TRIGGERnometry - Robert Jenrick - ＂I Joined Reform To Save The Country＂

00:00:00.000 The political economy of the last 20-35 years is broken.

00:00:08.640 A lot of people in reform have seen more and more Conservatives defect and going,

00:00:13.920 hang on a minute, aren't we just creating the Conservative Party 2.0? This is not what we want.

00:00:19.440 The country's in a real mess. Wages have stagnated for 20 years.

00:00:24.480 You've got 93% of crimes go unresolved. Our armed forces are smaller size they've been since

00:00:30.480 Napoleonic times. You can't get people on the housing ladder now. Issue after issue after issue,

00:00:36.320 things are very bad. What is going to be your role in a strong team?

00:00:41.040 Well, I don't know. Oh, come on.

00:00:44.960 What are you telling me? You left the Conservative Party with no promise of a job.

00:00:49.360 What really? Come on.

00:00:50.400 Um, there's going to be people watching and listening to this going, hang on a minute,

00:00:54.880 mate. You were part of the Conservative government when a lot of these disastrous

00:01:00.720 policies were implemented. Fess up, you need to take some responsibility for it as well.

00:01:04.720 Well, I do.

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00:01:53.200 Robert Jenrick, I was going to say latest defector from the Tories to the Conservatives,

00:01:57.920 but by the time this will go out, it won't be true anymore.

00:02:00.320 They wait months for a defection and then three come along at once.

00:02:05.840 Three come along at once. Well, welcome. We want to talk to you, obviously, about the political situation,

00:02:10.240 the Conservative Party, what our country has done to itself over time and, you know, including time

00:02:16.080 when you were in government. But before that, when we have politicians on, we always feel like

00:02:21.760 it's good to get to know a little bit about the person and who they actually are. So what is your story?

00:02:27.360 Well, firstly, thank you both for having me on. I've been a long-term fan and so it's good to

00:02:32.240 finally be here. I grew up in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands to two parents who were

00:02:39.200 from working class backgrounds in Manchester and Liverpool. Moved to the West Midlands when my mum

00:02:43.680 became a secretary there and my dad to work in an old-fashioned kind of Victorian era foundry there

00:02:52.000 called Cannon Industries that had made the cannons for Wellington's army back in the day. And then

00:02:59.200 both of them decided to set up their own small business in the black country, making stoves. And

00:03:06.480 my dad, before he did that, trained as a gas fitter, started our business outside our house in a white van

00:03:14.000 parked on the drive. And so it was in a very kind of a very loving, pretty traditional patriotic family

00:03:22.560 country where they gave me an incredible start to life. And they weren't natural conservatives and

00:03:28.560 neither of them voted conservative in my childhood, or at least not as far as I'm aware. My dad certainly

00:03:33.600 didn't. He came from a Labour voting household with roots in the trade unions in Manchester.

00:03:42.560 But they instilled in me without question the values that I ended up driving me into politics

00:03:49.200 later on of hard work, small business, love of country, belief in family as the

00:03:56.240 ultimate institution and foundation of everything that matters in life. And above all, they gave me

00:04:01.920 and my sister a great, a great start in life, which then propelled us on to other things.

00:04:06.800 And what about you? What did you do before you got into politics?

00:04:11.040 Well, I went first after university. My sister and I were the first people in our family to go to

00:04:16.640 university. Both my parents left school at 16. But I went to university in Cambridge

00:04:23.600 and then qualified as a lawyer, practiced as a lawyer in London and elsewhere in the world.

00:04:30.320 And then shortly in business for being elected to parliament. And I was elected 11 years ago

00:04:37.520 in a by-election against Nigel Farage and UKIP, would you believe it?

00:04:41.120 And, you know, been lucky enough to be elected five times for a small town in North Nottinghamshire,

00:04:48.080 actually very similar to where I grew up in Wolverhampton, a working class town really,

00:04:53.680 in the Midlands, the Northern Midlands, which has grounded me enormously in everything that I've

00:04:59.440 campaigned for, particularly in recent years. I feel like I see the world through the eyes of my

00:05:04.800 constituents. And it's been an incredible privilege to be their member of parliament.

00:05:10.320 At the last general election, all the polls, those MRP polls and so on, said that I was going to lose.

00:05:14.880 But fortunately, they stuck with me. And the support they gave me then has propelled me on really.

00:05:22.160 And a lot of the decisions that I've made in recent years have been because I felt that was the

00:05:29.200 right thing to do for them. Or what would they want their member of parliament to do? You know,

00:05:33.920 let that come on to talk about some of those debates on immigration or living standards,

00:05:38.400 or now this decision to leave the Conservative Party after all these years and to go to reform.

00:05:45.280 That is very grounded in the world that I grew up in, in Wolverhampton, where my parents still live in,

00:05:51.760 I guess would be patronisingly called provincial Britain, and the people I represent now. That is what I'm

00:05:58.400 in politics for. And those are the people I want to try to represent.

00:06:01.680 One of the interesting things you said when you were talking about your parents, and it's a bit

00:06:05.280 of an aside, but I think it's worth exploring. You know, by all counts, your parents haven't

00:06:10.160 disowned you for becoming a Conservative and now a Reform MP. And I think it speaks to something very

00:06:16.320 odd, which has happened in all of our lifetimes where, you know, I don't think of myself as someone on

00:06:22.720 the right. Because pretty much everything that I believe didn't used to be a right-wing valley,

00:06:29.200 it just used to be common sense that everyone thought, you love your country, right? The idea

00:06:35.280 that being left-wing is about hating the West or hating our civilisation didn't exist. The idea that

00:06:40.880 being left-wing means you support open borders didn't exist, right? There were arguments about

00:06:45.360 economics, but everyone recognised countries need borders. Everyone recognised you can't change your

00:06:51.280 sex by uttering words, all of this stuff. So I think your parents never voting for right-wing parties,

00:06:59.840 and yet you being representing those same values as first a Conservative MP and now a Reform MP,

00:07:05.440 that speaks to something very foundational that's happened in our country and the West at large,

00:07:11.520 doesn't it? Yes, I think you're right. I mean, they both grew up in the immediate aftermath of the

00:07:18.320 Second World War and in what today I suppose would be called patriotic working-class communities in

00:07:26.560 inner city Manchester and Liverpool. And the values that were instilled in them by their parents,

00:07:35.520 you know, as you say, love of country, family, hard work, are exactly the ones they instilled in me when

00:07:44.080 they were bringing me up in the 1980s and 90s. And although that world was in itself actually very

00:07:48.720 different, I mean, their lives, they'd watched essentially the de-industrialisation of the

00:07:52.560 country, the kind of businesses that they'd gone into, and my dad as an apprentice, were all going as

00:08:00.080 a result of trade unions and poor management and the de-industrialisation that we saw in that period.

00:08:05.440 But the values seemed pretty constant. And the sorts of things that I have spoken about in recent

00:08:13.920 years, which are now labelled by some as being on the right, or even worse sometimes, you know,

00:08:20.480 people say that they're far right or extreme views, you know, which is complete nonsense, obviously,

00:08:27.120 were just things that people took for granted, that a country has to have borders,

00:08:33.280 that you should have a sensible immigration policy, so you don't undercut the wages of

00:08:38.880 British workers or put pressure on housing, that you've got to try and keep regulation low,

00:08:45.600 so that people can set up small businesses like theirs. I mean, these are just, you know,

00:08:49.440 these were normal views, and represented, as I think they still do today, the common ground

00:08:56.240 of British politics, which is why I always found these debates in politics completely puzzling,

00:09:01.680 where people would be saying, well, you can't take the Conservative Party to the right, or...

00:09:06.560 It's not, it's not. It's just grounding it in the views of most people in this country.

00:09:11.280 But a lot of our political and media elites have become totally detached from the views of

00:09:19.200 the people that I grew up around, that I represent now, and I believe represent,

00:09:24.880 not just the silent majority, but the vast majority of people in this country.

00:09:29.360 And you spoke about coming to power, well, coming to power, getting elected in 2015. If you look at

00:09:36.000 2015, that was a different world. That was pre-Brexit, pre-Brexit Party, pre-reform. I mean,

00:09:44.080 your entire political career has been in the midst of a political revolution, hasn't it?

00:09:48.480 It has. A huge amount has happened. I mean, I've been elected five times. There's been a referendum.

00:09:54.960 I ended up serving in the government of five different prime ministers.

00:09:59.120 I mean, you'd have to be, you know, Ken Clarke, or Michael Heseltine, or one of these figures who'd

00:10:04.880 been in politics for 40 or 50 years to have had that career a generation before. But also politics

00:10:11.840 has just changed a huge amount. I mean, the issues in politics have changed, or at least

00:10:16.720 have sharpened enormously during that period. The kind of politics of Britain when I first went

00:10:23.760 into parliament is so different to the ones today. I mean, when you look back with hindsight,

00:10:29.840 I think it's possible to say that all of the roots of our current problems actually can be seen

00:10:34.960 in that period. And I now really have come to view the whole period from 1997 to the present day as one

00:10:44.560 continuum and a period when a huge set of mistakes were made by our politicians, which have now kind

00:10:52.240 of come together in the last few years, like a confluence of wildfires where they're feeding off

00:10:58.400 each other and creating more and more challenges for the country. But it didn't quite feel like that

00:11:03.680 when I was first elected. I think it was possible to believe that the state basically worked,

00:11:09.920 that things weren't going in a completely wrong direction. But over time, it became very apparent

00:11:17.920 to me, particularly in the last five years or so, that the country's in a real mess, that it really is

00:11:25.600 going in the wrong direction, and that the people that I want to represent in politics are finding life

00:11:31.520 very, very difficult and have basically been let down by an entire generation of politicians

00:11:38.640 who made bad calls on the most important issues facing the country. And in some cases have lied to

00:11:46.320 them, you know, pursued policies which were precisely the opposite of what they were setting out to do.

00:11:52.880 And that leads us to the debate that we're really having in the last week or two, is Britain broken?

00:11:57.760 Which may seem like a simplistic way of discussing it, but I do believe that is now at the absolute

00:12:03.920 heart of our politics. Do you believe that the country is in a mess, is in a moment of real peril,

00:12:10.240 and is at risk of slipping away and requires completely radical change? The end of that whole

00:12:19.920 20- or 30-year political consensus, and the building of something new? Or do you think that

00:12:26.400 it's not nearly as difficult and challenging as that, and you can muddle along with the same old

00:12:31.520 solutions? But that does strike me as the big debate now, and it's not necessarily a left or right debate.

00:12:37.600 There are people in all of our political parties who can slot into those different camps, both in their views

00:12:43.600 and their natural inclination and character. I would argue reform is the one party which,

00:12:54.160 to a man and a woman, recognizes that the country is in real peril and has to change.

00:12:59.680 Whilst the other parties are terribly conflicted on that, and you have people, including their leaders

00:13:04.960 generally, are saying that no, it's not as bad as that. And that's the big divide, the big question,

00:13:09.760 on which side of you are you on that debate? I know which side I'm on. I've come to that view

00:13:14.560 gradually, but then very suddenly and firmly. And how have you come to that view, Robert? Because

00:13:20.000 there's going to be people watching and listening to this going, hang on a minute, mate. You were

00:13:24.560 part of the Conservative government when a lot of these disastrous policies were implemented.

00:13:31.280 This is the reason that we're here. Fess up. You need to take some responsibility for it as well.

00:13:36.400 Well, I do, actually. I mean, I've probably been, when I was in the Conservative Party,

00:13:42.000 I was probably the most frank and honest about the mistakes that it made. The day after the general

00:13:49.120 election, I wrote an article saying that that government completely failed the country on

00:13:53.680 immigration, on public services, on tax. And I've fought since then a public and private

00:14:01.200 argument to persuade the Gazeta Party to be as honest as possible as the foundation for changing

00:14:07.280 and rebuilding trust with the public. My own journey, I'd like to think is a journey that most

00:14:16.320 people in the country have actually been on. It's easy to decry it and say, well, you know,

00:14:22.640 I don't know, like Ken Clarke, you should have exactly the same views you had

00:14:25.600 when you were a child. You know, you should be set in aspic. Well, I don't think that's,

00:14:31.280 but first of all, that isn't normal. That's not how most people think. And I don't think that's

00:14:35.280 what's happened in the country over the last 20 years. Most people have gradually come to the same

00:14:40.640 conclusions that I have. Let me just start to ask you something more specific, because I remember

00:14:45.360 a while ago, we've been talking about having you on the show for a while. Somebody said to us,

00:14:49.200 you've got to have generic on because he is a true convert. And what they meant was they said

00:14:54.320 that you went into the immigration department fairly, you know, soft and kind of gentle on

00:15:00.800 things. And by the time you'd come out, you were pretty hard line because of what you saw and

00:15:05.360 experience. Is that a fair characterization? Yes and no. I mean, I think the, my, the,

00:15:09.840 the roots go back deeper than that, actually. Um, in, in most of the government departments that I

00:15:16.320 served in, I ultimately came to the conclusion that the state was failing and one experience

00:15:24.560 compounded the other. So when I was housing secretary, I went in and wanted to build more

00:15:31.280 homes, wanted to get the country building again, generally, because it's not just homes, it's roads,

00:15:35.280 railways, it's data centers, factories, you name it. And found that almost nothing can get built

00:15:42.480 in this country. We're letting down generation after generation of young people because they can't

00:15:47.040 get on the housing ladder. There were campaign groups that were making almost impossible to

00:15:53.040 achieve our objectives, often using, you know, spurious regulations like neutral neutrality to

00:15:57.760 prevent a hundred thousand homes being built and members of parliament putting small minorities above

00:16:04.560 the obvious long-term interests of their constituents, let alone the national interest. And

00:16:09.760 ultimately a prime minister in a government that was not willing to do what was necessary. So they

00:16:14.880 frustrated the ambition to, to build more homes, to radically improve the planning system.

00:16:20.960 Then during COVID, I saw the state kind of in all its pomp, trying to be as overbearing as possible,

00:16:29.760 yet very powerless, you know, with one or two exceptions, you know, the vaccine program,

00:16:35.360 whatever people reached to, by and large, most of the things that tried to do were failures.

00:16:40.400 You know, whole government departments were on the verge of collapse, programs were failing,

00:16:44.880 billions of pounds was being wasted. It was, the state was unable to respond to a moment of

00:16:51.280 national crisis. And, but you are right to say the Home Office was the most stark and impactful of all of

00:16:59.120 those experiences because I walked into a department, which I didn't have experience of previously.

00:17:05.520 I'd never been there and I hadn't probably thought as deeply as some people had about immigration.

00:17:12.240 And it was a complete bin fire. You know, the, the, the department, by which I really mean the

00:17:18.240 state was enabled to do the most basic functions you'd expect, keeping the public safe, securing our

00:17:24.560 borders. You had thousands of people coming across on small boats, billions of pounds being wasted,

00:17:30.480 hotels being booked, you know, left, right, and center in towns and cities across the country.

00:17:37.840 You had no data or understanding really of what was happening. Every day, some new crisis would

00:17:44.720 happen that, you know, there'd be an outbreak of infectious diseases at Manstem camp where people

00:17:51.280 were being brought immediately upon arrival. You'd have appalling crimes occurring. I remember the

00:17:56.080 day when I discovered that a veteran in Bournemouth had been murdered by an illegal migrant who'd come

00:18:02.480 into the country posing as a child, been given into the care of foster parents, and then in a school,

00:18:08.640 and then had gone on to kill someone. And I did what I don't think my predecessors did do,

00:18:15.440 or not so much, which was actually to go and meet the people who were the victims,

00:18:20.560 who were on the front line. So I went to the council estate on the top of the cliffs in Dover,

00:18:26.320 where the residents had, when the boats were in those days still arriving on the beaches rather than

00:18:31.120 the appalling taxi service that we've created now. The illegal migrants were getting out of the boats,

00:18:37.360 clambering up, and were often being found in the gardens or even, you know, in the homes of people

00:18:43.760 because they were looking for food or drink or money or whatever, and listened to their experiences.

00:18:50.080 Or I actually went to the hotels to see what it was like for the people living in Stoke or Peterborough,

00:18:56.160 next to the hotels, whose lives were being turned upside down. And it was easy for the Home Office to

00:19:00.960 say, well, it's some, you know, run-down Victorian station hotel that no one cares about. Well,

00:19:07.600 actually, it's opposite the station by the statue of Josiah Wedgwood. It's the pride of place in Stoke

00:19:14.000 on Trent, and it's a total disgrace now that it's full of illegal migrants. And those experiences were

00:19:20.640 very formative to me. It left me feeling, firstly, that the state was just unable to perform its most basic

00:19:28.560 functions. Secondly, that we as a kind of political class were massively letting down the public. And

00:19:39.120 so many people were indifferent to that because their own lives were insulated from those experiences. It

00:19:43.120 wasn't them living next to these hotels. It wasn't their kids who couldn't get on the social housing

00:19:48.320 waiting list. They were a world away from the experience of the people on that estate in Dover.

00:19:53.520 And then probably the worst thing that radicalised me the most was the sense that the responses to

00:20:01.440 this were all a sham. That intelligent people knew that these things were not going to work,

00:20:09.680 and yet they still put their names to it. You know, you'd have stop the boats, smash the gangs.

00:20:15.440 There would be slogans which were parroted out by people who were not fools. You know,

00:20:20.480 these were smart people who understood what was happening. And yet, in their hearts,

00:20:25.920 they knew this was not going to work. But they either didn't care enough or showed such

00:20:32.000 disregard for public opinion that they were willing to go along with it and pretend

00:20:37.120 that something was going to happen when it really wasn't. The experience I remember,

00:20:41.280 the most searing one of all, was a couple of days before I resigned from the cabinet over the Rwanda

00:20:47.680 policy, which was basically a sham. And it wasn't going to work. It wasn't strong enough.

00:20:52.480 Not the idea itself was wrong, but it was so weak, the version of it, because it didn't exclude the

00:20:57.920 ECHR and the merry-go-round of human rights appeals that would have happened. As evidenced by ultimately

00:21:04.320 what did happen in that after the general election, Yvette Cooper walks into the Home Office,

00:21:08.880 and of all the people who'd been rounded up to go on those flights, only two people were still

00:21:14.160 in custody. Everyone else had had to be released. Ultimately, that's one of the reasons why Rishi

00:21:18.960 Sunak called the early general election, because he knew the policy was going to fail. But we had a

00:21:24.000 cabinet committee meeting in Downing Street in the cabinet room to sign off on the bill that was supposed

00:21:30.800 to go through Parliament that became the Rwanda bill. And everyone there knew it wasn't going to work.

00:21:37.120 It was obvious. It was just, in fact, people joked about it around the table. You know,

00:21:43.760 laughter, why do we stick this turn of phrase in to, you know, because that kind of was going to fool

00:21:48.720 people. And of all that group of people, I was the only person who was willing to say,

00:21:53.920 I just do not believe this is going to work. And no one really disagreed with me,

00:21:58.560 but they just were not prepared to do what was necessary. And so I went along with it and were

00:22:03.200 willing to look the British public in the eye. And when I remember walking out of Downing Street,

00:22:08.080 it was a cold November evening and thinking, what would my constituents think if they had been sat

00:22:13.600 around that table listening to that conversation? I mean, they would have been disgusted and appalled

00:22:20.000 by it. And that was just emblematic of what was happening in government. Bad decisions,

00:22:28.080 a sham really, where people were lying to the public and not prepared to do what was necessary

00:22:34.240 to fix the big problems facing the country. And I suppose from that point onwards, I have tried to

00:22:42.640 tell the truth, to be willing to be honest about the problems that are facing the country, and above

00:22:48.160 all, not to defend the indefensible, which is one of the things I said last week when I left the

00:22:52.960 Conservative Party, I'm not going to do that ever again. And if I can play a role in politics,

00:22:57.920 it will be by saying very clearly, what are the problems facing this country? How do we fix them?

00:23:03.920 And try to push the establishment, the government of the day to actually do it for once,

00:23:11.680 and do what my constituents in New York deserve to see happen.

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00:24:50.560 When you describe the events, I completely believe you. But I also think, well, hang on a second. Isn't

00:25:01.280 that just political suicide? Because eventually what's going to happen if you pursue policies that

00:25:07.280 you don't believe in that are essentially a glorified sham? Eventually the truth will come out.

00:25:13.520 Well, that's what we've seen, isn't it? I mean, that was, I mean, in the pure politics of it,

00:25:18.160 that was the absurdity of the situation that it was obvious this wasn't going to work and it was

00:25:22.960 obvious the Conservative Party was going to get smashed at the ballot box if solutions were not

00:25:28.560 found to that issue and others. It's not just about immigration. You can say the same about why are

00:25:33.760 we not building homes? Why are living standards stagnating? You know, net zero that's impoverishing

00:25:38.960 people and de-industrializing our country. But it's this pursuit of simple solutions in order to get

00:25:46.640 by rather than actually tackling the root cause of the issue and being willing to do some very tough

00:25:52.240 things. And that is at the heart of this fracture that there is in British politics between those

00:25:58.400 people who pursue that tinkering around the edges strategy because it's the easy way out or because

00:26:05.120 they care about their own respectability and they don't want to take on shibboleths like

00:26:11.200 international law or leaving treaties, really getting to the heart of the problem. And those

00:26:16.800 people who are willing to do that. And we've seen the same, frankly, with this Labour government where

00:26:21.920 once again, there's no real desire to create proper plan to address the big challenges facing

00:26:29.120 the country. And so the decline that we're in just goes on and on and on. And the rubbers hit the road

00:26:35.600 now. You know, the country can't continue like this. I mean, it can, but it will just slip.

00:26:40.960 It will start to slip away. And some of these issues now are almost unavoidable at some point.

00:26:47.840 You know, the public finances, for example, just we're not going to be able to be sat here in 10

00:26:52.400 years time and no one has tackled the size of the state and the out of control spending and borrowing

00:26:58.240 that there is right now. So on many of these issues, we're reaching a moment of truth where

00:27:04.240 someone and some party has to grip the country, tell the truth to the electorate and get on and

00:27:10.160 do what's necessary. And I fundamentally believe that people want that now. People don't want to

00:27:15.360 be lied to anymore. They are willing to understand trade-offs and to see someone get on and do things

00:27:22.720 and really blitz the big challenges facing the country.

00:27:24.960 Well, we'll talk about understanding trade-offs because you may be being optimistic. I wish more

00:27:30.240 people understood the idea that if you want certain things, you can't have certain other things. And

00:27:34.320 we'll talk about that. But you're not the first person that sat across from us,

00:27:38.880 having been a cabinet minister or indeed a prime minister, who's talked about the fact that when

00:27:43.680 they got in to a department and they started pulling levers, what they found out is those levers

00:27:49.040 don't go anywhere. The signals don't reach some kind of destination. So there's some simple

00:27:56.880 narratives that are spread about, you know, it's the civil service. It's resistant. They have their

00:28:01.200 own ideology. They won't do what you want to do. Or, you know, overall incompetence. We haven't hired

00:28:06.800 the best people or whatever. Or it's actually, you know, cabinet ministers never wanted to achieve

00:28:12.000 those changes in the first place, as you say. But why is it that when well-meaning, talented people

00:28:17.600 go into departments as members of a government and try to do things, they find, as you did,

00:28:23.440 or as you say you did, that it's not possible to do?

00:28:26.480 Well, I think it's all of those things. I generally think it's a bad captain that blames

00:28:33.120 the ship and the crew. And so a part of it has to be the politicians themselves.

00:28:38.880 It can't just be saying it's the civil service, you know, the blob, whatever you want to say. Although

00:28:43.120 there are undoubtedly issues there. Part of the issue has been, firstly, a lack of will

00:28:50.320 to do what's necessary. And from whom? From politicians?

00:28:54.320 From our most senior politicians, some of whom I think just didn't know what they wanted to achieve.

00:29:01.440 You know, all really of our recent prime ministers have disappointed in different ways. And

00:29:09.920 none. I mean, I think Liz Truss is probably the one who had the clearest idea of what she wanted to

00:29:15.280 achieve in office, although did not execute it successfully. So she's perhaps in a different

00:29:22.640 category. But all of the others you really aspired, even craved, the role of prime minister.

00:29:31.040 But when they got the great prize, they didn't know what they wanted to do with it. They didn't

00:29:36.720 have a deep conviction and the consistency that you need to stand by the ministers who are trying to do

00:29:45.120 it, you know, not to flinch when things get difficult. And that became painfully apparent.

00:29:52.240 I think many of them actually just, they supported ideas which were failed ideas.

00:29:59.920 You know, they took a few very big, but very bad calls in politics. I mean,

00:30:06.800 we can talk about something, but whether it's net zero, mass migration,

00:30:12.560 a big state. They perpetuated ideas which were failed ideas. I think some

00:30:20.560 put their own personal respectability above doing what was necessary.

00:30:25.040 You're talking about something like leaving the ECHR.

00:30:27.760 Yeah, I think that's the most classic example of that where

00:30:32.960 the debate has shifted quite a lot in recent years, without question.

00:30:36.880 But, you know, I would argue that it's not, people are not all entirely honest in saying that

00:30:41.520 they now support leaving the ECHR. You know, if actually confronted with,

00:30:45.520 I suspect a lot of those people wouldn't do it. But certainly a couple of years ago,

00:30:50.960 there were definitely people who just felt this was kind of a dirty argument that they wanted to be

00:30:58.000 someone who was seen as virtuous and could go to conferences or appear at Davos or pursue

00:31:07.440 non-executive directorships after they left politics and taking on issues like that.

00:31:12.640 They were just not prepared to do it, even if they knew that it was probably the way

00:31:18.080 to resolve the issue. And that was a problem. But it is fair to say all the other things you said

00:31:23.840 as well. I mean, the state is very weak in our country at the moment, and that has to be addressed.

00:31:30.320 Whether that's reform of the civil service, the quangos that we have right now, which are unaccountable

00:31:37.840 to ministers so that you struggle to get things done, even if you do have somebody who isn't a

00:31:42.800 technocrat, but is actually a meritocratic, you know, determined person who wants to fix things.

00:31:48.240 And then this network of laws that have grown up really since the Blairite period, which seem

00:31:55.360 superficially attractive, the Qualities Act, Climate Change Act, Human Rights Act, but which together

00:32:02.000 have created a web, which means it's immensely difficult for ministers to get on without being

00:32:06.960 judicially reviewed or challenged on different things. So unlike predecessors in the eighties who

00:32:12.320 took on different but equally challenging problems the country was facing, it's now very,

00:32:19.520 very difficult to effect change. And that contributes to the sense of frustration and anger and disillusionment

00:32:27.760 there is in the country because people are voting for change, and yet politicians just don't seem

00:32:34.240 to have the ability to show progress, or at least not quickly enough. And you've seen that with Labour,

00:32:41.680 certainly saw it with the last concerted government. I believe people will vote for change again

00:32:46.720 whenever the next general election is. If, say, that's a reformed government, then if people,

00:32:53.200 you know, that government was not able to bring about visible change quickly, then I really worry

00:32:59.920 what would happen to our politics, as well as our country. Because if people had chucked out a failing

00:33:06.080 Conservative government, then chucked out a failing Labour government, and then voted once again for

00:33:10.000 something else, and that didn't succeed, then people would just throw their hands in the air, wouldn't

00:33:16.720 they? Say, what's the point? What's the point? For those of us who've chosen to now throw their weight

00:33:22.560 behind reform as the best vehicle to fix the country, it's incredibly important that we use

00:33:28.640 the next two or three years to do what previous oppositions have not done, which is develop a

00:33:36.160 serious, credible plan and a proper team that's capable of actually changing the country and showing

00:33:42.720 change quickly, so that you can give a sense to the public that things are going to get better.

00:33:48.240 And how much of this is ideology as well? How much of this is people really believing in these radical

00:33:54.000 policies like net zero? Whatever your criticism you may level against Ed Miliband, I don't think you

00:33:59.600 can say he's being disingenuous. You look in his eyes, he's a true believer.

00:34:02.880 Yeah, I think Ed Miliband is the outlier in the present cabinet, in that he does know what he wants

00:34:10.080 to achieve. He had given it thought. He had a plan. He knows how to get things done. He's probably a

00:34:17.600 capable, intelligent, competent person. It's just, I fundamentally disagree with what he's trying to do.

00:34:23.600 And I would argue it's being absolutely disastrous for the country.

00:34:30.880 Those are the most dangerous people. But in a sense, we, you know, on the right, we have to do

00:34:35.760 that ourselves. But, you know, but with the right policies that will actually fix the country.

00:34:42.240 It does feel to me, I mean, to the point I tried to make earlier,

00:34:44.560 the political economy of the last 20, 25 years is broken. And within that, there's a number of

00:34:54.880 ideological choices that have been made, which have, their roots lie in that kind of Blairite,

00:35:02.000 Brownite era. But the last Conservative government didn't disabuse them. In fact, in many cases,

00:35:08.240 countries did more of them. And they are failed ideas, which have been proven to fail,

00:35:15.680 caused immense damage, and now need to be swept away. That isn't happening at the moment under

00:35:21.440 the Labour government. The question is, can it be swept away? And a new political order brought in

00:35:27.680 at some point in the future, hopefully after the next general election. And, you know, within those

00:35:32.160 would be mass migration, which Tony Blair started, but the last Conservative government

00:35:37.600 just increased dramatically. And actually in terms of the mix of countries and cultures that came

00:35:43.600 into the country has made it significantly worse. The obsession with net zero that has de-industrialized

00:35:50.240 the country at a rapid pace made us poor and uncompetitive. Probably the single biggest problem for our

00:35:57.840 economy right now. Failure to build anything because successive governments have just given in to

00:36:03.680 nimbyism and not reform the planning system so that you, you know, you can't get a road or

00:36:10.640 data center or factory built, let alone the homes that young people need. It's just,

00:36:14.640 and then for young people, it's meant social contract has essentially been shredded over the course of

00:36:19.520 my adult lifetime. You know, I mean, there are other ones as well, the bureaucratic state, the rise of

00:36:24.400 quangos, you name it. There is an ideological framework that has built up over 20, 30 years,

00:36:33.600 which I think has run its course now. And that has to end. And some people can see that, some people

00:36:38.640 can't. I believe you've got to have now a radical new set of policies to fix the country.

00:36:44.880 Do you think the two big political parties are no longer fit for purpose? If you think that

00:36:49.120 essentially they're broad coalitions, both Labour and Conservative, of people that you look at and you

00:36:54.080 go, is that really tenable? Is it tenable to have a left of center liberal with a hard left socialist

00:37:03.520 outlook? I mean, not really, is it? No, I think they are both basically broken now.

00:37:11.280 They are too broad. So they're ideologically incoherent. And you see that in both the Labour

00:37:19.520 Party and the Conservative Party. They, in different ways, have contributed to breaking

00:37:27.120 the country. And so there's been a massive loss of trust in both of them. And I don't think that's

00:37:31.920 coming back anytime soon. I mean, we might be sat here in 10 years' time or 15 years' time,

00:37:36.720 and people have a different point of view. But I don't believe in the next few years,

00:37:40.640 in this electoral cycle, people are going to have faith in the Labour Party or decide to

00:37:45.600 give the Conservatives the keys again when they're kind of the arsonist who made all these mistakes

00:37:51.360 not so long ago. People aren't fools. They can remember that. And they see the same faces as well on

00:37:56.640 the front bench who were the ones who made the mistakes not so long ago. And to my point about

00:38:05.440 change or the status quo, both parties are really prisoners of their past and of the set of failed

00:38:14.240 ideas. And they are struggling to break out of that. I don't think they're going to. I don't think

00:38:19.680 they're capable of changing, or at least not fast enough, given the problems that the country faces.

00:38:24.960 And that's why people are prepared in a way they haven't been for generations to give something

00:38:30.960 new a chance and say, you know what, let's give reform, in my case, a chance because the other

00:38:38.880 parties just seem like they failed so badly and they can't change, won't change. In fact, if they're

00:38:44.720 in government again, they probably make the same mistakes all over again.

00:38:46.720 Robert, why don't you leave and defect right after the election? Because presumably,

00:38:52.640 you haven't discovered the world view you have now in the last week or two, right?

00:38:58.000 No, that's fair. I mean, it's certainly true that the last general election, I stood on a

00:39:06.480 quasi-independent platform in that I rather like sweller. I was putting things on leaflets that were not

00:39:11.920 conservative party policy, like leaving the East HR and knocking on doors, reminding people I had to

00:39:17.760 resign from which you soon as cabinet. And my activists would say, well, if you were a reformed

00:39:23.040 voter, well, Rob's more reform than reform. And so why bother? You may as well keep supporting Rob and so

00:39:28.160 on. But I did, I had a deep loyalty to the party. You remember, I joined the Conservative Party when I

00:39:36.240 was age 16 in Wolverhampton after the 1997 general election. There were not many 16-year-old

00:39:42.880 Conservatives anywhere, let alone in Wolverhampton back then. And it was a sort of, it was actually a

00:39:48.000 contrarian act. Because at that stage, that was, you know, the height of Blair and most people my age were

00:39:56.640 excited by the, well, I think it turned out to be the false promise of that Blairite era.

00:40:02.640 But then I stuck with the Conservative Party through good times and bad. I was never like an insider in the

00:40:08.560 Conservative Party. You know, I remember all the history of the Conservative Party. I was never on the A-list or had these

00:40:15.040 big figures in the Tory party, you know, hooking me out and trying to promote me. But I was always

00:40:21.600 a kind of grassroots Conservative. That was very much the kind of leadership campaign I ultimately

00:40:26.800 fought. It was the grassroots out of London. You know, the people who voted for me were the members in

00:40:31.760 the North, the Midlands, Wales, East Anglia. It wasn't Kensington and Chelsea and the kind of more

00:40:37.120 fashionable part of the Conservative Party establishment. They actively campaigned against me.

00:40:44.160 But I wanted the Conservative Party to succeed. And I perhaps naively believed that I might be able

00:40:51.920 to change it. And, you know, I looked to people, there aren't many examples, but there are people

00:40:58.640 who have led other political parties where they fashioned it into something, at least for a period,

00:41:05.680 that was very different to what it had been before.

00:41:08.560 Blair did that.

00:41:09.440 Like Blair. And these, you know, when I talked to the Conservative Party, those were the examples

00:41:15.760 I gave. You know, you had to be painfully honest about the mistakes that you'd made,

00:41:23.120 apologize, but it'd be a sincere one where people could genuinely see that you shared the anger at the

00:41:31.600 failure. You weren't just saying it for short-term benefit and then change the party. And that change

00:41:43.120 would be painful because it had to involve taking on your own party like Blair did, not just trying to

00:41:50.240 seek unity for unity's sake. But, you know, if you want to leave the ECHR, say from the beginning,

00:41:58.880 I believe we have to leave the ECHR. And if some people didn't like it, then part company with them.

00:42:03.760 Because, you know, you have to have some religion at the heart of the broad church in a party or else no one will believe it.

00:42:10.720 And bring forward different people from the next generation, different ideas, and almost create

00:42:18.640 a new Conservative Party. And I think with hindsight, that was the party just wasn't prepared to do that.

00:42:27.920 It wasn't prepared to confront its past. It wasn't prepared to change. It was too willing to slip into

00:42:35.760 nebulous ideas like what are our values and our principles, but not really get to the heart of

00:42:42.640 what had gone wrong, have a diagnosis of why the party had failed in government. And over the course

00:42:49.840 of the year and a half, two years that followed the general election, there were just numerous occasions

00:42:57.760 where it became painfully apparent to me that the party was not capable of changing.

00:43:02.160 Like what occasions? Well, they may seem small in and of themselves, but they built on one after

00:43:09.520 the other. I mean, I give you, give you recent ones over the Christmas holidays when I was really

00:43:13.920 mulling over, you know, some of the final stages of deciding what to do. I woke up like most of the

00:43:20.400 country did to the news that Starmer had celebrated this Egyptian extremist El Fatah coming into the country

00:43:28.240 and retweeted that this was wonderful news and we should all rejoice and looked at his social media,

00:43:34.960 saw that he was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, you know, anti-Semitic, anti-white, that the police

00:43:42.400 should be killed, that Downey should be burnt down. The list went on and on and on.

00:43:46.480 Not standard Labour policies, really. Well, yeah, I mean, a natural client for Lord Herman.

00:43:52.800 Yeah. And so I went, I did what I, why I've been accustomed to doing, you know,

00:43:59.920 went on social media, went on the TV, said that this guy was terrible, he should be deported.

00:44:05.360 And then imagine my surprise when complaints went in about me within the Conservative Party saying,

00:44:12.560 well, you can't talk about this because you're drawing attention to the fact that the last

00:44:17.040 Conservative government gave this man citizenship. And the root cause of the whole problem is that

00:44:22.480 he has citizenship and that numerous senior people in the Tory party went off to Egypt and

00:44:28.560 campaigned for him, you know, saying that the number one priority of the UK in Egypt,

00:44:34.320 supposedly, is to get this guy to come back home. You know, I can give you other examples as well,

00:44:40.000 but examples like this, if I just say, examples like this showed to me that the party was not

00:44:46.240 prepared to confront its past. And to be honest about that, to say, like I did when somebody asked

00:44:54.640 me, or what do you think about us giving in the Tories, giving him citizenship? So I'm ashamed that

00:44:58.720 they gave him citizenship. And if you can't even acknowledge the mistakes that you've made,

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00:47:32.640 What I was going to ask is what you're describing, and I don't think this is unusual. It happens to

00:47:37.520 many organizations, political parties, groups of human beings in general, is a group of people who

00:47:43.440 have fundamentally forgotten what their central mission is, which is to serve the country and to

00:47:48.240 serve people. Instead, it's an organization that's focused on itself, on its own survival,

00:47:53.760 on its own internal strife. Is that an accurate description of the Conservative Party today?

00:48:01.040 Yes. Yes, I think it's become, it's like a sort of Westminster dining club now, where people are

00:48:09.360 clinging on to the vestiges of power, enjoying being members of parliament, having titles, which

00:48:19.360 actually in reality mean nothing like shadow this, shadow that, but have forgotten what the purpose of

00:48:27.040 this is. You're in politics to try to change the country. And to do that, you've got to have a very

00:48:35.200 different attitude, where you've got to actually understand the challenges that the country's facing

00:48:40.640 and bring forward solutions to it. I also just think that too, that one of the problems the Conservative

00:48:48.000 Party faces today is that too few Conservative MPs really believe in anything at all. There's definitely

00:48:54.960 a left of the Conservative Party, and there's a little bit of a right, although that really is now

00:48:59.360 going en masse to reform. So I don't think there really will be a right of the Conservative Party

00:49:06.000 going forwards. But the biggest group in the Conservative Party are decent people who are drawn

00:49:12.640 to public service as a constituency MP, the idea of ultimately serving in government as a minister,

00:49:20.000 but don't have a very deep conviction one way or another. And the problem with those people is that

00:49:27.040 you get blown around in the wind by events, you know, in our incredibly fast paced world today of social

00:49:35.680 media. And when you're faced with a country with immense challenges, like the one we have today,

00:49:42.560 you have to have people who have a very, very strong sense of why they're doing this. What do you want to

00:49:49.920 achieve? They're kind of gripped with it. They're restless people who are like waking up in the middle of the

00:49:54.800 the night, worried about things and thinking, got ideas, who are walking the streets. You know,

00:50:00.880 they might be privileged in their own lives, but want to understand how tough it is for other people.

00:50:07.840 You know, how do you get law and order back? How do you secure our borders? How do you raise living

00:50:12.000 standards? And that is just not a description of today's Conservative Party. It's by and large,

00:50:18.320 a group of decent people which have come together in a kind of cozy club, which is insulated from

00:50:25.840 the challenges the country faces and don't see the urgency. They do not really see that Britain is in

00:50:31.360 peril, that the country that we know and love could slip away and has to be arrested with serious

00:50:36.720 radical policies. They don't want to do that. And those people who do, and there are some still

00:50:42.240 within the Conservative Party. I, you know, I honestly think they've got to now leave the

00:50:47.120 Conservative Party and join reform because that is the vehicle for radical change now in the country.

00:50:54.080 If you want real change, you're not going to deliver that through the Conservative Party.

00:50:58.400 Because there is a worry, Robert, and I'm glad that we've touched on this. And a lot of people

00:51:03.440 in reform and supporters of reform are seeing more and more Conservatives defect and going,

00:51:09.120 hang on a minute. Well, if we just get all the old Tories coming to reform, aren't we just creating

00:51:15.120 the Conservative Party 2.0? This is not what we want. No, it mustn't be that. It really mustn't.

00:51:21.120 Look, undoubtedly, it needs experience. And, you know, Nigel says he can't win. One minute,

00:51:27.840 he's accused of being a one-man band. And then the next minute, he's got all these other people who,

00:51:33.120 some of whom are actually very well known. And so it's demonstrably not a one-man band anymore.

00:51:38.240 And he's being criticised for bringing in those people. But where you're right is that it's got

00:51:44.880 to have freshness to it. And I think you do that in two ways. Firstly, when you do bring in people

00:51:52.160 from the Conservative Party, or indeed any other political party, because we should be trying to

00:51:57.200 attract people from the Labour Party or others as well. They do have to be people who both share the values

00:52:02.240 of reform and share this sense that the country is in peril, that our political class have failed

00:52:11.040 the country, and have that kind of burning, kind of fierce desire within them to fix things. And that

00:52:18.800 is why, you know, when I speak to someone like Zia Youssef, who's a genuine political outsider,

00:52:24.160 successful businessman who's come into politics without having served as a member of Parliament for

00:52:29.360 anyone else. You know, I think I probably have more in common with him than some people might

00:52:35.360 think. Because both of us have a disdain for the political class that has governed the country

00:52:41.120 in recent years. And then I think the other thing you've got to do is attract people who've not been

00:52:46.800 in politics at all. And that strikes me as more important than attracting a small number of

00:52:55.040 remaining Conservative MPs who might be very ideologically aligned with reform. You want

00:52:59.760 to get people who are business people and veterans and farmers and doctors and people who've been great

00:53:06.160 prison governors or NHS trust, you know, chief executives, people who've been spurned by the

00:53:13.440 two old political parties and bring them into politics. And that's starting to happen. But that's

00:53:19.520 the great opportunity of reform to attract those people and then propel them into the front line of

00:53:25.040 politics so they can actually run the country in a way which it hasn't been run in recent years, because

00:53:30.560 you've had politicians who are predominantly career politicians, often doing jobs that they know nothing

00:53:36.240 about often for very short periods of time without deep understanding or ideas on how they fix those

00:53:42.800 things and with often disastrous results. So it's finding the right balance which is going to be key

00:53:49.360 to reform. But it mustn't lose its radical edge. I mean, if it does, I may as well just stayed in

00:53:55.520 the Conservative Party. The reason, or one of the reasons I was attracted to reform and to want to be part of

00:54:00.720 this team is that it is the best vehicle for radical change in the country.

00:54:06.800 Well, we're talking about people defecting from the Conservative Party. I look at Suella,

00:54:11.680 I mean, that makes complete sense. I look at yourself, that makes complete sense.

00:54:15.520 Nadeem Zahawi and his behaviour during COVID, I'm going to be honest with you, Robert, to me that is,

00:54:22.080 and to a lot of people in this country, that is a pretty big red flag. When you think about

00:54:28.000 sort of the epitome of the modern Tory party and what's wrong with it, Zahawi, in my opinion,

00:54:34.480 represents that. Yeah. Well, I think Nigel's view, who ultimately is the decision maker in these,

00:54:40.880 is that Nadeem is somebody who's an incredibly successful businessman,

00:54:46.240 somebody who's built world-class businesses from nothing, whose own personal life story is very

00:54:52.080 inspiring. It came as an immigrant fleeing persecution of Saddam Hussein and built a very

00:54:59.840 successful life here in the UK, who brings ministerial experience and a vaccine programme,

00:55:06.320 in whatever your view might be, on vaccines. It was demonstrably the world's most successful vaccine

00:55:15.680 programme. You know, we were the leading country in the world to do that, bringing the private sector to do it.

00:55:21.680 So I think there's a lot that he offers to the party. But the broader point you're making is

00:55:28.080 undoubtedly right, that there can be a small number of people who bring experience of government,

00:55:33.440 who know what needs to be done, who can learn from their mistakes as well, and have the honesty

00:55:39.120 to acknowledge the mistakes that they personally made, and certainly that the considered government

00:55:43.200 made. There are no illusions about that. But that can't be the be-all and end-all. It's got to be just

00:55:51.520 one element of a broader group of people that come together. And most people, the balance has to be

00:55:57.680 people who are political outsiders, who are going to make sure that reform remains the best vehicle

00:56:03.920 to change the country, not just slipping into the old ways of the Tory party or the Labour party.

00:56:08.800 Well, this has got to be one of the big challenges for reform, which is, where do you get 350,

00:56:16.640 let's say, of those people? And in some ways, I totally understand. I think France's point about

00:56:22.640 Nadeem Zahavi, I agree with you. He's a very successful businessman, very smart guy, very sharp guy.

00:56:28.240 But we come back to the point where he promised to not introduce vaccine passports, and then two

00:56:33.840 weeks later, how long it was, did. And that is exactly the Tory, slippery behaviour that you were

00:56:39.840 describing, where people are blown by the winds of the events. Whereas, forgive me, I may be very

00:56:45.760 old-fashioned. I'm only in my early 40s. But I remember a time when politicians would say,

00:56:50.800 well, I committed not to do something. The Prime Minister's making me do it. I resign.

00:56:55.680 Right? And I don't remember-

00:56:56.800 Well, I'm not sure you do remember many of those, because they're actually incredibly rare.

00:57:00.880 Robin Cook. Claire Shaw. I remember them.

00:57:05.200 There are honourable examples. There aren't that many of those people.

00:57:10.000 Well, if we had more of those people, we'd have prime ministers who don't force people to do

00:57:14.240 something they don't want. I totally agree with you. And never underestimate the impact that you

00:57:18.720 can make doing that. I mean, I was a relatively junior, or one of the most junior members of the

00:57:25.360 Cabinet when I was asked essentially to pilot a bill through Parliament on Rwanda that I didn't

00:57:30.640 believe in. And I said, well, I'm not prepared to do that. And it created a massive national

00:57:36.800 debate on the whole policy. And so it is powerful when you say, I'm not prepared to just be another

00:57:42.160 person who says one thing in private, does another thing in public. We do need more of those principal

00:57:48.080 people. I would say about Nigel that one of the qualities that he undoubtedly has is consistency on

00:57:55.840 issues on some of the biggest issues facing the country. I mean, he's been talking about

00:58:02.960 the dangers of mass migration since I was a teenager, when Tony Blair opened us up to migration

00:58:09.840 at scale from EU accession countries before others. So that's 20 or 30 years of consistent advocacy when

00:58:18.080 it was an unfashionable point of view. He was the one who's out in the channel talking about the small

00:58:23.120 boats, putting it on his own social media when there was no media interest in the issue he was

00:58:28.800 laughed at really. And people are not laughing now. And it's become one of the biggest issues

00:58:33.680 facing the country and emblematic of failure and unfairness within the country. So he personally

00:58:40.400 is somebody of conviction and consistency. And that is very important in a prime minister.

00:58:46.640 It's probably the single most important quality, if you wanted to serve under somebody in government,

00:58:52.880 is to know that they're going to stick by you if you're prepared to do tough things.

00:58:58.240 And that it's very clear the course that is being set for the government. And so people should have

00:59:04.480 faith in him. And hopefully he will build, as I think you can now begin to see, a strong team of

00:59:10.320 people around. Now, that I agree with. Speaking of a strong team, what is going to be your role in

00:59:14.720 the strong team? Well, I don't know. Oh, come on. Come on. What are you telling me? You left the

00:59:21.440 Conservative Party with no promise of a job. What really? Come on. I'll wash up. I'll make cups of tea.

00:59:28.880 Yeah. Honestly. What would you like to do? What would be your preference? Would you want to have

00:59:34.880 the immigration brief again and have a proper crack at it? Is that your preference? There's a lot. I mean,

00:59:38.960 I've got very broad interest, to be honest. There's lots of things I'd be open to doing,

00:59:42.960 but I'm... I didn't join the party on some kind of deal. I've joined because I'd come to the

00:59:49.600 conclusion... Robert, come on. No, but look, come on. I'm telling you the... I'm telling you the truth.

00:59:54.880 The God's honest truth. I am. Look, I joined to help make reform stronger so that we can have a team

01:00:03.200 of people and we can build serious, credible policies in the months and years ahead. And

01:00:09.600 there'll be different ways I might be able to do that. Ultimately, that's a decision for Nigel Newell.

01:00:14.480 So you have to have him on your show. Well, we've had him on our show many times

01:00:17.520 and will again, of course. We'd love to have all the party leaders on our show. I think, actually,

01:00:21.760 this... You know, it's really interesting hearing some of your ideas. I'd love to sit down like this

01:00:25.920 with Zach Polanski and Keir Starmer and all. I think we will get better politics when every

01:00:31.760 politician who is within touching distance or in positions of leadership has to speak in this way

01:00:38.960 about issues at length. And we really get to know a little bit about what their thinking is,

01:00:43.280 where they're coming from, how trustworthy you perceive them, etc. I'd love to see that by the next

01:00:47.840 election in the same way we had a podcast election in America. We need one in the UK, in my opinion.

01:00:54.240 I know that's very self-serving. It works for you guys. But I think you're right. And

01:00:59.920 I mean, if I've learned anything in the last couple of years, you do have to do politics

01:01:05.840 differently to the way it was done before. And it's been helpful to me to get out of Westminster,

01:01:12.160 take up issues, try to speak directly to people, whether it's on podcasts or through videos I've done

01:01:17.760 on tradesmen having their tools nicked or fair dodgers on the London underground.

01:01:24.080 people have such a low opinion, rightly, of politicians right now that trying to find

01:01:29.520 new ways of speaking to them or actually just getting stuck in and shaming the authorities

01:01:35.120 into action is absolutely key.

01:01:36.960 I was going to say, because to me, Robert, we're actually, and people may think this is hyperbole,

01:01:46.320 but I don't actually think it is. I think we're a really dangerous place in our democracy.

01:01:52.000 Because think about it like this. If you're an ordinary man or woman, you voted, let's say conservative.

01:01:57.680 You wanted Brexit to happen. Brexit was fudged. We had pro remain PMs. You then had another fudge.

01:02:08.960 You then it finally happened. And then you had all these promises about restricting immigration.

01:02:14.160 It didn't happen. You then had Labour come in who said they're going to tackle it. They haven't.

01:02:19.360 So you're thinking to yourself, well, quite frankly, what's the point? What are the other alternatives

01:02:26.160 when it comes to government? Because if democracy can't deliver these things, then should we try

01:02:31.440 something else? And you hear the kids, young people talk about abolishing, you know, capitalism isn't

01:02:37.440 working. And in a way, they've got a point. It ain't working for them. You look, they go, democracy

01:02:41.840 isn't working. They're right. It ain't working for them.

01:02:44.240 So this is a very dangerous moment, isn't it? It is. But this is my point when people ask,

01:02:49.120 is Britain broken? And there are some people like Kemi and Starmer who make the argument that Britain

01:02:57.520 is not broken. Well, just walk the streets, talk to people, go to the pubs and the factories and the

01:03:05.920 cafes and understand the lives of people in this country. Wages have stagnated for 20 years.

01:03:14.320 You've got 93% of crimes go unresolved. Our armed forces are the smallest size they've been since

01:03:20.320 Napoleonic times. You know, NHS waiting lists continue to be terrible. You've got, was it 40%

01:03:27.040 now of young people? You know, one in five young people leaving university and earning less than

01:03:32.320 had ever gone to university in the first place. You can't get people on the housing ladder now.

01:03:37.280 You know, issue after issue after issue, things are very bad. And as you rightly say,

01:03:44.320 people voted for change at the last general election. They didn't have faith, let's be honest,

01:03:49.120 in Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves, even then. But it was, it was like a cry from the heart that they

01:03:56.080 were so angry and frustrated with the Conservatives that anything will be better. So almost every

01:04:01.680 constituency in the country was a by-election. The essay question was, how do I get rid of

01:04:08.240 the Tories? And that led to the worst ever election defeat where only a few people managed to survive

01:04:14.560 by chance or good fortune, whatever. And then it's been as bad, if not worse, under Labour.

01:04:21.440 And all of these problems just seem to be getting worse and worse and worse. So that is my central

01:04:28.560 argument that the next election is almost the last chance for the country. And if the public vote for

01:04:38.800 change then and they get let down once again by reform or by anybody who gets in, I think that

01:04:47.920 the country is going to go down a very, very dangerous path then. Both the country itself

01:04:53.120 will continue to slip away into decline, social and economic decline, but also people's trust in

01:04:59.840 politics will just be shredded beyond repair. And that's why there's such an onus on people like

01:05:07.360 myself to put party loyalty to one side, get behind what you believe is the best vehicle to change the

01:05:16.480 country. And I believe passionately that is reform and make it a success so that it actually has a

01:05:22.320 serious and credible plan. So it doesn't let the country down after the next general election. And that,

01:05:27.120 that is why I'm going to dedicate, you know, every waking hour to between now and the next general

01:05:31.760 election. Going into this year, I told myself I was finally going to stop guessing about my health.

01:05:37.920 Like most people, I want more energy, better focus and to be still strong and sharp years from now.

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01:07:03.760 Because there's going to be a lot of people going, Robert, you're very eloquent, you're great,

01:07:09.200 reform talks a good game, and I completely agree with your diagnosis, but how are we going to save the

01:07:15.200 patient? Yeah. Well, the first thing is, what Nigel has managed to do is to speak for millions of

01:07:24.080 people in the country. He understands the depth of frustration and disillusionment there is,

01:07:30.880 and articulates that very powerfully. Coupled with that, he does have a personal record of having voiced

01:07:39.840 those issues for a very long time. And he's been talking about net zero, as Richard Tice,

01:07:46.160 well before it was fashionable to do so, and there are other examples as well. But that's not enough.

01:07:52.320 You've got to then build a team of people so that we go into a general election, people think,

01:07:57.520 actually, this is a serious group of credible people who could actually run the country.

01:08:02.080 They seem to be people who are gripped with the scale of the challenge and could get on and do the

01:08:06.640 job, and then have a set of plans that are comprehensive and are ready to go on day one.

01:08:13.920 Have legislation drafted where necessary, so that you don't waste months or years. Because we all know

01:08:20.400 that the first six months, the first year in office is the only moment you've really got to do radical

01:08:26.160 things in the country. And whether you love or loathe Donald Trump, I think we can agree that

01:08:31.680 there was a galvanizing moment when he first came to office, because he did have a plan and he got

01:08:38.240 stuff done in the first few weeks and months that even his critics had to acknowledge was important

01:08:45.440 and was achieving things and doing what he said he was going to do. And although the issues here are

01:08:49.920 very different and there's not a direct comparison, that is what we have to do. We've got to be ready to go,

01:08:56.160 so we can actually change the country and not make the same mistakes again.

01:08:59.360 Well, and the problems you're facing are gigantic. And you talked about trade-offs. This is really

01:09:04.800 important to talk about because my worry is the worry that you've articulated, which is a lot of

01:09:10.720 people will vote for reform at the next election. I think that's undoubtedly clear. And I don't tell

01:09:17.520 people who to vote for, but of the parties that are planning or saying they will address the key

01:09:23.200 issues as I see them. Reform is the only one that's really credibly promising to do anything

01:09:27.440 about it. So that's great. But my big worry is you're simultaneously trying to deal with two

01:09:33.760 very... The portions of the reform coalition are very good for opposition because there's a shared

01:09:40.960 sense of anger with the political elites. And so you can say there's the Thatcherite,

01:09:45.520 Faragian wing, if you like, low tax, pro-business, all of that great stuff. And it shares a commonality

01:09:53.520 with the Red Wall wing, which is they're against mass immigration and so on.

01:09:57.920 But those two parts of the party and the base don't really agree about economic policy at all.

01:10:06.480 One wants low taxes, allowing business to flourish. The other one wants a lot of redistribution and a

01:10:12.320 lot of welfare. And so my argument would be, maybe correct me on this if you disagree.

01:10:17.040 So how are you going to simultaneously stimulate growth and also continue the levels of welfare

01:10:23.840 spending that are just catastrophic? You will be familiar with the statistic that Angela Merkel

01:10:28.560 raised in 2011. The Europe, including Britain, is 12% of the world's population, 25% GDP and 50%

01:10:36.800 of welfare spending. So how are you going to appease those people and just make that work?

01:10:43.440 Yes. You see, I don't think that's a fair analysis of the situation.

01:10:47.360 Please, tell me why.

01:10:47.840 Let me explain. You know, the people that I represent in North Nottinghamshire are not wealthy

01:10:54.800 people. It's a town where thousands of people go to work every day in distribution centers,

01:11:02.480 food processing factories, doing tough jobs, frankly. And my near neighbor is Lee Anderson,

01:11:10.400 who represents a not dissimilar town.

01:11:12.800 Sure.

01:11:13.760 And the people that reform are attracting, and we hope to attract more of in the years

01:11:19.760 ahead, are not people who are scrounging. They are the people who are getting up at seven

01:11:24.480 o'clock in the morning to do the school run, then go to work in the distribution center and the factory.

01:11:30.400 But hold on, Robert. Hold on. Hold on. I'm not saying anyone's scrounging. Hold on.

01:11:33.280 More than half the country takes more in benefits than they put in taxes. That's half the country.

01:11:40.320 I'm not saying anyone is scrounging.

01:11:41.840 No, but I think point one is to say that reform is not a part of welfare. Reform is a part of working

01:11:50.160 people. And that is what it's going to be in the years ahead. And the types of people that I represent

01:11:57.280 are the people who are most vociferous in demanding sensible reforms to the welfare system.

01:12:03.600 Because they don't want people to be getting the motability Mercedes in the drive and seeing that

01:12:10.720 parked on the drive next to them when, you know, for ADHD or whatever bollocks is behind it.

01:12:18.000 And, you know, they want, of course they want a safety net and they know that life can be tough.

01:12:22.720 Yeah. And if something God forbid happens to you, you know, if you don't have savings,

01:12:27.840 as most people don't, you want the state to be able to have you back. But those people are not

01:12:33.520 looking for reform to be creating, you know, a ballooning welfare budget. And so reform already

01:12:41.520 has set out welfare reforms and it will do more in the years ahead. And I don't think that is discordant.

01:12:48.720 I think that the very people who are hardest up, but who are in work and doing the right things,

01:12:54.720 are the people who care most about that as a matter of fundamental fairness.

01:12:59.280 Second thing I'd say is that reform will have a distinct economic policy to the Conservative Party.

01:13:07.920 It feels to me as if the Conservative Party today is still reliving a fantasy of the Thatcher era and

01:13:18.480 is sort of cosplaying Margaret Thatcher. And I don't really mean that in as disparaging

01:13:24.160 a manner as it sounds, because like anybody else, I, on the right, I admire Margaret Thatcher. And I

01:13:29.760 grew up in the 80s and the 90s. And it was the radical changes that she made to the country

01:13:36.640 and the fact that it arrested decline that in many respects persuaded me to become a Conservative.

01:13:42.880 But she was right for that moment. And the main lesson we should draw from Margaret Thatcher was

01:13:48.240 she saw her country in decline, was willing to bring forward serious reforms, particularly supply-side

01:13:54.400 reforms, which are always the hardest things to do in practice rather than just reaching for the easy

01:13:59.520 lever of cutting taxes or spending money. And we should try and do the same thing for our era.

01:14:06.720 But there will be different solutions. And what will they be?

01:14:09.760 Well, I mean, let me give you an example. If you said in the 80s or the 90s that we should

01:14:16.720 consider nationalising or part-nationalising steel, people on the right would have said,

01:14:23.200 absolutely not. We're fighting. That's exactly what we're fighting against. If you'd asked me

01:14:28.160 15 or 20 years ago whether or not it would be sensible for the British state judiciously to take

01:14:34.640 a strategic stake in a marquee business like, say, Rolls-Royce, if it gave them the balance sheet

01:14:42.560 to be able to go and do something that's very important for the country like build small nuclear

01:14:46.960 reactors, I probably would have said that's not a sensible thing to do because I didn't want to

01:14:53.040 see industrial policy as it had become a dirty word in the 70s recreated. But the economy today is

01:15:01.680 different. We now face a world in which defence and security is very clearly linked to the economy.

01:15:10.960 And with rising authoritarian states like China, it does not make sense for us to lose our domestic

01:15:17.040 steel industry or our chemicals and fertiliser and car manufacturing to China and leave us so exposed.

01:15:25.040 And so there are arguments for pursuing a degree of re-industrialisation.

01:15:31.680 And we've also seen the fallacy of globalisation where, you know, there was a belief when I was

01:15:40.160 growing up that you could just have all your manufacturing made in China or India or Indonesia

01:15:47.200 or wherever it was, and the UK could still be in a highly innovative economy. All the smart people

01:15:53.200 would be here manufacturing, you know, designing things, but all of the manufacturing would happen

01:15:58.960 elsewhere. You know, if you listen to someone like James Dyson, who was on the radio over

01:16:04.800 Christmas explaining the decisions that he's made with his business, you'd say that doesn't,

01:16:09.280 that's been proven to be wrong. The two do go together, at least to some degree. And if you have

01:16:14.720 no manufacturing in the UK, don't be surprised if you also don't have the design, the engineering,

01:16:21.360 the technological advance and all the jobs and the value add that comes with that. And so we need to

01:16:26.800 bring as much of that back to the UK and make things there, create things, have the innovation

01:16:33.680 happening here in the UK. And so the point I'm making is that you have to move with the times and have

01:16:40.800 an economic policy that suits the politics and the economics of today. And that will not simply be

01:16:49.120 reheating Thatcherism and the ideas that made a lot of sense to Britain in the 1980s.

01:16:55.120 Well, to some people that might seem a little discordant, that you might be setting out for

01:17:00.640 very free market policies in some respects, like deregulation, trying to find ways to lower taxes,

01:17:07.600 trying to make the UK as investable a proposition as possible, get some of those wealthy investors

01:17:12.480 back into the country who's been lost as a result of changes to non-doms and so on.

01:17:17.600 Whilst at the same time saying there are some strategic industries we want to support.

01:17:22.880 There are maybe some businesses we want to even take a stake in. We do care about regional inequality

01:17:27.840 in the country because we don't want to see towns in places like the Midlands and the North just left to

01:17:34.480 you know, lose jobs and investment as they have done now for generations and do what Boris Johnson

01:17:40.320 set out to do but was never delivered on levelling up or regional policy, however you want to describe it.

01:17:45.520 And that I think will be different than what the Conservative Party is saying, but will be coherent.

01:17:52.000 I don't think it's an intellectually incoherent argument to say that we have to come with new

01:17:56.960 solutions to them. The one thing you will need to do if you want to re-industrialise Britain is

01:18:02.240 go from having the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world to producing lots

01:18:09.440 and lots of cheap, reliable energy, which means you just have to say net zero in the bin day one,

01:18:15.440 we're going to make energy in Britain, we're going to produce our gas, etc. Is that the plan?

01:18:19.680 Yes. Yes. So the reforms policy, which I've advocated for some time as well, is

01:18:27.680 the aim of British energy policy is energy abundance. Let's go for cheap and reliable energy. And we'll do

01:18:35.200 that however we can. If there's treasure in the ground or in our seas, we should make use of it. So as much

01:18:42.400 as we can get from North Sea oil and gas, let's use it. You know, if there is fracking that can be done

01:18:50.800 in a way where there's commercial interest and it's safe, we should do so. We should be honest

01:18:57.600 enough to say that gas is here to stay for the foreseeable future. And yeah, there will also be

01:19:02.400 a role for renewables like offshore wind and so on, but it won't be massively subsidised to the detriment

01:19:08.320 of other things. And we should be going for broke on small nuclear reactors. And that means completely

01:19:15.600 changing the planning system. And so we tried to do what other countries have done elsewhere in the

01:19:20.080 world, like South Korea here, so that we can build them as fast as possible. And that will be the bedrock

01:19:25.760 of our economic policy. Because, you know, there's not, there aren't that many levers that government

01:19:30.160 can pull to get economic growth going again. It can change the planning system so you can get the

01:19:36.480 country building again. It can change our education and skills policy. And so we send less young

01:19:42.480 people to university and more put through the route of genuine skills for apprenticeships.

01:19:48.320 But the most important of all, we'll be having a different energy policy. And we've basically just

01:19:52.560 got to do everything that is necessary to lower energy prices for consumers and for energy intensive

01:19:59.120 industries. And although there's been a lot of deindustrialisation, there's still almost

01:20:03.040 two million jobs in the country in energy intensive industries. And those jobs will be lost.

01:20:09.840 I mean, they will, they will go in the next 10 or 15 years. And they're good jobs, mostly outside of

01:20:17.920 the southeast, which are incredibly important to communities as well as to our national interest.

01:20:23.600 And we have to save those jobs.

01:20:25.040 Let me ask one question before Francis takes over again. There is one thing that's happening right

01:20:31.760 now. And we saw it at Davos and we see it with the new administration. It's not that new anymore.

01:20:35.680 It's been a year in. There is a global realignment. And in light of the critical comments that President

01:20:42.000 Trump made about Europe, which personally, I thought there was some, you know, his comments about NATO

01:20:46.960 troops, etc. I'm glad he walked those back because they were disrespectful and wrong. But in the broad

01:20:51.280 sweep of his analysis, which is Europe is committing cultural, economic and industrial suicide and is

01:20:56.480 no longer a useful ally to the United States. I mean, anyone looking at things objectively has to

01:21:02.400 acknowledge that there's a very large kernel of truth in that critique, right? And that has produced

01:21:09.040 a sort of, oh, we're so offended. We'll go and cozy up to China response from the Mark Carney's and

01:21:14.480 frankly, the Keir Starmer's of the world. My view is we should be going, it's a fair critique.

01:21:20.800 We're going to make ourselves strong again. And of course, the United States is our natural

01:21:24.240 alliance to pursue with the most vigor. Is that your position at reform?

01:21:28.000 It is. It is. No, I totally agree. I mean, to your opening comment, absolutely, Trump was wrong

01:21:36.240 to suggest that British troops didn't play a decisive and incredibly dangerous role in recent

01:21:43.200 conflicts. So that was offensive and wrong. I'm pleased he's walked back those comments to an

01:21:48.000 extent. But the broader critique I have a lot of sympathy with. I mean, has Europe made a series

01:21:53.520 of catastrophic mistakes over the course of the last 30 years in terms of mass migration, its energy

01:22:00.080 policy, the way it's denigrated, its history and its cultural inheritance? Yes, absolutely. Is it in

01:22:11.120 a very perilous position now? I do think it is, yeah, because mass migration is changing communities.

01:22:17.120 Some European towns and cities are frankly, unrecognizable from where they were 10 or 20 years

01:22:22.960 ago. Some of that is irreversible. In other countries, there may be strategies that could be deployed to

01:22:30.160 allow integration or a degree of it, but very difficult in some places. You know, its energy

01:22:37.360 policy has been so poor that it's not just the UK that is deindustrializing, but Germany and Italy and

01:22:44.160 other countries that had a much bigger industrial base within living memory. It doesn't have the

01:22:50.160 critical minerals and the energy resources that some other parts of the world have. And so,

01:22:55.280 and then it's got obviously terrible demographics as well, where everything is going in the wrong

01:23:00.080 direction. So it does feel that Europe is in a moment of peril. We should wake up to that

01:23:07.040 and do something about it. And I think we have the analysis of what needs to be done. We just got to

01:23:14.080 get on and do it. I don't think you go and cozy up to China or authoritarian states. I mean, there's an

01:23:20.640 argument to do some business with them. Of course, you know, that doesn't mean allowing Chinese embassies

01:23:26.400 to be created or giving away the Chagos Islands or allowing our universities to be bought out by

01:23:32.160 Chinese interests. It feels like Starmer is making exactly the same mistake that the Cameron Osborne

01:23:40.720 government did back in the 2010s in believing that in the short term pursuit of economic growth,

01:23:47.840 you can go to China and secure investment, except it's a worse mistake to make now. Because at least

01:23:53.920 back then, maybe it was naive, but at least back then, some people felt that openness would lead

01:24:01.200 in the long run to political change in China. Now we can see that isn't going to happen, or at least not

01:24:07.760 in the foreseeable future. And so it's a particularly naive thing to do now to go and sell yourself out

01:24:13.840 to China. And I also don't think that's really what China responds to. I mean, China, like most

01:24:19.760 authoritarian states, does respond to strength as well. So prostrating yourself in front of Xi Jinping

01:24:25.040 is unlikely to lead to the kind of dividends that Keir Starmer is hoping for. Robert, it's been an

01:24:31.440 absolute pleasure having you on the show. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing

01:24:35.280 we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Before Robert answers the final

01:24:40.240 question at the end of the interview, make sure you go to triggerpod.co.uk where you get to see

01:24:44.880 him answer your questions. What do you think you could do differently with reform that you don't

01:24:50.240 think would work in the Conservatives? How would you deal with the blob and how much could you reduce

01:24:54.240 the civil service personnel by? Should right-wing parties be doing more to speak about the dangers of

01:24:59.600 the far left? Why do you think the far left are not spoken about? What do you think you bring to

01:25:05.120 reform that you think is missing from the party? Well, one of the things that I've been reading

01:25:11.040 about a lot recently, to the extent that you can, is the state of our nuclear deterrent. And there's

01:25:17.440 been a few whistleblowers. There's been some commentary online and a couple of news stories, but I'm amazed

01:25:25.120 that parliament is not talking about this. It feels that our nuclear deterrent, which is so integral to our

01:25:32.080 security, is in a terrible state right now. Programs to improve it are massively over budget, massively

01:25:42.480 delayed. You've got very brave people who are out at sea, in submarines, on very, very long extended

01:25:50.480 missions. And there's a genuine risk that it doesn't work at all. Yet no one is prepared to talk about this

01:25:58.720 in parliament. Now, of course, there are some things, I'm not expecting that all of our top

01:26:02.480 secrets are laid bare in the House of Commons. Although somebody did once say to me that the

01:26:07.440 best place to tell a secret is in the House of Commons. But it feels like this is exactly the

01:26:12.560 sort of example of something where trivia is debated in parliament, but something that's incredibly

01:26:18.400 important and is at the bedrock of our national security and the subject of billions of pounds of

01:26:24.960 our defence budget is barely spoken about at all. Robert, thanks for coming on. We're going to head

01:26:29.360 over to Substack where our supporters get to ask you their questions. So head on over there now at

01:26:34.720 triggerpod.co.uk. You were immigration minister when the use of hotels or asylum seekers exploded.

01:26:42.480 Do you accept responsibility? Did you push back against it at the time? Or did you go along with it?

01:26:47.520 What would you do differently going forward?

01:27:07.680 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick. I like to be

01:27:12.880 prepared. That's why I remember 988 Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline. It's good to know, just in case.

01:27:19.840 Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder, anytime.

01:27:25.280 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government of Canada.

TRIGGERnometry - February 01, 2026

Robert Jenrick - ＂I Joined Reform To Save The Country＂

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