term Vision

• Brexit Unfulfilled: Tories faulted for not exploiting post-Brexit regulatory advantages; Zia promises stability, deregulation, and a pragmatic (not dogmatic) mix of market freedom and targeted intervention ([42:47]-[46:28]).
  • Nuclear Energy seen as cornerstone of future growth & decarbonization ([46:30]-[49:00]).

11. Political Adversity, Making the Case, Growing the Pie

• Adversarial Realities: Zia acknowledges some will never be reached, particularly on the far left and right; focus is on persuadables and non-voters ([50:18]-[52:53]).
• Logical Policy: Zia frames Reform’s stance as “logic is on our side,” particularly on taxation, employment law, and growth ([50:18]-[53:27]).
• Economic Philosophy: “Zero sum” thinking is challenged; must focus on “growing the pie” and equality of opportunity.

12. Local Government, High Streets, and Social Goods

• Town Centres in Decline: Business rates, crime, and dysfunctional council funding are hollowing out British high streets ([62:37]-[67:17]).
  • State should intervene to stabilize and protect “social goods” like vibrant high streets.
• Broken Incentives: Councillors unable to deliver public’s priorities due to rigid, ring-fenced funding obligations.
• Rebalancing Governance: Reform is actively researching how to give local authorities more autonomy and re-link spending to local accountability ([67:17]-[68:55]).

13. Zia’s Role, Party Structure, and Motivation

• Behind the Scenes: Zia is now head of policy, on the board, and deeply involved in government-preparation strategy—much out of public view ([73:01]-[75:19]).
  • “I take as much satisfaction as in that [behind-the-scenes work]... because that is the stuff, that’s why I came into politics.” — Zia Yousef ([73:01])
• Personal Motivation: Driven by patriotism and the desire to restore opportunity, Zia relishes the opportunity to do “the most important, impactful work I’ll ever do” ([75:21])—citing his journey from modest beginnings to entrepreneurship.
  • “I wake up in the morning really early. I don’t need an alarm clock... I really believe this will be the most important, impactful work that I’ll ever do.” — Zia Yousef ([76:45])

14. Policy Agenda & Future Announcements

• Manifesto Delivery: Policies will trickle out (on issues like justice, deportations, and the “Britannia card”) with the full manifesto to be released closer to the next election ([77:10]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Betrayal Among Traditional Voters:
  “The word betrayal kept coming up.” – Zia Yousef ([07:05])
• On the Risk of Decline:
  “We’re heading for a dystopian one... with no economic growth combined with sectarian politics... that is terrifying.” – Zia Yousef ([13:31])
• On Sectarian MPs:
  “What’s dangerous... is a situation where in certain constituencies, members of Parliament are being elected... on a platform of a single religion, be it Islam or otherwise.” – Zia Yousef ([15:23])
• On Wealth Exodus:
  “1% of the income taxpayers in this country... pay around a third of the total income tax pool.” – Zia Yousef ([20:38])
• On Political Adversity:
  “There’s a real fork in the road. ...On the one side, there is this shining city on the hill... On the other side, we're heading for a dystopian one.” – Zia Yousef ([12:33])
• On Leadership:
  “We have this unique opportunity to go and do some incredible things for the country.” – Zia Yousef ([75:19])
• Personal Resolve:
  “I wake up in the morning really early. I don’t need an alarm clock... hugely excited about getting on with the task at hand.” – Zia Yousef ([76:45])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• The Historic Opportunity and Risks – [00:00], [11:40], [12:33], [13:31], [76:45]
• Party Dynamics & Polling Issues – [03:35], [07:05], [10:03]
• Economic Decline, Taxation, and Wealth Flight – [20:38], [27:40], [30:30]
• Energy & Regulatory Reform – [28:28], [42:47], [46:28]
• Criminal Justice & Social Decay – [33:55], [36:04]
• Deficit, Public Spending, and Policy Ambition – [38:32], [38:48], [57:03]-[60:48]
• Local Governance & High Streets – [62:37], [64:24], [67:17]
• Policy Agenda Planning – [77:10]

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Tone & Style

Zia Yousef combines a sense of urgency and frustration at the state of Britain with optimism about the potential for reform-backed renewal. The tone is serious, at times punchy and combative, but also thoughtful and data-driven. Peter McCormack matches with candid, plain-spoken inquiries.

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Summary for First-Time Listeners

This wide-ranging episode offers a deep dive into the Reform UK worldview and campaign plan, as articulated by its key strategist, Zia Yousef. If you want an uncensored take on why millions have lost faith in Labour and Tory leadership, how sectarian politics threaten cohesion, why economic stagnation is at crisis level, and what a radical alternative government might do differently—this episode provides both the diagnosis and the zeal for a cure. Zia’s candid, sometimes impassioned arguments pull few punches on Britain’s challenges, but leave the door open for hope—and a plan—for national revival.

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Transcript

[Zia Yousef]

There's going to be so much, frankly, hostility, there'll be a lot of countermeasures from apparatus of state against our agenda. Now people might say, oh, well, you're being too pessimistic. No, I don't think I am. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. But look, we're going to get one shot at this, right? We have a once, I think, in a once in a lifetime of a country opportunity, I would argue, to reboot this country, almost have a rebirth of the United Kingdom, but in a way that restores it and takes it back to the greatness, brings back those great principles that has made this country one of the best countries, I think is the best country in the world. I will say this. I wake up in the morning really early. I don't need an alarm clock. I wake up really early. And at least most days I'm hugely excited about getting on with the task at hand. And that's despite the, the online abuse you get and, you know, Guardian journalists sending through, you know, grenades in your. In your whatsapps via the press team every other day. Because I know why I'm doing it, you know, and having sold my company a couple of years ago, I said I'm in and in the blessed position of not needing to work for money anymore. And I really believe this will be the most important, impactful work that I'll ever do.

[Peter]

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[Zia Yousef]

Very well. How are you?

[Peter]

I'm good. Good. I enjoyed your. I text you I enjoyed your thing on Question Time. It's good to see you there.

[Zia Yousef]

Yes, yes. Well, it was, it was the first time, I think Zach Polanski was on.

[Peter]

Yes.

[Zia Yousef]

And I think that a lot of people think the Greens are sort of this nice sort of fuzzy party that, you know, are just really into keeping the countryside green. And making sure that, you know, we've got a lovely habitat for the wildlife. And that's just not the case. I mean, a. The man himself has. I mean, fair enough. People are entitled to a past before politics. Right. But I mean, to be running around hypnotizing women in that way, I thought was extremely strange. And secondly, this is a party that literally wants open borders. That's on their website. Yeah. Number two, wants to destroy our nuclear deterrent while Vladimir Putin's marauding around in Ukraine and wants to legalize all drugs, including meth, all methamphetamines, you know, fentanyl, crack cocaine, but also make it illegal to rent out your flat. And so this is. I mean, if labor, to call them student politicians would be a massive disservice to student politicians. But as we speak, this party is now polling at 16% according to you gov, today, one point behind Labour and one point behind the Tories. So that is actually quite scary.

[Peter]

Do you think that's a reflection in a similar way to what's happened with reform in that conservative voters are trying to find a new home. You've got labor voters, especially young people, who are trying to find a new home.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah. You know, I tweeted out recently that in some ways what Zach Polanski is doing is quite. I want to use the word refreshing in the sense that what he's at least doing is saying things that he genuinely believes in. Right. And he's saying, look, if you vote for the Greens, this is. These are the things that we will do. And so in some ways, it is better for a democracy to have opened sort of. Sort of the globalism in an open way rather than the kind of open borders globalism in a covert way that the Tories and Labor have done. Does that make sense? You know, and so. So, yes, in some ways, what Greens are doing to labor, there is a parallel to what reform have done to the Tories. It's not. It's not a perfect parallel because reform has won lots of voters from other parties as well, and a lot of people who disenfranchised and didn't vote at all. This idea that, you know, reform are where we are because we just taken Tory voters is not true. Yeah, but it is true that, you know, look, the Uni Party's dead. The Uni Party is going extinct. I don't think people understand, particularly in the media, even amongst the sort of. The pollsters, when you speak to them. I mean, you can see this even in the way a lot of pollsters work. So what a lot of pollsters do, and this is why they've. Many of them do understate reforms. Actual level of support is they. If somebody says, I don't know who I'm going to vote for, when they ask them in the poll, they also ask, who did you vote for last time? And they peg you back. There's like a weighting on a lot of those polls that peg you back to whom you voted last time. Now, that might work in periods of less volatility, but you can imagine when volatility is like this, you know, where the two old parties between them win 70% of the vote not that long ago to winning 13% of the votes in Caerphilly. When you have that much volatility, that kind of polling methodology leads to a real understating of insurgent party support.

[Peter]

What did you make of Caerphilly? Obviously, part of it's a disappointment, but Wasn't it still 35% growth?

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, look, we're here to win elections and so we're certainly not going to celebrate second place. And it was disappointing not to win. But our candidate, Cleopal fought a great campaign. He's a great candidate. I think he will be in the Senate next May, if you look at what's. What happened? Yes. So, number one, this is a seat that's just outside Cardiff.

[Peter]

Right.

[Zia Yousef]

So it actually has some interesting urban characteristics, as it were, and it wouldn't be sort of one of the top 10 seats for us by any means, in. In Wales. But we obviously did an incredible job. We got 36% of the vote. That is up from 1.7% last time. And credits applied. You know, they won and they won by a few thousand votes, but they were up by less. You know, I think their vote increased by 18 points versus last time. But, you know, we won almost three times as many votes as the Uni party combined. Almost three times as many voters. Labor and the Tories. The tories down to 2%. They're basically extinct in Wales as they're going extinct in Scotland and soon in England, too. And Labour, remember, this is a seat that Labour had never lost an election in. The seat was created in 1918, the Parliamentary. Parliamentary seat. Labour won every single time. When the Senate seat was created, Labour won and they won every single time. And not only did they not win again, it's the scale and the magnitude of the problem. Rejection, I think even rejection is. Is too.

[Peter]

Too kind.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, it's too kind. I mean, if you speak to people on The Doors. So I spent some time there during the campaign, and it reminded me a lot of what happened in Roncorn and Helsby, another Labour stronghold. And I kept hearing on the doors, lifelong labor voters or people who voted labor last time. But it was most striking with the lifelong labor voters, as they characterized themselves, who said, I've been betrayed. The word betrayal kept coming up. And again, going back to your original question, that's a really interesting parallel because a lot of people felt unbelievably betrayed by the Tories. A lot of people feel really betrayed by labor now.

[Peter]

Yeah, it's a really interesting time. I was chatting to somebody locally where we live in Bedford, about politics, and he said to me something that I'd never considered before. He said, the thing with politics, it's not what you say, it's what you think. And a lot of people won't say what they think.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah.

[Peter]

But when they get to the ballot box, they vote based on what they're thinking. And it's still in some circles, even if you want to vote for reform, difficult to admit you're going to vote for reform. For some people, it's a quiet conversation. If you work in certain industries in London, you just can't admit, even if you want to vote for reform, when it comes to polling, is it similar? Do people worry about being honest in a poll?

[Zia Yousef]

There's definitely an element of the, quote, shy reform vote, and I think it's much less than it used to be. I would say the bigger issue with polls these days is the methodology of the pollsters and less the responses of the participants in the poll. And look, a really good example of this was on May 1st or just a few days prior. So Prior to the May 1st elections, reform was predicted to win about 26, 27% of the vote share. We then got far more than that, well north of 30%. And then all the polls the day after that moved up into line with the result that you've just seen. That is also partly a result of the incentive structure for pollsters. Pollsters are not trying to be the most correct at any point. That's. That's not what they're optimizing for. Remember, they make money by going, and, yeah, someone's got to pay for these polls. Right. And usually those people have an agenda. So what they're trying to do is make sure that they're not ever demonstrably wrong. You know, they're not that gazelle that sort of left behind from the herd. So they all hurt and they all cluster. And if you actually drill down into the methodology inside the spreadsheets, you can kind of see what's happening there. But look, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, that just is what it is. I don't have an issue with us being, quote, understated in the polls. Like, the reality is what matters is what happens at the ballot box. And yes, we were disappointed with Caerphilly, but we had an amazing May the first. But also, if you look at the council by election, since then, we've won more of those council by election seats than anyone else, including the Lib Dems, who are normally masters of the sort of local council elections. And if you look at the polls today, so just this morning, YouGov had one out. Now, YouGov is one that pretty routinely understates reform support, but still, that has us 10 points, Claire, and that was the one. As I said, there's Greens on 16, Tory 17, Labour 17.

[Peter]

Yeah, here we go. Just Connors bringing up. So in some ways it's. It's waiting four years. Obviously you need time to. To build out the infrastructure of the party. But it's in some ways also frustrating. Like, how do you strategically maintain that for four years?

[Zia Yousef]

Well, it's not frustrating because it's. It's great to be in the position that we are, but it is true. We are still in. There's a long way to go before the next general election. That is absolutely true. And you can use whatever analogy you want, you know, seven points clear at Christmas in the Premier League or running a math and whatever analogy you want to use. The key is that I'm not too concerned a. Because our leader, Nigel, leads by example. You know, he's just somebody who. Nobody works harder than him in politics. And we're always going to be. The risk would be we go into our shells or you start, you know, behaving in a different way. We're going to continue to take our message to the British people. We are also preparing for government. You know, we had a press conference this morning. Danny Krueger, who came over from the Tories, leads that. And that's not out of arrogance or hubris. It's because given we've led 100 opinion polls in a row, Nigel's a favorite to be the next prime minister. Most MRP polls give reform a majority. Now. It would be criminally irresponsible, would it not, if we were not preparing for government in the way, you know, labor turned up with 14 years in opposition and we're like rabbit in headlights.

[Peter]

Well, that's, that's what they do in the US they have a transition team already in place, ready for if they win.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, but the difference in America is after the, the, the elections, there's then a period where the president doesn't change instantly. You see what I mean? Whereas here, you don't get that.

[Peter]

You don't get that.

[Zia Yousef]

You don't got to be ready. You got to be ready. And there's going to be so much, frankly, hostility, there'll be a lot of countermeasures from apparatus of state against our agenda. Now people might say, oh, well, you're being too pessimistic. No, I don't think I am. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. But look, we're going to get one shot at this, right? We have a once, I think, in a. Once in a lifetime of a country opportunity, I would argue, to reboot this country, almost have a rebirth of the United Kingdom, but in a way that restores it and takes it back to the greatness, brings back those great principles that's made this country one of the best countries. I think it's the best country in the world. But we're on this, really. We're in a very dangerous time in the sense there's a real fork in the road. You know that meme, which way west by?

[Peter]

First thing, we're crossways. You said it in your, your love letter to the uk, Your speech at the conference.

[Zia Yousef]

It's why I came into politics.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Zia Yousef]

Because I've never seen such a. If I thought this was a period where decline was inevitable, but it's just sort of trying to pump the patient with as much morphine as possible, keep it as comfortable as. I have no interest in that. But that's not what I see. I see a path like that meme, which on the one side, there is this shining city on the hill. Britain can regain its confidence. It can heal the wounds that currently exist. It can become prosperous and powerful as it once was. Now, that means leaning into our strengths, being proud of our history, being proud of our strengths, investing in those strengths. Right now, we have the opposite of those things. Condemning the political class, condemn our strengths, talking about reparations, and claim that basically the entire history of this country is just one of slavery and oppression. Completely untrue. And also the risk is if we carry on, on the glide path this country is currently on due to the management, catastrophic mismanagement of the Tories and now labor, we're not just headed to an outcome that's not that. That outcome I just laid out. We're heading for a dystopian one. We're heading for one with no economic growth. A zero sum economic environment with no economic growth combined with sectarian politics. And any student of history knows that's not like a, that's not like a middling, mediocre outcome. That is terrifying and it's usually quite violent. And I don't think we should be in any way complacent about that. We already know now there, there are people who just vote based on ethnicity, vote based on religion. That has already started. Nigel's talked about this for years. We are still at a point where we can arrest that decline.

[Peter]

Well, what's the risk there? What are you saying?

[Zia Yousef]

Well, at the moment you do have a situation where there are some of these independent MPs who basically campaign based on winning the vote of their, you know, people who share their faith or share their religion. You know, we are consistently being told now that, well, these parties, or as I said, these independents who probably will form their own party at some point, that is essentially their value proposition. Rather than a world where in a democracy it's about arguments and it's about a view on the economy or the best way, how big should the state be? Or let's talk about how much immigration we should have instead. It's already started now where there are some constituencies where only that sort of a candidate can win. That has already started.

[Peter]

And are you, are you as a Muslim, saying this is a Muslim issue?

[Zia Yousef]

I think in the examples I'm giving, it is, yes, it absolutely is, yeah.

[Peter]

So that must be quite strange for you to be raising that issue.

[Zia Yousef]

I don't consider it strange. I mean, I, I've always said, you know, my faith I consider to be a private matter, like a lot of religious people. Right. Christians and Jews, a lot of people.

[Peter]

But you're worried about the people who don't think like that.

[Zia Yousef]

Well, I worry about making public policy and advocating for public policy that is in the best interest of the plurality of British people, regardless their faith. And what I do know is that clearly it's not an issue for people to have, you know, religiosity and have faith in the House of Commons or for even for it to have a really meaningful impact in how they see the world and the kind of public policy they want. What's dangerous and it's app. It is dangerous and we should be aware of the dangers of it is a situation where in certain constituencies, members of Parliament are being elected and councillors are being elected ostensibly on the, on a platform of a single religion, be it Islam or otherwise.

[Peter]

How do you even stop that? I mean, we don't have rules like, is it Pakistan? They have, you have to be a Muslim to be president. And they only have 10 seats for minority religions. Something.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, I, I think so.

[Peter]

So, so they have controls in a con in. In their country to stop it.

[Zia Yousef]

But yeah.

[Peter]

How, how do you change that in our country where we are?

[Zia Yousef]

Well, yeah, freedom of religion is a really fundamental tenet of English common law and important British value. And, and that's why these are difficult problems to solve, I think. I, I think the way that you solve the problem, because the problem is as soon as you start trying to demarcate bait on the grounds of religion, a, it's actually very difficult to enforce. Right. Number one. And number two, you start to then potentially cut into the bone of what actually makes this country an amazing country in the first place. So my view is the way we resolve this is number one, getting a handle. I mean, a lot of this has been caused by untrammeled mass immigration on an unfathomable scale with a lot of people coming from countries which have, let's just be factual, a lower propensity to integrate than certain other countries. That can be characterized as a binary between EU and non EU migration. That was the real legacy of Boris Johnson. It was not just the throwing open of our borders with the Boris wave and 3.8 million people coming here legally on his watch. It was the fact that we switched from roughly 80, 20 EU, non EU to 80% non EU coming in. And this stuff does matter. I mean, we have to be able to talk about these things. I mean, if we're talking about having an immigration policy, regardless of the numbers coming here, numbers are important and they need to obviously much lower, probably net negative for a period of time now. But it also matters about composition. Like, you have to look, if you're hiring for a business, I'm sure you consider cultural fit. Right. When you're thinking, I mean, look, primarily.

[Peter]

It'S a, it's a meritocracy. When I hire, I have, you know, when I had my agency in London, we, we put a woman in the boardroom because it was all men. And you know, we had women working for us. We had late night parties. There are things we weren't thinking about as a company because we weren't thinking from the perspective of a woman. So we did also put a woman in there that has Been cultural fit. Yeah. I mean, I think you as a. When you run a company without any outside influence, you know what's best for your company. We didn't put a woman in our boardroom for the sake of a woman. We put it in because we had women staff. We wanted to know the things that were important for them. But I think you have a gut instinct of what's right.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah. But I think I put it to you that you are sitting across the table from somebody, whoever the candidate is, and considering whether they're going to cohere with the rest of your team.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Zia Yousef]

Right. And I think that that's a very reasonable proposition when it comes to immigration policy as well. And so that doesn't mean that you start to discriminate in an inappropriate way, but it is appropriate to be selective. You know, there's so many people who want to come to this great country. That's not something we should take for granted, by the way. That might change if we carry on down the path that we're on, sadly. So we should ask ourselves, why do so many people want to come here? And if there's so many people that want to come, let's a make sure that it's the correct number. And as I said, for now, in reforms view, that probably needs to be not just net zero, but probably net negative for a period of time. But we have to. Probably the simplest way of putting this is let's ensure that the immigration policy is solely optimized for improving the lives of people who are citizens of the United Kingdom and nothing else.

[Peter]

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[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I think Britain loses more, is losing more millionaires per capita than any other country. And some people want to hand wave that away and say, you know, you see these random left, we don't need them. Yeah, yeah, we do. Don't shut the door on the way out or whatever. The point is that already, you know, 1% of the income taxpayers in this country, the top 1% pay around a third of the total income tax pool. That Pareto law expands even more as you get 2 to the 0.1%. So this really does matter. And you know, you saw this example, Nick Staronski, the Revolut, the founder of Revolut.

[Peter]

Yep. Gone to. Is it Dubai?

[Zia Yousef]

Gone to Dubai. Yeah, gone to Dubai. And probably there's a huge liquidity event coming for Revolut. Right. That's probably a 70 billion odd event. I don't know exactly what his stake is, but I would imagine that is a multi. I'm almost certain that had he been in the UK and paid capital gains tax on that, that have been a multibillion pound payday for hmrc. And I don't know him personally, but I do know other people who are in that scenario and it's not like they're just all going to leave because I want to pay 0% for a lot of people. There's thresholds, right? Number one, this sort of I might pay 20% but I'm not paying 26, I'm not risking paying 40, 50%. Totally different, you have to risk adjust that. But there's also one thing I hear a lot from people who pay a lot of tax in this country is it's less how much tax they're paying. It's their aversion and utter disdain for the way in which the tax money is spent.

[Peter]

I'd say there's more to it than that as well. So there is that. I also think the way people who've worked hard have been successful, have been demonized as greedy, mean, selfish and also their income, their Savings, what they're putting by for their children is now an open tab for the government to just dip into whenever they like. I think it's part of that as well.

[Zia Yousef]

Yes. I think it's that it's. It's that it's law and order as well. A lot of people, I mean, if you have yourself or you have someone close to you has been a victim of violent crime or had something stolen, that really does impact your sense of safety, obviously, and so people are leaving for that reason too. Now, again, I don't want. The reason I'm in politics is because I do believe there can be a really positive outcome and we can go into a place in this country where, you know, our kids and grandkids and great grandkids are going to be really excited to live here. There is still time to change all these issues. We're talking about the sectarianism, the law and order issue, the tax issue. But what we need is serious people in the cockpit of the country actually making the most important decisions that. That I just said there's a reason why we have the opposite of that. Right. It's not only like we're close, it's not. It's not as if we're on our way there. Every problem we've just outlined is not just not improving, it is getting worse in an accelerated pace. Now, we can reverse that by having serious people in making the most important decisions at the land. So the people making the most important decisions in this country right now are Madhead Meliband, who might put it to you, you wouldn't hire to change the time on the clock. Rachel Reeves.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Zia Yousef]

Ostensibly her key qualification was being in the Complaints Department at Halifax. And then during COVID we had Matt Hancock as the Health Secretary, we had Boris Johnson as our Prime Minister. So, again, not only it's an idiocracy, right, it's not only do we not have the best people, the system optimizes for the worst imaginable people making the most important decisions. The decisions around this country's energy policy and tax policy are actually the most important decisions in the country, because everything else, funding for the nhs, our view on the police and law and order is downstream from that. And so many of the problems that ail the country, yes, we get a lot more efficient in the civil service and, yes, we can have much better incentives for the police force. So they're actually, you know, preventing crime, real crimes and not policing. Tweets can do all those things. But for most of the problems, if you Ask why three times. The answer is there's not enough money. Right. And there's this view now, and it's one, it's, it's one of the reasons the greens are growing so much. There's this view now that economics is zero sum, that the pie is finite. And if, if my life isn't improving, and I understand this, don't be wrong. I really do understand this, why people think this, that if my lot isn't improving in any way, it must be because someone else is taking it from me. And I do have the view that inequality does matter. I'm not one of those people that just says, you know, you should just be totally laissez faire. And if inequality goes absolutely ballistic, there's. The state should just not intervene. History shows inequality does matter. And if we look at, you know, why do young people feel so disenfranchised right now?

[Peter]

Can't buy a house.

[Zia Yousef]

Can't buy a house.

[Peter]

Can't get a job.

[Zia Yousef]

Do you rent a home? Do you mind me asking? Do you rent? I pay rent on me. Right, okay.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Zia Yousef]

So you've got a rogue landlord. Well, for a lot of young people now, buying a house is just so beyond the realms. That's not even what. They're just renting a home now is the new buying a home in the sense that a third of our young adults, I think it's age 19 to 31, are living at home with their parents because they're unable to even afford renting a home. Right.

[Peter]

So I can't even get jobs now. There's a jobs problem at the moment.

[Zia Yousef]

There's a big jobs problem. And so, number one, if you've owned assets since the great financial crisis, you've done incredibly well. Yep. Right. If you haven't owned assets, I. E. Most young people, you haven't, you've gotten. You've not done well at all. And the gap between that own assets and the people who don't has dramatically widened. As much as I think AI has a whole load of wonderful opportunities for our species, I think AI is going to be a. Is much more likely to compound that inequality issue and be a force multiplier for people who own assets. Right. I mean, Nvidia's market capitalization, that's the company that obviously makes the computer chips, the AI GPUs, that power these large language models. The market capitalization of Nvidia, which is the CEO, is the founder, Jensen, I think now is 20% larger than the GDP of the United Kingdom. And sadly, I Think we spoke again in 18 months time. That number is just as likely to be higher that gap than lower. So we have to ask ourselves why is it. So all of this is happening while as real wages in this country have basically done nothing? They've gone up a little bit, but largely done nothing for 15 to 20 years. And these are absolutely things that we will be considering very carefully as part of our economic and tax policy. Because we've got to unleash the potential of the British people. We've got to get the state out of the way from good companies who are trying to go and build homes and do really valuable things. We've got to have an energy policy that collapses the cost of energy. I mean if there was one KPI for an energy secretary is get energy costs in this country retail and wholesale as low as you possibly can. In this country we have the opposite.

[Peter]

Yeah, we just got back from the us we went out to see an investor in New York with a project to regenerate our town. I'd been working a long time on this presentation. What do I get into? About a minute into it.

[Zia Yousef]

You didn't even show it.

[Peter]

Yeah, I didn't even show it. I was just doing my opening speech and he said, Pete, don't ask me to invest money in the UK at the moment. You can't invest in that country. He said I want to, I want to invest in the uk but you can't. He said there's too much red tape, there's too much bureaucracy, your tax rates are too high. I can invest anywhere in the world, why do I invest in uk? He said nothing is going to change until you change the policies in the UK. And he said you absolutely 100%, you've got to deal with energy costs because they're making you anti competitive with your industry. But also if you deal with energy costs, it could be a tax break to small to medium sized businesses and citizens. It's just such an obvious thing.

[Zia Yousef]

100%. So one of the reasons we have such high energy costs, I mean there's a whole bunch of problems there, but one of them is the subsidies. And those subsidies are a regressive tax, meaning they are disproportionately impactful on the poorest people in society. Disproportionately impactful for small and medium sized businesses relative to large ones ones. And there are ways you can solve that. You can end those subsidies, you can build a lot of nuclear. Yes, it takes a few years to come on stream but we will have a Absolutely have the duration of time period to actually make sure that we do those things. We've got to look at hydrocarbons as well, at least in the meantime. Right. And you know, you're not going to find a more pro nuclear Prime Minister than Nigel if he wins. But as I said, bringing on all of that nuclear capacity, both SMRs and potentially large scale reactors will take some time and we've got to look at any and all means to get our energy costs down in terms of taxation and bureaucracy. I mean we're the only party who are brave enough to come out with a Britannia card concept, right? And actually go and make the case to the British people that says, look, if you want Britain to be, if you want Britain to be prosperous and powerful, that is only going to be possible if there are lots of really wealthy people here helping to create that wealth. There is no world in which Britain, I mean you look through Britain's history, right? The only way Britain is prosperous and powerful is if it has wealthy people here. So we want wealthy people here. Instead this country rolls out the red carpet for illegal migrants. Like this guy from Epping, you know, comically was let out of jail and kept trying to get back in and they gave him pocket money and sent him to the station after having of course committed an egregious sex offense against a minor. Of course roll out the red carpet for people who gets taxpayer funded accommodation and free taxis all the way through. And that's, I'm not talking about at his Majesty's pleasure there. I'm talking about the hotels, et cetera. But we make it incredibly difficult and unattractive for people with lots of money.

[Peter]

There's a global marketplace now for rich people and I just think that's one of those economic realities that people have to accept. Facts don't care about your.

[Zia Yousef]

But you can. But you know, we're talking a lot about them as being rich people. And that isn't, that is an accurate, you know, modifier there. But these are fundamentally people who are wealth creators and jobs creators, right? Like there is no, there are no well paid jobs that give employees lots of satisfaction and make them feel good about going home to their families each day without there being really successful companies that are doing really well.

[Peter]

But it isn't just even that. There are, there are fabulously wealthy people who aren't job creators. They're just rich people just live a rich person's life and they're being rolled out the red carpet in other countries. They're saying come here, I Don't know. Is it Milan where It's like just £200,000? Yeah.

[Zia Yousef]

Lots of countries have programs but there's.

[Peter]

A global marketplace now and it's so easy to move around the world. Why not go and live in Milan or Portugal and if you want to come back to the UK and you've got a 45 day allowance, just do that. I mean there's a global market for it now and there's a reality and we have to accept that, that idea of, you know, oh well, we don't need them, we're better off. No, we're not, we're better off with them.

[Zia Yousef]

No, but we're literally worse off without them. Yes. I mean in any, on any possible metric. And you know, I think you're striking on a very important point. It's not just, but again I want to stress it's taxation is a huge issue. Right. And we've already laid out some of our plans on how we address that and we'll, we will address more. But it's not just taxation. I mean look, I would give a counterexample and it's not the rule, but it is an interesting counterexample. The richest people in the world generally are in Silicon Valley, California. Not exactly a low tax environment. Right. Generally they're not actually in Monaco or in Singapore or Dubai. Now I will say, you know, San Francisco has something utterly unique that I don't think we're ever going to be and no one else in the world has been able to emulate. But we have our own strengths too. And I keep saying this, you know, there are actually, and I speak to a lot of them and I know you speak a lot of them. There are actually really patriotic people in this country who said, some of whom say Z, some of whom I think might serve in our cabinet one day said I'm never leaving, I'll go down with the ship in this country. Now these people might be rarer than we would like, but they're extremely successful. They built, I mean I would, some of these people built some of the most iconic brands in the world as British people. And it's really, really nice to hear that. And as I said, I hope some of these people might actually end up serving in a reform cabinet under Nigel. But those people do exist. And one of the things that there are so many things that do make this country an attractive place to be, that if we just had a government that wasn't actively self harming, that wasn't actively enacting policies that as you said, chased these people away. I mean, instead of actually cracking down on crime and stopping people, arresting criminals, identifying and arresting criminals with steel smartphones, Sadiq Khan spends taxpayer money. Have you seen these? The Snatch Zones? I've seen the Snatch Zone paintings.

[Peter]

I know.

[Zia Yousef]

Which is like what you would see at Sea World. You remember in sh. Yeah. Shamu, this idea that, well, if you sit here, it's just inevitable that Shamu is going to splash you, if you see what I mean. You know, this sense of, well, if you, if you walk around with your phone in London, you should just expect and accept that somebody may well turn up in a balaclava on a mini bike and steal it.

[Peter]

It's normalizing decline. I don't like it. So we've seen it even just in the supermarkets. You go, you want to go and buy a bottle of wine or buy a steak, and there's all these countermeasures in place because people are stealing. It's like, can we just deal with the root cause?

[Zia Yousef]

It's actually relatively straightforward to do. You have, you arrest people and you put them in jail. But you see, this is where, again, it comes down to catastrophic mismanagement, too. So this country does have a massive shortage of prison places relative to the population size. So during the 14 years of Tory government, they shipped in 6 million net new people, 11 million gross. Now, even if you assume those people who arrived in that time to the country have the same propensity to commit crime, government data suggests that isn't true, but let's just assume that it is for the sake of this argument. Do you know how many prison places they built in that 14 years?

[Peter]

I, I, I believe it was a few hundred.

[Zia Yousef]

411. Yeah, 411. And you know what? The only reason we know that is because a Tory MP actually asked a question in, in Parliament. So it's on Hansard. So that sort of backfired him. 411. Not 411,411 net new prison places to deal with 6 million net new people. That's insane. They left the country with fewer hospital beds. That's. You can draw a straight line between that statistic and why people feel so unsafe and why people are worried about getting seriously ill. Now, it is also true that probably too many, too much of, too many of the prison places we have are being used up for people doing tweet crimes rather than stabbings. And, and you know, for example, there was a, a man who was released from jail early because of prison overcrowding. You know, this prison issue, who was an accessory, who'd been convicted of accessory to murder with a machete, and he's like, well, how does that make sense relative to all of the people that I'm sure we can name right now who are in jail because of something they tweeted out where there's no evidence actually that anything that they would have written that might have been, quote, insightful actually incited anything from happening. So. So again, two things can be true at the same time. But if we're serious about solving this problem, then we do have to go and build prison places very quickly. We do have to then change the incentives for police officers so that the way you get promoted is not by, you know, is not by arresting people for tweets. And to your point, end this idea of normalization, of decline. That's a brilliant phrase and I think it is. It captures, I think, this moment in time in Britain.

[Peter]

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[Zia Yousef]

Yes, it is.

[Peter]

Which would be great. But then on top of that, you probably want some tax incentives for companies bring their business here. Ireland has done a great job. You probably want other tax incentives. So you probably need to cut even more than 150 billion. Like how. How tough a job is that?

[Zia Yousef]

It's a very difficult job. We've already started a huge amount of work, actually got multiple work streams trying to forensically go through government budgets, for example, the quangos, hundreds of billions of pounds. Basically a black box. You know, the taxpayers alliance publishes something and it's good work, but it's just extremely difficult to actually get at where this money goes. And a lot of this is the legacy of Tony Blair and part of his, in my view, evil genius, but perhaps genius nonetheless in terms of doing this stuff. Was he interweaved an enormous amount of what? Of waste and things that we would want to cut with things that are actually really important. And so you got to be careful we don't throw the baby out with the bath water, to use the phrase. So what we're focused on is doing that work, doing the hard yards to understand where this money is going and then finding really significant cuts in public spending that are not going to meaningfully impact people's lives in a negative way. We think there is enough waste in this country in terms of taxpayer money being wasted that that is possible. Do you have an estimate, if you would ask me? I think we can get. I would like us to get to, you know, What I'm not going to give you a number right now only because it would be too speculative. Right. And people will hold you to it. It's actually less that. It's just that the work streams are underway and I will come on your show, we'll talk about it as we get more visibility on it. The risk is if I give a number then that you start optimize for that number rather than actually doing the work in what I want them to do right now, which is, is, which is quite a dispassionate way. Let's see where that comes out. But it will be significant. And as I said, I mean, look, a lot of this would be. So for example, net zero, where well north of 10 billion pounds a year is directly inside government budgets. Now one of the reasons that number is artificially low is because a lot of the money comes from fuel bill. So they don't count that because it's effectively taxation because you have no choice about whether you pay it or not. But it doesn't, it doesn't count as government spending per se. So they really understate the true cost of net zero. And that's just on the kind of direct cost side that doesn't include anything for the opportunity cost of having low energy costs and what that would have in terms of impact on GDP and tax revenues for the Exchequer and everyone living better lives. So I think we'll find for sure it'll be tens and tens of billions of pounds, you know, whether it's north of 100 billion. Let's see then what we need to do is, is work out a way of which tax cuts are going to be most multiplicative to economic growth. Right. Because yes, we want to start paying down the debt, but you know, it's, it's if, if your economy basically isn't growing, and I know we get, we eke out like point X percent growth, but if your economy isn't growing, then you're never going to be able to pay down that debt. And so again, it's, it's which tax cuts are going to make sense to, as, as we've talked about, attract. So first of all, retain the people who are most directly contributing to that tax revenue and to the Exchequer and attract as many people who will be significant additions to takings for the Exchequer. That's how we'll think about the economy from a first principles perspective. Again, a big part of that is energy. I mean, so much of what you need to do with the economy for government is not doing more Stuff, in many cases it's doing less stuff. And a lot of people don't get that. All of this freeport stuff and things, I don't really buy any. I think that's sort of the state trying to micromanage things. It can't. I mean, this is the same state that is basically now Monty Python sketch and releasing, you know, convicted sex offenders and then he's trying to go back into prison and he's being given money and sent to the station and told to go on his way. So I think we need to get the state out of the way in that way. We also need to sort out the regulatory environment for small businesses, medium business and also large businesses. I mean, Brexit gave this country this immense opportunity and that's what it was. It was an opportunity just on that.

[Peter]

So let me cut in there just because I often see people criticize Nigel for Brexit, but he campaigned for Brexit, but he didn't fumble the opportunity.

[Zia Yousef]

Right.

[Peter]

He wasn't in government.

[Zia Yousef]

Yes.

[Peter]

How do people not understand that?

[Zia Yousef]

Well, I think those people have Farage derangement syndrome or, you know, just coming at this with a. From a bad faith perspective, it is true that Britain has not made the most anything like what it should have of that opportunity. I will say this. I think you judge an event as seismic as Brexit, not on a, you know, on a decade long view, but on probably on a 50 to 100 year view. And I think judged on those terms, certainly this is the work we're doing. If Nigel wins, then I'm very confident it will be looked back upon as a real turning point for the positive for the country. But it was the Tories, remember who. I think it was actually Kemi Badenoch at the time, who had all of this regulation on her desk and could have taken away a lot of it. And she said, I'm not, because I quote, I'm a Conservative and not an arsonist. Thus, you know, in one fell swoop, rendering Brexit in many ways pointless. Right. Because you then we then stopped having a say in terms of a lot of the things actually happened inside the eu and then. But also said, we're going to be rule takers. So Britain is now, you know, just a total rule taker from the eu, is unable to impact it in a meaningful way. What should be happening is Britain should be making the most of. Because look, anyone seriously looking at Brexit understands that there are pros and cons of being part of the European Union, right? It's not like there's only pros in one direction, only cons. Any serious person understands that Britain has basically left all of the pros on the table. It just refused to embrace any of it because we have incompetent politicians. But also, I would argue a lot of the politicians who are in the cockpit at the time were Remainers who didn't believe in it. Right? So what reform is saying is, look again, this is actually the corollary to all of this that makes us feel positive and makes them feel optimistic is we actually don't need to be as good as America on this stuff, right? We don't. We just need to be much. We should be better than the European Union countries. And she isn't hard, right? Which, and I promise you, as much as I love, you know, I love France, I love. But these countries are also in a horrendous situation. And in my view, in many cases, I mean, I, I know we've got a lot of cultural issues in this country and we've got sectarianism. It's nowhere near as bad as it is in France, right? The level of political violence in France around sectarian lines is much, much worse than it is. Look at the German economy. The German economy is a, I mean, an unmitigated disaster, right? They have voluntarily basically laid waste to their industrial economy and that is going to have serious consequences. Now, some of these countries do advantages over us. France has 70% of their nuclear gener of their power capac nuclear, and they have big energy surplus and their net energy exporters, et cetera. Germany, very different. But we still have a lot going for us. So what we need to do is focus on, okay, how do we create a regulatory environment that is just so much better than any of these European countries? And that, as you said, that is not hard as long as you have the political will to do it. Now, we're not going to just slash and burn because some regulation, market failure does exist and some regulation is important. A lot of it is also giving people stability. This is a massively underrated thing. If the Tories have like three chancellors in three months and I speak to, you know, chief execs of companies in the nuclear space and say, well, how can we plan anything when we had like three chancellors in three months? So actually creating some stability and people get some confidence, okay, well, at least for a period of time, this is a government that's not only going to be there for a little while, but also is thinking about what this country would look like in 10 years, which, sadly, do you remember, there was a clip of Nick Clegg all those years ago talking about, well, I'm not a big fan of this nuclear stuff because it's only going to come on stream in like, 2017 or something. I can't remember the exact year, but, yeah, we look back on that, go, God, wouldn't we love to have that baseload capacity, energy capacity today.

[Peter]

We could be net zero.

[Zia Yousef]

Well, that's. That's the interesting thing. You know, we're not, you know, no one at reform is. Is religious about any of this stuff, right? We're not psychotically against renewables, right? We're against subsidies and we're against this insane situation where, you know, we are participating in international energy markets in the most insane way imaginable. You don't need to be a meteorologist or a climatologist to understand that, like, solar makes more sense in Nevada than it does in Lincolnshire, for example. So do renewables have a place in the British fleet? Of course, yeah, fine. But actually, we need a lot more nuclear, we need a lot more baseload. We need to be. So another chart you might be able to bring up is per capita energy capacity per cap, per capita energy production by country. And you see the UK just sort of trending down and Germany trending down even more, America sort of trending upward, and then China just absolutely vertical. Right. And what does powerful country mean? If you sort of start to tee up like what you would think of as powerful countries, it broadly translates to power generation per capita. They match up reasonably well. You know, if reform, if we are in this blue sky world where, you know, reform gets three terms, right, I think the UK will have virtually no carbon emissions by then, I really do, because we'll have so much nuclear capacity coming on stream. There's a lot of innovation coming in in that space as well. So, look, we want clean air for everybody to breathe, right? And we want the countryside to look lovely and we do care about the ecology and all of those things, but it is. There is no doubt that, you know, we have a. We have a situation at the moment where we are. There's this religious obsession with net zero beautifully encapsulated, by the way, that just yesterday our Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was off with a begging bowl in Saudi Arabia, of all places, to fill her black hole. She was saying, listen, I need. We need money. Please come and invest in the uk, Saudi Arabia. And I was. I tweeted, I will wait till she hears about their net Zero policies. They like the odds hydrocarbon in Saudi Arabia. So that's the craziness of this situation. And look, I think I'm really optimistic that we can get a lot of nuclear going very quickly. We will work with companies like Rolls Royce on, on smart technology. We'll need to sort the grid out as well and deliver that competently. I think we've got to look at things like fracking as well. I mean it's any and all means to collapse the price of energy as quickly as possible.

[Peter]

So you mentioned that if you had three terms.

[Zia Yousef]

So I mean very hypothetical but it's a fair point.

[Peter]

Turning around a tanker, it's 15 years. But that does mean you need a very good first term and there's going to be a lot of opposition to what you're doing ideological from different parties, from different media sources. It could get very dirty during pre election, during the election, post election. When you consider politics and you consider your role within politics and Nigel's role, other mps, how do you consider trying to bring everybody along but at the same time going with your gut instinct of what is right for the country? Because I know what I believe is right with regards to economics. I believe in smaller government, I believe in not having deficit spending. I believe in the incentives are going to all those things I believe in. There are a group of people who believe the opposite of me and I've tried to show evidence and debate, I've tried to bring them along and I just can't do it. There's certain people I know very well, I just cannot bring them alongside. So do you just need to win the argument with the right, the center ground and convince those who are maybe non voters last election didn't vote to go and vote or is this still an effort to try and bring along those.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean the nature of politics is, you know, there's a somewhat adversarial system of politics, right. That's what you have in these parliamentary democracies. And clearly now there's a very interesting time in British politics where you know, there's obviously multiple parties as you go poll really for the first time in four parties, reform is a 10 point lead and then basically four parties in a dead heat. It's extraordinary. Now I think it's both things. So number one we look there are always going to be people who are never going to agree with us, right? Maybe to the left of us, maybe to the right of us on social issues or economic issues or whatever. There are some People who will say there should be no borders at all here. Yeah, more borders are immoral. Why should we have nuclear weapons? We should lead by example and destroy our nuclear weaponry. Those people are going to exist and some of those people are now voting, saying that they would vote for the Green Party. I'm pessimistic that we are going to be able to reach such people, but I'm optimistic because they don't represent. There's just not that many people who actually think we should destroy our nuclear deterrent or legalize all drugs and make landlords legal, for example. Now, that being said, it is important and incumbent on us to try to make the case to as many people as possible. I sincerely believe that logic is on our side and that means that the preponderance of evidence is on our side too. So when we say things like, for example, Right, let's give you an example of the, quote, employment Rights Bill, Orwellian name, or we like to call it the Unemployment Rights bill. Right. Employment rights don't mean very much if you're unemployed. Right. And so I tweeted out the other day that Rachel Reeves has increased the cost and risk in hiring people and appears to be shocked that businesses are hiring less, fewer people. Right. That's basically what's happened. They increased national insurance contributions by 2%, made employing people more expensive, and then brought in this bill, which means that it's just a lot more risky for business, particularly small and medium sized businesses that don't have big legal teams and don't have huge balance sheets to be able to shore them up to go and hire people. And that means that fewer people will get hired. What's happened since then? Unemployment has risen to multi year highs, Payroll numbers have come down, there are fewer people employed. So when I say logic is on our side, I actually mean logic is on our side. I don't know what it would be like. I couldn't imagine being a politician where I was just routinely on the wrong side of logic and how the real world works. I don't. If you want evidence, if you want to ask somebody how that feels, you go and speak to Rachel Reeves. Right. Because me and you and most people watching this show probably could have told it what was going to happen if you do these things.

[Peter]

Well, we've, we're, we're about to pull out of a business we're about to launch because all the incentives of an investor, of a business owner have been taken away and all the risk has been put onto us.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And you know, when you're looking at launching a new business as a half million pound investment, and you can't figure out how you can actually make any money or that you might be able to. You might be able to, within three years, break even. The incentive is open source. And so then I look at that and I go, well, how do they not understand this? Or do they understand it?

[Zia Yousef]

Well, look, so I have a view that as someone, you know what it's like to be in a difficult economic situation, your business isn't doing as well as you'd like, maybe it's doing quite badly at the time. And you've got payroll to make and, you know, you've got employees who are relying on you. They're the breadwinners in the family and they've got kids. And those kids are therefore indirectly relying on you. And you know, that burden of pressure that you carry on those shoulders, I know what that's like. I've dealt with that multiple times in my business career. And my view is that unless you. I've said this, Nigel, too, unless you know what that feels like, it's very difficult to understand how people will respond to your policies. And that doesn't mean everyone in our cabin needs to be like that. That's not the case. We need some. You need a few. You need a few. Labor have nobody who've ever made any sort of important decisions at systems level at all. So, you know, I think where we are now is we've got to, as we've talked about, sort out the regulatory environment, break this narrative that there is a zero sum situation between workers and employers. And as I said, that bill is a disaster because what it's resulting in is fewer people having jobs. Same with minimum wage. Once it gets beyond a certain. But we all understand this. Well, I mean, we're not far away from. I genuinely. It's only maybe two steps away. Zach Polanski is from just announcing that it's official green policy that they will pass legislation to make everyone in the country a millionaire. I mean, I don't know how much further we go, honestly. It's that level of sort of childlike naivety and lack of understanding. So. But, you know, but I do want to preface what I'm saying again, I want to underscore, like, inequality does matter. Right. And. But first of all, we've got to focus on growing the pie. And that's the vision we have at Reform for Britain. And that's what Nigel will work really hard to deliver. Which is, again, I keep saying, a country that's, you know, Britain that's proud, has confidence in itself again, is rich and powerful, but then takes everybody with it. Doesn't mean everyone has the same amount of money, but it means that everyone has an equality. There's a sense of equality of opportunity, which is really important to me. And everybody feels like their life is improving, which means real wages actually going up. You know, what's really interesting is when we announced our policy on ilr, you know, basically we're going to abolish indefinite leave to remain. Right. And we're going to say, look, either you're going to be here on a renewable work visa and there will be salary threshold. So basically we're just going to ask that if you're a migrant here, you speak English to a good standard, you contribute more than you take from the state economically, and you don't commit crime.

[Peter]

You sound like a fascist.

[Zia Yousef]

I know. And that was sort of, you know, this was sort of an end of days front page, the Guardian. But what was interesting is a lot of the pushback we got was from business saying, zia, that's going to cause wages to go up for British workers. Yeah, it's a good thing. Now, look, I know what inflation is and I understand inflation is not a good thing, but the flip side of that is there was an interview with Boris Johnson recently, someone who I'm not exactly the biggest fan of. I think he's the worst Prime Minister the country's ever had because of the betrayal in particular. But he said, oh, when he was confronted with the Boris wave thing, he said, well, you know, we didn't know how many were coming at the time, and I was told that wages were going up, so we just had to open the borders. I'm paraphrasing, but again, this idea that the treasury has, that British workers earning more money is this horrendous and horrific thing. No, it's actually broadly speaking, you want real wages to be going up. Now, the key issue are the price of goods and services going up commensurately, or more importantly than that. And that's the thing that we got to look at now. What is the number one cause of prices going up? It's money printing.

[Peter]

Money printing.

[Zia Yousef]

And that's not an argument most people hear, partly because it's quite arcane and abstract. But how do you stop the money printing? By not having to run constant deficits all of the time. And this idea of sort of living within your means sounds really boring, but it's actually the key to.

[Peter]

I mean, we all have to do it in life. If you run a business or run a home, you have to live within your means.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah. And look, there is this new thing, you know, this modern monetary theory. It has been proven to be nonsense. There was a sort of a period where, you know, people thought it was Stephanie Kelton.

[Peter]

Do you know her?

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's all, it's all. It's all nonsense. But. But again, we talk about. There are people who believe that. Now you had Andy Burnham, you know, this guy who popped up, you know, the man of the people guy who doesn't know what a woman is or any of these things. He popped up, basically, and sort of pseudo challenged Keir Starmer for the leadership, then realized he wasn't an MP and kind of just backed down and went back in his box. Quite funny. But what was interesting is he made some comments about how or Britain has got to stop being enthralled to the bond markets. Do you remember that? And actually, if you look at the movement in the credit markets, Britain's bonds, our guilt actually moved on his comments because he was seen as a potential successor, obviously, to Keir Starmer. He's certainly an analog for whatever comes after Starmer. Right. Whatever comes after Starmer will not be more rational, it will be less rational. Something like that. And here's the funny thing. The bond markets are not these abominable old men in pinstripe suits with a top hat, smoking cigars, cackling in laughter as they make Britain poor. It's just people who lend money to Britain. It's very rational decision making. Yeah, that's it. And so the way you stop being, quote, enthralled to bond markets is by not needing to constantly go to bond markets to borrow new money. It's as simple as that. It is as simple as that. So that's why it's got to be a focus for us to find the savings that we need. The vast majority. I think we can find a lot of savings. We're already finding them. Ones that, I mean, some of them are not only going to not be negatively impactful, some of them will improve people's lives. You know, scrapping dei, scrapping the net zero stuff, that's going to improve a lot of people's lives in this country. But there are going to be some difficult choices that we have to make, at least in the short term, in the short run, to give ourselves the space, as I said. And that was the issue with the Liz Truss situation. And I do have sympathy for the idea, it's clear the bank of England did all sorts of stuff there that was underhand and totally unfair. I will say this too. It wasn't the bank of England who removed Liz Truss. It was her colleagues in the Conservative Party that made a position untenable. So I will make that point too. Is the structure of the Conservative Party more than anything else, which is why our view is that party is why it's gone extinct. Needed to. But I will say this, that if it were me, I would have had more spending cuts in there and I think announcing a lot of the tax cuts that she did, some of which we'd agree with. I think that doing so in a manner that was not commensurate with finding the appropriate savings. Certainly in hindsight you can see how markets reacted to that. And again, we live in the real world, not a fantasy. Jeremy Corbyn Zach Polanski World so the short answer is for the economy is we find really significant savings, certainly hundreds of billions over the course of Nigel's first term. That like without a shadow of doubt, which will be, you know, that's pretty serious. And then as a, the majority, vast majority of that, I don't think certainly the majority will not have meaningful impact, I would argue, on people's day to day lives. And then, and then find the tax cuts and this is what we're doing now, which tax cuts are going to be most multiplicative to economic growth? And then focus, you know, our primary KPI economically is not gdp. GDP per capita.

[Peter]

Yeah. Right.

[Zia Yousef]

Because if you're growing the economy slightly slower than the rate at which you grow, you know, nobody gets sat down. If you get sat down by your boss at work and they say, you know, good news and bad news. The bad news is your pay is staying the same, but the good news is payroll for the company has gone up 5%. That, that's not good news to you. It's just irrelevant. Right. And actually it's worse than that because in a country obviously there's only so many hospital beds, there's only so many gps, there's only so many police officers and firefighters. And you get the point. There's only so many roads. And so we're going to focus on GDP per capita. We've got to, as I said, lean into our strengths, of which there are many financial services. I think we can be world leaders in new age manufacturing. I think we can be leaders in biotechnology, in artificial intelligence. That might sound far fetched given we have like virtually no compute capacity. We just don't have data centers relative to other countries. But you know, it's been proven those can be built pretty quickly. And those Nvidia GPUs do actually kind of depreciate quite quickly. You know, there are new ones coming out all of the time. So with a. You know, one of the things that's most exciting about the policy work we're doing at the moment is actually the work we're doing on building. How do we make a country which builds at a speed much more like it did when Isambard Kingdom Brunel was blazing a trail for the world. Right. Beautiful architecture we can be really proud of. I actually think that's a really a big part of making people feel good about their lives. Yes, wages and salaries and things matter, but their day to day life matters. And you know, really interesting conversation we've been having recently is about high streets. So people say, well, you know, how are you going to stop the hollowing out of the high street? And what you realize is when you talk to people on the doorstep, it's like having a nice high street really matters to people.

[Peter]

I can tell you how you can fix a high street right now. We've been trying to fix in our town. We've got two businesses in the town centre. We base ourselves there. You know about my private security. Look, the problem with the high street is it has to be safe and clean and tidy. People want to go to somewhere that's just nice but also has to have shops, has to have a reason to go. Retail parks are safe and they have big national chains but they don't have boutique, cute little shops. But it is so hard to make money now because of business rates, rents and employment law. I would personally I would scrap business rates within, on high streets and in town centers, just eliminate them and provide the opportunity to open businesses. But the bigger problem is the decline in the country. The decay we talked about is, is, is highlighted in your town centers where we have HMOs, builders being converted HMOs because the incentive for the landlords is builder HMOs. They've got guaranteed higher rental incomes from the local council. Of course, at no risk by the way, no risk. They've got statutory demands that force the councils to do what they have to do. So our town centre has had an issue that has been plagued by drug addicts, alcoholics and the issues that come with that, which is shoplifting, which is harassment of shoppers, which is violence, which is crime. If you can eliminate that in a town Centre and then provide the incentives to go in. You can turn the town centre around. But there's a lot of work to be done that unfortunately all the councils are going broke because of all the statutory demands and the cuts in funding. That's a real issue. The connection between Westminster and the councils is really hard.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And that's another thing was like, well, if you. That's another tax that, if you got rid of the business rates in the town centre, that's less income for the government as well. So I know the answers, but I see the challenges.

[Zia Yousef]

Yeah. And look, I think all of those are really interesting ideas and points. And so where I was going to go with this is if we say that actually having a nice high street is just a social good and it's something people want and actually if just left to its own devices, let's be honest, in the world of Amazon, it's just gonna, you're just gonna get more hollowing out that. That is going to say, put another way, if, if there's a plurality of people in this country for whom, no matter where they live, having a nice vibrant high street that they would enjoy walking down in the summer getting an ice cream or getting coffee or going, buying something that is something they want to have in their lives and not having it is a form of market failure. And this is where you get into this whole small state, big state debate, which I think is much less relevant than the practical elements of what people. People want. Okay, so then that means if left to their own devices, those high streets would just hollow out because of Amazon and online shopping and, you know, all the reasons that those companies just cannot compete with Jeff Bezos. In that case, the state must intervene. How can it intervene? As you said, by eliminating or at least cutting significantly business rates or maybe for small business or however you want to think about it now, then you think, okay, well that's going to cost money. Okay, it'll cost money. So how do you generate enough savings to do that? And this is the point. There's going to be a balance, right, between finding savings and things that don't add value to people's lives in that way and then investing in things that people value. Now, you also touched on a really critical point too, which taps into the work we're doing with Danny Krueger at the moment around preparation for government and re architecting the state. Because as you've just pointed out, business rates and things, it's like so many of these systems are so dysfunctional and broken and the incentives are totally wrong. So if you speak to councillors and officers in the council, all they're trying to do is ruthlessly cut things, including things people really value. Like they're basically choosing which park to cut to close and which library to close to fund adult social care, which they have no control over the parameters of who gets it and who does. So there's a massive. We know for a fact whether you're left ring, white ring, whatever your views are on these things, whether more people should get taxis to school or fewer. There's a massive democratic deficit here because people vote for councillors thinking they're involved in potholes and they're going to fix those and they're going to sort out the parks. And actually, the vast majority of council budgets are social care and statutory mandatory things from the government, of which the councillors have absolutely no ability to change. So we're already working on plans to fix that democratic deficit, right? So that whoever is. It can't, you know, if whoever is the person, a department making the decision about who gets free taxis to school at the tax at the taxpayer's expense is also accountable for the budget from which that comes. And that is just not the case at the moment. So.

[Peter]

So more autonomy for the councils.

[Zia Yousef]

Well, so we're doing work at the moment. I'm not going to tell you what the prescription is going to be. I think what we're going to need to do is. Well, what I will say for sure is, as I said, we're going to close that deficit, right? So if it cannot be a. The current situation is insane, where people at local level have the vast majority of their budget they have absolutely no control over, and it's spiraling totally out of control. I mean, if you look at the population of SCND children, for example, in one of our councils, that's compounding at almost 15% a year from a big base. And every single one of those is a tax, is a liability in the thousands of pounds for the taxpayer. Now, let me be clear. There are send kids in this country, they absolutely should get help from the state, and that's really, really important. But the speed at which diagnoses are rocketing. You know, I say this again, if everybody needs help from the state and says they need help from the state, then in the end nobody gets any help from the state. You know, there's actually no bigger loser from that situation than the people who truly need the help. So that's the work that we're doing at the moment. I'm not saying we have all of the answers yet. But I want to give you a sense and people watching this program to get a sense of how first principles we are in terms of looking Again, I don't think any other party, I mean, if we achieve our goal of going from like five MPs, hopefully close to 400 MPS in one go, I don't think any party will ever have had, nor will ever have an opportunity to sort these problems out in the way that we have an opportunity to. Which is why we started all this work already.

[Peter]

I want to talk to you about one of my sponsors, Incogni. And that means we're going to talk about the weird world of spam. And I don't just mean those spam emails that you get day after day from companies you never heard of and companies you've never signed up to. I'm also talking about those spam phone calls you get from those people who seem to know a little bit too much about you trying to get your bank details. It's all a bit creepy right now. This all comes from the world of data brokerage. There are companies out there collecting your data, building profiles and sending that data to anyone who wants it. Which is why when one of those scammers phones you up, they seem to know everything about you. Now, I've tried, I've tried myself to get off these lists, try to get off the phone lists, try to get off the email list. I unsubscribe from every one of these emails that comes in. But this game of Whack a mole, it just never ends. And so this is where Incogni comes in. They do all the hard work for you. They reach out to these companies and they will get you legally removed from these lists. And I know because last time they sponsored my show, I signed up and I didn't take the free option that they offered me. I wanted to pay for it. I wanted to see if you get value for money. And they removed me from 79 data broker lists. And so I've stayed on, I've stayed a subscriber and I have seen a massive decrease in the number of emails and phone calls I've been getting. So it's a great service. I recommend you check it out. If you're sick of this like I was, please head over to incogni.com Peter and sign up. If you use the code, Peter, you will get a lovely 60% discount. So that's incogni.com Peter. It seems overwhelming, but also exciting at the same time in that it seems you have a very clear vision that this can be turned around. It just requires intelligence and backbone, but also must be overwhelming.

[Zia Yousef]

It is definitely the case that as you peel back the onion, there's just ever more sort of problems that emerge. But I think it was Steve Jobs, and I'm paraphrasing here, where he talked about so much of solving a problem is being able to really clearly define what that problem is. And I don't think that's really been done very much in British politics because there's a lot of learned helplessness. And I get that, by the way, because no matter what party you are, if you're sitting there as a councillor and a. You're part time, you know, and so you ask like, who, who runs councils? Well, if the CEO earns £230,000 a year and the council leader earns, you know, a fifth of that, you ask yourself who's running the council, right. And then you ask again what people's incentives are and the gold plated pensions that exist. And so there's not really any incentive for anyone to sort of say, well, let's actually look at this at first principles. But moreover, even if there was no one at council, have us any power to do it. And then to do it at parliamentary level requires a lot of political capital and basically requires a big majority of people who actually want to do those things. And then you've also got to risk adjust for the fact that, let's say we were to do all of those things, Peter, you know, if you're not simultaneously then making those changes that we just talked about, so that councils are empowered with enough autonomy to make the decisions in line with what their local voters want. You know, their local voters want a lovely high street. They can start to optimize for that. As you've just pointed out at the moment, again, regardless of the political party here, this is actually a partisan point. No council in this country can do the things that we're talking about.

[Peter]

They're all broke.

[Zia Yousef]

They're all broke, but broke because broke in a manner in which they are unable to fix structurally.

[Peter]

Before I close it, is there anything you want to ask on. You're a younger voter.

[Zia Yousef]

My only question is that when I think, when people think of reform, or especially me, I see Zia Yousef as quite a key player. And ever since you stepped down as chairman, I think your role seems a little bit obscure. What is the future? Is it planning for a seat in the next election or are you just batman in the shadows who is doing all the work but has no title.

[Peter]

Hey, you trying to take my job comes in with the big question.

[Zia Yousef]

Well look, the party's in a very different position from when I took over as, as chairman, you know. So when I took as chairman there basically was no real organization, there were no branches, there were basically lacked anything that would be characteristic. A characteristic, characteristic of a political party. Since I've come back, you know, I've, I'm now on the board of the party. I've obviously now I'm head of policy and you know, if, and all the work Danny's doing, you know, I'm obviously working with him very closely as well in terms of preparation for government. So it is true that probably still, and this is, was the same when I was chairman, the majority of the stuff I do for the party is like, you know, is not in the public eye. That is true. I mean even before we started filming, you know, working on some detail on policy and stuff and some things that we're going to announce. I take as much satisfaction as in that though maybe even more than I do in the public from the public facing stuff because that is the stuff. I mean, that's why I came into politics. And I didn't come into politics because I like to perform for the camera. I'm quite an introverted person. I came into politics, I love the country. I want people like yourselves to have the same opportunity set that I had as a young person. And I see that going the wrong way. And one of the big problems you've had in politics, I would say because of the incentive structures we talked about this last time, is the incentive structure in politics in this country is everyone's just optimizing for their own power on a 72 hour timeframe. Meaning I've seen people in politics incredibly diminish their own power on a seven day view in order to increase it on a 24 hour view. Everyone's just trying to win the next news cycle and that's why there's a total lack of seriousness inside the Commons at the moment. Again, we have this unique opportunity to go and do some incredible things for the country. That's the work that we're doing in terms of a seat. Yeah, I would like to be, I'm on the record saying, I'm happy to say it, I really would like to be an MP. I think as much as I disdain most MPs that are currently there, I think that you can have more impact as a member of Parliament. But we've just got so much work to do and I just want to help basically in any way I can.

[Peter]

Is it hard? Is it rough?

[Zia Yousef]

It's really difficult. But I just find I've always wanted to do difficult things. I mean, why would you not? I mean, you know, I've, you know, I studied the lse, I didn't come for money. I worked at a couple of investment banks and I left my job at quite prestigious investment bank and started a company from scratch which, you know, probabilistically did not have much chance of succeeding. Most people at a bank were telling me, z, you're insane, you're making a really bad decision. It was the hard thing, it was the risky thing. I did it, it was exactly the same coming into politics. Remember this was just before the general election Reform had no MPs and when I took over as chairman turned it really into full time reform had five MPs we were at 14% support levels. So it was still a very risky thing to do. And it's kind of a one way street, right, going into the front line in politics and you know what you're doing. But look at where we are today. We have this incredible, obviously a long way to go, but we have this unbelievable opportunity. I will say this, I wake up in the morning really early, I don't need an alarm clock. I wake up really early and at least most days I'm hugely excited about getting on with the task at hand. And that's despite the, the online abuse you get and you know, Guardian journalists sending through, you know, grenades in Your, in your WhatsApps via the press team every other day. Because I know why I'm doing it. And having sold my company a couple of years ago, I said I'm in the blessed position of not needing to work for money anymore. And I really believe this will be the most important, impactful work that I'll ever do.

[Peter]

Okay, last thing. At some point I want to get deep into policy with you. I've got pages here with stuff we didn't cover. How's it going to work? Will it be drip feed up until a certain period before the election or is there a period in time where will have a clear picture of the things that reform will be done?

[Zia Yousef]

So a bit of both in the sense that, I mean if you do about policy, you're talking about everything from Ministry of Defence procurement through the housing, through the health, through the tax, through the regulation and finance, you know, so it is, it is in that sense it is daunting. Right. And you've got to create something that's holistic and, and cohesive. So we will announce things. I mean, tomorrow we're going to be announcing some things on, on some, some savings that we found to reduce public spending. So we will announce things like that, like our Britannia car policy, our Operation Restoring Justice Mass Deportations policy or the ILR abolition policy. You will get more things like that. But then we will then have our manifesto ahead of the general election. So I wouldn't expect us to, you know, throw the manifesto out there too early, not least because it's a moving target, sadly, you know, you're trying to prescribe the solution to problems which are deteriorating at an accelerating pace under labor.

[Peter]

All right, well, we'll keep these conversations going. I think we could have come for hours, but yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Very interested to see the reform policy agenda. And good luck to you.

[Zia Yousef]

Thank you.

[Peter]

Thank you to everyone for listening.