The Real Reasons Populism Is Taking Over
2 April 2026
471. Rory Stewart: How the Government Tried to Silence Me on Lockdowns
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Podcast
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21 November 2025
Why did Boris Johnson and the British government not only fail to listen, but actively try to suppress early warnings about the pandemic? How did groupthink and optimism bias cripple the UK's response? And is Britain's government structurally too slow to handle future threats like AI and Putin's increasing aggression in Europe?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more.
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Hello Alastair,
I listened to your podcast about the budget yesterday and was very disappointed to hear you say that the triple lock is unsustainable and Rory sadly agreed with you.
When 1 in 6 retired women and 1 in 12 retired men live solely on the state pension, how could you possibly think that less than £13,000pa. is enough to live on?
Anyone with a private pension on top of their state pension pays income tax at the same rate as the working population, so 20% of the triple lock is clawed back in tax.
Everyone with a state pension has worked and contributed to the state pension scheme through National Insurance contributions and your entitlement to state pension and the amount you get is worked out from how many contributions you have paid, so you need to have worked for 35 years and paid full NI contributions to get the full pension (I’m sure you know that many women for various reasons don’t get a full pension)
I worked as a nurse in the NHS for 32years. With my state pension and my private pension my income is not even what I would get if I was paid minimum wage.
To say a scheme is unsustainable gives credence to the lie that we live in a poor country, I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. We should be saying how do we design an economic system that supports the triple lock so that pensioners do not fall behind and into poverty. Our state pension is one of the lowest in Europe and the constant rhetoric of ‘the triple lock is unsustainable, pensioners are well off’ etc. etc. is just another way of dividing society and demonising a group of people, some of whom are very vulnerable.
As we age our needs change and pensioners are now required to pay for much of the care they need in their later years. It is unaffordable for many, who live very unhappy lives at a time when society should be there for them. An adequate and stable income is very important at this time. With the mobile society we now live in, many elderly people don’t have family close by to help and a lot of the help that is needed has to be paid for.
Please stop scapegoating pensioners, most of whom have worked all their lives and contributed to society in many ways. Young people will be pensioners one day and I’m sure they would like to look forward to their later years and not be worried that society might not see them as worthy. We are a community and should be thinking how we can make life better for everyone, not demonising the old so the young can have more. There’s enough to go around, it’s just that a few multibillionaires have most of it!
Yours truly
Diane