UK Column News - 30th January 2026

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah, it's even better with Chumba by my side. Race to chumpacaceno.com, let's Chumba. No purchase necessary, VTW Group, voidware prohibited by law, CTNCs, 21 Plus, sponsored by Chumba Casino. Good afternoon, today is Friday, the 30th of January, 2026, just after one o'clock, welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Brian Garrish, delighted to have Patrick Henningson with me in the studio. Great to be with you, Brian. Yes, excellent. We're also very pleased to have Basel Valentine journalist and political analyst with us. So welcome, Basel. Well, the talk really across mainstream media in UK today, various levels is the tourist, what's his name, Patrick Keir Starmer? That's it, Keir Starmer.

1:00There's been awfulness, travels visiting China. And we're definitely going to make some comments on that. We're going to have to look at the serious build up towards war with Iran. We're going to have an in-depth look into British UK politics and who the real actors are controlling, not only what's happening in the civil service, but what's happening at a prime minister level. And in addition, we're going to have another look at the Panopticon for UK, which is the new police service. So over to you, Patrick, Mr. Starmer. Well, it's the state visit in China. We'll bring this up on screen right now. And this was a great summit for Britain, but not quite to the level of a welcome that the American and the French presidents got, but nonetheless, serious talks happened there. And what was interesting about this now is China is really taking the center stage as a sort of leading power now in this vacuum

2:03that Trump has left after Davos. President Xi Jinping warned Kier Starmer about unilateralism, protectionism and power politics, destabilizing the international order. And he's saying that international law can only function when all nations, especially the big powers, adhere to it. He's really as a dog whistle towards Donald Trump, but with Starmer sitting right across from him. And this is what he said, which I think was quite important in this context. If great powers don't lead by example, the world risks sliding back into the law of the jungle says Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, taking a leadership role in terms of the global geopolitical scene, Brian. Well, we need some gravitas, don't we? Because the rest of it is degenerating into pure theater. But I'm just going to say, I hear that Starmer's place at the big table was fairly low down the packing order. So I don't think he was getting quite the official reception from the Chinese that he thought he was.

3:05But maybe that's a little bit of hearsay. Nor did they've closed down the forbidden city for him like they did for Trump and manual Macron. But more about that maybe later. But over now, let's just talk about the degeneracy, if you will, of the international system here. Iran, Trump's latest war, all of the naval assets, which we'll show in a minute, Brian. I know you have a lot to comment on this side, but the US has amassed a massive military force there. But here is the basis of the public consent. Getting the Western public to buy into this war. Trump has changed basically the excuse for it. He's pivoted away from the protests of a few weeks ago. Now he's saying it's about the nuclear program. And maybe he'll pivot next in a few days to something else, the missiles or something. So it's hard to know where Trump is or what the reason for this war is. But back to it, back here, Brian, real quickly. The dirty numbers game, excellent piece in the cradle. And we'll look at this. So this is what people have heard in Western media.

4:07Waves of coverage. And they're talking about 43,000 dead 50, 350,000 wounded. And where are all these claims coming from about the massacres, alleged massacres in Iran? Well, this one of them is here is the International Center for Human Rights. They're based in Toronto, if I'm not mistaken, no forensic data, no independent, verifiable proof, no photos, nothing. There's a few photos circulating with body bags, but we'll talk about the details of those maybe in a minute. But a 900 word blog post by a British comedian set the mainstream media ablaze with those claims here, Brian. And the lowest estimate here from the human rights activists in Iran, again, I think this one's based in New York, funded by the State Department. They've lowered it down now to 5,848, this particular NGO. And that's the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut out.

5:08But what's important here is this, Brian, all these claims get filtered up to mainstream media. So Time Magazine is using this 30,000 dead and been killed by the regime supposedly, again, unverifiable sighting. I ran international, this is in Israeli clearinghouse. It's not in Iran, it's in Israeli cut out, if you will. That's acknowledged even by Israeli intelligence, on record, 36,000 deaths. So it's really all over the place. And Amriste International was pressured but refrained giving specific numbers and just said thousands here. But here is the actual official figures. This is from the Iranian government's foundation of martyrs and veteran affairs. 3,117 deaths, including 2,400 civilians. That includes also rioters and security personnel. Hundreds of police. There was a state funeral for the police that were killed. There were, to our count, 250 mosques were set on fire.

6:11700 banks were attacked and set on fire. So this was a calculated attack that both US and Israeli intelligence admit that they were involved in the destabilization and yet in the West Brian. It's, oh, the regime is carrying out a genocide. It's just, so that's the rhetoric that's being used to sell this war. Yeah, it really is terrible to watch this happening that the West is in flaming a state. On one hand, it's saying that these terrible atrocities are going on. Clearly, some atrocities have happened for the West is saying these terrible atrocities have happened. We're going to solve the problem by bombing Iran. That's effectively the American stance at the moment. And I want to say to our audience that we've had some very interesting emails come in from British Iranians who are commenting on what they've heard that's happening in the country from relatives. Clearly, some really unpleasant things have happened.

7:12But our key point here is that the West is not reporting events accurately. They're being grossly inflamed in order to justify a possible forthcoming attack by the Americans. And if we're going to deal with proper international politics, then we've got to have truth from both the Western media and other media overseas. So we recognize the bite of some Iranians at the moment. But the big point here is that the destabilization is clearly orientated by the West. And these figures are being pulled out of thin air, literally. So they're not, it's not, it's not forensic. This emotion, isn't it? These are for emotion and propaganda purposes. The same in Syria, Brian. Say Assad butchered 500,000 of his own people. On those figures, they were counting dead Syrian army soldiers and al-Qaeda soldiers. So basically anybody that died within Syria went into this giant body count that was used to justify sanctions and bombing of Syria.

8:12Exact same formula here with Iran, no different. So the lies just get unbelievable in our mainstream media. And I want to give a shout out to Jonathan Cook, one of the greatest independent journalists, I think, in the country in Britain, the BBC pushing the case for an illegal war on Iran with even bigger lies than Trumps. So the BBC have out-trumped Trump somehow, Brian. And we're going to show you a BBC clip here. And there's nothing journalistic about this report. It is pure propaganda. The Chinese and the Russians have nothing on the beab when it comes to ramping up excitement and fear for a war. Watch this. They killed my brother, the woman's screams. We still don't know the exact toll, but Iranians who witnessed what happened believe tens of thousands are dead, many more seriously injured. The scale is a truly shocking and it's not just a turning point in the history of the Iranian people.

9:12I would say in contemporary history, it qualifies as one of the worst mass kings. And it is absolutely essential, the extent possible, to get at the truth, to collect the evidence. As Washington weighs up what to do next, one of the American military's largest aircraft carriers with up to 50 fighter jets on board has arrived in the region. The US has bases around the Middle East, which have now been significantly reinforced. And this morning, a new warning from President Trump, a massive armada is heading to Iran, he said. Hopefully, Iran will quickly come to the table and negotiate. Warning, that if it doesn't, the next attack on Iran will be far worse. Last June, US bombers joined Israel's attack on the country, hitting three sites central. So that's basically the report Brian there, and just we'll move on. But anonymous voices may be tens of thousands

10:13or dead and outside Western person saying that it's impossible to get the evidence, but we're sure that tens of thousands. We are sure, yes. So it's double classic, double speak, incredible. That's what's being used to sell this to the Western public. Yeah. And Trump, of course, has been announcing that he's moving forces. He's saying there's a massive armada heading towards Iran. Iran better make a deal or we're going to bomb you. Basically, this is diplomacy from the US. Brian, this is like a child wrote this tweet. It is embarrassing, it makes no sense. It's incoherent, it's inconsistent. I don't know what to say. Well, it seems to be how politics is done these days over X. But just to add a little bit of meat to this, of course, the forces that are being moved by the US vast powerful forces all based around the very big carriers. But America is under a huge amount of pressure at the moment. If we have a look at this map of the worlds and we can have a look at US carrier deployments,

11:15now at the moment they've got the USS George Washington is doing operations with the Japanese apparently. So the key part is that the USS Abraham Lincoln has been moved out of the South China Sea and up in order to deal with the Iranian crisis. But if you have a look over here, we've got another big carrier, the US Theodore Roosevelt, that is finishing maintenance, but isn't ready at the moment to become fully operational. And we've got a big upon, let's just jump back on that. Sorry, and we have down off South America, we've got the USS Gerald R. Ford. So these carriers are basically locked into operations down there in South America and in the United States itself. So Abraham Lincoln has had to be pulled away from operations on the Chinese coast. Normally the Americans have got a carrier operating fairly close to China, although they're becoming increasingly nervous

12:17of the capability of Chinese missile systems in particularly land-based missiles capable of targeting the carrier. And so it's very significant that in order to deal with Iran, America has had to pull a key asset away from China. And I'll just add that I believe that this particular ship, the USS Tripoli, I think I've got that name correct, has effectively taken station to replace the carrier that's disappeared from the South China Sea. So huge number of assets, of course, in the American Navy, cost to this Patrick mind-blowing to move these battle groups around. But yes, Trump is clearly serious in the quantity and power of the assets that he's moved to deal with Iran. No, and the cost of Brian, you know, they announced that the US military budget Trump was very proud to announce that has been ballooned up to 1.5 trillion per year. What happened to Doge and balancing the deficit

13:18and all that talk at the beginning? It doesn't matter if there's a potential war. So if there's a potential war, the money appears on a plate, Patrick. Well, it's not cost-free. And what we're seeing this week should really shock people what's going on. And here is Richard Wolfe, the noted economist from America. He's saying here, foreign central banks hold more gold than treasuries now. What does this mean, Brian? That gold is now the new reserve currency, no longer the US dollar. That's official folks. USS R is decline, left the US empire to reach its peak, world central bank, then exchanged back then, Brian. It's gold for US treasuries. As the US empire declines right now after 2000 as China rises, those banks are shifting back from US treasuries to gold. Look at the graph. It is unbelievable. So the relationship, the inverse relationship here between US treasuries and gold and we'll go on more on this here. Gold is a new reserve currency, says Mike Adams here.

14:21Quoting, I mean, look at this. Gold is overtaken treasuries in central bank foreign currency reserves. This all happened, Brian, within the last week. There's just momentous events. This is a massive run on the dollar. Look at this. Global, the official gold holdings at market price up five trillion dollars surpassing foreign official treasury holdings of 3.9 trillion. This happened in the blink of an eye. We have never seen this in our lifetimes. It's very significant. This is unbelievable. And the ramifications are going to be significant. Here's Peter Schiff right now. I think Europe Pacific Capitalist is coming, listen to what he has to say. And the world is now pulling the rug out from under the US. The dollar is going to collapse. The dollar is going to be replaced by gold. Central banks are buying gold to back up their treasuries. They're getting rid of dollars. They're getting rid of treasuries. We are headed for an economic crisis. Again, that will make the 2008 financial crisis look like a Sunday school picnic.

15:22The biggest difference between the crisis that we're about to have and the one we had back then is this one is all in America. It's not going to be exported to the rest of the world. It's not a global financial crisis. It's an American financial crisis. So it will affect Britain. Reigns, we see what the city will do with its massive dollar holdings and also the European Central banks as well. So what's Donald Trump's reaction to this crisis? He says the dollar is doing great. This is what he said. The dollar is doing fantastic. Here's what he said about the housing market. And Brian, I have never heard anything this insane in my entire life from any political leader listen to President Trump here. And existing housing, people that own their homes, we're going to keep them wealthy. We're going to keep those prices up. We're not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home. We're going to make it easier to buy. We're going to get interest rates down.

16:23But I want to protect the people that for the first time of their lives feel good about themselves. They feel like they're wealthy people. And I want them to understand that there's so much talk about, oh, we're going to drive housing prices down. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes. And they can be assured that's what's going to happen. Well, some interesting comment there. What should take? What about the people who don't own homes, Brian? They're not going to be able to afford homes. So what does this mean? And we'll bring this up on screen. This was sent to us by one of our viewers here. Imagine working nine to five for 50 years. And then the Fed prints 40% of the total money supply and inflates away 20 years of your hard work. This, my friends, is government inflation. That's where it comes from. And the result of this, Brian, the numbers don't lie. Trump's working class votes, according to recent polls, they're gone. They've been totally eviscerated here.

17:23His approval rating, look at that, disapproval rating, 61%. So he's really not looking after the working class that put him into power. That, and the poll numbers are devastating. Basil Valentine, I want to bring you in. Basil, what do you think about the situation and what you just heard from the president? Hi, Patrick, great to be with you. Well, it's been the case on both sides of the Atlantic for the last 30 or 40 years that people have effectively been bribed by their own governments with their own money and rising house prices have been absolutely central to that. But we're now, as you point out, the situation where young professionals with degrees and well-paying jobs can't possibly buy a house 40 years ago, mortgages were calculated on three times annual salary. That's now up to eight or nine times. Of course, in America, they've got a lot more land to build houses and house prices in America have also traditionally been a lot more volatile

18:24in the trust the prices go much, much lower. But in the UK, they're much more stable. There's been no meaningful drop in property prices in my entire lifetime. The UK, of course, now embarking on this huge house building program much of it on the Greenbelt. I think that's an absolute disaster. But in the US, well, they obviously have a homeless this problem many times that of Great Britain. 60, 70, 80,000 people homeless in the Greater Los Angeles area alone. And Donald Trump doesn't seem to be remotely interested in doing anything about that. It's pretty, pretty shocking and it's all true. And what's the reaction from Trump to save the dollar here? Let's bring this up on screen. Who's this gentleman here? This is really gonna be the knockout punch ladies and gentlemen. If you think Donald Trump is fighting the globalists, well, this gentleman, Trump is preparing to nominate Kevin Warsh, the son-in-law of Ronald Louder,

19:27the billionaire, who happens to be just by coincidence, president of the world, Jewish Congress, but that's by and the by. And he's a former steering committee member of the Bilderberg group to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. So all of this talk by people like Alex Jones, everybody that Trump is fighting the globalists, it seems like Trump is the face of the globalists at the moment. It's hard to make, to argue against that, but incredible. It's pretty incredible. Is he there to protect him? I'm sorry, but Trump there to protect America was he bringing it down? Have you got a bit more on this particularly? No, that's all we have there. We'll leave it there. We'll leave it there. OK, well, let's come into UK and have a look at what's going on in UK. And one of the key things that UK Column News has been talking about is people talking about broken Britain as though it's some sort of accident. We are incompetent. We don't know how to run a country. We don't know how to run industry.

20:28The country is falling apart. And we're getting constant reports in the press more recently, of course, the press is winding up to the fact that a lot of people who would vote for reform believe Britain is fundamentally broken. And that we've got the use of the word chaos. It's chaos readers on Britain's broken political system. But the key question that we should keep in our minds is has Britain just broken up because we're incompetent and stupid or is this country being deliberately broken from the inside? And that's what we believe has been going on. But I'll just bring this new statesman quote up here because many people they refuse to believe that they can be nasty things going on in the world. It's always a cock up rather than a conspiracy and the reporter here from the new statesman saying they were wrong about broken Britain. But in the actual quote, also a little quote

21:29from inside this article, there was something very significant, I thought. So the reporter said Britain can feel divided and lost. But there's always another site to the story. If all politics is local, as the old saying goes, then perhaps all hope is too. I don't really believe that this reported new the significance of what they were talking about. But local politics, the key to stopping what's happening because when people locally, the ordinary man and woman in the streets say no to these rules based international order policies, that's when they stop. So there were some good punch in that new statesman article, even though the rest of it was fairly lackluster. And then of course, we have Nigel Farage. He is coming under the spotlight now from a lot of people and turbulent times here with the journalist Richard North are very, very good looking to Farage and what he's really up to.

22:33So is Farage going to do a mini-Trump in UK? Or a Boris Part II. Or a Boris Part II, quite possibly. And we've got to be very discerning to see that he stays on the right path to actually tackle the global elite. But let's just move on and have a look at how the Labour Party said it was going to deal with things. This is part of their Labour manifesto. We've shown this before. We're just looking about 30 seconds to remind ourselves of the style that Labour Party came across as it moved into power. This cost of living crisis comes on the back of decades of high inequality and low growth. Now, the number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a new record high. Richie Sinat gave a speech rolling back on the government's net zero pledges. The rising cost of mortgages is causing misery across the country.

23:34The record breaking week for numbers crossing the channel this year so far. So there we are. It's all black and white. It's all dismal. It's all due to Richie. Well, maybe not when we look deeper. Now, we're going to move from that. What was promised and what Labour said it was going to do in government to another look at just part. We just look at probably a minute of the Institute of Government talking about changes inside the state. And remember, this is an unelected body calmly telling its audience what is going to take place in British politics. Thank you very much for that introduction and welcome everyone here today. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to say a few words to introduce down Jones MP Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Unsurprisingly, to any of you here, the Institute for Government agrees that government must think hard about the how as well as about the what.

24:41Without setting up the people, institutions and processes of government for success, no government is going to deliver for the vases. And that's why we were really pleased to see the creation of the Chief Secretary role at the centre of government and to learn about the decisions to clarify the structures there and to hear about the government's plans to make it easier for the public to access public services using digital tools. Something that what three words knows. Well, that's enough of that, but you get the general idea. Totally unelected, standing the lectern and calmly describing what they unelected people have recommended for the politics of UK. And if you follow the track record of the Institute of Government, invariably what they suggest then comes into being. Let's have a look at another segment where one of their staff members, a lady, starts to look in more detail at aspects of the government and in particular the civil service.

25:41My name is Alex Thomas. I'm an executive director here at the IFG. And this panel we're going to be talking about rewiring the state is the government making any progress. We're going to kick off with a presentation from my colleague Hannah Keenan who will talk about our brilliant Whitehall Monitor, which the 13th edition of which we launched this morning. Thanks very much, Alex. So as Alex says, this is the 13th edition of Whitehall Monitor. This year's report looks at how the civil service changed in 2025, a year that was all about rewiring and our recommendations for 2026. I will start with a very brief bit of context. Starma has had to deal with 11 resignations, that is the second highest number of any recent Prime Minister at this point in their tenure. We have found that over half of departments have a new permanent secretary in place since the general election. The civil service continued to grow in 2025.

26:42You'll see that growth is slightly slower than in previous years, but we still saw an additional 5,000 or so people join in the last year. When you look on a proportional basis however, it is the digital in data and the policy professions that continue to grow the fastest. Both of those professions have over doubled since 2016 and they continue to grow the fastest in 2025. The civil service also continues to become more senior and you can see just how much the grade distribution has shifted here since 2010. Part of that is down to automation, meaning that there are fewer roles at the most junior grades. That pay restraint hasn't gone away, but pay is recovering from quite deep real-terms cuts, particularly so at the junior grades. For the senior civil service, real-terms pay is still 24% below what it was in 2010. So those recent rises, we think, will alleviate some of the pressure to move roles and to seek promotion, but until the way that pay is actually structured has changed those incentives will still remain.

27:52On the rail, the latest data that we have is for 2024, where we saw a very small uptick following three years of consecutive decline. So there we are. Obviously that was little excerpt out of what she actually commented upon, but what you've got is a huge civil service, which is now not really under the control of the government is under the control of other agencies. The digital proportion of the civil service greatly expanding, and then we are getting rid of or already lost the lower paid jobs because AI is taking over, taking that over. What this lady is giving you a look into is the workings of the civil service and later in the news, we're going to be hearing the really nobody knows how this organization functions, but what we can be sure of very powerful global corporate interests fully embedded in the civil service, particularly in relation to this digitalization and the creation of a digital based economy and country never put forward in a manifesto, never talked about.

29:00Properly on the floor of the house, never discussed in committees, but this is what's driving the government not just rewiring like a full on renovation of the architecture of government is a complete restructuring with a giant managerial elite managerial class on top of the AI, but no entry level or lower jobs. Those have been swallowing. They're gone by a basil valentine we just have a minute left, but what what's your reaction to what what you've just heard basil? Well, no democratic oversight either who actually is in charge of the civil service from those numbers, it looks like it's becoming increasingly top heavy and that'll only that trend will only increase because it's the mundane clerical work that AI replaces so quickly and so efficiently. One forecast will come under this later shows up to 40% of entry level software jobs, for example, is it to disappear with AI? No, it's it's absolutely extraordinary and Brian one of the big you know paradigm shifts that we're going to see in society and basil also has been following the story and absolutely want to get his comment on this will bring this up on screen at the moment here universal basic income could be used to soft soft in the head from AI jobs.

30:18From AI job losses in the UK minister says since this is Lord a stockwood opining here on this dystopian future that we are basically facing right now the UK could introduce you be I universal basic income to protect workers and industries that are being disrupted by AI says investment minister Jason stockwood here undoubtedly we're going to have to think really carefully about how we soft land those industries that go away industry. So they're really preparing here for something I don't think people are ready for Morgan Stanley said UK was losing more jobs than it is creating because of AI so because of AI were in the negative so what's the solution pay people to stay at home. I'm not sure create more AI and create more AI and so who and who's going to pay for all that is that deficit spending basil I want to get your comments on this because this is something we've all talked about the natural product of a robotic sized AI driven economy is going to be having to put millions of people on universal basic income go ahead basil.

31:33Well the forecast is as many as 8 million jobs could be at risk from AI but I think that's the low end of the spectrum because well we're already now used to digital interfaces in McDonald's now in Tesco's cafes as well you know staff cuts left right and center what do we do with all these people well the idea of you be I according to Lord stockwood is that. It will give an opportunity for people to retrain that they're not going to be pages to sit around and fester at home but is coercion therefore going to be involved and in which case what difference is there between universal credit and universal basic income universal basic income the universal suggest is that everybody gets paid it regardless of whether or not you have anything worthwhile to do every day or not. But it looks like they'll end up budging some sort of glorified universal credit system where and forcing training on people quite what jobs people are going to retrain for I'm not sure if 8 million jobs are going to be lost but what are we going to be all retrained to do of course the whole point of AI is it's wealth creation.

32:51So therefore why not tax the wealth that AI is creating and we distributed to people who who've been put out of work as a result and then that loops back to the argument about tech companies not being based in the UK and they will take their business elsewhere and all the other so called roadblocks towards wealth taxes so it's a bit of a bind really the projected cost has been estimated to be as high as 200 billion pounds. Or possibly as low as 50 billion pounds but whatever it is it's a huge amount rather amusingly there is a trial scheme being run with people being paid 1600 pounds a month by the government and the idea is to find out how that affects their lives. I think most people will say very positively if the government decide to give you 1600 quid a month every month tax free and then turn around and say oh now how's that impacted your life.

33:58I think you're like they say well yeah I've been on holiday and bought some new clothes and you see me I mean what a stupid question. It's puzzle it sums it up everything that we are seeing about so called experts who are re structuring government is is that their mindset is truly unbelievable they are following through or no ideas and policies which don't seem to have any basis of common sense attached to them there in a mindset where they're using the words and the phrases and this is what's going to happen. But if you say well what does this actually do for the quality of people's life is like that's irrelevant. But was it 1600 pounds a month that's probably pocket money for the average MP for his I don't know what dog expenses probably fruit and flowers and drinks tabs but this is the problem it's not just rewiring government.

35:02They're not telling you this it's rewiring society it's rewiring your relationship with the state this is a full overhaul of I would say I would even say Western civilization in the modern sense that we have you know developed over the last 200 years this is there's no public debate about this there's no discussion there's no forum. And these are these are this is fundamentally going to change the lives of the next how many generations well. If they get that way it will never change because people would never be able to escape from the panoptium panoptium panopticon panopticon we'll get to that. Compenopticon and basil final comment just we got a couple seconds left round this out and I want to bring in the Palantir graphic here but go ahead basil. Well the irony of this universal basic income trial is that one of the selected areas is Jarrow from where of course in 1936 there was the famous Jarrow March the unemployed.

36:08Marching all the way to London demanding jobs as Brian says it hasn't really been thought through at this point but it's part of as you both pointed out really the world of our parents my parents the you know the non digital world that they lived in is fast disappearing and there is so many fronts now on which I think people feel it on which there's a kind of fundamental fundamentally different way that the society is being steered including redefining relationships between the individual and the state and the role of artificial intelligence digital technology in that I mean my mother for example never went online in her entire life that generation are dying out will it even be possible to do that and live in society as an effective actor in the future really we should be able to we should have that choice at least at least in a free country if we are indeed free but bring this up on screen here this is a great presentation here we give credit to the nerve news here but look at this these are the different government departments here connected with Palantir the American based AI company here Brian look at they're touching everything their ministry of defense 300 and a two million GCHQ unknown NHS of course and defra home office

37:35it's it's right there so that's a U.S. company using probably Amazon web servers another U.S. company to host the very loud and buried into the UK with absolutely no accountability the public are just told it's happening but we're not to know what's really going on here but one thing we can be sure about is that the shareholders stripping all the wealth that a UK to wherever that company chooses to be based in order to escape the most taxes as possible and here's here's the the grand puba of this technology Peter feel and look at this I mean the numbers here are just staggering Brian you would say this is basically a corporate takeover of the British state if you want to look at this they to decouple from this it's impossible it would take years once you are hooked up to this system it's very hard to to migrate pull back to pull back in my great data and we're told that is Palantir's business model it's to get people stuck and hooked into it and that's basically a strategy for achieving long-term court clients for this ever growing artificial intelligence Leviathan it's frightening here

38:46and I'll just add a portrait that in some of the instituted government clips that I've listened to their calmly suggesting that more committees should allow in corporate interest to sit alongside elected members in order to be making decisions but for the public absolutely no knowledge of who these people are or a chain of accountability well responsibility and accountability and also the same tech barons Brian are plowing huge sums of money into British politics do you think they want something in return for that investment they're funding podcasts they're funding political parties spin-off parties events all sorts of things these are these are foreign actors with billions of pounds yes capital and they can just throw it wherever they want and they all throw it and get the results they want specific results and I think that's the important bit Basil you're which got a short period left but your thoughts on this

39:46well this of course goes back to Margaret Thatcher and the early days of privatization local councils being forced to issue tenders for rubbish collection that was one of the first things I mean I can remember when rubbish collection was all organized entirely by the local council then suddenly we had private collectors contracting rubbish this Palantir business is where that has led to directly with absolutely everything now being some contracted by government departments to private companies and in this case now a private company heavily invested in AI in digitization and what's more operating across as we see so many different government departments I think it's absolutely abysmal I think it's anti-democratic I also think it's wasteful because Palantir suck money out of the public's pockets for their own benefit for their own profits yeah absolutely well just after coming up to the UK column ads but afterwards we're going to be looking deeper into what's happening in UK politics

40:56and more of these things will come to the surface amongst other things we're going to be listening to Liz Truss speaking but first of all as always a huge thank you huge huge thank you to everybody who's financially supporting the UK column we can only do what we do with your financial support and we're immensely grateful to all the people who've supported us over 20 years this year is our 20th anniversary as many people will know so we're so grateful for everybody that signed up as a paid member monthly or annual basis or you're making donations and or you're buying through the UK column shop if you're listening in today you're not a signed up member and you'd like to be part of the team by helping fund what we're doing click the blue button there to support our work and details will come up on screen anybody who is helping us at the moment and we have some very generous people on board

41:59thank you very very much for your support now I just like to bring up here an ad for a lookout for another one of my gutsy women interviews this is with a lady called Erin who runs a YouTube channel called far from Eden and I'm going to be I have discussed with a feminism and the fact that we've now got an increasing number of women who are flagging up the dangers of feminism and our feminism as an agenda is destroying the lives of many women so watch out for that one to be streamed shortly now tonight at 7pm we've got weekly banter germ warfare with German Charles and Mike Robinson and that as always will be interested so do tune in for that we've also got tonight at 9pm Davos 2025 the West finally admits the rules based order was a lie

42:59and that's part of the Colesars silk and steel podcast so very apt title should be very interested to see what's actually said in that little discussion now on the front front Andrew bridge and a sat in the hot seat to be sketched by Jake under the thousand words part one and that'll be coming out going out on Sunday at 7pm let's just have a little look at this clip as Andrew bridge and sits in the chair in order to be sketched and ultimately presented with a picture can we just put that one across that video please and you've got a hood over your head and someone's kicked you in the face and your nose is bleeding then you put onto the floor of a helicopter you hear the helicopter take off and then a few minutes later the door opens you haven't landed and then you were thrown out of a helicopter that hasn't landed and we were a long way from the cameras and we thought we were having a confidential conversation

44:03it was me telling Boris confidentially that we're definitely going to win the referendum tomorrow and Boris's face you Genesis Malthusian yes what have you got against Stanley so I'm sure that one's going to be very very interesting and rumor has it there'll be more of the UK column team we'll be sitting in that very same chair so we'll see what happens now let's get back into UK politics and the key message of UK column is listen to what people are saying listen to the words listen to the language listen to the plans because this is how we really understand who is controlling the power based system through politics and the civil service now telegraph podcast interviewed Liz Truss and the last day I've just taken a couple of clips please listen to what this lady has to say but did that experience of trying to govern the country a certain way in realising you couldn't

45:06did that change your philosophy of government it radicalised up right I was already of the view that the British state didn't work and being a minister for 10 years starting as a junior minister in education I was constantly battling officialdom and also other people in the Conservative Party and often it was difficult to distinguish between officialdom and other people in the Conservative Party to do the right thing so I had huge fights over education policy huge fights over the trade deals that I wanted to do, huge fights over environment policy but I still believed that the system could be reformed with a few tweaks and that the people more senior in a hierarchy than me were simply too weak or too wet to do what was needed

46:06but when I got to the top I realised the sheer force of the administrative state and the relatively powerless position the Prime Minister is in now in modern Britain I believe that Liz Truss has said some really really important things there because she's admitting she knew nothing when she was in the system but when she got to the top she started to understand what was really happening the immense power of the state and then the next thing we have to ask ourselves who is controlling the state and that immense power and clearly it's not politicians this is where the funding that you've talked about a part comes in and the immense wealth of the corporates who are now fully embedded in the system of government itself so a big shock for Liz Truss but at least she's had the courage to actually admit that on camera

47:09I've got another clip but before we show that, Basil if I can just bring you in I don't know if you'd like to make any comments on the young ladies efforts What it reminded me of yes Minister and its successor yes Prime Minister she sounded like the blonde herd version of Jim Hacker totally unable to affect any change because of the monolithic civil service in that programme of course headed by Sir Humphrey I mean it could have been lifted straight out of that it could have been she ended by saying the state doesn't work and I think this is one of the areas where she still doesn't understand the state doesn't work but it's not supposed to do what the democratic system is not working for us it's not working for the democratic system it's working for its own ends let's have a look at part two of the UK columns take on Liz Truss so that did radicalise me yes

48:10so if you as a reforming Prime Minister said you wanted to do something what were the forces that prevented you from doing it? so let's take the example of what actually happened which is I put together a budget which I believed would reduce the deficit increase the country's growth put Britain on a better path the counterfactual has been shown to have failed you know the debt is worse growth levels are worse unemployment is higher even indicators like guilt are worse than they were in 2022 but what happened is when I put that forward the Bank of England which are unelected the night before the mini budget unbeknownst to me announced the sale of 40 billion pounds worth of government guilt and then in the days afterwards their failure to regulate the pensions industry led to a market crisis they blamed me for it

49:11and what I saw was the entire system backed them rather than me and when I say system I'm not just talking about the treasury and the office of budget responsibility which is part of it I'm talking about the senior voices in the media I'm talking about the establishment overall see what I saw was the so-called independent parts of government taking decisions that affect people's lives and being utterly unaccountable for them I mean her revelations Brian aren't unlike dominant Cummings revelations after he left Boris Johnson's cabinet but Basil what do you think about this? she's insinuating that the head of lettuce rotted because the fridge wasn't working properly what did you glean from this? I think the system works exactly as it's supposed to interesting she pointed out that senior voices in the media

50:15helped with the destruction of her premiership because we're always supposed to believe that the media has no power or is independent she does indicate that there seems to be a syndicate effectively an alliance bank of England, senior civil servants other senior politicians and media who put a straight jacket on what any elected official can do absolutely so there's a lot in her words and this is why I say to the audience it's so important that you do give whoever it is the opportunity to speak to hear what they have to say because these gems are coming out the government democratic of course not now let's switch to Andy Burnham and the reason that I'm going to bring him up on screen is that he's been involved recently with the Institute of Government as well and what is his big topic? Well aside from everything to do with mayors we also found very quickly that he was involved with innovation zero

51:15and I'm sure Monday Ben Rubin will be taking a little look at this but why do I need to highlight this to the audience? Well this organisation says its mission is to accelerate a just global transition to a low carbon economy we do this by connecting innovators, funders, policymakers and business leaders from across sectors and from all corners of the globe so this is well away from elected government we do this is what we do let's have a listen to Mr Burnham engaging with the Institute of Government Andy to come to you some of Rowena's points we're treating this morning it's made the argument that particularly perhaps those on the left shouldn't argue that the state can't function or that there's something fundamentally wrong with the state they should be sort of active agents in leading the state through that I wanted to get your reflections on that

52:15but also thinking particularly clearly you know an understandable service and the structural government for your time as a minister particularly working with the government system that we have as Mayor of Manchester what's your reflection on how things might need to change? Well from my point of view the state does need to change and we're moving quickly now to an all devolved England we have a Mayor's council that is becoming increasingly functional Mayor's asked for powers over taxi licensing you know we have home office abolishing police and crime commissioners and integrating them with mayoral combined authorities like I've had for almost a decade and I think that's the right reform you then turn to growth, the growth mission specifically the ongoing resistance of the Department for Education to devolve meaningfully post-16 education is a limitation on growth

53:15it's not justified I don't think for departments still to be resisting devolution So it's devolution and more devolution and growth now we've edited what he said we haven't taken anything out of context to give you the breadth of what he talked about but it's all about completely changing the structure of government more power for the Mayor's and the city states and it's going to happen he's sending you it's going to happen never discussed on the floor of the house in any detail but Andy Burnham at least being honest as he jerks around in the high-tech digital age that did make me smile slightly but let's go on and listen to the second part of what he had to say which we've edited into little clips to get more context to what he's actually talking about in the time available devolution is the direction devolution is bringing growth not just here

54:15but in other city regions as well so why are they allowed just to make us fight endlessly you know it's attritional you know we spend so much of our time making the case for devolution to the parts of the system that don't want to and the answer let me just by finish on this point see for me the word rewiring you know Rowena rightly asked for a definition rewiring relates to the flow of power doesn't it relates to modernizing systems so that the flow of power is better and in the right direction and I would say you know the unelected state whitehall currently holds too much power and indeed in my experience of 16 years in Westminster the whip system disempowers the elected state because often MPs are required to rub a stamp the long-held departmental positions and it's a brave minister that kind of unilaterally will go and try and change it it can do but it doesn't often happen

55:17I personally believe the answer to this to a more functional Britain is a major reform of the elected state Westminster to mirror what's being done now in the local state out in out in the world that I'm in which is about place-based mission-oriented delivery very much focused around growth So Andrew Burnham is actually telling the truth that don't worry about Westminster the power is all going to be in the city states with the mayors he and his colleagues will have the power including over the police and there's going to be a complete restructuring we'll talk about this whole affair and how it works more in UK column extra but let's just remind our audience of the power of this mayors system and these super cities the global parliament of mayors is a good place to go and if you look at some of the media articles

56:17that they put out over time you get a lot out of it so in defence of democracy Europe needs an urban reset everything is going to be broken down and changed we might be using an American city model presumably with people in tents sleeping on the streets there's Los Angeles and we've got compassionate cities apparently has a complement to declining welfare provisions so you can't feed yourself but don't worry the city will have a sign saying it's a compassionate city free coffee and biscuits and here we've got decide recharge democracy and human rights in cities and who's actually pushing this well it's the European Union EU charter explained so this is about a major major change in what we think is democracy and how it works and I'm just going to bring up two very brief little clips here from Rodney Atkinson

57:18Rodney is very elderly but he's been a campaigner over many many years warning about the dangers of the European Union and its organisation let's just listen to what he has to say and just as the domestic populations are attacked marginalised and their democratic systems undermined by corporatism at home so that corporatism extends itself through big corporations and banks into aggression abroad and in particular the advance of NATO and the European Union towards the former Soviet block and the Russian border over the last 30 years so you see a direct connection between domestic and international affairs between domestic suppression of

58:18dissent in so-called democratic countries on the one hand and the expansion of corporate internationalism and globalism on the other so that wonderful Rodney Atkinson still going very very astute man and we can still see that working let's just look at this little 20 second clip where he mentions the European Union European Union is the sort of classic corporatist bureaucratic authoritarian centralised system which is inimical to all democracy and the nation-state which support democracy and loyalty to democratic institutions but well there you are and if you want to see more about Rodney Atkinson and his story at work, have a look at the three nations

59:18website, we just pop that up on screen and this gentleman has done so much work over the years and particularly exposing what he describes as the resurgence of continental style fascism which I don't think is far from what we are seeing in 2026. Now this is the point for the audience that all of these plans of the so-called rules based international order are coming from unelected men and women planning what's clearly a dystopian future and beyond to no illusions it's here with the united nation sorry it's here with global parliament of mayors writing to the united nations and what are they actually calling for the formalised participation of cities in international decision making process so forget Westminster it's going to be the mayor of your local city that's not only going to be sorting your future out but supposedly with his colleagues

1:00:18the future of the country it's just incredible which will future be Brian the corporation of Manchester like the corporation of London like the corporation of Plymouth the corporatisation of the city state that's where it's going to have this type of control you have to control every individual you are going to need a police state that is beyond anything we can imagine at the moment and what does Britain need Brian but another police force or policing let's take a look at this how the British FBI will work did you hear about this folks well yes it's happening the national police service the British FBI we're told it's going to target organized crime i thought that's what the national crime agency was supposed to be doing a few years ago another new agency but nope we need another new agency here the British FBI the NPS will only operate in England Wales as policing is devolved as policing is devolved in Scotland

1:01:18and Northern Ireland here and here the NPS will bring together responsibilities of the national crime agency counterterrorism policing regional city regional organized crime units national road policing and will be in charge of providing professional standards and training requirements purchasing new equipment etc kind of like the Department of Homeland Security in that sense in America which is a giant gravy train now but here's the bit at the end Brian I thought was the most interesting their job includes the overseeing of the nationwide rollout of the controversial which we'll talk to Basil Valentine in a moment but before we do that watch this clip this is silky Carla is bringing a case against the state on this very issue of facial recognition listen closely how could anyone not get a massive chill down the spine when they read shabby moods comments weekend

1:02:18that she envisages a penopticon the structure was the idea of a penopticon is that you could bent them right it's bent them the idea of a self-pleasing prison through total surveillance as the model for great Britain and as part of that that she envisages ramping up facial recognition up and down the country five times as many facial recognition cameras up and down the country today I was in the high court challenging the metropolitan police use of live facial recognition which I think is expensive and not in accordance with the law but this is really it's an issue for the courts to consider but ultimately parliament my goodness are we going to get a debate on the floor of the House of Commons on this issue the policy is already set I mean it is it's obvious and overwhelming now that the control of the political agenda in this country is through the corporates and of course it's it has the power of the banks behind it because you need the money to run the system

1:03:18so the idea there's any form of meaningful debate I think is well passed Basel Valentine I want to get your comment on this and last story of the program the Home Secretary Shabbana Mahmoud I don't recall having a background in constructing penoptic cons if we're looking at her resume what she did previously what is this going on here and why are we always presented with these heads of ministerial departments that bring in these sweeping changes and then suddenly they're they're rotated out after the policy is put in place and given a period or a knighthood what are your just general thoughts on this new police force Basel and this whole idea that we need to construct a penopticon in Britain well it wasn't in the Labor Party manifesto at the last general election I can tell you that much 140 million pounds being invested the claim is that it will say

1:04:18millions of dollars and those hours we will be redeployed to the streets A.I. technology which is where the money is going he's going to be deployed to rapidly analyze CCTV mobile phone footage and doorbell footage detecting deep fakes carrying out digital forensics and all to speed up administrations such as form-filling reduction and transcription 43 regional police forces around the UK are no longer fit for purpose and as we've been talking about we need this centralized digitized system. Now I'm one of two of the smaller police forces have really been rolling out. Pilot schemes for this and the UK's home office procurement agency blue light commercial

1:05:20reviews who didn't know that's the body of the post office charged with subcontracting to private companies and they've confirmed that the Israeli-based firm Corsite AI have been subcontracted by the subcontractor digital barriers to provide the artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition software. So we can look forward you know when we people chant at rallies we are all Palestinians. Perhaps they know why now because amongst the people listed as being on the board of Corsite is Major General Jura Elland and he said to have given his name to the so-called Generals Plan to isolate and starve northern Gaza in October 2024 that's who's going to be powering the AI facial recognition software but we can talk more about that after the break. Rotested in Gaza Brian once again deployed on your streets in Europe and

1:06:22Britain it's unbelievable. You can say it's hidden in plain sight now or it's emerging into the light but it's becoming very very clear that the population of UK as a whole is being disenfranchised from its own system of government and that ultimately threatens everybody living in this country no matter what color you are, what religion, how long you've been here because this isn't a malicious system unfolding. We must end today's news there. As all I'm going to say thank you very much for joining me Patrick thank you. We will be back in a few minutes for UK column extra for our UK column member so we look forward to seeing members then but for the rest of our audience today thank you very much for joining us think about joining up and taking out a membership with UK column spread the word warn your friends also have a relaxing weekend we'll be back at 1 o'clock on Monday see you then bye-bye.

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