Starmer goes AWOL as Trump threatens to wipe out Iran

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30Ragbook is going to get you that promotion. And the AI drama that made Reddit our stock pick of the year. Jack and I worked on Wall Street, got MBAs, sold our last company to Robinhood. Plus, we were freshman year roommates. So I can tell you why Jack's a briefs guy, not a boxers guy. So listen to T-Board, the best one yet. It'll be the brightest part of your day. And if this podcast lasts longer than 20 minutes, call your doctor. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcast everywhere. Acast.com.

1:02Where is Keir Starmer? President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iran into the Stone Age if they don't reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

1:10Camilla: Meanwhile, our own Prime Minister is nowhere to be seen. And the Warnes Festival has been cancelled after its headline act, Kanye West, was banned from entering the UK for his previous anti-Semitic remarks. But is this really the best way to deal with anti-Jewish hatred in the UK? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Tim Stanton.

1:42Camilla, how was your Easter?

1:44Camilla: Very good. I feel like I've been resurrected on this podcast in the post-Easter period. I spent a lot of time gardening and then I did this thing where I had a brush, like a kind of like a long toothbrush, a cleaning brush, which I bought on the back of an Instagram reel. Someone had one, maybe Mrs. Hinch. And I got this brush and I dipped it in some bicarbonate of soda and then I dipped it in some fairy liquid. And I thought, I wonder what this will do to the grouting on my flooring. Yes. And I started and about seven hours later I finished. And I was like, why? I was on my hands and knees cleaning this grout.

2:23Camilla: Once you start, of course, you can't really stop. OK, well, if you're free next weekend, you can come and do my bathroom because the walls have turned orange over time. I don't know why. Have you been showering with Donald Trump? Washing the Cheeto dust off the US president. Speaking of which, the president has marked Easter in a traditional way by standing next to a man in a bunny costume shouting at children. It's so funny. I know it's serious. It's done every year. It's so serious, but it's so funny. Presidents have stuck to the Easter messaging and not talked about foreign policy from the balcony.

2:57Let's listen to Donald Trump discussing the war with the Easter Bunny. The United States, our country is doing so well like it has never done before. You'll see that very shortly. Things that we've done have not been done before. We've broken every record on the stock market. We've broken every record in our military. And what about the rescue that took place yesterday? What about that? That's something that you rarely see. You know, they were giving me a briefing about that. And they said, normally, when you're in very hostile territory, and I don't think it gets much more hostile than Iran, they're capable fighters.

3:35They're very tough people. And there are others like that. You don't mind when the enemy is weak, but that enemy is strong. Not so strong like they were about a month ago. I can tell you, in fact, right now they're not too strong at all, in my opinion, but we're soon going to find out, aren't we? A lot of people were thinking, am I the only person who can see the Easter Bunny? Yes.

3:56Camilla: Are we hallucinating? Could we be on serious drugs? It's hard to tell right now. There's actually Shades of Donnie Darko, that film with Jake Gyllenhaal, where he envisages a bunny chasing him. It was a bit like that. And then the press conference went inside, but he carried on with the theme because, of course, this came after another Truth Social post with some spelling errors and a lot of capital letters, Tim. Maybe you want to read it out. Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day. That's as in actual bridges, not a rubber of. All wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it.

4:34Open the f***ing straight, you crazy bastards. Or you'll be living in hell. Just watch Praise be to Allah President Donald J. Trump

4:44Camilla: This is funny because I sent you this last night, didn't I? Somebody had done a compendium of all of the very meaningful things that US presidents have said in the past on the eve of war So we have things like, by comparison A house divided against itself cannot stand Yes, and the only thing we have to fear is fear itself A man may die, nations may rise and fall but an idea lives on That was Truman. Mr. Garbachev, tear down this wall, Reagan, and then open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards. Donald J. Trump. Thank you very much for that. It's also bearing in mind all the slightly exhausting debates we have in Britain about the decline of Christianity and should the king comment on Easter.

5:28Donald Trump began Easter Sunday by saying, praise be to Allah.

5:32Camilla: Yes. Was that being ironic? I'm not quite sure. Also, Tim, sorry, just breaking. We have Trump ramping up the rhetoric again today on social media. His truth social post reads, a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change, we're different, smarter and less radicalised minds prevail. Maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Capitals, who knows? He added, we will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.

6:15Camilla: 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. What we're working towards here is the Tuesday deadline. Yes. Donald Trump has threatened repeatedly to blow up key infrastructure, some things that some say might actually be a war crime. If the Iranians don't surrender and agree to terms, we don't know what those terms are. Nor do we know who is speaking to who, what channels are open, and the Iranians have denied that they're talking to anyone. Asked on Monday about the threat, the president claimed that Iranians actually want the bombing to continue. They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom.

6:55The Iranians have, and we've had numerous intercepts, please keep bombing. Bombs that are dropping near their homes, please keep bombing. Do it. And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding. And when we leave and we're not hitting those areas, they're saying, please come back, come back, come back. These are the people.

7:18Camilla: I don't know what they do. All I can tell you is they want freedom. And another extraordinary moment, Tim, where standing alongside his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the president said this. We're doing unbelievably well, well at a level that nobody's ever seen before. The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. Now, big orange man bad, as Constantine Kissing calls him, was very visible during the whole of Easter, literally with bells on. Sorry, where's the Prime Minister? Do you know where he is? No. Because he's not been seen. Does anyone know where he is?

7:56Camilla: I think I have been seen, having been off, he was last seen in public on April the 1st. Now, I did this podcast on April the 1st and April the 2nd. Wow. And I made a guest appearance last week because we had pre-recorded one about reform, OK? Okay. So don't you think... What you need to do is ring the police and get them to track his phone. Yes. It'll be somewhere at the bottom of the Thames, along with Morgan McSweeney's and Rebecca Vardy's agent's phone. I get this whole idea that prime ministers are able to go on holiday. Of course, they must. And I think you must. We don't want a prime minister who's exhausted and strung out.

8:33Camilla: Well, no, okay. But I mean, I think it's probably part of the job description, to be honest. You've got one job and that's to be exhausted and strung out. because you're literally running the country. We want to make sure that they have a chance to recharge their batteries. OK, but do you remember the complete hullabaloo over the former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab being away when Kabul fell? And Labour went on and on and on about it. Keir Starmer himself going on about him being on his sun lounger. Remember if you're old enough, when Boris Johnson was in Canada during the London riots in the early 2010s, he had to rush home, didn't he?

9:07Camilla: So we have all of that. Opposition always does this. And then we have the Prime Minister who has been missing in action. I'm sorry, he hasn't been seen in public. We then this morning had, oh, bless, your favourite, Wes Street in the Health Secretary. Can I just say how proud I am of how the Prime Minister's handled this? Sorry. Because when we just look at what's happening over in America... The rigid chin and the eyes. The eyes. Which are not quite looking at the interviewer, but just over the head of the interviewer. Frankly, Doris, I am just delighted. I am over the moon that we have this Prime Minister at this moment.

9:45And, of course, inside that, you know, the hamster working the wheel is actually thinking, no, I want to be Prime Minister. I should have been Prime Minister.

9:53Camilla: I would have done this better. I'd be all over this. I know. And he was laying into junior doctors, resident doctors, as we should call them, striking doctors. Let's just call them what they actually are. Doctors who are not at work right now again. Yes, but he has said that anyone thinking of using the NHS don't be put off because A &E actually improves when junior doctors are on strike. Because they're taken over by more senior doctors who know what they're doing. Having said that, the junior doctors say they want to be called resident doctors because some of them have been working for 10 years.

10:26Camilla: Right. And we don't want to be infantilised. If you don't want to be infantilised, just get back to work and stop having a giant strop at the cost of billions of pounds to the taxpayer, if you don't mind. Again, like the prime minister, you've got one job. It's to be in hospitals helping patients. Well, of course, the doctors have been granted a pay increase of 29 % over three years. Which is huge. Which is enormous. And they have been offered 3.5%, but they're pushing for even more. Good grief. It is interesting to see West Streeting being so critical openly at the BMA as well. There's a real rift there between the government and the professional association.

11:01And of course, the government's pouring money into the NHS right now. And it doesn't want to see it wasted. on strikes and wage increases.

11:08Camilla: No. So he said this morning that it had cost altogether £3 billion since that action started, which could have been ploughed into, well, I presume more doctors and nurses, which the BMA would support. So we've got West Streeting out on the broadcast round, loving life at the forefront. Yes. Nothing from the prime minister today. Now, again, OK, he can go on holiday, but this is more significant than the fall of Kabul. OK, this is the US president saying that he is going to bomb the hell out of Iran by this deadline. I would have thought that might be a moment for the Prime Minister to emerge, maybe with some words of reassurance, not least as I passed a garage yesterday, Tim.

11:47Camilla: It nearly has reached the£2 for a litre of diesel mark. It was£1.98. I can tell you in some states in America, it has hit$6 a gallon, which is astonishing. I mean, that works out. My maths are terrible, but I think that's somewhere between£2 and£3 a litre. And this is not something that a country which prides itself on the freedom to drive, but also one where supposedly energy self-sufficient now. This should not be happening. It's happening, of course, because the price for your petrol is not set by how much energy you produce locally. It's set by the global market or the regional market. And however much America produces, if there's a sudden shortage, they'll just sell to China rather than it going to America.

12:28And that produces price inflation, yada, yada, yada. But I would remind you that last week the Prime Minister said that he was working at pace for de-escalation.

12:37Camilla: Right. Is he? Is he really? Right. So everyone's saying, I mean, you could argue, well, this has got nothing to do with Britain anyway, has it? Well, not true because citizens are in the region. Our people have been attacked. British military are involved in some limited way. So it's not true that we're not involved. But also we were told the United Kingdom is working at pace to de-escalate and is currently organising a 35-country coalition of the not-quite-willing to try to bring about peace in Iran. But they've got nothing to do with it. My point is that unless Keir Starmer shocks us and turns up tomorrow in Tehran, like Kissinger in Beijing, bringing peace, then I would suggest we can't see him working at pace for de-escalation.

13:25No. What does that actually look like?

13:27Camilla: Imagine if there was like a Scooby-Doo moment where Starmer emerges in Tehran in a full burqa. It's ripped away. But to be fair, Donald Trump wouldn't let him anywhere near this now. No. Because again, he's laid into him. So we've already had, what, two references to the Prime Minister not being Churchill. Yes. And then we had this. The UK has a long way to go. We don't want another Neville Chamberlain. Do we agree? We don't want Neville Chamberlain. You can't hear it because he's speaking over a marching band, but he compared the Prime Minister to Neville Chamberlain and said we don't need another Neville Chamberlain.

14:00But there's a case for saying we actually, we could do with a Neville Chamberlain right now because A, Chamberlain was involved. Yes. at least at Munich. We were at the table. Britain did matter in the balance of power in Europe. He did have that piece of paper in his hand. And secondly, Neville, old Nev, was buying us time to rearm so that we could enter the Second World War on a much stronger position. Whereas, of course, what this government is doing is talking about rearming. But until the Treasury commits the money, we're not actually going to be able to do it.

14:30Camilla: Which it won't, because the Chancellor doesn't have any money. And we've also got dire economic forecasts once again this morning. we've got businesses saying they're going to have to let people go because of the hike to the minimum wage we've got Angela Rayner your favourites workers rights bill has now become legislation so that means that employers have got less right to sack people who aren't doing their jobs properly businesses are therefore running scared they're in turn suggesting that they're going to have to lay off more people I think the government's defence, it constantly articulates correctly what the problems are.

15:07It has acknowledged that there's not enough money being spent on defence. It has acknowledged that we need to grow. So it's not like a government that literally has its head in the sand. It's not like Green Party levels of delusion.

15:20Camilla: No, but it's still levels of delusion. Yeah, but it's still held hostage by backbenchers who don't share that analysis. and it just won't do the things necessary, the grand structural stuff that's needed to fix those problems. But also if you're engaged in this kind of national gaslighting, for instance, over North Sea oil and gas. Yes. So we've got a report today running on The Telegraph with an independent body having concluded that if we were more self-sufficient, at least when it came to natural gas, it would save the economy£2 billion a year. even in the face of that actual evidence Ed Miliband is, no no, I'm not doing it he's as immovable as his stone, okay, so how does a public deal with that when they look at these people they look at Rachel Reeves going, well actually I don't know if I'm going to give you any defence spending well, then we're just in stasis, that is represented by Keir Starmer's total and utter his inactivity in relation to this war, just sit on the fence and watch it all happen, that's emblematic of his entire premiership.

16:25Camilla: Just fence it, carry out a review, knock it into the long grass, don't take a decision, only take a decision if your backbenchers force you into taking a decision. All the while following the process. The less view of foreign policy is it is defined by virtue and you lead by example. So on the case of the environment, we obviously must produce less carbon. So Britain's global role is to decarbonise faster than anyone else. Why? We don't produce very much carbon compared to anyone else. Either way, if you then extend that to the very real world problem of a military conflict, well, if you are guided by this sense of virtue, war is wrong, okay, and you lead by example, we will not go to war, okay.

17:10Yeah. Yeah, fine. I personally support what the Prime Minister has done because I'm against the war, But I recognize that what that means in practice is it's Britain stepping back from, pulling out of, and rendering itself irrelevant. Does anyone believe that Keir Starmer is the linchpin in bringing peace between Iran and America? He's not. And he's not in part because generations of politicians like him have committed us to a series of policies that means we have no military muscle. We're not part of this because we couldn't be if we wanted to be. So we end up just being a talking shop. And I'm really interested to know how other people see us.

17:48Camilla: Well. We can't ask an Iranian. No, they're not available right now. Right, but we can ask an Israeli. Yes, so we spoke earlier to Elon Levy, who was a former government spokesman, and this is what he said about the lesser-spotted Keir Starmer. Britain is an ally and should start behaving like one. I mean, Britain is not really relevant in this story at all. it has decided to hide behind Israel and the United States doing their dirty work for them. You know, it would be one thing if you took a strong position like the Spanish and said, we don't want this war. It's illegal. This has absolutely nothing to do with us.

18:24At the moment that you allow the United States to use your air bases because you accept the legitimacy of the strikes against Iran's ballistic missile program, you're just hiding behind another country and allowing it to do your dirty work for it. Now, Personally, I'm torn on whether Britain should join at all. I'm not sure that there's a solid case that it should join offensive military action. I can see the strong reasons against it. And frankly, the United States and Israel don't need Britain's support in order to fight. What I am more concerned is about Britain's own deterrence capabilities, because the Iranian regime has directly attacked Britain.

19:02We've seen not only those drone attacks against the sovereign in British territories in Cyprus, but an attempted ballistic missile attack against the British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia. The Iranian regime has committed direct acts of aggression against Britain. And the response in Britain seems to be to pretend that it isn't happening. Every time British ministers were asked, does the Iranian regime have the capability to fire missiles at Britain? The response was, well, we don't at the moment have an assessment that they're planning to do that, which, of course, isn't answering the question.

19:37So I fear from the British perspective that the message being sent to the Iranian regime is that Britain doesn't intend to stand up for itself and that British targets can be attacked with absolutely no consequences. But that's a question for Britain and how it wants to structure its own national defence and deterrence against a regime that thinks it can get away with attacks against it.

19:58Camilla: Now, on this podcast, I was supportive initially of the US-Israeli action, but I am growing increasingly concerned by the US president's rhetoric. Is he losing it a bit, Elon? One day, history GCSE students are going to be presented with that image of Donald Trump flanked by the Easter bunny as source material. And I'll please explain this for seven points. I think President Trump is putting into practice the madman theory of international politics. He needs the Iranian regime to back down. the Iranian regime is getting absolutely thrashed militarily, right? It has no air force, no navy, its ballistic missile program is kaput, but it's making increasingly delusional demands.

20:42It's saying that in order to end the war, it wants to erect a toll booth over the Strait of Hormuz, expel American forces from the Middle East, and gain immunity for its proxy forces throughout the region. And so President Trump is trying to scare the Iranians and convince them that he's really off his rocker, that if they don't fall into line and appraise the situation rationally, then he could flip and do something extremely dangerous. Now, I hope we don't get that. But it looks like President Trump is trying to scare the Iranians into accepting some sort of deal that ends their regional aggression, instead of thinking that they can buy time by dragging the US and Israel into some war of attrition.

21:22That's how I read it. It's very hard for us to imagine what that deal might be, partly because things have been confused by some of the language around regime change, which probably wasn't on the table. But you mentioned making peace with a free and prosperous Iran. Well, that would suggest a change in the government. So from Israel's point of view, what is an acceptable peace? How does this end? Look, I have an unpopular opinion. I think that wars should end with peace. I think the Iranian regime should make peace with Israel. I think the core problem in the Middle East is that the Iranian regime is sworn to death to Israel, and we'd quite like to live.

22:00The core problem is that the Iranian regime has stolen billions of dollars from the Iranian people and poured them into its proxy armies, Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, into its ballistic missile program, into its aggression and intimidation across the region. There is no reason that the Iranian regime should be sworn to the violent destruction of the state of Israel. But it's a fanatical, Islamist, fundamentalist, theocratic, revolutionary regime. And the situation is what it is. So from Israel's perspective, ultimately, there will be no peace in the Middle East as long as Iran is still governed by a regime that is sworn to our destruction.

22:34The only hope of peace is if Iran is governed by a government that wants peace. By the way, just like before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were direct flights between Tel Aviv and Tehran, and the Iranians even bought land in Tel Aviv for an embassy. It's still sitting empty here while we're waiting for them to stop being aggressors and make peace. So Israel is hoping that by systematically eliminating the entire leadership of the Iranian regime, it will prepare the conditions so that the Iranian people can rise up like they've tried before and bring down the regime and establish a new Iran.

23:12But if that doesn't happen, that would be a nice bonus. It's the cherry on the cake. It's the only thing that will ultimately bring peace in the Middle East. that it wants to make sure that the Iranian regime can no longer project power beyond its borders, can no longer threaten us with the ballistic missiles they've been firing indiscriminately at our cities, can no longer blockade the Strait of Hormuz. And we're seeing the Gulf states coming towards that position. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, that weren't particularly excited about this war to begin with, now saying we don't want a simple ceasefire that leaves Iran emboldened and going after revenge.

23:48We want the comprehensive treatment of the entirety of the Iranian threat. And they're basically telling the United States and Israel, keep going, because you can't just walk away from it like this. Well, much of Britain has at present an at best ambivalent attitude towards Israel. And that will have been shaped by the vote in the Knesset to introduce the death penalty for Palestinians found guilty of terrorist offenses, but of course not Israeli citizens accused of the same things. Do you think this has damaged Israel's reputation internationally? And what do you think of the bill yourself? First of all, the characterization of the bill is not exactly accurate.

24:31it, and I'll put to one side my personal opinion, which I'll explain in a moment. The bill allows the death penalty against non-citizens tried in military courts and allows for the death penalty against Israeli citizens convicted of acts of terrorism whose purpose is to negate the existence of the state. So it does introduce a death penalty against Israeli citizens as well, just on a point fact. Now, that's my personal take. I am personally on balance and on principle opposed to the death penalty. I generally believe that no matter how nasty someone's crimes, it's good enough to just lock them away, throw them in prison, and throw away the key.

25:12The problem that Israel is dealing with is that Palestinian terrorists keep abducting Israelis in order to get their terrorists out of jail. And what we taught them by freeing so many prisoners from Israeli jails to get back those poor hostages who were taken on October 7th, is that taking hostages works. If you abduct Israeli civilians, we will pay the ransom, we will negotiate with terrorists, we will allow ourselves to be blackmailed, and we will release those terrorists from prison. So Israel is now in a position where having taught terrorists that taking hostages works because we released prisoners to get those hostages out, it needs to find a way to deter hostage taking.

25:57And one of the arguments behind the death penalty bill is that you can't just throw them in prison anymore because that's just going to be an incentive for terrorists to abduct more civilians in order to get the terrorists out. As for some of the antics we saw in the Knesset, the shameful behavior, the opening of champagne, the hangman noose from Mr. Benver, who's the Minister of National Security. Frankly, it's a national embarrassment. He's an oafish buffoon and convicted criminal. And we're going to have elections coming up this year. And although I don't usually talk about domestic politics internationally, I very much hope that he doesn't make it over the threshold.

26:36I want to get one thing absolutely clear. You say that Israeli citizens can also face the death penalty for acts committed against the state. Is that correct? So would that also apply for acts committed against, say, Palestinians in the West Bank? The law that passed would allow the death penalty against Israeli citizens convicted of terrorism offences motivated as an act against the state, as an attempt to negate the existence of the state. So would that include terror offences against people, say, for instance, settlers committing terror offences in the West Bank? The bill would not require the death penalty for that, no.

27:17I see. I think that's the distinction. I'm not saying that the bill is racist in the sense that it says brown people can die, white people can't. It's the question of the target of the violence, that it's a bill which says you get the death penalty if you target the Israeli state, but not if you commit similar crimes against Palestinian people. And I think that is the distinction that some people globally find distasteful. I can hear that. It's a very fair criticism and it's a reason that that bill has been very controversial here and didn't exactly pass by a very wide margin.

27:52Camilla: Elon Levy, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Tel Aviv. Stay safe. Pleasure. Thank you. Coming up next, the Wireless Festival has been cancelled after Kanye West was banned from entering the UK as the headline act for his horrific anti-Semitic remarks. We're going to be discussing whether this is the best way to deal with anti-Jewish hatred in the UK.

28:19Hello, I'm William Sitwell and as a proud ambassador of the Telegraph Save Our Pubs campaign, I'm here to tell you about our nationwide competition. Nominate your favorite pub and tell us in 250 words what it means to you and your community. Five winning pubs will win a£5 ,000 round for punters like you to enjoy on our National Pub Day on the 16th of May. Entries close on the 11th of April, so mark your calendars and get nominating. Visit telegraph.co.uk slash pubs today. With endless scroll algorithms and AI flooding feeds, podcasting stands out. They're sought, not served. Audiences actively choose to hear trusted voices on topics they care about.

29:03In fact, 72 % of listeners say podcasts shape cultural conversations. For marketers, that means podcasts shift brand perception like no other channel. ACAST's Podcast Pulse 2025 report has the proof. Get all the insights at podcastpulse2025.com.

29:30Camilla: Tim, we've returned to the Daily Tea studio because there's breaking news. Now, we had recorded an entire section of the Daily Tea agitating over whether or not Kanye West, the US rapper, should or shouldn't perform at the Wireless Festival. You're now back home, again resembling Tiffany. What's going on? Are you sometimes in your spare time taking calls on some kind of customer service hotline? Just to explain to those only listening to this, Tim's not just got headphones on, but like one of those kind of wired microphones attached. Like, do you want me to give you my credit card details? What's happening here?

30:05Putting you through. No, this is the only headphones I've got. These are the only ones I've got. Love it.

30:11Camilla: Anyway, you're back home because you're writing a feature. I've been running around town trying to star in royal documentaries. And basically, we've come back here because now this is the latest. OK, Kanye West has been banned from the UK. He is not being given a visa or actually an ETA, that electronic travel authorisation. Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, said, no, you're far too anti-Semitic to enter these shores. And so Wallace, in turn, who have been under pressure for the last 24 hours to stop this festival, or at least Kanye West's involvement in it from going ahead, have now said, OK, well, if we don't have our headline act, then we're going to cancel the whole festival.

30:50Camilla: Is this a case of giant overkill? Or if someone like West does suggest that he is a Nazi, Tim, then maybe he shouldn't be allowed into blighty at all. Well, he has, of course, apologized for his past statements, including publishing a full page letter in the Wall Street Journal. He has said that he has suffered from a debilitating case of bipolar for the last few years brought on by an accident in 2002, which he says was mistreated and left in one period to a four month long sort of mental bender in which he came out with this nonsense. So he would say that, yes, he said things that were wrong in the past, but he has apologized for them and he's willing to go further.

31:37He was offering to meet with Jewish groups when he came to the UK. And as of this morning, which is one reason why we recorded one version of this and now happens to do another, the person running the festival came out in his defense and said that we ought to give people a second chance. Also, if we are operating in the spirit of free speech, and when this country was truly great, it was somewhere that was renowned throughout Ancien Regime Europe for being unusually friendly towards free speech, such that many people came from abroad to exercise it here. This is where in the 19th century, Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital.

32:13This is where in the early 20th century, Lenin met Trotsky for the first time. So we've got a long history of being open to people coming here and speaking their minds. Having said that, though, I don't think it's entirely contradictory to say free speech for British citizens. Yes. But we do control and have a say over who gets in and who is allowed to speak here. If you think about it, that's the point of Brexit, isn't it? It's border control. It's the ability and the freedom to say no, including to extremists. And that means saying no to Islamist extremists. It also means saying no to pop stars who we regard as extremists.

32:47Theresa May blocked a rapper from coming to this country in 2015 called Tyler the Creator. And just recently, a Dutch woman whose name I'm not even going to bother to try to pronounce, was banned by the Labour government from coming in. She had been critical of Starmer and of his immigration policy, and they said that it would be bad for the community.

33:09Camilla: Even Gerd Wilders was banned as well, wasn't he? The Dutch politician at one point. David Duke, the plastic surgery enhanced white supremacist, has been banned since 1978. So it's, you know, we've got a mixed history on this. And it's not unreasonable for governments to take individual decisions and say, in this case, we just don't think you're worth the trouble. And this is coming off the back of ambulances having been set fire to in London, Jewish run ambulances having been set fire to. And of course, last year, Jews were actually killed at a synagogue in Britain. So there is a context to saying we just don't want one more egregious anti-Semite in our country.

33:48I don't think that's entirely our reason.

33:50Camilla: I'm going to do something surprising and speak up for West stroke ye or whatever it is he calls himself these days. Notwithstanding the fact that it was absolutely disgraceful for him to have said the things he said, to have produced a record called Heil Hitler, to have glorified the swastika and said the most outrageous things about Jews. there is a contradiction at play here, Tim. Because on one hand, you are singling out this US rapper who, as you say, did issue a full-page apology for his behaviour, blaming it on mental health. And I appreciate there is the Roseanne Barr argument to employ here.

34:33Camilla: You know, she famously compared one of Barack Obama's aides to a monkey and then blamed it on the fact that she had been taking Ambien, which is like a pain relief medication in America. and you have to ask yourself, well, hang on a minute, Roseanne, I'm not sure on the list of side effects. If you read the bottle, it says can result in headaches, loss of sleep and, of course, racism. Yes, indeed. OK, so I'm not excusing any behaviour here, but there is an explanation for why he completely lost it. I think West had a very, very public nervous breakdown at some point between his marriage to Kim Kardashian and his marriage to his new wife.

35:13Camilla: I think she's called Bianca Cesori, who, by the way, weirdly, is constantly appearing in public with her boobs out. And I don't get that either. And there is an argument to be said to be saying, this guy only wants to make money. He's a controversialist. Who the hell were all these people helping him to put out an album entitled Heil Hitler? Why has he been elevated to this status of such world fame that he thinks he's a cut above the rest? And this is the right way to treat him. But if you don't mind me saying, I do rather take objection to figures like the Liberal Democrat. I'll remind you of the words Liberal and Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, getting his knickers in an enormous twist about this appearance at the Wilders Festival, but not really having anything to say about the quite outwardly anti-Semitic remarks that have been made by actual parliamentarians or at least pretenders to the throne.

36:11Camilla: Let's talk about the deputy leader of the Greens, Mothin Ali, and his celebration of the October 7th attacks and his description of a rabbi as, quote, an animal. That's on the record. Nobody says anything about that. Other figures that were let into the UK are people like Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abadi. Again, sorry to come over all Douglas Murray, but they were allowed to remain. We've got Rochdale rapists who have actually been deported and lost appeals, still living in Rochdale because they've renounced their Pakistani heritage. They're still in the country. But apparently Kanye West is the biggest problem that we're facing right now.

36:49I think also if you're just dealing with Kanye West superficially, I think you're missing the bigger picture, which is the context of what he said. Now, I do appreciate the argument that he was mentally unwell. And I do think we should show mercy and give people second chances. But we have to address why is it that his mental illness was expressed through anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism?

37:15Camilla: Yeah. Why did some people still invest in him when he said those things? Why did some people still play the record? They didn't have to. If someone's mad, normally when they're mad, they just stand in the high street holding a Cornish pasty and say, I've got a bomb. Right. Yeah. Or they do the blackadder thing of sticking pencils up their noses. Right. In which case you call the police and they quietly deal with this person in a dignified way. You don't continue to promote them, put them on their show, interview them and celebrate. To be fair, Tim, he was, hang on a minute, he was widely ostracised and condemned.

37:51Camilla: Producers left him, publicists left him, his first wife obviously left him. I mean, he was considered a showbiz pariah and rightly so. He had been difficult to deal with for a very long time. I mean, you could even date this back to Hurricane Katrina, when he said live on TV that George W. Bush doesn't care about black people. I was reading some liberal commentary on that, which said that was Kanye at his best. And unfortunately, he went anti-Semitic. No, there's a case for saying that this was a form of racial rabble rousing even back then. So my point is that a lot of people have invested in Kanye during this period in which he says he was mentally unwell.

38:32So we must ask why they have done that. But also, as I say, why should his illness happen to be expressed as anti-Semitism? And it's because there is a strain of anti-Semitism within black nationalism and within black politics. We know that because his best friend Candace Owens has been expressing anti-Semitic things on her podcast.

38:52Camilla: Yes. Well, should she be banned from the UK, though? She's married to a Brit. This is the other question, though. How far do we go with this? Do we start saying Tucker Carlson, who, let's be honest, has been flirting with old fashioned tropes about Jews apparently controlling the world? Should we ban him next? I don't know it's it's all down to the the ministers the government and their decisions based upon the context and the context is as there have been anti-semitic attack a couple of weeks ago what a couple of weeks ago in north London and we were all acting then as though we were deeply upset about that because we were so it's not unreasonable then a couple of weeks later to say so should we should we be welcoming someone to headline a music festival who sung a song called Heil Hitler let's have some consistency in our empathy here right maybe this isn't the right time to do that.

39:38In principle, no, we shouldn't bar people from coming in. As I've said, we have a great history of not doing that. I just think there's a specific circumstance here. And I think there are questions about Kanye West of how he became, how his fame wasn't really stymied by his racism and why his racism is this particular kind of racism. I think these are questions that we haven't addressed and people don't want to out of fear. In the same way that Ed Davey does not want to confront that part of the pro-Palestinian movement, which is anti-Semitic, out of fear, because some days he might want their votes.

40:10I know, but then he's a massive hypocrite.

40:11Camilla: Well, then he's a fraud and he's a hypocrite. He's a politician. They're all like that. I'm not trying to be an idealist, but I'm just saying, can we please have some consistency? When we had Bob Villan crying death, death to the IDF, not just on the Glastonbury stage, but on the actual BBC, actually that was a far greater incitement to violence than West has ever been responsible. People have effectively lost their jobs over that. So I come back to don't be surprised, therefore, that a fuss was made about inviting Kanye West. I know, but Bob Villain's still performing at events, Tim. So we can't ban Bob Villain from the UK because he's British.

40:51Camilla: So it's a different thing. But why take that stand? Why say, oh, some people were saying and still are saying there's nothing wrong with Villain. And villains indeed attended some quotes, stop the war rallies that have also been attended, no doubt, by lefties, liberals, in adverted commas, Green Party members and all the rest of it. But apparently we've got all of this outrage about someone who, yes, was anti-Semitic. I am not for a minute trying to justify what he said. What he said was abhorrent and awful. But there is a context to this and it's mental health. And that's the other inconsistency here.

41:28Camilla: The likes of Sered Davy and all of their ilk are perfectly happy to be doling out welfare money and motability cars to people with mild anxiety. And yet when somebody high profile presents themselves with probably the most classically obvious case of mental ill health we've witnessed in recent years, everyone starts pointing the finger. It's like John Davidson. We just had an awards ceremony. We just had an awards ceremony, right, in which someone with Tourette shouted some really disgusting and offensive things, and we had to have a conversation in which we had to explain to people this is something he had no control over.

42:05But there were some people who did feel that should have been cut and shouldn't have been broadcast, and I frankly don't blame them because the things that were said were incredibly hurtful.

42:14Camilla: But we either accept that people who are mentally ill say irretrievably stupid stroke offensive stroke racist things and they don't have full agency over their actions or we don't and i appreciate mental health is i'm only saying this because a close friend of mine wrote this really interesting book about his father suffering with bipolar and he had these manic episodes where he literally went publicly mad and had no real control over his actions again i'm merely pointing to the inconsistency of oh well we can have sympathy with mental health when we agree with the person or when it manifests itself in a way that we see as acceptable, but not in this case.

42:55OK, I'm just trying to see on YouTube while we're speaking if I can actually find Kanye's Heil Hitler song. And to be fair to YouTube, I can't. I can only find people talking about it.

43:04Camilla: Oh, but you'll find plenty of videos by doctors speaking at BMA rallies being anti-Jewish. You can find plenty of rhetoric. There are still a lot of people who have chosen to make money out of Kanye despite these controversies. And I think on this question of why do politicians choose to make a fuss about him and not about other people? And I think part of it is precisely because Kanye is so obviously mentally ill, his anti-Semitism is almost operatic in its insanity. Yes. It's almost easier to point to Kanye West and say that is bad because it's not dressed up. He's literally saying Heil Hitler.

43:44There's nothing polite or coded about it because he's mad. Yes. So it's much easier. It is a lower cost for someone like Ed Davey to say that is bad, shouldn't be allowed in our country than someone who is using a more subtly coded form of anti-Semitism. Which is coded around things like Gaza and the struggle for Palestinian rights.

44:04Camilla: OK, so while we're saying, just to conclude, I've always made the argument, I think when you look at the David Irving and Deborah Libstadt row, that it's just better to let the Holocaust denier say their piece so that sensible, right minded people can turn around and say, well, I'm going to destroy your argument now comprehensively because of A, B, C, D and E pieces of evidence. OK, and like that Newsnight special that Jeremy Paxman hosted between Irvin and Lippstadt is one of the best pieces of journalism you've ever seen in your life, because he is absolutely and wholly exposed as being historically wrong.

44:44Camilla: He's humiliated on air. And I enjoyed watching it. The same is true of Nick Griffin on Question Time as well. Exactly, right? So one wants to fight for people's right to say... I mean, I will always fight for people's right to say something offensive so that we can give a counter-narrative. But what are we now saying about somebody like West, that West cannot ever re-emerge? What does West now have to do? And can I just caveat? I think West is an a-hole. I don't like him. I don't really like his music. He strikes me as an absolute moron of the highest self-regarding order. But what's he now meant to do?

45:18Camilla: Disappear for the rest of his life? He said he wants to atone. He wants to meet with Jews. OK, the British Board of Deputies said today, meet with us by all means, but don't headline a music festival in our country. Thanks very much. Or can he atone? I just want to say he is a formidable talent and I really liked his Sunday service album. I'm not going to write off Kanye. I'll disagree with you on that. Well, I know I liked one of his songs. What was this, you know, American Boy has a good song. Right. OK. And if we're going to dismiss geniuses who are racist, then we're going to have to rule out a lot of people from the past.

45:50But to go back to your point about Irving versus Lipstadt, that was a free speech debate in a different age in which speech was mediated. That was fought out literally in the court. The point of that was it went before a judge and arguments were made properly by academics. and Irving was slowly done up like a kipper, right? It doesn't work like that anymore. Now, because of Tinternet, Irving, if he was around today, would have a much larger audience. There would be less direct criticism and he wouldn't have to answer questions directly. And that's the new world order in which people like Kanye are operating.

46:28And what some agencies like the British government are starting to obviously think now is, we cannot mediate this, so let's just ban it.

46:35Camilla: Good point well made, Tim. Now I'm going to leave you in your headset to your telesales. This call was actually recorded for training purposes. And we'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

46:48Ahead of May's critical local elections, we're taking the daily tea on the road, visiting key battlegrounds across Britain and answering your questions with four special live events. Join me and Camilla, plus special guests, in London on April 27th, Cardiff on April 28th, Warwick on April 29th, and Worthing on April 30th. You can buy tickets now at telegraph.co.uk forward slash Daily Tea Live.

47:31Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Welcome back to Two Judgy Girls. It's Mary from the Bay. And it's Courtney from LA. Every week, we're talking about the only things that truly matter. Bravo, pop culture, reality TV, and of course, our very own chaotic lives. If there's a feud, a scandal, or a messy drama, we've got thoughts. Lots of them. We break down all the episodes like it's our job. Because honestly, it kind of is. From Beverly Hills to New York, Summer House to Southern Charm. If they filmed it, you better believe we're gonna talk about it. Expect hot takes, unfiltered opinions, and a lot of laughter.

48:13We're like your best friends who never stop talking about TV. So pour yourself something strong, maybe a teeny or a big cup of coffee, and join us every week for Two Judgy Girls. Because being judgy has never been this fun. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com