TRIGGERnometry - Iain Dale on Conservatism, Immigration, Tax & the NHS

00:00:00.000 okay hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissin and this

00:00:13.620 is a show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they

00:00:17.840 know nothing about at trigonometry we don't pretend to be the experts we ask the experts

00:00:23.620 our fantastic expert guest this week is an lbc radio presenter ian dale welcome to trigonometry

00:00:30.880 hello hi thanks to you thank you so much for coming on i was about to introduce you as a

00:00:35.160 conservative radio presenter and then you said no no no let's have a conversation about it so

00:00:39.980 why didn't you first of all tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are and then we'll

00:00:44.020 get into the whole conservative not conservative thing um well god how do i start where did i start

00:00:49.400 off um i studied german believe it or not at the university of east anglia and was intended to be

00:00:54.600 a german teacher languages were my thing it's anything i was good at at school could i just

00:00:58.840 interrupt you there as a former teacher in well done and avoiding the profession

00:01:03.160 do you know there's part of me that wonders whether at some point i mean i was 56 yesterday

00:01:08.200 so there is still time but i've always thought i might go back to do it don't um not it certainly

00:01:13.480 wouldn't be in a secondary school i couldn't cope with that anyway um i got into politics at

00:01:18.520 university and ended up working in the house of commons for a couple of years for a tory mp back

00:01:22.200 in the mid 80s when politics really was great fun and then i had a succession of jobs in

00:01:30.040 lobbying i was a financial journalist i opened a political bookshop in westminster became a

00:01:37.000 publisher and then got into broadcasting and that's how i got into lbc so that's the sort

00:01:42.120 of potted history and i've always been politically interested um i always remember my grandmother

00:01:47.880 said to me in about 1974 never trust the Labour Party because they always spend more than they

00:01:54.200 can afford and Michael Foote's a communist. She was certainly right on the first one and I actually

00:02:00.680 started off as a liberal and I would still say I still am a liberal in many ways. We did a project

00:02:07.160 after we'd done our O-levels in 1978 at the end of the term and it was on local politics. We had

00:02:12.840 to meet the local liberal mayor of Saffron Walden, that's where I grew up in Essex, and I was really

00:02:17.700 impressed by her. So I joined the Liberal Party for six months. And then I saw a speech by Margaret

00:02:21.480 Thatcher, which I assume must have been at the 1978 Tory party conference. And I thought, well,

00:02:26.040 I agree with every word she said. So I then switched to becoming a Tory. And I stood for

00:02:31.520 Parliament in 2005 in North Norfolk with the electorate fought back. I always wanted to be

00:02:38.040 either an MP or a radio presenter. Was it a close race, that one? No, you know that.

00:02:43.840 Sorry, I didn't mean to rub it in.

00:02:45.560 I don't accept it.

00:02:46.700 What I did was I applied to be the candidate in North Norfolk,

00:02:50.460 which you think of Norfolk as quite a conservative area, and it is.

00:02:53.740 And it had always been a conservative seat until 2001

00:02:56.220 when the Liberal Democrats, Norman Lamb, won it by, I think, 483 votes.

00:03:01.020 So I thought, well, I can win that back.

00:03:03.220 But it soon became apparent that, I mean, he was very, very popular.

00:03:06.540 He'd fought the seat three times before.

00:03:07.980 He was very well-known, good constituency MP.

00:03:10.580 So it was quite difficult to differentiate myself from.

00:03:13.680 I mean, he's a little bit Eurosceptic for a Liberal Democrat.

00:03:18.140 And to all intents and purposes was a sort of fairly moderate conservative voice.

00:03:21.860 And I always remember one day in February 2005,

00:03:26.420 canvassing in one of the coastal villages called Overstrand.

00:03:30.100 Lots of big houses, you'd have thought, natural Tory voters.

00:03:34.160 Every single one of them that we knocked on the door said something along the lines of,

00:03:38.020 well we really like you but norman's such a nice man i remember going home that evening saying to

00:03:43.420 my partner this is just not going to happen i think i think i probably knew that way before

00:03:47.300 that but that really brought it home and on the night i lost by 10 600 votes so that was a bit

00:03:54.100 of a blow um i i did try again in the next parliament but i took two years out to start

00:04:01.120 a new business and i don't you can't really apply for seats while you're doing that and i left it

00:04:05.500 too late i nearly got bracknell um but yeah it just wasn't to be so after 2010 i thought no that's it

00:04:12.200 and when i got the job at lbc i didn't renew my tory party membership so that's why i didn't

00:04:18.420 want to be introduced as a conservative because in many ways i'm not anymore um i voted liberal

00:04:23.800 democrat in the last local elections in time of joe was partly because and you'll know because

00:04:27.760 you live there it's a very corrupt local council they want to spend 90 million pounds on a new

00:04:31.820 civic centre and try to pretend to the electorate it's not going to cost them any money. Well of

00:04:36.040 course it is. On social issues I'm much more left-wing than I used to be partly because of

00:04:43.080 my radio show because I hear people's experiences. If you have people telling you day after day how

00:04:47.920 awful the bedroom tax is and what the effects on them or universal credit it does shift your

00:04:53.500 preconceptions a bit and so I can see the logic of the bedroom tax but the way it's been implemented

00:04:58.980 it just hasn't worked. So I'm still, from an economic point of view, very sort of dry

00:05:05.980 and right wing, I guess. I voted Leave, so I'm a complete Brexiteer. But on a lot of

00:05:12.440 issues, I'm not your stereotypical conservative voter anymore.

00:05:17.460 There's such a fascinating point you make about having your mind changed by listening

00:05:22.300 to people talking. This is what we try and do on the show. And we find that it's happening

00:05:26.300 less and less people actually having genuine conversation and being able to change each

00:05:30.700 other's minds so that's such a great point was there a particular moment when you thought well

00:05:34.900 this is the one story that kind of changed my mind on this or some other issue um well I've

00:05:40.440 been doing radio now on on a daily basis since 2010 so I don't know how many people I've talked

00:05:47.020 to in all the shows I don't know what to calculate it one day I suppose but it will be tens of

00:05:51.140 thousands and they've all got stories to tell some of them very emotional stories um and

00:05:58.200 i do i remember one particular phone and it wasn't that long ago actually on universal credit which

00:06:03.760 you think oh god a phone on universal credit how can that be interesting and i do i can't say i

00:06:10.100 ever relish doing benefits phonies because they can be slightly uh you either get people phoning

00:06:15.920 in saying what's all these sponges Ian taking out taxpayers money and all the rest of it or you get

00:06:22.320 the opposite now on this phone in I had three male callers towards the end of the hour

00:06:28.400 who phoned in and they all were crying and you think well they're not acting something's happened

00:06:35.900 in their life in their dealings with the demand for work and pensions that has driven them to

00:06:40.840 the brink of despair and and there are subjects that when people phone in and they're incredibly

00:06:47.680 emotional and it's I mean I can be a very emotional person I mean I'll cry at Emmerdale so

00:06:52.620 it doesn't take much to set me off and I've talked about I mean when my mother died I've

00:06:58.100 talked about that quite a lot and broke down once and I've got no I was gonna say I've got

00:07:06.220 no embarrassment about sort of showing emotion but in some ways you do because you're supposed

00:07:11.020 you've got a professional role to transact so you don't want to be known as sort of the crybaby

00:07:16.700 presenter all the time but and there was one i can't remember what it was there was one time

00:07:23.180 i know what it was it was um lee rigby you know who was murdered in uh woolwich i was on air

00:07:32.620 when that just after that happened and a couple of days afterwards i think it was i suddenly got

00:07:39.740 flashed on my screen the statement from the ministry of defense issued on behalf of his

00:07:46.140 his girlfriend or his mother i can't remember so i started reading this out now normally i would

00:07:51.100 read i would read it to myself before i read it out which kind of kills the emotion a little bit

00:07:55.260 but i i read it and i got to the bit which talked about his children

00:07:58.620 and I just completely lost it and I went silent I mean I everyone listening could tell that my

00:08:06.240 voice was choking and I literally went silent for two seconds while I sort of gathered myself

00:08:11.620 and that was about seven minutes before the end of the hour and then just before the end of the

00:08:16.940 hour I apologized for that because I said it was very unprofessional I'm sorry it happened

00:08:20.940 and the text and Twitter feed just went mad saying why have you apologized we were doing the same so

00:08:26.980 I can feel myself doing it now.

00:08:30.060 They said any normal person would have done that.

00:08:32.980 Why do you think that as a radio presenter

00:08:34.640 you shouldn't show us that you're emotional

00:08:36.660 when we're being emotional?

00:08:38.380 And that was quite comforting because I could have got...

00:08:42.100 I mean, you're not on the radio to emote.

00:08:45.620 You're there to do a job and to read what's in front of you

00:08:50.060 if you've got something to read.

00:08:52.480 I had an incident the other day

00:08:54.320 where we were talking about gay conversion therapy.

00:08:56.980 and I had a guy right at the end of the hour

00:08:59.360 who lived on a council estate in Yorkshire.

00:09:02.620 He was probably in his 20s,

00:09:05.440 found it quite difficult to articulate

00:09:07.560 what his views were initially,

00:09:09.100 but once he got going, he was fine.

00:09:11.160 And this was leading up to the end of the programme,

00:09:13.340 and I stop on 59 minutes past the hour,

00:09:15.680 and then Nigel Faroosh comes on to do his talk-up.

00:09:18.300 At 58.15, he told me that he was thinking

00:09:21.320 of killing himself that night.

00:09:23.500 Wow.

00:09:24.080 Well, put yourself in that situation.

00:09:25.540 thinking well what as a radio presenter do you say to him at that point because you know that

00:09:30.920 one word out of place and it could be seen as encouraging him to do it obviously wouldn't mean

00:09:37.080 it to be and also obviously Ofcom intervene and you potentially lose your job and all I could

00:09:44.960 think of was saying well Ryan stay on the line I'll talk to you after the show I've just got to

00:09:50.100 finish the show and I'll come into the gala and talk to you which I did and it was fine and we

00:09:55.700 ended up having a joke about he was um said are you going to watch the world cup match tonight

00:10:00.300 so I said yes I am he said I like watching that all those men in their tight shorts

00:10:04.500 so I'm right I was you sort of think well has that done the trick has that sort of I mean I

00:10:12.100 don't think he genuinely really meant that he was going to do it but I did have another instance

00:10:16.880 years ago, Bill on the M25, I will always remember it, where he convinced me that he

00:10:22.600 genuinely was thinking about doing it. And I kept him on for 20 minutes. And I mean,

00:10:27.000 I'm not a trained, I mean, I did do it, I was one of the counsellors on Nightline at

00:10:31.700 my university, but I'm not trained to talk people off the edge. So all you can do is

00:10:37.600 talk. And I kept thinking to myself, how do I get him, how do I stop this conversation?

00:10:42.960 I can't remember how I stopped it. Anyway, I asked him to speak to my producer.

00:10:46.880 when I finished and then he phoned in the next night and told us that that he had tried to kill

00:10:52.580 himself I think it was with pills and then but then he thought what I and Laura my producer

00:11:02.200 had said to him and then he called 999 and he obviously survived that sort of shows how radio

00:11:11.620 is such an intimate medium and you do have this one-to-one relationship with people

00:11:15.960 and that's why I love radio

00:11:18.400 I don't particularly like doing TV

00:11:21.540 which you'll think is a ridiculous thing

00:11:23.120 of the amount that I've been doing

00:11:24.140 over the last six months

00:11:25.200 but I don't enjoy TV

00:11:26.440 in the same way that I enjoy radio

00:11:27.700 because you don't have that connection

00:11:29.420 with the audience that radio gives you

00:11:31.260 A lot of the time with radio

00:11:32.920 what is amazing with it is

00:11:34.460 like you said, the connection

00:11:35.860 I do a lot of talk sport and talk radio

00:11:37.660 and people tweet in

00:11:38.640 Shame on you

00:11:39.220 A direct competitor, how dare you

00:11:42.660 We don't think of it that way to be honest

00:11:44.540 we do

00:11:45.960 we have ten times the audience

00:11:48.200 I'm enjoying this

00:11:50.860 suddenly I'm going to come out of here

00:11:53.160 feeling diminished

00:11:53.880 but anyway

00:11:55.560 what is amazing is how people tweet in

00:11:57.840 and go oh lovely to hear your voice again

00:11:59.760 and then they have a chat with you on Twitter

00:12:02.060 and sometimes you get the opposite

00:12:04.320 like I'm very pro-Romain

00:12:06.860 and I got called

00:12:08.060 by one of the Twitters

00:12:10.560 who follows TalkSport

00:12:12.400 what I've got called a cock-sucking terrorist sympathiser

00:12:14.800 because I said that...

00:12:16.340 Sounds reasonable.

00:12:16.880 Yeah, because I said I didn't think Brexit

00:12:19.700 would be a particularly good idea.

00:12:22.020 Well, as we both know, that happens on both sides.

00:12:24.320 I mean, I've been involved...

00:12:25.960 I mean, yesterday was my birthday

00:12:27.180 and I spent virtually the entire day on Twitter

00:12:29.040 arguing Brexit with people.

00:12:31.000 It's like, why am I doing this?

00:12:33.020 But I must win.

00:12:34.380 Well, there is part of me that would love to just say,

00:12:39.100 do you know, I'm not going to talk about Brexit anymore

00:12:41.100 I mean, if I'm bored with it, God knows what other people must feel like.

00:12:46.640 But going back to this unique relationship,

00:12:50.420 I mean, I sometimes, if I get abuse, I mean, people send in texts,

00:12:56.100 and what they don't know is that I see their phone number at the bottom of the text.

00:13:00.380 So sometimes, if I get particularly horrible ones, I text them back,

00:13:04.940 saying, by the way, just so you know, I've reported you to the Metropolitan Police.

00:13:09.380 Of course I haven't

00:13:11.140 but they don't know that

00:13:12.280 and they usually say

00:13:13.980 oh I'm really sorry

00:13:14.760 I didn't mean it

00:13:15.720 I was just a spur of the moment

00:13:16.620 thinking Ian

00:13:16.980 I really like you

00:13:17.640 I think you're a top presenter

00:13:18.520 and it is astonishing

00:13:20.700 the things that people

00:13:21.780 will say to you

00:13:22.680 via social media or text

00:13:24.300 whereas if they were

00:13:25.480 sitting next to you

00:13:26.480 they just wouldn't

00:13:27.640 dream of it

00:13:28.320 It's incredible

00:13:28.960 Some of the terrible things

00:13:30.420 you've tweeted me

00:13:31.320 You're not saying them now

00:13:32.640 That's my job

00:13:33.600 I'm sorry

00:13:35.600 he is Russian

00:13:36.340 He can't help it

00:13:38.540 Exactly

00:13:39.020 But it is incredible what people will say, like with doing the show,

00:13:44.800 the kind of stuff that people will put online about us or I guess just like for no reason whatsoever.

00:13:49.780 Well, you wait till you see what comes after this.

00:13:53.420 Well, I'm looking forward to it.

00:13:55.460 But anyway, coming back to politics, I was interested that you said that you worked for Tory MP in the 80s when politics was fun.

00:14:02.600 Still fun. What does that mean? What do you mean about politics being fun back then?

00:14:06.040 I think it may be just because of my age.

00:14:08.120 in your 20s you see things through a very different prism than you do when you're in your 50s

00:14:12.200 and it's like the world cup when we lost the world cup semi-final last week i mean yeah i was

00:14:17.960 disappointed but i didn't feel at all emotional about it but in 1990 when i was 27 losing to

00:14:25.220 germany i was with i was in a hall with 800 insurance brokers watching this and 800 grown

00:14:30.680 men in floods of tears that it didn't affect me like that this time and politics i i maybe it's

00:14:37.500 because I'm looking at it now from the point of view of an outsider rather than an insider.

00:14:44.700 And when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, you kind of felt things mattered. There were big

00:14:50.400 issues in the 1980s that really mattered. The Cold War, which people now completely forget.

00:14:57.180 And the economy in the late 1970s, when I became first politically interested, I mean,

00:15:02.660 It was just a basket case and people don't remember, 27% inflation.

00:15:06.980 I mean, people don't remember that anymore.

00:15:09.200 So that was what drove me to get involved in politics.

00:15:12.380 I just felt part of it, whereas now I'm not part of it,

00:15:16.800 apart from interviewing politicians all the time.

00:15:19.380 And I think I look at it in a very different way, slightly more detached.

00:15:23.940 And people keep saying to me, well, do you not want to stand for Parliament again?

00:15:29.360 No, I don't.

00:15:30.300 And I got asked to stand as Tory for Mayor of London the other day,

00:15:33.240 purely because I've got quite a bit of name recognition in London.

00:15:36.320 And I said, I would rather stick hot nails down my knob than run for Mayor of London.

00:15:44.040 Well, why is that?

00:15:46.680 Because I've kind of been there, done that.

00:15:49.460 I still think politics matters.

00:15:51.320 But if a good friend of me said, should I go into politics nowadays,

00:15:55.020 I would advise them not to, which is a terrible thing.

00:15:57.080 When I told my mum that I wasn't going to stand for parliament again, she cheered.

00:16:02.240 And I was thinking, well, she ought to be really sad about that,

00:16:04.720 because you ought to be proud that your son wants to do sort of public service.

00:16:09.220 But she took the view that if, I remember in 2010, she said,

00:16:13.460 well, you could have got caught up in that expenses scandal.

00:16:16.100 And the truth is, of course I could have done, because many people did,

00:16:18.980 through no fault of their own.

00:16:20.420 It was the system.

00:16:21.400 Some people did through their own fault, it has to be said.

00:16:24.240 And she didn't like all of the public scrutiny.

00:16:27.640 She knew because I was gay that I would have had much more scrutiny than maybe others.

00:16:32.760 So I am sad that I've never been an MP because I think I would have liked it.

00:16:37.220 I think I'd have been good at it.

00:16:39.540 But it wasn't to be.

00:16:41.780 Ian, looking back at the 80s and especially with Thatcher's government,

00:16:44.820 I mean, there were some things that they brought in which were homophobic.

00:16:50.520 If you think about the, I can't remember what the section was called now.

00:16:54.700 28.

00:16:54.800 Yeah, section 28 in schools.

00:16:57.200 Was there not part of you as a gay man that saw that and thought,

00:17:00.020 hang on, I don't agree with that in the slightest?

00:17:04.140 Well, at the time, this was in 1988,

00:17:10.840 and I'm probably going to give you too much information here.

00:17:14.400 I was 26, and I knew I was gay,

00:17:19.040 but I'd never actually done anything about it.

00:17:20.800 and I remember logicalizing this to myself if that's a word on the basis that it was designed

00:17:30.180 to prevent the promotion of homosexuality whereas the narrative now is that it was designed to

00:17:35.260 prevent any discussion whatsoever now I think that probably was the effect of it because teachers

00:17:41.780 were sort of nervous about well if I talk about it does that count as promotion now I don't believe

00:17:48.380 it's the role of teachers to promote anything to their class and to their children so that was how

00:17:55.680 I sort of rationalized it at the time I'm looking back yeah I would not have been knowing what I know

00:18:02.120 now I would not have supported it and I think that has clouded every single discussion about

00:18:07.540 the Conservative Party and homosexuality ever since and even now virtually every month in one

00:18:13.380 of the gay magazines there's always an article about the wicked Tories in section 28 forgetting

00:18:18.500 all of the progress that the Tory party has made on that issue which I played a very very small

00:18:24.280 part in. I remember when I was selected as a candidate I was the first openly gay candidate

00:18:32.400 to have been selected having told the selection committee in terms that I was gay. Now I was

00:18:38.000 slightly forced to do that because I'd forgotten I'd agreed to speak at some gay fringe meeting

00:18:42.680 at the Tory party conference and I remember the association chairman bringing me up saying

00:18:46.840 um we've got a little bit of an issue in that people have seen that you're speaking at this

00:18:51.640 event and he knew I was gay anyway and I said why is that an issue well it's just that people

00:18:58.260 sort of aren't very happy and I said okay well I'll address it in the next because that was

00:19:02.600 by that stage I got to through to the second round of the selection

00:19:05.380 so I'd done my speech done my questions and answers and at the end I'd actually primed

00:19:11.600 somebody in the audience to ask me the question and they worded it rather beautifully they said

00:19:15.820 is this an issue that means a lot to you they didn't because they weren't allowed to ask if

00:19:20.440 I was gay so I prepared a statement and it was quite a sort of tearjerker in a way and it was

00:19:26.760 sort of as well many of you sitting in the audience you will know people who are gay you

00:19:30.740 may not know that you know people that are gay but it could be a dustman it could be a hairdresser

00:19:35.000 it could be whoever but does that affect the way they do their job does me being gay affect the way

00:19:40.840 that I would do my job and I mean I got standing ovation at the end of it and they selected me

00:19:47.460 with a 66% majority. Now bear in mind this was North Norfolk not the most liberal area in the

00:19:51.780 country to say something. So I thought well good on them and they haven't let it affect them.

00:19:58.960 They've judged me on what they think my abilities are and they selected me. Now the electorate

00:20:02.880 didn't take that view and some people have said well do you think that the majority was so big

00:20:06.860 because, I mean, some of my opponents obviously sort of promoted that I was gay

00:20:12.880 because they knew it wouldn't go down well.

00:20:14.780 I think there will have been some people that didn't vote for me because of that,

00:20:19.080 but I don't think it was...

00:20:20.740 I think it was mainly because they knew that Norman Lamb was a really good MP.

00:20:26.660 So I've never blamed my defeat on that.

00:20:30.300 And then sort of subsequent to that,

00:20:32.020 you've had the Conservatives introduce equal marriage.

00:20:35.660 And I don't think, and although quite a lot of Conservative MPs oppose that,

00:20:40.240 I don't think there would be many Conservative MPs now.

00:20:43.100 If it came back, if somebody put down a motion to repeal equal marriage,

00:20:46.960 I'd like to think there would be no Conservative MPs that voted for that.

00:20:51.820 But if there were, I'd be surprised if it was more than five.

00:20:56.140 Now, I think people need to accept that the Conservative Party has come a long way on these issues.

00:21:02.220 in some cases sort of being dragged and screaming but we are where we are and i think it's about

00:21:11.800 time that people acknowledge that and what would you say to those people who say that the

00:21:15.800 conservative party is an inverted commas the nasty party the party of austerity the party who

00:21:21.360 demonizes the poor the party brought in the bedroom text which let's be fair has caught a huge

00:21:26.000 amount of suffering to working I don't think that there are any politicians on which in whichever

00:21:31.860 party that deliberately bring in policies designed because they think they will harm people

00:21:36.580 that's not how it works I mean you know you really would have to be a pretty nasty individual to

00:21:41.500 bring in a I mean take Ian Duncan Smith and universal credit and welfare reform um

00:21:47.580 I remember back when he was leader of the conservative party and he went to this

00:21:53.260 councillor state in Glasgow, Easter House. And he was profoundly moved by what he saw there and

00:21:59.520 thought, well, this has been a Labour council for 60 years and they've left these people in this

00:22:04.520 state. They've had the chance to improve their lives and they've done nothing. So, I mean, he

00:22:09.000 could argue that the Labour Party was a nasty party for doing that. And I remember he came to

00:22:14.520 visit me when I was a candidate. We went round a drugs rehabilitation centre and I listened to the

00:22:19.360 conversations he had with drug addicts and there was one of them there that knew his cousin and

00:22:23.900 i mean it was quite an emotional conversation um now that man is not motivated by hate or spite he

00:22:33.160 genuinely wanted to reform the system to help the kind of people that he'd seen in in this council

00:22:38.620 estate and i've seen them in my political life these are states that um that whichever political

00:22:45.520 parties have just left to rot because they know that the people generally don't vote very much

00:22:51.680 so they feel that all the political strategists feel they can be ignored now so i think he was

00:22:59.360 motivated by the best of intentions how do you though do meaningful reform of the welfare system

00:23:05.200 which is so incredibly complex it eats up so much public money um i think it's a really difficult

00:23:12.320 challenge so when you i think all all parties have agreed that universal credit is a good idea

00:23:18.480 trying to bring all the benefits into one but clearly there have been terrible issues in how

00:23:23.760 it's being implemented now um who do you blame for that do you blame the politicians do you blame the

00:23:29.600 civil servants who effectively i mean the politicians will say to the civil servants

00:23:34.320 right this is what we want to do tell us how we do it now in the end the buck does stop with the

00:23:39.840 secretary of state there has to be somebody who's formally accountable to it but he hasn't he wasn't

00:23:45.600 served well by his civil servants and of course there'll be a lot of people listening to how dare

00:23:49.680 he and they'll blame the civil servants well sorry civil servants do get away with an awful lot in

00:23:54.080 this country and are not held accountable uh for it we do have some very fine civil servants but

00:23:59.200 we also have some very very incompetent ones and it's about time that we recognize that and when

00:24:04.240 When there are systematic failures in what happens, they need to be called out.

00:24:10.480 And yes, blame the politicians all you like.

00:24:12.520 But in the end, there are many more people to blame as well.

00:24:15.680 Well, if you ever do run for parliament again, there'll be a constituency of what you're not getting as the civil service.

00:24:22.240 It's not going to happen.

00:24:23.000 I'm kidding.

00:24:23.700 It really isn't.

00:24:24.580 But coming back to France's question, I mean, I'm an outsider in this country.

00:24:28.580 I'm an immigrant.

00:24:29.420 I came here when I was about 12 or something.

00:24:30.800 I keep reminding you of that, mate.

00:24:32.120 Well, I keep reminding myself.

00:24:33.440 it's just fact uh but it's it's like a given to me that the tory brand is a toxic brand and yet

00:24:41.400 we've had a conservative-led government for years how does that happen in a country which

00:24:45.720 supposedly hates the tories yeah we have a tory government well we have a shy tory phenomenon

00:24:50.640 don't we people who don't tell the opinion posters that they vote tory that i think there are still

00:24:55.180 people feel i don't know but they feel shame or embarrassment about voting tory i don't think

00:25:00.660 anybody should be ashamed of who they vote for um it's like ukip were never identified in the

00:25:05.900 opinion polls until 2014 really um because the opinion polling companies never picked them up

00:25:13.400 um i think it's the same with donald trump in america that there are a lot of people that just

00:25:17.840 didn't tell the polling companies that they were going to vote for him so he a lot of people felt

00:25:23.180 that he was going to win but um all of the so-called experts didn't see it coming and then

00:25:28.660 but there were howls of sort of disbelief afterwards and still are.

00:25:34.720 I think people always contrast political parties

00:25:40.280 and they compare whether they think they're actually capable of governing.

00:25:46.160 When Tony Blair was leader of the Labour Party,

00:25:48.240 people felt that, I mean, I never voted for him, but he didn't scare me.

00:25:53.660 He didn't sort of frighten the electoral horses in the way that maybe Neil Kinnock did

00:25:57.680 or maybe now Jeremy Corbyn does with some people.

00:26:03.780 And there is a phenomenon of sort of stick to nurse for fear of something worse.

00:26:08.540 And that's Theresa May's biggest asset at the moment.

00:26:11.960 Where, I mean, when this goes out, she may not even be Prime Minister.

00:26:14.460 But she has survived so often because there is no alternative, really.

00:26:19.260 And there's nobody waiting to take over.

00:26:21.160 Well, there are plenty waiting to take over.

00:26:22.560 But there's no ready-made alternative.

00:26:25.380 And people look at Corbyn.

00:26:27.460 I mean, why is Labour not 20 points ahead in the opinion polls

00:26:30.220 when you've got probably the most incompetent Tory government

00:26:32.520 since the last one?

00:26:38.520 I mean, they should be 20 points ahead,

00:26:40.560 and under Tony Blair they were.

00:26:41.880 I mean, John Major, I think you can compare to Theresa May in some ways

00:26:44.980 or his government,

00:26:46.300 because there was complete chaos in the 1990s,

00:26:48.600 again over Europe.

00:26:50.600 But Labour just cannot seem to break through in the way...

00:26:54.420 Now, they keep saying,

00:26:54.940 oh, but we did so well in the last election campaign.

00:26:57.300 We went up by 10 points or whatever.

00:26:59.680 Yeah, you didn't win, though.

00:27:00.620 Even though you keep trying to pretend you did win,

00:27:02.540 you are not in government.

00:27:04.160 Get used to that.

00:27:05.640 And they can say, oh, well, it'll happen again in the next election.

00:27:07.720 We'll put on another 10.

00:27:08.480 Well, it doesn't work like that.

00:27:10.520 And I do wonder now whether we've reached Pete Corbyn,

00:27:13.820 where the novelty has worn off.

00:27:16.540 When do you ever see Jeremy Corbyn doing anything nowadays?

00:27:19.520 He doesn't really do any interviews.

00:27:21.600 Before he was elected Labour leader,

00:27:23.320 I would interview him every two or three weeks on my show and he was always if we couldn't find

00:27:28.120 another Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn was always our backstop he would cycle down from Islington

00:27:32.920 and come into the studio and I got like a house on fire with him he knew exactly where I came from

00:27:37.660 we had some really good discussions since he's been Labour leader not a single interview and

00:27:43.020 that's because Seamus Mill and his director of communications clearly thinks that we're all

00:27:46.800 fascists and therefore must be avoided at all costs but I think that's a real problem for them

00:27:51.280 Because if you are as leader of the opposition, you need to be out there fighting the good fight.

00:27:55.760 Now, you can talk to your momentum rallies till the cows come home, but you're not persuading anybody new to vote for you by doing that.

00:28:02.000 You are just confirming the view that you're a bit of a lefty, that sort of centre ground people can't trust to be in government.

00:28:10.900 Oh, you mentioned about the people behind him who run his campaign.

00:28:15.540 do you think part of the reason why they don't put him in front of people like you

00:28:19.880 is that Corbyn does have some pretty dodgy values

00:28:23.320 for instance his refusal to criticise the government in Venezuela

00:28:26.320 now my mother is from Venezuela

00:28:28.940 and I know first hand the terrible atrocities that are happening there

00:28:32.720 and I used to vote Labour

00:28:34.580 and the fact that he refuses to condemn them

00:28:37.240 I would never vote for Corbyn

00:28:38.500 well he doesn't just refuse to condemn them

00:28:40.180 I mean he and McDonnell actually have praised Maduro

00:28:42.860 yes

00:28:43.360 now I don't understand all of that I really don't but I don't think that's the reason why

00:28:50.180 they won't do interviews I just think that they they think they can bypass the mainstream media

00:28:54.640 now and use Facebook and social media to get to the people that they think they need

00:29:00.260 well I think they're wrong on that because you you've got to have a sort of multifaceted approach

00:29:06.300 bear in mind that old people are the ones that actually turn out to vote and all this

00:29:10.860 the fantasy that at the last election it was the 18 to 24 year olds that pushed the Labour vote up

00:29:16.860 they did vote in slightly larger numbers than before it wasn't actually it was a 25 to 45

00:29:21.540 age group but if they can tap into older people and they've got a tremendous opportunity to do

00:29:27.000 this now um that's how they could win but they show no sign of looking at doing that whatsoever

00:29:32.640 and just going back to Venezuela like because I find it absolutely baffling when I talk to

00:29:39.460 Labour voters I go but you do understand that he's in support of Maduro and they're like

00:29:43.540 yeah but it doesn't really matter does it and it's you know it's a long I got told by one person

00:29:48.240 yeah but it's it's very far away isn't it a country of which we know nothing yeah so I mean

00:29:53.420 why do you think that in many why do you think that it's so it's reprehensible for him to come

00:29:58.980 out and support with Maduro well I mean they kept praising Chavez and saying well this is what

00:30:06.680 socialism can do they were actually using the venezuelan economy as as a model for what they

00:30:12.640 would want to do and now that the venezuelan economy i mean it's probably the most basket

00:30:20.820 case economy in the whole world at the moment they now of course blame the americans for that

00:30:25.100 now i can't quite see how that works but that's what they do they've always got an answer and

00:30:31.180 they will never ever admit that they're wrong on venezuela but the electorate in many ways

00:30:36.320 discount that you're right just as they discount the fact that he used to meet with the ira just

00:30:41.520 the fact that they discount the fact that he met with hamas he's cultivated this image as a sort

00:30:46.480 of gentle old uncle figure um and he has become a bit of a cult that's l in that

00:30:52.720 and it is a fascinating thing to watch he I think his strings are pulled entirely by Seamus

00:31:03.480 Mill and John Macdonald I don't think he's got an original thought in his head now he believes

00:31:06.900 exactly the same as he believed in 1985 now that's a good thing in some ways that we like

00:31:12.920 consistency in politicians but he hasn't adapted to the modern world and he can never bring himself

00:31:19.520 to say anything positive about america about israel but he will always find positive things to say

00:31:28.160 about russia about certain countries in the middle east that you and i might find reprehensible

00:31:37.200 he used to take money from press tv admittedly i did a few programs on that as well but i think i

00:31:43.520 was paid 75 pounds for doing three programs and he was paid 20 grand he's never said well in

00:31:49.760 retrospect i was wrong to do that and i really deprecate the iranian regime's views on homosexuality

00:31:55.520 and all the rest of it he's never done that um and i find it very strange that he can utter

00:32:00.960 supportive words to that kind of regime and treat israel with the contempt that he does now israel

00:32:07.120 gets a lot of things wrong i'll be the first to admit that but it is a democracy it is a fairly

00:32:12.320 liberal democracy in terms of social issues um but you'll never find him acknowledging that

00:32:18.240 do you think he's unelectable no i don't i think the conservatives are doing their best to make him

00:32:23.920 electable um and because of what's happening on brexit uh i think there are a lot of conservatives

00:32:31.200 who will well i know there are because they tell me all the time on my program that they either

00:32:36.480 won't vote Conservative or they won't vote at all and I mean my partner's a good example of this

00:32:42.840 someone who's not really that interested in politics but sort of listens to the Jeremy

00:32:46.720 Vine show on Radio 2 and that's where he gets most of his current affairs knowledge from

00:32:50.100 said to me the other day um is it true that Brexit might not happen and I said well I don't I think

00:32:56.960 it will happen but there are lots of people who are trying to make it not happen including

00:33:00.140 lots within the Conservative Party and said well if it doesn't happen I will never vote Tory again

00:33:03.800 and he said not only that I will never vote again and I've had so many people say this and

00:33:09.320 particularly people who may be voted for the first time in the referendum because it's somehow on

00:33:14.220 either side it's somehow enthused them and I get a lot of calls texts tweets from people saying well

00:33:20.580 if we're if we're betrayed on this I should never take part in the democratic process again

00:33:25.240 and that is extremely worrying because it leaves a gap for someone like Steve Bannon who we were

00:33:31.080 talking about earlier, who said on LBC yesterday that Tommy Robinson was a great British hero

00:33:42.340 and that there will soon be a revolution in Britain. Now, Paul Mason, who I normally don't

00:33:51.260 agree with on anything, he tweeted that he thinks that when Tommy Robinson comes out of prison,

00:33:56.400 he will get huge american funding to start up a sort of tea party type organization

00:34:03.980 to try and rip down the uk political establishment and i thought jesus i agree with paul mason he's

00:34:12.560 absolutely right on that now what a frightening prospect that will be because whatever you think

00:34:16.720 of tommy robertson i actually try and ignore him i don't have him on my show but whatever you think

00:34:21.120 of him and his views he is an incredibly articulate human being and to many people will be quite

00:34:27.940 plausible and when you are in a time of political turmoil it only takes one demagogue to really

00:34:36.400 pull the whole sack of house of cards down now whether he would be capable of doing that i don't

00:34:42.680 know um i mean nigel farage is now saying that he's going to get back into politics because he

00:34:48.080 thinks that we're being betrayed by Brexit. Now, whatever you think of Nigel Farage, he is not

00:34:52.260 a Tommy Robinson type figure. I have a lot of time for Nigel Farage. I take over from him

00:34:58.000 every evening on LBC. And I've known him for 10 years. So I think I know him reasonably well. I

00:35:04.560 mean, he does say a lot of things that I disagree with. But he does believe in democratic politics.

00:35:10.780 So I think that's quite a boring development. It's interesting what you say about Tommy

00:35:14.740 Robinson because we had a guest on the show a couple of weeks ago who's a YouTuber who's done

00:35:21.320 conferences with Tommy Robinson and things like that and one of the things he told us I don't

00:35:25.540 think it was in the interview but we went for dinner after he was saying that one of the things

00:35:29.620 that you experience when you are with Tommy Robinson is that there's a huge number of people

00:35:33.940 who will come up to him they'll take a look to the left take a look to the right make sure no

00:35:37.900 one's watching and then they'll come up to Tommy Robinson and shake his hand and say thank you

00:35:41.420 much for what you're doing there is a huge undercurrent that i don't think anyone has quite

00:35:46.620 explained or understood of people feeling deep resentment and frustration in this country

00:35:51.660 where do you think that comes from i think it comes from a feeling that politicians have let

00:35:56.700 people down that's always been there to an extent but because we have social media now it's so much

00:36:02.620 easier for people to let people know what they're thinking um 20 years ago if mrs miggins from 32

00:36:10.700 location at avenue scunthorpe wanted to vent her spleen over something she'd write to the scunthorpe

00:36:15.920 courier now she can start a blog she's got twitter she's got facebook all sorts of different mediums

00:36:21.480 to make her views known now that's a really good thing in many ways for democracy it enables people

00:36:27.800 to feel that they're taking part in the democratic system but it's also a great danger because if

00:36:33.000 they feel that they're taking part but the politicians are letting them down that that

00:36:37.440 fuels a feeling of resentment um and in the end if politicians continue to let people down i mean

00:36:44.720 who knows where that leads i mean look at italy as a good example i mean okay maybe italy isn't

00:36:50.500 the best example because italy has always had political problems but i doubt whether this

00:36:54.820 current italian government would be there without the power of the internet i mean the five-star

00:37:00.820 movement is essentially a creation of the internet now by a comedian by the way really

00:37:06.860 Founded by a comedian.

00:37:08.420 There we go.

00:37:09.140 There's a future for all of us.

00:37:12.040 And you know it's not well run if it's founded by a comedian.

00:37:15.580 Well, it's Italian.

00:37:16.320 It's definitely not well run.

00:37:17.840 But do you think part of what's happening with Tommy Robinson,

00:37:20.760 part of what is happening with Brexit,

00:37:22.320 is the fact that immigration is a major issue in this country

00:37:26.320 and mainstream politicians have always felt an unease with tackling with it

00:37:30.900 and dealing with it and talking about it openly?

00:37:35.340 Yes.

00:37:36.580 I think until about 2003, 2005, that was probably the case.

00:37:43.400 We talk an awful lot about immigration now.

00:37:46.020 I mean, people keep saying it's a subject that politicians try and sweep under the carpet.

00:37:50.720 It's not at all.

00:37:53.260 I mean, I'm as wet as a lettuce on immigration.

00:37:55.540 I have no fear of immigration.

00:37:57.640 I think that generally people who come to this country come here for a reason,

00:38:01.080 and that is because they see a country where they can do well in.

00:38:03.860 um if you are a syrian um asylum seeker you come to this country presumably because you think it

00:38:13.260 can offer you the sort of things that you're that that syria cannot at the moment and people say oh

00:38:19.480 yeah but they should have stopped in the first country and yeah that's that's the system but

00:38:24.280 they come here partly because a lot of them will be able to speak english and we should think it

00:38:28.560 as a real compliment that they've chosen our country rather than France, Germany, Switzerland,

00:38:34.400 wherever. And it's not because they think we have a loose benefit system. I mean, there will always

00:38:39.900 be the odd person who comes here for that reason. I mean, it's the human nature. But 99% of people

00:38:45.500 come to this country for the right reasons, whether they are asylum seekers or whether

00:38:49.560 they're economic migrants. And in both cases, they're making rational choices, which if you

00:38:55.280 or i had been in that situation we would probably do exactly the same thing and they're taking

00:39:00.400 terrible risks to do it so i look at it and again this is something where i think my views have

00:39:06.160 become much more liberal since i've been doing my radio show um and from time to time i'd say once

00:39:12.400 every two or three months i will devote an hour to asking immigrants to this country to phone in

00:39:17.840 and explain why they've come here and um and what it's meant to them and with the view of trying to

00:39:24.560 persuade those people who think that all immigrants are on the take to just have a pause for a second

00:39:30.240 thought and think well you've heard what these people have said um do you really still believe

00:39:34.720 that they're all evil people come to bomb us or whatever now that's all i can do as a radio

00:39:39.280 presenter but i think that's almost a public service um i think every country has to have

00:39:46.000 control of its borders we clearly do not have control of our borders as long as we're within

00:39:50.240 the EU I think it's a fantasy to think that the number of immigrants is going to be reduced to

00:39:55.520 tens of thousands after we leave because the economy will always need new people if we're

00:40:00.160 not if we're not training people to do the right jobs where else are companies going to get them

00:40:04.240 from now in many ways it is a scandal that so many of NHS nurses come from abroad so many of

00:40:10.800 the doctors come from abroad because what we're doing is we're stealing them from countries that

00:40:14.800 actually really need them, like the Philippines or Indonesia. But they're not going to stop after

00:40:21.020 Brexit. I mean, Brexit doesn't mean that they're not going to come here anymore. Indonesia is not

00:40:24.760 in Europe. Well, indeed, but nor are people from Europe going to stop coming here. I mean,

00:40:29.340 the figures are out this morning, I think, showing that the net immigration to this country,

00:40:33.020 it has slowed from Europe. It's the lowest since 2013. But we still have a net inflow of people

00:40:38.420 of 102,000. Now, I don't see that changing after Brexit at all. Yes, the numbers might

00:40:44.740 come down marginally, but we're not going to get to this mythical tens of thousands

00:40:48.800 target. And that's where, again, people lose trust in politicians, where they stick to

00:40:53.060 a target which they've never achieved and which they know they can't achieve. And Theresa

00:40:57.200 May is the only one around the cabinet table who still believes in that target. All of

00:41:00.140 the rest of them don't. And what Sajid Javid should have done right from the start when

00:41:05.340 he became head secretary say to the prime minister we're abolishing this target and she would have

00:41:09.760 had to agree to it because you're never stronger than on your first week in a job and she couldn't

00:41:13.500 have afforded for him to resign straight after amber rudd and i think he has made moves in that

00:41:18.800 direction um but maybe not gone as far as he could but let me put the counterpoint to you

00:41:23.820 on immigration because i totally hear everything you've said about it and myself an immigrant but

00:41:29.180 But on the other hand, I sense that there's a level at which immigration becomes, I don't

00:41:35.880 mean unsustainable necessarily economically, but our ability to integrate people into our

00:41:40.480 society while preserving social cohesion within that society is limited.

00:41:45.440 I'll give you an example, right?

00:41:46.560 So I'm from Eastern Europe.

00:41:47.840 I'm from Russia.

00:41:48.580 It's very common in Russia or in other parts of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland, all these

00:41:53.120 places, for people to sit down and have a drink in the park on a bench.

00:41:57.060 That's how they do it, right?

00:41:58.300 That's how we do it.

00:41:58.920 You don't go to the pub.

00:41:59.840 You don't have pubs necessarily.

00:42:02.000 In this country, the culture is different, right?

00:42:04.120 Now, in the last 10, 15 years, 15 years ago, it would be unheard of for people to be sitting

00:42:09.700 and drinking beer on a bench in a park in this country.

00:42:12.300 It would be completely unheard of unless they were homeless usually, right?

00:42:15.420 Nowadays, you walk around, whether it's central London or Tunbridge Wells, where you and I

00:42:19.320 live, it's very common to see lots of young men sitting on a park bench drinking beer.

00:42:24.480 I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but that is just a visual

00:42:28.220 reminder of how quickly the country has changed now there might be people who are troubled by

00:42:34.340 that or concerned about that or who feel that that's a reflection of the fact that society

00:42:37.840 has changed in a way that they're not comfortable what's wrong with that well i think generally we

00:42:42.940 have a really good record in this country on integrating immigrants where i mean what a lot

00:42:48.460 of people are really talking about are brown people let's let's face it polish people are

00:42:52.920 No, I know they're not.

00:42:54.740 Which is why I gave that example.

00:42:56.100 So Romanians are Polish people.

00:42:56.580 But for some people, it's more acceptable to have white immigration than brown immigration.

00:43:02.440 No, for me. That's not my point.

00:43:04.040 No, I'm not. Don't get defensive.

00:43:06.560 I'm not accusing you.

00:43:07.400 I just want you to address my point, which is not the racism, but the actual thing of people changing the structure of society.

00:43:14.840 I don't think that many people would have a problem with the example you've given.

00:43:18.420 There might be some.

00:43:19.020 I think what people have a problem with is that, particularly the Blair government, allowed so many people in all at once from Eastern Europe.

00:43:26.960 Definitely.

00:43:27.740 And there wasn't the infrastructure there to support them.

00:43:31.120 I think people accept immigration if it means that their children aren't going to suffer for lack of school places.

00:43:38.060 Or they think that in A&E they have to wait longer.

00:43:40.860 All of those sorts of things.

00:43:42.640 And I think we haven't got enough housing in this country.

00:43:46.560 so people naturally say well if we haven't got enough houses we can't let more people in i mean

00:43:50.900 it's a perfectly logical thing to think it doesn't mean that they're racist necessarily right some

00:43:55.340 of them will be some of them won't be so that's where again politicians have let down people

00:44:00.040 because they haven't provided the infrastructure for the numbers of people that have come in but

00:44:04.980 i think generally in terms of integration in this country i think we've done a pretty good job if

00:44:10.820 you compare particularly I mean you compare us with France so you look at the immigration that's

00:44:19.220 happened in France over the last 20 years and there are genuine ghettos in France where literally

00:44:24.580 French people indigenous French people are scared to go now there may be one or two areas in this

00:44:30.600 country that you could give that description to but I couldn't name you more than two or three

00:44:35.060 there may be one or two northern towns where for whatever reasons a particular section of the

00:44:40.040 population has decided to settle there and it's almost sort of there aren't any white families

00:44:44.680 in those areas anymore now that is something that should to my in my view should not have been

00:44:49.520 allowed to happen through the local council or whatever they shouldn't have allocated those

00:44:54.520 particular areas when we're talking about effectively immigration from pakistan and

00:44:58.900 muslim countries here um but that is not widespread in this country and i think but we do also have

00:45:05.640 to recognize that i mean we're sitting here in west london if we walk down the street i don't

00:45:11.380 notice someone's color when i walk down the street if i hear somebody speaking a foreign language on

00:45:16.060 the tube does that bother me of course it doesn't bother me i'm trying to think oh what language is

00:45:19.860 that i find it interesting if you live in a market town in the in the middle of devon

00:45:25.460 where you probably don't see a black person or a chinese person for months

00:45:32.700 you it's it is something i mean i remember once when i was walking down the high street in croma

00:45:39.880 on the north norfolk coast and there's a black man walking the other side of the street and i was

00:45:45.380 just sort of looking and watching people and they were all staring at him and that wasn't because

00:45:50.380 they were racist some of them maybe it was because he was different and that's what people

00:45:56.480 find a challenge and that's why people find different cultures quite challenging when they

00:46:03.560 don't understand them. A friend of mine a few weeks ago, a friend of mine was saying

00:46:07.840 we've got a Muslim family moved in two doors down. I said yeah and? Well you know. I said no you tell

00:46:15.480 me. Well you know I mean it's and I was really quite shocked by this conversation and then of

00:46:22.660 was two weeks later ran me up again and of course they're now in each other's houses having cups of

00:46:27.740 coffee very friendly but he'd never met a muslim before now that's the challenge for society how

00:46:34.540 do you address that in all of the areas where it's still a novelty to see someone of a different

00:46:41.180 skin color and i know i take your point about well nowadays it's not necessarily skin color but

00:46:45.700 that was all that always used to be the case and for many people i'm afraid still is um and i think

00:46:51.660 the internet and i think television has actually helped in this and that it normalizes things and

00:46:57.540 people don't feel the threat maybe that they sometimes used to from mass immigration um

00:47:03.720 and it's a bit like a gay thing um eventually people do when they meet people who are gay

00:47:11.600 they realize that not all gay men want to shag every gay man they meet

00:47:15.640 or every man mostly yeah every man what was that no i just know i know you got that right

00:47:24.000 um so um and it's the same with with immigrants it's the same with i mean just like muslims i

00:47:30.620 not every muslim wants to bomb you they'll be the very small proportion and then but they

00:47:35.880 they will still say oh yes but the others might sympathize with them well i mean once you get to

00:47:42.680 that level of argument you can't really win it. Well isn't that what Majin Nawaz says your fellow

00:47:46.640 LBC presenter? Isn't that exactly what he says that there's a small group of extremists and then

00:47:51.620 a very large group of people who do sympathize with them? Well I've I have never met a Muslim

00:47:58.180 that sympathizes with any form of terrorism. That doesn't mean to say they don't exist just because

00:48:04.400 I've never met them but I think I mean we all judge people by the I suppose the people that

00:48:10.480 we meet in our lives and I've had a couple phone in on my radio show and whenever there's a terror

00:48:17.520 incident and I've covered quite a few of the terror incidents because they've broken within

00:48:21.440 my show and I would always encourage Muslim callers to phone in to tell me what they think

00:48:27.160 now they shouldn't have to do that really but it's important for the rest of the listeners to

00:48:31.820 hear the condemnation and from time to time you'll get what I can only think of two incidents in

00:48:39.580 eight years where i've had somebody phone in to effect not support necessarily but to show

00:48:46.860 more than a degree of sympathy and understanding with what's happened and i and i let them have it

00:48:53.260 because i can if it was on the bbc i couldn't but i can and um it's quite a powerful position to be

00:48:59.820 in when and again all you i mean i remember one was a female zainab her name was and i kept her

00:49:06.300 on for about 20 minutes because I thought it was really important that she understood or I tried

00:49:12.120 to explain to her why I thought what she was saying was completely wrong and it ranged from a huge it

00:49:18.300 wasn't actually necessarily about terrorism it was on quite a few social issues but it's quite

00:49:25.040 that's partly why I love the job because you do have the opportunity at least to try and make

00:49:29.780 people think again even if you're not going to necessarily change their minds you've got to get

00:49:34.180 to question what they've been told by their parent because I remember saying to her your

00:49:37.960 parent should be ashamed of you for teaching you this which is quite something to say to somebody

00:49:42.520 and very teacher like can I just say as well yeah you've let yourself die

00:49:47.040 it's your own time you're wasting

00:49:50.720 but I think a lot of fear of immigration it does come from a fear of the unknown and I explain it

00:49:58.460 through children um i remember when i was teaching i was teaching four-year-olds and i sort of did

00:50:04.660 this experiment just for myself really and i put a big bunch of crowns in and they were doing

00:50:09.260 coloring in and they were coloring in happy and then i got a big i grabbed a big load of the

00:50:14.840 crowns and i moved them over to there and i saw how they dealt with having a smaller number of

00:50:19.580 crowns all of a sudden that's when the argument started to happen and they started arguing and

00:50:25.360 there was pushing and there was shoving and all the rest of it and then tears now don't you think

00:50:29.960 a lot of the fear basically a child abuser yeah that's why i do it that's why i did it for 10

00:50:35.360 years but do you not think a large part of the fear of immigrants coming in is brought in by

00:50:43.120 austerity the fact that people see our services getting reduced the fact that we see the nhs

00:50:48.700 whether it's right whether it's wrong are starting to shrink and die and being privatized and being

00:50:52.820 taken away it's a load of old bollocks i mean you look at the money that is now spent on the nhs

00:50:57.820 it is infinitely bigger than it used to be she's got another 20 billion but apparently that's not

00:51:01.980 enough you don't solve the problems in the nhs just by throwing money at it we should be looking

00:51:07.480 at the systemic failures of the nhs but we can't because we are obsessed by this fact that the nhs

00:51:13.740 is loved by everyone and therefore cannot be changed we've got i mean anne widdicombe who

00:51:18.180 donkey years ago she had a health secretary she's like 2000 she said at the time and nothing has

00:51:24.080 changed in the last 20 years she said we've got a we're looking to have a 21st century nhs

00:51:30.760 using a 1940s bureaucratic system and we don't have an nhs you'll only have an nhs a national

00:51:39.780 health service when somebody in berwick upon tweed will get the same level of treatment on whatever

00:51:45.140 as somebody in central London.

00:51:47.800 It's all a postcode lottery

00:51:49.580 on so many different issues.

00:51:53.060 Now, I don't want to privatise the NHS.

00:51:55.780 Nobody ever believes me when I say this,

00:51:57.040 but I don't want to privatise the NHS.

00:51:58.460 But this pretense that it's being subject

00:52:01.380 to whole-scale privatisation is rubbish.

00:52:04.460 Under Tony Blair, sorry, under John Major,

00:52:07.440 4% of the NHS was effectively privatised.

00:52:11.160 Well, it wasn't even privatised.

00:52:12.460 It used private sector resources.

00:52:15.140 Under Tony Blair, that went up to 5%.

00:52:17.720 And under David Cameron, it went up to 6%.

00:52:20.980 Now, you could say, well, that's a 50% increase on what it was under John Major.

00:52:26.380 I mean, if you want to be a propagandist, that's terrible.

00:52:29.880 It's a 50% increase.

00:52:32.060 But 94% of it isn't.

00:52:35.600 And I don't really see that changing very much.

00:52:38.220 And this idea that somehow in healthcare, the private sector is evil.

00:52:42.440 most of us use private sector dentists pharmacies are all in the private sector

00:52:49.240 gps are effectively private sector contractors to the nhs um most other countries in europe

00:52:57.640 i forget america because everyone says we don't want an american-style healthcare system no we

00:53:01.280 don't but if you look at europe they aren't embarrassed that they that the french or the

00:53:06.060 german system uses a lot of far more private sector input than it does in this country

00:53:11.660 So the whole debate, to me, needs to be reframed about, well, OK, if we were starting from scratch, how would we do this now?

00:53:19.880 And then once we've decided that, and let's have a proper national debate on it, once we've decided that, well, let's see how we can get there.

00:53:27.200 That doesn't mean to say we dismantle everything that is in the existing NHS.

00:53:32.220 But everything is so complicated now.

00:53:34.240 There's no wonder we have thousands and thousands of bureaucrats and administrators in the NHS

00:53:39.480 because the systems are so bureaucratic that they have to be there.

00:53:44.820 So you say it's all down to austerity.

00:53:51.240 Well, what was the alternative to the so-called austerity programme that George Osborne carried out?

00:53:58.240 We're still borrowing £50 billion a year.

00:54:00.340 I mean, if you believe that there's a magic money tree that somehow magics up this money that we can sort of get from nowhere, fine.

00:54:07.400 But we saw the result of that in the 1970s with 25% inflation.

00:54:11.000 And then in the 80s, the result of that was massive unemployment.

00:54:14.980 The good old fun days, as you talked about.

00:54:17.280 Fun days of politics.

00:54:18.360 I'm kidding.

00:54:19.100 Yeah.

00:54:19.940 Let's not go back there.

00:54:21.140 Yeah, let's not.

00:54:22.760 But it's interesting to me because on the one hand, you make a very good point about austerity.

00:54:27.320 And I actually agree with this idea that it was completely unnecessary.

00:54:30.340 and ideological, I think is completely wrong, on the one hand. But on the other hand, we earlier

00:54:34.660 talked about your experience of talking to people about things like the bedroom tax. So how do you

00:54:39.100 bring these two things together? This, on the one hand, the need to reduce public spending,

00:54:44.280 the need to borrow less, with the fact that when you reduce public spending, people suffer.

00:54:49.320 Politics and government is all about choices. When you fight an election, you have a manifesto,

00:54:54.700 it says, well, this is what we're going to do. And then when you get into government,

00:54:58.980 you've got a certain amount of money

00:55:00.820 I mean you can borrow more money obviously

00:55:02.900 but you've got a certain amount of money

00:55:04.280 and you have to decide how to allocate it

00:55:06.260 and you have to be responsible for those choices that you've made

00:55:09.180 and a Conservative government is inevitably going to make different choices

00:55:13.220 than a Labour government

00:55:14.500 now at the moment we have a Labour opposition

00:55:16.640 that thinks it can spend, spend, spend

00:55:19.160 they're making all sorts of promises

00:55:21.000 across all sorts of different government departments

00:55:23.400 well if they do ever get into power

00:55:25.800 and they try and implement those spending pledges

00:55:28.960 well the long-term effects of that there'll be there'll be a short-term um feel-good factor

00:55:34.760 particularly in education and the nhs probably where people say wasn't it wonderful that we've

00:55:40.620 got all these extra resources but in the long term because all politics is cyclical the chickens will

00:55:46.460 come home to roost now i don't pretend i would necessarily made the same choices as david

00:55:51.300 cameron and theresa may have made um but that's because it all individuals will make different

00:55:57.100 choices and and and i would not have made some of the cuts in some areas that were made but the

00:56:04.220 amount of the nhs hasn't been in financial terms the nhs has not been cut local government services

00:56:10.500 are being cut social care has been cut quite happy to accept that um but you picked the wrong one on

00:56:18.740 the nhs i'm afraid do you think we need do you think we need to be more mature about how we think

00:56:23.940 can talk about politics. I think you make this point about certain things that are going to have

00:56:29.060 to be cut, right? I think so few people actually accept the fact that political decisions will have

00:56:34.800 negative consequences. No, and we also have a media which, particularly on the BBC, if you

00:56:40.520 listen to the Today programme, I would say on average, in a three-hour programme, they will

00:56:45.540 have seven or eight lobby groups, pressure groups, come on to explain why the government should spend

00:56:50.280 more money on x y or z now i don't think that's particularly responsible i mean there are reports

00:56:57.100 that come out every single day complaining about this that or the other um and yeah okay they said

00:57:03.600 well they've got to fill three hours of news well is it really news that the royal society for the

00:57:07.880 protection of whatever demands that another five billion pounds is spent on something um in some

00:57:14.540 cases, it would be. But these desires for more money are entirely natural, but they're never

00:57:20.880 countered. You'll get John Humphreys interviewing a Treasury minister saying, isn't it outrageous

00:57:27.220 that you won't spend the money that this particular pressure group wants to spend? But he will never

00:57:33.540 quiz the pressure group on the fact that the money isn't there. It'll just be, well, why do you need

00:57:41.040 to spend this money yes that's a real problem isn't it thank you very much and

00:57:44.520 goodbye now as I say I don't think money extra money is always the best way to

00:57:50.580 solve in its systematic problems within a particular sector some sometimes it

00:57:55.780 will help a reform but not always and yet the the constant cries for money

00:58:01.560 from the left are just based on the fact that they want to soak the taxpayer they

00:58:07.420 think that none of us are paying enough tax particularly the rich well what

00:58:11.040 what what classifies as rich in london nowadays well according to the labour party it's somebody

00:58:16.160 who earns 70 or 80 000 pounds now if you're on 20 or 30 000 pounds you clearly do think that

00:58:20.400 somebody who's on 70 or 80 000 is rich but try telling someone who's um got a family of two uh

00:58:26.640 paying mortgage in london that 70 000 pounds means that they should pay a top rated tax

00:58:30.880 i think you'd have a bit of a job to do that um and in the end in the 70s there was this

00:58:38.000 were called incentives and so many people felt that the tax system was

00:58:44.460 working against them and they were being unfairly treated they just buggered off

00:58:48.260 to other countries because there was no incentive for them to stay in Britain

00:58:51.640 and I can see a point soon where that's going to happen here I think to the

00:58:57.560 current government is in danger of that if they bring more people into the 40p

00:59:03.280 tax bracket which they're threatening to do to pay for this 20 billion for the

00:59:06.600 NHS. I mean, it's outrageous that somebody who's on £41,000 a year is paying an effective tax

00:59:16.040 rate of well over 50%. Now, I would love to see a law that actually banned any future government

00:59:22.120 from taking more than 50% of someone's income, because I think it's just criminal. Why should

00:59:27.780 somebody have to pay more than 50% of money that they've earned? And it is generally earned income.

00:59:34.080 Now you can do unearned income fine, you can make a case for that being more, but you can't tax people till the pit's great because it will have long term effects on the future of the economy.

00:59:46.160 I think one of the things that people are very critical about when it comes to taxation is these big companies like Amazon or Starbucks who get away with seemingly paying nothing.

00:59:55.560 I totally agree. And to be fair to George Osborne, he actually did do something about that, which Gordon Brown didn't, has to be said.

01:00:03.900 but George Osborne did now you can argue has he done enough probably not but they're apparently

01:00:09.840 getting 14 billion pounds in which they wouldn't have had before so that's something but I totally

01:00:15.280 agree with you some of these big corporates need to be addressed and the thing is they've always

01:00:21.860 got tax lawyers who will always find another loophole one will be closed and then another

01:00:26.240 one will open up and somehow the Inland Revenue have got to try and do more to do it they have

01:00:31.540 They've employed a lot more people to look into this and to try and tackle it.

01:00:35.320 You're never going to eliminate tax evasion or tax avoidance, but you can actually do something to mitigate it.

01:00:43.000 Do you not think that's also an issue of political will?

01:00:45.480 Yes.

01:00:45.780 Because a lot of these people who are not paying the taxes, they're in cahoots with the politicians.

01:00:50.900 They're friends.

01:00:51.660 They go to the same cocktail parties and dinners, and they meet on the same yachts with Russian oligarchs and all the rest of it.

01:00:59.560 And your family comes in.

01:01:00.400 Yeah, my family, exactly.

01:01:01.540 Yes, because all Russians are only gods.

01:01:05.040 I'm going to phone into your radio show, experiences by immigration.

01:01:08.640 Yes, I came to this country to buy a mansion in Chelsea.

01:01:13.260 So, but do you not think that's a big part of why Amazon and Google

01:01:16.840 and all these companies can avoid paying tax?

01:01:19.000 There was always a lot of chatter about the fact that David Cameron's

01:01:22.840 former chief of staff, Rachel Whetstone,

01:01:25.800 or actually Michael Howard's one or the other,

01:01:27.220 but there was this little group of people around Cameron

01:01:29.640 and that all went off to work for Google or Uber or wherever.

01:01:34.220 And I think that was,

01:01:37.440 I mean, it certainly gave the impression

01:01:39.160 that people were in cahoots.

01:01:41.680 Do I believe that David Cameron or George Osborne

01:01:43.760 changed government policy

01:01:45.380 because they knew someone within?

01:01:48.360 I'd like to think not.

01:01:50.260 I mean, I do wonder how Uber get away with what they do.

01:01:53.660 I mean, it's partly because

01:01:55.000 there's a whole generation now in London

01:01:58.460 of under 30 year olds who wouldn't ever think of taking a black cab because they always take Uber

01:02:04.660 and that's why in the end when Sadiq Khan didn't renew their license I always knew he wouldn't in

01:02:09.220 the end because there would be there would have been a big backlash against that. I think there

01:02:15.180 are sometimes relationships between politicians and people in business and the media which are

01:02:20.900 unhealthy which lead the public to think that there might be things being done inappropriately

01:02:27.940 even if there aren't I mean I have this a little bit when I'm interviewing politicians that I know

01:02:33.480 and I've worked out that if I interview a politician who's a friend I tend to give them

01:02:38.940 a harder time because I'm conscious that there'll be people out there who say he has given them a

01:02:42.820 soft time because he knows it David Davis good example on the day after he resigned

01:02:46.380 I did an interview with him and I knew I was on a hiding to nothing but the news of Boris Johnson's

01:02:56.100 resignation broke just as we were halfway through this interview. So that gave a good news line out

01:03:02.760 of it. But Gillian Reynolds, the radio critic of the Sunday Times, she said that that was a really

01:03:11.940 good interview because I knew him and I asked hard questions. He gave coded answers. Now she

01:03:19.300 doesn't, has never liked me particularly. She described my voice as being whiny on one occasion,

01:03:23.700 I mean, as if.

01:03:25.400 So that was, I really was very grateful that she wrote that.

01:03:31.060 And then I was talking to David on the phone a couple of nights ago,

01:03:35.260 and he said, I did five interviews that day, ITV, BBC,

01:03:43.780 I can't remember who the third one was,

01:03:45.020 and then Julia Hartley Brewer and you.

01:03:47.640 And he said, and to be honest,

01:03:48.760 I thought your interview with me was terrible.

01:03:50.740 and I thought he meant I'd been asking sort of really bad questions and it was genuinely a bad

01:03:57.560 interview but a journalist I know um dm'd me and said that he'd run into David on Friday and he

01:04:05.100 said I can't believe I did all these interviews and the two people that my friends they gave me

01:04:08.640 the hardest time and I thought well good because that I did my job then and I do find it interesting

01:04:15.660 that i found when i first started doing this i did find it difficult to interview people i knew

01:04:20.980 there was one time i interviewed rob halfon he's a lovely guy mp for harlow um he's a really good

01:04:26.940 campaigner and he was doing a campaign on something i can't remember what it was now

01:04:29.820 but he clearly didn't know his staff and i absolutely roasted him and then later that

01:04:35.120 evening my phone went off and i saw his name appear oh shit here we go and he so i said hi

01:04:41.720 he said um i just want to thank you i said what and he said because you taught me a lot in that

01:04:48.020 interview that i should not go into an interview not fully briefed and you were absolutely right

01:04:52.380 to do what you did um not long afterwards i interviewed priti patel and it was the day

01:04:58.260 jeremy corbyn was elected leader of the labor party and she'd been put up by the conservatist

01:05:01.760 to comment on it so i just said priti patel your reaction to jeremy corbyn's election well he's a

01:05:08.720 danger to our nation he's a danger to your family's economic security and off she went

01:05:12.840 and all these pre-prepared lines i and so i just let her finish and i said well aren't you going

01:05:19.540 to congratulate him it's not my job to congratulate him and i said be polite if you did and i've never

01:05:25.700 interviewed her since now rob halforn had a really adult reaction to that she didn't yeah

01:05:33.920 make of that what you will interesting well our time is running uh out so before we insult you

01:05:39.880 and never bring in before we insult you to say something that means you'll you'll be like pretty

01:05:43.820 patel and never speak to us again uh the question we always like to finish on is what is the one

01:05:48.300 thing you think that no one is talking about that we ought to be talking about god um

01:05:55.240 i could say something trite like mental health but we kind of are talking about mental health

01:06:01.400 now and that's certainly one thing that when i was doing the evening show on lbc i mean we got a real

01:06:07.640 reputation for that and i mean making a phone in on depression interesting is sometimes a challenge

01:06:13.500 but boy did we do that we got shortlisted for an award from mind for doing that but i think we are

01:06:18.940 talking about it now in 2018 in a much more different way than we did in 2010 um what subject

01:06:26.160 I think we should be talking about? Well, I mean, I go back to the NHS. I mean, we are talking about

01:06:31.540 the NHS, but we're not talking about it in any meaningful long-term way. And I would love to see

01:06:36.860 a proper national debate about the future of the NHS, because we're not having it. It's become far

01:06:42.260 too politicised, which is inevitable when we spend one in six pounds of taxpayers' money goes on the

01:06:47.540 NHS. People say, oh, well, maybe you should just have a non-political board that runs the NHS and

01:06:53.340 not have any politicians involved with it well i actually want politicians to they've got to be

01:06:57.760 accountable for the money that they're spending on my behalf so you can't take politicians out of

01:07:02.780 running the nhs um so i think that's that is a national debate that we should have and um possibly

01:07:09.640 also on uh how west ham can win the champions league yes i'm a west ham fan are you i'm indeed

01:07:17.500 yes you want straight up let's end the interview right now this could take about half an hour i

01:07:22.940 I don't agree with Son in Wilshire, but that's...

01:07:24.740 Do you know how I do?

01:07:25.740 Really? Well, that's where it's probably going to kick off.

01:07:27.980 See, we could do another hour.

01:07:29.480 This is the end of our show for the rest of humanity.

01:07:33.520 Ian Dale, thank you so much for coming on.

01:07:34.960 Thank you, I enjoyed it.

01:07:35.160 You're on Twitter at...

01:07:36.500 At Ian Dale.

01:07:37.400 You have a podcast.

01:07:38.220 We have a podcast.

01:07:39.040 I do it every week with Jackie Smith, the former Labour Home Secretary.

01:07:41.780 It's called For the Many.

01:07:43.060 And we talk about the political events of the week.

01:07:45.860 But it's quite a fun podcast and very, very smutty

01:07:49.000 because she has got a filthy mind.

01:07:52.040 Wonderful.

01:07:52.600 There you go.

01:07:53.680 And you're working on a book as well.

01:07:55.280 If you want to talk about a withered clitoris,

01:07:56.480 she's your woman.

01:07:58.740 Too much information.

01:08:01.120 Well, that has quite literally ticked every box.

01:08:04.540 In so many ways.

01:08:05.720 Yeah, absolutely.

01:08:06.960 We're also writing a book together,

01:08:08.700 well, editing a book called The Honourable Ladies.

01:08:10.920 And it sounds quite dry,

01:08:11.860 but it's a collection of biographies

01:08:13.640 of every female MP that's ever sat in the House of Commons.

01:08:16.940 Because at the end of this year,

01:08:17.980 it's the 100th anniversary of Nancy Astor

01:08:19.820 being the first woman to take her seat.

01:08:21.340 So the first volume goes up to 1996.

01:08:24.320 There's 168 different essays, all written by female politicians or academics.

01:08:30.520 The second volume, which goes from 1997 to 2018, has got 323 in.

01:08:36.720 So you can see the difference in numbers that there are now.

01:08:39.960 And they've got some fascinating stories.

01:08:41.940 There's a female Tory MP from the 1950s called Patricia Ford,

01:08:46.800 who turns out to be the step-grandmother of Bear Grylls.

01:08:50.040 Wow.

01:08:50.580 Who knew?

01:08:51.340 Who knew, indeed.

01:08:52.540 Who cared?

01:08:55.980 What a great way to do.

01:08:57.140 But actually, finally, if any Russian oligarchs

01:08:59.440 or any other people want to phone into your show

01:09:01.720 and give you some grief, how do they do that?

01:09:03.860 They do that between four and seven on LBC.

01:09:08.080 It's very easy to do.

01:09:09.060 I actually do know a Russian oligarch, believe it or not.

01:09:11.440 Do.

01:09:11.660 And it isn't you.

01:09:13.640 I'm too young to be an oligarch.

01:09:15.220 I'm an oligarch's son kind of age.

01:09:17.200 Oh, yeah.

01:09:18.700 Do you have one of the sort of like Superboy racer cars

01:09:21.040 that you drive around

01:09:21.640 Knightsbridge

01:09:22.220 yeah it's a Vauxhall Astra

01:09:23.540 yes

01:09:23.960 that's exactly what it is

01:09:26.200 with a broken tail lamp

01:09:27.980 yeah

01:09:30.560 so between four and seven

01:09:32.360 on the LBC

01:09:32.900 perfect

01:09:33.500 thank you so much

01:09:34.440 for coming on

01:09:34.840 for the moment

01:09:35.260 that may be changing

01:09:36.200 but

01:09:36.500 oh

01:09:37.060 we've got an exclusive here

01:09:40.020 we do indeed

01:09:40.820 and on that note

01:09:41.520 thank you very much

01:09:42.280 for watching

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01:10:01.760 thank you very much

01:10:02.680 we've had him Dale

01:10:03.420 he's been great

01:10:03.960 thank you so much for coming on

01:10:04.860 and you say you've had me

01:10:05.900 we have had you

01:10:06.900 well that's coming later

01:10:08.040 thank you very much

01:10:10.340 that's the payment

01:10:10.920 thank you very much

01:10:11.820 and goodbye

01:10:12.360 see you next week

01:10:13.280 Jesus Christ

TRIGGERnometry - July 30, 2018

Iain Dale on Conservatism, Immigration, Tax & the NHS

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