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The Reform revolution, with Rupert Lowe
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There’s an interesting historical pattern in British politics, and you can see it in various shapes and forms since the days of William the Conqueror. About once every century, there is a realignment that completely changes the nature of politics in the country. The last great realignment was the 1922 election, with the Liberal Party falling to third-party status, the Conservatives establishing themselves as the largest party in Parliament, and Labour emerging as the undisputed opposition party.
103 years later, all the conditions are in place for another political revolution. A feeling of decline across the country, two weak major parties, and a populist alternative that is rapidly climbing in the polls. That alternative is the Reform party, led by Nigel Farage. To discuss whether Reform will be a perpetual irritant or a potential government, Will is joined by one of Reform’s five MPs, and its Business and Agriculture Spokesman, Rupert Lowe.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Historical Political Shifts in the UK
00:00:21
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Far It Will, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. There's an interesting historical pattern in British politics, and you can see it in various shapes and forms since the days of William the Conqueror. About once every century, there is a realignment that completely changes the nature of politics in the country.
00:00:42
Speaker
The last great realignment was the 1922 election, with the Liberal Party falling to third-party status, Conservatives establishing themselves as the largest party in Parliament, a position they would hold for all but eight of the next 42 years, and Labour emerging as the undisputed opposition party.
00:01:00
Speaker
103 years later, all the conditions are in place for another political revolution.
Rise of the Reform Party
00:01:05
Speaker
A feeling of decline across the country, two weak major parties, and a populist alternative that is rapidly climbing in the polls.
00:01:14
Speaker
That alternative is the Reform Party led by Nigel Farage to discuss whether reform will be a perpetual irritant or a potential government. I'm joined by one of Reform's five MPs and its business and agriculture spokesman, Rupert Lowe. Rupert, welcome to Fire at Will. Hi, Will. How are you? and I'm good. How are you going? Not too bad. Not not too bad. Now, the first question I've got to ask you is, are you from the East Coast or the West Coast of Australia?
00:01:39
Speaker
I'm from Sydney initially. i can okay I go to Perth a lot, so I'm i'm always interested. i love I love the mining industry over in Perth. yeah It's a wonderful part of the world. Great fun. It's great fun. It is. Why don't we start there? I was back in Sydney, and actually I went to Perth only a month ago.
UK's Sovereignty and Brexit
00:01:56
Speaker
and When I told people that I was living in London,
00:02:01
Speaker
I almost invariably got variations on the question, what the hell has happened to the UK? It's actually extraordinary how many times I got asked that. So I'll put that question to you, Rupert. What the hell has happened to the UK?
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, i I get asked the same question. you know i I'm involved with quite a lot of people out in on the West Coast, less on the East Coast, but a few in Melbourne. And they ask the same question because i you know you oz is a ah you love home country. you know You've done your bit in in the world wars for us. you You are great patriots. And I think looking at at us from afar, you can probably see more clearly the decline that we we've suffered.
00:02:40
Speaker
I guess it it epitomises it's epitomized by the fact that at 67 years old, I'm now in parliament you know when I should be enjoying the sunlit uplands of retirement.
00:02:51
Speaker
A bit like you you you and your your fellow patriots, at the end of the day, I could see the country was going badly wrong. i've I've been involved in it for quite some time, and whether it was the Maastricht Treaty, the referendum party where I stood, business for Sterling, whether it was vote leave, whether it's the Brexit party, you know whether it's obviously the Reform Party now as an MP.
00:03:14
Speaker
I guess people like me have been battling to regain our sovereignty as a sovereign nation from this supranational post-war socialist plot, which which I think is gradually coming unwound. I think Europe's not looking in a very good position now, so I think the British people were very prescient with the with the vote that they made in 2016, even if the establishment, who were supposed to be servants of the people,
00:03:43
Speaker
didn't actually deliver what people voted for. It was a very simple question, and they gave a very, very simple answer in the majority, which should have been respected.
Youth Support and Political Criticism
00:03:51
Speaker
so i and As you you gave a very elegant elegant outline of where we are politically, and I think it's a very interesting fact that once every hundred years, there often is a seismic change in British politics. You're quite right, the um you know the rise of labor and the decline of the Whigs.
00:04:10
Speaker
ultimately was just about 100 years ago. And now we're seeing reform leading in quite a serious national poll for the first time. And probably that poll, I think, understates the lead which we currently got. So I think what is really heartening is the number of young people who are coming over to reform. If I was young, I'd be voting for change.
00:04:32
Speaker
I'm sitting in parliament, Will, and I have been now for six months. I'm just, as I described myself, I'm a punter. I've worked all my life. I'm self-made. I've built up a reasonable sort of pod for retirement, and I have a passion for farming, which never makes any money, but I love doing it, and it keeps you honest because you can't cheat as a farmer.
00:04:56
Speaker
The weather gets you, the stock gets you, you cannot cheat farming. You can't cheat weather and and and and and the ultimate power. And that keeps you humble. And I and i think the problem we've got is,
00:05:12
Speaker
In this country, and and this answers your question and your fellow countrymen's question, is the Uni Party, which is the reds and the blues, as I call them, have become, as George Galloway so elegant, he says, two cheeks and same backside. and they are They've been hollowed out, firstly, by Blair, Brown, Campbell, Manlinson, and Derry-Oven, who passed some vile and damaging malign legislation, which has damaged the the fabric of Britain.
00:05:41
Speaker
Their selection policies started the whole thing. Their immigration policies started the whole decline. Because until Maggie left, I discount John Major as a pretty average irrelevance. I mean, he he should never have won that election ah in 1992, where he carried a soapbox around, but won by 15 seats, which would have been far better if Neil Kinnock had won. and Labour would have made a complete mess of it, but no, he he won. and He didn't have time to do too much damage, but his his sort of power came to an end with various scandals and you know people hanging from the ceiling and wearing women's stockings and having an allen nitrate orange in their mouth and all sorts. He was called Stephen Milligan, tragically.
00:06:23
Speaker
So that that came to an end, but we were still a solid country. We knew who we were. We had very little ah debt, thanks to Maggie. ah We had very even immigration, very under control immigration. And we still had what I call the entrepreneurial ethic, and our stock market was still, and all our financial markets were still incredibly powerful.
00:06:48
Speaker
So Skrolon blare undermined the ah gene pool of the Labour Party with selection based on on quotas rather than on merit. Cameron and Clegg then followed by obviously Cameron himself, followed by Theresa May, followed by Boris.
00:07:08
Speaker
ah They continued with this policy of selection of MPs through ah quotas, and that's quotas of obviously sex, ah race, religion. Whatever whatever you know quota you choose on the day, that's how they were selecting their MPs, not on ability or merit, which is how I think everybody should be selected. i don't really have an issue with any other matter, it should all be based on merit. That's how things should work. So, you've got a very weak gene pool in this uni party, so whoever's in power
00:07:43
Speaker
is not holding the civil service, which is now out of control to account. And that's what they should be doing. As Maggie used to say, ministers, advisors advise, but ministers decide.
Vision and Critique of Conservative Party
00:07:54
Speaker
And the problem is, if you've got your front bench ministers who are not capable of holding the civil service to account, you get some aligned civil service that gets out of control. And I think it's been undermined by all this DI nonsense, which I'm delighted to see.
00:08:11
Speaker
Donald Trump ah crushing in America. I think they were largely responsible for the genesis of it, and I'm um'm very pleased. Hopefully, they're going to be responsible for the destruction of it because it's... It's a cancer that runs through the the bloodstream of of of any sort of productive country. It does terminal damage, and once you've got DEI officers, their only intent is to increase the ah sort of influence of of DEI within an organization and justify their own existence. So I think it's a thoroughly bad development. So reform, I think, offers people an opportunity to vote for common sense. i mean i
00:08:51
Speaker
I like common sense. I like fairness. I like individual sort of power rather than state power. I like devolved sort of individuals making decisions. I hate, you know, central planning. And if you look throughout history, central planning, almost without exception, ends up firstly with corruption and then with failure. And what you're seeing now I think is, and it's interesting, the U.S. money supply is beginning to go up again.
00:09:18
Speaker
Because every time we hit a bump in the road, recently what governments do is instead of being subject to the same strictures of budgetary control, so you and I, if we spend more than we earn, sooner or later we go bust, that hasn't been happening to governments, so they've proliferated and grown like like a weed.
00:09:37
Speaker
And they've done it by basically either borrowing money or printing money. And that's that's made them corrupt and unfit for purpose. So if people want change, they've got to vote for reform. We've got a lot a lot of work to do before we're fit to be or fit and ready to be forming a government, which I think we will do.
00:10:00
Speaker
And it won't necessarily will be a very smooth ride to start with, because i I always say a bit like a drug addict coming off drugs. It's a pretty unpleasant experience, but it's one that's worth going through if you if you tough it out. I think that's my way of explaining to you and to everybody where we are.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, and we will get to what reform needs to do going forward in the lead up to the next election. But I want to just keep looking back for the moment. And that is that particularly the conservators within the Uni Party spoke to John Moynihan last week, a lot of the ills of the country. well I like John Moynihan, he's a very good man. Yeah, he's a very good man. And a lot of the economic problems that you articulated he agrees with.
00:10:40
Speaker
What I don't understand about the Uni Party is that so much of what the conservative base believes in, small government, belief in British values, lower spending, all those sorts of small C conservative principles, were ditched by the conservatives over a 14 year period. Obviously the one I forgot there is mass migration as well, is something that was embraced but by the conservative government, despite a vast majority of conservative voters not believing in it.
00:11:05
Speaker
I mean, it actually said they'd bring it down, Will, so they misled the British public. I mean, Tony Blair opened the floodgates, and then Cameron, May, and Boris actually really, ah yeah you know, gerrymandered them open and left them open, so the spigots were open, and they immediately did the opposite to what they were elected to do. So it was, really.
00:11:29
Speaker
How did that divide emerge between voters and the conservative party? How did they become so detached to the point where now they are facing an existential crisis? Well, I actually think what's quite interesting is if you look at what Boris delivered with an 80-seat majority that we we helped him,
Reform Party's Approach and Experience
00:11:49
Speaker
or Nigel Farage helped him to win by stepping down in all the Tory seats.
00:11:53
Speaker
I mean he did less than nothing with an 80 seat majority, so what actually staggers me well is how well the Tory vote is holding up. It shows you what a solid foundation they actually had, but I look at them and there are are some good Tories, not I don't think many. I think a lot of them are Lib Dems rather than Tories and that that comes back to the selection process and you have to blame largely David Cameron for that.
00:12:18
Speaker
I think David Cameron would have been happier as a Lib Dem than as a Tory, really. i think I think his instincts are Lib Dem. So, as a result, the party always takes on the image of the ah the leader in a way, and he's it is his image. And I i look at the MPs of the left. I mean, some of them got voted out at the last election, quite rightly. some of them remaining are still what I call one-nation Tories who I don't think reflect what true conservatives either want or believe in. So the problem I think that Kemi Badenoff has got is, number one, she's got this problem in head office where I'm not sure their head office is fit for purpose. Number two, I think half her MPs were more.
00:13:03
Speaker
arguably a Lib Dems, not Tories. So how how do you square that circle and actually make the party fit for purpose for them? It's very difficult. I think, therefore, you know, they're arrogant enough, as people often are, to think that they are the kingmaker. But I think the people are telling us that that's not what they want. They want radical change. And that means that arguably a clean reform party with five MPs, and I'll leave you to to judge whether or not you think we are doing the job of the official opposition or not. Well, I mean, you can judge that, and it would be arrogant and and and and beheaded of me to do that. But i I don't think they're very effective at what they're doing, and we can actually act as the unifier of what I call the common sense elements of the House of Commons. And there are some people, I think, who share our views and our and our ah visions, and they've been
00:14:00
Speaker
silenced by these one nation Tories who haven't let them flock flourish. and Really, we can unite that because we're clean. We have no no history. ah We do need some experience. I think it's wrong of us just to take every Tory that decides they want to throw their lot in with reform. I think we have to be very careful about who we bring in. and I don't think our supporters necessarily want to see us morph into a sort of rebrand of the Tory party. I think we need to be different.
00:14:28
Speaker
If you read on, we don't call it a manifesto, but our contract with the people, which again, I i drafted the agriculture and the business and and and I worked on the fishing as well.
00:14:40
Speaker
I challenge Torrey to say, well of course, you haven't got any policies. I say, why don't you go and read our contract with the people, which we've obviously got to refine, and then they read it and they come back and they go, God, it's like a ah breath of Thatcherite fresh air. so But people are too lazy to actually go and download it and read it, Will, and I would urge everybody to look at it because that reflects the kind of attitude that we want to bring.
00:15:04
Speaker
to government. Now there's a lot more work for us to do and now we're leading in the polls. We need to get structure and policy in place and and we need obviously then to select decent men and women who have expressed a view that they'd like to stand in the local constituency. And we can start to get back to more what I think Parliament should be, which is people made up
Power Dynamics and Free Speech
00:15:31
Speaker
of local representatives who are successful, well-known in their own communities.
00:15:36
Speaker
and will represent the interests of their constituency. and And ultimately, you could argue, I think there are too many MPs in parliament, so personally, I think we could do with less MPs. But I think we want people who are strong and successful, who are going to reflect the different sort of regional aspects of Britain in a democratic parliament So, that's a big job, but then the other jobs we've got to do are reverse all of this malign legislation, which I blair i blame Blair, Brown, Campbell, Anderson, Derry, Irvin for, which is basically the rise of the quango, which is an unelected
00:16:18
Speaker
replacement or undermining of the power of parliament. So instead of things being decided in parliament, they're now decided by these unelected bodies outside parliament. So the power of parliament has actually been undermined, like and goes probably the biggest of which is the wretched Supreme Court. So I think i think we do need we do need massive change and we need to implode and return power, implode quangos and return power back to the elected assembly, which should be omnipotent. So, institutions you probably know, the king is the titular head.
00:16:58
Speaker
The elected MPs should be the omnipotent body, and then the Lords provides guidance on the new bills that are being pushed through to ensure that they capture any sort of stupidity or error which is made in the elected chamber. They usually work extremely well.
00:17:15
Speaker
but You know, our constitution is unwritten, and we're always at risk of people like Derry Ervin with instruction from Tony Blair, who, as you know, was a barrister himself. If they decide they want to plant heffalump traps in our in the way in which we govern, they've done that. And the sad thing is the Tories, even when they had the ability to do so, they simply haven't repealed that legislation, which they should have done. Yeah, it's it's interesting that that rise of the administrative states, or if you want to use Trump's term, the deep state is something that we're not just saying in the UK is saying it across the Western world and have seen it since when the US since FDR and and and then since then. So it's not just a UK problem. USAID, I mean, look at the stuff that it looks like they're going to uncover there. I mean,
00:18:03
Speaker
if If you had a good squint of what's going on in the DWP, Will, I think USAID's probably going to be a bit of child's play compared with them. yeah and I mean, I honestly, and what's going on in all these global, I mean, it's it's almost an undermining of the sovereign nation. That's what the post-war plan has been. It's really derived, I think, from the growth of the welfare state and from this sort of post-war socialist plan, which I think has undermined individualism and undermined personal responsibility. And if you like the concept of caveat emptor, which I think along with free speech should run through all of our Western economies. Let's turn to free speech because there are some really troubling developments around free speech, particularly when it comes into conflict with religious sensibilities. Only a couple of days ago, a man in Manchester was arrested for burning a Quran. What many people have said is a de facto
00:19:02
Speaker
Sakva that's been issued by Manchester Police for the crime in inverted commas of blasphemy. This is one of several incidents now of supposed hate speech against Islam. It is one of several instances where people are accusing the forces that be of taking a different approach to say Islamic groups, as opposed to say the white working class. How do you reflect on where individual freedoms and free speech sit today in the UK and particularly when they come in tension we with Islam?
00:19:33
Speaker
Well, I think, well, it's quite a simple one. If you come and live in this country, you have to live by our laws, have to speak our language, and you have to respect our culture and integrate. So I i personally disagree violently with any form of Sharia courts, and I think there are 92 of them in this country. And what I think has happened is our establishment has turned a blind eye to what's going on. And you only have to look at the grooming gangs or as I prefer to call them the rape gangs, ah which is a blot on our history.
00:20:08
Speaker
It is largely Islamic, Pakistani Islamic men who've been perpetrating this. And I'm not surprised that Labour particularly don't want a national inquiry into this. They've managed to be to kick this into the long grass for an awfully long time. And there are still a lot of people who've been very badly damaged and scarred by it. So i as you know, my view is we need this to be completely cleansed. We need it to be totally outed.
00:20:35
Speaker
We need a national inquiry with statutory powers, and we need to understand—and this is an answer to your question—why and how this happened, and, you know, decent white working-class girls were abused so badly by these Pakistani rape gangs. And they're not just Pakistan. There were some—I think there were some Bangladeshis and even a few Afghanistanis, but predominantly Pakistanis.
00:21:04
Speaker
You know, and and and I suspect that our establishment, particularly the Labour government, and whether it's linked to, you know, Asian block votes, I mean, post postal voting, I think is personally ah an evil that needs to be crushed. I think postal voting should be only allowed by, you know, troops serving overseas or by people who are literally not capable of getting to the polling booth. Otherwise, you should turn up and it should be one man or one woman, one vote, and you should put you in the box that you want. You cannot have this.
00:21:34
Speaker
this wretched block vote and I think the Asian block vote was a big issue and that used to go to labor as you know it's increasingly going to the the sort of islam Islamic candidates who are standing as independents.
00:21:48
Speaker
and and and and the George Galloway show. So I think also people were dead scared of being called racists. I think probably the establishment was worried that their post-war experiment with this multicultural nirvana, which they they they thought was the way in which the world should go, is failing.
British History and Multiculturalism
00:22:09
Speaker
to To clarify, would you say multiculturalism has failed in the yeah UK? Well, i think I think you have to say at the moment, yes, because you've got people who come here who don't speak English and who aren't integrating into into our society. So I think that is that cannot be considered to be successful multiculturalism. So I think it's if it if it's going to succeed, well, everything has to be in English. Everything has to be done according to our laws.
00:22:38
Speaker
and everybody has to be equal in the eye of the law, and they have to be treated equally. Otherwise, don't have you have a two-tier society, and that is not acceptable. That cannot work, and with that will come the risk of you know, social unrest and all the other things that we've we've seen the beginnings of some of it. And we do see two-tier policing without a shadow of a doubt. You only have to look at these marches, these these these Palestinian marches in London, and you have to look at Black Lives Matter. I mean, there were they were treated totally differently during COVID to other people. So i I don't know. I think our establishment's gone very soft. I think in a way it's probably lost
00:23:20
Speaker
belief in itself, and we have to change that. And if young people agree with what we're doing, I mean, hopefully we can restore their country to one which protects and looks after their interests, which in my view, any sovereign nation should put at the top of their agenda the interests of their people, of there of the people who've basically worked hard, paid into the system, built the country into what it is. And you did used to get that in Victorian Britain. I mean, look at prime ministers like Lord Salisbury, or and yes, it's a different structure, but his interests always aligned with those of the British people, so they were always put at the top of the agenda.
00:24:03
Speaker
and You know, people don't like that because they say we were in a different era and it was an elitist era and everything else. But I can assure you, if you read it about Lord Salisbury, who I think was a great prime minister, he always put Britain first um and his were totally aligned with Britain. So I'm not sure now if the people running the country and I go back to the selection process in parliament, are they independent minded people with a capability to do what they think is in the best interests of their constituents in the country, or are they now more interested in doing what they think is accepted as normal within a slightly sort of ah undermined society? And and I'm afraid i I think that is the case. Well, the Chagos Islands deal is the perfect example of that, unfortunately.
00:24:56
Speaker
um hoping But it it looks as if he may not, but I'm hoping Donald Trump will quite rightly put a very large size 11 foot onto that one. i For the life of me, I understand what we think we're doing at a time when, as you know, China's e economy is not going swimmingly. And we've got the issues in Taiwan. And as we know, a bit like the Falklands, when things are going badly wrong economically, the first thing people tend to do is lash out militarily. and This is a potential danger, and strategically the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia are absolutely crucial ah to that balance of power. I therefore, a bit like Starmer cuddling up to the EU at just at the time when
00:25:43
Speaker
you know Europe's going right far right, and its economy is collapsing.
Geopolitical Issues and Trade Relations
00:25:49
Speaker
Trump's about to put trade tariffs on, and he's about to ask them to pay up to 5% to fund correctly their own their own national defense. They've lost our contribution. so I think the EU is in a very precarious position. What's Starmer doing? Backing the wrong horse again. so i i mean Why wouldn't you back?
00:26:11
Speaker
a deal with America, a free trade deal, if we could do it. Because our trade actually is actually different to Europe, so oh ah we have a much more open economy then um that than than Europe. So I've sat in Europe on the Agriculture Committee, they're incredibly protectionist. So Germany particularly has a huge trade surplus with America.
00:26:29
Speaker
largely And look, trade is a very complicated thing, so americans America tends to subsidize transport, and France has other ways of subsidizing her businesses, so it's quite complex. But in the end, a one-sided trade deal doesn't work for the person who is effectively on the wrong side of it over an extended period of time. And I think what Trump's trying to do is he's trying to correct that.
00:26:52
Speaker
now Why would you not do a deal with America? who Why would you cuddle up to Europe risk the ire of Donald Trump? And I asked in parliament the other day, Will, and I'd be interested to know what you think about this, why haven't we got a free trade deal with the Commonwealth? And I asked the question, you know, Britain's got the Commonwealth. It's an incredibly powerful alliance of like-minded countries. why Why haven't we got a free trade deal with them? We haven't.
00:27:18
Speaker
Well, my instinctive answer is because too many people in the UK are quietly embarrassed about the Commonwealth. There's this self-flagellating instinct amongst the British establishment that the Commonwealth is a reminder of our colonial past. And as a result, apart from you know running the hundred metres in the Commonwealth Games every four years, we need as little to do with it as possible. I think that has a big role to play. And that actually is a good question. How do you feel about When we think about British values, and this is so obvious to me as an Australian living in the UK and as an Australian who has a huge amount of respect and pride and admiration for this country, it's why I choose to live here and its history. How do you feel about the way where there is just this feeling of decline and there is this feeling of shame about our past? How do you reflect on that that that sentiment that is so prevalent today?
00:28:05
Speaker
Well, I honestly, I've never understood it. And i look, i Winston Churchill presciently said, the farther you look back, far the farther forward you can see. And if you look back at our history, and in any colonial society, there's always been some issues to be ashamed of. But on the whole, Britain was the most enlightened colonial power.
00:28:29
Speaker
you know We were the ones who spent a lot of money to end the slave trade. you know That came reflexively out of the Wilberforce and you know what I call decent people. we actually The Royal Navy spent a lot of time stopping it everywhere. We never perpetrated the same kind of horrific behavior that that the Belgians did in in their colonies, or indeed the French in their colonies.
00:28:53
Speaker
now That doesn't mean that colonialism was right, but it's what happened. That's how the world worked. and In fact, you know the Christian missionaries went out, and I think now, in a way, that that they're bringing the Christian religion back to the mother country, which has rather lost its way in terms of religion as well.
00:29:11
Speaker
so i think i i I'm not remotely ashamed. I think what we've done in the world, the administration we've given India, the structures that we've put in place everywhere, I mean, obviously, to some extent, it served our purpose at the time. But I think we did it in a ah very civilized way. And I think we've left a legacy, and I don't know whether you find this, but whenever I go to a country where Britain has been involved, there is very much love for the mother country. I think people respect what's happened. And as you say, they now look in and think, what on earth is going on with these people? but We need to get our confidence back.
Education and Economy
00:29:49
Speaker
I think we need to sort out our education system. I think there's a lot of malign and cancerous behavior going on with young children, which needs to be stamped out. There's a lot of sort of rubbish going on with all this sort of LGBTQ plus stuff.
00:30:06
Speaker
particularly with you know children changing sex and being encouraged to change sex and everything else. I'm really pleased that Donald Trump has announced there are only two genders, male and female. I i share that view. But you know, children, when they're young, are very impressionable and and they follow trends. well And if you make them think it's okay to do these things, then they often they often try it. And I think so. That's a big problem for us because that's been going on for a long time now. And I think it permeates our schools, certainly our universities. And it's it's a bizarre sort of development which has to be changed. And for the young people,
00:30:46
Speaker
coming to support reform will help that process. And i you know i I do say to people, and I say it particularly to the young, don't expect five or reform MPs to be Charles Atlas and carry you through. but we can We can lead the charge, but I tell you what, I say to people, don't when you get a local bureaucrat who's supposed to be as your servant, you know bullying you or telling you what to do or behaving badly, challenge them. Keep challenging them.
00:31:16
Speaker
Don't accept it. Don't accept all this nonsense that's being pushed to people all the time, you know the health and safety executive. they there're there're They're another sort of quango that needs to be sorted out. you it Look, it's across the spectrum. So rise up, challenge. Obviously, legally, as I've said, you can't do it illegally, but don't just let them think they can behave as if they're you know your master. They're not.
00:31:42
Speaker
What is local government supposed to do serve you? What are your elected MPs supposed to be doing representing your interests in parliament? They're not supposed to be telling you how to live your life.
00:31:53
Speaker
On the economy, the mantra of the current Labor government is go for growth. We've seen in the UK anemic growth for 20 odd years now. And if you look at it on a per capita basis, it's it's it's but even worse. Will they be able to drive growth? And if not, what would reform do to try and get this economy going?
00:32:14
Speaker
Well, so I've been in the house listening to Rachel Reeves talking about regulating for growth, which I consider to be a huge oxymoron. And if you look, I mean, the trouble is she's never done a real job, so therefore she doesn't actually understand the dynamics of how an economy works.
00:32:35
Speaker
and In the end, a capitalist economy is driven well by investment, long-term investment, and usually that's from the private, not the public sector. The essence of capitalism is that you and I see an opportunity because we're prescient individuals, and we risk our capital to exploit that opportunity. But that means investing and taking risks. States are hopeless at taking risks. That's not their job. Their job is so is to basically administer. That's their job. Our job is to then look and try and predict. Now, if you're wrong, you lose your money. And if you're right, you make money. So actually, the profit motive is a good thing because what you're doing as an entrepreneur is you're lubricate lubricating the economy. You're taking a risk.
00:33:20
Speaker
if you get it right you win and and make money you then invest further in the economy you probably employ more people you actually do good things if you lose your money then you've lubricated the that the risk machine and you funded it with your own cash. So it's not you know you're an individual driving your own agenda if you if you got a state investing.
00:33:42
Speaker
What happens? Well, is they make bad investment decisions like HS2 and like all these other, they love a big sort of vanity project where they can all go and cut ribbons and look great and, you know, fill their social media pages and make it look as if they're doing good things. But when it goes wrong, trust me, they all run for the hills and it's always everybody else's fault.
00:34:04
Speaker
And what what has happened progressively, if we just take you know the financial markets, as I said, London was in rude health under Maggie. We had fantastic capital markets. we you know we We led in almost every aspect of fundraising, the Eurobond market, you you name it, we were incredibly powerful. And we we're very lucky because we sit in this beautiful time window between East and West.
00:34:30
Speaker
What's now happened is, again, Blair, Brown, Campbell, Manleson, they changed pension tax credits, and they regulated. They started the the they used the Financial Services Market Act of 2000 to start financial regulation, which that morphed into the FCA, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Prudential Regulation Authority, the PRA.
00:34:53
Speaker
And what's happened is gradually, that's a quango, by the way, so and and and its funding is extraordinary. It's funded by the industry that it finds. So it has an interest in finding and finding people guilty of you know breaking a very complex rulebook. So it's been a fest for lawyers. It's been an absolute death knell for entrepreneurs, and I've written several articles about it. One recently found enough online for the spectator, I didn't saw that. I did, yes.
00:35:20
Speaker
So, look, I've been banging on about it for some time. I watched it happen, and you got this, the power shifted from the risk-taking doers to the risk-averse administrators, i.e. the regulators and the lawyers. And they've hollowed out our stock market to the extent that I think now I'm right in saying our institutional funds only hold about 4% of UK equities. they've They've been investing in other markets.
00:35:51
Speaker
NASDAQ has grown hugely while London has declined, largely because it's been killed off by regulation. And the extraordinary thing now is I i regale against another, and by the way, that was a very,
Debate and Accountability in Parliament
00:36:04
Speaker
very incredibly successful private sector initiative that that the city, and as soon as it was regulated, it declined. And we've now got the most successful football league in the world built up under like touch regulation, self-regulation, right? So, and it's built into the most incredible league that not only gives us soft power across the world, huge soft power across the world, it generates the most vast amount of money through player-weight tax on wages law go through the payroll and national insurance and all the other things. So, when somebody earns 25 million a year, which I mean, it's great to be paid 25 million a year for doing what you love. I mean, who who could think of a better job?
00:36:48
Speaker
but That generates vast amounts of money for Rachael Reeves. What do our loss in Parliament now want to do, Will? Regulate it! And guess whose idea that was? What? Conservatives. Tories. It was their idea. Bonkers. And I say to you, bonkers, bonkers, bonkers. And in Parliament, there are all these guys, they're all fans, and they all think you know they that they know how to run a football league, even though We didn't see any of them anywhere when when the league was building itself up into the most successful league in the world. Now they want to be part of it.
00:37:20
Speaker
Let me tell you, I will predict it will be a replication of what happened to our financial markets. And in 20 years' time, you and I are going to be sitting around this table, listening to some idiots in parliament, if this is if reform don't win, talking about regulating football for growth. I mean, so it's it's completely farcical. And you you I say to them, well, hang on, guys. They go, well, we've got to look go after for the fans. I go, no, I ran a football club.
00:37:50
Speaker
And you actually don't want to listen to the fans. The fans are customers of the football club, and they're an incredibly important part of the equation. But when you look at Peter Ridsdale, who ran Leeds United, who was a fan, he had a huge flyer on getting Leeds into the Champions League. He lost his bet. And he's a good man. I like Peter. But he lost his bet. And what happened to Leeds? They disappeared for 15 years. They're on the way up. Hopefully, they get themselves promoted. They're a very big club. and they You know, they're great supporters. I think they've got a huge sense of humour and they're great fun. But no, what you need to run a football club is you need a disciplined person who is prepared to stand up to the mob and say no, because if you keep saying yes, in the end you go bust and then you lose the football club and the supporters have nobody to support. Rupert, we have two minutes. I have two questions for you. First, what surprised you the most since entering Parliament?
00:38:45
Speaker
Well, I guess my biggest surprise or disappointment is, you know, you think parliament is where you have honest open debate and you get answers, right? But you've probably seen us, ah Prime Minister's questions, and I was lucky enough to get a question on day one of the parliamentary session, where I was unsurprisingly asked a question on immigration.
00:39:08
Speaker
But the fact of the matter is that no questions are answered. So when I sit around a board table as the chairman of a company and somebody doesn't answer a question, I go, hang on a second, Will, the question was this. You haven't answered the question. Please could you answer the question? that's That's what we need to know what the answer is. So that doesn't happen. And I thought that's disappointing. And I think people looking in on parliament and they can now watch it on telly. I'm not sure I really agree with parliament being televised because all you do is You make these these these MPs who are not that important into sort of well-known figures who begin to get high on their own supply. but So either I think the speaker should intervene and say you haven't answered the question and fulfill the role of chairman, or the MP who's asked the question should be given the right of comeback, which they aren't. So once I've asked my question, I can't then go back. So all you get is, how well?
00:40:05
Speaker
The Tories left us with a 22 billion black hole, and then they sit down and shut up, and that's the answer you get. So, I mean, that will, to me, you ask me, that shocked me. I mean, I i honestly think we're in parliament to get at the truth and to try and make life better for people. And you don't do that by having a dysfunctional parliament that basically allows ah french bench front-bench ministers not to answer questions from backbenchers. It doesn't work, it shouldn't work. like My final question, Rupert Lowe, do you want to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? I mean, look, do I want to be? My wife definitely doesn't want me to be. I'm 67 years old. As I said, I should be trotting around, enjoying myself, reading the Telegraph over a cup of coffee at 10 o'clock in the morning. But as it is, I've started a new career at 66.
00:40:56
Speaker
Which, by the way, I think is very good for one's brain. I mean, having to absorb all the data and all the information that that that that you need to in Parliament is very good, I think. brain The brain's like a muscle. The more exercise, the better it works, because it can get rusty if you don't use it. Do I... I mean, it's ludicrous that I'm in the betting now to be... I mean, how can a punter like me who's come into Parliament six months ago be, I think, I'm fifth or sixth in the ranking in the betting to be the next Prime Minister? Bonkers. Bonkers.
00:41:26
Speaker
Would I do it if I had to? Well, look, I love the country, and i if I had to do it, I think i think i I would definitely do it. But I mean, we've got Nigel Farage, who's our leader, and at the end of the day, we're now leading the polls. He's favorite to be prime minister. I'm still pretty long odds. But who knows? I mean, if it if if if circumstances demanded it,
00:41:50
Speaker
Would I enjoy doing a bit of quango bashing? You bet I would. I'd love to see it. Rupert, thank you for coming on Fire at Will. Pleasure. Very nice to see you and thank you very much for taking an interest in what we're up to.