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New Culture Forum
‘Mad Terrorists’ Given UK Council Houses + Manchester Airport Attackers Walk Free + Burnham Poll
00:58:31
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, welcome to the show. Now, first of all, please do come and join us on Friday 5 June and Saturday 6 June for our second annual literary festival. It's one of the best free speech festivals in the country, if not the world. We've got a great lineup of speakers. Alison Pearson from the Telegraph. We've got Professor David Betts, the academics forecasting civil war for this country, Lord Nigel Bigard or David Frost, the comedian Dominic Frisbee. Too many to mention. To get tickets, please go to our website, new cultureforum.orguk or go to the link on this description. Now, on today's show, we're going to be discussing three topics, much like we did on our old show Newspeak. Two of them are about two tier Britain. Do we still have two tier policing on our streets? We've got the story, of course, of Henry Novak, the young man who was killed and was handcuffed by police as he lay dying. We've got the story, of course, of juries unable to reach a verdict in the Manchester airport assault case. Other cases too, that we'll be discussing. And also, of course, we've got two tier justice with a benefits and housing system where we have jihadis, criminals, even foreign heads of state, all living at taxpayer expense in this country with council houses, I'm delighted to say today. To discuss all of this, I've got two great guests. Peter Barnes, political commentator, who's also going to be at the Literary Festival, and also Jack Hadfield, an independent journalist. Welcome, gentlemen, both of you. As I said, we've had a litany of things happening in recent days. We've also had a case of a chap, not from this country in Edinburgh, who, whilst he was out on bail for knife crime, proceeded to kill a young man. We've also had numerous other stories of a similar ilk. In fact, in East London we had a young Muslim man who was calling for Jews to be beheaded. In fact, he told this to my friend Stefan Thompson of Visigrad24 on camera. He's still out wandering the streets. Is it always going to be like this in this country? Is this the state of things to come for the future? And when will the British people actually say enough is enough?
- [02:11]
B
I mean, it probably doesn't always have to be like this, but certainly unless something is done about it, then, yes, this will continue. We've obviously had mass uncontrolled migration for so many years which has let all of these criminals into our country who are now killing, stabbing, murdering, raping, sexually Assaulting in so many cases across the country and they aren't getting punished in the way that they should be. I don't mean people feel this. People see the. Obviously Keir Starmer, you know, who still, as of the time of recording is still the Prime Minister, you know, he was called two tier care because, you know, people saw all these cases, obviously they. There was the Axel Rude Gabana Southport murders there as well. And people instead saw that the government was focused on silencing white British people for taking to the streets and say, actually rampant crime from third world immigrants is not what we want in this country. And the government decided, actually, no, we need to crack down on that instead. I think the Novak case that you mentioned was one of the most shocking that we've seen recently where again, he was allegedly stabbed and then as he was dying, he tells the police, I've been stabbed. And they go, no, mate, I don't think you haven't. I think it was the direct statement from the court reports there just again believing that, you know, because he was accused of saying something racist to somebody. Well, therefore the police went into, ah, we now know who the victim is. This man was accused of racism, another man is accused the other way around, has been accused of being stabbed. But racism, that's the more important thing. That's what we have to focus on. We don't have to look into the other allegations, even though there's blood pouring out over from him. And of course he died then as a result of the police focusing so much more on protecting minority classes in this country than going after actual crime.
- [04:15]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. I think a lot of people have to realise also that even if you get rid of Keir Starmer, this problem has existed before him and it will exist after him because for me it's more that victims get the consequences, offenders get context and institutions get protection. I think that is the reality of what we mean when we say two tier is that it's actually that the institution itself is therefore protected from any amount of kind of culpability in these instances, even though in reality they're probably more responsible than anything else. And it doesn't have to be this way, but we have to realize how we got into this situation. And I think it's a. A mass migration has played a part. But I think it's. You go back to the sad God comment of, you know, suicidal empathy that we've allowed ourselves to just continually to feel sorry for people, that we somehow have to also atone for Our history, I think that's a big part of it as well. And you know, I think we're looking at a real kind of to turn it around, a cultural shift and a kind of reset that I don't think we're actually ready or prepared for. I really don't. And I can only see us wandering further into this because we haven't quite got the gumption to turn it around just yet.
- [05:24]
A
But. So why is that and why do certain communities get the benefit of the doubt always? Is it simply because of suicidal empathy? Is there something else at play here?
- [05:32]
C
Well, I do think there's a little bit of, you know, who votes for who. I think that plays a very big factor, particularly when you look at the Labour Party. They still have it in their heads that they own the minority vote despite every bit of polling telling them that they don't at the moment. But I think that is, that is also one of the reasons as to how we got here is that we will look the other way because of, in quotes, cultural sensitivities rather than actually treat people as equal, equal citizens under the law. The idea of equality goes right out of the window when you actually have to put it into practice. You know, equality is for other people. Rather butcher the Allwell quote. But yeah, I think that's, I think that is a big factor to the, is self serving politicians that believe that they got their vote because they looked the other way. I actually think mainly a lot of minority communities wised up to this fact and now start to understand they can get away with a lot more and they can use these kind of the race card and, you know, they could claim all this stuff and the media narrative that, you know, is very sympathetic to them will automatically believe them. You know, look at the mess that we got ourselves into. Black Lives Matter believing that our police is anything like the American situation. It is, it's laughable, it's hysterical. But we tore ourselves apart over it because our communities cried foul, the media played into it and the politicians had to bend to the media narrative because we don't have, you know, anybody with a backbone anymore.
- [06:48]
B
Yeah. And I think the actual legislation as well lends itself to this sort of anti British structure in policing. If you look at where hate crimes originate from, it goes back to the Race Relations act and all of these sort of hate crime, hate speech offences originate from this. You know, they've been stretched out now into hate speech relating to of course, sex, gender, age, disability as well. But the core of sort of hate speech and Hate crime originates, I think from the Race Relations act, then you have all the staring up offenses and so on. And these, this specific in terms of hate crimes was designed to really only be applied to one section of the population that was the white British population. Certainly if you look at who gets charged with hate crimes, the minority communities never do. Even in say in the Pakistani rape gang cases where there was, you know, terrible things done to white girls on the basis of their ethnicity. I think all of the racist abuse that they received and all the vile sexual and violent abuse that they, physical abuse they received as well was because of who they were as a group. And they have never been prosecuted as part of a hate offense. They've never been, it's never added to that as an exaggerated offense that you can do. And you see this when I think there are more multiple other cases where white Brits get charged with hate speech or again, hate crimes when this seems to be nothing of the case. So until this is supposedly to protect people. If you look at the legislation to go after anyone who commits a crime that is then racially motivated, but it is only ever applied to the native population when done so.
- [08:45]
C
I think you bring up a really interesting point there about the rape gangs is we never talk about the fact that they were targeted because they were white working class girls. We never talk about that fact. You know, we always, whenever the racism issue is played up, it's always big. You know, it's always, oh, we're going after Pakistani and Muslims, all the rest of it. We never talk about the fact that they targeted this community because they were a very vulnerable community. Nobody believed them when they came forward. I think that is a, is a really important point that we just brush over. It's. And you know, not just the fact that they were the targets for the, for the gangs, but also the fact that the institutions didn't believe that because they were white, working class, you know, nobody, you know, they had it coming, how they dressed, all that kind of narrative, which is desperate, despicable and disgusting. But you know, we never really talk about the fact that these institutions yet again are protected from actually being held accountable. And I think, I think that's actually one of the worst bits of that entire saga is that yet again that the institutions are not held accountable. Because I always really, I point out to people that an institution is nothing but a letterhead and a postcode. It is people that make the decision. It is people that did these things. We have to start naming the people. It's not, you Know your West Yorkshire Police, it's the Chief Superintendent and we have to do that. That is the only way we ever get accountability back is holding people up, you know, with the actions that they did and say, you did that. Not a postcode, not a letterhead. You did it and you should be held accountable for it.
- [10:07]
A
Sorry for the interruption. Just want to let you know our second annual literary festival is taking place Friday the 5th to Saturday the 6th of June. Do get your tickets. We have a fantastic lineup. Our literary festival is basically the only free speech festival in the country where we platform writers and authors, your favorite broadcaster, who aren't welcome at other literary festivals. We've got Alison Pearson, Professor David Betts, Lord Nigel Bigger, David Frost, too many to mention. Do go to our website, newcultureforum.org.uk or click on the link at the bottom of this video. Thanks so much. And too often, of course, the excuse, which is no excuse at all, of course, is that they were petrified by political correctness, whereas of course now we know goes far beyond that. They actively turned a blind eye in order to essentially secure votes, to secure the support of and of course endemic corruption in the police force and elsewhere, police even taking part in these sorts of things as well, being paid backhanders, and yet nobody has been held to account. Just the same thing as the 2008 financial crash. We do not hold anyone to account. People should be, not only should they lose their jobs, they should go to prison and I say they should lose their pensions as well. You know, they need to suffer in some, you know, somewhere at least close to what those girls suffer aboard. Nothing can equate with that. And again, yes, the fact that there was no race hate charges put against them because of course they also went after Sikh girls, again deliberately because they weren't Muslim. And how, and how, how they regarded them. I think, you know, a lot of this you can trace back to the macpherson report. I think the overreaction to the racism of the 1990s was, has been so over, overqualified for. I think we need something similar to the MacPherson report to actually reveal how extreme they've gone in the other direction and that hopefully that would be something that would cause some sort of systemic change within, systematic, within the police force. Now, of course, the British people aren't fools. They can see all of this happening. It's one of the reasons why trust in our institutions has eroded so greatly. The question is, what would a right wing government do? We supposedly had 14 years of an Allegedly right wing government that simply accelerated all of this. What would a real, a true conservative government need to do to get this in order?
- [12:23]
C
Oh, to really realistically, you need to break the blob, you need to break it down before we begin to rebuild something new.
- [12:30]
A
In terms of the police, for example,
- [12:32]
C
fire the chiefs of police, every single one of them. The College of Policing, the Turretom, are part of the problem. You know, I think you also have to bring back the street. Bobby, as she stopped sounds rather daft, but stop policemen going to university. I think the minute that we like, we funneled them into the university sector and then gave them a degree, we put them through all the woke stuff and the next thing you know, the police ended up being woke. Who didn't see that coming? You know, I think that is a real problem because people forget that it's actually. It's the handbook that the chiefs write that the police actually follow in terms of how they implement the law, what they actually look for, what they don't. And that's written by people with a very different interpretation than what the public want. The gap between the public and the police has never been further apart and it's literally, it's that factor. As to what matters more, I think you had the head of the Essex Police say that hate crime was equivalent to rape. And I mean, in what world are we living in where that is a thing? You know, when that is the chief of the police in an area such as Essex, as it is at the moment, you wonder why you've got all the trouble. I mean, it's laughable to kind of not put the dots together, but we've spent a long time doing that. You know, we make that a children's game, but putting dot to dot. But we don't do it when we get older. But I have to admit, I think that's in the police in particular. You start by firing people and you don't retire them, you fire them. You say you did a bad job, out you go. How many people now do we suddenly see? He got to keep his pension, he got to, you know, he got to walk off into the sunset, live his golden years. While communities end up being devastated. I look at Michael Stewart who headed Prevent, you know, that guy oversaw the system that should have caught Axel Ruder Cabana. You go up to Southport, it's still reeling from it. He got his pension, gets to live a life of Riley. I think that is despicable. And yet again, it's the lack of accountability. But I think starting by firing people and having the guts to do it en masse with very little sympathy is going to take a lot. Which is why I always say you're going to need one big mandate for the public to get away with it because the media will try and stop you because they're next on the chopping block.
- [14:33]
B
I mean, Peter Hitchens has previously argued for disbanding the police force in its entirety and sort of growing up its replacement as you're doing that. And then as soon as that replacement force has, you know, enough capacity, completely disband the police and they're all gone. I think you're definitely right in terms of, you know, we do need to fire the guys right at the very top. But frankly, a lot of the rank and file police officers are not just, you know, don't just go along with wokery because that's their orders. No, they are true believers as well. That's true. You've seen this, I think, because obviously Blair put in, as you mentioned, the requirement for police to go to university. Now since the 2000s, you know, you have this, this fall off of, of the old bobbies within the police force and since then, you know, they have retired and better people haven't gone in because the incentive has changed to what policing is certainly at least over the last 15 years or so. If you're seeing police focus on being two tier, caring about mean tweets more than, you know, sexual assaults by migrants, why on earth would you join the police? And therefore the only people that are getting recruited and being happy to join this are these people that are happy with the status quo. So we have to go a hell of a lot further, I think, than justifying the eyes at the top. There has to be a full clearing out of these people, you know, differing. The ones that were implementing, you know, this with total vigor and those who only did it because they were following orders and would be totally fine police officers under a new system. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
- [16:10]
C
I think also allowing former servicemen back into the police. I think, I think you're actually right here. I think a lot of this is an overreaction to the McPherson report and the police turning into a service. I know that's often one of the, the great cliches of this debate, but I do think it's a big factor that it changed from a force into a service and people became, we lost the kind of, the hard. What it was, you know, the hard side of the law, you know, that kind of we will knock your head against a wall. Kind of situation. If you've done something and don't give me a police Bruce brutality should not exist. But we've gone from using a baton to a feather duster. We've overco corrected. And I think this is a big factor we'll find in two tier and all the rest of it. Why society has gotten into the situation it has is we've gone from one extreme to the other without someone realizing we should be halfway between.
- [16:54]
B
I mean Americans will absolutely rinse this. When you see viral videos of say 10 or 12 police officers trying to take down one guy with a knife because all you can use is tasers, for example. And a lot of them are now, you know, five foot two women who. It's like great, you know, like you might be a wonderful person, but actually perhaps we do need some physically hulking people who are able to.
- [17:18]
A
This is why I've argued for a long time that women should not be in frontline policing. Not just women, but people who are my size as well. Right. If you're not able to apprehend an average young man, then you should not be in frontline policing. There's nothing does more to actually erode public respect for the police than seeing two women trying to apprehend. Not even a very strong man who just laughs at them and walks on. You've seen all those sorts of videos. I think that's imperative. And I think reform now has a policy of having a man always accompany a woman on police rally and so forth. And it's funny because I've often talked about how to reform education and I've said, you know, the problem was set when they had independent teacher training. Colleges worked very well, but then departments of education took over the training of teachers. And that's when you've seen this rise in. And I've also argued for troops to become teachers. This is actually an existing program. Same thing applies precisely to the, to the police forces as well. The other thing of course is that because the Tories laid off so many police, the rehiring of 20,000 or having many new police means we have the youngest police force ever. So they're very inexperienced as detectives, but they're also of course the woke generation who've come in with all those ideals as well.
- [18:21]
C
Yeah.
- [18:22]
A
Now the Manchester Airport case, the jury has got an undecided. They can't come to a conclusion on whether or not the male police officer, whether he was assaulted or not. We can't speculate on any of that because we don't know what the jury's decision was. But it does bring another question regarding jury trials in this country. Obviously we've got the talk about labor and Lamy wanting to do away with jury trials in certain cases, but actually is it the case now that juries themselves may be no longer fit for purpose, at least in the decades to come? Because we have increasing evidence in America particularly, but also here that ethnicities are more likely to be lenient on people from their own ethnicity and harsher on other ethnicities. That's particularly pronounced in the black community. We saw that of course with O.J. simpson. Everybody who wasn't black thought he was guilty. Those who thought he was black said he was innocent. But even in this, in this country, white people aren't immune from this either. But white people are actually less, less prone to this than blacks are. Now you're supposed to be judged by a jury of your own peers. But actually, can we say that's going to be the case when we have an increasingly diverse country? And what does that mean? Do we have to have some sort of quota system, ethnicity wise on juries, or do we need to get rid of jury trials eventually altogether?
- [19:43]
B
Yeah, it's, I mean obviously, I mean you, you bet. You mentioned the O.J. trial there. I think, I think the famous photo from the end of that where there was a mix of white and black people in the room and all the were celebrating, cheering and the white people just stony ashen face that he'd been found not guilty because of that. But yeah, like the stats when it comes to ethnicities on juries as you mentioned, are just insane. I think you'd also see this in terms of general racial preference. I think the only white people in some ways white liberals find a racial preference out group, ironically, which is the only group, only group on the planet to do so, which is, which is funnily enough, so. So if you're on a jury of white liberals, you're probably more likely to get done if you've ever attended United Kingdom before, for example. But yeah, looking on the stats it is crazy that you think that different ethnicities are more likely to want to get a fellow co ethnic off than actually care about did he do this or didn't he do this? Obviously there are going to be cases where people are guilty or people are not guilty. But if the juries are aren't focused on the facts of the case and instead saying this person is a member of my group, therefore I stand with them. I think obviously if you have the Pakistani grooming Gang trials in these areas full of Pakistani men. It's like. Well, it seems obvious even without those statistics, just to anyone with any bit of logic in them that of course this would happen. But the problem is though, if we do you get rid of jury trials, what are we going to do? Well, we're going to have the judges and again, we know that the judges of this country are massively left wing as well. I think I would rather, if I was charged with some kind of like hate speech offense, I would far rather have a jury than a judge. I reckon that a jury of normal people split across ethnicities would be far more likely to let me go for saying a mean tweet than a judge who is part of the system that proliferates hate speech, hate crime offences as being again, the sort of holy grail that you must defend. I'm worried that a judge would lock me up for 20 years for a mean post online than a jury, even with those problems. So there's not necessarily a solution just by banning jury trials, I don't think. I think going into Rachel Quotas as well is going to be a bit of an issue. But, you know, clearly something has to be done about the situation. But I can't see what they see. What solution?
- [22:16]
C
I think it's actually, if you take a step back, I think jurisdicturing this kind of problem is a kind of consequence of victimhood in society. If you perpetually believe that your community is a victim of the majority, of the majority white nation, then therefore you are always going to be on the side of your people. It's a very tribal way of thinking about it. So once we stop trying to treat people as a victim, we stop saying that you're only like this because of these nasty white people, that the whole kind of the tribal kind of barricade should drop. How we do that, well, that's a big longer question, but I have to admit I think the jury thinks it's a prime example of why when you run around telling people that you're only in the situation because of something else, that you're a victim. I think, yeah, this was inevitable in a way, and I don't think it's an accident. I think it's yet again a consequence of what I've always called the tyranny of the vague, that we use these words like the best one is in the ec, it's the right to a family life. What does that even mean? It doesn't mean anything. But that is the point of it. We're Stuck in this gray area. And it's been used deliberately, I think, to kind of foster this victimhood mentality because we say, well, things aren't equal, so why aren't things equal? You know, it's we, we always go for the surface level and we live in the gray. And until we actually have the guts to say, you know, these things, this is this and this is that we're stuck, I'm afraid.
- [23:42]
B
Yeah, well, to be honest, I do think, think. I think I do know what right life means and, and it means you can't deport me.
- [23:48]
A
Yes.
- [23:48]
D
Yeah.
- [23:50]
A
And on judges, it's, you know, in, in the book that we published this year, the New Culture Reform on immigration, I have a chapter in there and part of it, I, I say, you know, we now have increasing evidence of activist judges openly celebrating on social media the defeat of the Tories on the Rwanda scheme. So whilst the independence of judges must be sacrosanct, I think there does need to be a mechanism now for firing judges who actually have blatant evidence of their bias. And what's remarkable to me, of course, is how rapidly it's changed because when I was a child, judges were very right wing. I've got lots of retired judges as friends, believe me. I even remember as a child reading her, judges would say, you know, it was a woman's fault for the way she was dressed, you know, impossible. Nowadays we've gone so much the other way. And of course a lot of it is due to the rise in female quotas because a lot of the women who choose to put themselves forward or who are put into those places for quota reasons are those who tend to come from the left and they're very activists.
- [24:42]
C
For me, politics and society follows the same rules as physics. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So every time we've had a very hard ride judiciary, the consequence is we go swing very far to the left. It's the same in literally everything that we see. We have overcorrected. And I think university education is the central factor of all of it. Once the left captured the academy, every bit of society was going to fall that way. So, you know, this Andira being indoctrinated at university, it's not necessarily like you're lectured into believing left wing things. It's just because when that environment only says that this is the acceptable thing, you're naturally going to do it. You take those ideas, you go to the corporate world, the judiciary, the political world, whatever, everything was going to collapse in that Fashion. So, yeah, it is one of those interesting things.
- [25:26]
A
Now we have to move on. But continuing in the vein of two tier Britain, unfortunately we've had stories out this week about the first lady of Sierra Leone, a multimillionaire who has a property portfolio which is very impressive, who lives in a presidential palace in Freetown, Sierra Leone, nevertheless still has her council flag in Southwark which she's refusing to give up despite the fact that there are 18,000 people on the waiting list in Southwark. She says in her defense, I've committed no crime. As if that's the only gauge by which you can go. Nothing to do with morality, nothing to do with ethics of the issue whatsoever. But on the back of that we now find out that in 2023 a senior figure in Hamas was able to use our help to buy scheme to get a property in Bar Planet. We've got people, you know, terrorists and jihadis, people like Abu Hamza, of course, and Anjem Chowdhury famously was living in social housing and told all of his colleagues to get job seekers allowance, which they renamed Jihadi Seekers allowance. You know, how have we got to this state and how is it possible actually that these types of people can, can get away with being funded by
- [26:34]
C
us to defend the First Lady Sierra alone, she didn't break the law. That is the reality as to why they get away with it is it's not against the law. The system has. Is that permeable? Is that Brit that. Yeah, of course she was able to do it and then in a way, morally what she did is repugnant, but legally she shouldn't be able to do it. That's the bigger point is why was she able to do it? We can get very angry at the woman, but we should get angrier at the people that allowed the system to happen and that's successive governments. I think it is preposterous that we're in this situation, but then again, I'm not surprised when, you know, we've got. I think the problem is people don't realize that social housing is so scarce that we don't have a lot of it and that when one family gets it, a lot of other families don't. And I think we have to start putting that back into the debate. It's not a matter of who's entitled to it, it's the fact that we don't have. We have to start treating it as the scarcity that it is. And ask, and ask why aren't we building more social housing?
- [27:32]
A
Well, I mean in this country, 16.6% of the population live in social housing. But if you look at the Somali community, for example, 72% of Somalis live in social housing. I think the majority of them on benefits of some variety which does call into question whether we want to have migrants coming here from Somalia. That's not an issue of race, that's just an issue about looking after your own. We know in parts of London, in Ealing, for example, I think 70, over 70% of social housing is occupied by foreign nationals. For example, London is 40% of Londoners are foreign nationals. But even then you get 70% occupying it. So what is the solution there? Do we need to deny social housing to anyone who's not a British citizen?
- [28:16]
B
Well, yeah, I think so actually. And I think if you look at London Overall, it's around 50% of social housing is the head of the household is somebody who's foreign born, even though of course London is around 50% non white or so. But obviously that includes second and third generation immigrants. So actually the foreign born century of London overall is obviously much lower than those who are, who are heading social households there. It really is just a complete insult to the British people who pay all of this money in tax all the time and we are then rewarded by paying even more for someone fresh off a boat to come here. It's frankly, if you look at asylum seekers, for example, who are obviously a far much smaller section of the population overall. But if you look, we have responsibility to house them illegal migrants as well. And it seems that there is a section in legislation which says that, oh, you know, we don't have to give asylum seekers Central Housing, etc. Because that'll be taking the money. And it's like, okay, that's technically what it says. And so the government can get away with saying, oh, you know, we don't have to do this. But if you then look at what the exceptions are, if they have a kid, they've got to be housed and if they're at risk of poverty, they've got to be housed. Well, someone who's just come across on a boat is not going to have a job and is not going to say, oh yeah, I've got a load of money in my bank account, don't worry about me. No, they're going to say, oh no, I'm at risk of poverty. At which point this is basically everyone. So the system has a glaring loophole in it, even though the government says that there isn't, but yet the entire principle that we're giving money, money to, you know, non citizens. I think, you know, it should, it just seems obvious that this should not be the case. Like it seems obvious that, you know, you can only suckle off the taxpayer if you paid into the system. If you're born here, if you're from the society, the people that we're meant to look after are our own in that way. And certainly also, I mean you can obviously become a British citizen as well if you come here. After a while I think we, we should crack down on how easily that's handed out. But the point remains, certainly that should be the dividing line. And I think Layla Cunningham, who's the reform's London mayoral candidate, she had a viral tweet just the other day where she pointed out that a young white British graduate is going to be in London on 60k and have to live with multiple other people or in a tiny little bed sit. Whereas someone whose dad came across on a boat, now been given, has got social housing, lives in Zone 2 for rents of £300amonth and, and they're just completely living it up again. I'm scrimping and saving and London bleeds me dry financially all the time. I'm sure you guys know as well. And yet, you know, there are people who are completely economically inactive who can live in one of the most expensive cities in the world basically rent free, who then just sit around all day and do nothing and smoke weed and harass people on the street. This is clearly not a situation that can continue or should continue.
- [31:39]
C
Yeah, it's like I said, Dr. David Stark always makes his policy because everybody going to work has to go on the train past people who aren't going to work. I think it's that level of resentment because I think the one thing that people forget is the British system can't go anywhere. When the system fails, we live with, we don't only have to pay for it, we live with the consequences of a broken system. If you don't come from this nation, you can leave and go back to your home. Nation, nation, you know, we can't go anywhere. We're unfortunately stuck here. I think that is the extra little bit of it that we keep forgetting. And you know, you look at all the people who are in off to Dubai and all the rest of it because of the state of this nation and the way that, that sense of unfairness is really at the heart of everything, you know, you can work 7 days a week, get 60k in London is nothing. That sounds a preposterous statement, doesn't it, that, you know, 60,000 pounds, you should not necessarily be living at large, but relatively more comfortable than most people are. And it is because of the on the imbal that we find ourselves in. And that is, like I said, it comes from successive governments and more importantly, the public kept voting them in with bigger majorities each time. So that's why it continued.
- [32:45]
A
And you mentioned Dubai, where people are going to, of course the UAE makes it was impossible to get citizenship in that country. They just use temporary visas. That's what we should be, we should be doing in this country, extend citizenship to 15 years. And yeah, if you're a taxpayer with the right to live in this country, I think that tax is basically just your charge for living here. But the benefits should only accrue when you, when you get, when you get citizenship. Now you see, the Danes understand all of this because all of the evidence shows sociologically that people are less likely to want to support a welfare state if the people who are benefiting don't look like them. So the more immigration increased in Denmark and in Scandinavia, the less people were willing to pay for social welfare. In fact, many people think that many sociologists think that one of the reasons America doesn't have health care is because white people didn't want to pay for black people to get medical care. So, so the way that the Danes solved all of this, of course, because the Danes are a sort of a golden example to us all of how to effectively control migration, both legal and illegal. And it's been done by a trade union, former trade union left wing prime minister who wants zero asylum seekers. Impossible to imagine a starmer saying something like that. But she basically rephrased the argument and what she said, well, yes, we are a compassionate people, but the question is, do you want to want your family, your grandmother to have a good quality of life or do you want to prioritize the stranger? That's. And once you rephrase this and that's it, we can look after our own, but we can't afford to look after our own. And the stranger. And no one has made that argument in this country because I think it's still a left wing argument. It's still an argument that should carry over everybody, everyone wants to believe that there should be a social network of some variety. And I would think a party that did that would actually be able to win a lot of heart, hearts and minds in this country.
- [34:27]
C
Yeah, I think you have to take the politics out of it and I think it's actually it's across a political spectrum argument that everybody wants to make sure that, that you look after the previous generation but you don't saddle the future generation. That's the one bit that we've got wrong in this nation is that we keep pushing all the debt on future generations. And then when that generation says well wait a minute, why am I not just paying to look after my grandma, I'm paying to look after everybody else's grandma, you know, they didn't there wasn't born here. I think that is when young people rightly start to say, say wait a minute, this isn't right, you've made it impossible for me to want to be here. And when you've made your own country that hostile to a nation that you, to a generation you desperately need, you wonder why everybody's leaving. Again, it's dot to dot, but again we don't do that when we get older.
- [35:11]
B
And certainly that argument, as you mentioned, is certainly a sentiment that will be held by a lot of people who are against migration in this country. Obviously a lot of former labor voters obviously voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 and probably now voted for voting for reform in the north and frankly many other places in England as well. I know Lorraine Cavanaugh's leader of Pink Ladies down at the Isle of Dog for Danny Hotel. I interviewed her last year during the summer, summer of anti asylum protest and she said to me at one point, which is quite interesting, which is like, well why are we funding the hotels when that money could, you know, go to disability benefits for people, people for people who are sick, you know, why can't it go to the nhs? And I think this is the attitude of a lot of again traditional working class left wing people who see this money, you know, going to the stranger and wondering, well why aren't we helping our own? But I do think as well that like there is definitely the issue with, you know, overall, with the, with the welfare ism that we've seen. The problem is, is that we focus so much much money on giving it to now mostly the strangers and not our own. If you look at again social housing, of course, whereas you know, public investment has then completely suffered as a result. So we can't then create jobs, you know, by building roads, schools, hospitals, railroad allies, I mean, God, how long. I think HS2 is now set to take over 100 billion by the time we get there. Exactly 100 billion, which is about how much NASA is spending on getting back to the moon. We're building one railway line with it. The government is so terrible. The government is now too focused on giving people money, which then leads to, ah, if you come over here, we're compassionate, we just give you money instead of thinking, okay, what's the best way to use the government purse? And that's to again invest and actually create the ability for new jobs. And so the British people would love that, like I would love and many people would love, you know, a very good paying job, you know, it doesn't matter what it is, you know, wherever you can have it in the country. Whereas that's far less attractive to the people who are coming over here who just want to suckle off the government teeth, you know, coming from, you know, Somalia, Afghanistan, Eritrea, wherever. These people aren't coming for just jobs. They're coming because they, because they were told that Britain is an island where you can just get free money all the time. Yeah. If you move away from welfarism, it's not only just good for the government pocket in that way and good for creating new jobs, but it will also turn off the incentives for people to be here in the first place.
- [37:48]
A
And it's more likely to lead to re migration. If actually they're incapable of getting skilled here, then, well, you know, going back to Timbuktu or wherever is actually not that bad an idea. And it's also why of course we need to implement a red list of countries from which, which we don't want any immigration based on crime, based on welfare recipients and so forth. But the hotels, you know, are an interesting issue because I think they were slightly misguided in the hotel protests because they just referred to hotels. And from day one I said, well, where are they going to go? Yes, it's one thing to have all these people on a golf course on the outskirts of town. It's another having them in actually subsidized housing in houses of multiple occupation opposite your girls school or next door to you as a whole. And I always wish that they had reframed it as if we don't want them in any accommodation. They should be in refugee camps. And actually the hotel protests have now subsided. They should actually be even bigger now because the problem has been imported right into the heart of their communities.
- [38:40]
B
Well, they definitely will be coming back. The reason it turned out is because we, because there were a few incidents because migrants weren't out on the street, because it's been cold and wet and rainy. But as summer's turning around, those inciting incidents are going to come back. Now I Think the reason why they had the protests is because unlike the HMOs, the hotels were visible in the community. There is a single point where you can see, say these men are here. This is the point where he protests. Now there are a few incidents now. I think there was one in Nuneaton with the. The Afghan asylum seeker who raped a 12 year old girl was convicted of this. There was another one who was alleged at the time, but he wasn't charged in the end. But that was in Nuneaton and they were in an hmo. So what they did there instead is that they protested outside the town hall because there was no single location for it. But Certainly, certainly the HMOs are even worse. Ironically, with the hotels, you know where they are and you know, to a very least avoid that area and the areas around it. But once they're spread out into the community, it's so, so much worse. Again, the problem is, is not the hotel, it's not the HMOs. It's the fact these people are in the first place.
- [39:42]
C
Yes, I completely agree. And I was, I was with, in line with you, Rafe, on this. I was, I. People lost their minds when I thought, Lord. When I said Lord, Justice Goose was correct in epic saying the hotel has to stay open because we know where they are. I call them houses of multiple horrors. You know, because this is the thing. Once they're suddenly out in the community, the control element of it is completely abandoned. Just, let's be real. They're not really controlled at the hotels as they are anyway. But at least you could have some assemblance of where everybody's supposed to be. But it is laughable that people thought that shutting down the hotels was the right thing because all you did was remove the problem around.
- [40:17]
A
To clarify, they should have closed down the hotels and the HMOs. I want refugees camps.
- [40:22]
B
Yes, alleged.
- [40:23]
A
I want, you know, I want economic scout camps. That's what they really are.
- [40:27]
C
You sure have any.
- [40:29]
A
Temporarily. And we could do it with the, with the Nightingale hospitals very easily.
- [40:34]
B
Yeah.
- [40:35]
A
So we can, we can create this if the desire is there to have it. But the problem for me was that it was all phrased around hotels. So once labor could then say, well, we've closed down this number of hotels. People think, oh well, the issue has been sorted. And it gave an easy answer out to the Labour Party.
- [40:48]
B
Yeah, as far as I'm aware, with the asylum seekers, once they've come over, they aren't therefore legally detainees. Ergo, you can't lock them up. So even Crowborough, which is the former army base, they couldn't even lock them in there. Again, the issue is that they're allowed to roam around free wherever they were not being locked up. Now, again, you can lock up the people who you're about to deport and there are deportation facilities now which are akin to prisons where they're locked up. So. So if you got rid of ECHR and the Human Rights act, then you could treat asylum seekers immediately as detainees and keep them in enclosed areas. Again, that's the reason why they're allowed to roam free in the community.
- [41:29]
A
But you don't even need to leave the echr, you just need to leave the Human Rights Act. I mean, yes, ideally you would leave the echr, but Denmark was hauled before the ECHR on multiple occasions. They said, what are you going to do about it? We are a sovereign state, so I don't know why we're too beholden to the because we created so many of the world's institutions. I think we're too beholden to all of that. Well, let's leave the dire state of Tutor Britain to side and go into another area. And that is the fact that new polling came out today, which should be an alarm call to many on the right, I would say, which says that if Andy Burnham were to win the by election in Makerfield and beat Starmer and become Prime Minister, that Labor would overtake the Reform Party to become the biggest party in the country with around 30% or so could even be within the region of getting a majority because you only need to have around 31, 32%. So that must surely concentrate minds on the right in this by election. I understand, Peter, you're actually from Napierfield where this by election is being held. We understand that. Well, let me put the scenario to you. Best case scenario for the right is to have Starmer stay for the next general election. Starmer will beat every other leadership candidate candidate currently running. According to all the evidence that we have. Streeting will be annihilated. Same thing with Rainer and Miliband. The only person who can beat Starmer is Burnham. So if Burnham wins this by election, he's likely to replace Starmer, which means it's likely that it's not likely, but it's possible we may have a left wing government and Labour may win the election. So what does that mean for the right? And do you not think it's possibly possible in the better interest for the Tories and reform to stand their candidates down? Or is that being anti democratic and denying people a trust, it's definitely anti
- [43:17]
C
democratic in denying the choice. But the reality is, even if you put the RESTORE vote and the Tory vote in Makefield together, Reform are still way behind the Labour Party. That is the real bit of what we're actually seeing in Makerfield. It's actually the fact that the Reform Party has not been able to convert local election victory or let's not forget, that's 50. Well, most of the council's seats went to reform. They held 50.2% of the vote into parliamentary power. They haven't yet. Not even consolidated the right. They haven't convinced the people that they can do more than take out the bits.
- [43:49]
A
Sorry for interrupting you here. What I saw yesterday was that if any other candidate stood apart from Burnham, Reform would win in Makerfield. That's the last polling I saw. And that only Burnham can beat Reform in Makerfield, which to me means if you do put RESTORE and Tory behind Reform, Reform would win.
- [44:08]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. To be fair, I haven't seen that particular polling, but I will. But just as you broaden it out, this seat is made for Reform uk. This seat is literally white working class. It is, you know, it's trending Reform anyway. And yet they should be romping this. That's the thing. It's not necessarily that, you know, the Restorer taking the votes or the Tories or anything. It's the fact that they shouldn't even be a factor in this election and then this by election.
- [44:33]
A
Well, again, my understanding is if Burnham wasn't there, they would be taking it home. And a lot of people who are saying they would vote for Reform normally are now saying they're 50. 50 because of the Andy Burnham local factor. I think that's. Oh, yeah. Boris Johnson being the only Tory to take London.
- [44:48]
C
I would say that's very true. You can't discount the Burnham factor, but Burnham isn't really that big of a. A thing, really, in that area, because it's so far outside of Greater of the verges of Greater Manchester. There's half of it's in Merseyside, so which is where he's from. And I never understood why Greater Manchester voted for him in the first place, but yeah, that, that.
- [45:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, certainly. I think. I think as a polling you mentioned, I think it was specifically with no Burnham candidacy, it was something like reform at 50% of the vote and Labour at about 25, 27. And then with Burnham standing, it's Burnham 45 and reform 42 or 43.
- [45:27]
A
That's right.
- [45:27]
B
So very, very close and certainly doable for reform to take it, but not when you have the sort of right splits with Tory and restore. Also I think you're right. I think it's. If Burnham does get get in, we could be in total disaster scenario because the British people do have a sort of very big sense of sort of fair play and oh, let's give him a try. And certainly. So you're going to have that bump and there is a danger is if he does become PM and then he does call a general election really early before the polls turn around. Yeah, we could have another five years of Labour government. Even worse Labour government because the thing with Star wars is that frankly I think it's pretty incompetent. That's one reason why we've been basically fine for the past two years and haven't gone completely downhill. And you know, obviously this Shabana Mahmoud has obviously proposed the ILR reforms as well. But Burnham, if he was, if he was in office for a while and he didn't and he didn't call an election, it's possible it go down. But again people want to give somebody else a shot, you know, they want to say, ah, we've got a new pm, fair play, let's give him some time. Time. I think again, if Burnham didn't call election and did stay to 29, he could just make it. But again we don't know what he's going to do. But certainly the best option is right, as you said, is starmer in until 2029 is going to be the best option to have a massively right wing government rather than a leftist rainbow coalition or even in the Burnham case, potentially another Labour member majority.
- [47:03]
C
I will say though, there is industry. When you actually look at this, the poll that puts Labour ahead on to Burnham is it's the fact that the Lib Dem and the Green support collapses near enough the same percentage that labor go up. So it's actually as I've as a lot of people haven't quite realized, it's the anybody but Farage vote coalesces behind
- [47:20]
B
one single figure and that's with Burnham. That's the national polling with Burnham as leader, not the Makerfield polling.
- [47:29]
A
Well, that's actually yes, because the thing is the left have painted reform as a pan villain. They think that they're fascist when in fact they're just 1980s conservatives. So you are going to see tactical voting as you've never seen before on the left. There'll be no party loyalty which is why the task is going to be so much more difficult for Reform. But that means then do you think the Tories and Restore even need to stand their candidates down or will voters there do the same thing and have tactical voting and say, well, actually, I am a Restore voter, but here to stop Burnham, I'm going to actually support the Reform candidate?
- [48:04]
B
Well, I mean, it depends, because the only need a few votes being peeled away. Even if people like Restore, you only need in such a marginal seat like this, and certainly one that's basically a presidential election in one go, because that's pretty much what this is. It's saying, do you want Andy Burnham to lead the country or not? In seats like that, where so much is going to be at stake, again, you only need a few voters deciding not to swing and deciding to go with their guts in voting Tory or Restore or whatever to then actually let Burnham through the middle of that.
- [48:43]
C
Yeah, I'm going to say, I think it's between. If RESTORE poll just. I think it's about 6% at the moment, the damage they could cause to preventing a reform victory is significant. But then my question goes back to why haven't Reform been able to put down Restore? You know, it's the consolidation of the right that Reform have failed to do. As to why we have to have this conversation, I mean, if we go back, the idea that Boris Johnson had to capitulate to anybody and, you know, in 2019 is laughable. You know, he owned the right vote, you know, so therefore you have to ask, well, why hasn't Nigel Farage been able to convince enough Conservatives to leave the Conservative Party and convince, you know, the Restore doesn't need to exist or advance? That is the bigger question is why hasn't Restore got its iron fist on the right? Reform, Reform, sorry, though, why hasn't Reform been able to get it? We all need different names that are
- [49:29]
A
further apart, by the way, at least Reclaim on Standards.
- [49:35]
C
But. Yeah, but that's my point is that, you know, they doesn't wield it with. With the same force to which the. The headline would rather suggest that they do. If we're still having these internal battles now, I don't think, you know, and I think that is the bigger, the bigger question.
- [49:49]
A
But I think the Tories come in for this as well. I mean, in terms of whether Restores are threats. But the Tories, I mean, they should ideally be in single digits. You know, Canada is instructed on two sides here. I really hope, hoped that they would be in the single digits. I mean, in Canada, the Tories went from being in the government to having only two seats in Parliament, which enabled the Reform Party of Canada, very similar to our Reform Party, becoming the biggest party on the right. And they had a hostile takeover of the, of the, of the Canadian Tories. But what's also. That's what I was ideally hoping would happen to the right here. But the other thing instructive was the last general election in Canada. Everyone thought Trudeau was their starmer. Everybody thought Trudeau and the Liberals were going to be annihilated. Pierre Piliev was going to win for the Tories. Suddenly they had changed to Mark Carney and he swept them and is still much more popular than Trudeau ever was. And that, I think, is the Burnham scenario. If Burnham wins and calls a general election immediately during his honeymoon period, then I think people on the right will begin to say, what have we done?
- [50:46]
C
I think that's true. But then again, I go back to the point. Why have so many people stuck with the Tories? Why haven't they made the jump to reform? You know, I think, yes, you know, we could say that we split the vote and all that kind of thing, but again, you have to ask, well, why? What's stopping people moving en masse to reform, reform than you know, than you know, than just enough to say, well, we want to keep the left out. That should just be enough on the
- [51:09]
B
face of it, shouldn't it?
- [51:10]
C
But why haven't they made the jump? And it is literally, I do think a lot of it is that the reform have the snarl, they don't have the murmur, as I always say, they've got the kind of, the disillusion, the angry vote. They haven't got that. They don't. Not everybody thinks the Tories betrayed the nation and they haven't quite made that jump yet to kind of get that, that type of vote they haven't got. If you look where the Tories remain, it is commuter belt. It is mainly the more middle class to affluent areas. And that is literally, and I think it is an, it's an economy issue, the right, that the, the middle class of the Tory party do not trust reform with the keys to the nation's purse. Yet you can take out the bins
- [51:50]
A
and they're more Lib Dem in their, in their social views as well.
- [51:53]
C
You could take out the bins, which we're not giving you national security. And I think that's where they are.
- [51:56]
B
I think there's something a bit more sort of like classist actually on this. Yeah. I think reform is seen, you know, obviously it portrays, you know, the party of working people. Alarm o' clock Britain. You know, they have this, this sort of ITV nationalism veneer which is, you know, Jeremy Kyle obviously going into rallies and such. Daytime TV energy, which does, which does appeal to a large swath of the country. And I do think it is a good thing. But you know, there are, there are people who are, who are quite snooty in this and they think that, you know, reform is there therefore beneath them in its aesthetics, the way they present themselves. And that's why I think some people, some Tories, you know, like Rupert Lowe and Restore, because Rupert Lowe is a Tory in that he has that same kind of farmer y, you know, old aristocratic vibe to him. Yeah, I was speaking to some young Tories previously and they're like, they're like, oh no, like we don't like reform whatever. But you know, but we might like Restore because for these people, people it's about aesthetics. Yes. Over everything. It's not like even though reform could get into government, reform could be the most right wing government like we've ever had and the Tories are wet. And Restore can't get into government for people who are more attracted to the Tories and Restore. Again, it is for these, this class, for these class reasons in many ways. And I think this is something where, you know, you have to ask yourself, you know, do you care about, about saving the country or do you care about feeling good and voting for something that's within your aesthetic sensibilities?
- [53:32]
C
I think that's right because if you look where the Tories remain, it's, it's Wandsworth, it's cases in Chelsea, it's oh, what somebody think of my townhouse. Which is a mentality which I think is, is, is correct. But again it is up to Reform to convince that voter to come over, not up to the voter to give up what, you know, their, their sense of what they think is right and wrong. That, that kind of demand people forgo something that the Reform Party would never do. I think is, is entitlement. And I think that is a bigger problem. Reform feel that they are owed it because while the. Look at the left. Well, the Tories said that in 2019. Sorry, in 2024 we got Keir Starmer. Do you know if realistically I think you can make the same argument that you know, Rishi was pleading with people? Don't vote for reform because you'll put stake Starmer and off office now we're somewhat of a role reversal which I find very entertaining.
- [54:21]
A
Although it still is very hard to see how anyone who calls himself a conservative can still be allied with a party that betrayed the nation and cannot by any measure be called anything other than a neoliberal party. But we've had that discussion. So we know we are less than a month away from the by election result. What is your prediction? Oh, I will hold you to this as well.
- [54:42]
C
Look, as things stand, the Labor Party will win. They shouldn't. And I do think reform should have walked it. But I'm going Andy Burnham.
- [54:51]
B
Jack, I really hope that reform does it. I think there is a chance that they can do it, but I don't know. I'm black pilling with the RESTORE splits. If they take only a thousand or so votes, even if they just above keep their dependent deposit, it might be just enough to hand the seat to Burnham. In which case, you know, we could be in the dark timeline. And that probably is looking like Burnham at the moment, looking at the polls. But I think reform can turn it around if they do, certainly with their. Robert Kenyon, who's obviously fantastic local guy who came second, had a load of votes last time the general election. Charismatic. I think he's the exact right person to potentially beat Burnham again. We still got a month for the campaign to go. Entirely possible he can with that campaign turnaround. As it stands, it looks like Burnham's
- [55:43]
A
going to get it and tactical voting too. We have to see whether people can be told how serious this is.
- [55:49]
C
Well, I'm just going to say really quickly it's interesting in that constituency, the Greens, the Lib Dems, not a factor. So this is why I always say it's make or break for reform and this one because it's theirs to lose. On paper at least. Be interesting. If it wasn't Burnham, I would be fascinated to see how this would go. But Burnham is a huge factor in this and I obviously shouldn't have an ice cubes chance in hell of winning this seat but I think it speaks larger to reform structural problems. But we'll have to wait and see, I suppose.
- [56:15]
A
Well, time will tell. Well, that's all for this week. Thanks very much Jack. Thanks very much Peter. And we will see you next time.
- [56:24]
D
Hello, I'm Philip Kissley, senior fellow here at New Culture Forum and director of of NCF LitFest. Yes, our literary festival is back. We had such a great time last year. Two days packed to the rafters with huge names, talks, conversations and panels and guess what, no one got cancelled? There's a novelty in this day and age, so we thought we'd do it again. Friday and Saturday, 5th and 6th of June. Put those dates in your diary because we have Telegraph columnist, novelist and all round hero, Alison Pearson, one of the great champions of our culture. We have Professor David Betts. He'll be talking about his world class research publications, the state of the nations and where we're headed. You'll have the opportunity to meet him, you can ask him questions. It's unmissable stuff. We have the wonderful Sue Cook and Professor Nigel Bigger and Dominic Frisby and Lord Frost. Returning this year, I'm delighted to say, is literary agent Matthew Hamilton. He's a fearless hero as well. So many more names, so many more surprises. But that's all you're going to get from me, at least for the moment. Click on the link below to get your tickets. Now, we've got some great discounts for NCF members, so here's a tip from me. If you aren't already a member, click on the other link down there and become one before you buy. There are loads of benefits, loads of perks and you'll become one of the NCF family. That's important now more than ever. And this is an important event. It's the only genuinely alternative, high profile literary festival and we want you to you to be part of it. Join us please on the 5th and 6th of June. It's in Westminster. It's NCF LitFest 2026. See you.