Speaker 1The Telegraph Parliament is back and Burnham's first budget looms as he faces down a £35 billion black hole. And a disastrous new report proves that life on welfare pays more than the minimum wage.
Speaker 2But why is the Prime Minister banging on about Brexit again? Welcome to The Daily Tee with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Now he's following a Trumpian playbook. You say something that is so outrageous and so untrue in the hope that you muddy the waters. It's clear that the Russians did not affect the Brexit vote. But it's classic of the mad, obsessed Remainers that they can't believe that the British people, in a fair vote, wanted to reject their beautiful project. And that's what happened and they can't get over it. Burnham needs to grow up.
Speaker 1Jacob Rees-Mogg, we're back together. The team wanted us to talk about quite a late night we had in Birmingham, but we're not going to discuss it because what goes on tour stays on tour.
Speaker 2Well, it's not as late as if we were staying up to listen to The Ashes.
Speaker 1No, that's right, actually. It was a relatively quiet evening. I love the fact that you think it's quiet. I've got to plug The Daily Tee Plus membership, which is going great guns. For goodness sakes, sign up if you want exclusive access to behind the stage footage with me and Jacob and Tim, who's having a couple of days off. God love him because he's tired. And he's been sketching to his heart's content. You get early access to episodes and a whole lot more details in our show notes. Wonderful. And before we kick off, an inquiry from a listener, which you'll appreciate. Miss Tominey, how formal. I understand Jacob Rees-Mogg will be your wingman for a couple of days. Can you please ask him if it's true that when he was a baby, his nanny dressed him in pinstripe nappies?
Speaker 2Oh, sadly, I think that is not true. She probably should have done.
Speaker 1Although you've got into a pickle in the past. I've heard a lot about nappies, haven't you? And your complete and utter reluctance to change any, despite being a father of six.
Speaker 2Well, why would I be in a pickle about this? I think most men are quite happy not to change nappies.
Speaker 1Well, in this very modern era, you should be doing your fair share.
Speaker 2Well, my fair share was done by all sorts of other people. But why should one want to do these things? I don't understand it, that I don't feel that this was a great need for me to change nappies.
Speaker 1Well, it's like, you know, being hands on and at one with the children, I'm sure. But. When the babies were born, you were ripping off your shirt and tie, having skin-to-skin contact at the hospital.
Speaker 2No, of course I wasn't, I wasn't doing anything like that, but I did their catechism with them. Ah. So, you know, their spiritual life I was concerned with, making sure all this happened. And perhaps others were able to deal with them. You set them on a path to God. The physical needs.
Speaker 1Yes. Also, we know we had a good night out because you almost converted me back to Rome, didn't you, when we were in Birmingham?
Speaker 2I keep on trying.
Speaker 1Yes, we'll see.
Speaker 2Along with Tim. Tim's keen to bring you back to Rome.
Speaker 1I know. He's not a fan of Axis. It's a pincer movement.
Speaker 2Catholic. That's right.
Speaker 1Unum Sanctum. Come back to the church. I shall flagellate later in the style of Silas the Monk from The Da Vinci Code. Should we talk about an obsession of different sorts, and that is seemingly Burnham's religious obsession with Brexit. Why is the prime minister constantly banging on about Silas? I know he's nostalgic about the 70s. He seems to be very nostalgic about 2016. What's wrong with him?
Speaker 2It's really weird because he's now become Trumpian. He's basically saying. The vote was stolen, it was stolen by the Russians, and therefore we must go through it all again. This is madness that he's been very critical of Donald Trump in the past for suggesting the election was stolen in 2020, but now he's following a Trumpian playbook. It's clear that the Russians did not affect the Brexit vote, but it's classic of the mad, obsessed Remainers that they can't believe that the British people, in a fair vote, wanted to reject their beautiful project, and that's what happened, and they can't get over it.
Speaker 1He does. Also, he needs to be down with the people of Makerfield, his own constituency. They voted 65% Leave. If you want to have a conversation about why people voted for Brexit, literally just knock on a few doors in your own seat.
Speaker 2Well, do you think he thinks the people of Makerfield are, in fact, Russian bosses? No, I don't think so. I don't think so.
Speaker 1Well, possibly. I mean, some of the Remainers think.
Speaker 2He must think pretty poorly of his own constituents.
Speaker 1I don't know about you, but I could not have supported Brexit without watching endless reruns of Russia Today and being influenced by anonymous trolls on social media.
Speaker 2And indeed, of course, that was exactly what made me become Euro-skeptic in about 1992. Indeed. It was the direct message from, I suppose, it was then Gorbachev, who said to me. Can you be honest?
Speaker 1It's 1892, isn't it? It's 1892. It's 1892. It's 1892. Katie Lamb, who is the equivalent in the Tories to Angela Rayner, and this is one for the Communities Department because it's about a vote. Elections, yes. At best, the Prime Minister's statement. I should point out that he did say this on a completely unmemorable podcast. I can't. Don't know who hosts it. Don't listen to it. Wouldn't want to. But anyway, he's more than welcome on the Daily Tea if he wants some robust exchanges rather than existing in a strange echo chamber of liberal hell. But anyway. At best, the Prime Minister's statement was carelessly vague and risks sowing doubt about the result of a professionally run, independently monitored democratic vote in contradiction of statements made by both a foreign office minister and a security minister. Well, that makes a good point. As you say, there's been no finding whatsoever, much as the Remainers and others have tried, of Russian interference.
Speaker 2Foreign countries often try to interfere in elections. You may remember Guardian readers wrote to people in a county in Ohio. Saying, "Vote against George Bush, Jr." in whichever election that would be in 2004. Completely counterproductive. It didn't make any difference. The question is not whether people tried to influence it. It's whether they succeeded in doing anything that affected the result of the election that was improper. There is no suggestion that the ballot papers were fiddled. There's no suggestion that people who weren't allowed to vote voted in this election. There is no suggestion of electoral malpractice. This is sheer dishonesty by the prime minister who wants to change the Brexit result and is now lying about it. He's going for the stolen election playbook that Trump went for. It's a weird thing for him to do. And it's very dangerous because in this country, we're very lucky. Since the ballot came in in the 1867 Reform Bill, Reform Act, we have had incredibly good and reliable election results. With remarkably little corruption in them. And for the prime minister to start saying our election results have been stolen is really dangerous and hacks away at the tree of democracy.
Speaker 1Do you think the ultimate aim is a second referendum? Oh, yes, of course. Yes. Because I spoke to Wes Streeting about this on my GB News show on Sunday. I pointed out the paradox at the heart of the government's argument. On one hand, they say that Brexit is to blame for our sclerotic economy. And then in the same breath, they say, "We've got the fastest growth in the world. We've got the fastest growth in the Eurozone or the G7." Well, those two premises cannot be correct at the same time, can they?
Speaker 2No, of course they can't. And the German economy and the French economy have mainly done worse than ours, the German economy much worse than ours since we left. So the idea that being in the EU would have helped us economically, simply not true.
Speaker 1Secondly, I said to Streeting, this is all about rejoin, isn't it? And we had a story, I think it was in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend, with a senior MEP saying, "Well, if you want to rejoin, your coaster's on the bottom of your coffee. I just want to avoid a double-breasted emergency." The senior MEP said, "Well, if Britain wants to rejoin, the first thing they'll have to do is ditch the pound." So we have all of these surveys by YouGov and others saying, "Would you like to rejoin?" Not pointing out that it would require us to ditch the pound, pay 350 million a week back to the EU to be a rule-taker and not a rule-maker and all the rest of it. That's not said. And Streeting was trying to weasel out of it and say, "Well, we're not talking about rejoin." And I thought, "Well, what are you talking about? You've gone further than Starmer saying realignment."
Speaker 2Yes, they are basically talking about rejoin. They're proposing, I think, after the next election, at least the single market, which is rejoining in all but name. The single market is the mainstay of the European Union. It's actually, it's reaccession. You would have to negotiate a new accession treaty. And everyone who now joins the EU is bound to take the euro. Crucially, the EU is centered upon free movement of people. Today, we will have just solved the immigration problem from outside the EU and then we swamped by EU migrants. I don't think anyone in the country wants this. It is quite embarrassing for prime minister when a junior minister has to correct the record the following morning.
Speaker 1Yes, exactly. So, Stephen Doughty saying, "No, Russia had not succeeded in its attempt to influence the Brexit referendum," he confirmed, and that's the foreign office minister who Katie Lam refers to clearly in her letter, I mean, it's bizarre, but then maybe it's a dead cat's mouth strategy to divert from a quite worrying statement made by the IFS, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, saying that actually when you factor inflation into the budget that's coming on October the 28th, John Healey, the chancellor, needs to find £35 billion more because the government doesn't seem to have allowed for the fact that the price of everything has gone up. I mean, do you agree with that analysis because the IFS can sometimes be controversial in its predictions, Jacob?
Speaker 2Well, yes. The IFS, publicly funded IFS, gets a lot of taxpayers' cash by UKRI, if I remember rightly. The thing about inflation on the government accounts is quite complicated because it reduces the national debt as a share of nominal GDP because the debt is in nominal pounds mainly, some of its index linked. And when nominal GDP rises because of inflation, the debt to GDP goes down.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm really struggling so much.
Speaker 2So that is in a way quite helpful to the government. So the government debt benefits from inflation. You could talk about this in terms of pies. You could make it simple for me. Well, but the annual expenditure is affected in a different number of ways. So freezing the income tax threshold, the higher inflation, the more money the government gets from fiscal drag. So that's why they do it. They love that. That's positive for the government. On the other hand, benefits go up by more because of inflation. So that's an outflow. Thank you. So saying inflation means the government has to spend more in and of itself is true, but there are countervailing advantages for the government. It's not quite as simple, I think, as the IFS is saying.
Speaker 1But to break it all down, the IFS is basically saying because of these inflationary factors, you've got a very, very stark choice. It's either raise taxes to compensate or it's slash government spending. And I think you and I both know, where Mr. and Mrs. Miner's Lamp are going with this on the 28th.
Speaker 2Yes, but inflation makes it easier to cut expenditure because most people are worried about nominal income rather than real income on the day they get it. So if you say to a council, your expenditure this year is in nominal terms the same, the fact that inflation has been 3% is something that they can deal with more easily. Than if you say to them, we're cutting your expenditure by 3%.
Speaker 1No, okay, I get that.
Speaker 2So inflation can be used to make cuts less painful because people have the same nominal amount.
Speaker 1Although it can also be used as a political lever by, for instance, the trade unions when they demand public sector pay rises. It was interesting, Sharon Graham from Unite was on one show or other that I was listening to this morning talking about good jobs. She was like, at the end of the day, what they're doing is they're creating good jobs and that's good union-backed jobs. I was like, a job is a job, Sharon Graham. There's no difference between good jobs and bad jobs anyway. So she was making that point and obviously there's going to be huge demands on Healy and Burnham as they want to go back to the 1970s to pay public sector workers a whole lot more and those workers will want it to be linked to inflation and all the rest of it. Which brings us on nicely to this compendium of benefit stories which are really quite staggering. So on one hand, we've got the Centre for Social Justice which was founded by Ian Duncan Smith and others on the right. Although it's non-partisan as an organisation, it's got some conservative roots, basically saying that there are 3,000 areas in the UK where more than half of the population is on benefits, which is a staggering figure in itself. And a lot of these areas, by the way, it's Blackpool, it's Bradford, it's Redcar, it's some of these actually previous industrial heavyweight towns that have now been left behind. And I think we do need to accept that. Also, towns with a high immigrant population begging the question, does low-skilled migration actually grow the economy? Probably not. But then how about this as well? We've got the Times concurrently reporting that nearly 2 million people on sickness benefits are left completely unchecked. 2 million! And we've got another staggering figure from the CSJ that basically suggests that if you're on minimum wage, you have to work six days a week to keep up with people on benefits. So we are now in this perverse situation where people on benefits, Jacob, are earning more than those on the minimum wage. Now, I would argue for that if it's in favour of someone who is completely incapacitated and cannot work. But because the number of working-age people who could work but are signed off and often unchecked aren't working, that is creating, frankly, a time bomb for our economy, isn't it?
Speaker 2It's disastrous because there are, I believe, 6 million people in this country who work for the CSJ. There are people who work who would be better off on benefits. Now, they are working out of the goodness of their hearts, out of a moral sense that they ought to work. But you can't rely on people's good nature forever. They would improve their standard of living if they stopped working. This is crazy. Benefits are just too high. You can't get earnings up that businesses can't afford to pay anymore. Taxation is already very high. So you can't give subsidies to them. What you've got to do is cut welfare. Welfare is too great. I mean, there's this thing on. Working people being worse off than those on benefits really is quite extraordinary. The figures are here. A worker would need to work 50 hours a week at the national living wage rate of £12.71 an hour to earn more than £33,000 before tax to take home the same amount. So if you're on benefits, of course, you get all tax-free. Yes. If you're working, you have to earn not only what they're getting on in benefits but then the tax as well. Yes. There's just such an unfair. There's such an unfair burden on the working population. And the working population should be furious about this. It's a complete scam.
Speaker 1I'm going to role-play for a moment. Imagine this. I'm going to occupy the position of the lefty. And I'm going to say to you, well, what do you know about it? You've never been on benefits. You're a well-educated, old-Etonian toff. You're loaded, let's be honest. Therefore, why should we listen to you on welfare?
Speaker 2Well, I was a member of parliament for 14 years and I had many people come to my constituency surgery who needed welfare. People who had serious disabilities. The people you were talking about who need help in their lives and are not able to work full-time. Some are not even able to work part-time. And I think everyone agrees that allowing them to have sufficient support is quite right. But this is for people who are making welfare a lifestyle choice. And I know plenty of people who work hard who would be better off on benefits. And that's just unfair that they're paying for people to be layabouts. That can't be right.
Speaker 1Also, this not checking. So, let's just go into a bit more detail on that Times investigation. More than two-thirds of claimants who should be reassessed have yet to be seen. The average wait is more than two years. And one person has been waiting as long as 16 years, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. It means billions of pounds a year in sickness benefits are being paid to claimants whose eligibility has not been checked, although it is not known how many, would no longer qualify for payments. This face-to-face assessment falling off a cliff since COVID has been an unmitigated disaster.
Speaker 2Well, the PIP numbers have gone up and up as various protections have been taken away, the testing being the most important of them. When testing was introduced in relation to PIP, when PIP was introduced and had this testing, there were huge squeals about how unfair it was to test people. Actually, it was extremely effective because you'd discovered that a significant number of people didn't even turn up for the test because they knew they wouldn't pass it. They knew that they were playing the system.
Speaker 1And then if you don't turn up, do you think instant stop?
Speaker 2Of course, yes. If you don't turn up to the test, there are exceptions. I had a constituent who was a double amputee who was asked to turn up from Somerset to a testing centre in Swindon. And that was sorted out brilliantly by Priti Patel, who was an incredibly effective minister. I spoke to her in the division lobby and Priti said, we sorted it out within 48 hours. So there were things that went wrong, but there was a mechanism for putting them right.
Speaker 1And were you concerned at the time that those in really desperate need were being overlooked in favour of those that weren't? Because this is where it does become perverse. We're now in a situation where those who really, really cannot work may be being deprioritised by people who could work, but for reasons known only to them, probably because they might be better off on benefits choosing not to.
Speaker 2All benefits, all financial services, all systems are limited, aren't they? So if you want to spend a certain percentage of GDP helping those who can't work, and it's taken instead by people who can work, that means there's less for those who can't work, genuinely. And so, yes, of course, you squeeze that, you make the system less generous for them.
Speaker 1Excuse me, my goodness. I'm not sure whether the Tories are going fast enough and deep enough on this, you know, because we spoke to Andrew Griffith at the weekend. It's the Sunday Showdown-ish type interview. that we did with the Shadow Chancellor. They've pledged the Tories £36 billion in welfare cuts. But if you actually drill into the figures, the bill overall is going to go up by £30 billion by the end of this Parliament anyway. The whole idea that the bill is in any way being cut is a complete misnomer. So really, the Tories are only pledging to cut a rise. It doesn't really touch the sides.
Speaker 2I think we need to do more than that. I think we should straightaway announce that all benefits, other than the pension, which is different, will be. frazen for as long as the income tax threshold is frozen. It seems to me it's very unfair that the people who pay should be getting worse off every year whilst the people who receive have their standard of living maintained. That if people who are paying in are losing out, the same should apply to those who are receiving benefits.
Speaker 1Do you know what would be a great way to get people back into work? A third runway at Heathrow. Are you for it or against it, Jacob Rees-Mogg?
Speaker 2I could not be more strongly for the third runway at Heathrow. I've been in favour of it for. as long as the matter's been under discussion and I've been alive. I think the first discussions predate my. birth um really yes i think was there
Speaker 1flight oh that's true the wright
Speaker 2brothers the wright brothers hadn't done their stuff yet um but other than that it's such a good thing to be doing we should have a fourth runway a fifth runway we should have as many runways as we need we should have another runway at gatwick and so on and do you know who i blame who do you blame your mate
Speaker 1boris johnson oh come on hang on a minute let's just let can we please just deal with this this is a man who as prime minister used to go around literally saying bridges buildings infrastructure and then when it came to heathrow he couldn't support it because of uxbridge and riceland constituents being against it but
Speaker 2actually there was a vote for it whilst he was prime minister in
Speaker 1the end i know but the tories should have delivered this runway of course we should have
Speaker 2done i mean
Speaker 1come on it's ridiculous we're still debating it
Speaker 2what about this thames crossing that we've spent 1.2 billion pounds just on the um proposal this is all lunatic uh we've got to cut through the forest of regulation that stops us doing things and we just need to crack on with it many runways as you want at heathrow are not costing 30 billion pounds just get a bit of tarmac down and get a plane going what about the good
Speaker 1people of hayes and yedding and surrounding areas can be blighted
Speaker 2they knew they other than um the king yeah they all knew they were living near a runway when they moved into their property that's
Speaker 1right didn't an american tourist want to say oh my god why did they build this beautiful castle near an airport allegedly could have been trump um by the way i'm mentioning that because andy burnham has said to the transport secretary that he is unconvinced of the need unconvinced airport expansion is estimated to cost 33 billion including 1.5 billion to move the m25 to build the runway listen i'm not relishing that moving the m25 and the tailback that will cause this is eye-wateringly
Speaker 2stupid of burnham that this decision has now been made it's already being delayed till 2039 or something lunatic we need to get on with it and his wavering is just absurd it's very very bad and all of this is privately financed it's not like hs2 which i thought was idiotic which was publicly financed taxpayers money this is private money just let them get on with it
Speaker 1yeah get some of his mates at man city to pour some money into it jacob although i'm being a bit mischievous with that
Speaker 2well i'm not relishing that i have very little interest in football but i do have an interest in our relationship with the uae which is much more important than football
Speaker 1burnham might have some questions to answer on that but we'll leave that there shall we discuss coming up let's discuss reform and restore go to war over migration literally have some kind of i don't know asylum off shall we call it that with who could deport the most from this do we like this idea jacob of nigel farage pledging to shut down the asylum system for five years so if he becomes prime minister he says that there will be a ban on migrants being granted asylum and 90 000 applicants will be deported immediately this is him channeling his rupert low as both of these parties compete for the hard right strong right robust right vote i don't know what we call it these days i'm certainly not calling it far right because i don't really agree with that
Speaker 2well i'm not far right and i agree with this as a policy do you i i i think it's a tough policy but i think we have allowed and i was part of this i was in parliament at the time i was in government sometime we've allowed migration legal and illegal to get completely out of control and we basically need a five-year period where we have no legal or illegal migration the illegal migrants are removed and that legal migration is not allowed and that legal migration is down to tiny tiny numbers i don't
Speaker 1disagree with you i'll just give you this scenario and just because it popped up into my mind this morning putin invades estonia in the vein of the crimea and ukraine and a load of estonians say please help us do we have a safe and legal route for them because under this scheme one assumes not all
Speaker 2governments can respond to emergencies and the british people were very welcoming to ukrainians coming and for that immigration rules had to be changed yes right that there is a sensitivity there is an application of rules i i think that um it's these essentially bogus asylum claims that are clearly um economic migrancy that need to be stopped the way to stop them is simply so no one can come in or we're sending you off to rwanda um you can always postulate circumstances that could be so desperate that the british people would want something to be done but that would be different because you'd have a popular mandate and support for it but currently we've just got to stop mass migration we've got to let the country settle down we've had this great debate on what it means to be english and we may discuss that further and one of the things you need is for the population to settle yeah and then we all feel that we're part of the same country and we're a unity we've lost that unity in recent years
Speaker 1um nigel farage has also threatened pakistan with visa bans and tariffs saying that he would threaten to impose both if pakistan refused to take back those convicted of grooming offenses we know that there are several criminals i mean gang rapists who have been released from prison and residing alongside the women that they terrorized i mean it's
Speaker 2quite interesting i think it's australia that has sent back to england people who went there aged two and turned out to be nasty criminals and then aged 52 are sent back to england i remember reading a case of this kind a few years ago so other countries do do this yes and i don't think it's unreasonable to say to people who have a clearly identified foreign nationality that they were born with but if they've broken our laws they ought to go back to where they started i mean
Speaker 1australia can do that it's not a signatory to the echr well we
Speaker 2should unsign the echr and the we should pull out all these international um bodies and other we've got probably say in the un that's fairly useless body but we should pull out of the european court human rights the international criminal law and the international criminal law and the international court which seems to be very dodgely run we should pull out of the um the icc as well i mean you say
Speaker 1about the icj sorry the international court icj the i the un has blotted its copy book over israel in my mind i'd many of you of course it has yes can't be trusted at all um so we've got farage also talking about the lunacy of describing the boats crossing the channel as small let's just listen to him at the press conference as he unveiled a
Speaker 3mega dinghy can we please stop calling this a small boats crisis it is not a small boats crisis have a look at this behind me this is a replica size of the boat carrying 230 people that recently crossed the english channel it is not a small boats crisis and it doesn't matter how much money we give to france it's irrelevant how much money we give to france because they're now setting off from such a huge geographical range now as night follows
Speaker 1day of course rupert lowe's party couldn't resist coming out with their own deportation plans jacob so let's see if you like the sound of this restore britain has today published a comprehensive policy paper setting out its plan to construct a 30 000 place secure detention estate for illegal arrivals to be delivered within 12 months of a britain government taking office the paper detained deport that's in capitals the new illegal arrivals detention estate sets out the full operational legal construction staffing requirements for three regional detention centers of approximately 10 000 places each where are they going to put these can you imagine what people are going to say like steroids um but they make a point there is going to be a transition period between any new government coming in that won't be able to do anything about it and that's going to be a transition period between any new government coming in that's going to be a transition period between any new government that wants to crack down on migration both legal and illegal being able to get its ducks in a row to do stuff so legislatively and lawfully that you'll then have to have people detained somewhere but i mean is that sensible they must have
Speaker 2their legislation ready what they need to do is have the king's speech introduce the legislation get it through the commons in a day and the lords in a day
Speaker 1what literally on day one yeah yeah they've got is it in week one day one day
Speaker 2one's not practical because parliament won't meet we meet off about 10 days the king's speech is then debated for a few days and then you introduce the bill and you expedite it through parliament which parliament's quite capable of doing to allow for these things to happen to give notice that we're leaving the european convention on human rights repeal the human rights act with immediate effect yes ban our judges from giving any effect to human rights judgments and repealing the judgments that have been made since we joined the european convention on human rights act which otherwise have presidential effect so you need to have a very well thought robust piece of legislation that you pass rapidly and if the house of lords doesn't do it you have to pack the lords with peers to push it through wow um the lords can't really refuse after a clear election mandate yeah but
Speaker 1this is that's the point clear election mandate which doesn't look like it's any closer to happening since we've seen the recent mrp polling and we've got all this talk at the weekend about a snap general election is he going to call one before christmas apparently the deadline for that is the day of the budget october the
Speaker 228th right well the brilliant john curtis thinks it's unlikely because he would lose his majority. And that seems to me to be quite probably right.
Speaker 1Although somebody pointed out he'd be quite happy to be the prime minister of a progressive alliance. But then that gets tricky now, doesn't it? Can Labour really get into bed with the Greens after this Zionism is racism motion?
Speaker 2Nobody wants to be the head of an alliance rather than head of their own party. Yes. They like power.
Speaker 1Well, I know, but you'd still have, you'd retain some power. You'd just have to share it with Ed Davey.
Speaker 2Much less. As soon as you're sharing it with somebody, you're not in power, are you?
Speaker 1But the point is, the three parties on the right are all calling for massive immigration clampdowns of different varieties. The Restorers and the Reformers will say the Tories aren't.
Speaker 2We are. But the Restorers are lunatics, unfortunately.
Speaker 1One of them said something extremely unsavoury about Tim Stanley. These people are complete and some of them are total nutbags.
Speaker 2But, you know, to build a camp that takes 10,000 people is not going to happen. Within a year, look at Heathrow, look at HS2. You can change the law, but to do something like that, you've got to change the culture of the state as well to be an activist state. And we're not there. That'll take time. That's true, actually. What you've actually got to focus on, stopping new people coming.
Speaker 1But then maybe if there was a prospect of a right-wing government or coalition or whatever, it would be a massive deterrent.
Speaker 2Deterrent is the key. Rwanda was already a deterrent before it was introduced. You need a Rwanda scheme that's implemented on day one. So you are elected. You get this legislation through. A small boat arrives, actually now a quite large boat. And they are moved from the country within 48 hours. Then the problem's over. And then you work out over time how you deport people, about which you have to be sensitive. Even in America, even in tough-minded, capital punishment, public execution America, ICE has become very unpopular.
Speaker 1Also, ICE has only deported tens of thousands of people. But it's given the impression that millions have gone, which in turn has put people off going.
Speaker 2And people aren't getting through. So Trump's great success is stopping people arriving. Yes. He hasn't succeeded in mass deportations.
Speaker 1No. Has Trump gone mad?
Speaker 2No, I think he remains exactly as he always has been.
Speaker 1Aren't you troubled by all this Putin-Diesel deal?
Speaker 2Well, there's no
Speaker 1diesel for Putin
Speaker 2to sell because he needs it all for himself.
Speaker 1I know, but this cozying, I mean, to bring the conversation full circle, cozying up to Vladimir Putin by Donald.
Speaker 2Seems to me to be a mistake.
Speaker 1It's really embarrassing, isn't it?
Speaker 2I mean, it's not what I would want him to do.
Speaker 1No. Maybe he thinks it's going to help the midterms. It's not going to bring the price of gas and oil down in America by then, is it?
Speaker 2No, the only thing that will do that is concluding what's going to happen. It's going on in Iran, and that seems to be getting worse with the Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1Yeah, horrible Putin from there. To be fair, we haven't even got onto the tiger. I think that's probably best left unsaid. Poor chap, honestly. What a weekend of news it's been, and we're back tomorrow.
Speaker 2It always is. We're back tomorrow.
Speaker 1We're back tomorrow at 5 p.m. We're back tomorrow at 5 p.m.
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