Transcription
And what do you think of K Star DMA and the way he's leading the UK?
>> It's very tempting always. We come back to the Biden Trump left right thing to put the blame on one specific person. I don't think he's doing a good job for the reasons that I told you. We we've got the highest tax burden in peace time history. So, he's driving business through the floor. I know that you will we you and I have never spoken about this, but I bet you could name 50 people off the top of your head who've left the UK to go to other places, who run businesses. cuz you're nodding right for people listening. Well, why is that happening?
>> Cuz the business climate here is not good.
>> Mhm.
>> The taxes here are very high and also the quality of life here is declined.
>> And generally, you know, I think maybe the first point you said about climate, there's a pessimism.
>> Yes.
>> Why is that? Why is that?
>> It's self-fulfilling.
>> Yes. It's like a self-fulfilling pessimism where founders who are in my portfolio that I've invested in will come to me and say, "Hi, you know, we've just sold uh 10% of the business for 20 million."
>> Yeah.
>> And then the next sentence will be their escape plan.
>> Mhm.
>> And that didn't used to happen even 10 years ago.
>> And that's because of government policy. That's the only way that this happens, right? Because if the government a keeps taxing you up to your eyeballs and b keeps telling you that you are evil, which is what it does, right? If you're rich in Britain, you are evil. That's the that's the algorithm we have. And we treat successful people, we immediately assume that they're privileged people. My pet theory is that this goes back to the landed gentry. The idea that in this country, if you were rich, there was a time when that was almost certainly because your dad was rich or at least people thought that. And so this sense that if someone is successful economically, financially, it's probably because they've benefited from some sort of illotten privilege, it permeates everything. In America, people don't feel that way. They go, "You've been successful cuz you've worked really hard and you've had a great idea. I'd love to learn from you. I'd love to be more like you." In Britain, we go, "You've been successful. Uh, you know, we got to tax you." So if the government keeps taxing you and then telling you you're a bad person while you pay the overwhelming share of the taxes in the country, it's not a great place to be. You know, if I come home tonight and my wife says, "Yeah, you earn all the money, but you're a dick and I don't like you." And after a while, you sort of go, "Well, if this isn't working, I'll go somewhere where I'm wanted." Do you know what I mean? And I think that's what's happening to a lot of the most driven, the most talented, the most successful, the most creative people. And so we're driving out the business. We're driving out the entrepreneurs. Then on the industrial side of it, we talked about it before. Net zero basically means that any energyintensive business is completely unviable in Britain. And I'm sure you've seen this with AI and lots of other things. You go to where you can do your business. Then on top of that, you add regulation, particularly in in Europe, which restricts your ability to do things again. So there's this um you and it didn't didn't have to be like that. It wasn't like that in the '9s in this country, right? There was a positive go-getter business climate. And you can do that again. You just have to have a leader who is willing to do that. And SMAR is the opposite of that. And part of the reason is that they simply can't do anything about the fact that we are spending huge amounts of money uh keeping lots and lots of people trapped in welfare. against in many ways against their interest and actually in some ways I would argue even against their will because and I've made this point before. If you said to you're a very driven person, I'm a very driven person. But when I was in my early 20s, if you'd said to me, you don't need to work. You know, I know you're feeling a bit depressed as I was in my early 20s. I wasn't sure what I was doing with life. You're a bit depressed. You're a bit anxious. I remember going to apply for a job and just sweating buckets because I was so anxious, right? Well, you've got anxiety, you've got depression, you can't work. We'll give you 20 grand a year and you can just, you know, we'll write you off and you just sit home and play on the PlayStation, smoke weed. I would have taken that. Most people would have taken that. And that's the position we have put a lot of our young people in. Uh we just ride them off. We give them benefits and we forget about them. And that welfare bill has become a unsustainable, but it's also uncutable. They try the Labor government tried to cut it. They tried to reform welfare and their own backbenches revolted and they caved and they said no no no we're not going to reform welfare we're going to tax the rich because the rich you know don't pay enough tax when in the reality I think the top you maybe look this up 10 the top 10% of taxpayers in this country pay I think more than half of all attacks probably significantly more than half of all attacks but look it up I think the top 1% pay 33% of all attacks fact check me on this
>> okay So the top 10% of taxpayers pay 60% of all income tax.
>> Yeah. And also um what's the other one? The capital gains as well. If you look up capital gains, it's basically the same. So if you put those two together, which is basically what we pay on earning, the top 10% pay 60% of it. So what happens when you chase out those people, which is what we're doing? What happens to your tax base? You get less and less tax. That means you have to tax the people who haven't left yet more and more in order to pay people who are not who are net consumers of tax revenues.
>> According to HM revenue and customs data in the UK, the top 1% pay 30% of all income.
>> I said 33. So 30. Yeah. Yeah. So what happens when you say that 1% are evil and they must pay more? 1% pay 30% of all the tax.
>> It's funny. I'm quite a torn person on this subject because I I represent kind of two sides of this argument. The first side of the argument, I just have this sort of visceral memory of being sat at my desk in Mosside with these like baiff letters on my right, the smashed up laptop on my left, knowing that I had no way of eating that day and thinking, "Oh, I you know what I need to do? There's this thing called jobsekers allowance." And I was like messing with the do I join it cuz like right now I'm like scavenging for pound coins to see if I can buy some Chinese from young dar takeaway. And I printed off the forms and the forms were there in front of me on the desk to apply for jobsekers allowance when I was maybe 18 years old roughly that age 18 19 years old. And because I got so close I have this huge amount of empathy for people that get to that point. And then on the other side, because I'm now in a different world
>> and I I'm around entrepreneurs so much who are
>> so so frequently telling me their escape plan from the UK
>> that I feel the need to let the average the the normal person that's listening to this podcast that maybe doesn't have the access to entrepreneurs or the inside conversations that that I have with entrepreneurs know that when people come on the show and tell you that rich people will leave, it is my experience that rich people leave and like because there there is an argument ongoing argument no they won't leave and there people point at different things no they they leave they leave I mean we just saw Revolute which is one of the the most successful companies emerge from the UK in recent times it's probably going to be worth a hundred billion the founder left
>> I think it's Dubai or somewhere it's gone to
>> and people say well Britain can't compete with a zero tax environment we don't need to compete with a zero tax environment people want to live in Britain still you just have to stop clobbering over them over the head and calling them evil.
>> Right.
>> Yeah.
>> Now, look, you know, I can give you a sob story as well. Like when I was at university, I had no I had to stop university cuz I couldn't pay for it. I slept on the street in a park. Blah blah blah blah blah. Empathy for days for people who are in that position. And there are lots of people, by the way, and this is important to say, Stephen, who are not in your position. They're not super talented. They're not predisposed to success. They're not as hardworking and motivated as you for whatever reason. And many people are disabled. Many people have all sorts of other issues. And of course, we've got to help them. But what we have done is trapped now hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who could be working and have meaning and purpose in their life on welfare and we're not helping them get off it because it's much easier to give them a payout and forget about them. That's what's happening. And so, you know, I've had these views since before I was in any way successful. I just looked at what works. And when we talk about rich people leaving, the thing is I don't care about rich people leaving. People who have a lot of money leaving is not really an issue for me. What's an issue for me is people who are going to create wealth leaving. So on that point, the founder of Revolute leaving the UK, Nick Strinsky, I think his name is, um, estimates say, credible reports say that because he's leaving, there's going to be a3 billion pound potential loss of capital gains tax that he would have paid had he not absconded to the UAE. Now to put this into more stark terms what that means. I then um did some research and I was looking at how many people it would take to pay that 3 billion. How many average taxpayers it would take to pay that 3 billion that we that we lose by him leaving.
>> And it says roughly £450,000 average UK taxpayers because the average UK taxpayer pays about £7,000 to £7,500 a year. So very simple math 3 billion divided by 7,000 equals 430,000 people.
>> Mhm.
>> So in plain English, that billionaire's potential tax bill is equal to the entire income tax of a midsized UK city for one year because that person decided to leave.
>> Congratulations, you tax the rich. Congratulations. Now half a million people have to pay more tax. Well done. That's what we're doing. And because it's become a moral argument because the rich are evil in our mentality, people don't hear this point at all. It just totally goes over their head. They go, you know, but but the rich are evil, they must pay more tax. And you go, even if I agreed with you, it still doesn't work in practice. So if something is not working in practice, why would you keep doing it? I think as well, you know, one of your other points was around what the UK has to offer them. And I think if the UK was really growth focused and you know, the energy point you made, energy was cheaper here, then
>> that equation that these founders are making whether to stay or to leave would tilt a little bit further in our direction. So, it's super it's so difficult.
>> And no, no disrespect to Dubai, but most people don't want to have to live in Dubai.
>> I think the UK is a lovely honestly. That's what I mean, right? And I say this with there's lots of great appealing things about Dubai. But if you dealt with prime in the UK and you had a growth focused mindset, you had a tax climate that encouraged people to start businesses and employ people, we wouldn't be losing these people and we shouldn't be losing these people. They are they are the people who will create the wealth of the future and they should be doing it here. They should be founding and keeping their businesses here. And if you did that, then you start to turn the whole thing we've been talking about around because ultimately everything is about economics in in this sense. The military is about economics. It's about do you have the resources to have a strong military? We don't. So we don't.
>> So which leader do we need?
>> Again, I don't like getting into the personality side of things, but what you need is someone who understands how the economy works.
>> Why don't you like getting into the personality side of things? Because what happens when if I give you a name?
>> Yeah.
>> Then immediately people say, "Oh, he's one of them."
>> Okay.
>> Right. I am not one of them of any them. I'm just telling you what the policies are that I think would work for our country. If Kia Starama tomorrow came on your show and said, "Stephen, I'm here to announce a great British transformation. We're going to cut business taxes. We're going to get rid of net zero. We're going to make sure that we have the cheapest energy in the world for our businesses to grow. go and thrive. We're going to have a strong, capable military. And by the way, I've just hired 50,000 new police officers to deal with all the ridiculous amounts of street crime we've got in London. Sign me up. I'm all Karma. Ride or die, right? But that's probably not going to happen. That's probably not going to happen with any of the other leaders that we have. So, I'm here telling you what I think the right policies are. And if there's a leader who advocates for those policies, that's the sort of leader that I will support. Only 18% of Britain's view karma positively.
>> Yeah.
>> With around 65 to 72% holding an unfavorable opinion.
>> You're desperate for me to slag off Karma. I'm happy to do it.
>> No. No. I'm I'm actually not. Do you know what? Do you know what my opinion Kharma? Probably a really nice person.
>> Probably.
>> Probably a really nice person.
>> Yeah. I don't really care how nice he is, and that's my attitude to all politicians. I care about whether they're going to do things that are good and good for our country. uh from what I know, he's probably he strikes me as a very uh well-intentioned, probably fairly competent person.
>> Uh but what he's doing is completely wrong. The only reason I don't like to go in on him is I think he I I think he's useless. I do.
>> I also don't think it's fair to lay the blame for everything that's happening at his feet. The Conservatives were useless before that. The Lib Dems and the Conservatives were useless before that. The Labour Party under Blair were actually not useless. They were really really good at ter doing terrible things to the country. They were very competent at doing that. So what we have had for now one to three decades is terrible leadership that's taken us in completely the wrong direction.
>> I I'm I have to cite the statistics around his favorability or popularity because it puts everything you're saying in context which is these ideas aren't popular.
>> No. Polling has shown that Stalmer's approval among the British public is the weakest of any recent UK prime minister with dissatisfaction levels on some trackers showing him to be below most predecessors um in even in the Labor government. So that's the the weird part because it's not it doesn't seem to be working to drive favorability either.
>> No, but but this is why I'm saying focusing on him individually isn't helpful actually. And this is not to argue with you unnecessarily. If you put Kemmy Baden in his place, she'd have the same favorability ratings.
>> Really? Even though she has different ideas.
>> Does she?
>> I don't know. You tell me.
>> She has some different ideas. I mean, the Conservative Party's gone a long way to changing their policy on things like net zero, right? But while they were in power, they were doing all the same stuff. They were arresting people for tweets. They were driving the economy into the ground with this green lunacy. They were the ones that oversaw the decline of our military. So uh in in in some ways the personality conversation is really not that important here. What's important is a gigantic paradigm shift needs to happen to our attitude to everything. And and one of them is dealing with unaffordable welfare. The Tories didn't do that. Labor aren't doing it. I actually thought Labor had a better shot because at least people wouldn't say labor are evil and they hate poor people. That's what they say when the Tories tried to cut welfare. When Labor tried to cut welfare, I didn't think that would happen, but they just caved to their own backbench. Maybe they had to for political reasons. But you you you just have to the the shift that needs to happen in Britain is not political. It's cultural. We have to change the mindset that we have as a country around these things.
>> Cultural transitions are very very very hard. And I say that from the perspective as a business owner. If you tried to get me to change when I had a lot of people, so say you I remember in my German office back in the day in social change German office, we had 150 people. Very very different culture to the UK. I thought naively as a 23 24 year old I could fly there
>> and change the culture of the Berlin office.
>> How dumb was I?
>> This is not how we do things.
>> I could not change I could not change the culture of the German the Berlin office. So I think about a country changing the culture of a country.
>> Yeah. That's why I'm what I call an accelerationist.
>> What does that mean? It means that I believe that the only thing the only way that these things will truly fundamentally get better is when they get really really bad first.
>> So you think it's going to get really really
>> the only way to change the culture is for people to understand what's actually happening uh so that they can't pretend the things that are happening are not happening. And that's what's happening at the moment. Most people don't yet quite know that they're poorer today than they were 20 years ago. Most people still think that we are saving the planet when we reduce Britain's carbon emissions from 2% to 1.9% of global carbon emissions. While in fact, we're not even doing that. We're taking our carbon emissions and we're sending them to India and China and then shipping back the stuff they make for us in a dirtier way on big tankers which actually consume more dirty fuel and we're actually ending up increasing our CO2 output, not reducing it. Most people don't know that. But when they feel it in their pocket, when they feel like the we're having a fiscal crisis, when they feel like they really can't afford their life anymore, that's when they're going to start to ask some of these questions. It's one of the reasons actually the narrative on net zero is shifting. Like almost nobody other than the government in this country still believes in the idea of net zero, right? Because it's moving quite quickly in that direction. Uh and on lots of other things, it will happen when things get much more difficult for ordinary people. Sadly, I don't want that to happen, but I think it's the only way things get better.
>> But on the subject of global warming, it's scientific fact that the climate is changing.
>> Changing unfavorably.
>> Uh what do you mean by unfavorably?
>> Well, if the you know, scientists talk about the poles melting and how that will have big impact on you know third world nations and
>> um how that will be a net negative for the planet because then you'll see more migration, you'll see more sort of natural disasters and those kinds of things. Well, let's let's not argue about that because neither of us is a climate scientist, but let's accept that for the sake of argument.
>> How is outsourcing our carbon emissions to other countries
>> while destroying our economy?
>> That's I mean
>> making that better.
>> It's not.
>> It's not right.
>> And that's all I'm saying. All I'm saying is we are pretending to be saving the planet when we are not saving the planet while also destroying our economy while also making sure that pensioners in this country die every winter cuz they can't afford to pay the heating bills that they need to pay to stay warm in in what is a first world country. That's what's happening and it's happening because of government policy. So we are not saving the planet by killing pensioners. I I'm not in favor of killing pensioners.
>> Have you ever thought about going into politics? Are you eligible for
>> eligible? Yes. Have I ever thought about it? No. I I people offer me to go into politics regularly, but it it's just it's not my game.
>> Why? You know, you when you talked about your mission, Yeah. it seems very aligned with going into politics.
>> I feel I have way more influence doing what I do now
>> than being, I don't know, prime minister. Well, that's extremely unlikely than being the the MP for the whatever on C who who gets one chance to ask a question of prime minister. No, no, no, no, no. I get to speak to way more people and to persuade more people and to articulate ideas in a much more unfiltered sense. And I think that's really important in the modern climate. What happens when you become a politician is you start having to talk the party line and then you suddenly don't quite follow what you actually believe. Now you have to adjust and you have to say, well, you know, the party believes this. Well, I'm not interested in speaking for the party. I'm interested for describing things in reality as I see them. And then if there are politicians who want to take that on, that's their job, not mine. I just don't have the temperament for it either. I just I'm much more interested about in the truth than I am in getting along with people, coalition building, caring about potholes, you know, all of this other stuff. In this multipolar world, this is how we got to the subject. I asked you who would benefit and is it a good thing? Yeah. And then I asked you is is it a good thing for Europe? And you said no. Yeah.
>> Who is it a good thing for?
>> China
>> because they get to do
>> do what they want,
>> whatever that is. They're much less restrained by the US. It's good for India for same reasons. Uh is it good for Russia? We'll find out. Possibly
>> good for America.
>> Yes and no. Oh, I think it's that that is more complicated. I think America will be able to get what it wants in that world, but it's probably going to find itself in a lot more confrontations internationally, and that will obviously be a drain on its resources and and its energy.
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