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Pete Hegseth has criticised Europe over an ‘invasion’ of migration, during a speech commemorating D-Day. Henry Riley speaks to former Tory advisor James Price about whether these comments were a step too far for a US official. Whilst acknowledging the comments as ‘bombastic’, Price thinks we can’t ‘clutch our pearls over the message’. Speaking of channel crossing migration, Price condemns the 'sheer number' of people coming over, and asks: 'We stopped the Nazis, why can't we stop this?" Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #henryriley #ukpolitics #hegseth #uspolitics #migration #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
Obviously, in the style of any Trump administration official, it's pretty bombastic
0:04
It's incredibly controversial and provocative, to say the least. But I think that if you are in the American mindset, you've had multiple administrations of both of their main parties for decades now
0:16
trying to get their European allies to take seriously the issues of defence of the continent of Europe in all its guises of security, of resilience
0:26
And increasingly, if you look at the document that came out a few months ago, the National Security Strategy, this broader concern that the Americans have about Europe of losing a level of civilizational confidence through quite dramatic demographic and cultural changes
0:43
I think this is a strategy that is trying to get European allies to start taking the defense of our own continent seriously
0:51
My wife is American and when I go to visit her family in the Midwest, in Indiana, all of Europe feels a very long way away
0:59
And you do wonder why it is that taxpayers in the Midwest or any other American state should feel obliged to send their sons and daughters and huge amounts of their tax dollars to the defence of a very fat and rich and quite lazy continent
1:14
There are still so many American troops here in Europe trying to keep us safe from threats like the Russians and all the rest of it through NATO
1:22
And so I think we've got to see it in that broader context and not just go, oh, clutch our pearls at how controversial and unpleasant the way of delivery of that message may have been
1:31
But on the two main points, I mean, firstly, migration, that is taken seriously now because people bluntly and some of the incumbent governments who've been complacent look at the polls and they look at some of the parties who are hard to line on it doing well
1:46
And I kissed armor, not too much fruition, I have to add, but I've spoken about sort of smashing the gangs when it comes to small boat crossings on defense spending more broadly
1:54
We've seen commitments from the UK, other governments to increase it. I mean, the messaging has worked and sort of European governments are taking this seriously
2:04
already, are they not? I think they're getting there after an awful lot of getting it wrong for
2:09
a long time I mean you look at the polling on issues and immigration has become way ahead of even the cost of living and the economy The number one issue let say certainly in Britain for example and you seeing it again across all lots of European countries
2:24
In fact, the only European country that doesn't have a kind of resurgent populist right
2:29
some might call it far right, hard right, some would just call it common sense
2:33
I won't go into that debate, that doesn't have that kind of party in Europe is Denmark
2:37
because their centre-left government were very, very serious about cracking down on immigration
2:43
from a centre-left perspective, whether it's legal or illegal, talking about the depression of people's wages and things like that
2:49
as well as being brave enough to wade into cultural issues. And it does just get me as to why it is that so many governments
2:56
whether it's Emmanuel Macron's in France, the Labour government here, the various Tory governments that I got the grey hairs for serving in as well
3:03
why they didn't get to the bottom of this issue and it matters so much to people
3:07
It's not beyond the wit of man to design a system that says we will compete for the very best and brightest people around the world
3:13
And we will restrict people coming into this country or any other European country, except for those who have a broad level of cultural compatibility
3:22
Some people would talk about the Huguenots of the 1680s mostly, but they were about as close culturally as you could get
3:29
Protestants fleeing France, coming over the channel to England and integrating there
3:35
It may be, I think, one percent of our whole population. But we've seen much, much bigger levels of that happen in the last few years of people from whether legal or illegal immigration from very different cultures
3:46
And yet politicians act surprised when they don't therefore then try and do more to assimilate and integrate those people into the British way of life, the French way of life, German, American, even you name it
3:57
Why do people then find this a very unpopular and difficult thing to do
4:01
I think it's a very obvious solution. If you could just get to grips with this and recognise that people are not all just completely interchangeable economic units
4:10
but come with their own sets of values and ideas and traditions and laws and things like that
4:15
And that if those things are going to be incompatible with a receiving country, you're going to see some conflict and some tension unless you actively try and make everybody assimilate into the dominant culture
4:26
But, I mean, the example you mentioned of Denmark and Mita Fredrickson Social Democrat Party of course the sister party to the UK Labour Party that is ultimately what this current government and the current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud is basing her immigration plans on isn it So the idea that it a sort of outlier and is being ignored is surely not the
4:43
case. Well it's been an outlier in that it's been doing it for quite a long time and various countries
4:48
are now getting to grips with it. I think the fact that the Labour Party, the modern Labour Party
4:52
full of people who are very pro high levels of immigration, have to come round to this and
4:57
Shabana Mahmood is an honourable person of actually doing this properly. It's probably because the
5:02
Tories, my party, did such a damn bad job on this, and the so-called Boris wave that let so many
5:08
people from broadly incompatible cultures who are probably not going to make the level of economic
5:13
contribution required to pay for the kind of benefits and education and healthcare and things
5:19
like that that they will accrue by being here. But that is, you know, that is something that is now
5:23
coming cheap by child and because of the popularity of let's say reform now Labour are having to do
5:28
this let's not forget of course I think it's right now that reform our polling level with the Labour
5:33
Party in terms of support from members of trade unions because those are people at the coalface
5:38
who realise if you have someone coming in willing to undercut wages that is bad for a small l Labour
5:45
in this country or anywhere else. Sure yeah and that's the JL Partners poll you're referring to
5:49
quite rightly about a week ago, which showed that reform are doing very well within certain trade
5:54
unions. But do we need to step back a bit from this, James, and think that, you know, ultimately
5:59
the sort of visceral reaction we have to people crossing the border in small boats is something
6:03
you know, people feel strongly about, and understandably so. And it plays into this
6:08
sense of fairness. But ultimately, if you take in the first instance, 60% there or thereabouts of
6:13
those asylum claims are granted. I mean, in a lot of cases, these are people fleeing persecution
6:18
which is completely at odds with what the brave men and women from the UK and other allies were doing on D-Day
6:24
which was liberating so that we would have freedoms in this country
6:29
Yeah, I mean, it would be challenging me to point out these people are fleeing France, which is a perfectly safe country in all but a few banlieues around some of the cities
6:36
Not from origin, of course, yeah. Right, right. I think there's a couple of points here, why people get so annoyed about this
6:41
And people get so annoyed about immigration, especially illegal immigration, despite thinking the numbers are much lower than they actually are of course If people really were sat down and showed the level of both legal and illegal immigration that we had in this country then their heads would explode i would urge people if they got a strong drink in front of them to go and actually look at the numbers of people we
7:01
got coming over part of it is because these people are from and i'm just going to say there's broadly
7:05
very different cultures you've got places you know like i think the majority something like 66
7:10
percent of people coming over from afghanistan from iran from syria from iraq from eritrea these
7:15
some countries I've done business work in and they've got just very different cultural ideas
7:20
about what is right and what is wrong you know people that I've employed in some of these
7:24
countries in the past think that it's weird that we wouldn't hire our cousins we'd hire the best
7:29
person for the job instead they would think that was immoral well why wouldn't you hire your cousin
7:32
he's your cousin and so on so I'm not just you know weighing into whether that's a good or a bad
7:36
thing but very different and difficult therefore to start assimilating people in so that's one
7:41
problem. I think another problem of it is just the sheer inability of the state to enforce our
7:47
borders or to get anything done. The fact that we've seen these boats, small little dinghies
7:50
coming over and are unable or unwilling, either because of a capacity issue or legal issues
7:56
surrounding the ECHR and others, to stop this when a time we've had the English Channel has managed
8:01
to stop the Nazis or Napoleon or the Spanish Armada or whatever else it may be. That really
8:06
gets people's goats as well. And then I think there is just the sheer quantum of this from
8:10
people especially who live down in Kent. If I told you that there were now well over twice as many
8:16
people who've come over in small boats since this phenomenon started in 2018, then we have regular
8:21
members of the British Army, then people might start to see that Pete Hagseth has got a point
8:26
In fact, if you add not just the Army, but the RAF and the Navy and everything else as well
8:30
that's about 140,000 people. And yet we've hit about 200,000 people who've come over in small
8:36
boats, the vast majority of whom are young men. And people might start going, well, hang on a
8:40
even if they were all Shakespeare where are you going to house them how are you going to find them
8:44
the right job are you going to you know have enough provision of health care for them they're
8:48
going to bring over all their families and their dependents and so on and so forth and the fact is
8:52
the vast majority of these people are not Shakespeare unfortunately I think there's a lot
8:56
of reasons why people are very angry about this and a lot of reasons why if it's going to continue
9:00
for the next few years it's going to be as much of a milestone around the next the Labour Party as it
9:05
was the Tories and who are the beneficiaries of that going to be I suspect it'll be Nigel Farage and reformed
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