Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Christian

Guru Murphy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about

the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them. My

guest this week is Samuel Kasumu. Now Samuel was

special advisor to Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister between 2019 and

April 2021 when he resigned. Now his brief was called civil society and communities but he was

widely referred to as Boris Johnson's racism advisor and he left Downing streets not long after the government's own racism report

which was very controversial but Samuel's written a book called The Power of the Outsider, which he addresses

the reasons why he left and what he learned along the way. He has been a he's

entered sort of active politics since leaving Downing Street and wanted to be the conservative

candidate for the mayor of London, but he didn't succeed in winning that nomination and is now to tour in the book and what else are you doing?

I'm a business and I'm a district councillor and I'm busy doing other things. So you're very busy?

Tell me why you were an outsider in Downing Street.

For many reasons so when I when I arrived then in 2019 I was one of very few people that hadn't worked with Boris Johnson when he was at City Hall as May of London or when he ran the vote leave campaign and neither was I a legacy hire. So I guess in those were many respects I was an outsider, but I was also an outsider because I was one of very few people.

In team I was part of that didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge, from a working class background,

grew up in social housing, so I wasn't very typical in terms of the types of people that

would enter in Downing Street as a special advisor.

So how did you become an insider?

Am I an insider?

Well once you're working in Downing Street you're in Insider aren't you?

So how did you get inside I suppose is what I mean?

Yeah, I mean it's not a job you apply for of course so

...