Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. Welcome to in the City.
Speaker 1: Each week we unpack a story that's crucial to the
Speaker 1: world's financial capitals.
Speaker 2: I'm from sin Leatwa and I'm David Merritt and Dave.
Speaker 1: This week a conversation with Zia Usoof, businessman turned rising
Speaker 1: politician in the Reform UK Party.
Speaker 3: That's right, and this comes as a new survey by
Speaker 3: IPSOS puts the Reform Party, which is led by Nigel Farage,
Speaker 3: on thirty four percent. That's nine points ahead of Labor
Speaker 3: and the Conservatives a distant third. So if the figures
Speaker 3: in the survey were to be replicated across the country
Speaker 3: in an election, Reform UK would win a majority. It's
Speaker 3: quite a change from the results we saw less than
Speaker 3: a year ago at the last general election.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to get Zia Usoof on to talk
Speaker 1: about what he thinks is behind reforms rise in popularity,
Speaker 1: but also more importantly, what policies we could expect from
Speaker 1: a form government, especially in challenging geopolitical time like these.
Speaker 3: And after the conversation was here you'll hear from our
Speaker 3: UK Politics correspondent Lucy White. She's been covering reforms rise
Speaker 3: and policy platform, and we wanted to get her perspective.
Speaker 4: One of our.
Speaker 2: Conversation Welcome to the City of London, the city of the.
Speaker 4: City of the City of London.
Speaker 1: Mind the gap between the.
Speaker 3: Financial hearts of the country, the city, the city. Welcome
Speaker 3: in the.
Speaker 1: City, clear of the doors, Siyah Yusuf. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us.
Speaker 2: My pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Now. You have quite an unconventional actually past your businessman
Speaker 1: You worked for a lot of the big American banks
Speaker 1: and then you set up a company which you then
Speaker 1: sold and went into politics. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm the son of Sri Lankan immigrants into
Speaker 2: the UK. They came to Britain in the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: My father just qualified as a doctor there to go
Speaker 2: over the work. While so I was born up in
Speaker 2: Bellshill in Scotland. I studied at the LSC, worked at
Speaker 2: a couple of American investment banks, quit that job to
Speaker 2: start a tech company, grew that for nine years, successful
Speaker 2: outcome thankfully sold it to an American bank. Then when
Speaker 2: Nigel Fraus said he was coming back into British politics,
Speaker 2: I could see there was a glimmer of hope for
Speaker 2: the United Kingdom, the country that I love. So I
Speaker 2: decided I wasn't going to jump ship. I was going
Speaker 2: to stay here and fight to try and turn the
Speaker 2: country around. And that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: This podcast dives into the issue that really matter around
Speaker 3: here in the square mile, and Reform is about reforming politics,
Speaker 3: about reforming the economy. Is your city background core to
Speaker 3: the policies that you're what was the.
Speaker 2: Definitely, Look, it was the formative stage of my career.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The first five years after I graduated were spent on
Speaker 2: a trading floor on one of your terminals, twelve hours
Speaker 2: a day pretty much, and I loved it. I was
Speaker 2: so grateful for the teams I got to work in.
Speaker 2: They really invested in and look, you also get a
Speaker 2: real sense of I got to go and visit great
Speaker 2: companies like air Bus and companies like Daimler and you know,
Speaker 2: British engineering companies like Spyroxaca, and you really get an
Speaker 2: understanding when you walk around these factories of what makes
Speaker 2: a great company, what makes a less good company. And
Speaker 2: one of the things I think Reform has got in
Speaker 2: its leadership team is, frankly, just people understand however reasonably
Speaker 2: good understanding of how the world actually works.
Speaker 1: But it was my understanding actually by speaking to people
Speaker 1: that were close to this, that you were so when
Speaker 1: you were chairman for eleven months of Reform, your job
Speaker 1: was to professionalize the party. So this gives an idea
Speaker 1: that actually, you know, you were there to make it
Speaker 1: more credible, to give more policies so that people understood
Speaker 1: what Reform actually stood for. At the moment, it feels
Speaker 1: more like culture Wars, and so.
Speaker 2: I disagree a bit with that. When I joined the
Speaker 2: party's chairman, but Nigel asked me to do that job.
Speaker 2: They basically wasn't a political party, frankly. So one of
Speaker 2: the things I don't think people necessarily appreciate about Reform's
Speaker 2: journey over the last year. It was only in June
Speaker 2: last year in Nigel announced he was coming back to
Speaker 2: run to be an MP in Clacton and the party
Speaker 2: had no MPs. We had about nine counselors and we
Speaker 2: were polling at around ten percent. Today we're polling at
Speaker 2: thirty thirty four percent. The book makers have us as
Speaker 2: the favorite to be the next government, Nigel favorite to
Speaker 2: be the next PM. We've got north of a quarter
Speaker 2: of a million members, that's grown fourfold, and so we've
Speaker 2: built all of this. We've got four hundred branches across
Speaker 2: the country. You know, you mentioned that IPSOS poll that
Speaker 2: IPSOS pulpits reform just six points away from having more
Speaker 2: support than Labor and the Tories combined.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, he's a controversial figure. I can't see
Speaker 1: many business people around him apart from you. Is it
Speaker 1: because the opposition is weak? Or is it because Reform
Speaker 1: is really doing the right things? I mean, is this
Speaker 1: like a moment for reform?
Speaker 2: Well, it definitely is a moment for reform. Richard Tights,
Speaker 2: the deputy leader and former leader, is also a successful
Speaker 2: entrepreneur and businessman and has contributed immensely to this journey
Speaker 2: and policy formulation like the ones that we just have.
Speaker 2: So look what we have at Reform. It is a
Speaker 2: small team. We only have five MPs. Now they're formidable MPs.
Speaker 2: We only have five, but we have a men's support
Speaker 2: across the country and what we have done already as
Speaker 2: a result of those made the first election, this wasn't
Speaker 2: a poll, this was a natural election. So I wouldn't
Speaker 2: understate what's just happened now We've still had a lot
Speaker 2: of work to do. We are still years away from
Speaker 2: a general election. I can tell you partly because I've
Speaker 2: got asymmetric data on this.
Speaker 3: There are so.
Speaker 2: Many brilliant people coming forward wanting to help reform, both
Speaker 2: behind the scenes and to be front of house and
Speaker 2: front line.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether reform has the A list, the
Speaker 1: A game. I mean, everyone's trying to kind of find
Speaker 1: space for itself and speaking to a population that's maybe
Speaker 1: fed up with something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, it's perfectly reasonable to say that the British public
Speaker 2: are utterly sick and tired of the two old parties.
Speaker 2: Given this is Bloomberg and we're talking about the economy,
Speaker 2: Britain should be one of the most prosperous countries in
Speaker 2: the world. We still have great assets in this country,
Speaker 2: a dynamic fun system. We still have I think, the
Speaker 2: best people, the best language, the best time zone. We
Speaker 2: have the rule of law in an excellent way here,
Speaker 2: and we have a talent base in areas like finance
Speaker 2: and AI for example, in the AI era, which should
Speaker 2: mean that British people writ large are benefiting. Instead, what
Speaker 2: we're seeing is an unprecedented brain drain British people and
Speaker 2: wealthy non doms are fleeing the country at an unprecedented rate.
Speaker 2: They're going to Singapore and Dubai, and they're even going
Speaker 2: to America. We've got to turn all of that stuff around.
Speaker 2: The only way that's going to happen is if you
Speaker 2: have a first principles approach as and you're really focused
Speaker 2: on how you're going to get the economy growing again
Speaker 2: on a per capita basis, and that's what Reform are doing.
Speaker 3: This process of kind of professionalizing the image of Reform
Speaker 3: feels like a big challenge. Robert Headlines have been on
Speaker 3: in fighting controversies around individual members. Yourself stepped back from
Speaker 3: your role just this month, saying how you were feeling
Speaker 3: burnt out. You know you've done high pressure jobs in
Speaker 3: the past. Tell us a little bit about that process
Speaker 3: this week, why you left, and then why you came
Speaker 3: back so quickly.
Speaker 2: So look, I basically I had a day off in
Speaker 2: eleven months, and people listening to this business brings a
Speaker 2: certain level of pressure. Politics is a whole different level
Speaker 2: of pressure. And as I said, not just building and
Speaker 2: assembling a political party from scratch in real time, also
Speaker 2: doing everything else that the political party need to do
Speaker 2: and tell us why I came back. Look number one
Speaker 2: I received I was inundated, which is lovely heartfelt messages
Speaker 2: from reform supporters, voters and members who expressed just how
Speaker 2: important the reform movement is to them. It's not just
Speaker 2: a political party for many people. That represents the last
Speaker 2: hope the country has to This great country has whom
Speaker 2: so many people have laid down their lives for to
Speaker 2: turn itself around. And look, as I said, I was
Speaker 2: exhausted and my decision making at the time wasn't great.
Speaker 2: We reversed that very quickly. Look, I came into politics
Speaker 2: in no small part because of Nigel, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to continue to spend all my time trying to make
Speaker 2: him the Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: I know you criticized her at poachin right, who was
Speaker 1: basically urging cure Starmer to ban the burker and the
Speaker 1: interest of public safety, and you said it was done
Speaker 1: for a party to task a PM to do something
Speaker 1: that the party itself, your party itself, wouldn't do. Do
Speaker 1: you stick by that.
Speaker 2: I didn't criticize Sarah. Let me care about something. The
Speaker 2: number one serias of phenomenal MP I speak almost every day.
Speaker 2: She's a good friend. I was instrumental in getting her selected,
Speaker 2: getting her elected, and she's going to be such a
Speaker 2: formidable asset to the country. Look that tweet which I
Speaker 2: sent out, which I definitely regret now what the point
Speaker 2: I was making to I was frustrated because I didn't
Speaker 2: know that question was going to get asked. In hindsight,
Speaker 2: perfectly reasonable for me to have not known. I'm not
Speaker 2: an MP, So I regret that tweet. I don't mind
Speaker 2: saying that.
Speaker 1: Can you just give us a sense? So when we
Speaker 1: speak to a lot of people, they say I'd like
Speaker 1: to know a little bit more about reform, but we
Speaker 1: don't really know where they stand on the economy, So
Speaker 1: it's you talk common sense without a lot of I
Speaker 1: guess policy details. So can you give us an idea
Speaker 1: of what you would do, for example, for this UK?
Speaker 1: DOAJE like the money is very limited right for any
Speaker 1: chancellor to play around with? So where are you finding efficiencies?
Speaker 2: Well, that is a line that the establishment always uses,
Speaker 2: right the money. My favorite one is quote difficult decisions
Speaker 2: need to be made. How many times have you heard that? Right?
Speaker 1: But I mean we run the numbers at Bloomberry. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just not a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Well, hold on, hold on, So let me give you
Speaker 2: some big numbers. That so fifteen billion in foreign aid, right,
Speaker 2: five billion a year in terms of free accommodation to
Speaker 2: asylum sequels and illegal migrants, and that's per year. The
Speaker 2: twelve billion in net zero costs that will be found
Speaker 2: directly inside government departments. The real number is much higher
Speaker 2: and I can go into that. So there's straightaway is
Speaker 2: almost forty billion, and you're going to have and there
Speaker 2: are so many other line items in the budget. When
Speaker 2: you start peeling this stuff back, I mean you look
Speaker 2: at the big consulting firms. Some of your listeners might
Speaker 2: not appreciate this, but the big four accounting firms and
Speaker 2: the strategy consultants won eight and a half billion pounds
Speaker 2: in national government tool contracts over the last five years alone.
Speaker 2: So the notion that there is no money to be
Speaker 2: saved is for the birds. Now, it is also true
Speaker 2: this country is almost three trillion in national debt. But
Speaker 2: the bottom line is the British economy is not growing.
Speaker 2: I mean talk about point seven percent. That's less than
Speaker 2: the population is growing just from immigration. If we do
Speaker 2: not get the British economy growing meaningfully on a per
Speaker 2: capita basis, this country is headed to an extremely bad place.
Speaker 2: The way we're going to do that is by cutting
Speaker 2: spending on things that are wasteful. We have to get
Speaker 2: our welfare bill under control, and difficult conversations do have
Speaker 2: to be had about it. Of course there are some
Speaker 2: people who need benefits not of course that is true,
Speaker 2: but it has never been easier to get onto benefits.
Speaker 2: So we have to get the welfare bill per capita
Speaker 2: down to where it was back in twenty nineteen. That
Speaker 2: will free up a lot of money to reduce the
Speaker 2: tax burden on working people. And we also have to
Speaker 2: buy the way be really honest that we need wealthy
Speaker 2: international job creators wealth creators.
Speaker 3: To be here.
Speaker 2: We don't need them fleeing. We want them here in
Speaker 2: the UK. That's a big part of what our policy
Speaker 2: announcement was today. If you talk to us a demisacebas
Speaker 2: at deep mind, for example, you know Jensen Wang from
Speaker 2: Nvidia was talking about he do you use the term
Speaker 2: goldilocks a situation for AI in the UK. We have
Speaker 2: a significant percentage of the world's finest AI engineers graduating
Speaker 2: from our universities likewise in areas like biotech, and then
Speaker 2: we also have to start manufacturing here again. We can
Speaker 2: have a new manufacturing revolution with cutting edge manufacturing techniques
Speaker 2: in the country, and we need people who understand economics,
Speaker 2: understand business in charge of making the most important economic
Speaker 2: decisions in this country.
Speaker 1: When I speak to global investors, and I'm talking about
Speaker 1: in a Blackstone, black Rock, even some of your old shops,
Speaker 1: Colman Sachs, I mean, they're quite bullish on the UK.
Speaker 1: It's a bad neighborhood out there. The US because of
Speaker 1: trade and tariffs, looks like less attractive investment right now.
Speaker 2: Great, great, But here's the point. The British economy has
Speaker 2: had virtually no growth now for a very very long time.
Speaker 2: And you can arguing about whether it's point three or
Speaker 2: point seven, it's pointless. The reason why people in this
Speaker 2: country feel like they're getting poor is because real wages
Speaker 2: have done nothing now for about two decades. Real GDP
Speaker 2: capita has done nothing for about two decades. This is
Speaker 2: the other thing in business, there's accountability, right. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're a chief executive and you're paid a lot
Speaker 2: of money and you're very powerful. If you make bad decisions,
Speaker 2: the markets will see to it. You are not the
Speaker 2: CEO for very long. Right in politics and inside the bureaucracy,
Speaker 2: not only do you not face consequence as you're promoted,
Speaker 2: you're put into the lords. That's what has happened on
Speaker 2: these big military contracts that have gone massively and overspent.
Speaker 2: HS two. This country is paying eight times more per
Speaker 2: mile of high speed rail than China or France, eight
Speaker 2: times more. Why is that? If we win a majority
Speaker 2: in the House of Commons with Nigel as the Prime Minister,
Speaker 2: we can make sweeping reforms. We will have a great
Speaker 2: repeal Act and we can go and solve these problems
Speaker 2: root and branch.
Speaker 3: I was just going to ask how you're going to
Speaker 3: do it, so you have a repeal Act for what specifically?
Speaker 2: So well, that's what we're working on as we speak.
Speaker 2: I think this country has way too many laws, way
Speaker 2: too many regulations. A lot of those have to be repealed.
Speaker 2: We can get into it. The e CHR that prevents
Speaker 2: multiple convicted illegal migrants.
Speaker 3: Touring thousands of staff in Washington and across multiple government departments,
Speaker 3: people being barred from entry. It's been pretty extreme. Do
Speaker 3: you see a version of that here with a reform company.
Speaker 2: Not not necessarily. I mean, if you zoom out a minute, right,
Speaker 2: what's happening is endless outsourcing. We're now at the stage
Speaker 2: where a contractor is now running the recruitment program for
Speaker 2: the British Army. While that's happening, the cost and the
Speaker 2: headcount of the civil service has ballooned by fifty percent
Speaker 2: over the last decade in government in the civil service.
Speaker 2: Literally you're ramping up spending on outsourcing and agencies and
Speaker 2: contractors and ramping up the size of the civil service.
Speaker 2: I think you can have the size of the civil
Speaker 2: service and actually deliver a better service to taxpayers.
Speaker 1: A couple of things on dough I mean, do you
Speaker 1: have an early update on your DOGE project and working
Speaker 1: with ten councils that reform now controls, So what sort
Speaker 1: of savings have you actually identified concretely?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, look, we already have one number on its
Speaker 2: early days and a lot of what we're doing is analysis.
Speaker 2: But I'll give you one exact sample. One of our
Speaker 2: Cabinet Minister's Cabinet members in West Northamptonshire Council was presented
Speaker 2: with a Microsoft contract for millions of pounds and told hey,
Speaker 2: you've got like three days to sign this off, otherwise
Speaker 2: they'd be penalties. Now that's funny that there'd be penalties
Speaker 2: for a contract that you haven't even signed yet. He
Speaker 2: pushed back and did a really good job and saved
Speaker 2: nine hundred and sixty five thousand pounds on that contract
Speaker 2: straight away, And that was within the first week of
Speaker 2: arriving in the council. And what does that tell you?
Speaker 2: It's actually a reason to be bullish on the UK
Speaker 2: because there's so much waste there sort of people who
Speaker 2: are sitting there signing those contracts off historically a big
Speaker 2: Microsoft contract where it's obviously massive gross margins. Right, Clearly
Speaker 2: most of these companies have been taking councils and taxpayers
Speaker 2: for a ride. I don't really blame them because it's
Speaker 2: up to the councils. It's up to the civil servants
Speaker 2: and the politicians to fight the corner for the taxpay
Speaker 2: As soon as a reform person turned up, they did
Speaker 2: that and they saved nine hundred and sixty five thousand
Speaker 2: pounds within the first seven days.
Speaker 1: What do you say to the accusation that, actually, because
Speaker 1: you've also promised tax cards. It feels a bit like reminiscent.
Speaker 2: Although so at local level we certainly haven't haven't promised any.
Speaker 1: Time, but you have at the at the national levelt Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. Great. I mean some people are worried that
Speaker 1: this is the spell of a lost trust disaster type.
Speaker 2: Liz Truss did not announce any spending cuts Nigel's foot.
Speaker 2: Nigel stood up and gave a spech a few weeks
Speaker 2: ago and announced three to four hundred billion pounds of
Speaker 2: spending cuts to happen inside his first term as Prime minister,
Speaker 2: funded full stop. That's exactly right. Here's the irony. We're
Speaker 2: formerly the only people who have a leadership team with
Speaker 2: experience of balancing some quite large budgets. What we're saying
Speaker 2: is we need to dramatically cut spending on things. Like
Speaker 2: I said, the twelve billion on net zero that'll be
Speaker 2: found in director in budgets, the fifteen billion in foreign aid,
Speaker 2: and the five billion in terms of asylum. There's a
Speaker 2: lot more. I mean, you look at the money that
Speaker 2: is hidden inside these quango budgets. You look at the
Speaker 2: money that's being spent on these on these consultancies and
Speaker 2: these agencies, vast amounts of money. That's the work that
Speaker 2: we're doing.
Speaker 1: Now you're also trying to I mean I had a
Speaker 1: question on you know, trying to basically take reform into
Speaker 1: the mainstream. And while you're leading in the polls, there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of voters, whether fairly or not fairly,
Speaker 1: that associate your party with racism. Are they wrong?
Speaker 2: Of course, And I think that that's now So if
Speaker 2: you are leveling that claim reform, you are now calling
Speaker 2: that epsos pole leveling that claim at more than third
Speaker 2: of the public in the UK. Any human who has
Speaker 2: been in the UK for more than five minutes knows
Speaker 2: that that claim is absurd on its face.
Speaker 1: But there must be a perception. I mean, the perception
Speaker 1: is still there. You can't deny that.
Speaker 2: It might be there for people who are brainwashed by
Speaker 2: certain media outlets that they might watch. But look, frankly,
Speaker 2: we're coming across that less and less and less, and
Speaker 2: the more that we have been attacked without hominem attacks.
Speaker 2: Partly it is because they can't engage us on the arguments. Secondly,
Speaker 2: the result of all of this silliness being you know,
Speaker 2: so ideologically possessed that that's the only argument against us
Speaker 2: is that the country continues to go to the dogs.
Speaker 2: And I put it to you that the more people
Speaker 2: here from reform, the more they hear from Nigel and
Speaker 2: our MPs, the more they like us. That's the evidence,
Speaker 2: and the opposite is true of other political leaders in
Speaker 2: this country.
Speaker 3: Can I pivot a bit to again back where we
Speaker 3: are in the city of London and what we care
Speaker 3: about more than anything on this podcast is what the
Speaker 3: future holds for the city. So what people think about
Speaker 3: you say is important. Do you care what the city
Speaker 3: thinks about you as a former banker and what plans
Speaker 3: would you have in place to improve the fortunes of
Speaker 3: the financial services.
Speaker 2: We need to know. The city of London was once
Speaker 2: the greatest financial center in the world. We need a
Speaker 2: strong city of London. I think it is. It is
Speaker 2: massively overregulated, no doubt about that. You saw our cryptopolicy
Speaker 2: for example. We've got to lean into the technologies of
Speaker 2: the future. Yes, of course there needs to be some regulation,
Speaker 2: but it's gone way way too far. We need to
Speaker 2: do things on taxation and look, the first act that
Speaker 2: we want to cut is the one for people earning
Speaker 2: less than twenty thousand pounds a year. One of the
Speaker 2: reasons why the city of London is suffering it's people
Speaker 2: are worried about law and order. People are terrified of
Speaker 2: walking around late at night. They can't wear a nice
Speaker 2: watch anymore. They kind of hold their phone out in public.
Speaker 2: I grasp it with two hands as if their life
Speaker 2: depends on it, because in some cases it actually does.
Speaker 2: So we have to do all of those things. And
Speaker 2: one of the interesting things I'll tell you as well.
Speaker 2: I spend a lot of time in Runcorn during the
Speaker 2: run Corn and Hellsby Parliamentary by election. And there are
Speaker 2: some pretty deprived areas, not all of it, but there's
Speaker 2: some pretty deprived areas of Runcorn, and there are people there.
Speaker 2: We would hear time and again on the doorsteps, people saying, look,
Speaker 2: we set our alarm clocks in the morning, we do
Speaker 2: everything right. We pay into the system, so did my parents,
Speaker 2: and life has become endlessly more difficult. The cost of
Speaker 2: the weekly shop keeps going up. Those energy bills because
Speaker 2: of that virtue signaling keeps going up. And then they
Speaker 2: see someone next door on the same at state, who's
Speaker 2: on benefits, with four kids, whose front gardens a complete mess,
Speaker 2: doesn't do any work, and they think, why do we bother?
Speaker 2: And I hear exactly not what. I met one of
Speaker 2: my friends who still works in the city with a
Speaker 2: sizeable income. I don't mind saying, you know, a sizeable
Speaker 2: six figure household income between him and his wife, and
Speaker 2: he said exactly the same thing. He said, you know,
Speaker 2: we both work really hard. Yes we own good money,
Speaker 2: clearly much higher than the average. But we've got two kids.
Speaker 2: We can barely afford to send them to the school
Speaker 2: we want to send them to. Our relationship, it's starting
Speaker 2: to pray because we don't really get a chance to
Speaker 2: engage each other because we're so busy. And then we
Speaker 2: see all that, we see this sense that people are
Speaker 2: getting away with not working, not contributing. And the phrase
Speaker 2: that stuck in my head was they both use the
Speaker 2: phrase why do we bother? And I think that that's
Speaker 2: a big reason why reform is getting to be successful.
Speaker 2: Come on, and why we're going to fight, why we're
Speaker 2: going to fight for working people. It's really important. Contract
Speaker 2: is the thing that is breaking.
Speaker 1: But I mean, why do we bother? They don't want
Speaker 1: to be on benefits? Like I understand that this is
Speaker 1: a huge concern and immigration, you know in this country
Speaker 1: needs to be fixed, But why do we bother if
Speaker 1: you're if you have two jobs, you're in an OK position.
Speaker 1: Things maybe need to change, but it's tough to say,
Speaker 1: why do we bother?
Speaker 2: Well that the tax burden on everyone that I just described, right,
Speaker 2: even though and I'm using that example advisedly right because
Speaker 2: they're at very different extremes in terms of the Bell
Speaker 2: curve of economic distinction and salary. But the sentiment that
Speaker 2: they have is that they are being taxed ever more
Speaker 2: and they are getting less and less and less for
Speaker 2: it when they want to go and see a GP.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly difficult. Having children has never been harder economically
Speaker 2: for people in this country, which is why a birth
Speaker 2: rate has collapsed below replacement. And this real sense of unfairness.
Speaker 2: We know people of mind paying taxes if they feel
Speaker 2: like they're getting something valuable in return.
Speaker 3: So obviously it's been a very significant weekend in the
Speaker 3: Middle East. Part of preparing for government potentially would be
Speaker 3: your geopolitical policies. Kis Darma's getting fairly good reviews around
Speaker 3: the word. I spend a lot of the time in
Speaker 3: the United States about how has been triangulating on the
Speaker 3: Ukraine issue and on the Middle East. Now do you
Speaker 3: have a policy? Do you support the United States strikes
Speaker 3: on Iran? And if you were in government, how would
Speaker 3: you navigate this very delicate and difficult moment for the world.
Speaker 2: The first thing to say is reform is about focusing
Speaker 2: on the UK I tweeted out yesterday, A country that
Speaker 2: cannot even defend its own borders has no business and
Speaker 2: will not be taken seriously lecturing any other countries about there.
Speaker 3: Where should spending be Then, when you're looking at the
Speaker 3: priorities and where money's going to be saved, But should
Speaker 3: we be ramping up to three and a half percent?
Speaker 2: Yes, we want to be ramping up spending on defense.
Speaker 2: So the way you're going to spend more on defense
Speaker 2: ultimately in absolute terms by growing the economy, Right, So
Speaker 2: that's the first thing. If you don't have a fast
Speaker 2: growing economy and a buoyant economy, you will not have
Speaker 2: a strong defense. Secondly, we need to spend it in
Speaker 2: smarter way. So let's stay drone warfare where there's been
Speaker 2: some high profile cases. For example, Russia had a whole
Speaker 2: load of its nuclear aircraft fleet decommissioned by Ukrainian drugs.
Speaker 2: Ukraine is firing three to six thousand drones every single day.
Speaker 2: I'll let you take a guess as to the total
Speaker 2: number of military drones available to His Majesty's armed forces.
Speaker 2: I want to take a guess how many less than
Speaker 2: two thousand?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: We are so ill equipped in this country for modern warfare.
Speaker 2: We obviously have amazing men and women who give their
Speaker 2: lives and give their careers to service for this country.
Speaker 2: And so we have to grow the British economy and
Speaker 2: if we do that, we will have a strong armed forces.
Speaker 1: Is that maybe just final question? Is there a country
Speaker 1: or a politician that you admire?
Speaker 2: I admire the United States, and I admire I do
Speaker 2: admire President Trump. I don't agree with everything he does
Speaker 2: or says, but I do admire him. I think he's
Speaker 2: a very determined man, and I think he has done
Speaker 2: a lot of good for America, even though I don't
Speaker 2: agree with everything he does. I'd also say Georgia Maloney
Speaker 2: in Italy I think is someone who has done a
Speaker 2: great job. But look, Britain is a proud country. It
Speaker 2: has an amazing history. This is the other thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to close on is We're not in the business
Speaker 2: of saying Britain's in managed decline, and that is the
Speaker 2: axiom on which every politician in Westminster, pretty much outside
Speaker 2: of Reform knowingly knowingly operates. We think Britain can be
Speaker 2: an awesome country again, that we can be excited to
Speaker 2: live here and soa can our kids and their kids.
Speaker 2: But it's going to take a lot of work and
Speaker 2: time is running out, is.
Speaker 1: The a useuph Thank you so much for joining yes today.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So that was a conversation we taped with Reform UK's
Speaker 1: is the AUSU earlier this week. Now, Lucy as our
Speaker 1: UK politics reporter, you've been tracking Reforms right and popularity,
Speaker 1: but more importantly trying to understand what the party stands
Speaker 1: for when it comes to economic policy.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, it's seemed quite a change over recent years.
Speaker 4: So Reform UK can trace its roots really back to
Speaker 4: the UK Party, the UK Independence Party, which was again
Speaker 4: headed by Nigel Faraj. Nigel left that party after essentially
Speaker 4: becoming one of one of the very few sort of
Speaker 4: instantly recognizable figures in UK politics, and he's founded the
Speaker 4: Brexit Party that was sort of continuing in the same
Speaker 4: vein as the UK Independence Party, but to to bring
Speaker 4: the UK out of the European Union essentially was no deal.
Speaker 4: He wanted a very clean split from the European Union.
Speaker 4: After achieving that, well we did have a deal of
Speaker 4: some sex, yes, the brexit bit, not the deal a bit,
Speaker 4: we found him, you know, wanting to rename the party essentially,
Speaker 4: and he landed on reform UK as he sees it.
Speaker 4: The UK is broken, the UK needs fixing, and that
Speaker 4: covers pretty much evering from reform of the welfare state
Speaker 4: to cutting back on migration, which has always been a
Speaker 4: huge vein in Niger Faragi's politics.
Speaker 3: So that's the thing. So in the past it was
Speaker 3: the sort of the one issue thing was like get
Speaker 3: brittin now the EU and then that mission accomplished. I
Speaker 3: mean he failed to become an MP all that time,
Speaker 3: didn't he. And now they've actually got some MPs now
Speaker 3: that they've got a bit of a broad well technically
Speaker 3: a broader agenda. But you know, listening to our conversation
Speaker 3: with him, I guess what struck me was that we
Speaker 3: were asking about lots of economic policies and they had
Speaker 3: this big new non dom thing that came out, but
Speaker 3: everything kept on coming back to that same thing, which
Speaker 3: was always been the Nigel Farage policy number one, which
Speaker 3: is about immigration. Yeah, still are they still actually really
Speaker 3: a one issue party?
Speaker 4: It's interesting because I think Zia Yusef has been one
Speaker 4: of the key figures in trying to professionalize reform UK
Speaker 4: and so he has really been wanting to broaden out
Speaker 4: that kind of spectrum of policy from just being an
Speaker 4: immigration focused party to really looking at kind of economic policy.
Speaker 4: You know, as you mentioned, we saw the non dom
Speaker 4: issue raised earlier this week where they have trying to
Speaker 4: attract wealthy non domicile people back to the country too,
Speaker 4: as they see it raised tax revenue here, and Zia
Speaker 4: last month talked about cryptocurrencies, you know, how he wants
Speaker 4: to make the UK a real cryptocurrency hub. And we're
Speaker 4: really seeing a much bigger breadth of policies across the party.
Speaker 4: But as you say, what they're really kind of what
Speaker 4: they always hone back to is that issue of migration.
Speaker 4: That's the kind of anger that they're trying to tap
Speaker 4: into among the British electorate of people who feel that
Speaker 4: they've been hard done by because we have seen such
Speaker 4: huge numbers of migrants come to the country.
Speaker 1: It's really important in the UK to remember, of course,
Speaker 1: this is historically almost a two party system, and so
Speaker 1: they really want to break away from that. But are
Speaker 1: they more right wing the Tory right.
Speaker 4: It's on certain social policies, it certainly seems so. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've heard various of their MPs that I mean, they've
Speaker 4: only got five MPs at the moment, but we've heard
Speaker 4: some of them talk about, you know, wanting to tighten
Speaker 4: up abortion legislation, for example, make it harder for women
Speaker 4: to get abortions. We've heard some of them talking around
Speaker 4: a sister dying and sort of coming at that from
Speaker 4: a very you know, kind of socially right wing angle.
Speaker 4: But it's hard to kind of say exactly because on
Speaker 4: certain economic policy they are trying to challenge labor from
Speaker 4: the left as well, because you know, you've seen them
Speaker 4: sort of talk about reinstating the winter fuel payment to
Speaker 4: elderly people that labor pulled when they first got into power.
Speaker 4: I think, rather than looking at it as an issue
Speaker 4: of right and left, what they're really looking at it
Speaker 4: from is trying to tap into that kind of base
Speaker 4: of working class people. Who feel like they aren't recognized
Speaker 4: by either of the mainstream political parties and trying to
Speaker 4: figure out what they want and what might appeal to them,
Speaker 4: while also keeping you know, the wealthy, high net worth
Speaker 4: traditionally right wing voters on side.
Speaker 3: So that sounds like pretty good definition of populism to me,
Speaker 3: isn't it?
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah?
Speaker 3: And that's a playbook. So you know, when we talked
Speaker 3: to the Conversation, didn't we about you admire President Trump
Speaker 3: and said he certainly does might musque and that obviously
Speaker 3: calls himself now the doge of the UK. So are
Speaker 3: they just kind of cherry picking from the kind of
Speaker 3: populist regimes, obviously the trumping the biggest one, and trying
Speaker 3: to repeat that playbook in the UK.
Speaker 4: It certainly seems that way in certain of the policies
Speaker 4: that they have taken forward. I mean this, the Non
Speaker 4: Doms Britannia card that they're talking about, giving people a
Speaker 4: Britannier card giving them the right to live in the
Speaker 4: UK is pretty much a sort of direct translation of
Speaker 4: the Trump card, even though it's an awful lot cheaper
Speaker 4: than the Trump card.
Speaker 3: Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds every ten years is
Speaker 3: it rather than what was it five million?
Speaker 2: Did I get that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Several million pounds for sure.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a bit cheaper than the US basically.
Speaker 4: Whether they're doing down or not, I don't know, but no,
Speaker 4: it's it's it's it's difficult to to see, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of how the UK would be able to bring
Speaker 4: in millions and millions.
Speaker 3: And again we asked him in there in the conversation
Speaker 3: around more specific economic or even things that were useful
Speaker 3: for the city of Life, and I don't know, and
Speaker 3: I just don't think they had much me on the
Speaker 3: bones there, do they.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, it's it's important to remember that we
Speaker 4: are four years away from from another general election and
Speaker 4: you could level the same criticism and the Conservative Party exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you know, it's a long way off yet,
Speaker 4: but they are kind of coming at this really from
Speaker 4: ground zero. You know, they've never had more than one
Speaker 4: MP before. Now they've got five. But you know, there's
Speaker 4: still a lot of questions around who's going to be
Speaker 4: their cabinet if they if they do get into power,
Speaker 4: who would be the chancellor? You know, there's there's a
Speaker 4: few names in the pot already who could who could
Speaker 4: probably fill that position. But you know, there's a whole
Speaker 4: cabinet that they'll have to fill, and it's it's relying
Speaker 4: a lot on trust from the electorate to think that
Speaker 4: they would vote a party into power when they have
Speaker 4: absolutely no idea who any of the people are.
Speaker 1: Oh see, so interesting. Thank you so much, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this week's In the City from Bloomberg. This
Speaker 1: episode was hosted by me Francins Laquis with David Merritt.
Speaker 1: In the City is produced by Somersaudi and Moses and Dam,
Speaker 1: with sound designed by Blake Maples. Brindon Francis Unim is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Special thanks to Zia Yusuff and Lucy White.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts.