TRIGGERnometry - Chloe Westley on Tax, Brexit & Socialism

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is

00:00:12.920 the show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they

00:00:17.180 know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts.

00:00:22.940 Our fantastic guest this week didn't want to be introduced as an expert, but we think she'll

00:00:26.960 be absolutely fascinating to talk to. She's the campaign manager at the Taxpayers Alliance.

00:00:31.520 Chloe Wesley, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me.

00:00:38.140 It's great to have you. And before we get on with the show, just tell us a little bit

00:00:41.420 about who you are, how did you get to where you are, and maybe a little bit about kind

00:00:44.720 of your thoughts and your background, how you developed your ideas and your views.

00:00:48.080 Sure. Well, I'm from Australia originally. As people find out when they see me on TV,

00:00:53.580 They're like, what's that accent? I'm from Brisbane in Queensland. I didn't grow up wanting to be a

00:00:59.920 campaign manager for a tax organisation. That wasn't really part of the plan. I was just very,

00:01:05.740 very interested in politics from a very young age. I was a complete nerd at school. I remember

00:01:10.960 actually being picked on a little bit for being a bit obsessed with politics because I was always

00:01:14.700 reading newspapers and watching political shows. It was quite an odd obsession that I had. My

00:01:20.240 parents were like, where does this come from? It was just a natural thing that I was really

00:01:24.520 interested in. So as I was reading as a young person, developing my thoughts, I was very open

00:01:31.960 to lots of different ideas. But when I was about 16, I think I was a little bit more left-wing than

00:01:38.260 I am now. So I thought the world was really unfair. There were some people that were struggling and

00:01:44.220 others that were doing really well. And I was very skeptical of authority and of the system. And

00:01:49.700 I read a lot of French and German philosophy, and I read this book by Albert Camus called The Rebel, where he writes about revolutions, and he wrote about the Soviet Union, and it changed a lot of my thinking about things, because he pointed out the flaws in his thinking, and that he was a left-wing person who wanted to empower people, but he saw that when you do have socialist and communist regimes, actually people can become enslaved.

00:02:16.720 You just transfer power to a state, and actually that's a different kind of enslavement.

00:02:24.780 So it made me very sceptical of statist ideologies, and actually I became a lot more fond of the

00:02:32.500 idea of individualism, that societies where people are free and they have the most freedom

00:02:37.520 to choose things are far more prosperous and people thrive a lot more than in societies

00:02:42.380 where there is a really big state.

00:02:43.940 so that's kind of how my views developed but I moved to London to study philosophy just after

00:02:51.860 high school so when I was about 18 and I really got to engage a lot of these ideas on a deeper

00:02:56.760 level and I met some incredible philosophers I was very lucky I went to a philosophy college

00:03:01.700 so we had 12 different professors and experts in all different kinds of areas and I did read a lot

00:03:09.300 of Marx. I was fascinated. I think he identified a problem, but proposed the completely wrong

00:03:15.320 solution, in my opinion. I fell in love with Aristotle, Greek philosophy, and I just, I really

00:03:22.140 loved ideas, and I became very interested in British politics over here, because everyone was

00:03:26.860 talking about this, and everyone was talking about the European Union, and that was, from a very early

00:03:33.240 time when I moved here, I remember that was already part of the national conversation, at least in

00:03:37.180 the common room and students talking about these things. And I didn't really set out to

00:03:42.560 get into politics over here. At the end of my second year of university, I volunteered for an

00:03:49.780 MP to help him get elected on the conservative side. And then completely unexpectedly, while I

00:03:56.540 was still a student, he offered me a job. And that was life-changing, because instead of just

00:04:02.200 reading about politics and debating it online and watching Question Time and shouting at the TV,

00:04:07.180 I was actually, I got to be part of it, I got to work in Parliament and it was incredible

00:04:12.600 and I felt very, very lucky and also a little bit surprised that, you know, from growing

00:04:19.140 up in Queensland to working in the British Parliament, it wasn't really an obvious thing

00:04:25.440 for me to turn out to do, so that was incredible and I feel very lucky to have that experience

00:04:30.140 And even working in Parliament, I was still reading and studying and learning more about the EU.

00:04:38.880 And I became very severely Eurosceptic.

00:04:42.600 I mean, one of the reasons why I wanted to work for this MP was because he was very Eurosceptic at the time.

00:04:48.920 Because it was my scepticism of, you know, centralised control, of taking control away from the individual.

00:04:54.320 And the more I read about the EU, the more I thought, hang on, this is a really, really bad thing for this country.

00:05:00.140 And even though this wasn't the country I'm born in, this is a country where I have family and history,

00:05:04.860 and I just felt like the country was moving in their own direction.

00:05:08.160 So I was very passionate about it.

00:05:09.500 And I got to work on the Leave campaign, something that I really, really wanted to do.

00:05:14.940 And that was incredible.

00:05:16.860 I didn't think we were going to win the referendum, but I thought we'd come pretty close.

00:05:21.480 And I wanted to stake a claim in that fight.

00:05:23.860 If there was going to be this referendum in Britain at a time when I was living here,

00:05:27.640 I wanted to have it known that I was on the side of the anti, the EU side.

00:05:34.080 And that was incredible.

00:05:35.240 And from there, I helped launch another Brexit group after the referendum

00:05:38.880 to hold Theresa May to account.

00:05:41.620 Gisela Stewart, Labour MP, she's fantastic, one of my heroes.

00:05:45.440 Well, an ex-MP now.

00:05:46.900 She stood down.

00:05:48.740 And now I work at the Taxpayers' Alliance,

00:05:50.620 which is very much in line with my kind of scepticism of government

00:05:55.200 and of, you know, centralised power,

00:05:58.620 I think people are taxed way too much in this country.

00:06:02.440 I think in general there is a move towards, you know,

00:06:06.400 more spending, more government.

00:06:08.240 So whenever there's a problem in society,

00:06:10.200 the first thought of most politicians and most commentators

00:06:13.240 is how can the government solve it?

00:06:15.060 So we've got a problem with, you know, childhood obesity,

00:06:18.580 kids eating too much sugar.

00:06:19.900 The government must do something.

00:06:21.720 The government must introduce a sugar tax.

00:06:23.140 This is the kind of way of thinking in Westminster at the moment.

00:06:27.920 And the organization I work for, we're in the minority.

00:06:30.920 We're the group saying, hang on, maybe every problem in society isn't solved by a big government spending money and taxing people.

00:06:37.860 Maybe individuals can make choices.

00:06:39.720 Maybe there are free market solutions to these things.

00:06:42.780 So I've been with the Taxpayers Alliance for about a year, and I'm loving it.

00:06:46.080 I'm not loving the criticism, because it's very brave to go out and argue for lower taxes in the current climate.

00:06:51.980 Really?

00:06:53.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:06:54.140 I think I'm always outnumbered in all the shows that I do.

00:06:58.220 I remember I did Any Questions and there was two MPs and a priest,

00:07:04.120 socialist priest, lovely, lovely, lovely chap,

00:07:07.300 and they were all talking about the cost of living

00:07:09.220 and how the government can solve it.

00:07:12.100 And I said, well, what about taking less money away from people

00:07:15.960 so they have more disposable income?

00:07:17.820 And they all laughed at me.

00:07:19.420 So it is a non-conventional viewpoint at the moment.

00:07:25.720 Well, that's great.

00:07:26.400 We love to have people with non-conventional viewpoints on the show.

00:07:30.060 And so what does the Taxpayers Alliance do?

00:07:32.040 We'll come to the Brexit in a bit.

00:07:34.680 What do you do at the Taxpayers Alliance?

00:07:36.400 Do you campaign?

00:07:37.680 Do you advocate to government?

00:07:39.040 Do you lobby government to change things?

00:07:40.840 How do you try and make change to society?

00:07:43.980 Well, we try and connect activists to government and also speak for taxpayers.

00:07:48.780 So the Taxpayers Alliance was founded in 2004 by a couple of guys, Andrew Allum and Matthew

00:07:55.600 Elliott.

00:07:56.520 And at the time, every politician, every political party was calling for higher taxes and more

00:08:01.620 spending.

00:08:02.100 And there was a lot of lobbying in Parliament in Westminster for more money.

00:08:06.560 So charities would lobby for more money, different pressure groups.

00:08:10.080 There wasn't really a pressure group or a group representing taxpayers, the people that

00:08:14.520 are paying for all these things.

00:08:15.740 They set up this group.

00:08:16.700 I think mostly to just put pressure on political parties to think about taxpayers and their right

00:08:22.540 policy, actually, and just expose how much government spending there is, what it's being

00:08:27.780 spent on, and point out some areas where money can be saved. So at the moment, we're a pretty

00:08:33.820 small organisation still, but we get a lot of press attention because I think we have a unique

00:08:38.740 viewpoint at the moment in Westminster. And we do a lot. We do reports on what the tax system

00:08:45.540 should look like. So in 2012, we released the single income tax, which outlined how we would

00:08:50.880 simplify taxes, what areas of spending we would cut, and what the kind of perfect Britain would

00:08:56.560 look like. Not perfect Britain, but where the country could go. And it was very practical.

00:09:00.880 It was, you know, government spending should be about a third of GDP, and taxes on income should

00:09:05.580 be about 33%. And figured out, you know, all the numbers and the way that the government could move

00:09:12.820 towards this position. At the moment, government spending is about 40%. And if you're a lower

00:09:19.820 earner, you're taxed at a rate of about 40%. And if you're a higher earner, the tax rate is 53%.

00:09:24.900 So we've got a long way to go to get to that vision. But we do a lot of local work. So the

00:09:31.180 things that people don't really see the Taxpayers Alliance do is all of our local campaigning. So

00:09:37.660 So we do national press releases and reports and we go on political shows, but the day-to-day work, a lot of it is just local activist calls and says, I think my local council is spending money on this thing.

00:09:49.460 Can you help me set up a stand so I can protest it?

00:09:51.820 Or can you tell me the person I can get in touch with to change this?

00:09:55.740 So at the moment we're doing a campaign in Southampton because they want to introduce this new surcharge, this clean air zone surcharge.

00:10:02.420 So if you want to drive into Southampton, you've got to pay £100, which is essentially a tax to visit Southampton.

00:10:09.320 So we're helping...

00:10:11.600 I've been to Southampton.

00:10:13.780 No, I wouldn't pay a fiver to go there, I'll be honest.

00:10:16.880 Really?

00:10:17.500 No.

00:10:18.080 I haven't been before.

00:10:19.460 But if there was a £100 charge, I'd be much less likely to.

00:10:22.940 And so that's just one of the campaigns we're doing.

00:10:24.840 We do a lot on council tax, which is one of the most hated taxes in Britain, because you have to pay that.

00:10:30.600 like it doesn't just come out of your income straight away you have you get a bill and you

00:10:35.700 have to pay it and that means people are really ticked off about it um and they really care about

00:10:40.000 how that money is spent and sometimes it's spent well but more often than not we find areas where

00:10:44.580 it's not spent well so we do we do a lot of things um but yeah one of the things so you what you're

00:10:51.880 proposing sounds great my worry is number one what happens to our public services i mean let's be

00:10:58.820 fair the nhs isn't well it doesn't look like it's doing that well it needs more money the roads are

00:11:05.600 in a horrible state in london they're talking about cutting police services crime spiking

00:11:11.140 don't we need people to pay more tax to pay for these public services well at the moment

00:11:15.580 government spending is about 30 000 pounds per household um so government spending is very very

00:11:21.340 high there's a lot of money in the kitty and at the there's billions of pounds being spent

00:11:26.680 in projects and areas that aren't essential services.

00:11:29.820 So about $14 billion in foreign aid, for example,

00:11:32.540 about $56 billion put aside for HS2,

00:11:36.220 which is a train from Birmingham to London.

00:11:38.520 It's going to make this infrastructure project.

00:11:40.460 There's so many areas of spending that you could cut

00:11:43.720 and re-divert into public services,

00:11:45.820 which is actually something that we advocate.

00:11:48.020 I think there are areas of public services that need more money.

00:11:51.800 I think social care is underfunded.

00:11:53.080 I think it was a huge mistake to make it separate to the NHS.

00:11:56.680 and then to lump that cost into local council. Social care does need to be

00:12:00.280 funded. I think policing probably needs money to be spent well and it isn't

00:12:06.760 always spent well but also they probably need more funding and when you pay your

00:12:10.060 taxes and things you think about it's the NHS, it's bin collection, it's

00:12:14.680 education, policing, defence and these areas are areas where actually government

00:12:20.620 has cut down on spending. One area the government hasn't cut down on is public

00:12:24.520 sector pensions, which costs about $38 billion a year more than the education budget in England.

00:12:31.700 So I understand the argument that politicians make that we need to put up taxes to pay for

00:12:37.220 public services, but you can't make that argument if you're spending a lot of money on things that

00:12:41.980 just aren't necessary. State-funded art, it's not necessary. Like, if I was a politician and I had

00:12:48.280 to choose between putting more money into the health system or spending millions to give to

00:12:54.340 artists to do state funded

00:12:56.020 drawings that go in galleries that people probably

00:12:58.400 won't visit because if you can't make

00:13:00.300 money off your art it's probably not going to

00:13:02.160 be very popular

00:13:03.280 We know all about that

00:13:05.440 Can you imagine a state funded

00:13:08.280 comedy night? That would be awful

00:13:09.680 You'd have to fill out a form

00:13:12.140 and say I adhere to these

00:13:14.260 regulations and they'd

00:13:16.320 say actually no you can't make that joke

00:13:17.840 and it'd be rubbish

00:13:19.340 Just like a normal comedy comedy

00:13:20.400 And that's the way comedy is going

00:13:22.340 But on public services as well, we're doing a lot of work on technology and automation.

00:13:28.940 So how technology can actually improve, particularly the NHS.

00:13:34.740 So at the moment, NHS servers are using Windows 98.

00:13:41.400 There's been examples of doctors using WhatsApp to share patient records, which isn't just bad.

00:13:47.960 It is encrypted.

00:13:49.040 It's not encrypted, isn't it?

00:13:50.240 Well, it's not the best way of doing things.

00:13:52.500 So there needs to be a lot of reform in efficiency

00:13:55.760 and that kind of thing, and we're doing some research on that.

00:13:58.620 Does the AHS really use Windows 98?

00:14:01.420 That's why it's so vulnerable to cyber attacks.

00:14:03.880 You had that WannaCry.

00:14:05.320 Was it WannaCry or WannaBeCry attack last year?

00:14:08.380 Yeah.

00:14:08.960 Yeah.

00:14:09.520 Windows 98.

00:14:10.740 Well, this is what I was going to ask you, Chloe.

00:14:12.720 There must be a few examples that if you just tell an ordinary person

00:14:16.420 this is what the government's doing with your money,

00:14:18.420 they've got to be you probably have a few of those where you kind of go this is what they do

00:14:22.320 and people go you know and freak out what can you give us a few examples of something like that

00:14:27.500 well i think the one that frustrates people the most is pay for public sector staff not

00:14:34.740 frontline staff not nurses and teachers bureaucrats civil servants and bosses um the amount of money

00:14:42.620 that goes into not just salaries but also bonuses and payouts for top staff is extraordinary.

00:14:50.700 And because there isn't a lot of scrutiny over it, you just assume that the government spends

00:14:54.400 money well, right? It's only groups at the Taxpayers Alliance that kick up a fuss and say,

00:14:58.420 hang on, why are you giving a local government boss a £300,000 payout? That's twice the salary

00:15:05.080 of the Prime Minister. Something's going wrong here. So that's the one that I think annoys people

00:15:09.520 the most in our research so we do every year we do um a report called the town hall rich list

00:15:14.920 which is top paid local government chief executives in the country and quite a lot of them are earning

00:15:20.620 more than theresa may which is that's fair considering how well she's doing at the moment

00:15:26.580 i deducted just for that fucking dance right i thought it was a good dance really i think it

00:15:32.640 It made her relatable.

00:15:33.240 Okay, that's it.

00:15:34.420 That's it.

00:15:35.460 I'm drinking.

00:15:36.300 That was horrible.

00:15:37.020 That was done.

00:15:37.460 That was horrible.

00:15:38.600 I nearly had a heart attack just watching it.

00:15:41.080 Really?

00:15:41.220 That's how unpleasant it was.

00:15:41.820 Yeah.

00:15:43.220 You thought it was good.

00:15:44.720 I can't do better than that.

00:15:46.240 And so I liked it, but it distracted from, you know, everything else.

00:15:53.220 I think it was very smart politics because everyone was talking about her dance.

00:15:56.040 They weren't talking about the fact that she didn't use the word checkers once in her speech.

00:16:00.880 So it was good politics.

00:16:02.140 There you go.

00:16:02.940 Look incompetent at something you're not supposed to be doing.

00:16:06.080 And then no one cares that you're incompetent in what you are doing.

00:16:09.440 Yeah.

00:16:10.680 Okay.

00:16:11.620 So the chief executives get paid more than Theresa May.

00:16:15.280 But still, that's definitely going to piss people off.

00:16:19.080 I can totally see that.

00:16:19.920 But that's not like a thing that makes me go,

00:16:21.860 oh, my God, I can't believe that's happening.

00:16:23.780 Is there like a thing that we spend tons of money on?

00:16:26.140 Well, I mean, HS2 is a big one.

00:16:29.260 Go into Birmingham.

00:16:30.060 Who wants to do that?

00:16:30.440 I mean, it's so unnecessary.

00:16:32.660 It is the wrong infrastructure project.

00:16:34.540 I'm not against infrastructure projects, but this is so unnecessary.

00:16:37.820 It's just a vanity project from George Osborne.

00:16:41.060 Politicians love to say, here's my project, I got it done, success story.

00:16:45.380 What you've done is you've spent a bunch of money on something that nobody really needs.

00:16:49.140 And at the beginning, they said it was going to be, what, $30 billion.

00:16:52.340 Now it's looking, it could be up to $80 to $100 billion.

00:16:55.600 And it's such, it's really, really expensive.

00:16:57.860 and by the time it's built, it's actually going to be quite outdated.

00:17:00.900 So the main argument they're making is that it's,

00:17:03.840 first they said it was about speed,

00:17:05.600 so we need a train that gets from London to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker.

00:17:10.320 That was the justification.

00:17:11.880 And now they're saying it's about capacity,

00:17:14.080 and now they're saying it's about jobs because they're creating lots of jobs

00:17:16.740 because there's lots of PR firms being hired by HS2 to sell the project.

00:17:20.360 There's about 17 PR firms, it's ridiculous.

00:17:23.020 So that is one area of spending that, if I was Prime Minister,

00:17:27.400 I would cut on day one because that's a lot of money.

00:17:30.980 I mean, if you compare it to education in England, that's $33 billion.

00:17:35.700 The entire defence budget, it's about $38 billion.

00:17:38.780 HS2, $60 to $100 billion.

00:17:41.540 It's so much money.

00:17:42.860 And for something that is very unpopular

00:17:44.680 and it's actually ruining people's homes as well,

00:17:47.240 so to put down the track,

00:17:48.840 they've got to build through a lot of towns and areas.

00:17:51.520 And it's causing a lot of upset and we're working really hard.

00:17:55.140 We hope that we can get it scrapped.

00:17:56.600 But at the moment, they're saying, we've spent $4 billion on it so far, so we might as well waste another $50, $60 billion, which I think is a very poor argument.

00:18:05.840 And I would back any politician who had the guts to say, we got it wrong.

00:18:10.420 I'm going to save some money now.

00:18:11.780 This is a bad project.

00:18:13.920 Quango is another one.

00:18:15.340 So do you know what a quango is?

00:18:17.300 Compliance moves fast, and Moody's can help organizations move even faster, leveraging AI to help you gain quicker insights and reduce bottlenecks.

00:18:24.460 Let Moody's help your organization navigate change with confidence.

00:18:27.800 Visit moody's.com slash kyc slash ai dash study to discover how.

00:18:32.320 It's a non-governmental organization.

00:18:35.760 Exactly.

00:18:36.900 So it's the NHS is technically a quango, I think, but it's essentially a publicly funded organization that isn't really a government department.

00:18:46.100 So Public Health England is one of the most famous ones.

00:18:50.840 But there are so many of them.

00:18:53.020 There are so many of them that we don't even have a list compiled.

00:18:57.300 And they cost a lot of money, and they have really high salaries for bosses that come in,

00:19:03.380 sometimes ex-politicians or people that are friends of politicians.

00:19:06.540 And then they get a cushy job at a quango, and they sit and write reports all day that nobody really reads.

00:19:13.220 So there are quangos for so many different things.

00:19:15.420 A lot of them are health quangos.

00:19:16.920 You could merge them into, say, 12 main health quangos and save so much money.

00:19:23.020 um and david cameron's promised a bonfire of quangos when he when he came in so he said

00:19:28.400 these are so you know we have too many we've got hundreds of quangos we don't need them

00:19:32.560 let's just you know scrap a lot of them and i think he cut down like a couple dozen not even that

00:19:38.620 um but they don't really reach the headlines in the same way as and why do you think that is why

00:19:43.700 why were they not able to do that what's what's the difficulty in getting rid of them or merging

00:19:48.580 them? I just think it wasn't really a priority. There are so many things that aren't a priority,

00:19:54.140 like simplification of the tax system, like simplifying the tax system would save so many

00:19:58.980 problems, but it would take a long time. It would be very complicated. And at the moment,

00:20:05.780 I think there are politicians of other things in their mind. But it's a shame because there are so

00:20:11.180 many things that could be improved by either merging quangos, simplifying government,

00:20:15.980 um you know getting rid of bureaucracy but there just isn't the political willpower for it imagine

00:20:20.340 like that's your political platform like okay everyone i'm just going to focus on just organizing

00:20:26.220 it i'm going to give the government a spring clean um and just make sure that everything's

00:20:31.040 working well that's that's not as inspiring as saying i'm going to spend all this money on on

00:20:35.600 this project or i'm going to fund this or fund that but that's the vote winner and that's why

00:20:40.100 i think jeremy corbyn is very popular he's promising to to do things but those things all

00:20:45.100 costs money and the way that he wants to fund it is to actually kind of drain the wealth and the

00:20:50.820 desire to create wealth in this country um which would be a very bad thing well don't forget that

00:20:56.100 dig in there very good yeah you mentioned the criticism that that you guys get and you're

00:21:02.120 called right wing i mean first of all i think nazis i imagine oh quite often yeah i've gone i'm

00:21:08.960 pro-fascist oh really yeah according to some a couple of people on the internet yeah yeah so

00:21:13.980 there we go

00:21:14.460 and simultaneously

00:21:15.580 a left wing

00:21:16.240 selling out cuck

00:21:17.540 yeah yeah

00:21:18.320 what was it

00:21:20.280 social justice

00:21:22.320 warrior

00:21:22.660 left wing cuck

00:21:24.100 wow

00:21:24.560 who is also

00:21:25.840 in favour

00:21:26.620 third wave feminist

00:21:28.100 yeah third wave feminist

00:21:29.400 who's pro fascist

00:21:30.900 and in favour

00:21:31.420 of an all white

00:21:32.200 ethno state

00:21:33.000 wow

00:21:34.120 all at the same time

00:21:35.240 all at the same time

00:21:35.980 I am all things

00:21:36.800 to all people

00:21:37.360 we cater to a broad

00:21:39.000 audience here

00:21:39.620 the internet is amazing

00:21:41.260 it is

00:21:41.840 it is

00:21:42.340 it's truly remarkable

00:21:42.940 Yeah, pointing out deficiencies that even I wasn't aware of.

00:21:46.420 Yeah, so, I mean, I think in this country,

00:21:49.060 a lot of people use the word right-wing as an insult

00:21:51.380 and just to mean bad people.

00:21:53.080 But there is a legitimate kind of right-centre-right position

00:21:57.000 that doesn't have to be demonized.

00:21:59.280 So when people talk about the Taxpayers Alliance

00:22:01.460 being a right-wing organization, is that accurate?

00:22:04.760 I think so, in that if right-wing means less government, then yes.

00:22:09.540 we stand

00:22:11.840 we're a very single issue group

00:22:13.320 where taxpayers alliance doesn't have a position on Brexit

00:22:15.580 or in many other things

00:22:17.040 it just stands for lower taxes, less government spending

00:22:20.000 and more simpler government

00:22:21.760 You don't have a policy on the Jews, right?

00:22:23.760 No

00:22:23.900 Then you're not that kind of right wing

00:22:27.000 I'm sure there's probably a government quango somewhere

00:22:31.640 There probably is

00:22:32.740 There's a quango for everything

00:22:36.340 for every season

00:22:37.600 yeah yeah under jeremy corbyn that would definitely be acquired yeah yeah i i think

00:22:44.020 there's a lot of people who think that if you also campaign for lower taxes it means you don't want

00:22:48.600 to help people or you don't believe in any kind of public uh service or government and that's just

00:22:54.600 not true at all i think there are definitely libertarians out there who support us and who

00:22:59.460 would like to prioritize everything and i i wonder who would build the roads to be honest

00:23:03.460 but generally most of our activists

00:23:07.040 and certainly the team that we're with at the moment

00:23:09.420 we just believe in smaller government

00:23:10.700 so keep it to the essential stuff

00:23:12.500 most people just want to pay their taxes

00:23:14.600 but not too much

00:23:15.580 for good public services

00:23:17.280 and other than that

00:23:18.340 for the government to leave them alone

00:23:19.620 so it sounds like what you really want

00:23:21.520 is just to eliminate waste

00:23:22.740 pretty much

00:23:23.840 and also just make things run a lot more smoothly

00:23:27.380 so it's great

00:23:29.820 at Conservative Party Conference

00:23:31.100 we had a panel on local councils

00:23:33.380 and someone put their hand up and said,

00:23:35.520 I used to work in the private sector

00:23:37.600 and now I went into a local council to do some work

00:23:41.020 and it was like walking into a 1970s TARDIS.

00:23:44.640 It was incredible.

00:23:46.460 And I think that's the reaction of a lot of people

00:23:48.660 that go from the private to the public sector.

00:23:50.140 They say, how are these processes in place?

00:23:52.880 Why does everything take such a slow,

00:23:54.920 why does everything move so slowly?

00:23:56.380 Why is there no efficiency?

00:23:57.380 Why is there no get up and go?

00:23:59.600 I think we really need that,

00:24:01.340 especially with Brexit.

00:24:03.380 but a spring cleaning of government.

00:24:06.560 I think I'm going to use that, actually.

00:24:08.940 Yeah, I like that phrase.

00:24:10.380 Government is like a spring clean.

00:24:12.280 Yeah, make it efficient.

00:24:13.440 One thing I always want to ask people who are involved in tax,

00:24:17.240 and this is for the average person on the street,

00:24:19.200 and it drives me up the wall, and I'm sure it drives them up the wall.

00:24:21.540 Why can't we get big businesses to pay fucking tax?

00:24:25.160 That's a very good question.

00:24:26.900 It's because the UK has a really overcomplicated tax code.

00:24:30.620 It's about 11,000 pages long,

00:24:32.320 and there are so many different taxes and tax codes

00:24:36.160 that if you're an accountant and you search hard enough,

00:24:39.000 you can find a loophole for just about anything.

00:24:41.120 So if you're a really big company or organisation,

00:24:43.540 you can afford a team of accountants and lawyers

00:24:46.040 to find all the loopholes for you.

00:24:48.240 That's how big companies like Amazon and Facebook and multinationals

00:24:52.640 don't end up paying as much taxes as small organisations.

00:24:56.500 It's completely legal.

00:24:58.300 They find accountants and lawyers to find holes.

00:25:00.820 if you simplify the system and you said here it is everyone's got to pay this there are a few

00:25:06.540 exemptions um but this is that these are the rules you wouldn't they wouldn't be allowed to do that

00:25:11.660 and this is it really annoys me when politicians say oh we need to crack down on businesses not

00:25:15.780 paying their fair share it's in their power like these companies are avoiding tax completely

00:25:21.000 legally it's you politician that needs to change the law to make it fairer because it's not fair

00:25:26.200 that if you're a small business you can't afford to get an accountant to find loopholes for you so

00:25:31.000 you pay your taxes in good faith um when a larger organization can afford to find a loophole it's

00:25:36.980 just it's really not fair and it means there isn't trust in the tax system and and it means that

00:25:41.680 people start resenting paying their taxes because like why am i paying so much of my my wage or my

00:25:46.440 earnings or my you know my small profit to the state when all these larger companies aren't

00:25:51.320 Totally with you on that.

00:25:53.180 So, in a sense, why don't they change it?

00:25:56.200 Is it going back to what you said,

00:25:57.680 that actually it's because it's too complex and it's too difficult

00:26:00.380 and it doesn't capture the public's imagination?

00:26:03.040 Or is it a part of it, there's a more sinister reason?

00:26:07.520 I don't want to think there's a sinister reason.

00:26:09.680 I'd like to believe that it's just because it's not a priority.

00:26:13.460 But maybe, I don't know, I'm not privy to backroom conversations.

00:26:16.900 I know that there is a big problem with corporatism at the moment in the West

00:26:20.200 in that you do have companies with larger GDPs than countries,

00:26:24.180 huge organisations, and once you get to a certain size,

00:26:27.940 you almost don't want a free market.

00:26:30.120 You don't want it to be easy for your competition to enter the market.

00:26:32.940 So you do cosy up with the EU or bureaucrats in Whitehall

00:26:38.000 to try and get the rules written so there are more regulations

00:26:40.840 and more barriers to entry.

00:26:42.540 That would be in your interest.

00:26:44.560 And I think at the moment people distrust business and capitalism

00:26:49.120 because they see that happening and that's that's not right that's not free that's not a proper free

00:26:55.180 market that's corporatism and that's not really what i stand for and where do you stand on the

00:27:00.140 tax rates because you've talked about eliminating waste but you've also said that people pay too

00:27:04.000 much tax so is your argument that we if we eliminate you know hs2 we eliminate quangos or

00:27:10.680 you know cut down the number of quangos we eliminate other things that you've talked about

00:27:14.900 then just by virtue of that the tax rates can come down or is it really about reducing the tax

00:27:21.740 load on people altogether in addition to those things so that we would have less money for

00:27:27.340 other things for public services and whatever you'd have to do both and you'd have to do it

00:27:31.200 gradually so you'd want to lower taxes gradually um and also cut down on spending bit by bit um

00:27:38.400 i'm a you know big fan of the do it now a little bit and wait and see because i think if you did

00:27:43.520 lower some taxes, you'd find you get more revenue in. So when corporation tax was lowered, the

00:27:48.820 government had more revenue because, you know, more people were paying it, there was more of an

00:27:53.000 incentive to pay. So I think if you did lower taxes, you may find that there's more money in

00:28:00.020 the economy and things grow more and you do have more revenue. But like all economics, it really

00:28:06.740 is disputed. And I'm not an economist by any standard. But we had some researchers work out

00:28:14.300 all of these problems in the single income tax, which I spoke about, which was, you know,

00:28:18.320 sitting down and seriously thinking, what would you need to cut? What would you need? What would

00:28:24.100 be a long term plan to get to the optimum point of spending and taxation? And it's a really,

00:28:29.900 really good document. And I'd encourage anyone who is unsure about what we stand for to actually

00:28:34.700 read that because they're very practical measures. And we actually had a thing on our website where

00:28:38.620 you could go through and test how much you would cut. So a list of things of spending you could

00:28:44.360 cut. So like state funded art or foreign aid or HS2. And it would show you how much spending

00:28:49.820 decreased. So it showed you how much you could afford to cut taxes by or how much money you'd

00:28:54.220 be saving. And that was very cool. But I don't think it would be as simple as just clicking

00:29:00.560 your fingers, get rid of some waste and lower taxes, I think it would be difficult and have

00:29:04.640 to be gradual, but it would make people's lives, living standards, a lot better. Because

00:29:09.800 I think when you put money in people's and businesses' hands, they spend it a lot better

00:29:14.400 than the government. And actually, when you leave it to people to solve problems, they're

00:29:18.540 pretty good at it. So you have the government failing in some areas, so the rollout of universal

00:29:22.820 credits, and then the community, food banks, a Trussell Trust, a charity set up by individuals

00:29:28.780 in the community come in and solve that problem and i think that's a really good thing it's

00:29:33.720 interesting so you you've you've talked about some of the kind of i mean all the things you're saying

00:29:38.500 you may or may not agree with them but they're reasonable things right these are conversations

00:29:43.240 that can be had reasonably right i think this is what taxes should be no i disagree i think this

00:29:48.020 is what taxes should be i want to go to birmingham 20 minutes faster i don't do you no of course i

00:29:53.540 I want to leave Birmingham 20 minutes past.

00:29:55.460 But anyway, see, okay, we've lost all our San Hampton and Birmingham audience.

00:29:59.580 All five of them.

00:30:00.600 All five of them.

00:30:02.760 So these are conversations that you can have as two reasonable people

00:30:07.040 and have a reasonable disagreement about, right?

00:30:09.380 So where does the vitriol come from that you've kind of referenced,

00:30:13.540 that people push back on it, people call you Nazis and whatever.

00:30:17.160 Why is that?

00:30:17.960 Why do you think?

00:30:19.400 That's a good question.

00:30:20.520 I wish I knew because then maybe I could stop it.

00:30:23.540 I wish any of my people were so negative towards us

00:30:28.000 and as a spokesperson a lot of it's just directed at me

00:30:30.660 so I'm used as a bit of a punching bag sometimes.

00:30:34.800 We have a lot of activists who are afraid of putting themselves out there

00:30:39.840 for that reason.

00:30:40.840 I think I'm not sure if it's just a left problem

00:30:43.520 but at the moment particularly online

00:30:45.760 there is a very strong left-wing hate mob

00:30:50.560 that descend on you if you publicly say things that I'm saying and even if you are perfectly

00:30:55.800 reasonable in your arguments and you do try to explain yourself I think there's a barrier to

00:31:00.220 accepting that any reasonable person could not be a socialist so as soon as you are to the right of

00:31:07.000 Jeremy Corbyn it's assumed that you're an evil person and what I've found is you're dehumanized

00:31:14.880 and so I think they think you don't really deserve the respect

00:31:20.120 or courtesy as a normal person

00:31:21.880 because if you're right-wing, you're evil.

00:31:24.080 So I don't need to engage in your arguments or your ideas

00:31:26.340 because you're an evil person

00:31:27.400 and so it's okay for me to send you nasty messages

00:31:29.920 and tell you to go back to where you came from

00:31:31.740 and all that kind of rubbish.

00:31:34.160 I think as well the internet has a big part to play in this.

00:31:37.140 I don't know if they'd say this to my face.

00:31:39.300 I don't know if people would say the things I say on Twitter

00:31:41.520 to anyone's face.

00:31:43.040 So maybe, I mean, I try to, it is hurtful,

00:31:47.200 but when I read them, I try to think,

00:31:48.620 well, this person's probably just having a bad day

00:31:50.360 and I'm taking the brunt of it.

00:31:53.140 Or a bad year.

00:31:54.340 Yeah.

00:31:54.800 Bad life.

00:31:55.600 And it can kind of be like a football team,

00:31:58.300 like I'm on this side and you're on that side,

00:32:00.320 so it's going to feel good to have a go at you.

00:32:02.860 It's kind of tribalism.

00:32:04.160 And people on the right do it as well.

00:32:06.020 Like I think a lot of left-wing commentators

00:32:08.400 and politicians get so much nastiness online

00:32:10.820 and it is very tribal because i have friends who are very left-wing and they're really good people

00:32:15.940 and i think we just disagree yeah it's true there are exceptions

00:32:19.300 francis himself probably more left more left than anything yeah and we we don't take that kind of

00:32:26.220 we're not right wing i'm probably more centrist francis brought slightly left but what troubles

00:32:31.800 us is this tribalism because it prevents genuine conversation you know that that's the issue for

00:32:37.620 us so whether i agree with you or not to me is much less important than whether we actually have

00:32:42.060 a genuine conversation and have that ability to exchange ideas and exchange information

00:32:47.720 and i think that's much more important and like you say i think online you know like we we actually

00:32:51.800 did a whole video of all the comments that people send us yeah whether they're just like straight

00:32:58.140 up racist comments all kinds of stuff and it is quite funny you know as comedians we're used to

00:33:02.500 dealing with it so we don't take it personally but i can totally see that if you're trying to

00:33:07.420 do something uh you're trying to make change in society and whatever and you just get hundreds

00:33:12.420 of messages of people just being nasty to you that's a different thing you know uh and it's

00:33:18.280 very it's very unfortunate that that happens and like you said i think it happens on both sides

00:33:21.840 it's not a right or a left thing um but it ties into another thing that we wanted to just have a

00:33:26.820 chat about as well which is the free speech thing uh which is is um you know you you mentioned that

00:33:33.140 you were concerned about free speech on campus and things like that what is what did you want to

00:33:37.220 say on that issue yeah I'm just really concerned that fear of offense and fear of what people will

00:33:46.120 say about you is stopping genuine authentic conversation and expression so I'm concerned

00:33:53.020 that at particularly universities young people are told that they've got to be you know really

00:33:59.480 careful about what they say or they'll get no platformed or banned or I'm just I'm concerned

00:34:06.240 about that I don't know what the solution is I don't know if you know this is something that

00:34:12.060 is as prevalent as perhaps the media make it out to be maybe there's a bit of hype around it but

00:34:17.240 I really hope that in our education system we can teach people to have authentic conversations like

00:34:23.620 I was very blessed to go to a philosophy college where the whole point was that you discuss ideas

00:34:28.640 and not, you know, identities or take sides or anything.

00:34:32.020 And you were trained to be able to see 12 different sides of an argument.

00:34:35.560 And I don't think there's enough of that now.

00:34:37.680 I think there's a demonisation of the other.

00:34:40.960 I think there is a lot of good versus evil rhetoric going on

00:34:44.700 where it's, you know, you've got to have your beliefs

00:34:47.560 and you're good and the other person's evil.

00:34:50.720 Although it's been a little while since I've been to university,

00:34:52.880 so I'm not sure if that is the case.

00:34:55.260 I don't know if you have any views on that,

00:34:57.760 But it's just something that I'm concerned about because I'm seeing all these stories about people being, you know, platformed or someone going to do a talk at a university about something very non-controversial, but that a bunch of protesters show up and it's shut down.

00:35:12.140 And I'm just, I'm concerned if that's the future, if these are the people that are going to go into the world of work next, if that's a healthy way to have society.

00:35:22.480 And I see it happening in politics as well, actually.

00:35:25.600 um it's a lot of good versus evil you know the kind of debates on tv where you have six minutes

00:35:31.960 to discuss an issue and you've got a righty and a lefty and someone's got to win and they both put

00:35:36.600 out a video saying i owned the other person and it's not about maybe we can have a discussion

00:35:41.400 and learn something about each other or maybe the viewers can learn something new it's i need to beat

00:35:45.760 you because you're evil and i'm good i think the worrying thing that i find is ultimately

00:35:50.780 why i have a discussion is to listen to somebody's point of view and then go

00:35:54.940 oh yeah i never thought about it like that yeah i kind of agree with that and then what it becomes

00:36:00.920 is adversarial and ultimately it's just about a display of ego and that's what you see a lot of

00:36:06.200 the time whether it's question time or anything else and that's why you know like we said before

00:36:11.000 i think when we started this show is that's why we set this up well why we set this up because it

00:36:15.020 once you get to that point then it's not about the shared the expression of ideas and it's not

00:36:20.340 about sharing ideas and it's not about learning and it's just about you know the glorification

00:36:25.700 of one's own ego then that's where we end up unfortunately yeah you've been on question time

00:36:32.360 actually how did you find that i have oh i was so nervous the whole week i was so scared and then i

00:36:39.220 called my mom on the train i said mom i don't know if i can do this and she said oh yeah you're from

00:36:43.120 queensland you can do it you've dealt with scorpions exactly you've killed spiders you can

00:36:48.920 Yeah, I mean, they're terrifying.

00:36:50.340 They are terrifying.

00:36:50.880 You're living in your country.

00:36:52.080 I just couldn't handle them.

00:36:52.980 Anyway, sorry.

00:36:54.180 Anything involving the words your country in your accent.

00:36:58.580 Your fucking country.

00:37:00.000 Sounds racist.

00:37:01.820 I embrace that.

00:37:04.060 Your accent, your tattoo, the whole look.

00:37:06.340 It doesn't work.

00:37:07.900 It's a carefully cultivated image, mate.

00:37:11.520 It's great.

00:37:12.140 It's working for you.

00:37:12.980 Yeah, I know.

00:37:13.660 It's a great brand.

00:37:14.600 The racist brand.

00:37:17.360 Yeah.

00:37:17.960 It's scary.

00:37:18.720 So you were nervous and your mum kind of gave you that talk.

00:37:22.040 And then backstage they have lots of snacks and drinks,

00:37:25.440 but no one really touches it because you're all so nervous.

00:37:28.460 And then you go through and you sit down.

00:37:31.800 And it was strange.

00:37:32.600 As soon as I sat down and looked at the audience,

00:37:35.160 I felt a bit more calm.

00:37:36.680 And I kind of nodded to myself and said,

00:37:38.520 OK, I'm just going to answer some questions now.

00:37:41.360 And didn't really notice the cameras.

00:37:44.240 And it was a huge rush.

00:37:45.580 It was really exciting because it was a show I'd watched so much

00:37:47.800 and shouted at and said, oh, if only I was, you know, up there.

00:37:51.940 It's harder than it looks, though.

00:37:53.520 So I didn't watch the whole thing back,

00:37:55.460 but I remembered there was a question on Corbyn,

00:37:58.220 and I froze and I didn't say authentically what I really thought.

00:38:03.160 I just thought of something on the spot,

00:38:04.720 and I wish I could go back and redo that bit.

00:38:07.080 But that's part of the show, I suppose.

00:38:08.540 It's live and you've got to be really quick on your feet.

00:38:11.160 But it was a really good experience.

00:38:13.020 and yeah you get all the people afterwards saying nasty things about you but what was

00:38:18.680 really exciting was people getting in touch and saying oh you made me think about this a little

00:38:24.220 bit differently or hi I'm also a young person and I hadn't really thought about the fact that

00:38:28.480 I'm getting taxed so much you know that sucks I looked at my paycheck and there's a lot of it

00:38:32.020 going to the government and that was why I wanted to go on I wanted to change some minds or offer a

00:38:37.120 bit of a new perspective. And what do you think of Corbyn because you sort of alluded to it before

00:38:42.680 and you were saying you don't agree

00:38:44.780 because, I mean, there's a very healthy chance.

00:38:47.920 I mean, they were talking that we're going to have a...

00:38:49.780 There was rumours of an election in November

00:38:51.940 and, I mean, we could still have an election

00:38:53.680 in the next year or so.

00:38:55.140 There's a chance he could be Prime Minister.

00:38:56.740 Why do you think that would not be a good thing

00:38:58.600 for this country?

00:38:59.660 I think his ideas are wrong.

00:39:01.340 I think they're really, really wrong.

00:39:03.020 Like, everyone talks about him personally

00:39:06.200 and his... I don't know him personally.

00:39:08.620 I don't know what his morals are.

00:39:09.940 For all I know, he has very good intentions.

00:39:11.600 I'm not going to make any statements about his character, but his ideas and his plans are very wrong.

00:39:16.680 And I think they'd cause a lot of misery, actually, for people here.

00:39:19.940 And it would be a very, very bad thing for the country.

00:39:23.500 And in a way that I don't think I can articulate well enough.

00:39:29.120 The idea of central planning and centralised control and the state seizing control of everything, it's very, very dangerous.

00:39:36.940 And it's not just dangerous because you're disempowering people of their liberty.

00:39:40.080 because you can say, well, yes, I lose my freedom and my ability to choose,

00:39:44.660 but at least the services are running well.

00:39:46.580 They don't run well.

00:39:47.400 When things are run centrally from a government or it would be from Whitehall,

00:39:52.260 you get shortages and things don't run very smoothly.

00:39:56.380 And that's exactly what we saw in Venezuela.

00:39:58.440 And I know that it's kind of used as an example of socialism gone wrong

00:40:03.540 and then socialists say, well, that's not real socialism.

00:40:06.420 But every single time central planning has been tried

00:40:09.720 and the state seizing control of industry has been tried,

00:40:13.200 it's resulted in mass misery.

00:40:15.180 And I think it comes from a place of compassion initially.

00:40:18.060 You want to help people, and it sounds so simple

00:40:20.580 when it's going to take all the stuff

00:40:22.280 and make sure it's distributed fairly.

00:40:24.280 But it really doesn't work

00:40:25.640 because the people distributing them are just people.

00:40:28.560 And you replace one hierarchy,

00:40:30.860 so free markets and people making money and getting further up,

00:40:33.980 with another hierarchy where it's the bureaucrats at the top,

00:40:37.080 and there's always corruption, and it's always a bad thing.

00:40:39.720 And in the UK, there was a little bit of central planning in the 70s

00:40:44.920 and it was getting, there's a very big state.

00:40:47.280 And Margaret Thatcher came in and really she taught,

00:40:50.820 can I say the S-H-I-T word?

00:40:52.500 Yeah, yeah, she really just shook it up and she said,

00:40:57.660 no, we're going to really change things.

00:41:00.960 And what's interesting is when she did that,

00:41:02.740 the people that opposed a lot of her free market reforms the most

00:41:05.780 was the British aristocracy

00:41:07.040 because suddenly it was going to be a little playing field.

00:41:10.240 Working class kids were going to start competing with them for jobs

00:41:13.900 and they were going to have to up their game.

00:41:15.880 And suddenly, you know, wealth was something that you didn't just get

00:41:18.920 because you were born into the right family.

00:41:20.360 It was something you could earn and be a part of.

00:41:22.360 And I think what you did for this country was fantastic.

00:41:24.240 And I would hate to see all of that go to waste,

00:41:29.540 to go back in time to that bad, failed experiment

00:41:33.260 of central planning and socialism.

00:41:35.100 I think free markets are the best thing to a meritocratic hierarchy that we have, and that's a very good thing for people.

00:41:44.100 And I'm not sure how far Corbyn and McDonnell would go with what they really want to do,

00:41:48.300 because we know that the Labour manifesto, and they are hardcore socialists, but the manifesto was a bit less radical, right?

00:41:55.580 I don't know if they would just implement that or if they would go all the way, but I know that they want to go all the way.

00:42:02.040 And if they can get away with it, they will.

00:42:03.800 I think that would be a really bad thing.

00:42:06.260 I think a lot of the criticism about Corbyn is a bit misguided

00:42:09.980 because it's kind of like Trump.

00:42:12.040 There are all these stories about his character

00:42:14.260 and Hillary Clinton said he's a terrible man.

00:42:19.300 People didn't care.

00:42:20.360 They just wanted change.

00:42:21.760 And I think the conservatives attacking Corbyn at the moment,

00:42:25.880 they're all focusing on this thing he did or that thing he did.

00:42:29.560 And people switch off to that because all they know is, whatever, he could be a terrible person, but he's promising change.

00:42:36.860 And at the moment, I don't think the Conservative Party are promising real solutions to people's problems right now.

00:42:43.320 I think they're offering more of the same.

00:42:44.820 And I think that the free market solution is better, but it's not being advocated very well right now.

00:42:51.260 And that's why the kind of left-wing socialist ideas are coming back into fashion.

00:42:55.360 It's funny, when you said Jeremy Corbyn is like Trump, I thought we had an exclusive on that.

00:43:00.140 I thought you were going to tell us something completely different.

00:43:02.480 I was going viral clip, viral clip.

00:43:04.920 No, nothing like that.

00:43:05.980 No, but actually your point, I think, is exactly right, which is that whatever someone's ideas,

00:43:12.160 in the absence of a compelling, competing narrative, change will always trump the status quo

00:43:17.980 if people are not happy with the status quo.

00:43:20.440 And I think that explains.

00:43:21.540 And what I really liked about what you said there as well is that whether you like Jeremy Corbyn or not, you're quite happy to go, well, I don't know him.

00:43:30.520 He might be a really nice guy, but I don't agree with his ideas.

00:43:33.880 And so much of our politics now seems to be about attacking the person, attacking the man.

00:43:39.580 We've seen this with, you know, this judicial appointment in America with Brett Kavanaugh.

00:43:44.740 It's been all about like his judicial record pretty much didn't get talked about at all.

00:43:49.360 And it's all about certain allegations, which may or may not be true.

00:43:52.580 It's the same with Donald Trump.

00:43:53.620 You know, when we think about Donald Trump, we don't think about policy.

00:43:56.420 I think most people would struggle to name a single policy other than build a wall.

00:43:59.400 Tax cuts.

00:44:00.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:01.100 That was more Paul Ryan's.

00:44:02.080 That's your thing.

00:44:02.900 Yeah.

00:44:03.000 Yeah, that's your thing.

00:44:04.140 So it's all about personalities now.

00:44:06.140 It is.

00:44:06.960 And I think that that's not a good thing.

00:44:10.520 No.

00:44:11.940 I understand why people want to vote for people that they like.

00:44:14.760 So I don't have anything against politicians being charismatic or likeable or fine.

00:44:18.920 Like Jeremy Corbyn.

00:44:20.340 Yeah, I mean...

00:44:21.240 Charismatic.

00:44:21.580 I don't think he's that charismatic, actually.

00:44:23.380 I was being sarcastic.

00:44:26.080 You know who is charismatic?

00:44:27.460 Geoffrey Cox.

00:44:28.360 Did you see the speech he made at conference?

00:44:30.540 No.

00:44:31.040 It was brilliant.

00:44:32.180 It was so entertaining.

00:44:33.800 The Attorney General, no one knew who he was,

00:44:35.900 and he got up and did this rousing speech

00:44:38.100 in like a Mufasa voice.

00:44:40.080 And he said,

00:44:41.180 we need not fear self-government.

00:44:44.680 And it was amazing.

00:44:45.700 Anyway, we're getting sidetracked.

00:44:47.000 But I think the issue in politics now is that people are basing their political beliefs on identity.

00:44:54.700 So I identify as this kind of person, therefore I've got to vote this way.

00:44:58.560 And it's less about the manifestos and the policies.

00:45:01.760 It's more about personality and identity.

00:45:05.300 I think that gets in the way of proper discussion.

00:45:08.300 So even though maybe if people didn't know the organisation that I work for, for example,

00:45:14.340 and they heard me speak in an argument

00:45:16.460 and I said, you know, we should change this policy,

00:45:19.860 maybe they'd listen more than if I was introduced as

00:45:22.320 this is Chloe from a right-wing think tank.

00:45:23.980 Because I think as soon as you do that,

00:45:25.680 a certain amount of people just switch off and go,

00:45:27.520 oh, she's evil.

00:45:29.100 And I'm a goodie because I love the state.

00:45:32.080 There's too much for that.

00:45:33.680 I was actually going to ask you in terms of identity,

00:45:36.060 you're a conservative woman.

00:45:38.880 I hope I haven't misgendered you there.

00:45:40.400 Yeah, I haven't misgendered you, no.

00:45:41.940 Yeah, perfect.

00:45:42.780 So what's that like?

00:45:45.140 Oh, good question.

00:45:46.800 I'm not a member of the Conservative Party.

00:45:49.300 But I'm in small-c Conservative Party.

00:45:50.460 Yeah, the closest to my views.

00:45:52.380 I think I'm more of a liberal, but not in the left-wing sense.

00:45:57.740 I'm more of a libertarian, classical liberal.

00:46:01.040 But I don't think anyone is just one thing.

00:46:04.180 But, yeah, I'm a right-wing conservative woman.

00:46:07.760 It's difficult because you kind of don't really always get the approval of your side.

00:46:13.040 be your side because sometimes I speak about you know inequality or you know

00:46:18.280 unconscious bias and it's difficult sometimes in certain industries being a

00:46:21.740 woman or there's discrimination and then I'm said oh you know get over it and but

00:46:27.680 then I don't get the defense of the feminist because I'm right-wing so I'm

00:46:31.880 not really a person so when people are sending me very sexist comments you know

00:46:36.440 there's there's very little outrage or sympathy because all she deserves it

00:46:40.100 because she's evil because she wants to lower taxes um so it's it's it's all right i don't think

00:46:46.540 it dominates um my career though the fact that i am a conservative woman or that i'm a woman

00:46:52.320 most of my days spent talking about taxes which is not gendered right tax payers both men and

00:46:59.820 women pay taxes yeah so i'm curious you mentioned about kind of annoying your side yeah i don't like

00:47:06.060 to call it that yeah but yeah well I know what you mean people who would otherwise be aligned

00:47:11.240 with what you're saying yes they get annoyed by you talking about inequality or so what is it that

00:47:17.200 you that where you differ from the kind of mainstream narrative on that side of things

00:47:21.960 in terms of when you talk about women's issues or whatever what is it that you say that annoys them

00:47:26.080 yeah I'm not sure if it annoys them but I'm definitely definitely honest about what I think

00:47:32.300 about things and predominantly on twitter i'll say what i really think and sometimes people think

00:47:38.600 it's a bit strange so you know i'll talk about why you know it's it's not fair that sometimes

00:47:43.220 women in politics are judged unfairly for how they look or how they dress and um i'll be told

00:47:48.920 to you know grow up by um some people and told well you'd stop complaining um you're a right-wing

00:47:55.360 woman so you support the patriarchy and so i can't really have an opinion on social issues without

00:48:00.560 people bringing my economic beliefs into it if that makes sense and I'd say that I'm probably

00:48:08.800 aligned with a lot of young people on most issues I'm you know pretty libertarian I think I'm coming

00:48:15.140 around to drug legalization I think gay marriage is a great thing you know I'm pro-choice and these

00:48:22.920 are a lot of issues that I think it's lots of young people agree with me but because I think

00:48:28.360 taxes should be lower there's a perception that i'm supposed to be really conservative and social

00:48:32.980 issues too so but one place one way you differ from a lot of young people statistically is brexit

00:48:40.380 yeah and that you are pro-brexit you believe it's a good idea um i think i'm statistically a

00:48:46.900 majority of young people are anti-brexit can you just explain in a nutshell why you think it will

00:48:52.780 be a positive thing for this country? I think it'd be a great thing. I still really, really do.

00:48:58.160 At the moment, a lot of the conversations are about how we leave and the technicalities of

00:49:02.900 the deal. But the reason people voted leave was what could be achieved outside of the EU. And it

00:49:08.940 was really about who makes decisions in this country. Is it going to be the EU that makes

00:49:13.780 decisions about policy or elected politicians in the UK? And that is essentially what it came down

00:49:19.560 whether you're left or right-wing, the decisions have been made in Westminster now.

00:49:23.560 And so you have more power and more influence over decision-making

00:49:27.560 than when those decisions were made in the European Commission.

00:49:31.560 So I think it'll be a fantastic thing.

00:49:34.560 But I appreciate not all young people agree with me.

00:49:37.560 What's interesting, though, is when you break it down by social class,

00:49:41.560 working-class young people, about 45% voted leave.

00:49:44.560 So in the referendum, yes, age was a big determining factor,

00:49:48.560 factor but also geography um and income was also it was another big factor wealthier people voted

00:49:54.120 remain um less well-off people tended to to vote leave more it's actually we had a guest on the

00:49:59.640 show whose episode may or may not release before or after yours eric kaffman is a professor of

00:50:03.960 politics at birkbeck university and he's just really he's just publishing a book now where he

00:50:08.740 talks about his analysis of the individual level of the reasons that people vote for brexit

00:50:13.460 and actually he shows that income was not a big factor

00:50:16.440 and the biggest factor was attitudes to immigration essentially

00:50:20.580 and he's not, by the way, using that narrative

00:50:23.360 that everyone who voted Leave is a racist at all

00:50:26.060 but that was the biggest predictor of voting to Leave

00:50:30.040 so I think the intellectual elites might have been concerned

00:50:34.340 about getting our powers back from Brussels or whatever

00:50:38.240 but actually I think this is what I was going to put to you

00:50:40.900 The main predictor of voting to leave was social attitudes, particularly to immigration, right?

00:50:47.380 So what do you make of that counter-argument?

00:50:49.920 That's really interesting.

00:50:51.880 Well, I can only go based on anecdotal evidence and people that I spoke to on the campaign.

00:50:57.560 And it was more of a gut instinct that decisions should be made here.

00:51:01.860 Now, I want my government to be in control of that, whether it's immigration or trade or whatever.

00:51:06.860 But I know that immigration played a really huge part in that.

00:51:09.920 What was interesting is after the referendum, Open Europe did a really big extensive report into attitudes and immigration in the UK, what people really think.

00:51:20.600 And what they found was that most people just wanted immigration to be controlled and fair, and they didn't really have a problem.

00:51:27.640 It wasn't about numbers. It was more about the fact that Britain didn't have control over immigration.

00:51:32.720 That was a really big concern.

00:51:34.720 And what's interesting is that the most popular replacement immigration system is the Australian

00:51:40.040 skills-based system that we have in Australia.

00:51:42.880 And we have higher levels of immigration per capita, but immigration isn't really an election

00:51:49.380 issue.

00:51:49.840 It's not as much of a political issue because people have trust in the system.

00:51:53.620 The government controls it and we know it's fair.

00:51:56.160 And I think if you had that system in the UK where people knew, OK, well, the government's

00:52:01.160 regulating this and you know it's it's based on on visas and and work and it's not based on

00:52:06.700 whether someone's european or not i think there'd be a lot more positive towards immigration i also

00:52:12.000 think infrastructure is a huge problem so housing um people became i think they felt like britain

00:52:19.340 was becoming not too full but public services were getting very busy and there's enough houses

00:52:25.760 and what's interesting this has been pointed out to me by free market people who are very pro-free

00:52:32.260 movement and they say to me well the market is able to respond to changes in population so

00:52:37.500 tesco always has enough food for people um private services always do it's the public services the

00:52:43.740 government services that don't really keep up with changes to population um so you know free

00:52:49.440 movement isn't a bad thing chloe it's just that the government hasn't been able to you know get

00:52:53.860 the NHS to speed up and creating more, you know, hospitals and infrastructure and the like.

00:53:00.400 And I think that's probably the case, but just because there is, in a perfect world,

00:53:09.620 a free market way of having free movement, I don't think that's an argument for it to happen now,

00:53:13.920 because we live in the real world, in the UK, where actually infrastructure isn't keeping up

00:53:17.960 with demand. We don't have a government that is keeping up with demand, and people are really

00:53:21.980 struggling and suffering now under the weight of that but what was interesting during the

00:53:28.840 referendum is that I was an immigrant campaigning for Brexit and a lot of people found that very

00:53:33.220 interesting and I think yeah I moved here I want to live here permanently as my country and for me

00:53:40.740 it was a lot more about the future of Britain than immigration policy but I personally found it very

00:53:47.120 unfair that people from non-EU countries were discriminated against in favor of those from EU

00:53:52.360 countries. So you had an open-door policy with some people based on where they're born and a

00:53:57.620 closed policy on others based on where they're born. I think it's actually very discriminatory

00:54:01.580 and xenophobic and it's not the best way to have an immigration system. But why do people vote

00:54:08.500 leave? I mean that is the question that everyone asks and it's a million dollar question and I'd

00:54:13.280 interested in reading that report oh yeah it's a book i'll give you the details and i know

00:54:17.540 immigration was it was a big thing but it wasn't the only thing and what i found out internally and

00:54:23.920 you know since after a friend and speak for the leave activists it was just about control it was

00:54:29.000 just about i want the british government to be in control of these things these are things that

00:54:32.500 should be done by a national government not a multinational organization that i have no

00:54:37.260 access or power to lobby or change things all right well uh listen our time's almost up it's

00:54:44.240 been so great to have you on thanks for coming to talk to us uh the question we always like to ask

00:54:48.560 at the end is what is the one thing that we're not talking about that we ought to be talking about

00:54:53.100 oh automation i think yeah it's shocking i think automation is going to change society it's going

00:55:04.200 to change the world. It's going to change how we live our lives. And it's going to, if we don't

00:55:08.680 plan for it, I mean, it could be a really, really good thing, but it's going to completely change

00:55:14.100 everything, automated cars, jobs becoming automated. And we should be talking about

00:55:18.860 and planning for that now. Excellent. All right. Listen, thanks very much for coming on. It's been

00:55:23.860 an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. As always, if you enjoyed it this week, click that

00:55:28.640 bell button next to subscribe button. Once you've clicked the subscribe button, of course,

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TRIGGERnometry - November 19, 2018

Chloe Westley on Tax, Brexit & Socialism

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