Reform UK's Dr. James Orr joins us in studio to talk about his new political party, Reform UK, and why he thinks we should stop sending our kids to college. We also talk about why the Tories are worse than the Nazis.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome to our two of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:02:34.000In fact, in many ways, there isn't really a historical precedent for how well Reform UK is doing.
00:02:40.000Well, what we're witnessing is really the emergence for the first time in the history of British politics, a new party of the right that is credible, that has increasingly very strong popular support.
00:02:53.000I think we've been leading at about 160 polls, poll after poll.
00:02:59.000We've made some amazing incursions electorally back in May, swept the local elections.
00:03:06.000Looks like we're going to do extremely well in Wales and in Scotland.
00:03:12.000At the moment, we're sometimes polling higher than the combined polling of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, the two historic parties.
00:03:19.000I want to highlight that, that they've had a few different parties towards the left end of the politics.
00:03:23.000They used to have the Liberals, and they're still around, but they're small, and they got replaced by Labour.
00:03:27.000But the Conservatives and before them, the Tories, they're older than America.
00:03:31.000There was a, I believe it was a Tory prime minister when the American Revolution broke out.
00:03:52.000Well, I think for the One very important animating factor is a negative one, namely just the routine betrayal and incompetence of successive Labour and Tory governments over certainly over the last 25 years.
00:04:06.000Over the Tory period, you know, the Conservatives let in their last Parliament, from sort of 2019 to 2024, more legal and illegal migrants than we've seen in our history.
00:04:22.000Well, all sorts of complicated reasons behind it, but I think part of the problem was a belief in the dogma of the Treasury that the British economy will collapse if we don't keep the Ponzi scheme going, if we don't keep bringing in hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of people to help prop up the economy and do the jobs that Brits don't want to do.
00:04:46.000Well, it's so appalling just because you did the Biden wave, except they call it Boris wave there, and it was, I think, higher than Biden's level of immigration when you adjust for the size of the country.
00:04:57.000And with a right-wing government, they've had only right-of-center governments in the UK until Starmer from 2010 to last year, and they did the full open border spiel from the right.
00:05:09.000And so I think that's the first thing that's really driving support for us because reform has been very, very clear on migration from the very beginning.
00:05:19.000It's very clear on the fiscal suicide of net zero and the need to get some energy independence and energy sovereignty.
00:05:25.000It's been very clear on questions of free speech.
00:05:29.000We had the passing of the Online Safety Act just a few months ago.
00:05:34.000And this is really a censorship charter using the wedge of trying to get some statutory protection for children online.
00:05:43.000But folded into that enormous piece of legislation was effectively measures and tools that equip Ofcom, our media regulator, with enormous powers to censor.
00:05:56.000And even Substack is now having to censor certain articles to comply with the legislation.
00:06:02.000I think even X announced today that they just said some of our material is going to have to be taken down in Europe.
00:06:08.000And you have to watch out for what you post because we're falling, but we can't defy these laws just yet.
00:06:14.000The European Union is developing its own kind of censorship charter that is even more draconian.
00:07:00.000Yeah, so this has been a long-running debate in the public square over the last few years in Britain, and there's been a big push on the left and now with the Labour Party, which has an enormous majority in the House of Commons, to effectively legislate a definition and protect, or rather, protect anyone who feels themselves to be a victim of Islamophobia.
00:07:22.000And so there's been a lot of back and forth.
00:07:24.000And actually, Parliament has been working very well.
00:07:26.000There's been excellent Tory MPs who've been getting up and pointing out just what an incursion on freedom of speech and freedom of religion this definition would be.
00:07:36.000Because effectively, what they're trying to do is to elide sort of beliefs with identity.
00:07:42.000And And so the thought is that to be a Muslim is to have a particular identity rather than to have that identity in virtue of subscribing to a set of beliefs, beliefs that plainly can be criticized in any free democracy and indeed and should be criticized, should be open to criticism.
00:08:00.000But so the government's backed down is trying to tweak the definition and now it's something like anti-Muslim, anti-Muslim hatred or anti-Muslim, yeah, I think it's anti-Muslim hatred.
00:08:10.000And the problem with that is it just, you know, it just bakes in the problem.
00:08:20.000I mean, there is all of this sort of exists under the equality legislation, but this would be a special provision.
00:08:25.000It would be a special protection, which, well, they're trying to say by shifting to anti-Muslim hate as opposed to Islamophobia, we've kind of solved the problem.
00:08:35.000Because, again, the assumption is there that somehow to be a Muslim is to be a member of a race or to be a member of an ethnic group, which plainly you're not.
00:08:42.000Just if you can do the Shahada three times or whatever it might be, the three of us could become Muslims in the next half hour.
00:08:50.000It's completely nothing to do with our ethnicity or race.
00:08:52.000I'm looking at the latest draft definition, and it includes as something that would be banned the prejudicial stereotyping and racialization of Muslims to stir up hatred against them.
00:09:02.000That just strikes me as an incredibly broad thing.
00:09:06.000To say there's a common trait that a lot of Muslims have.
00:09:11.000Well, I think that what you would have to say to speak to a trait that a lot of Muslims have is you'd have to pick out some doctrinal commitment, some belief that should be contestable in a free democracy.
00:09:27.000There's nothing distinctive, ethnically or racially distinctive about being Muslim.
00:09:31.000As we said, it's simply whether or not you sign up to a belief system.
00:09:35.000And so what it's doing is it's protecting that belief system, protecting the identity that you have in virtue of signing up to the belief system.
00:09:41.000It's an ideological belief, and then you say you can't stereotype a belief system.
00:10:11.000I mean, what's interesting about that is that ironically, this legislation could make people think that criticism about grooming gangs or criticism about female genital mutilation is something somehow a widespread shared Islamic belief.
00:10:28.000It's actually, certainly the grooming gangs come from a very particular area of Pakistan and FGM is localized in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
00:10:37.000This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and founding partner of YReFi.
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00:10:53.000Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about YReFi.
00:10:57.000I'm going to tell you guys about YReFi.com.
00:12:03.000But I have another day job now where I'm as senior advisor to Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, and we are all expecting our next prime minister.
00:12:14.000Well, 2029 is the latest that the election can be called, and I'm not sure the country can last that long, but it's possible that the government will fall before that.
00:12:24.000We're very good at getting rid of prime ministers.
00:12:26.000Getting rid of governments is a lot harder.
00:12:51.000Is it going to be 2029 or you predict before?
00:12:53.000Well, I mean, the first thing to say is that we've got what Nigel is calling our midterms, which is sort of an American phrase, but we have got a big set of regional, local, devolved elections next May.
00:13:06.000So the whole of Wales gets to vote for its local parliament, same in Scotland.
00:13:11.000And then there's thousands of seats around Greater London and all around England that are going to be up for grabs.
00:13:16.000And we're expecting a turquoise tsunami.
00:13:18.000We're expecting Reform UK to do extremely well in all of those elections.
00:13:22.000And that will be the last time that the British people get to express their democratic will before the next general election.
00:13:28.000The latest that can be constitutionally is the first week of August 2029.
00:13:32.000And it could be that Kier Starmer, many people don't think he's going to be Prime Minister for that much longer, but whoever his successor would have until the first week of August 2029.
00:13:42.000But it could be that something happens before that.
00:14:55.000Yeah, I mean, so it's very interesting seeing the parallels between somebody like Mandani and Zach Polanski, who is the new leader of the Green Party.
00:15:04.000And it's growing very, very fast as a party.
00:15:07.000I think you only pay like £5 to get in.
00:15:09.000So it would probably be quite easy to do some entryism and maybe hijack the Green Party.
00:15:14.000But as far as we're concerned, it's fantastic.
00:15:19.000May many flowers on the British left bloom because it's basically fracturing the vote between, you've got the focus on, well, I mean, there are focus on the crescent, you might say.
00:15:43.000The Parliamentary Labour Party is very welfarist, very, very statist.
00:15:49.000Starmer tried to get a tiny little haircut, £5 billion off our ballooning £300 billion a year welfare bill, and he couldn't get it through, even though he had a majority in Parliament of about 175 seats.
00:16:03.000So, and that's the most, you know, just a very, very tiny, very, very small exercise of kind of restraining our public expenditure.
00:16:13.000So, yeah, things are not looking good on that side of British politics.
00:16:19.000And on the right, yes, there are supposed, there are also figures popping up.
00:16:23.000There's Tommy Robinson's, there's Rupert Lowe's, there's Ben Habibs.
00:16:26.000These are interesting figures on the right.
00:16:28.000So it's not like we're completely unified, but that's where the energy is.
00:16:32.000I think there's a feeling that that's where the policy energy is.
00:16:37.000It's where the best ideas are fizzing on the right.
00:16:41.000So we just discussed with Steve Dace, our last guest, about the recurring Republican problem of elect people to restrict immigration or do other bold things, and they just get these feet of clay in office.
00:16:53.000So I suppose one obvious concern is reform wins a landslide, 27 or 29.
00:16:59.000Do they have the stones to go through with a big immigration cutback or moratorium or other big sweeping things?
00:17:06.000Or is there going to be a lot of, are people going to wuss out at the brink?
00:17:11.000Somebody told me, I think it was about a year ago, that the process, there's a name for that process.
00:17:15.000What happens to you as you got to go in?
00:17:17.000Melonification, melonification, which I think actually in retrospect is probably unfair to Georgia Maloney, who is reputed to have come in with talking tough on migration and then actually folded as soon as she got in.
00:17:28.000But actually, I think if you look at her numbers, what she's done, her track record, it's been pretty impressive.
00:17:33.000So it's going to be very, very challenging.
00:17:35.000We're going to be up against one of the most effective blobs, as it were, as we call it, in England and in the world.
00:17:44.000Enormous inertia, huge resistance probably to almost all of our program, despite we're having widespread popular support across all the different parties regaining control of our borders.
00:17:55.000So it's going to be extremely difficult.
00:17:57.000We're going to be up against the judicial industrial complex, the human rights lawyers.
00:18:03.000That was actually my question about legally what are you guys going to because we Trump gets stopped at every judge, every district judge with a gavel and a robe.
00:18:11.000And I can only imagine just knowing the nature somewhat of the English intelligentsia that you're going to be up against a real stiff fight.
00:18:24.000Look, I know there are a lot of choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service.
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00:19:31.000Call 972-Patriot today or go to patriotmobile.com slash Charlie.
00:19:35.000use promo code charlie for a free month of service that's patriotmobile.com slash charlie or call 972 patriot and make the switch today we've got a full house here dr james or blake neff myself and we're about to bring in one more uh joining us now is todd nettleton author of when faith is forbidden uh he's also the voice of the martyrs radio host uh todd welcome to the show thanks so much good to be with you Yeah, honored to be with you.
00:20:05.000You're also joined by Dr. James Orr from Cambridge, and this is an issue near and dear to his heart as well.
00:20:11.000So we're going to have a fun, well, not a fun, it's a serious and important conversation.
00:20:15.000You have been traveling around interviewing persecuted Christians in South Asia.
00:20:22.000And I think a lot of people, a lot of discussion right now is about Nigeria.
00:20:25.000This is kind of, if you're going to talk about this topic, that's where you're focused on.
00:20:29.000But, you know, there are other areas of the world that we need to be aware of where Christians are being persecuted actively right now.
00:20:36.000Please tell us about some of your stories out of South Asia.
00:20:39.000Yeah, one of the things we heard repeatedly in South Asia was stories of Christians being affected by the anti-conversion laws in India.
00:20:47.000So multiple states, now 12 states in India, have passed laws that make it illegal to change your religion and illegal to encourage someone else to change their religion.
00:20:59.000So right now in India, there are dozens of pastors in prison under these anti-conversion laws.
00:21:05.000And one of the interesting things is the inducement, the idea of inducing someone to change their faith is illegal.
00:21:12.000We actually had an interview and we've aired it now on Voice of the Martyrs Radio with a human rights attorney who is talking about if you set up donuts and coffee before your church service, the government can come in and say, hey, that's an illegal inducement.
00:21:37.000It is not illegal to reconvert someone to Hinduism.
00:21:40.000In fact, an Indian member of parliament just in the last few weeks has presided over what they call a reconversion ceremony, reconverting people back to Hinduism.
00:21:52.000But if a Christian invites you to church, if the Christian gives you donuts and coffee, that's an illegal inducement to change your religion.
00:22:28.000Well, they really took a lot of momentum when Prime Minister Modi, who has come out of this Hindu nationalist movement called the RSS, that is his background.
00:22:39.000He's the prime minister of the whole country of India.
00:22:42.000And so he has brought that philosophy to the highest levels of the Indian government.
00:22:46.000Now, they have talked about a national anti-conversion law.
00:23:07.000But then, like I say, when you get to what the law actually says and some of the laws, there's one state that says, if you want to change your religion, you need to go before a magistrate and say that you're going to change your religion.
00:23:20.000And if you want to talk to someone else about changing their religion, what us Christians would call evangelism, you need to go before a magistrate six months before you have that conversation.
00:23:31.000And you need to appear and say, hey, in six months, I'm going to talk to my neighbor about coming to church with me.
00:23:37.000I just want to get your okay, Mr. Magistrate.
00:23:39.000And it's like you read that and you're like, that's ludicrous.
00:23:54.000You've, you know, it kind of makes me think of this story that's kind of percolating, and we haven't talked about it yet, but Rep Mark Warren Walker from North Carolina, he's Trump's nominee for religious freedom, and he's just been waiting for a committee hearing.
00:24:12.000He's getting blocked, apparently, by a former political foe.
00:24:17.000But these are the types of stories we need to be educated on about why those types of posts are so important within the Trump administration.
00:24:24.000Let's kind of keep going around the map here.
00:24:55.000Was it just a criminal gang that wants ransom?
00:24:58.000They're trying to fundraise, and so they're kidnapping people for ransom.
00:25:01.000Right now, we don't know that, but this is happening again and again and again.
00:25:06.000And I think at some point you start to ask the question, well, is the Nigerian government incapable of stopping these kinds of attacks, or do they not have the will to stop these kinds of attacks?
00:25:20.000Since President Trump named Nigeria as a country of particular concern earlier this year, it's going to be really interesting to see how the State Department plays that out and what tools are brought to bear to help Nigeria.
00:25:34.000Again, typically it's not the government of Nigeria that is persecuting Christians.
00:25:44.000So it's going to be interesting to see how that CPC status plays out and how the State Department sort of acts that out in our relationship with Nigeria.
00:25:54.000Well, and one of the more surprising things, I don't know if you've heard this story, Dr. Orr, but Nikki Minaj, of all people, has been helping raise awareness.
00:27:25.000Well, the Syrian government, the new Syrian government, now almost a year old, a year since the fall of Bashir al-Assad there in Syria, what they have said to the rest of the world is, we want religious freedom.
00:27:38.000We want a Syria that is safe for every religion.
00:27:42.000We know that there are Syrians who are Christians, and then there are Syrians who are Druze, and there are Syrians who are Muslim, and we want to all live together in peace.
00:27:50.000And the rest of the world hears that and we're like, yes, that's great.
00:28:13.000So what they're telling the rest of the world, the Syrian government, is not what they're telling Christians living inside Syria.
00:28:20.000And Christians there are understandably very concerned.
00:28:23.000If you're a father or a mother and you have young children in Syria and you're a Christian right now, you're asking yourself every single day, is it safe for our children?
00:28:31.000Is it safe to raise our children here or should we try to go somewhere else?
00:28:44.000And, you know, it occurs to me, and you guys kind of flag this for us, is that during the Christmas season, persecution of Christians actually increases.
00:28:54.000So, you know, for our audience listening, what do they need to know about that?
00:29:01.000Well, if you hate Christians, if you hate the gospel, what better time to make a statement like that than on the day Christians are celebrating the birth of Christ?
00:29:11.000So Christians have been targeted in recent years in Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Bangladesh, in Nigeria, in Egypt.
00:29:20.000And so we want Christians here in America, as you gather around the table, as you are with your family, as you're with your loved ones, we hope that you'll remember to pray for Christians who live in hostile areas and restricted nations.
00:29:32.000They are at more risk around the Christmas season, more risk around Christian holy days.
00:29:39.000And so as we gather together in safety, let's pray for the members of our spiritual family who don't have that safety and just pray that God will protect them during this Christmas season.
00:29:50.000Yeah, and we have a URL here as well that I want to make sure we put up.
00:30:05.000So if you want to be a voice for religious freedom, if you want to stand with your brothers and sisters in Christ around the globe that are facing persecution and in some cases, genocide, please, please, please, this Christmas season, when they need you the most, consider being a part of what Voice of the Martyrs is doing.
00:30:26.000And Todd, I just, you know, really, really appreciate you highlighting these areas of the world where we need to be praying.
00:30:33.000We should be praying for the persecuted church.
00:30:35.000We should be doing what we can to contribute financially, especially right now.
00:30:40.000And, you know, final words to you, Todd.
00:30:44.000Well, when you come to that website, we'd love to send you a free book that has stories of persecuted Christians.
00:30:50.000And this is a way to be inspired all year long as you read the stories of people who would rather go to prison or rather be beaten or rather be killed than deny their faith in Christ.
00:31:02.000I think there's great lessons and great inspiration for all of us who are Christians in these stories.
00:31:07.000That is vom.org slash Charlie to get involved, help out.
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00:32:11.000What is the, I mean, so we're talking about persecution all over sort of the developing world, Asia, Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East, certainly.
00:32:23.000What's the state of Christendom in Europe, in the UK?
00:32:27.000Well, I guess it's post-Christendom, and you could say maybe the story of Europe in the 20th century, maybe even the 19th century, is how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again after the fall of Christendom, after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.
00:32:43.000And you could think of even the European Union as an attempt to come up with some sort of secular sequel to Christendom, like a way of trying to, you know, bind Europe together into a sort of single collective entity.
00:32:55.000But I remember back in 2004-05, when they were trying to push through a constitution on the EU, there was an attempt made to make reference to just the Christian and Jewish inheritance of Europe as well as the Hellenic and Enlightenment ones.
00:33:09.000And there was a huge political battle over it.
00:33:10.000And in the end, they said, nope, we're not making any mention of it at all.
00:33:14.000So that's the sort of broad context across Europe, you might say.
00:33:18.000In Britain itself, you know, there's evidence, I think some evidence that there's been a quiet revival over the last five years, big spikes in Bible buying, big spikes in commitment to God, at least some kind of spirituality.
00:33:35.000But broadly speaking, the institutional church, the Church of England, has chronically failed Christians in Britain in England for many, many years now on all of the really sort of hot-button political issues.
00:33:52.000Now, that's not something that the church should really be doing.
00:33:56.000It certainly shouldn't be doing it as aggressively as it has been doing it.
00:34:01.000I was saying to somebody the other day that actually, you know, the bishops in the House of Lords are voting more often against the Conservative government than the Labour Party.
00:34:09.000My friend Ed West calls Britain, he says, we're the world's only left-wing theocracy.