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Try it now at stemregen.co and use code POD15 for 15% off your first order. That's STEMREGEN code POD15. Good morning and welcome to Morning Boreas. Come up to three minutes past six. I'm Mike Graham and we are here. It is Tuesday the 1st of July, ladies and gentlemen. We are well into the summer now. It's rather warm. It's very lovely. It's Wimbledon week, of course. It just started up. Great day for the Brits.
today, some of which I saw on my television. Peter Plexey's here with us to look through some of the big stories in the papers this morning. And I'm afraid, once again, it doesn't look like very good reading for the Prime Minister. And the only person who's rivaling him for numpty of the month so far on the 1st of...
of the month is Tim Davey, the head of the BBC, who's coming under all sorts of pressure to either sort out the BBC that he runs or fall on his sword and finally resign. But also, the big story this morning and the big political debate, I suppose...
will be the welfare bill, because on the front page of pretty much every newspaper, there is a problem for Sir Keir Starmer. As he comes up to one year in office, as he comes up to celebrate or commemorate, at the very least, one year of his government, people are beginning to...
ask questions, just exactly how bad is this guy going to be? Labour rebels accuse Starmer of breaking welfare promises, it says on the front page of the Times. Daily Mail, rebel MPs are set to humiliate the Prime Minister today. His welfare U-turn has fallen flat.
And of course, on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, Starmer's benefit deal with Rebels unravels. So it's all a bit chaotic for poor old Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, on the BBC front, after the debacle of Glastonbury, BBC Boston Festival from Rappers hate child, it turned out...
So not only did Tim Davey know what was going out on the BBC when those terrible, awful, ghastly chants were being made. Death, death to the IDF. He was actually there at Glastonbury at the time. Yeah, not only was he there, he actually received a phone call from...
the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, who said, what on earth are you doing? I'm just watching this. Why aren't you pulling the plug? And he's going, sorry, I can't hear you for all the noise. Just another gin and tonic, please. Thank you very much indeed. So that's Tim.
debut for you uh meanwhile what else is going on oh yeah nhs will prioritize uk doctors and nurses that's nice uh apparently under the current plan at the nhs more than two-thirds of the doctors that we hire are actually from foreign parts incredible and one special for Peter Blexley.
Just nicked. Did somebody say just nicked? Front page of the sun, a brilliant headline. Immigration cops began a crackdown on illegal delivery riders yesterday after the sun blew the lid on a nationwide racket. And there's pictures of police swooping on these delivery.
just eat and uber eats people with their bikes just outside one of the migrant hotels which they're being put up in very nice too 0344 499 1000 apparently there's one other story that you really should know about apparently cheese really does cause nightmares
So if you've woken up this morning wondering what on earth that was all about last night, it could have been the toasted cheese. 0344 499 1000. Text us at 8722. You can find us at Talk TV, of course. I'm Mike Graham. This is Morning Glory. Let's get it on. And a very good morning to Peter Blexley. How nice to see you looking very resplendent in such hot weather. You know, people are wandering around in shorts.
wearing, you know, what you might call summer tops, but not you and not me. Suited and booted professionally. Well, thank you, Gov. No standards matter. They do. A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month. Thank you very much indeed. Now, it's 2025, so whatever you do, don't do that.
in the workplace no even if it's in jest yes even if it's the gentlest you can only say it now can't you the tiniest punch or else that will end up in a tribunal probably it probably will and you could end up losing your job altogether but don't worry it'd be alright if you work for the BBC though
It's very difficult to lose your job there. It doesn't matter how bad things are. It doesn't matter how terrible management becomes or what people do. You can, you know, be soliciting people on your phone while you're reading the news. You can be sending pictures of your backside to people. while you're reading the news um you could be encouraging anti-semitic behavior down at a music festival where you've got 500 employees all having a great time nothing ever happens to you
Mike, you're a veteran broadcaster, OK? And I've been knocking around this media world for 25 years or so. So we both know that when it comes to live broadcasting, there is invariably a dump butt. or some other mechanism through which with a built-in time delay, the minute somebody starts spouting something, which is utterly unacceptable, you can pull the plug on it, you can cut to something else.
play an advert, go to a presenter, leave a test card. Especially if you've got 500 people in a position to help you out to do that. Of course. It's so basic and simple. And as a producer from another media outlet said to me, Peter, he said, I know all about the dump button. He said, my finger hovers over it whenever you're speaking. So, yeah, everybody in broadcast...
knows these facilities exist. Although I have been told, and I don't know how it works in television, but I have been told that in BBC Radio, they don't have a dump button. And certainly they've had instances where people have sworn and said things and they haven't been able to do anything about it. Because apparently the BBC is so grandiose that they feel like they don't need one. Well, I find that astonishing. Absolutely astonishing. And I'm not entirely convinced.
by that. I'm not either. But certainly with television, there was ample opportunity for somebody just to pull the plug on that. It appears that Tim Dovey intervened in some way because he apparently told them not to make it available on demand.
this particular, you know, what's his name, Bob Villan, who's now had his career pretty much sliced and diced by the American State Department and also his own management. So, you know, well done, mate. You may have made yourself famous for five minutes, but I'm afraid that'll...
be the end of your gravy train for a while but so he apparently knew enough about how offensive it was to say we mustn't make it available on demand but he didn't know enough about how offensive it was to actually just cut the whole broadcast which he could have done points emanating from that. Firstly, somebody revealed on social media yesterday
that apparently Bob Villan had established two limited companies. Yes, he has. Through which he was paid. I saw those at the weekend. In order to minimise his tax liability. Both of which seem to have about 115 or 120 grand in. Somebody said, how very left wing of him. Isn't it just socialist?
to love them all. Yeah, yeah. Also, the other thing that people haven't seen, and I saw this again on social media yesterday and I tweeted it out, before his... ghastly chanting that he did he also told a story about working for a record company and working for this fat horrible bald man who it turns out was a zionist as he calls him and he saw his name later on on a sheet of paper of people objecting
to kneecap playing at Glastonbury. So he turned his story about a former work experience that he had into another anti-Jewish rant. And next it raises, not my most powerful point that I shall raise this morning, but I've long... had concerns about Mr Davey a man of a particular age who wears a suit no tie of course because he's a progressive so he can't wear a tie you know what I mean that would be far too submissive of him but he wears suits and white
trainers yes a bit worrying that isn't it mate buy some shoes buy some shoes act your age yes But anyway, he might be looking for a new job before long. He might well be. It is ghastly. Whatever the excuses that are put forward by whosoever was in that position of responsibility at the weekend and did not...
Pull the plug. Exactly right. Because considering there were so many people there, you would think, you know, it would be one thing to say, look, it was an under-utilised group of people. It was a weekend. Sometimes, you know, the wrong people are on and the wrong people are charged. This is the big...
jewel in the crown of what the BBC do every single year. They spend an absolute fortune on it. They own it and they broadcast it around the world. And so they are in many ways complicit in broadcasting this ghastly, horrible, heinous message.
with this bloke, you know? Across their TV, their radio channels, the iPlayer, they splash it everywhere. Yeah. Now, here's something interesting, because Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, who's been a bit quiet up to now in the first year of this government, she actually said this... When you have one editorial failure, it's something that must be gripped. When you have several, it becomes a problem of leadership. Now, who do you think that made me think of?
Yes, of course. Not just Tim Davy, but Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of this great country, because he, as I'm afraid, is about to celebrate or commemorate at the very least, or commiserate, one year in power.
of pieces being written i'm writing a couple as well um hoping to have a couple of pieces published this week you know there is nothing going right for this man let's have a look at liz kendall because it turns out that despite rolling over and giving in to the rebels they've not said that
they're happy with it and they've not said that they're going to vote for the welfare bill later on today here's what Liz Kennell had to say our plans to ensure that people with severe lifelong health conditions will never be reassessed removing all the unnecessary and
unacceptable anxiety this brings and our plans to legislate for a right to try, guaranteeing that trying work in and of itself will never lead to a benefit reassessment, giving people the confidence to take the plunge and try work, something many organisations have called for for years. But there have also been real concerns about our initial proposals. We have listened carefully and we are making positive changes as a result.
We have listened carefully when making positive changes as a result, but I'm afraid that's not going to be good enough, and the rebel MPs are going to humiliate at the PM. By the way... Not wishing to pick on Liz Kendall in particular, but why has she come dressed as a dentist? I think her speech made matters worse. Yeah, I think so.
I think so. I think she irritated a lot of backbench MPs. Well, this is the problem, you see. When Keir Starmer suddenly... I mean, even... What's her face? I'll come back to that in a minute. When Diane Abbott, when she came out yesterday and said, is Keir Starmer seriously expecting... us to believe that the only reason that he thought the welfare bill was going well was because he was abroad.
Yeah. Right? And actually he didn't really understand what was going on because he was abroad. Yeah, so you don't have dispatch boxes when you're sitting on an aeroplane. No. For hours and hours and hours. Right. You don't have papers you can read through when you're at 36.
Nobody's telling you from Downey Street, by the way, there's a bit of rebellion growing, but you should have known because one of his chief whips quit, do you remember? Yeah. Right in the middle of it. Utterly ludicrous. Just symptomatic of the appalling lack of leadership that this country suffers from. Exactly right.
So it looks as though, at the moment, it's still on a knife edge, though. I mean, I'm not quite sure what the timing of this is. I presume it will be later on this afternoon or this evening, where the welfare bill, which, by the way, according to the Financial Times, for those of you who are worried about what it's going to do, it's still going to push...
150,000 people into poverty, despite the fact that they've diluted it, they won't be actually stopping the revolt because dozens and dozens of rebels are holding out. The budget black hole will still be around about 4 billion. because they can't actually slice and dice it anymore. So...
All of this sort of activity that's happened over the weekend has led to nothing. And the problem for people like Starmer is when you've got an organisation that's so bad and doesn't work, when you go, right, now we're going to fix it. Actually, you can't fix it. I had the entertaining pleasure of being on a train the other day with a deliciously indiscreet Labour MP who got elected at the last election. So fairly new to Parliament and all of that.
And, of course, we were talking about this potential rebellion and all that, and this MP said, yep, they couldn't vote for the bill as it stood and what have you, but he was hoping that an agreement would be reached by today. And he told me how he was really wrestling with his conscience because to vote against the party line is not something he was elected or wanted to do. But he felt he was going to have to.
In part, I see where he's coming from because despite these new amendments that Starmer's put forward, one of them means that if you get injured and disabled next year... heaven forbid, you will be paid less than somebody who got injured and disabled last year. So how can somebody's disability...
of last year be more valuable than someone's disability of next year. I can help you with this. It's called two-tier disability benefit. There you go. He's now introduced it because now we've got two-tier everything else and Stan was obviously worried we didn't have two-tier disability benefits so now he's introduced it.
Lord Herma will not be inviting you round for dinner at the weekend for using that two-tier expression. What a shame. You know how upset he gets about that, especially when you talk about two-tier judiciary, two-tier justice, two-tier policing. Do you remember when...
When Keir Starmer was asked it and he said, nonsense, he's really angry about it. There's no such thing as two-tier anything unless it's a two-tier Keir. So I couldn't possibly encourage anybody to use the expression two-tier, but two-tier is really quite two-tier kind of entertaining.
It really is. And I mean, the trouble is he walks right into it every single chance he gets. And Dan Hodges, right? I can't stop talking about Dan Hodges because Dan Hodges started the year of Keir Starmer's reign on July the 4th, 2024.
believing in him and thinking that you know this will be a change from what we've seen the Tories and the constant you know psychodramas the change of leadership you know people trying to stab each other in the back his headline today I think says it all it's the most cack-handed incompetent welfare bill in living memory. And he's one of their supporters.
Yeah, exactly. And he was turned some weeks ago, wasn't he? He was. Even now, he cannot look himself in the mirror. No, no. He comes on with me, and he's more right-wing than I am now, on this government, because they are so completely and utterly hopeless.
basically virtually every penny of of liz kendall's five billion pounds saving has vanished so how will the black hole be filled uh this is on that speech she was saying was dreadful yesterday miss kendall was asked how these collective u-turns would be funded and she refused to answer MPs will be told at the next fiscal event. Well, doesn't that feed into another story that we might discuss this morning? Indeed. About the tax-free limit on ISIS. Well, what a stupid idea this is. Isn't it?
Absolutely ludicrous. This woman, Rachel Reeves, was described to me, and I'm going to use this a lot, I think, the other day, that this government now is like the final stages of the crystal maze, you know, and you know you're about to be kicked out, so you're just literally panicking.
and grabbing anything you can to go, oh, this will do it, stop that, give this, you know. And that's what she's doing. You know, ISIS are a great way for people to save money. You know, I wasn't until relatively recently wealthy enough to do it. But, you know, I knew plenty of people.
People did. And lots of people put money in ISIS for their kids and all the rest of it. £20,000 is the limit. She's talking about bringing it down to five. Anybody fortunate enough to have some spare cash that they want to save would act very responsible. in getting an ISA and utilising that tax-free limit...
on those savings. What's a sensible, all-round thing to do? Isn't it something that, as a government, you would want to encourage anybody that could have savings to invest in? You would think so. Oh, absolutely. Why not encourage people? not to do what the government's doing, which is to borrow and borrow and borrow to the point where you actually literally drive yourself into debtor's prison. Instead, actually be responsible, make plans for your future.
Make it so that if something bad does happen to you, you lose your job or something immediately cuts short your money supply. You've got a little bit of stuff hanging around for a rainy day. Exactly. And a tax-free limit, £20,000 a year. And Rachel Reeves... is looking to cut that, apparently, to maybe 4,000 or 5,000. And what's that going to claw back? Exactly. What money is she going to get? It's not going to bring in billions upon billions upon billions, is it?
But again, you see, politics of envy. Somebody's got a few quid they can save. They haven't been able to, despite the so-called massive majority they've got, they haven't been able to push through their own policies with their own backbenches. So now they're coming after everybody else. Yeah. You know, because the welfare bill is 100 billion quid, right? Yeah. This will save them, what, one or two maybe? Yeah. Maybe.
And yesterday, there was some kind of think tank, I think it was called the Intergenerational Foundation, that put forward some kind of suggestion that the old age pension should now be means tested. So that those... Perhaps.
better off there is a cohort of people in this country who think that pensioners are all well off and they shouldn't be able to get tax-free benefits at all because you know the young people are suffering i mean i think that's absolutely quite frankly insulting to the people who built country well i qualify for my old age pension in december of this year i'll be 66 in december
You're lucky, though. Normally, you don't get it through about 68 now, do you? Yeah, well, I've qualified for it at 66, and I've paid in since I was 16 years old. Right. So there will be 50 years of national... insurance payments every year without fail. I think I'm entitled to an old age pension. Sure you are. Even if I continue to work if I'm fortunate enough that the phone keeps ringing. Yeah, absolutely. Of course you are.
I'm entitled for it. I've paid in. Why should they nick all that money and say you don't need it? Because you're well enough off because you've actually been a success in your life and you've actually managed to raise a family, buy a property, have a couple of nice holidays. You know, why should you be punished? Having done that, this is the trouble. They're raising a generation of people on welfare who don't work and punishing the people who did work in order to pay for it.
You've nailed it, Mike. You've nailed it. That absolutely is, isn't it? Surely. Because I and my wife have worked...
tirelessly, continually, throughout our adult lives. Well, you could say we weren't even adults at 16 when we started work. Since we were teenagers and we've worked and paid tax and national insurance and worked, dare I... say it blooming hard yeah um yeah oh no no no no no they've done well they've been sensible they've been frugal to an extent they've not wasted their money they've saved for a rainy day and helped their kids punish them
Take more money off them. Absolutely shocking. It's 21 minutes past six. We're running slightly late. Carly Nutsman says, is it possible the BBC producer responsible for not pulling the bomb villain streaming decided to let the idiot spew his vile vile in order to bang him to rights?
Nah, they're not that bright. Great show, Mike. I don't think they are. Although it has shown, as somebody pointed out yesterday, that this country has not yet completely sold up and given away the land to the maniacal left, because actually the backlash against this bozo... kneecap and all the rest of it has actually been pretty good. And I'm quite pleased to see it. I'm pleased to see the government doing it as well. The home of common sense. This is talk.
Brilliant front page this morning. Thomas, very good morning to you. This is the latest instalment in the saga of young men coming to this country and within hours getting jobs, driving around on electric bikes, terrorising the neighbourhood, delivering food. You posed as a... as an illegal migrant yourself to get the licence to do it. Tell us a bit about this great headline. Did somebody say, just nicked?
Yeah, morning, Mike. Well, it seems after a week of banging the drum about this, the Home Office now have taken some action and proven really how simple it would have been. to stop this happening in the first place. Yesterday there were rolling raids throughout the afternoon at a migrant hotel in Barbican in central London. It was one of the hotels we had originally highlighted in our investigation.
And it was where dozens of e-bikes with delivery bags from all three of these companies were brazenly on show outside. And if you remember, the people who own that hotel, the contractors. even built these delivery drivers working illegally, their own little enclosure. Yes. So this raid yesterday, around 10 people were arrested by immigration enforcement. Also some arrests on suspicion.
of migrants breaching their bail conditions for other offences they'd earlier allegedly committed. We watched on as some of those officials just basically went through migrants' phones to see what apps they were working. At one point, several phones were put into an evidence bag and taken away by the police. But, you know, this comes really after our probe and also after I made deliveries as an illegal migrant. One of your voice notes there.
uh really sort of shone the spotlight on the companies and it is these companies that have failed at every single level to do anything And if it gets to the point where someone like me can rent a Just Eat account while posing as a new arrival into the country and actually start delivering food to families when I could have been anyone. No one asked for my documents. No one asked me to take a picture of myself to verify.
No one asked me for my address. I mean, that's where we really have a problem. And you have to think, how long have people in this country been at risk because of this scam? Well, exactly right. And we've already played out that video of you going to somebody's house and actually asking them, how do you feel about the fact that I'm not who I'm supposed to be? And she said that she was quite sort of nervous about it. And I think most people's reaction now is that.
And a lot of people have sort of shrunk, I think, away from ordering this stuff now because they don't know who's bringing it to them. They don't know where it's been on the way. But I thought last week, did Angela Eagle, the Home Office Minister, not say she was meeting with the companies this week? Do we know whether that's actually happened?
Yes, Mike, that meeting happened yesterday. The company's sort of recommitted, as they do every time they are hauled in by their home office, recommitted to bolstering... all of their sort of verification techniques. We think now Deliveroo will up the rate at which it asks drivers to take a picture of themselves. Same with Just Eat. Uber Eats had a policy where I think every three orders you had to verify yourself.
that policy will remain in effect. So it seems there is some movement after all these companies were dragged over the coals, but really the responsibility lies. with them now to actually do something i have asked all the companies if they were going to send their own teams to some of these migrant hotels we identified i mean they're not exactly difficult to find from the uh raft of videos and pictures now online
and I didn't get a response from any of them as to whether their own investigators, their own staff, would be going in to confront it. They seem happy to leave it to the Home Office. who seem happy to leave it this long to do anything. Yeah, exactly right. And of those who were arrested yesterday by the immigration police, what happens to them? I mean, will any of them be deported? Will any of them be detained? Will they be issued a caution? What's going to happen?
next well anyone in the migrant hotel has been here for less than 12 months and it means their asylum applications in the overwhelming majority of cases are still going through so they can't be removed until those applications are decided on one way or another. We could see some charges, although in the last six months only one person in the country has been prosecuted for illegally working delivery, and that person allegedly at least had been doing it for six years.
up to that point. So we could see some charges if they decide now to make an example of the migrants at this hotel. and actually bring them to court and actually lay down the law. But actually the most likely action here is that we could see fines for the companies. It could be up to £60,000 per illegal worker they fined. whether the Home Office will actually levy any sort of penalty.
against these free courier companies we simply don't know until the investigations by immigration enforcement are complete though if you're taking away phones and you're taking away bikes and you're taking migrants away in vans because Deliveroo have phoned them up in front of immigration
enforcement, as happened yesterday. I think it's a fair judgment to say that at least some of the people in that hotel were working illegally. And also, as I said at the time when we spoke last week, where's the money going? Because there must be a way of tracking the money.
as to where it's being paid into, because a lot of these guys, having just arrived in Britain, won't have bank accounts. They may have some kind of electronic bank account or some international app of some kind, but it'd be interesting to know where the money is paid into as well, wouldn't it?
It would yeah, I made about 20 quid doing my deliveries last week and sadly I'm not going to see a penny of that because As soon as we told just the details of the account we had rented they shut it down So I'm 20 quid poorer having put in six hours of work into that But I think the serious point is that anyone who's renting an account, the money gets paid into the account of the person who owns the account. There was one extreme example we were told about where...
50 different accounts were being paid into one bank account. So it is a proper industry on the black market. And so hopefully when the Home Office of Immigration Enforcement... managed to get onto these accounts migrants have been using through taking their phones etc they can actually go after the people who have been running these sort of just eat rings on Facebook and on social media because
I think you're right in that it's rife for exploitation here. People could basically just never be paid the money they've earned, even if they've been working illegally. I mean, there's criminality, basically, at just every level.
Yeah, because it looks very much like a sort of a gang master set up, doesn't it? Where people get hired to do jobs, but they never really see all the money. They might get paid a sort of stipend by whoever's running the actual racket. But the money is actually going into some big central bank, which is all being kept or used.
for other nefarious purposes, no doubt. Correct, yeah. And also a lot of the people coming over who are working on these apps are potentially paying off the debts from that channel crossing. So all the money actually, and people... make the point that, oh, well, why don't we have some sort of carve-out for asylum seekers to work? Why don't we regulate it and do it properly? But actually, a lot of their work and a lot of, you know, us ordering Deliveroo and Just Eat...
There is a real possibility that that money that they make is being funneled back into criminal gangs and criminal gang enterprises. And that is the exact opposite of what we should be funding. It's the worst trade and the most horrific trade in Europe. So I think if anyone knew that if they order a delivery to be dropped off at their home, and it's not me that turns up that it is an illegal migrant.
but there was a chance that that money was being put into the back pockets of organized crime gangs, they would think twice. And I think the apps now have a reckoning ahead of them where they need to do something urgently to completely cut off the supply. of illegal migrant workers, or I think millions of people across the country, having read our investigation, having seen the reaction to it, will simply just delete the apps from their phone.
You'd like to think so. Thomas, great stuff again. Great show this morning. Thomas Godfrey, reporter at The Sun there, with a massive, massive expose of what's been going on on the black market. with regard to these delivery bikes, the Just Eat bikes, the Uber Eat bikes. I mean, it would explain why there's been such a massive, massive increase in the numbers of mopeds, the numbers of bikes, the numbers of people doing it.
If it's all being fed into a sort of a black market, industrial level gang where people are just taking money out of this country, not paying any tax on it and using it to fund even further criminal activity, that would make an awful lot of sense to me. That's why we're seeing what we're seeing, I think. Bit of breaking news for you. We just heard on the news a little while ago that energy prices were going to drop.
by 150 pounds well it turns out actually they're going to rise so i'm not sure where they got that from because apparently network charges are going to rise as the price cap actually eases so as much as the price cap might bring some prices down this will bring them up because so-called network charges currently make up 22 percent of a typical household bill and they're going to go up from april next year by 24 pounds a year as part of
to maintain energy security amid the transition to green power. They just make it obviously go along, don't they? This is another one of Ed Millipede's brainchilds, no doubt. £24 a year, part of an effort to maintain energy security.
Well, you've already stopped energy security by making sure that we don't produce any of our own energy. That's part of the problem, isn't it? And the transition to green power isn't working terribly well because it looks as though Nissan have just fired hundreds of people because of the green plan. The home of common sense. This is Talk. Let's talk to Simon Danchuk now, the former Labour MP and reformer defector, he says here. Simon, very good morning to you.
Good morning. It's good to be with you, man. Thank you very much indeed for joining us on this auspicious occasion, just a few days short of the anniversary of one year of Labour government, Simon. And it's been an absolute shambles, hasn't it? We're calling it 12 months of chaos here. It really has. I mean, Storm has had an absolute terrible 12 months. The country's had a terrible 12 months. I mean, his leadership has been found to be failing and all that comes to a head, as you say.
On Saturday, it's exactly one year since they won the general election. But tonight, it'll be the vote on the disability benefits issue. And he's really struggling on this. It sort of encapsulates the problem.
that he's had over the last 12 months. Right. And, you know, for all of his standing tough and talking about wanting to fight for what he believes is right, you know, he then goes away and does his kind of international statesman thing in Canada for the G7. Then he's over in the Netherlands for NATO. And even Brian Abbott's seen through it. She's going, you know, is he seriously going to expect us to believe that he didn't know that the welfare bill sort of remedies were unpalatable?
by the backbench MPs because he was abroad. Yeah, I mean, it's just ridiculous. He's not on top of his brief, is he? And this all comes about because Rachel Reeves has failed to balance the books. So they've had to lock. billions of the benefits bill. Now, we all agree that we need some radical reform of the benefits system. No doubt about that. But just top slicing money off it and taking it off disabled people is not the answer. What is really interesting here...
Mike, is that you can see people jockeying for position. Starmer has had to come out and say this is not a vote of confidence in him. I think it is. You've got literally dozens of Labour MPs who are going to vote against this tonight. and a second reading of legislation hasn't been lost by a government since 1986 if he loses this he is a significantly
on the way out. I don't think there's any question. I read a piece last night in which it quoted a Labour MP who said this doesn't feel like somebody standing up to the opposition in this party. at the end of days. It feels like somebody who's wholly focused on gripping onto power when it's literally ebbing away from his very fingernails. Andy Burnham is advising people to vote against it. Sadiq Khan doing the same. thing you know it's very clear that the the wolves are circling aren't they
Oh, no doubt about that. And if you take those two examples, Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan, you might think, well, they need to be MPs before they can challenge for the leadership. But, you know, I follow the minutiae of Labour Party politics so that you and your listeners don't have to. Andrew Gwynn, you'll recall, with the Trigger Me Timbers WhatsApp group. He's a Greater Manchester MP.
He could well resign because of that issue. He's already been made independent. If he goes and he's very close to Burnham, then Burnham could fight the by-election in that seat. And then in terms of Sadiq Khan, if you look at Tuli... Sadiq, who's had real problems as the MP for Hampstead and Highgate in terms of allegations of corruption around a wider family in Bangladesh, then if she goes, then Sadiq Khan would easily fight. That's it.
they're close as well so these people are jockeying in for position there's no doubt about that Yeah, absolutely. Let's have a look at what Sama said when he was at the G7. I mean, it seems like an age ago now, an eon ago, when he had a very, very different view of his position. Well, we need to drive through reform in the welfare system. It's not working for anyone. It's not a confidence vote. It's a vote about reform for our welfare system. It isn't working. It doesn't help people into work.
country. So he sounds still quite arrogant and quite sort of stick-in-the-mud-like, which is part of his problem, because when we were looking at all of this last week when he was away, Labour MPs were saying, we don't know him, we don't see him, he doesn't hang out in the tea room, he doesn't talk. of people. It's almost as though ordinary Labour MPs are beneath him. Some have not even yet met him.
Yeah, that's right. And contrast that with some of the previous Labour prime ministers. You know, you would, I understand, regularly see Tony Blair walking through the voting lobby. And that's a chance for backbench MPs to... have a word with the leader to cozy up to them or to you know offer some constructive criticism but starmer hasn't even been going through the voting lobby seven times apparently yeah
He hasn't been voting for his own legislation. And all this stuff makes a massive difference. And so he's been failing in terms of rallying the troops within the parliamentary Labour Party. And now it's all coming on to roost. And I have to say, I'm at this point... to a Labour colleague, a Labour guy, recently. When you see him speaking like you do there, he doesn't look like he's in full control. He looks like he's beginning to lose control of his situation. He really does.
There's no doubt about that. I mean, when Dan Hodges, who was a pretty good Labour loyalist over time...
writes in the mail today, it's the most cack-handed, incompetent welfare bill in living memory, you know, and that's just the headline. He talks about Liz Kendall's performance yesterday. Virtually every penny of her £5 billion saving has vanished, right? So they're not going to get any... benefit from that really whatsoever when she was asked yesterday how all of these u-turns would be funded she couldn't answer
um mps were told oh we'll deal with that the next fiscal event and the trouble is you know like many things that they've set out to do they found that halfway through it they couldn't do it So they've had to U-turn and go, oh, we're not going to bother with that now. We're going to go and do something else. But they don't have an answer. They don't have a solution to where they're going to get this money from, which has already been fed into the system.
That's exactly right. It's all about the money. They're just trying to make dramatic cuts. And the irony is, you know, they came into government saying, well, we found this £22 billion black hole. It's took 12 months and Rachel Reeves has created it. which ain't black all of her own, mate. And this is part of the solution. It's now about 10 times bigger, isn't it? Because, I mean, she borrows about 20 billion a month just to keep the payments up.
Oh, yeah, that's right. And it's almost in November that she was saying, listen, she was saying in the city, there will be no more tax rises. That will not stand now. There's going to have to be tax rises because she's run the economy. that badly. It's a really desperate, serious situation, natural fact. Yeah, it really is. I mean, there are people who worry as well about the fiscal possibilities that might afflict the country in the coming months, because it's not entirely out of the question.
that because of the high level of borrowing and because of the low level of growth, that this country was going to get to a fiscal crisis very shortly. Yeah, people are talking about that more and more. And this is what they're trying to fend off. But we have a prime minister and a chancellor that are on the ropes, to say the least. And that's within their own party, never mind the wider party.
this is the most popular prime minister britain has ever had at this stage in an electoral cycle i think it'll last 12 months i really do think that yeah absolutely right but we'll watch with interest and see i mean i still think there's a chance that they could either lose
the vote altogether tonight because the amount of rebellion is even bigger than they think or he gets cold feet at the last minute and even though he's going to have to suffer the slings and arrows of doing it he just pulls the bill pulls the vote altogether I think that's possible. I think there were 126 rebels at one stage and now that's down to about 50 odd. But that's not nailed on. I think, as you were suggesting, the number of rebels...
will continue to increase throughout the day. And the vote's possibly not until about 7pm. And if it's looking desperate, it'll be keeping in touch with the Whips.
As you said, they might well pull the legislation. That would be exceptionally embarrassing for the government. It would, because every time he opens his mouth, he makes it worse. I mean, that's the problem, isn't it? Simon, good to talk to you. Thanks very much indeed. Simon Danchuk there, former Labour MP, literally telling us that Keir Starmer...
has got the skids under him. I said this to you many, many months ago. People have said to me on social media, oh, you'll be sure every month. Yeah, but you can see the progress that he's made. You can see how difficult his time has been. Oh, my God.
Oh, by the way, I don't know if you just heard the news there. Can we just replay? We heard the woman on the news there talking about her PIP allowance, OK? We don't need to know what her name is, but if we just have a listen to her saying, this is why she's worried about losing her allowance.
Check it out. I use it to pay for my private mental health therapy. In addition, it goes to having to pay for taxis to get everywhere. Even if I live close by, I have to taxi everywhere because I don't get a free bus pass because they've tightened the regulations for that up. So you don't get a free bus pass and so you have to now get a free taxi instead because you can't go anywhere on your own.
I mean, what's going on in this country? I don't know what her circumstances are. There's no point in me vilifying her individually. But just to me, it seems to me to be a sort of, you know, a great example of what's gone wrong with the welfare system in this country. People think that... If they don't get a free bus pass anymore, they must then be entitled instead to a free taxi. I don't know where she's going.
Seems to me to be that it's all been allowed to run completely and utterly ragged and out of control, doesn't it? Let's talk to John Curtis, the pollster of pollsters, the man who knows everything there is to know about cephalogy and how things work in the world of pollsters. politics so John a very good morning to you
Good morning to you, Mike. Good to see you. You made quite a few feathers ruffle the other day when you appeared on Times Radio and you told everybody that Keir Starmer was the most unpopular prime minister and had the worst start, I think, of any prime minister. whether Labour or Conservative, in recent memory or perhaps in history.
Yes, well, I was looking in particular at the record of newly elected governments. And as compared with newly elected governments, this government saw its support fall more substantially and more rapidly. previous elected one of course we do have to remember here a crucial point this is a government that despite that landslide majority only got 35 percent of the vote
That is the lowest share of the vote ever won by any government with a majority. So it's not as though this was a government that was elected with enthusiasm back in July of last year. A major reason for its... majority is actually the movement of voters from conservative to reform which then helped Labour to pick up many a conservative held seat and this is why something's been said for quite some considerable time is why sometimes last year's resort is
referred to as a loveless marriage in other words this was a government that started off with a relatively shadow basis of support um and it's just that we've discovered that it's fallen away pretty rapidly on average now labor at the moment in the polls are at 24 that's 11 points down on that 35 so they've lost nearly a third
of of their support it's not occurred with some particular event or suddenly it started in the early autumn of last year it persisted gradually certainly all the way through to last month it now seems to have flattened out But this has just been a government that's gradually seen its support erode.
And it's led by Prime Minister Sikir Starmer, who has never been popular with the public. Throughout his position as opposition leader, he was always in net negative favourability territory. He was always less widely regarded than.
his party um and that is still the position now and that again was a fundamental political weakness that he had so far as the electorate was concerned that inevitably has continued to be a problem for him and now that he's become prime minister yeah i think that's part of the labour problem in government isn't it because while you say it might have plateaued a little bit now and it's kind of flattened out here's
unpopularity, if you like, his disapproval rating continues to plummet. I mean, I was looking at it on Sunday on Laura Kunzberg's show, according to Ipsos Murray, he's at minus 54 now, and they pointed out that after the first year of government, Tony Blair was plus 34. and even David Cameron, who wasn't the world's greatest love to Prime Minister, was only at minus three. So he's at minus 54. That's catastrophic, isn't it?
Yeah, it does mean he's not doing quite as badly as Rishi Sunak or John Major did at the worst problems of their premiership. But he's certainly, you know, it's not a very, very happy figure. I mean, we're talking here about a politician who, in a sense, has a fundamental problem if you're going to be a political leader. And that is he doesn't have a clear story.
about what his government is about, what he's trying to achieve, and above all, what kind of country he wants to create. I mean, insofar as he's had a message.
uh as prime minister it's been look the last government made in my view a big mess of it we are the repairmen we're and women we're going to come in and fix the problems but that still leaves the question well but what do you want to do thereafter oh and by the way and how are you going to do it of course one of the reasons why the government's run into trouble is that some of the ways in which decided it wants to repair the
problems not least its fiscal constraint has been through these cuts on welfare which have proven to be rather unpopular a because this is not the kind of thing that many people expect a Labour government to do if they are Labour supporters
And B, unlike Tony Blair, this was not ground that was prepared in advance. The last Labour government under Tony Blair was heavily critical of the welfare bill. It said that Margaret Thatcher had wasted a lot of money, particularly the money we had from North Sea.
the 1980s on paying people unemployment benefit it tried to get the welfare benefit build up but the point is that was ground that was laid before the government got into government albeit some people were still surprised about what they did this
There was no inkling from Labour that any of this was going to happen before last year's election. Therefore, it's much more difficult to sell not only to his MPs, but also to the wider public. Right. And I think one of the problems he's had over selling him...
and the party to the wider public is that he puts out an awful lot of statements particularly on social media but also sometimes just when he's speaking which turn out to be completely untrue and you kind of have the opinion that he sort of knows that they're untrue. we've been going through the archives here because it's the week that it is and, you know, he's coming up to a year in power. I mean, have a look at this. This is when he talks about Rachel Reeves and how well she was doing.
Rachel Reeves is doing a fantastic job. She has the full confidence of the entire party. Well, she may well have, but she's had a terrible performance as Chancellor. The economy is flatlining at best. There are people losing their jobs hand over fist as a direct result of what she did in November in her budget. You know, April was only...
the beginning of people losing jobs. I mean, Nissan only yesterday announced they're going to sack a few hundred people, not just because of the Labour government, but it makes it look like it's their fault, you know what I mean? Well, I think my attitude Mike is that when a Prime Minister has to stand up and say I have full confidence in my Chancellor
you know that the Chancellor is in a certain amount of political difficulty. Yes, I mean, it certainly would seem that way. Up until now, people have said to me... Basically, he won't get rid of her because that would make him look bad. But they've now started to turn on that and say, actually, by the looks of things, she won't last even as long as he's going to last, which may not be the full term.
Well, it's certainly, I mean, one of the reasons why perhaps she's indifferently, not at least including with her parliamentary colleagues, is the perception that the welfare cuts, the benefit cuts that we're still arguing about and on which there's going to be a vote later today, that the... The motivation for that was primarily guided by the wish to try and ensure that according to the OBR forecaster last March that it would indeed say, you know, the Chancellor was meeting her rules.
And that it was therefore rushed in order to try to achieve that rather than necessarily being a thought through attempt to try and deal with what, you know, many conservative politicians are arguing, let alone a Labour one.
is a welfare bill that is rising too high and i think i've just heard you mike raise one or two questions about the welfare bill so i think in a sense uh while we might want to argue about how the government has handled this uh we clearly do have to decide society as to what extent we think it is reasonable to be supporting people who do meet extra costs as a result of disability or as a result of long-term illness but clearly because there are now more people in that category
We are finding that the bill is rising quite substantially. Yes, quite. Let me ask you about the Tories and reform, because, you know, we talk about a loveless majority for the Labour government coming in. The reform vote seems pretty solid to me. I mean, a lot of people say, oh, you know, polls can't be trusted, particularly during elections. But the MCP poll...
came out just last week from YouGov, I think it was, first one since the election, had reform certainly winning the majority of seats in Parliament, maybe not enough for a full, you know, sort of autonomous government, if you like. looks to me like that vote is a fairly solid vote. Well, let me say two things. I mean, the first is that I think there probably was a feeling among some politicians, including on the Labour side.
that perhaps the polls were exaggerating what reform were capable of achieving.
But I think that view, insofar as it was abroad, was disabused by the result of the English County Council elections at the beginning of May. And I think, again, one of the reasons why Labour MPs are now... against their prime minister willing to do so is that they have decided that indeed the polls are right that Labour are behind reform in the polls and that therefore the party needs to get much more clearly on a front foot that it's acceptable to them
supporters and all prime ministers tend to lose their authority if they're behind in the opinion polls and their MPs come to doubt as to whether or not they're going to be able to lead them to success in the next election. The third thing I would say to you, it's certainly a mistake to think that the reform vote is some general protest.
very, very heavily located in a particular section of our society. And I can drive it home to you by saying to amongst those people who voted leave in the 2016 referendum, support for reform is running. In other words, Nigel Farage is appealing very successfully to those people who are, yes, in favour of Brexit, concerned about immigration.
are not very keen on equalities policies all these things about the so-called culture wars issues that reform are focusing on and in doing that reform are actually primarily taking votes off the conservatives i think the conservatives do now face
a really major challenge for their future, given what Nigel Price has achieved so far. It's a problem for Labour because reform at 30% can take seats off Labour by winning over more Conservative voters in the way they... last year but it's for the conservatives above all that reform are at the moment posing a long-term challenge and long-term do the conservatives have a have a future because i put this sometimes to conservative party mps because i'm not even sure that they know
But they have an identity crisis in the same way that Keir Starmer does, don't they? I think the honest truth is Mike that one of the things that was clear from the wake of last year's general election is that the whole future of our electoral politics is perhaps up for grabs in a way.
so certainly it's not been true during my lifetime um you know fewer than three and five people voted for either labor or conservative it was a record low in the polls at the moment it's down to around two in five are again a record low There is a risk that, as far as Conservative Labour is concerned, that voters who do now have more options, it's not just reform attacking the Conservatives, the Greens are also potentially a problem for Labour, as are Liberal Democrats.
and of course in scotland although the smp are not as strong as they were they're still the currently the most popular party north of the border our electoral politics is more fragmented and uh also it means that therefore whether or not whether conservative or labor can look forward to the continued joint dominance of our politics in the way they've had for the most of the second period since the second world war that is certainly now
are very much open to questions. Yeah, absolutely right. Sir John Curtis, great to talk to you. Thanks very much indeed. Sir John Curtis, the pollster. How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Now.
We've been looking back at the Starmer archive because, of course, he's been in nearly a year. Hard to believe, isn't it? I don't think he's going to make a second year. But here he is talking about Rachel Reeves. It will also be the first budget delivered by a woman. Ever. That is a moment of pride. When Rachel Reeves stands up, she will be making history. And I can tell you, young women and girls... across the country will be watching, they will look up, and they will notice.
Yeah, they certainly will. They're still noticing as well how badly it's all going. Absolutely ridiculous. Coming up on Friday at 9pm, we've got this for you. Have a look. They promised stability. They said the grown-ups are back in charge. I was so happy you just couldn't believe it. Our work is urgent. And we begin it today.
I mean, you couldn't really scrape together a worst gang of misfits to run a dog kennel. Broken promises. Billions blown. Botched U-turns. And Britain is burning. One of the most immiserably eventful. One year in power. And Britain in... freefall it's just been a disaster one year of chaos Friday 4th of July 9 p.m.
It really has been a disaster, hasn't it? Let's talk to Rupert Darwold, author of Greener Tyranny, because we haven't even started yet on Net Zero. But we've got a story today, Rupert, very good morning to you. Good morning, Mike. The ambition. of old Ed Miliband is to cover over an area of Britain the size of the West Midlands in solar panels, 347 square miles I think, by 2030, which will achieve precisely what? I don't really know. Tell us.
Well, it's to save the environment, they're going to destroy the environment. It's about the industrialisation of nature. It's absolutely reprehensible. We live in a beautiful country, parts of it are beautiful, and they are going to... cover it in wind turbines, in solar farms and with new national grid pylons up and down the country. i was staggered actually i was down in margate a week or so ago and uh looking across the sort of thames estuary to south end i had no idea
just how many wind sort of wind machines there were in the sea. I mean, it's absolutely horrendous. Yeah, I think those came in under David Cameron, actually, Mike. So this is very much, we shouldn't forget, this isn't... Actually, to say it's a bipartisan effort, we shouldn't forget the Lib Dems' awful involvement in this and Ed Davey when he had Ed Miliband's job. Actually, he was really one of the worst.
Well, this is the trouble. I mean, you know, people worry about what they call the uni party because they're all responsible for it. You know, this ridiculous net zero, you know, sort of race to nothing because it was the Tories who kiboshed their own party. You know, even now when I...
talk to Tory MPs and talk to them about the future of their party and whether it will have a place in politics in years to come. And I say, you know, and they say, oh, yes, well, we're very much, you know, looking at the targets, the net zero targets. They're not still walking away from it. They still think...
we should achieve net zero they still can't explain what it is they still don't know why yeah so kemi bedenock in her speech that uh got a bit of applause putting a question mark over net zero said that her objection to net zero was that there wasn't a plan, which implies if there was a plan, she'd be supportive of it. They're not questioning the whole notion of net zero and the cost to the country and the insignificant effect.
has on global emissions as we know Britain's emissions now are next to nothing and as we outsource more and more of our manufacturing to China and the global south the amount that we emit
just shrinks and shrinks. But of course, the number of jobs we have also shrinks and shrinks. And they keep talking about energy security while at the same time refusing to generate... their own energy other than by uh the means of of these so-called sustainable methods which clearly aren't sustainable i mean it's the most ridiculously named thing ever isn't it Yeah, I mean, weather dependent, wind and solar are weather dependent. It completely depends on the weather.
when it's sunny you get quite a lot of solar but of course we most of the year is not like this balmy first of july day no um and that the peak Power needs in this country are in a winter, early evening in winter. And of course, solar produces... Absolutely nothing there. And if there's a wind drought, as there can be, we are really in very, very difficult territory. Yeah. What's that German word for it? Dumpelkopf or something like that? Yeah, dunkelflauter. Dunkelflauter.
when there's not enough wind. Wind drought. Wind drought, yeah. But it doesn't make any sense to me at all. And when we see things like GB Energy, which is a complete racket, which appears to only employ about one or two people, Jürgen, the man at the helm of it, who sort of sits there with...
really very much to do all it really is it seems to me is a funnel for public money to be put through to make it look as if people are investing in green energy when they're really not because all they're doing is taking taxpayers money and pushing it through their system Yeah, the thing is that the subsidies for wind and solar are so generous that you've had queues of green rent seekers, green capitalists.
lining up to throw money at this. But of course, it's all paid for by us out of our electricity and gas bills. And the fact is, Mike, Every single extra wind turbine, every single extra solar panel means higher bills for ordinary people.
And they keep telling us the bills are going to come down, but they keep not coming down. I mean, there's another story in the mail today about the next Archbishop of Canterbury who's going to have solar panels and heat pumps installed into Lambeth Palace. They're spending £40 million...
They're calling it an eco-makeover, right? With the hope that the 12th century palace bill for annual heating will go down from 52,000 a year to 30,000 a year. Well, I'm no mathematician, but that's a saving of 22,000 pounds.
how long before you make back the 40 million yeah you never do but the other thing the other thing Mike is that when people put uh solar panels on their roofs like the archbishop canterbury wants to do when they sell back electricity to the grid it's at the retail price not the wholesale price and the gap is made up by people who don't have solar panels
So it's actually a reverse Robin Hood tax. It's taking from poor people to rich people. So this is what the Church of England is now involved in, taking money from poor people. Well, I've just worked it out. I think it's 22 billion.
something 22 000 pounds a year so it would take sort of you know so 220 000 pounds in 10 years so it would take five 50 years to save a million um so in order to save 40 million i mean they're talking millions of years before they get the money back It's total virtue signaling, which shows how the Church of England and indeed the previous Pope, he had, if you remember, he had that encyclical called Laudato Si, which was all about renewable energy. That had the war on global warming and so forth.
Yeah, it is absolutely extraordinary. And meanwhile, we've got the next climate change conference to look forward to in Brazil. I was speaking to Diana Davidson, who's living there now, former Tory MP, who was saying some of the stuff that they're having to sort of do in order to prepare for this.
conference like building hotels you know cutting a huge swathe of uh of space through the amazon rainforest to make a super highway to take all the vips to the new hotels that they're building i mean the carbon footprint of what they're actually putting together is Ridiculous.
Yeah, climate conferences are well known for that being incredibly carbon intensive. What they are, Mike, is if you ever have the misfortune to go to one, they are essentially trade fairs for the climate industrial complex. got their snout in a trough goes to these and they exhibit how much their wares and how much more money they can take out of poor
poor people and how they're going to impoverish Africa by inflicting this nonsense on the developing world. It is the most appalling, appalling place to be. He really is. And of course, Ed Miliband only recently sent one of his aides over to make sure that the hotels were going to be suitable for him, wasting even more money.
Yeah, he was, Ed Miliband, he was a critical voice at, if you, do you remember the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference? That was the one Barack Obama turned up to. Gordon Brown said, I can't remember, 10 or 20 days. save the world. Do you remember we had the countdown to Copenhagen and it completely flamed out. It was a total disaster because basically the Chinese, the Brazilians, the Indians and the South Africans vetoed a...
climate treaty. So now we have this absurd thing where countries just make up their own commitments. So Britain is committed to net zero and China is committed to peaking its emissions sometime after the turn of the century in 2016. It's all a joke, isn't it? They just want to create some kind of statement at the end of it. I mean, I think the peak sort of stupidity of it all was when they had the one in Dubai and Qatar, I think it was last time. It was just nonsense, wasn't it?
Yeah, actually, one could make the case that having it in the Gulf actually showed where power really is now in not just climate negotiations, but it's the global south that are the biggest emitters. they're the ones they're the that's They're the ones that have energy realism. They know that fossil fuels are absolutely essential to their economies. And we are, we're climate delusionists, energy delusionists. We think we can get, we can power our economy.
on Wind & Solo. That is a form of insanity, Mike. It really is. And thank goodness for people like yourself, Rupert, and me, to be fair, because we can actually talk about it sensibly rather than with the most ridiculous nonsense. Rupert Darbo, author of The Green Tyranny, thank you very much indeed.
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