The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Realpolitik #22 ｜ The Situation in Britain with Joseph Robertson

00:00:00.000 I am your host, Firas Modad. I am joined in the studio by Joseph Robertson.

00:00:04.960 He's a former advisor to reform. He ran as a candidate for them for council elections,

00:00:11.140 and he's a big reform supporter. And we wanted to bring him onto the show and have a chat with him

00:00:18.180 about the current situation of Britain, reforms, future plans, and what can we expect between now

00:00:25.100 and the next general election scheduled for 2029, but it might happen sooner given how the Labour

00:00:32.980 government is imploding. So, Joseph, thank you so much for joining me.

00:00:37.440 Good to see you, Firas, as always, and thank you for the introduction.

00:00:40.500 Yeah, there's a lot to cover in one sitting, but we can try.

00:00:44.120 There is a lot to talk about. There is a lot to talk about. I guess the question on everybody's

00:00:50.980 mind is that there is a critique of reform that is coming from online circles, but now is also

00:00:58.840 coming from Jacob B. Smog and Alistair Heath. And their question is along the following lines.

00:01:07.540 To govern Britain, there's got to be a bench of up to 1,000 people between the 300-400 MPs who are

00:01:18.200 necessary, the 400 MP candidates, 500 MP candidates, at least, that are necessary, between the SPADs,

00:01:26.580 the appointees to the Lords, et cetera, et cetera. This is a massive HR operation.

00:01:34.680 And this is necessary because if you're going to have people sitting in parliamentary committees

00:01:38.840 and asking the heads of these quangos and the various civil servants, what are they doing,

00:01:46.220 and why are they doing it, and when will they start doing it properly, this expertise is going

00:01:51.400 to be necessary. So this is really the first concern that friends of reform have about the party.

00:01:59.180 What can you tell us about that?

00:02:01.220 Well, first of all, I think there's a very important point that we've forgotten about

00:02:05.020 in Britain, which is our constitutional sovereignty of parliament. Now, in America, we saw under Trump

00:02:11.700 one that they didn't manage to do much, let's be quite frank. You know, there was a big wave of

00:02:16.580 optimism about what would happen. The reality is whether or not you think the 2020 election was

00:02:20.840 stolen. There was certainly, you know, a decline in support for Trump at that point, either way.

00:02:27.580 Come around the next time, they knew exactly what to do. They had the right people in place.

00:02:31.280 They weren't fooled into recruiting the same old people who would make sure that nothing happened.

00:02:37.960 And that brilliant day, I was fortunate enough to be in DC for the inauguration and to see,

00:02:44.620 you know, as it was happening live, him signing all of the new executive orders and throwing the

00:02:48.640 pens away. Wonderful theatre, but it was a deeper meaning, which was, we know exactly what we're doing

00:02:53.760 right now. Well, our equivalent to those executive orders is the vote in parliament. So first of all,

00:02:59.520 you have to have a majority that can pass that. Reform's good at that bit. They're going to do

00:03:04.600 that bit, right? We're so far ahead in the polls as long as the momentum sustains through to the

00:03:09.680 next general election. I don't think they'll have a problem on that front. Now, to address your second

00:03:14.320 question, where it gets more technical is that you have to have preparatory legislation drafted to

00:03:21.060 pass through parliament. If you've done that well, and you're able to get to the position where you

00:03:27.340 can elect permanent secretaries, civil servants, you know, whatever else we need to do with the

00:03:33.200 financial institutions as well, you don't have to worry too much about who your MPs are. You don't

00:03:39.660 have to worry too much about who's in the House of Lords. As long as you have the numbers and you

00:03:43.520 have a good whip managing the party or whip's office, you can get a lot done in British politics.

00:03:50.500 You don't need a team of 500 superheroes in capes as your MPs. What really needs to happen is that

00:03:57.520 you need to overhaul radically the administrative deep state, if you want to call it that. And by the

00:04:02.620 way, even from America, the conversations I have with our colleagues across the Atlantic, it's normally

00:04:08.640 you guys, the originals, you guys had the deep state long before we even existed, right? Look at what

00:04:14.720 happened with the Russia hoax document. Who do they go to, to get that prepared? A British spy,

00:04:20.840 right? Okay. We're the original malfactors, right? Okay. You know, we're the original deep state. And

00:04:27.940 the reason why there's been so much entrenched resistance to change since Tony Blair basically

00:04:33.720 butchered our constitution in 1997 is a lack of understanding in the fundamental sovereignty of

00:04:39.220 parliament. If reform, and I think they do now, I know they do, understands this very sophisticated

00:04:47.400 balancing act that you have to play out and understand where the power lies, which again,

00:04:52.940 I think they do. A lot can happen within the first hundred days. And I think really the reason why I say

00:05:01.300 that they know is because we've already had Trump on. We had Liz Truss. Yes. Everyone forgets that.

00:05:07.760 It's not like this hasn't already happened. And Liz Truss and Trump one are identical. Okay.

00:05:14.860 Constitutionally, there's a different electoral cycle. You can't kick the president out. The only

00:05:19.140 reason why she was ousted in 50 days, and it was four years for Trump is constitutional. Yes. You can

00:05:24.460 manage to do that here. But if you go in clear eyed, understanding exactly what needs to be done in

00:05:30.360 the first hundred days, when you have that base of power, because everyone knows after that point,

00:05:34.560 your support wanes. Yes. If you already have things prepared, like you said, on the HR front,

00:05:40.200 but most importantly, on the legislative front, that's where the real kicker is. You can do

00:05:45.360 whatever you want. Afuera, afuera, afuera. You can be Malay. You can be Trump. You can be whoever,

00:05:49.940 as long as you understand parliamentary sovereignty. And so one of the questions has been,

00:05:57.140 where are the policies, where are the bits of legislation that reform will want to pass in

00:06:04.100 this first hundred days? Can you update us on specifics? Can you update us on specific policies?

00:06:14.780 I don't know, agriculture, fisheries, local enforcement, strengthening local authorities?

00:06:22.180 Is the nitty gritty? Sure. Yeah. I mean, look, the best way to talk about this, I think,

00:06:29.600 is to reverse the question. It's not what do you want to add into the legislature? What do you need

00:06:34.380 to take away? Okay. Now, a lot of people would say, well, you need to undo all the Blairite legislation, 0.93

00:06:40.700 get rid of the Supreme Court, bring the law lords back into the House of Lords, start with the basics,

00:06:44.760 right? And that's fine. But that doesn't go far enough. You've got things that prevent you from

00:06:50.280 doing other things. So with the agriculture industry, the destruction of the milk board led

00:06:54.840 to milk prices going up. With planning, the Town and Country Planning Act destroyed the ability to

00:07:01.340 build things. There are all these pieces of ingrained legislation. Yes, we can talk all day

00:07:05.540 long about immigration and how that's happened and wokery and all this stuff. And that's all

00:07:09.980 important, but that's all post-1970 stuff, particularly post-1997 stuff. And of course,

00:07:16.660 there are pieces of legislation to look at on that. And that's a big, important issue, don't get me

00:07:20.180 wrong. But what about all the rest of it? How do we get this country flourishing again in a way that

00:07:27.600 attracts people to come back? Because our biggest problem is brain drain. Yes. No one wants to start

00:07:33.560 a company, let alone continue a company here. Most of my friends and clients in the investor class

00:07:40.620 around the world, a lot of them are British, but they're not living here. They're not working here. 1.00

00:07:45.260 They care about this country, but they don't want to be here unless they have to for a meeting,

00:07:50.160 right? Which is inevitable. How do you bring those people back? Well, you're right. Agricultural policy,

00:07:56.440 education policy. It's a big thing. If you want to raise a child in this country,

00:08:01.180 they're going to be indoctrinated or you're going to be able to see them flourish in the way you want

00:08:05.120 to see them flourish. I very often find that billionaires and taxi drivers are saying exactly

00:08:10.540 the same things about the state of this country and everyone else is caught in the middle.

00:08:13.780 All right. Yes. It's a fascinating phenomenon. If you go into a reform branch, a local branch,

00:08:21.140 I've spoken at local branches in different parts of the country, you will see on one side of the room,

00:08:26.920 the investor class, people who run businesses, people who are taking risks, maybe people who have

00:08:32.820 had a career and are retired. On the other side, you'll see nurses, you'll see taxi drivers,

00:08:37.780 you'll see police officers. And that's quite compelling because it basically means that both

00:08:42.600 ends are disenfranchised. Yes.

00:08:45.080 So how do you solve that? Well, you get back to basics. That doesn't necessarily mean adding

00:08:49.580 legislation because that's exactly what Tony Blair did. That means getting rid of it.

00:08:54.620 So, you know, repeal.

00:08:56.520 So a great repeal bill of sorts?

00:08:58.900 I would call it a great restoration bill, but you know, you're trying to restore as to what it was

00:09:03.760 before that we had. Okay. Because we were competitive. Yes. We are the most overperforming

00:09:09.620 country in the world by a long shot. Right. You know, in every metric, we're not always the most

00:09:17.540 powerful, but we're always someone who's in the conversation. And there are certain sectors,

00:09:23.580 certain industries that we relied on to make that happen. Now it's probably our services sector more than

00:09:28.540 anything else. But in the past, it was steel. It was exports. It was trade all around the world.

00:09:35.560 It was our logistics, our military. All of these things are things we've got to resurrect. And to

00:09:42.260 do that, we've got to get rid of the amount of entrenched bureaucracy, the amount of red tape.

00:09:47.200 In some ways, I want us to move away. Yeah. Everyone hates the phrase Singapore on terms, right? Yes.

00:09:53.520 I'm going to introduce one that will rise the heckles of people even more. Okay.

00:09:58.540 Okay. I think we need Dubai on terms. Okay. Now, why do I say that? Not because I want the Middle 0.97

00:10:04.660 East to come to London. Right. It's already here. But what I do want to happen is this regulatory

00:10:11.300 sense of freedom that attracts the best in the world. Because let's face it, no one really wants

00:10:18.620 to live in Dubai. There's not that much there culturally. Yes. There's no green spaces. There's

00:10:24.020 no place. Yet, people go there. Even people with young families, my friends living in Dubai, why are

00:10:29.040 they there? Opportunity. Right. A lower crime rate. A lack of terrorism. These are all things we've got to

00:10:36.060 solve here. The guys who have already solved that are MBS and MBZ. Okay. Now, I'm not saying that we agree

00:10:44.000 with their worldview or that we're part of the East in any way. What I'm saying is that we already have

00:10:49.320 the canvas. We already have the green countryside. We already have the museums and the architecture

00:10:54.660 and Winter Wonderland and Hyde Park. People are still going to come to London no matter what.

00:10:59.160 Yes.

00:10:59.640 If you can then unlock the second half of what they've done, stop regulating. Don't over-regulate.

00:11:05.240 Don't over-complicate. Don't over-tax. Build up your tech sector. The world is moving towards

00:11:10.920 tech. Focus on tech. These are all supposedly things that a lot of conservatives might sneer

00:11:16.220 at because they would say, well, it's, you know, we should go back to farming. All right.

00:11:21.280 Okay. But the world has moved on. So you either compete, preserve what you have, preserve the

00:11:26.540 countryside, scrap net zero, do all of those wonderful things, but build for the future and

00:11:33.780 thus preserve the past. Do you see a, uh, need to restore industrial jobs or to strengthen the

00:11:42.420 agricultural sector? Um, if only from a national security perspective, if, if, if you can't build

00:11:50.040 steel, if you can't, um, have a decent energy policy, if you can't build, uh, chips, then you're

00:11:59.140 not an independent power. Um, um, in the same way, if you can't feed yourself, you have a fundamental

00:12:07.540 security problem that imposes certain behaviors in order to secure your food supply chains, in order

00:12:14.720 to secure, um, things that you absolutely must have to survive in any conflict. Um, so do you see a need

00:12:23.780 for a cooperative relationship between the state and industrial sectors, a sort of industrial policy

00:12:31.140 to use a dirty word, um, or is it closer to a libertarian approach?

00:12:39.760 Well, we've already got a lot of what we need. We're just not allowed to use it.

00:12:44.040 Okay.

00:12:44.640 So we already have tremendous oil supplies. We already have huge expenses of agricultural land

00:12:51.940 that are lying unused or being rewilded or having, uh, solar panels put on agricultural land,

00:12:58.220 which by the way, kills agricultural land for the next 10 years. It becomes unusable once you put

00:13:02.300 solar panels on and remove them. There are all these things happening, which if they weren't

00:13:07.600 happening, we would have the resources. This isn't a question of building out something new.

00:13:12.640 It's not even a question of going all the way backwards because we have technology that helps

00:13:16.500 us move forwards. It's unlocking it. So how do you unlock it? Well, first of all,

00:13:20.160 you've got to deregulate. Okay. And that's the most important thing. But then the second thing is

00:13:24.420 also to pull away from international pressure and focus on what you already have at home.

00:13:31.680 You said the point about us being, uh, you know, energy dependent, agricultural dependent,

00:13:38.740 we're also militarily dependent. There's a lot of things that we're dependent on. Our water systems

00:13:43.360 are owned by foreign national. Yes. Right. This is a huge problem because do they really care about 1.00

00:13:50.160 water in this country? No, no, they care about their bottom line. Right. Now, if you have a British 1.00

00:13:55.100 company that owns those, well, they could still be bad, but there's a lot more communal, uh, let's

00:14:03.540 call it communal spirit. I wouldn't even call it spirit. I would call it, um, analysis. It's very easy to

00:14:13.940 know if your competitor next door is better than you, but to know if your competitor in Japan is better

00:14:18.620 than your own domestic market is really difficult. So the process with reform, I think for a reform

00:14:24.840 government, you, in some ways you have to reclaim all this stuff first. You're going to have to

00:14:28.900 nationalize things again, not very popular with elements of the right, but after that, you've got

00:14:35.120 to retender to British companies and you've got to make sure that they are the ones ensuring quality

00:14:41.680 in these areas, be that steel, be that water, whatever it is. First of all, start at home.

00:14:48.760 This is what Trump tried to do with Detroit. Okay. You bring back manufacturing to America,

00:14:53.440 but you tender to American companies. First of all, you've got to seize control. Right. We've lost

00:14:58.460 control. So we need to seize control back and then we need to start building out from that point again.

00:15:03.800 And I think if you do that across all sectors, agriculture as well, why the hell are we still

00:15:10.300 following entrenched EU guidelines on farming? Why? We had Brexit. So why are we still doing that?

00:15:18.360 We're doing that because there's an international consensus that you don't break international

00:15:22.680 treaties. To hell with that. You need sovereignty. Unless you properly reclaim sovereignty, which is

00:15:29.280 exactly what Nigel's laid out, by the way, on deportation plans, which I'm sure we'll get into

00:15:34.140 later. Not only do you have to withdraw from the ECHR, you also have to withdraw from UN conventions.

00:15:41.700 Not only did Trump say we're going to open up industry again, he withdrew from the Paris climate

00:15:47.780 accord. Yes. You've got to get back and pull back. It's not isolationist. It's pragmatic. You can't be

00:15:54.500 reliant on the international community to support you during a war. Correct. The name of this

00:15:59.120 show is real politic, right? A dose of real politics. No one is your friend. No one is

00:16:04.020 your friend. You're the only player that you have to rely on. Yes. And so you've got to start with

00:16:10.120 Britain, but also at the same time, build out your industries like tech, like your financial

00:16:16.460 services, rebuild those industries. That's what will attract foreign interest. How do you rebuild

00:16:21.580 them? Deregulate. Okay. You've got to deregulate. Um, subsidies, uh, loans, a dedicated bank for

00:16:35.240 re-industrialization, a, um, investment, investment, private investment, private investment. Okay. If

00:16:42.480 you look at, uh, what companies want now, they want two things. They want access to data and they

00:16:49.100 want data centers. Right. Okay. All your big multinationals are investing in data centers.

00:16:54.980 Okay. How many jobs do these create? Well, this is a secondary question, right? Because we're still

00:16:59.640 talking about the city. Right. You mentioned industrialization. There's no AI that can go and

00:17:05.120 take a tractor out yet. There's no AI that can go picking in the fields. There are a lot of very neat

00:17:11.340 fixes to labor shortage and labor supply that just haven't been tried. I'll give you an example. So

00:17:18.700 if we, if we go to the other end of the spectrum, when we need more workers for seasonal labor,

00:17:24.160 we have to advertise to the whole world and see who responds. It is a really simple solution.

00:17:28.960 If you have a treaty with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, perhaps the US and the UK, in which you

00:17:35.680 have an unlimited movement for seasonal workers, Kanzuk plus the US, you've solved your issue.

00:17:44.660 Everyone speaks English. Everyone moves freely between the countries. You can do exchange programs

00:17:49.560 with students between those countries. You have a powerful trading block because we've gone out

00:17:54.340 with this European mindset and we have to make a deal through the EU and only work with our

00:18:00.240 carefully vetted and prepared partners around the world. We're not allowed to just go and do stuff.

00:18:06.380 If we did that, it would solve so many issues overnight. And you can start to just take that

00:18:10.760 all the way through the supply chain. You're saying, do we need more job creation? Yes.

00:18:14.420 But also there's jobs that have to be filled. I mean, farmers are talking about not getting enough

00:18:19.240 seasonal labor because of Brexit. So what? Find other people who already speak English to come

00:18:24.860 into the country. We can do that as an exchange program. There's so many neat solutions. If you

00:18:31.340 want more jobs, open up the steel factories. AI isn't going in with a welding suit. 0.86

00:18:37.040 How do you open up the steel factories?

00:18:39.520 Well, that's where you've got to get the state to take back control of what is a failed industry.

00:18:43.420 Right.

00:18:43.900 Okay. And that's why nationalization is part of this.

00:18:46.400 That's not nationalization long term because we know the state eventually

00:18:49.700 gets things wrong. But it has to step in at some point and say, this isn't working.

00:18:55.140 Then you can retender.

00:18:56.820 So what you're describing here is a sort of real economic pragmatism

00:19:02.200 that looks at a case-by-case basis that has a bit of a

00:19:09.300 element that requires re-nationalization of industries

00:19:14.980 to put them back in British hands and in the hands of British capital, with the idea

00:19:20.980 being that the...

00:19:23.180 Well, at least UK-focused capital, yes.

00:19:25.600 Okay. With the idea being that the oligarchy must act in the national interest. 0.99

00:19:31.780 Well, the oligarchy will not exist unless it acts in the national interest. It will be 0.77

00:19:35.640 somewhere else.

00:19:36.860 Well, yes.

00:19:37.400 The oligarchy can't survive. If you want to talk about the different layers, the state

00:19:42.360 and the oligarchy have fundamentally fallen out. I think this is something people don't

00:19:45.880 understand. In a traditional structure, you have competing oligarchies trying to pull the

00:19:53.140 government in their direction. Now, in this new framework of globalization, you have

00:19:59.780 supranational, not really oligarchs, collectives pulling against each other, okay? And for their

00:20:06.460 own vested interests, which aren't always financial.

00:20:09.780 Right.

00:20:10.500 And so the people who are purely focused on finance are the ones, A, leaving. But also,

00:20:17.160 if you had a private conversation, eight out of ten will agree with Nigel Farage, will agree

00:20:22.160 with what Liz Truss did. Maybe not publicly, because they can't be political for whatever reason. 0.99

00:20:27.500 They own a corporation. But if you had a one-to-one conversation, I don't see that they would

00:20:32.020 disagree with much. So it's not really the oligarchy. The oligarchy are going to be re-invited

00:20:38.000 by the state to join the equation, if anything. We've got to move away from this idea that they're

00:20:43.220 still pulling strings. They're all moving out. I mean, if inheritance tax and wealth tax

00:20:50.040 are in this week's budget, even more of them are going to go. There's already hardly any left.

00:20:55.840 But I know, I can hear these conversations happening around me all the time.

00:21:00.500 They've already got places prepared. Most of them are already somewhere and thinking,

00:21:03.860 let's see how it goes. I might come back.

00:21:06.660 Right.

00:21:06.920 Why do they need to? They can go to Dubai. If they want to experience the English countryside,

00:21:11.480 they can go to New England. They can move around. These guys have opportunities everywhere.

00:21:17.300 Correct.

00:21:17.980 So why do they need to be in London?

00:21:19.360 Well, yeah, there is a very legitimate question here about how do you get the

00:21:26.480 investment class interested in Britain, because if you speak to them, they will tell you that

00:21:31.480 Britain right now is uninvestable.

00:21:33.180 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters,

00:21:36.640 head to our website where you can find more.

00:21:38.880 Well,

00:21:39.840 Hmm.

00:21:43.840 Well,

00:21:44.260 Huh.

00:21:47.940 Hey there.

00:21:53.260 Hey,

00:21:57.580 Hey,

00:21:58.780 Hey,

00:21:59.720 Hey,

00:22:00.340 Hey.

00:22:00.380 Hey.

00:22:01.640 roll.

00:22:02.700 Hey.

00:22:03.720 Hey.

00:22:04.240 Hey.

00:22:04.720 Hey.

00:22:05.160 Hey.

00:22:05.840 Hey.

00:22:06.880 Hey.

00:22:07.000 Hey.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 03, 2025

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #22 ｜ The Situation in Britain with Joseph Robertson

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