Chopper's Political Podcast: EXPLAINED - How Nigel Farage changed politics forever and the TRUE reason Unite the Kingdom

Coming up on Chopper's Political Podcast

People feel strangers in their own land because they're basically told that their neighbourhoods and their lifestyles have to change to accommodate a mass influx of people who are not from that area

welcome back to chopper's political podcast why bring you the best guest gossip news and stories

from our studios at gb news here in the heart of westminster is freedom of speech in the uk

under threat senior figures in the us think so here's what the vice president jd vance told the

Munich Security Conference earlier this year. The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's

not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of

its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where

the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons

in particular in the crosshairs. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat

If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you

And over here, some of our leading politicians, notably Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK. He's also worried he compared the UK to North Korea

I've come today as well to be a klaxon to say to you, don't allow piece by piece this to happen here in America

And you would be doing us and yourselves and all freedom loving people a favor if your politicians and your businesses said to the British government, you've simply got this wrong

At what point did we become North Korea? Well, I think the Irish comedy writer found that out two days ago at Heathrow Airport

But would North Korea allow a protest like the one we saw last weekend

between 110,000 people and 150,000 people, descended on the streets of London to a Unite Killer Kingdom rally

All of this comes in the context of last week's assassination of Donald Trump's ally

the influencer Charlie Kirk, who was shot dead at Utah Valley University

So this poses a question for our podcast. Is freedom of speech under threat and where should the line be drawn

Are opposing views being suppressed by those who simply don't want to hear them

I'm really pleased to be joined by Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley

the director of the Academy of Ideas and the author of a book called

I Find That Offensive! exclamation mark. Claire, welcome to Chopper's Political Podcast. It's great to be on. I'm

usually listening, so it's not a debate. I'd love to have you on. I enjoyed your Wikipedia

entry. It says this, a lifelong Eurosceptic. She was previously a member of the Trotskyist

British Revolutionary Communist Party, but later began identifying as a libertarian. That's

a great intro of a life story. It is, although it is Wikipedia's version of my life and therefore

not necessarily accurate. I was in the Revolution with Communist Party. I don't know that I was

a lifelong Eurosceptic and I don't use the term libertarian, but I do believe in freedom

Are we like North Korea? Is Nigel Farage right? No, I think that was a bit of hyperbole

on Nigel's part, but I think the point he was making was that we often in this country

lecture the rest of the world, like North Korea, or maybe a bit more realistically

places like Hong Kong and say, oh, it's terrible. People are put in prison for their views

And then you have to kind of go gulp. We might have had a bit of that ourselves

Lucy Connolly. Exactly, the Lucy Connolly case. But the figures are stark

I mean, 30 arrests a day for speech crimes. And even the economists

The economists. I know. I mean, the economists said, what? This is mad

And therefore, you know, the economists actually said Europe's free speech crisis on a front page a few months ago

And I just think it indicates that across the political spectrum, actually, those people who are following this carefully are anxious that we become much more casual about saying that speech

People say things like, I believe in free speech, but not hate speech

Then when you ask them to define hate, you discover that their version of hate is often views that they find hateful

And it's entirely subjective. and actually the law itself messes around with this

And so I do think the police have got themselves into a position where they're knocking on the doors of ordinary people

saying, we've just read your tweet. And that's why you see Mark Rowley, the head of the Met

saying, give us some guidance. And we do hear from Number 10 repeatedly, they want the police to focus on priorities

muggings, attacks, the shoplifting, the stuff that matters, according to the police

maybe less so than being offended by a tweet. I mean, look at the Lucy Connolly situation

that was that not due to legal advice? Maybe if she hadn't pled guilty, a jury might have got her off

Yeah, I mean, I'm absolutely convinced that if she'd have gone to a jury, she would have stood a very good chance of getting off

I think there's an argument about whether she should have been arrested. I mean, this is a slightly different point

I think that once she was arrested and pleaded guilty, it's different

Although I think then she was unfairly treated. She was given the absolute maximum you could get

and she wasn't allowed out on bail and all that. She's now out early. And that feels to me a bit more like, you know, vindictive

And we had got, after all, the prime minister going on during that time, basically threatening that, you know, everybody, they would be used as exemplars of what would happen if you incited

Now, this is an interesting phrase, isn't it? Incited. Because incitement is usually associated with quite narrowly, you know, saying, Mrs. Smith lives over there

The gun's in the corner. Go and do something, you know. But this is incitement to hatred

And so consequently, it becomes much more murky as to whether it actually led to any action

Of course, you said burn down a hotel for all I care. I mean, the for all I care does seem to me to be a fairly key phrase

For me, that did qualify. I know. I mean, because that's a kind of heated, angry, unpleasant sentiment, you might say

Which is deleted the next day. Now, Keir Starmer, when he was DPP, the Director of Public Prosecutions, also said, I think back in 2014

The lawyers, prosecutors should allow for an intemperate tweet after a few drinks

This leads to the next morning. And that, to me, is exactly what happened in the case of Lucy Connelly

Yeah, I mean, we often talk about that horrible phrase, the Overton window has shifted

And in many ways, it has in the direction. I mean, it basically means that you thought it was open there and then it's kind of like suddenly over there

Anyway, I'm not going to overdo the explanation. But what it does mean, we say it's about something like immigration, which, you know, a few only maybe last year saying we should be deporting tens of thousands of people would have been considered to be absolutely extraordinary

And now even the Labour Party is saying it even if they not doing it because they mean things move But the opposite has happened on free speech which is that we now have got to a situation where a more liberal attitude to free speech is a foundational value of democracy

It's now shifted and it's very much I believe in free speech, but, but, but, but

And so it's very difficult to take Keir Starmer seriously when he says, you know, or we are a country that's based on the foundation of free speech

when practically every piece of legislation that I have to do within the Lords

let alone a culture, by the way, just brings in this chilling impact

We're going to come to some new legislation out this week on that very point. Just going to refine on this issue of tweet-twittering

I mean, I think that for me, the line may have been crossed by the arrest of the Father Ted writer, Graham Linehan

by five armed policemen in Heathrow. There are armed police in Heathrow, I get that. But he was tweeting some remarks about a row on the trans issue from America, read by someone here, arrested on arrival here

That's extraordinary, I think. And he's not British, he's Irish. No, three tweets, and he was treated as though he was a major threat, like a terrorist, effectively

And in view of the fact that we have a situation in which people who actually do represent a terrorist threat to this country

are sometimes, you know, treated with kid gloves or ignored or somehow we miss them

They go over to the prevent strategists who then say, carry on

And yet we have it. Not people who would say carry on. They would say, carry on your life

You know, we'll kind of come and see us in a few weeks. I don't mean carry on. No, but what I'm saying is preventers being exposed

has not been preventing anything. And then we have a situation where through speech

I think what we've got to be very clear about, and this is, you know, you started off by mentioning Charlie Kirk

You know, Charlie Kirk was an influencer who many young people who the Academy of Ideas worked with knew about

And one of the things that they admired was not necessarily what he was arguing

but that he was prepared to argue and that he didn't actually hide away

from his political opponents. And he was, as we, he was gunned down

and massacred in that way. He was on a campus tour going around saying

come on, tell me what you think and I'll argue back. And that the spirit of that, which is free speech

encouraging people to have it out in the open is absolutely considered to be almost dangerous on university campuses

I mean, they'll sort of say, oh, well, we know we don't want to inflame emotions

We don't want to cause psychological harm to people. Upset people hearing it. Exactly. And so consequently, people suppress these ideas

And actually, to be honest, if you suppress ideas, they fester. But the law here is such that if you say something and someone just feels offended by that

the police can act. Yeah, they can. I mean, that's what it is. Because they've actually got in the legislation

And by the way, the Online Safety Act is even worse because it accepts that harm can now include psychological harm

Nobody can define what that is. And once you do that, you conflate words and actions

In other words, when you get those kind of progressive activists who are particularly irritating, who go around saying speech is violence

And so therefore, if Kathleen Stop turns up at my university, it's like an act of violence being done to me

then you actually are in a situation whereby if you can't tell the difference between words and

violence then you can use violence just like you can use words and i'm afraid we can see

the brutality of where that can lead but by the way i i do want to say that i think some of the

reaction to charlie kirk from people who maybe are fed up of cancel culture having silence

particularly right-leaning opinions a lot of the reaction both in america and actually in the uk

is to say anyone who says any of those horrible things excusing Charlie Kirk's murder, which is abhorrent

but that they should be sacked. They should be locked up. They should be done away with

And I think the problem then is that we get to a situation where we now ourselves

even though it's a free speech fraternity, end up with a free speech for me, but not for thee

And also accepting that they can't tell the difference because they're saying that act of assassination and violence

was the same on a par with violent speech. Now that is exactly what those kind of leftish identitarian progressives said

And I just think that it's very dangerous when you basically start trying to have a tit-for-tat cancel culture going on

and everybody trying to silence everybody else. When you hear Keir Starmer describing people protesting

after the Southport attacks last year as far-right, what do you think about that

I note, by the way, that number 10 as of this week isn't saying that the Unite the Kingdom march last weekend was far right

And that's probably because they reckon it has a problem saying that. People get really upset, don't they, when they hear that

Yeah, because I think, you know, first of all, it's made a mockery of the term far right

It destroys language. I mean, you actually get to a point where you can no longer accurately describe

some people who are far right. Because if you called everybody far right, then you've got people at Epping

the pink ladies walking around saying, we are, you know, we aren't far right. Or more mockingly, we're all far right because we're right, because it's become a joke, you know, and you'll get lefty feminists who are gender critical saying, yeah, I'm far right Nazi

You know, because therefore the words become meaningless because you just know that it's used to demonize you and to shut you up

But the danger with the way that the government, I think, or with Keir Starmer dealt with the Unite the Kingdom march, was that he basically tried to imply that it led to violence against the police

And I just think it was a complete mischaracterisation. I mean, I actually think, from all accounts of people I know who were there, that there was far more than 150,000

I think the three million is a bit overstating it. But I think there could well have been up to half a million people

That was a huge demonstration. Well, the joke is the police always slightly underestimated numbers

And the organisers always go a bit mad. But Trevor Phillips, I thought, made some excellent points

because he said, I decided to go down and talk to people. And the most important thing you have to know

is that they were ordinary people, lots of families. And we've got to remember that what everyone thinks

about the organisers, Tommy Robinson et al., this was actually a free speech

They called it on the basis of free speech. And the people I know who were there tell me

and I also watch a lot of the GB News reports as well

that most people were just saying, I'm here because I'm so fed up of people telling me

I can't say what I think and having to almost apologise for who I am

and what my beliefs are. Brits are sick of that. And they're really furious about that

And also they were saying it's such a relief to not have to apologise, to be able to turn up here

be myself, be patriotic Brit, be worried about maybe asylum hotels, But, you know, worried about lots of things without actually having to explain that I'm not far right and that I'm not about to start a riot

And I'm here with the kids because I want to show them there's a lot of other people like us

Hello, I'm Bev Turner. Now, it can feel like the money in our bank accounts at the moment does not keep up with the cost of living

And maybe there's a solution. I'm here today with the CEO of Tally Money, Cameron Parry

Cameron, what is Tally Money? Well, Bev, with telemoney, you get a current account and a debit card

but instead of pounds, you use milligrams of gold as your everyday money

So why gold Gold traditionally is a great store of value It has on average gone up at over 11 per annum for the last 25 years against the pound

It's tripled in value in the last decade. And in the last two years alone

it's increased by 50% against the pound. Banks' savings products just can't compete

with that level of growth. But this isn't just about gold. This is about a currency that you guys have created

at Tally Money. Explain it to me as though I'm an idiot. So, look, people need to be able to hold their earnings

and build their savings in a money that retains its value and remains in their legal control

and remains theirs to access away from government control. Great. You had me at not exposed to government control

You should feel safe and happy with your money. You should have peace of mind. The more money you see in your bank balance

and that's the type of thing we're trying to deliver, and give people choice in the type of money they get to use every day

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Cameron. Thank you. criminal who feel intimidated due to the colour of their skin

It seems he's picking sides in this. I think that was a very unwise thing for him to say because, as I've pointed out, that's

not what the march was about. No. It's also the case that there are a core, a minority who are racist

No, but there are people who see skin colour and see that as a problem. That is absolutely not what has driven the fury around either the illegal migration and the inability of the government or any government to control the borders, stop the boats

But also the concern about mass migration in the absolute sense in which people do genuinely, to quit Sir Keir, feel strangers in their own land

I mean, people feel strangers in their own land because they're basically told that their neighbourhoods and their lifestyles have to change to accommodate a mass influx of people who are not from that area

That's not a skin colour issue. And also you get to, I mean, I want to make it clear

If the majority of people on a demonstration are white, this does not make it white supremacists

We live in the UK. It's a predominantly white country. It's not something you should apologise for

It's not an achievement. You're just born with a skin colour any more than you should be hating on people because of their skin colour

But the tensions around a mass migration policy that happened behind the backs of the electorate means that people are very resentful of the way they're being treated

I don't know, that simple point. Having covered this for GB News and for The Telegraph before that, it strikes me that often the tensions are created by the authorities not being open about the changes to people's communities. So the hotel is shut down, migrants have moved in, we don't know where they're from, they can come and go. That is going to create concern for people. You hear women not wanting to go jogging in the park because they're not sure who's there. They don't feel safe

And just people feel, I think, that the state is not looking after them, you know, and they're allowing this to happen

If they were more open about where you were going to cite migrants, then there might be more of an acceptance among local people

Well, at least it wouldn't create this sense of things happening behind people's backs

I mean, you'll know this. I mean, somebody I know, you know, they had some family event organized, a christening in the local hotel, and it just got cancelled and there was kind of no explanation

and they kind of were asked. They didn't, I think, had anything to do with it. When they found out that the hotel was being used out of migrants

they were furious because it was the local hotel where all those kind of things happened

They felt, in a way, robbed but also treated like, you know, mugs because they weren't told why

I think we've seen that sense in which they don't trust the public

So, for example, when we got to a situation where, the Afghan situation, where they actually sneaked in

thousands of Afghan people because they'd messed up and published something. They didn't even tell Parliament

But they also had a discussion in which they said, oh, we don't want the public to know where we're placing them

because it might cause tensions. They actually have that situation. We get to a situation, and I think this is what happened

absolutely with Southport, which is they thought, we can't say anything about who the murderer was

because we don't trust the public with that information. and if we tell them it might lead to civil unrest

actually the opposite is the case. If you suppress information from the public

you basically think are untrustworthy, then you actually create a massive chasm

between the elites and ordinary people who just feel totally cut off

I think that that has changed. The dreadful attacks in Liverpool, we immediately knew the such details. Exactly

We didn't know of a Southport and I think they have changed the guidance on that

Take a step back here. Do you think that the state just doesn't trust us

No, well, that's what I genuinely think. They probably like us, us people, because we pay our taxes and stuff

But they just don't like us. They don't trust the Brits. Is that right

Is that a trust issue? It's not worth it of us. Am I being completely bonkers

No, you get the impression the whole time that there's not just a sneer

but that they actually think, oh, who are these people? You know, you can imagine looking at that Unite the Kingdom thing

like, oh, who are they? They did it after Brexit. We've seen it all the way through, which is, who are they

They don't recognise that. They're in a bubble. There's literally a bubble

And I think as a consequence, they have developed a kind of dehumanised version of what people are

It just cannot penetrate into their mind why anyone would put up a flag

You know what I mean? They'll say, oh, you know, as indeed we had one of the ministers saying recently

we've got flags all over our house. We have Buntingers sounding like a lunatic because nobody does that, right

But they can't understand that people are longing to belong to the country that they are part of

And they have a real sort of contempt and distaste, even aesthetically, for the kind of things that people like

You know, that's why they're always so sort of like keen to sanitise football. You know, they hate things like gambling

they're determined to stamp down in a puritan like way on people eating the wrong kind of junk food

and not drizzling everything with olive oil according to jamie oliver and so on and so forth

so you i mean there's a kind of form of snobbery that's basically anti-working class as we would

have understood it um and even when they're kind of they don't understand like why nigel farage is

so popular they kind of look at him and think oh he's such a kind of uncouth type you know why

would anyone like him when we've got all these? And, oh, I actually find it despicable

And I do think that the reason why people feel like they are strangers in their own land

is that they realise that the traditions, the culture, the history and the background, and by the way, this is

the British people, some of them are from ethnic minorities guess what And they exactly also came to this country wanted to be British became British and they also are looked down at So this day for the flag is strange I been driving around the UK a lot over the summer

And I have seen everywhere. I mean, they can go through bits of Birmingham on the M6, going north and south

I mean, it's an odd thing to do in a way. Why are people flying Union flags and St George's flags from lampposts

I think it's become popular because it's a positive thing that you can do

to demonstrate that you shouldn't be ignored and that actually you're not embarrassed about being British

Or English. Or English. Or English. I mean, it may be English

But I think it's because there's been a particular attack on the English flag

You know, if you wrap yourself in a Welsh flag or a Scottish solitaire

everybody's trying to beat you. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, but they also think how interesting Celts, you know what I mean, type thing

The English flag has got a particular association with racism. And obviously, you know, God, I got into so many facts

That's obviously wrong. No, exactly. But it's also, just to be honest about it, you know, in the 80s

when I was sort of first involved in politics, and yes, I was involved in left-wing politics

but I was involved in anti-racism. And a lot of those absolutely open

Z-Kyling National Front types wore the flag, right? But we also know it's the Emily Thornberry kind of like, you know

you remember that famous thing where she saw a flag outside and she basically, Emily Thornberry combined with Gordon Brown

and this woman's a bigot. You know what I mean? It's that kind of thing. They've got this in their head

So ordinary people are trying to fight back. By the way, I think it's just a very positive thing

Putting the flags up is a way for people to express some form of solidarity with each other

and a lot of the people who are involved in putting up the flags are also saying we want to rebuild

civic bones in our community and they actually say things like oh yeah we also help out at the local

food bank or we're helping do litter pickups or we're and so on and so forth so there's something

about those people who've been marginalized and thrown out to the side of society treated like

dirt basically and and look down on saying no we want to rebuild the pride in the place that we're

Re-own your flag. Take back control. Or don't. I know, but there's a point in there

Brexit memories by saying that. You mentioned earlier your role as this watchdog

against anything impinging on our freedom of speech. I was looking through a bill published this week

by the government called the Public Office Accountability Bill. It's being written up as the Hillsborough Law

Now, Hillsborough, of course, was this tragedy in 1989 when dozens of Liverpool fans

and I'm a Liverpool fan, were killed in the Hillsborough football ground

And the fans were fighting with justice, correctly, and it's great that there might be something

on a statute book to recognise that. But just going through the detail here

I'm looking at Chapter 3, Misleading the Public. It says this, The public authority or public official commits an offence

if, in their capacity as such, an authority official act with the intention of misleading the public or are reckless

as whether their act will do so they now ought to know that their act is seriously improper

this is this is quite a big reach here by the state and it's done under the cover of the

hillsborough law which is really important to get justice for those families have you seen this yet

um i know that it's um on the table of bills that i've got to pick up to read over the

the next few weeks. This is a increase by the state. It's a massive reach. Because it could mean that you have officials

don't want to say what they think may have happened in case they're found to be wrong. This is the part of the problem is

is that they're trying to legislate on something which actually is not legislatable

in quite the way that they think. And I do think behind the backs of, you know

people who obviously want to do the right thing, they can sneak things in

I mean, who is going to... I mean, just to clarify, I mean, the Hillsborough scandal was a massive cover-up

It was an official cover-up, people watching their backs, and they lied to the families

And then what's worse was they tried to blame the victims, if you would remember

Saying they were drunk. Exactly. And it was a horrible situation, and I'm from the area

so I remember it incredibly vividly. But I also think that very often with legislation

there is a kind of emotive headline, and then you're meant to pause and not go along with it

I mean, I don't think that this bill, by the way, will force officialdom to suddenly start being honest with the public

I mean, that's the last thing. But if you make it, if you make this law that you've got to, if every word that you say can be, you can be actually prosecuted, they'll just sit there and not say anything

So the government says this, and I raised this with the government this week. They said that this is about to change the balance of power so the state can never hide from people

So they're twisting it back onto the critics saying, no, no, no, this is about giving the power to those affected

These offences are aimed at those who seek to cover up the truth. This is a government letter to serve working people

It's for serious breaches. So they're trying to stop cover-ups, right? Yeah

But in truth, it also means people will get less information. That's actual truth

What I'm trying to say is I don't think the law can force public officials to be honest

We need a new culture. And once you start legislating in this way, it will lead to more behind the scenes secrecy, people not being frightened to actually have an open and frank conversation

Because if you're going to be honest with the public, you basically need to chat away

You don't want to think that every word you say will be written down and used against you, as it were. And I think this is what this will lead to

But also it is true that the I just wanted to stress that, say, for example, the Online Safety Act

When that bill came in, we were told, we carry on being told

that this was about protecting children from the worst, horrible, nasties that you could possibly find online

And critics of it are like Jimmy Savile. Exactly. But actually, I read the bill and only, you know, 20% of it had anything to do with protecting children

And if they'd confined themselves to that 20%, as it were, then there might have been a discussion that you could negotiate around

But it's the rest of the bill that's the problem. and we've already seen, don't want to rehearse all that

but it genuinely will be a census charter and it will allow people to justify the removal of content

that's politically inconvenient or difficult or what have you. But whenever you say that, they say

oh, so you don't care about children. You want to enable children. You want to, exactly. And so that's a very awkward, that's what happens

So you can imagine that when this comes into the Lords and I stand up and I say

I just want to raise the problem with Chapter 3. Can I make a query? They'll say, there are people here

who just do not understand the suffering and the agony of the Hillsborough families

who want to hide secrets from them. And that's why they'll do it

And then all the parliamentarians... They'll do it to demonise you for it. Yeah, and all the parliamentarians

will sit there thinking, I'm not going to be the one who does it. Are you going to be the one who did it

And it makes it very difficult then. So already, before it's become law, it has the impact of chilling the debate about what should be law by phrasing it in this way

When we go back to the beginning, we all want the justice for Hillsborough families, definitely

and we don't want what happened to them to happen to anybody else. But the question is, is this an overreach

Exactly. And also, the role of lawmakers is not to use the excuse of a big issue

to throw at it a whole range of draconian and authoritarian measures

sometimes not intentionally, but sometimes with unintended consequences. It's up to us to scrutinise and say, no, this is wrong

I mentioned that claim about enabling Jimmy Sowell. That was used by a cabinet minister against Nigel Farage

the bet noire for the left at the moment. You know Nigel Farage quite well

You were a Brexit party MEP. He's an outsider. He's someone who proclaims he's going to shake it up

I think he may want to scrap the Online Safety Act, leave the ECHR

Has he got it in him to do it, do you think? You know him pretty well. I don't know that I know him pretty well

but I have to say that... I was in the Brexit party for, I think, seven or eight months because luckily Nigel Farage did lead us out of the European Union

So I'll give him that. Look, I am excited by the political realignment that's happening at the moment and the shakeup

I mean, I have become so frustrated by the mainstream parties and Labour's absolute implosion in such a short time

I didn't anticipate it would be this quick but I don't feel as though

they have it in them to run the country and they're basically, they did throw out ordinary working

people, they bought into some you know, identitarianism on the one side

and a sort of technocratic empty managerialism on the what an unhappy marriage that's proved

to be and they're just incompetent apart from President Trump, they don't seem to be able to know what to do

despite the scale of their majority scale of their majority, nothing and the Tories deserve the kind of

collapse that they've had because they betrayed all those 2019 voters. Why can Farage do that better than anyone else

Yeah, no, but all I'm saying is that it's not Farage. What's happened is that it's happening around Europe, but what's happened is that ordinary

people have had enough and they basically are using reform as the vehicle through which they say not in a silly protest type way but in it right we going to give it a go

We're going to go in there. Nothing's working. Nothing's working. So we're going to, and people will say, it's a wrecking ball

Hopefully it'll be a wrecking ball that you can build something from. And I think that, in that sense, I think that reforms rising the polls

is an exciting new chapter in politics. I think that, as it were, the 20th century, the long 20th century is sort of over

You know, we're into a new era of politics. I think there are populist revolts all around the world

And they aren't necessarily clear ideologically, but they do embody what democracy is really all about

And one of the things that I've learned from being in parliament in the last five years is that democracy is skating on thin ice

You know, too many things are handed over to the centre. You know, it's too many pieces of legislation

You just sort of say, oh, it's all right. Trust the ministers. There's Henry VIII's powers. There's all sorts of things like that

They would do anything rather than face the electorate. That's what they like, the ECHR

That's what they like. Who's they? They is. The political, well, at the moment, the government

but the political class, the political elite at the moment. The Tories. Labour Tories

They basically have done everything to ring fence off decision making from the attention or the accountability to ordinary people

And that's what being in the EU was all about. But it didn't end when we left the EU

And so they carry on. So I really, really do think that democracy needs an injection of energy

And the people who can do that are the demos. That's what happens. And they're the ones who are propelling reform forward

The hurdle to do that is so much greater than on the continent because we don't have a portion of representation

I know, but isn't it? You need to get 32% in the ballot. But let's be honest, what happened at the last election

when reform got those MPs was they suddenly broke the mould of the first-past-the-posting

And suddenly everybody went, I hope we can do it without having to change the electoral system

It's a big ask. It's a big ask. Big ask. But look, I'm looking forward. I'm from Wales

And the idea that the Senate is going to fall to reform is exciting. I mean the free speech issue and to go back to it but to link it up is people want to have their say They want to be treated with respect They want to be listened to It doesn mean that you have to go along with everything they say

Or what you don't do is to sort of sneer at people. And so that's what the state does all the time

And the one thing that, you know, any new party, whichever it is, that breaks through, needs to be able to do

is to see that they are the servants of the masters and the masters are the people, ordinary people

And so when they are silenced, when they're told to shut up, when they're told you can't say that all the time

and we didn't kind of, I can't let this whole thing go without mentioning, you know, equality, diversity and inclusion

Every workplace in the country, you know, you don't need laws to shut people up

You have equality, diversity and inclusion officers wandering around, policing what you say at work

People are looking over their shoulder. You look at all the employment tribunals at the moment

So many of them are based on speech offences. People saying so-and-so said this and it's like an act of violence

People are actually terrified that they're going to say the wrong thing or they can't believe it

They say something in some work WhatsApp group and the next minute they know they're whole before HR

HR are a monstrous growth industry. I think it's the second largest HR industry in the world is in the UK

So the one thing we're growing on is human resource apparatus. Can you believe it

And when even the government today, you know, I heard some laborers say, you know, employment's going up

And then you find out it's public sector employment. And that is not the same as growth

And so these public sector organizations who spend all their time sending people on training for the public sector equality duty

I mean, you know, North Korea is an exaggeration, but there is something very Stalinist about the whole thing

You know, they're really allowed to happen. We're allowed to companies. This is a, it's not government now, it's the companies

Exactly, exactly. And the employment rights bill, it's just about to, you know, go through, which a lot of us have been fighting against all aspects

Again, dressed up as workers' rights. I mean, how can you argue against workers' rights

Until you read the bill and then you discover this is trade union bureaucrats' rights

and actually ordinary workers are going to suffer very badly And a lot of it is going to be about shaping behaviour So I just I can I can do a little advert now because I do think that when people went on that March of the weekend

but also when I hope that many of the GB News viewers and listeners will come along to our Battle of Ideas Festival

where, of course, GB News will be there and Free Speech Nation is going to be there

but we have 100 panel debates, 400 speakers, thousands of people across the political spectrum

What's the website factor? And it's www, I can't even remember, battleofideas.org.uk and sign up

There's actually special tickets. But the reason I'm saying it is because you want to feel a sense of solidarity that you can argue without being shut up

So it's not that I do not want an echo chamber. I'm not interested in that

I want a place where you can argue and have it out in public and know that you won't be treated like a child, infantilised or treated with contempt

Well, there's no contempt here, Claire Fox. That has been one of the best podcasts I've ever done

I've really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you, Griff. Thank you for spending your time with us

That's Baroness Fox of Buckley. Do you let me know what you thought of what Claire Fox had to say

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