TRIGGERnometry - LIVE Reaction to Manchester Terror Attack - Ex-Police Detective, Peter Bleksley

00:00:00.480 Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of, unscheduled episode of Trigonometry, of course related to the terrible attack in Manchester on a synagogue yesterday.

00:00:10.680 Joining us again, returning to the show, is former police detective Peter Blexley. Peter, welcome back.

00:00:15.920 Thank you for having me.

00:00:16.880 It's a terrible thing for all of us that we only get to see each other when terrible things happen, but that is where we are.

00:00:23.420 What do we know, first and foremost, about what happened yesterday?

00:00:26.800 Okay, at 9.31am yesterday, Thursday 2nd October 2025, a member of the public dialled 999, calling the emergency services, and they reported that they had seen a car drive in to people, and that the driver of that car had got out and was attacking people with a knife.

00:00:49.700 So that was the scene setter for the people receiving that call, and the information that's then going to be relayed to the police and other emergency services.

00:01:01.500 What we then know is that at 9.37am, probably based on other information that had come forward, Greater Manchester Police declared this as a major incident,

00:01:14.980 and that means that other resources basically can be deployed to it, and at 9.38am, we know, and the footage has been widely available on social media and elsewhere,

00:01:29.920 that armed police officers shot a 35-year-old man, Jihad al-Shami, who was apparently born in Syria and came to Britain as a child.

00:01:41.380 He was shot dead by armed police.

00:01:46.040 Jihad al-Shami had had what looked like a potentially explosive device strapped around his waist.

00:01:54.180 Again, the images are widely available on social media and broadly mainstream media.

00:02:01.220 After he'd been shot, because he has a device that the police do not know whether that is a viable bomb or not,

00:02:13.260 they have to work on the theory that it is.

00:02:16.420 And so, of course, huge caution has to be exercised here.

00:02:21.500 A bomb disposal robot was deployed, which then carried out a controlled explosion of what appeared to be the device on Jihad al-Shami's body.

00:02:36.420 They later told us that, in fact, it was not a viable device.

00:02:41.600 And I would imagine, in my opinion, something designed to spread fear and terror into the very hearts and soul of anybody that saw it,

00:02:53.680 along, of course, with his murderous actions.

00:02:57.500 And as we move on to that, tragically, two people were killed by him, were stabbed to death by him,

00:03:05.260 although there has been recent reports that one of the victims, one of the dead people, did, in fact, have a gunshot wound.

00:03:15.160 And Jihad al-Shami did not have a weapon.

00:03:18.900 So that gunshot wound must have come from a weapon fired by a police officer.

00:03:26.000 I'll perhaps touch on that in just a little while.

00:03:29.620 Three people remain in hospital, seriously injured.

00:03:33.940 And that is, with a very broad brush, the dreadful, appalling, terrorist events that happened at a synagogue in Crumpsell, Manchester, yesterday.

00:03:48.580 Now, one of the things that I think it's really worth saying, well, two things, really.

00:03:53.240 One, of course, the thoughts of everybody will be with the victims, their families, the people who are in hospital.

00:03:58.540 We hope for the swift and speedy recovery and full recovery.

00:04:01.780 But the other thing, before we get into the other ramifications of this, is, you know, on this show, we are often critical of certain aspects of what people have described as two-tier policing.

00:04:13.460 There's criticism, rightfully, in my opinion, under police.

00:04:16.860 But in this instance, you have to say that this is an incredibly fast response.

00:04:21.620 To get there in seven minutes and deal with the terrorist threat in this way is a testament to their professionalism.

00:04:29.160 Was there also a stroke of luck, do you think, in them getting there that quickly?

00:04:33.340 Is this a standard speed of response to this kind of incident?

00:04:36.180 Like your show, when justifiable, I am a very fervent and vocal critic of the police.

00:04:44.060 Likewise, when they do brilliant things, and our police do do brilliant things, they are rightfully deserving of praise.

00:04:53.280 What we don't know about yesterday's timings, in other words, they were there and they'd shot him dead within seven minutes.

00:05:02.540 We don't know if those armed police officers were nearby by default, by design or by luck.

00:05:12.000 We just don't know.

00:05:13.420 That will come out, I'm sure, in the ongoing inquiry.

00:05:17.420 Perhaps they were deployed to be close to synagogues, because, of course, it was the most holy day in the Hebrew calendar yesterday, Yom Kippur. 0.95

00:05:27.460 It would make sense if the police, given the heightened tensions in the world and in Britain today,

00:05:34.800 had deployed more armed police officers to be in those kind of locations.

00:05:40.600 We don't know yet.

00:05:41.940 Either way, what is clear to me, from the footage that I've seen, everything I've heard, everything I've read,

00:05:51.620 those police officers, having initially shot Jihad al-Shammi, saw him fall to the floor,

00:05:59.760 and then he starts to move again, after having been originally shot.

00:06:05.860 Those officers, without any concern for their own safety, by the looks of the footage,

00:06:16.720 were less than 15 metres away from Jihad al-Shammi as he laid on the ground.

00:06:23.140 As he tries to lift himself back up, I don't know, but I would imagine that perhaps the officers thought,

00:06:32.020 is he going to come at us again with a knife, and he's already wreaked so much havoc,

00:06:40.040 or is there a possibility that he's going to detonate that device?

00:06:45.960 And had that device been viable, and had he detonated it,

00:06:52.720 then in all probability, those police officers would not be here today.

00:06:57.860 But they got close enough so they could engage him, and they then shot him again as he tried to get up from the ground.

00:07:06.380 And I would imagine it would be perhaps the final fatal shot, but all of this will come out at a later inquiry.

00:07:13.600 Peter, so we know that the belt wasn't viable, the bomb wasn't viable.

00:07:19.120 Is there another reason why these terrorists wear those belts, is so that they almost ensure the fact that they're never going to be captured? 0.92

00:07:27.380 Because the police really have to kill them.

00:07:29.960 They have no other option, because you simply can't risk the detonation of a bomb in a crowded area like that, next to a place of worship.

00:07:37.740 Yeah, I think you raise a very good point here. 0.96

00:07:40.700 Perhaps it is, in their sick, twisted, evil minds, perhaps it is a way that they can try and claim some form of martyrdom by being shot dead by the police. 1.00

00:07:54.900 They're not martyrs, they're cowards. 1.00

00:07:57.620 He is a murderous, repugnant, repulsive piece of garbage. 1.00

00:08:02.780 And the good thing about the police shooting him dead is that he will never be able to carry out such despicable acts ever again. 1.00

00:08:11.720 One of the worrying things about the case, I mean, there's lots of worrying things about the case, but one of the particularly worrying things for me was, is that he wasn't known to the authorities.

00:08:21.520 He wasn't known to counterterrorism, which then begs the question, well, if somebody like him, who is clearly as extreme as he was,

00:08:31.640 and there were reports which haven't been confirmed, that he sent death threats to a conservative MP, aren't they thinking, well, how many of these people, how many other jihad al-Shamis are there wandering the streets, who we don't know about, as well as all the people on terrorist watch lists, who we do?

00:08:48.860 Well, we know that of the people that are of interest to the security services and counterterrorism police, around about 75 or 80% of that workload is radical Islamists.

00:09:03.860 So that's a huge, huge chunk.

00:09:06.920 The breaking story about did he send death threats to an MP or not, I think is yet to be confirmed either way.

00:09:15.340 Let's just say he did.

00:09:18.960 Then if he did do that, and he has not been referred to counterterrorism police, or even local police, at the very, very least, that will be a major failing.

00:09:31.100 But we will have to wait and see what happens as a result of that.

00:09:34.740 But while we're talking about MPs, and I'd just like to echo your words right at the top of this interview, and thank you.

00:09:41.780 Of course, my thoughts with the family and the loved ones of those who lost their lives, and those who are still in hospital, and all of that community.

00:09:51.480 But let's think about MPs, because, of course, we've had two MPs murdered in recent times, Sir David Amis and Joe Cox.

00:10:00.660 We've got a lot of bloodshed in this country, unfortunately.

00:10:06.720 So there should be huge attention and suitable resources, when required, deployed to the MPs where we do feel there's a risk.

00:10:18.580 And on that very note, what happened this week?

00:10:21.600 We heard that the Home Office had cut the funding for Nigel Farage's security by 80%.

00:10:30.520 And they'd offered up a kind of mix and match, whereby 20% of funding, so 20% of security staff, would come from the Home Office side of things.

00:10:42.600 And the remainder would have to be made up from private costs, and a different security company, which would have been, of course, largely unworkable.

00:10:52.520 So these things are all linked.

00:10:55.400 MPs, danger to MPs, terrorism, bloodshed.

00:11:01.240 But they're inextricably linked.

00:11:03.140 Peter, can I take you back a little bit?

00:11:05.180 We'll talk about the political ramifications of this, I'm sure.

00:11:07.940 You mentioned that almost immediately the decision was made to designate this a major incident.

00:11:16.300 How would that decision have been made so quickly?

00:11:19.400 Is it because there was reports of somebody stabbing numerous people, or would they have had some other information going, this guy is actually potentially a terrorist?

00:11:29.400 How did they know so quickly that it was a major incident?

00:11:32.320 There's a number of criteria that have to be met by somebody senior within the control headquarters of Greater Manchester Police.

00:11:42.700 I'm sure that the 931 call wasn't the only call they got.

00:11:46.380 We know there were other people there.

00:11:47.860 Some people were filming it.

00:11:49.380 And these things come to the attention of a considerable number of people very quickly.

00:11:54.000 Whatever it was, the information that went into that control room, it filled all the criteria, ticked all the boxes.

00:12:01.200 And so they were able, in a very short space of time, to say, yeah, this is a major incident.

00:12:06.240 And I've also heard that two other people have been arrested.

00:12:09.540 Do we know anything about those?

00:12:10.920 Have they been released?

00:12:11.980 Have they been charged?

00:12:13.040 Do we know anything at all about them?

00:12:14.580 Three other people, apparently.

00:12:15.800 Three?

00:12:16.180 Yes, three.

00:12:16.800 Two men in their 20s, I believe, and a woman in her 60s have been arrested.

00:12:22.840 We know nothing about them as we speak.

00:12:26.640 But they were arrested nearby.

00:12:28.340 And, again, it goes back to my earlier point, which is this is so incredibly worrying because he wasn't known to the authorities.

00:12:39.760 Look, the question I'm going to ask you is quite a blunt one.

00:12:43.200 But how big a problem is radical Islamism, jihad, in this country at the moment?

00:12:50.260 Well, this is going to sound like a preposterous question, given the guy's name.

00:12:55.240 But do we actually know that he was a radical Islamist at this point?

00:12:58.780 No, to the point of being able to confirm it live on air?

00:13:02.080 No, we don't.

00:13:02.980 No, we won't.

00:13:03.800 The media have not said that.

00:13:06.420 Yeah.

00:13:07.200 But I am quite happy to stake whatever shredded reputation I've got.

00:13:11.540 The fact that he has been radicalised.

00:13:14.740 He's an Islamist. 0.97

00:13:16.040 Of course, let's look at the facts.

00:13:18.700 You don't have to be Sherlock to work out what his motivations probably were.

00:13:23.660 So how great a threat does this ideology pose to this country, to the stability of the country and to the safety of people?

00:13:35.540 80% of the workload of counterterrorism police and MR5, radical Islam.

00:13:42.940 That's a huge chunk of their workload.

00:13:46.400 And they're just the ones they know about.

00:13:48.420 The security services and our counterterrorism police, while we sleep soundly in our beds, together with some hugely courageous people, are out there thwarting plots, observing people, endeavouring to frustrate and otherwise stop murderous terrorist plots.

00:14:12.240 And they do that 365 days of the year.

00:14:17.040 And we owe them all a huge debt.

00:14:21.320 Of course, with the scale of the problem, as it is, there are going to be individuals that act alone or in a small cell that does not come to the attention prior to the police or the security services.

00:14:38.800 That's inevitable.

00:14:40.580 It's going to happen.

00:14:41.580 And it's going to have tragic consequences.

00:14:44.960 We only have to look back at people like Axel Rudabachana and his murderous rampage in Southport.

00:14:52.060 He was on the radar.

00:14:55.100 He'd been a part of the PREVENT program in the past because he'd been radicalized or was regarded as such a threat.

00:15:04.200 So even people that have been on it at some stage have gone on to commit atrocities.

00:15:09.380 And now we have this character with his murderous actions of yesterday.

00:15:16.220 It's a problem.

00:15:17.860 It's a considerable problem.

00:15:19.600 We have getting on for 4 million Muslims in the UK.

00:15:26.320 Many of whom, of course, are law-abiding, peaceful, worship as they want to, contribute to the country, pay their taxes.

00:15:36.540 But there are some that don't, some that make up that 80% of the security services and counter-terror police's workload.

00:15:47.820 And bear with me one moment while I just delve into my phone, because this is apposite and relevant as I see it.

00:15:59.200 In the last five days, for the figures that are available, in the last five days, 2,037 illegal migrants have entered the UK on 30 dinghies.

00:16:19.100 2,037 people who are not, with a sweeping statement, going to say they are all Islamic jihadis, right? 0.58

00:16:31.840 But we don't know where they've come from.

00:16:35.680 We don't know their backgrounds.

00:16:39.020 We don't know their intentions.

00:16:41.020 And we don't know how they're going to fill their time while they are in the UK.

00:16:48.140 And because we have had an abhorrent government, followed by another pathetic government, who are not gripping this problem, who are allowing these people into our shores, in fact, with the help of border force and such like, facilitating it by bringing them in on their vessels. 0.99

00:17:08.720 And so it goes. 0.85

00:17:11.020 Smashing the gangs?

00:17:15.000 It's almost abhorrent for me to say that phrase, because it's clearly not happening.

00:17:23.160 And there has to be an element of danger to the UK, to the citizens of this once great nation.

00:17:32.320 And it is negligent.

00:17:34.320 And it is negligent.

00:17:35.000 It is abhorrent.

00:17:36.460 It is an absolute disgrace that our government are not stopping it, because time, sadly, will tell us that amongst that number are coming, are people coming to our shores who are a threat. 1.00

00:17:53.520 If not a terrorist threat, then a threat in terms of so many people that we've seen arrested for sexual offences and the such like.

00:18:01.960 And it's a great point, because, look, we can then turn around and point the finger at police, counterterrorism.

00:18:07.460 But then the police and counterterrorism can go, look, there's only so much we can do.

00:18:12.360 And we're working as hard as we possibly can.

00:18:15.400 Eventually, one is going to slip through.

00:18:17.240 Well, on that very thing, I was speaking to somebody earlier today who is, I won't give the details, but who's familiar with the security case workload.

00:18:25.240 And he was saying, basically, there's so many plots now being stopped.

00:18:30.800 Everybody always knew at least one, maybe more, I hope not, would get through by the year end, because there have been so many of these, because the scale of the problem now is so vast.

00:18:42.740 Yeah, and let's face it, let's talk about some more uncomfortable truths, shall we?

00:18:49.620 Many of these people, and I'm talking about immigrant populations that have come together, live together.

00:18:58.200 They occupy street after street in their own little environment, their enclave.

00:19:04.620 And I can see why people who come to this country as a migrant might be attracted to wanting to live in the same street as another migrant.

00:19:13.340 But it's not really integrating, is it?

00:19:15.860 If all you're doing is living with people that look like you, talk like you, sound like you, as an immigrant, you're not really integrating, are you? 0.99

00:19:26.660 If ever I was to live in another country, the last thing I'd want to do is live in a community surrounded by expats, British expats. 1.00

00:19:34.140 That wouldn't be the point of going to live abroad, would it?

00:19:36.560 Anyway, I digress somewhat.

00:19:39.100 So when you've got, you know, we have a huge number of people that are off the radar, live in the black economy. 0.99

00:19:47.320 We know all this because we see so often when immigration officials or border force or people from HMRC carry out searches, raids on premises,

00:20:03.020 and they end up levying fines because people are here illegally and working illegally.

00:20:07.920 The bottom line is our nation does not know the identity of everybody here, and we don't know how many undocumented people living under the radar there are.

00:20:21.000 Well, up to a million at this point from some of the figures.

00:20:24.940 Peter, I know it's a tangential question because this person, as far as we know, this jihad guy was not monitored by Prevent.

00:20:32.620 Do you think Prevent is working?

00:20:34.800 Prevent being the government program to de-radical.

00:20:37.100 Do you think de-radicalisation is working?

00:20:41.480 When I was a detective and you'd get a new young officer, you know, come to work with you for a while,

00:20:49.100 and you'd talk to him about criminality, and we can say the same about terrorism and such like.

00:20:57.520 I used to tell him the story.

00:21:00.040 It's like we cast a net, okay?

00:21:03.500 As police officers, we cast a net, and we hope that that net is going to scoop up every bad boy, every bad girl, 0.95

00:21:13.800 and we're going to live in some kind of crime-free nirvana.

00:21:18.380 But it's not like that.

00:21:21.380 When you cast that net, exactly as if you're casting a huge, great fishing net into the ocean,

00:21:28.760 you're not going to scoop everything up.

00:21:31.560 Things are going to get through the mesh, up over the top, round the side, fall out, whatever.

00:21:37.300 You just hope to scoop up as many as you can.

00:21:39.740 And that's how it is.

00:21:42.420 That's how it is now, I'm sure, counter-terrorism police and security services know that it's imperfect.

00:21:51.220 They can't stop every plot.

00:21:52.780 Yesterday's tragic events showed us that.

00:21:57.260 I'm never going to hang them out to dry, because they do do astonishing work.

00:22:02.640 And believe you me, as somebody who has worked with people and done an element of being out there in the dead of night myself,

00:22:13.700 climbing through quarries and uphill and down dale to get a suitable observation point where you can watch people,

00:22:21.100 having worked with colleagues that, shall we just say without giving away too many secrets,

00:22:27.000 are brilliant at conceding themselves in places where us three just would never want to go in order to keep surveillance.

00:22:36.560 Of course, it's 2025, so there's also huge elements of technical surveillance.

00:22:42.920 We're very much in the digital world, but it still needs courageous people, and they're still out there.

00:22:49.720 And they'll be out there on Christmas Day.

00:22:54.000 When we're tucking into a bit of turkey or whatever takes your fancy, pulling crackers, drinking, surrounded by our loved ones,

00:23:03.020 there will be people out there, like there are every other day of the year, trying to stop people,

00:23:08.920 blowing us to smithereens or stabbing us to death.

00:23:15.240 And the threat is out there.

00:23:17.660 It's very, very real.

00:23:18.820 Well, this will happen again, and I feel it is in the here and now just another symptom of the decline of this once great notion.

00:23:34.780 Peter, when are we going to start talking openly and honestly about this?

00:23:38.380 I don't mean here or in certain podcasts.

00:23:40.540 I mean out in the media, because I used to go to football.

00:23:44.040 I went to football a few times with Sir David Amos.

00:23:45.980 He was a wonderful man, English eccentric in the best sense of the word.

00:23:51.020 And he was murdered in the most awful, brutal way.

00:23:55.480 It still has a profound effect on me now.

00:23:58.300 And I remember watching the news coverage afterwards, and they were talking about online hate.

00:24:04.560 And I was saying to myself, this isn't about online hate.

00:24:08.680 This is about radical jihad.

00:24:11.120 This is about radical Islam. 0.98

00:24:14.360 This is about people who feel entitled to kill and maim and destroy other people's lives purely for a political and religious ideology.

00:24:23.300 My question is, when are we going to just be honest about this and talk about it bluntly instead of hiding behind terms like, oh, hate and hate must never be allowed to exist and all of this, quite frankly, bollocks that we're talking about?

00:24:37.680 Yeah.

00:24:38.380 But I'm 65.

00:24:39.200 So terrorism driven by a faith and political kind of motivation is no stranger to me, because I grew up every time going on a bus or the underground or an overground train looking for an unattended bag, because the IRA carried out attack after attack after attack after attack during my childhood and into adulthood.

00:25:07.040 And, of course, the IRAs bomb took some of my B division colleagues with it, tragically, and injured many others.

00:25:14.460 So I've had a terrorist threat virtually for as long as I can think of or remember.

00:25:21.360 That threat, of course, was tackled by politics, because we eventually, thanks to the brilliance of, and he never gets very much pressed for this,

00:25:34.960 the process being started by John Major, then Blair, of course, who took all the glory, but people like Mo Molen and many, many others who, I hope they'll forgive me because I've forgotten their names.

00:25:50.120 Many, many people played a huge, huge part in bringing about the Good Friday Agreement.

00:25:58.080 So when it's politics, essentially driven by faith, I think it can be tackled.

00:26:06.360 When, however, somebody's grievance and their hatred is driven purely by a religious ideology without kind of trying to establish any acceptable political norm, how do you tackle it?

00:26:21.500 I don't know.

00:26:22.780 And is it going to grow?

00:26:23.780 When I was, I was born in 1959, the first census of my lifetime was in 1961, when 21,000 people in the UK identified as being Muslim.

00:26:39.300 There's now nearly 4 million.

00:26:42.020 That's a significant growth of that population in my lifetime.

00:26:47.160 I think those figures, understandably, alarm many people.

00:26:53.740 A lack of integration, driven by hatred, an ideology, a religious ideology, which people certainly are, and I would fundamentally suggest Jihad al-Shamid was yesterday, 0.98

00:27:09.140 is a deeply worrying thing, and I don't suspect there's going to be any simple answers to it.

00:27:16.040 But there may be multiple answers, if only people were willing to grasp the nettle, stand up, be courageous, and say, this is what needs to be done.

00:27:26.700 But what are the answers, though, Peter?

00:27:28.660 What are some of the answers to dealing with it?

00:27:30.840 Because I've heard a lot of people make the comparison with Northern Ireland, and for the reasons you give, I think it's completely inappropriate,

00:27:37.160 for the very reasons that you state, because Northern Irish terrorism in the mainland of Britain was about achieving the political end of a united island.

00:27:46.000 Yeah.

00:27:46.600 And let's say the government of the day had been willing to do that, we would not have had terrorism in this country.

00:27:53.020 But I don't even know if the British state was prepared to surrender to Islamism, might well be at this point, frankly, what the surrender would be. 0.96

00:28:03.120 Like, what do these people want from us, exactly?

00:28:06.400 Why are they killing our fellow citizens?

00:28:09.160 What are their objectives?

00:28:10.500 What is it that they want, exactly?

00:28:12.680 I don't think anybody knows.

00:28:14.360 I do.

00:28:15.080 You do?

00:28:15.460 Okay, tell me.

00:28:16.180 You don't have to delve too deeply into social media to find many, many videos of people saying, we're here to take over.

00:28:25.160 Oh, you can see them.

00:28:27.520 You can see them on social media.

00:28:29.860 They're quite simple to find.

00:28:31.460 They will pop up on my timeline from time to time.

00:28:34.900 People saying, we are here to take over.

00:28:38.160 Simple.

00:28:39.040 It's a plan. 0.95

00:28:39.880 Now, of course, I sincerely hope that's a plan that will never come to succeed and can be thwarted and won't be, won't be the desire of the moderate Muslims, but is the desire of the lunatics off the scale radical Islamists. 0.99

00:29:04.880 You know, it's Friday, so I'll probably go for a curry tonight.

00:29:09.960 My local curry house is amazing, and it's run by Muslim fellas, right? 1.00

00:29:16.120 The father, who's since retired, originally came over from Bangladesh 40-odd years ago, ran the business, drew it, wonderful restaurant, amazing, a real kind of centre point for the community, and he's handed it over to his boy now, okay?

00:29:35.300 Who's a lovely fella.

00:29:37.300 And I say to him, a few weeks ago, again, McCurry, I said to him, you know, what do I say to people who are concerned about the rise of Islam and are concerned about people who claim that they're here to take over and not to live side by side and contribute?

00:29:55.740 And he says, well, he says, it's them not, isn't he?

00:29:59.780 Because, of course, there's a huge great division, isn't there, in Islam between Sunni and Shia.

00:30:05.020 He said, it's them, he said, it's not us.

00:30:07.840 He said, my dad came here 40 years ago, built this business, provided our family with a great living.

00:30:14.580 He said, why would I want to change anything?

00:30:17.780 He said, I love this country.

00:30:19.180 I love running this business.

00:30:21.260 I love customers like you, Peter, and everybody else.

00:30:24.540 I don't want anything to change.

00:30:27.340 But, of course, his moderate, as I would call it, version of his faith that he follows, is very, very different, I would suggest, to somebody who went to a synagogue in Manchester yesterday.

00:30:41.600 So, coming back to ways of dealing with this problem, what are your thoughts?

00:30:48.080 What can be done?

00:30:51.980 I'm not the most learned man on the planet, as I've made blatantly obvious.

00:30:58.060 I'm an ex-cop and a keen observer of life.

00:31:02.060 I think the problems are probably multiple.

00:31:06.500 How do we stop people being radicalised in this day and age of the internet?

00:31:13.720 Very, very difficult, I would suggest.

00:31:18.500 I think there's a huge responsibility on people that come to this country, or live in this country, to have concern, compassion for their fellow citizen.

00:31:32.540 Listen, if I knew that either of you were a danger, I would be on the phone within the blink of an eye, because I love my fellow citizens, and I love this nation.

00:31:49.160 If anybody has a suspicion, or they know that somebody is a danger, and they do not notify the authorities of that, then they are an enemy of this state.

00:32:03.360 But the problem is, Peter, there is a lot of people like that.

00:32:06.800 We've seen it, not just with this particular crime, but crimes going back 20, 30 years.

00:32:12.200 You look at the members of the grooming gangs, family members were covering it up, and you just go, wives, covering up for their rapist husband, daughters, sons, all the rest of it.

00:32:24.080 And you think to yourself, these are people who have no alliance.

00:32:28.760 They have no connection to this country.

00:32:31.620 Their only connection is to their clan, to put it quite frankly, or to their religion.

00:32:38.380 And you go, this is not sustainable.

00:32:41.700 And I genuinely think that unless we are prepared, and by us, I mean the political class, to have a very uncomfortable conversation about this, that's got to be the first step.

00:32:53.640 But we can't even have an uncomfortable conversation without saying, oh, we need to stop online, hey.

00:32:59.560 I'm up for the uncomfortable conversation.

00:33:01.920 I know.

00:33:02.140 I'm up for seeing people deported out of this country, and I don't care how big of the numbers are. 0.99

00:33:09.340 If they've come here illegally, they break our laws, they don't contribute, then ta-da. 0.58

00:33:17.100 I mean, give me the shackles.

00:33:18.580 I'll gladly wrap them around the ankles and the wrists and fog march them onto an aeroplane.

00:33:24.200 But the problem comes when you have people like Jihad himself.

00:33:30.260 He came to this country. 0.94

00:33:31.700 He's a British citizen.

00:33:32.960 Now, he came here as a young boy, so you can make the argument, okay, well, he could be stripped of his British citizenship.

00:33:38.760 But we know that's not going to happen.

00:33:40.360 What, are you going to send him back to Syria?

00:33:41.960 There is no way in a million years that that was going to be allowed to happen, even if he provided the level, if they knew he provided the level of threat that he did.

00:33:51.100 And he hadn't been sent to his maker by Greater Manchester Police.

00:33:55.000 Yeah.

00:33:58.320 Yeah.

00:34:00.260 It's complex.

00:34:01.520 It's very complex.

00:34:02.500 And I completely agree with you when you say it's going to require brave conversations.

00:34:10.020 I look at some parts of London these days.

00:34:15.260 And, of course, I'm old enough to remember Brixton and Notting Hill when they became centres for Afro-Caribbean communities that drew one another together and lived together.

00:34:28.580 And, of course, I policed Beckham, where there was a sizable Afro-Caribbean population. 0.92

00:34:35.280 But some of the swathes of East London and other major cities, there's talk about your Rochdale's, Oldham's and so on and so forth, where there's communities that don't look very integrated to me in any way, shape or form.

00:34:55.560 And then, is it an intractable problem?

00:35:01.200 Do we all just have to say, well, that's how it is.

00:35:04.300 Governments aren't going to do anything about it. 0.92

00:35:06.280 It's too difficult.

00:35:07.360 So we'll all just go on that slippery slope to however it might end up.

00:35:13.080 I'll tell you what I think it would end up if things are not done.

00:35:15.800 I don't think we'll have a civil war in this country because I don't believe there's that greater division, to be perfectly frank.

00:35:24.060 But I could see a holy war happening at some point down the line.

00:35:28.760 What do you mean by that?

00:35:29.500 I could see people rising up to fight against, if there became a significant amount of people that followed one particular faith that was hugely damaging and wanted to take over, like some of those clowns on social media claim they do, then I could see a huge number of people rising up to take that on, head on.

00:35:53.560 And this is the worrying thing, the fact that you actually said that.

00:35:59.980 And a few years ago, I'd be like, oh, come on, Peter, chill out, mate.

00:36:03.660 Let's keep within the realms of reality here.

00:36:08.120 But you're saying that and I'm going, well, that's not outside the realms of possibility because that's where it feels that we are.

00:36:15.760 And I don't want to see it.

00:36:17.600 Of course, I don't want to see it.

00:36:19.260 But there is so much discontent out there in a country.

00:36:26.180 Was it 2037 in the last five days?

00:36:30.060 I know that's a very visible and visceral and emotional side of the whole migration debate.

00:36:36.880 Look at the figures last week.

00:36:38.860 The UK's population increased in a year by what?

00:36:42.540 750,000.

00:36:44.440 What was that almost entirely down to?

00:36:47.700 Migration.

00:36:48.340 But see, we talk about having uncomfortable conversations, but even in this conversation, we're conflating things that I think are.

00:36:59.040 I understand why people keep talking about immigration, but I think we have to be honest.

00:37:04.480 Ukrainians are not storming synagogues with knives.

00:37:07.980 Hong Kongers are not blowing themselves up on tubes.

00:37:11.420 Polish people aren't doing jihad.

00:37:15.600 This isn't an immigration problem.

00:37:17.280 And if we were to Google terrorist attack carried out by Jewish man in Northern Europe, you wouldn't find it.

00:37:27.440 So this isn't about immigration.

00:37:29.720 And that's where I think we get into a lot of difficulty because the mainstream media is already in overdrive mode to, you know, the Emily Maitlis and John Soppel on their podcast yesterday.

00:37:44.140 They were talking about the fact that the real problem is the right wing journalists who are exploiting this tragedy.

00:37:51.080 They're unhinged.

00:37:52.080 Just move on from those two. 0.88

00:37:53.580 Well, you say that.

00:37:55.640 But I think if this was just random people on social media, I think we would move on because, you know, there's a spectrum of opinions. 1.00

00:38:02.320 Some people are stupid. 1.00

00:38:03.260 Some people are devious, frankly. 0.99

00:38:05.380 But Emily Maitlis and John Soppel are two former respected, I'm using inverted commas for people who are listening, authoritative using inverted commas, balanced inverted commas, unbiased inverted commas, stalwarts of the BBC, the national broadcaster, until like two years ago.

00:38:23.900 Right. So we are talking about the very core of the center of the mainstream media in this country.

00:38:31.240 And what they're already attempting to do is to distract people's attention away from the fact that this type of terrorism and this type of incident is coming from a very particular subset of the migrant population.

00:38:45.740 Radical Islam. 0.99

00:38:46.340 Radical Islam. And the reason they're doing this is very clear, because one of the things that you see Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, talk about this, you know, this guy was, how did she phrase it? 0.90

00:38:58.580 I don't want to get it wrong, but he is the only one responsible.

00:39:01.360 Something like this. Right.

00:39:02.700 So attempting to make this a kind of lone wolf type of situation when I we don't know exactly what's happened here.

00:39:09.400 But, you know, if you call your son jihad, it sort of feels like that might cause some problems down the line.

00:39:13.820 No. No struggle to live a virtuous life.

00:39:19.600 Well, nothing to do with holy war.

00:39:22.080 Not at all. And so I guess what I'm saying is one of the reasons that they're attempting to say that this is not that Islamism has nothing to do with Islam.

00:39:30.780 I mean, how you can say anything of that kind with a straight face is hard to understand, is that the inevitable logical conclusion of believing that Islamism has something to do with Islam is what you said, which is if you have four million people who are the overwhelming majority of whom are peaceful and law abiding and wonderful people and so on.

00:39:53.100 But if a small percentage of the Muslim community are prone to this kind of extremism, then the greater your Muslim population, the greater the absolute number of people in your country who are prone to this kind of extremism.

00:40:06.360 And the logical conclusion of that is you have to stop pretending that all immigrants are the same. 1.00

00:40:12.180 You have to stop pretending that all cultures are the same. 0.99

00:40:14.920 You have to stop pretending that all religions are the same, as you pointed out about Jewish terrorism in Europe. 0.96

00:40:20.800 It is not happening. Right.

00:40:22.100 And then, unfortunately, you have to start dealing with the reality that not everyone is the same.

00:40:27.500 And that is the greatest threat to everything that we are forced to believe, because then you have to start treating different people differently.

00:40:35.600 You have to start saying, well, according to the numbers, people who have come from this particular part of Syria are way more likely than other people to commit terrorism or rape or whatever.

00:40:45.760 And therefore, if we are going to allow people from that part of the country of the world to come, if we are going to do that at all, we have to have extra vetting. 0.89

00:40:54.540 We have to be extra thorough. We definitely have to close the bloody border, because when your border is open, you don't know who's coming in.

00:41:00.340 Right. But all of that makes our elite.

00:41:04.860 It's so uncomfortable that what they would rather do is what Francis is talking about.

00:41:09.020 When David Ames gets murdered by an Islamist, let's talk about online. 1.00

00:41:12.480 And hey, when this happens, let's talk about not looking back in anger, as they did after the Manchester Arena bombing.

00:41:19.480 And that's why you guys are talking about having an honest conversation.

00:41:23.480 The honest conversation is not all cultures are the same and not all religions are the same. 0.97

00:41:28.100 And until we recognize that, we're not going to do anything about this problem.

00:41:31.220 I guarantee you that.

00:41:33.400 I agree entirely.

00:41:35.460 Yeah, of course, not all cultures are the same and not all religions are the same.

00:41:39.780 I'm fortunate not to be burdened by religion.

00:41:42.520 I ran down my throat as a kid, but I'm not a person of faith as an adult.

00:41:47.280 And I like being deliciously unburdened.

00:41:50.680 I've got time, of course, for faith.

00:41:55.080 And so many of my friends have faith is really important to them.

00:41:59.440 So I respect it.

00:42:00.540 And I've got a bit of an obsession with religious architecture.

00:42:05.320 Go to the Milan Cathedral, if you know, and I can mention other places that I've been to.

00:42:09.820 But getting back on message, well, Sopal and Maitlis are an irrelevancy as far as I'm concerned,

00:42:18.520 because I would never listen to them.

00:42:19.980 I had the misfortune to read something of theirs once upon a time. 0.98

00:42:23.680 And they're, quite frankly, in my opinion, unhinged and such lunatic leftists that they're not worth it. 0.97

00:42:31.780 But they're the mainstream. 0.98

00:42:32.660 This is, I don't, I'm not trying to put a target on their back or get people to dislike them more than they do.

00:42:39.800 I think they do a brilliant job of that themselves.

00:42:41.880 My point about them is not individual to them.

00:42:44.620 My point about them is they are the mainstream.

00:42:48.180 They are the people who are just like you had religion rammed down your throat.

00:42:52.040 These are the people who've been rammed down our throats for the last 20 years by the neutral, unbiased BBC.

00:42:58.380 BBC, that's who is setting the narrative on this stuff.

00:43:03.520 But now they're not at the BBC.

00:43:05.960 We all have the power to go off.

00:43:09.440 That's true.

00:43:10.120 Or change the channel.

00:43:11.180 We don't have to listen to those people. 0.83

00:43:13.940 I occasionally listen to another unhinged lunatic left broadcaster just because I want to know what the enemy are thinking.

00:43:22.100 But I normally suffer it only for about 10 minutes and then I have to get a grip of myself once again and move back to sanity.

00:43:31.560 Because the big issue that's coming out of those appalling events of yesterday now is not only the protests that took part last night in Whitehall,

00:43:42.240 but the protests that are planned for tomorrow, Saturday.

00:43:47.940 It's Defend Our Juries, isn't it, in Trafalgar Square on Saturday.

00:43:52.440 And I don't know what ragtag and bobtail lot it was last night in Whitehall, but I saw many of them. 0.97

00:44:00.900 I was travelling through Westminster Tube Station and they come with these packages over their shoulders.

00:44:06.860 The poles of the banners are poking out in front of them and the sort of part of the placard is over their shoulder.

00:44:15.340 And I was tempted to go and buy some of them some soap, but anyway, moving on.

00:44:22.780 Yeah, should those... 0.97

00:44:24.000 But the language that came out from Shabana Mahmood and Robert Jenrick today was pathetic. 0.79

00:44:30.760 They were like, oh, I think Jenrick said do the decent thing and don't protest tomorrow. 0.88

00:44:38.160 And Mahmood said something else along very similar lines.

00:44:41.680 Well, if you're displaying such weakness and not being fervent and not saying,

00:44:49.220 actually, you're not having your protest tomorrow because it's inappropriate,

00:44:55.860 because we may have received some information that there might be disorder,

00:45:00.500 some intelligence, for example, and you've only got to look at last night to know that there's disorder.

00:45:05.660 Talk to last night, right?

00:45:06.980 The amount of people that met in Whitehall for that protest, which turned ugly early,

00:45:14.040 was tiny compared to the Unite the Kingdom march.

00:45:19.440 OK?

00:45:19.920 At Unite the Kingdom, correct me if I'm wrong, there were 26 arrests.

00:45:25.020 Did you see how Shabana Mahmood got up at the Labour Party conference and banged on about it?

00:45:32.400 OK?

00:45:32.740 We did.

00:45:33.120 Not only that, by the way, Peter, as I'm sure you know this,

00:45:35.220 most of the arrests were actually among the counter-protesters, too.

00:45:39.040 In Greece.

00:45:39.700 Let's just give her that one, right?

00:45:41.480 OK?

00:45:41.840 Let her have that, right?

00:45:43.300 And, of course, there were some assaults on police officers.

00:45:46.140 And let me just make it clear. 1.00

00:45:47.580 If you assault a police officer, you're an idiot, right? 1.00

00:45:51.140 If you misbehave yourself at a protest or a demonstration, you're an idiot. 1.00

00:45:55.820 And I don't want anything to do with you. 1.00

00:45:57.160 Anyway, so last night, there were 40 arrests, regrettably six police officers injured.

00:46:04.020 So, on a pro-rata basis, last night was way, way, way, almost infinitesimally worse behaved,

00:46:14.560 more dangerous than the Unite the Kingdom march ever was.

00:46:20.820 So, they can ban a march.

00:46:24.060 If they've got credible intelligence, there will be disorder.

00:46:27.420 I would say, well, last night's protest, if it's anything to go by, would give me plenty of reason to suspect there will be disorder on Saturday.

00:46:39.840 Ban it.

00:46:41.520 Stop them.

00:46:43.140 Don't have it.

00:46:43.760 I mean, how disrespectful last night and Saturday.

00:46:49.200 I mean, look, I completely agree with you.

00:46:52.120 I think her argument was is that legally that she can't.

00:46:55.340 That was her argument, which you're disputing.

00:46:58.880 Well, if the police can't gather intelligence to say that there would be significant disorder,

00:47:06.280 let's just wait and see.

00:47:08.060 I guarantee there'll be significant disorder.

00:47:10.940 So, why haven't the police got their ear close to the ground?

00:47:13.340 Why are they not gathering that intelligence?

00:47:15.580 Why are they not privy to that information?

00:47:18.400 It makes those pro-Palestine demonstrators look absolutely abhorrent.

00:47:26.440 When I saw that that was going ahead, I was genuinely shocked, Peter.

00:47:32.360 I thought, there has just been a horrific...

00:47:36.400 Were you shocked?

00:47:38.000 You don't remember October the 8th?

00:47:40.800 Yeah.

00:47:41.240 So, look, let's stop pretending.

00:47:43.560 On October the 8th, there were people who were protesting against Israel.

00:47:47.200 Before Israel had done anything.

00:47:48.600 Yeah.

00:47:49.100 They were not protesting against Israel. 0.83

00:47:51.140 They were celebrating the mass murder of Jews. 0.93

00:47:53.500 That's what they were celebrating.

00:47:54.960 Let's be honest.

00:47:55.660 So, why are you shocked?

00:47:57.180 Let's stop being shocked.

00:47:59.080 Now, I know there are some Jewish people that go on these pro-Palestinian marches.

00:48:06.160 I've heard some of them on the media talking to them and the such like.

00:48:10.540 And, of course, there are. 0.97

00:48:12.800 But I believe overwhelmingly these protests are filled with Jewish-hating people. 0.90

00:48:21.300 Absolutely convinced of it.

00:48:23.920 Because are you really going to be fervently pro-Palestine if you don't really dislike Israel?

00:48:34.300 Hmm.

00:48:36.160 There are a lot, you know, for our channel, I've gone along to a number of those protests

00:48:41.920 and I talked to people there.

00:48:43.640 And I think it's fair to say that, of course, the hardcore you're talking about definitely exists.

00:48:49.200 I also think, actually, the majority, I would say, of the people there are people who are very captured,

00:49:00.380 you might say, or very badly affected by the horrific images they're seeing from the conflict in Gaza.

00:49:07.300 This is really the first conflict, urban warfare type of situation in human history where it's been broadcast through the smartphone into people's living rooms in that way.

00:49:17.020 And a lot of the young people in particular who go along to those protests, they're not there because they hate Jews or even hate Israel.

00:49:24.800 A lot of them are just horrified by what they see and they don't have the understanding of war, urban warfare, conflict, history to contextualise it in any way.

00:49:36.500 So all they're really there to say is, I have this horrible image on my phone and it makes me feel bad.

00:49:42.540 And therefore, I feel like I'm doing something.

00:49:44.860 Have they not listened to the stated aims and the primary goal of Hamas? 0.57

00:49:50.480 No, they haven't.

00:49:52.120 Really?

00:49:52.640 No, they haven't.

00:49:53.860 So there's a clip on our channel, Peter, that I go and talk to some young people and they have a sign which says something, something socialist intifada.

00:50:06.260 They have a sign which says socialist intifada.

00:50:08.900 And I go up to them and I say, what's a socialist intifada?

00:50:11.240 And the guy goes, well, I actually don't know because I picked up the sign over there.

00:50:15.980 And I said, well, do you know what the word intifada means?

00:50:19.320 There was about five or six people in that circle.

00:50:21.680 Not one of them knew what intifada means.

00:50:24.980 They don't know anything.

00:50:26.600 It's hard to imagine they don't know anything.

00:50:29.460 So the reason I'm interjecting with this is I think it's really important for us not to dismiss the entire group of people as Jew haters or whatever,

00:50:38.060 because we have to believe that young people, look, we're all young people once.

00:50:42.880 Were you the most educated, the smartest?

00:50:44.920 No, I'm still not.

00:50:45.720 And I thank you, by the way, for putting me straight.

00:50:47.960 Well, I'm not even putting you straight.

00:50:49.980 I just think we have to believe always that young people can be persuaded with knowledge, information, maturity, time.

00:50:59.580 You know, I have lots of opinions that I've changed in the last 10 years.

00:51:03.840 Francis has.

00:51:04.680 You probably have as well.

00:51:06.280 So I don't want to dismiss all of them as that because we're going to have to win a lot of them over to the side of sanity.

00:51:12.660 And we're going to have to persuade them to look at Hamas's stated goal, to understand the history of conflict, to understand what war is like generally and why you ought not to start wars that you then end up losing, why you shouldn't use human shields, why you shouldn't take hostages, you know, all of this stuff.

00:51:30.240 When you educate yourself about things, it gives you a different perspective.

00:51:34.220 And we are going to need those young people to open their minds.

00:51:37.640 If we just dismiss them as haters now, I think it's a bad part to go.

00:51:40.860 And it's also as well, look, we know that when you're young, your friends are the most important thing to you at that time.

00:51:48.900 And if all of your mates are pro-Palestine and talking about a genocide, and it's not just, by the way, I was in a cab on the way here to the studio.

00:51:59.640 James O'Brien was using the word openly, genocide, several times over a four minute period on LBC, which goes out to 1.4 million people just in London.

00:52:10.200 And that's just one person.

00:52:12.520 Think how often it's been repeated, not just in the mainstream, but on social media.

00:52:16.680 So these people think that there is this genocide happening.

00:52:21.020 So to them, it's the morally right thing to do.

00:52:25.020 And I just think that we just we all need better messaging and we all need to be able to connect and go across the threshold and actually be able to persuade these people.

00:52:37.220 This path that you're going down is not a good one.

00:52:41.300 It's not a good one.

00:52:42.260 And it's going to lead to something very, very ugly, which is what we saw yesterday.

00:52:48.780 Indeed.

00:52:49.260 Indeed.

00:52:51.020 Well, Peter, we have lots of questions, I think, suspect for all of us coming in.

00:52:55.260 If people are watching, if you'd like to submit a question, of course, our Substack supporters, you have First Dibs. 0.57

00:53:00.440 We've got a bunch of your questions that we'll read out in a moment.

00:53:03.380 In the meantime, do, if you want to send in a super chat, we'll try and get a few of those in as well.

00:53:08.300 We're going to go to an ad break if we're ready.

00:53:11.480 And then when we come back, we will look at all your questions, put them to Peter.

00:53:15.300 We'll discuss them among each other and continue the conversation.

00:53:20.820 We are that close to a situation where you basically need a digital ID to go online.

00:53:25.380 The right to work is the first one. 0.70

00:53:27.980 Then the right to rent, banking, education, childcare, voting.

00:53:33.880 Five billion was wasted last time this country tried to introduce digital IDs.

00:53:38.560 That's about 50 times the amount of the border security command.

00:53:42.020 Very, very clearly, this isn't about immigration.

00:53:45.300 The Starmer government has just introduced mass bank spying powers on the premise of rooting out welfare fraud.

00:53:51.660 The Home Office right now is supporting essentially an expansion of live facial recognition across multiple police forces.

00:53:58.880 The time to really put up a fight is now.

00:54:01.080 Relax, relax, this is not an ad.

00:54:11.100 I just wanted to let you know that you can watch this video without any advertising at all.

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00:56:56.620 You, the trigonometry audience, understand how vital free speech is.

00:57:01.920 That's why we're proud to reintroduce you to our long-standing partners, Give, Send, Go.

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00:58:00.880 The platform that doesn't just talk about free speech, it protects it.

00:58:05.360 All right.

00:58:05.980 Welcome back.

00:58:06.900 Thank you for sending in your questions.

00:58:08.720 Keep sending them in, particularly in the super chats.

00:58:10.920 We will be able to get to those as we go.

00:58:13.580 We've got a bunch of questions from our substack first, though.

00:58:15.960 Francis, go ahead.

00:58:17.420 J.S. Powell asks a great question, which is, Starmer's response to this attack seems woefully inadequate.

00:58:23.900 What would be the right response and associated actions thereafter?

00:58:28.920 I think Starmer gets blown by whatever political wind is blowing on any given day, to be perfectly honest with you.

00:58:35.880 It was a very predictable photo opportunity of going up there with his wife, but I could imagine why his wife would want to go there.

00:58:43.920 She is of Jewish heritage.

00:58:45.760 So that, I think, is understandable.

00:58:51.220 I think I would be saying, if I was the leader of the country, which, of course, I'll never be, saying to the police, give me the intelligence that says there's going to be disorder at the protest on Saturday, then we can stop it.

00:59:06.560 This is from Helen, who says, what legal consequences should and will there be for the imams of the four British mosques recently shown on videos encouraging their followers to kill Jews?

00:59:18.140 I'm not aware of this.

00:59:19.300 I don't know if this is.

00:59:19.940 I haven't seen it.

00:59:21.080 Yeah.

00:59:21.260 But if that is happening, is that a crime?

00:59:25.520 Yes, of course it is.

00:59:26.340 It's a crime to call upon people to kill another person.

00:59:29.600 It's very much a crime.

00:59:31.880 If there is such footage, please send it to the police.

00:59:37.260 I beg of you, send it to the police so that they can deal with it appropriately.

00:59:42.140 You say that, Peter, and I'm sure that's the right thing to do.

00:59:45.060 I'm just remembering only a week ago there was a trial for a man who wielded a knife and attempted to stab someone who was burning a Koran.

00:59:56.420 He got off without a custodial sentence.

00:59:59.540 Yes, he was convicted of crimes connected to that event, but he didn't receive a custodial sentence.

01:00:05.880 I think the whole different issue now of activist judges within the UK is something that very much needs to be looked at.

01:00:16.280 And we are, fortunately, having people that are exposing the background of many of our judges, particularly those who sit on immigration tribunals, for example, and make decisions relating to deportation.

01:00:31.580 We're seeing so many of those who have previously been attached to either chambers, barristers' chambers, that did human rights work.

01:00:43.440 So you would imagine there could be a bias there, or people that have judges who are now judges who have worked for refugee charities, for example.

01:00:52.100 Then how on earth could you expect anybody to give an impartial and unbalanced judgment when sitting presiding over such cases?

01:01:03.700 They need exposing.

01:01:05.480 And, you know, it's interesting.

01:01:06.300 I was talking to a judge some time ago, basically talking, and he was saying, look, I don't say this publicly, but our profession has been captured.

01:01:15.020 There you go.

01:01:16.360 There you go.

01:01:16.920 Nailbunny asks, are the police prepared for what may be coming?

01:01:23.560 Do we need the military involved?

01:01:26.020 There's been many an occasion when I've thought, should we get the military involved?

01:01:30.280 I mean, what does that mean?

01:01:31.720 What does that mean to get the military involved?

01:01:33.420 Because most people wouldn't ask that.

01:01:35.220 Well, look, I was not in Egypt.

01:01:36.880 I was in Uzbekistan a couple of months ago, right?

01:01:39.400 Outside of every mosque, because they used to have a problem with Islamic terrorism.

01:01:42.840 They don't anymore because they dealt with it.

01:01:44.700 There's a couple of guys with AK-47s.

01:01:46.920 And if there was a guy with an AK-47 outside of that synagogue yesterday, this jihad guy gets sorted without any casualties, right? 0.93

01:01:56.660 Possibly.

01:01:57.200 You don't know.

01:01:58.020 You've got to remember, more like the attacker has the element of surprise.

01:02:01.660 Okay.

01:02:01.900 So I wouldn't want to downplay any potentially heroic efforts made by the security guard yesterday and the suchlike.

01:02:10.060 That's the trouble.

01:02:11.340 The attacker's got that element of surprise.

01:02:13.560 But that's the point of when we say about getting the army involved.

01:02:18.320 You want to equalize that element of surprise with superior force, don't you?

01:02:23.040 Yeah.

01:02:23.340 But our army, of course, are not particularly trained to carry firearms and behave like a civilian police.

01:02:31.880 They are, of course, the army.

01:02:33.940 So it would be a huge, possibly, admission on behalf of the police that they've failed, I think, first and foremost.

01:02:42.680 They would see that like that and they would argue very strongly against it.

01:02:47.020 I'm just putting myself...

01:02:48.060 Look, having praised the police as the very outset of this interview, I sort of think the egos of police constables and chiefs don't matter as much as the safety of people in this incident.

01:02:57.960 And I echo those words entirely.

01:03:01.420 Funnily enough, you've said about the judiciary being captured.

01:03:04.900 Right.

01:03:05.500 Ditto senior police.

01:03:07.320 Right.

01:03:07.740 Mm-hmm.

01:03:08.660 Right.

01:03:10.000 Go for it.

01:03:11.120 Rob says,

01:03:12.080 Do you feel the only way to protect our Jewish community is to change our feeble government, sack the duplicitous mayor of London, and root out the culture of appeasement amongst senior police officers? 0.97

01:03:24.540 Well, I'm no fan of Sir Sadiq Khan.

01:03:30.100 Sticks in the back of my throat that I have to call him a sir.

01:03:33.180 But anyway, I'm really not a fan.

01:03:36.120 Sack the government.

01:03:37.020 I'm afraid the Jewish community is going to have to do more of protecting itself through the Community Safety Trust, which has had some government funding to do that.

01:03:46.940 They're going to have to do more of it.

01:03:48.640 And do you know what?

01:03:49.320 They are not alone.

01:03:50.960 There are now leafy suburbs and nice parts of the home counties where private security companies are patrolling the streets, paid for by residents, protecting them because the police can't do it.

01:04:06.040 We are on this inexorable slide towards all having to pay other people to protect ourselves because the police can't do it and because division, divisiveness and hatred is so prevalent in our society.

01:04:23.580 Peter, can I ask you something?

01:04:24.920 This is along the lines of something Katie's asked on Substack, but I want to expand her question a little bit.

01:04:29.600 And it's something I genuinely don't know what the answer is.

01:04:32.060 I'm just thinking out loud.

01:04:33.340 We have seen case after case after case where there have been various failings, whether that's at the level of immigration.

01:04:40.560 I remember, I think the guy's name was Abdul Yazidi, who threw acid on a woman.

01:04:45.660 And he, I think, if I remember correctly, in his instance, he was given asylum based on fake claims that he was a persecuted Christian when it was blatantly not true.

01:04:55.520 I don't understand the legal system well.

01:04:57.780 I'm sure you understand it better.

01:04:59.440 Is there ever any room for repercussions for people who make these terrible decisions, for them to be held to account?

01:05:05.920 No.

01:05:06.460 Should there be?

01:05:07.660 None whatsoever.

01:05:09.000 They are utterly intouchable in that regard.

01:05:13.100 Should there be?

01:05:14.020 It is, of course, not the criminal law we're talking about here.

01:05:18.240 It's the whole immigration process, which, interestingly enough, of course, Shibana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, only this week said the Home Office is not fit for purpose in many regards.

01:05:31.180 Because this all needs gripping, the whole Home Office, the immigration department, the borders, it all needs gripping because it is simply becoming the number one issue on the doorstep, as political campaigners tell me.

01:05:51.140 They say when they're leafleting, when they're knocking on doors, people are saying immigration.

01:05:56.100 And then, secondly, when they say, and who are you voting for, people increasingly and increasingly and increasingly are saying reform.

01:06:06.980 I guess what I'm asking is, again, I'm just thinking out loud, this may be totally wrong and un-British or illiberal, or I don't know what the words are.

01:06:14.880 But if you're an activist judge, or if you're a Home Office employee who's rubber stamping these people and letting people through without proper checks, you're letting people off, having committed crimes that then go on to re-offend.

01:06:30.320 If there are no sanctions for that and you are an activist, well, you'd carry on, wouldn't you?

01:06:37.000 Right?

01:06:37.380 Wouldn't you just.

01:06:38.120 Wouldn't you?

01:06:38.500 So, presumably, I think that ought to be looked at.

01:06:41.620 Are there some repercussions to be had for people who are negligent in their duties?

01:06:45.940 I mean, if you were guarding a military base, right, and you just waved people in who don't have the right past, presumably you'd be punished for that in some way.

01:06:54.020 Well, look at Palestine Action, who got into a military base very, very reasonably. 0.94

01:06:57.820 Should have been shot.

01:06:58.520 And who that protest tomorrow, I believe, is in support of. 0.99

01:07:02.660 Right. 1.00

01:07:02.900 So, we're going to have more idiots with their, I have to pull, I have to pull, I have to pull in action banners, getting arrested, the clowns, thereby draining police resources away from dealing with crime anyway, preventing crime, and protecting the Jewish places of worship. 1.00

01:07:20.280 And, of course, you know what's going to be protected this weekend? 1.00

01:07:24.540 Mosques are going to be protected.

01:07:25.840 The police will have additional patrols around mosques, because they'll be thinking, once the full background of jihad, I'll say that again, jihad al-Shammi is revealed, and his devout Muslim beliefs become public knowledge. 0.87

01:07:44.740 I'm guessing that's what will happen, all right?

01:07:46.480 We don't know yet.

01:07:48.000 Then, of course, they'll be thinking, oh, will there be retaliatory attacks on mosques?

01:07:52.320 Not by Jewish people, everyone. 1.00

01:07:53.760 Well, I really very much hope that churches are also protected this weekend, because I don't think Jews are the only group of people who are targeted by Islamic terrorism. 0.96

01:08:02.120 I mean, we know from their very statements they consider Christians and Jews infidels in the same way, and would happily kill them both. 1.00

01:08:08.600 So, I hope our Christian friends are also kept safe this weekend. 0.92

01:08:11.040 As was dreadfully exhibited at an Arianna Grande concert on London Underground trains and elsewhere.

01:08:20.040 They don't care. 0.98

01:08:21.160 If you're the infidel, you're the infidel, and you need to be blown to smithereens, according to their perverse, vile thinking.

01:08:31.060 And on that subject, Mickey says, does Peter believe there are very likely to be further attacks of this type in the near future?

01:08:37.200 And would it lead to this pitiful government taking serious action to stop illegal immigration?

01:08:41.380 Answer to the first question, sadly, regrettably, yes, I think there will be further attacks.

01:08:48.900 This government getting a grip on immigration?

01:08:51.500 For the birds, sadly, no.

01:08:53.600 Yeah, it's, you know, it's so, it's so, so worrying that when you saw yesterday's attack, one of the emotions that I went, had, I was just, actually, I'm surprised it took this long.

01:09:12.500 That's one of the, it's not an emotion, that was a genuine thought that went through my head.

01:09:16.140 And I went, I'm surprised it took this long.

01:09:18.660 Yeah.

01:09:21.020 Yes, I can see entirely why you feel like that.

01:09:25.160 We live in an increasingly dangerous nation.

01:09:28.600 We really do.

01:09:29.260 This is a question from Sammy T40, who says, every Jew in the entire world knew something terrible would happen on Yom Kippur.

01:09:36.940 It's sad, but it's true. 1.00

01:09:38.560 We were all on eggshells waiting for something to happen because our leaders throughout the world do nothing, all talk and just say stupid things and forget about it. 1.00

01:09:47.680 I agree. 1.00

01:09:48.360 That is very sad indeed.

01:09:51.640 Marco asks a great question.

01:09:53.400 He says, hi team, any practical solutions to issues discussed?

01:09:56.900 To issues discussed?

01:09:58.040 As plain and practical, as plain and practical as possible, step by step.

01:10:02.320 Thank you all.

01:10:03.020 I've got loads.

01:10:04.240 Okay, let's crack on.

01:10:05.220 Let's do it.

01:10:05.880 Right.

01:10:06.660 The very, very sad reality of life in Britain is that we have to protect ourselves.

01:10:14.740 Okay, we've got to protect ourselves, not only from the potential of a terrorist attack, but from criminals.

01:10:21.700 So what do we do?

01:10:23.120 If you own your own home, protect that home.

01:10:27.280 And I'm talking burglar alarm, state of the art CCTV system.

01:10:33.100 I could go on and on about what you grow in your garden.

01:10:35.580 And if you've got a garden and such like, which stuff that burglars and intruders and other people don't like.

01:10:41.660 Do the obvious.

01:10:42.860 Don't leave things in the back garden like shovels and forks and all of that, which burglars can sell with.

01:10:47.700 And you can find lots of that crime prevention advice online.

01:10:51.520 When you go out onto the street, don't wear headphones.

01:10:57.680 It's utter lunacy.

01:11:00.740 And I know people do.

01:11:03.080 You know about the element of surprise that I was talking about with a terrorist attack.

01:11:06.720 If you've got your headphones on, in all likelihood, you can't hear and you won't be focusing on the world around you.

01:11:15.780 You are giving the terrorist an even greater head start.

01:11:19.920 In all likelihood, you might be killed or seriously injured before you even realize anything's going on.

01:11:26.820 Whereas, if when you travel, when you walk, when you are out and about, when you're driving, use these senses that are given to us.

01:11:36.940 Don't shut them off.

01:11:39.200 And even on a very basic level, if you're on a train and you can't hear the train announcement, that again could be something really, it could mean life or death.

01:11:47.920 Listen to the podcast when you get home.

01:11:50.240 Listen to the new album when you get home.

01:11:53.320 Listen, you need these, you need those, and you might well need these, and to be on your dances in an emergency.

01:12:01.400 And I think those are great points.

01:12:03.740 But I think what Marco was really driving at is what practical solutions does this government, let's say we had a brilliant government.

01:12:11.740 Okay, let's just play that little thought experiment.

01:12:14.300 Yeah.

01:12:15.620 What policies do they need to do in order to really get a grip of this, with this problem?

01:12:21.240 Out of the Muslim Brotherhood, make it a prescribed organization. 1.00

01:12:25.560 Correct.

01:12:26.520 Yeah, that's a day one thing.

01:12:28.880 People won't understand what the Muslim Brotherhood is, Peter.

01:12:31.620 Can you just explain that to the people who don't know?

01:12:34.580 Well, Constance didn't know far better than I the full history of it, but it's basically a very dangerous organization,

01:12:41.780 which essentially, from my standpoint and from what I've seen, spreads a lot of bad stuff into a lot of decent places and therefore needs to be stopped.

01:12:55.400 By the way, the Muslim Brotherhood, this is one of the great ironies that I've talked about often, 1.00

01:12:59.160 is Muslim countries are much better at dealing with Islamist extremism than we are. 0.75

01:13:03.860 The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned across the Muslim world for decades now in modern countries

01:13:09.480 because they don't pretend it's Islamophobic to be concerned about Islamic terrorism.

01:13:16.880 They know that these people are extremists and they don't pretend they aren't and they deal with them.

01:13:22.660 We obviously, we banned Hizb ut-Tahrir like last year.

01:13:25.960 Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned in the entire Muslim world for like 20 years.

01:13:29.120 This is the shocking irony of this.

01:13:33.420 We are more permissive towards Islamist terrorism than Muslims are. 1.00

01:13:38.980 Yeah. 0.96

01:13:39.300 It's unbelievable.

01:13:40.740 I hear stories and I'm afraid I can't disclose my source, but people from the Middle East that speaks to somebody I know very well,

01:13:50.300 and they say, why do you let all this dross in here? 0.96

01:13:53.520 We wouldn't have it in our country.

01:13:55.140 We don't have it in our country.

01:13:56.440 We don't allow them anywhere near us, and yet you have them flooding in.

01:14:01.540 Well, there we go.

01:14:02.800 Peter, thanks for coming on.

01:14:04.340 Obviously, it was a tragic day yesterday.

01:14:07.740 We all hope this is the last one of these we have to deal with.

01:14:10.960 Sadly, I think a lot of people are concerned it's not.

01:14:14.360 It won't be.

01:14:15.040 I send nothing but thoughts and best wishes to everybody affected by it, for what that's worth.

01:14:22.840 I was having lunch with a great mate of mine who happens to be Jewish on Wednesday.

01:14:29.560 And, of course, one of the great things about having friends from other faiths and people of faith, you get to learn so much about their faith.

01:14:38.840 And, of course, he was saying, yeah, it's Yom Kippur tomorrow.

01:14:41.480 I said, tell me all about it.

01:14:42.520 You know, what do you do?

01:14:43.480 What's the point of him?

01:14:44.420 Why?

01:14:44.880 You know, all of that.

01:14:46.720 So I then see that horror unfolding so early on that day. 0.95

01:14:50.120 And, of course, the murderous bastard knew it was Yom Kippur and planned it for Yom Kippur because in the way that many people might be Christian but don't go to church, so many of them do on Christmas Day, don't they? 0.85

01:15:07.040 And it's kind of, and if it sounds clunky, it's not meant to be an insult anyway, but it's kind of that sort of equivalent. 0.97

01:15:14.080 And Jews who don't go to the synagogue very regularly will go on Yom Kippur, which is why they get vast numbers, same as, like, Church of England churches get packed on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning.

01:15:26.580 You know, it's that kind of thing.

01:15:28.720 So Jihad al-Shamie knew exactly what he was doing. 0.74

01:15:32.320 He plotted it.

01:15:33.300 He planned it.

01:15:34.340 He chose the date.

01:15:35.680 I bet he'd sussed out that location.

01:15:37.580 And, yeah, sadly, we'll have to wait till the next time.

01:15:46.000 Peter Bilexi, thanks for being here.

01:15:47.540 Thank you for watching and we'll see you soon.

01:15:50.400 Your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival line-up is here on September 11th through 13th at Arendale Park.

01:15:57.320 Three nights, five shows, huge laughs.

01:16:00.460 September 11th through 13th.

01:16:02.120 Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

TRIGGERnometry - October 03, 2025

LIVE Reaction to Manchester Terror Attack - Ex-Police Detective, Peter Bleksley

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