Migrant returned to France after government wins court challenge

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show. It's the end of an era at British Vogue as long-standing editor Anna Wintour steps down. But does the new appointee have what it takes to turn the fortunes of the fashion title around? It's a really, really good time for her to reclaim Vogue's position as the sort of arbiter of what's going on in the world in terms of style and fashion and lifestyle and women's lives and celebrity and money and all the rest of it.

0:42It's a great time. The question is, can she do it? I really, really hope she will. Vogue needs to be better. Vogue is important and it's lost its way in recent years. Someone needs to get it back. But first, an Eritrean man has left the UK under the government's one-in-one-out deal with France after a last-minute court bid to delay the departure failed. The Home Office tightened rules around human trafficking claims to win Thursday's case. The first-time ministers won a legal challenge that led to the immediate removal under the scheme. It comes as hundreds more migrants have risked their lives trying to reach the UK.

1:21The one-in-one-out deal is intended to deter people from turning to smugglers to cross the channel because of the risk they could be sent back. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has told Sir Keir Starmer that illegal immigration is destroying Britain from within and advised him to consider using the military to stop small boat crossings. The US president told the prime minister that he must use any means necessary to stop illegal migration. Here's Business Secretary Peter Kyle speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning about the government's new migration scheme with France. What you can see is a Home Secretary in Shibana Mahmood who is straining at the bit to make sure that this pilot that we are currently testing with France is delivering to the maximum.

2:08We are making sure that we are getting as many people who don't have the right to be here returned as swiftly as possible. There's a lot of cases going through the courts at the moment. As you can see that we are successfully able to begin the deportations and the returns to France. This was always a pilot. We are testing different areas of the law. We're testing the new arrangement with France, a new agreement that was negotiated successfully by this government between the two nations. And we need to make sure that we can now start ramping it up. Our target is to make sure that everybody who comes to our shore and doesn't have the right to stay is removed from the country.

2:43Joining us now is The Standards news editor, Michael Howey. So the government's one-in-one-out deal has come into force. Can you remind us what's happened so far? The Prime Minister, Secure Stamler, and French President Emmanuel Macron signed the one-in-one-out deal basically last month. It came into force at the start of the week. So the deal itself essentially involves the UK sending back a number of asylum seekers, illegal migrants who are seeking asylum in the UK in return for an equivalent number of migrants who are in France seeking to get to the UK, who are deemed to have valid claims to reside in the UK.

3:25What's happened this week is that the deal was expected to get underway at the start of the week with a small number of migrants being deported from the UK on commercial flights to France. However, that didn't go according to plan. In the first couple of days, there were a couple of legal challenges at the last minute against the move to deport a couple of individuals, which meant that the first few flights, I think on Monday and Tuesday, essentially left without any deportees on board. The government have managed to get the deal off the ground, if you like, yesterday. morning with the first deportation taking place and a second one has happened with an Eritrean man being deported on an Air France flight from Heathrow to Paris at quarter past six this morning.

4:20And how does the legal challenge aspect work? We've already seen a clamour to get legal challenges in on behalf of a number of illegal migrants who are being lined up for deportation back to France. We've seen one particular case involving Eritrean man who was deported this morning, raising the issue of how the Britain applies the Modern Slavery Act, a piece of legislation which has come into force in the UK. So the issue there was that the asylum seeker, I believe, claimed that they were a victim of modern slavery, human trafficking, and there was an initial ruling by the High Court that meant that the deportation shouldn't take place and that there should be some time allowed for that person's legal team to put forward their argument.

5:09The Home Secretary challenged that and crucially won an appeal on Thursday, which essentially means that these cases can now proceed as planned in terms of the deportation. What happens now is that the person, the migrant being deported, can continue their claim again on the grounds of human trafficking while they're in France. So it's not necessary for the deportation process to be held up, even if someone is claiming that they are the victim of modern slavery. Donald Trump was here on his state visit yesterday when the question of illegal migration came up. What did he have to say? Donald Trump was forthcoming in his views on that and he suggested that the Prime Minister should resort to using the military if necessary to stop small boats coming to the UK and bringing thousands of migrants with them.

6:04I quote here that he said, you have people coming in and I told the Prime Minister I would stop it and it doesn't matter if you call out the military. It doesn't matter what means you use. So that's a bit of a stir. There's been some reaction from the government this morning. Peter Kyle, the trade secretary, was asked about it and made it quite clear that the military is not an option in the sense that Donald Trump was suggesting. Although it's worth pointing out that the Royal Navy does work with the border force to try to combat the problem of people smuggling gangs. So this is just a pilot scheme for one year.

6:41Do you think it's going to work? Will it actually deter migrants from coming here? Well, that is, of course, the big question. We've seen similar schemes in the past, most notably the Rwanda scheme that the Uyghis Tory government tried to bring in, hit the buffers. The government will be pleased that they've managed to get this scheme, as I say, off the ground. It remains to be seen whether it will have the deterrence effect that the Prime Minister hopes. And in fact, just this morning as the second deportation was taking place under the one-in-one-out scheme, we had some really quite powerful images coming through of hundreds of migrants trying to board a dinghy close to Calais in France, making their way to the UK.

7:24There was even the scenes of a small child, a toddler being placed, being waded through the water and placed on a dinghy. So it's going to take probably quite a lot to put off a number of often desperate migrants, many of whom are fleeing war and persecution in various forms. Others just simply seeking to come to the UK for a much better life than the one that they would be leaving. So the government will be hoping it will have that effect. whether a handful of people being deported to France every week, as it seems to be the case, we might be looking at, has much of an impact, remains to be seen.

7:59And finally, do you have anything else to add? One of the big reasons why this is such an important issue is that the government really needs to tackle the backlog in asylum seeker claims. We're talking about huge numbers. So as of last June 2024, there were around 224 ,000 cases outstanding. So that means that there's 224 ,000 migrants seeking the right to remain. And most of those were actually cases where they had been refused permission and were appealing or awaiting further action. So the reason why this has become such a big issue, and one of the reasons is because these people have to be accommodated somewhere.

8:40And it's a huge burden on the taxpayers, a huge burden on councils. And one of the routes, or it's one of the methods in which so many illegal migrants have been accommodated is, of course, by using hotels. And that's become a huge flashpoint in communities across the UK, particularly over the summer. We've seen protests on a near daily basis in recent weeks in Epping and also within London, Canary Wharf, for example. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, can Vogue magazine regain its unique role as gatekeeper to the world of fashion with a new editor at the helm? We'll see you back here in just a moment.

9:26Welcome back. This London Fashion Week, it's all change, as after 37 years leading US Vogue, the most powerful of all the global editions of Vogue, Dame Anna Wintour has stepped down to make way for an intriguing new face in fashion's front row. Here's Anna Wintour speaking on the New Yorker's Radio Hour about what she really thought of the character Miranda Priestly, who was based on the formidable Vogue boss in the infamous film The Devil Wears Prada. I went to the premiere wearing Prada, completely having no idea what the film was going to be about. And I think that the fashion industry were very, very sweetly concerned for me about the film that it was going to paint me in some kind of difficult light.

10:16But cartoonish. Yes. Caricature. But first of all, it was Meryl Streep, which is fantastic. And then I went to see the film and I found it highly enjoyable and very funny. In the end, I thought it was a fair shot. Now, 39-year-old Chloe Marle will take over the editorial reins. But has she got what it takes? Joining us now is journalist John Arledge, who has covered Condé Nast for the past 20 years. John, do we know what Winter has said about stepping down and how she feels about it all? She hasn't said a great deal about why she's leaving, but you could think after almost four decades, there might be time for a change with some younger talent.

10:57And interestingly, Chloe Marle, who is 39, She's only been alive two years longer than Anna has been edited. So, I mean, maybe it is time for a change. Anna said this and Chloe Mal will bring some new blood, some new ideas to a title that really, really needs it. Vogue has really struggled in recent years for various reasons. I'm sure we can talk about that. Her real job as a success is to try and recast Vogue as a magazine and make it relevant again, because it isn't really relevant anymore. or other new digital platforms. Social media have become much more part of the cultural discussion and about the fashion discussion and discussion about women's lives and what it means to be wealthy, what celebrity means, how you should dress.

11:37So Vogue really needs to get its relevance back, and that's going to be a tough challenge for Chloe. Tell me more about her successor, Chloe Mal. Chloe Mal has absolutely impeccable credentials to take over the reins at US Vogue. Her mother, the actor Candice Bergen, played Carrie Bradshaw's Vogue editor in Sex and the City. And Chloe also featured in Vanity Fair's Bright Young Things column in 2010. She joined the magazine in 2011. She became a contributing editor of Vogue.com, the magazine's website, and co-hosted the magazine's podcast. And so she's had this amazing rise through the ranks. I mean, the question, I guess, is, is she sort of too much part of the old Vogue?

12:15Would it have been better to bring in someone from outside that often really works? They desperately need a fresh start. But, you know, as it stands, I think she does have certainly an experience there. And also she's more of a words person than an images person. And this could be quite useful because I think one of the things that Vogue really has to try to do is do a little bit more journalism. It's become very, very commercial, very, very soft on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years. If you go to commercial and essentially you're a shopping catalogue for fashion, nobody's going to subscribe or pay for a shopping catalogue.

12:45That's ridiculous. need to actually offer something more, some grit in the oyster, something challenging, something new. You need to lead the conversation. And that requires a little bit of journalism. You just can't do that by doing what the advertisers want you to do, because the advertisers are powerful, of course, but if they become too powerful, they kill the magazine. Vogue used to be seen as the Bible of fashion, but not anymore. What challenges faced the publication? Like every traditional publisher, Vogue has been massively disrupted by the digital revolution. They were the gatekeeper to fashion.

13:15Vogue was where you needed to go. It was the Bible. Now, of course, brands and designers and readers, anyone who's interested in fashion, can find all sorts of great fashion coverage, often for free, online. You can go to Instagram. You can go to the live streams of the Catwalk show. You can go to the celebrities or the designers' own social media feeds to find out what they're thinking. You can go to new publications like Park or The Business of Fashion. There's all sorts of places you can go now to find out what's going on in fashion, what's going on in lifestyle, changing nature of celebrity, the changing nature of women's lives, the changing nature of extreme wealth in America.

13:50So the idea that Vogue alone was the voice channel for this has gone. The real challenge is to find a new way to become relevant. And that's Chloe Miles' biggest challenge. It's going to be really tough. It's going to be really tough. But Vogue is still Vogue. Nobody really cares about any other fashion magazine. They only really care about Vogue. So she's got some strong brand equity to build on there. But she doesn't have much time. She really needs to make a mark quickly. And she needs to get people talking about Vogue again. And in one of the interviews I did for today's piece in The Standard, I asked Lauren Sherman, who's probably the sharpest fashion critic out there, she works for Puck, what would be the one thing that Chloe Malker do to really get people talking about Vogue again and make it relevant.

14:28And without hesitation, Lauren said, put Melania Trump on the cover. Now, that would be very bold, because Anna Wint is the card-carrying Democrat. But it would be a really interesting thing to do, to try and shake things up. And as you saw from Melania Trump's wardrobe on the state visit with her husband, the president to the UK this week, there is a lot to talk about the way she dresses and the way she projects herself. And that would be an amazing thing. Will Chloe do it? I don't know. I really wish she would, because I would buy that issue. I would start reading Vogue again. And what do you think readers want from this new era of Vogue?

14:58Something they can't find elsewhere. That's all readers want. That's why they go to places. If it's the same old, and this has been Vogue's problem in recent years, it's not interesting. It's not distinctive. They want to know things that they didn't know before they went to Vogue, either online or in the print issue. And that means exclusives. It means breaking stories. It also means great imagery and all the other things that come with Vogue and great stylists. And Edward Ennenshal in the UK, when he was editing here, was terrific at that. But it can't only be that. You need the secret sources, the most fantastic fashion, the greatest fashion pages.

15:30But you also need great interviews. You need to make waves. And actually, British Vogue showed the way recently here. They did an interview with Michelle Hussain after she left the BBC Today programme. And she made some comments about bombastic presenters, which was written up in the papers as an attack on her former fellow colleagues, Amol Rajan and Emma Barnett. But that's what people want. They want something fresh. They want something new. And crucially, they want something they can't easily find elsewhere. And finally, can you remind us of Anna Wintour's legacy? Anna Wintour is without question one of the absolute greats of journalism.

16:05There are very few people who bestride the magazine world and fashion. In fact, there's nobody before her and there will be nobody after her. She is unique and she should be celebrated as that because she's had such an incredible impact. The way also brands behave, I mean, they still ask her about who should be the next chief designer. Her word counts. She's like a powerhouse. One of the absolute bulletproof editorial brains in magazines, in journalism. And the kind of sadness, if there is a sadness, is that she is the last editor. There won't be anyone like that because the magazines aren't as powerful these days as they once were.

16:43So that's a bit of a shame. But I mean, she made the weather in fashion and lifestyle. It's an absolutely brilliant, unsurpassed and will always be unsurpassed achievement.

16:58And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here on Monday at 5pm. We'll see you then.

17:20Thank you.