June 26, 2025 • 29 mins
According to new polling, the party led by Nigel Farage now stands at 34% support, nine points ahead of Labour and well ahead of the Conservatives. Hosts Francine Lacqua and David Merritt sit down with Zia Yusuf, head of Reform UK’s own “Department for Government Efficiency,” to explore the party’s rapid ascent and the political undercurrents driving it.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. Welcome to in the City.
Each week we unpack a story that's crucial to the
world's financial capitals.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm from sin Leatwa and I'm David Merritt and Dave.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
This week a conversation with Zia Usoof, businessman turned rising
politician in the Reform UK Party.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
That's right, and this comes as a new survey by
IPSOS puts the Reform Party, which is led by Nigel Farage,
on thirty four percent. That's nine points ahead of Labor
and the Conservatives a distant third. So if the figures
in the survey were to be replicated across the country
in an election, Reform UK would win a majority. It's
(00:45):
quite a change from the results we saw less than
a year ago at the last general election.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
So we wanted to get Zia Usoof on to talk
about what he thinks is behind reforms rise in popularity,
but also more importantly, what policies we could expect from
a form government, especially in challenging geopolitical time like these.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And after the conversation was here you'll hear from our
UK Politics correspondent Lucy White. She's been covering reforms rise
and policy platform, and we wanted to get her perspective.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
One of our.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Conversation Welcome to the City of London, the city of the.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
City of the City of London.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Mind the gap between the.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Financial hearts of the country, the city, the city. Welcome
in the.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
City, clear of the doors, Siyah Yusuf. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
My pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Now. You have quite an unconventional actually past your businessman
You worked for a lot of the big American banks
and then you set up a company which you then
sold and went into politics. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah. So I'm the son of Sri Lankan immigrants into
the UK. They came to Britain in the early nineteen eighties.
My father just qualified as a doctor there to go
over the work. While so I was born up in
Bellshill in Scotland. I studied at the LSC, worked at
a couple of American investment banks, quit that job to
start a tech company, grew that for nine years, successful
(02:20):
outcome thankfully sold it to an American bank. Then when
Nigel Fraus said he was coming back into British politics,
I could see there was a glimmer of hope for
the United Kingdom, the country that I love. So I
decided I wasn't going to jump ship. I was going
to stay here and fight to try and turn the
country around. And that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
This podcast dives into the issue that really matter around
here in the square mile, and Reform is about reforming politics,
about reforming the economy. Is your city background core to
the policies that you're what was the.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Definitely, Look, it was the formative stage of my career.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
The first five years after I graduated were spent on
a trading floor on one of your terminals, twelve hours
a day pretty much, and I loved it. I was
so grateful for the teams I got to work in.
They really invested in and look, you also get a
real sense of I got to go and visit great
companies like air Bus and companies like Daimler and you know,
British engineering companies like Spyroxaca, and you really get an
(03:14):
understanding when you walk around these factories of what makes
a great company, what makes a less good company. And
one of the things I think Reform has got in
its leadership team is, frankly, just people understand however reasonably
good understanding of how the world actually works.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
But it was my understanding actually by speaking to people
that were close to this, that you were so when
you were chairman for eleven months of Reform, your job
was to professionalize the party. So this gives an idea
that actually, you know, you were there to make it
more credible, to give more policies so that people understood
what Reform actually stood for. At the moment, it feels
more like culture Wars, and so.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I disagree a bit with that. When I joined the
party's chairman, but Nigel asked me to do that job.
They basically wasn't a political party, frankly. So one of
the things I don't think people necessarily appreciate about Reform's
journey over the last year. It was only in June
last year in Nigel announced he was coming back to
run to be an MP in Clacton and the party
had no MPs. We had about nine counselors and we
were polling at around ten percent. Today we're polling at
(04:11):
thirty thirty four percent. The book makers have us as
the favorite to be the next government, Nigel favorite to
be the next PM. We've got north of a quarter
of a million members, that's grown fourfold, and so we've
built all of this. We've got four hundred branches across
the country. You know, you mentioned that IPSOS poll that
IPSOS pulpits reform just six points away from having more
support than Labor and the Tories combined.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
So, I mean, he's a controversial figure. I can't see
many business people around him apart from you. Is it
because the opposition is weak? Or is it because Reform
is really doing the right things? I mean, is this
like a moment for reform?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, it definitely is a moment for reform. Richard Tights,
the deputy leader and former leader, is also a successful
entrepreneur and businessman and has contributed immensely to this journey
and policy formulation like the ones that we just have.
So look what we have at Reform. It is a
small team. We only have five MPs. Now they're formidable MPs.
We only have five, but we have a men's support
(05:07):
across the country and what we have done already as
a result of those made the first election, this wasn't
a poll, this was a natural election. So I wouldn't
understate what's just happened now We've still had a lot
of work to do. We are still years away from
a general election. I can tell you partly because I've
got asymmetric data on this.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
There are so.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Many brilliant people coming forward wanting to help reform, both
behind the scenes and to be front of house and
front line.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I don't know whether reform has the A list, the
A game. I mean, everyone's trying to kind of find
space for itself and speaking to a population that's maybe
fed up with something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Look, it's perfectly reasonable to say that the British public
are utterly sick and tired of the two old parties.
Given this is Bloomberg and we're talking about the economy,
Britain should be one of the most prosperous countries in
the world. We still have great assets in this country,
a dynamic fun system. We still have I think, the
best people, the best language, the best time zone. We
(06:04):
have the rule of law in an excellent way here,
and we have a talent base in areas like finance
and AI for example, in the AI era, which should
mean that British people writ large are benefiting. Instead, what
we're seeing is an unprecedented brain drain British people and
wealthy non doms are fleeing the country at an unprecedented rate.
(06:24):
They're going to Singapore and Dubai, and they're even going
to America. We've got to turn all of that stuff around.
The only way that's going to happen is if you
have a first principles approach as and you're really focused
on how you're going to get the economy growing again
on a per capita basis, and that's what Reform are doing.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
This process of kind of professionalizing the image of Reform
feels like a big challenge. Robert Headlines have been on
in fighting controversies around individual members. Yourself stepped back from
your role just this month, saying how you were feeling
burnt out. You know you've done high pressure jobs in
the past. Tell us a little bit about that process
this week, why you left, and then why you came
back so quickly.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So look, I basically I had a day off in
eleven months, and people listening to this business brings a
certain level of pressure. Politics is a whole different level
of pressure. And as I said, not just building and
assembling a political party from scratch in real time, also
doing everything else that the political party need to do
and tell us why I came back. Look number one
I received I was inundated, which is lovely heartfelt messages
(07:25):
from reform supporters, voters and members who expressed just how
important the reform movement is to them. It's not just
a political party for many people. That represents the last
hope the country has to This great country has whom
so many people have laid down their lives for to
turn itself around. And look, as I said, I was
exhausted and my decision making at the time wasn't great.
(07:47):
We reversed that very quickly. Look, I came into politics
in no small part because of Nigel, and I'm going
to continue to spend all my time trying to make
him the Prime Minister.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I know you criticized her at poachin right, who was
basically urging cure Starmer to ban the burker and the
interest of public safety, and you said it was done
for a party to task a PM to do something
that the party itself, your party itself, wouldn't do. Do
you stick by that.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I didn't criticize Sarah. Let me care about something. The
number one serias of phenomenal MP I speak almost every day.
She's a good friend. I was instrumental in getting her selected,
getting her elected, and she's going to be such a
formidable asset to the country. Look that tweet which I
sent out, which I definitely regret now what the point
I was making to I was frustrated because I didn't
(08:30):
know that question was going to get asked. In hindsight,
perfectly reasonable for me to have not known. I'm not
an MP, So I regret that tweet. I don't mind
saying that.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Can you just give us a sense? So when we
speak to a lot of people, they say I'd like
to know a little bit more about reform, but we
don't really know where they stand on the economy, So
it's you talk common sense without a lot of I
guess policy details. So can you give us an idea
of what you would do, for example, for this UK?
DOAJE like the money is very limited right for any
chancellor to play around with? So where are you finding efficiencies?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, that is a line that the establishment always uses,
right the money. My favorite one is quote difficult decisions
need to be made. How many times have you heard that? Right?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
But I mean we run the numbers at Bloomberry. I mean,
there's just not a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, hold on, hold on, So let me give you
some big numbers. That so fifteen billion in foreign aid, right,
five billion a year in terms of free accommodation to
asylum sequels and illegal migrants, and that's per year. The
twelve billion in net zero costs that will be found
directly inside government departments. The real number is much higher
and I can go into that. So there's straightaway is
(09:36):
almost forty billion, and you're going to have and there
are so many other line items in the budget. When
you start peeling this stuff back, I mean you look
at the big consulting firms. Some of your listeners might
not appreciate this, but the big four accounting firms and
the strategy consultants won eight and a half billion pounds
in national government tool contracts over the last five years alone.
So the notion that there is no money to be
(09:57):
saved is for the birds. Now, it is also true
this country is almost three trillion in national debt. But
the bottom line is the British economy is not growing.
I mean talk about point seven percent. That's less than
the population is growing just from immigration. If we do
not get the British economy growing meaningfully on a per
capita basis, this country is headed to an extremely bad place.
(10:19):
The way we're going to do that is by cutting
spending on things that are wasteful. We have to get
our welfare bill under control, and difficult conversations do have
to be had about it. Of course there are some
people who need benefits not of course that is true,
but it has never been easier to get onto benefits.
So we have to get the welfare bill per capita
down to where it was back in twenty nineteen. That
(10:39):
will free up a lot of money to reduce the
tax burden on working people. And we also have to
buy the way be really honest that we need wealthy
international job creators wealth creators.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
To be here.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
We don't need them fleeing. We want them here in
the UK. That's a big part of what our policy
announcement was today. If you talk to us a demisacebas
at deep mind, for example, you know Jensen Wang from
Nvidia was talking about he do you use the term
goldilocks a situation for AI in the UK. We have
a significant percentage of the world's finest AI engineers graduating
from our universities likewise in areas like biotech, and then
(11:13):
we also have to start manufacturing here again. We can
have a new manufacturing revolution with cutting edge manufacturing techniques
in the country, and we need people who understand economics,
understand business in charge of making the most important economic
decisions in this country.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
When I speak to global investors, and I'm talking about
in a Blackstone, black Rock, even some of your old shops,
Colman Sachs, I mean, they're quite bullish on the UK.
It's a bad neighborhood out there. The US because of
trade and tariffs, looks like less attractive investment right now.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Great, great, But here's the point. The British economy has
had virtually no growth now for a very very long time.
And you can arguing about whether it's point three or
point seven, it's pointless. The reason why people in this
country feel like they're getting poor is because real wages
have done nothing now for about two decades. Real GDP
capita has done nothing for about two decades. This is
the other thing in business, there's accountability, right. You know,
(12:05):
if you're a chief executive and you're paid a lot
of money and you're very powerful. If you make bad decisions,
the markets will see to it. You are not the
CEO for very long. Right in politics and inside the bureaucracy,
not only do you not face consequence as you're promoted,
you're put into the lords. That's what has happened on
these big military contracts that have gone massively and overspent.
(12:26):
HS two. This country is paying eight times more per
mile of high speed rail than China or France, eight
times more. Why is that? If we win a majority
in the House of Commons with Nigel as the Prime Minister,
we can make sweeping reforms. We will have a great
repeal Act and we can go and solve these problems
root and branch.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I was just going to ask how you're going to
do it, so you have a repeal Act for what specifically?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So well, that's what we're working on as we speak.
I think this country has way too many laws, way
too many regulations. A lot of those have to be repealed.
We can get into it. The e CHR that prevents
multiple convicted illegal migrants.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Touring thousands of staff in Washington and across multiple government departments,
people being barred from entry. It's been pretty extreme. Do
you see a version of that here with a reform company.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Not not necessarily. I mean, if you zoom out a minute, right,
what's happening is endless outsourcing. We're now at the stage
where a contractor is now running the recruitment program for
the British Army. While that's happening, the cost and the
headcount of the civil service has ballooned by fifty percent
over the last decade in government in the civil service.
Literally you're ramping up spending on outsourcing and agencies and
(13:34):
contractors and ramping up the size of the civil service.
I think you can have the size of the civil
service and actually deliver a better service to taxpayers.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
A couple of things on dough I mean, do you
have an early update on your DOGE project and working
with ten councils that reform now controls, So what sort
of savings have you actually identified concretely?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, so, look, we already have one number on its
early days and a lot of what we're doing is analysis.
But I'll give you one exact sample. One of our
Cabinet Minister's Cabinet members in West Northamptonshire Council was presented
with a Microsoft contract for millions of pounds and told hey,
you've got like three days to sign this off, otherwise
they'd be penalties. Now that's funny that there'd be penalties
for a contract that you haven't even signed yet. He
(14:15):
pushed back and did a really good job and saved
nine hundred and sixty five thousand pounds on that contract
straight away, And that was within the first week of
arriving in the council. And what does that tell you?
It's actually a reason to be bullish on the UK
because there's so much waste there sort of people who
are sitting there signing those contracts off historically a big
Microsoft contract where it's obviously massive gross margins. Right, Clearly
(14:38):
most of these companies have been taking councils and taxpayers
for a ride. I don't really blame them because it's
up to the councils. It's up to the civil servants
and the politicians to fight the corner for the taxpay
As soon as a reform person turned up, they did
that and they saved nine hundred and sixty five thousand
pounds within the first seven days.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
What do you say to the accusation that, actually, because
you've also promised tax cards. It feels a bit like reminiscent.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Although so at local level we certainly haven't haven't promised any.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Time, but you have at the at the national levelt Yes,
that's true. Great. I mean some people are worried that
this is the spell of a lost trust disaster type.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Liz Truss did not announce any spending cuts Nigel's foot.
Nigel stood up and gave a spech a few weeks
ago and announced three to four hundred billion pounds of
spending cuts to happen inside his first term as Prime minister,
funded full stop. That's exactly right. Here's the irony. We're
formerly the only people who have a leadership team with
experience of balancing some quite large budgets. What we're saying
(15:36):
is we need to dramatically cut spending on things. Like
I said, the twelve billion on net zero that'll be
found in director in budgets, the fifteen billion in foreign aid,
and the five billion in terms of asylum. There's a
lot more. I mean, you look at the money that
is hidden inside these quango budgets. You look at the
money that's being spent on these on these consultancies and
these agencies, vast amounts of money. That's the work that
(15:57):
we're doing.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Now you're also trying to I mean I had a
question on you know, trying to basically take reform into
the mainstream. And while you're leading in the polls, there's
still a lot of voters, whether fairly or not fairly,
that associate your party with racism. Are they wrong?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Of course, And I think that that's now So if
you are leveling that claim reform, you are now calling
that epsos pole leveling that claim at more than third
of the public in the UK. Any human who has
been in the UK for more than five minutes knows
that that claim is absurd on its face.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
But there must be a perception. I mean, the perception
is still there. You can't deny that.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
It might be there for people who are brainwashed by
certain media outlets that they might watch. But look, frankly,
we're coming across that less and less and less, and
the more that we have been attacked without hominem attacks.
Partly it is because they can't engage us on the arguments. Secondly,
the result of all of this silliness being you know,
so ideologically possessed that that's the only argument against us
(16:54):
is that the country continues to go to the dogs.
And I put it to you that the more people
here from reform, the more they hear from Nigel and
our MPs, the more they like us. That's the evidence,
and the opposite is true of other political leaders in
this country.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Can I pivot a bit to again back where we
are in the city of London and what we care
about more than anything on this podcast is what the
future holds for the city. So what people think about
you say is important. Do you care what the city
thinks about you as a former banker and what plans
would you have in place to improve the fortunes of
the financial services.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
We need to know. The city of London was once
the greatest financial center in the world. We need a
strong city of London. I think it is. It is
massively overregulated, no doubt about that. You saw our cryptopolicy
for example. We've got to lean into the technologies of
the future. Yes, of course there needs to be some regulation,
but it's gone way way too far. We need to
do things on taxation and look, the first act that
(17:46):
we want to cut is the one for people earning
less than twenty thousand pounds a year. One of the
reasons why the city of London is suffering it's people
are worried about law and order. People are terrified of
walking around late at night. They can't wear a nice
watch anymore. They kind of hold their phone out in public.
I grasp it with two hands as if their life
depends on it, because in some cases it actually does.
So we have to do all of those things. And
(18:07):
one of the interesting things I'll tell you as well.
I spend a lot of time in Runcorn during the
run Corn and Hellsby Parliamentary by election. And there are
some pretty deprived areas, not all of it, but there's
some pretty deprived areas of Runcorn, and there are people there.
We would hear time and again on the doorsteps, people saying, look,
we set our alarm clocks in the morning, we do
everything right. We pay into the system, so did my parents,
(18:29):
and life has become endlessly more difficult. The cost of
the weekly shop keeps going up. Those energy bills because
of that virtue signaling keeps going up. And then they
see someone next door on the same at state, who's
on benefits, with four kids, whose front gardens a complete mess,
doesn't do any work, and they think, why do we bother?
And I hear exactly not what. I met one of
(18:50):
my friends who still works in the city with a
sizeable income. I don't mind saying, you know, a sizeable
six figure household income between him and his wife, and
he said exactly the same thing. He said, you know,
we both work really hard. Yes we own good money,
clearly much higher than the average. But we've got two kids.
We can barely afford to send them to the school
we want to send them to. Our relationship, it's starting
to pray because we don't really get a chance to
(19:12):
engage each other because we're so busy. And then we
see all that, we see this sense that people are
getting away with not working, not contributing. And the phrase
that stuck in my head was they both use the
phrase why do we bother? And I think that that's
a big reason why reform is getting to be successful.
Come on, and why we're going to fight, why we're
going to fight for working people. It's really important. Contract
(19:32):
is the thing that is breaking.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
But I mean, why do we bother? They don't want
to be on benefits? Like I understand that this is
a huge concern and immigration, you know in this country
needs to be fixed, But why do we bother if
you're if you have two jobs, you're in an OK position.
Things maybe need to change, but it's tough to say,
why do we bother?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Well that the tax burden on everyone that I just described, right,
even though and I'm using that example advisedly right because
they're at very different extremes in terms of the Bell
curve of economic distinction and salary. But the sentiment that
they have is that they are being taxed ever more
and they are getting less and less and less for
it when they want to go and see a GP.
It's incredibly difficult. Having children has never been harder economically
(20:14):
for people in this country, which is why a birth
rate has collapsed below replacement. And this real sense of unfairness.
We know people of mind paying taxes if they feel
like they're getting something valuable in return.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
So obviously it's been a very significant weekend in the
Middle East. Part of preparing for government potentially would be
your geopolitical policies. Kis Darma's getting fairly good reviews around
the word. I spend a lot of the time in
the United States about how has been triangulating on the
Ukraine issue and on the Middle East. Now do you
have a policy? Do you support the United States strikes
(20:45):
on Iran? And if you were in government, how would
you navigate this very delicate and difficult moment for the world.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The first thing to say is reform is about focusing
on the UK I tweeted out yesterday, A country that
cannot even defend its own borders has no business and
will not be taken seriously lecturing any other countries about there.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Where should spending be Then, when you're looking at the
priorities and where money's going to be saved, But should
we be ramping up to three and a half percent?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yes, we want to be ramping up spending on defense.
So the way you're going to spend more on defense
ultimately in absolute terms by growing the economy, Right, So
that's the first thing. If you don't have a fast
growing economy and a buoyant economy, you will not have
a strong defense. Secondly, we need to spend it in
smarter way. So let's stay drone warfare where there's been
some high profile cases. For example, Russia had a whole
load of its nuclear aircraft fleet decommissioned by Ukrainian drugs.
(21:36):
Ukraine is firing three to six thousand drones every single day.
I'll let you take a guess as to the total
number of military drones available to His Majesty's armed forces.
I want to take a guess how many less than
two thousand?
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
We are so ill equipped in this country for modern warfare.
We obviously have amazing men and women who give their
lives and give their careers to service for this country.
And so we have to grow the British economy and
if we do that, we will have a strong armed forces.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Is that maybe just final question? Is there a country
or a politician that you admire?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I admire the United States, and I admire I do
admire President Trump. I don't agree with everything he does
or says, but I do admire him. I think he's
a very determined man, and I think he has done
a lot of good for America, even though I don't
agree with everything he does. I'd also say Georgia Maloney
in Italy I think is someone who has done a
great job. But look, Britain is a proud country. It
(22:27):
has an amazing history. This is the other thing I
wanted to close on is We're not in the business
of saying Britain's in managed decline, and that is the
axiom on which every politician in Westminster, pretty much outside
of Reform knowingly knowingly operates. We think Britain can be
an awesome country again, that we can be excited to
live here and soa can our kids and their kids.
But it's going to take a lot of work and
time is running out, is.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The a useuph Thank you so much for joining yes today.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So that was a conversation we taped with Reform UK's
is the AUSU earlier this week. Now, Lucy as our
UK politics reporter, you've been tracking Reforms right and popularity,
but more importantly trying to understand what the party stands
for when it comes to economic policy.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
It's interesting, it's seemed quite a change over recent years.
So Reform UK can trace its roots really back to
the UK Party, the UK Independence Party, which was again
headed by Nigel Faraj. Nigel left that party after essentially
becoming one of one of the very few sort of
instantly recognizable figures in UK politics, and he's founded the
Brexit Party that was sort of continuing in the same
(23:30):
vein as the UK Independence Party, but to to bring
the UK out of the European Union essentially was no deal.
He wanted a very clean split from the European Union.
After achieving that, well we did have a deal of
some sex, yes, the brexit bit, not the deal a bit,
we found him, you know, wanting to rename the party essentially,
(23:52):
and he landed on reform UK as he sees it.
The UK is broken, the UK needs fixing, and that
covers pretty much evering from reform of the welfare state
to cutting back on migration, which has always been a
huge vein in Niger Faragi's politics.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
So that's the thing. So in the past it was
the sort of the one issue thing was like get
brittin now the EU and then that mission accomplished. I
mean he failed to become an MP all that time,
didn't he. And now they've actually got some MPs now
that they've got a bit of a broad well technically
a broader agenda. But you know, listening to our conversation
with him, I guess what struck me was that we
were asking about lots of economic policies and they had
(24:26):
this big new non dom thing that came out, but
everything kept on coming back to that same thing, which
was always been the Nigel Farage policy number one, which
is about immigration. Yeah, still are they still actually really
a one issue party?
Speaker 4 (24:37):
It's interesting because I think Zia Yusef has been one
of the key figures in trying to professionalize reform UK
and so he has really been wanting to broaden out
that kind of spectrum of policy from just being an
immigration focused party to really looking at kind of economic policy.
You know, as you mentioned, we saw the non dom
issue raised earlier this week where they have trying to
(24:58):
attract wealthy non domicile people back to the country too,
as they see it raised tax revenue here, and Zia
last month talked about cryptocurrencies, you know, how he wants
to make the UK a real cryptocurrency hub. And we're
really seeing a much bigger breadth of policies across the party.
But as you say, what they're really kind of what
(25:18):
they always hone back to is that issue of migration.
That's the kind of anger that they're trying to tap
into among the British electorate of people who feel that
they've been hard done by because we have seen such
huge numbers of migrants come to the country.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
It's really important in the UK to remember, of course,
this is historically almost a two party system, and so
they really want to break away from that. But are
they more right wing the Tory right.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
It's on certain social policies, it certainly seems so. I mean,
we've heard various of their MPs that I mean, they've
only got five MPs at the moment, but we've heard
some of them talk about, you know, wanting to tighten
up abortion legislation, for example, make it harder for women
to get abortions. We've heard some of them talking around
(26:04):
a sister dying and sort of coming at that from
a very you know, kind of socially right wing angle.
But it's hard to kind of say exactly because on
certain economic policy they are trying to challenge labor from
the left as well, because you know, you've seen them
sort of talk about reinstating the winter fuel payment to
(26:24):
elderly people that labor pulled when they first got into power.
I think, rather than looking at it as an issue
of right and left, what they're really looking at it
from is trying to tap into that kind of base
of working class people. Who feel like they aren't recognized
by either of the mainstream political parties and trying to
figure out what they want and what might appeal to them,
while also keeping you know, the wealthy, high net worth
(26:47):
traditionally right wing voters on side.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
So that sounds like pretty good definition of populism to me,
isn't it?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Absolutely yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
And that's a playbook. So you know, when we talked
to the Conversation, didn't we about you admire President Trump
and said he certainly does might musque and that obviously
calls himself now the doge of the UK. So are
they just kind of cherry picking from the kind of
populist regimes, obviously the trumping the biggest one, and trying
to repeat that playbook in the UK.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
It certainly seems that way in certain of the policies
that they have taken forward. I mean this, the Non
Doms Britannia card that they're talking about, giving people a
Britannier card giving them the right to live in the
UK is pretty much a sort of direct translation of
the Trump card, even though it's an awful lot cheaper
than the Trump card.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds every ten years is
it rather than what was it five million?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Did I get that right?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yeah? Several million pounds for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
You know, it's a bit cheaper than the US basically.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Whether they're doing down or not, I don't know, but no,
it's it's it's it's difficult to to see, you know,
kind of how the UK would be able to bring
in millions and millions.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And again we asked him in there in the conversation
around more specific economic or even things that were useful
for the city of Life, and I don't know, and
I just don't think they had much me on the
bones there, do they.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Well, I mean, it's it's important to remember that we
are four years away from from another general election and
you could level the same criticism and the Conservative Party exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Yeah, So you know, it's a long way off yet,
but they are kind of coming at this really from
ground zero. You know, they've never had more than one
MP before. Now they've got five. But you know, there's
still a lot of questions around who's going to be
their cabinet if they if they do get into power,
(28:35):
who would be the chancellor? You know, there's there's a
few names in the pot already who could who could
probably fill that position. But you know, there's a whole
cabinet that they'll have to fill, and it's it's relying
a lot on trust from the electorate to think that
they would vote a party into power when they have
absolutely no idea who any of the people are.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Oh see, so interesting. Thank you so much, thanks for
listening to this week's In the City from Bloomberg. This
episode was hosted by me Francins Laquis with David Merritt.
In the City is produced by Somersaudi and Moses and Dam,
with sound designed by Blake Maples. Brindon Francis Unim is
our executive producer. Special thanks to Zia Yusuff and Lucy White.
(29:18):
Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. Welcome to in the City.
Each week we unpack a story that's crucial to the
world's financial capitals.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm from sin Leatwa and I'm David Merritt and Dave.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
This week a conversation with Zia Usoof, businessman turned rising
politician in the Reform UK Party.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
That's right, and this comes as a new survey by
IPSOS puts the Reform Party, which is led by Nigel Farage,
on thirty four percent. That's nine points ahead of Labor
and the Conservatives a distant third. So if the figures
in the survey were to be replicated across the country
in an election, Reform UK would win a majority. It's
(00:45):
quite a change from the results we saw less than
a year ago at the last general election.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
So we wanted to get Zia Usoof on to talk
about what he thinks is behind reforms rise in popularity,
but also more importantly, what policies we could expect from
a form government, especially in challenging geopolitical time like these.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And after the conversation was here you'll hear from our
UK Politics correspondent Lucy White. She's been covering reforms rise
and policy platform, and we wanted to get her perspective.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
One of our.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Conversation Welcome to the City of London, the city of the.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
City of the City of London.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Mind the gap between the.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Financial hearts of the country, the city, the city. Welcome
in the.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
City, clear of the doors, Siyah Yusuf. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
My pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Now. You have quite an unconventional actually past your businessman
You worked for a lot of the big American banks
and then you set up a company which you then
sold and went into politics. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah. So I'm the son of Sri Lankan immigrants into
the UK. They came to Britain in the early nineteen eighties.
My father just qualified as a doctor there to go
over the work. While so I was born up in
Bellshill in Scotland. I studied at the LSC, worked at
a couple of American investment banks, quit that job to
start a tech company, grew that for nine years, successful
(02:20):
outcome thankfully sold it to an American bank. Then when
Nigel Fraus said he was coming back into British politics,
I could see there was a glimmer of hope for
the United Kingdom, the country that I love. So I
decided I wasn't going to jump ship. I was going
to stay here and fight to try and turn the
country around. And that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
This podcast dives into the issue that really matter around
here in the square mile, and Reform is about reforming politics,
about reforming the economy. Is your city background core to
the policies that you're what was the.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Definitely, Look, it was the formative stage of my career.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
The first five years after I graduated were spent on
a trading floor on one of your terminals, twelve hours
a day pretty much, and I loved it. I was
so grateful for the teams I got to work in.
They really invested in and look, you also get a
real sense of I got to go and visit great
companies like air Bus and companies like Daimler and you know,
British engineering companies like Spyroxaca, and you really get an
(03:14):
understanding when you walk around these factories of what makes
a great company, what makes a less good company. And
one of the things I think Reform has got in
its leadership team is, frankly, just people understand however reasonably
good understanding of how the world actually works.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
But it was my understanding actually by speaking to people
that were close to this, that you were so when
you were chairman for eleven months of Reform, your job
was to professionalize the party. So this gives an idea
that actually, you know, you were there to make it
more credible, to give more policies so that people understood
what Reform actually stood for. At the moment, it feels
more like culture Wars, and so.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I disagree a bit with that. When I joined the
party's chairman, but Nigel asked me to do that job.
They basically wasn't a political party, frankly. So one of
the things I don't think people necessarily appreciate about Reform's
journey over the last year. It was only in June
last year in Nigel announced he was coming back to
run to be an MP in Clacton and the party
had no MPs. We had about nine counselors and we
were polling at around ten percent. Today we're polling at
(04:11):
thirty thirty four percent. The book makers have us as
the favorite to be the next government, Nigel favorite to
be the next PM. We've got north of a quarter
of a million members, that's grown fourfold, and so we've
built all of this. We've got four hundred branches across
the country. You know, you mentioned that IPSOS poll that
IPSOS pulpits reform just six points away from having more
support than Labor and the Tories combined.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
So, I mean, he's a controversial figure. I can't see
many business people around him apart from you. Is it
because the opposition is weak? Or is it because Reform
is really doing the right things? I mean, is this
like a moment for reform?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, it definitely is a moment for reform. Richard Tights,
the deputy leader and former leader, is also a successful
entrepreneur and businessman and has contributed immensely to this journey
and policy formulation like the ones that we just have.
So look what we have at Reform. It is a
small team. We only have five MPs. Now they're formidable MPs.
We only have five, but we have a men's support
(05:07):
across the country and what we have done already as
a result of those made the first election, this wasn't
a poll, this was a natural election. So I wouldn't
understate what's just happened now We've still had a lot
of work to do. We are still years away from
a general election. I can tell you partly because I've
got asymmetric data on this.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
There are so.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Many brilliant people coming forward wanting to help reform, both
behind the scenes and to be front of house and
front line.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I don't know whether reform has the A list, the
A game. I mean, everyone's trying to kind of find
space for itself and speaking to a population that's maybe
fed up with something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Look, it's perfectly reasonable to say that the British public
are utterly sick and tired of the two old parties.
Given this is Bloomberg and we're talking about the economy,
Britain should be one of the most prosperous countries in
the world. We still have great assets in this country,
a dynamic fun system. We still have I think, the
best people, the best language, the best time zone. We
(06:04):
have the rule of law in an excellent way here,
and we have a talent base in areas like finance
and AI for example, in the AI era, which should
mean that British people writ large are benefiting. Instead, what
we're seeing is an unprecedented brain drain British people and
wealthy non doms are fleeing the country at an unprecedented rate.
(06:24):
They're going to Singapore and Dubai, and they're even going
to America. We've got to turn all of that stuff around.
The only way that's going to happen is if you
have a first principles approach as and you're really focused
on how you're going to get the economy growing again
on a per capita basis, and that's what Reform are doing.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
This process of kind of professionalizing the image of Reform
feels like a big challenge. Robert Headlines have been on
in fighting controversies around individual members. Yourself stepped back from
your role just this month, saying how you were feeling
burnt out. You know you've done high pressure jobs in
the past. Tell us a little bit about that process
this week, why you left, and then why you came
back so quickly.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So look, I basically I had a day off in
eleven months, and people listening to this business brings a
certain level of pressure. Politics is a whole different level
of pressure. And as I said, not just building and
assembling a political party from scratch in real time, also
doing everything else that the political party need to do
and tell us why I came back. Look number one
I received I was inundated, which is lovely heartfelt messages
(07:25):
from reform supporters, voters and members who expressed just how
important the reform movement is to them. It's not just
a political party for many people. That represents the last
hope the country has to This great country has whom
so many people have laid down their lives for to
turn itself around. And look, as I said, I was
exhausted and my decision making at the time wasn't great.
(07:47):
We reversed that very quickly. Look, I came into politics
in no small part because of Nigel, and I'm going
to continue to spend all my time trying to make
him the Prime Minister.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I know you criticized her at poachin right, who was
basically urging cure Starmer to ban the burker and the
interest of public safety, and you said it was done
for a party to task a PM to do something
that the party itself, your party itself, wouldn't do. Do
you stick by that.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I didn't criticize Sarah. Let me care about something. The
number one serias of phenomenal MP I speak almost every day.
She's a good friend. I was instrumental in getting her selected,
getting her elected, and she's going to be such a
formidable asset to the country. Look that tweet which I
sent out, which I definitely regret now what the point
I was making to I was frustrated because I didn't
(08:30):
know that question was going to get asked. In hindsight,
perfectly reasonable for me to have not known. I'm not
an MP, So I regret that tweet. I don't mind
saying that.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Can you just give us a sense? So when we
speak to a lot of people, they say I'd like
to know a little bit more about reform, but we
don't really know where they stand on the economy, So
it's you talk common sense without a lot of I
guess policy details. So can you give us an idea
of what you would do, for example, for this UK?
DOAJE like the money is very limited right for any
chancellor to play around with? So where are you finding efficiencies?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, that is a line that the establishment always uses,
right the money. My favorite one is quote difficult decisions
need to be made. How many times have you heard that? Right?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
But I mean we run the numbers at Bloomberry. I mean,
there's just not a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, hold on, hold on, So let me give you
some big numbers. That so fifteen billion in foreign aid, right,
five billion a year in terms of free accommodation to
asylum sequels and illegal migrants, and that's per year. The
twelve billion in net zero costs that will be found
directly inside government departments. The real number is much higher
and I can go into that. So there's straightaway is
(09:36):
almost forty billion, and you're going to have and there
are so many other line items in the budget. When
you start peeling this stuff back, I mean you look
at the big consulting firms. Some of your listeners might
not appreciate this, but the big four accounting firms and
the strategy consultants won eight and a half billion pounds
in national government tool contracts over the last five years alone.
So the notion that there is no money to be
(09:57):
saved is for the birds. Now, it is also true
this country is almost three trillion in national debt. But
the bottom line is the British economy is not growing.
I mean talk about point seven percent. That's less than
the population is growing just from immigration. If we do
not get the British economy growing meaningfully on a per
capita basis, this country is headed to an extremely bad place.
(10:19):
The way we're going to do that is by cutting
spending on things that are wasteful. We have to get
our welfare bill under control, and difficult conversations do have
to be had about it. Of course there are some
people who need benefits not of course that is true,
but it has never been easier to get onto benefits.
So we have to get the welfare bill per capita
down to where it was back in twenty nineteen. That
(10:39):
will free up a lot of money to reduce the
tax burden on working people. And we also have to
buy the way be really honest that we need wealthy
international job creators wealth creators.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
To be here.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
We don't need them fleeing. We want them here in
the UK. That's a big part of what our policy
announcement was today. If you talk to us a demisacebas
at deep mind, for example, you know Jensen Wang from
Nvidia was talking about he do you use the term
goldilocks a situation for AI in the UK. We have
a significant percentage of the world's finest AI engineers graduating
from our universities likewise in areas like biotech, and then
(11:13):
we also have to start manufacturing here again. We can
have a new manufacturing revolution with cutting edge manufacturing techniques
in the country, and we need people who understand economics,
understand business in charge of making the most important economic
decisions in this country.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
When I speak to global investors, and I'm talking about
in a Blackstone, black Rock, even some of your old shops,
Colman Sachs, I mean, they're quite bullish on the UK.
It's a bad neighborhood out there. The US because of
trade and tariffs, looks like less attractive investment right now.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Great, great, But here's the point. The British economy has
had virtually no growth now for a very very long time.
And you can arguing about whether it's point three or
point seven, it's pointless. The reason why people in this
country feel like they're getting poor is because real wages
have done nothing now for about two decades. Real GDP
capita has done nothing for about two decades. This is
the other thing in business, there's accountability, right. You know,
(12:05):
if you're a chief executive and you're paid a lot
of money and you're very powerful. If you make bad decisions,
the markets will see to it. You are not the
CEO for very long. Right in politics and inside the bureaucracy,
not only do you not face consequence as you're promoted,
you're put into the lords. That's what has happened on
these big military contracts that have gone massively and overspent.
(12:26):
HS two. This country is paying eight times more per
mile of high speed rail than China or France, eight
times more. Why is that? If we win a majority
in the House of Commons with Nigel as the Prime Minister,
we can make sweeping reforms. We will have a great
repeal Act and we can go and solve these problems
root and branch.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I was just going to ask how you're going to
do it, so you have a repeal Act for what specifically?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So well, that's what we're working on as we speak.
I think this country has way too many laws, way
too many regulations. A lot of those have to be repealed.
We can get into it. The e CHR that prevents
multiple convicted illegal migrants.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Touring thousands of staff in Washington and across multiple government departments,
people being barred from entry. It's been pretty extreme. Do
you see a version of that here with a reform company.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Not not necessarily. I mean, if you zoom out a minute, right,
what's happening is endless outsourcing. We're now at the stage
where a contractor is now running the recruitment program for
the British Army. While that's happening, the cost and the
headcount of the civil service has ballooned by fifty percent
over the last decade in government in the civil service.
Literally you're ramping up spending on outsourcing and agencies and
(13:34):
contractors and ramping up the size of the civil service.
I think you can have the size of the civil
service and actually deliver a better service to taxpayers.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
A couple of things on dough I mean, do you
have an early update on your DOGE project and working
with ten councils that reform now controls, So what sort
of savings have you actually identified concretely?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, so, look, we already have one number on its
early days and a lot of what we're doing is analysis.
But I'll give you one exact sample. One of our
Cabinet Minister's Cabinet members in West Northamptonshire Council was presented
with a Microsoft contract for millions of pounds and told hey,
you've got like three days to sign this off, otherwise
they'd be penalties. Now that's funny that there'd be penalties
for a contract that you haven't even signed yet. He
(14:15):
pushed back and did a really good job and saved
nine hundred and sixty five thousand pounds on that contract
straight away, And that was within the first week of
arriving in the council. And what does that tell you?
It's actually a reason to be bullish on the UK
because there's so much waste there sort of people who
are sitting there signing those contracts off historically a big
Microsoft contract where it's obviously massive gross margins. Right, Clearly
(14:38):
most of these companies have been taking councils and taxpayers
for a ride. I don't really blame them because it's
up to the councils. It's up to the civil servants
and the politicians to fight the corner for the taxpay
As soon as a reform person turned up, they did
that and they saved nine hundred and sixty five thousand
pounds within the first seven days.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
What do you say to the accusation that, actually, because
you've also promised tax cards. It feels a bit like reminiscent.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Although so at local level we certainly haven't haven't promised any.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Time, but you have at the at the national levelt Yes,
that's true. Great. I mean some people are worried that
this is the spell of a lost trust disaster type.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Liz Truss did not announce any spending cuts Nigel's foot.
Nigel stood up and gave a spech a few weeks
ago and announced three to four hundred billion pounds of
spending cuts to happen inside his first term as Prime minister,
funded full stop. That's exactly right. Here's the irony. We're
formerly the only people who have a leadership team with
experience of balancing some quite large budgets. What we're saying
(15:36):
is we need to dramatically cut spending on things. Like
I said, the twelve billion on net zero that'll be
found in director in budgets, the fifteen billion in foreign aid,
and the five billion in terms of asylum. There's a
lot more. I mean, you look at the money that
is hidden inside these quango budgets. You look at the
money that's being spent on these on these consultancies and
these agencies, vast amounts of money. That's the work that
(15:57):
we're doing.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Now you're also trying to I mean I had a
question on you know, trying to basically take reform into
the mainstream. And while you're leading in the polls, there's
still a lot of voters, whether fairly or not fairly,
that associate your party with racism. Are they wrong?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Of course, And I think that that's now So if
you are leveling that claim reform, you are now calling
that epsos pole leveling that claim at more than third
of the public in the UK. Any human who has
been in the UK for more than five minutes knows
that that claim is absurd on its face.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
But there must be a perception. I mean, the perception
is still there. You can't deny that.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
It might be there for people who are brainwashed by
certain media outlets that they might watch. But look, frankly,
we're coming across that less and less and less, and
the more that we have been attacked without hominem attacks.
Partly it is because they can't engage us on the arguments. Secondly,
the result of all of this silliness being you know,
so ideologically possessed that that's the only argument against us
(16:54):
is that the country continues to go to the dogs.
And I put it to you that the more people
here from reform, the more they hear from Nigel and
our MPs, the more they like us. That's the evidence,
and the opposite is true of other political leaders in
this country.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Can I pivot a bit to again back where we
are in the city of London and what we care
about more than anything on this podcast is what the
future holds for the city. So what people think about
you say is important. Do you care what the city
thinks about you as a former banker and what plans
would you have in place to improve the fortunes of
the financial services.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
We need to know. The city of London was once
the greatest financial center in the world. We need a
strong city of London. I think it is. It is
massively overregulated, no doubt about that. You saw our cryptopolicy
for example. We've got to lean into the technologies of
the future. Yes, of course there needs to be some regulation,
but it's gone way way too far. We need to
do things on taxation and look, the first act that
(17:46):
we want to cut is the one for people earning
less than twenty thousand pounds a year. One of the
reasons why the city of London is suffering it's people
are worried about law and order. People are terrified of
walking around late at night. They can't wear a nice
watch anymore. They kind of hold their phone out in public.
I grasp it with two hands as if their life
depends on it, because in some cases it actually does.
So we have to do all of those things. And
(18:07):
one of the interesting things I'll tell you as well.
I spend a lot of time in Runcorn during the
run Corn and Hellsby Parliamentary by election. And there are
some pretty deprived areas, not all of it, but there's
some pretty deprived areas of Runcorn, and there are people there.
We would hear time and again on the doorsteps, people saying, look,
we set our alarm clocks in the morning, we do
everything right. We pay into the system, so did my parents,
(18:29):
and life has become endlessly more difficult. The cost of
the weekly shop keeps going up. Those energy bills because
of that virtue signaling keeps going up. And then they
see someone next door on the same at state, who's
on benefits, with four kids, whose front gardens a complete mess,
doesn't do any work, and they think, why do we bother?
And I hear exactly not what. I met one of
(18:50):
my friends who still works in the city with a
sizeable income. I don't mind saying, you know, a sizeable
six figure household income between him and his wife, and
he said exactly the same thing. He said, you know,
we both work really hard. Yes we own good money,
clearly much higher than the average. But we've got two kids.
We can barely afford to send them to the school
we want to send them to. Our relationship, it's starting
to pray because we don't really get a chance to
(19:12):
engage each other because we're so busy. And then we
see all that, we see this sense that people are
getting away with not working, not contributing. And the phrase
that stuck in my head was they both use the
phrase why do we bother? And I think that that's
a big reason why reform is getting to be successful.
Come on, and why we're going to fight, why we're
going to fight for working people. It's really important. Contract
(19:32):
is the thing that is breaking.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
But I mean, why do we bother? They don't want
to be on benefits? Like I understand that this is
a huge concern and immigration, you know in this country
needs to be fixed, But why do we bother if
you're if you have two jobs, you're in an OK position.
Things maybe need to change, but it's tough to say,
why do we bother?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Well that the tax burden on everyone that I just described, right,
even though and I'm using that example advisedly right because
they're at very different extremes in terms of the Bell
curve of economic distinction and salary. But the sentiment that
they have is that they are being taxed ever more
and they are getting less and less and less for
it when they want to go and see a GP.
It's incredibly difficult. Having children has never been harder economically
(20:14):
for people in this country, which is why a birth
rate has collapsed below replacement. And this real sense of unfairness.
We know people of mind paying taxes if they feel
like they're getting something valuable in return.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
So obviously it's been a very significant weekend in the
Middle East. Part of preparing for government potentially would be
your geopolitical policies. Kis Darma's getting fairly good reviews around
the word. I spend a lot of the time in
the United States about how has been triangulating on the
Ukraine issue and on the Middle East. Now do you
have a policy? Do you support the United States strikes
(20:45):
on Iran? And if you were in government, how would
you navigate this very delicate and difficult moment for the world.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The first thing to say is reform is about focusing
on the UK I tweeted out yesterday, A country that
cannot even defend its own borders has no business and
will not be taken seriously lecturing any other countries about there.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Where should spending be Then, when you're looking at the
priorities and where money's going to be saved, But should
we be ramping up to three and a half percent?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yes, we want to be ramping up spending on defense.
So the way you're going to spend more on defense
ultimately in absolute terms by growing the economy, Right, So
that's the first thing. If you don't have a fast
growing economy and a buoyant economy, you will not have
a strong defense. Secondly, we need to spend it in
smarter way. So let's stay drone warfare where there's been
some high profile cases. For example, Russia had a whole
load of its nuclear aircraft fleet decommissioned by Ukrainian drugs.
(21:36):
Ukraine is firing three to six thousand drones every single day.
I'll let you take a guess as to the total
number of military drones available to His Majesty's armed forces.
I want to take a guess how many less than
two thousand?
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
We are so ill equipped in this country for modern warfare.
We obviously have amazing men and women who give their
lives and give their careers to service for this country.
And so we have to grow the British economy and
if we do that, we will have a strong armed forces.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Is that maybe just final question? Is there a country
or a politician that you admire?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I admire the United States, and I admire I do
admire President Trump. I don't agree with everything he does
or says, but I do admire him. I think he's
a very determined man, and I think he has done
a lot of good for America, even though I don't
agree with everything he does. I'd also say Georgia Maloney
in Italy I think is someone who has done a
great job. But look, Britain is a proud country. It
(22:27):
has an amazing history. This is the other thing I
wanted to close on is We're not in the business
of saying Britain's in managed decline, and that is the
axiom on which every politician in Westminster, pretty much outside
of Reform knowingly knowingly operates. We think Britain can be
an awesome country again, that we can be excited to
live here and soa can our kids and their kids.
But it's going to take a lot of work and
time is running out, is.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The a useuph Thank you so much for joining yes today.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So that was a conversation we taped with Reform UK's
is the AUSU earlier this week. Now, Lucy as our
UK politics reporter, you've been tracking Reforms right and popularity,
but more importantly trying to understand what the party stands
for when it comes to economic policy.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
It's interesting, it's seemed quite a change over recent years.
So Reform UK can trace its roots really back to
the UK Party, the UK Independence Party, which was again
headed by Nigel Faraj. Nigel left that party after essentially
becoming one of one of the very few sort of
instantly recognizable figures in UK politics, and he's founded the
Brexit Party that was sort of continuing in the same
(23:30):
vein as the UK Independence Party, but to to bring
the UK out of the European Union essentially was no deal.
He wanted a very clean split from the European Union.
After achieving that, well we did have a deal of
some sex, yes, the brexit bit, not the deal a bit,
we found him, you know, wanting to rename the party essentially,
(23:52):
and he landed on reform UK as he sees it.
The UK is broken, the UK needs fixing, and that
covers pretty much evering from reform of the welfare state
to cutting back on migration, which has always been a
huge vein in Niger Faragi's politics.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
So that's the thing. So in the past it was
the sort of the one issue thing was like get
brittin now the EU and then that mission accomplished. I
mean he failed to become an MP all that time,
didn't he. And now they've actually got some MPs now
that they've got a bit of a broad well technically
a broader agenda. But you know, listening to our conversation
with him, I guess what struck me was that we
were asking about lots of economic policies and they had
(24:26):
this big new non dom thing that came out, but
everything kept on coming back to that same thing, which
was always been the Nigel Farage policy number one, which
is about immigration. Yeah, still are they still actually really
a one issue party?
Speaker 4 (24:37):
It's interesting because I think Zia Yusef has been one
of the key figures in trying to professionalize reform UK
and so he has really been wanting to broaden out
that kind of spectrum of policy from just being an
immigration focused party to really looking at kind of economic policy.
You know, as you mentioned, we saw the non dom
issue raised earlier this week where they have trying to
(24:58):
attract wealthy non domicile people back to the country too,
as they see it raised tax revenue here, and Zia
last month talked about cryptocurrencies, you know, how he wants
to make the UK a real cryptocurrency hub. And we're
really seeing a much bigger breadth of policies across the party.
But as you say, what they're really kind of what
(25:18):
they always hone back to is that issue of migration.
That's the kind of anger that they're trying to tap
into among the British electorate of people who feel that
they've been hard done by because we have seen such
huge numbers of migrants come to the country.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
It's really important in the UK to remember, of course,
this is historically almost a two party system, and so
they really want to break away from that. But are
they more right wing the Tory right.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
It's on certain social policies, it certainly seems so. I mean,
we've heard various of their MPs that I mean, they've
only got five MPs at the moment, but we've heard
some of them talk about, you know, wanting to tighten
up abortion legislation, for example, make it harder for women
to get abortions. We've heard some of them talking around
(26:04):
a sister dying and sort of coming at that from
a very you know, kind of socially right wing angle.
But it's hard to kind of say exactly because on
certain economic policy they are trying to challenge labor from
the left as well, because you know, you've seen them
sort of talk about reinstating the winter fuel payment to
(26:24):
elderly people that labor pulled when they first got into power.
I think, rather than looking at it as an issue
of right and left, what they're really looking at it
from is trying to tap into that kind of base
of working class people. Who feel like they aren't recognized
by either of the mainstream political parties and trying to
figure out what they want and what might appeal to them,
while also keeping you know, the wealthy, high net worth
(26:47):
traditionally right wing voters on side.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
So that sounds like pretty good definition of populism to me,
isn't it?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Absolutely yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
And that's a playbook. So you know, when we talked
to the Conversation, didn't we about you admire President Trump
and said he certainly does might musque and that obviously
calls himself now the doge of the UK. So are
they just kind of cherry picking from the kind of
populist regimes, obviously the trumping the biggest one, and trying
to repeat that playbook in the UK.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
It certainly seems that way in certain of the policies
that they have taken forward. I mean this, the Non
Doms Britannia card that they're talking about, giving people a
Britannier card giving them the right to live in the
UK is pretty much a sort of direct translation of
the Trump card, even though it's an awful lot cheaper
than the Trump card.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds every ten years is
it rather than what was it five million?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Did I get that right?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yeah? Several million pounds for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
You know, it's a bit cheaper than the US basically.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Whether they're doing down or not, I don't know, but no,
it's it's it's it's difficult to to see, you know,
kind of how the UK would be able to bring
in millions and millions.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And again we asked him in there in the conversation
around more specific economic or even things that were useful
for the city of Life, and I don't know, and
I just don't think they had much me on the
bones there, do they.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Well, I mean, it's it's important to remember that we
are four years away from from another general election and
you could level the same criticism and the Conservative Party exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Yeah, So you know, it's a long way off yet,
but they are kind of coming at this really from
ground zero. You know, they've never had more than one
MP before. Now they've got five. But you know, there's
still a lot of questions around who's going to be
their cabinet if they if they do get into power,
(28:35):
who would be the chancellor? You know, there's there's a
few names in the pot already who could who could
probably fill that position. But you know, there's a whole
cabinet that they'll have to fill, and it's it's relying
a lot on trust from the electorate to think that
they would vote a party into power when they have
absolutely no idea who any of the people are.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Oh see, so interesting. Thank you so much, thanks for
listening to this week's In the City from Bloomberg. This
episode was hosted by me Francins Laquis with David Merritt.
In the City is produced by Somersaudi and Moses and Dam,
with sound designed by Blake Maples. Brindon Francis Unim is
our executive producer. Special thanks to Zia Yusuff and Lucy White.
(29:18):
Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host
Francine Lacqua
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