“F***ing Bullsh*t!” Iran War Talks COLLAPSE Over Israel + Cenk Uygur BANNED From UK

I go to the airport and they just say that I've been rejected.20 minutes later, that Times article that you mentioned, Pierce, comes out, and it says, because I criticize Israel, over 60 % of Americans are critical of Israel.Will we all be banned from the UK?

I disagree with Cenk on basically everything, and the United Kingdom, or at least their government, hate Israel.

Valentina Gomez, I think she's an appalling human being who just wants to whip up racial hatred.Who would you not let in?

I don't even agree with you on Valentina Gomez.Really?Yeah, she's a nutcase, but so what?I believe we're the only family to have two members banned from Britain.Are we the most dangerous family in the world?

I'm happy to host you and Cenk and all these other guys, too, because this is, as we say over here, fucking bullshit.

Well, coming up, the debate that was too hot for Britain to handle.Cenk Uygur returns to the show after being barred from entering Britain.We'll begin with Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show, and the breaking news of Iran pulling out of ceasefire talks over Israel's escalating attacks on Lebanon.Megan, great to see you.

You as well, Piers.What a news day.

Amazing news day.And literally as we're about to start this chat, we've got this breaking news of Iran suspending talks with the US, now announcing they're moving to completely block the Strait of Hormuz again.And we know how damaging that has been to date for the global economy, never mind anything else.You know, you and I have talked about this war now since the start of it and expressed deep reservations about what it was supposed to be achieving and how it would be achieved and how long it would all take.Here we are months into this and it's going nowhere, isn't it?

Yeah.And Israel's gotten its way again, which is to clear the deal by bombing Lebanon over and over and over.I mean, the so -called ceasefire was meant to include Lebanon.And our side said that from the beginning.And the Pakistani mediator said that when he announced the ceasefire, only Israel deniedthat was part of the deal negotiated by us with Iran.

And they began bombing Lebanon.already, like, messing up the ceasefire right from the get -go.And then they spoke to President Trump, and President Trump apparently ceded the argument to Bibi and allowed him to bomb Lebanon.And off we were to the races, where the ceasefire was never really all that ceasefire -y.And here they are bombing them yet again, as we reach this tentative deal where we say, OK, let's have no more bombing in clarity from the beginning that Israel refuses to abide by our attempted promise to have it stop bombing Lebanon.And that's been a problem in putting this thing to rest from the beginning.

And I don't see it letting up anytime soon.The Israelis are determined to do to Beirut what they did to Gaza.And no one seems inclined to stop them.We're really the only ones who can stop them.And we don't seem to have that as an agenda item.So our ceasefire is falling apart as our attempt to put an end on a wider basis to this war falls apart.

And the real problem here is that the Iranians know we don't have any cards to play.We've done what we can do.And President Trump, to his credit, is not willing to sacrifice more American blood and treasure.on this war, which was never ours to begin with, because he understands there's zero support back home for that.And therefore, we don't have the muscle to force Iran into doing anything.And they know it.

They understand that we're in a weakened position and that they really don't have we don't have any cards to play.You know, this standoff in the strait is hurting President Trump.It's hurting the Iranians, too.But we had calculated from the beginning that they would never play that card.They wouldn't.seize the straight.

It would be too economically painful for them.And we underestimated how much pain they're willing to inflict on themselves in order to hurt us.And we're not barbarians here.We don't have an Iranian Revolutionary Guard running our country that doesn't really give two figs about its countrymen, as they do.And we underestimated their capacity for self -pain.And now we're paying the price, as we had the U .

S.and the world into a potential national and then global recession as we head into a midterm election cycle that the president's party cannot afford to lose.We assume we're going to lose the House on Team GOP.But now more and more political pundits are predicting that the Republicans are going to lose the Senate as well.And the map doesn't get any easier for Republicans two years after.these midterms when we go into 2028 with a presidential election and yet another election for House members in some Senate seats.

So all the math is bad.We don't have the cards to play.It's already a quagmire.Yes, it's only 13 weeks or whatever it is, but it's already a quagmire because there's no easy solution left, even if we just pack up our bags and leave, which is what we should do.

You know what, that's what I've been saying is take any kind of Pyrrhic victory you like, but get out of this because there's not going to be some great total surrender as Donald Trump talked about early on.There's not going to be a dismantling of the IRGC.They now know if they control the Strait of Hormuz, they basically can have the cards, right?And they know if they want to let off some rockets at their neighboring Gulf states, that will just intensify the pressure, which means that the military battle being waged by America and Israel with the bombardment and so on, yeah, fine, you can win that.But what you can't do is you can't stop the Iranians controlling the waterways.which are the waterways to the world's energy.

You know, Donald Trump has posted on True Social a little earlier, President Trump.Now the problem with that is the person who's doing most of the chirping is President Trump.right, who is telling us in real time every day either there's about to be a great deal or he's about to wipe Iran off the face of the earth and so on and so on.Constant mixed messaging, very extremes either way.He is leading the agenda here himself.The chirping is coming from Donald Trump.

And, you know, my message to him back would be, don't worry what other people are saying about this.I would stop being so vocal.on your social media feeds and try and work a way to extricate the United States from this before the damage becomes irreparable.

The only way to force the Iranians to give us what we want in Iran is with boots on the ground and there is zero appetite for that here amongst the American people.Right.And especially because the war was never sold to us.It never had majority support.The reasoning for it has been all over the board.The first thing that was really said publicly was we did it for Israel.

And then they realized that caused quite a backlash.They tried to tell us that wasn't true, but it's all on tape from the House speaker and the secretary of state slash national security adviser.And so there's never been majority support.And as things have gotten worse and stickier and weirder and harder, the support that was there is starting to dwindle.even amongst Republicans now.there's less and less support, and President Trump knows that.

For the first time that I've watched him in history, he's not attacking the polls as wrong or biased or unreliable, because it's all the polls from every single outlet that say he's underwater with every constituency.He's lost all the gains he made with Latinos.He's lost all the gains he made with black voters.He has lost the white working class.That is as core MAGA as you can get.Once you've lost them as President Donald Trump, you have no one left other than the boomer crowd watching Fox News.

That's the only one still in his corner.And that's not enough.That's not enough to keep the Republicans in power in the House and the Senate.And if he loses both of those bodies going into this November, he's immediately a lame duck.And not just that, but he's facing two years of investigations of himself and his family and every executive order and every allegation of corruption that's been leveled against him and his family.I mean, he's really back to what was happening to him when he was out of power those four years.

So the chirping, though, I mean, it's really amazing because the president was the chief critic of the wars that we had in Iraq and our involvement in the Middle East.And that's one of the reasons why he was elected president, for all the chirping he did, giving voice to those who are very skeptical of our wars over there.It's one of the reasons why he was elected.And now he's gone and done the very thing he promised us he wouldn't do.without getting the majority support.And so sure, he's got a lot of critics, not only on the left, but on the right too.

And he's not going to silence them by saying, stop criticizing me.That's not the way this works.No one supported this and no one but the hardcore neocons wanted it.So you still have those guys sort of in your corner, sort of, they're starting to drift as you won't launch a ground war against them.And they're going to be gone from him in two seconds, Pierce, if this deal is basically reopen the strait and here's $12 billion in your Iranian assets that we had under our control, which is what the deal is looking like.That's what it's starting to look like, which just puts us back to square one.

Only Iran is a lot richer and has a new weapon, a geopolitical weapon, the strait, which it didn't know it had.with no progress on the nuclear front.Those people are going to abandon him in two seconds flat.But he's lost majority support with all the other key constituencies.So this wasn't worth it.And I think sober, honest analysis would show any fair minded person that it wasn't.

And the question now is just cutting the losses.

I think he knows.And I think that for all his support of Netanyahu publicly, I think he must be bitterly regretting believing the Netanyahu playbook for this, which was you decapitate the leadership, the IRGC collapse from within, the people rise up, it's going to be straightforward.None of that has happened apart from the initial decapitation and the Ayatollah got replaced with his son.Right?So nothing's really changed other than Iran now knows it has cards it didn't know it had.And that's kind of the worst scenario of all, where they've now gone, OK, great.

Now, every time we shut the Strait of Hormuz, the entire world goes nuts.Right?We've got everybody over a barrel, quite literally, literally over a barrel of oil.

Well, and one other thing has changed, which is, incredibly, we've gone from the Ayatollah to more radical leadership.in Iran.I mean, it's unbelievable.We had a guy who at least had a fatwa on actually developing a nuclear weapon to a team of people who I think would be just fine doing that.And a guy who understood that they could potentially seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, but never actually did it because he'sthat would be a next level move that would actually really upset the world economy and the Iranian economy.

And now we have these guys who are just, I'm forgiving, but it is just a bunch of bastards who are like, let's fight dirty.You know, this is existential for us.And they've done it.They've gone and done it.So we have, to the extent we have regime change, we've gone from radical to extremely radical.And a group of people that understands they don't have to bargain with us at all, that the pain we're withstanding is worse than the pain they're withstanding, and that we're likely to bend the knee before they are because they see the numbers over here that 70 % of the American populist, does not like this war.

And it's up to in the 90s when you ask who is opposed to ground troops.So while Mark Levin would really like, you know, us to send boots on the ground over there and to have, I don't know how many aircraft carriers over in the Strait of Hormuz patrolling it forever.He's in a very growingly small cabal.And President Trump, while he continues to tell us to watch Mark Levin's show and Mark Levin defines who's MAGA and who's not, understands that That's a very small group, and that's not a group big enough to win elections.

Well, the other person who's gone very quiet is Ben Shapiro, our friend who loved to whack us for our supposed, you know, terrible positions on all this.But he's gone very quiet because his own business is now getting seriously damaged and people running away from watching his show because they know the narrative he's been putting out there has been proven in front of our eyes to be incredibly unsuccessful.and actually working out the exact opposite to how he assured us it would happen.On the issue of Israel and criticism, how concerned are you about booking any holiday or vacation any time soon to the United Kingdom?Because Cenk Uygur, who you would disagree with pretty much every word that comes out of his mouth, but he's a regular guest on my show,He's a very, very aggressive critic of the Israeli government.

I've never heard him utter a word that I would construe to be anti -Semitic.I never sense from him at all he hates Jewish people in any way at all.He just does not like what the Israeli government has been doing in the name of the Israeli people, and he doesn't like the hold the Israeli government appears to have had over the American government.And as a result of his comments, including on my show, overnight he was about to fly here to sit in my studio and do a debate with a big pro -Israeli guest.and instead they have revoked his visa.Now the context of this is a few weeks ago they revoked a number of visas for people who were going to come to the Tommy Robinson march.

Some of them I was mystified by, I'll be honest about why they had been banned and didn't like that or agree with it.Some I could see the merit.I think if you're espousing violence or you're obviously bigoted against a group of people based on their ethnicity or their religion.I think that's acceptable reasons to not let people into a country.But if you're not doing that, if all you're doing is criticizing a government for the actions it's taken, I mean, I criticized the British government mercilessly over the Iraq War in 2003.Should I be banned from my own country?

What do you feel about this, this whole area of free speech?Who should be allowed to go where?What they should be allowed to say?You know, to me, if you're not espousing violence, and you're not targeting a group based on ethnicity or religion or whatever it may be, but you're criticizing a government.Why is that not protected?

I mean, I think they should both be protected.Here in America, you're allowed to be a racist or a bigot or a transphobe.You know, I've been called all those things.You probably have, too, unfairly and unjustly.But OK, that's fine.You're allowed to be those things.

What's not allowed is making, for example, an employeedecision based on those biases.But there's no law against having racist feelings or having transphobic feelings or having sexist feelings.People are complicated, Pierce.And one person's definition of transphobe is another person's definition of standing up for women's rights.And you could go down the list of these terrible names and make the same argument.

I mean, my feeling watching this from over here is we're about to celebrate our 250th anniversary of independence from Great Britain.And one of the reasons we broke away was because they were too overbearing.on matters like this, and to the point where we felt the need to write it into our Constitution with our First Amendment, that the government wasn't allowed to crack down on speech like this.They couldn't police opinions in this way.And it seems to me that the government of Great Britain is looking to create another one of those revolutions by the folks like you who are over there not wanting to live like this.These excesses are beyond.

I mean, as I understand it, in the UK right now, you got a group of cops that let a young man die after being stabbed to death by some Sikh.Gentlemen who they told him as he lay dying that he wasn't stabbed as he was bleeding out and nothing's happened to those cops But meanwhile, you've got the government and the police authorities over at Oxford shutting down a similar debate about Islam's role in the UK and at the same time stopping Cenk Uygur and his nephew Hassan Piker from even coming into the country because of their criticisms of Israel So basically this entire debate which is very relevant within the UK of all places places, since it does have a growing Muslim population, and there are pockets where it's gotten extremely controversial, you're not allowed to talk about it.What the hell kind of solution is that?How are you going to solve anything if you're not allowed to talk about it?That's the very basis of starting to problem -solve.So I think this is hypocritical.

it's outrageous, and of all times to be doing it, as we over here are celebrating our independence from you guys.More and more of your folks, including some of the folks shut down by that Oxford Union, are going to come to America.I'm actually in the talks right now to help host this thing, Piers, and I'm happy to host you and Cenk and all these other guys, too, because this is, as we say over here, fucking bullshit and needs to stop.The government should have absolutely no say over what the opinions are in your head, the opinions that you speak out of your mouth.What it should police is when you use those biases, if they exist, to actually hurt people physically or via employment, etc.

Just quickly, I know you're going to go, Megan, but you mentioned the 250th.This whole row has been breaking out over America's 250th birthday, the musical performances supposedly celebrating it.A number of artists now dropping out, citing the event's affiliation with the White House.What do you feel about that?I mean, Trump's responded, as you'd expect, saying, cancel it on True Social, calling the performers overpriced and boring.Should it be canceled?

Are these people overreacting?Are they politicizing it themselves by pulling out?What's your view?

Yeah, I think it's really unfortunate.I think, you know, whoever booked them, if they didn't make perfectly clear exactly what they were being asked to do and why failed and set the White House up for an embarrassment, because it's pretty foreseeable that anybody saying they're going to perform at a Trump event is going to get political blowback.But honestly, like, shame on them for not just being more clear.I think the real reason that they are canceling is not really that people said, oh, Trump is bad.I think the real reason is that The reaction on the left and the right to the list of performers was, shall we say, disappointed.I mean, people were mocking it endlessly because with respect to these bands, it's like mostly a bunch of hazards.

-beens with a few exceptions.And so people kind of scoffed at it.And then suddenly nobody wanted to be associated with it because it lost all cool factor.And I think they blamed it on the Trump thing, which was disingenuous, in my opinion.The sad thing is now what we have instead is Trump being like, it'll just be me giving a great speech.And it's like, all right.

The Trump faithful love Trump and they'll be thrilled to hear Trump.We get it.But like the 250th is supposed to be about the country.We're supposed to be getting beyond core MAGA and everybody in their MAGA hat.It's supposed to be something about our United States of America.And this is becoming one of those just sort of like Trump rallies, which is fine for the party faithful, but not inspirational for the party, not unifying in any way.

And I think kind of I'm feeling shame on those artists for not just taking the black eye.You said you'd do it just because people weren't impressed with the ultimate lineup.Shame on you.You should find out.I agree.As you and I both know, when somebody invites us someplace, we say, who else is going?

Who are the other speakers?You make sure in advance that you're comfortable with the people who are going to be around you.And I think, you know, I don't use the P word.peers but these people are a bunch of p words for chickening out of showing up and just which p word are you talking about well you know has another word for it is cat i'm gonna say my only disappointment today megan is we've been speaking for 20 minutes and you haven't yet congratulated me on my football team winning the premier league arsenal would you like to oh yeah would you like to correct this problem I don't know anything about it, but I celebrate from here the joyful pictures you post because this seems near and dear to your heart.And all I think when I see it is I wish I had a sports team I felt that way about.Congratulations.

Thank you.

And way to commit.

You know, there was a moment when Declan Rice, the superstar player for Arsenal in my eyes, ran over when he saw me at the trophy.lifting ceremony put his winner's medal over my neck in front of my three sons and said we did it mate we did it and I turned to my sons and I said, guys, this is the greatest moment of my life, including your three births.And they looked at me and said, dad, dad, we get it.We feel exactly the same way.

Congratulations.You've had a rough year with the hip and all that.

You deserve this.Well, I've gone from a broken hip to hip hip hooray.Megan, lovely to talk to you.Thank you very much.See you soon.Well, Cenk Nyga means many things to many people.

He's a progressive YouTuber whose self -made business was at the vanguard of a shift from legacy to digital media.He's an outspoken critic of America's meddling in foreign conflicts and of foreign meddling in America's politics.He's a failed presidential candidate, an unashamed hothead, an acquired taste.One thing he's certainly not, though, is an extremist or a dangerous purveyor of threatening hate speech, unless that is you're the British government.Last night, Cenk Nyga planned a border flight to London and to be told that the UK authorities had removed vote his permission to enter the country.Among other things, he'd been invited to speak at South by Southwest London, to give a speech at Oxford University, and to take part in a debate in this very studio.

The UK Home Office doesn't publicly disclose why it bans anyone, but Cech says he was told that he poses a serious risk to public order because of his commentary on Israel.A very detailed report appeared in the Times newspaper quickly after Cenk himself got the news.It refers to his framing of the Gaza war as a genocide and his view that the pro -Israel lobby has a big influence on US politics, as well as other comments made on my show.You may not agree with any of Cenk's positions, but anyone with even the faintest grasp of popular discourse will know they are mainstream opinions which are freely debated almost every single day.By this standard, half of the guests on the show will be banned from Britain.And on that point, Cheng's nephew, Hassan Piker, another uncensored guest and a very popular streamer, is also banned.

He's mainstream enough to appear alongside leading Democrats.Ro Khanna and AOC, but apparently he's too hot for we Brits to handle.Well, Cenk Uygur actually joked about all this a few weeks ago.

I'm coming to London in a couple of weeks, as you know, Piers, and I intend to greatly offend Israel.I don't know if I'll be arrested over there.You know, they have some absurd laws in England.My nephew, Osama Piker, is coming with me, and he might be arrested because some pro -Israel people think that they can say anything they want about Muslims, but the minute you touch Israel, not even Judaism, they think you should be arrested.Obviously, that kind of double standard is unacceptable and is the, you know, refuge of cowards.

Well, he hasn't been arrested, but he has been banned.And all of this amounts to a colossal embarrassment for the UK, which already has an unwanted global reputation for authoritarian crackdowns on social media users.And it's yet another example of censoring the criticism of Israel.It should be blindingly obvious that there is a huge difference between criticizing the actions of a nation state and its government and the hate -filled diatribes of Kanye West or, indeed, Valentina Gomez.But my country is losing the ability to see that difference.And it won't be long before that's something which threatens all of us.

Well, joining me now is Cenk Uygur, founder and CEO of the Young Turks, and Shabos Kestenbaum, commentator with PragerU, both of whom are due to be in this studio with me to debate in person before the British Home Office intervened.Well, before I get to Cenk, you know, Shabos, credit to you because your first reaction publicly about this was to say how outraged you were by this ban and how wrong it was.

Just explain why.Sure, well it's good to see both of you, if not in person, at least virtually.And that's because of Charlie Kirk.Charlie Kirk always taught me that the best way to combat bad ideas is with better ideas.It's not with censorship.I'm half British, as I think I mentioned on the show before.

My parents were born and raised here.My whole extended family still live in London.And to me, England is a country that producesMagna Carta. YouYou know, this is a country of thinkers like John Locke and Edmund Burke.And I find the deterioration of free speech, the erosion of free speech in the United Kingdom in particular, to be incredibly worrisome.

I would add, I'm not entirely clear what the reasons were, because I think, Cenk, if you're being intellectually honest, you will also admit you were not given specific reasons.Was it because you're anti -Israel?It's possible.I'm not disputing that.But we also have to keep in mind that there are a whole host of people that have been barred from entering the UK that did not elicit the same outrage.People like You know, Ezra Levant, I mean, he's pro -Israel as they come, and I'm not entirely clear why he was rejected.

People like Don Keith, people like Dominic Tarczynski, who I believe was on your show.

Well, I had Don Keith on only last week after the Tommy Robinson march, and I gave him plenty of time to try and explain why he felt he'd been banned, and I didn't understand it.Now, Valentina Gomez, to me, is a different situation.She's somebody who is openly, brazenly, hatefully bigoted towards Muslim people because they're all Muslim.She hates them all and wants to whip up hatred about them.I didn't see Don Keith in that category at all, and I don't see you, Czech Yuga, in that category at all either.most regular guest on on census since we began and sometimes I'm concerned about your blood vessels but when it comes to what you say about Israel I've been you know listening very intently you've always been very careful to maintain your criticism of Israel and its government in particular and its decisions but I've never heard you espouse any anti -semitism.

Never heard you be hateful about Jewish people or anyone because of their faith or their ethnicity.So I just don't understand what rationale the UK government could possibly have for banning you.Have you been able to find out any more?

Yeah, so let's break it down.So I go to the airport and they just say that I've been rejected by the British government and I'm not allowed to enter and hence I can't board the plane.They don't give any stated reason.Then about 20 minutes later that Times article that you mentioned, Piers, comes out and it says because I criticize Israel in the wrong ways.Now, I don't know if the British government is going to put out a list of the acceptable ways to criticize Israel and the unacceptable ways to criticize Israel.That might be helpful, because apparently we're going to need it.

Over 60 percent of Americans are critical of Israel.Will we all be banned from the UK?Should everyone be careful about traveling to the United Kingdom, because they might ruin your plans at the end if a different government is unsatisfied with you?Can they list, can they put out a list of things you're not allowed to say about Israel?And what's amazing is that you're allowed to say anything you want about the United Kingdom, or about America, or any other country, and they said the only thing they could grasp at, because I've never said anything anti -Semitic, because I don't believe that, in fact, I believe the opposite, is that they said that, I said that America is controlled by Israel, the Congress is, because they're the top donor in this last election cycle.Well, that is empirically true.

That is a fact.So are facts anti -Semitic now?Are news people not allowed to deliver facts to people?And if you say, hey, someone who is deeply anti -Semitic, says the Jews are terrible and it's their fault and Hitler's good, et cetera, is in the same camp as a guy who says, no, this has nothing to do with Jewish people.In fact, 63 % of Jewish Americans are opposed to the current Israeli government.And I make that distinction on The Young Turks almost every day.

You made it on this show regularly.Yeah, and if you put us in the same category, well, you know, you're destroying the idea of combating action.bigotry.It's almost like pulling a Jussie Smollett on a national level and saying we don't care.And it's also deeply ironic to say that we're going to ban you for criticizing Israel by saying that our governments are controlled by Israel.

well the other point the other point which well the other point i read in the times piece actually involved directly this show because it's the times said the decision to ban you was also based on some appearances on uncensored in which in which he dismissed evidence relating to grooming gangs in towns such as rotherham where official inquiries identified an estimated 1400 victims well let's take a look at the clip we think they're talking about and then they go It's the Muslims!

I mean, it's almost comical.It's comical.And then they, we're talking about, wait, grooming gangs going after kids or whatever.Oh, that comes out just as everyone's talking about the Epstein files and how a bunch of pro -Israeli figures raped American girls.Oh, it's the Muslims!It's the Muslims!

So next time you hear it's the Muslims, I guarantee you that it's Israeli propaganda.trying to divert you from something that's in the news now.

Can you address it?

Can you shut up and let me address it?

Can you address it without mentioning Israel?Or can you address grooming gangs?No, because that's the whole reason we're having this conversation.

Because you're Israeli buddies.wanted a distraction from the Epstein files.That's why they threw this garbage into the media.So now let me just explain to you what this has explained to you that that's been going on for 30 years.Will you shut up and let me address it?It's been going on for 30 years.

You're asking me a question, and I'll answer it.You're asking me a question, and I'll answer it.This is super easy.Why don't you arrest everyone who's committed a crime?So if Pakistani grooming gangs exist, and I'm sure they do, then arrest them.Where's the question?

Yeah, but they didn't.If there's a gang of white people, shut up and let me finish.If there's people, shut up and let me finish.So if there's a white gang of people who are raping people, arrest them.If there's a bunch of super powerful people who are raping American girls, arrest them.

Now again, you know, people can disagree with you, agree with you, whatever, right?You know, the reality of the grooming gang scandal was that it went on over several decades, it was covered up, it involved predominantly Pakistani British Muslim men abusing young white girls.English girls that was that was what happened and many of them eventually got brought to justice and put in prison but not before a gigantic cover -up went on and that is indisputable and was a disgusting scandal which shamed my country.However nothing that you've said about that I mean look I would contest and I would argue with you that I've not seen clear evidence of any concerted Israeli campaign to hide the Epstein scandal thing around re -inflaming the Muslim grooming gang scandal, because to me they're two totally different things and the grooming scandal continues to make news because of developments involving it.So I would say that you're wrong about that, Shane, but it doesn't really matter whether you're wrong about it or not.You are perfectly entitled to express that opinion and to express that suspicion.

and people on the panel can argue with you, disagree with you, or agree with you.The idea that that, again, as the Times reports, was one of the reasons apparently the British government used to ban you from coming to my country, I just find completely ridiculous and shameful.You know, people say to me, what is going on with your country?And they try and say, you're being overrun by Muslims.And I say, you know what, it's completely ridiculous.We're not being overrun by Muslims.

But when they say, but there's been a concerted attack on your free speech, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to argue about that.We have comedians who've been arrested at the airport, Heathrow, coming in for jokes they made on X months before.We now have this.We have people doing Facebook posts being put in prison, grandmothers, and so on.And it's got completely out of control.and we've forgotten what free speech actually means.

It actually means tolerating opinions that we don't like, not opinions you do like.What now happens?Do you have any right of appeal check?

So let's talk about the Grooming Yanks for a second, Piers, because it goes a little deeper than what you said.They told The Times that I denied the existence of Grooming Yanks.You didn't.Even in the clip you just played.You didn't deny it.I said, I'm sure that they exist.

So that's the exact opposite of what's true.So then that inexorably leads to the question of, why is the British government lying about me?That is very weird, right?Why lie about my stance on grooming gangs?And can I not say that I think it's, you know, meant as a distraction and a way to blame Muslims overall?Well, you can.

The whole point is, of course you can.

Yeah, I mean, of course you're allowed to have that view.Like I say, I don't agree with it, but I don't agree with a lot of things you say.And I agree passionately with other things you say.And I like having you on the show because you always take part in debate.You're always prepared to debate with people like Shahbos.I mean, I was really pleased Shahbos to bring you back in.

in, that you immediately went out there publicly and defended Cenk, the guy you were going to be arguing with passionately about these kind of issues, not realizing that he would be at the center of it.I mean, let me ask you, Sherbos, in terms of this, every country has a right to let anybodyor not let them in, right?America bans a lot of people from going into the country.I happen to know two famous people in England who stopped going to America because they had warnings like literal like cautions from the police for possessing tiny amounts of marijuana and that meant every time they tried to go to America they'd be hauled into a side room when they landed and grilled for 15 hours and they got fed up with it and they and they eventually left um and yet Tommy Robinson who has a list of prison convictions as long as your arm appears to come and go as he pleases so there are clearly a weird set of double standards applied about all sorts of stuff but fundamentally a country has a right to decide who they let in and who they don't.But you raised a good point which is after the Tommy Robinson march It was clear a number of American citizens had been banned from coming in for that because their views were deemed to be likely to, you know, be against the interests of my country.

And some of them I kind of agreed with, like Valentina Gomez.I think she's an appalling human being who just wants to whip up racial hatred.But others I didn't get.And so I think, again, it's like, well, who's deciding this?Who is the arbiter?It seems to be just on the whim of the Home Secretary or the Home Office or the Homeland Security people, whatever, to just arbitrarily work out who they think isn't suitable.

What do you think about that?

Yeah.I agree with how you diagnosed the problem, and that's why I was comfortable using the word authoritarian, because when you have the government arbitrarily deciding which views we're going to subjectively decide or allow into this country, that's really dangerous.And there are kind of like two ways of answering this.One is the legal lens.So to your point, you are right.Legally, countries can decide who is allowed into the country and who isn't.

The United States does it.So Marco Rubio has made it very clear in the beginning of the second Trump administration that we are going to screen people based on their social media presences, if they're in support of terrorist organizations or not.So Tyler Oliveri, he was actually banned from the state of Israel for entering Israel.Whether he should have been banned or not, it's irrelevant because legally Israel can make that decision.I think where I find Cenk's diagnosis of the problem accurate, but his antidote kind of silly, is because to your point, peers, Shabana Mahmoud, she is the home secretary.This is a Muslim woman who spoke out against Israel for almost all of her political career.

The United Kingdom is not a fan of Israel.This is the same country that banned military export licenses that suspended free trade negotiations, that sanctioned two Israeli ministers.They recognized the state of Palestine against Israel's recommendations without even delineating its borders.They continue to fund the United Nations Relief Works Agency, again, against the wishes of Israel.There are these hate marches every single week.As I said, I have family who live in London.

Almost all of them have stopped wearing their yarmulkes.Jews get stabbed in broad daylight.Ambulances are being blown up on Golders Green Road.Jewish cemeteries are regularly defaced.Synagogues are regularly smashed.So this idea that like, this is the Israel lobby, or this is the Jews exerting their control.

A, the United Kingdom, or at least their government, hate Israel, and B, the Jews of the United Kingdom have very little political control in their country.So I think the much broader and better point to make is there is an erosion of free speech.We cannot allow a state -centralized government to dictate which views are accepted.And yet, I disagree with Cenk on basically everything, and I would assume, judging by his friend Anna, he disagreed with me on basically everything.But as I said, the only way you can have a civil society, the only way you have a flourishing democracy is when you go on platforms the Piers Morgan show and you talk it out and you air it out.Because again, the only way to combat bad ideas is with better ideas, not saying that certain viewpoints are not allowed.

And that's what the Keir Starmer government has been doing.And it's shameful.Cenk should be in London right now.

Cenk, if you were the British prime minister, who would you not let in?

Yeah, I love freedom of speech.I'm an American.So I don't I don't even agree with you on Valentina Gomez.we covered her on the Young Turks and she's yeah she's a nutcase but so what she's here in in America right now and is everybody going crazy it's our you know has she affected the whole country no no you so she has terrible ideas about how awful Muslims are and she's terribly bigoted but so what So, then it's super easy to defeat her in a debate.So, look, this isn't about any religions, Jews, Muslims, etc.Everyone in different religions have completely different points of view.

To categorize people as thinking a certain way because they're Jewish, for example, or as Valentina does because they're Muslim, is by definition absurd.Ben Cohen from Ben and Jerry's is one of the greatest fighters for peace movement in America.He's, you know, adamantly against what the government of Israel is doing.So this generalizations are absurd, but let us deal with it.You know, people that are in media and on shows like this and where we discuss things and debate things.But right now, the British government has stepped in and said that some views are not allowed.

OK, then you have to elucidate what those views are.I agree with that.You know, are you really banning the great majority of the world?

Well, I think the problem is not.That's insane.Well, the problem, Shabbos, I will let you respond, Shabbos, but the problem is if you don't say precisely why you're banning high -profile people, then obviously the theories will run riot, right?I mean, Cenk doesn't really know.He knows what he's read in the Times.He seems to be incredibly well -informed.

Well, who informed the Times?You know, the Times shares the building that I do with this studio.So maybe I'll go up and ask them, but they probably won't tell me.But the point being, somebody clearly briefed the Times, right, from, I presume, from the Home Office or the government.But what exactly is it that Cenk has said or a spouse.which means they had to ban him on public order grounds?

I just don't understand it.

Well, that's entirely my point.So I want to be clear.It's very possible that Cenk was not allowed into the United Kingdom because of his views on Israel.That's totally possible.But I think the problem I had with you, Cenk, and with your nephew, Hasan Piker, is you immediately went to the conspiratorial, it's because of Israel, it's because of the Jewish lobby, or however you phrased it.

No, they reported it.

It could be, hang on, hang on, hang on.It could be because, I don't know, you made weird comments about bestiality 10 years ago.It could be because you made weird comments about grooming gangs.I don't know, but you don't know either.No, I can't.And that's kind of my point.

We don't know, and I would agree with you, the United Kingdom should actually say, here's what we found demonstrably offensive, or whatever it happens to be, because then we could actually say, okay, so at least we know what's within the Overton window of accepted political discourse, and fight against that accepted political discourse.But as I said, I think a much stronger argument is the erosion of free speech, and not what you immediately did, which is just blame the Israel lobby, which as I already demonstrated, doesn't make any sense because the Home Secretary, Mahmoud Saban, hates Israel.

No, but brother, I'm not the one saying it.They apparently told the Times and they listed three things.They listed.No, but I do know that it's in the article.It's like so.I mean, I know it's a lie and they made it up.

Yes.The U .K.government did not explicitly comment on why you were banned.They don't say that.

But again, the Times, the Times, the Times, the Times, the Times is a very authoritative newspaper.It's like, you know, the New York Times for the U .K.and it published what appeared to be a very well -sourced report, very quickly after the news broke, detailing the grounds that the UK government had banned Cenk.And it was largely to do with Israel and also potentially to do with what he'd said about grooming gangs on my show.But given that I've just illustrated that he said the opposite to what was reported in the Times, i .

e.he didn't deny that there had beenabuse by the grooming gangs. HeHe was making a wider point about whether it was now being used by the Israeli lobby in some way to distract attention from the Epstein scandal.And that's a different point.It's not about denying whether the abuse ever happened.

He didn't, he said the opposite.He said he accepts it probably happened, right?So he wasn't obviously as aware of the case as we are.But I didn't hear him trying to deny it happened.He was making a bigger point about it being used as a distracting tool, which, by the way, I'm sure by some people it is being used that way, as all these things are.But for you, Shabos, I mean, the First Amendment is one of the most powerful defenses of free speech in the world.

Hold on.Hold on.Can I just address the three reasons that the Times put out there, and we missed one, okay?So one was, I said that Israel gives, the Israeli lobby gave more than any other lobby in the last election cycle to Congress.That is an empirically correct statement.So, and by the way, the Times said it was incorrect, so the Times is incorrect, the British government is incorrect, and anybody can verify that.

So then the second one was the grooming gangs, where they said, I don't said that they don't exist and you just showed tape of me saying they exist.So then the British government is lying about that if the Times is correct.And then the third reason that I don't know if it was connected to the British government or the Times just threw it in there as a character assassination was about some blogs that I wrote where I was joking about myself, which they didn't clarify at all.And so then you make it and those are 30 years old.So then you go, OK, wait, is this just a character assassination?Because I've been in the UK so many times since those 30 years have passed.

Yeah, what were the jokes?

Yeah, so I'm going to clarify that and the one that Shambos alluded to.So in a blog I wrote about 28 years ago, I was kidding around about how I couldn't get girls in South Beach and how the genes of womenmust be poorly designed if I can't get women in South Beach.It was a joke about myself.And so, by the way, the New York Times, Times of London, et cetera, have never clarified that it's a joke, and it's an abomination that they mislead people like that.And then Shabos just talked about bestiality.

Now that was another joke from a video where they Edited so they cut out me saying the horse wouldn't say nay and everybody in the studio laughs And so since they cut that out, they have been smearing me with that for literally a decade straight But again, I didn't get banned from coming into the UK all of those years.These are all attempts at character assassination Exposed facto so now that makes it even worse because why did the British government lie about me?What is it about and they did say it was over criticism of Israel.So if they don't clarify They're just sending out an advertisement to the world, don't come to the United Kingdom.We will ban you.We won't even tell you why we ban you other than the fact that, generically, we don't like your opinions of Israel.

And Shabbos can say that it's absurd, except that's literally the only thing that they have said to the newspapers as to why I was banned.So if it's absurd, take it up with the British government, not me.

But that's my point, because that's not true.The British government has not publicly commented on it.All they had said is that you and your nephew are not good for the public service in the United Kingdom.Is it because of your views on Israel?Probably.Well, no, I think it's more than that.

But hang on, hang on, hang on.

But the Times hasn't reported this out of nowhere.They reported it because they've been briefed by the Home Office to this is the reason.

Here's yes or no.Has the British government taken a public or official statement on Cenk Uygur?The answer is no.We can speculate as to what it is, and I would probably agree it has to do with Israel.But again, you are missing the much broader point that there has been erosion of free speech in the United Kingdom.You have staunchly pro -Ukraine.

United Nations Relief Works Agency, again, against all the objections of the state of Israel.They have sanctioned Israeli ministers.They have weekly hate marches.They have terrorist attacks against Jews almost on the weekly at this point.So to say it's part of the Israel lobby, I'm saying is demonstrably not true.And yes, Cenk and I, we should be in the United Kingdom going at each other's throats on Lebanon and Iran and tariffs and Epstein or whatever.

So I agree, he should be there.It was wrong for the United Kingdom to do this.But when you simply focus on the, you know, everything is run by Israel, it's all a conspiracy, we don't know that.It might be, but again, the British government doesn't actually have an official statement on this matter, should they?probably, but you're ignoring the fact that so many other people have also been banned from coming into the United Kingdom, which I think is the real story, not Cenk Uygur and his nephew.

But they haven't been banned because they're supportive of Israel.That's not been the reason they've been banned.It's normally to do with other things.

You're proving my point.There is no reason.You're proving my point.There is no officially stated reason because it's arbitrary.It's subjective and it's stupid.But to say it's one thing over the other.

In fact, Cenk, you were tweeting before the Times article even came out.Again, as someone with British ancestry who has family living in England, that's why I'm so appalled at the state of the United Kingdom today.

But if you have someone like Valentina Gomez -Chenk, who you've defended, I was surprised to hear you say that.Because she's tried to be a politician.She's run for office.She has advocated for all Muslims to be thrown out of the UK, for example.And she wants to come to the UK and take part in a march led by Tommy Robinson.And we know that is her position.

And we have five million Muslims in the UK.And I would say her presence, given her position of throwing every Muslim out of Britain because they're Muslims, and the disgusting things she then says about Muslims, why should we let her in?I mean, I would say, obviously, if you advocate violence, I think we would all agree on that.But I'm surprised that you would think that that may not be a criteria to stop someone coming in, given her obvious potential, by saying that, to whip up genuine hatred against all Muslims.

Look, I would answer, so what?I mean, there's tons of people who whip up hatred against Muslims.I would argue that almost all of American mainstream media whips up hatred against Muslims.They call us terrorists, and when Israel does 100 times worse, they say that they're a moral army and a democracy.They've kept 5 .5 million Palestinians as their prisoners for 58 years in a brutal dictatorship they run in the occupied territories.They're not a democracy at all.

So, okay, the mainstream media has been painting Muslims as the bad guys, and how dare they seek their freedom from us?from the Israelis, they're disgusting terrorists.So I would say the New York Times and CNN and ABC and all those outlets have been horribly bigoted against Muslims.But I wouldn't want to ban them.Look, I believe in freedom of speech.I'm not at all threatened by Valentina Gomez's ideas.

Her ideas are comical, bigoted, and easy to defeat.So the minute you ban something,say well that idea is hard to defeat I'm really worried about that idea so I don't want it to be in the public sphere.No I believe in putting it all out there and you know get the battle of ideas going and it's super easy for people who are right to win.

How many times have you been to the UK in your life?

I think I've probably been there about three times, twice to give speeches at Oxford, and then at least one other time.And never had any problems?

Three, four times.

No, that's why I went to the airport and I thought initially that it was a bureaucratic snafu.Because I was like, well, this can't be true.That doesn't make any sense.And I already had an existing visa.And so like, you know, Chavez keeps saying that you can't put it on Israel, but I'm not the one who did.The Times did.

The Times says the British government told them because I criticize Israel.So either the Times is lying or the British government is doing something quite, you know, terrible.It's terrible for free speech, terrible for Britain.

Shabbos, in April, the UK government banged Kanye on the grounds that his presence would not be conducive to public good, the same argument used against Cheng over his history of anti -Semitic comments, which are pretty indisputable.You know, he's released a song called Heil Hitler.He sold t -shirts with swastikas on.He talked about DEF CON 3 on Jewish people and then apologized for them in a lengthy mea culpa in the Wall Street Journal.So pretty, you know, indisputable that he said all these things and did all these things.Was it right the UK government banned Kanye?

Well, let me just add quickly that my understanding is the reason why Kanye West said Defcon 3 is because he didn't know which one was worse, Defcon 1 or 5, so he figured he would just compromise in the middle because he's an idiot.

Right, I'm sure that's true.

Yeah, it probably is.But in general, I mean, yes and no.Again, every country can decide who's let in.If they don't think that he's conducive to the public good, then they probably shouldn't let him in.The problem I have with the United Kingdom in thisis where Cenk and I are in agreement, is it's entirely subjective.

They don't actually tell you what the rules are.But look, I mean, I'll use Mahmoud Khalil.That's a pretty good example.This is someone who came into the United States.He lied on his visa application, and he will be deported.I mean, he appealed to the Supreme Court.

I can guarantee you, even if the Supreme Court hears his arguments, which I highly doubt, he will be deported.Mostly it's because he lied on his visa application.But it's also true that this is not an American citizen.He's a foreign national.He comes from Algeria and Syria.He called for the eradication of Western civilization.

So, you know, what exactly is the net positive of having like in the United States?So I think in general, a country can dictate, like, what are the types of peoples we want?What are the types of values and ideologies we want?The problem, again, with the United Kingdom is they don't actually tell you any of those things.

OK, but Shabos, if the United Kingdom has decided that Cenk's regular, very virulent attacks on the Israeli government for their actions and the nation of Israel, because they represent the nation of Israel, obviously.Have you ever heard anything that Cenk has said which you believe was anti -Semitic?

Well, no offense to Cenk.I try not to listen to him too much.But in general, whether he makes anti -Semitic comments or not, to me, it's not really the point.

No, but my question is whether you believe he's anti -Semitic.

I think it's irrelevant.I care way more about...

Well, it is relevant, because they may well have used that as a reason for not allowing him in.So it's relevant.

You know, outside of Harvard University and Candace Owens, I'm pretty reluctant to call people or institutions anti -Semitic.What I will say is that Chang's policies, the ideologies he advocates for, are wildly disastrous to the 10 million Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Jews who call Israel home.I think that's way more important of a discussion rather than simply calling people anti -Semitism.And this might actually surprise both of you, but this is where I'm sort of outside of the Jewish mainstream, at least in the United States, because A, they don't like the fact that I go on your show.B, they don't like the fact that I tweeted what I did last night.And C, I think we are way too comfortable just calling anything we don't like

the fact saying opinions we don't like are inherently anti -Semitic.And it was actually weird because just a few hours ago, I got a notification that Candace Owens actually liked my tweet defending you, Cenk.So I don't know if I want to be in the Candace Owens camp, but ultimately, I think it was Voltaire who said, I detest your opinion, but we'll fight like hell to ensure that you have the right to say it.I think he said, I'll fight to the death.

Yeah, I'll fight to the death to defend your right to have it.

Yes, so we should be doing this debate talking about the issues Israel Gaza America in London and I look forward to it and if there's anything I can do to amplify the fact that United Kingdom is taking American citizens and forbidding them from entering the country then Cenk I mean this genuinely I know you probably don't like me and I know Anna doesn't like me but I mean this genuinely please let me know what I can do to help because this is not just a United Kingdom problem it's not just an Israel Gaza problem it is a problem affecting Western civilization where people especially young people don't know how to have conversations or debates anymore they just silo themselves in these dumb echo chambers and anything they don't like is racist or anti -semitic or homophobic or Islamophobic.It's stupid.

I completely agree and I absolutely applaud what you've just said.I do.I think it's intellectually honest and I think the key thing that I judge people now, well, are you intellectually honest?Are you prepared to be critical of your own side at all?If you're not, you're intellectually dishonest.You're just part of a tribe where honesty doesn't matter.

I mean, Cenk, what's your reaction to what Shabazz said?

So look, I appreciate him standing up for freedom of speech, and I appreciate him not doing the thing that, unfortunately, a lotof supporters of Israel do.The minute you criticize Israel, they say, oh, I've got 28 different tropes.Oh, that's it.You crossed one of the tropes tripwires.So that's it.

You're an anti -Semite.I've canceled you, et cetera.I do disagree with him on a number of things, though.Mahmoud Khalil isn't guilty of any of the things that he said.And oh, look at that.Yet another critic of Israel banned by yet another Western government.

I'm sure it's all a coincidence.Come on, nobody believes it's a coincidence.You could say that all day long.We all know that...He's lying on his visa application.Look, I don't know much about the British...

Hold on, Shabbos.I don't know much about the British government except what they've done to me.But the US government is overwhelming.You can't support boycott, divestment and sanction.of Israel and over 30 states in America because they pass absurd laws, some of which they sign in Israel, not even in America.It's just preposterous saying you're not allowed to disagree with the government, a foreign government.

We've given them over 300 billion dollars.They've given the 94 percent of Congress.They're the number one donor to Biden and Trump.It goes on and on.They have overwhelming control in this country.It isn't Jewish people, because remember, 63 percent of Jewish Americans don't even agree with this current Israeli government.

And some of the best fighters for peace are Jewish.But does Israel and the Israeli lobby have enormous control?Of course they do.And look guys, it's so overwhelming because Shabos last week in a debate with Anna Kasparian, my co -host on The Young Turks, she said proverbially, oh my god, shoot me in the head, and Shabos said gladly.Now I assume he was, no, but that's on tape.Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

I mean, let's assume that Shabos was kidding and, you know, He could speak for himself in a second.But if I had said that about Shabos or anyone else, the British government would pounce, and the American government would pounce, and media would pounce.And you go, look at that!He's calling for the murder of someone else!When Shabos says it, nobody even noticed because there's such a huge...different standard for people who support Israel and people who oppose Israel.

And if you're denying that, you can deny that.But everyone has eyes and ears.Your most essential command could be to ignore what we see with our eyes and what we hear with our ears.But it's not going to work.We all see the massive, massive double standard.

Shabo?OK.First I'll just respond to the Ana Kasparian thing, because that one's so easy.This is a woman who's called me a bitch on your show, Piers Morgan.I think she's called me a Nazi.She calls me every name in the book.

She cannot go 30 seconds without either interrupting me or saying the word Israel.So I was speaking, and lo and behold, she interrupted me.And as I was talking, she said, shoot me in the head.Now, was Ana Kasparian serious when she said, shoot me in the head?No.Was I serious when I joked and said gladly?

Also no.I think this is her way of absolving herself from the fact that I was bringing concrete evidence that refuted all of her talking points.and she had no actual answers, so her only response was, the Zionists want to kill me because it's part of their culture because they're so violent.It's a stupid point that you and I are adult enough to know it's not true.That's number one.Number two, Mahmoud Khoury, he objectively lied on his visa application.

OK, like that is why he will be deported.He said that he was not involved with the United Nations Relief Works Agency.That was a lie.He has had more due process and more lawyers than I had when I sued Harvard.The fact that this guy, we can't even get one person out of the United States after more than two and a half years.He's getting all of his constitutional rights that's any time I'm in a Twitter debate.

It's all on WhatsApp.stupid thing, and that's Israel.So Piers, you interviewed Joe Kent 10 minutes ago.I agree.Cut foreign aid, it doesn't bother me in the slightest.It is 0 .8 % of our federal budget.

It means absolutely nothing.But all people want to talk about is the foreign aid, is AIPAC, is the Israel lobby.It is so inconsequential.And I actually believe Israel is being used as an excuse to distract us from actual pragmatic issues that our country is facing, like tariffs, like the Epstein list, like immigration, like the economy.Let's talk about those issues.But unfortunately, especially my generation, All they want to talk about is an American lobbying group called AIPAC.

All they want to talk about is one of the only democracies in the Middle East, Israel.And again, have those conversations.Hate Israel as much as you want.Be as anti -Semitic as much as you want.But let's be honest, the idea that criticism of Israel is being stifled is ludicrous.It is detached from reality.

OK, final question for you, Cheng.No.If the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is watching this, and he might well be, because I'm about to interview a lady who wants to have his job, which is Kemi Badenoch, who's the leader of the opposition.If he is watching, what is your message to him about what's happened to you?

Yeah, I'd like to know a number of things.How long is my ban?Am I permanently banned from the UK?If I show up in public in the UK, is it really going to cause disorder or is it going to cause mayhem?I believe we're the only family to have two members banned from Britain, are we the most dangerous family in the world to the United Kingdom?What are the standards for how you can criticize Israel?

Will you ban billions of people in this world who are critical of Israel, or over 60 % of Americans?Will you ever explain why you ban people?Will you clarify what gets you banned?And why are you singling out one country that cannot be criticized?Israel's president,is about the size of Papa New Guinea's.

Are you also banning people for criticizing Papa New Guinea?I mean, isn't it absurd that you're only banning people for criticizing one country?Do you not see any of those double standards?And finally, what I would ask him is, is Britain free or is it not free?Are British citizens allowed to have the same opinion as me, travel outside of the country and be allowed back in?Or will they also be banned?

Because I would guess that a great majority of British citizens agree with my point of view on Israel, not their point of view.So how far are you going to take this absurdity in protecting a different country in Britain and by the way ruining your reputation as the home of freedom by doing so.

Okay well all I can say is I had a bagel with you Cenk last time I was in Los Angeles where we both have homes and at no stage did I feel you were a danger to my life and I'm going to try and get you back into my country so I can return the favor and buy you a nice meal here, and I suspect, again, that you will not present a clear and present danger to my security, but...

Pierce, how come you never bought me a bagel in L .A.?You never asked.I think that's anti -Semitism if you ask me.

You never asked for one.It's because...Okay, next time you're in L .A.Yeah, it's only because you're Jewish.Otherwise, I'd buy you a bagel in a Jewish diner where we had it, by the way.

It was Larry King's old place, so...

I'll take you guys up on that.We'll all have a bagel at Larry King's old diner.What about that?Guys, thank you very much.Cenk, I'm sorry about what's happened to you.I think it's ridiculous.

We'll see how this plays out.But thank you all very much.Well, Kemi Bainock is the leader of the Conservative Party and the leader of the official opposition to Keir Starmer's Labour government.If she gets her way, then she will be the next Prime Minister.of the United Kingdom.And she joins me now for her Uncensored debut.

Kemi, how are you?

I'm very well, thank you for having me on.

I've never interviewed you.It's the first time for everything.Have you been hiding or waiting for the right moment?

I've been waiting for you to ask me, and now you have.

Well, I did ask you in January, and then I fell over and broke my hip.

Oh, right.Oh, yes.

I had to cancel.But you were very nice about it.

How are you now?

Well, you were suggesting it may have been alcohol -related, and I had to quickly say it was not alcohol -related.For Americans who are tuning in, because half our audience is American, who are you?Who is Kemi Badenoch?

So Kemi Beynok is common sense personified.That's what I'm about.I am a politician who's very much on the right.But my politics is politics which people who are not political will want to share.I believe in family.I believe in equality under the law.

I think that we need our police to do their job, create a safe society.I think government needs to make sure that it helps to grow the economy.So let's back business, support the people who are out there working hard, even if they're not business owners, whether they're nurses or teachers.Let's drill our oil and gas in the North Sea.Energy is growth.Let's make sure that we can give an inheritance to our children.

I'm a mom of three children, and quite a lot of what I'm doing now is about making sure that they've got something to look forward to when they grow up.

What people say to me, just my personal straw poll of family, friends and so on, everyone seems to be warming to you, even if they didn't like you to start with.They see you as a kind of most improved player in the parliament, in the sort of commons firmament.And I would say that too.But the problem you have is it's not yet showing up properly in the polls in a way that suggests you can be prime minister.What are you going to do about that?You've got two and a half years.

It's a long time in politics.A day could be a long time in politics.But how are you going to square that issue of your rising popularity with people on a personal level, but a residual distrust and dislike of your party, which many Brits blame for the chaos that we've now found ourselves in?

So you're absolutely right.I need to make sure that people understand what the party is like now under my leadership.We made a lot of mistakes over those 14 years.I wasn't there for all of it.I only became an MP in 2017.But what I want people to know is that those of us who didn't like what was happening, who were complaining and trying to steer the party onto the right course, are now in charge.

This is a new Conservative Party under new leadership.And we have junked some bad policies, things which were not helpful for the country, net zero, in legislation by 2050, it's de -industrializing, good intentions, cross -party consensus isn't working.So we've junked that.We have to be much tougher on immigration.We let a lot of people down, immigration far too high.So I've brought in much tougher policies.

We're leaving the ECHR.We've got a borders plan of how we're actually going to get the numbers down.We want a high growth, low immigration economy.If you're using immigration to fuel your growth, then it's a pyramid scheme.And we just want to get Britain working again.There are too many people who are on welfare and it's breaking the back of this country.

I used to say that the rider was getting heavier than the horse in terms of the people we were carrying.The rider is now heavier than the horse.We spend more on welfare than we get in income tax.That's not right.

It's ridiculous.And we've got five million or so people now on benefits in this country not working, a million and a half of whom have a variety of mental health issues.predominantly like anxiety and things like this.A sort of failure to better deal with regular life stuff.Where have we gone so badly wrong as a country that one and a half million people are sitting at home anxious, unable to work?What should we do about that?

So we need to remind people what the welfare system is there for.It is therefore the most vulnerable for those who absolutely cannot work, not just those who don't want to work.And I think COVID shifted the understanding.We spent a lot of money, you know, tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of pounds paying people to stay at home.Some people just decided they quite liked staying at home and it felt like the government could afford it.We were actually borrowing that money.

What's gone wrong is that too many people think that we are an infinitely rich country.We can give money to people who don't want to work.We can give money to people abroad.We can fund everybody who wants to come and live here.And we can't do that.And what really worries me now is that we now have a government that genuinely believes that.

We didn't believe that as conservatives.We were trying to manage and get a balance.We got the balance wrong.Labour really believe that you can just tax, tax, tax, and pay for benefits.And that is making the country poorer.

As we were preparing to do this today, there's been a further development in the scandal of Lord Mandelson.He was a UK ambassador to Washington briefly.He'd been fired from two previous Labour governments.Sakhir Starmer brought him back again, only to have to then fire him again for a sort of record -breaking third firing.What does this say?I mean, the stuff that's come out today is kind of more embarrassing than, I would say, significant in terms of the new files about all this.

I mean, Mandelstam emerges as, you know, pretty duplicitous and all the rest of it, but it's not really that consequential.But what does it say about Sakir Starmer's leadership, already battered by the terrible local election results?infighting in his party, people jostling now to run against him, and yet he still seems to want to carry on.You've got this bubbling away in the background, the Mandelson scandal, again playing to his judgment.What do you feel about him just continuing?

So the Mandelson scandal is a metaphor for Keir Starmer's leadership.He doesn't know what he wants.He doesn't know why he's there.But he just believes that everything he does is right and anyone who disagrees with him is wrong.There's a pomposity in the way that he manages things.He's not paying attention to the detail.

Peter Mandelson, it turns out, was flagged as a security risk before the vetting had even started.And Keir Starmer didn't want to know.He doesn't want to know.He delegates to other people, and then he punishes them when things go wrong.He has ruined so many careers for mistakes which he made.And that's why his party don't like him, and the country can see that he doesn't have an agenda.

to deliver growth, to deliver prosperity, to deliver safety.He just wants to be in the job.Doesn't know why, but he just wants to be there.And that's why I think he should go, that he doesn't have a plan to make this country a better place.Should Keir Starmer resign?So I've said he should resign for a whole number of things.

I've also said that he misled Parliament.I've brought the evidence to Parliament.Labour MPs voted against.None of this would have happened if I hadn't exposed at PMQs what was going on.The Mandelson files, all of these documents that are coming out have only happened because of the work that I and other Conservative MPs have done.So Labour have become tribal.

Rather than doing the right thing, they just wanted to conceal it, even though they don't like the guy.

Do you think he lied to Parliament about Mandelson?

I do, and I've said so.I can't say it on the floor of the House, because you're not supposed to call anyone a liar on the floor of the House, but I have made the case that I do believe he's misledI put the evidence there.He said that all the security vetting had been done.It hadn't.He said he followed the process.

We've seen evidence from these release files.that he was told to carry out the vetting, and he didn't do so.But it's the fact that he put someone who had links to Russia and links to China in our most important diplomatic post.Because if you're an American ambassador, if the UK ambassador to America, you see US intelligence as well.And he shouldn't have been seeing that.But this is Keir Starmer's fault.

So it's no longer just about, oh, Mandelson was a bit dodgy.He hung out with Jeffrey Epstein.That was bad enough, but the fact of the appointments going ahead with all of the stuff that we now know was going on, I think that that is resignation territory.And I think it's one of the reasons why his MPs want rid of him.100 Labour MPs have said they don't want this man.They're all looking to Andy Burnham to come and save them.

And I think Keir Starmer is in a very dangerous position.I'd be surprised if he survived.

In relation to today's dump of over 1 ,000 pages of documents, what leapt out to you as significant about it?

It was Pat McFadden, the welfare secretary, saying that all Labour MPs want is to increase taxes so they can pay for benefits.He has confessed privately what he refuses to say publicly.I say this at every other prime minister's questions.Labour are not the Labour Party anymore.They're the welfare party.They're taxing everybody else to pay for benefits.

And now we have a cabinet minister confessing that that is true.

Let's turn to big global issues.This afternoon Iran signalled it was just going to pull out of any peace talks with America and Israel because it believes Israel's breached the agreement of the ceasefire by continuing to attack Lebanon.What is your reaction to that?

So I thinkthat Iran is an enemy of the UK.They would happily wipe us out if they had the nuclear weapons to do so.And I think that Israel, being where it is with so many hostile countries around, does what it can to fight for its survival.It is not a perfect country.I would not say that.

But I think that after what happened on October 7th, what Hamas did, Hamas is an Iranian -sponsored terrorist group.What Hezbollah and the Houthis have done, this is the consequence that Iran is reaping.I'd like to see the war come to an end.I think the ceasefires should be respected.But it's not clear to me what the US strategy is in terms of an exit.It's clear to me that Israel is prepared to fight continually to ensure its survival.

But the US is the one that can make this really happen.

Hasn't it been a complete mess?I mean, let's be honest.I mean, if the objective was to get regime change, that hasn't happened.They've taken out the Ayatollah, but his own sons replaced him.The IRGC, Netanyahu tried to persuade Donald Trump that the IRGC, in that eventuality, would then self -implode.That hasn't happened.

No one's got their hands on any of the enriched uranium.The Iranians regime has worked out if you control the Strait of Hormuz, you hold the whole world to economic energy ransom.And they fire off rockets at the Gulf state neighbors, which causes enormous damage to their business models.I'm looking at all this and going, this has been a complete mess.And I get a feeling that Donald Trump, I've known him a long time, that if he could get out of this right now, he would.But it's quite hard to see how you now extricate yourself, if you're United States, in a way that doesn't look like you failed.

Like defeat.Yes, exactly.It shouldn't look like another Vietnam or Suez.So I'm an engineer.And the way I do things is by understanding exactly what it is you're trying to build and having a plan to get there.But you also need to communicate that plan to other people.

And at the beginning of this war, it looked like it was regime change.We know that Iran has been terrorizing its population, even now they are rioting.So I'm someone who's always been supportive of making Iran a less hostile place to this country.How we do that depends.Our country has now been shown to not be in a place to do anything.We've looked very weak.

My main concern from all of this is how the Iran war has exposed the UK's position on defence, on our relationship with the US, on the government not having a defence strategy, they're not putting any money into defence, they haven't got a plan.That's what really worries me.From the US perspective, what I would like to see is what was the plan, what was the exit strategy.It looked, in theory, as if Israel had done enough to weaken Iran and they were going in to finish the job.But now, looking at it, doesn't look like they had much of a plan.Perhaps they thought it might be as easy as Venezuela.

So they either need a new plan or they need to get their act together and finish the first plan.But this is having an impact on people across the world.It's increasing fuel prices in our country.And that's why, if we can't be a strong country, in terms of defence, let's at least be a strong country in terms of our energy.Let's drill our own oil and gas in the North Sea.We have cities like Aberdeen, which are fading away because we're not allowing them to provide energy for this country.

We're importing energy from Norway.We're importing energy from Russia now.Kistama has lifted sanctions.It's ridiculous.I think that's immoral when you're not allowing our own British companies to take that oil and gas out.So this Iran war for me has exposed a lack of a plan land generally, but more UK lack of resilience, which Labour and I'm not saying that, you know, everything was perfect under us.

But when the war in Ukraine started, we were aa position to help Ukraine.I don't think we'd be in a position to do that again with what Labour's doing.

When Donald Trump called Keir Starmer and wanted to be able to use our bases that we share with them to launch his planes in this war, Keir Starmer said no.He then allowed him to do so 36 hours later, when it was deemed to be then a reactive and more defensive role.What would you have done as Prime Minister?

So I would have said right from the get -go, let them use our bases.And in fact, I said that.I even asked him to express support When you have two countries where one is an ally and the other is an enemy state, you should be able to say whose side you're on.It doesn't matter who started it.If you've got allies, you should be able to say we're supporting this side.That's what Canada did.

That's what Australia did.They didn't send any weapons or ships.I wanted us to at least be able to say, morally, this is whose side we're on.And I was shocked that Keir Starmer couldn't do that.That's something that I would have done.I would have let them use our bases.

And probably the difference between me and others is that when we were being fired on, I would have tried to take out that capability.Some people don't agree with that.But I use this analogy that if someone is shooting arrows at you, you shouldn't just try and catch the arrows because eventually you'll get hit.I worry a lot about British servicemen and women in other countries.I worry about us looking like a soft target.I want us to project strength at all times.

And I think that projecting weakness has also damaged some of our relationship with the United States.And our partners in the Gulf as well.They're very, very upset by how we've responded.

Of course.How do you get on with Donald Trump?

I only met him once at a state dinner.We got on fine.

What was his opening line to you?

Drill oil and gas in the North Sea.I think somebody, I think someone had briefed him that Kemi's, you know, very determined on this issue.He didn't say drill baby drill, which is his line.didn't.He was disparaging about wind farms.So when Donald Trump says something, I agree with.

You know, I say so.When he says things that I disagree with, I'm also vocal about it.I think he was wrong to criticise British troops.I think that the rabble -rousing over Greenland was also wrong.I don't like the childish spats that he has with Keir Starmer, the public insults, you know.It's my job to have a go at Keir Starmer.

I mean, if you're Prime Minister, you're going to get that.You'll get that.

Well, the thing is, And you may just cross over, right?Well, yes, yes.But I don't think that would happen.When I was trade secretary, we had other countries who were doing things to us on trade that were very, very damaging to the UK.I never had a war of words in public.I always had the war of words in private, because the only people who are helped by a war of words between the UK and allies are countries like Russia and Iran.

They love it when they see us slagging each other off.So I didn't like when Donald Trump did that, because it weakens the Western alliance.And now more than ever, I think the world needs a strong NATO, a strong Western alliance.Looking like the West is weakening makes countries like Iran and North Korea, Russia, China maybe, you know, happy days for them.

Many people think that his decision to go to war in Iran has emboldened the Iranian regime, not damaged it.

I'm not so sure that is true.I mean, I'm not in Iran, but you look at the amount of capability that's been taken out.We know that they're clearly being helped by some other countries.They're fighting for survival.I think the main thing that Donald Trump underestimated is that with some countries, it's about ideology.They're prepared to die for their ideology.

I think Donald Trump is someone who thinks in terms of, you know, what's the deal?Who's going to make money out of this?If something's costing people money, they'll back out.Iran is a country that is very, it's led by ideology.They want to kill and they're happy to die for what they believe in.And I think the West needs to stop being naive as if every country is happy to go to the UN and talk it out.

Not everyone is like that.How do we respond?Investing in our defence, making sure we can defend our country and people don't try and attack us.And that is not happening right now.There are all sorts of orders which we put in place in 2024.Labour paused them when they came in for the election.

They said they wanted to have a strategic defence review.It's been a year since then.We should have had an investment plan last autumn.It's now this summer and nothing's happening.So Labour is weakening our country.I want a strong United Kingdom.

I love this country and I can't believe what's happening to it.Everyone with common sense can see that we should be spending money on defence, not on welfare, and Labour just wants more and more welfare.

What are you going to do about reform?Because Nigel Farage is leading in the polls.If the general election happened tomorrow, it would be highly likely that he would be Prime Minister, not you.What are you going to do about that?Because he's stolen a large constituent of Conservative voters, I know quite a few, who just got sick and tired of the procession of useless Tory governments, as they saw it, wrecking everyone's lives.So they gravitated to this guy, Nigel Farage, And like I said, as things stand, he would win an election, not you.

How are you going to beat him?

Well, he's had a lot more time in the public eye than I have.The more people see of me, the more they like.So I need to get out there and explain that conservative message.We made some mistakes in the past.but we have always been the best option.Imagine if anyone else, Corbyn, Miliband, or any of those people had been in charge during COVID, during Brexit.

I'm not saying that we were perfect, but we are still the better option.We are still the best option.Nigel Farage is attracting a lot of protest votes.He doesn't have the baggage of having been in office, but he also doesn't havethe experience.He's telling everybody what they want to hear.

He's a one -man band.He's got no one to speak on defence.Is he a bit of a snake oil salesman?Well, I mean, you look at that fishy £5 million.Yeah, I mean, that stinks.What's he got?

It does stink.It does stink.If it's a gift, Why didn't he tell people about it?If you receive gifts 12 months before being an MP, the rules are that you say, why did he keep it a secret?Have you received millions quietly without telling us?Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.And to be honest, I wouldn't want that.I mean, £5 million is a fortune.It's life -changing money.Yeah, it is.It's life -changing.

It'll change your life forever.He claimed it was for security.Then he said it was a gift for Brexit.The story's all over the place.I want people to know that I'm working on this.for the public of this country, for the British citizens, you know, the British people, that's who I'm working for, not any particular donor.

Of course, every political party needs donations.We get them from a large number of people.We're not bought by anyone.And they support us because of the policies we have.We're not changing our policies so we can do things, you know, on crypto or whatever.So I think that five million pounds shows that, you know, Even though he's tried to pretend that he's different from what people think of politicians, he is really in it for himself.

That money didn't go to reform.It went to his personal pocket.So that means he's doing it.And he said that, you know, there's no money in politics unless, you know, you're dodgy or something like that.And, you know, if he said that, what did he mean by that?

We've had so many prime ministers in such a short period of time.And really, from the moment of Brexit onwards, it's been total chaos here.I voted remain in that referendum, but I was prepared to give Brexit a chance.But 10 years later, I can't see any proper benefit from that whatsoever.I can see a lot of negative to it.So when I see West Street, he wants to be the new Labour leader, say he would have another referendum, or even reverse it.

Actually, why shouldn't we have another referendum?

So we should not refight the battles of the past.

But why if it isn't working?With any other policy, it doesn't work.

So that is true, but let's look at the evidence.I wasn't an MP when the Brexit referendum happened.How would you have voted?I voted leave.I voted leave.And people voted leave for all sorts of different reasons.

What have we got out of Brexit?The opportunity to make our own laws.Are we using them?No, we're not.This is one of the mistakes that the Conservative Party made, where they treated leaving the EU as the end rather than the beginning.We have not used those powers.

We are not being competitive.Instead, some of the things we did were actually more left -wing, using leaving the EU to be more left -wing.Labour has doubled down on that.You know, VAT on private schools, you couldn't have done that in the EU.They're using leaving the EU to do more left -wingers.

And that was a crazy decision.The politics of envy at its worst.

It was the politics of envy.A lot of those schools have closed.We don't have more teachers.They haven't got any money from it.So they're not more teachers, but they're now more pupils.

Well, they never were when they tried it in Greece, is the point I made at the time.

So we need to start using the benefits that we have.And there are some things that we can do.Gene editing, we're ahead.Even our regulation on AI, we're ahead of Europe on that.You look at things like jet fuel and refueling.There are all sorts of little rules that have impacted EU citizens, EU countries.

We're able to refuel.It's been very good for our airline industry.But the polls suggest...But one more thing.So things like the cheap power plan, which I've put out, where we're going to scrap VAT on energy bills.You can't do that in the EU.

So what I'm doing is saying, here are the things we can do now that we've left.Let's use them.The trade deals.I signed our biggest trade deal since leaving Brexit, the Trans -Pacific Partnership.We'd have to undo all that.And if you're going back into the EU,

we're going to have to lose pound sterling and take the euro.These people don't want that.So what Labour are trying to do is refight a battle.Most people want us to make the best of Brexit, not go back and have that argument again.

I know, but most of the polls show that a lot of people have buyer's remorse about Brexit.given it was a referendum and given we're 10 years on, my whole thing at the time was, well, let's see if it works.Why not just ask the British people, you know what, we'll have another referendum and see whether you actually still want that to happen or not.Now, it would be incredibly difficult to go back in, I get that, and we'd have to have reforms of the EU and all the rest of it.And I'm not saying it should necessarily happen, but why not just ask the British people?

So we saw last time that simply asking them the question is different from the government getting it done.Can this Labour government that gave away the Chagos Islands and paid £35 billion on top of that, do you think they can negotiate with the EU?I came into Parliament when the negotiations started.Three years of going round and round in circles.I want us to go into politics to get stuff done for the people of this country.Having endless negotiations and nothing happening, which is what happened 2017 to 2019, I don't want to see again.

So I'm not in favour of us going backwards.I'm in favour of the future.What can we do for the next generation?If you have another referendum and have another constitutional parliament debating these things, it's not going to make things better.We're not going to have the same deal we had before.You know, Margaret Thatcher's rebate, all of that is gone.

We'll have to get the euro.And Europe is not growing.We need new ideas.It's an idea for people who haven't got any ideas.They have, Labour have no plans for the country.So why don't we just go back to 2016 and hope it's all fine?

I want us to talk about the things that we are going to do.What are we going to do on the economy?How are we going to get this country growing?How are we going to free up business?How are we using those rules tomake ourselves an AI superpower?

How are we competing with the EU?We can do these things.But they've got no ambition for this country.They can't think of what to do, so they want to refight old battles.Let's get the trade unions back in.Let's nationalise.

Let's go back into the EU.Everything Labour is doing is about the past.I'm about the future.

Free speech is a big raging issue, not just here, but everywhere.But overnight, Cenk Uygur, a regular guest on my show, probably my most regular guest, actually, got banned entry to the UK, stopped in Los Angeles, because, according to the Times, of his views about Israel and several other things, but mainly about his views about Israel.He's very strident with his criticism of the Israeli government.and what that means therefore for Israel as a nation.I've never heard him be anti -Semitic or say anything hateful about Jewish people or any of that kind of thing.Why has he been banned from this country?

So that is a question for the government but I've been very consistent about bans.I do think that a government should be able to make a call if the security services or the Home Office or other people have some information that shows someone will not be a public good.I think a government has the right to stop people from coming into the country.In fact, I wish they'd do more of it.Shouldn't they say why?All those small boats coming in, they should be doing the same thing.

Sure, but that's different.But if people are being banned who are high profile, shouldn't there be an explanation?

I think there should be an explanation.There's no reason to be secretive about it.

Criticising Israel.shouldn't be a reason.

But I don't know if that is the reason.But also, I believe in free speech, but I am concerned about the free speech of people in this country.I don't think that we are giving international rights for people to come to our country to exercise their free speech.

But we've been jailing peoplefor example, for Facebook posts and so on.Do you agree with that?

So people should not be, in my view, jailed for Facebook posts unless they are breaking the law very clearly.I am someone who believes in free speech, but free speech has its limits.You can't defame people, you can't incite violence or hatred.But I have also been very vocal about what is happening to British Jews in our country.There's clearly been a climate of intimidation and incitement to violence happening with a lot of those protests.I think that's the sort of place where you draw the line.

That yes, have free speech, but you don't use it to hurt other people.Your rights stop when someone else's rights begin.So if they, you know, When I'm Prime Minister, I want to be able to stop bad people from coming to our country.I don't know the reasons that Labour gives to the people that it does stop, but that right to stop people who are not conducive to the public good from coming to the country, I think is an important one for a government to exercise.

Are you comfortable fully aligning yourself to an Israeli government that has people like Ben Gavir and Smodrich, who To put it bluntly, I view as psychopaths.

So I am aligning myself with Jewish people in our country.I don't align myself with particular...But that's different.Well, yes, but where did you...

Well, if you were prime minister of this country, you would have to make public statements about the Israeli government.

So, yes...

Given the way that certain members of that government behave now, or what we see with our own eyes, would you be comfortable fully supporting that government?

So let's remember Israel is an ally of the UK.Sure.There will be all sorts of people who will be in any foreign government, Israel or elsewhere, that I might not be comfortable with, might dislike their views.But when I was Trade Secretary, I saw how Israeli intelligence helped protect British citizens and this country.They are fighting a lot of battles which are really fights for Western values.And I think that when you look at what happened on October 7th, the massacre

that happened, really horrific stuff, which I even find uncomfortable thinking about, knowing what I've read about, what I saw, that I understand why they are in a fight for their survival.

Do you feel comfortable about the scale of the response in, say, Gaza and now in Lebanon?Are you comfortable about that?

So I know that mistakes have been made, but I can also see that Israel takes actually quite a lot of care in targeting people.So I disagree when people call it a genocide.It's a war.Or death, you know, is something which I think should be avoided.I think Israel actually takes care to try and target the specific people.

But they're killing a lot of civilians in the process.

Because Hamas uses the civilians as human shields.

Is that a good enough excuse, eventually, if it looks like eventually we hear from Ben -Gavir and Smodrich what they really want to do is kick all the Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank?

I don't know him and I don't know what he said, so I can't comment on that.I do think it is wrong that Hamas uses innocent civilians as human shields.That is what has caused a lot of the scale of the violence.You look at what they did with Hezbollah and the Pages, you look at the very precise targeting, I believe the Israeli government, when they say they do everything they can to minimize human life, Hamas does not do that.And even Palestinians will say that Hamas is the biggest oppressor of Palestinian people.Getting rid of Hamas, I think, is important.

It is a terrorist group.That's the issue, I think, with the guest on your show.I'm sorry, I've forgotten his name.He has said that he prefers Hamas to Israel.to Israel.Hamas is a terrorist group.

He's always condemned Hamas to me.

But I was told that he had said that.And I just don't want people who support terrorist groups coming to our country.

He's not a Hamas supporter.That would be a mischaracterisation.Two quick things before we wrap up.It's been very interesting talking to you.Don't leave us so long next time.Okay.

What is your faith, which I find really interesting, because you were very open about this recently in an interview.with Amorajan.You said that you lost your personal belief in God after reading about the Joseph Fritzl case, where this Austrian monster had imprisoned and abused his daughter for 24 years.She'd had to have seven children by him.It was a despicable, awful story.You had lost your belief in God, but now identified as a cultural Christian and people were a little bit confused about that, you know and debated it a lot.

You happen to be married to a practicing Catholic Church every Sunday he does right and I believe your kids are all being raised Catholic and they go to church every Sunday.Yeah.

So what do you what do you do?What is a cultural Christian?I go to church sometimes but not very often but remember I was um, I I'm the granddaughter of a Methodist reverend.So I grew up in a Christian family.My grandmother, I tell people my grandmother was born a Muslim.She actually converted to Christianity after she believed she'd witnessed a miracle.

I grew up in a very Christian family and it's...In Nigeria?Yes, in Nigeria.My childhood...You were born here, but then your mother went back to...Yes, I was born in London, but my childhood was spent in Nigeria.

And it's literal there.The Bible is a living word of God.So when I say I lost my faith, it was believing that every single thing in the Bible was true.Because if every single thing in the Bible was true, I don't think what happened to Elisabeth Fritzl would have happened.

Well, I think you made the point that you made little prayers to God, which God answered about exams and so on.But she had clearly prayed every day to be released from this horror, and had never been released in 24 years.And you were making the point, how can a just God allow those two things to happen?

Yes, basically, why were my prayers answered, but not her prayers?But I am still a cultural Christian, because...Do you pray every day?No, but when I say I'm a cultural Christian, that means that the culture of Christianity is one which I think is a force for good.I think churches are a good thing.I think that the work ethic, the Protestant work ethic, which is what Methodists are often most seen about, is very important.

I think the Christian values, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, truth -telling, all of those things I think are important and I think that they are very much part of the culture of this country.I think that this is a Christian country.I don't want to see Christianity disappear and so even though I might not believe in every single thing that is in the Bible, overall I think that Christianity is a force for good and I will fight for it.

Do you think you might rekindle your belief in God, given that the rest of your immediate family are pretty devout by the sound of it.

I don't think faith works like that.I don't think faith works like that.Oh, it does.Oh, no, it does.

Really?

Why do you think so?

I've heard people who renounce their faith and then something happens and they get it back.

I might need to see the kind of miracle my grandmother sought.

Do you think anything would persuade you?

But sometimes I look at how lucky I have been personally.And, you know, the role that I'm in, you know, 10 years ago, I was not even a member of Parliament.Now I'm leading the Conservative Party.And, you know, once in a while, you can think, is there someone who is, you know, or is there a being that is directing these things?Those thoughts do cross your mind.So I don't describe myself as an atheist.

I describe myself as agnostic.Maybe there is a God.maybe there isn't, but I will try and live my life according to certain values, which are Christian values, but I'm not going to use the Bible as a textbook for how to be in government or what rules and regulations should come in.And I think that most people in the country are probably in that space, that there is a cultural Christianity, go to church,not just for weddings and funerals.you know, Christmas and Easter when something momentous is happening, and I am bringing my children up in that.

But I also, I believe in being honest, and I cannot pretend that I believe in God when I don't believe in God, when I am agnostic about His existence.I'm somebody who, you know, even when it's painful, I will tell the truth.If I'm telling you something, you know that what I say I mean.I think that that's really important in politicians.People are so disillusioned by politicians saying things so that they can get votes.So I'm not going to tell people, that I believe in something just to get their votes.

I want them to know what I do believe.So I'm a cultural Christian.I believe in culture a lot.I think we talk a lot about values, but not enough about culture.And I think we have a great culture in this country.We're at risk of losing it if we don't preserve it.

So I fight for churches.I want to see them fixed.You know, I want more money going into preserving churches, which are actually often a repository of the history of every village, especially in the countryside and in rural areas.They tell a story about who we are and, you know, maybe where we're going.

Tommy Robinson who spent their time on the airways in America saying Britain is lost, London is lost, we've been overrun by Muslims and there's no hope for us.

So we are our people.A country is its people.We are not lost.We are not broken.But there are certainly some things which are broken or breaking.I think our immigration system is broken.

That's why I want us to leave the Convention on Human Rights.It doesn't work.I think there are a lot of nice ideas we have.which are being naive.People who convert asylum seekers to Christianity and then they go on and become an imam afterwards or start visiting the mosque.People who convert men who claim to be gay and then when they get their settled status, they get married and have children.

I think that we've been very naive.I'm not a supporter of Tommy Robinson.I think he said a lot of unsavory things.You know, he's gotten into trouble for contempt of court.But he is tapping into a sentiment that clearly thousands of people do share about their concerns about us losing our culture.I am also concerned about us losing our culture.

I think that Britain is a beacon to the rest of the world.The reason why people come here is because of British culture and British values.So we have to fight for them.People think culture is just the food you eat or the clothes you wear.Culture is the way you behave, its norms, its expectations, how you treat women, how you bring up your children, how you treat minorities, who gets a job.Is it a meritocracy or is it a clan culture or an aristocracy where it's who you know that gets you in?

Those are the things that make up culture.And we don't talk enough about those things.And that's a conversation that the Conservative Party is now having.That's one of the ways that I am changing the Conservative Party.I think for a long time, you know, a lot of people turned their noses up talking about culture or saying you're fighting culture wars.But culture is as important as the economy.

They go hand -in -hand.If you have a culture of people not going to work and just having benefits and they get money for having children on benefits, you're going to destroy your country very quickly.That's why I want to put the two -child benefit cap back in place.People who are on benefits should have to make the same decisions as everybody else when it comes to having children.That's part of our culture.

There is a parallel I think you're going to rather like, which is that my football team at Arsenal have just been declared the champions of England by winning the Premier League for the first time in 22 years.The manager of Mikel Arteta, a Spaniard, has created a team of shared values, as he sees it.Four of his squad are young men of Nigerian heritage, Madawaki, Eze, Saka and Waneri, which I didn't actually realise they were all of Nigerian heritage until I knew you were coming along.and that you are.What does that say about your prospects to be Prime Minister that Arteta's clearly put his faith in four young men, British Nigerians, who've powered us to victory?Are you seeing this as a sign?

I think it is a wonderful sign that we are a multi -racial country and you're judged on how good you are.not on the color of your skin.That's something I never wanted to change.I tell people that this is a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.We should all have a shared culture and shared identity.But it is amazing that we, people whose heritage is from elsewhere, are treated fairly in this country.

And I think that the British public will give me a go.I think that they will look when it's the election day and think, who actually has the best offer?Who has got the character?who is a leader, who doesn't take any nonsense, and does the right thing.We may not agree with everything she says, but we know she means it.I think that they will look at me.

But I've still got a lot of work to do, and I've got a lot of work to do with the party as well.I want people to know that we got things wrong, and we know we got things wrong, and we have changed.I'm changing the candidates that are coming into the party.We want new people, better people, so I'm changing things.And I think that we will be looking like the new, fresh party, while Labour and even Reform will be looking quite tired.I mean, Nigel Farage is already quite exhausted.

He doesn't come to work anymore.He doesn't.

Kemi Bainot, a pleasure to get to know you a little bit.Come back again.Thank you.Pleasure was all mine.I enjoyed it.Thank you very much.

Thank you.We will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain.And we'll do it all for free.Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical.And we couldn't do it without you.