Rwanda Plan

Welcome now you’ve heard he was talking tough there, wasn’t he? yeah just as David Cameron talked tough, if you come here illegally you won’t be allowed to stay, Teresa May if you come here illegally you won’t be allowed to stay, Boris Johnson if you come here illegally you won’t be allowed to stay and just over two years ago of course we had the speech at Lydd airport down in Kent telling us about the Rwanda plan.

We’re two years on, we’ve spent at least £160 million so far on the Rwanda plan, not sent a single human being and what happens is every time Rishi Sunak speak on this subject, he raises the rhetoric and he does so of course because public anger is so great, the sense of injustice and unfairness. Do I believe that in 10 to 12 weeks’ time there’ll be planes taking off with significant numbers of migrants on board? No, I don’t, he gave specifics there didn’t he? He said there’s an Airfield at the ready, he said they’ve got trained people stopping people, we’ve done our prep is what he said, I mean how boring I think we’re working hard, I only hope they’re working hard, they’re the government!

I mean all of that, nobody gives a damn about any of that, what people care about is, are the numbers crossing the channel going to stop? He made no acknowledgement in his speech of the fact that numbers crossing are up 25% so far this year. What he said; they’d cut them he said, we’ll defy the European Court of Human Rights well, I very much doubt that he will but even if he did there’s Something missing here, it’s called The Human Rights Act 1998, that was the legislation that took the ECHR and put it into British law and all the while it’s there, there will be legal cases taken (with regard to the Rwanda plan) and British judges will find in favour of the legislation.

Not a Single Person will go to Rwanda

I promise you not a single person is going to Rwanda, the Rwanda plan is a complete charade and the tougher he talks and the more he raises the rhetoric the more public to the British people he’s lying to himself okay. Well, there’s elections coming up, he’s lying to himself you know and he’s talking tough. Look I tell you a funny thing, whether it’s the sick note culture, whether it’s the number of people claiming they’ve got depression and not even having to look for work and getting an extra £400 a month, it’s all well and good but I genuinely believe the public now don’t believe any of this.

We’ve heard this again and again, no one’s listening. Tell us before we talk about the de-banking which is a very important story today, succinctly; what you would do to turn these boats around?

All the while you have European Court of Human Rights and its code taken into British law through the Human Rights Act you will never ever deal with this problem all right. So, you have to repeal the Human Rights Act and you probably have to say to yourself do you know what we don’t need European style human rights, we’ve been since Magna Cara the freest country in the world and we should be rather proud of the fact.

That we as a country have always given the individual much greater against an overbearing state, so until you deal with that, you’ll never solve this. Once you’ve dealt with that it starts to become quite easy, you do what Tony Abbott did in Australia. You say right nobody that comes via this route will ever be granted refugee status, good start and then you literally start sending people back and of course Brussels will scream and the United Nations will scream and you know what within a fortnight no one will come.

De-Banking Scandal

Well brilliant, now let’s talk to you about de-banking Nigel, you took on and you saw off the chief executive of Coutts we’re calling it the Farage effect exactly yeah but we see today figures which are pretty alarming you were not alone in being de-banked.

Do you know the funny thing, when I was given notice that my bank accounts were going to close because ‘your xenophobic’ and ‘well-funded by the Kremlin’ they gave me very long list very long list of my sins, so much so that employees of the company would like they said to push me out of a moving car.  Yeah, lovely people, what was interesting about it was I thought for a few weeks, do I say in public what’s happened to me or do I just quietly try and find some resolution. Finding resolution was difficult because I was refused by 10 other High Street Banks which just shows you how deep this corporate woke culture has gone.

But in the end, I went public and the reason I went public was I began to realize it wasn’t just me this had been bubbling away for a long time but no one likes to admit they’ve been de-banked. If you’re a company to admit you’ve been de-banked means it could affect your credit rating could affect you know how potential customers see you on individual level. You know it’s a humiliating thing to do, so I sort of came out as being de-banked because I knew that others would start to speak and indeed, they did so.

What you’ve seen with these figures is a 44% increase in the number of people going in the last year to the financial ombudsman saying my account has been closed and this is wrong. But companies or individuals this is only companies, the figures that we’ve got are only for companies. What we don’t know are the number of individuals who have gone either to the Ombudsman or have put in subject access requests to their Bank demanding more information.

ESG: Environmental, Social and Governance

What is certain is that I’ve helped to lift the lid on something that is nothing less than a scandal. You think about these 140,000 businesses were closed down last year by British Banks now even if a couple of thousands of them were crooks or money launderers, the vast majority wouldn’t have been and I generally believe in the free market, I don’t want government to interfere.

I don’t need regulation but in the modern digitized age having access to a bank account is just the same water and electricity. Coming onto your rights, on what basis are they closing companies down on what basis? Most of it is to do with money ESG regulations (Environmental, Social and Governance) so we have a whole series of Brussels directives that were transposed into British law and it means Banks and others are terrified, so let’s say for example you’re running a business. I don’t know that business turns over £89,000 a month if suddenly you get a gigantic order and £20,000 comes into that bank account so you’ve done well maybe an alarm bell goes in the bank, an alarm bell goes off.

You are then asked a series of questions, the costs of compliance are huge, as soon and the same for personal accounts say you’ve got an old Harley-Davidson sitting in the garage and you sell it for four or five grand and that money goes into your bank account again alarm bells start to ring you know. Are you a front for a Colombian drug ring? Whatever it may be and the problem is this the legislation is so onerous that the compliance costs of the bank in checking all this out are massive, it’s estimated by Forbes that for every one pound of laundered money recovered in the UK banking system the compliance cost is £100.

Good Lord, so it’s easier for the bank to say you know what we haven’t got the man power, we’re shutting you down, close the accounts and basically, they’re shutting businesses down because at the root of this, at the root of this are a series of European Union money laundering directives, well intended but of course in this country carried out literally to the letter of the law and what we need to do is to simplify that regulation.

Brexit Benefits Not Taken

Didn’t you tell us with Brexit that all this these EU directives were going to vanish and disappear, scrapped. No, that was Boris Johnson and people like that. What I told people in the referendum was that with Brexit we would have the opportunity to do these things, if we had the will and the wit to do so and sadly, we haven’t and I as yet I told I remember the last time I spoke to Kemi Badenok who was your Business Secretary, she said we have got rid of hundreds and hundreds of regulations.

Not enough though and because there were so many thousands of them yeah and we can see the city of London, the stock exchange in quite serious decline yet we still charge stamp duty on share transactions, we see in many ways, our biggest industry financial services is not flourishing in the way that it could be and should be.

Brexit was a big opportunity and yet another one I’m sorry to say that a Conservative government that said it believed in it got an 80-seat majority but saying they believed in it just haven’t you know. What I’m not sure and there there was a poll last week Lord Ashcroft poll showed that Labour is trusted to deliver Brexit more than the Tories and that’s Labour, led by Keir Starmer who led the campaign for a second referendum.

I know, and look you I think you know I’m absolutely certain that when it comes to financial Market regulations Labour will be the same if not slightly worse when it comes to the tax burden, they’ll be the same if not slightly worse and I get all those arguments.

Why Vote Tory?

I had John Redwood on the show a few months ago, I said John why should we vote Conservative? Because Labour will be worse? So sorry, it’s just not enough it’s not enough just to be; vote for us. Look, you think we’re bad, have a look at the other lot!

I mean this is not very inspiring a great narrative is it and we could be, I have a hunch at the minute with the way things are going that the turnout at this general election will be way back to what it was back in 2005 when it barely touched 60%.

I just sense a bigger level of absolute disenchantment with politics. I also think the sort of man the pub conversation is what’s the real difference but also, I think the people who are Tories don’t want to vote, so they just won’t come at all.

I think there’d be a lot of abstentionism and you know some of that 2019 vote has gone back to the Labour party and these were people who’d been voting Labour, their families Labour since 1918 you know, an equal chunk of it’s been going to Reform under Richard Tice you know, there’s a lot of movable parts here but you know when John Curtis, the political commentator when he says it’s a 99% certainty Starmer is going to be the next prime minister, he’s probably right.

Thank you very much. Are you with us tonight? I certainly am, 7 o’clock I’ll be there and watching this parliamentary ping pong on Rwanda. Pitiful and pathetic it’s totally futile isn’t it, but they know it’s going to happen.