Reform Party Crypto Donations

Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast . Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name is Andrew Huntermurray, and I'm here in the iStudio with Helen Lewis, Ian Hislop, and Richard Brooks. So we have just had uh an American import to the UK in the form of Saturday Night Live UK. It's a big American show that's come here after kind of 50 years. But we have just announced a really successful new export to America, which is the idea of having a mad king. Uh America's taken that on and they've been running with it. And Helen, I believe you've been following how just how well it's been going. Yeah, I mean so much, so much winning. So obviously Donald Trump uh I mean I'm hesitant to say anything about the Iran war because it's it's existing in this sort of quantum superposition of whatever Donald Trump says is currently happening with it. He currently says it's he's negotiating with the Iranians. The Iranians say we don't know what you're talking about. He did announce that just after the markets had opened after a pretty grisly couple of days. So who knows where we'll be by the time this goes out. But essentially, what we now know after four weeks of war is that they didn't have any contingency planning about what would happen if the Strait of Ormans got closed. They assumed per report in the New York Times that uh based on Israeli intelligence it looked like that Iranian protesters would rise up and overthrow the regime, which is so far not happened. Yeah. And that they wouldn't at any point have to put kind of boots on the ground. Boots are now kind of sailing over from Boots are hovering over the ground, I would say, at the moment. So you know that and that is an incredibly symbolic thing for America to do. But the main thing about it is the fact that it has really revealed there is no one in this White House who can say no to Donald Trump. And why is that? Because they were all hand selected to be people who wouldn't say no to Donald Trump. Well, but in one way, look at it. kind of reality denier in favour of the cult of, you know, um El Presidente. So by saying that you have to say, you know, you've accepted this one thing, your loyalty to Trump matters more than the facts. You can kind of see where everything else flows from that. But fact is quite important in the run-up to a war. I mean the failures of intelligence you've described could be applied to Iraq or some of the other um adventures or picnics or whatever what is the definition for the war at the moment. I believe it's a Sharabank tour. A Sharabang tour. But again, none of this was um unforeseeable. Why did no one mention any of it? Did he even know about things like you know, oil going through the Strait of Hormoose. You know, did he think about that? He's making these decisions, isn't he, without talking about anybody? Does it occur to him that hang on there's gonna be a consequence like that? We don't I uh they do seem to have been completely caught on the hot by that. I think the way that their intelligence was running was essentially we'll go in, you know, d take out the iotolla and the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards. We'll be back home and sort of tea and medals. And that is obviously not what has happened. The regime has basically said, well, hang on a minute, what like what's the point of negotiating, right? That's the fascinating thing is that Donald Trump has been hopping from foot to foot for days now, obviously desperate to negotiate an end to the war that he can claim as of another great Donald Trump victory. And the Iranians are the ones who really don't see what's in that for them. Well what we have at the moment, as y as you said Helen, D Donald Trump has just declared that he spoke to Iran and he now graciously won't bomb energy infrastructure for five days, whereas previously it was a forty eight hour deadline and the Iranians have said, Well we haven't we haven't had that chat. Uh so we don't know who you were talking to. Uh I mean things are probably quite chaotic at the top of the regime at the moment, obviously. Well everyone's got Donald Trump's phone number, so it's quite possible that someone with a m what and an Iranian accent has phoned him up claiming to be the Iranian foreign minister and they've had a very good chat. But the last time Donald Trump said things were going well in negotiations. I I had a little check. It was the sixth of February, if you can remember all the way back then. He said the talks they were having had been very good and it looks like they want to make a deal very badly. That was about three weeks before he unleashed Armageddon. So maybe his word on the how the talks are going is not not gospel. I have this vision of of Donald Trump inventing a talk at one end and at the other end there's a an Ayatollah who may or may not be alive, we don't know. There's a series of men who you see grainy footage of in bunkers, who may or may not be talking to each other or to anyone else who's actually in charge of a missile. I'm I'm not quite sure how these talks are happening. They're clearly not. That's the problem. But you're right. I mean it's a crisis for international diplomacy if you end up with a leader that nobody believes a word that they say and they go back on themselves all the time. That's the thing. If even if America was sending out very strong signals of being utterly bonkers consistently, that would be something that people could work with. But the problem is that everybody and you know, I do feel a great deal of sympathy for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves in this because all of their fiscal plans for the entire year are resting on what mad King Donald rampaging down the ha-ha in his white nightshirt flapping behind him decides to do next. Although it does give them a bit of a let out, doesn't it? Because you know, global turmoil is a bit like COVID and so on. Um if I were Rachel Reeves, I'd be thinking phew, you know, at least I'm not gonna be held to those The thing you said about the purity test of of saying that you know Donald Trump won the twenty twenty election and that's the sort of threshing machine which you have to pass your brain through in order to be accepted into Donald Trump's in It's a weirdly reminiscent of what happened to the Conservative Party after Brexit, where you had the Boris Johnson cabinet, which was only Loyalist, you know, all of the anyone who disagreed was cleared out, you know, the the kind of left of the Tory party and the centrists and the people who thought Brexit looks like a might be not a brilliant idea. They were all cleared out. I think even before then, when but what so for a long time if you wanted to get selected as a Tory MP during the 2010s or the late 2000s, the question that came up in selection meetings was what do you think about leaving the European Union? And you know, it was a very popular thing to say. So you had a lot of people who had never really looked into it or didn't think it was a great idea but also thought it was never gonna happen, just going going along with it. And I think that's that is exactly the problem we're seeing repeated is that people who just think, well it doesn't matter if I just make this one compromise actually know sometimes that bill does come due. And how does it happen that the head of counterterrorism, who from what I'd read I assumed was pretty much full on Trump loon, um has declared that Trump's a loon. Um what on earth are we doing here? What why is this man suddenly um the new bellwether? Well a new type of loon is rising in the east, now I'm in the west, um actually, which is he is Joe Kent we're talking about resigned and he made a a fair point in the resignation letter which was a bit about this kind of idea that the US has embarked on a joint war here with Israel and actually that maybe this might be suiting the Israelis rather than more than the Americans. But he then brought in this other stuff about how his wife was killed in Syria by by a suicide bombing, about how that was another Israel-led foreign war. And that shades into lots of things he said in the past that's shaved into the idea that actually maybe the Jewish state and then maybe by extension Jews are maybe controlling America's foreign policy. In the kind of way that if you saw somebody saying it online your eyes would probably would go up and go, is this going to just stay as a strictly a critique of foreign policy or is this gonna end up where I think it is? In a little bit puppet master hands in the cartoon. Right. Um and I think that's that is uh an emerging strain of MAG A. So there are people who are both anti-Israel for very principled reasons in the sense that they think it is a foreign war adventurism and that America's foreign policy should be dictated by America's interests first and that those don't lie in wars in the Middle East. But there are also some flat out white supremacists who have glommed on Tamaga, who are anti-Jewish Holocaust deniers, people like Nick Fuentes, who I've mentioned before. But this has caused this going into a war with Israel has caused a split in the what you might call the kind of MAGA elite. So I looked at the polling and actually voters who self identify as MAGA, ninety percent of them backed strikes on Iran at the start of the war. That may have softened up since then. Only 70%, only 77% of those who define as Republican back it. Right? So being MAGA is being, you know, Donald Trump right or wrong to some extent. But within the elite, people like Tucker Carlson, Meghan Kelly have started to and the kind of podcast comedian class, so Theo Vaughn, Joe Rogan. You can't lose the podcast comedians, they're they're a core demographic. Right, but they are a core demographic, right? Because they all swung behind Trump in twenty twenty four. Right. But they have been to their credit, Joe Rogan is is not a a big fan of foreign wars in the way that Donald Trump once wasn't. Right. And so they being a a little bit more of a distance removed, um, have been uh have been quite critical. I'm gonna just gonna read you out something 'cause just to give you a sense of the level of debate that is currently happening, right? So Mark Levin, very pro-Israel, talk radio host versus Megan Kelly, ex Fox News, you'll remember her. Is anyone involved not in broadcast? No. That's the wit, okay. Everyone is twelve and everyone is a chat show host. Those are the only things you need to know to understand. That explains so much about the war. Everything about American politics. Okay. So Megan Kelly first of all attacks Mark Levin, saying, calling him micropenis Mark Levin. Alright, and saying that's why he's in favour of this war. He then says, busy Sunday morning for Megan Kelly, she wakes up and has micropenis on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlot and posts like a harlot, it's well you know the rest, shalom. At which point Donald Trump thinks, here's a beef I should get involved with. Oh my god. And posts on Teru Social defending Levin as a truly great American patriot who is far smarter than those who criticize him. So this President of the United States has got nothing better to do. Just to weigh in on the great micropinas controversy of twenty twenty-six. But this is what's happening is you've basically got a load of yeah, like cable news hosts. I mean Pete Hegseth of Secretary of War is a former Fox News host. This is basically a load of preening prima donnas who have somehow accidentally been in ch put in charge of the world's only superpower and it's enormous arsenal. And of course they're all fighting with each other. Mm so the base w is still very much with Trump, but he has lost significant portions of the kind of magger elite over this. Can I can I ask what happened to the army? Are are there any generals left? Is there anyone left in command in America who says I I'm not sure about this or someone's someone's fire someone's launching these missiles, aren't they? Yeah. Well, I mean Pete Hegseth has been pretty explicit about clearing people out. You know, he gave went and summoned them all if you remember of that lecture about how they weren't allowed to have beards. Um and you know, he's been very clear that he wants a you know he wants a stereotypically masculine military and he wants the one that is not gonna gainsay anything that they're ordered to do. So you're right, the big figures of Trump won, like um General Mark Kelly, like H. R. McMaster , gone. He wasn't gonna make the mistake of appointing anybody like that again. And the two things they used to do was one they used to tell him to his face things were a bad idea, and two, I think they used to quietly hide his briefing papers and hope he'd forget about it. Also, it turned out a great tactic. But now he's got Marco Rubio, who he used to attack all the time as little Marco, and just, you know, once so said, you know, if you locked him in a room, you know, he could slide under the door, right? Like that's he would just change all his principles. J.D. Vance, who's been stuffed in a cupboard, um, and knows that his only lane for twenty twenty-eight is his, you know, c continuity Trump, so he can't break from him. Susie Wiles as a chief of staff was picked because she was just there to enable whatever he wants to do. And who in the whole of the Republican Party is is a counterweight to him? You know, and the like Mitt Romney's out of the Senate. You know, d there are a couple of senators like Thomas Tillis who's on his way out who will vote against his nominees, stand up to him, make criticisms. Right. Um but none of this matters. The great vaunted American system of checks and balances it doesn't seem to work at all, does it? No. Congress, you know, at the moment if you look online you will see that there are two or three hour long queues at security at American airports. And that's just because of essentially a partial government shutdown in funding. They have this mad idea that you can like fund agencies and and you keep voting you know, Congress needs to reapprove funding. And what's happened with that is that the Republicans have attached a load of ICE funding, immigration enforcement funding to it, which the Democrats don't want to vote through. So while they continue to have this stalemate, people have now got to get to the airport fifteen hours early and stand in the car park. Like there was this line I think it was PJ Rawquis used to have about, you know, Republicans say that government doesn't work and then they set out to prove it. And there is a lot of that in American politics, right? It's just that we just, you know, don't really care that much about government working. So is it just that it takes so long for these checks and balances for the courts to act and you know, so there's just not effective 'cause that was always the the line, wasn't it? Oh don't worry too much about Trump because the checks and balances will kick in. He's a lot better this time though. So uh without getting too conspiratorial no I mean uh agree to disagree. No, I mean he's not gonna Okay, getting what he he wants or the people who work for him. So in um Stephen Miller, who's effectively his prime minister, you know, he has got a doctrinaire anti-immigration ideologue who is crucially quite well liked by his staff and really good at bureaucracy, right? He he is not a although his wife is a podcaster inevitably, because that's the law. Someone in his family's got a podcaster and it's gonna have to be you. Um so you know he's got these kind of dry bureaucrats essentially in place now, and thanks to things like Project 2025, which was the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a second Trump government, he's got a kind of of tick list stuff that he can do, often using executive orders, you saw the big barrage of them at the start. Lots of those when they eventually end up at the Supreme Court will get overturned, but it takes months. And the Supreme Court gets to pick its docket to some extent so it can pick and choose what it wants to look at. I mean the midterms are coming up and that m really might be when it changes everything. And also at that point lots of Republicans start thinking about their positioning for twenty twenty eight. Do they want to be left holding this um probably by that point unpopular failed war? And that might encourage a few of them to grow tiny whisper of a vertebrae. Just a song. I'm interested you say that there's no one pointing these things out until the head of counterterrorism says, Do you think Israel's leading this war? I mean last week on our letters page, uh one of our readers, you know, and this is a full two weeks ahead, said, I think we should call this the Israel-US Iran War. And I thought, well that's quite good. That's from one of our readers. Is is there no one of that level of competence operating in the White House? I mean as I say the m most of the people who I think are really competent are on the domestic side of policy. And you know the other thing is I I mentioned this before in my column that um you've got Jared Kushner, for example, one of the envoys and uh Steve Whitkov, they're also supposed to be doing Ukraine. Yeah. You know, you've got a situation now in which the US is also blockading Cuba, right? Cuba has had power cuts intermittently and they're all kind of going, well we've just there was a report in Atlantic, my other organisation, saying that they're casting around for a Republican donor with family links to Cuba who might fancy going over and having a having a crack at being in charge of Cuba. So being the governor. I mean there's lots there's a big Republican Florida community of expats who love to have a crack at being head of Cuba. They give you your own cigar. Absolutely. The life expectancy is six to eight months. It's absolutely like reform taking over councils here, doesn't it? It's it war warmermer? A little. So Trump's cut off the oil to Cuba and opened it again so Iran can sell. Yes. I wanted to bring this up. So yes, I w this is exactly what I wanted to ask. So so far as far as I can tell, there are three beneficiaries of the war. One is the big American oil exporters and producers, the price has gone up enormously. One is Russia, uh they'll get a lot more and they've just had their sanctions lifted, and the third is Iran. The USA seems to have allied with Iran to lift its sanctions to ensure that the prices don't go completely out of control. Well they well they see What's going on there? You know, like we were talking about earlier, just not understanding the consequences of your ac of your actions. You know, this is gonna hit the oil price, that's gonna hit inflation. Um, oh we didn't really think about that. You know, you go to war in the Middle East and don't think about the effect on the o oil price until until a bit later. Um so yeah, I mean it is must be the most perhaps the only example of one power funding its enemy during a war. It reminded me a bit of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Europe is still using a a chunk of I mean they've tried to diversify a lot away from Russian gas and oil and they've I think they'll have completed the job next year. But Well I th I think they just haven't understood that you know the, markets are all interconnected. Uh it's not you know, we don't get our oil from, you know, friendly countries and domestically and th and you know, Iran just sends it to China and whoever. That it all goes on the same market and therefore you get this terrible effect on prices. And not really understood that. And not understood the way that we actually help break any kind of ring fence that you might want to set up by using places like Dubai where Iran can route oil pretty much to wherever it wants through centres like that. Well he doesn't understand tariffs, so it's possible he just also wilfully misunderstands international markets. Yeah, and there's a similar sort of uh you know this negotiating tactic with ta with tariffs where we're gonna you know if you don't come to the table we're putting a massive tariff on you and then the time comes and he sort of delayed, oh no, we'll give you another couple of months. You know, this is the guy who's supposedly uh you know the great negotiator. But what you'd learn is that actually you can't believe any any threat he says doesn't really stand up. Well it seems like a lot of these red lines have already been crossed. I mean they were in the middle of a negotiation when the war was launched, so why would Iran come to the table to negotiate an end to the war given that Trump has shown that his word is not to be relied on. I d I don't think theirs is either. No no quite I'm not entirely sure that the uh assembled uh revolutionary guard would be that worried about sticking to their negotiating positions either. N I I'm sure that isn't what you meant. But I mean the problem seems to be that we're in a phony war where if we are at war with Iran, why are we encouraging them to sell their oil freely and make more money and rearm themselves? Why are we encouraging our so called allies and Richard's written about this to carry on selling Iranian oil uh but just doing it slightly under the radar. None of this makes a great deal of sense if we were genuinely at war. Right. But we we we you know we have allowed them to become so embedded that's the issue. You know, yes, it would be great if you could say Iran you're not selling any oil um and and they're you know and they suffer the consequences. But you know it it's in the system. We've we've created that system. Is it international capitalism, Richard? Yeah, it's the scourge of just checking. Okay. I mean this is if anything a resounding sort of cheer for international capitalism because that's appears to be the only thing that has any restraining value on Donald Trump, right? He obviously made the announcement that he did because he's very worried about inflation and the economy and particularly American gas prices, which are like a kind of holy value. I know they've gone from American petrol prices have gone from insanely cheap to criminally cheap. And the American people will not put up with those extraordinary prices. They have to honestly, as a Brit, looking at those petrol prices, you think, come on. I know I quite regularly fill up like a big SUV, sorry, close your ears, you don't want to hear this when I'm driving across America and and I go and I'm like and I and I consistently because my You've only charged me for the chocolate bar here. Right, because my car doesn't work, like you have to have the special bag stripe palm whatever in America. I often have to go in and prepay for the pump and I always I go, well that's a m I'm essentially driving a tank. It's probably gonna cost what, like fifty dollars to fill that up? And then every time I've massively overestimated. Did you um talking about Saturday Night Live, did you see that Donald Trump reposted the Saturday Night Live sketch taking the piss out of Keir Starmer for being afraid of him? The unkindest cut of all. No. But I j but that is also kind of reflects that other thing that we've been talking about about the Trump's belief that his allies are really not stepped up for him and his sort of like why have you not guys not opened the Strait of Hormuz, you ain't eat you bunch of ingrates. But petrol prices will go up, as you say. And Americans do drive twice as far with much less efficient cars. So it will it will affect people there, won't it? Or certain people will feel it in their pockets. knock on effect, even if people weren't also driving pickup trucks where the wheels are like that high cost you. But yeah. But America is more insulated than lots of other places, is is another element of this whole thing. Is this because of their shale gas? Their fracking? Yeah. Well, since the the 1973 oil crisis, the oil shock, America was a big net importer at the time and now they're a big net exporter. That will affect their their attitude to it. All the Asian countries are having a driver time. I mean they've already gone to four day weeks in various places because they're trying to preserve the stocks they've got. They've set limits on what you can set the air conditioning to because their their electricity is gas based. So there are plenty of countries that are in a mad scramble at the moment to try and deal with this and not knowing when full supplies will be resumed. So and there is a feeling that and old Sparky was writing it for us is that um it's a big crisis but it's particularly a crisis if you're a poor country, because the remaining stocks will be you'll be outbid. Sorry. The rich countries will buy the liquefied gas, they'll buy whatever there is, and if you're Bangladesh, it's gonna be a bit grim. Yeah. So we spoke last time on the show about what happened in Pakistan after Russia invaded Ukraine, uh in relation to their energy system. Pakistan since then had a bit of a solar revolution where they've imported I mean uh huge numbers, like gigawatts and gigawatts of solar. That has changed Pakistan's economy to a to a greater extent than Bangladesh's, where Bangladesh is still very reliant. Can I float a new conspiracy theory though? Which is that Trump is actually being controlled by Greta Thunberg. Because this war is just a giant advert for like defossilizing your economy. I like I like that theory. He's actually all this time he's been a mole. He's been incredibly deep cover. Perhaps it's an advocate for having, you know, emergency supplies Maybe we should drill the North Sea. I'm just gonna float the idea. But it is about energy security. I mean it does show you know the importance of security and the energy. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's it's funny ' everycause time these crises happen, and they do keep happening, the alternatives are looking better economically. You know, things like battery storage, which is probably down by about half since twenty twenty two. I mean the costs of the alternatives keep on changing. China is the fourth beneficiary of this war really, because I think a lot of countries will be looking at their plans for big expansions of natural gas and thinking hmm, maybe we could just do a bit of solar and storage.ite Qu sunny here. Storage is quite cheap now. But we'll drill the Northea and we'll be all right. That that's the default opposition position at the moment, isn't it? Yeah. Why don't we just drill the Northeast since we I thought we It's almost as though Kemi Badana wasn't listening to you, Andy. I can't believeve that. I' spoken this morning to more people involved in the same chemically. It is an interesting one because lots of people are putting the case that we need everything all at once. You know, we need to do everything to ensure stability and security. But a lot of the sides of the debate will say, Well we need to do everything except the thing I've chosen we shouldn't do. So if you're Kimmy Badnock or or Richard Tyson Nigel Farage you say, well we need to do everything, but let's not do the renewables, which is basically an argument for doing the North Sea, you know. And the uh again, there's a case for doing it if you want to maybe nationalise the industry, that would be that would be an option. What about a lovely nuclear power plant? Yeah, ten years from now, terrific. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. Twenty. How many months? It's so interesting because governments keep on having these shocks and that you know, we had the shock in twenty twenty two. Rishi Sunak's one of his next moves was to say, Well let's roll back the the electric car mandate, let's go slower, let's let's keep our reliance on this stuff for longer. The government's initial package has been pretty decent. What they've said is very short term, if you're struggling with heating oil, but lots of houses use heating oil still, we're gonna support you, but in a targeted way, because they're not yet countenancing the idea of supporting everyone's bills again. Um I'm not sure we can sustain that, can we? It doesn't seem like it. Borrowing's quite quite difficult at the moment, isn't it, Richard? The trouble is that yeah, it's very difficult to get back to normal in the meantime. And often sort of counterproductive because you say well we've really got to rein in now, we've got to cut that debt to get that interest down and so on. Then you end up not putting money into various things like and you know now we're talking about not enough going into defence, for example. Um, you don't actually address the problems. You know, like COVID we weren't prepared in the health service. This crisis has come along. You know, we've got a couple of dinghies we can send over. You know, we're not prepared for this one. Yeah. Um let's hope the next crisis is in the arts. Unfortunately the arts are always in crisis. There's no solution there. And can I say one more quick thing about energy? Just that no matter who you talk to all over, everyone's solution is the same, which is lower the price of electricity. For people who simply want bills to be lower, uh like the reform or the conservative lot, removing levies from electricity bills and maybe putting them into general taxation, maybe scrapping them, whatever, they have different proposals, but that cheapens people's bills. For people who actually want the transition to happen, when I put myself in that camp, that making the electricity price lower encourages people to adopt these solutions, you know. It and we've already largely made the the electricity grid green, but there's so much elsewhere, mostly the cars we drive and how we heat our homes that is remaining to be greened. It is it is security. I knew we start off with the Arama Wall, I knew we'd end up at cross pavement charging systems. No, no, no. He pumps and electric cars are the electric they are stability. They are they're basically security. You were saying that uh essentially the populist view of get get the bills down because we want to pay less is actually a positive green incitement. I think getting the bills down means more people will be encouraged to adopt these solutions. Yep. I think reform of the Conservatives have said various things like we're going to scrap net zero targets, we're going to scrap heat pump incentives. I think it would not be good for the climate in the long run or emissions. But getting the electricity price down seems to be the thing everyone can agree on because you make these solutions even more economically compelling, more people will adopt them, you know. If you can fill up an electric car for seven quid and your your diesel's just gone up to a hundred quid, it becomes it becomes more convincing. So yeah, that seems to be the thing we should bear in mind for next time this happens, which will be in about two years apparently . So now we come to the exciting world of finance. Richard, you write the in the money column, and there have been a few stories recently, both in your column and across across the rest of the press, about um a little upstart party called reform. And the very innovative things that they're doing with money, things like them receiving donations in the form of crypto. Seems to be it seems to be a really vibrant area. And uh the cutting edge of this. Yeah. Definitely. Can you tell us what gives? Yeah, well they've said they Well who gives. Yes. Well that's the point. We can't. Um or we're not sure. They've said that they've started taking crypto donations, but none are actually recorded y et. If they are, they're getting washed through the crypto system and turned into real money. And that process doesn't give you any great confidence in where the money originally came from. Now there's no we haven't got a case where we can say, ah, that money you said came from Mr. X actually came from Mrs. Y. But that's what it potentially allows you to do, and that's why there are people arguing for banning crypto donations or donations that originate with crypto. The government shows no signs of doing that. It's it's quite pro-crypto as well. God, I thought we weren't so pro crypto. I mean obviously the the Trump family is massively pro crypto. Um they uh you know, had this big stake in World Liberty Financial, they sold to Qatar just before inauguration day. Donald Trump Jr. is at every shady looking crypto conference in the Middle East Well, actually that's probably really neck of their business model for shady looking crypto conferences in the Middle East. But I I I sort of thought we were maintaining what I'd like to think of as a kind of slightly more useful reserve, but is that not true? Britain is is gung-ho for crypto as well. Well we're we're saying that we want to regulate it properly in order to have a you know a healthy, responsible crypto industry. But the question is whether that you know, there really is such a thing. You know, if you look at who uses this stuff for real purposes as opposed to just kind of hoarding it and hoping it goes up in value. Pornography, uh drugs. No drug money laundering. It's hard to find and you know you even find we wrote a piece uh couple of issues ago about the guy who runs the payment processing company that reform are using. And he was at a conference saying, Oh, you know, we've you know we've got pornography covered, we've got um you know we've got the drugs covered. Um we we're looking for some decent purposes to for people to use our produc You use a bank, as we like to call them. And you get that get you get deposit protection insurance, right? As a consumer, you get up to something like eighty five thousand pounds you have in a bank account, the like the government will back that if the bank bank goes under. If you lose the keys to your like your crypto wallet or someone steals it, no one is coming to save you. Like I just I extreme caution is how I film about crypto. Yeah, was it disposable? But Nigel Farage can't use ordinary banks, can he? Well I yeah, he got the bank. He was by Coots, but I I think that was an interesting one that that I'm not saying he he rigged it, but it came at a very useful time for him to use it as a and this is why Oh right. You know, because he was also very into gold, right? Like he sold gold through his newsletter. So the part of the Yeah, right. The part of the political ecosystem that he's appealing to is very low trust in institutions. Yeah. And then so the message to sell crypto has always been don't trust the banks, you know, have your crypto. Keep m like it's it's money that's can't be regulated, can't be overseen. I have to say turning I was debanked by Coots into your pitch to people to not trust institutions is qu ite it's quite good politics, I gotta say, it's quite cleverly done. And he's certainly going going strong on both gold and crypto. He's got this big gig with the gold company, this direct bullion company, who are paying him you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds. Not that he's necessarily used that money, but he's put a very similar amount of money into a crypto company whose largest shareholder is the guy who's paid him all that money f for the for endorsing gold. This is this separate to quasi quartang's Well the No it's not. This is the quasiqu Bitcoin company which is described as called that 'cause I would suggest that's not a very good name to market. Why is it not called quasi crypto? It's allied with the with the trust uh investment management uh company. Uh no, it's Crossy Krauting and this chap Paul with us have joined up to create this company called Stack Bitcoin, which is a Bitcoin treasury company, which means they'll look after your Bitcoin. But it's nothing to do with the treasury. No. I'm just checking. You seem quite alarmed by this. Aren't there rules about what you there are rules about you can't just say this is the king's crypto company or whatever, you're just allowed to stick treasury on it? You can use the word treasury, yeah. But um I think so Farage gets the money from the gold company, he puts it into the crypto company that the gold guy's involved in and this crypto company shares leaps up, which is all you know very convenient. That's what I'm really interested in because exactly as you say, when he announced I think it was two hundred and fifteen thousand pounds he'd invested in this stack company, the value then leaps. He's got various options which mean that if the value of this company goes above a certain amount, he will make a huge amount of money. But obviously he's using his status as a public figure to drive up the value of the coin. I mean it's very this is the thing about crypto. You're looking for an adjective. And Richard has already said convenient. Sorry. So if you don't want the lawyers to have to spend the next thirty five minutes convenient. Can we just say convenient? Yeah. As in public convenience. But that's the kind of the point of crypto though, right? Is it some respects it's trading on reputation and trading on speculation. Nobody buys crypto really as a safe haven. They buy it because they think they're going to the moon. And like the the the the thing that annoys people I wish they were. Well no, but the thing that annoys people like me, I made a podcast about this once was the fact that it has delivered a huge amount of returns for people like for everybody who was the early investors. Uh I mean and there's a weird analogy to analogy to some of the other stuff. L remikeember when they took the post office public and they sold off the early things and then immediately it spiked up. So everybody who got in the early distribution made absolute bank. Well it's like any other bubble. Yes. A lot of people make money on it. And a lot of people make money knowing that it's a bubble, knowing that there's no substance to it. But they just hope they get out before they think the other people make it. Everybody else realizes that. This could go on ages where the public figures are politician, you'd think, well, that's a bit off really, using your uh you know, political profile to boost the company. But you know, in this case they're they're boasting of that. Quasi Quartang saying, Oh, it's wonderful to have a frontline politician, as he described Farage. Combining this this sort of financial bubble with political fortunes and saying, yeah, come on, let's froth it all up. It's it's a bit like Trump really on a slightly smaller scale. We're not in the billions yet. But Farage has said he wants the Bank of England to have a Bitcoin reserve and he wants to slash the tax on Bitcoin transactions or cryptocurrency deals cut by more than half. I thought you were about to suggest is the fact that he's advocating a policy that will benefit both him and all his friends, is that in some way convenient? And I think the answer is yes. I think it is very convenient, Andy. The the intellectual underpinning is that people like Christopher Harbor like it, his biggest donor, and therefore he gives him millions. This is the Thailand based millionaire based who's given Reform Party more than twenty million pounds, coincidentally. Um Farage, you know, favors tax breaks and so on for crypto. It is an enormous amount as a donor, isn't it? I know you frequently catalogue who gives reform money. Nick Candy, he's the treasurer, isn't he? Famous former tax exile, made a lot of money while he was offshore through cashing in on one high park and so on. We've report a couple of others in the latest issue using companies in the UK that are owned by British Virgin Island companies. So again, we're not quite sure where the money's coming from. The companies in the UK are losing money, so it can't be coming entirely from them. Yeah, and and there's various other offshore donors. There's another chap called Basim Haidar, a Nigerian Lebanese businessman, who's very vocal in uh wanting non-dom tax breaks to come back in and he's has become one of Nigel's new close friends, accompanying him to Mar-a-Lago and so on. I just think that's so public spirited of these businessmen who don't live here. They don't, you know, they pff theyt they could just not get involved if they they wanted to have an easy life. I think it's amazing that they're doing this for our politics. It all just makes I just no it makes me feel so Maoist. I'm sorry, it really does. I just really, really seriously object to it. And having it yoked to this populist party. So Matt Goodwin, former candidate of reform, you know, he's been in s a bit of um hot water over his book and people check questioning the sourcing of that and he's gone instantly to you snooty libs are trying to take me down, right? Right. And to have a group of people who's who are a kind of a front to some extent for offshore money and a series of tax reforms that will benefit extremely wealthy people, saying that the only people who oppose me must be this sort of metropolitan elite. Just gets on my nerves something chronic, really does. I I found the fact that Richard Tice avoids quite a lot of tax quite convenient. How how how does he do that, Richard ? Well he did. He's he's been stopped from doing it now, but he did uh can't do anything nowadays. Let's just say it was six hundred thousand pounds he managed to avoid in tax, wasn't it? Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he's he's a property man and he decided to do it a bit more tax efficiently. Labor government in two thousand seven had introduced a new type of property investment company called a real estate investment trust. The idea behind it was that lots of different types of investors would come together, pull their money and invest in property, and we wanted to encourage that. The vehicle they pulled their money in wouldn't be taxable. So it was intended for like big pool investments like y you know, like like fund managers look after and so on. Not for f small family property companies based in Mayfair. Um But Richard Tice found a way looking at the rules of saying we are a REIT, you know, so can we have the tax break? Happy days. Um and and the revenue did allow them that status for a while. Okay. I think because they must have or they claimed they were looking for other investors, which funnily enough didn't come off. Right. Uh and then that was it. So the revenue has now stopped this? Yes, they've lost that status. So it's six hundred thousand pounds, which is quite a lot of money. Yes, and you pointed out in the last issue that it's quite a lot more than many of the shirkers. that Mr Tice and his party have been pointing at the end. That's the thing. I mean the the you know this crowd, special if they specialize in anything, it's gaming the system. Yet the things they're probably most exercised about among other people. You know, they they hate the idea of people being on benefits and so on. Or making a couple of hundred quid more than they should. Yeah, benefits are okay I I think I find it quite worrying because I think say we'll I've got as you'll have heard on this podcast quite a few criticisms of Keir Starmer. I don't think he would front a crypto company. I don't think Theresa May would have done. I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have done, I don't think Gordon Brown certainly would have done. Tony Blair, let's put a question mark over that one. Maybe I would have waited until he left office. Yeah. Right? And and I so the populist drift of that I think really bothers me, that the erosion of the idea of conflicts of interest and the idea that you're in public life. Because as you say, the whole value of that crypto company is about as um it was said that he is a frontline politician. It's it's the it's a version of what Mandelson was selling as you know, is it context. That doesn't work unless you're in politics. So it is to me a conflict an inherent conflict of interest and as you say, very very convenient.