Tax rises ARE coming

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Here we are. It's Thursday, the 7th of August. And very good morning to you, Chloe. Good morning. A lot of stories around this morning. Yeah. Where would you like to begin? I mean, I don't know. I suppose HMRC and the British guilt classes probably strikes me as the most amusing story.

morning. HM Revenue Customs able to log on to an online session during office hours yesterday, prompting a furious backlash. Tory leader, Kemi Bay, not describing it as nonsense. This goes on all the time in Whitehall, doesn't it? You've basically got loads and loads of woke people.

with nothing better to do than go, I know, let's have a seminar on how awful it is to be British. And, you know, whether you're white or whether you're black or whether you're guilty or, you know, what are they doing? I mean, complete waste of time. I mean, no good private company would use their...

having staff during their working hours going to some seminar on the guilt of being British. I mean, it's just crazy. So you've got HMRC where you can't get them to answer the phone. No. They really should be... prioritising that rather than this right and then you've got the NHS where apparently we lost 26,000 NHS working hours to people attending woke events which also cost a lot of money to run and it's all this same sort of

Stuff like guilt of being British, white privilege, DEI, transphobia, this and that, right? I mean, it's just a complete and utter waste. It is. And when the taxpayer's paying for it, I mean, as I said, a good private company would never do this. But if a private company...

If a company does decide to do this stuff, I think, fine, they want to waste their money, that's OK. But when it's taxpayers' money and you can't get adequate service from them, they won't answer the phone and you can't get an NHS appointment, it's just taking us to fault. This thing that they had yesterday...

It was the Guild of Being British Listening Circle from 11am until noon, run by the HMRC Race Network. I didn't know there was one of those. It was billed as a powerful, interactive and reflective listening circle, exploring the emotional complexity of being South Asian and British. covering topics including the emotional weight of colonial history and inherited trauma. Have you any inherited trauma? No, I don't. I don't think I have either.

Although apparently you've got epigenetics and if your mother is, say, stressed while she's carrying this baby, that can get passed down to you. Yeah, my mother, I think, wasn't stressed in particular because in those days people didn't get stressed.

stressed you know they just got on with it um but my parents were Scottish so I might be able to claim some kind of colonial um you know backlash in my previous life from when you know England and Scotland were at war perhaps the Battle of Culloden or something like that I could go no no I'm definitely

traumatised by that historically. Nowadays young lot are stressed out if the train is two minutes late. I'm stressed I have to go to work. I have to get out of the house. They're saying I have to go into work. We need civil service. What, they were going to... Have they gone on strike about this, having to go in two days a week? Well, yeah, they don't want to go in more than two days a week. I know, they think that that's horrible to have to go in for...

Half of the week. I know. Absolutely ridiculous. Earlier this year, a report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee found that HMRC answered just 66.4% of customers' calls to advisors, well below the target of 85%. Performance has reached an all-time low. apparently, in HMRC, around 40,000 people who had been on hold for more than 70 minutes were cut off without an explanation.

We've all had that. I was on the verge of tears the other day trying to get hold of Scottish power and they just kept saying, oh, we'll direct you to someone and then hanging up on me and having to start again. It happens a lot, doesn't it?

There's nothing worse than having to wait on the phone. And, I mean, Rachel Reeves, she's got a lot of money to find, as we're now finding out there's apparently a 50 billion back hole. Maybe it would be a good idea for the tax service to answer the phone to people who are trying to pay their taxes.

Yes, because then they could get more money in, couldn't they? As opposed to just announcing they're putting more taxes on. Because on the front page of the Telegraph, Starmer's pledge on tax thrown into chaos. He was out and about yesterday. And we'll have a couple of clips from him. I think we've got one here. Asked about tax rises in the autumn budget. we go in the autumn we'll get the full forecast and obviously set out our budget the focus

will be living standards, and we will build on what we've done in the first year of this government. We've stabilised the economy, and that means interest rates have been cut now four times. And for anybody watching this on a mortgage, that makes a huge difference. on a monthly basis to how much they pay.

In the first year, we've raised wages as well, both in the private sector plus the minimum wage, which means people have got a bit more money coming into their pocket. And so at this stage, that'll all be set out in the budget. But the focus... will very much be on living standards and making sure people feel better off. Some of the figures that have been put out are not figures that I recognise, but the budget won't be until later in the year, and that's why...

We'll have the forecast then and we'll set out our plans. What's really important is that I'm very clear about our focus, which will be on living standards and making sure that people feel better off. Partly because more money is coming into their pocket in the first place through better wages and partly because we're bearing down on costs like mortgages and other costs to everyday families. Everyday families now.

What's an everyday family? Hello, I'm from an everyday family. The focus, I'm very clear about this. He literally spoke for about a minute and a bit there and said nothing. There's nothing in that, is there? The focus. It's just babble and it's just lies. It's not rubbish. He doesn't recognise the £50 billion black hole because if the £22 billion black hole was the Tories' fault, even though it didn't exist...

Whose fault is the £50 billion black hole? Because that's quite significantly more than 22, seems to me. It's definitely Rachel Reeves' fault, and we all know it. They can't keep parroting the same line that it's the Tories' fault any longer. And I mean, him saying there, oh, the focus...

is going to be on raising living standards first of all that's very vague on purpose you're very vague people are not better off right no he gave he gave public sector workers a pay rise so they're probably better off but everybody else is worse off

I mean, he's saying that, oh, well, we've raised the minimum wage, which means people have got more money in their pockets. And I'm like, hang on, you've got companies, you know, especially companies who hire a lot of minimum wage staff, like say a pub or a cafe or a restaurant, right? They're having to fire.

a load of people because they've got a load more money to make up from the national insurance hike and the big hike in the national minimum wage right that means that there are fewer jobs going around and there's another story on our list somewhere today where you've got

Some polling done of young people who are all saying we don't think that the situation is going to get any better. We think there's no hope of getting a job. And they say we're going to get Britain working. How are you meant to get Britain working if all of the companies are currently...

firing people and not hiring anymore because they've got this huge national insurance bill and a big minimum wage hike to factor into their costs. And also they're worried now about what's going to happen in the autumn because even though he says we're going to wait until the autumn to decide...

chris was going to be on um but the point is is that nobody's investing in business because they don't know what the tax regime is going to be like come october and november so they don't want to spend any money they don't speculate about the fact that there could be a worse state of the economy and as far as interest

rates coming down. There's nothing to do with Starmer. There's nothing to do with the Bank of England. They might be reducing them today, apparently. But at the end of the day, that is outside of the government's control. They haven't stabilised the economy, as he says. The economy is in the absolute crapper. I mean that.

Couldn't be further from the truth of what he said, right? He is saying, he is taking credit and saying, we've stabilised the economy, we've done well with the economy, therefore the interest rate is being cut. It's the complete opposite, actually. The reason why they're cutting the interest rate is because the... economy hasn't grown. It's stagnated. I mean, we even had two months of negative growth, right? That is why...

the rate is being cut because they've done so poorly with the economy that they desperately need to do something to start boosting economic growth. Yeah, absolutely right. Let's get a better view of Keir Starmer. And now that we know what he means about everyday families, he was out and about with some kids. yesterday talking about music believe it or not god so what are you playing you're playing okay

Are you doing that from memory? Oh, yeah. So C and then G. So you've got C and G. So just here, this chord should have been the C. Listen to music and, I mean, it's a big part of my life in the sense I love it. Apparently music's a big part of his life in the sense that he loves it. He's never mentioned music in any interview I've ever read about him, right? The one thing he has said is he doesn't have a favourite book, right? He doesn't have a favourite movie. Because he's never read one.

Well, I don't know. I wonder if he's got a favourite song. What do you think his favourite song would be? Well, I don't think he has much musical knowledge. Row the boat was that kid that was playing to him. Do you remember when he put out that tweet saying how many great... Row the boat gently across the channel. Merrily, merrily, merrily. I mean, this guy, you can't make this stuff up.

I mean, it's so... Every single video he puts out. He's supposed to be a father, right? You know, those of us who are parents usually can identify quite well with children and have a little chat. It's like having a kind of conversation with a child like he's an adult. I know. Have you done that from memory?

I mean, he looks and sounds so awkward there. I don't know what's funnier to watch that. Or do you remember when Rishi Sunak went into a school and he said to this group of kids, I just love coke. I'm a massive coke addict. And then he went, oh, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola.

Yeah, amazing. It was like the time he went to the homeless food bank place and asked the guy what he did for a living. And the guy was queuing up to get some breakfast. I'm homeless, mate. Yeah, he was homeless. He goes, what do you do for a living?

I'm homeless. Anyway, so this is your challenge for this morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's have some Keir Starmer songs. What would be Keir Starmer's favourite song? I'm going with Row, Row, Row the Boat because obviously that's quite current in terms of the migrants.

Let's talk to James Price, former government advisor, of course, a man who I'm sure will share my rather bemused look at this idea of one in, one out. And they're now talking about putting taxes up again. James, very good morning to you.

Oh, is it a good morning with all of this stuff happening? It's good to see you at least, my friend. Yes, indeed. Well, I mean, I find myself smiling. I know that many people are getting... to the end of their tether with all this stuff and they're getting quite angry about it but I my attitude is merely to find it amusing and I know it's not amusing for so many people in this country because it's driving people mad but it's the only way you can deal with it on a daily basis without going in

scene. Yeah, absolutely right. You're right. The one the one crumb of hope, the one small morsel, little silver lining that we've got is that I think that with another four years of this lot, there will never, ever again, surely be a socialist government elected.

in this country, right? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And then we had Blair, goodness knows. And now we've got this lot of absolute muppets. I don't think we'll ever be electing a left-wing government in this country ever again at this rate. No. And I think, as we say on a regular...

basis nobody thought they'd be this bad and it but every day it does go from bad to worse i mean yesterday kia star was out and about um talking to children uh with just as much woodenness and stiffness as you can see when he talks to adults have a look at this right um this is about him talking about music so what are you playing you're playing okay

Are you doing that from memory? Oh, yeah. So C and then G. So you've got C and G. So just here, this chord should have been a C. Listen to music. I mean, it's a big part of my life in the sense I love it. It's a big part of my life in the sense that I love it. He's never mentioned music, ever. I know he did go to a private music school when he was a child, which was rather against his supposed background of socialism, right? And he went to this, I think he got a scholarship to this fee.

paying school uh which was a very very nice place i went down in surrey um and we've been asking people today for what his favorite song might be because you know famously doesn't have a favorite book doesn't have a favorite poem doesn't have a favorite film so i don't know what favourite piece of music he would have.

A couple have said, we've got loads of them coming in. Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads, says Daryl. How about Tragedy from Jim in the Netherlands? How about Hotel California from Bruce? You know, the list goes on and on. The man is just a... sort of national mockery now, isn't he?

yeah absolutely he doesn't dream either i think he said in the same interview where he admits he doesn't have a favorite or anything like that i mean i know that we're living in a nightmare but i think that's a bit on the nose even for him maybe my maybe my version of his favorite song would be a slight reworking of that great smith song and in this case it would be this charmless man yes absolutely that's a good one but yeah he really is and we've got him now saying we might

have to put taxes up in the autumn. He was asked about tax rises, right? And again, he's come up with a new phrase because you know we've been assailed with this working people thing that he's been saying for ages. He's now come up with a new one. See if he can spot it right at the end. ...forecasts and obviously set out our budget. The focus...

will be living standards, and we will build on what we've done in the first year of this government. We've stabilised the economy, and that means interest rates have been cut now four times. And for anybody watching this on a mortgage, that makes a huge difference. on a monthly basis to how much they pay.

In the first year, we've raised wages as well, both in the private sector plus the minimum wage, which means people have got a bit more money coming into their pocket. And so at this stage, that'll all be set out in the budget, but the focus will very much be... on living standards and making sure people feel better off. Some of the figures that have been put out are not figures that I recognise, but the budget won't be until later in the year, and that's why...

We'll have the forecast then and we'll set out our plans. What's really important is that I'm very clear about our focus, which will be on living standards and making sure that people feel better off. partly because more money is coming into their pocket in the first place through better wages, and partly because we're bearing down on costs like mortgages and other costs to everyday families. Can you spot the new phrase?

Is this the living standards idea? No, it's everyday families. Oh, everyday families. What's an everyday family? Oh, it's just, it's so mindless that it actually went in one ear and out the other for me. Well, for the first time we played that out, yeah. The first time we played that out this morning, I was trying to count the seconds because he literally says nothing. He's able to speak for about a minute and a bit while making no sense at all and saying nothing at all.

Yeah, I must admit, I think I nodded off at one point as he was speaking there. But there is a real consequence to all this, which is that you don't trust anything that he says. He comes out and makes speeches. Do you remember the Island of Strangers speech a few months ago? It was actually very good.

parts right he he said the bit that no left-wing leader has said for a long time which is you know huge amounts of mass migration and not enriching british culture or not having the state trying to push british culture have turned us in to an island of strangers anyone

ever visited London, let alone lives here. Well, no, that's true here, as it is in many cities. He comes out a few weeks later saying, I didn't actually really read the speech until I gave it, and I regret that now. Yeah, and he wished he'd never said it. And it's the only thing he's ever said that actually... was any good, to be fair.

Absolutely right. And as a politician, you're not supposed to admit that you don't write your own speeches, let alone that you don't even read them before delivering them. I mean, it would explain the very wooden delivery of the speeches that he used. But how do you even compete?

against someone like this who's just such a kind of closed off unit and doesn't dream, doesn't read all the rest of it. So how is it that we're supposed to expect to believe anything he says when he's like, oh, I'm probably maybe not any more taxes. We definitely know that taxes are going up because that's also.

Socialists know how to do. They only have one lever. It's more state control, more immiseration of the people that live here by stealing more of their hard earned money to give it increasingly to foreigners who come here not to work. How are we supposed to believe anything this man says?

Yeah, exactly right. And all that you get, the message is, you know, we inherited this terrible situation. Well, even if it was true, which it isn't, that they inherited a £22 billion black hole, well, who's to blame for the amount that they've now put on to make it up to 50?

You know, which is by any measure another 28 billion. Surely that must be their fault then. Yeah, it's extraordinary. Look, the fundamentals of all this are that they came in. Actually, Rachel Reeves said when she was in opposition.

We're not going to do that naughty thing that new governments do where I promise not to do anything now and then get into government and say, oh, blimey, the books are much worse than I actually thought they were going to be. We'll have to be even worse. And then she goes and does the thing she promised.

not to do. Talking the country down, inventing this black hole. In the process, by the way, creating it because she's scared off huge amounts of investment. Loads of rich people and not rich people, frankly, are emigrating and leaving to other places where they're...

The streets are safer and the taxes are lower. And then what? More tax. And we know that tax doesn't lead to prosperity. Winston Churchill said that trying to tax your way to prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull. himself up by the handle exactly right well just as you mentioned rachel reese we've got a little montage for you here on how she's not going to come back for taxes

I'm really clear I'm not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes and that is why at this budget we did wipe the slate clean. What the budget in October did was draw a line under the economic... and financial mismanagement of the Conservative government. I've now put our public finances in order, so never again will I have to do a budget like I did in October. Our public finances are now on a firm footing. We have now set the public...

spending envelope for this parliament. We don't need to come back and ask for more. We've now set that. We're going to do a zero-based review to make sure we get value for money for every pound that taxpayers' money spend. In that budget, I've tried to fix the foundations and wipe the slate clean. So 1.3% year after next, for example. And that implies, doesn't it, that you're going to have to come back and ask for yet more tax rises. Absolutely not.

now set the envelope of spending for this Parliament and we're going to live within our means. Yeah, we're going to live within our means. I think they've shredded that particular envelope. I'm not quite sure what's happened to it. There's another one here from Pat McFadden, who said on the 4th of June of last year, Rishi Sunak's claims about Labour and tax are categorically untrue. Labour will not put up tax...

is on working people. They're just a collection of liars, aren't they? Yeah, well, maybe they won't put them up on working people. What about the everyday families? I think if you're listening and you're a non-everyday family, then watch out because you're definitely getting stung for a big tax hike. It's the fact that she can't speak outside of platitudes as well. We've drawn a line under this, the spending envelope.

a good writer when you write stuff you abide by some of george orwell's rules for writing and don't use boring tired old cliches it's all these people can think in in the 14 years that they were in opposition felt that none of them have ever read a single book none of them ever thought about a single novel or new idea it's always you know if it moves tax it if it doesn't move subsidize it

And if it still doesn't move, nationalise it and make it even worse. It's really depressing when you see what other countries are now getting to do. In the United States of America, the exciting things they're doing. We just saw a £600 billion investment from Apple who have come back. from China. You know, the CEO was standing with Trump yesterday. 600 billion quid. That's just one company.

Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary what can be done. And actually, some of the stuff the Trump administration is doing, you would think would be grist for a Labour Party mill, right? Re-industrialising, on-shoring jobs again, all this kind of stuff. But we're doing the opposite. We're even stopping farmers from...

food in England so that you can plaster it with the solar panels I know you'll talk about later and that's probably why they're putting the farmers out of work to have more space for the solar panels whilst we're not generating electricity in all sorts of other ways the reason that this matters and that I think the next election that comes is probably so existential.

I think we've only got one shot left to turn some of this around. If you look at the scale of debt that Britain has, we now spend a huge amount, something like £115 billion every year, just to service... the debt that we've got and that is a number that's growing every time we're not paying down that debt that's just to keep running to stand still 115 billion pounds a year it's about the third biggest line item after welfare and pensions and then the nhs

And that's growing every year. And as that grows and we owe more and more money, the market is less likely to borrow, to lend us any more of it. And it means less money that you've got to spend on defence as the world gets more dangerous, on education as labour...

Wrecks that on the NHS as they fail to get to grips with that. At some point, the music will stop and that we will become uninvestable just at the time when Labour has scared all the rich people away. Everybody else is too dejected to bother working because they have.

haven't raised those tax thresholds and many millions more people are paying higher rates of tax than they were ever supposed to. And we've still got these numpties in charge for a few more years. That is a really cruel state to leave the country in.

government comes along next and you can be sure when the music stops there won't be any chairs either because they've sold all those off for firewood to keep the keep the home fires burning for heaven's sake uh james great to see you thank you very much indeed brilliant james price former government advisor they're making a great deal of sense, as he always does, talking about the state of our nation. Absolutely ridiculous. The home of common sense. This is Tor.

Now, let's talk to Richard Tice, who is here, of course, Deputy Leader of Reform UK. Richard, very good morning to you. Well, good morning, and your listeners and viewers will be pleased to know that I would not be breaking out into song. And frankly, I'm not sure that there's much to be celebrating at all, given the state of the nation, as you've been talking about this morning.

As you've just touched on, I've been alerting the solar farm developers, Mike, who want to desecrate hundreds and hundreds of square miles of our glorious British countryside and farmland. with these revolting solar panels. And I've made it very clear to them that there's no mandate for this whatsoever. In Lincolnshire alone, just get this, there are plans for about 100 square miles.

of solar farms some villages are going to be completely and utterly surrounded by solar panels alongside which will be these very dangerous battery energy storage systems that when they catch fire the fire brigade can't put out as the lincolnshire fire brigade confirmed to us in a letter they just have to have to just watch and

then they produce toxic fumes and contaminants into the soil. So we don't want this. No, it's absolutely outrageous, isn't it? Because as you say, there's no mandate for it. Nobody was asked about this. And what about this pledge that the Labour government made that we won't be buying any soil?

solar panels from China if they'd been made by slave labour. Well, it doesn't seem to me as though they found anywhere else to get them, have they? There are very few other places that make solar panels at scale. And the great irony, of course. And China being very clever at this is that they're building coal-fired power stations to make lots of cheap electricity in order to produce solar panels and wind turbines much cheaper than anybody else, sometimes allegedly.

using slave labour. I suspect there's no real doubt about that. And people are left with no choice. And so the absolute irony that we are... This government wants to...

cover our land with lots of solar panels produced with slave labor, produced using coal-fired power stations. I mean, the whole thing is completely and utterly absurd. Solar panels... on roofs fine you can you make a very strong argument and sell the electricity to the occupier and the need that can ease the pressure on the national grid but uh covering our productive farmland that we should be using to grow food is absolute insanity yeah and are they acquiring this land um

By hook or by crook. I mean, how is that process working? Because these people that you've written to, the Ireland Green Power people, which is planning a 2,700-acre project, apparently, I mean, how are they getting hold of the land? Well, primarily, they lease the land from farmers. And we've made it very clear to the developers and their shareholders and investors and indeed their lenders that we will use every lever at our disposal.

under-reformed government to stop the subsidies and to force them to think again. In other words, don't invest in the first place. But they can also use it, it now transpires what they call compulsory purchase powers. So that if a particular landowner doesn't want to sell out or lease out to these solar farm developers.

uh and that's in a sort of an important part within a bigger plan solar farm then it turns out these developers can compulsory purchase that land and i mean that's just doubling down on the The wrong, frankly. Yeah. And I was told this some months ago, and I don't know whether you've had an opportunity to look into it. I can't remember if we spoke about it before. But there's a sort of loophole in the law on rural land, apparently, where if you've had the land occupied...

by solar panels and used as a solar panel sort of field, if you like, for a long enough period, that can then change the use of the land and it can then cease to be arable land and it can then be building land and you can actually then build houses on it.

Yes, there have been those allegations. And I think the answer is that is a grey area that's unknown. I mean, it's obviously a ridiculous statement, but some people are very concerned about that. Frankly, we should be concerned about anything under this deeply. socialist government. I'm actually most concerned about stories that I'm reading into where the land under these solar panels, if it's left like that for 20, 25 years.

it becomes completely organically dead and therefore even if the solar panels were removed it would take many years for it to be brought back into agricultural use and possibility of contaminates contaminants coming off from the rain of the solar panels onto the soil. These are very serious concerns that need to be clarified. We just know so little about this. What we do know is that we need to be producing more of our own food.

And if you put these hundreds of square miles of solar farms in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and many other places, then you're doing the opposite of food security.

It's absolutely ridiculous. Let's talk a little bit about the other problem for this government, this ridiculous one in, one out. which is so ludicrous now that it's fallen apart literally before their very eyes. I mean, it fell apart pretty much as soon as they announced it. Yesterday, the Daily Mail were in Graveline over in Calais, very close to Calais.

describe what looks like a sort of dinghy rush hour which goes on from about 7 a.m uh until about 8 30 9 o'clock in the morning uh where you know one canoe one one dinghy after another sort of turns up people pile on it and off it goes Britain. And so on the first day of this one in one out, it looks as though at the very least dozens, possibly hundreds came and nobody left. You say it appears that it's hundreds in every day and none out at all.

Particularly when we now discover that our friends, the lefty, lovey human rights lawyers, if they can lodge a human rights claim here in the UK for someone who arrives, then they don't now qualify under this new... absurd labour scheme. So the whole thing is a complete and utter farce. And here we are a year later. We know that the migrant numbers so far this year in 2025 are up about 50%.

compared to last year. And what you've just shown there yesterday, hundreds more coming to the UK shows there's no deterrent factor whatsoever. Actually, we're becoming an ever greater, ever larger. And the British people have had enough. I don't know where this ends, but it's not going to end well. It really isn't. People are raging, raging mad. And there was the just yesterday, the gendarme were on the beach waving them off. Funny, isn't it?

A few weeks ago, the BBC happened to be on the beach and that was the one day where a gendarme happened to put a knife into one of the boats in order to deflate it. Why aren't they doing that? every day, all day, to stop these boats? I know. Or was it just a complete stitch-up picture made up to suit the Prime Minister and President Macron? Yes, it was definitely a stunt because, I mean, I was saying this week, I wrote a piece in the Sun yesterday.

that this is actually going to encourage more migrants to come, not fewer, because what you're going to now get is people who actually get to France and apply legally through an online application form to get asylum in this country. And as long as they can say that they've got...

somebody that they know here, they've got family here, they're fleeing some kind of terrible situation, they will be invited in to Britain and they won't have to bother getting on a dinghy, they'll just be able to come legally.

The whole thing is so absurd. It's truly unbelievable. And where does this end? The irony now where you've got people in the UK slightly ironically saying... They want to take a one-way ticket to France so they can apply and then they can come back and get free accommodation, free heating and free food. I mean, it's just it's it's.

utterly utterly ludicrous and there's only there's only one way you stop this that is we leave the echr uh we rip up the human rights act so these human rights lawyers can't uh carry on with their

with their ridiculous trade. And we've got to pick up and safely take back a variant of what the Australians did. We know it works. The Australians successfully did it. And we know we're entitled to do it under the United Nations. 1982 convention of the Law at Sea Treaty, which I have read cover to cover.

And you've said this before, and people who challenge you end up having to give up because they don't know the law. Let's talk about what Starmer says now, though, about taxes as well, just before we let you go.

He was talking yesterday about the fact that he can't tell us yet whether there's going to be any taxes, but he can tell us what his focus is going to be on. Have a look. The focus. will be living standards, and we will build on what we've done in the first year of this government, but the focus...

will very much be on living standards and making sure people feel better off. What's really important is that I'm very clear about our focus, which will be on living standards and making sure that people feel better off. partly because more money is coming into their pocket in the first place through better wages, and partly because we're bearing down on costs like mortgages and other costs to everyday families. Yeah.

Yeah, we've got a new phrase for you. Everyday families, Richard. That's a new one. Well, I'm going to focus. I really am going to focus, very focused on the issue of taxes. If we focus on taxes, Mike. then we can focus on making people better off. I mean, what on earth is he talking about? Saying that he's stabilised the economy. The economy is going down the tubes. Exactly. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being destroyed.

I've got a theme park in Skegness in the middle of holiday season, get this, that's closed two days a week because of the national insurance increases, because of the cost of energy. I'll tell you what. That theme park owner's focus is to stop losing money. And we've got a black hole that is re-emerging in the economy. They're going to have to put taxes up ever more. You've got bond markets.

that I can tell you are very focused on their concerns about the British economy. And it's very, very fragile. It really is. And that's all because they've... They've ruined it. They've done the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be cutting wasteful government spending, of which there is vast, vast amounts, cutting daft regulations. That creates the conditions for growth. And when you've got growth emerging...

Then you can have performance related tax cuts. That's how you get the economy growing back to two and a half, three and a half percent like we had in the 80s and 90s. And by the way, that was the time when we had cheap energy, because guess what? We were using oil and gas, not solar and wind. I know. It's an absolute shambles. It just gets worse and worse and worse. Richard, good to see you. Thank you very much indeed. Richard Tice, Deputy Leader of ReformU.

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Okay. Chris Philp is going to join us now. Shadow Home Secretary. MP, of course, for the Conservatives. He was out in the channel yesterday. Some people say channeling Nigel Farage. checking on what it was that was going on there and what it was that was going on was pretty much what goes on every single day chris a very good morning to you good morning mike you managed to survive the trip then it looked like it was reasonably calm it didn't look too choppy

Well, there was a bit of wash from the aftermath of the storm, and I've got to say the express journalist who was with me did end up spending quite a bit of time being sick over the side of the boat, so it wasn't completely calm. But as you said...

Despite the government's New Deal, which they claimed would act as a deterrent, people were still crossing. Within half an hour, we found two boats stuffed full of illegal immigrants, almost entirely... young men who weren't being deterred at all and that's not surprising because the government's deal has only um i think six percent of people being returned 94 get to stay so hardly surprising it's not much of a deterrent

Well, this morning they're telling us that they've detained the first illegal migrants under the New Deal. Keir Starmer says no gimmicks, just results. They haven't said how many. They say, according to the Home Office, they're being detained in some kind of holding centre, but it's not clear.

where that is or what that is um so what would you say um they say basically um if you break the law to enter this country you will face being sent back but it's not clear as i say one how many they've detained and two how quickly they'll be sent back

Both very good questions. We don't know how many. The briefing that came out previously suggested that it would only be 50 a week you get returned, which amounts to only 6% of arrivals, meaning 94% get to stay. That's no deterrent. We've also found, looking at the details...

of the French agreement. It's got more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. If somebody pretends to be under 18, they get to stay in the UK. If they make a modern slavery or even a made-up human rights claim, they end up going into a lengthy legal process.

likely to take months if not years to resolve so I strongly suspect the people that have been detained today however many that is will end up going into a lengthy legal quagmire that could take months or years to resolve and that is why when I was on the water

yesterday, the illegal immigrants were still coming across. And the French, by the way, were doing nothing at all to stop them. They were, in fact, ushering them and escorting them across the English Channel. And what about this line which the Home Office has put out today saying...

In exchange for these people who have been detained, migrants in France can apply to come to the UK on a one-to-one exchange basis, subject to strict criteria and security checks being met. I mean, how confident could we be about those checks?

Well, not confident at all because the agreement with France expressly says the French government will not share any personal details at all about the people in France being sent here who probably are illegal immigrants. So even if the French government... know that they've been convicted of a criminal offence, if maybe they're suspected of being extremists or even terrorists, even if the French government know that.

The treaty, the agreement, says the French government will not tell the UK government those facts. So we don't really know, to be honest, who is going to be getting sent into the UK at all. Yeah. And I mean, in terms of who they are and how they come here as well, do they bring a family with them? Is there, you know, any criteria for... Who gets priority? Do women and children get priority over single men? There's a lot of detail that's not there.

That's right. We don't really know how this is going to work. I think it does include family as well. And we know that sometimes people bring over vast numbers with them. So I think the government has a lot of questions to answer. The thing that worries me the most is the fact the French government will not be sharing any personal data. So even if the French government know the individual is an extremist, a terrorist, they may have been convicted of crimes.

The French government are not going to be telling us about that. We don't know who these people are beyond what they choose to tell us themselves. Angela Eagle, the Home Office Minister, was very critical of you yesterday, saying that you were just out on a boat pointing at things and that you weren't really doing anything about it and you didn't do anything about it. it for years i mean would you say to her that you try to do things about it but they stopped you

Well, I think, first of all, in the last full year of the last government, 2023, illegal immigrant numbers crossing the channel went down by 30%. And then we had the Rwanda plan that after all of those legal challenges, we had to pass a new law. That was finally... ready to start in July of last year but just a few days before it was due to start the Labour government Keir Starmer

cancelled it with no replacement plan except for their laughable claim they were going to smash the gangs. And as a consequence of that, so far this year, 2025, we've seen the worst ever numbers, the highest ever numbers, illegally crossing. channel. It's gone up by 50%. It's the worst ever. And that is thanks to the decisions that this Labour government, which includes Angela, have taken.

And what are you going to do next? Because Robert Jenrick started with these little videos that he was putting out there. Have you got plans to do something else out there on the big wide sea? Well, I've been out to an asylum hotel a few weeks ago and in fact exposing the illegal working on Deliveroo at the asylum hotel, which actually shamed the government into acting a week or two after that. I went to an encampment of tents by...

Romanian and Bulgarian beggars on Park Lane and the day after I went there that finally got cleared I was out on the channel yesterday there are various other things I have in mind so just watch my social media accounts to see what's going on coming next. All right. Chris Philp, thanks very much indeed. Chris Philp, sorry MP, Shadow Home Secretary. Thank you.

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