Hi everyone and welcome to this buy one get one free extra special episode of the UKIS ITEL podcast.

And in this episode we have a recording of a recent unlocked event that I did with Minister of State for Security, Tom Tuganat.

Tom and I met in late April and talked amongst other things about the threat that Russia poses to us,

about the UK's role in European defence,

and about China's increased assertiveness on the world stage. I'm pretty sure you're going to find

it really interesting. Hope you enjoy it. See you again soon. Take care. Bye. This is, for those of you who don't know, we had a series during the Brexit years called Beer and Brexit.

This is basically a rebranded version of that.

And we hope to sort of have a regular series once a month of these in-conversation events where we can spend an hour talking to a well-known politician, not engage in sort of punch and duty fisticuffs but actually find out

what they think about some of the big issues the next one actually is going to be a very little

use to you lot in the sense that it's going to be in Leeds unless you're very very keen and you want to

go up to Leeds but it's going to be streamed it's with the mayor of West Yorkshire and it's a series

we will as I said keep trying to keep going with a sort of monthly routine from here on in. Without further ado, let me welcome Tom Tuggenhat here. We always like to start off with some facts you might not have known. His surname means has virtue in German apparently. I won't quiz you about that. He's got a

master's degree in Islamic studies and speaks Arabic. Blimey. Badly. We're going to show off some

Arabic there? No, no, I've forgotten so much. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the

territorial army, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the citizen of both Britain and France.

Constituency is Tunbridge and Malling, and he is the Minister of States for Security,

and is the sixth such minister since 2019. Tom, welcome.

Unlike many in contemporary politics, you didn't go straight into politics. You're not what they call a career politician. I've never known what that meant. How did you find politics when you went into it? Did it surprise you? Were you pleasantly surprised?

Yeah, it was surprising. It was, I mean, it's a really strange job. In the sense, it's not really a job, it's a lifestyle in the way that many careers are.

Well, I'm an academic. You don't know so many. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yours is a lifestyle. I'll stop there. I was about to make a joke, but I'll save it for another time. The, you know, I got into politics through soldiering, but mostly because you get to see a slice of your country that you're not, that you don't always see when you're soldiering.

You meet people from across the United Kingdom, you meet people, in fact, across the Commonwealth,

who come from very different backgrounds,

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