Labour's desperate asylum crackdown

0:02The Telegraph

0:09The left hates it, the right hates it. Does Shabana Mahmud's new Danish-style asylum seeker crackdown have any hope in hell of actually working? Reform claims that it is flattered by the imitation, but we think they're a little bit unnerved. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominy. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:40Tim, the Home Secretary. This sounds a bit like a reform press conference. I know you've been to a reform press conference again this morning because it's a Monday. I've got another one tomorrow. They're over press conferencing, if I may say. But listen to all this. Measures that include penalties on countries that do not accept back failed asylum seekers or foreign criminals. Visa bans, for those who don't. legislation to prevent immigration judges from putting migrants' rights to a family life under the European Convention of Human Rights ahead of protecting public and controlling the UK's borders, illegal migrants to be restricted by law to only one appeal against their removal, refugees who enter the UK illegally will be forced to wait 20 years before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain, refugee status will become temporary, with reviews every 30 months to determine whether a home country is safe or not.

1:33And we'll get on to this in a minute. Asylum seekers with assets such as jewellery cars and e-bikes forced to contribute towards their taxpayer funded bed board and financial support. Is this what was announced this morning by reform? No, it's not. And when this was put to reform this morning, all they could really do was laugh it off as a copycat and say, but can you trust Labour to deliver it? And we will discuss that. That's a fair question to ask. Nonetheless, when this was trailed late last week, it did come as a big surprise. The Home Secretary also talked about illegal immigration tearing the country apart, which is not language that you expect to hear any Home Secretary use, but especially a Labour one.

2:12And again, we can discuss this, a Muslim Labour Home Secretary. This is all quite surprising. Shabal Mahmood said on X, I know this country is an open, tolerant and generous place, but the public also rightly expect that we can control our borders. Now, the way they've chosen to do this is by importing someone else's immigration policy. I mean, isn't this just always how we save Britain in the end? Just import it. We rely upon immigrants. And they have reached for the system that has been established in Denmark. Yes. And by doing so, the political context to what happened in Denmark is that the Social Democrats, who were very powerful for a very long time, faced a serious threat by something called the Danish People's Party in the mid-2010s.

3:00Danish People's Party, very right-wing, very anti-immigration. And this was in reaction to the wave of immigration that occurred post-Syria. So how does one respond to that? Well, the Danish Social Democrats decided if you can't beat them, join them. Yes. And came up with an immigration policy, much of which Mahmood is going to imitate, which was very, very tough. And it seemed to work. A few months ago, I attended a conference in London run by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which is a lefty think tank, in which they brought parties, left-wing parties from across Europe together to discuss the policy challenges.

3:37And the one that kept coming up was immigration. And the most interesting panel I saw was a conversation between a representative of the Spanish socialists and a representative of the Danish social democrats. And these were two parties with a similar problem who took completely different strategies. The Spanish one was to just defend and encourage immigration. The Danish one was to crack down on asylum seekers and reduce the numbers. I'm not quite sure who won. I think actually in the course of that debate, much of the room was in sympathy with the socialist strategy rather than the Danish one.

4:10But something that the Danish minister said that really stuck with me was he said, if you're going to do an immigration crackdown, you have to do it because you mean it. And you have to say it because you mean it. He said, the public are very good at detecting when you're just saying what you think they want to hear. And so you have to come around to believing in the necessity of controlling borders if you're going to do it. And his argument was that it is social democratic to control your borders because social democrats want a welfare state. And for that to work, you have to have taxpayers willingly financing services for preferably citizens of the country.

4:53And he said the other thing that social democrats want is social cohesion. And so when Shabal Mahmood said that illegal immigration is tearing this country apart, I think when reform says that, what it means is it's talking about rising crime or rising benefits Bill, what she's saying is unless we not only are seen to tackle this, but people believe we want to tackle it, reform is going to be the beneficiary. Well, obviously, you've got those on the left saying it goes too far. Those on the right saying it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't adopt all of the Danish policies. There's also been a crackdown on what they describe as sort of ghettoization, that if some migrants are all gathering in a certain area of Denmark, that actually their communities are actively broken up.

5:39And dispersed. And dispersed to stop different nationalities operating in silos within their own country. Also a very strict rule in Denmark about people who come having to learn Danish, not just roughly, but very, very well. Again, it's less of a concern, I suppose, here. In a way, that's more of a deterrent because it's harder to learn Danish, one could argue, than it is to learn English. Duh. Yes, this is the big, big difference between Britain and Denmark, right, which everyone I feel is slightly overlooking, it is easier to turn people off moving to Denmark because it's already got a barrier in the language.

6:13Precisely. There's also two other key differences between Denmark and Britain, which explain why the policy is slightly different. One is that this is paradoxical, but Scandinavian societies are politically very liberal, but culturally they're very conservative. They are communitarian. By contrast, British society is quite liberal. We're used to the idea that you don't tell people what to do. People like Tony Blair have complained for years that we can't enforce employment regulations because we have no ID card, for instance. These kind of qualms, they don't exist in Scandinavian society. They're the kind of countries that are happy to correct or even overcorrect.

6:51I mean, look back at their history, right? So this is a society where the government's saying you must all move and you must all mix in, I don't think that offends the Danish in quite the way that particularly English people who see their home as their castle don't like being told what to do by the government. I think it offends us more. The other key difference is that Denmark had no empire. I mean, it had a bit of an empire, right? Greenland. Yes. But it didn't colonize vast swathes of the developing world. We did. So when we talk about the problem of ghettoization, We're talking about people who've come over a 50-year period or people who are coming now and who are moving to areas, understandably, where there is a tradition of people from that part of the world living in.

7:36So Denmark can just close down, shut down things, knock down things and disperse people because those people have really only arrived within the last 10 years. We can't imitate that part of the policy because if we were to have some kind of crazy audit of the ethnic balance of Britain, we'd have to move the entirety of Birmingham to the rest of the country. So some people have said, this is why some people say it's a half-baked Danish solution that she's adopting. Well, I would argue it would be inappropriate to completely borrow a Scandinavian solution and apply it here in liberal Anglo-Saxon kind of polity.

8:12But Mahmoud as an individual politician representing Birmingham Ladywood and as a Muslim and as somebody with an immigrant background is a bit like the Social Democrats in Denmark, probably more credible trying to deliver this than, say, her predecessor, Yvette Cooper. I love it. Well, I mean, Morris Glassman loves it. He's a representative of blue Labour. He likes right-wing Labourites because he hates Jeremy Corbyn. I just love it because so many fruitcakes, when Shabana Mahmood was appointed, said, oh, I've appointed a Muslim. Oh, yes. They're rubbing it in our faces. I know. These morons knew nothing about her.

8:52I know. some conservatives. They knew nothing about her, but they also have no understanding of Asian culture. No, I know. It's quite conservative. Well, also, presumably Mahmoud will be representing communities that have been here for decades, that have settled, worked really hard, integrated. She's a perfect example. She couldn't be a better example of integration into this great nation of ours than to become the Home Secretary now in charge of immigration policy. So let's be honest, you know, historically, familiarly, she presumably does know her onions more than most. And the one thing is, OK, she's pro-Palestine, but most Muslims are pro-Palestine.

9:30I understand where they're coming from. And there may be some tension there. But what a lot of MPs say, what people I've spoken to have said to me is she is one of the people who receives the most abuse in parliament from her own constituents on the Palestine issue. So she is representing exactly the kind of area that is on that fault line of ethnic change in politics. With the rise of Gaza independence, your party, etc. OK, she's pro-Palestine, but Mahmoud understands that an ugly sectarian politics has been introduced here. And I think if anyone is able by their biography to tackle that head on, it is a Muslim woman from Birmingham.

10:09And also there's this assumption, particularly among white lefties, that immigrants themselves aren't worried about illegal migration and mass migration. Which is offensive, right? It's totally offensive and patronising. I mean, how many people have we spoken to in the past who said, well, my parents came here legally. So, yes, it does annoy me. Same rhetoric is echoed in America. That's why a lot of immigrants or the children and grandchildren of immigrants voted for Trump. because they felt it was unfair that they had to jump through hoops, pay for visas and all the rest of it while other people jumped over fences.

10:41Yes. I mean, that's the difference here. Yeah. But also, of course, I mean, that's a good line, isn't it? We want to provide sanctuary to those in danger. We want to be a greater Britain, not a littler England. To do so, we must restore order and control, which is a good argument. There's the sting in the tail, right, of this legislation. this is where it might end up proving not to be quite like the Danish experience which is she's also talking about opening up safe and legal routes in the style of the Ukrainian route that we had and look at the thousands and thousands of people who came there.

11:15We thought only 20 ,000 would come. Oh, goodness me, it's 200 ,000. This is what happens with these well-meaning policies and also, well, how are you going to determine which should be the safe and legal routes And then how are you going to decide how many people should be able to use them? Is there going to be a cap? This is the thing that I have never quite understood about our asylum policy. At what point does a country get to say, OK, we've taken enough people just in terms of its own, the state's ability to cope? Yeah. I'm not talking about legal migration now. I'm talking about people claiming asylum in this country and then being granted it.

11:55what control is over the numbers? Because, of course, you can do the best by as many people as you can, but that must have a limit. Because there are some leftists who just argue anyone that wants to seek asylum and deserves to seek asylum must be granted asylum. Yes. And I think they'd even go further and say it shouldn't even be a case that you have to apply for asylum. People should just be able to come. You should just come here. But then this is the problem. Funny enough, I was discussing this with somebody this morning, saying, well, back in the old days, You could be fleeing a country. You could be fleeing persecution.

12:28And the difference was that you turned up in another country and the country didn't give you anything. And if you survived, if you could stand on your own two feet and prosper, then you just got on with it. And if you didn't, you had to go back home. Right. Yes. Isn't that how immigration policy has changed over the course of decades? Yes. If people were fleeing the depression in America and thinking, my goodness me, I'm going to set up shop in Croydon because my family's lost all of their business, then OK, they arrive by boat, try their best to get a visa or whatever, and then they have to establish themselves.

13:01What I can't understand about this particular policy is it does nothing about the incentive that is come here illegally by boat and get room and board. Yes, right. So she's talking about... It doesn't stop the have a go element. Well, it doesn't stop us being a soft touch. As far as I can tell, we are being extremely generous in our offer to people that come off dinghies and the back of lorries in Dover. Right. Documented, undocumented, what have you. We had a huge debate about this as we were marking remembrance. We are offering more to people coming here illegally than we are our own veterans who are homeless.

13:40Yeah. OK. And therefore, if you are coming across from whichever country it may be through different European countries, of course you're going to cherry pick the one that makes your life easiest for you upon arrival and so Mahmoud has been talking about the golden ticket that Britain represents and she's trying to stop that she's trying to stop us looking like we're Willy Wonka giving everything to everyone but it doesn't solve the initial draw isn't the initial draw are people really thinking oh well how long will it take me after I've got indefinite leave to remain to become a permanent citizen.

14:17I don't think that's foremost on their mind, is it? Because if nothing else, you can just slip into the black market. I suspect that that bit won't deter anyone. This is where things like the jewellery and belongings things comes into play. Yes. Let's talk about that. This has been described as state endorsed robbery by the Liberal Democrats, who are literally becoming more ridiculous by the day. Yes. Basically, the suggestion is if you actually come with some stuff, the example was cited of somebody claiming asylum here who was receiving£800 a month from their family and driving around in an Audi, but still being state funded in terms of accommodation and food.

14:57Right. And that seemed to people to be incongruous, which I would agree with. So the suggestion is, if you're going to come over here and you have got some stuff, you've got some jewellery, you've got some wealth, you've got some possessions, you must sell them in order to support your own upkeep in a foreign land. Yeah. Is that controversial, Tim? First of all, I feel that whenever people start deciding that some forms of taxation are theft, then they need to take a look at what they endorse elsewhere, because we're all at some point in our lives forced to sell things to pay for things. Yes. Are we not?

15:32Isn't that what inheritance tax is? You literally have to go through your dead mum's jewellery and work out 40 % of it. So I feel like that Rubicon has already been crossed. It's not very nice. It doesn't sound nice because it conjures up horrible images and people have compared it to, I'm being careful with my words here, Central European dispersal programmes and involves stealing the belongings of people and making them pay for their own misery. I mean, it does come up with a horrible picture. I think that's the point of it. I think it is supposed to be awful. The pain is the point. It is to send a very clear message that if you come here, you are going to be, to some extent, humiliated.

16:13Behind it is this assumption, well, look, if you are so desperate to come here, then you won't mind. Yes. Because surely if you are fleeing imminent threat of persecution and death, then you won't object to handing over a gold watch if it guarantees you bed and board and security from the country. Or if you are fleeing a life and death situation, you probably haven't got any possessions with you anyway. Yeah. On the other hand, it's not very hospitable and it is contrary to the spirit of asylum to say, if you come here, you must pay for it. That's not really the point of asylum. Do you know what this is reminding me of?

16:46phrase which Labour have tried to disown since Liam Byrne, the former immigration minister, first came up with it. It's trying to create what I would describe as a hostile environment, Tim, for illegal immigrants. And is there anything necessarily wrong with that? If this policy, a little bit like Rwanda, is meant to act as a deterrent, people often look at it from the practicalities of somebody arriving in a dinghy with heirlooms from their great grandmother, suddenly they're being snatched by some copper in the shadow of the white cliffs of Dover, etc etc what this is really trying to do and this is how it was effective in denmark is to reduce asylum claims enormously so in denmark asylum claims over the course of the decade the policy has been running have reduced by more than 90 percent right right okay so it's to stop people because labor in all their infinite wisdom well let's be honest rishi sunak in all of his infinite wisdom calls a general election before the first rwanda flight is taken off which was possibly as stupid as him leaving D-Day early.

17:47Yeah. Okay, point one. But point two, Labour then made the mistake of not continuing with the policy. They could have continued with the policy and it would have been effective as a deterrent and they wouldn't be in this mess now. Or they could have continued with the policy. It could have gone wrong. And what's to stop them from blaming the Tories? Because they blame the Tories for their own mistakes anyway. So they should have stuck with it as the Australian Labour Party did after their own offshore processing was introduced by the Liberals, the right-wing party in Australia. But anyway. And people again asked why Rwanda.

18:21The regime is not pleasant. I don't think you're particularly secure there. But that was the point. The pain was the point. People were getting onto a dinghy and thinking, shall I come here or shall I actually just stay in Italy because life might be easier than being shipped to Rwanda. The cruel joke was I might travel thousands of miles to get into Britain and then be sent back to the country next door, to the country I've just come from. Precisely. And that's not where I want to be. If you do as Yvette Cooper set up, if you're sent back to Paris, it isn't that great a pain. Although, of course, there was famously someone who was sent back to Paris and then came back to London because he said he felt he felt endangered in Paris.

18:59The other trouble with this, and this is what the lawyers are saying, not just the right, but the lawyers are saying this. There have been countless human rights lawyers on the airwaves last night and today saying none of this is workable if Britain remains in the ECHR because people will be able to fight their proposed deportations under Article 8 of that convention, the right to family life. And also under Article 3, the right for protection against degrading treatment and something like the jewellery idea could be seen as degrading. and argued as such in courts when we consider how wide the interpretation of those articles has been since we became a signatory to this treaty.

19:44You know, you want to read about it, go and read Lord Sumption. This treaty and its interpretation has spiralled completely out of control, which means that basically we can't seemingly control our own borders anymore because the people who are keeping our borders open are the lawyers acting on behalf of some of these claimants. Yeah. And to be fair, Mahmood, as part of her package, wants legislation that means that the right to family life cannot stand in the way of deportation. So she believes that she can get around the ECHR through legislation. And this package is going to be a really interesting test of the ECHR.

20:21Denmark's signed up to it. Denmark seems to have been able to get away with these policies. Well, on that, if people do challenge under the ECHR, it's quite a difficult situation for Denmark. Obviously, there are fewer people they're having to deal with, which reduces the problem enormously. But while they do deal with those people, they have to hold them in this kind of limbo detention centre arrangement where they are funded by the taxpayer. that in turn causes the resentment that we've witnessed here with migrant hotels as people stay in a system sort of almost ad infinitum while lawyers fight over the case.

20:56So they haven't quite solved that. Yeah. The Danish. OK. But we'll see. As I say, it's a test of that because the left-wing argument is the ECHR is a big distraction, which was cooked up by the Tories because they'd rather have a political battle about Europe than actually do the things you need to do to firm up the asylum system. whereas the right says always no matter what you want to do unless you fix the problem of the ECHR it's impossible to do it and this will be a test of that and an interesting thing is if it proves the ECHR is a problem will Labour then follow the money and pull us out?

21:30Before we discuss the backlash and also how the Tories and Crucially Reform handle this policy what do Telegraph readers think? Jack Saunders, the policy sounds pretty positive However, we all know most Labour MPs and members don't support it. These are the same people who think it's racist to display the Union Jack. A leopard doesn't change its spots, which is an interesting point. Do we really think, deep down, Keir Starmer, a man who once declared all immigration policy to be inherently racist, deep down does he support this or is this for his own political survival, Tim? Of course it's the latter.

22:06Stay tuned. We will discuss that. Anne Mellor writes, without a plan like Rwanda, without interim basic sustenance detention centres, without the removal of benefits, without a major reduction in judicial processes, nothing will work. And without strong action, this will be wave on wave, year on year of undocumented and fit young men from countries and cultures very different to our own, and those men possibly mentally and emotionally damaged from what they've lived in. I'm sorry for them as a whole, but we can't save the world, and our first priority is to secure ourselves. Alan Dobson questions whether Labour aping reform is actually going to work, which is what we're going to come on to next, Tim.

22:58Tim, if you had a Labour bingo card of people you would imagine would immediately impose this policy. Who might be on it? Oh, clickety-click, Stella Creasy. Stella Creasy, exactly. Guess who she's written her objections up for. Oh, well, now where would she write that? It's not going to be the Daily Express. I'm going to guess The Guardian. Yes, it is in The Guardian. She's saying that... And you can imagine her face as she wrote it. Oh, screwed up. My goodness. Yes, somewhere between fury and the deepest empathy. Empathy. Just no one cares more than Stella. And she cares not just as a politician and as a woman but as a mother Tim.

23:38Yes. I'm not sure if you're aware but Stella Creasy is the first woman on earth to have had a baby. Well she's the gentlest person alive and if anyone disagrees she'll strike them down. So she has described the reforms as performatively cruel and economically misjudged. Okay. Who else is on the bingo sheet? Come on there's a really obvious one. To be fair I'm being unfair because he's not quite Labour anymore. It's going to be Jeremy Corbyn. JC Jesus Christ of politics himself Corbyn. Two fat ladies Jeremy Corbyn. And he has called this policy absolutely disgusting. It's disgusting. It's disgusting.

24:10There are some less predictable critics, though. So we always talk about the usual suspects. Nadia Wittem came out last week before these policies had even been properly announced, saying that they were racist. Okay, ka-ching. She's top of the bingo card. But then we've also heard that one minister is on, quote, resignation watch. Right. Not sure which one. Hopefully not Mahmoud. and Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP for Folkestone, Hyde and Romney Marsh, demanding that the government think again on the reforms, which is an interesting position to take from the seaside. Part of the world that I would think actually would be quite in favour of it.

24:47Yeah, Folkestone. That's Michael Howard's old seat, isn't it? Stroud MP Simon Ofer said that Labour should push back on the racist agenda of reform rather than echo it. Does this make life very difficult for reform? You were at that press conference this morning, which wasn't about this. What was it about? It was about reforming local government. No, no. It's Richard Tice. He wasn't talking about pensions again, was he? It was actually very interesting because he talked about the rising costs of education for children with special educational needs. Yes. The cost of the certificates, motability programmes, sending kids to private schools, etc.

25:25And he took a ball stand that I feel could come back to hit him, claiming that the middle classes were, quote, playing a game of getting their kids into private schools and avoiding VAT by having them diagnosed as autistic. That's quite a claim. I mean, honestly, to think that middle class parents would game any education system to get their children in, tutoring them for grammar school. Whether they do or not, as you know from all conversations about educational needs, everyone always says that someone else's kid doesn't deserve it. But if you suggest that their kid doesn't deserve it, you've lost a vote.

26:01He also claimed that in the future, councils wouldn't be collecting bins because of the rising costs of these certificates. So he took a bold and brave position on that. But really, the questions were mostly about immigration because he was making this statement on Immigration Day. and the question which kept coming up from people, well, two questions kept coming up. One, if this bill comes up, would you vote for it? And two, is the Labour Party stealing your clothes? And this was a question that you stood up and asked with a great amount of enthusiasm, Tim, not realising or forgetting that you had an Americano at your feet.

26:36Oh, my coffee over. Sorry. On immigration, Thatcher said that the best tribute to her was Tony Blair. Is the Home Secretary a tribute to reform? Look, ultimately, let's see what the Home Secretary delivers. But, you know, copying is the greatest form of flattery. And we like to lead fashion, we don't follow it. And I think that's what the Home Secretary is doing. It was unclear from his answers if reform would vote for or against the bill. On the question of imitation, Richard Tice just sort of laughed it off. And I felt didn't really land a blow. He said that Shabana Mahmood may well be well-intentioned, but he doubted that she could get it through the Labour Party, which is an interesting point.

27:18Nonetheless, I don't know if I felt reform was rattled so much as reform just didn't know what to say. What does it do when the government, it's been calling wet, socialist, out of touch, what does it do when the government starts talking like reform? Exactly, and in the face of criticisms that the Home Secretary is indeed channelling her inner Nigel Farage. Yes. Now, the Tories' approach has been rather more magnanimous. Kemi Bade, the opposition leader, has said, well, if you can't get this through on Labour votes because there is the potential for a large backbench rebellion, then we will help you because in the national interest, we do want these asylum claims to come down.

27:57Yeah, similar to their line on welfare reform. I mean, it's sensible, grown up politics to an extent. Oh, it's devious as well. It's devious because it exploses his left flank, which could be increasingly problematic. Save Labour's immigration reform. That's a very good headline. But what if they don't have any effect at all? Just two concerns. First of all, the whole policy fails for some of the reasons that we've outlined. It's a half-baked Danish pastry, the ECHR factor, the government and indeed the incompetent home office's inability to enforce any of this stuff. OK? Yeah. It all fails there.

28:35then they're associated with a bad Danish light policy that doesn't really grab the issue by the cojones. And second of all, because they're then seen as being in bed with Labour and if the Reform Party are on the outside of this, Reform can again point and say... Uniparty. Uniparty. Look at these two in bed with each other. They both don't know their arses from their elbows. For the last God knows how many years both of these parties have taken it in terms to let you down with their immigration pledges. Look at us riding like a knight on a white charger to the rescue of the great people in Dover and beyond.

29:12So what I would say is if Kemi were here, I mean, she would shoot that down. She'd say, we're just being mature and we're doing what you should do, which is support the government where you think it's right. Strategically, they are playing a card Corbyn refused, I think, to his great error not to play during the Brexit debate. When, if you recall, Labour had a chance of supporting Theresa May's Brexit deal and he turned it down. and some on the Corbynite left now wish he had taken it because if he had, what would have happened? Well, Labour loses nothing, but the Tories were split because May's deal would have been saved by Corbyn and therefore she would have stayed in place and she would have been hung by that deal and the party would have hated her, they'd have been split and they'd have gone to the next election and lost.

29:51So there's a case for saying that it's a gamble, but it's one which can split the government, make the government, like it relies upon you, the left will hate it even more and the public will go, oh, you're so good that you stepped in and did the right thing. And she's doing the same with welfare, of course. Her pitch is, will the government support our welfare cards? Your backbenchers won't support yours, so we're going to put forward our proposals. If you'll support them, then we're happy to get welfare reform through because we just want to help the country. And one thing we should bear in mind is the Tories have no other card to play.

30:21No. I mean, percentage-wise, they're what? A 1 % with a give or take 10 %? Yeah. They're finished. They're literally playing whist with no trumps. At this stage, they're finished. The only thing the Tories have is the second largest number of seats in Parliament. For now. For now. So if you think about it, what are you going to play with? You can't get any national attention on telly. Anything you say, hardly anyone pays any attention. And why should they? Because there are dead men walking. So use the one arena you've got. And Kemi is using it very well at the moment with PMQs, to her credit.

30:54So why not play some parliamentary games? Yes. Do the parliamentary maths. And all of this brings us back to the big question, which isn't will reformers support it, will the Tories support it? It's will Labour support it? Yeah. What does Labour really think about its own welfare reforms? Actually, do you know what, thinking about it now, rumours of a rebellion may be overstated because there are a great many Labour MPs with such marginal majority. I mean, we know from the polling, regardless of what Stella Creasy or Jeremy Corbyn... Who represents Ware Walthamstow, a very unrepresentative kind of seat.

31:33Exactly. So regardless of what these people think, generally, when you actually poll the general public, they want a crackdown. Including Labour supporters. Of course, legal and illegal. You know, we said earlier about, of course, immigrants also support the crackdown. By the way, Labour supporters support the crackdown. This idea that nobody supports this because it is, quote, a right wing concept is just preposterous. So maybe the rebellion won't be quite as meaningful as people are saying because a great many people, particularly Labour MPs elected to the Red Wall after Boris Johnson cocked everything up, are sitting on seats with tiny majorities and their constituents are really concerned about this issue.

32:15So actually they'll think local because they don't want to lose their jobs at the next general election. And if you sit in on Home Office questions, it's striking how many Labour MPs get up and ask about a hotel in their area. They've inherited the same problem that those old Red Wall Tories MPs used to have. I feel that possibly the biggest block to all of this could be the Prime Minister. Because does he really believe in this? And I come back to what I said at the beginning. The Dane said, you've got to not just say it, but believe it. I think part of the problem with the Labour Party is it's still led by Keir Starmer, who doesn't believe much of where the party is going.

32:51Yes. I mean, if you think about where it's going to be in about a month's time, post-budget and post-this legislation, it's going to be possibly a little more left-wing on tax, because they're going to raise taxes, aren't they, obviously? Possibly more. Definitely more. Definitely more. But there's also going to be more right-wing on immigration. And we might look at that and think that's quite clever. That's probably where most people are, actually. squeeze the rich until the pips squeak, and kick out the foreigners. I mean, that's your classic populist line, isn't it? Yes. But from Labour's point of view, that's kind of a disaster because you're taxing without much more in the way of spending.

33:27It's hardly a redistributive budget. It's just a balancing the books budget. And you've just caved in to the right and to reform on immigration, which they naturally think is xenophobic. And they are facing a growing problem from the Greens. Yes. Although there was some polling out today which suggested that Green Party supporters quite liked this plan. Again, let's not patronise everyone and say that they don't support a crackdown on illegal migration. Yes, they do. The other thing and the other problem for Starmer, of course, is if the Home Secretary does pull this off, she ends up looking like a very serious rival to his premiership.

34:04We've talked about West Streeting. Angela Rayner's out on manoeuvres on Sunday, speaking to the Sunday Mirror, naturally, reminding them of how much she cares about her constituents. And now we have Mahmoud potentially really threatening. And also it looks decisive in the face of his absolute flip-floppery. Yes. There are four people we're watching. We're watching Streeting, whose leadership ambitions seem to have been accidentally flushed out by Morgan McSweeney, but who represents the Blair right wing. You've got Angela, who represents the soft left, who clearly is not happy about the way she went and is obviously looking for a return, whether it be the front bench or to challenge the leadership.

34:43You've got now Shabana Mahmood, who represents Blue Labour and is very much supported by people like John Healy, who is really being boosted during the conference season, the party who's going out of its way to promote her. And then if those three kind of devour each other, there is Healy himself, who is regarded as solid from the North and just the kind of Jim Callahan consensus type figure who might have to step in to restore all that. Yes, and that rare thing in a defence secretary of somebody who's actually put up the money that defence has got from the treasurer. He's actually the least controversial and possibly most appealing of the lot.

35:19Right. Before we go, should we just bask in the glory of our Daily Tea exclusive on the BBC and the second Trump speech doctoring that Newsnight carried out, as we revealed on Thursday? Thank you to everybody for watching and listening to that episode. It's become our most successful first day broadcast of the Daily Tea in our entire history, Tim. John Howard, great expose of Newsnight's sleight of hand, although it will inevitably reinforce the BBC's view that the Telegraph is one of their enemies. Too true. Jonathan Hoskins says, I have been loving the scoops on the Beeb. I gave up on it a couple of years ago and these last six months stopped listening to the Today programme.

36:02In which case, Jonathan, you won't know that I was on it this morning. He continues, I used to have Radio 4 on all the time, but it's just too grating these days. It's really sad because I loved the BBC. It's not grating when you're on it. Can I just say that? Also, Jonathan has switched from that to this and is listening to you every day. So you must be complimented by that. That is my thought for the day, if you don't mind me saying. Simon Goodall adds, I love the fact that the BBC decided to advertise renewing the licence fee on your Friday podcast, which you devoted to the BBC's failings. That's proper balanced journalism, isn't it?

36:36Now, to be fair, we don't have any control over that. We have no say over that. But you're telling me that in the midst of our podcast, an advert for getting your licence fee renewed popped up. I know. That's the podcast we did with Andy Webb, the journalist who's written a book called Diana Rama, saying that the BBC was in some ways complicit in the death of Princess Diana. I see. That's so funny. That reminds me of whenever they go inside prisons and you see an advert on a wall for reporting crime. Yes. we'll be back tomorrow at 5pm