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Let's go to a text question from Rick in London
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Another around 600 people have crossed the Channel and entered the UK illegally today
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Labour has levers it can pull to prevent this, but apparently refuses to use them
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Externally and internally, is the UK now signing its own death warrant by failing to tackle illegal immigration
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Will Hutton. Well, I find this kind of language of immigration extravagant
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I don't think that we're signing a death warrant. I do think that we have to do something
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My favourite approach to this is actually, I think and have long advocated
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that there should be a national system of ID cards and we should know who's here
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And if you arrive and without an ID card you can't get work
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and that this whole notion of actually kind of the country being wide open to anybody
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is kind of, could be acted on. And I don't think it's that easy
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to stop these boats crossing the Channel. I mean, Nigel Farage talks about
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towing them back to France. I don't see that. The French government can just turn back
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and have endless boats crossing the Channel. I mean, if you're going to get at this
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we have to kind of make it clear to those who want to come here
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that there are rules of the game and we're going to insist on them. Jonathan
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Look, Ian, you know me on this topic. Illegal migration is a travesty to this nation
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It's rightfully what cost the Conservative Party and people like me their parliamentary seats and were hounded out of office
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for the failure to do the basic thing of controlling our sovereign borders. These are predominantly, overwhelmingly young single men
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and the age of 18 up to 39, many of whom, or a lot of whom
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will have medieval attitudes when it comes towards women and how they perceive how women should be treated
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and how they should act, as well as obviously coming and fuelling criminality
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Let's not forget that we're seeing more and more cases where in Baroness Casey's audit
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these illegal migrants are showing up in child rape gangs. We've seen The Sun call out the fact
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that these migrants are going into stores like Liberty in central London and thieving
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and shoplifting using tinfoil lined bags. We're also seeing, obviously, the black market
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when it comes to Just Eat, Uber Eats and other delivery drivers earning up to £1,000 a week in some cases
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as well as obviously then working in the drug trade and black market too. So Keir Starmer is going to live and die
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when it comes to this politically by whether he indeed delivers on his promise to smash the gangs
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which the only thing he's managed to do is smash the records with a near 50% now increase on small boat arrivals in 2025
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compared to 2024. It is time to be dramatic and drastic. It is time to detain and deport on a mass scale
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and take inspiration for what Donald Trump has done, where he obviously had zero illegal crossings over the month of May
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So are you about to join reform? Well, I think these are things... You've just spent a couple of minutes there espousing reform policy
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Well, these are things I espoused when I was a Member of Parliament that is fully on the record and said in studios like this
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when I was still a Member of Parliament too. I'm still angry deeply at my own party for failing to deliver on its promise to stop the boats
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and it was because we weren't radical enough and people like me rebelled on that last Rwanda bill
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because we said clearly that the government had to go further than it ever had done before
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when it came to completely ignoring the European Court of Human Rights as well as carving out sections of the Human Rights Act
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to allow us to stop the judicial activism and get these people deported
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Let's not forget, Sakir Starmer is one of those, along with Shabana Mahmood, our Justice Secretary
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who signed letters saying that foreign national offenders, for example, shouldn't be deported to Jamaica
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some of whom then obviously went on to commit other crimes. He has zero credibility when it comes to dealing with illegal migration
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His own government doesn't have a clue on what they're trying to do. And as I say, it is a serious danger to the safety and security of our nation
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and particularly to our women and girls to have these amount of young men in our country roaming the streets
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Natasha? I can't believe that you sit there and claim to have any kind of concern
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for the safety of women and girls and in the same monologue praised Donald Trump an adjudicated rapist self sex offender who trying to take away bodily autonomy from women in the United States who is being welcomed for a second
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state visit next month. You cannot have it both ways. The reason that it is mostly young men that
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we see making that dangerous trip across the channel is because they come here first and then
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they try and gain asylum and then they send for the women and children who can come here safely
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They don't come here first, do they, though? They come to Italy, they come to Greece, then they travel through Central Europe
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then they come to France. There is no law that says that they have to stay in the first... Keir Starmer's done a deal which creates a safe and legal route from France
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which will drag more people to the French border, which will mean that if they..
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There is no law to say that they have to stay. You're talking over each other. Apologies. I'm sorry. There is absolutely no law that says that they have to stay
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in the first safe country they arrive to. They may have family here, they may speak English
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there may be other reasons why they specifically want to come to Britain, and Britain should take our share
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Now, if the Labour government properly invested in the asylum system, made that more efficient so that we didn't have these very expensive hotels, so that we could quickly determine who is legitimate and who is not
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And yes, deport those people who are illegitimate. Absolutely. But the rest of the people can pay taxes, contribute to society the way that the majority of people who make that perilous journey want to do
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And it's incredibly irresponsible, I think, to paint them all somehow as sex offenders
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They didn't say it all. I said there would be a large cohort of those young men who have medieval mindsets towards women
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A large cohort. A large cohort of those men, yes, those young fighting age men who are coming over on small boats
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And it is a very dangerous thing indeed that these men are coming over. And Baroness Casey's own audit said they are showing up when it comes to child rape gangs more and more when it comes to those police records, where the police are keeping records
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We see the criminality that's following. But do you not have to watch your language here a bit because words have consequences
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and if you try and make out that a large cohort by which I'm assuming you mean sort of getting on for half
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or even over half are likely to be potential sex offenders or criminals
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well I mean that makes it even worse doesn't it because there's no evidence for that
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yes there have been arrests and charges brought and convictions made against some people
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who've come over on small boats you're absolutely right on that but to try to label all of them
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or a large cohort of them in that way, I mean, I think that's quite incendiary
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Well, you can think that, and others will get offended, I'm sure, with their faux outrage online
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I'm talking what is going on in places like Stoke-on-Trent, which were the fifth largest voluntary contributors
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to the asylum dispersal scheme previously, which saw us have over 1,200 illegal migrants in our city
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and we're to the point where we had a 1 in 30 ratio in a Tririan-Hanley Ward, the city centre
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well above the 1 in 200 ratio that is meant to be the absolute flaw
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when it comes to the Home Office's own data. And in that particular ward
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what's the highest, what we see, it's the highest for violence and sexual offences, it's the highest for theft
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it's the highest for shoplifting, it's the highest for antisocial behaviour. Again, Stoke-on-Trent is constantly used
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and abused by successive governments and Serco when it comes to dumping people in our city
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because we have a cheaper private rental housing stock as well as hotels. Zoe
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Well, I do think there's a risk of dehumanizing people, which doesn't behoove those of us who want culturally
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to have the moral kind of upper high ground, I suppose. I think the problem is there's a mixture of truths
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in all of these perspectives. So, yes, there are cultural differences and problems
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that come from the demographic that comes on the boats is just here seeking asylum
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But without evidence, I would not want to say that the majority are kind of criminals or anything
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But I think that there are cultural differences and problems and some tendencies that are worrying
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And the problem we have is a complete failure to assimilate or insist on assimilation
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So if we had a robust assimilation a robust belief in who we are and minorities and immigrants could be well integrated then actually I would I mean I think immigration in itself can be like a very revitalizing force And it doesn matter
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where people are from, if they want to come here and they want to be British and they want to pay the tax, etc, etc, then they can really be fantastic. The problem we have is that the
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conversation is just kind of stupid on all fronts. So on one hand, we have this kind of
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of all-encompassing, they're all terrible, which can't be true. But then we have Starmer kind of
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encouraging, continuing to encourage a lack of transparency in the way we talk about the actual
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issues. So people get more and more angry and the conversation gets more and more polarized
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So in terms of the actual, you know, clearly there is a problem right now with unvetted
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migrants coming in this way. It's a problem for taxpayers, it's a problem for communities
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and it's a problem for the national conversation. I think it's interesting what you say about integration
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because generally, I think in this country, we've had quite good record of integration
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But when you have, whether it's legal or illegal migration, in the numbers that we've had in the last few years
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that is when, for whatever reason, communities do feel threatened. And the problem for politicians is trying to work out how to address that
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when they're the ones that have allowed the situation to come about. But I think there's also a problem, isn't there
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with the way certain, you know, policing, for instance. We know now that there have been things
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that haven't been properly policed out of fear of, you know, getting it wrong
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You know, sensitivities, saying the wrong thing. And that has really serious consequences
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And I think that, you know, again, this comes down to what are the things
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that are not allowed to be discussed, frankly. And, you know, things that are, you know
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come out of mosques, for instance, communities that don't necessarily want to integrate people who come here and mean us harm
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and don't want to kind of work and contribute and all that stuff and there has to be a way of yeah
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you know being able to to discuss both i just think we're going to see more and more
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um rioting and fury and reform growing and growing until it you know until it stops being
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completely verboten to say certain things can i just remind people that nigel farage described
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himself as part of a similar phenomenon to the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate
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I watched a lengthy interview with Richard Tice in which he sought to downplay the fact that one
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of their five MPs had been arrested for repeatedly kicking his former girlfriend. The idea that the
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reform movement cares about the safety and dignity of women and that's the reason they speak so much
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about immigration is offensive, laughable for the birds in the words of Will. But I think we would
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take the air out of that movement if it was okay to have real honest conversations about people's
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concerns and fears and also the cultural problems that sometimes come with these men who come from
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ultra conservative societies but we can't you know everyone is petrified and as I say I think
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that that's crept into the policing culture and and then that isn't you know that's even worse
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for communities. Do you think there's a danger that I mean there's been a lot of talk about a
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summer of discontent that and this conversation sort of slightly reflects it where we're in danger
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of talking ourselves into a summer of riots no i don't think so there were recent statistics as
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well in one constituency 68 percent of the people that were arrested for rioting had been reported
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for domestic abuse across the entire country 41 percent of the people who were arrested for
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rioting had been reported for domestic abuse if we care about the safety of women we care about
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the safety of women, but it has to be consistent, not just when a brown person is the perpetrator
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Natasha, those statistics that you've just used there, for example, if there are 100 people protesting
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10 are arrested, and then 4, 4 scumbags, who rightly deserve to be called
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out as scumbags, but 4 out of 100 is not representative for the majority of people
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in many places that we've seen in Epping, which are women and mothers who are coming out
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Well, no, my statistics are based on what Karen S. Casey's been saying, but again
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let's go back to Epping. In Epping, you've got a situation where mothers voluntarily
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went on a peaceful protest, and it was predominantly peaceful were there far-right agitators in there of course there were were
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there also the antifa lot who come in balaclavered up looking for conflict in order to try and start a fight and so they can get their pictures and portray everyone who there as somehow being a far right And the lazy slogans of fascism and Nazism come out
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when actually women in that case were protesting after a girl, albeit I appreciate that the person in the hotel has claimed that they're innocent
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was sexually assaulted. And when you talk about Nigel Farage and Richard Tice
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that's for them to answer. What I say is how can the Labour Party claim to be on the side of women and girls
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when they chose to vote against a national grooming gang inquiry and were embarrassed into doing it by Baron S. Casey
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But I think an important point to make here is that everybody
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when you're in a position of political leadership, and Nigel Farage is, you do have to be responsible for what you say
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And when you accuse the Essex police force of bussing in counter-demonstrators
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and then it's proved that you're talking a load of hogwash, you have to take responsibility for that
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And that's the sort of thing that does, I think, wind people up. And, I mean, if that had been true
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I think people would have been right to be outraged. Ian, what could have been? So, the right to protest is a qualified right
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not an absolute right. The Essex police knew, by allowing that counter-protest near those women
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who were fighting for the safety of women and girls, was likely going to cause some sort of friction
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Did they bust them in, or did they not? Well, we see them being walked in, and the police are walking in alongside them
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and then we see some being put in vans and driven out after the protest. But what's so important to understand here is, again
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it's a qualified right. The police could have said either the counter-protest happens further away from the Epping Hotel
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or that protest happens at a later time to stop conflict. That was a decision by the Chief Council of Essex Police
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Yeah, and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex I interviewed at length on Saturday morning
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and told me exactly what happened on that, and I think I prefer to believe his version of it
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I just want to quickly just come back on something Natasha said, about the fact that we have a different standard for if it's a brown person who commits a sexual offence
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I don't think that's necessarily the case, but I can understand why when people have come over on a boat and they're not paying, you know, they're just in hotels at the tune of the taxpayer and they're not, you know, undocumented and they're committing crimes
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That is different from someone who's who's just already British and, you know, not better or worse
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But you can understand why people are like, OK, now we're funding that
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I'm just going to say a great conversation, very intriguing, actually. but what's wrong with the notion
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and I've floated at the beginning of it actually there should be some system
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of ID cards why can't we have identify who's here by obliging everyone to hold an ID card
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I mean I think there's substantive I agree with you Will by the way I agree with Digital ID, I see it in Estonia
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it works incredibly well, you can slim down the civil service because you're able to do a lot of what you want to do online
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as they do, they barely have a local government civil service because you can do so much online
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So Estonia is a great blueprint towards a digital ID. It's not the British way
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But here's the problem, I think. Two papers, please. I mean, you know, what's happening is we're trying to kind of deal with this
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at the same time as kind of respecting the British way, in your own words
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But actually, we have to kind of shift the conversation. You know, if we're going to deal with the kind of emotive things
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that have been said in the last kind of ten minutes, we've got to try and preserve, you know, what's best about Britain
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which is a certain liberality. And actually, you know, I'm struck at how kind of in the main
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we get along with each other. I don't believe that society is broken
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I'll be surprised if we have a kind of wave of riots this August
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I could be wrong. And, you know, actually the crimes show that crime
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has actually halved in the last 30 years. So, you know, I mean, actually, you know
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it's a pretty good place still. And we talk so as it's kind of corner of kind of, and if we wanted to kind of transform things, I think something that I've just suggested would be a way of actually saying we're going to control our borders, we're going to know who's here, kind of trust us
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Well, I think it goes back to what you were saying, Zoe, about integration, in that if you compare us with most other European countries, maybe not everyone, but most, I actually think we've done a pretty good job on that in the last 30 or 40 years
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I mean, why is it that so many people want to come to this country rather than France
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Not just because they speak English, but because they know what the race relations are like in France