#159 - Matt Goodwin - It Might Already Be Too Late For Britain

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Peter McCormack Show
Episode #159: "It Might Already Be Too Late For Britain"
Guest: Matt Goodwin
Date: March 23, 2026

Overview

This episode features Matt Goodwin, political scientist and author of Suicide of a Nation, discussing the deep shifts, challenges, and potential futures of Britain's political landscape. The conversation, led by Peter McCormack, spans electoral realities, the rise of Reform UK, demographic changes, economic decline, youth prospects, the impact of radical parties (Greens, RESTORE), and the psychology behind British politics. Goodwin contends that an existential crisis is at hand, where pragmatic yet radical reform is essential to prevent irreversible national decline. The tone is urgent, candid, and at times confrontational, as both men dissect what it would take to “save” the country.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Political Fragmentation and Populism

• Inexperience and Chaos: Goodwin warns that new outsider movements, like RESTORE, are filled with passionate but inexperienced activists who risk creating "complete chaos" if put in positions of power ([00:28], [62:00], [64:00]).

  • "When you fill a political party with amateurs and inexperienced activists, however well intentioned they are… the end result is often complete chaos." — Goodwin [00:28]

• Reform vs. Greens: Goodwin and McCormack explore whether new populist parties (Greens, Reform) are simply different forms of anti-establishment backlash. Goodwin sees Greens as radicalized progressives and sectarian opportunists, while Reform occupies an uncompromising but pragmatic space on the right ([10:00], [43:00], [116:00]).

• Notable Moment:

  • "The Greens are actually a very dark, sinister organization that are mainstreaming sectarianism and some really, really dark shit that's going to tear our country apart." — Goodwin [27:00]

2. The Gorton & Denton By-Election — A Microcosm

• Demographic Divides: Goodwin shares his candid, often alarming, on-the-ground experiences in Gorton and Denton, illustrating how election contests are increasingly split along ethnic and sectarian lines ([01:44]–[05:52]):

  • “We won Gorton and Denton among white Brits, but we lost heavily among minority ethnic communities. That is a symbol… areas of the country will basically become beyond reach.” — Goodwin [03:35]
  • Reports of alleged block voting, family voting irregularities, and a sense of "losing not just our country, but our democracy" ([02:53]).

• Need for Systemic Reform: He calls for radical changes to postal voting, clampdowns on illegal voting, and ending Commonwealth voting ([04:20]).

3. Demographic Change & British Identity

• Nation in Transformation: Goodwin argues that the scale and speed of demographic change are underestimated, and that this, rather than just immigration policy, is shaking the foundations of national identity ([07:08]).
  • “Demographic change at a speed and a scale that even now, people are not really sure… of just how profound this change is going to be.” — Goodwin [07:08]
• Integration & Cohesion: Advocates for policies that prioritize those "who belong to this country, who are tax paying, law abiding British citizens," regardless of background, but is critical of any mass deportation rhetoric ([85:57]–[91:10]).

4. Greens, Sectarianism, and the Limits of Radicalism

• Greens Accused of Sectarianism: Goodwin accuses the Greens of mobilizing votes through "tribal block voting" and pandering to sectarian interests—especially in Muslim communities—raising concerns about identity politics replacing national unity ([08:41]–[10:38]).
• Identity Politics & Radicalization: Parallels are drawn between how both sides see each other as “radicalized,” with mutual accusations flying ([13:36]).

5. Economic Crisis, Decline, and the Future for Youth

• Decay and Decline: McCormack worries that even Reform might only "slow the decay" of Britain, not reverse it ([83:20]).

  • “I refuse to vote for decay… If you don’t fix the economics, it doesn’t matter.” — McCormack [06:55], [99:28]

• Social Contract for Young People: Goodwin insists the state must prioritize its citizens with access to housing, opportunity, and support for families, proposing radical measures like state-backed ultra-low-interest mortgages for large families ([84:53]–[101:31]).

• Notable Quote:

  • "If we keep going as we're going… we're just not going to have a country left." — Goodwin [01:22], [103:45]

• Attacks on Small Businesses: Both lament the high tax and regulatory burden strangling SMEs, which are vital to youth employment and national vitality ([100:06]).

6. The Right Path: Pragmatism vs. Purity

• Critique of RESTORE and "Online Extremes": Goodwin maintains that extreme or vague rhetoric alienates mainstream voters, referencing historical failures of "amateur revolts" ([68:00]–[74:00]).
  • “British people will never, ever, ever get behind RESTORE in a big way. It will never happen.” — Goodwin [74:38]
• Need for Experienced Leadership: Argues for a "dominant faction" in Reform: a mix of anti-establishment outsiders with the experience to execute complex change ([56:48]).
• McCormack’s Skepticism: Peter voices distrust of ex-Conservatives joining Reform, fearing infiltration by the "Uni Party" and loss of grassroots authenticity ([60:00]–[61:52]).

7. Institutional Capture and State Power

• Both discuss how the British state and institutions have been “captured,” “corrupt,” or “rotting,” and the challenges of truly revolutionary change in practice ([07:08], [53:06], [53:55]).
• Notable Reference:
  • Curtis Yarvin’s idea of needing “100% regime change” in the UK to actually “fix” Britain ([51:00]).

8. Economic Foundation & Inflation

• Inflation as Core Threat: McCormack cites inflation and the corrosive effect on the working class as a root crisis, praising figures like Argentina’s Javier Milei for cutting the state and fighting inflation ([112:50]–[117:22]).

  • “You can remove every immigrant from the country—if the state continues to grow and continues to extract wealth, we’re fucked.” — McCormack [99:35]

• Goodwin believes Reform is as radical as possible within electoral realities, but is "not going to be unrealistic" about how fast economic reforms can be enacted ([118:05]).

9. Pensions and Demographic Trap

• Discusses the "population trap" of trying to fix aging with constant new migration, calling it a Ponzi scheme. Advocates for family policy and getting welfare claimants back into work as partial solutions ([104:48]–[109:05]).

10. On Optimism vs. Fatalism

• While McCormack expresses doubts that any party can reverse decline, Goodwin is adamant that radical, but not extremist, reform can deliver real change ([39:05], [118:45]).
  • “I reject the idea that we can’t change things. This is Britain, for goodness sake.” — Goodwin [39:11]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Campaigning Realities:
  • “Without doubt… running for the by election was the hardest thing I’ve ever done by a long way… canvas four times a day, every day, under constant heavy attack from all sides.” — Goodwin [20:55]
  • "We had thousands of reform activists coming up to campaign...that is incredibly motivating." — Goodwin [21:30]
• On the Media and Political Attacks:
  • "Labour, the party that campaigns against misinformation, decided they'd splice it...make it look like I was dissing Manchester." — Goodwin [22:55]
  • "The default reaction is to always blame the straight white man in front of them so they don’t have to talk about problems within minority communities." — Goodwin [23:23]
• On Policy Pragmatism:
  • “The answer is not to then wander off into the political abyss and think you’re going to change the country by becoming ever more extreme.” — Goodwin [79:40]
• On Immigration Rhetoric:
  • “If you go and knock on their door and you say, look, I’m so angry with this country, my main policy offering here is mass deportations…they’re simply gonna close the door in your face and say that shit sounds extreme.” — Goodwin [80:57]
• On Welfare and Youth:
  • “One million people, your son’s age, 18 to 25, not in education, not in employment, and not in training. That should be an absolute scandal.” — Goodwin [109:36]
• On the Young and Reform:
  • “I would be joining my local reform branch…I would be looking ahead at a very promising career in politics in a party that can genuinely not just slow decline, but introduce the most radical program for government since Tony Blair.” — Goodwin [84:58]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:44]–[05:52]: Goodwin's experiences and revelations from Gorton & Denton by-election
• [07:08]: On demographic change and its speed
• [10:38]: How Greens mobilize along sectarian lines
• [13:36]: On mutual accusations of radicalization
• [20:55]: The grueling reality of political campaigning
• [27:00]: The Greens as a “sinister organization”
• [36:43]: Differences between the "new left" and old left
• [39:11]: Can the country be saved?
• [51:00]: C. Yarvin’s “100% regime change” for the UK
• [62:00]: Amateurs vs. experience in politics
• [68:00]–[74:00]: Critique of RESTORE and "online extremism"
• [80:57]: The risk of “extremism” and the pragmatism of Reform
• [83:20]: McCormack’s skepticism that Reform can do more than slow decay
• [84:53]: The urgent need for a new social contract for young people
• [91:01]: The "Boris wave" and its implications for migration policy
• [100:06]–[101:31]: Youth opportunity, small businesses, and economics
• [104:48]: Population trap and why more migration won’t solve pensions
• [109:36]: Welfare, youth unemployment, and national apathy
• [112:50]: Inflation as the core economic threat
• [116:31]: The allure—and limits—of radical economic rhetoric
• [118:45]: Goodwin’s closing optimism

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Summary Table: Major Points of Comparison

| Topic | Reform UK | RESTORE/Online Right | Greens | |----------------------|-------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------|----------------------------------| | Approach | Radical, but pragmatic; anti-establishment| More radical, less pragmatic; extreme | Identity politics, sectarianism | | Immigration | End illegal migration, Boris wave rollback| Call for mass/re-migration, “doubling”| Open borders, pro-migration | | Demographic Policy | Pro-family, national preference | Vague, hardline on removals | Identity/sectarian prioritization| | Economic Model | Lower taxes, pro-business, anti-inflation | Sledgehammer rhetoric, radical shrink | State redistribution | | Institutional Reform | Targeted, aware of capture | All or nothing, regime change | Capture for progressive causes |

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Conclusion

This episode is a deep dive into the existential anxieties gripping the British electorate, the meaning of national identity, and the stark choices facing voters in an era of rapid social and political change. Goodwin is a passionate, combative voice for pragmatic, but uncompromising, reform, while McCormack channels widespread voter cynicism and fear of merely “slowing decay.” The dialogue traverses not only electoral tactics—youth, class, and culture—but also the ultimate question: Is it already too late, or can Britain truly be saved? The only certainty is that Britain stands at a crossroads, and that the next steps must be both bold and realistic if real change is to be achieved.

Transcript

[A]

Let's have this out properly. What I see happening around Restore the People I see trying to organize that political movement have insufficient political experience. They will be blown apart at a general election or at a by election.

[B]

Do you understand the fear that somebody like I have as a voter with what's happening with reform? Zahawi? No thanks. Nadine Norris? No thanks. Generic is a, is a problem for me. It's a real problem for me.

[A]

When you fill a political party with amateurs and inexperienced activists, however well intentioned they are, however much they believe in the country, the end result is often complete chaos.

[B]

So it was Rupert's rhetoric of taking a sledgehammer to the state. I think he said it would make Javier Milei blush. That's what I'm drawn to.

[A]

Well, we're all drawn to things that sound very radical and engaging, but aren't always very practical. But the answer to that is not to then wander off into the political abyss and think you're going to change the country by becoming ever more extreme.

[B]

So I refuse to vote for decay, I refuse to accept decay and I fear that with reform the best they can do is slow the decay. Because I think if we don't fix the economics of this country, it doesn't matter.

[A]

No, I agree.

[B]

It's not the immigration stuff like say you can fix the immigration. If you don't fix the economics, we're still going to be in poverty.

[A]

I mean, if we keep going as we're going, I mean we're just not going to have a country left.

[B]

Matt, your book came out yesterday, Suicide of a Nation, where you argue the British public is furious and desperate for change. Can you tell me what happened up in Gorton and Denton? What did you see?

[A]

What I saw is lots of people who believe firmly that they're losing their country and that is also what the book is about. But in Gorton and Denton, I went from door to door listening to people tell me that this isn't about policy anymore. It's not about who should be the best prime minister, who should be in the next government. It's about are we going to save our country? It's very civilizational out there in the country. People are just saying, look, unless we turn the tide at the next general election, it might be too late. That that is the mood. And in Gorton and Denton that's what I kept coming across on the doorstep. And the reality is I ended up basically coming second, but losing to an alliance of Greens and Islamists. That's how I would describe it. And I felt like I was in a sort of French novel being outflanked by this alliance of Muslim left activists. And it made me realize we're losing not just our country, but our democracy. And if you want to fix Britain, before you can do that, you have to fix our democracy.

[B]

Was the seat winnable?

[A]

Yes. Yeah. So in order to win that seat, what you needed to happen was you needed the core reform vote to mobilize with some non voters, a bit like Brexit people that aren't usually interested in politics. And they would have come behind. A lot of them did come behind reform. But then we needed the left vote to split. Now what happened is, yes, the left vote did split, but it leaned much more in the green direction than we needed. I mean, if you just look at the demographics of that seat for a minute, Savaish and the pollster have actually looked at this. So we won Gorton and Denton among white Brits, but we lost heavily among minority ethnic communities. And that is a symbol, I think it's a warning sign of what's going to happen over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years as the trends I talk about in the book begin to reshape Britain and large areas of the country will basically become beyond reach. And they will be subjected to the things that I witnessed and Nigel Farage witnessed in Gorton and Denton, which is tribal block voting, illegal family voting, coercive behavior, abuse of electoral practice. Lots of people who aren't British voting got about two and a half million people in Britain who are allowed to vote but are not British citizens. And we just came away from that. And we said, look, we got to prioritize reforming the political system because if we don't reform politics by dramatically slashing postal votes, by banning or clamping down on illegal family voting and ending commonwealth voting, if we don't do all those things, forget about saving your country, it's not going to happen.

[B]

When you were going door to door and meeting people, obviously you probably had a range of experiences. You would have met people who were like, great reform, you've got my vote, love it, Matt. But you also must have met people who dislike reform. I'm intrigued to hear the people who weren't going to vote for you. What were they saying? Not about reform. I know their argument against reform, but what were they saying was the problem, the things that they wanted fixed?

[A]

I had some hostile people, not that many actually, but I did have one lady, a kind of middle aged cat lady, open the door in a dressing gown and she said, GB News Reform uk, you're a wanker. I kind of laughed. I said, ok, there you go. And I had a few hostile conversations. People just say, no, not interested. Don't like Reform, or don't like Nigel Farage or whatever it was. But there weren't many of those. What I got a lot of were people who could not speak a word of English, who weren't even apparently aware there was a by election taking place yet, who I suspect would have turned out to vote Green and Labour. So what you tended to get was a lot of deference on a doorstep, like, oh, thank you very much, thank you for the leaflet. Oh. Mm.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

That's kind of. Kind of it. But you knew there was a sort of unsaid realization, right, that they weren't with you. And I'm pretty convinced there's something very shady going on across not just Gorton and Denton, but across much of England. Because I was canvassing entire streets, right, where firstly, nobody could speak a word of English. But secondly, the people who were in the house were not matching up with the data that we had from the electoral register on who was supposed to be in the house. So I'm walking down these streets and I'm like, Where's Mr. And Mrs. Baker? Because they're not in this house and I don't even know who these people are and why there are eight people in this house. And I just kept wandering around thinking, there is something very shady going on here. Now, this was one seat, right? So you've got to ask yourself the question, what's going on across Manchester? What's going on across Birmingham or Bradford or Luton or London? And I just get a vibe, I got a vibe during that by election campaign that there was just a whole other thing going on that we weren't aware of.

[B]

Is there something deeper going on? If you think back to when you worked in academia and we've had the institutional rot there, the institutional capture, are you essentially seeing just capture everywhere?

[A]

Yes, but I think more fundamentally, what we're seeing is demographic change at a speed and a scale that even now, people are not really sure, they're not really aware of just how quickly the country is being transformed. So you go online and everybody's like, oh, yeah, mass immigration, it's a problem. Oh, we need to save Britain. But when you actually look empirically at just how quickly the country is being transformed and what, for example, a child born today will see, by the time they're in their 20s and their 40s and their 60s, I don't think anybody out there has really got an understanding of just how quickly and just how profound this change is going to be.

[B]

My thesis on this is that the, in some ways the people are voting for Green, are voting for the Green in a very, for a very similar reason that people are voting for reform, of voting for reform. I've mentioned on the podcast a couple of times I am an avid reader of Grace Blakely's substack and she's a Marxist, self declared Marxist, and often in her articles when she diagnoses some of the problems in the country, I agree with a lot of it. Obviously I completely disagree with the solutions. But do you think, are you seeing the same, do you think the same is going on? Do you think this is the rapid rise of Greens under Polanski, despite his obvious stupidity and the massive and fast growth of reform, is essentially the same act?

[A]

I don't think so, no. I think the Greens are benefiting from two things. One is the radicalization of liberals and the kind of rise of woke progressives, if you want. So they will do well in student areas and they'll do well in areas with lots of middle class progressives like Levenshume in that seat. But you could equally say Oxford or Cambridge or Brighton or Bristol. But they're also now tapping into sectarianism, which is a very different thing, that is when certain groups prioritize their religious identity or their tribal identity, their clan identity over their loyalty to the country. Now the Greens, the nice fluffy Greens who accuse everybody else of being divisive, tapped directly into that willingly and openly by campaigning in Urdu, by campaigning in Punjabi, by actively mobilizing local Muslims against Hindus in terms of what they were putting on leaflets, and by accusing anybody who dared to challenge them of being a racist islamophobe, far right, etc. It was the standard progressive playbook. So what they are really doing is tapping into these two wings in British politics. Now they can only do that currently in a few dozen seats because they need the students and the woke progressives with a large concentration of Muslim voters. But within maybe 15 years, 20 years, maybe even sooner, they'll be able to do that in hundreds of seats. And I didn't need to stand at the election. I felt it was an important thing to do for the country and I didn't need to write this book. But I feel as though nobody's telling the British people the truth about what is happening and the speed at which it's happening. And I'm deeply alarmed about our Inability to just talk about where we are, where we're going, and also to ask people, do you really. Do you want this? Do you want this to happen?

[B]

So you don't see the Greens and Reform are both just a rejection of the establishment.

[A]

I think they certainly have something in common in that they reject the uniparty consensus that has dominated Britain for the last 30 years. I mean, John Curtis said this to me, the sort of the oracle of British politics. The famous pollster, Sir John Curtis said the Gorton and Denton by election was only the second time since 1945 that two parties other than Labour and the Tories had finished in the top two spots. The other being, I think it was Rochdale only a couple of years ago. So the point being, we are now seeing a wholesale rejection of the establishment. Right. But the difference between the Greens and reform is the Greens are willing to sell out the country in order to fill that space, and Reform are not willing to do that. The Greens will happily pander to anti Western, anti British, anti Christian ideas, beliefs, ideologies and religions in order to win at the ballot box. Reform will not do that. Right, so there is a big difference between the two.

[B]

What do you think the psychology of it is, then, if they're willing to do that? Do you think it's become like a team sport? It's just about winning without. Without really thinking critically through what winning means?

[A]

No, I think the Greens are. The progressives among them have simply been so radicalized by all of the things we've spent 15 years talking about in the west, critical race theory, identity politics, the kind of downstream effects of postmodernism, that you can look at somebody like Hannah Spencer or you could look at somebody like Owen Jones. I look at them genuinely as people who have been fully radicalized by an ideology. They're so utterly detached from the reality and so obsessed with identity politics and just hating on anything that used to define us and hold us together. I look at them as being deeply radicalized, and I think that's what has pushed the Greens into this space. It's why they're partly quite appealing to people on the left. But they're a Trojan horse, right? What they're doing is they're allowing the sectarian vote to come in behind them. They're allowing people into the ranks, senior ranks of the Greens, who we do see on pro Iran protests, who we do see shouting al O Al Akbar when they win elections, who we do see clearly viewing the Greens as a vessel for their religious faith rather than as a vessel for what is in the best interest of Britain. And that's why I'm deeply concerned about both the rise of the Greens, but also the fracturing on the right of politics that we can come on and talk about later on and just really trying to wake people up about just how pressing this problem is.

[B]

But they would also think you've been radicalized. And I say that you. And I also say me, because I've had family members reach out to me and say they're, like, concerned about me. They've written letters to me thinking I've been radicalized.

[A]

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, I've had that.

[B]

But do you see? It's like this kind of mirror thing. We're saying they've been radical, and they're saying we've been radicalized. And we had. We've had a Curtis Yavin in here recently. We've had Neymar Palvini in here recently. And what both of them would likely say is that this anger and this. This division is just allowing the continuation of theft from everyone by an elite class, which sounds like conspiracy, but if people have been coming out actually saying, no, this is real. This is how money works. There was a great interview on Tucker Castle recently. I can't remember the guy's name. I'll share it with you. But also, Chamath came out recently and said basically 150 people run the world. Where the money goes is what happens. Your anger, their agenda. Yeah, your anger, their agenda is what Neymar Palvini said. So is there a way of bringing people together, or are you more in the boat as this is existential. We have to win this?

[A]

Well, I definitely think the latter. Otherwise I wouldn't be blowing up my life doing what I'm doing. No, the way through this mess is to mobilize the forgotten majority of people in this country who work hard, pay taxes, play by the rules, and believe in this country and have some link to this country. And that means raising awareness, raising consciousness, and raising political engagement. That is the way forward. That's not being divisive. It's simply ensuring that the people who have built this country and who represent this country and who symbolize this country are the people who will be in charge of this country going forward. I want Britain and England to look like Britain and England, and for me to be able to recognize those places and for other people to know that they feel at home in those places. But I don't think that is happening today. I think what people feel is a sense of dispossession that something is being taken from them without their consent, that policies are being imposed on them, which they never voted for, and that they are now being subjected to, along with their children, to a demographic reality that will leave them in a very weak and vulnerable place. And I think that is what people can sense. What I'm trying to say with this book is that's going to happen very, very soon.

[B]

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[A]

Me too. Actually. I had that conversation with a friend recently. I said, do you know how great it was to. I still remember the 80s and the 90s. And of course Britain was not a perfect place. There was a lot of things that looking back, you think, well, you'd quite like to fix. But it was a much better place than what we've got now.

[B]

Well, we didn't have mobile phones and

[A]

social media, but that was a good thing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Which, I mean, it's a good thing. I mean, how often do we talk about this kind of. My son is a 90s child, born in 2000s. He's a nice child. He never really did social media like he, he. He has a yearning for that era. He's jealous of not having grown up in it. We were very lucky to have. But those times were good. We were very lucky to have that.

[A]

I think just to add to that, there was also a much greater sense of cohesion and coherence. Little things like There was basically four television channels, right? So before you had 20 apps, all with 200 television shows on them. And nobody's really going through the same national unifying story, right? There was a time where 17 million people would watch the same program and you'd get to talk about it and reflect. And there was a sense of cultural coherence. Migration was very low. We controlled the borders. There was still a sense of pride in who we were as a country. And there was a civility to the country. I have recently started re watching Inspector Morse from the very beginning because when I'm in Oxford, I always have a drink at the Morse Bar, which is at the Randolph Hotel, where my grandparents, they went on one of their early dates. And just out of, you know, for sentimental reasons, I have a drink there and it's called the Morse Bar. So last time I was there, I thought, I'm going to re watch Inspector Morse. So I started re watching Inspector Morse from the very beginning. And it starts in 1987, I think. And it is like watching another country. It's actually quite an upsetting experience because you end up going through the country through the late 80s through the 90s, and what comes out more than anything once you put the crime and the murders to one side, which Inspector Morse is solving is a civility, or what people used to call England's civic culture. A sense that, you know, we weren't particularly controversial or messianic or dogmatic. There was a quiet civility to the way that we lived. That is difficult, I think, to see and feel today in a way that it used to be seen and felt.

[B]

Do you know where I notice it most? Me and Connor. Connor probably agree with me because it happened today is on the train. Just getting a train into London is an entirely different experience.

[A]

It's very depressing.

[B]

Yeah, it's very depressing. Having to listen to shitty conversations, loud people in their music. It just. Yeah, we're feeling it the same. Okay, so if you said here, I just wrote it down, blowing up my life. I'm just intrigued how grueling Is it campaigning?

[A]

Running. Running for the by election, A national by election, not just like a seat at a general election where there's 600 odd other people doing it alongside you? Without doubt. And I'm including doing a PhD, writing books, having children, all of that stuff, without doubt was the hardest thing I've ever done by a long way because for 31 days we canvas four times a day, every single day. You are under constant heavy attack from all sides. You are having to sit watching people lie about you, gaslight people about you, misinform people about you. You're having to have fairly difficult conversations with family members and friends about what is true and what isn't true. And you're under a level of scrutiny you're never really going to experience anywhere else. Now, at the same time, what gets you through it is the sense of purpose and commitment that you get from other people. We had thousands of reform activists coming up to campaign in canvas on the actual polling day. We had 1200 people on a Thursday come up and help get the vote out. That is incredibly motivating and it just keeps you going. But it was incredibly difficult. The very first thing that the Labour government did, the Labour Party did, was they selectively edited a video of me giving a speech about Manchester in which I criticized the Tories in Manchester. And Labour, the party that campaigns against misinformation, decided they'd splice it like the BBC did that Trump speech and they'd make it look like I was dissing Manchester. And that would have been signed off by Lucy Powell, the Labour minister. And it was absolutely outrageous. The next thing is they attacked me and my family for coming from the wrong part of Manchester, coming from Salford while they stood a candidate who was born and raised in Greece. Then I watched Hannah Spencer, the Green candidate, blame me for the Manchester Evening News arena bombing.

[B]

I saw that.

[A]

Not Salman Obaidi, the mad Islamist and his brother, sorry, the British born man of Libyan descent.

[B]

She rightfully got heavily criticized for that moment.

[A]

Yeah, but that was also a moment that opened the bottle, right? So you could see this is how the woke progressives think they will their default. Their instinctive reaction is to always blame the straight white man in front of them for anything and everything so they don't have to talk about problems within minority communities. And you saw that live on TV and I'm glad everybody got to see that because it was insane. It was very, very, I think I

[B]

messaged you straight away.

[A]

It was very, very disturbing. So you're sat in this by election and you're just, you know, you're watching it. And to be honest, I knew I needed to do it because I needed the political experience. But going into it, you know, ahead of it, I had a very stable career. I was doing broadcast media, you know, and so on. I'm still, thankfully still doing some of that stuff. But I didn't really need to blow up my life in the way that I did by running it, running for it. But it came down to that sense of if we're serious about turning this thing around, everybody who feels that has to put their head above the parapet. And in fairness to Nigel Farage, you know, he's just, he just said, look, this one, it's not the easiest, it's not straightforward. If you want to do it, you know, we'll get behind it, we'll get behind you.

[B]

If you were to run it again, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? Like, it goes back to the point, is it really winnable?

[A]

If I could do it all over again and we had the same dynamics, I would probably have gone a lot harder at trying to get the Labour vote to switch because there was still about 25% that went labour. If you accept that it was us versus the Greens, then you would have had to decimate a bigger part of the Labour vote and you'd also have had to get even higher rates of turnout in Denton among white working class voters mainly. And I think I just would have lobbed as many grenades as I could at the Greens when it came to exposing what they are and what they're about. I do actually think.

[B]

But that doesn't really work because if you look at it, if you look at Zach Polanski, he hasn't done anything in his life of significance. He tried to hypnotize women to increase their breast size, which I think is a, is something we should take very seriously because we can have shitty jobs. I've made mistakes in life, but that is fundamentally a fraud.

[A]

He changed his name too.

[B]

Yeah, it changed. Well, I think I saw an argument to do that was like something to do with his Jewish background, but that doesn't bother me so much. But also in the only the one interview has done, we've been slightly pushed on economics and asked who his inspirations are. He said, Gary Stevenson, who is a socialist, and Grace Baker, who's a Marxist. He has no serious, credible economic answers. Yeah, it feels like it doesn't matter what you throw at them. The radicalized ideological left are going to vote for them either because it's the be nice or because they fundamentally think reform are Nazis and they've got to stop them. There doesn't seem to be any logic. And then I think about. You talk about how brutal the electioneering is. Does it even make you think, hold on, we've got this all wrong? There is a solid argument that us all fighting just benefits those people who get to extract wealth out of our country all the time.

[A]

Well, what I meant by attacking the Greens is a few weeks into the by election, when it was clear that there had been some kind of discussion between the Greens and local representatives of certain communities, I thought the best thing that we can do during this by election, just put the result to one side, is show the country what the Greens are really about. That they want to legalize crack cocaine and heroin, that they want to legalize prostitution, that they want to teach children that they can change their gender, that they want to mainstream all of the transgender ideology nonsense that we've just spent 15 years trying to get out of the institutions. They want to get rid of our nuclear weapons. You know, they want to leave NATO. They want to now disassociate the Church of England from the British state. You know, all of these things. I just thought people need to know about this. And I think where the by election will become significant over the longer term is that it will come to be seen as the moment in which everybody really understood that the Greens are not a nice, fluffy party that are bringing people together in Brighton. But the Greens are actually a very dark, sinister organization that are mainstreaming sectarianism and some really, really dark shit that's going to tear our country apart. And I think after Gorton and Denton, that became unavoidable.

[B]

Well, they're predators. That's what I believe. I believe they're predators.

[A]

I don't know what. What you mean by that.

[B]

They. They want control. They want to control what you think, what you believe they want. They believe your money is their money. It's the states to redistribute as they choose. They want to control your thought to an extent that you can be counseled from culture if you don't become part of what they stand for. I think they're predators.

[A]

Well, they're definitely very illiberal, and they're very dogmatic, and they're extreme. I found it very difficult being called an extremist by the Greens during that by election because the stuff they were advocating was insane. Take drug legalization as an example, just for a minute. If you look at what happened with the policy the Greens are advocating in Oregon and British Columbia. Oregon changed their mind after three years. They said no, this is insane. Because addiction rates went through the roof, overdose rates went through the roof, criminality went through the roof. British Columbia, very similar. Portugal's now gradually starting to backtrack, thinking we made a bit of a mistake here, but yet no one in the Greens ever talks about that. So even during the hustings where I was trying to have a debate with Hannah Spencer about, yeah, but you understand the evidence base on this policy is pretty thin. And a lot of people that have tried it have changed their minds. They're not there. And I don't want to be rude.

[B]

You can be.

[A]

I just don't think they're very clever and I don't think they're very. I don't think they're interested in research. I don't think they're interested in looking at what has actually worked. I think it is all about a sort of morally righteous narcissism, a kind of look at me, I'm virtuous. I'm one of the good people. I'm going to advocate all of these luxury beliefs and guess what? I'm never going to have to pay the consequences of them. Zach Polanski is a great example. I mean, I've been told the guy doesn't do drugs and he doesn't drink. Yet he's advocating a policy that I know through relatives and friends of mine would decimate communities in this country, would decimate them. Making hardcore drugs available to addicts, mainstreaming that kind of behavior would be a disaster. Yet here we have a guy who's never really done it himself as far as I can see or read, pushing it on working class communities that will get torn apart like open borders. The Greens literally want open borders. And again, they're not the ones that are going to have to pay the consequences of that. It's going to be hard working British people once again having to subsidize the rest of the world coming onto these islands. And they never voted for it and they never asked for it.

[B]

What was your turning point? Because I think you and I maybe have had kind of a similar move to more kind of freedom based right wing politics. I would have always said I'll send to right, but I was definitely a lefty on some issues. And I know that you've had that transition. What changed for you?

[A]

I think it was an accumulation of things. I was pretty open to voting Conservative or Labor when I was young, in my early 20s, mid-20s, I think the great financial crash and no one going to prison for it, really irritated me. I think Tony Blair's decision to impose mass migration with no democratic consent, that really irritated me at the time. Yeah, I thought it was dangerous. I thought it was going to create an enormous conflict in our society, very divided society. And of course, Brexit later became the culmination of that. I mean, Blair, Blake Blair, Tony Blair basically created Brexit, if you really follow the tributaries back. So I thought mass migration was a disaster. I thought the parliamentary expenses scandal, that was a moment for me. I was really. I was. You know, it's insulting to see the way our elected representatives were behaving. And then Brexit was a really big moment in terms of how people responded to Brexit, right? There was this just totally total condemnation of ordinary people who had dared to challenge the system. And watching one politician after another line up and say, they're racist, they're ignorant, they've been pushed around by Russia, they've been pushed around by Cambridge Analytica. And I was in universities, remember, right. So I was going to these workshops at LSE and Oxbridge, and I'm listening to all these professors who have clearly never met ordinary people in their life. I mean, I know these people, right? I was in the universities for 20 years, right? So this is coming straight from, you know, the top level kind of conferences. And I was in the room, right, with the politicians and the academics and so on, and the way they just talked about people I knew, people I'd grown up with who'd vote for Brexit, right. That really became quite a radicalizing experience. And the way in which I was then harassed and sort of. I say bullied, but it's like when you're being bullied by the nerds, it's not really bullying, you know what I mean? So I could take it. It was fine. I could take it. But I was just, underneath that, I was thinking, like, this is just outrageous. We're in a democracy, we're allowed to think and believe different things. But I was watching my mates get chased off campus because they happen to say things like, I think mass immigration's been a disaster, or, you know, Kathleen Stock, I don't believe in, you know, all of this gender gobbledygook. I think it's gone way too far. And I was watching people I knew getting sacked and getting harassed. And that was a real radicalizing moment. And then as you went into Boris and the Tories, then I was like, what Is this. What's this Boris wave? 4 million people from outside of Europe, most of whom aren't working. You're having a laugh. I mean, the way, again, treating the British people with total contempt. That's what that was about. And I honestly. That's my relationship with the Tories ended right there. I briefed Boris twice and I left the room once, I thought, deeply unimpressive. And the Tories, to me, no, thank you, not interested. And that's why I said in Gorton and Denton, when I launched the campaign, I said, I'm not a Tory. I'm the last person in this country to try and defend the Tories and try and promote the Tories. I've got no time for that. They deserve to die as a political party. They deserve to die. They deserve to be obliterated. They've had their time in the sun and they chose to use that time to sell our country down the river. And, yeah, I do agree with some of the critics on the left about corporatism, globalism. The one thing Boris did which really, really cut deep. Boris removed the requirement for companies in Britain to advertise jobs in Britain before advertising those jobs overseas. That is Globalism 101. It is absolutely outrageous that he did that and Priti Patel standing next to him cheering on the Boris wave. I mean, these people should be chased out of frontline British politics. And thank goodness that's exactly what Nigel Farage is doing, which is chasing these clowns out of British politics, because they sold the British people down the river and they took those votes for granted. And they've now left us with an almighty mess to clean up. And that's going to be the project for the next 10 years.

[B]

What's weird is this new left, because I think of my childhood, when my family would argue over politics and the argument for the left was a real argument for the working class and fairness with the electorate. And conservatism was really about an argument for small government, lower taxes, support the entrepreneur. But we've had this and I still believe that is what conservatism is. I believe that is what reform want. I believe that's what Restore want. I don't think. I think the Conservatives are coming round to the idea because they feel like they have to, because it's existential. I just don't trust them. But the left is a new left.

[A]

I don't trust them either, but the left is. The left is fundamentally different.

[B]

Yeah, it's now the old left. People like William Clouston are much More aligned to somebody like yourself than they are.

[A]

No, we get on.

[B]

Yeah, he's a great guy.

[A]

We're good mates.

[B]

Yeah, he's a really good guy. I really respect him. But this new left seems to be about control and the non working class. It's a very strange shift that we've had in this country.

[A]

So if you can go back on Hansard and you look at Clement Attlee's speeches, or you look at, I mean, even Tony Benz or Peter Shaws, or how they talked about things like the European Union, how they talked about things like the echr. I mean, Clement Attlee was very clear in saying, I don't think we should be signing up for anything to anything that could dominate over our own national sovereignty. Peter Shaw was awesome. His speeches, his oratory, his defense of national democracy, and so was Tony Benn. Actually. I disagreed with some of their, obviously some of their other politics, but what they understood, a lot of those guys was national sovereignty. And I think also the nation state is really the only unit of organization that has worked and that we've managed to get to work. And there are some people like that today who probably shouldn't really be where they are. I mean, I'm thinking about. Take Maurice Glassman, for example. Like, if you really care that much about national sovereignty and the little platoons and community life, like, how on earth can you justify being in the labor movement today? Makes no sense to me. Like, they've sold out to globalists. I think Glassman should be in reform. I think these people need to find their guts and just understand that the political map has changed. Like Shabana Mahmood, like, he's not going to save Britain, but among a certain generation of men, right. It's a bit like with Kemi, there's a certain generation, like baby boomer men who are sort of entranced by somebody from a minority background daring to challenge the consensus, but they're not ultimately going to do what needs to be done to save the country. I think it just makes those men feel a little bit better about themselves rather than doing the things that need to get done to save the country.

[B]

I mean, you're probably just going to naturally say, yes, but do you think the country actually can be safe?

[A]

Yes, 100%, of course. Otherwise I'd be like, you know, in Italy or something. Of course. We just. We need, we need. Look, I always say this to people

[B]

and I'm having my doubts.

[A]

I'm 44.

[B]

You're 47.

[A]

47. Okay. So here's the obvious example in our lifetime, the new labor project, a wholesale rewriting of our constitution and culture within the space of about, I don't know, seven years, right? If you go from 97 to basically the mid-2000s, people say, well, I don't know if you can bring about radical change in this country. What about Brexit? However it was managed afterwards, Brexit was still the most important, significant constitutional moment in this country since the 17th century. And people are still saying, I don't know if we can bring about radical change. What we do, and I appreciate you and I will have our differences. We can come and talk about that. What I would like to see us do is elect a majority reform government, which would have the executive and legislative power to bring about that kind of radical project, which would mean leaving the European Convention on Human Rights within the first six months so we can reclaim our national sovereignty and our judicial independence. It would mean ending the policy of mass migration, stripping welfare benefits for people who are not British, removing social housing subsidies for people who are not British. It would mean lowering the tax burden. It would mean slashing national insurance tax increases and VAT for small businesses, getting the lifeblood of the economy moving again. It would mean banning Muslim Brotherhood, banning the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It would mean also, at least I would argue, and I think a lot of people in reform agree with me, banning sharia courts, banning cousin marriage, making it clear that no churches in this country can be converted into mosques. As Ziya Youssef has already said, there's a long list of things there that if you said, okay, if you were to enact all of this and put in place this radical project over the course of two, three years, and then people I think, would not be able to say, well, you can't really change things. That would be as big. In fact, in many ways, it would be bigger than the Blair Project. It would be much bigger and deeper than the Blair project. So I reject the idea that we can't change things. This is Britain, for goodness sake.

[B]

Well, I think you can have the ambition, you can have the will. It's where the. Once you win power, you can actually do it. Can it actually be done? Well, I mean, again, can it be allowed?

[A]

Right, in terms of, say, the state? Of course. Ultimately, did we leave the European Union? Yes. Despite fierce establishment resistance from legacy media, civil service politics and everything else. So of course you can push through a radical deviation from the status quo. Of course you can. It needs to be done in a way that is clever and sophisticated legislation has to be drafted before the next general election. And the strategy for reconfiguring the state, the civil service, which Danny Kruger's already started to put into, started to prepare for, and electoral reform. You could have a bill straight up the first couple of months that says quite clearly we're changing the rules of the game with regard to postal voting, family voting, commonwealth voting. That's not a difficult thing to do, to draft that legislation and get it through with a majority. So these are all things that can be done. What I resent are people who sort of sit online shrugging their shoulders, saying, oh, it's too late. We can't really do anything, because if every single one of those people was actually involved in the movement, pushing it forward, turning out to vote, standing at local elections, this wouldn't even be close. But I think we've got. And I get it, I understand why people feel this way, but we've got a groundswell of apathy. People who have lived through 35 years, 40 years, maybe longer, of watching the country being treated in this way. I saw them on the doors in Gorton and Denton. They said, I don't vote for anybody. Politics won't change anything. And I was saying to them, look, I'm here. I'm not a politician. I'm here. If you put me into Westminster, I will guarantee you we will shake up this area, make sure it can't be ignored again.

[B]

You will do your best, but the apathy comes from someone like, I am probably a perfect example of this. I haven't voted in three elections. I have apathy. I've considered leaving. I've seen election after election where people promise hope and they promise change and nothing changes. Taxes go up, everything gets more expensive. Weirdly, I benefit from it now because I'm an asset holder, but it's gross. I hate it. I just look at what's happening in America at the moment with Trump. For me, maga's dead. I'm going to upset some people.

[A]

Why is MAGA dead?

[B]

Because Trump has fundamentally betrayed the voter base that went with him. Based on releasing the Epstein files. No foreign interventions, growth and securing the borders. Okay, secured the borders.

[A]

There's a lot of support for the. For the intervention in Iran among Republican voters.

[B]

There's a lot of objection to the intervention in Iran with Republican voters as well. I. I predict a clean sweep for the Democrats in the midterms.

[A]

No, I don't. I don't.

[B]

I would bet you on it.

[A]

I think there's a. There's a view that People tend to be quite sweeping in their criticism of Trump. I think if you voted for strong borders, if you voted for reshoring taking on China, standing up to mad Islamists who we can't allow to have nuclear weapons, dealing with some immediate threats in close proximity to America like Venezuela, getting regime change and actually just having a more manageable situation, I think a lot of that is good for America.

[B]

Sure. I mean, some bits of that, we can talk about that. But there was something weird about what happened with the Epstein files, something very weird about promising to release them. And they've really had to force them to release something. If it wasn't for Massey, who is, I think, a hero to the American voters, they might not have even been released. But he was very clear on non intervention, no wars, no foreign interventions. Venezuela happened and I, at the start I kind of agreed with it.

[A]

Well, hang on, October 7th happened as well. I mean, when Trump was coming out, criticizing forever wars, Afghanistan and Iraq in 2015, we were in a different era.

[B]

Sure, but haven't we seen in history that foreign interventions can lead to more terrorism, not less terrorism? It can radicalize more, possibly.

[A]

But I don't, I'm happy to be wrong on this. I don't think Iran is going to become an Iraq. I don't think Iran is going to become an Afghanistan. I think personally what I would support are targeted surgical strikes, dismantling and degrading the Iranian military for a generation.

[B]

Right, but you dismantle the. I know the main infrastructure of their army, of their military. What do they have after that? Is it peace or is it a large percent of people?

[A]

They don't have a nuclear weapon. I don't want Iran. I'm very, I'm very simple on this. I don't want the Iranians, like mad Islamists getting hold of a nuclear weapon. I just don't want it.

[B]

No.

[A]

Especially being that close to, you know, a lot of our allies. I just think it's a no brainer.

[B]

No, I can agree with that. But we've been told for 35 years that they're close to having a nuclear weapon. They've never actually had it. I just. Aren't you slightly concerned about history repeating itself in that? I can't remember the last time one of these, these foreign wars worked out for the better, made the, made the world a better place, a safer place. I've been sold down that river a few times now. This is why I'm just so skeptical of it.

[A]

I don't know. I think we're in It. We're, as I said earlier on, I think we're in a civilizational moment where we have to start drawing some lines in the sand and we need to start taking on the issue that everybody is terrified of taking on, which is Islamism and the possibility, the very real possibility of Islamism with nuclear weapons. And we can't just duck that under the rubric that interventions in 2003 didn't work. Therefore we're going to steer clear of this one. I think we have a moral duty to ensure that those kinds of regimes don't get nuclear weapons. I'm not advocating sending troops and getting bogged down for 10 years. I'm saying with the weaponry and the technology that we have, let's strike what we need to strike and get out, and that will be good enough for me.

[B]

But what's left behind afterwards, a weakened

[A]

regime and a weakened country, that's fine. I'm fine with that.

[B]

20 other regimes. No. 20 other little regimes. No.

[A]

Not. Not an Iranian Shiite regime with nuclear weapons.

[B]

We'll agree to disagree on that. I go back to my original point, was that there are people within the Republican base which are. They feel like they've been let down by Trump. I would be willing to make a.

[A]

I think there are some people that will never be satisfied, though.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I think Trump. I honestly think Trump's legacy is cemented. I think Rubio or Vance, whoever ends up getting it, will carry on. I think Trump has delivered the vast majority of things he promised his base. America looks strong and it looks like it is in full control of geopolitical affairs. And as a European, a Brit within Europe, I feel very thankful to Trump, Vance and Rubio for calling out the absurdity that we've had to live with on this continent for the last 30 years. I agree with that. Which is no free speech or dramatically curtailed free speech, no serious investment in defense, ridiculous energy policies that have left us very vulnerable and dependent upon our enemies for energy, which is insane. And I actually take my hat off to Trump because at least he had the courage and the guts to say, we can't go on like this geopolitically. We can't go on thinking the United nations is going to solve everything. We can't go on covering Europe while Europe is not even bothering to invest in its own defences. And we can't go on ducking the biggest issue of our time, which they were very clear and open in talking about, which is civilizational erasure. Berlin and Paris and Westminster laughed at the Americans when they gave that speech, but everybody outside of politics was quietly nodding along saying, well, actually we get it because we feel it. I mean, that's what the book's about, which is this sense among many people that it isn't about the day to day politics anymore. It is about a deeper feeling that we are losing our country and our civilization. And I think Trump gets that and I think Rubio gets that. So I'm very thankful to them. I mean, they should open up a refugee route for disillusioned Brits.

[B]

They've talked about that. Yeah, I don't disagree with some of the things you're saying. I think the point I was trying to make is that I would happily bet on the midterms that it'll be a clean sweep for the Dems. I'd happily vote on the next election. I think. I fear that they're going to introduce an opportunity for AOC to become president, which I think would be a disaster for America.

[A]

But there's parallels with the British politics. Not to cut you off, but there are parallels. Right. So there are people on the right of America who will never be satisfied, and there are people on the right of British politics who will never be satisfied. And so what happens is they all end up engaged in a purity spiral. Until you're at a point where you're saying, oh, I quite like Nick Fuentes. Or you're at a point where you're like, oh, I quite like that guy in Britain who's on X every day prattling on about Zionism or talking about, you know, throwing everybody who isn't white out of the country. And that sounds reasonable to some people, you know, and I think that's what a lot of people on the right have engaged in.

[B]

I don't think being anti war is a purity spiral.

[A]

Not the anti war. Yeah, but you said, you know, there's a lot of things there that you said people had got issues with Trump

[B]

about Epstein, the Epstein foes talked about, and mainly Epstein. I think it was just the Epstein files and no foreign intervention. With the two things I brought up, he hasn't really dealt with the inflation issue entirely. But I just. What I'm saying is, for me, if I was a voter, for the Republicans, I would feel let down. And the point I was trying to get to is that if reform win, which I still think they. Yeah, if you're a better man, they probably will. Can you actually do the things you really want to do? Because, yes, we had. It feels. It feels like the job is it's either bigger than reform are saying, and they're not saying it because they don't want to scare people or haven't fully appreciated how big the job is. But Curtis Yarvin made a really pertinent point when he was here. He said that 40% regime change in the UK is not enough. It's 100% regime change. It's a complete change to the institutions, it's a complete change to the power, it's a complete change to the media infrastructure. Because essentially it is a. It is a complete, completely captured infrastructure which is leading you to want to be a politician to try and fix it.

[A]

Well, I remember a survey by Find out now where they. They surveyed people working in the institutions in Britain and they found 75% lean to the left. So I don't think anyone disagrees that there's an issue with institutional capture. The question is, how do you fix it? How do you rebalance it? How do you actually go about putting into place a program for government? But you can't have it both ways, right? So there are people on the right who on the one hand say, well, can we really ever get this done? And then reform, bring on people who have seen it working from the inside, like Suella Braverman or Robert Jemrich. And those very same people say, oh, but those guys, no, no, they're part of the establishment. We can't have those guys.

[B]

Well, I've said that.

[A]

No people online have said that.

[B]

Has she seen it working? Wasn't she Home Secretary during the Boris wave?

[A]

There are lots of people who have gone through government who have seen how government works from the inside, have realized it's corrupt and it's been captured and they're not able to do the things they promise voters. And so they left. And in some cases they left for reform.

[B]

They're also some of the people that contributed to the downfall. Well, have you met my son, the radical?

[A]

It depends, you know. Okay, then let's carry on that logic. Let's have a government that's comprised of nobody who has ever been in government.

[B]

I think that's what the people wanted. That's what I want.

[A]

Well, then I want you.

[B]

You are the best candidate reforms brought out because that is what the original reform base wanted.

[A]

But I'm also politically experienced enough to know that the kind of action we need to take has to happen very quickly. And you need within that squad or battalion, people who on day one can say, here's where the skeletons are. Here's what we need to do in this Office. This is one of the big problems and you need to take a punt on a few individuals and look them in the eye and say, yeah, I think their conversion is genuine and I think they would be an asset to a team. It's like you're involved in football, right? You've got a football club or we've gone to see a game together, it was a great day. But it's like the dressing room and that football club, right? If it was fully comprised of total amateurs, but they were just really passionate, right? They just really wanted to win the game, you'd be like, oh, this is interesting. Good squad, right? But it would probably be a stronger team if one or two of those players had been in the Premier League, had maybe got the experience on the pitch. Could say, guys, guys, let's keep the passion, let's change the game, let's go and win. But just while we're doing it, it's going to make more sense for you to do this and you to do that and let me just help guide it and shape it a little bit. And I think that's where we are in politics. I think we've got the benefit of one or two people. We're not talking about, you know, an entire cabinet made up of ex former politicians. We're saying there are people here who can bring experience and wisdom to anotherwise very passionate, very new team of people. And I'm also biased in that I know these people very well. So when I see somebody online saying, oh, you've got, you know, too many established Tories in there, it's like, okay, well, I know Danny Kruger, I know his heart's in the right place. I know he wants to save the country.

[B]

He's a better example.

[A]

I know, I know Suella Braverman, she believes it. She's probably actually deep down, she's probably a bit more anti establishment than even people think now. I think probably on balance, I think genre Robert Jenrick has gotten to a place where politically, and I'm sure he believes it, but politically he now has to be in a particular kind of place because he knows his position really depends on being in that place. And I think that's a credit. I think over the longer term that'll be a credit to the country, if I'm honest. He has intervened in big debates around Birmingham around integration. He has said things that really did ruffle feathers. I think that's to be welcomed. There are one or two people that I'm less interested in, but there are also people I don't really see at the center of it. And I think being an academia and working on politics, analyzing politics for a long time, there's a literature on what makes a successful political movement. And the one thing it comes back to is the dominant faction. Every political party that ends up becoming successful has to have a dominant faction that is united, organized, and really committed to what that party is about. And around that dominant faction, you can have your catch all stuff. You can have this person that appeals to this side or this former Tory that appeals in this part of England or this one that sold millions of books and is a columnist and just might help bring over the mums and the grandmas or whatever it is. Right. But the dominant faction is what matters in political parties. And I don't think anybody in Reform would mind me saying, having been in and around the movement for 15 years, the dominant faction in Reform is wholly focused on saving the country and putting in place the radical plan of action that is required. And that dominant faction is not comprised of the kinds of people that I see everybody online complaining about. And I just think getting close to movements, you really get to understand how they work. And if I thought for a second this was going to be something that was ineffective, I wouldn't be committing all my time to it.

[B]

Sure, you kind of have to say that. But like, I think the cons point.

[A]

Well, it's kind of interesting to say anything.

[B]

Well, I mean, yeah, but you know, you're not going to come here and say I'm like, I'm half committed. You're here because you are committed. I get it, I get it. It's not criticism. No.

[A]

But also I'm not here pushing a party line. I'm here based on nearly 20 years of both studying politics and being very close to the people that we're now talking about and understanding how they operate. And I'm also now observing people reaching conclusions they shouldn't be reaching if they really knew what was going on.

[B]

But do you understand the fear that somebody like I have as a voter with what's happening with reform? Do you know what I fear? Because we've had Zier in a few times. I think he speaks brilliantly. I don't want to get into what's gone on with him and Rupert, but I agree with nearly everything he says when he's on Question Time. I think he's brilliant. Yeah, he eviscerates them all. I think Nigel's a good leader, actually. I think he's handled the kind of intensity you talked about. Really, really. Well, I think there's some distractions you like you're not part of the establishment like that. Like that a lot. But when I look at. And even Suella I like Soella a lot. I spoke to her the other day.

[A]

So what's the problem? What's that?

[B]

But Zahawi. No thanks. Nadine Norris.

[A]

No thanks.

[B]

But I've tick. Is that me? I was particularly generic is a, is a problem for me. It's a real problem for me because I, I think I'm a good judge of character and I can see, I can see straight through. I don't. I believe he's a career politician. I don't think he cares about the country. I think he moved to reform to save himself and I think he comes across as disingenuous. Like, I know you're genuine. I've got to know you. And, and if I thought you were being disingenuous, I'll say, man, I don't believe this but I know you're genuine. I don't believe him and I. What I worry is there are old aspects of the Uni Party, the conservatives that will start to meddle, have their influence. There is a. I don't know the detail, but I know there's a fear of George Osborne's influence over generic. I don't want any of that. I don't want any Gove's influence. I don't want any of that old Tory influence in it. They, as you said, they sold our country down the river. I want 650 Matt Goodwins and Z is and, and I don't. It doesn't feel it, it doesn't feel anti establishment as much. You got to remember like I'm basically a libertarian. I hate the government, I hate every politician.

[A]

I.

[B]

It'll be my duty to distrust you and dislike you as a libertarian when you become a politician. I could be a friend and have a beer, but like.

[A]

Okay, let me just, let me just say though the flip. Let's just go to history for a minute because I think history is probably most instructive. There was an anti establishment political party once upon a time and it was full of ordinary people. It was full of plumbers, farmers, electricians, workers, people with. That sounds like the Green Party people with very little political experience. And it captivated the mood of the country and it took off in the polling and it did really, really well at a national legislative election. Okay. Was considered to be the first real populist movement in post war Europe and that movement was the French pugilist movement comprised of outsiders and anti establishment people who were convinced they could take on Paris and redirect the shape, the direction of their country. That movement almost immediately collapsed on collision with power because it turned out that when you fill a political party with amateurs and inexperienced activists, however well intentioned they are, however much they believe in the country, the end result is often complete chaos. What you need to do, I think today is harness the energy in the country that is anti establishment, with a vanguard of people who are genuinely anti establishment, drawn from outside of politics, but who can also rely, if needed, on a handful of people who at least have gone through the system. I don't believe for a second that somebody who is a careerist politician would survive or be able to survive in reform, either in opposition or government. And the reason I say that is I speak to maybe two or three branches a week, every week across the country. And there is one line that I always say in my speeches which is that reform must not become a Tory tribute act. And it is guaranteed. Every time I say that, there will be an outstanding ovation. People, the grassroots are behind it. And I say that not to make a point about me. I say that in the sense that reform as a political movement will not tolerate careerists who they think are not focused on what is in the best interests of the country.

[B]

But the point of a careerist is knowing how to survive well

[A]

in a movement that will tolerate that kind of naked careerism. But reform isn't like that. I've always said reform is not a political party. Reform is a, is a family. I mean, Nigel is not like that. Nigel won't tolerate that for a second. Yeah, I remember. Anyone who is in or around Nigel Farage early on will get a question which is, have you joined yet? He demands loyalty to the movement, demands that everybody signs up and everybody is active. And I noticed this in Gorton and Denton. Cameras weren't there, media weren't there. Nigel's just knocking on doors. Richard Tice is coming up on a sign. He's just knocking on doors all day long. Sarah Pochin came eight times. Zia came up. You know, everybody is leading from the front. It's an activist party where you're committed to that activism. Right? It's not a careerist professionalized party. It's not people sitting in a spin room somewhere saying, oh, we'll let the, the minions do that. And we're triangulating because we need to put together this new labor style political strategy. There's none of that. Everyone's in the trenches, everyone's campaigning. And Nigel does that from the front because he understands the importance of that. Because if you lose that, you are establishment careerist. Now, the flip side is what happens when you don't have that and you don't have that experience and you don't have that political sophistication and the grasp of political reality. I'm going to go out on a limb and just irritate a lot of people. But you have what I see further to the right of reform, which is a lot of people who, on the one hand, care deeply about Britain. I know quite a lot of them, I think, because they've been involved in and around my writing community for a while. I understand why they've got to the point they've got to.

[B]

Well, why is that? I mean, let's say clearly we're talking about people who've moved from reform to restore.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of those people, I think they want something that is even more radical than the program that is being offered by a party that happens to be number one in the opinion polls and has a realistic chance of pulling off the most radical program of government this country has seen since Tony Blair and New Labor. But for some people, apparently, apparently they want more than that. And, okay, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. But I look at the arguments that are being thrown around in that corner of politics, and I think back to my experience in Gorton and Denton. Okay, so how does this go? Let's just work because I knocked on 7,000 doors. Okay. Myself. So how does this go? Okay. Hi, I'm from a store. Oh, not heard of you. What's your policy? Mass deportations. Oh, oh, right. Okay. That's. That's quite hard. What do you mean? We just want all these people out who. Well, you know, people who aren't part of us. We want re. Migration. You want what? Remigration. What's that? That's where we basically force everybody out and. Right. Okay, that sounds quite extreme to me. That sounds quite. Actually, that sounds pretty nuts to me.

[B]

I don't think you framed it how they've been framing it, though.

[A]

That's exactly what people have been saying online.

[B]

And then people online or the people from the party, people who are claiming

[A]

to lead that side of the debate,

[B]

because as far as I've seen, it is. It is illegal migrants that they want to remove first.

[A]

Okay, well, that's reform policy. So what's the difference?

[B]

Well, I don't know if there is

[A]

a huge difference, but this is why I'd like us to have this conversation, because I think there are lots of people who are being led into a cul de sac. And there's also a lot of people, I would say, who are also speaking in very strident terms. Here's something else.

[B]

Well, should we just do this? Because rather than me, this is their point. The Boris wave must be reversed and the asylum system must be abolished.

[A]

Okay. That's the annual depart. Hang on a second. That's reform policy.

[B]

Yeah. The annual departure of legal migrants must at least double. Millions of foreign nationals cannot speak English, live in social housing, claim benefits, refuse work, break our laws or fail to integrate, should go home, and for the seeable future, significantly more must leave than enter.

[A]

A lot of the policies that you've just read out, but do you disagree

[B]

with any of that list?

[A]

I think a lot of it is quite vague and I think it would be very easy for restores political enemies to point out how vague and abstract that is. But there are also a lot of things there that are already reformed policy, but disagree with. I mean, I.

[B]

Because it sounds that to me, reads like.

[A]

I'm not entirely sure why you would want to say something like, the annual departure of legal migrants must be at least double. That just sounds very six form to me. Why? Why double? Why that level? What about what's going on at the particular moment in time? A lot of the other stuff, though. I mean, if you look at millions of foreign nationals who cannot speak English, live in social housing, claim benefits reforms, already outlined policies on all of that.

[B]

Also, it sounds like basically the solution to your book.

[A]

There are policies there I don't particularly have an issue with. But what I do have an issue with is what is the best vessel for delivering the kind of change that Britain needs. And I just want to come back to some of the bigger differences. Every single household in this country knows who Nigel Farage is. The vast majority of people in this country do not know who Rupert Lowe is. Polling. We've got reliable polling. About 76% of people say they've never heard of Rupert Lowe.

[B]

What's the polling on Zach Polanski?

[A]

Reasonably well known. I mean, he's a national figure.

[B]

He wasn't known a year ago.

[A]

I just.

[B]

I'm just saying movements can change quick. They can change quick.

[A]

But the Greens. Hang on a second. Let's unpack this because it's important. Path. Dependency matters in politics, right? Where you start determines your eventual outcome. The Greens didn't start with Zach Polanski. The Greens have started with 30 years of campaigning and activism that goes back through Caroline Lucas and beyond. All right, the Greens have got a long history, and they've also got a long history at talking about something that a large number of people are open to talking about, which is the quality of the environment, and talking about issues around climate and whatever. Even if lots of us disagree with it, they've had an entry into politics. What I see happening around Restore, again, people who might say they would be open to voting for that movement, I'm not making a judgment about those people, but the people I see trying to organize that political movement are too extreme, are too strident, are detached from political reality, do not understand what and how the average voter really thinks, and have been very sloppy with their language and have insufficient political experience. They will be blown apart at a general election or at a by election. Actually, we polled our national polling average in our 440th target seat. All right, so if anybody's making those kinds of arguments, they don't even understand politics. If you apply the swing that was achieved in Gorton and Denton, nationally, it's a reform majority government. In fact, what I think, at some point it's going to happen. Maybe at the local elections, I don't know. But where are all these big, sophisticated, popular campaigns? I can't see them. What I think is going to happen, and I've said this before, but I think it's true. What is going to happen here, pushed on by Americans who don't understand British politics and British culture, because that is what's going on. There's a lot of Americans who think this is the answer, but they don't understand, really, Britain's political culture. I can tell you this, like, I've knocked on so many doors and I've had so many conversations with people, there is no way in hell this country is going to get behind anything that strikes the British people as being extreme. Ain't gonna happen.

[B]

Well, they're getting behind the Greens, and we think they're extreme.

[A]

There are people on the left who are open to the Greens.

[B]

You mean on the right.

[A]

There are people on the left who are open to the Greens, but they're, you know, justifying it in all kinds of ways. And let's be honest, a lot of the Green vote is also now sectarian. I just feel very. I feel very sorry.

[B]

You mean on the right they won't get behind if it's considered extreme on the right?

[A]

I don't think. I think. I think. No, I think.

[B]

No, they were considered Extreme.

[A]

No, again, path. Dependency matters. Nigel didn't come out of comments like we're going to put people on an island and let midges do the rest. Nigel came out of Euroscepticism. Nigel came out of the Maastricht debates. Nigel came out of a movement in this country which was fully mainstream.

[B]

Conor's talking about perception. Yeah, I think perceive. I'm not. I'm from the right. Well, more libertarian, but from the right. I'm just saying it's. People tend to always paint every opposition as extreme. That's what they do. They just tend to like the Greens are extreme.

[A]

I'm very aware. I've just gone through a by election campaign where I was called extreme right. But I'm saying the stuff that's going on over here is batshit crazy. British people, British people will never, ever, ever get behind RESTORE in a big way. It will never happen. What will happen is it will be 1979 and it will be standing 300 candidates and getting 0.6% of the vote. I'm 100% convinced of it. I've just campaigned against a party further to my right. It got fewer votes than the monster raving loony party. I've watched senior people who are pushing this movement on get 2% of the vote at elections. I have seen a lot of people getting excited about a movement who I have never, ever seen canvass and campaign seriously at elections. And I don't think the country really has time for what all these people are doing. I think it's very indulgent. I think it's very unfortunate that a lot of young men have blown up their political careers. What could have been very promising political careers, actually changing the system and really reconfiguring this country and pushing it in a better direction. And instead they've been led into some cul de sac by people who should really know better. And egos have got in the way. Right. And certain people feel that their ego has been dented and they're now going to lead off, lead all these people off into a very amateurish, inexperienced movement which will be like. It's going to be exactly like the National Front in 1979, I guarantee it. And they thought they were going to take over the world and then they collided with political reality because they realized actually, what are they calling for? Repatriation. That's what they were calling for, repatriation. In fact, they were calling for basically exactly the same thing that I see people talking about today online. And the British people were saying, you know, What? We're down for ending mass migration. We're down for ending this insanity we've lived with for 30 years. Okay, you can probably convince the British people to leave the echr and you can probably convince them to start removing or to remove people who are in the country illegally and remove foreign criminals from our prisons. And you can convince them that we should be doing things like banning Muslim Brotherhood and clamping down on Sharia courts. And you can convince them of those things. I'm pretty sure of it. But when you start talking in very vague, abstract, loose ways about deporting millions of people, some of whom are British nationals, I guarantee you, based on everything I've studied and everything that I've experienced in politics, there is no way the British people will ever get behind that.

[B]

So is this pragmatism? Is politics about pragmatism?

[A]

I think it's about understanding where the average voter is and building something that can carry the average voter with you while getting the things done that you want to get done in order to try and deliver your political project.

[B]

So pragmatism, it's like the art of impossible.

[A]

The moment your movement becomes detached from that, from the reality of what people are thinking and feeling, you, you will drift into the abyss. What Nigel Farage has always been very good at understanding, and his critics, I don't think fully understand, is where the line is. And there's a line that runs through British politics and culture. And Nigel Farage has always been very good at understanding where that line is, what is broadly what's going to basically just keep you on the right side of that and allowing you to put in place a radical project like Brexit, for example, or critiquing mass immigration. He was the first person really to do that in a serious mainstream election winning way. Won two nationwide elections with two different parties. Not talking about, like, who started talking about the grooming gangs first. I'm talking about changing the political debate in this country now. But there are lots of people that I see today who are either in their 20s, who have not gone through the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s, or their 40s who have. Who have not gone through or are not as aware of where the line is and the average voter is. Now, that's not to say people in

[B]

their 20s don't have a line because they've just been shat on for most of their life.

[A]

Well, okay, I don't dispute that. I don't deny that if you're in your 20s, you've had a terrible. That you've had a terrible. You've had a terrible life experience. You've come of age against a backdrop of the great financial crash and all of the wars and the volatility and the record electricity prices and the biggest tax burden. I get it. The system has not been particularly kind to a certain demographic. But the answer to that is not to then wander off into the political abyss and think you're going to change the country by becoming ever more extreme. Because the person you have to win over is not the 21 year old. The person you have to win over is the 55 year old average voter in Tamworth or in any other swing seat. And I can tell you, if you go and knock on their door and you say, look, I'm so angry with this country, my main policy offering here is mass deportations. I guarantee you those people you'll meet some people who will say, oh yeah, that sounds okay. But then those people are almost certainly not. They're already gonna be voting for the party that happens to be leading in the national opinion polls. But you'll get a lot more other people who are simply gonna close the door in your face and say that shit sounds extreme.

[B]

So is the form just giving up on the 20 year olds? No, because they're more. They care more about the 55 year old.

[A]

Every reform. I was in Milton Keynes last night, we had 2,000 people, a lot of young people, a lot of young guys, a lot of reform events full of young people who can sense that in order to actually win power in this country you need something that is credible, compelling and coherent. Led by somebody who is also incredibly charismatic.

[B]

Well, let's talk about that. Because the polling. I'm still a floating voter, right? I am still a floating voter. I most likely don't vote in the next election. That's the truth. I just think it's a waste. But I'm still a floating voter. But

[A]

how do you not vote at the next general election?

[B]

My principle is if I'm going to vote, I have to believe in a of party will improve the country and not lead to more decay. So for the last. The last time I think I voted, I think was David Cameron. Was that about four elections ago?

[A]

Because you believe David Cameron was gonna.

[B]

But I'm as younger, more naive and I believed that a conservative party would make the country better. I wasn't. I didn't know enough about politics. I didn't.

[A]

I understand coming off the back of New labor and having that view.

[B]

It was what I'd learned from my dad about conservative politics was lower tax. When you went to work, when you got paid, you had more of your money in your pay packet. That's my dad, always. My dad was an aircraft engineer. He was working class, but voted conservative because he believed they gave them more of his money back at the end of the month.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so when I went to vote, I went just with that idea. I didn't know anything about politics, haven't voted since. Because my principle is, do I believe they will make the country better? And I haven't once seen one party that will make the country better. So I refuse to vote for decay. I refuse to accept decay. Like, if the decay slows, I refuse to accept decay. I hold a principled line that I want the country genuinely improved, Matt. Genuinely improved. Now, listen, if I'd been up in Gorton, I probably would have come out and voted for you because you're my mate. But I want the country improved. And I fear that with reform, the best they can do is slow the decay. That's my fear.

[A]

I don't agree with you, but I'm listening to you.

[B]

Let's talk about. Cause I actually don't care about me. I'm fine. I can retire, I can leave the country, but I care about my son. I care about my son's friends, I care about my daughter and their friends. What do you think the reform or the party that wins the next election needs to do for young people? Because I think it's the most important thing we should focus on is. Is the young people.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

What do they need to get from a party, like, genuinely a better.

[A]

So a social contract that works for them and a social contract that prioritizes the people of this country, who come from families who built this country and who in everything from housing to health care to how we spend our country's money, are put first, are prioritized. And that is about the principle of national preference. We either put our people first or we just become another blob on the quilt of universal liberalism. And everybody is equal and nobody is ever put first. If I was your son's age, I don't know exactly how old your son is 21. I would be joining my local reform branch. I would be standing in council elections, I would be campaigning and getting active, and I would be looking ahead at a very promising career in politics in a party that can genuinely not just slow decline, but can actually introduce the most radical program for government that we've seen since Tony Blair. That's what I would be spending my time doing well.

[B]

What does that mean? Can we unpack that? What is the social contract for young people? What should they expect?

[A]

They should firstly expect an opportunity or they should expect that they are given a fair opportunity to build prosperity, to own their own home, to start a business and for that business to be supported by the state. That they can expect to come of age in a country that values and respects who they are and where they're from, that they can be given as much respect if they decide to go into the trades as if they decide to go into university. That they are treated with decency and fairness in a country that puts them first unequivocally and unashamedly.

[B]

What is them like? Puts them like? You've talked about putting the British people first. Is it the British people? Is it the English people? It's a conversation I find even uncomfortable. But like, what is them first?

[A]

Well, people who belong to this country who are tax paying, law abiding British citizens and prioritizing them in everything that we do.

[B]

But what if it's a British Muslim who's a law abiding, taxpaying citizen?

[A]

Well, I think if that particular person and I talked to lots of British Muslims in Gorton and Denton who were running businesses and some of whom I know voted for me because they were saying I can't actually support this business anymore and the tax burden's too high and things are out of control. If they are believing in the country, if they are respecting the rule of law, if they are integrating into who we are, if they were integrating into our culture, then they are part of our national community.

[B]

Can we define Britishness because, and that

[A]

by the way, is an important fault line, I think, between where, say people like me are right and maybe where people further to my right are. And some people to my right might respond to that and say, no, we want those people out of the country.

[B]

Because I'm more, with respect.

[A]

And I noticed this during the by election briefly because I had British Sikhs campaigning quite very, very often at Gorton and Denton. And I was struck at the reaction online when I was very proud actually of the campaign and what we put together. And when I did release some images just showing, you know, we had British Hong Kongers, we had British Sikhs, we had British Nigerians campaigning for Gorton and Denton to campaigning for reform and going harder actually than a lot of people online that I didn't see campaign once. There seem to be people in and around the restore world, quite a lot of people who say we Want all those people out of the country now, if that's your view, okay, there's going

[B]

to be people in the reform world who also think that it isn't like suddenly everybody who thinks that is suddenly no longer reform.

[A]

No, but I see a lot of prominent people in and around RESTORE who are basically advocating for wholesale deportations of people, some of whom are British nationals now. I just. I don't think that's a feasible, practical, realistic policy that would ever engage British people and win over their support. If you're talking about deporting illegal migrants, if you're talking about deporting foreign criminals, if you're talking about reversing the Boris wave and saying we're not going to extend any visas to people who are not making a net economic contribution, who are not learning our language and who are not playing by the rules, you know, all of that, okay, that's one thing. And all of that is in the Reform manifesto. But when people are sort of online just talking in very abstract, loose ways about re migration and mass deportations, to me, having grown up in the 90s, that's just BNP policy, right? That's British National Party policy. And.

[B]

Hold on, hold on. Sorry, just to understand, because this is an area I struggle with myself. I'll be honest. Reform. Talk about illegal immigrants and foreign criminals. I think everyone kind of agrees on that one.

[A]

Beyond that, I think even Shabana Mahmood agrees on that one.

[B]

But beyond, beyond that, who else within Reform do you think should not be in the country anymore?

[A]

Well, what Reform have said is anyone who's. So to be clear, anybody who's entered Britain illegally will be deported. And if we leave the echr, that also gives us the right to remove foreign criminals. And we've made it very clear in saying we think the Boris wave was a disaster. An indefinite leave to remain.

[B]

But what is it? How do you define what the Boris wave is?

[A]

Well, the Boris wave is basically anybody who arrived after 2021 as part of the 4 million or so migrants that came into Britain, 90% of whom came from outside of Europe. There was no democratic mandate for that. And because about 80% of them did not come in on a work visa, we are now paying for that policy disaster. So Reform came out very clearly and said reform will scrap the Boris wave by ending indefinite leave to remain. And the only way that people will be able to stay or have their visas extended and remain in Britain is if they are speaking the English language, making a net contribution to our economy, not living in social housing not spending their lives on welfare. And this is part of the reshaping of our country, it's part of the saving of our country.

[B]

But the Boris wave could mean millions.

[A]

Well, the Boris wave does mean millions, 3.8 million to be exact.

[B]

So millions may have to go.

[A]

Well, depending on where they are now in the economy and what they're doing. But essentially, potentially, yeah, I would say essentially it's about creating a very different environment or a very different economy in our country, where we now expect anybody who is here to be contributing, to be integrating, to be speaking our language and to be playing by very different rules from the rules that applied over the last 30 years. I think that's a reasonable position.

[B]

Well, yeah, but what I'm trying to get is, I don't think what you're saying is vastly different from what RESTORE have said, which is millions have to go. It's those who aren't contributing, speaking the language. So I actually don't think it's vastly different.

[A]

I think I don't understand the point of restore, personally. No, I just don't understand the point of it.

[B]

I'm just more on policy wise because it's, you know, what people care, care about. In the end, I don't think there's a vastly different language being used there between the two. And I think one of the concerns people have, well, if millions have to go, like, how do you actually. Like, how do you actually do it? Because I've watched the Icing in America and doesn't. Doesn't come across well sometimes.

[A]

Well, I think you actually do it. Well, if you were working here on a study visa and your visa expired, what would you do at the end of your visa?

[B]

I might just stay illegally.

[A]

Well, if you stay illegally, you'll be removed.

[B]

But how, like, is there a plan for how that will happen?

[A]

Like, we already removed people now, not enough people, but a lot of people who are deported in the latest figures with the Home Office leave voluntarily. Often they're told by the state that they are here illegally and they go, but some are forcibly deported. I think the numbers, off the top of my head, the numbers are a lot lower than the voluntary deportations. But forcibly, I think Labour have removed somewhere between 10 and 20,000. I need to double check the numbers, but it's nowhere near enough. But we're already removing people from the country, so the pathways are there, the mechanisms are there. What I'm saying, though, just to be clear, what I'm saying is if you do all the things that reform, have said we're going to do remove welfare for people who are not British, remove social housing subsidies and so on. Remove translation services in public sector institutions, for example. So you basically have to learn English, right? If you create that environment and you're part of, say, the 72% of Somalis who are living in social housing, more than half of whom are unemployed, you're not going to stay here. It's not going to be a viable proposition with no taxpayer support, no longer being subsidized. And I would. Instead of getting bogged down in what is the specific unit that will extricate this person. What I'm saying is, as a country, we first need an entirely different regime. In this country that makes it clear you, it's not going to be a comfortable place to live if you're not doing these things or you're here illegally or you're just depending upon the British people's goodwill or you're not making a net fiscal contribution to our economy. We need to basically get to that place, which I think we can do quite quickly. And then you will find a lot of natural change I think just happens on its own.

[B]

So I just don't think. Tell me if I'm wrong, Conor, but I don't believe you're saying anything much different from what's there upon Restored.

[A]

Well, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not similar. I'm not going to personalize this in terms of people in and around the RESTORE orbit, but like, I'm not online complaining about, you know, Zionism. I'm not sloppy with my language. I'm not, I'm not appearing very dogmatic and shrill in the way that I talk about things.

[B]

More pragmatic.

[A]

Again, I would say that I'm on. I'm much closer to the average voter than a lot of the things I see coming out of that camp. Now, I don't deny that the people who attempted to vote might be tempted to vote for a RESTORE candidate have legitimate reasons for feeling concerned about the state of the country. What I am saying to people is now is the time to box clever. Now is the time to actually ensure that, that our side of the debate stays firmly united and delivers the kind of change we can achieve at the next general election rather than falling into this trap of sort of veering off into the abyss, believing you're going to change the world, waking up after the next general election and realizing the British people have not come with you on that journey and they will not go with you on that journey. And not falling for obvious things. Take them. That the numbers that we hear so much about online. How many members. I want to see the breakdown of that. How many of those members are international? How many are from America, how many are genuinely on the electoral register in the uk?

[B]

The Reform have the same for theirs.

[A]

Yeah, we have reliable membership data. I want to see.

[B]

I want to release that data.

[A]

I want to see Restore's. We're a fully registered political party. No, no, I mean with the Electoral Commission, which, by the way, Restore isn't. I don't even believe the numbers that Restore are telling people. And if they are indeed true, as I say, I want to see a breakdown.

[B]

But do all parties release those breakdowns? Do you release the breakdown of how many are registered here and abroad?

[A]

If we're a registered political party, the membership reports put out, do you have to.

[B]

I don't know how it works. Do you have to be a registered resident of the UK to become a member of a British political party if

[A]

it's registered through the Electoral Commission? Yes. What I'm saying is I don't. I mean, I don't think. I do not believe that Restore is anywhere near as strong in this country as it is leading people to think it is.

[B]

Okay, no, it's a fair point and you might be wrong.

[A]

And the way we test that, if you compare partly that, and I'll bring an army, but the way we test that is looking at, say, local elections.

[B]

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[A]

You really are looking for a lot to get you to vote.

[B]

No, do you know what? I'm not. You know what? Because I don't actually get too involved in the. Too much involved in the immigration debate and too much in the ethnicity debate. Because I think if we don't fix the economics of this country, it doesn't matter.

[A]

No, I agree.

[B]

You can remove every immigrant from this country if the state continues to grow and continues to extract wealth.

[A]

No, I agree.

[B]

Yeah, we're fucked. Him.

[A]

I agree. I think the tax burden now is at 38%. Right. So it's, it's the highest it's ever been now under, under reason stammer. It's, it's a. In the, since post war period, it's the, the highest ever tax burden. Right. Which is saying something.

[B]

Sorry, just to be sweet. So you talked about young people. Housing, healthcare, business. What, what needs fixing to ensure that young people can afford houses and they can get health care and they can have a business. Like what. What do we. What needs to happen?

[A]

Well, the first thing is looking at the small businesses that I was talking to, right? Not to sound like a politician, but literally small businesses going bust because the taxes are too high. National insurance tax rises have been introduced under labor and it's 15% more expensive to hire people in this country. So if you're, you know, your son's equivalent in Gordon and Denton, he's like, I've just come out of uni or maybe even a bit younger. Just come out of school, want a Job, first place you go, local high street, small businesses collapsing because they've been clobbered by a government that is full of people that don't understand what it takes to run a business because they've never run a business before. I was literally going from one business to another and they were saying exactly the same thing. Too much regulation, too much taxation, too complicated to hire my son. I had a plumbing business guy, he said, look, I'd love to hire my son and two of his mates. It's just too complicated for me to do that. Now. We've been, we've completely battered small businesses, right? And that really matters because they hire about 17 million people in this country, right? And there are about 6 million small businesses that hire about 17 million people. So if you're killing small businesses, you're killing the economy, right? That's one thing. Reform are the only party with a small business forum full of small business owners who are constantly advising on policy, as in, what would help us thrive, right? Can we get rid of this regulation? Can we? Do you know, can we, how can we thrive here?

[B]

I can tell you all these things.

[A]

Local pubs, I mean, I could talk all day, but you know, reducing VAT beer duty, supporting local hospitality businesses, I mean, everything, everything that we're talking about essentially comes back to pushing back the arms of the state and allowing genuine prosperity to start to emerge and thrive. With regards to housing, we just have to deal with the trade off that is staring us in the face, which is you can have, and I'm sorry to bring it back to this, but you can have record population growth fueled by mass migration, which is now responsible for 98% of population growth in this country, or you can have available affordable housing. You cannot have both of those things. Yes, there's planning, the planning system is part of that process, but that fundamentally is a trade off. What I would like to see us do, apart from removing social housing for people who aren't British, is prioritizing housing for people who are working, who are paying tax, contributing and having children. How do you do us? Well, I would like to see us go further than maybe even Poland has gone or Hungary has gone in saying, and I don't know exactly how this would work, I have not looked at it in detail, but I would like to see us get to a place where we have something like, you know, 0.5% mortgages, 1% mortgages for people that have three or more children, for families that have three or more children, reserving new homes for people who have three two, three or more children. I would like to see the demographic crisis wrapped into our policy, housing policy, going forward. One of the big reasons people are not having kids is not, it's not only the cost of living, it's not only to do with cultural changes and, you know, the collapse of relationships and let's not go down that road right now. But I do think fundamentally one of the reasons is it's just impossible to get on the housing ladder and have a nice home that you would want to raise a family in. And we need to start embedding family first policy into the heart of everything we do. And we need to start really thinking outside of the box at how we're gonna do this stuff. I mean, another example would be cars. I mean, if you go to Central and Eastern Europe, you get 0% loans for cars. If you have a large family, there are all kinds of things that are going on in other parts of the world. Who provides those loans that we don't do here? I think they're state backed, I think they're state backed loans. I think we need to be thinking about all of that because at the moment, as I say in the book, birth rate in the UK is 1.4, just above that. Scotland is 1.2. If we keep going as we're going, we're just not going to have a country left. So unless we can find a way of simultaneously boosting birth rates, putting our people first, and solving the demographic crisis, unless we can find a way of doing that, we will just end up declining into this place that no longer really looks like anything we've ever known.

[B]

Well, Zoe, is it? Gardener Gardner Gardiner, she says because of the low birth rate, we do need high levels of immigration to be able to pay pensions.

[A]

No, that's not true. So again, a lot of people aren't reading the research. So even respected policy wonks who sit in the Office of Budget Responsibility, people like David Miles have come out and said they do not think the answer to our demographic crisis is immigration. Because what that is going to do is push us into what they call the population trap. The population trap.

[B]

It's a Ponzi.

[A]

It's a Ponzi scheme because migrants get older too. So what you end up needing is an ever increasing population in order to service your aging population. So you need more people in to service those people, but then they'll get old too. So then you need more people for them. And I think the estimates are insane. There's one forecast that suggests we would need something like 20 million people.

[B]

I did the math. It's 13 million, right?

[A]

Well, some, yeah. So it's an impossible scenario. The answer is not to fall into the population trap, which is also, again, raises questions no one's even thinking about. I mean, I would say to somebody like Zoe Gardner, so what happens then when the population grows at such a speed that the state can no longer provide core basic services for its own population, which is what we're living through now. The reason the borders are collapsing, we don't have homes for people, we don't have enough GP appointments, is because the state cannot keep up with the pace of population growth. So what do you do when you then push Western nations into an even bigger population trap with a state that at the same time is becoming less able to deliver core public services? Right. You end up in managed decline, which is what we're all living in now. But imagine that being 10 times worse.

[B]

But what do we do then about. Because it's a pay as you go pension. The state pension is a pay as you go pension scheme. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Paid for by the money comes in today. So if we reduce immigration and we have a falling birth rate, but an age in population.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What do we do about.

[A]

So one answer that's been put forward and again, it's all there is. No, I don't. I think it's all going to be very difficult. That's the reality. Because of really disastrous policies that have been enacted 20, 30 years ago and we're now realizing. We're now realizing a bit like nuclear energy. Well, nobody built the plants and we're all sort of here trying to come up with an answer to it.

[B]

Can I just.

[A]

There is one suggestion, just to answer that question before. There is one suggestion, which is again, I think came from David Miles. I'd have to check. But what you basically want to do is really lower the overall rate of net migration and changing the composition of that migration, of any migration that is still coming in to be high skill and I would argue European or at least from the Anglosphere. So you're dealing as well with the cultural issue. You would then need your very assertive, proactive pro family policy, Right. Where you are teaching children about the importance of having children, about the reality of having children, about the biological risks of having children later in life, embedding pro family culture in your society. A bit like we brought about culture change with the environment or smoking or dangerous driving. Right. There have been moments in recent history where we have changed the culture of a country quite dramatically, quite quickly. Not saying I support those decisions, but nobody smokes cigarettes in nightclubs anymore. Right? You get what I'm saying? And I remember when they did. And lastly, getting 8 million people off welfare. So welfare reform is one of the big elephants in the room, right, because we've got.

[B]

Can we just stick with pension for now? Because the reason I ask is.

[A]

But you're saying how we haven't got enough workers.

[B]

Well, yes, but there's a lag. So say you're. I agree with you on probably family policies. I 100 agree. I wish I'd had more kids myself. It's my biggest regret. But if we, if we're successful with that, those children won't be taxpayers for 18, 20 years, 21 years. But we've got an agent population now and we've got unfunded liabilities with this pension. What do we do? Like, do we have to be realistic that we just cannot afford the pensions as they are?

[A]

I'm not an expert on pensions, I'd defer to somebody like Richard Tice, but to go back to the tax contribution point, it would take 18 to 25 years for those people to become taxpayers. But as I've just said, there are 8 million potential taxpayers currently sitting on welfare, half of whom have no requirement to look for work. Did you see that thing? That is insane. That is insane.

[B]

The doctor's notes?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Was it like pretty much everyone they surveyed, they do not turn down doctor's notes.

[A]

One million people, your son's age 18 to 25. One million people not in education, not in employment and not in training. A million young people. Nobody in Westminster actually gives a shit about that. I mean that should be an absolute scandal.

[B]

What do you do for the psyche of these kids?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, and I saw them, I've seen it. We all see them on the bikes with the hood, smoking weed. Right? But they are. I do remember hug a hoodie, right? David Cameron. And I remember Tony Blair on ASBOs. There was a sense in the 2000s that this was unacceptable, right, that you actually needed to re. Engage. You remember New Labours policy on troubled families, which is actually quite brave for the Labour Party. They actually said, look, if you look at all antisocial behavior, poverty, unemployment, like all these problems that are endemic, repeat offending. It often comes back to a small number of families. And Blair, I mean, imagine the left doing this today. Blair basically said, we are going to create. I can't believe I'm saying I support something Tony Blair did, but he said we're going to create A multi agency targeted response to deal with what was called troubled families. And they would basically be hit from every direction. Social care, you know, health care, employment, training, you know, all of this. They would just get this revamp. And I think probably we need something like that on a really big scale and we need to radically reform the welfare state, which obviously reform have said we're going to do get back to face to face consultations. The absurdity of people getting all of this stuff through zoom meetings, being trained what to say on TikTok and get millions of people off welfare and back into the labor market and then we won't need masses of low skill migrant labor that is coming in to fill gaps that could be filled by Brits but at the same time are undermining and really draining our economy and our country.

[B]

Do you know what I think the biggest risk to this country is? That's an unfair question, really. I'll just tell you. I think inflation is the biggest risk to this country. I think it's what's hollowed out the country over the last 20, 30 years. We did the numbers. I mean last 30 years, house prices up 1500% but wages are 500%. Inflation is a constant. I call it trickle up. It is a constant feed of purchasing power up to the rich societies in the poorest. And now with the minimum wage we've had this wage compression whereby if you're a trolley collector at Sainsbury's you're on 24 and a half grand a year. But how many businesses really want to have Starling jobs at 25 grand a year which are skilled jobs? So I think inflation is the biggest risk to this country. And the only reason, and the reason I was drawn to Rupert Lowe is he's the only person I've seen fully attack this and talk about a plan for what would really attack this.

[A]

So I don't think that's true. I think both Nigel Farage and Richard Tice have talked about that and have talked extensively about how a reform government would reshape the economy.

[B]

I don't reshape the economy, but there's reshaping the economy and then there's tackling inflation. You could reshape the economy economy with deficit spending, but it's going to be an inflationary environment. And the only person I've seen fully attack this internationally so far has been Javier Milei out in Argentina. Somebody who fundamentally understands economics. My fear for, and this is why I fear uni party, fear reform, nothing will change is the reality of governing is obviously going to be very difficult. It's like, great, we want to get rid of business rates, want to get rid of regulation, want to get rid of the welfare bill, want to perhaps have 0% loans. This is all has to. Where does the money come from? From this. And will it come from borrowing or will it come from taxation? Will Reform party be a continuation of labor and Conservatives and continue to deficit spend and the national debt will continue to increase? We know.

[A]

I don't think it will at all. I think Nigel's been very clear in saying bringing down the debt is going to be an overriding priority. He's talked more about our national debt than any other frontline politician. What we spent £110 billion a year on just servicing our national debt. Most people don't know. Yeah, most people don't even even know that. And I suspect now the war in Iran, whatever your view about the war in Iran, I suspect that will now obviously, through the energy shocks make it a lot worse. But again, that takes us back to reform policy.

[B]

That's not inflation.

[A]

No. But what it will do is put everybody's bills up and it will make the managed decline even more visible. But again, that brings us back to another area in which Nigel's been ahead of the game, which is saying we should never have left, allowed our energy markets to become this vulnerable, this unstable and this weak. He was talking about drilling and North Sea oil and gas. He was talking about that decades ago,

[B]

just on that point. So when you talk about prices going up because of the war in Iran, I think I saw this week, one is Sri Lanka said that they're going to not have people working on Wednesdays because of energy shortages. And so this is going to. Yeah, we're going to see the ripple effect. I mean, you must have seen it filling up your car. I have. You obviously support the idea of what's happening in Iran, but do you think.

[A]

Well, I support surgical strikes.

[B]

Yeah. But do you think therefore, because that has a cost implication to people in this country, that it's something as a country we. That the government needs a mandate from the voters for to support?

[A]

I think I'm just going back to the vote on Syria. Was it Syria or Libya where there was a vote in parliament and at the moment, obviously, Keir Starmer feels as though he doesn't really want to get drawn in and he doesn't need the mandate. Anything involving action that's more extensive than what we've seen I think would necessitate some kind of mandate, some kind of vote yes. In terms of supporting America dismantle key bits of infrastructure, I don't personally think that would need to go to the country, but the involvement of ground troops and something that looks like it's going to become more prolonged than. Absolutely.

[B]

Okay, so just back on the economic stuff. So it was Rupert's rhetoric of taking a sledgehammer to the state, said he would made. I think he said it would make Javier Milei blush. That's what I'm drawn to. That's what I'm getting at is that,

[A]

well, we're all drawn to things that sound very radical and engaging but aren't always very practical.

[B]

Well, I mean, I think Javier Millais proved that you can do it in Argentina. He has taken a chainsaw to the state. He's driven growth, reduced inflation.

[A]

So it has actually he's not done

[B]

it by himself, but he's done it.

[A]

Let's not reheat the. Go back in time on the arguments, but there are lots of things you could do to cut back the size of the state, to make the state more efficient and to reshape the state. I think Danny Kruger's put out a policy paper on that and I think reform's obviously been very clear in saying what it wants to do around reshaping the civil service, cutting down on fraud and waste, cutting down net zero. I just get the vibe it's not radical enough.

[B]

Not economically. Just economically.

[A]

Yeah. Well, that's fine.

[B]

You know, I fundamentally believe in the smallest state possible, the lowest levels of tax possible, the lowest welfare possible. I mean, I think what Milei's done well is the sequencing. You can't do it all at once. But he came in with a mandate that he was going to take a chainsaw to the state, and he did, and it's been effective. And I guess just personally I'm so embedded in the idea of that the foundation of the country is the economics and that we've destroyed our country through bad economics, bad economic policy. That that's what I look for. And I haven't seen that from anyone apart from Rupert, which is why I was drawn to him. It's not the immigration stuff. Like I say, you can fix the immigration. If you don't fix the economics, we're still going to be in poverty.

[A]

I don't. Again, I've not really seen anything that's been comprehensive on economic reform. I think we have a very reform, have a very well thought out plan for what we want to do with the economy and how we want to get to tax cuts as quickly as possible. But we're not going to be unrealistic and say everything is going to happen on day one because A, that's never going to win a general election because the British people aren't idiots, and B, it's not going to be feasible if and when you enter number 10 Downing street to go back to your point, there's going to have to be a sequencing aspect to this and I think that's what you'll see.

[B]

Okay. Well, are you optimistic?

[A]

Yes, I am looking forward to the general election.

[B]

All right. Well, Matt, I appreciate your time. I don't know how long. We've done quite a bit. Appreciate your time. Good luck. I'm looking forward to see which seat you go for next. And yeah, I'm intrigued. Good luck. Good luck with the book.

[A]

Great. Well, thank you for having me. And I look forward to seeing your son campaigning alongside me at the next by election.

[B]

Get you. I haven't picked a size yet. Get you a turquoise Tycon? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, everyone for listening. See you soon.