00:03:52.340The time that she had, remember, it came at the end of a very gruelling two months of campaigning for who was going to get the leadership of the Conservative Party.
00:04:07.440That came after all of the chaos of, is Boris going to resign?
00:04:13.980You know, is he going to stay in office?
00:04:16.220What's going to happen to the Boris administration?
00:04:19.300And that came after all of the COVID and the, you know, and we've had, so it wouldn't be fair to say that just those seven weeks were chaos.
00:04:29.120I mean, I've been around since 2010, working either in CCHQ or in number 10 or elsewhere.
00:04:37.400It's been chaos pretty much since 2015.
00:04:40.760I mean, I would say that when, no, 2016 was when Brexit happened.
00:04:46.120And things were fairly well ordered and pretty well run then.
00:04:50.620After Brexit, when Theresa May came in and then Boris came in and then COVID and then Liz and then Rishi, that was chaos.
00:05:00.300I mean, it was literally just fighting fires one day to the next.
00:05:05.720And I think in the future, when the history books are written, we will look back and just, as certainly I'm a, you know, I'm a centre-right, conservative, free market capitalist.
00:05:17.580You know, I mean, that's kind of, I'm not, I'm not ashamed of that.
00:05:21.580We will look back and go, we squandered, not just a huge majority since 2017 after that election, but we squandered the opportunity to govern, I think, really well since 2016.
00:05:34.800But what happened with Liz Truss specifically, the reason I ask is, I think on the day that she was elected, Lord Frost was sitting in the chair that you're sitting in.
00:05:44.980And do you remember that he came in all chipper, he was excited and we were excited because, you know, any change is exciting.
00:05:51.300And also Liz Truss, whatever, whether people like her or not, was offering a different set of ideas about how the country should be run.
00:05:59.260And she actually attempted to put them in place.
00:06:02.440Why was she not able to actually stay in power long enough to even see some of those ideas being implemented?
00:06:09.660Well, I mean, look, my take on it is that in August of last year, of 2022, I think it was fairly obvious that she was going to win the leadership election.
00:06:21.320So, you know, those of us that were working on her campaign could see that, you know, the numbers were very strong.
00:06:26.880And as it turns out, you know, she won reasonably convincingly.
00:06:33.800Now, that vote was only with the conservative members.
00:06:38.240So there was a campaign that, you know, Rishi's team were going up and down the country trying to get conservative members to vote for Rishi.
00:06:51.120And the numbers were pretty healthy for Liz.
00:06:55.140So, you know, I suspect, as I don't know for sure, but I suspect they knew the gig was up when we did.
00:07:04.080That was sometime in August. So they went through the motions and said, OK, you know, yes, they, you know, they drove to the line and they fought to win.
00:07:14.280You know, they thought that they were they had to put in a good showing, but they probably knew it was a death march from the beginning of August.
00:07:21.860Then September comes. The announcement is made. Liz wins.
00:07:26.060She goes to see the Queen, I think, on the was it the 5th or the 6th of September?
00:07:31.820I think the Queen dies. I think was it the 8th of September?
00:07:35.620And then we have 10 days of not very much.
00:07:40.100And then chaos, even more chaos than we've ever had before.
00:07:44.780And I don't necessarily blame Liz for that.
00:07:46.720Those will probably get me into trouble with some of, you know, my friends who don't agree with me on this.
00:07:51.300But I think I think it was inevitable when you've got somebody who is stepping outside of both the economic and social orthodoxy that is was expected of her.
00:08:04.500And I make this point, you know, if you were to take all of the G7 leaders of Macron, Trudeau, Biden, Schultz, Albanese in Australia, which is Cinder Ardern, as it was in New Zealand.
00:08:21.120There's not any real difference in either social policy or economic policy between any of them.
00:08:26.940And this and they're all, by the way, on on the centre left.
00:08:29.800So here you've got a centre right member of the G7 who's saying, no, we're going to, you know, we're going to cut spending.
00:08:36.820We're going to lower taxes. We're going to grow the economy.
00:08:39.700We've got to break with the economic orthodoxy.
00:08:42.200And I'm no economist, but I mean, it sounded good, you know, that actually we're here.
00:09:55.040I'm not saying that there is, like, I don't think there's some sort of, you know, Geppetto who is a, I don't think that there is one person who is pulling all the strings.
00:10:04.340And I'm certainly no conspiracy theorist.
00:10:06.540But I'm saying that there is an orthodoxy and that orthodoxy may be unspoken.
00:10:12.200It may be unwritten, but it exists and you have to stick to it because if you step outside of it, you know, you feel the pain of it.
00:10:21.840So, and that orthodoxy, I think, you know, is largely economic.
00:10:28.180But I think it's also, as I said, I think a social orthodoxy in terms of, you know, progressive beliefs.
00:10:36.280And I think that, you know, when you have a prime minister that says, no, I'm going to do something slightly different, it upsets the markets.
00:10:44.000It upsets that orthodoxy, it upsets individuals.
00:10:48.220And you can see what, and it becomes a bit of a feeding frenzy.
00:10:50.860I mean, the last days of trust was, when she was prime minister, was, you know, I mean, it was, everybody was against her.
00:11:01.020I mean, and maybe, because as I said, I'm not an economist.
00:11:09.860But it did feel a bit strange that, you know, we were up against the White House.
00:11:13.780We were up against the World Bank, the IMF, the Bank of England, the opposition, you know, other people within the Conservative Party.
00:11:22.300You know, there was a huge opposition to everything that she was doing, which seemed to me out of kilter with what would be normal.
00:11:36.380I mean, it was just such a robust response, to the point that, you know, I think on the Friday, the Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarting, had to fly back from Washington.
00:11:49.800And he was fired, I think, on the plane on the way over.
00:11:57.420But, so I'm not suggesting any conspiracy.
00:12:02.700What I'm saying is that there is a social and economic orthodoxy which exists.
00:12:07.220If a government was to dare go against it, you know, they would be closed down pretty quick.
00:12:13.200And honestly, tell me where is the social and economic difference between this government and that of Biden or Trudeau or Macron or Keir Starmer, for that matter?
00:12:23.720I suppose the only one that I can think of off the top of my head is Maloney in Italy.
00:12:41.940It's not going to rock the planet if they step outside of the orthodoxy.
00:12:46.940When the United Kingdom, still the fifth biggest economy in the world, still the sixth largest manufacturer in the world, London, the, you know, probably the greatest capital city, the greatest city on the planet, when that steps outside that economic orthodoxy, you know, it's going to make waves.
00:13:03.220And as much as I love Rome and as much as I love Italy and as much as I love Hungary, you know, we're not talking in the same league.
00:13:30.040And, you know, and I thought that, you know, we were just fighting fires all the time.
00:13:37.600And party conference came around early October 2022.
00:13:42.100And by then it was very clear that, you know, we were constantly just putting out fires.
00:13:48.460And no matter what the party chairman did, what the chief whip did, what the, you know, what the prime minister's chief of staff was doing, what the other cabinet ministers were doing, it was all, you know, it was all just getting a bit too much.
00:14:01.700And what were these fires in particular, Colin?
00:14:03.920Well, you know, so we had, let's say, personnel issues with some members of parliament.
00:14:11.020Some of them were legacy problems that had come over from Boris's time as prime minister.
00:14:18.180But, you know, just getting the support across the back benches was, was, was, was pretty difficult.
00:14:25.700So you're fighting your own party at this point?
00:14:28.260Yeah, I don't think that's, I don't, and I don't think that's necessarily controversial.
00:14:31.460I think the party was fighting itself pretty much during COVID as well.
00:14:39.820I mean, the party's position on Brexit was neutral, although the prime minister, Cameron, obviously was, you know, he was in favour of staying.
00:14:47.540And I often think about, you know, David was a, was a great prime minister and I really, really like and admire him.
00:14:55.700You know, I, I wish he had stayed out of that argument.
00:14:59.080I wish he had said, you know what, I'm not going to campaign for one thing or the other.
00:15:05.040The rest of you go and campaign and fight for your lives, fight for what you believe.
00:15:09.900And then when the votes come in, I'll implement what, you know, what you had.
00:15:15.300But by, by this time he'd already done, I think, two, you know, we'd, we'd had two big, you know, national elections.
00:15:27.060And so we had the, the first past the post one, and then we had the, what was the, what was the, what was the other, the Scottish, the Scottish referendum.
00:15:37.860We hadn't had referendums for as long as anyone could remember.
00:15:41.740And then suddenly three come along at once.
00:15:43.420And David supported, you know, remaining.
00:22:33.300You know, we have to have a low-tax economy.
00:22:35.880How many politicians have you heard, how many people have you had sitting in this chair saying, we wish the British economy was like, you know, or London was like Singapore on Thames?
00:22:45.980Do you know how you get Singapore on Thames?
00:22:47.740Is that you have a much more mature approach to immigration.
00:22:56.460You deal with law and order in a much more stringent way.
00:22:59.100You deal with asylum in probably a different way than what we're currently doing.
00:23:04.460So they say the soundbites, this is what we want, but they're not prepared to then do what's necessary to achieve it.
00:23:11.460And what will be necessary to achieve it, you know, we'll be having a smaller government with a much more, you know, much more focused government, taxing less.
00:23:19.760Putting corporation tax up is a crazy thing to do.
00:23:25.620You know, I just don't understand where is the conservative in taxing businesses more than they've ever been taxed before.
00:23:33.420We should be competing in a global stage by having, no, come to the UK.
00:23:38.920You know, if you're a billionaire somewhere in the world, you've probably got a flat here in London or you've got a house in London, right?
00:23:45.700We get precisely zero of their income tax.
00:23:54.320You know, better to have 5% of everything than 40% of nothing.
00:23:57.760I mean, any idiot knows this, but we make life very, very difficult for ourselves if we don't use the assets that we have, like London, you know, like, you know, the stability that we are famous for in a successful way.
00:24:17.140And I think that, you know, we are in danger if we don't make some big changes pretty quickly, then I think we're in danger of, you know, creating irreversible problems for ourselves if we haven't done so already.
00:24:33.460So you're saying all of these things, which I agree with from an economic point of view.
00:24:49.540There are certain things that, you know, we need to tackle as a nation that is going to require political leadership.
00:24:55.880It's going to require courage, bravery from our politicians, more than just fine words.
00:25:01.680They are going to have to see something through to the end.
00:25:04.200The problem is, is that at the slightest pressure, most of them cave in.
00:25:10.080You know, you saw this recently with the Ministry of Justice, and I can't remember what exactly the issue was.
00:25:14.600It might come to me where it was obvious that they were going to have to, you know, change, change tack.
00:25:21.220It was it was I remember it was the guy who had been convicted and sent to prison and he was innocent and he had to repay the money that he got compensation.
00:25:35.520And then they tried to charge him for bed and board for the 20 odd years he was in prison.
00:25:40.860And and, you know, the newspapers sort of said, this is outrageous.
00:25:45.980And the Ministry of Justice put out a statement which said, we have no plans to change this.
00:25:51.880And I was listening to this on the radio and I and I turned to my wife and I said, of course, they're going to change this.
00:26:09.940Because they look idiotic to begin with for not saying not reading the political runes and saying, yes, of course, we're going to have to change this.
00:26:18.880This is, you know, it's offensive that you would charge this guy this.
00:26:24.880But then they'd already put the press release out to say that they weren't going to look at it.
00:26:29.680And then, of course, then they have to U-turn.
00:26:31.460There's nothing more obnoxious to an MP that has to, you know, grab hold of the handbrake and do a 180 degree U-turn in the middle of the skid pan, which is exactly what they did.
00:26:44.040And this is it's going to require bravery for them to say this is what we're going to do and we're going to stick to it.
00:26:49.580And we don't see much bravery, I'm afraid, in public life.
00:26:54.440We don't see it from either of the two main political parties or any of them.
00:27:01.060And, you know, I remember I'm old enough to remember my political hero is Ronald Reagan.
00:27:07.780And if you ever come to my house, you'll see that we have our downstairs toilet is is it's got all of the Reagan memorabilia in there.
00:27:16.440And he used to sit in front of a TV screen and talk to the nation.
00:27:21.200And he was known as like the great communicator, you know, the Gipper.
00:27:24.080And he would say this is why we're going to be cutting taxes because, you know, we're cutting taxes because, in fact, we will raise more money.
00:27:32.280And he would talk about things like the Laffer curve and when the when the shuttle exploded and he went straight onto the TV.
00:27:38.680And he spoke to a nation that was in shock about us not hiding our, you know, our mistakes.
00:27:45.000But we do things in, you know, making a clear contrast between Western American values and the values of the of the of the Soviet Union.
00:27:54.160And, you know, he had great political bravery.
00:27:59.240And we don't have anyone like that, you know.
00:28:01.340But here you come to the question that I always ask in this situation, which is, well, I mean, the obvious counter to what you're saying is just from a devil's advocate perspective is list trust show bravery.
00:28:39.120But the question I want to ask you is in a world in which any time a prime minister says I intend to cut spending, I intend to lower taxes,
00:28:49.320what the media do is they come out and say, well, when you do this, you will kill people.
00:53:28.520The third group are the make-believers.
00:53:30.880And they're the ones that cause us all the problems.
00:53:33.160It's the make-believers who use their faith as a vehicle to promote themselves or their agenda.
00:53:38.800You know, they do it for pride or for, you know, for money, ego or status or whatever it might be.
00:53:44.740And they use faith as a vehicle for these things.
00:53:47.420And government needs to be really discerning, not cynical, but they need to be really discerning about who they engage with, who they talk to within the faith space.
00:53:55.900Not just going for the first person that puts their hand up and says, hi, I'm the local community leader.
00:54:01.820You know, they need to say, no, we're going to be much more discerning about who we're talking to and what we're dealing with.
00:54:07.220Because there are so many make-believers out there.
00:54:10.880And again, without, you know, turning the tables on you guys, there are make-believers in the comedy industry.
00:54:15.880How many people use their comedic skills for, you know, for non-comedy reasons?
00:54:24.140Yeah, well, quite a lot of them, unfortunately.
00:54:26.400The thing that I found really interesting about your report is you were saying that there are certain topics or aspects of religion that we don't talk about, we don't focus on.
00:54:41.680So let's talk a little bit about that because I don't think, I mean, that to me was completely surprising.
00:54:48.520So, look, number one, when it comes to faith-based extremism, by far and away, both in destruction, quantity, impact, Islamist extremism is still the biggest.
00:55:06.900And I make the point in my report that we have to acknowledge that by far and away, the biggest victims of Islamist extremism are Muslims.
00:55:18.880And I don't think we're quick enough to say, look, yes, it affects us.
00:55:23.180You know, if there's a tragedy, if there's a, you know, if there's a terrorist attack, you know, in one of our cities or something, of course, that all affects us.
00:55:30.660But the day-to-day grind of ongoing Islamist extremism doesn't affect me.
00:55:37.880It affects the majority of British Muslims.
00:55:41.740Just that chilling effect, that corrosive effect.
00:55:45.420And I think we need to be, we need to acknowledge that.
00:55:48.960And we need to say that, you know, that they are, I think, they are the biggest victims of this.
00:55:56.280And Islamist extremism has been done to death by lots of other people.
00:55:59.760So I didn't go into it in too much detail because I only wanted to put my energies where I felt I could say something different, where I could add something or contribute something that others hadn't done.
00:56:12.140The second biggest group is white supremacists, neo-Nazis, who will very often use faith as a, they're make-believers, right, as a vehicle to promote their very sinister and very racist approach.
00:56:31.140And so you have the case of some white supremacists and neo-Nazis literally running into mosques, eating bacon sandwiches, leaving Bibles in the mosque, barricading the doors where women are supposed to be coming out of, and just generally being really vile and horrible.
00:56:54.220And worse examples of this. There are many, many worse examples of this.
00:56:59.260So, and I'm pleased to say, you know, when Priti Patel was Home Secretary, she prescribed a number of these white supremacist neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations.
00:57:10.080And she did a brilliant job at doing that. And I applaud her for her courage in saying, I'm not going to part up with this.
00:57:16.780Because we had lots and lots of Islamist terrorists and extremist groups that were prescribed as terrorist organizations.
00:57:22.880And she took, I think, a really courageous decision of saying, no, we're going to go after some white supremacists as well, because what they're doing is, you know.
00:57:31.080Colin, why is that courageous? That seems pretty normal thing for government to do, to go after neo-Nazis.
00:57:35.540Yeah. I mean, when you put it like that, it ought to be, but she did it. You know, she did it.
00:57:43.900So who was the Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016? Remind me. It was Theresa May.
00:57:51.260Those groups like the Sonnenkrieg division and the Luftwaffe or the Atomwaffe division and all these other groups.
00:57:58.860They're not very, they don't conceal themselves well, do they?
00:58:02.640They don't. But no, Priti did. And, you know, I'm a good friend of hers. And I think she did. I think, you know, she was magnificent.
00:58:11.220So white supremacists are the second biggest.
00:58:12.820They're second biggest. And then I think there's a massive, massive, massive gap then between the third biggest group in terms of who are they in the UK.
00:58:21.760And I do say in the report that they are Sikh extremists. Now, the vast majority of British Sikhs, they're a relatively small population.
00:58:30.180The vast majority of them are the best of British.
00:58:34.100They are overrepresented in almost every positive indice you could look for.
00:58:40.420Home ownership, family staying together, academic results, you know, starting businesses.
00:58:45.300You know, they're just brilliant, brilliant people. They're very charitable. They're very kind.
00:58:50.960They are some of the loveliest people I've ever met.
00:58:54.300Hiding amongst them is a tiny minority who want and are fighting for an independent Sikh state in India called Khalistan, which is roughly the Punjab.
00:59:07.580Now, look, I'm almost a free speech absolutist, right?
00:59:12.820So I take this view and I say in the report, people can believe whatever they want to believe.
00:59:17.500You can encourage people to believe what you believe.
00:59:20.380You can raise money. You can, you know, you can teach and educate.
00:59:24.500You can do whatever you like. But what you can't do is be coercive.
01:00:07.400And I think there might be some small view that that might be the case, but they wouldn't dream in a million years of causing pain or suffering or being aggressive.
01:00:55.720When we were doing the evidence gathering, so many Sikhs come to me under the promise of anonymity to say, you know, our lives are being made of misery.
01:01:02.900You know, our gudwaras, that's the gudwara is the Sikh temple.
01:01:06.640You know, are being taken over by these extremists.
01:01:09.020You know, they're kind of using our local sort of democratic means to become, you know, take over the running of our charities, of the Sikh charities, of the Sikh gudwaras.
01:01:20.980And they're poisoning our young people with some, you know, some really hardline extremist things.
01:01:37.680But they can't deny that there are lots of Khalistan extremist and terrorist organizations that have been prescribed by the UK, by France, by Canada, by America, that some of the stuff that you can find quite easily on YouTube and other social media will make a hair curl.
01:01:58.880I mean, it's really obnoxious and violent stuff.
01:02:02.500And so, you know, they're on thin ice if they think that there isn't a problem.
01:02:08.900It was the Khalistanis that blew up the Air India flight over, you know, until 9-11, the Khalistani extremists were the world's worst aviation terrorists, which is why they were prescribed as a terrorist organization.
01:02:21.920I mean, they don't like being reminded of these things.
01:02:25.220It was, you know, it was Sikh extremists that assassinated Indira Gandhi.
01:02:31.340It was Sikh extremists that tried to, you know, cut the throat of General Bra, a Sikh, I think he was a general in the Indian Army, who was shopping in London.
01:02:44.000You know, they tried to cut his throat.
01:02:53.820When you say how many, quite a few, yeah, very same question.
01:02:57.400Well, I've been surprised at just how many.
01:03:01.340So if you were to look up, even as recently as this year, protests outside the Indian embassy, hundreds and hundreds of Sikhs with the Khalistani flags wearing, you know, Khalistan Zinzabad T-shirts and things like this.
01:03:21.920Hundreds of them protesting outside the Indian embassy, even pulled down the Indian flag outside the Indian, caused a huge diplomatic uproar because they, you know, the Indian embassy said, you know, our police didn't do enough to sort of intervene.
01:03:37.000I think pulled down the Indian flag and replaced it with a Khalistani flag.
01:03:41.160I mean, it would be like, I mean, I don't know what it would be like.
01:03:44.540Imagine back in the 80s, some Irish nationalists going to Delhi and going to the British embassy in Delhi and pulling down the British flag and replacing it with the Irish one or the, you know, the IRA flag.
01:03:57.820I mean, it would have that same emotional kind of response that we would have.
01:08:32.240Like 70% of Europe's critical minerals, the stuff that we need for our mobile phones
01:08:38.060and for, you know, our technology and the big wind farms and things like this,
01:08:46.58070% of them are on the eastern border of Ukraine,
01:08:51.940just, you know, I'm not surprised Russia wants it.
01:08:57.280So critical minerals, rare earth minerals and the supply chain of them.
01:09:02.860China have got us by the short and curlies on this, not just us, the whole of the West.
01:09:09.620America has been asleep, Europe has been asleep, we have been asleep, we need a healthy supply chain of these critical minerals to make stuff.
01:09:23.060And at the moment, nearly all of that supply chain, 90% of it comes through China, either the processing or the mining of it.
01:09:31.060And that's a massive problem, because it means that they want to turn it off, we've got a problem.
01:09:45.960You know, the amount of IP that we have in this country, whether it's in pharmaceuticals or whether it's in defence or whether it's in, you know, high tech or that kind of thing.
01:09:55.920Yeah, intellectual property, that is being stolen by other states, is eye-watering.
01:10:03.940And, you know, my next report is actually on this subject, on state-sponsored industrial espionage.
01:10:10.920And the more I've looked into it, the more I get into it, the more I think this is a massive, massive problem, and people should be talking about it.
01:10:16.920But, no, we're going to fixate with, you know, the latest, I don't know, whatever tabloid issue there might be.
01:10:25.180There are really big, important issues that are happening right under our nose, whether it's critical minerals, whether it's state-sponsored industrial espionage and other things.
01:10:33.960A lot of your guests have said other interesting things as well.