Where are asylum seekers supposed to live now?

This is a Global Player original podcast. We're looking very closely at the judgment. Clearly we are in the process of identifying contingency options for what's going to happen to those people who are currently Accommodated i in that hotel in Epping. What seems the likeliest contingency option? Well w with respect the the legal judgment was only handed down yesterday afternoon. If it's not a hotel, it's a

It's a flat somewhere or a or a bedsit. Well as I say, we're we're looking at contingency options. for how those people can be appropriately accommodated. But the b the bigger picture issue is driving down the use of hotels altogether. We don't think that that is an appropriate solution. That is Dan Jarvis, the Home Office Minister Um struggling. To explain what is going to happen to the people who were housed in the Epping Hotel, the Bell, who must now be rehabed.

The worry for the government, the nightmare scenario for the government. is that this won't only be contained to Epping, but rather this legal judgment will be picked up and apply to hotel after hotel in local authority after local authority, which leaves a central question that Jarvis was unable to answer. Where are all the asylum seekers gonna go? Welcome to the news agents.

The news agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And you'd have to say that the judgment that came from the High Court yesterday, whilst it may have been anticipated was probably the last thing the government needed right now with its asylum policy with a record number of people arriving in this country on small boats The policy of putting these people in hotels has grown more and more unpopular with local residents. They've become more and more of a flashpoops on the far right. And now...

What the hell, as you said Lewis, are you going to do with those people? Not just at the bell, but anywhere else. Where there is now a problem. This is a nightmare scenario, really, for for the for the home office. I you say um maybe it was expected, John. I think my understanding is that it wasn't expected.

Partly because there have been similar attempts, not only by this particular district council in Epping, but other local authorities around the country to do something like this before. That the background to this is what they've managed to do. Th these hotels have been around for a long time, we should say. They were not a Labour idea. They were in place under the Conservative government. In fact the numbers were higher actually.

under the Conservative government um at one point, Richard United start to drive them down. But these have been used as really a kind of matter of last resort for governments. The fact of the matter is and we can get into a debate about why people are coming or what to do with them, but while they're here being processed. Their applications for asylum being processed.

They've got to go somewhere. Otherwise they'll be homeless. And you know, there are countries that do that. It happens in northern France, where we've both been, I think, over the years.

reported from there. The people in northern France hate it, understandably,'cause you see, you know, migrants, asylum seekers wandering along the streets, kids on the streets, people with tr all their possessions in trolleys, living in the woods, it's filthy, it's unsanitary. It's horrible. So you gotta do something with it.

And we know we've got very little in the way of social housing accommodation, and so governments have ended up using asylum hotels which themselves have become very controversial. The government I think thought that this would easily go through because this has been challenged before. What's happened is is that they've managed to use an obscure bit of planning legislation. Basically they're getting it on a planning technicality, basically saying that this hotel has had a change of use.

Under planning law, i.e., this was supposed to be a hotel for people visiting for a night or two or whatever. Now people are basically living there, therefore it's unlawful and it needs to be remedied, and that's what the judge has said. the hotel can be used for people who don't stay more than thirty nights. And of course. These people are semi-permanent whilst the backlog is got through of asylum applications. And so under planning law it is pretty clear

why Epping Council was able to mount the legal challenge. I do think it's kind of telling and interesting the Home Office argument against Which is not based on law, it's kind of the give us a break. argument which is, you know, there was a last minute attempt by the Home Office to get the case dismissed. And Edward Brown, K C for the government, said any injunction could lead to other councils making similar applications. That would aggravate the pressures on the asylum estate. Well hang on.

That's not the law, that's just a PR appeal. And the idea that all the Home Office have got is an appeal to say, oh God, look, this is gonna make matters worse for us. The judge who's hearing this has to implement the law as it currently stands.

And the law as it currently stands is not about what is good for the government or what is bad for the government. And now the government therefore have got uh well they've got several decisions to make. I mean the ministers have been saying this morning that they've just received the judgment, they're gonna consider it in terms of of what it means.

It could be overturned, they could appeal it and that might happen. But if they choose not to, or it is not overturned, and we see this morning that this is taken up by other councils, which looks like all but guaranteed, because we've seen that Richard Tice the deputy leader of reform of course.

saying that local authorities and they now control ten local authorities that all of their local authorities will seek to mimic and replicate the judgment, take the government to court, to get asylum hotels shut down in their area.

Well, you know, if this were to be replicated, it becomes nightmarish because the question is we go back to that first question, what does the government do with them? This is the problem, I think this is my problem with w when you talk to people about this and you know, particularly kind of people who are against these hotels. You say, Well where are they gonna go? No one wants these hotels.

No one wants them. Labour doesn't want them. Labour have pledged to close them by twenty twenty nine at the end of the parliament. The Conservatives didn't want them. They have become a centre of deep resentment and political action in in different places. And I can completely understand. why if you suddenly have a hotel in your community which is suddenly full of

people that you don't know who maybe don't speak English who you know sometimes yeah maybe commit crime not all obviously but that can happen. I can totally understand why you might be really pissed off, you might be really worried, you might be scared and you hear things that people say about them and so on. But the question remains

Where are they gonna go? If you listen to people like Farage or Tys, they'll just come back with a completely reductive we'd just send them back. Send them back. But you can't send them back. A, there's a legal duty to process them. They may be genuine asylum seekers to whom then Britain has a legal obligation. That's number one. Number two, even if they're not.

haven't got a case for asylum. Let's just say for example, you know, the evidence doesn't back up or maybe we think actually they're an economic migrant. Okay, fine. But then what do we do? If they're from Yemen, or if they're from Afghanistan, or they're from South Sudan. We send them back there? We don't have a returns agreements with those countries. I've said it before on the show, what are we supposed to do? Just parachute'em in?

We can't. There aren't charter flights to Kabul going from Luton Airport. Not present. And therefore what do you do? Even leaving that question to one side, you still have to put them somewhere while they're being processed. So now, if asylum hotels aren't the answer, the only other answers are Social housing, of which there is precious little supply.

Houses of multiple occupation. So like bed sits basically, big blocks and whatever where you basically just sort of shove people in. Big day problem with those that you know they can be difficult or unsanitary, whatever it happens to be. Or the private rented sector. So basically the answer is is they'll be in the community, separate around. Now people don't want that either. So what do you do?

I don't know what you do in this situation, but the problem is with the the debate in this country about this is that It presupposes there are no trade offs, that there's just an easy answer, but there isn't an easy answer. Both Tory and Labour governments have struggled to know what to do with this because it is very, very difficult. Just going back to the Dan Jarvis clip that we played at the top there, do you think He doesn't know or doesn't want to say

about what the answer is. Because I think it's really interesting. Because, you know, maybe the problem that the government thinks they will have is if it announces we're gonna do something radical you know, that sparks another lot of preemptive protest.

before you do it because we've seen the power of the protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping which has caused a real ding dong. That was the kind of pun that I shouldn't probably not try to get in Way in Way. But i you can see the You know, the the power of protest. emboldens the council.

to take the action to go to the courts because it's got a problem and the courts have upheld it. Yeah and w we should say I mean actually it is a minority of asylum seekers who are in hotels. So it's about there's about thirty two thousand or so at the moment in in hotels. That's about thirty percent of the total. There's about seventy one thousand who are in by far the biggest uh share. About sixty seven percent are in other types of accommodation, so that is

shared houses, HMOs, flats and so on. But you can completely imagine if there is a shortage of those things and they are also used for other reasons people might need to be in temporary accommodation, you know, whether they're thrown out or evicted or whatever it happens to be. So there's already pressure on those from other sources. But you can completely imagine, let's say an HMO, sort of large bedstill or whatever, as soon as some of these groups get wind.

that some of these people are in those, then they'll attack those as well. And they'll start to tell other people that oh, there's that block or whatever it happens to be or that set of flats. That's full of asylum seekers. So just transposing people from asylum hotels to other forms of accommodation Doesn't necessarily answer the question. In a to answer your question, John, I think it's probably a combination of those things for Jarvis, right? Like on the one hand

he kind of does know what the answer is, but he doesn't want to say'cause people won't like it. But then on the other hand, there's actually not enough of those things, those shared accommodations or whatever, to actually put all of the people who are in an asylum hotel. So it's it's a nightmare for the home office. Yeah, Paul Brand.

uh IT V correspondents sometimes heard here. Uh, government source tells me the reason why Dan Jarvis won't set out the alternative to asylum hotels is because of security concerns. They claim far right could use locations as a recruitment tool, but not sure that that position can hold. People want to know where asylum seekers will be. Again, it all feeds into this idea of it being an absolute bloody nightmare.

I tell you one thing that was interesting me, I mean obviously we have made extensive phone calls this morning and rung around some of these uh reform councils and you were talking about Richard Tice talking about, you know, looking at all the legal options. and anywhere where they control a council. Now reform are normally pretty good at coming forward and wanting to put their case. We couldn't get anybody

on who would agree to do an interview this morning. All we managed was Mark Arnold, the leader of West Northamptonshire Council, who sent us a video statement. We've always been clear with the government and the public that the current use of the hotels in West Northamptonshire have never been suitable locations for asylum accommodation and place an unreasonable and unsustainable strain on our already stretched local services.

We know these hotels cause concern for our communities and I've raised these issues with the Home Secretary and I've written to the Deputy Prime Minister about the wider use of asylum accommodation within our communities. We're currently considering the implications of the judgment in Epping yesterday to understand similarities and differences, and we're actively looking at the options now available to us here in West Northampton.

As such, I can't comment further at this time, but I will issue a further statement in June. In the meantime. We will continue to work with partners in the police and in our communities to make sure that residents' concerns are heard and addressed. So how are his captors doing, by the way? Is everything all right in West Northamptonshire? Well, look, first of all.

Kudos to him for giving us an answer. Do we do it at gunpoint? I know, but it did look rather like he kind of dare not stray one inch in either direction. No. And was reading from a statement. I kind of thought actually it showed

I mean it was you know, he came back to us and thank you for doing so. But it did look like a hostage video and it did look like he was rather fearful to say anything that could be taken out of context there. Yeah, indeed. Well, I mean look, I think they're afra look, I think they're afraid. Ultimately reform don't have the answers either. No one has the answers.

This is one of the most complicated bits of public policy that I think exists in Britain today. It's also the most politically contentious one and the most politically noxious one. It's really emotive, it's really difficult, and that's all fine and that's okay. it has been made worse by politician after politician after politician. Pretending there's a simple solution.

Stop the boats. Smash the gangs. Smash the gangs. Farage, send them back. Each one of those things, three words, whatever it is, each one of them wrong. Each one of them they know it's wrong. And this is the problem, is that then what that that fuels the disillusionment. fuels the disillusionment that exists because you get politician after politician coming along saying, I know how to handle this and there's an easy way of dealing with it.

And guess what? It doesn't happen. And the fact of the matter is, is that with regards to the small boats issue, yes it is a profound problem in our politics. I've come around to the view actually I I used to I used to had the view that I've got to do that.

It was kind of a blown-up problem o out of proportion to what it was. And indeed the numbers are relatively trifling, right? It's it's thirty, forty thousand a year in an overall picture of where at migration is five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred thousand.

But there's no doubt that it has metastasized in our politics. As a result of the impression the T V pictures, it gives an impression of the lack of control of the state completely losing any grip on its own borders and a sense of lawlessness. And it is inhabiting people's everyday concern and it is fueling the far right. Therefore, I've come around to the view that actually quite drastic measures.

need to be taken to stop it. Not because I think the problem is that profound, but because the p problem of political perception is profound. And whether actually that does involve, for example, a reworking of the ECHR. I don't mean like Robert Jenwick believes it by the way, which is a unilateral withdrawal from it. I don't think that's possible or desirable. You couldn't do it as part of our Good Friday Treaty obligations for a start.

But there are other countries around Europe. There are lots of other countries who have this same problem. This is why it is not just a British problem. We've got the control. France has got a problem. Italy's got a problem. Spain's got a problem. Greece has got a problem. Turkey's got a problem. You name it Germany.

There is a widespread feeling within Europe because other, you know, mainstream democratic parties are struggling with this as well. There is clearly a feeling in Europe that the current policy legal architecture we've got which was designed after the Second World War in a very different era, might need to be reappraised.

And I think that in the era and the world of global insecurity that we are in, that would not be a bad idea. There has got to be an alternative way of reassessing this problem, which is less simplistic than just smashing the gangs, less simplistic than just say stopping the boat.

Less simplistic than just saying send them back that will take time, but I think could be done. But I do think that mainstream politicians do have to start to think quite drastically. Maybe that would also include offshore processing. I don't mean a Rwanda type deal where you just send people there in perpetuity. But some form of offshore processing where at least while they're being processed

that's where they are. So I think all options need to be on the table because this is becoming such a p profound political problem. I think I agree with more or less everything you've just said, which is disturbing and worrying for me. Uh I think there is the urgency of now I just think that there is no time to waste. And I think that the more the public hears politicians of conservative or Labour colour. With glib phrases that look good on a podium but are actually undeliverable.

I think that it just fosters the cynicism that allows the reform politicians and even maybe people on the far, far right, to flourish. To it's a recruiting sergeant where people think you know what, I I'm so pissed off.

with the conventional mainstream Labour politician who tells me we're gonna smash the glangs, or the Conservative politician who tells me we're gonna stop the boats, and neither of which are able to achieve either then I think you are in the territory that is so fertile for these groups

that I don't believe have got any easy answers either. But I think that I'm a hundred percent with you. This is an absolutely serious problem and I think that for years and years politicians, I mean, of all strikes

have lied about the scale of the problem. You know, David Cameron, we're gonna get migration down to the tens of thousands, all the rest of it. It's been going on for a quarter of a century now that people have been queuing up In Calais, trying to find ways to come across, and now it has reached the levels where I think that the public have it in their heads that conventional politics has utterly failed them.

Yeah, I think that's right. And so I think that's why conventional politics has to go to places that it might not ordinarily have gone. And I think that that is an increasing conclusion that Labour politicians are coming to as well. In a moment we'll be back with a much sunnier subject for the government.

The economy. Oh no, it's not that sunny. This is So from one intractable problem for the government to another, um this on the economy, yet more bad news for Rachel Reeves today. It keeps getting worse and worse for the Chancellor. Some of it

In her control, some of it not within her control. This is about inflation. So two big really negative things over the last twenty four hours. First one is about inflation. Inflation rose again in July to a higher than expected, three point eight percent, so nearly four percent. Largely being driven by the exactly the things you don't want it to be driven by, which is food prices, travel costs.

That's basically making the markets think that there won't be another interest rate cut this year or at least it raises the likelihood that that won't happen. Actually food prices are rising by substantially more than four percent, about five percent a year or so, which is obviously bad news for everybody else. The other thing is uh government borrowing costs continue to climb as well. And so this is guilt prices, cost of government bonds.

Government borrowing costs on Monday pushed higher again, nearly reaching their highest rate for twenty-seven years. Thirty-year government borrowing costs. And again the scary thing about that is It's not entirely clear why. There is a general increase in government borrowing costs for other G seven countries. Britain's is a bit faster. It seems to just it's it's not being obviously triggered by a

trustile mini budget or anything like that. It seems to be a slow realization by the markets or a slow pricing in of the markets. of the prospect of continued sluggish growth, a lack of confidence by the markets in the British economy over the short to medium term, as more and more I know the ability to finance our debt.

as more and more of these bad economic indicators come out. I've seen Liz Truss, as you might expect, on X talk No, she's normally so quiet. I know, I know. Talking about why is no one screaming about The cost of borrowing. I mean, yeah, I know. But she's but she's making the point that it you know, it's higher now than it was when she was Prime Minister and caused the absolute crisis.

in the markets. Now it's not a crisis yet, but you can see these black clouds looming as Rachel Reeves sort of tries to navigate apart towards a budget. And it's also interesting some of the ideas that are coming out now. about how she's going to deal with this fiscal black hole because we know she still needs to raise huge sums of money. The government backed down at the time of the summer recess on its

welfare reform packages which created another black hole. We now know that inflation is up, that the cost of borrowing is not going to fall. And so there are all these factors and and if the cost of government borrowing goes up That means you've got to find more money to fund it.

And so, you know, p some people talk about a fifty billion pound black hole that needs to be plugged. And of course we know that the Labour government back in the you know, last year at during the election campaign said it wouldn't raise uh income tax, said it wouldn't raise national insurance contributions for employees. So what the hell do they do? And now they're looking at all sorts of

kind of esoteric property taxes that might be a way of raising large sums of money. Politically toxic. And of course made worse by their own retreats over welfare reform, over winter fuel payments and various other bits and pieces as well, which all add up. So the prospect I mean sometimes obviously you know, when we're talking about billions and billions of pounds, it's sort of hard to kind of get your head around. But having to make in year or year to year adjustments

of even if it's at the lower end of twenty billion. I mean that even for a for the government, that's serious money. Serious money that you've got to try and find. Particularly as you say, John, when you have ruled out the main levers that you have

to try and actually raise extra revenue. There's only three options for her, right? There's fundamentally for any chancellor there's only three options when you're plugging a a shortfall. You can raise taxes You can cut spending and she's just had the departmental spending review, so she'd have to reopen that which would look ridiculous and actually probably create a confidence problem. Or you can borrow more money.

And we can see that in each one of those things, her room for manoeuvre is so, so small. Either because she put herself there on taxis And on departmental spending or because of external circumstances as a result of her lack of ability to borrow. So when I think of Rachel Reeves at the moment I sort of think of a woman in a room where just the walls are just closing in bit by bit. The sort of room that she has to move in any particular direction is just So she's trying to find

a sort of way out of the room and it's harder and harder to do. So you just say some of the unorthodox ways that she's thinking about raising extra money, or the papers full of suggestion that maybe should impose what would really be very radical things. in the history of British politics. So for example, imposing capital gains taxation

on the sale of your primary residence, which is a relatively rare thing to do without some exceptions, anywhere in the world. And in Britain this sort of great property owning democracy would be really, really controversial. The Treasury Minister Torsten Bell was asked about some of these more unorthodox

on Sky News yesterday. Well I'm a newish MP, but I'm not an idiot. And you know that tax decisions are made by the Chancellor. I'm not going to start speculating on individual taxes because then you'll ask me another three questions about other taxes. So the answer is uh taxes are matters for the budgets are matters for chances. What I can say is this government is gonna get things being built again. Well I get that you're not the Chancellor, but you you're a treasury minister.

Well that's another reason why I'm not going to start speculating individual taxes. Look, you you get the same answer that you ask any minister all the time, and at some point there'll be a learning curve and we won't just go through a rehearsing each individual question. What I'm saying to you is this is a government that is going to get houses built.

Fu fine, but uh it's a rather interesting the obtuse response to to a a reasonable question about the the pros and cons of of types of taxes rather than specific. Yeah, when you've got little ground for being on the offensive as it seems right now. We should say of course.

Quite a bit of the macroeconomic instability she's facing is is beyond her control, right? I mean she can't control, for example, what Trump has done on tariffs. That's destabilized the global economy. It's slowed growth everywhere, without doubt. There's geopolitical instability which is continuing again completely beyond her control. There's sluggish growth in other countries, including the European Union, beyond her control. And she inherited

The way the Tories go on about it, honestly, completely shamelessly, is if the economy was going gangbustered and and that there was no debt. For God's sake, most of the debt that we have was accumulated under the previous fourteen years. So, you know, lousy inheritance, the rest of it. But there are some things it's gonna be harder for her politically in October in October for the budget to be able to do what she did last year, which is just basically blame the Tories for everything.

And then I think there are two sort of cardinal things that you can say. worsen the overall situation. One is a relatively specific thing. The increase on national insurance for employers. Now you might say that was the only option she had, okay fine. But there's no doubt that it has slowed employment growth.

And it it even has had a part, I think it's clear, in the inflation figures, for example, we've seen today, because one of the reasons that food prices are rising faster here than in, say, other European countries is it seems that the supermarkets are passing on. that national insurance rights in the form of their prices, which are obviously we're all paying in the shop. So that that's one. The second one is and you've already said it, John, it it goes back to that political decision.

to say, which they really probably didn't need to say, that they would not under any circumstances ever increase national insurance, income tax or that. Because the net effect of that I mean they would have won the election anyway for a start. Maybe it would have been a bit less, but they would have won the election anyway. The net effect is that

has been that basically we're seeing this pattern that we had last year repeated, which is the economy isn't doing well. So everyone is wondering. We've got these long run in times to the to a a fiscal event, to a budget. And the net result of that is that because the markets know and we all know in the media we all know

That she can't use those levers, those big tax raising levers. There's all this endless speculation about these other things that they might do or might not do, which destabilizes the political scene. Spooks the market. And you end up having the conversation dominated, exactly as we just saw in that clip, about potential unusual things.

that the Treasury might do to try and raise some revenue, which is bad for them politically, it's also bad for them economically as well. You y you used the metaphor a moment ago about you kind of imagine Rachel Reeves as this person standing in a room Uh where the walls are contracting and the floor is raising and the ceiling is coming down and she's squashed in what she can do. I wonder whether it's also made worse by the person next door to that room, Keir Starmer.

has not entirely backed her. I mean he's backed her in terms of political support. But you know, he was the one who made the decision. That we're going to abandon the welfare reform proposal. Now maybe he had no choice, but it was also a cack-handed political operation in Downing Street that hadn't prepared properly for getting the support of backbenchers for it.

And it left Rachel Reeves with another headache. And you know, and even now if she comes up with an idea, say on property taxes, and my God, you know, w look at the history of Prime Ministers who've tried to introduce

major changes to the way property is taxed? You know, Margaret Thatcher was brought down in large part by the poll tax back in the day, and other politicians have considered it and chickened out. Does she have the confidence that if she comes up with an idea That Keir Starmer might back it for now. But if protests grow, will he still be there and saying you're absolutely you've got you've got I've got your back, Rachel? And I think that that's another area where, you know

There's not a lot of confidence between number ten and number eleven. I think what this government has got to be really careful of is that it doesn't start to appear to exhibit a sense of malaise. Yeah. You know, there are Stupid comparisons are always made in the sort of Tory supporting press between any Labour government and the nineteen seventies.

But one way in which any government and particularly Labour government has got to be careful of of the sort of thing that happened in the seventies is is more or less about the economic details which are very different to today in all sorts of different ways.

but more about that sense of perpetual sort of gloom. That there was just economic kind of doom loop, doom spiral, without any real sense of getting out of where we're going. There's that story about Jim Callahan when he was Prime Minister turning to his

Principal private secretary Bernard Donahue saying or ch principal political advisor Bernard Donahue saying, You know, Bernard, looking in the mirror in the morning while I'm shaving, and I look at myself and I think to myself that if I were a young man, I would emigrate. You know, that was the Prime Minister saying that the day because that was a sort of sense of just kind of malaise and and and just economic kind of spiralling in the country. Now we're not anywhere near that.

Um actually Britain's growth compared to much of the G seven isn't bad. In fact, depending on how you measure it, was actually top of the G seven. But there is I think Reeves politically

there is a real, real danger that it feels much like with a small boat situation, like things are running out of control, that she's always chasing her tail. Each time she comes back, she said in that budget She said well the after the aftermath of the last budget, I won't be coming back again with a budget like that. i.e. a big tax raising budget. Now, it looks like she's gonna have little choice, but one way or another to try and do exactly that, she really set herself up for failure there.

So I think that wh when this budget comes, I think what Labour MP's gonna be looking for more than anything else is a sense of a positive sense of where we might be trying to get to and an actual economic and political vision about what this Labour government is about rather than just chasing your tail and coming back with more bad news each time. Lewis you used the story of Callahan

um Bernard Donahue and there is another one from that period which seems to also sum up very well the position that this government is in right now, whether it be about the economy or whether it be about the asylum problem and immigration problem. And it you know, apparently Callahan turns up Donahue and says, You start pulling all the levers of government and nothing happens.

and that was the Labour government at the end of the nineteen seventies. This government is pulling levers and it doesn't seem to be having much effect on the economy. on the social fabric of the country. Just do one other thing before we wrap up on this. I think there's also a question, and Labour MPs do talk about this, about Starmer's involvement.

with number eleven. I mean if you talk to Labour MPs, they will say that they've never known a number ten, particularly in the early days, and a Prime Minister less interested in economic politics. Yeah he basically handed it over to Reeves to deal with. Now that's fine and you could say it shows a lot of trust and they don't he didn't want to have a kind of Blair Brown relationship with that sort of acrimony. But nonetheless, the treasury is a treasury and it is a home of orthodox thinking.

And is the sort of thing where they will come across with all sorts of ideas. and and come to a chancellor and say this we think this would be a much tidier, more efficient way of doing it. You need a real political sense. And there has been a s a a worry about Rachel Reeves's political antenna, but in that case you need that support from

number ten and from Keir Starmer, right? To me all a successful political project needs both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to be at one and to be involved in the decision. So I wonder And and and there is a particular problem for Starmer in this is that A he's quite uninterested in economic policy generally, which is quite unusual. B is we're seeing at the moment his time is being so consumed

by foreign affairs, by everything that's going on in Europe, in Ukraine and so on and I make no criticism of that whatsoever, unlike this some of the idiots out there who do. He ha I mean what was he supposed to do this week, for example, say, sorry, I've you know, I can't turn up to the White House, I'm busy, you know, I'm in a meeting with Rachel Reeves or whatever.

Obviously not, but it does I think I think it has been a problem for this government, at le at least in the early days, that number ten has not been more involved in some of the decisions that are being made in number eleven. On the black door of number ten Downing Street is the letter box and embossed on the brass is First Lord of the Treasury. That is the position of the Prime Minister and for him not to be taking an interest or enough of an interest.

in what Rachel Reeves is doing seems to me a slight abdication of what you need to do when you're the Prime Minister, because it's the economy stupid and it will come back and bite you. This is Tomorrow, before we go, just let me point you in the direction of Newsagents USA, where we'll be looking ahead to What has come out of the extraordinary few days of summitry in Alaska and Washington D C but also the democratic fight back and how Gavin Newsom is taking the fight to Donald Trump

On X by aping Donald Trump on X. Thank you for your attention in this matter. Block Capitals. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye. Bye-bye.