437. Question Time: Farage vs Corbyn: The UK's Next Prime Minister?

0:00Thanks for listening to the Restus Politics, sign up to the Restus Politics Plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestuspolitics .com. That's therestuspolitics .com. Coming up on the show today, this is probably the biggest opportunity we have to demonstrate that we can control immigration while doing it legally and humanely. I think that Labour's probably got another year to 18 months and they got to engage better on that with the public, Robert Generic, who's trying to sort of vie with for ours from the same space by doing sort of snappy Instagram posts.

0:37He said, do these politicians and these civil servants live near these asylum hotels? You Robert Generic, until quite recently, were the f***ing minister in charge of this? Fact, the numbers currently is a lot lower than when the conservatives are in power. The rest of politics is powered by fused energy and fused and are offering £20 credit and free trick plus membership if you switch to a fixed tariff before the end of August. They've listened carefully to their customers and the number one request was Gas Tariffs. So now at last you can switch both your gas and electricity to fuse. One supplier, one bill, one less quokmire to navigate.

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3:15Welcome to the rest of the politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Anastakambal, and Rory, you said in the main episode, you were going to be nice about it Cooper. Well, we've had a lot, a lot of questions about all that's going on in the immigration front. Let me just give you a few. Haley Bright, not everyone protesting immigration can be lumped into the far right category. Many of us are simply concerned about our children and community and the rising levels of crime, squeeze public sector, do you understand the legitimacy of these worries? Sean Trainer, with the one -in -one out treaty being applied without having received parliamentary approval, are you worried that parliament's role in our democracy is being undermined?

3:55Marriam Benney, Wystar was so reluctant to call out and fact check Farage. I might have a go at that one in a minute, but where do you want to start? Let's start with the deal itself. I think begin by a massive praise for Ivette Cooper pushing ahead with this. This was something that was trailed in their policy before the election. And it gets to the number of the issue, which is, as we've often said in the podcast, France is a safe country. There is no humanitarian reason why you would need to leave France and move to the United Kingdom. And doing it with people's smugglers in very, very unstable, dangerous craft, often threatens people's lives.

4:35And also, of course, is being used by the far right to stoke massive anxiety and is contributing to the possibility that we could end up with Nigel Farage as a very, very major force in government. So you've got to deal with it. And the correct way to deal with it is to deal with France, which says everybody who learns and Britain on a boat will be returned to France. That's the positive bit. Praise to be back. But the negative bit, I'm afraid. I'm going to have a bit of a go. at your friend, President Macron here. Because France somehow is missing the whole point of the thing. They're saying that they'll take people back up to a certain number.

5:15Now that's exactly misses the whole point. The whole point is deterrence. If every single person who arrived on a boat was automatically returned to France, the numbers would cease. There'd be no point you getting on a boat anymore. That's what happened with the EU Turkey deal. Furthermore, it's ridiculous for France to say every time you return someone to us, you take someone for us because again, if the policy works, nobody would be coming to the UK, then they wouldn't be taking anyone from France and then France wouldn't have any incentive to collaborate. The real structure, which is what, if at Cooper and I think the British government once had to push for, says everybody returns back to France, but Britain will undertake to take a set number of asylum seekers from France every year regardless of how many people arrive.

6:00And final thing, if Macron can develop the courage and the detail to get this right, and I think Germany should get behind it, European Union should get behind it, we have a model for what could happen in the Mediterranean for dealing with immigration and the Mediterranean because we would have proved that there is a legal, court approved perfectly reasonable method of dealing with this kind of illegal migration and it could then be extended to safe, third country return from people arriving on the European borders. Interesting. The reason you were, I gave you the open door to mock me over my calls to some of the secure crats about Palestine action was because actually we We said last week we were going to talk about immigration, so I was talking to people in the home office in elsewhere.

6:50And it's really interesting that you say that because I think one of the things they feel at the moment is that largely because of our media and because of populists like Farage and our Robert Generic who's trying to sort of vie with Farage for the same space. So the government feels they're not getting remotely a fair deal on this debate at all. Just to give you one example, the moment virtually every day you pick up the right wing newspapers and they're covering this relates to Haley's question. Not everyone protesting immigration can be lumped into the far right category. These are people often presenting themselves as concerned mothers outside hotels that are currently housing asylum seekers.

7:30Now fact, the numbers currently being held in asylum hotels is a lot lower than when the conserved as a rimp hour. Is that a fact that the government has been able to land with the public? It would seem not much much harder when you do have the the the media that we've got and the populist politics that we've got. This relates to Marion's question, why is Starma so reluctant to call out and fact check for ours? Very good example this week. For ours posted a video purporting to be of men with brown skin arriving on a beach shouting aloe at bar and for our saying these are sort of people that starmas sort of letting into our country.

8:15Turned out it wasn't our country at all, it wasn't 2025, it was years ago. And then generic, I'd be fascinated, Rory, what you think about generic's positioning because of course what Haley's question relates to The generic had him, uh, did a social media post and he's become a like list trust. He thinks he can become lead with the Conservative Party by doing sort of snappy Instagram posts. And he turned his Instagram posts, presumably at the mail on Sundays request into an article headline, I care more for my daughter's safety than the rights of foreign criminals. That's why I support every peaceful protester outside in a silent hotel.

8:51If you want to study populism at its most venal, there you have it. I care for my daughter's safety more than the rights of foreign criminals. Find me a parent who doesn't. But what he's saying is, and in his video, he said, do these politicians and these civil servants, do they live near these asylum hotels? No, they don't. Well, I assume that includes you. Because you Robert Generick, until quite recently, were the fucking minister in charge of this and the policy pursued by Vett Cooper as your former colleague Rory Stewart seems to have acknowledged is at least beginning to work better than the expensive gimmicks and the bullshit you came out with.

9:36But I do think there's a very interesting question about all these leaders. If at Cooper Macron in the sense that they had an incredible opportunity here with this big summit between Macron and Stama to come out with a really big bold courageous statement, which is every single person now arriving on British shores will be sent back to France. It would have been a fantastic headline in achievement. I'm very confident it would have stopped the the issue overnight. So why didn't they do it? Why did they both miss the opportunity by going for a sort of technocratic fix and this is where I think the floor is that they're not doing spectacular courageous stuff when all the world media is looking at them which allows them to appear decisive.

10:23They get into these sort of slightly overly detailed half -hearted things which in the end run the risk of being the worst in all worlds because as somehow the French government doesn't get it the point of this needs to be to stop this and the way you stop it is every single person who comes here for its return. This is what we said at the time when this deal was done, is that it's a step. I think nobody should project this as the sort of, you know, the thing that's going to end. But the population didn't do it as a step. No, but wait a minute. The point is going to be, we said at the time that we wondered whether the European Union, the Commission and all the member states would buy this because there was a worry amongst some of the European Union member states that this would be basically France able to lob its problems further south to some of the countries that are already dealing with this.

11:10So I think having got the principle accepted, I hope that what then happens that this is taken to the next stage. So I agree that it's not the, I think one of the points that Evacupy does quite well. She doesn't, and this is in direct contrast to when January was in charge. She does not say we're doing this and this is going to sort it. She says this is really quite difficult, really quite complicated. It involves a lot of international cooperation and that is what we're building. And I asked them at one point last week, I'll send it to you, you can have a look at it. I asked them to send me a kind of catalog of all the different things that they've been trying, that they've been doing, the different initiatives, the different meetings, etc.

11:49Nobody can say she's not putting the work in. And I think that is part of the battle because where you're right, and listen, I really worry about this issue because I think that Farage, he's becoming ever more reckless, I think, in his exploitation. Because I think he will be feeling slightly under pressure from January. Can I be fast as you know what you think of, generally, it's kind of transition from this sort of Cameroon figure to this sort of, you know, list, trust on steroids, Instagram guy wandering around, making ever more kind of extreme statements, because he knows that's what plays into this kind of right when conservative party vote that he wants to have when Kenny Bay not falls off her purge.

12:29But I think that Labour's probably got another year to 18 months to carry on with this style, to do the sort of detailed stuff, and at the end of it to be able to say, look, it's not perfect, but with this is the progress that we've made. Bearing in mind that there are opponents, including the press, and it is amazing if you think about it, Roy, if you read the Sun, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Express, the Times, etc. You would think that there had been no asylum hotels until Keir Starmer became prime minister. But in fact, Labour have got fewer people in fewer hotels than was the case when they were elected.

13:07Now that's a communications issue and a particular issue and they got to engage better on that with the public and better at challenging reform and at challenging generic who's clearly decided this is his issue. This is the big challenge for everybody who cares about the progressive centre because Because here's an opportunity, this is probably the biggest opportunity we have to demonstrate that we can control immigration while doing it legally and humanely. This is the opportunity, if we can get this right with France, which is to say everybody arriving in Britain from France will be returned to France.

13:48And by doing so, who's going to pay 15 ,000 euro to a people smuggler if every single person who arrives gets him back? In fact, what they found with Turkey when Greece did this is you only have to return the first hundred people and the thing stops almost immediately. If we can get this right, we can prove that we can do it while respecting the European Court on Human Rights, the European Court of Justice, the refugee convention, the convention on child rights, the convention against torture, all these things. The next stage to that would then be Europe making a deal with, for example, Kenya or Senegal or another EU Turkey deal to do the same thing in the Mediterranean.

14:29Because what they will have established is exactly what the far right keep claiming from Farage to Trump to the AFD, which is we've got to ignore all international law. We've got to rip up the European Convention Human Rights because the only way to deal with this is to break the law, break all international conventions and take the world back to where it was before the end of the Second World War. So Britain and France got this get this right and then Europe's got to get this right because it's in Europe's existential interest actually to make sure for us doesn't end up leading the United Kingdom and that the AFD doesn't end up leading in Germany It's on 25 % even though the German economy Isn't in the trouble it might be in until three years time.

15:11So yeah, I think the stakes couldn't be higher but because of that we need to hear the courage and final point to you I still don't quite get why Stammer is not calling out for Arshmore. There should be huge possibilities in saying, no, you're lying about your crime statistics. I mean, you see people at oddly, people at Fraser Nelson, the ex -editor of the spectator, very much on the right, seems to be more consistent in making the arguments for multi -ethnic Brinton making the arguments around crime, than some of the Labour leadership. Given it's a progressive government, why are they not finding this huge opportunity to stand up for the values that most Labour voters deeply care about?

15:59Well, as you were saying, I said ages ago, even before they got elected, the Labour should have a team of people, including MPs, who basically get on with their day jobs, their MPs, they're doing their constituencies, they're fair, etc. But give them the job of taking down forage and taking down reform. And you see bits of it. There's a guy might tap in Dover, I think, that's quite good stuff on social media. But you know, with all due respect to him, I, how many of our listeners would have seen that, been aware of it, don't know. Here's someone that made that big speech, really going for reform.

16:37But that was a one off. I didn't see the sort of campaigning coming through on the back of it that said, right, We say you're going to be a, you're a big threat to the country. This is how we deal with the threat to the country. We take them down. And I think, I still think they're in that mode of not quite deciding whether if they go after him very, very hard is somehow pleasant to his hands. But I think if you, you cannot allow somebody like Farage to get away with constant misinformation, with constant polarization, with constantly getting this line that all of these people are decent people.

17:14Some of them are decent people. Some of them are decent people with a genuine concern that you have to address. You've made that by, they have to sort the issue. But where it is being whipped up by the Tommy Robinson's and their ilk. And you've got to call it out. And then the other things to bear in mind, we're going to talk about Corbin in a minute. Jeremy Corbyn has always been a leader who doesn't really like having people to the left of him, okay? And that's why he's going to be quite comfortable in this position that he finds himself in now. Nigel Farage wants people to the right of him.

17:45He wants the Tommy Robinson, Stephen and the Axley Lennons. He wants to be able to say, they're not us. I think Labour should be saying, I'm sorry, you actually, you're part of the same tribe on this. and call out a bit more. And repeat my point, which I'll repeat probably in vain until the day I die, the other way that for ours has got to be hit hard. The one thing you've done with your life in your career, you gave us Brexit and look where it's got us. So are we really going to give you over the whole country? Well, and I think that I think everything you say, I mean, Labour and Peace I talk to and a bit more in the centre left of the party, it would be complete music to there is.

18:27They're horrified because what they see is that everything from the Statement Sun, immigration to the Palestine action stuff, all feels to them as though labor is chasing for our votes rather than standing up for the values that most labor MPs profoundly believe in. and one of them obviously would be consistently talking in defense of minorities. And that's also I think why they were quite worried why some of the positions the government took on on trans issues too, because as one of them was saying to me last night, there is a very, very strong belief, right? They were wrongly in the Labour Party that if you start attacking one group of minorities, it doesn't stop.

19:10You should stand up for minority rights full stop. Here's a question for you from Tom Yardley, Trip Plus member from London. In the Samaria where Labour became as unpopular as the Tories were prior to the last election, it's coming down to Corbin versus Farage. Who would you vote for? There we are, I ask the guy, and we're putting you on the spot here. No, Rory, Tom Yardley did not pose that question to me. He posted to both of us, so Rory, who would you? No, I would, look, I have, I've, despite being expelled by him, I did at one point vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be private -listed. I voted Labour.

19:48Not a complicated question for you, no. But, you know, I don't think that is going to happen. I don't think that is going to be the choice. But I do think this is what's so interesting about what's going on is that we are on the cusp, certainly, and maybe we're already in it of becoming a kind of European -style multi -party democracy in a first pass of the post system. So it's not impossible that somebody could end up becoming prime minister. And including with the majority in some scenarios by getting a quarter of a very low turnout. So I've answered the question very directly, Mr. Stewart, who would you go for?

20:32Corwin or Farage? It's a pretty horrible choice, isn't it? But probably narrowly I'd go with Corbin and not just because there's beautiful ears. Now, as I said, on this, just just just just remind us from him because this European story is very interesting, isn't it? As you've reminded us on France, but I'm not sure everybody's fully taken us on board, basically the French equivalent of conservatives and labour kind of almost disappeared and were replaced by a centre, a far right and a far left. And that's happened in other European countries too, get just just quick reminder on that because I did do think it's relevant to your point about European policies.

21:09Well take Germany the biggest country in the European Union so they have currently got another grand coalition so the two main parties have now come together to form a government right but nobody should read from that that's basically the public saying you know we really support the two parties this has happened because they're the only two that could come together and former majority. We've talked all about Holland where the Vilders is a very, very, very, very powerful force and he's the kind of, you know, the Farage and the Netherlands, even in the kind of Scandinavian democracies we've seen, we've seen coalitions forming between parties that you wouldn't necessarily expect to work together.

21:49So I think that that is a sort of European trend. The other things I read this week was actually about the numbers of parties, you know, when you put them into the different families, the numbers of parties on the far right is still growing. I mean, it'd be very, very interesting to see what goes on with Corbin because, of course, I think that Labour's response on this has to be very careful and quite clever because I think part of them think, well, you know, and their initial line was, well, the guy has been rejected twice. Well, okay. But he got almost 40 % of the vote and Labour and Tory between them in the polls right now, are around about that if not slightly below it.

22:34The other thing I think Labour should be careful of is to understand that Corbyn is going to become in terms of when he gets this party up and running, if he does get up and running. You can have Farage to the right, Corbyn to the left, Corbyn in previous elections, the media has been trying to kill him because he might have become Prime Minister. Okay. This time, the media will be using him, like they're using Farage now, to try to undermine the Labour government. That's a very different dynamic. Couple of quick things. I mean, first see, there's an interesting parallel, as you've just put it out with Germany and this, not not the Vargan Connect party on the far left, but Delinka, which has just brought in a charismatic young leader, maybe there, equivalent to Zara And as now up, I think well up above 10 % in the polls.

23:24The second thing, what's a very strange party, this new Jeremy Corbyn party is? Jeremy Corbyn, of course, collects around him a very, very diverse group of people, including these people like Andrew Murray, who grew up, I think I'm right in saying, in sort of proto -communist, trotsky -ite bits of the Labour Party. And when they're interviewed by people like the New Statesman, and it's absolutely extraordinary. I mean, they talk in this incredibly complicated jargon about their party's procedures and their mechanisms. So one of them says, we have to aim to support extant popular institutions, organized labor, cooperatives, anti -war groups, and build new ones, build pairs unions, boycott campaigns to later foundations for an effective socialist electoral challenge, and then Murray replies, An umbrella alliance would fail to articulate a coherent oppositional politics, while a centralized party could struggle to incorporate independent forces.

24:26A party when the affiliation model might be one way of squaring the circle, but whereas Schneider envisions a largely extra parliamentary organisation, Murray hopes this has anyway. It goes on and on and on and on and on and this kind of way. An incredible parliamentary block that could use its national profile to mount a genuine systemic challenge. Its main goal should not be to create such forms with sociational life rather than using the party to reconstitute the working class. The party could create the space for the working class to reconstitute itself. Ah, well. When you come into Labour politics, when you summer on the fringes of your world, people talking in this highly theoretical, I mean, it's almost, he sounds like a sort of, My newspaper, The New World, one of my fellow columnists, Paul Mason, who flirted with Corbinism for a while.

25:19But he's become like a lot of people who dip their toes into this sort of politics. He's come out absolutely horrified and he's written a very good column this week, analyzing the education of people like Andrew Murray, James Schneider, who you mentioned, Shameless Millen, Corbin's right hand man. Shameless Millen went to Winchester, the Schneider went to Winchester and according to Paul Mason, the school that Andrew Murray went to, the current annual fees are £45 ,000. So, and this is, if you go back to the 30s, Paul's very interesting, this is where you go back to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which is kind of back in the 30s where these guys would probably be.

25:58It was full of public school -educated kind of, you know, intellectuals who were telling the working class what was good for them. And of course, these people wouldn't really understand the lives of the working class much at all. And then the other thing you've got to say about Jeremy Corbyn when he was leading the Labour Party, he was kind of doing his own thing, but he was a lot more constrained than he will be with this. And my point about not wanting anything to the left of him means that this thing is going to be wide open to all sorts of kind of people that ultimately, I mean, God, he got in in enough trouble we're getting selfies with dodgy people, but this time it's gonna be, but we'll have to see.

26:39I think the other thing that most listeners in Britain will be aware of, but maybe international listeners will be aware of is a large core of his MPs seem to come from this independent group, which were predominantly Muslim candidates who ran against labor candidates and often Muslim -dominated constituencies. This is an alliance which will have highly progressive people who are very much in favour of transgender issues, you know, might get clived, Lewis sympathetic towards them, Labour MP, or but on the other hand it's going to have Muslims who's maybe much more conservative in their social values.

27:17I got sent this from somebody I don't know who emailed me on my website and is a voice note from a young man called Jacob Stokes and I've checked out with him. He's happy for us to use this. I'll be really interested in your reaction. I've edited it down a little bit, but he's a young guy early 20s from the north of England, currently studying in the south of England, but just have a listen to this, because I think this speaks to what we've been talking about in this episode so far about immigration, about forage, and how it exploits it, and also about Corbin and Labour. I think I record this because I'm dissolutioned, disenchanted and probably distraught by the way that the UK seems to want to do politics.