The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Lawfare - A Practical Guide by Henry Martin

00:00:00.040 Hello and thank you for joining us for this book club and interview. Today I'm

00:00:04.840 going to be discussing the book Lawfare, a practical guide by Henry Martin

00:00:09.480 published by Imperium Press that came out earlier this year and to discuss it

00:00:14.320 in depth today I'm talking to his author Henry Martin, otherwise known as

00:00:18.800 Reactionary Reading Law. Thank you very much for joining us today Henry. Thank

00:00:22.480 you for having me Harry. And so let's get straight into this then. So the book is

00:00:29.340 called A Practical Guide. What was your reason for writing a practical guide

00:00:35.120 that's kind of aimed at right-wingers and dissident-centrist types? What is it that

00:00:42.060 they do wrong that needed to be corrected with such a guide? Right, so this ties

00:00:47.640 back to the origins of my sub-stack which I set up, oh gosh, four years ago now,

00:00:51.980 2021. The reason I set that up was I kept hearing people throw around the term

00:00:56.960 lawfare with, especially in a UK context, with no understanding or deliberate use

00:01:04.240 of the word and they were just throwing it around. So whenever there was a judgement

00:01:08.400 that our side of politics didn't like, it was activist judges, it was the result of

00:01:14.740 left-wing lawfare and terrible, evil, liberal lawyers. And I'm caricaturing that

00:01:20.740 position a bit, but that's been the quality of legal discourse on the right for years now

00:01:29.580 with the exception of myself and a few others now. And I decided that that had to change

00:01:37.260 because a lot of the mistakes that were being made by people were fairly elementary mistakes

00:01:46.740 that anyone with a basic understanding of law would be able to acknowledge its mistakes and work around.

00:01:55.940 Moving on to the book, the reason I ended up writing the book was because

00:02:01.460 lots of people in my private life, people I know who are activists, content creators and people like

00:02:08.820 that were saying to me, could you put a condensed understanding of lawfare, try and define the term

00:02:16.660 and explain how it works in a practical context. So I spoke to my writing mentor and said,

00:02:25.380 you've written lots of books, how do you do it? Step one was writing a proposal. So I had to think about it,

00:02:30.580 wrote a proposal and sent it to Imperium with links to my sub stack and myself and Mike had a conversation

00:02:37.860 about it. And he said, I like the idea, get on with them. And yeah, I'm very grateful to Mike and Imperium

00:02:44.660 for facilitating me writing this book. And moving on to what people get wrong, which I think was the

00:02:52.180 second part of your question, because the American judicial system is often seen as the most similar

00:03:03.300 judicial system to the British one. Lots of people and even relatively well-funded activist organizations,

00:03:13.140 such as the SPUC in Christian Concerned, up until quite recently, had a very American attitude towards

00:03:23.860 legal disputes and using the law in an activist way. And the reason for that seems to be that

00:03:39.220 there's the perception that the British legal system is a lot like the Americans because it's an idea that

00:03:46.500 comes from legal academia. And what's quite stark in legal academia with compared to practical law

00:03:53.540 and people practicing law is most people who end up in legal academia have a very philosophical

00:03:59.460 view of law. Whereas if you discuss this with practicing lawyers, they have a very practical

00:04:05.540 understanding and there's not really a mixture between the two. So when a legal academic talks about

00:04:12.420 law, they're primarily talking about principles without much of a consideration for practicality.

00:04:18.740 Yeah, I think from my own experience, looking at discourse revolving around this, and one of the

00:04:25.060 interesting parts of the book is you set out very early on some of the most practical differences

00:04:30.660 between the US and the UK legal system, which I was not entirely aware of myself. US law is seen as an

00:04:38.020 outgrowth of historic Anglo-Saxon, like, legal traditions, at least when people discuss it

00:04:44.340 in a rhetorical fashion. They're seen, I mean, America's entire legal system and their political

00:04:48.820 system is kind of seen as an outgrowth of founding principles of the Magna Carta, this idea of Anglo-Saxon

00:04:54.580 liberty. And so I think that's where people are coming from when they treat it as though they are the

00:04:59.940 same when in fact, as you lay out through the book, they are very different from one another.

00:05:05.540 Yes, certainly with the practical aspects of how it functions, because the British judiciary,

00:05:12.420 as exists today, isn't anywhere near as old as people think it is, in the sense that

00:05:20.020 most of the way that the British courts worked, if you go back 500 years, would be unrecognisable to

00:05:25.860 how it works now. Because most courts were localised, and the way commercial disputes were dealt with was

00:05:36.660 it was a medieval form of arbitration. For those of you who don't know, arbitration is basically where

00:05:41.140 you have a private judge who both parties appoint, who makes a legally binding decision.

00:05:45.860 So for things like merchant's courts and commerce legal matters, you had separate merchant's courts,

00:05:51.220 which were mostly ran through the City of London. And other legal matters, depending on where you

00:05:56.980 were in the country, would be dealt with by your lord, and then you would have the king's justice,

00:06:01.620 which depending on what point in British history you're discussing or thinking about,

00:06:06.900 the king's justice may or may not have been in force because of war and difficulties with the monarchy.

00:06:18.500 Yeah, and so when was it in that case that the modern conception of law, or at least the modern

00:06:24.580 systems that we operate under in the UK, because obviously for the purposes of our own circumstances,

00:06:30.180 I think it's best to focus on UK law through this interview. When was it that that was set up?

00:06:35.860 Right, so it started in the 19th century and basically continued up until Blair. So prior to

00:06:45.940 the mid-19th century, family court matters were dealt with by the church exclusively.

00:06:51.700 So you had church courts that would deal with marital disputes and enable divorces. And divorces

00:06:59.220 up until the middle of the 19th century, you had to go through parliament for approval anyway.

00:07:04.260 But it starts really in the 19th century where you have a modern, well-unified form of justice in

00:07:12.500 a way that would be recognizable today. I think that's a satisfactory answer to your question.

00:07:18.100 Okay, and I mean you could say that the English legal system since Blair, you mentioned Blair a

00:07:24.900 moment ago, has tried to take on this veneer of the American system with things like the Supreme Court,

00:07:32.420 at least again coming from a layman's perspective, which, as far as I can tell, do not have anywhere

00:07:38.420 near the same kind of legislative or interpretive power that, say, the American Supreme Court does.

00:07:45.380 If I'm getting anything wrong, you can correct me, by the way.

00:07:47.780 Yeah, so on my sub stack there's an article called The Worst Things That Tony Blair Ever Did,

00:07:53.860 and perhaps controversially...

00:07:56.180 I mean, have you finished writing it? That must be a long one.

00:07:58.660 Oh, well, yeah, I finished writing it. I kept it mainly to fox hunting, but that's because I'm a country boy, so...

00:08:05.300 With Blair, it was very controversial, the choosing of the name of the Supreme Court. The

00:08:09.780 reasoning why the Supreme Court was established was because Blair was and still is a huge fan of

00:08:16.580 separation of powers. And prior to the foundation of the Supreme Court, you had the law lords,

00:08:22.180 which would be legally qualified lords who were exceptional lawyers in their own right.

00:08:28.900 They would sit in the House of Lords, but they would also take on the most difficult appeal cases

00:08:34.580 and provide binding judgments. The reason why Blair got rid of that was because

00:08:44.260 that basically is a medieval system, or a remnant from the medieval era, wasn't

00:08:52.580 conducive with his neoliberal ideas of separation of powers. So under Blair, the...

00:09:00.580 I'd imagine with somebody like Blair as well, it just didn't seem current.

00:09:04.260 No, it didn't seem current. So the role of the Lord Chancellor changed and

00:09:10.180 how a lot of the roles within parliament and governance more broadly changed and became more

00:09:15.700 separate, whereas previously you would have had people who were appointed by the Crown in some

00:09:23.060 cases and would serve different roles across government. So under Blair, the rules of how

00:09:29.460 judges were appointed changed. So previously they'd be appointed by the Crown.

00:09:35.300 After Blair, he established the Judicial Appointments Committee, which was...

00:09:39.700 I mean, it was relatively similar to the Crown, apart from it was incredibly bureaucratic because

00:09:45.380 the Crown Appointments Committee, or the appointment of judges by the Crown,

00:09:50.260 was by the time Blair got rid of it, it was somewhat ceremonial, like giving assent to legislation.

00:09:59.060 It's still a power the Royalty have, in theory, to say no, but it hasn't been exercised in centuries.

00:10:06.100 Okay. And when we talk about all of this stuff, and going back to the original question regarding

00:10:14.020 sort of the way that dissidents talk about this, would you say that the kind of legal ignorance of

00:10:20.740 every, of all the sorts of subjects that you're covering there in rhetoric that's given, because

00:10:25.540 through the book you are quite critical of some public figures.

00:10:29.540 Yes.

00:10:29.940 Of the way that they discuss legal matters.

00:10:34.020 How would you say that that kind of hinders people's ability to make effective change?

00:10:39.460 Because ultimately what we want, as part of any dissident movement within Britain right now,

00:10:44.500 is for there to be effective change, effective blocks to changes being made to our towns and cities

00:10:50.980 that we're not in favour of, such as, for instance, HMOs just coming in, and

00:10:57.060 airdropping a load of asylum seekers into your neighbourhood.

00:11:00.660 Would you say that the kind of Americanised rhetoric is helping or hindering with that?

00:11:07.940 The Americanised rhetoric, I think, is a massive hindrance, and that's for a couple of reasons.

00:11:12.980 Firstly, it doesn't get anywhere because it doesn't work.

00:11:17.140 So I've got some examples that I've used on my Substack, and I believe I use them in the book,

00:11:21.700 the most prominent of which I wrote a case note on the Faircop case, that was years ago now.

00:11:26.500 But Faircop, once the organisation had been established, ended up achieving quite a lot.

00:11:32.260 But that was because of political pressure, lobbying and other productive political activities.

00:11:38.740 The legal win in the Faircop case didn't achieve that much, other than saying that,

00:11:45.620 that on a proportionality basis, the decision to investigate Harry Miller and give him a

00:11:54.740 non-crime hate incident was disproportionate, and the advice given by the College of Policing

00:12:04.260 was also unlawful on a proportionality basis.

00:12:06.740 So when I say on a proportionality basis, what I mean is, it's on a technicality and it doesn't lead to

00:12:13.860 a significant change. That significant change has happened because of Harry Miller and Faircop's

00:12:20.100 political activities. But the reason that investing in big legal cases is a bad idea is because it's

00:12:30.580 expensive. I don't know off the top of my head how much was spent in the Harry Miller case, but it

00:12:37.300 would have been tens, if not hundreds of thousands, because it went to a full judicial review. And there

00:12:43.380 were other judicial reviews that got nowhere during the Covid period on regulations that were making the

00:12:49.940 argument that the Covid regulations were disproportionate, unlawful and irrational. And because people had hope

00:12:57.780 that the court would do something to put a leash on the government during the Covid era, people were

00:13:06.500 willing to spend money on legal cases, either their own or someone else's through crowdfunding, on legal

00:13:13.300 cases that most lawyers would be able to tell you weren't likely to get where you wanted them to. And that's

00:13:23.060 sad because if people are raising hundreds of thousands of pounds, millions of pounds to spend

00:13:32.260 on legal cases that don't go anywhere, that money could be put somewhere else. And it's very sad for

00:13:37.940 people who are hoping that legal cases will bring them some reprieve from government oppression or other

00:13:48.020 horrible things. Because the needs of people and the wants of people not to be locked in their homes or

00:13:55.140 not to have hundreds of thousands of migrants come in every year is a genuine need that people have.

00:14:04.900 But it's, if you exercise the need or you put money into things that you want to work but you're

00:14:14.100 not sure that they're going to work, you're doing a disservice because you're just wasting money in

00:14:19.940 people's time and attention. And in my experience that's how people get genuinely disheartened.

00:14:26.820 They can become demoralizing.

00:14:28.260 Yeah, demoralizing massively when people just waste money on things that aren't going to go anywhere.

00:14:33.940 Well, I mean, one thing that I've commented on, and this is, I think this could apply for

00:14:39.700 the UK and the US as well, is the lack of strong patronage networks for dissidents

00:14:48.260 in terms of the fact that the left has always been overt in their support for their more radical

00:14:54.900 elements. They never disavow their own more radical elements. There always seems to be some kind of

00:15:00.980 money lifeline for these people, whether you're talking about in America something like the

00:15:05.140 Innocence Project, which is literally crowdsourced money from celebrities to try and get cases thrown

00:15:13.060 out from 20 years ago on the basis of new bogus DNA findings, just so they can get criminals out.

00:15:20.340 When you spoke about the lockdowns, you had the BLM riots, people being in and out of prison because

00:15:26.580 there were organizations sponsored by people like Kim Kardashian to immediately pay for people's

00:15:32.500 bail money. The right has no real equivalent to anything like that. I mean, you look at somewhere

00:15:38.980 like Australia where Joel Davis, who is a peaceful nationalist activist, gets arrested and put in

00:15:46.740 prison for speech crimes. And there's no real funding lifeline that I'm aware of that's thrown out to him

00:15:53.460 in a situation like that. And then to see this kind of big deal made over, like you say, what is

00:15:59.620 essentially a technicality. Yes. With loads of money spent on it, it does seem like a quite demoralizing

00:16:05.700 waste of time. And I dislike the way that people are so eager for whatever minor victory they can

00:16:13.060 score, they'll cheer for scraps. Yes. They'll see something like, for instance, we're both friends with

00:16:19.060 scrump. Yes. Uh, scrump has been quite vocal about the fact that the whole case to do with the, um,

00:16:26.180 uh, the, um, what was it? The Tavistock clinic. Yes. Ended up being celebrated as this huge win for

00:16:32.260 the TERFs and other dissidents by saying that we've finally got the Tavistock clinic shut down,

00:16:37.540 we're gonna have the trans surgeries are gonna finally go away, they've basically been outlawed,

00:16:43.220 when actually, when you looked into the reporting on it and the actual decision that had been made on

00:16:48.020 it was something like, excuse me, if I get any of the particular details wrong, that the care that

00:16:54.420 they were being given at the Tavistock clinic did not meet certain demands and requirements. And as

00:17:00.020 such, they were actually expanding it into six to eight more clinics. So in fact, those decisions ended

00:17:06.420 up expanding the remit of that, uh, of what the Tavistock clinic was already doing. Yeah. I remember

00:17:12.900 reading the judgment on that case when I read it and thinking, oh my gosh, that level of legal

00:17:19.940 ignorance of people reporting that going on telly and celebrating that it was quite clear to me that

00:17:25.300 they hadn't bothered to read the judgment or ask anyone who could be trusted to give an accurate

00:17:31.540 summary. And there were loads of examples like that in the book where I criticize the rhetoric of

00:17:37.860 commentators and activists who clearly haven't read or in the cases that they might have read something,

00:17:45.540 understood something that they're celebrating and they just don't understand that.

00:17:51.300 Well, I mean, in fact, they've lost. I mean, um, uh, you even criticize, uh, not, not necessarily

00:17:56.660 criticized, but you try to give examples for us in Lotus Eaters of where we could have done

00:18:02.900 something better than what we did in response to you say here, I'll quote directly from the book,

00:18:07.700 following the debut episode of the BBC for radio for podcast, Mariana in conspiracy land,

00:18:13.060 which alleged that Carl Benjamin had issued rape threats. Benjamin and his platform,

00:18:17.700 the Lotus Eaters opted to produce a rebuttal video. A more robust response would have involved

00:18:22.660 seeking formal legal advice on defamation and rallying their considerable audience to file

00:18:27.940 official complaints within the BBC and Ofcom. Had sufficient complaints been lodged and sustained,

00:18:33.460 it's probable that Ofcom would have taken action against the BBC and the podcast presenter. So you

00:18:39.380 are trying to present practical advice on how people can work within the British legal system,

00:18:45.620 because one of the things that you point out a number of times is that there is

00:18:48.580 both parliamentary sovereignty within the British system, which means that the judiciary actually

00:18:55.540 are not as powerful as you would expect from all of the Americanized rhetoric surrounding it,

00:19:00.100 but also that there's the public private partnership, uh, that operates as well. And there are within

00:19:07.540 the more privatized systems, there are a regulation as well. There are official processes that you can take

00:19:15.380 advantage of, which I found interesting given that I actually have worked for complaints before. It was

00:19:21.220 for a phone insurance company, uh, but I can only imagine the kind of headless chicken shenanigans that

00:19:29.300 would have been going on if all at once multiple hundreds of the same complaints had come in at the

00:19:35.780 same time. Because sometimes these complaints departments, even for larger companies, are not as big as you think

00:19:41.860 that they are. No. And I can tell you from experience, I was one of me, I was on a team of seven people,

00:19:48.740 and it was for an entire phone insurance company. Seven people handling complaints. And of those seven

00:19:55.940 people, four were Jobsworth's. Okay? And then there was me, there was one other decent one, and our manager.

00:20:03.940 They were the only decent ones. I would often get complaints handed over to me that they would say,

00:20:11.540 here's the decision that we've made, we'll throw it over to you, I'm not in today, can you just finish

00:20:16.340 this for me? And I would be then responsible for making the call and saying, congratulations,

00:20:20.980 we've accepted your complaint, you're legitimate in this, we're going to give you loads of money for it.

00:20:25.780 And I would look over the work that had been done for the complaint and just found that the person

00:20:29.860 who threw it over to me had just done as little as possible. They'd misread everything that had been

00:20:35.220 given to them. Almost like they just wanted to grant this person what they were asking for,

00:20:40.820 to get it over with quickly, and so they didn't have to have an argument over the phone. Because

00:20:44.340 that was a big concern for a lot of people. So, one thing that you can leverage with the whole

00:20:50.180 complaints processes is that if you're dealing with real people on the other side of them,

00:20:55.380 there is a decently high chance that they might just give you what they want because they're lazy.

00:21:02.420 Yes. Because they don't want to go through the hassle of doing their job properly. Like I was the

00:21:07.860 only one that actually did. And um, so, on that subject to try and lead all of that into a question,

00:21:15.380 with the kind of examples that you're talking about and with the example of, say, Harry Miller,

00:21:19.460 that you're discussing in Faircop, if you had been advising them on how to, um, and how to approach

00:21:27.060 the case, what kind of advice would you have given them? What kind of advice would you give to normal

00:21:33.540 people, uh, who think that they might have some kind of legal complaint or believe that they are

00:21:38.900 being wrongly targeted? Um, when with parliamentary sovereignty, parliament can kind of just pass any

00:21:45.620 law that they want if they get enough votes. Right. That's a hard question for me to answer

00:21:50.580 because it's quite vague and also quite specific. But what I would say is some of the things that

00:21:57.140 I've seen be quite effective behind the scenes is a case of if you've been visited by the police for

00:22:04.500 a tweet or something, it's generally quite a good idea to write an official complaint and make sure

00:22:15.940 that it's well-drafted. You include, um, when you've got the complaint done and chase it up.

00:22:23.460 And who would you send that to? Depending on which, it depends on the police force that it is,

00:22:30.100 but if you go onto most police forces website, there will be, uh, there should be links to

00:22:36.660 how to make official internal complaints and other relevant people. Because normally what happens

00:22:44.260 with organizations like the police government departments, you have internal complaints,

00:22:47.140 which you go through so many levels of, and then you have the external complaints,

00:22:51.220 which will either be an ombudsman or someone else. And the thing is with making official complaints is

00:22:57.460 you need to be specific and not rant at people. So if it's the case that you've been visited by the

00:23:04.660 police for a tweet and it's clearly, the tweet's clearly nothing illegal and there's no reason to

00:23:13.620 complain. Most people that I've seen do this successfully have complained on the grounds of

00:23:20.500 harassment and also questioning why was the decision made to visit me for a tweet when there are other

00:23:29.460 criminals who require police attention. And as a general rule, I think being somewhat involved in

00:23:38.020 your local politics to whatever extent you can be is a huge benefit because most police forces have a

00:23:45.620 police and crime commissioner. They're another person who you can complain to about broader policy

00:23:50.580 concerns because it's a similar role to a sheriff, but with less power because sheriffs in the American

00:23:59.300 context have considered more power than a British police and crime commissioner does. If it's the case

00:24:04.900 that your local police force, even if you haven't been visited by the police, is spending a large amount of

00:24:09.460 time visiting people for tweets and engaging in things that might be genuine criminal investigations

00:24:21.380 in the sense that it technically is a crime. But you can make public interest arguments and complain to

00:24:27.540 them about why is there, I don't know, large-scale antisocial behaviour in my town when the police are

00:24:36.580 investigating people for tweets. So for instance, I mean an example, a very recent example of something

00:24:43.620 like this happening was Pete North being visited by the police. I believe it was off of the back

00:24:49.380 of a tweet that he had posted regarding the Palestinian flag, insulting that. Is that the

00:24:55.540 sort of thing that you would have advised him to do rather than make a big stink of it on Twitter?

00:25:02.100 Right, I'm not going to discuss the specifics of that because I don't know whether there's an

00:25:07.060 ongoing investigation into it. Oh right, okay. So, okay, that's absolutely fair in that case.

00:25:14.180 And when we talk about this, so, often we worry about a situation within society that people have

00:25:23.780 deemed anarcho-tyranny. Yes. And that you discuss within this book itself, and that is essentially

00:25:30.100 the selective non-enforcement of laws, so that you can create a situation where there's a two-tiered

00:25:36.180 society and justice system where some people are having laws very heavily strictly applied to them,

00:25:41.060 such as, for instance, over-policing of things like tweets, getting knocks on the door if you've put

00:25:46.100 something into the public that could be deemed offensive, versus people who are actually going

00:25:52.420 and committing crimes and maybe the police are just ignoring it and looking the other way. Yeah.

00:25:55.860 If you were to pursue the kind of tactics that you've suggested there, is that the kind of thing

00:26:04.900 that there may be change? Are there any examples of people pursuing this?

00:26:09.540 Off the top of my head, no, because most of the things that I've described in the book are quite

00:26:15.220 boring. So you can influence policing in your local area by trying to work with them and get on police

00:26:24.660 advisory boards, because most police forces have advisory boards that advise on policy and also

00:26:30.580 dealing with your police and crime commissioner. When I've seen it with people anecdotally trying to

00:26:38.180 not pressure, but try to reorientate the way their area is policed into policing properly.

00:26:48.100 And it normally works best, as far as I've seen, with creating a dialogue with your police and crime

00:26:55.620 commissioner and being very polite, but also making it clear that this is something you and other

00:27:00.660 people care about. And you're not going to go away until that problem has been solved.

00:27:11.140 And through that, you might be able to apply enough pressure.

00:27:13.940 Yeah.

00:27:14.420 I imagine that's the sort of thing where you would also want to organise locally a number of people

00:27:19.540 to coordinate it.

00:27:20.580 Yes, because you can write your police and crime commissioner on your own. It's a good idea.

00:27:26.180 Yeah. And I'd certainly suggest people, if they're not happy with the way their area is being

00:27:31.060 policed, start with that. Because complaints are generally meant for individual cases, not general

00:27:41.940 policing issues. However, that's normally what the police and crime commission is for.

00:27:47.300 Yeah. And one thing in terms of that kind of like larger scale coordination and organisation

00:27:53.140 that you point out, I believe you do point out through the text of the book that the left have

00:27:58.340 been much more effective in organising in this way. And that is a big difference between the left

00:28:06.260 and their radicals and dissidents is that, I don't know, it's a bit of a cliche for some people to say,

00:28:11.780 well, people on the right tend to be more family orientated, they've got jobs and things that take

00:28:16.580 up a lot of their time and energy, so they're not able to organise effectively in the same way.

00:28:21.140 But with younger people these days, who are more disenfranchised, who maybe aren't as employed

00:28:29.220 as they once were, for instance, I would say that there is, I would say there is opportunity for

00:28:38.740 organising larger scale, larger scale, it's just the case of people actually going and doing it.

00:28:46.180 Yes. I think that I agree with you there. But something I would add is taking part in your

00:28:53.860 local anti-HMO group is not going to take up too much of your time. It might involve you going to

00:29:01.140 meetings and being present at a meeting saying, or writing a formal objection to planning permission.

00:29:09.460 But generally, if you've got a HMO group with a couple of hundred people in it that's organised

00:29:14.820 through Facebook, it's probably going to take up at most a couple of hours a week. It's not going to be

00:29:21.300 something that is going to take up all your life or a large portion of your life for the next 10 years.

00:29:29.540 Yeah, I think that's actually a very positive way of looking about it, because people don't want

00:29:34.900 to put themselves on the lines, so to speak, and perhaps what they may consider take so much time

00:29:40.980 away from themselves and their families, purely for the sake of something that they don't know that they

00:29:47.300 have a guaranteed resort from. But this is the sort of stuff that takes time. You've got to have the time

00:29:52.980 investment and the idea that people can just go and do this, I think is positive and encouraging.

00:29:58.900 But one of the other things that you talk about, you have a chapter on character destruction.

00:30:03.700 Yes. And the risks that come with putting yourself into a public space where sleazy media tactics will

00:30:11.620 try to smear you. Yeah. They will try to make you seem like somebody who, like they will dig into your

00:30:18.980 entire background. I mean, we saw with a segment I was talking about earlier on today with Piers

00:30:24.900 Morgan, like, newspapers have been known to illegally hack into people's devices for the sake of trying

00:30:30.660 to get juicy information from you. And even with somebody like, um, with somebody like, uh, um,

00:30:38.900 Harry Shookman? Yes, Harry Shookman. With the case of Harry Shookman, they seem, some of these

00:30:44.500 organizations like Hope Not Hate seem to have very strange access to, uh, facilities that we as normal

00:30:53.140 people, uh, would not. Even though they've now come out and addressed it and said that he legally

00:30:57.940 changed his name, seemingly for the sake of procuring a passport. But also there was the case of Roareg

00:31:03.380 Nationalist last year being doxxed. And they released newspaper articles about all of the, the incredibly

00:31:09.700 in-depth methods that they went through to be able to get his personal information, when it's more than

00:31:14.820 likely that he was in fact just, like, potentially, uh, it seems more likely that there were some illicit

00:31:21.860 methods of getting that information possibly in conjunction with, uh, with other organizations.

00:31:28.260 I wouldn't be surprised to find out if MI5 or other intelligence organizations and parts of the British

00:31:37.300 Deep State were actively involved in giving Harry Shookman the documents and helping him infiltrate

00:31:47.860 some of the groups that he did. I mean, infiltrate is probably the wrong word because he infiltrated

00:31:52.340 basket weavers, which... He was at the Witten as well, wasn't he? Yes.

00:31:57.060 Which I believe we were both at as well. Yes, we were.

00:31:59.380 It's weird that we were both in the same building as him at the same time.

00:32:02.900 Well, and he just went to the pub with a couple of people and wrote a book about basically these

00:32:09.620 people go to the pub and are far right and all they're dangerous. And here are the things that

00:32:15.380 they talk about after a couple of pints. Yeah. I mean, this, this was pressing and necessary for the

00:32:20.980 intelligent state to get out to the public. So for the sake of headlines, essentially, for the, for the,

00:32:27.460 for the sake of smearing headlines. Yeah. And to be honest, I think with a lot of the, I've,

00:32:34.980 because I've organized events and done that type of thing before, I've met quite a lot of

00:32:39.140 undercover journalists and they're really easy to spot because I don't think I had the displeasure

00:32:46.340 of meeting Harry Shookman, but everyone I know who did said, oh, he was really awkward. Whenever you'd

00:32:52.340 ask him questions, he'd give one word answers or turn the question back on you. And then he'd just

00:33:01.540 listen to the conversation because when I've organized events and I've had undercover journalists

00:33:06.660 turn up, all right, you be nice to them. You ask them some questions and just try and talk to them.

00:33:11.700 And they're impossible to talk to. They'll throw questions back at you. And you're just like,

00:33:16.900 I'm sorry, but if I've asked you a fairly basic question and for your opinion on something

00:33:22.740 and you can't give me a straight answer, that's normally a sign that you don't belong here.

00:33:27.060 And if you do have undercover journalists to turn up your events, I don't see why

00:33:31.460 you can be anything but gracious towards them because these people, other than the fact that

00:33:36.260 they're going to smear you, they're not that dangerous and they're really unimpressive people.

00:33:42.100 Well, I mean, I, I, I can only imagine that they, they're just so out of their depth,

00:33:46.660 especially showing up at somewhere like the Witten, that he's no idea of the context of

00:33:51.300 anything that anybody is saying. There's so much esoteric internet talk going on that. Yeah,

00:33:56.660 it is, it is easy. Although there is also the difficulty of, are you a fed or are you just a spurg?

00:34:02.500 Uh, but, um, but you, you, we were talking before we, uh, before we started recording about the

00:34:10.260 importance of, of gatekeeping. Yes. Um, and gatekeeping the movements. And I think that's

00:34:14.980 something that's important when we're talking about larger scale organizations. Organizations

00:34:19.700 have begun to spring up, uh, around influential figures like Rupert Lowe and his organization Restore

00:34:27.060 Britain. Um, would you, would you say that gatekeeping is just as simple as giving the

00:34:32.740 sniff test if this guy seems like a feddy spurg? No, it's not. It depends what you're doing. If

00:34:39.540 it's something like basket weavers and it's literally just people going into the pub, maybe organizing

00:34:45.060 a walk or a hike or going to do an activity like climbing, it needs, there's no need to have any

00:34:51.140 higher level due diligence done on people because you can just get rid of people who annoy you and

00:34:58.420 misbehave. And I've seen it happen plenty of times. Yes. The misbehaving isn't really going to cause

00:35:04.180 you an issue or certainly not long-term. The problem then becomes when you're doing genuine

00:35:11.380 political action or something like, like that, you, or getting money off people, giving people money.

00:35:19.220 That's when you need to start having some serious conversations about due diligence. I mean,

00:35:25.380 would you like a practical example of some things that I've seen go on in the sort of wider political

00:35:30.260 scene? Absolutely. Okay. Right. So there was this guy a couple of months ago who was floating around

00:35:36.580 the London political, old media political scene. His name was Norman McKenzie or the name he used was

00:35:44.260 Norman McKenzie. And this was somebody floating around people that we both know. We both know, yes.

00:35:50.340 We both know. And the way that he presented himself to me was he presented himself to me as the director

00:35:57.220 of an organization called Ofcom Watch. You won't have heard of this organization because it basically

00:36:06.020 doesn't exist. I'm just giving it a quick Google. It seems to be a single Twitter account with less

00:36:14.420 than 6,000 followers. Yes, exactly. So when you set up organizations and campaigns, there's normally

00:36:22.820 going to be a paper trail, if you will, on those types of organizations. It will be registered

00:36:28.340 and there'll be websites and people involved in the organization and things like that. If they're

00:36:34.420 fully registered, there'll be a government website page that you can go and find. This guy was floating

00:36:41.220 around the scene saying things like, oh, he's Rupert Lowe's chief of staff and things that are quite

00:36:48.660 easy to falsify. And in my case, I did and didn't have anything to do with him after I checked. But

00:36:54.580 the problem is, what he was, was he was an expert con man. And this man, Norman McKenzie, when you look

00:37:02.740 him up, there's a website that I believe was released a couple of months ago that displayed him, that had been

00:37:12.020 taken control of by his debtors, naming him as a serial fraudster. All right. Unfortunately, this man ended

00:37:21.780 up conning quite a lot of people out of money. And from what I could tell by talking to him in the early

00:37:28.820 conversations I had with him, he was trying to set up an organization and it seemed to me like he was

00:37:34.580 going to crowdfund his Ofcom watch and then run off with the money. And there are examples of that

00:37:41.540 happening with other political organizations. Fortunately, it's not ridiculous amounts of

00:37:48.340 money, but you do get people who turn up in media spheres, in political spheres, who are

00:37:54.260 con artists or people who are so incompetent that you wouldn't want to give them money.

00:38:00.740 And Norman is the perfect example, because if you'd have done some basic professional level due

00:38:05.860 diligence on him, you would have found that out. But the problem with expect having that as an

00:38:11.620 expectation from people is you need people like myself, like others who have the skills and know-how

00:38:17.620 to do professional level due diligence on someone, and then you also need to be able to

00:38:25.620 convince other people that you're not making trouble by excluding that person

00:38:31.300 from particular organizations. So it's something that, as far as I've noticed, this is one of the

00:38:37.460 biggest problems that I see going forward with the right-wing media space and political space.

00:38:42.820 There's no formal gatekeeping mechanism where there should be, especially if people are

00:38:48.740 asking for money or obtaining free services of people. Because what that does, having

00:38:57.140 con merchants who are quite good at this, actually...

00:39:01.220 From what you describe, it doesn't even sound like he had a particular political agenda. It was just

00:39:06.500 he was trying to get the money. And this was a circle of people who, because of the fact that we're

00:39:11.620 somewhat out in the wilderness. We trust people. We're in dissident spheres. There's an eagerness to

00:39:17.700 want to accept people in who seem to... There's an over-trustingness, which you would expect to be the

00:39:23.540 opposite, but it's actually... It's actually people are too trusting because they're eager to get more

00:39:28.340 people in on it, especially if they seem like they can help with patronage. Yes. It's the amount of

00:39:34.580 people I meet in the right-wing political media spheres who... A big problem I've noticed is

00:39:44.020 lots of people who end up in the media or politics don't have that much life experience, even the ones

00:39:48.100 who are in distant spheres. They've normally got some of the psychological issues and they just don't

00:39:56.660 have the experience to be able to tell when someone's trying to con them. And a lot of the

00:40:02.900 people in the broader scene, whether it's distant art, distant art especially, you have quite a lot of

00:40:11.140 people who can be described as nepo babies who are quite vulnerable to being conned or getting

00:40:16.980 themselves into trouble with people because they don't have the experience and they're not naturally

00:40:21.700 suspicious because they're very well sheltered and have been. Yeah, and this is... I would say this

00:40:27.220 even expands just purely outside of the purely financial realm as well. This can just be political

00:40:32.580 grifters who are looking to attach themselves to a scene so that they can gain a bit of notoriety and

00:40:38.980 then hop from one movement to another. And this is the other problem with gatekeeping. If you are so

00:40:46.020 eager for people to join your movement, you can end up ratcheting your own views to match theirs rather

00:40:54.820 than bringing them into your own views. And so I find that people tend to dilute and weaken their own

00:41:00.740 spaces if they do not gatekeep well enough. This is an ongoing argument I have a lot about gatekeeping

00:41:07.860 because I'm very in favour of not having anything to do with people like Tommy Robinson who there's enough

00:41:19.300 evidence out there whether it's the allegations that Lauren Southern has made which people can look at

00:41:25.460 those in their own time or it's his track record that Tommy Robinson is not worth working with because

00:41:35.540 he seems to have and it's been alleged he has quite a lot of personal issues whether that's

00:41:41.620 drug usage or financial problems. I mean I've been critical of him simply because he tends to draw

00:41:50.100 all movements that he gets involved with with into an orbit so that they orbit him. Yes. Purely he turns

00:41:57.300 every movement he's involved in into purely being about him which I suppose if you want if you purely

00:42:04.100 want eyes on your movement in the media then that can then you're going to get eyes but whether you're

00:42:10.900 going to get effective change off of the back of that and and you are critical of Tommy in this book

00:42:18.420 and you're critical of the idea of having these overwhelming media figureheads in the first place

00:42:24.020 to a certain extent. Yeah the reason for that is someone like Tommy but also Nigel Farage, Nigel Farage

00:42:30.260 and Tommy Robinson in the aspect that they're big characters and the way that their political

00:42:35.940 organizations work around them they're very similar in that aspect. I'm sure neither of them would

00:42:41.620 appreciate the comparison but the issue with that is is most people who are large characters

00:42:50.900 aren't people who you can trust to do the day-to-day things and do useful political activism.

00:42:57.140 Normally those people need to be kept on a leash actually and controlled and kept in their lane

00:43:06.580 so that they don't cause problems for other people but also they can be useful to the movement more

00:43:12.580 broadly. Well yeah that's the thing is that I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to eschew those

00:43:17.540 kinds of figures altogether because it is good to have media outreach uh for everything and one of the

00:43:23.860 interesting solutions that you suggested in this was to almost have people set up as fall guys.

00:43:32.740 Yes. Because the media you you talk about Tory sleaze. Yes. Being the thing that took down many Tory

00:43:40.580 governments because they have always for whatever reason they've seemed to be the party of sex scandals

00:43:47.140 and affairs for a very long time. Very strange that it would be the Tories they do seem at this point

00:43:52.420 to just frankly be a casual gay club. Um and a very pro-Israel club. I mean all of the parties are.

00:44:00.020 Yeah well with the Tory party it seems like there's two factions that exist you've got the

00:44:04.660 gay side of it and then you've got the really pro-Israel side of it and they seem to be like two

00:44:08.580 different factions. I've not considered the Tory party in in that divide but that's a that's that's

00:44:13.940 interesting. But um but yeah you talk about this Tory sleaze if you have somebody like Tommy Robinson

00:44:20.420 who can have lots of uh allegations thrown against him by by other media officials. I mean

00:44:28.580 Trump managed to sidestep a lot of it uh quite effectively just through his sheer media presence.

00:44:34.740 Yes. Through his ability to to uh dodge questions or reorient questions around you you name some

00:44:42.980 examples of where he does it uh where he did it in the lead up to the 2016 election.

00:44:47.860 But this idea of the fall guy that's going to be somebody who's either going to have to be

00:44:52.820 media savvy and adept like Trump to be able to get around these things and to be able

00:44:58.180 I think it was the um the uh the quote you give is when he was asked you you compared women to pigs

00:45:03.620 and he said no just Rosie O'Donnell where you can turn it around on them and turn it into a joke and

00:45:08.180 it can make you seem more charming or somebody who is willing to take the fall but for that

00:45:13.540 they are probably going to need some security they're going to need an incentive to yeah want

00:45:17.940 to put themselves at risk like that because these are risky positions people put themselves in but you

00:45:23.780 also need if you're going to go to those lengths you need to have an actual effective and practical

00:45:30.980 organization behind them yes what I've noticed with basically media figures is normally the media

00:45:38.420 figures need to do their media thing and they can't do anything else really I mean that some of them

00:45:44.900 might have some talents but what I've noticed with whether it's someone like Lawrence Fox or whether it's

00:45:51.300 someone like even actually no I'm not going to use this example but someone like Lawrence Fox for

00:46:00.100 example is very good at the media stuff people find him entertaining but he's been given ridiculous

00:46:07.060 amounts of money by people to set up things that he's not qualified to set up or run for example

00:46:11.860 he's got something called the bad law project which is meant to be a legal NGO that protects people

00:46:19.220 and helps support people who are under oppression by the state whether it's people who have

00:46:26.500 political views or whether it's people who are for some reason being oppressed by the government

00:46:32.020 he I don't understand why it was ever a decision to give Lawrence Fox money to fund something like

00:46:38.820 that because okay if you want he's a strange person to have at the head of yes that and I think the

00:46:45.300 reason why there it took so long for there to be people who are openly out and out lawyers in the scene of

00:46:52.260 the right of center is first of all generally conservative lawyers are generally quite

00:46:58.500 conservative in that they don't think they should have any involvement or discussion about politics

00:47:03.140 which is fair enough but also lots of legal avenues that and legal organizations that are

00:47:13.700 associated with the right have got quite dodgy track histories of engaging in some quite

00:47:18.500 not necessarily illegal but doing things that makes people involved with them look bad

00:47:26.260 so you've got the cancellation risk but you've also got the risk if you're a lawyer who wants to do

00:47:31.300 some volunteering or wants to take some work from a right-wing legal organization like the bad law

00:47:37.940 project is am I going to be associated with someone who is going to make me look bad because they're not

00:47:44.980 qualified to be doing what they're doing and on that example specifically with Lawrence Fox he had a

00:47:54.900 falling out with a free speech union relatively recently because he was encouraging people or

00:48:00.420 or the free speech union claimed he was encouraging people to vandalize you less cameras and it's like

00:48:07.700 i i'm speaking for myself i don't want to be associated with people who are either my boss or even as an

00:48:17.620 ambassador for an organization who are going to run their mouth and do stupid things in a way that is

00:48:24.180 childish and is going to make me look bad i don't mind being i mean if you're encouraging vandalism you're

00:48:28.580 just trying to tell people put yourself at the risk of going to prison yes i mean that's crime like

00:48:33.380 encouraging vandalism is a crime and that's what the free speech union said and that's how they dealt

00:48:39.860 with it but it's one when i started to get involved in the scene practically i basically got a name for

00:48:47.540 being the boring person the moral enforcer if you will because i don't tolerate bad behavior and you

00:48:54.180 shouldn't tolerate bad behavior i mean if it's in private fine but if you're a public figure and you

00:49:00.580 behave badly in public like people like lawrence fox do you're poisoning the well for other people

00:49:06.740 yeah i think people take the wrong lessons from what they see the left getting away with yes you

00:49:11.780 can you can have a you can have i know you don't really know who he is uh but you can have like a

00:49:18.900 hassan piker who's going to make outrageous statements and say things like america deserve 9-11

00:49:24.180 who can do things on twitch like be caught what looks like electric shocking his dog to stay in

00:49:31.700 place over and over and over again so that it can act as a prop for him while he's streaming in the

00:49:36.740 background you can have psychos like that because he's on the side that's in power yes these people

00:49:43.860 have the overwhelming cultural support behind them already the people are willing to make excuses for him

00:49:50.420 and people are willing to pay him for the propagandistic services that he provides you can't really afford

00:49:58.260 that when you're not in power no you can't because a general observation i have of free speech law in

00:50:06.500 the uk is that it can protect the diversity of views but it will not protect the way though a diversity of

00:50:16.340 the way those views are expressed so what i mean by that is that if you are a leftist someone on the

00:50:24.740 left you can pretty much get away with saying whatever you want however you want to do well that's been

00:50:34.580 what's the norm up until fairly recently the exception is the anti-israel stuff for example lots of people on

00:50:43.460 the left who had previously been allowed to get away with rhetoric that they're now no longer getting

00:50:51.780 away with have found that out but a lot of people who have been cancelled and successfully recovered

00:50:59.940 from it in the uk who are on the right or avoided being cancelled they've done so because they're

00:51:07.060 relatively boring in the way they express their views and they're not bombastic they

00:51:14.740 exert opinions clearly and concisely they're not trying to be shocked they're not trying to be

00:51:20.580 shock jocks no i know this is why i think someone like charlie downs does so well because he's i

00:51:27.140 wouldn't say as far right he's a sensible centrist but he goes to places in a polite well-spoken manner

00:51:32.500 in a way that other people just don't i mean he references carlisle on gb news but he does it

00:51:37.940 in a very polite way and his personality is very amenable to lots of other people like boomers like

00:51:46.020 him so it's very hard to call someone like charlie downs racist and try and take them down do a

00:51:53.940 character assassination and because he's a reasonable guy he looks reasonable he talks reasonably and he's

00:52:00.340 also very polite yeah i mean we've had him on the show a number of times i know charlie uh charlie

00:52:06.100 personally he's a he's a very well behaved and very polite young man as far as i'm aware um he's not

00:52:13.620 the kind of guy that you hear rumors about circulating behind the scenes that could be used as compromise

00:52:19.140 later he's a he's very on the ball and he um he sticks to his lane in the best way possible he is

00:52:27.940 the professional media face and it's it's interesting when you bring up the way that free

00:52:33.060 speech provisions can work within the uk because one of the most interesting examples that you give

00:52:38.020 here which i think illustrates this perfectly is in cases of people having been prosecuted for um

00:52:45.300 holocaust denial or revisionism in that what people may not know is the cases that have been prosecuted

00:52:52.260 in the uk have been when it's been overtly intended to offend people through mediums like uh cheeky

00:53:00.260 offensive songs yes and and video content despite the fact that actually it's not unlike many european

00:53:07.220 countries it's not illegal on the face of it to support to to have those views and even to publish

00:53:14.180 those views and in fact within the uk there have been a number of um professional scholarly you say in

00:53:21.380 here works published on those subjects that they're allowed to do yeah and it's simply the format and

00:53:27.620 i think by going to such an extreme example that most people even some some so-called free speech

00:53:34.660 warriors may disagree with actually goes to show your example quite well by saying that well i mean

00:53:40.740 this is like most people wouldn't even dare talk about this with their closest family members at the dinner table

00:53:46.100 and yet as long as you're presenting it in an inoffensive manner in a boring manner yes it's

00:53:51.780 actually legal to do here mostly mostly yes it there are some exceptions so you can't just

00:53:59.940 encourage violence on someone else even if you it's done very boringly well obviously outside of like

00:54:06.100 incitement yes and things that have their own provisions to them sorry yeah because what i found

00:54:11.460 interesting about things like incitement to racial hatred when i wrote the book originally incitement to

00:54:18.900 racial hatred was very rarely used for prosecuting people and since the sam millier case it's become

00:54:26.580 considerably more common especially after southport but even lucy colony i'm quite unpopular with my

00:54:34.580 position on lucy colony in that i don't think the decision was unreasonable given that from the

00:54:41.140 court documents she did directly incite violence it may be the case that it was a joke and she didn't

00:54:49.380 actually mean it but given the circumstances and the evidence that is discussed in the court documents

00:54:56.100 in the trial i don't think it was unreasonable for her to be given the sentence that she had

00:55:01.380 however what i will say is i don't think it was unreasonable for the judge's decision

00:55:07.460 and the court's decision because going back to the topic of judges and the difference between the

00:55:15.460 american and the british judiciary i got into an argument with someone on twitter earlier or was it

00:55:20.580 yesterday basically making the point that it's not the judge's fault that people are being given longer

00:55:27.780 sentences for what are broadly called speech crime than people who have been caught in possession of

00:55:34.580 child pornography the reason that happens is because of sentencing guidelines and legislation it might be

00:55:41.940 true that there are some judges who aren't independent and are fifth columnists i i haven't seen that much

00:55:54.100 evidence of that i mean i've seen the examples where some judges have been on the board for

00:56:01.220 left-wing charities and in my opinion those judges shouldn't be

00:56:09.780 sitting in cases where the facts of the case relate to those given previous experience or previous roles

00:56:17.620 that they've had but in general from the judges i know most of them are quite reasonable people

00:56:23.860 like they're not ideologues so with it being down in many cases like you say to the sentencing guidelines

00:56:29.620 within the uk um because i mean just recently we've had the transcripts released of a lot of

00:56:35.300 the grooming gang cases yeah and i've been reading through them and they whenever they're going to

00:56:40.820 the uh sentencing telling them how uh what they're actually going to be how long they're going to be

00:56:45.380 in prison for they're always going for the sentencing guidelines and laying out the specific

00:56:50.100 distinctions the crimes were committed then when there were different laws in place but we're going to

00:56:54.740 go by the sentencing guidelines for how long you could be in prison for them then although we're

00:56:59.380 looking at the laws as they exist now etc etc who who is in control of the sentencing guidelines and

00:57:05.620 if you wanted to make it so that for instance i think many people would morally agree that um

00:57:13.140 incitement to racial hatred if you even consider that to be a legitimate category should not be

00:57:18.420 sentenced to the same degree as child pornography how uh like who's in control of that is there a

00:57:24.260 practical way for people to affect change or is that going to have to be political that's going to

00:57:28.260 have to be political yeah you're not going to be able to deal with that through any form of legal

00:57:34.260 leverage you would basically have to have someone like rupert lowe as prime minister because the

00:57:41.300 the sentencing council is a quasi-autonomous no i'm not sure it's a quasi-autonomous body a quango

00:57:48.980 but it's held at an arm's length from the ministry of justice so you would need to be in power to address

00:57:57.140 the sentencing guidelines you've also got the problem that many crimes that are crimes by statute

00:58:03.460 have statutory limits on the sentence that can be given all right so it's not as simple as going yes

00:58:12.740 i'm now in power therefore we're just going to change the sentencing guidelines you could change

00:58:18.740 some of them you could change quite a few of them but you'd need to understand how the sentencing

00:58:24.580 guidelines at present intersect with primary legislation and case law all right so if there's

00:58:31.620 certain case law that makes it the norm for a crime to be punished by x sentence then because of

00:58:40.340 the way the hierarchy of government powers works generally common law is held has press has greater

00:58:51.060 power over than other forms of secondary legislation but you can change common law or case law with primary

00:58:59.060 legislation but generally it's accepted that case law from the courts is superior and can't really

00:59:07.780 be overruled by government ministers okay sorry does that make sense because that was a bit waffly

00:59:14.820 um so let me just try and uh collect what you said there so the actual sentencing seems to be

00:59:23.860 at least partially administered by something that's held at harm's arm's length from the government

00:59:29.700 and the sentencing council the the sentencing council and if the judges are looking at case law that can

00:59:36.340 override uh yes political decisions by the mps right so when we say political decisions what

00:59:45.700 what what are you on about today like for instance we've been talking about you mentioned you mentioned

00:59:51.860 rupert low uh one of the things that you've written about recently was his large document talking about

00:59:57.940 the potential of mass deportations something that charlie downs has spoken about and harrison pitt has

01:00:04.100 spoken about as well would be the necessity of what they have called alongside the great repeal bill if they

01:00:10.340 were to get in if people were to get into power uh would also be something called the great clarification

01:00:16.340 bill something that would clarify particular terms possibly legally as as well would that be something

01:00:23.140 that would be effective or would they need to affect a different change if it's defining

01:00:30.420 if you want parliament to just define what certain words mean in the legal context then from my

01:00:36.900 understanding of what you said parliament could just narrow the definition of particular legal terms

01:00:45.220 that is certainly doable but the concern i've got with the great clarification bill is i don't know

01:00:52.020 too much about it and whenever i've only ever heard it as something mentioned in passing alongside the idea

01:00:58.020 of the the great repeal bill which i think was a david starkey idea so i don't really want to comment

01:01:04.660 too much on the great clarification bill because i'm not best placed to understand it that that's

01:01:08.980 fair so we've we've spoken a lot about in that case let's let's um let's go on to i've mentioned

01:01:14.500 restore yes and your article that you wrote about and we've spoken a lot about how some of the political

01:01:20.900 organization and the political media figures within the uk can be counterproductive and they can be

01:01:28.820 harmful to the movement and you've praised charlie downs for being a very uh not milk toast but very

01:01:35.300 acceptable media figure yes he's not milk toast by any means of the imagination no he references

01:01:39.940 carlisle on gb news and talks about talks about sam francis anarcho tyranny yeah he's a big big fan of

01:01:45.780 a lot of authors that most people in the media spheres would never have heard of yeah let alone read the

01:01:51.220 works of but um with restore britain do you see any any hope coming from them with their with their

01:01:58.420 plans for uh the mass deportations and the laws that they would affect for that you have written an

01:02:04.980 article on your substat which people can access if they want greater clarity with all of your thoughts

01:02:10.180 but do you see that as a positive step right the short answer for restore britain is a cautious yes

01:02:18.260 i like the idea of restore britain i really like the idea that you have a team of bright young men

01:02:26.660 and women who are being led by someone mature like rupert lowe who are putting their heads together and

01:02:33.940 thinking about policy in principle it's a good idea and i have made some that i hope are constructive

01:02:42.500 criticisms of criticisms of restore britain one of the concerns that i have

01:02:49.460 discussed in private has been it seems like a lot of the staff of restore britain

01:02:56.660 are people who are media people and not necessarily policy people and don't necessarily have the legal or

01:03:05.300 policy background to

01:03:10.980 draft well-written policy and legislation this is something that some of the lawyers who i speak to

01:03:16.420 quite a lot who read my substack have mentioned to me and i am aware that they have the black belt

01:03:23.620 barrister on board as an advisor in some capacity or another and i mean you you would hope that there

01:03:29.860 would be some kind of legal expertise advising them yes if they're going to be proposing massive

01:03:34.580 legislation changes you would hope at present i don't think it's there yet to be able to do what i

01:03:41.060 would like it to do however that's not a bad thing it's only been set up for a year less than a year

01:03:46.180 i i think i mean it must only be a couple of months six months maybe maybe uh because i mean

01:03:51.780 rupert lowe was only kicked out of reform at the beginning of this year oh yes yeah so it's in its infancy

01:03:57.540 and any criticisms that i'm about to make of the report or any other criticisms that i've made

01:04:03.300 will be caveated in the it is early days

01:04:08.100 putting the concerns of the media presence of a lot of the restore britain people aside i'm also a bit

01:04:15.860 concerned that the criticisms that i made of the restore britain report into mass deportations were

01:04:23.460 twofold first of all i don't think i think it focuses too much on the echr and the reason that's a

01:04:31.860 concern for me is in popular dialogue in the media the echr is always discussed as an obstacle to having

01:04:42.420 more sensible restrictions on things like refugee and asylum and enabling deportations of criminals

01:04:55.060 i was actually going to ask about the echr whether it's more of a political media football to get

01:05:00.260 headlines rather than something that's actually as important as is made out yes it's nowhere near as

01:05:06.500 important as it's made out to be and in the book i and in the article as well i go through some examples

01:05:11.620 of and give a detailed legal explanation as to why the echr isn't the primary issue stopping things

01:05:19.940 like mass deportations and so so i mean on on a video that we did a while back now carl decided to

01:05:27.620 depress me by showing me a number of cases where there was a prosecution put forward to some asylum

01:05:36.100 seeker who'd done something horrible like rape somebody and instead of deporting them the echr had

01:05:42.660 been cited as uh like uh whichever the human right is right to a family life for instance was one that

01:05:49.380 was consistently brought up is that something that our judiciary and political system if we decided to

01:05:55.460 could just sweep aside and ignore yeah we could just yeah we could just do that so in terms of the

01:06:01.940 echr specifically the human rights act gives the echr specific powers in british legislation so what's

01:06:09.700 happened over the past 20 or so years there's been a range of legend of cases that have evolved and

01:06:17.940 interpreted working alongside primary legislation coming from parliament to create the current

01:06:23.780 system for dealing with asylum claims and deporting foreign criminals you wouldn't

01:06:32.660 you'd need parliament to do it but you could just change the rules in terms of

01:06:39.540 refugee status using parliament it's not something that we need to have an elaborate brexit process about

01:06:46.420 so i want to make myself clear i'm not saying that the prime minister can just randomly decide to ignore

01:06:54.260 the echr what i'm saying is parliament if it wanted to could just change the law on asylum

01:07:02.820 and on immigration and make it clear in the legislation that this is this supersedes the echr

01:07:11.300 so i'm not really for getting rid of the echr or leaving it because i just don't see the point

01:07:18.260 it would be a lot of use of time and energy yes could be done much more simply like what you're

01:07:23.940 describing there boris johnson could have done at any point yeah if they were serious about actually

01:07:29.700 changing asylum law yeah and it again it's just another case another example of boris johnson and his

01:07:34.820 government just betraying us yes uh as far as i'm concerned but sorry carry on with uh what you were

01:07:41.140 discussing with um with the restore britain you had gotten onto that their focus on the echr okay um

01:07:47.940 and uh how how that was maybe not as important as as uh yeah they could be focused i really like the

01:07:53.300 primary legislation i was a bit concerned that the modern slavery act wasn't mentioned

01:07:57.940 which the thing is with the modern slavery act i found it quite difficult to i wrote an article on

01:08:06.420 it but i found it quite difficult to to find statistics on how many people have been allowed

01:08:12.820 to stay using the modern slavery act and how many of those people end up with indefinite leave to

01:08:20.420 remain so i put a freedom of information request on that topic which i'll write up when i get it back

01:08:25.060 that's currently pending yeah it's currently and the modern slavery act that's if you have been

01:08:29.620 trafficked into the country yes do you automatically get granted refugee status no you are given the

01:08:35.860 right to remain on the grounds of criminal investigations that you're part of support and help and

01:08:44.900 it's i can go into more detail so it could be a case that these people who get off the boats even if

01:08:49.380 they've chosen to pay for it they could just get here and claim oh i was trafficked yes from the

01:08:54.660 way the human trafficking is defined under the modern slavery act of 2015 i would find it very hard to

01:09:01.140 see an example of someone who has entered the uk illegally who wouldn't be awarded the protections

01:09:11.140 of the modern slavery act so so that definitely needs to be addressed yeah that does need to be addressed

01:09:17.060 even if it's not a huge problem with tens of thousands of people being allowed to stay in the uk

01:09:22.500 under it it's something that potentially could be used by human traffickers and people prosing as

01:09:32.180 asylum seekers and in that article i do discuss the point that it is a problem it might seem like the

01:09:38.420 compassionate thing to do to let someone who's a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking stay

01:09:42.340 in the country but if they are allowed to work in the country and a given asylum or a given indefinite leave

01:09:49.380 to remain that person who is seen as an asset by human traffickers will then be able to send the

01:09:59.220 human traffickers money because the way that modern human trafficking works is you've got this whole global

01:10:04.180 network of people smugglers who smuggle people in some cases against their will sometimes it works by

01:10:11.540 a loan system where if you default on the loans that you're meant to be paying back it can be arranged

01:10:19.700 that someone in your family gets hurt so allowing these people to stay and giving them the right to work

01:10:27.700 or giving them benefits and support can actually be counterproductive and continue to monetize

01:10:36.820 an industry that is i think last time i checked human trafficking and modern slavery as a

01:10:43.460 criminal network is worth more every year than the drugs trade

01:10:47.620 so so what you're what you're actually the argument you're making there that is that even

01:10:51.940 on its own terms for what it's setting out to do this legislation could enable yeah it could enable

01:10:58.580 more abuse yes and i think there's loads of bits of legislation like that in the british system that needs to be updated for

01:11:10.020 a global environment whereby our compassion is seen as weakness and by allowing people to take advantage of

01:11:18.580 our compassion we're enabling greater evils but circling background to the restore

01:11:24.580 i i i genuinely think restore britain is doing well and the concern the other concern that i've got with the report is

01:11:36.740 especially the hostile environment section that wasn't particularly well thought out

01:11:41.060 i think that right for those who aren't aware and haven't read it there is

01:11:47.380 about half the report is on the logistics of mass deportations and what they discuss is they discuss

01:11:55.940 creating a hostile environment for people who are in the country illegally and they go through all these

01:12:03.300 policy suggestions that are great but they're not particularly well thought out for example one that

01:12:10.820 stuck out to me and i discussed in the report is working with local councils and community care workers

01:12:18.020 and other responsible adults to identify people who are in the country legally the reason i suggest that

01:12:26.180 policy suggestions like that aren't well thought out is i don't see how that's going to interact with

01:12:33.140 other legal obligations that responsible adults have and care workers and

01:12:41.060 basically anyone else you can name who

01:12:44.260 is in a position of authority and responsibility over vulnerable people

01:12:49.780 how that's going to interact with the care duties those people have and the obligation to

01:12:54.820 report illegal immigrants and there are lots of examples like that in the respondor britain report

01:13:03.060 where it's a good idea but it hasn't been particularly well thought out so so what there would need to

01:13:08.020 be in situations like that would there also need to be adjustments of how all of these other

01:13:13.540 responsibilities interact with one yes you'd basically need a report on how to implement a policy whereby

01:13:21.220 people who are responsible for vulnerable people are to interact with immigration officers and

01:13:29.140 report people who are in the country illegally

01:13:33.300 that would be a whole policy paper in of itself and i think with the report that restore britain came

01:13:41.220 out with they're trying to run before they can walk i think what would have been a really good use of time

01:13:46.660 was a really thorough explanation of getting rid of and adjusting for domestic creating new domestic

01:13:54.500 legislation to enable mass deportations yeah and and with that a lot of people talk about um

01:14:02.660 the idea of self-deportation uh that people would uh would want to have not necessarily the hostile

01:14:09.860 environment that was suggested there but for instance just like to not encourage people to come over to

01:14:15.540 take advantage of the benefit system yeah and such like that would it be more worthwhile right now to

01:14:21.300 try and come up with legislation because i also think that it comes across less hostile yes by say

01:14:27.060 by um not having it be deportations but just incremental changes to the way the benefit system

01:14:33.220 incentivizes people to come over and claim our taxpayer money for themselves would it be a worthwhile

01:14:39.780 for some uh an organization like restore britain to focus on policy proposals in that direction as

01:14:46.580 well i would say so yes because the problem you've got is that an organization like restore britain as far

01:14:53.380 as i know they have fairly limited resources and

01:14:59.700 dealing with and generating the policy suggestions that the you've suggested as relates to the benefit system

01:15:07.940 would take quite a lot of time and expertise because the benefit system is extremely complicated yes

01:15:15.860 and in my opinion the benefit system is structured in such a way that incentivizes people to

01:15:25.220 either engage in benefit fraud or

01:15:29.140 otherwise behave in a negative way that leads to their long-term unemployment

01:15:33.620 well i mean we've discussed it a lot recently with the some of the changes to the budget was coming

01:15:38.180 out about all of the various taxes that people are subject to and uh the number that was being

01:15:44.980 banded about was that the average working family to be able to earn as much as a two-parent family

01:15:51.540 where neither of them were on work neither of them were at work and they had three children the working

01:15:57.380 family would need to earn 71 000 pounds per year to have the same take-home pay and it's it's i i see

01:16:03.860 it as very that's a huge incentive to not work and take advantage of the system even outside of whatever

01:16:10.260 benefits may be going to foreigners yeah even within if even if it was only british people that's still a

01:16:15.940 massive disincentive for people to be productive yeah it's disgusting and it's also quite sad because

01:16:21.460 i know lots of young people who are on universal credit and they're getting like 300 pounds a month

01:16:27.140 and to live off and they live with their parents and it's really sad that we have created such a

01:16:34.740 society whereby it's not only impossible or not impossible but improbable to work but it's also

01:16:42.420 improbable to get off the benefit system because the way i've discussed this with other people if you're

01:16:48.740 going for a job and and you're on benefits you can't really start off it can be quite difficult

01:16:55.620 to start a full-time job because of all your benefits being withdrawn and things like that i

01:17:02.020 would think that i've seen it happen to people myself they they go well it's not actually worth

01:17:06.820 it for me to go into work yeah it's sad and i think as relates to the deportations i would like to see

01:17:13.860 in the future from an organization like restore britain or restore britain itself

01:17:18.820 to have some very well thought out policy proposals on how to create so a helpful and effective social

01:17:27.780 safety net for british people that has a bounce in it like for example i used to i've got a friend

01:17:36.500 who's an expert gymnast and they have these bouncy like nets which spring you back up when you fall

01:17:42.260 i mean that's what the social safety net should be yeah it helps you get back onto your feet

01:17:48.820 yeah and and well the interesting thing that you said that in the book you talk about how

01:17:53.540 lots of legislation because the mps and you don't have to be an expert on any of this to be an mp you

01:18:00.340 just need to get into a party or be an independent and get voted in so a lot of the legislation is written

01:18:05.780 up by ngos and quangos so an organization like restore britain could act if they dedicated their

01:18:14.900 time to very productive matters like that they could act as an organization that has all of these

01:18:20.260 proposals drafted and written up in time for in 2029 a for instance potentially a reform government

01:18:28.820 if reform was serious but here's where you come into some of the other problems that we've already

01:18:33.060 been discussing given their very public feuding and the is the issues that happened at the beginning

01:18:39.860 of this year you would then have to hope that nigel farage rupert lowe zia yusuf

01:18:45.780 can put their prior animosity aside to be able to work together uh as in in coordination with one

01:18:54.100 another so there you run into some of the other problems that we've been speaking about the kind

01:18:58.100 of media demagoguery uh that infects this um that infects the whole movement frankly yes this even if

01:19:08.580 restore britain end up drafting policy proposals are very good that don't get put into

01:19:19.940 practice by a reform government or any government in the future

01:19:24.260 in the near future anyway it's still a benefit having the right that is able to draft policy and has a clear

01:19:35.460 policy framework because as far as i'm aware the right that's further to the right than the

01:19:42.340 conservatives within britain hasn't really had a clear set of policies that are ready to implement

01:19:52.740 it's been general oh we want to do this we want to increase government spending we want to in a lot

01:19:58.580 of cases it's more of a philosophical movement yeah than it is a practical legis uh that it is practical

01:20:04.820 yes and i would rather put the horse before the car in that sense and go okay well this is what we're

01:20:13.940 ready to implement and we want to implement how do we get it implemented because i've worked on

01:20:21.540 some minor level political campaigns that have been on certainly for local government on policy and that

01:20:28.820 type of thing and what i've noticed with the way that policy gets implemented is they take a bit of this

01:20:38.820 they take a bit of that and it'd be interesting for someone like restore i would think that it's a very

01:20:47.140 good idea to come up with self-contained policies that are written in such a way that if they were

01:20:53.860 implemented they're written in such a way that that they would work in a vacuum in of itself because

01:21:00.740 lots of grandiose policy proposals that i can think of are dependent on all aspects of government working

01:21:09.540 together to enable that policy goal to be achieved whereas if someone like restore britain were took an

01:21:19.860 area of policy and thought okay how do we make this policy achieve our goals directly and indirectly

01:21:26.500 but also so that it will work in a freestanding way that isn't dependent on other government departments

01:21:33.860 given the absolute state of the british administrative state i that's going to be a very difficult

01:21:39.220 job well at the very least i do hope that we can start moving in positive directions with all of

01:21:48.820 this i uh is there is there anything else from the book that you would like to very briefly discuss

01:21:54.020 before we finish not really that's fantastic well thank you very very much for your time henry uh

01:22:00.740 where can people pick up your book lawfare a practical guide right you can pick it up off the

01:22:05.620 imperium press website you can also pick it up in an electronic format on amazon i believe and you

01:22:13.220 can also get it as a hard copy from amazon depending on where you are it might be easier for you to get

01:22:19.620 it from amazon but if you can please get it from imperium press because that supports our publishers and it

01:22:27.140 doesn't give a cut to amazon yes and what compete what else can people find in here that they haven't

01:22:31.380 heard us discussed today well there's the speech laws there's the role of legislating from the bench

01:22:38.740 there's also my conclusion to the which has a more practical outlet there's i think we've discussed

01:22:47.700 most of it but there's a lot of case studies and detailed explanations in the book because that's what i'm

01:22:52.900 like yes it's it's like you say it's dry it's presented in a very dry way but if you want to

01:23:01.140 have a better foundation a better footing for everything that will actually need to be practically

01:23:07.700 done to organize an effective movement you need to know all of this stuff so i'd say it's well worth

01:23:13.780 picking up a copy and where can people find you on social media and sub stack i'm on x and it's at

01:23:20.100 law reading on x and you can also find me on sub stack which is the reaction reading or sub stack

01:23:26.580 well thank you very very much for joining us today henry it's been a pleasure and thank you for

01:23:30.980 watching this please take care

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 24, 2025

Lawfare - A Practical Guide by Henry Martin ｜ Interview with Henry martin

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