The Authorities Failed Those Girls - Julia Hartley-Brewer

Social workers wouldn't go to his home without a police escort. That's how dangerous they believed him to be. Oh, but let's leave him free to walk the streets. All of the signs were there and nothing was done because he didn't fit a category. I mean, it's such a failure on every single count on both of those major stories, both of which involved terrible tragedies, terrible things happening to little girls. Dreaming gangs were known.

known by, not doing it, no one knew, were known by the authorities. Some were even killed. People keep forgetting that. Some were even actually murdered. And yet there were times when these girls were found themselves prosecuted. So why is that happening? Julia, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much. It's been a very long time. It has. Well, it's not because we don't like you and we've asked you on. I've been busy. You've been busy. Been busy. Here you are. A lot to talk about. Yeah.

And a lot of very serious things to talk about in the last couple of weeks that, you know, the grooming gang is obviously exploding, that conversation. We've had the Southport murderer sentenced. What have been your takes on the last few weeks? I don't know. I don't know about...

you, I've just been blown away by the whole thing, depressed by the whole thing, and incredibly incensed and angry by the whole thing at the abject failure of pretty much every single authority in our country. I mean, it's such a failure on every single count. on both of those major stories, both of which involved...

Terrible tragedies, terrible things happening to little girls, where there were 13-year-olds being raped for years on end, gang raped by rape grooming gangs, or Telford and Rotherham and Rochdale, and it turns out... that are 45 other cities and towns across the country, or it was those little girls who were killed by Axel Rubikana in Southport, and the other eight who were stabbed. Oh, and by the way, you know, the other sort of, you know...

20-odd who were in the room, who somehow escaped, well, with just the mental scars, not the physical scars. And in both of these cases, very, very different, and yet exactly the same issue, which is... British authorities, whose job it is, whose job it is to keep us safe, failed. And they failed again and again and again and again. But don't worry, guys.

We're going to have inquiries of some kind or another, not necessarily the big public inquiry into Southport that we all think we need and do need. But we're going to have other inquiries. We're going to have investigations and lessons will be learned. Well, like it's the knife's fault.

I think it's all down to Amazon. I think this country, our authorities, think that everything is down to nasty things being sold on the internet and herty words on the internet. And if you could just solve that, we'd all be fine.

I think these people are so deeply wrong. I think they are immoral in terms of their failure to do the job. Because you know what, if you can't do that job, you have no. bloody business pretending you can because people's lives are at stake and I think sometimes I think I cannot work out are they mad or bad like do they just not care about

you know, people's lives? Are they so desperate to virtue signal and not say the wrong thing and not be called a bad word and to still go to the North London dinner parties they want to go to? Is that their concern? Or do they genuinely believe that... If only Axel Rubikana didn't have to wait an extra nine days to buy a knife from Amazon, that...

the Southport attack wouldn't have happened. Or if only people didn't say nasty things about Pakistanis, then we would have been able to tackle the grooming gangs led largely by men of Pakistani heritage. It's always about words. about stuff on the internet, it's never about the actual problem.

Do you think that's because... Look, I think they do care. I think it's hard to imagine a human being, although some exist, but it's hard to imagine... Yeah, most people. It's hard to imagine a government made up of people who don't care about little girls being killed. I imagine... You say that. You say that. But let's go back to Southport. No, not Southport. So let's go back to the grooming gags, OK? So for years on years, in...

Dozens and dozens of dams and cities across our country for 10, 20, possibly even 30 years grooming gangs were known. known by, not doing it, no one knew, were known by the authorities, known by the police, to be going out, to be drugging and giving alcohol to and threatening and grooming young teenage girls in care, in difficult circumstances, and then... having them gang raped, tortured, beaten. Some were even killed. People keep forgetting that. Some were even actually murdered.

Young girls were turning up back at their care homes, you know, bloodied and bruised. They were being taken to hospital pregnant. Some girls had to have surgery. They'd been so badly injured. Are you telling me? Are you telling me? There were all these people who cared, the doctors and the care home workers and the social workers and the police and the council leaders. You're saying they cared, but they just didn't care.

Quite enough to stop it. Could you imagine any of us? I like to think any of the audience watching this, my audience at Talk TV, I can't imagine any of us going, well, I'm worried about my career, I'm paying my mortgage, so I won't do anything to try and stop this. I can't imagine. I don't... I don't see how you can have any morality and not stop that.

Well, on that issue, we had Maggie Oliver, the police whistleblower. Wonderful Maggie Oliver. Yes. Who did give up her career. She did. And she also talked about the fact that one of the comments that I can't remember who made it was either another police officer or somebody in position of authority.

said that, oh, these girls, they should have just been drowned at birth or something because of what, because of how worthless they were considered. Well, they were slags, weren't they? They were holes and slags, you know.

The idea they were underage prostitutes. There's no such thing. There's no such thing. You're a victim of rape. If you're under 16 and you're having sex, particularly with a man who's old enough to be your father or grandfather, you're a victim of rape. End of. Nothing to discuss. And yet there were... when these girls were found themselves prosecuted, taken into a prison, into a police cell, and the men who were perpetrating this evil against them were let off.

I don't know how you can say, well, most people, well, they might have been good people. They weren't good enough. In the interest of fairness, as somebody who has actually taught and taught in deprived areas... It is systemic because let's say you notice bruises on a little boy's body. You would refer it to your line manager. Your line manager will then refer it up. So you have done your job.

All you can do is your job. And if the bruises keep happening, you go to your line manager, what's happening about it? But... You don't have that much power, particularly if you're at that echelon of the change. No, absolutely. I mean, so in the Sarah Sharif case, you know, she was taken out of school. When the school started nosing her bruises, the little girl who ended up being murdered by her father and her stepmother, they took her out of school.

Well, first of all, they put her in a jeep to cover her up so her bruises couldn't be seen on her face. I mean, evil people are quite clever at covering up their evil deeds. But the key thing is, if you're in a position of authority, if you're in a position... of trust, if you are somebody whose job it is to protect people, if children are coming to you and saying

This is happening to me, and you don't do anything about it. If police officers like Maggie Oliver are going to people and say, you need to do something about this, and you choose not to do it because you don't want to stir up community tensions and all of this, I just... I just think you need to take a long hard look at yourself. I'd also like to see your hard drive.

I'm serious. I don't know. What was happening in the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England for all ages and many other churches as well. It's not just happening in certain churches. The cover-ups that went on and on where a priest would be found to have been...

sexually abusing or beating both children in one diocese. Oh, well, can you move him somewhere else? This was routine. Oh, well, send him to Africa. It's OK if he abuses African children. This was routine in the church for decades. It's fairly routine even now. They'll pretend it isn't, but it is happening now. We just lost Justin Wilby as the Archbishop of Country because his failure to deal with this stuff, stuff he knew and he didn't deal with. I just...

There is just no circumstance when I can see myself and I think you guys and people watching or listening to this can see themselves going, yeah, I'm going to put my career over saving a child from being abused. I don't, I just don't think you have. any normal human morality if you do that. Yes. I'm in an agreement with you. And I also think we need to look at the fact that there's been systemic failings as well. Take the case of the killer.

of Southport, he went into a school, his old school, armed with a hockey stick, targeting students, had to be tackled to the ground, I think by the deputy head. He literally jumped on him. And you go... So then why was nothing done about that? That is also a very, very serious incident. He admitted 10 times he's carried a knife. He was definitely caught with a knife in school as well. He was found on a bus with a knife again and again and again. What's amazing is, you know, he was sent...

off to the special schools to deal with these sort of kids, didn't bother turning up, only went for a few days in total. Social workers sent to his home. Social workers wouldn't go to his home without a police escort. That's how dangerous they believed him to be. Oh, but let's leave him free to walk the streets. I mean, that seems normal. These are the choices we make. And this comes back to the big debate that's been going on in the last couple of weeks.

Especially since we learned so much more detail about Axel Rubio-Kabana in the sentencing, which was... one of the most harrowing things I've ever covered as a journalist. Not even in court, and I've sat in court through some horrible cases as a news reporter, but covering that on air, reading out some of the details. And I'm in the studio.

I've got a 60-year-old ex-military man who happened to be my guest that day, and he and I were both red-eyed. There were a couple of times when I just had to say, I'm going to have to go to a break. I can't even, you know, as a mum, I can't read this out loud. This is just too awful. And saying to people, if you've got kids in the car, you might want to...

you know, tune out at this point, but we need to get the information out. But the key thing about this, so much information was known and so little was done. And then the whole debate became about whether the authorities would deem him as an extremist. Was it because he has Islamic material, Islamic...

al-Qaeda training manual so was it you know which in itself is a terror offence but whether that was meant that he was you know an Islamist inspired terrorist no we thought he had other ideologies obsessed it would appear with White genocide spoke about that at the school. And this became the big debate. And yet, this is all about words. Everything with this government, and I think the last government as well, is about words, whether it's hurty words on Twitter, whether it's someone...

saying something that people don't like, the language you use about a particular issue, as opposed to actions and deeds and taking action against people who would do us wrong. This guy was clearly a danger. He went from being a 12-year-old choir boy. Christian Rwandan migrant parents who were suddenly incredibly troubled, who called Childline and talked about, I want to kill people, what do I do about that? Bought knives, beat up other...

He went into the school and beat up the kids. His dad was so worried a week before the Southport attack that his child was going to go and commit a massacre at a high school, which is what he planned to do. He begged a taxi driver not to take him. Now... All of the signs were there and nothing was done because he didn't fit a category because someone had to tick a box and go, oh, he's a far-right terrorist, he's an Islamist terrorist, he's an incel. Well, he didn't fit any category.

And so then the computer said no. That's what happened. The computer said no and nothing was done. He didn't respond to some of the efforts made by social workers and Prevent. So they just kind of didn't bother. Same issue we have with kids who were murdered by their parents. Often again, oh, the parents wouldn't let us in the door. If the parents don't let you in the door, you...

bash the door down, you arrest the parents, you take the kid into care. The failure to take action against people who are a risk to us. Again and again and again and again and again, every single Islamist terrorist who has committed an atrocity in our streets in the last 20 years was known to the authorities. Often they've been followed by the authorities. They had clear links with Islamist terrorist ideology.

and they talked about it, they knew people, nothing was done. So many criminals. Nottingham murder. The other year, there's a caretaker and two young students killed in the prime of their life. So many opportunities to prevent those murders from happening and they weren't taken. This is about joined up thinking and it's about putting the rights of law abiding people from 80 to...

eight months to live safely in this country. And the only time we ever hear about civil rights in this country from the authorities is when they're worried about the civil rights of someone who would potentially do us harm. They're never worried about the civil rights of everyone else.

They don't care about those. I just think we've got things absolutely the wrong way around. You know, in you talking about the words and the obsession with words, I think partly, Julia, it's because you can deal with words. Words, it's a very easy thing. You can control them. It's a very easy solution. It's something that's easy to trot out in front of the television cameras. What's more difficult is to tackle the thorny issues. and in particular the truth.

Yeah, facing up to the truth and dealing with the actual actions. It's hard. I'm not pretending it's easy. I mean, even when we talk about, say, terror attacks, we don't hear about the terror attacks that have been stopped and the magnificent work of the security services. But there are too many that... have not been stopped and there are too many criminals that are not stopped, too many mad and bad people.

go out and about. And when you get into a situation, the madness of last autumn, where we had the Labour government, and the Tory government would have done it if they'd still been in power. It was their plan too, letting out convicted, violent offenders.

sex offenders included, lettered them onto the streets because they had to clear enough space in prisons to put people who tweeted hurty words in August about the Southport attack, to put them in prison, some of them for a couple of years. You are...

in Alice Through the Looking Glass territory. Yeah, and also as well, you look at Keir Starmer's approach to it and the way that he cracked down using the word far right. And I'm thinking to myself, you can only use that... tactic once it's only going to be able to be used once and after that it's going to be inflammatory more than anything well i mean i think you know far-right racist bigots islamophobe

Well, that's been thrown at pretty much everybody who voted Brexit since 2016. I've been called all of those things. I am none of those things. My audience have called that, you know, if you listen to anything that isn't, you know, the BBC.

news, then you're accused of being that. If you say anything that's even fact-based, you look at the latest Office for National Statistic data on population projections, and you say, maybe this isn't a good thing to add another 5 million people to the population over the...

you know, over a 10-year period, or pretty much entirely from immigration. Oh, oh, that's a bit far, right? I mean, I'm stating official government facts and projections, and I'm giving a perfectly valid opinion based on the facts as I see them. But that's the thing. They throw this out. We had a report only this week, which we were never supposed to see, a Home Office review of...

of events post-Southport, so not just the Southport attack, but also the riots afterwards. And it's a review. We don't know who wrote it. It was commissioned by the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, who has now said, oh, no, no, it's not government policy. No, no.

No, we weren't going to enact this. This doesn't represent government policy then or now. But this is a review that says not only that, well, we shouldn't just be focusing on ideology. We should be looking at, you know, actions and things. So ideology isn't really the big thing to look at in Prevent.

Well, apart from the fact that 80% or 90% of all attacks in this country, which are terror attacks, are from Islamists, 80% or 90% of the deaths from terrorist attacks are from Islamists based on that ideology, of course you should be... focusing your resources on that but it also said that we should focus more on non-crime incidents non-crime hate incidents by definition not crime the non-crime bit is the clue but the idea that we should be failing to tackle a

mad or bad teenager in his bedroom who's planning to massacre in high school and decides to go massacre little children at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club, but you're going to worry about... literal non-crimes, frankly, is absurd. I mean, and dangerous and immoral because it costs lives. But that's what the government has been looking at. So there are people quite right now.

On the government payroll, i.e. your and my payroll, our taxes are paying their wages, whether they were freelance or on staff in the civil service, who wrote a report basically saying, yeah, the problem isn't ideology. The problem is, you know, some incels or lone kids on the internet and hurty words. And Julia... Mad. One of the things I find interesting is...

You talk about how Labour and Conservatives are united in this, really. They largely are, aren't they? Effectively, right? So why is our country in this position? God, there's a question and a half. But why is this happening? That's a question that a lot of our and your audience will be asking. It's like, how do we get here? I came to this country in 1995.

Look, they're always going to be in a country of X million people, atrocities and people who are violent. And I remember Dunblane, very, very kind of, you know, terrible. But... This idea that sort of every few months there's a massive stabbing in which people are killed or blown up or something. And that kids are stabbing each other. I wasn't a thing when I was a teenager.

It was at times, you know, in the early 2000s, there were like the postcode wars. I wasn't a teenager. I guess what I'm asking is something else, which is these terrorist attacks. And these incidents like the Southport stabbings, they're definitely happening more now. So why is that happening?

Why is our country in this position? Because I hear you, lack of enforcement. Look, I know a lot of police officers. I know people in security. I know a lot of police officers who are tearing their hair out of failures. They're tearing their hair out of the failures, but I also think we'd probably accept that they have a bigger workload on those issues than they've ever had. Why is that? I think there are lots of different social and demographic reasons. I think we have imported.

a lot of people to this country who don't like this country. What's very interesting actually is... the high rate of sort of violence incidents from the children of immigrants. Many immigrants come to the country, like, you know, they want to make a better life for themselves. All credit to them. You want to prove your family's lot. Got no issue with that at all. And but their children.

often feel, from whichever background, not just Muslim children, many other children, will feel like I don't quite belong. I've kind of got a foot in both camps and I don't quite belong in either and will feel sort of an otherness, a separateness and that.

That can breed problems. Why is that, Julia? Just let's double click on that because we spend a lot of time in America and I don't see that in America. America's got a very different attitude. Look, you know, I went to school in America. My mother lived there for a bit and we used to have to...

the flag and sing the national anthem every morning my hand on my chest and sing the national anthem and i said well i'm not american i mean i'm seven eight nine my mum said yeah but we're in america you do what you know you you know you do what the you do what the deal is there um it's very it's about you know you're not you're

not you know a Muslim you know you're a Muslim American you're an Arab American you're Italian American you're you're African American it's very much but you're American you're American it's a much prouder sort of thing I think one of the biggest issues we got and I don't think it's just the demographics because that's

I'm not a, oh, all our problems come from immigration. Rubbish. No, they don't. Our problems are homegrown. Fundamentally, our problems are homegrown. I think it's in a political, media, academic elite who...

And public sector elite as well. And actually you can add in quite a lot of the private sector as well. This elite who are just completely out of touch with... with mainstream British opinion, I think the vast majority of what most people think in the country, who are signed up to an idea that... Everything about Britain's past, everything about Britain's values, everything about the white indigenous native population is wrong.

bad. It's shameful. Our colonial past is terrible. Not only did we colonize the world and we enslaved people forget the fact that we were the first empire to end slavery. Didn't you get some brownie points for that? No.

The fact that, you know, the Industrial Revolution, we're responsible for more global emissions because we invented the Industrial Revolution. Oh, well, the reason why we're all alive right now and not dead because we didn't have modern medicine and we don't have, you know, mass production. of food and from fossil fuels. I mean, again, I always say to people, you know, industrial revolution, you're welcome, world. You're welcome. They, not we, they are ashamed of everything. They're moral.

and cultural relativists. They think that all cultures are equal. Blatantly untrue. Because you know what? There is not a mass exodus of people from Western liberal democracies. desperately trying to get to Saudi Arabia, to Iran, to Russia, to China, to Nigeria. They're not desperately trying to get to those countries. Why not? Because they're coming the other direction. Because we have a superior... We have a superior morality. Oh, can't say that. You can't say that.

Well, yeah, I can, because it's true. Because a culture where women and men are equal, where gay men are not murdered simply, or gay women for their sexuality, where you're allowed to be of faith or... be of faith, to marry out of your faith, leave your faith. These are basic things which we take for granted in the West. These are entirely new inventions and they're inventions of Western liberal democracy. And you've got an entire political academic media class who...

are very uncomfortable about that, even though they champion those things and they're all, you know, the trans pride flag-waving folk. At the same time, they will say that... that morality that enables that freedom in our country, that that somehow is equal with the morality and the culture of a country or a religion or a part of the world where none of that is the case. Now, you cannot...

hold both of those ideas in your head at the same time and be a coherent human being. And yet that's what they're trying to do. They are ashamed of our past. They're ashamed of our present. They're ashamed of British people. They're ashamed and embarrassed the Emily Thorberry sneering at White Van Mann with his England flag. How dare people say the England flag, or even the Union flag, are owned by the far right? How dare you?

flags. They represent my nation. They're embarrassed by everything about British people. And I think that's how we got here. I think that's how it's all been allowed to happen. That lack of... confidence in ourselves is why we don't act. Correctly and strongly enough, perhaps, on threats. And we don't stand up for it because people are embarrassed. And again, the urge to virtue signal to say the, quote, right thing. So I...

Don't think you can underestimate the urge to be thought of as a nice person and invited to the right dinner parties. How important that is. I remember this. When I learned this, first of all, when I was at the Sunday Express, I was a political editor at the Sunday Express, and we were... constantly told like that stuff we were writing about maybe maybe mass uncontrolled immigration isn't always a good thing

Just going to throw that out there. Yeah, it turns out, yeah, massive majority public opinion now. When I was campaigning for Brexit in 2016, and I would have so many people, I mean, you know, well-known names in the British media and politics. who would say to me, but you're one of us. You know, you went to Oxford. You're a clever girl. You're in the media. Surely you don't believe in this stuff. I mean, come on. It's like, yeah, I believe in...

I believe in democratically elected parliaments and governments and self-determination and national sovereignty. And they looked at me like I'd said... I mean, the most evil, awful thing in the world. They don't mix with anyone who thinks differently to them. And if you do think differently to them, you are cast out. Do you think... We're in a moment now where this can't hold on for much longer simply because...

I think Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter has changed things. And you can see with the grooming gangs, which is an issue, I think we should be fair and say it was an issue that was both exposed and covered by the mainstream media for quite some time. that Tommy Robinson exposed it. No, he's sodding well didn't. Andrew Norfolk at the Times, you know, people like Maggie Oliver. On the one hand...

On the other hand, certainly I would say it was not covered nearly enough and consistently for a long time. And what we then saw is Elon Musk and others amplifying the voices of survivors and campaigners, etc. online. And so now it's starting to feel to me like because of that freedom, you can't really keep the lid down on all this stuff. I think two things have happened. One is when you've called everyone far right.

I mean, then it has no meaning anymore. And people, you know, the Dominic Frisbee song, we're all far right now. But that's it. OK, we're just going to laugh back at you. Those words, the racism, bigotry. those words don't have the power anymore to shut people down. People, no, I'm not having it. But I agree with you on X and the freedom, I mean, on so many different issues to talk. But I think also...

There's been an emperor's new clothes moment. You know, suddenly the crowd has stopped shouting for just long enough for us to all hear the little boy go, but the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. But what you've been telling us for years isn't true. You've been failing us. You've been lying to us and failing us, telling us what you think we want to hear and then abusing us. I mean, we've been in, the British people have been in an abusive, coercive relationship with the British state.

last 20, 30 years. We have been groomed. No, seriously, we have been sort of controlled and patted on the head and talked, there, there, there, don't worry, no, no, no, we'll deal with that. Don't you worry your prickly heads. And then the exact opposite has been done. And we've been gaslighted. And we go, oh, but you haven't done what you said you'd do. Yeah, we have. Yeah, we have. And I just think there is just sometimes these little moments where everyone goes...

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The worrying thing is, Julia, is I was looking at polls the other day where it was showing that the Gen Z's faith in democracy... Oh, terrifying. ..is at rock bottom. And then the part of me, you know, the outraged millennial was like, well, young people. And then I thought, well, let's look at it from the perspective of first principles. You voted to lower immigration.

Immigration hasn't gone down. By the way, Gen Z didn't vote for that. But we voted. They're like 30 to 17, 27 year olds, something like that. But we voted to lower immigration. Immigration wasn't lowered. In fact, it was raised. Time. and time and time again. Policies that we demanded have not only been ignored, they have also done the exact opposite. So when Gen Z turned around and go, I don't really have an argument, do you?

I do. I do. Because as I said, there's a reason why people, everyone talks about all strong round politics, but no one is moving to those countries desperate to make a new life there. They want to come to democracy. As Winston Churchill famously said, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others.

It really is. I mean, again, one of the reasons I was a Brexiteer. You know, I want democratic accountability. So my thing was, I didn't think that us not being ruled by Brussels was going to immediately make Britain a better place and get more accountable policies. My thing was, yeah, but when they bugger it up, as I know they will under Boris Johnson, Liz Druss and Rishi Sunak and Kirsten and everyone else.

At least we can blame them and they can't say, what can I do? Brussels wouldn't let us do it. Those are the rules. I want to know, you know, you're accountable to me. I'm a voter. You're accountable to me, not to them. And I want you to act. And when you fail to act, you. be punished, which is why the Tories are not in power and why Labour is in power now. Let me push back on that. What about, OK, the kid will go, right, what about illegal immigration, Julia?

We've done nothing to solve it. And whenever we've tried to do something, it's a European... That is actually not true. We have processed lots of assignments by silent plates by granting them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, then you solved it.

There's no more backlash. The European Court of Human Rights. No, but democracy does not ensure that you get everything you want from any government or that they will do what you want. What it ensures is you get to get rid of them when they fail. So Tories have failed. Labour will fail. OK, well, who do we choose next time? Well, the Tories aren't going to get back in unless the Tories are believable that they will actually take on those issues that they failed in the last...

14 years. Reform need to be viable, realistically. We need to probably see a uniting of the right in whatever form to defeat Labour on that front. Do I trust any of them right now? No, I don't. But you know what? That doesn't mean democracy doesn't work. But what I found most worrying about that is that... You say it was like 52% of young people basically said they didn't see the point of democracy and our country would do better under a strong man, a strong leader who didn't have to...

you know, deal with voters and elections, which is all very well. But again, you can actually have someone who can drive the economy. I mean, look at China under Xi Jinping. The economy is booming forward. Yeah. And sorry about all the people who were in prison and the people in the slave labor.

camps and people who get beaten and tortured and disappeared because they talk about democracy. Sorry about those people. People are under a complete illusion. And again, that is part of the whole, the elites. The ruling class is not defending our values, not defending freedom of speech.

Freedom of thought. Yeah, remember, whoever thought that would be an issue, not defending democracy, the importance of voting, not defending these fundamental basic tenets of Western liberal democracy, thinking that it doesn't really matter. You know, and it does. And these things need defending every generation. But if you've got a class that are in charge of the national conversation...

who don't actually really believe in any of those things. If when you do have, you know, the biggest national public vote for anything ever in this country for Brexit, and you... If you're the prime minister now, Keir Starmer, spend four years of your life trying to stop that from happening to undermine a democratic vote. You're saying that it doesn't matter.

I mean, it's untenable. These people think that Donald Trump is unfit for public office because of what he did to try and overturn the 2020 election. And I would agree with them on that front. even though I massively welcome him getting elected this time round, given the options available. Keir Starmer spent exactly the same amount of time doing exactly the same thing. I mean, but apparently he's all right. Because he was doing it on the left.

I just think there is absolutely an answer to those teenagers and those 25-year-olds to say that, no, our values and our system, it's not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives. I do agree with you. But then when we talk, for instance, we interviewed Liz Truss in this very room, and she said that she couldn't do anything because of the civil servants, that they try and implement policies and that the civil service rebuffed them.

You go, well, do we actually live in a democracy or do we have this unelected, unaccountable blob? Who are actually in charge? Well, we do. But here's the thing. Let's get rid of them. And I love that. We're told we've got this world-class, first-class civil service. I mean, they kind of forget, you know, you're civil.

servants. You're civil, so you're not political, and you're servants. You don't get to decide. You advise, you give information to the person who is elected. And we don't have a system where our cabinet ministers are experts in the subject. The civil servants are supposed to be the experts. But then the choices are made by democratically accountable politicians. And if they refuse to actually stand by that...

on both sides, then yeah, they deserve to be ousted. But I would like a Trumpian type revolution. We literally go, you know, if you're not prepared to do what you're told by your cabinet minister, unless, you know, life is at stake, you know, I'm sorry. Bye-bye, go and get another job. That you're not welcome here. And the ability to hire political activists in those roles. Because we have a political activist civil service, but they only have one set of views.

But even if I agreed with everything that the civil service was doing, I still would think it was wrong. And with that in mind, I don't see either the Tories or Labour obviously doing anything about that. And reform are interesting, if only in the sense that they seem to be, according to some polls, this week.

number one in the polls. What do you make of them? And you mentioned that the only way for them to succeed would be to unite. Well, not only way, but it looks like. It looks like at this point. It's early on. But the thing that I find kind of... Interesting is just talking to people on both sides of that divide. They hate each other as only next door neighbours can. Yeah, absolutely. So...

That doesn't seem like a likely outcome to me. It doesn't. And Nigel Farage feels like he had his fingers burnt back in 2019. Everyone forgets the reason why Boris Johnson got an 80 majority was A, he was up against Jeremy Corbyn, and B, because... reform stood down some sort of 250 candidates and gave the Tories a clear run. Nigel Farage said he had his fingers burnt then. He wasn't happy with the Brexit deal that Boris Johnson did. His hands were remarkably tied by Theresa May before that.

Completely fair criticism. But fundamentally, he says, no, I mean... No, thanks. I'm not doing it anymore. And to a certain extent, the party as the Tories are now, I can't see how they can actually unite with reform. I mean, Kenny Bagnock has made it very clear that's not where she's going. But I think also... So, so many Tory MPs are, you know, they could be Lib Dems. But they could be Lib Dems. A lot of them went off to be Lib Dems. I won't tell you who said this exactly, but...

Will I be able to guess? I don't think you will, because there's quite a lot of people who fit this description, because a Tory MP, when I asked him in a private conversation... why they lost the last election, he went, oh, yeah, we lost to the Lib Dems. We need to move to the left. Yeah, I know. It's literally like...

And there's quite a lot of those people. And this is what people say to me. Well, you don't win elections anywhere but the centre ground comes in. But here's the thing. They don't know where the centre ground is. They think the centre ground is what is actually an extreme leftist position. The British public aren't extreme.

OK, actually, they're quite on the left when it comes to economic policy. Nationalise this, nationalise that, you know, but loads of public services and things. But actually, you know, on culture issues, on things like education, on crime. and justice and immigration. No, very much centre-right, but centre-right. We've never had a successful hard-right or far-right party in this country. But by the way, the EU is wonderful and lovely. They're far-right.

right and literally literally far right not hard right not you know, anti-immigration parties, I'm talking properly far-right parties, do very well. But this is the thing. I just think the Conservatives, they stop being Conservative. Conservative Party members are still Conservative. We're not talking about policies that are...

when reform their policies, there's not a single reform policy that is not something that would be considered completely reasonable 20 or 30 years ago. So do you see that as the vehicle through which our democracy is... more reflective of the views of the public. I mean, it depends, doesn't it? What's so different here from the rest of mainland Europe?

is our voting system. I'm a big fan of First Past the Post. I don't like coalition governments that take six months to put together and can fall apart because the Greens have decided to leave coalition. No, thank you. I want a government. Here's your choice. at the election, you know, this or this. I do think the barrier to entry to become a viable opposition or government for a political party in this country is very high.

Perhaps it's not a bad thing that it's very... You need to be a serious organisation. I think the financial barriers are too high, certainly, and I don't know what... I'm not quite sure yet in my head what we do do about that. I'm not a big fan of multi-billionaires funding political parties in that way, but whichever the parties, whether they support or not. But we've seen, I remember you think back like 1983, because I am that old.

SDP Liberal Alliance. SDP got like a handful of seats and they've got sort of 20 odd seats between them with 25% of the vote. You know, and that's easy to do. Lib Dems talked an awful lot about changing the electoral system. They mention it every now and then now, but with 70-odd MPs, not so bothered anymore. So I think the key thing for reform, reform are going to need to be around the 30% mark.

to get a serious number of MPs and be a serious force. But I think they're already, their five MPs, I think are already having such an impact by refusing to... toe quite literally a party line in the Tories or Labour in not asking difficult questions, in not being afraid of being jeered at or booed or tut-tutted in the Commons and just saying the stuff that people want them to say.

I think, I mean, certainly for my audience at Talk, they are absolutely hitting the right note. And if they can keep their act together, we don't see some of the sort of selection of candidates we've seen that's been a disaster in the past. I think they'll go a long way. And I can't see Nigel Farage being willing to do a deal with the Tories, but I equally can't see the Tories being willing to go to reform positions, a lot of things. Or...

crucially, even with Kimi Badenoch as leader, who's someone I do like a lot, being thought of as credible on that, given everything they've said before and have failed on. And why do you like Kimi Badenoch? Because she actually has talked the talk on some key issues. Trans ideology and its attack on women's and girls' safety and rights. She has talked the talk on that and walked the walk on that and stood up on that. gone out of collective cabinet responsibility on that.

She has also been very open and, again, much easier for her, again, as a woman of Nigerian descent, to talk about, you know, cultural issues and stuff and be open about that. And we say we need to tackle that. And I like her for that. I'd love to know where she was during lockdown. That's still... Where people stood in lockdown is still a...

Big determinant for me. Did you fight against Brexit after it had been voted for? Are you a Democrat? That's simple as that. No, Liberal Democrats, neither Liberal nor Democrat. Done. People who kept quiet on lockdown long after it was... blatantly obvious that lockdown... By the way, this was around June 2020. If you were still not campaigning against lockdown in early 2021...

I want to know where you were and I want to know your reasoning because unless you were trapped underneath something heavy and unable to reach a telephone or a Zoom call, then I want to know where you were. It's a good proxy for independent thought, isn't it? But also the willingness to say stuff that's unpopular at the time, but that is right. Yes, absolutely. It's interesting. Yes.

Sorry, I've lost my train of thought. Go ahead. You can't get the quality of questions. You know what the problem is? And there's something else that I think... This is actually one of the main reasons I voted Remain. It's not because... I didn't agree with some of the arguments for Brexit. It's not because I didn't think that if it was handled capably, it would be a success. There are perfectly good reasons to have voted, Romain.

But my problem was I looked at our politicians and I go, none of you are competent enough to be able to deliver this. But you thought the European commissioners were? The status quo for me was better than... You really are concerned. I said, genuinely, and I know I've parked on it a couple of times because I do think that was a really telling moment in modern history.

There's not a single day when I would not put that in my top 10 greatest days of my life. And I've had some great days. But, Julia, I don't want to talk about Brexit, because for me, it's done and whatever else. I'm talking about... calibre of politicians. I'm talking about competency.

When people talk about the poor caliber of British politicians, and people say, well, when are you going to rob politics? I couldn't tell the line. There's no way. There's no way. I mean, my skeletons in my closet, I mean, they're mostly out and about, I'm pretty sure. I just think it's a terrible, terrible life. I mean, I can see a point when it's something. And I go, right, I'm done. I'm going in. I'm going to have to do this. But...

But we criticise politicians, but we don't do it ourselves. And also people expect politicians to have this perfect squeaky clean life. I don't. I don't. Most people do. Never to say anything slightly wrong. Never to have a gaffe.

I mean, people have such ridiculously high expectations of politicians. And I know people go, oh, they're paid so much. Not compared to actually a lot of very well. They're not paid well at all. They're not paid well at all. Exactly. They're not. For that job. For that job. Seven days a week. I wouldn't do it for ten. times what they're paid. And I think, you know, we have to if you're not going to stand yourself, I don't think that's a fair criticism.

Interesting. I mean, that is a fair. My line on that, slightly more cowardly perhaps, is that we should pay them a lot more and then we would attract higher calibre people. I don't think it's to pay people a lot. I think it's a lot for people now. You pay people a million pounds a year, you're going to...

I don't want people motivated by a million pounds a year. I'd like people motivated by doing some... Because I don't think money is everyone's motivation. And I don't think it should be everyone's motivation. But people who could make a million pounds running a business... But a lot of these people...

have. There are loads of MPs on both sides who've actually made a load of money. Now they want to go into politics. But then people slag off someone like Rishi Sunak. Oh, isn't it awful? You're so rich. I haven't got an issue with someone being rich wanting to go into politics. So that's a harder life. I think it's the life. I think it's the judgment. But we need to be holding them to account for the right stuff.

and not the stuff that doesn't matter. On that, actually, what I know my train of thought has come back to me. I've seen some interesting moves from the Labour government. in terms of West Streeting and puberty blockers, in terms of Keir Starmer saying we're not going to be climate extremists, although I think they probably are. But at least... They're attacking the Tories for immigration. It sort of feels to me like...

He's trying to reposition his party as a more centrist. You're shaking your head. I think this is all absolute bollocks. I think the Keir Starmer doesn't believe anything that he says. I don't see how you can be, you know, you can't be a man who claims that 99.9% of women don't have a penis. It means roughly 30% of women in this country. I do this at least once a week on my show.

show to take a look at. Nope, still haven't grown one. Can't be me. Can anyone else please make a check so we can find these women? This is a man who a few years ago voted against the third runaway at Heathrow, which by the way has been a political topic not since the day I started as a political journalist, I hate to tell you, 30 years ago. It's been a political topic literally since before I was born, for God's sake. He votes against it on the basis that the biggest...

The biggest issue facing Britain was climate change. This man's an idiot. Well, he's either an idiot or he's a liar. I don't think he's an idiot. Well, then we know what he is. He doesn't... He doesn't think that immigration is too high. He doesn't think there's an issue with male rapists being put into women's prison cells. We know he let the Labour Party in Scotland vote for that with the SNP. There are men in prison right now in women's prison.

Right now, today, in England. That's still happening on his watch. We are... In this mad situation where anyone who puts Ed Miliband in as your, and I hate this job title, his title, his job title is Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary. As I've said to every one of the people in that job, Grant Shapps and others, it's energy security.

All net zero. Pick one. You can't have both. They are mutually exclusive. We've got a prime minister and a chancellor obsessed with growth. I mean, we're not going to see growth, certainly not under these guys. We weren't seeing much under the Tories. You're not going to have growth while you've still got net zero.

You have to pick one. Those are mutually exclusive. You're not going to have an AI revolution here when you've got net zero because of the cost of electricity to generate. You need to be generated for it. All of these things are completely mutually exclusive. Again, they're either too stupid to realise that. That's worrying for people who've got great degrees, great universities, they've been very successful.

or they don't care that they're lying to us. Both of those... Or there's a third option. What's the third one? They're ideological. They're staunchly ideological. It's a religion. Yeah, which means that you can hold two constraints. But that's also irrational. On all three grounds, I would say, should not be in public office. That I agree with. That said, is that any worse than the Tories talking a good game? Oh, we need to get immigration down.

this trans ideology. Oh, this is always terrible. And then doing... Nothing about, and I mean nothing about it. And they're the ones that I'm holding responsible on net zero. I mean, why we've got an entire policy to completely ruin our economy because Boris Johnson wanted to get a blowjob from his... then girlfriend at the time. I mean, that's basically...

That's basically why we've had a lot of this madness. I mean, it's really that. When you put it like that, it doesn't sound unreasonable. Boris Johnson wasn't a green zealot before he was with Carrie. I mean, no, Feds Carrie, but no. Boris Johnson doesn't believe in anything. He never has. Because Johnson is like Donald Trump. He believes in himself. Not to make it crass, but her blowjob technique must be incredible.

It's worth ruining an entire economy. Yeah, I don't think it's worth de-industrialising Britain for, in fairness. Mind you, you haven't experienced that. Sorry, Harry. Sorry, Harry. But that's where we are. Policy made up on the hoof. Again, ideologically driven by wanting to, I go on about this, but I'm telling you, wanting to be seen as the right kind of person at the North London dinner party circuit. It's so true.

There's so much of that going on. And I can't reconcile this with the fact that what I said to you earlier, which is when I meet politicians and I hear... or maybe it was in a previous interview, I talked about the fact that when you meet politicians and you really sit down and hear the reason they got into politics. They seem like nice people. They're well-intentioned and they really want to help and they really want to make things better. But at the same time, I can't reconcile that.

with this. It's so pathetic. My view is always, it's like with Miliband, he's got a PPE degree from Oxford, same as me. He's got no more qualifications than I have in the field of, you know, I mean, astrophysics, biology, chemistry, whatever it is, you know, you need to know to understand.

climate change. He has no more qualifications than me, neither do his advisers, interestingly. But apparently he thinks, you know, that 2 plus 2 equals 7,024. I mean, he's mad. He's crazy. It's not possible to look at any of these numbers and to think that his policies make sense.

The only thing that we've seen changed in the ludicrous net zero policy is other than the fact that every single year we're going to have a pushing back of things like when the gas boiler ban does or does not come in or when you have to have these...

heat pumps that, by the way, don't work in housing like we've got in the UK put in, or EV mandates. Everything's going to be pushed back because it's all unachievable and undesirable. But they've managed to change this policy of... carbon-free electricity by 2030, 100% carbon-free.

Mad. I mean, insane, unachievable, impossible. Even if it was, it'd be too expensive. Insane. But they've now taken it down to 95%. Equally insane, unachievable, impossible. But that's where we're going. And we're going to be... seeing that it's a lie

They must on some level know it's a lie, but they pursue it anyway. And I think you're right. I think it's kind of a religious zealotry. It's Greta Thunberg is our Joan of Arc sainthood. But we can't... continue to be ruled by this and and now people are more and more aware you know a few weeks ago we almost had blackouts because the wind wasn't blowing and the sun wasn't shining and we had to pay two million pounds an hour for a gas storage station to be put on to make sure that we had enough

We are importing gas from abroad to our country so we don't use our own gas because our wind generator is enough or they have too much we can't store it or our solar power isn't enough to keep our... And at the same time, we've got submarines from the Russian Navy patrolling our seas to check where our cables are, electricity and otherwise, so they can cut them in a time of war. But yeah, in no way.

is this a national security risk? We're one of the world's biggest economies in the 21st century. We are literally switching off our ability to create our own electricity and other energy. We have terminated our ability to make virgin steel.

That might be useful in a time of war. Do you think? Well, there won't be a war. Sorry, have you seen Ukraine? Have you seen what's happened in the Middle East? Has anyone heard what Xi Jinping's aims are with Taiwan? We are literally, I mean, we're not cutting off our nose to spite our face. We are literally... flailing our entire bodies to spite our face. You know, when you were talking about this and you were breaking it down, what it seems to me is that...

Politicians have infantilised all of us. They're not telling us the truth. They're talking to us like children. And we're living in this very nice... fantasy world where... Green jobs. Yeah, green jobs where we are going to be able to save the planet. Lead the world. And lead the world. And sorry to say it like this, but it just ain't going to fucking happen. No.

And we're in a fantasy land at the moment. We're going to impoverish ourselves. And we're trying to impoverish the third world as well. That's what's even more immoral. Not only making it harder for people. If you're well off, your eating bill goes up.

But you can still afford it. Oh, you have to have one less ski holiday. Oh, well, I'm so sorry. If you're genuinely worried about putting the third bar on your gas heater on, you know, that is the difference between living and dying for someone elderly, OK? Or someone disabled. It's that serious. Heat doesn't kill anything. Nine times more people die from cold than die from heat. It's immoral to make energy that expensive. What's even more immoral is to...

Tell the people in the developing world, you must not have the benefits of fossil fuel and industrialisation and modern electricity and cooking facilities and refrigeration. And you must not have this because saving the... planet. It's so deeply immoral. The most moral thing we can do is say, plentiful fossil fuels for everyone. Make energy cheap again. I mean, the example I always use is in 1947 at the time of partition, average life expectancy in India was 32.

Today it's over 70 and the reason is they've got richer and the reason is they've been burning fossil fuels. Now you want to tell them half their children need to die in infancy again? That's your moral position? And you want to tell Africa, which is still at that poverty level, that they have to stay there.

And we'll give you some windmills. I mean, I can't think of anything more immoral. So how do we get out of this, Juliette? Oh, God. That was a big question. Well, yeah, I think it's worth asking. Some people I've heard talking about a bounce off the bottom kind of... We have to hit rock bottom. We have to hit rock bottom, at which point, you know, it speaks to a lot of conversations we've had with people recently where...

It just seems to both Francis and I that so many of the problems that our societies now face are about a fundamental unwillingness to face the truth. Yes. And so, but people don't want to. You don't want to hear that there's no... that actually we can't continue to expand our benefits bill. We can't continue to expand our public services necessarily, even though we'd like to.

We don't have the money to do that. We could ensure decent health care. Lots of other countries manage it if we didn't expand our benefits bill. But ultimately, we are living beyond that means and have been for a very long time. And we've been printing money to pretend that that's not happening. That's what we've been doing. And ultimately...

At some point, we're going to have to face that and take some very, very unpleasant and difficult decisions that are going to be painful for everybody. But I just... It just seems like until there's some kind of catastrophic event, no one is going to be prepared. I'm waiting for the blackouts. Genuinely, I think we are going to head to blackout. They're going to do everything they can to prevent a blackout because they know that that is the point where people go...

Are you kidding me? We can't keep the lights on. You know the trauma? I mean, someone might have a message saying, oh, have you had a problem with your water because our water's been cut off? Oh, yeah, you know, Thames Water, we're just doing some roadworks. Maybe it'll be on by the time I get home, but yeah, what a pain. You know, yeah.

Imagine that with your electricity and your gas for days or weeks on end or the whole country they're happening to you. That is catastrophic. This is catastrophic stuff. I think it's only a matter of time because if you keep shutting down nuclear power stations and gas power stations, we don't have battery storage.

and the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine enough, and there's a problem getting gas and electricity from mainland Europe. That is what's going to happen. I think that is what is going to have to happen, reality check. In the same way that every time, you know, on the net zero thing, every time we get close to the mandate, for instance, on the number of electric vehicles being sold, you know, these £15,000 fines for companies for each non...

electric vehicle they sell. I mean, it's insane. Again, I keep saying that word insane, but it is. Do you remember, I mean, we're a bit too young for this, but when we got rid of the horse and cart as the main mode of travel and people moved to motor cars, they didn't have to find...

They didn't have to bribe people to buy them. They went to the better mode of transport. People will buy electric vehicles when they can afford to charge them and when they are cheaper and blah, blah, blah. That's not going to happen with mandates and things.

these things get shuffled a little bit further away, the heat pump, they get shuffled a bit further away, you wouldn't have to have a mandate on heat pumps. If everyone knew heat pumps were working and they gave you cheaper heating and actual heating, you wouldn't have to do any of this. The reality of the mandates is always the giveaway. That's where you know. I think we're going to have to have the blackouts. I think we've hit...

I like to think, God, I hope we've hit rock bottom. No, no, we haven't. No, on the woke agenda. That's another thing. When you watched a man, not a trans man, but a man who's quite clearly... physically born, biologically, chromosomally, a man, smashing his fist into a woman boxer's face. And it was on primetime television for billions of people to watch. And the great and the good were saying, well...

That's equality for you. And the rest of us went, what the actual was that? There are moments when the reality, oh, well, it's just a weight lift. It doesn't make a difference or it's a tennis player. No, that. That was real to women. That was real.

I think when we saw that point with Nicola Sturgeon, it was part of her downfall, although not the only reason, when we had in Scotland that moment where it was wonderful. Finally, the BBC asked a question about trans. I mean, literally, the one BBC journalist who bothered to ask.

Was a trans woman, who is, let's face it, a man, who is a double convicted rapist, should they be in a women's prison with women, often victims of rape themselves? The fact that she talked... utter mindless gobbledygook and nonsense it was i mean it was just nonsense that she spoke um just totally exposed the madness all the people have been going i don't know what your problem is what difference does it make these trans people aren't doing anything to you no no

but when a man who was convicted two rapes and is convicted of them puts on a wig and pink leggings over his large dangly bits doesn't even pretend to hide anything fake boobs and then says I'd like to be in a women's prison and the authorities say well yes of course you should be in a women's prison, Isla Bryson. And then, I mean, that actually, that was happening. That was what was going to happen. And it's still happening now. That's the moment when people go, whoa.

Sorry, are you serious? And I think... Hold on, if it's still happening now, we clearly haven't got... Most people aren't aware it's still happening now. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but I think we are at that point where people are saying, no, you have to hit... the point of peak madness or the biggest low before people wake up and they can't cover up the double think anymore. You're having that Orwellian moment where it can't...

These two things can't both be true at the same time. I think I understand where that sense of... I'm trying to be an optimist. That's what I was going to say. That sense of optimism is coming from... And I feel it because I think when you look at what's happened in America...

When you look at what's happening in Argentina under Malay, when you look at the freedom to actually express opinions without fear of being cancelled or destroyed or next, etc., it feels like there's a movement of pushback. The reason I'm skeptical that we've hit Rob Bottom is I think our country...

is in a very different place at the moment to those other things. So to the extent that all of us now live more on the internet than we do in our country, which kind of is true for a lot of us, I think that I understand the sense of optimism. But I think in the UK...

I don't think we've remotely hit rock. OK, I do worry about that because the big hope went certainly on the day one of the Trump presidency, the executive orders. Again, this is the mind blowing thing. One of his first executive orders.

was to recognise there were only two genders. I mean, male and female. Yeah! Because, by the way, gender and sex used to mean the same thing. Yes. And in my head, they do still mean the same thing. Call yourself Sheila. I do not care. I'm not interested in what you wear. I don't care. But you're a man or you're a woman and there are...

Sex-based rights based on the biology, not what you think on a Wednesday afternoon, end off nothing to discuss, whether it's sport, prison, jobs, whatever it is, you know, enough. The fact that we needed an American president to sign an executive order to establish biological fact as law, I think is really quite scary. My hope is that we are... We've always been downstream from American madness or the wokery, the Black Lives Matter, the trans ideology, frankly, an awful lot of the anti-

The anti-Semitism, let's call it what it is, not anti-Israel, it's anti-Semitism that is happening on campuses and a lot of that. We're downstream from that. So my hope is it does flow. But yeah, maybe America is hit peak sooner. Again, their political system enables that sort of work to change, whereas we would need Keir Starmer. Well, I mean, he ain't going to do it anyway, but even if we had...

Nigel Farrell, she's prime minister, and we know he's stood firm on a lot of these issues over the years. Again, you're going to have to take on the civil service, you're going to have to take on the NHS, you're going to have to take on the military, you're going to have to take on every single school. I mean, this stuff is, it's in every corporate PR. I mean, God, it's in my building, for goodness sake. This stuff is imbued through everything.

the nation now. And how do you remove that? How do you remove that? That is going to take years, if not decades. I think you have to quite literally outlaw it.

I think, no, because to the extent that in HR departments, this is now, there are lots of companies that, you know, for instance, you have to have these DEI policies. You have to actually sign up to, you know, loads of... loads of stuff which people do not, most average person does not believe in, and the non-merit-based sort of policies and things, to even get a contract with government or with another big company, the ones that have the rainbow lanyards and go on and on about this stuff.

in all of their Western adverts. But strangely, it never happens in their adverts or their social media accounts in the Middle East or in China. Very strange. Or Africa. I can never work out why it doesn't... The rainbow never appears there, but it never does. So, I mean, I think you'd actually have to outlaw it. And I think it would be easy to do so. I think separating people by race or by their sexuality or by their gender and having a non-merit-based hiring policy or whatever is...

Clearly, clearly against the Equality Act. Clearly. Look, my issue is, Julia, with all of this stuff, I agree with you 100%. But you know what? I... There's a lot of people who still believe in this stuff. I know. And they make a living from it. And it's their interest to keep it going. You look at what's happened in Scotland with bringing in the hate speech bill. Criminalised public performance on stage. People can now, at the home of the Edinburgh Festival...

people can now get arrested for telling a joke. I would rather they were being arrested and it was all public than they were being quietly cancelled without... any action. And you go, well, you know, those are just, we always talk, well, there are consequences. Well, that's your consequence. You get taken off stage. Let's make it more obvious. Let's take it. Okay, let's take it to the limit. Arrest people. But you know what?

Go before a jury and see what the jury thinks. And also there's a shadow of blasphemy laws, which are being openly discussed. And my worry... is not even that these things are being implemented. My worry is that the people that I talk to, a lot of people, particularly in that echelon of society,

don't see it as a problem. And that's when I get the panic bells and I'm like, well, this is... By the way, not only do they not see it as a problem, they think you are a problem for seeing it as a problem. Yeah. By the way, we already have a blasphemy law.

We already have a blasphemy law. Because you know that grammar school teacher in Batley? He's living under that law because he and his family have been hiding out, hiding for four years for fear of their life. The reality is there's lots of things.

that we will say about pretty much any religion apart from Islam or go up against, you know, showing a picture of the, you know, cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, you know, the Charlie Hebdo cover, you know, you wouldn't do that now. You wouldn't do it because you'd like to stay alive.

And you'd like your family to stay alive. And you won't. It is a simple matter of fact. You will be in hiding the rest of your life if you do that. We have a blasphemy law. And the authorities have gone, yeah. Yeah. That's my case. We haven't hit rock bottom. Yeah. Oh, God! Welcome to trigonometry, where you get even more depressed than you were coming in. However...

Tune in next week. However, I think your point is actually broadly correct, which is there is a sense now in some parts of the Western world that this isn't forever. Yes. There is the possibility that if you elect the right people... or the better people of the two that are available to you, let's say, if they promise to do this, there is the possibility of doing it. And maybe it's going to take some time.

I think a lot of it you need to take time because people need to know. I mean, again, people need to know what the trans ideology was doing in terms of damaging women's safety and rights. You need to know. You need to know that net zero is going to cost jobs and ruin the economy.

Who knows that? Exactly. You need to know that. Look, I can remember a lot of times when I used to do the breakfast show and talk and I'd have MPs on, Labour MPs in particular, and I would say, OK, just give me a clue. You're signed up to this. What... What percentage, what percentage of, not just right now today, but on an average, what percentage of our electricity do you think comes from renewables?

in any average year, you know, a percentage of our energy or energy. And they were like, oh, you know, oh, I don't know. No, no, I'm not going to hold you to the nearest 20%. Can you give me that? Oh, mutter, mutter, mutter. I mean, near as 50%, give me that. They wouldn't know. And I'd say, like, it's like sort of four or six percent.

And that's of all our energy needs. I mean, even when they talk about electricity, that's only 20% of our energy needs. These people, MPs, who are voting on this stuff, who are campaigning on this stuff, they don't know the most... basic facts about energy production and energy use in this country.

Why would we expect the public to? I mean, I think the role of shows like mine, Column for the Sun as well, and podcasts like yours, who've been campaigning just to get the facts out. And I remember doing this through lockdown as well. It was, I felt I was on.

It was public service broadcasting. It's the proudest thing I've ever done. Wasn't right about everything. There are things that a lot of people would disagree with me on in different directions on my views on those things. But I just felt like I just want to try and get the alternative views on. I want to I want to just make sure people have got an outlet they can hear. I think I was.

probably the only journalist on broadcasting who was challenging cabinet ministers week in, week out, actually on some of the policies they were making and demanding cost-benefit analysis and the like. People cannot wake up to something if no one is told. them they're asleep. Yes, it's so true. And I'm so glad you are raising this issue about net zero in the way that you are, because I really see that as it's a set of luxury beliefs that we simply can't afford anymore.

It's as simple as that. It's going to cost lives. Yeah, it already is. Well, pensioners freeze every winter because electricity is too expensive and gas is too expensive. Yet the question becomes, oh, that's where our politics gets it wrong. And it brings us back to the start of the conversation where we talked about, oh, what's the solution to...

Children being stabbed to death in Southport last summer. Oh, oh, changing the rules on what evidence of your adulthood is needed from Amazon when they sell you a knife, right? That's what they think the solution is. And that's when you get to energy prices are too high. Oh, how do we subsidize?

energy prices? What extra benefits, whether it's winter fuel allowance, whatever, do we give some pensions so they can afford to heat their homes and not die in winter? You're tackling the wrong end of the question. You have completely misidentified the problem. And therefore, any solution you offer is not actually a solution. And this is a problem, I think, in this case, about every aspect of the conversation we've had.

Politicians who have completely misunderstood the problem, misidentified the issue and therefore any efforts they make to tackle it are going to go. completely and utterly unnoticed. Well, are they either going to do more harm? They're certainly not going to improve things because they haven't identified the problem. To the extent, go back to immigration. Boris Johnson identified the issue as being we don't have control of...

net migration to our country. If we have control, if it's us setting the numbers, then that's the solution. So it was OK for him to raise it to net one million a year. That happened under his watch. Those figures didn't come out later. The visas were issued on his watch. Legal visas for people to arrive in this country.

to make new lives for themselves. No issue with those people. No issue with them at all. But that was a deliberate government policy. They weren't illegal migrants. They weren't a shock. They came over legally. His view was, clearly, that we're controlling it.

He misidentified the problem, so he couldn't come up with a solution. The problem was... too many people coming to this country, both number wise and too few skills and too little contribution to this nation and too little assimilation misidentified the problem. And I think that's the thing. In every area, whether it's energy, whether it's immigration, whether it's crime, they keep misidentifying the problem. How do so many clever people get so much so wrong?

That's what I can't work out. I've never been a conspiracy theorist. I always say with people on my show, it must be a conspiracy, whether it's COVID or anything else. I'm like, no, I've met these people. Honestly, I met them. I know quite a lot of them quite well. They're not clever enough. They're not clever. The moon landings. No one was clever enough to inspire to do all of that. But I can't understand.

How they can get it so wrong when, you know, we've not got PhDs in these topics. We can see it. It's in black and white in front of us what the problem is. So what are they missing? Is it the will? No, but the will would imply you actually had identified the problem and wanted to do it. Some of them have. Some of them have. I remember during the Tory administration talking to Tory ministers who would agree with every word you've just said.

While implementing policies. And then shut up about it. Yes. Oh, yeah. I remember talking to a lot of ministers that we say during lockdown. I knew we had a third of the cabinet behind us. I knew. I knew there were people. None of them said it. Only a few. Weirdly, the person who got the most... Rishi Sunak was the one person in the group of four, you know, who were making all the decisions, who was actually fighting, fighting lockdown, ironically. But this is the thing, I mean...

What's the point of being in one of those jobs if you're not going to stand up and be counted when it really matters? Well said. Well, Julia, it's been great having you back. Thank you for coming on. As you know, the last question we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about?

that we should be. Oh, God, we've covered so much. We have. We've covered so much. Gosh, I wish I'd thought about this earlier. We should have given you a warning. You should have reminded me. We like to surprise people. What's the one thing we're not... Well, I say I don't think we're talking about net zero enough. I don't think we talk about demographics enough and the ageing population and how we need to make it so much easier for so many people to start families sooner.

and be able to afford a home and have a family and have the two or three kids that they want. And everything that we need to solve in our country in terms of our future economy, paying for the NHS and not needing...

we're told to import lots of people from abroad and deal with those issues, could be solved by actually enabling people not to leave university with a load of debt, not be able to afford a home and not be able to start a family and have the family they want. Our demographics are absolutely atrocious.

not as bad as some other countries, but that is something that we don't talk about enough and that would solve a lot of problems. And you know what? It would contribute to the sum of human happiness. It would do indeed. And also when people talk about this woke stuff, I mean... I have a lot of sympathy for young people. Why would you be conservative if you've got nothing to conserve? Absolutely.

It got depressing again. I'm sorry, guys. We promise that when we go to Substack, it will be uplifting. Our American viewers, just tune in for the depression porn. Yeah. All right, heading over to Substack where they'll be uplift. Will there? Probably not. Probably not. Anyway, head on over there now. There'll be more depressing questions and answers. That's why you watch. Yeah, exactly. You love it.

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