Birmingham Airport

for decades, it will connect us quicker and closer, not just to London, but to other parts of the world.

So obviously beyond Kirsten Street going to Birmingham Airport, but then into London itself, being able to connect educational institutions, investors institutions, and actually make business happen.

in a quicker, more paceful environment, if you like, as well.

So there's lots of opportunities at the back there.

He's from the Midlands, originally from Stoke-on-Trent.

He learned to fly with the air cadets and did his PPL at Birmingham Airport, where I am now based.

But when I was a child, he kept that PPL going.

He took me up in a Cessna around the ages of four and five.

We don't enforce our borders.

It's harder to get into Britain via Birmingham Airport and Luton Airport than it is via Dover or the back of a lorry or overstaying.

It's true what I'm saying, isn't it? So we haven't really got borders.

We've lost them.

It is an early Friday morning as I record this in equally early September 2026.

I am reporting this time from a hotel between Birmingham Airport and the National Exhibition Centre.

Of all of the travel taverns that my work takes me to, the view from this one could be the most dispiriting, especially on a grey and miserable day like this one looks set to be.

I'm here for the Reform Party Conference and I'm speaking at a fringe event at lunchtime.