Optimistic and Changing the World – so OPTIMISTIC

27:01Peace agreement? I think Trump has got Putin boxed in. And I think it's been very clever delivering in the Middle East and putting real pressure on Putin. I think the main way pressure can be put on Putin is by energy dominance. is by producing so much energy that it makes the Russian reserves less valuable. I think it's all about economics.

27:25Shelley:That's what he's got to do. But Europe isn't going to turn its back on the pipeline, do you think? Or stop buying Russian oil? Well, they're not. The Europeans are hypocrites, as we know. But also the Indians have been bypassing the sanctions. And I think it's very difficult to get global sanctions on oil because it's a fungible product. So you think it's the energy, not the tomahawks, that they're going to be talking about? I think the energy is crucial. Absolutely crucial. But I think, you know, Putin cannot be allowed to win this. Right. Because what message does it send to President Xi about what happens about Taiwan?

28:13Shelley:do you miss being in the thick of it or are you enjoying having a long leisurely Friday lunch with me and Jonathan and all of your people so I it's very intense so I had like an intense 10 years in government that is like really intense and the last bit was very intense because I was foreign secretary when the Ukraine war kicked off and and it's you can't how can I put this it's just like one thing after another you're constantly active so I have more time to think and also you're very insulated which is very frustrating so all the things I'm thinking now about politics and about the blog I kind of knew it I was fighting it but I was on the front line and I didn't have time to amass the network or the resources to take them on.

29:11Right. I just had to fight every battle. And, you know, the conclusion I came to was you cannot win from politics alone because the pressure from outside, from the media, from the, you know, the sort of financial incentives, all of that pressure is so powerful on politics that actually, if we are going to save Britain, save the West, which is the title of my book, we have to deal with that too so but it was fun, don't get me wrong it was fun and there were great moments and crazy moments it was historic and epic I sort of talk about this I talk about this in the book there were so many crazy things that went wrong and you know but I had got to the end of the road of what could be achieved within the current structures.

30:12That's the point. I literally pulled the levers as hard as I could. And it still didn't work. This is the message that I'm delivering to people in Britain, which is we need a total system change in Britain. We can't go on like this. The country is headed for a financial disaster. or we're headed for a spiritual and social and moral disaster. It's a very serious situation. And we need to mobilize more resources from outside government. And it's also what I'm saying to people here in the US. Right. That there's a serious problem in Europe, and we need your help in getting a MAGA revolution or a mega revolution to make Europe great again.

31:00Shelley:Well, isn't that the premise of Verity? let's talk about the Verity Foundation it's very new and it's very ambitious so what the purpose of our foundation is is to take on the the sort of the left wing blob that has been running Europe into the ground and to promote Christian values to promote free speech and to promote the nation state that's what the purpose of the foundation is and we need to get support for that in order to be able to take on these forces that are well financed they've been in power for a long time this is why they fight so hard you know everything from ej antoni to you know everything else they fight so hard because they don't and we need to fight back and we need to create the infrastructure and one of the problems we have in Britain is because our permanent bureaucracy is so powerful it hasn't allowed the space for politics to grow.

32:11So our political infrastructure is very weak. You know, the Conservative Party was hollowed out, completely hollowed out, without the thinking, without the wherewithal, without the people to actually be able to implement the policy. So we need to build that infrastructure And I guess that's my point about being in government. You know, I literally did all I could. Right. You know, I literally pulled everything on the field. I literally did all I could. And that was the maximum that I was able to do without more infrastructure, more external support. So that's what I want to build now. So you're starting a network.

32:51Shelley:And what is the media aspect of it? well what we want to do in Britain and Europe is build up independent media so in the same way in America you have the development of things like Megyn Kelly Joe Rogan Shelley's podcast all of these independent media outlets in Britain we don't currently and in Europe we have less infrastructure supporting that so we want to build up that infrastructure we've also got like a more powerful state-funded media so the bbc right which is known as the britain broadcasting sorry the the britain bashing corporation is known as um but it's found to be very anti-israel it's you know very one-sided on issues like climate change it's very anti-conservative so we need a network a media that's going to take this on and we also want to fight for free speech.

33:54Shelley:Right. Because the other thing that's happening in Britain is people are being arrested for saying things. I mean it's extraordinary that being arrested. It's impossible for me to get that through my brain and so it hasn't seemed in but I hear that's happening and it doesn't make any sense. It's absolutely true. So the comedian Graham Lineman was arrested at Heathrow Airport for posting about transgender and saying that men are men and women are women. And he was arrested. arrested like what was the premise so that he was engaging in hate speech there was also a woman who was arrested and jailed lucy connolly and she was jailed for you know posting on x you know something you know it's very negative about asylum asylum accommodation you know so it was in the immediate aftermath of the um southport attacks she deleted it four hours later because she thought better of it it was it was incendiary she was jailed for 31 months for that 31 months i know i mean there were people getting off child pornography charges for less so yeah what has happened is that the police have been captured by woke ideology and they are going after you know people for these types of violations.

35:22It's so chilly. I know. We almost can't believe it. We can't believe it in Britain. And even people that I've been debating with on X, I find that they've been visited late at night in their house for something they've posted. It's really quite extraordinary.

35:44Shelley:Is there anybody in the Conservative Party that's standing up to this? Well, to a to a certain extent and there are people like Suella Braverman who've spoken out on this issue but I don't think they're making enough of it I don't think I think it's a bit like boiling the frog people and one of the problems is that the key piece of legislation the online harms bill was actually passed by the Conservative government so it was the Conservative government legislation that's being used to arrest these people. So the way I would put it, and I said I thought all of this started when Mrs Thatcher was deposed.

36:30It really goes back to the 1990s, the problems. So what happened was Blair got in. He then made all these changes to Britain, such as the judiciary, the economic system. He took the power away from politicians. He gave it to these left-wing bureaucrats and judges. That's basically what happened. How did he have that much power at the time? Was there just an overwhelming majority? Yeah, when you've got a majority in Britain, you can do pretty much anything, provided the MPs are prepared to vote for it. So all of those Blair laws can be overturned within a year. Oh. If you get a majority that is prepared to do that.

37:10But the problem was, rather than the Conservatives opposing this stuff, they were mesmerized by Blair so in an Obama sense

37:24Shelley:like he was so cool so David Cameron said I want to be the heir to Blair you know they called Blair the master these people like they called Blair the master I know but of what like just the master he's just like the master it's you know and it was people like there were lots of them but you know Michael gave David Cameron, George Osborne, all of the writers at the Times, all of the sort of... You write about Michael Gove or mention him a lot. Yeah, he's one of the key people. And so when they went into the office, the whole mindset was, how can we be a better version of Blair? Not, Blair is completely put a fire under our country and it's burning down.

38:14and I think it was and this is why we can't deport illegal immigrants because of the Human Rights Act or because of the judiciary we can't make the economy grow because of the Bank of England and the Office of Budget Responsibility these institutions have made it impossible because basically Blair rigged the playing field against us and this is a bit I see parallels with what happened with Bush in America that he wasn't prepared that a lot of Republicans went along with some of those things. They went along. And Trump takes no prisoners. He's just not willing to go along with that stuff and he's willing to call it out.

38:55He doesn't care if he's popular or not popular. He says whatever he thinks. I'm going to do it now. He says whatever he thinks. But the mindset of the Conservative Party was much more like the mindset of the Bush Republicans. Right. It's better to put it like that. but Blair so when I got elected as leader in 2022 it was all about taking that one but my fundamental problem was that they were more powerful than me. Nobody was ready to do it yeah but also your party wasn't ready to do it. Correct they were but so many of them were still in the air to Blair mindset and a lot of them are just you know conservatives in name only they don't actually believe in so you know during covid we put in this very stringent lockdown you know vast amounts of money were spent and we even had a conservative prime minister theresa may put forward a gender self-id bill which we were talking about that with the elliots which allowed which would allow men to say they're women and women say they're men you know so what i discovered was that a lot of my party were alone so yeah so if you go back to the the way the British system works.

40:08The answer is you can change everything with a majority, but we did not have a majority of real Conservatives who were prepared to walk through fire because we know how dirty the left fight.

40:19Shelley:Right. And those Conservatives weren't prepared to be unpopular. They weren't prepared to say net zero is going to ruin our economy. Let's get fracking. One of the big fights I had with Conservative MPs were over fracking. Yeah. And I said it's the only way we're actually going to lower energy prices and make British industry competitive like they've done in America. And they're like, no, we don't want to do this. So that was the fundamental problem. And it's why we got annihilated at the 2024 election, because the public were just thinking, well, what is the point of voting conservative if I just get Labour light?

40:54Shelley:Right. I just think that this administration really reexamines things from an incredibly interesting and fresh viewpoint. like it or lump it. Contrable class principles. Yes. But also, and from an attitude that it can be done, the immigration situation in our country has been a terrifically difficult situation, and it was almost like Social Security. It's like the third rail. You know, everybody kept saying, it's bad, it's bad, but nothing can be done. And the president stepped on a lot of eggs or whatever, you know, and is a bull in a China shop but what he did in six months exactly it's the only way and this is what people will say and they kind of said it to me they say we don't like instability we don't like chaos but when you're fighting the blob right there's going to be chaos right and you know and it's not going to be perfect it's going to be perfect and the only way to do it is actually the way Trump is doing it which is right you flood the zone you announce all the things you get it done straight away you don't take any prisoners you're and i think that going back to the the sort of previous republicans prior to trump is that they weren't really prepared to take the establishment on correct and the establishment had become left-wing correct and it's exactly the same story as britain which is why which is why i think britain is fixable because i think you know things can be done.

42:28Shelley:You're listening to Lunch with Shelley. Well, what did you think about living in number 11 rather than number 10 Downing Street? Well, as I say in my book, it was infested with fleas. Right. And I think one of the big problems, which does need to be fixed as well, is that the Prime Minister in Britain is not properly looked after. Right. So Boris almost nearly died of COVID. There's no medical staff in number 10. There's not, you don't have a sort of caterer. You've got to do things like sort out your own shopping. And you were talking about your hair, right? And hair and makeup and stuff like that.

43:09So all of these things that really as a senior leader you would expect to just be there and you would have that support, they just aren't there. It was surprising to read about that. It's a big problem. and I think the British system needs to be completely changed, it's just not working and you've essentially got a system where the British Prime Minister is in effect in a similar role to the US President they're treated like that by the media the media think they're all powerful they can simply pull levers and get them done, they have all their support, they don't and that is a problem because then people get disappointed.

43:56You know, what we're seeing now, you know, with Keir Starmer as the most unpopular Prime Minister ever, is, you know, record levels of disappointment.

44:03Shelley:Right. That they're not actually getting what they thought they were getting. So I think that's a big problem. You also write about how it was very insulating. Yeah. I mean, it's like being in a prison. Like, it's quite a nice prison. Okay, please. But it's, you know, you can't leave without going with a police escort. Right. You know, you don't, I'm somebody who just likes to walk about and think, and you just can't do that. It's very isolating, very isolating. I love that you're saying that post your prime ministerial position that you have more time to think because it's really important. Yeah.

44:46Shelley:I mean, thinking is, I used to call my father, I'd talk to my father all the time, but sometimes I would call him and say, what are you doing? And he would say, I think that's mine, and he would say, I'm just thinking. And he's the only person that I knew that was thinking as an active effort. Yeah. You know, like he wasn't like, oh, I'm doing nothing. Like it was actually something going on. Like he needed to think. And I really admire that. And I think in this world of technology, for lack of a better way to say it, people don't really have time to think because there's always something beeping or going on.

45:25Shelley:And being active feels better. Yeah. So. But also, I think that like these these kind of government positions have been sort of de. I was a de skilled, de think. but in the i was reading some of the stuff from the 80s about how you know lawson and co came up with their budgets you know they didn't have social media they didn't have 24-hour news they didn't have all this requirement to be present the whole time right and you know they spent a lot of time just on the weekend with each other talking thinking yeah and that doesn't happen and the thinking has been outsourced right and everybody's become used to the thinking being outsourced so they think well i don't know what does the cbo think or what does the blah thing and actually those decisions and thinking should sit with the politicians themselves right and the whole like the whole structure mitigates against that totally and i'm somebody who thinks to myself i mean the ideas that i put forward in the mini budget were my ideas i developed them the treasury didn't like them they went along with them but you know because i believe that's what politics should be about i don't think politics should be about you know you're a front man and you're just basically acting right you're an actor and you've got these policies that somebody else has provided and then you do a good job of delivering them that's not what that's not leadership that's not what people want to see but i think it is what's happened which is why trump is so different from European politicians.

47:07And if you compare Trump to like Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, they're just automatons. Everyone knows they're briefed by the officials. They read out their lines. Trump just posts stuff on True Social. And everything that he does is off the cuff.

47:22Shelley:It's in his brain. Well, I think he thinks about it in advance. Correct. He does think about it in advance, but that is what politics should be. And that's what politics was 200 years ago. Right. But it isn't now. And Trump is the counter example. So what I really like is in the book, you say that you were trying to get pumped up for some speech and you were listening to Queen and Whitney Houston. So are those your go-tos? Like, what music are you into? They're great motivational. Right. Like, I think, I was just watching the start of the Whitney movie. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you've seen that, but yeah.

47:59She's a great, I mean, honestly.

48:02Shelley:my mother broke her hip because she was so enamored with Whitney Houston she ran during the funeral she ran to go to the bathroom and slipped and fell because she was so into Whitney she was like running because she didn't want to miss anything yeah anyway I am not as big of a fan as she is so Whitney I just remember so I was living in Leeds which is probably a bit like Is it like Philadelphia or Wilkes-Barre? It's like a northern industrial town. Oh, then it's more like Wilkes-Barre. Yeah, but it's got... Okay, but it's not like Philly. It's got a population of about 200 ,000 people. Okay. More like Wilkes-Barre.

48:47Okay, it's like Wilkes-Barre. Or Scranton.

48:49Shelley:Okay. Anyway, so... And I remember I Want to Dance came out. And, you know, Whitney's second album. I Want to Dance with Somebody. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and Whitney's second album. And I remember going into the center of Leeds and buying the album and dancing with my friends in our... I was about 11 or 12 at the time. That's fun. And it was Whitney and Madonna. Those were the two ones that we absolutely loved. It was so good. That's cool. So I love Whitney. So, and what about Queen? I love Queen as well. Yeah. And Freddie Mercury is such a great character. Yeah. He's really compelling. and it's a kind of magic.

49:30It's one of my motivational songs. It's very good.

49:33Shelley:How does it go? It's a kind of magic. I don't know. You don't know your one. Well, you know, I was really into the Stones and then second to the Stones, I was very into The Who, which are actually older than I am. I just always liked older classic music, classic rock. But I didn't realize how much I liked Queen until the movie came out. I mean, I always liked Queen, but their body of work was incredible. They are incredible. They're, like, very underrated for the amount of good songs they've done. Yeah. I totally agree. I totally agree. And then what was the Bob Geldof concert? Live Aid. Exactly.

50:14Shelley:They killed Live Aid. And they were, like, the last band or something. Anyway, so what else is on your playlist? On my playlist? Yeah, for music. Are you into British music? I love Britpop, you know, so Oasis and Pulp. I went to see Pulp recently, Jarvis Cockroach. It was an amazing concert. Are you going to see Oasis? No, I didn't get tickets for that. You should. I mean, are they still on tour? I think they finished. Oh, okay. I think they finished their tour. Were you shocked that they got back together? No. No, they needed the money. Yeah, right. Everybody. That's why bands always get back together.

50:50Shelley:I know, I know. So what do you do as a family to relax? or do you all go in four directions when you're relaxing? We do a lot of walking. Yeah, that's good. So we do a lot of eating. So we're just about to go on this tour of the East Coast and we will be eating. Right. So we're getting to, you know, we want to have the Philly cheesesteaks. We want to have the Maryland crab cakes. You know. Yeah, do the whole thing. Exactly. That's cool. And we talk a lot about politics. I'm afraid because it's kind of... So the girls are into it? Like, they kind of can't avoid it. Right. That's cool. It's sort of unavoidable, isn't it?

51:29And do you read? Yeah, I read.

51:31Shelley:I read. Everybody has to read. But do you read novels or just serious stuff? I do read novels and serious stuff. I like into... And I read crime. I love crime fiction. Do you? I love it. That's cool. Well, here's my last question then before I bore you to tears. If you were going to eat anywhere in the world, where would you be and what would you be eating? Wow, that's a difficult, very difficult question. Well, you can take your time. There's so many. I love food in the same many places that I've been obsessed with. Like, I love Spanish food. Really? It's amazing. Would you be in Spain or just eating Spanish food?

52:13I might be in San Sebastian touring the Pinchos bars.

52:17Shelley:Wow. I don't even know where that is. I know. It's probably the most amazing food city in the world. Where is it? So it's northern Spain. Okay. And essentially what they have is like, there's lots of great restaurants, but they also have these pinch-off spas with all these like mini bites of different things. Oh, yeah. And they compete with how amazing they are. Wow. It's just, I love that. Do you have to go through a market or like can you sit at one place and they just bring you little bites? You can sit at one place. They're like restaurants. you can they're very good it's a really that's like one of my favorite food places tokyo is amazing as well i do love sushi i love sushi um do you like eel like what would you be having i've got a friend who loves eel and she made me like eel in five different ways so it's like this is eels okay like right this is an eel too far i was actually just thinking when you said about food Dave the pizza rossa that they have in Rome just very thin pizza with the tomato on top it's so simple it's so great it's so perfect so I like that kind of thing just the perfect pared down thing right sitting at a cafe somewhere yeah in one of those bakeries where they slice it out I've got so many favorite food places I could go on for a long time Well, that's good.

53:47I actually love Texas where they weigh the barbecue stuff. Oh, right. So you have the pork thing and you can order like half a pound of ribs. Yeah. That's great. Love that.

54:01Shelley:And spicy or not spicy? Spicy. Me too. Always spicy. Can you go very hot? Very spicy. Me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, hopefully we'll be in Texas together. Well, all right. So what do I put you down for? Spain, Rome, and Texas? And maybe Tokyo? That's just like a short... You're very international. I know. And pancakes. I thought you were going to say pancakes at some point. I love pancakes. I do love pancakes. Pancakes for lunch? I know, she mentions it in her book. I do like pancakes. I like making pancakes. So there's a difference between what I cook and what I would like to eat out.

54:39There's a difference. So that's the kind of thing I make at home. And maybe you don't make it for lunch.

54:45Shelley:no so you're just an international lunch diner Liz that's what I'll put you down I just like a food food obsessive yeah you're asking what my hobbies are that basically is my hobby food I love it kind of is oh my god I'm so glad to know you well on that note actually I will say I am so glad to know you and um I just think you're incredible and I am super super grateful that you sat down with me for lunch. It's a great pleasure. Oh, it's my pleasure. We've experienced some of the local specialties. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for being on. Everyone, I'm sure you really liked this episode. I hope you liked this episode as much as I love to tape it with Liz.

55:30Shelley:Please check out other episodes at www.lunchwithshelly.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And in the meantime, and as always, peace, love, and lunch. Thank you.