'The Israeli government is racist, that doesn't mean Zionism is' | James O'Brien - The Whole Show

It is three minutes after ten and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC where we will begin our week together in extraordinarily difficult territory

At least I think it is. I think it's extraordinarily difficult for a whole bunch of reasons, but chiefly because the word Zionist itself is so hard to pin down

So when the Greens vote to declare that Zionism is racism, an awful lot of people are going to have extraordinarily strong opinions while disagreeing with each other, whether they realize it or not, on what the words actually mean

For the avoidance of doubt, I think this is a grim moment. I mean, a truly grim moment

And I'm going to explain why. But before I do that, I also want you to know that I absolutely subscribe to the school of academic and human rights thought that describes events in Gaza since the horrors and atrocities of October the 7th as genocide

I'm under no illusions about that. My reading is wide and my sources are august

But I still think that what the Greens have done is bad

And I can hold both of those thoughts at the same time. And I'd go a little bit further and I'd say that most decent people should be able to hold both of those thoughts at the same time

But I fully acknowledge that the more skin, the more familial skin or historical skin that you have in the fight, the harder it is to achieve that sort of moral objectivity, that sort of overview

I don't know whether it's relevant or not but my criticisms of the far right government in Israel

have often led to me being described as anti-Semitic by people who are keen to shut down any critique

or any criticism whatsoever of a regime that welcomes Stephen Yaxley-Lennon into the country

and attacks elected British politicians while somehow claiming to be our ally

but that's about a government, that's about a regime That's not about a country, a nation

I think I'm going to begin by reading you something. I have a friend who has guided me

I have quite a lot of friends who contact me privately about this issue

because I've spoken to them in the past about needing a little bit of help

needing a little bit of historical context. And I just want to read you something that I think frames much of where I come from

and then we will talk about what the Greens have done. This is a family story of a Holocaust survivor

deciding in 1959 to move from Poland to Israel. And the granddaughter of this family looks at the pictures

of the pre-move history when they moved from Poland and wonders why they did it

And I'm going to read you what she says. So she would ask. It was really difficult when they moved

They had a lovely life in Poland, and when they got to Israel, they were living with parents and brother in a shipping container

and then they moved to a very modest one-bedroom flat in which all four of them would live

and from which her grandparents would run a dental clinic. I often asked him why

Why did they choose to leave their picturesque life in Poland for one that was so hard, so different, and visibly uncomfortable

My dad always replied, this is my friend writing, my dad always replied by saying that my grandfather was a Zionist

that he wanted to allow my father and my uncle to grow up and raise their children

in a country where they would never have to fear persecution for being Jewish

simply because it was a Jewish state. He was a Holocaust survivor, the only one of a family of ten siblings

and completely non-religious, a secular Jew. He believed in peace and coexistence

and always voted for parties that led with these principles. The subscription to support for the modern state of Israel

is, I think, best expressed here. I never lost sight of the importance of having a Jewish state

for Jewish people who want to predominantly live according to the Jewish calendar

with its many holidays and different working week structure, and crucially for those who believe that it is the only place

where they can truly feel free and safe, like my grandfather did

And the rest of my family still does. My friend's family is still based in Israel

although she has chosen not to live there, partly for very modern political reasons

And I recognize that this ysis, in a sense, bestows an almost unique status on Jewish people in this world, on this planet

And I also recognize that my support for that status, my support for that unique status is built upon historical persecution of Jewish people

the belief that there is something about the Jewish experience that is so allied with constant persecution

pretty much from the New Testament onwards, that the need for a safe state, a Jewish state

is, for me at least, crystal clear. And I'm going to remind you once again

it is also crystal clear to me that the leaders of the modern Jewish state at this point in their history

are committing genocide, have committed genocide in Gaza. I think it's really important

I know that's going to upset people. It's going to leave me, and this is not an important part of the discussion

by any stretch of the imagination, under attack from people who support the Greens motion

and under attack from people who support the idea that Israel can do whatever it wants

to uphold Benjamin Netanyahu's definition of self-defense. And that's fine. That's what I do for a living

I think out loud on the radio. I think deeply. I get some things wrong. And with your help, I get most things right

So there it is. Of course, people who reach immediately for the word supremacy to describe that Jewish state are not necessarily being willfully stupid, but they are being a little bit myopic

Because you can have a Jewish state in the way that I have just described, where other people from different faiths can live freely and equally

Now, it's my belief, my conviction indeed, that that is not what is currently happening

But it is an achievable dream, as is the two-state solution. And once again, the current regime in Israel appears dedicated, particularly with recent events with planning applications to build in the occupied territories

in more illegal settlements that would cut such a swathe through the West Bank that it would be

almost impossible to reverse and the dream of a Palestinian state would perhaps disappear over the horizon for generations I can sustain all of these thoughts in my head at the same time And I don think that that is a particularly rare or difficult position to hold

But I do understand that there is, I don't know, maybe a vulnerability to this position

because in an ideal world, religion wouldn't carry this sort of heft, but it does

I'm always struck, as I was when I read you that note from my friend, by the phrase secular Jew, because it doesn't matter

It didn't matter to the Nazis whether you'd ever been to a synagogue in your life

If a matrilineal link could be established, then your blood was tainted in their minds and your death warrant was secured, was guaranteed already

You know, this is, I don't think this is emotive language. This is historically accurate language

The Zionist movement preceded the Holocaust. In many ways, I could argue, and I think it can be argued successfully, that the Holocaust kind of justified the Zionist movement

The idea that centuries, millennia of persecution had created a necessity for a safe state was proved in the most hideous and irrefutable way by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis

but it still bestows a unique status on Jewish people. The reason why you shouldn't use the word supremacist

unless you're being deliberately provocative is because the modern regime, the current regime

the far-right government in Israel is not the only possible iteration or incarnation of a Jewish state

This, for example, is a Christian country. We abide by Christian festivals

We live according to laws derived from the Christian tradition. We have, do we get Good Friday off? I can never remember

But whether we go to church or not, we call for God to save our king

This is a Christian country where Christians are always going to be safe

Now, I grant you, there have been little windows in our island history

where if you were the wrong kind of Christian, you could end up being burnt alive. But I would like to think that the centuries that have passed since then have established a sort of a consensus, a Christian consensus

I know if you're currently listening to this program in Northern Ireland, I'm sounding ridiculously out of touch and naive

But the point stands that this is formally and informally a Christian country where Jewish people are free to live and worship and work and observe their own traditions and their own festivals as are Muslim people, as are Hindus

Hey, don't forget, you know, none of these victories are ever permanent. You've heard Nick Timothy, a prominent conservative

calling for Muslims to be banned from praying in public. These victories are always fragile and usually temporary

But in a Christian country, it's perfectly possible to feel free to be any number of other religions

and it will not affect how you are treated in almost all environments

And that is why you can't conjure up either what you believe to be the modern reality of Israel

or a theoretical supremacist state to say that the Zionist movement is racist

any more than it is racist or Islamophobic or anti-Semitic to call the United Kingdom a Christian country

I liked it when King Charles, back in the day, sought to describe himself as the defender of all the faiths

I mean, one of the ultimate ironies of giving religion so much heft in a modern society

is that the reason why I think our coins, I don't really have coins in my pocket anymore

But I think our coins still carry the fit death title that was bestowed upon Henry VIII by the Pope for his defense of the faith

He is the defender of the faith. And, of course, you know, kingly vanity being what it is, we have gone to the title even after we'd left the Catholic Church

even after Henry VIII's love life precipitated an entire country, moving away from the embrace of Rome and setting up its own outfit instead

Again, it is daft to put this much heft on religion, but humans do. Humans do. And that, I think, is why the green motion strikes me as both dangerous and deluded. But I want to know what you think. 038456060973

And, you know, again, even if you have evidence of secular Arabs in Palestine being persecuted

and it's pretty hard to argue that they're not, it doesn't make Zionism racist

I think you can argue very persuasively that the current government of Israel is racist

It certainly contains men. Well, in fact, I just think that's a given. I mean, to have a look at the track records of Itamar Ben-Gavir

and Smotrich and others. I mean, the minister for diaspora, the one that rolls out the red carpet for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon

I don't think it's... And this is difficult, of course, for many people who like to throw the anti-Semitism accusation around

without really caring whether it's accurate or not. It's very difficult for them to accept

The current Israeli government is almost certainly racist and is most definitely far-right

That doesn't mean that Zionism is. Does it? that doesn't mean that Zionism is

The other thing that troubled me was the way in which the vote was conducted

which I think involved entryism on a scale that we haven't seen

since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party and then led it

The argument today is, I mean, people are going to use the word ethno-nationalism as well

But again, it's perfectly possible to have a Jewish state where everybody is equal, but where Jews are demonstrably free

The movement of traffic was very much in that direction until relatively recently

But of course, as I keep saying, the modern regime has blown all that up, all of that up

So for the avoidance of doubt, Zionism is a belief that Jewish people have a right to a Jewish state where they can be free and unpersecuted

There's absolutely nothing in the historical establishment of that belief or in my understanding of it that necessitates either apartheid or the persecution of people who are not Jewish

If those things have happened, it is a consequence of politicians, not the principle of Zionism

So to call Zionism racist is I think to make both a category error and quite possibly as well to give ammunition to people who accuse everybody who condemns genocide or ethnic cleansing or the far right nature of the current Israeli government and anybody who points out the horrors of what Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies continue to do the people who are very keen to label them or indeed us

as anti-Semitic, probably get some ammunition out of this conversation, probably get some

ammunition out of this decision by the Greens. And that's a shame, because the real victims

here, as always, are the Palestinians, the real victims of the ongoing horror, the victims

of October the 7th were Israeli, they were Jews, the victims of what has happened since, are Palestinians

And the victims, the historical victims, will actually include everybody, even people who have been brainwashed into believing

that Benjamin Netanyahu is on their side because he has rendered Israel less safe, less secure

and a far less accurate reflection of what the original Zionist ambition was

So again, it's not an ethno-state. I know people love these words, and forgive me, but if you're using these words

I think you probably don't know what they mean, or you haven't properly examined it

because this is a Christian country, and yet no one would describe this as a religious state

or a fundamentalist society. Here's a Christian country where everybody can worship as they please

Here's a Jewish country where everybody can worship as they please. Here's a Christian country where everybody can be confident that they're not going to be persecuted

for their religious beliefs or their family lineage, whether you want to call it his ethnicity or a family tree

Here's a Jewish state where everybody can be confident that they're not going to be persecuted for their lineage or their ethnicity

They're both entirely achievable goals. Just because in the minds of many of us

the second one hasn't been achieved does not mean that the belief that it can be, should be, and will be

is by any stretch of the imagination racist. I really think it's that simple

and at risk of at risk of of inflaming passions I honestly think

that it's impossible to think deeply and historically about this without concluding

that that's the mistake everybody made well not everybody because it was

it was only narrowly passed and certainly according to one report that I've seen

about 400 people voted for the amendment that would have protected Jewish Greens from being persona non grata as a consequence of attending synagogues that subscribe to the Zionist dream

that amendment was defeated by fewer votes than people who voted online and then logged off immediately after that single amendment had been passed

So the belief in something that could be equitable cannot be racist

Even if the current incarnation of it is not equitable, the belief in it can't be racist

It simply can't be racist, can it? 03456060973. Now, there are lots of other questions you can ask

Why does it have to be where it is now? But that doesn't actually undermine the racism argument

You can make a geographical or historical case against it having been cited where it was

Zionism wants it to be where it was with a biblical rationale, but it doesn't become racist

At no point does Zionism have to be racist. People who march under the banner of Zionism may have become racist

They may have done racist things. I believe that they have for the avoidance of doubt, but you don't get to reverse engineer the meaning of the word Zionism to turn it into a synonym for racism

I hope I've covered most of the bases. I'm perfectly happy to take fire from all sides, but I just want to be absolutely clear on where I'm coming from

And now I am. So I'll shut up for a while and open up the phone lines. The number you need to contribute is 0345 6060 973. It's 1022

James O'Brien on LBC. It is 25 minutes after 10 and equating Zionism with racism is wrong

Discuss. 03456060973. Let's start in Manchester. Mark is there. Mark, what would you like to say

Hi, good morning, James. I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller. Welcome. So, a bit nervous

It's only me. Yeah, okay, I am Jewish, ironically. I live around the corner from the Heaton Park Synagogue, so it's quite poignant, that point

I don't want to weigh in on my views about politics in Israel because I don't believe that is relevant

but it's telling that one of the amendments surrounding Jewish members or attending a synagogue

there isn't a synagogue in the country that isn't Zionist. And when I say that, the liturgy of the prayer book is a 2,000-year-old book

has Zionism written all over it, or at least a Jewish commonwealth in the land of Israel

And my issue is that the Greens have basically bucketed or put Jews into good Jews and bad Jews

and on the numbers, they are basically saying a very, very small number of Jews are in the good bucket and the rest are bad

and that is a very, very bad look for the Green Party. I mean, the amendment would

and I mean, you know more about this than I do. I don't have the scholarship, but it seemed to me to be, at the very least

disingenuous to say venues that identify as Zionist. That is what it is being directed at

because, as you say, the religious texts kind of mean that every synagogue would be definable

or define a bull as Zionist. So that means that members of the Green Party

who go to your synagogue, or the synagogue around the corner from you that was the victim of a terror attack so recently

could be reported to the party for racism. Yes, I mean, the prank seems to be ahead

by saying that this is not a disciplinary discussion, in which case, then what's the point of it

It's just a virtue of seeing. So they're trying to have it both. they're trying to have the cake and eat it by adopting this resolution

and say, well, we're not going to do anything about it. So, again, it further leads to the fact that this was just virtue signaling

to a certain sector of the population or to green-aligned voters. Well, I don't even know that it's great

It doesn't have an awful lot to do with solar panels and global warming, does it? The decision

decision. So it's, I mean, I don't like the phrase virtue signaling, but you've used it

so it stands. And I mean, it seems to me to be directed very much at the kind of people who

still think that Jeremy Corbyn was more sinned against than sinning. And of course, Keir Starmer

presided over a sort of successful removal of them from the party. Are you sure you can do this

without referencing modern politics I respect your attempt to try and I not going to force you to abandon that position but I think if I were to be generous

and I'm not necessarily minded to be, that some of the people who don't deserve to be categorised

as we've just categorised them, but who also voted against this because of their burning rage

and continuing rage about what is going on and has gone on in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank

they think they're just sort of casting a vote of condemnation of the modern state of Israel

What I would say, and I did start by saying I didn't really want to weigh into

Israeli politics, but I do not expect our UK-based elected politicians speak like a Likudist member

No. But there is the Israeli Labour Party that I would say is pretty middle of the road

in terms of when it comes to two-state solution and the way

the war in Gaza has been executed. Without going down like words for example, without using

the word genocide. I dispute, I would not call that genocide. And that's a debate

that is ongoing and we will be on different sides of that debate

But it's perfectly possible to hold. This is UK politics, not Israeli

politics and I'm not an Israeli citizen. I don't vote in the elections

I vote in local elections in the UK. And therefore, I'm not sure

I don't think my voice should be any less than anybody else in the streets in the UK

And therefore, as a Jew, that is how I see this resolution at the Green Party

What it says to me as a Jew. Yes, and I thank you for that. And of course, anybody else listening

is welcome to find fault with anything that you've said. and the number you need to do so is 03456060973

Today is not a day for a debate about whether or not the term genocide is being accurately used

Mark will have the sources and principles to which he can appeal

and I would repeat that a plurality of Holocaust scholars and all manner of human rights organisations

including ones in Israel, have concluded that the word is accurately applied

Technically, you wait for the final judgment from the highest court of the United Nations

but of course they've already taken steps in that direction themselves. Here's part of the problem in terms of domestic UK politics

as Mark alludes to. There are 230,000 registered members of the Green Party

230,000. Okay? It's a big party. It's supposed to be member-led. How many do you think voted on the Zionism is racism motion

all entitled to. They're not all going to be in the hall, but I think there was an online vote

I'm pretty sure there was an online option here. So 230,000. So he uses the word virtue signal

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It's a phrase I think has been co-opted to describe people doing good

by people who want to do bad. But on this occasion, maybe it's accurate

I'm not even going to tell you until after the news. 230,000 members of the Green Party

How many do you think voted on the Zionism is racism motion? 0345 6060 973

Not to answer that question, but to answer the broader questions that we are discussing

It's 10.31. Dominic Ellis has your headlines. James O'Brien on LBC. It is 1,835 out of 230,000 members of the Green Party who voted on the Zionism is racism motion

which is why I will keep mentioning echoes of the mess that much of the Labour Party ended up in during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership

But of course, the massive majority of people who may even have voted Labour during during that era

as I did, would either be unaware of or unconcerned by that tiny minority and what they represented

for good or for ill. The conversation we're having is about the Green Party voting to declare that

Zionism is racism and the disastrous connotations of that decision. And I say this, and I will keep

making this point because I think it's important. I say this as someone who believes that genocide

is being committed in Gaza and, to go further, that ethnic cleansing is currently underway

with full government support in the West Bank. So here's a thought after the first half of this

hour, that the point being missed, either willfully or naively, is that you can't equate Zionism

with Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government. So Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government, which can find homes for terrorists and racists, is racist

But that doesn't mean that Zionism is. And I think, I don't know, but I suspect a lot

of people who voted in favor of this motion have fallen into the trap of believing that the two

things are interchangeable. Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government is Zionism, the embodiment of Zionism, as opposed to the current embodiment of Zionism. So condemn the far-right government

condemn the genocide. Don't condemn what I am going to call the dream. And the dream of a Jewish

state, I would suggest, is detoxified, if it needs to be, by the existence of plenty

other states that are formally and informally defined by the majority religion

But the mark of a liberal democracy is freedom of worship. So I don't believe that in the modern state of Israel, being born an Arab means you will

have all of the same rights and freedoms that being born a Jew would bestow

But it could. and therefore it's wrong to describe Zionism as racism

Some people might find this difficult to accept, but I don't think there are many, currently

I don't think there are many holes in this position. And I would add one more thing, just for context

is that many of the people queuing up to condemn the Greens today

both prominent people and non-prominent people, have queued up to condemn me in the last couple of years

Up to and including calling for me to be taken off air. So, you know, I do know what a false accusation of anti-Semitism looks like. I do know exactly how dangerous it is to conflate criticism of Israel, criticism of the current regime with anti-Semitism

I do believe, but Benjamin Netanyahu does it all the time. And many people in this country, including some of the organizations and individuals attacking the Greens today

have helped Benjamin Netanyahu conflate Judaism with Israel, have helped create the lie that by condemning Netanyahu's government, by condemning genocide, you are somehow being anti-Semitic

It's yet another example where an issue is not binary. But the meaning of a word is kind of, or at least the meaning of this word, a belief in this state, does not mean that it has to be, that the state has to be in the state that it currently is

10.39 is the time. Joe's in Hove. Joe, what would you like to say

Hi, James. I'm Joe. I'm a Jewish Green. I'm an anti-Zionist and I'm the coordinator for our entire constituency

And I am really, really worried and upset by the motion that passed yesterday

I really fear for the consequences of that motion, both for our chances of giving Hov and Port Slade really good green representation

where we can put the cost of living and climate change to the top of the agenda and also in our ability to challenge this government on its approach to selling arms to Israel

I think we've expended a lot of our political capital and I'm really concerned that, you know, we've had a lot of success in the Green Party over the last year

We made Andy Burnham Prime Minister and Ed Miliband Foreign Secretary. I would dispute that, but this is your call, so I'll let that stand

Well, you know, the successes we've had over the last year... I think Keir Starmer made it

I think Keir Starmer made Andy Burnham Prime Minister, mate. Well, this time last year, all eyes were on West Streeting

And as soon as the Labour Party started losing to the Green Party, they thought, we need to get someone who's going to speak to the left of this country into power

It's a view. But it's not what we're here to discuss. Yeah, all right

But what I would say on that is that how many lives have been saved in Gaza

because of the foreign policy changes that we've seen with this new prime minister

And I would attribute a lot of that to the success of the Green Party, but I think we've expended a lot of our political capital yesterday

So two questions then. First of all, for my benefit, as much as anybody else's

just a quick definition of what you mean when you describe yourself as anti-Zionist

and then a word, if you would, on why you feel that this is such a misstep

Well, I'll do two in one, if you like. I think Zionism means different things to different people

To me, it's dangerous because it says that I belong in Israel and I don't belong here in home

But to my grandparents, it's about a safe place that means when the going gets tough, that's where you will be safe

And I think that while we're debating the semantics of Zionism and we're calling into question faith and identity

we're actually not talking about the genocide that's going on in Gaza and the children that are being killed

um well listen this is a pretty hefty claim and i dispute it in the context of the program that

you've rung into we've made repeated mention of the genocide that's going on in gaza and the

children that have been killed but why have you chosen to reject your grandparents

generation definition of the word because i i don't know if you follow yeah wallack who's a

soas i think a great scholar in this area and i think it was him writing at the weekend about the

role that the diaspora plays in Zionism and Zionism was always about

more than coming to Israel it was a kind of totem for members

of the Jewish diaspora as well and I hope we're not getting bogged down in hair splitting exercises

but why have you chosen not to subscribe to your grandparents generations understanding

of what Zionism is well I think I come from you sound to me sorry just let me get it

you sound to me very anti Likud or very anti the current regime

or even very anti the direction that Israel has taken since, I don't know, the assassination

of Yitzhak Rabin. I don't know what you mean by anti-Zionist except

anti what Israel is today. I don't believe that me as a Jew, I believe

that I as a Jewish person have to belong in Israel. I have never

associated... But should Israel exist? I think that is a huge question

but that to me is the question that's what Zionism means to me and I'm not Jewish

well, you know, look I don't believe that Israel should be existing on the

grounds of a Jewish state, I don't believe in a state that is based on

a religion, I think, you know even if there was a multiracial country

and I think we do a really good job of having a multicultural society. But it's still a Christian country

But we don't... We might be a Christian country, but we have less Christians than we do

We have less and less religion than we do now non-believers. We do, but

I guess I'm describing your grandparents' dream. And our citizenship is not based

on our Christian identity. I am not a citizen of this country. But Zionism

doesn't necessitate that either. I mean, maybe this sounds too nuanced to people

Maybe it sounds too luxurious to people listening to this, but I do think the more I talk about it, that we are conflating criticism of the modern state of Israel with criticism of Zionism

And they are two, for me at least, they're two profoundly different things. Well, I think the deeper and deeper you go into debating what Zionism does or doesn't mean, you go back thousands of years worth of history

and actually what we need to be talking about right now is why our government

are still allowing weapons sales to Israel and why there is that

ongoing genocide and why Gaza has been absolutely flattened and why we've

all been able to see it down our phones and not feel in any way

empowered to stop that from happening The Google Earth images that I think you might be

referring to are absolutely apocalyptic when they juxtapose what was there before October the 7th

with what is there now in simple aerial photography, it is almost unbelievable

And I say almost because it has happened. And as Joe points out so powerfully

it's happened on our watch and elements of it continue to happen

So if I've understood you correctly, you kind of agree with the motion

but you just think it is, A, perhaps giving too much sucker

to the enemies of the Green Party and indeed perhaps to genuine anti-Semites

and B, the party should be frying different fish at the moment

I think that would be one point. I think, you know, debating the semantics of Zionism

I think, is a distraction at this point. I think you never bring anyone with you by calling people racist

You only divide. But I think also, you know, I have a responsibility as an organiser

to protect the rights of my Jewish members, that they can attend a synagogue or a Jewish organisation

because most Jewish organisations tend to be linked to or of Zionist ideology

And actually, I want to make sure that my members have that reassurance

And at the moment, they don't. And at the moment, they don't because that amendment passed

That amendment failed, the Third Amendment. And I think what I would say there is we had a lack of leadership from Zach Polanski and Caroline Lucas

and the five Green MPs that we have, who did a really uncoordinated amount of political organising

I think it was 11 o'clock the night before the motion, Sean Berry came out saying

vote against Zionism as racism. This motion has been coming for six months

And in the end, it passed by, as you said, 1,000 votes, which is 0.004% of our membership

That's not entryism on a massive scale, like you were talking about in the court. No, I never said it was on a massive scale

No, no, no. That a vocal minority that is dictating the majority view And I think that most of my members are deeply deeply disappointed in this in this motion will people leave will some of them

leave the party well i think i am considering my position today and i'm looking to zach polanski

for leadership on this to come out and say i am going to change the way we develop policy in this

party because this this this conference that we had was behind a paywall so even to vote online

you had to have paid up to be at the conference, which stops it from being party democracy and starts it being based on those who have the time and those who have the money to be able to pay to vote

And so what I would say is that we've gone from 60,000 members to 230,000 members

We have had unproliferated growth in the last year. And it is now time for Zach Polanski to take the lead in changing our party so that we are updated to be a democratic party for the 21st century

When are you going to decide what you're going to do? If you don't mind me asking, you don't have to tell me

Well, I've emailed Zach Polanski. I've emailed our deputy leader, Rachel, and I've messaged Sian as well

I will wait to see what they say by the end of the day. Thank you, Joe. And take care

It is 1048, an anti-Zionist Jewish Green, dismayed by the decision by the Green Party to equate Zionism with racism

And I suspect he speaks for many of his members, many of the people that he represents as the organizer of the group that he described

I'm currently leaning quite heavily towards the problem here being a conflation of Zionism with Likudism

But, of course, there's plenty of room to critique that conclusion as well

It is 10.49. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. I think I'll do the Burnham Optimism Barometer in the next hour, with your permission, if that's all right

But rest assured, it is on the way. James O'Brien on LBC

The decision by the Green Party, or by a vanishingly small number of Green Party members

many of whom had paid to vote online, and as far as I can tell, were interested only in voting on this issue

passed a motion that conflates or declares Zionism to be racism. And then I think even more troublingly for many Jewish Greens, and others as well, myself included

They also voted down an amendment that would have protected Jewish Greens from being open to reporting to the party for racism if they were to attend, for example, a synagogue

most of my Jewish friends that I was in touch with yesterday

only about half a dozen people five of them I think were explaining or would certainly have the view

that it would be very difficult to prove that a synagogue was not Zionist

simply by dint of the mode of worship and the words of worship

so you know as an earlier caller said it's all very well saying that we're not going to report you for racism

this motion means that they could. Ash is an amateur. Ash, what would you like to say

Hi, James. So I just actually was saying to your producer that you need to try and get some balance

and maybe get some facts on the ground. Fill your boots. Right, so I think you question the definition of Zionism

as I understand it, and you're saying I think that Zionism means different things

to different people. Well, I've read the motion. I know that they've used

I've also explained that the word ethno-nationalist appears in the motion and the conversation

but that's something that's just been put there by the Greens. Most people who call themselves Zionists

would not call themselves ethno-nationalists. Well, okay, so here's the thing. Here's the rub

The motion defines Zionism, and then it says this has led directly

and I think you've already said yourself, to a genocide in Israel

I haven't said that. I haven't said that it's led directly. I said there has been and there is a genocide in Gaza

Listen, this is going to sound a bit snarky, but have you been listening? I have, although to be honest with you

I'm on the phone having to listen and hang on the line at the same time

I can't have a radio. All right, well, tell me where you stand

and why you've rung in, if that's okay. So I'm a member of the Green Party

I took part in the conference. and I voted for the motion. I joined the Green Party specifically

because of all the mainstream parties, it was only Zach Polanski who called out the genocide

And by the way, I'm not just a single person. There are hundreds and thousands who joined the Green Party

exactly for that reason. So there was actually a political landscape where the Green Party were the only ones

who were calling out the genocide. I voted for this motion on the definition that's given in the paper

and I also know that all of the cabinet in Israel the Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ben Gavir, Smotjes, all are Zionists

so I'm just saying to you the motivation for Israel today is the ideology of Zionism

no you see this is the problem which is why they had to put the word ethno-nationalist in the motion

because then it automatically means something else. So ethno-nationalist as a synonym for racist

James, can I just say... No, I just need to respond to what you've already said

No, OK, carry on. Zionism is founded on the basic principle that there should be a Jewish state, not anywhere

but actually in the land... We have said all this a lot. So if Zionism mandates creating Israel on the land currently and previously lived on by Palestinians, what does that say

Well, it says exactly what you've just said. So that means that the Jewish folks can have a right of land that belongs to Palestinians

No, because Zionism doesn't necessarily entail either expulsion or persecution, or indeed apartheid

Which is why you had to put... I'm going to have to let me speak now, if that's all right

Sorry, James. No, you're not. Okay. It's majority Jewish is part of the definition

Yes. So that's why you had to put ethno-nationalist in the motion

But if you're going to have majority Jewish... So it's a bit like saying, I'm going to have to speak now, Ash

It's a bit like saying Zionism is racism. Shall we vote to agree that Zionism is racism

As soon as you put ethno-nationalist in the motion, it becomes a nonsense. It becomes utterly meaningless

So this is the question I'd like you to answer. What do you say today to Zionists who are not ethno-nationalists because you've called them racists

Well, that is not possible because Zionism is founded on having a majority Jewish state

But they are not ethno That arithmetic So what do you say to them What do you say to the self Zionists who reject ethno and reject Benjamin Netanyahu regime

Would you just tell them why you think or why you know that they're racist? That's all

Because they want to dominate by being a majority on a land belonging to Palestinians

No, they don't. They do. That's the definition, James. And listen, one thing I would say, James

This is obviously a very important topic, very important matter. I genuinely wish that lay people like me were not allowed to have such a voice on your programme

But you'd invite scholars. There are many, many scholars in the United Kingdom who actually have taken the position I have

I've been looking and learning from there. I hold you in much higher esteem than you hold yourself, Ash, because this is a radio phone-in show

And please pass on to your scholar friends the number, which is 0345 6060 973, because this is nothing if not democratic and not in a million years

A conversation where your thoughts are awarded higher weight, according to I don't even know, according to what your religious status

It is coming up to 11 o'clock. You are listening to James O'Brien

and thank you for that. I thought that went quite well. I'm just going to read out one message

because I resisted the urge to read it out while we were on air

but I think it is at least something we can all agree with. That was a brilliant 20-minute introduction on Zionism

I concur 100% writes Malcolm or as Trump would say 900%. I'll have to listen again on catch-up though

At several points my O-level religious studies qualifications quietly packed its bags and left the room

And in a way, I suppose that's why I'd rather talk to you, Ash, than your scholars

James O'Brien on LBC. We've got the Burnham Optimism Barometer on the horizon this hour

Memory serves, I think the last seven weeks, the current Prime Minister has scored nine out of ten

on the answer to the question of how optimistic you are about his premiership

I mean, it can't be sustained. I wouldn't say the only way is down. to paraphrase the great sophologist Yaz

and indeed the plastic population but I mean it could go to 10

it can't go higher than 10 this isn't spinal tap but surely it's going to have to start coming down soon

albeit that our sample is not necessarily scientific four minutes after 11 is the time

and the question I could turn you next to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood

and her description of her colleagues as being too willing to pull the immigration lever

Quality of calls to this programme recently has been so high that it occasionally reinvigorates me

And what I mean by that is sometimes I listen to other phonemes

perish the thought in passing or in the background or I'll get into a car and they haven't changed at all since the 1980s

I don't believe that people can't afford a toothbrush or immigration is awful. Do you see what I mean

And it puts me off certain topics. And then I reflect upon the calibre of contribution that we are lucky enough to have on this programme

And I think, no, we can actually have a conversation about the same subject matter that is profoundly different from the sort of knee jerk tabloid provocations that usually typify the conversation

If you ever catch me having a phone in predicated on the question of how would you stop the boats, then I want you to take me out and shoot me

All right. That is an absolute rule. How would you stop the boats? Oh, I'd let them sink, John. That's absolutely fine. And you can form an orderly queue to do it

I'm looking at something Shibana Mahmood has done I read a brilliant ysis of Shibana Mahmood's

motivation recently and it was heartbreaking in a way because she is trying to appease

people who I consider to be unappeasable so I think the way to understand

Shibana Mahmood's attitude to immigration and we had a particularly interesting conversation

last week about Suela Braverman and her ludicrous dismissal of the idea that because she's brown she can't be

racist. I mean she clearly is with her pathetic and dangerous attempt to redefine Englishness or

even to define Englishness in a way that would somehow mean the king of England wasn't English

And Shabana Mahmood is coming from a very different place but she sometimes appears to be in danger of ending up at the same destination. Shabana Mahmood is alive to racism and thinks

that you can reduce it by addressing some of the issues that are currently fed upon by racist figures

be they politicians or be they pundits. So in a way, what Shabana Mahmood seems to be saying

to the British public is, we're going to implement these policies. Otherwise, a far-right party might get in

and implement these policies. Does that work for you? We're going to implement these policies

because if we don't, then a far right party might get in and implement these policies

So she's essentially doing the things. And this is why I worry that it's a fool's errand

I don't think it matters what the numbers are. I think people are either willfully ignoring them or moving very quickly to

yeah, well, when I said that immigration was too high, I didn't mean that I wanted immigration to come down

I wanted to be able to deport that bloke over the road in a turban. That, I think, is where politics is going now

And Siobhan Mahmood is not consciously part of that process, But I worry that she adds to it, perhaps, by seeking to appease the unappeasable

So that's just sort of a start for 10. I used to really balk at the phrase train our own

And I want to tell you why. I used to balk at the phrase train our own because of all the people who are currently doing jobs

often essential jobs, who would not technically qualify as being our own. All of the people that

came here from somewhere else to work as doctors or as nurses, all of the people who came here to

work as welders or as bricklayers. And when you talk about the necessity of training our own

I kind of thought, and I still do, that that sends a really rancid message to them. You're only here

under sufferance. You're only here because we couldn't find a bloke who

we couldn't find a white bloke to do the job that you're doing. And then, of course, as we've written us now, I think beyond any challenge, it moves beyond recent arrivals

into everybody who's not white. I mean, anybody who doesn't think that what Suella Bravman meant

when she tried to redefine English was white, needs their head examining even more than she does

So, you know, all of the conversation about immigration or 99 percent of it is bogus and racist because immediately that the numbers start coming down, they start complaining about black faces on television

What's that got to do with immigration figures? They start complaining about too many black faces in Birmingham which has been a multicultural city since long before I was born So what that got to do with modern or recent immigration absolutely nothing and and I still feel that way I still feel that if you a second or third generation

person of color an English person or British person whichever you prefer in this country

I still feel that there's a nasty message being sent to you when they start talking about the

necessity to train our own, except for the fact that you are our own. This is my big discovery of

the morning. And in a way, you're letting the story be told by the racists when, like me

you bulk at the phrase. So does it matter whether you arrived here 10 years ago or 10 generations

ago or 10 days ago? If you are a person of color working in a skilled area, you are our own

I'm not explaining myself very well. Shabana Mahmood has accused her own colleagues

of being too quick to pull the immigration lever and rely on foreign workers to plug skills gaps

So what I'm trying to articulate is the idea that just because I worry

that when people talk about training our own, they end up sort of casting nasty glances

at people who aren't white, I don't know that we should let them set the agenda

because what Shibana Mahmood is saying is that what her colleagues should be doing

rather than saying we need foreign workers to plug the skills gaps

we should be working harder to get people who are already here

regardless perhaps of where they were born, but people who were already here

to a place where they can do the jobs themselves. This is what she told the Rest is Politics podcast

Since I've been in the home office, the sheer number of requests I get

from colleagues across government, from other departments, can I have 10 visas over here for welders or something I'm like you're telling me that we

can't find 10 welders in Britain it's become a lever that is very easy to pull and you know from

their side of the equation they'd be thinking we've got to plug a gap really quickly and this

is the best way to do it really quickly to which I would say you've got to be able to do a bit more

long-term planning for your workforce in your own country now I think this is really interesting

because I think she's absolutely crackers. If I need 10 welders tomorrow

and I can't find them from within the current workforce, then where am I supposed to get them from tomorrow

So you can simultaneously say we should have better long-term planning and you can even point out

that we might undermine long-term planning or we might take away the need for long-term planning

by bringing in people from overseas to plug gaps that we cannot plug domestically

but what's going to happen in the meantime to the bloke that needs 10, or the lady that needs 10 welders tomorrow

10 welders tomorrow? I genuinely don't know. But what I do know is that there is a question I can ask you

The other thing that bothers me about it is foreign workers are being brought in

because they're cheaper and their conditions will be worse, right? So even the Home Secretary, who is currently presiding over a genuine collapse in net migration figures, the number of people arriving for work is almost halved

Even the Home Secretary presiding over that process is still using the tropes that we use to get that process started

So even though migration, net migration has halved, the number of people coming here for work specifically has halved

Shabana Mahmood herself is still saying, well, we should be training our own and also, oh, they're only getting hired because they're cheaper

So which is it? Have we got a shortage of welders or have we got a shortage of cheap? Do you see what I mean about this all sounding a little bit crackers

But the question I want to ask you is actually much simpler than all of that. That's just a bit of context, a bit of background

The question I want to ask you is this. How hard is it to find skilled workers in this country at the moment

And this is a conversation about immigration. You are an employer. You need a chef

You need a welder. You need a rocket scientist. You need a doctor

You need a nurse. This is the point about the mistake of looking at unemployment figures

and looking at vacancies and thinking that one should somehow be cancelling out the other

I don't even know what unskilled labor would entail these days. But I mean, obviously, there are some things that you need a modicum of training or skill to do, but you don't need any qualifications or anything like that

But I just think that Shabana Mahmood, you get this. It's a bit what I might call the Starmer syndrome is that you look at them and you think, well, you can't have risen to that position by accident

You can't have risen to that position and achieve the admiration of your colleagues without being sharp and without being astute

And then I look at some of the things she says, particularly in this field, and just think to myself, what are you talking about

We need to plan long term to stop people from bringing in 10 welders tomorrow

I'm no expert on welding, but if you've got some welding that needs doing tomorrow, you need 10 welders tomorrow

And then subscribing to these old tropes about it's cheap and easy labor

And that argument is never going to disappear. If it doesn't disappear after people coming here to work has halved, if the actual Labour Home Secretary is still talking about how, oh, they're only getting hired because they're cheaper, then it's never going to go away, is it

It can halve again. It can halve again. It can come down to next to nothing. And you'd still have people on the right saying there's still too much

And you'd have the Labour Home Secretary apparently agreeing with them. So that's part of the conversation

I want to hear about that. I want to hear about the observations I just made about why Shabana Mahmood is doing what she's doing

But I want to focus actually on the quite straightforward element of it, which is the question of workers, skilled workers

Her colleagues are coming to her and saying, we need some visas for these people because we cannot fill these vacancies

my constituencies, the companies in my constituency cannot fill their vacancies. So we need to get some overseas workers in

I'm old enough to remember when that wasn't even a particularly controversial position

It would be a relatively straightforward thing where we'll get the workers, I mean, particularly when you have freedom of movement, such a boon for employers

such a strength for employers. But how hard is it at the moment to find skilled workers

03456060973. Do you, as an employer, whether you're running a care home, a laboratory, a restaurant, a hotel, whatever sector you're in, the idea that you should be hiring people who are already here as opposed to needing to cast your net a little bit further afield

I just want to know how accurate that is. I want to know whether you recognize that

that. 0345 6060 973. Because if I need 10 welders tomorrow, I need 10 welders tomorrow

Not after we've implemented a new scheme of apprenticeships and a new scheme of support

and we've announced some funding and moved into these sectors. If I need 10 welders tomorrow

I need 10 welders tomorrow. Am I missing something here? Or is it simply the case that she is appeasing people who will prove to be in the great scheme of things unappeasable

And the best way to answer this question, to begin the answer to this question, is very simply to tell me how hard is it for you to find skilled staff in the current climate

How hard or indeed easy is it for you to find skilled staff from members or from the workforce that is already here

0345 6060 973. I've made a mistake here. I've gone too much around the houses. That's the phone

in. All right. So you don't need to have opinions on appeasement or on Shabana Mahmood or upon

whether she's trying to sort of feed the insatiable appetite of nativists. You run a business

you hire staff, you need skilled staff. Is it so hard to get them from the extant

workforce that you need and are perfectly happy to cast your net further afield

to bring in foreign workers because you have to stroke want to but crucially

for the purposes of this conversation because you have to 0345 6060

973 it's 1118 James O'Brien on LBC she could be right couldn't she

two things can be true at the same time you may struggle to find skilled workers

and there is a political case to be made for improving the state of the workforce we already have so that the difficulty

of finding skilled workers is alleviated. But if you need the skilled workers tomorrow

and the only way that you can see clearly towards getting them would be immigration visas

working visas, then you're either going to have to turn down work or you're going to have to

ask Shabana Mahmood to let you have some visas. I think that's the issue here. And I think that's

why I'm confused about what it is she can see that I currently can't. We'll talk to Nigel in

Chichester first. Before that, this is one of the best texts I've ever received in all the years

that I've been doing this programme, and I don't know why. If you were listening in the last hour

we made a fairly successful attempt to distinguish between three things, really. Zionism as it was

envisioned. Zionism as it was defined by the Green Party in the motion that was passed at their

conference yesterday. And finally, Zionism as a conflational synonym for the modern Israeli

government. And one way in which I did that was by describing this country as Christian

This is a Christian state. This is a Christian country. To which Helen in Lancashire has

responded, good morning, James. This country is not a Christian country. Stonehenge proves that

good grief, kind regards Helen I don't know why I love that text

but I love that text, now on the question of staff skilled or otherwise, Nigel is in Chichester

Nigel what made you pick up the phone? Hello there, yes I

employ people within the fabrication industry So welders, actual welders fantastic, here he is Welders

are one of the rarest things they're like hen's teeth, if you can get

A qualified welder under the age of 40 in this country, you're doing very, very well

You couldn't import foreign welders because the qualifications in this country we need to produce structural steel work

is only applicable to this country. It's a BS 1090. Oh, I didn't know that

To get that qualification for the company to get that, all your welders have to be coded welders

which are tested in this country. And for a company to get BS 1090

it will cost in the region of about £15,000 Per welder? No, for the company, but the company has to be

registered, and then the welders have to be registered, they have to be coded If I am a brilliant welder

working in France or Poland or Pakistan I mean truly brilliant, I'm not being glib

because this wasn't my example, this was the Home Secretary's example, so if it's a bad

example, I'm not taking any responsibility for it whatsoever, Nigel If I was a brilliant welder, presumably I'm going to be able to come here and get my accreditation quite easily

First of all, the company has to be accredited. But then you have to be accredited

To become that, they call it coding. You have to be a coded welder, which means you have to go through samples

Testing. Testing, which is sent away. They're sent away. They're not tested on site

they're sent away, they're x-rayed they're put into stress situations. This is really interesting

That will cost, for that welder to do that will cost me about £2,000, £2,500 for that one person. And if we

pay for somebody to do that we've got no control over them, they could leave us tomorrow and go

somewhere else. They get their accreditation and they become, you know, actually they're a premium because if you've said

yourself they're as rare as hen's teeth so they're probably going to be able to go somewhere else and

get a higher salary. If I arrived if I was the best welder in the

history of Germany, right? I'm like, I'm the king of welders. I'm the uber welder. Yeah

I arrive here at 11.25 today. What is the soonest point at which

I could realistically have my BS 1090 in place and be good to go

A month, month and a half. You see what I mean? If I can't find anyone

here, I'm going to think about bringing me over from Germany. aren't I? Well we've blamed Brexit for a lot of this to be honest with you. This is a man called

Nigel attacking Brexit? Yeah I was brought up in a military environment. I went to a military

boarding school from the age of 11. My dad was in the area for 35 years. So you're familiar with

mobility and freedom of movement and what have you. I've got no problem. I've got no problem with

Foreign people, foreigners, I've lived in Malta, Cyprus, Berlin in the 70s

before the wall came down and all that. I've got no problem. Of course you don't

Live and let live. Yes, I get it. And now, just to be clear, you struggle to get welders

either from our workforce, and now it's much harder to get them from overseas

Yeah, well, we turn away about 30% of our work. No way. Yeah, we do

We have enough work on to take us into next year, and we turn away, we could take on at least two more welders

And not only because of the welding scenario, we don't take them on, but also the employment situation in this country

First of all, nobody wants to do it. The job's dirty, it's hard work, and it's noisy

We approached one of the local colleges about taking on an apprentice

and they said they had no fabrication courses going at that time

They couldn't get enough people to fill a classroom. Why did you go into it

How did you end up in this world? I don't know. When I finished school, I went to school in the UK

but we lived in Berlin in the 70s. I came back to England, and I just wanted a job

So I took the first job I got offered. And you got trained on the job

Yeah, I did day release, apprenticeship day release, which I think to me is more I mean I got O at school and A But I chose to do day release apprenticeship as opposed to going to university To me I think you

learn more. Well, they are talking about bringing that sort of scheme back, aren't they? And

the problem is, it's going to be too late for you, for the

jobs that you need that you could say yes to tomorrow, but in the long term of the

country, she's probably right in the long term, Shabana Mahmood, that we do need... But they left a gap. The gap's been

too big. You've got nobody to instruct them. Who's going to instruct them

You know, a guy who's been to university is probably great on paperwork. You give them a welding

torch, right? Now, to become a welder isn't a question of sitting down in a classroom

To be a good welder, it's like being an artist. You don't pick up a needle and

a paintbrush and just suddenly be able to paint. You do it with practice. It comes

over time. Welding's the same. The more you do it, the more

the better it gets. And that's basically how it works. You get me a bloke out of a classroom

who's never got his hands dirty, give him a welding torch, you won't know which way I'll weld it

And so it is, I mean, she may just have picked a really bad example

because she picked welders. She says she's got colleagues across government from other departments coming to see her

and saying, can I have 10 visas over here for welders or something

And I'm like, you're telling me that we can't find 10 welders in Britain and you, Nigel, are telling her that, yeah

we can't find 10 welders in Britain. 10 qualified good welders in Britain you won't I mean we we have to be accredited and you know we

well welding isn't just a question of putting heating metal up and putting it together there's

a lot more to it than that the stop the start of the world is important it creates cracking it

creates it creates air air within the world and so on you know all this has to be tested it has

to be x-rayed um it's extraordinary really that we've gone in so deep on welding specifically

but it's actually part of the point I was trying to make about Shabana Mahmood sometimes sounding

as if she hasn't really thought through what it is that she's saying and in conclusion Nigel

I mean 10 years ago you would have been able to bring in workers

more easily from overseas and therefore take on more work and therefore contribute to what the government

keep telling us we need more of which is economic growth well 10 years ago

you could get a well-do operating under under EC qualifications. Oh, wow

The BS 1090... Of course you could. That's what a single market is, isn't it

Yeah. Now, the BS 1090 is a UK CA qualification. It's a different qualification

So do you know what that is, Nigel? That's taking back control. Yeah, exactly

Worse than we ever did. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you don't get me started on Brexit. I mean, you know, at the end of the day

But it's not just this industry. No, of course not. The construction industry has got the same issue

I mean, we have a sister company that is in the construction game

civil engineering. Yes. And that's got the same problems. People can't... There's no qualified..

There's nobody going to college on a day-release basis. You need on-site training

You can't train these people in a classroom every day and expect them to go out into the wild world

I'm just going to read you a message from Liam because I think it will make you smile

Liam's just messaged while you were talking to say, if my dad was still alive, he'd be listening to this nodding

and saying, I told you you should have been a welder. Well, there you go. Ask if he needs a job

Thank you, Nigel. Half past 11 is the time. There it is. I mean, I didn't know that Brexit was going to be brought into it

But, I mean, how many people then just suddenly went, oh, of course, a trained welder within a single market

where you have freedom and movement can work anywhere. So you need 10 welders tomorrow, you can get them

You can't get them now. Shabana Mahmood says, well, we must train our own then

And so she can be right, but it's naff all use to somebody who's turning work down now

What about other sectors? How hard is it to get skilled labour in this country at the moment

Because as the number of people coming here to work is deliberately, very deliberately and violently reduced

then it is, as Nigel knows, it's only going to get harder. But I want to know how hard it is now

And if you can provide detail, obviously, I think we've probably covered welding

But if there's any other sector whatsoever, the simple question of how hard it is

Let's do the Burnham Optimism Barometer. I want you to text me now with your mark out of 10 for Andy Burnham

How optimistic are you currently about Andy Burnham's premiership? And by optimistic, I just mean hopeful, optimistic

just the feelings that you have about him and what he has done so far

and what that says to you about what the future is likely to hold

It's 1131. You can text your number, mark out a 10 to 84850

You can WhatsApp it to 03456060973. And that latter number is also the phone number for you to call me and tell me simply

as Nigel did quite brilliantly from his business, how hard or easy is it right now to get skilled labour

Because Shabana Mahmood is, I would argue, she seems to be minded to make it even harder

It's 1132. James O'Brien on LBC. Frieda writes, this call from the welder is amazing

Nigel, how can you forget his name? I hope the right people are listening

If we could drop all the cultural nonsense for 10 minutes and start focusing on practicalities, we might get somewhere

I know it's not the world of Fred Dibner and Steam anymore, but AI isn't going to make anything

This is the problem I've got at the moment. Right. And Nigel has crystallised it quite perfectly

with a side order of Brexit, which is always nice, and the lunacy of Brexit

it. You are an employer turning down work because you can't find the staff. People like Nigel

Farage and latterly Shabana Mahmood are essentially saying to you, well, don't worry, just take the

hit and make sure you start training up people who were born here so that you don't have to turn

down the work two, three, four years from now. And I think that's a ridiculous position, not least

because of the size of that window. And then you go back to 2016, when as a consequence of freedom

of movement and membership of the single market, you could bring your qualifications from anywhere

in the single market, and they would also apply here. How could anybody have thought that was a

bad thing? Now you can't do that. Even if you're a fully qualified welder in Berlin, if you want to

start work in Birmingham, you're going to have to go through our own bespoke, we make our own rules

we've taken back control system, which makes it much harder for the employers

to get the workers that they need. It seems to me a little bit like magical thinking

to simply keep saying, well, too many of them are foreign. We need to train our own

And that is why the question I want you to answer this hour very simply is

and social care would be another area where this is particularly acute

My mum has carers visiting her at home at the moment, and it is, I mean, it's a veritable United Nations

Given where she is geographically, it's very different from London, so there is a preponderance of white Brits

but there's certainly many, many, many other demographics being represented as well

And of course all that we care about is whether or not they do a good job of looking after mum Don really care One One jot about where they came from And this politics seems to be saying well alright you might have

a Filipino coming round tomorrow morning to look after your mum, James, but I bet you wish it was

a locally born Brit. I never really understood why I'm supposed to feel that

And I still don't. 11.38 is the time. Andy's in Mill Hill. Andy, what would you

like to say? Hi. Hi, James. How are you doing today? I'm good, mate. What's going on

I'm an employer. I've been in business for close to 39 years

How close? How close to 39 years? I think January. Oh, okay

Fair enough. We're an electronic fire security company, burglary alarm, CCTV, fire alarms, et cetera, et cetera

And again, I have got spare vehicles outside my office. We are unable to fill any positions

We are having to turn work away constantly due to the lack of engineering staff that we have

And nothing is going to improve. When I first started in business, before I started in business, I did a three-year apprenticeship

What was then a national company. I learned my trade. I went to college, as the previous caller said

And I was on the tools and everything like that. None of that happens anymore

we cannot get any foreign workers even if we do get any foreign workers apply even though we're

still working to european standards in a lot of the fields of work we do it we've got our own

interpretation of them and nothing is going to get any easier i turn up at jobs and i have to say

this isn't for us not because i couldn't do it although i can't at my age now sure but but there

There just isn't anybody around. And unfortunately, because I sound and I am very old now

the younger generation just do not want to do hands-on work, crawling up ladders, crawling on floors or welding

or a whole host of a million other similar types of jobs

Are you sure? From my experience, we've had people who have been to college

to do electrical engineering courses, have come out with their city and guilds

they've sat in front of me, I've asked them, I've said right, there's a plug socket on the wall

there, what voltage is coming out of that plug socket? James, I'm

not going to embarrass you, but I'm sure you know what voltage household electrics are

These kids have come out with distinctions in city and guilds, haven't

got a clue. I don't know, I don't know. I'm not going to pretend that I do know. Do you think less of me now

Of course not, you don't need to know i've got i've got a different skill set i've got a very specific set of skills is it too

odd is it too i've looked everyone's going to know i looked it up i think it came up on mystery

the other day and it's about 240 volts 230 230 to 250 240 is taken as the average yeah that's what

i thought i can't remember what the question was about can you date it because you've been in the

business i i don't know if you're aware of this handy for almost 39 years now and and is there a

Have there been moments? Can you think in the last... I mean, have there been... Go on then

Yeah, I can pinpoint it exactly. I could foresee this happening for about the last 15 years

because no new trainees were coming through. But the thing that really kicked it all off

and we've never recovered from was COVID. A lot of the older people who had learnt their trade

who were, I don't know, in their early 50s and whatever, when they were furloughed

they had decided, I don't need this anymore. and so they retired. And therefore, we lost huge skill sets

We lost the people that could train the younger people into how to do the work

And that is the big problem. This is Burnhamism, because I think he recognises this, actually

Because he has been pretty explicit about the... I forget the phrase that he used

but talking about how we need to shift from an obsession with academic qualification and graduates

to on-the-job training and skilled labour. He had a pithy phrase. I can't remember what it was

It wasn't quite mortarboards. But he seems to recognise it. But the scale of the challenge ahead is actually enormous, isn't it

Because you're sort of recalibrating the entire secondary and tertiary education system

And what do you do in the meantime? This is the point that Shabana Mahmood seems to be missing

If we join the single market tomorrow, you could be drawing upon the whole of the European Union to find workers

who would arrive here fully qualified under EU legislation and they could start work for you tomorrow

If that doesn't happen and if we're supposed to be waiting for the world to change

so that we are training people and apprenticeships are popular again what are you supposed to do in the meantime

Well this is the other thing I laugh about particularly when you hear of the government's policies on house building

regardless of what colour the party of the day is. Yes. They want to build X number of houses

Yeah, fine, great. Show me the electrician. Show me the plumbers. Show me everybody else that is going to be able

to actually plumb electric or put the roofs on these properties. It just isn't going to happen

You can throw as much money as you'd like at all this, but if you've not got the people that can do the work

it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it. Do we know whether there is a sort of a workforce

that you could employ? There's a couple of people who have just pointed out to me that I don't know that there are loads of welders in Berlin

No, there isn't. There isn't. But I mean, outside this country, I mean, if you could cast your net wider

would it be easier to fill the gap? I honestly don't believe it would because a lot of people are very, very quick

to downplay our country. I'm not one of those people. No, me neither. Yeah, because I honestly believe that the problems

or a significant amount of the problems we have here are experienced worldwide or at least Europe-wide

Well, there was something about the Eastern European accession, though, that seemed to involve an awful lot of men who had been trained

and who were skilled in various areas and who were keen to come here for a while and work on our sites

But I don't think that holds true anymore, A, because the economic situations have improved in their home countries

and B, because we are no longer a welcoming destination, are we

No, I mean, over the years we have had European workers and they have been exceptionally good

But they move on, they want to better themselves and a lot of them do go home

and take their skills and the money they've earned in the UK with them

And that's fine if freedom of movement is in place because we can

invite people in from the next generation down, but we can't do that anymore. Final question

because I would, back in the day when I was a bit of a, I don't

know, a lefty agitator, I would say at this point something like

well, what car do you drive or well, why can't you just pay them more? To which you respond by saying, well, it doesn't matter what, I pay them

if they don't exist. Well, that is exactly the thing. They don't exist because the workers that we do have

we've had to recognise, I've had to recognise, not we, that you can't pay people peanuts anymore

Oh, of course. Particularly in London, you've got to pay people a decent amount of money

That is reflected in the charges that, obviously, we apply to our client base

And this is how you have inflation. I mean, this is a vicious circle

Yeah, and growth is the casualty, really, and both on a personal level, as in you and Nigel and others

who could have a bigger bottom line going on if you could take on all the work that you could take on but you can because you can get the staff And as No Hostages points out first you have to train and then employ the trainers

Then you have to train and employ the people responsible for assuring the quality of the trainers' training

You will need supervisors, assessors, placements, classrooms, kit. I think Burnham's up for it, and I think he recognizes the necessity of it

but whether he recognizes the scale of the issue under discussion, I do not know

It is 11.45. Simon Marks in the studio next with a veritable potpourri of political shenanigans from the other side of the Atlantic

James O'Brien on LBC. The midterms are looming ever closer and almost as if they were sort of connected by a tendon, a political tendon or something

Donald Trump's approval ratings go down as the calendar ticks ever closer to the midterms

Nothing that happened this weekend, Simon Marks, is likely to reverse that trend

No, and I think only deepen that trend, James. The Republicans are waking up this morning to a new set of ysis data from The Economist saying that the Democrats are now ahead in Texas, Alaska, Iowa and Ohio

And there is now a dead heat in Kansas, which has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932

I love these facts. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988

Remember that the Democrats need to hold all of their seats and pick up four Republican ones

in order to enjoy a majority in the Senate from next January. And that is beginning to look possible

The Economist's forecast gives the Democrats a 61% chance now of taking control of the Senate in November

and a 95% chance of winning the House. As we've been saying on the programme

it is almost certain that they are going to take control of the House

I was slightly alarmed to get an email from President Trump this morning

when I woke up, a fundraising email, and its subject line reads

this could be my final four weeks as president. I don't know if we're breaking some news here

but this could be my final four weeks as president. Then you click on the link to read his critical reflection

which is something that's obviously been written for him, about him saying a prayer in the Rose Garden the other night

for the future of the country. But, I mean, the fact that he is suggesting to supporters

that he could be going into his final month as president raises a number of questions

First, I mean, if we take that on its face, is he seriously considering the possibility after a loss in the midterms

of perhaps handing over to J.D. Vance and saying, right, you take it home for the last two years

I think that's unlikely. I think the more likely explanation for this email

is that they are so concerned about activating grassroots Republicans to show up at the polls in November

that he's almost conflating the midterm elections when his name is not on the ballot

with a presidential election in 2028. But suggesting to them, this could be my final four weeks as president

You've got to bring us over the line. But it was quite something to see that in the in the email today

It speaks, doesn't it, to the disconnect now at the very top of the Republican Party, where by most of these candidates in places like Texas and Alaska and Iowa would probably like to keep them at arm's length

But he still thinks that he's the magic source, the special source

So that is a very dissonant scenario where he's going, all we've got left is me

Break glass, release me. Absolutely. And the candidates will probably be going, oh, Lord, above, things are tough enough already

Well, so he unleashed himself over the weekend, dating back to Thursday. He's been making a series of campaign trail appearances, finally, as we head into the final month of this midterm election campaign

And there will be Republican candidates that undoubtedly will have preferred him to stay at home

Let's take a listen, first of all, to what President Trump said in Ohio, one of those seats that the Democrats are hoping to pick up

He had already said that affordability, the number one issue in this midterm election campaign, the economic crisis sparked by his war on Iran is a made up word by the Democrats

But then when it comes to the concerns that Ohio voters and presumably voters all over the country have about rising oil prices, his message to them was you've got to suck it up

Remember about the oil, you're paying a price, but boy is that a small price than what it would be if these lunatics were allowed to have a nuclear weapon and used it on Mobile, Alabama

Not going to happen. Well, it's definitely not going to happen because US intelligence, before his war began, had concluded that Iran had not reconstituted its nuclear program and certainly did not have a nuclear weapon capable of reaching Mobile, Alabama

But the message there is it's a price worth paying. There's no polling that suggests a single voter is buying that

And of course, even if it had had some sort of nuclear capability, he's claimed on several occasions since launching that war that it has been completely eradicated by Donald J. Trump

Yes. the defense of it now by some of his key consigliere is beyond comical i mean you know

sitting there saying you can't believe the figures everything is going well the economy is going well

the the that gulf between observable reality and the political rhetoric is is the biggest it's ever

been yeah well uh substantial because every single american this weekend filling their car

or their truck up with petrol or diesel. Every single American standing in a supermarket checkout line

over the weekend is aware that when he says prices are coming down

and this is all the fault of Joe Biden and the Democrats, he inherited, he said this weekend, a dark age from the Democrats

He's introduced a golden age for America. That is simply not showing up

It's a splatter, Garnt, isn't it? He's just like going like this and just desperately hoping something will stick

It's like nuclear bombs, Joe Biden, things are going well, Ukraine, Volodymyr, nothing sticking

And often trying to make points that don't land. Take a listen to this next clip

Again, this is Trump in Ohio. And see if you can guess what this riff is actually all about

I take an aspirin a day. I don't know if it works, but psychologically, I need it

It thins the hell out of your blood, I guess. I don't know if it works or not, but I've been doing it for a long time

And here I am making speeches. And I take the big one

You know, they want me to go down to the 80. I take the 386

I don't know what the hell it is. It's a monster. They said, sir, you don't need that

I said, do me a favor. I've been doing OK for 35 years. Leave me alone. So that's Donald Trump talking about his habit of taking doses of aspirin every single day

that his doctors have warned him he should not be taking. What do you think that's all about? It's actually about the fact that Bayer, the company that manufactures much of the aspirin sold in the United States, had invested $2.2 billion in a million dollars in a new

manufacturing plant in Ohio, in Columbus, Ohio. But that news was completely buried after we had the shaggy dog story from him in Ohio

about his love of taking far too large doses of aspirin. Completely buried

And then there was Donald Trump in Ohio engaging, I think, ostensibly, in a get-out-the-vote operation

This is Donald Trump and we have cleaned this language up because we have to

This is Donald Trump urging people in Ohio and across the country to show up at the polls

Just get out and vote. If you do that, we're going to win and we're going to win big. And we're going to shove it up their a**, OK

I'd like that they continue to fight because as long as they do, they can't win elections

They're a bunch of dumb son of a b*****. So that's Donald Trump saying to voters, please show up at the polls and back Republican candidates that in very large measure at these campaign rallies, he either has briefly mentioned or in some cases mentioned them, mentioned them in ways that have damaged them in Texas

He described Ken Paxton, who's battling to win that all-important Senate seat in Texas

as also being a pain in the rear. And if you take a look at Politico this morning

they are reporting that Ken Paxton, whose seat the Republicans desperately need to hold in the Senate

if they're to stand a chance of retaining their majority there, Ken Paxton has been caught on tape saying

I've never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign

and what issues are going to matter because it's all coming, you know, from DC

We'll carry this over if you're not busy. You don't have to go anywhere, do you? No, no, no

Carry it over the news because I do want to talk about the Tuckle Carson, Jacob Rees-Mogg thing as well

and indeed the Tom Cotton intervention. So, I mean, he sounds a bit like the missing Bouvier sister

doesn't he now? Everything is sounding... It's Patty and Selma, Marge's sisters in The Simpsons

He's beginning to sound like the missing... Bouvier, sister, and as you say, making no sense, making everything worse for his candidates

And 61% chance of Democrat control in the Senate. And 95% in the House

So he loses everything if that happens. We're confident that when he talks about the last four weeks potentially of his presidency, he's not alluding to impeachment or anything like that

I mean, he could be. That's not what he says in the reflection that you read when you then click on it

I mean, I think that that subject line is frankly clickbait in these fundraising emails, but we've never seen him say anything like that before

And he rejects, I think, the idea that if Democrats win the House and the Senate, his presidency will be at an end because, as we were talking about last week, he's barely used Congress for anything since he got back into power in January last year, apart from his big, beautiful spending bill

That's the only time he really needed Congress to do anything. He got that done, and then everything else has just been this tsunami of executive orders

which is clearly the way that he intends to carry on governing whoever is in control of both the House and the Senate

And forgive me if this was in your clip, but he's also now urging people to vote by mail

Yes. Well, he himself has voted by mail. Vote by mail. Yes. I mean, there is certainly quite a contradiction in that claim

given that he has previously argued that postal ballots are the biggest problem besetting America's electoral system

that America is the only country enough, stupid enough, to allow people to vote by mail

even though that is completely untrue. Vladimir Putin himself told him, you've got to get rid of postal voting

which is odd because they use it in Russia, and Vladimir Putin takes tremendous advantage of it in order to secure the massive majorities that he ratchets up there

Republicans were very worried about this campaign against early vote, postal voting, because, you know, it matters

You want to get as much of your vote mobilised as possible. And Democrats, as of last time I looked

over 700,000 people had already voted by post early, and they were breaking in most surveys for the Democrats

And so that may be one reason why he changed his mind over the weekend. People are voting all together, of course

Yeah, not just voting by mail, Because if you don't vote by mail, you don't vote at all. They're staying at home out of loyalty to Donald

or rather they're not mailing their ballots out of loyalty to Donald Trump

And many people vote by post because they can't... It's a big old country

They're not sufficiently mobile to show up at the poll. It's a big old country. Jacob Rees-Mogg is recasting him

Well, no, we'll find out more in a moment. I don't want to spoil the surprise, if indeed it is a surprise

The time now is 12.01. James O'Brien on LBC. This is Washington editor Simon Marks still with me

I've no idea what we're going to do next, actually, so stay tuned to find out. There you go. If that's not a way to build dramatic tension, I don't know what is

You mentioned Putin telling Trump to get rid of mail voting. I did look at the story this morning from Fairford about the decision to withdraw U.S. bombers

and reflect not for the first time on how Donald Trump has never done anything that would fail to delight Vladimir Putin

But we'll have to sit tight to find out more about that. I struggle at the moment

Simon with the things the tension between ignoring people who are desperate

for attention and recognising that there comes a point where they've successfully secured

so much attention that you can't ignore them anymore for me last week it was very much

Suella Braverman's attempts to tell lots of my friends that they're not English

I feel very much the same about Tucker Carlson actually and you know when he was a prominent figure on

Fox News you could ignore him up to a point and then you

He realised it was a mistake to have ignored him because of the role that Fox News played in promoting Donald Trump

all the way to the presidency. And, of course, crucially, the role that they played in the lies about the voting machines and all that

And then he went off on a new course. Well, as a what exactly

And why on earth has he been breaking scones with, or scones, with Jacob Rees-Mogg

Well, he's his own media man now, in the same way, I suppose, as Piers Morgan is

with his YouTube venture. Tucker Carlson produces his own eponymous video program on a regular basis in which he sits down and shoots the breeze, usually with people who agree with him

And I think one of the big questions that we are all facing today is when he booked Jacob Rees-Mogg and traveled to Jacob Rees-Mogg's country estate to record the interview that was put together and transmitted by Tucker Carlson late last week

Did he think that Jacob Rees-Mogg was a fellow traveller? And indeed, did Jacob Rees-Mogg think that Tucker Carlson was a fellow traveller

But if you want to see a definition of the complete breakdown that has occurred in the relationship the traditional comity and amity that existed between the Conservative Party in the UK and the Republicans in the United States it is contained in this interview between Jacob Rees and Tucker Carlson in which Tucker Carlson reveals himself first of all as someone who is just extraordinarily ignorant but also secondly as someone who has completely left what anybody I think would view as core conservative orthodoxy

Let's start with the conversation that they were having about the threat that Russia poses to the UK

All of this, of course, rooted in the UK's continuing support for Ukraine and the notion that Vladimir Putin may covet the idea of going further and has already launched hybrid attacks on NATO members

There was this quite extraordinary exchange between Carlson and Rees-Mogg in which Lord Rees-Mogg, William Rees-Mogg, not for the first time in this interview, Jacob Rees-Mogg in this interview, absolutely schools Tucker Carlson

Take a listen to this. Let's explain why Russia would want to pick a fight with Britain

It's got a much larger economy than Britain's. No, it hasn't got a larger economy than Britain's

It's got a smaller economy than Britain's. It's got a larger military. It's a much larger economy

It has much more wealth and resources. It has a much larger manufacturing sector

Its GDP is smaller than the UK's. GDP is not, I mean, the only measure of an economy

It's a pretty important measure of an economy. It's one measure we can think of

Russia is an economic failure. That it could have a huge economy, but it's got a small economy because it's deeply corrupt

and it hasn't managed to use its resources effectively. And so although the population of Russia is bigger than that of the United Kingdom, very significantly

its GDP per capita is so much lower that the total GDP of Russia

is smaller than that of United Kingdom. I love this, because he's absolutely right

but he's using exactly the same tones that he used during Brexit when he was absolutely wrong

So it's such a curious little place we find ourselves in, but fair play to the penny-farthing in human form

And at the end there, Tucker Carlson goes, right, having been completely demolished

by Jacob Brees-Mogg. He'd become one of the most high-profile and highly paid broadcasters in the whole of the world when he was on Fox News, while knowing nothing about anything

Knowing nothing. And let's not forget that this is someone who's travelled to Moscow, who has presented, I think it's fair to say, propaganda versions of what is taking place in Moscow

extraordinary scenes where he was wandering around a Russian supermarket, absolutely enthralled by the range of products that were on display there

sort of communicating to the American audience that, you know, this country was an economic superpower

as he appeared to be arguing unsuccessfully there with Jacob Rees-Mogg. But then..

Yes, it goes. Then the interview takes, I think, a much darker turn

And we're going to play this at length. an absolutely extraordinary exchange

between Tucker Carlson and Jacob Rees-Mogg about why the UK decided it was a good idea

to stand up to Adolf Hitler. I never understood why fight the Second World War in the first place

Well, that's a very fundamental question. How about the First World War

Well, let's stick to the Second World War. No, let's start with the first. We were on the second. that the Second World War, Hitler would have taken as much as he could have done

as he was showing. And did you really want him to... Well, Hitler said that 15% of Poland was once Germany

and it was given to Poland at the Treaty of Versailles. That was German territory with Germans

That was his case. And by the way, that was true. Except the Polish borders had been cut up by Russia and Russia and Austria

I'm not here to... I'm not sure I'm defending Hitler. I'm just saying the idea that Hitler just randomly rolled into Poland is a lie

And everyone believes it because they know nothing about the actual facts. But the truth is, Germany had big pieces of it carved off, including part of Prussia

and it was given to this other country, infuriated the Germans. Maybe it shouldn't have, but it did

And that was a justification for it. The UK had nothing to do with it at all

And they destroyed their empire and their country, fighting this war that they still pretend was a good idea, but it wasn't

It was fundamental. It was the classic good versus evil. Has the UK benefited from it

We did the right thing. Is it a better country than it was? To have defeated Hitler, yes

So the UK is a better country now. It's a healthier country now. Otherwise we'll be speaking German

Who cares? There are a lot of people in Britain who can't speak English. So it would be nice to have at least a European language spoken in your country

No, I see no advantage of speaking German over any other language

We want to speak English. Thank you so much. But the point is... I'm very surprised you're verging on defending Hitler

I think this is not really what you want to be doing. yeah I guess I'm just a secret Nazi

I don't know how secret it is in the context of that exchange

he then immediately denies being a secret Nazi because he realises he's probably copped

why did you fight Hitler so what's going on here I think it's a

all sorts of stuff yeah but it is extraordinary isn't it when you start digging into the weeds

how many roads lead back to the Kremlin to Vladimir Putin because that sounded like an attempt

to conflate the old line about oh well Of course, Putin invaded Ukraine. NATO has been threatening him from his borders and you've poked the Russian bear. That was almost an attempt to put Hitler in a similar sort of category that he became he was provoked beyond endurance by events

Yes. And the Allies and therefore the Second World War, rather than being a murderous imperial fever dream, is some sort of natural response to the fact

Without any mention, of course, of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. No copying to that at all

Look, I mean, first of all, it's just, it's a completely childish

sophomoric series of questions that he's asking. How did he get such a big job, Simon

I mean, as I say, I've generally managed to ignore him, but he's absolutely stupid

Because he speaks to the people on the hard right in the United States

who were mainstreamed by Donald Trump and who are willing to wander down rhetorical avenues

about whether everything that they have always traditionally been told about history

Let's not forget, you know, when the United States finally joined World War II

after you had people like Charles Lindbergh holding rallies at Madison Square Garden

saying America first means we don't get involved in this war. I mean, ultimately, it was the United States, of course

that assisted the UK and its allies in defeating Adolf Hitler. But in Tucker Carlson's mind, he's wandering down a road

that, first of all, maybe Hitler wasn't all that bad. Maybe he was just a reasonable man

and you could have had a debate and a conversation with him and derailed the possibility of World War II

But he's also taking you down the road, as you heard there, of hammering away at his insistence and the insistence of the far right in the United States

that the UK today is a hellhole. That line where he says well I mean at least it would have been a European language that was being spoken in the UK because people aren speaking European languages anymore on the streets of the UK It all redolent of this absolute

determination that everything in this country has gone wrong, is going wrong, and that we

are facing, as the national security strategy of Donald Trump's government puts it, civilisational

erasure, along with all of those other countries in Western Europe. But it's rooted in that

sort of absurd defence of Adolf Hitler. And then again, you have

Jacob Rees-Mogg saying to him, I mean, do you really want to go there? Is that really where

you want to take this? And the answer is, with Tucker Carlson, it is

always where he wants to take this. And again, well, I was just reflecting on the fact that

Rees-Mogg is good when he's in binary scenarios. And, you know, he handled that really well because that's probably why he avoided the First World War, actually, because that's a lot more nuanced and difficult

But good versus evil is easily defensible. Just incredible to hear one of, originally, one of Donald Trump's biggest cheerleaders there, essentially, as you say, shilling for evil

Important to underscore that these people see conspiracy theories everywhere. they've just announced a Department of Justice effort to probe Watergate and to see whether Watergate and we can talk about this later in the week

but to see about whether Watergate was a deep state conspiracy, a coup against Richard Nixon

Never mind that all the Watergate stuff is, let me remind you, on tape, apart from that missing chunk. Right

So the Department of Justice now, 30 days before midterm elections, by the way, has launched a probe to see whether Watergate was a deep state conspiracy

If you follow that Tucker Carlson approach to its logical conclusion, we may eventually see an investigation into whether the American decision to enjoin the war and help defeat Adolf Hitler was itself a deep state conspiracy to undermine what was the original America First movement before Donald Trump expropriated the name

We're in very, very dark waters. We are indeed. To be fair, Tucker Carlson doesn't hate all foreigners. Do you know who he once described as his favourite foreigner

His favourite foreigner? No. Who is his favourite foreigner? Not Putin. No, Nigel Farage

Oh, his favourite. That was an easy one. I mean, I say that. The source for that is actually Nigel Farage, so it may need to be double-checked

And then I saw a story about Tom Cotton, the senator, Republican senator, having his cell phone

Do they call them cell phones in the state? Mobile. Is it called a mobile? Well, cell phone, yeah

Mobile, Alabama. I've been over here too long. I can't remember. So having his actual private cell phone number published on social media by the president of the United States of America. Doxed

I mean, genuinely doxed. And that's a nightmare because that's the number that people who need to get hold of him will have

And now he's going to have to change it. He's going to have to get rid of it. And I didn't

I just saw that. Again, I didn't dig in too deeply. And I think, why on earth is he doing that

And then the answer was revealed, really. Why on earth is he so bothered about the daylight

There's a Daily Mail columnist who's obsessed with putting the clocks back and putting the clocks forward, and Donald Trump is in the same camp

But why? So Trump wants to stop changing the clocks. Yes. And the House of Representatives has already voted in favour of changing the clocks

the Senate has not voted on it because Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas

who is a loyal Trump supporter this guy is an insurrectionist this was the guy who was giving the raised fist salute

to the insurrectionists on January the 6th 2021 as he walked through the grounds of the Capitol

he has put a hold on the legislation and Donald Trump is furious about it

and let's take a listen to why Donald Trump says advancing this legislation is a national priority for the United States

Professional sports and amateurs that would like to play tennis at night

would like to play golf a little bit without having to run home after 14 holes

It's ridiculous. It's very expensive to do. It's not a good thing

People don't want to have to change their clocks twice a year. It's a lot of work for a lot of people

They're running around for two days, changing all the clocks in their house

So there it is. Golf, you say. Golf, you say. It's just golf. I mean, that's it

He didn't even come up with anything about industry or farming, which is some of the traditional arguments

Not a mention in that clip. It's just golf. Not a mention in that clip. And he's just about wise enough to say tennis before he told the truth and said golf

Yes, and it's just worth making the point, the United States did for a period of time

I can't remember exactly when, in the late 70s, I think. I think it was in the Jimmy Carter presidency

they did abandon the time shift for a year possibly two and public opposition to that move

then led them to revert to the time shift so we are all still as you are here adjusting your clocks

twice a year i mean there's very little on which i agree with donald trump but i would personally

love to see the time shift end but it's got nothing to do with golf golf simon marks thank

Thank you. You've promised now to come back later in the week, so we will hold you to that. Here's a nice statistic

Kansas, which is on the list of states that you told us could fall to the Democrats

last fell to the Democrats seven years before the Wizard of Oz came out

And we're not in Kansas anymore. It's 20 minutes past 12. James O'Brien on LBC

I have the results. I have been handed the results of the Burnham Optimism Barometer

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Was he talking about optimism all the time

and then we launched the Burnham Optimism Barometer? Or did we launch the Burnham Optimism Barometer

and then he started talking about optimism? It was more hope, wasn't it? It was more hope, Joanna, at the conference

He definitely nicked my joke, though, about... Well, not even a joke. He definitely nicked my line about the monopoly

And then it popped up on, have I got news for you? Uncredited

I think they may have been suggesting that it wasn't actually the best line

that had ever been delivered by a politician in a conference speech but it's still my line

and Andy Burnham nicked it off me which is becoming perilously close to a t-shirt slogan

but the results are in and it is now 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

the seventh, eighth week in which the Burnham Optimism Barometer has stood at nine

nine out of ten that's the answer that is the average answer

to the question of how optimistic are you about Andy Burnham's premiership. So the first

three weeks were eight. This began on Monday the 27th of July. It's now Monday

the 5th of October. We've got three eights and one, two, three, four, eight

nines. Make of that what you will. 23 minutes after 12 is the time

Just going to do something because we're quite busy. We spent a lot of time with Simon, which is always a particular

pleasure, isn't it? And there's so much to get through. So we don't have the full hour for this. Far from it, in fact

So I spend five or so minutes setting it up and then you ring me and we spend the final half an hour of the program talking about this I find these stories almost unbelievable I had a sort of fascination with them when my kids were young Isn that weird

I don't know how it works in the context of my relationship with you. When my children are young

my interest in issues involving young children is much greater, and therefore I communicate that on the radio

My enthusiasms are informed by my experiences. My life off the radio

is always going to play a huge part in me, at least, the way I work

determining what I want to talk about on the radio. But now I'm less interested in stories involving young children

but I'm still the same radio presenter and you're still the same member of the audience. So did you find it boring

Or is it only interesting when you've got children? And then some of them cut through it completely

Some conversations about children, for example, today, there's some research looking at the improvement

in academic performance of people whose phones in schools where phones were blocked and no prizes for working out

that the improvement was considerable. Grades went up by more than half

or grades rather are up at more than half of the schools that block pupils' phones

A little bit more nuance than the headlines allow. This is even more universal, I think

This was even more universal. I don't think that this is going to be a conversation

about personal experience, because can I say something that is going to sound quite snobbish

Would you mind? Is that okay? I could be wrong. I just find it unlikely

Maybe I do. I don't know, actually. This is so alien to me. This is so removed from my personal experience

that I don't know quite how to set it up as a conversation. But do you think it's possible

that there would be people listening to this program? And make of that what you will

That's like advertiser speak. There's a socioeconomic median there. There's a current affairs. There's probably an intelligence thing. People listening to this program at this time, I would cautiously suggest to you that they are highly, highly unlikely to be in the surprisingly large cohort of parents who send their children to primary school without having toilet trained them

Is that a snobby thing to say? What am I reading into this? That if you have not toilet trained your children, then you are..

And that's the phone-in, actually. I mean, what would we say? Is it remotely excusable or explicable

This is not going to be an exercise in condemnation. Not by any stretch of the imagination

I don't know why some of us are built that way and some of us are not. So some people see this story, and I've got a horrible suspicion I might have been one of them once, and just want to start attacking the parents

Other people see this story and feel desperately sorry for the children and then find themselves wondering what's gone wrong in a world where parents can be sending their children to primary school without having toilet trained them

Now, again, I've already perhaps sounded snobby. I don't want to sound discriminatory, but this is not a conversation about special educational needs

OK, this is not a conversation about disabilities or issues that make it harder for a child to learn to be potty trained

This is a conversation about children who would have been toilet trained 10 years ago, but are not being toilet trained today before they go to primary school

One of the schemes that has been introduced to address this issue has recorded spectacular success

All families across York who were due to start school in September were offered a potty training guide

The idea being that all children would arrive at school able to use the toilet independently unless they had

And this is why I say the conversation is not about medical issues or special educational needs

Neither, and I'm doing that thing again, aren't I, where I'm kind of telling you not to ring in

but neither do I want to take phone-ins from people who just want to attack the parents

and pontificate on how awful they are and how this is inexcusable and should never have happened

They speak to some parents in the coverage that I'm reading, and they talk about how going to school is hard enough for children

without having to add the pressure of toilet training upon them. Another mother says that she welcomes the help

And I just can't quite believe that 11%, this is across York last September

11% of children were turning up not being toilet trained. So that's just what I want to talk about

I suspect that it's emblematic of a bigger truth. And I suspect that some of the answers to the question of how

how is this happening, will be the same answers as to some of the other questions that we talk about

How is this happening? What do you think is changing in our society

Because it can be easily changed back. That's the nice thing about this story. It can easily be changed back

But the statistics that I've shared with you specifically exclude medical issues or special educational needs

So they are addressing a problem that is very real. And it's a problem of parents raising children to the age at which they start school without having toilet trained them. And I want you to tell me how that has happened. That's all. And you can do it from the personal because I'm not here to judge, not by any stretch of the imagination, although I've already indulged in a little bit of low level snobbery by suggesting that this is

Probably not as likely to happen in a family where, I don't know, the level of interest in the world is such that you would tune into LBC

Maybe that's a stupid thing to have said, but I've said it now. I can't take it back. So you can talk to me from personal experience or you can join me in speculating on what the reasons might be

Because it could speak to something rather horrible, couldn't it? The idea that children are simply not receiving the levels of attention from their parents that were once commonplace

And that brings us back to the other conversation that we have these days on a relatively regular basis

which is when are we going to stop worrying about children spending their entire lives on their phones and focus instead on the adults

But you know that your baby needs to be toilet trained. you know roughly when the deadline expires

starting school without being able to do your business strikes me, and I don't think I'm a particularly

cliched middle class parent when it comes to this issue, it strikes me as absolutely extraordinary

Absolutely extraordinary. Send out guides and the drop in the number of children

turning up to start school without being fully toilet trend is 43%

So this is why I'm suggesting to you that it's not fair just to attack the parents

because that figure suggests that they did actually need help. And they..

aware that it was necessary but needed a little bit of guidance or they weren't even aware that

it was necessary or they needed a little bit of guidance on how to do it and i don't want to be

that bloke sitting here spluttering and go i can't quite get my head around this but i do have to

confess to being that bloke who sits here feeling absolutely bamboozled how can this be all right

And that's a sympathetic question, which doesn't involve condemnation or judgment of the parents involved, because that 43% figure suggests that at least roughly half of them, given the correct help and guidance, will deal with this issue, will tackle this issue

But the question remains, how have we arrived at a place where a significant number of parents are sending their children to school without having toilet-trained them

OK, that's the question. 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need

James O'Brien on LBC. 12.36 is the time. This is really interesting

So the idea that I sought to express to you was that the parents of children who are arriving at school without having been potty trained are not to be lazily consigned to the scrap heap

described as feckless or lazy. I mean, the idea, for example, that as soon as a little bit of guidance is put in place

the number drops by 43% suggests that the appetite not to be in this cohort is great

But some people can't resist it. Some people can't resist it. So there's a message, let me find the right one

from Abigail, which says, James O'Brien tells us why kids are, tell us why kids are not potty trained

without having a go at the parents, and then puts a couple of laughing emojis after that

as if my question is flawed or pointless. And then most of the other texts coming in say things like this

Tories shut Shorestop, massively cut local authority funding. Many parents don't get parenting guidance from anywhere

Two parents need to go to work, maybe do two jobs each. Remember, the numbers are big but small, if you see what I mean

Lack of support from older adults for many reasons, distance, time, lack of contacts

some parents thinking it is someone else's problem um that's from beatrice and this from alice

children's centers have closed over the last 10 years there's so much less help for new parents

in society today i never even met a health visitor in six years as my daughter was born in a pandemic

so many parents are navigating parenthood with no help or support these days doesn't necessarily

demand sympathy from everybody although it gets some from me and then the kicker perhaps um

from Richard. Parents are impossibly busy and tired. Our kids are in school

so he's talking about himself now, and wrap around care for 42 hours a week

which is more than my partner and I work each, but we have to work as much as we do

to afford to live, and we still struggle towards the end of the month

We have parent friends who work opposite shifts. So that's one on the day shift

one on the night shift. All this makes being able to give proper, consistent time to each child's needs difficult and and this from scott you may only see your kid

for an hour or two a day before bed you've then got to do all the stuff in that window

so it automatically becomes a much more nuanced issue than abigail with her emojis and perhaps

old me would allow how is this why is this happening how is this happening sarah's in

harleston sarah what would you like to say oh hi james hello i'd like to say it is a nuanced problem

um i think parents are incredibly time poor um so like um mum is dropping kids off from nursery

from the eight of nine months then they go to school um you know both parents are working full

time you've only got the weekend but you can potty train a child in just one weekend and I know this

because I've done it but you have I know you know you've got activities at the weekend you've got

all the chores at the weekend you've got all the homework even from reception class there's a lot

of homework to do and you know your time is poor but and also parents are deemed scrolling that

you can always make time you have to make time to give this most basic skill to your child how do you

do it in a weekend i forgive me i'm so old now i can't remember this particular period but um

it's drill drill drill routine so it's like you keep have to go back keep going back to square one

um you know every time um you can do it so you just got to take their pants off let them run

around the house and then you keep bringing the child to the toilet every 15 minutes

Oh, okay. It can be done. Until they do. I mean, are you going to play that tape again, Eleanor

Well, I'm not allowed to give out advice. This doesn't count as medical, does it? It's not me, it's Sarah

But that sounds like a fairly good way of doing it. And then they put two and two together and by Monday morning they associate sitting on a pot with needing a wee And then you just got to reinforce it in the evenings when you get home from work

and then reinforce it again the following weekend. You've got to do it. I wonder how much of it is the, as you say, the prioritization of problems

And I've got so much to get through. That one is kind of, I know I should be doing that, but it's kind of dealt with

You know, they've had a nappy on for two years. It's not going to matter if they have a nappy on for another two years

It's like a dealt-with problem, and you need to remind yourself, or parents need to remind themselves, or someone needs to remind them

which is why the 43% drop in the number of children where the council was sending out guidance and help

It just reminds parents that this should be higher up their list of priorities

You need to think of your child's threshold for embarrassment. Their peers will laugh at them

Their teachers or their support workers in the class, they will make value judgments about your child

They may not voice it, but they're going to express some kind of distaste to your child

You don't want that to happen. So you have to prioritize this

I'd also say that lots of kids are being diagnosed with ADHD

and that can cause a little bit of delay in picking up the pattern and the routine of um

potty training that's not medical that's just something i've noted yeah well it's also special

educational needs are excluded from the um from the statistics that we're discussing today as well

although i mean there will be factors of course some kids find it easier to pick things up than

others do and and that really boils down to the what is it what's the word the sort of motivation

if you like, of the parents. And I'm not a big fan of shame, despite having been raised a Catholic

And yet, of course, when Sarah points out that the child will be embarrassed in some scenarios

then I don't think you can argue with it. So if nothing else

you do it to spare your child embarrassment. It's an extraordinary figure

It really is. And yet, I think there's something in that relationship

between not just being time poor and both parents working, but also every morning when you wake up, particularly at the weekend

you've got so much to get through. That is not an urgent issue because it is literally contained

That's what I mean by the nappy. The problem is contained, so you can postpone it beyond where you should be postponing it

Alex is in Southampton. Alex, what do you reckon? Yeah, I mean, echoing your sentence entirely

it is this dual-income household that we've had to sort of adapt to

within the recent, I don't know, couple of decades or so. Me and my wife, we work alternate shifts

She works nights, I work daytime. And there's this struggle for time or genuine time with your children

And I think most parents, especially if they're in a professional environment where they're both working nine to fives

there's such a starvation of time for quality sort of learning, building time with your children to the finite points of potty training

Yeah, of course. there's just no time for this in the modern world

I mean, a couple of interesting thoughts have come in that I hadn't seen on the horizon

One is that we send children to school too young. Many other countries, formal schooling won't begin until you're six or so

And the second is, I presume that childcare facilities, nurseries and the like are just too, there's too many children there

and too few staff for them to take responsibility for toilet training. I presume some might do it

when you get to the preschool level, it's around five or six children per adult at that level

And that's when they're sort of becoming, they're giving those signals towards the potty training element

Well, you can't do it because you need one-on-one attention, don't you? So you wouldn't be able to do it there

without neglecting the other four or five kids. Exactly that. You've got to look out for those signs of them needing that wee

So if your wife's working nights, she gets to spend some time with them during the day

when she's had a snoot, when she's had a proper kip, and so she could take a bit more of the responsibility for this

than she would have done if she'd been working days with you. Yeah, exactly

The weekends are mine. She has Mondays, Tuesdays off. We balance that bit

And for the remaining three days that we can't cover, they go to nursery. And those are the times where we balance the potty training

and the rest of the learning that we have to do for them

to get them ready for school. Because it isn't the nursery's job at the end of the day to get them ready for school

It is on the parents. It is called child care, isn't it? Not child preparation or school preparation. It's extraordinary, isn't it? I presume that people most likely to struggle to sympathize with the scenario you described will be the people who had no experience of it. The ones from kind of the 70s or 80s when one parent would be at home all day. And therefore, of course, it's a no brainer. And of course, it's straightforward. And of course, the parent who hasn't done it when they're at home with the baby all day is remiss and is being irresponsible

but you can't say that about the parents who aren't at home with the babies all day that that that that

window is small and full and I get it actually um 12 45 is the time and when they send out I like it

when successful schemes come to fruition local authorities send out the after this York pilot they send out these packs which encourage parents to A be aware of the necessity and B to address it

It comes out with the first school offers, so in the same envelope that your allocation of primary school arrives

so too will the guidance on how you should be and can prepare your child for school in this area

12.46 is the time. James O'Brien on LBC. With the answer to questions or issues that we find a little bit hard to understand, the answer is rarely just to shame people even more

And I say this as someone who was raised very much in the Catholic faith, where shame is an absolute humdinger

It's rarely going to be the answer. And sometimes when I go through the history of messages to the programme, so if you send me a message now, I can see the last goodness knows how many messages that you sent

Normally, it's a passport to Idiot's Corner because it proves that your ignorance is endemic

It's baked into you and it's not just a sort of one-off or an outburst. But sometimes, I'd say maybe two or three times in ten, it's a lovely experience

because I can see a process that's gone on during your messages. It's rarely as lovely as this

So Chris sent me a message, which I read during that last junction

It just said, you win. I've been totally rage-baited by this one

Hats off to you. So whose curiosity isn't piqued by a message like that

So you think to yourself, aye, aye, what's happening here then? So you go into the history of messages and you see that just sort of five minutes previously

he wrote to me, I've got to call BS on this one. Are we literally allowing people to let their kids continue to poo themselves after four years

This level of tolerance is so unhealthy. and then three or four contributors explaining the simple concept of time management and two jobs

and split shifts opposite shifts mums on nights dads on days and the simple difficulty of doing

something that used to be simple chris happily has the has the wit to realize that the answer

is not more shame or anger although chris may i hate to break it to you but when you texted the

station before I came on to say I bet you a loo roll that they can buy

cigarettes. Presumably a conversation about hygiene poverty. Guess what mate? You'd been successfully rage baited

then as well although the cure, it would appear, did not come along shortly afterwards

12.51 is the time. Amy's on the Isla White. Amy, what made you pick up the phone

Hi there. Hello. I have quite strong feelings about this. Yes. We've been through potty training

ourselves with our four year old who was potty train before he went to school

Right. And luckily he had some quite good advice from nursery. Yes. You know, from the nursery just to go for it

I'd got various books out about it and been reading, you know

different methods of going about it. But we just had to ultimately just, on the day I did it

it was like you had to just go for it and, yeah

just simply take the piece away. Yes. But I think leading up to that

a couple of years beforehand, and he was two, and we did receive some unhelpful advice

Right. We were really up for starting now potty training. Yes. Really eager to receive from a help

We received some unhelpful advice from a help visitor. Oh, really? And that my son's nursery didn't understand

really why he'd given the advice either but he went to nursery with pants under

pants under his nappy. What's the point of that? He was given advice to a health visitor

How bizarre. Ultimately, he became quite unwell from that and ended up in hospital with a

UTI which we believe was to do with this advice we were given

That's just bizarre. I did complain, but I didn't really get anywhere with it

But it did set us back for quite a long while, actually. Well, it would do

From starting again. And he was really up for starting, and he lost a lot

It was obviously quite traumatic for him. Yeah. So luckily, since then, you know..

I think I know why they do that. So it's under a disposable nappy

Yeah, it was pants under a disposable nappy So that they can feel damp

Feel the wetness Right I'd also like to say No, it's just bad advice, isn't it

I mean, I think there was a brief period where it was encouraged But you were just unlucky, I think, on that one

Yeah, it was really unlucky And it was really traumatic, you know

Still on the NHS website, still there Yeah, but we have since been directed

No, I was really up for doing reusable nappies, and I looked into it a lot

And when he was very young, we did use lots of them

which, to be honest, I felt a bit out of the norm using them, but we used like muslin cloth nappies and nappy nippers

which were really cheap to buy. And they do take a bit more effort

but once you've sort of got the hang of it, They are great for getting them to feel the wetness

You clearly take this very seriously and you knew what was needed Well I was really determined Yeah but also I love the way that you just very naturally established the fact that you needed a bit of help

You knew it needed to be done, but you would benefit from a little bit of guidance and support

Whereas some people listening think that it, probably forgotten what it was like when they were raising babies

that it sort of comes naturally like some sort of sense memory

Of course you're going to need a little bit of help to know how to do it. I think I do reach out to health visitors regularly

But I think they are, when he was actually, when I did get him potty trained

I was reaching out to health visitors regularly for advice. And the nursery were really

he's lucky to be a great nursery that did just tell it

reminded us, gave us the confidence. We were just like, go for it. You just need to take them away and commit to it

See, you're talking about it as if it's a big deal, and I think the danger here historically is to talk about it as if it isn't

you know, as if it's of the most easy and natural. I felt like it was a big deal

Well, it is. Is he at school now? Yeah, he's gone to school now

Do you know how many kids in his class were not trained when they got there

Was it something you became? No. No, but most of his children come from the same nursery, I think

so they probably were. We were giving lots of good advice and potty training

No, I get it. You've covered it. That's it, isn't it? And I think, you know, I'm quite old

and quite smug and quite set in my way, so it's a tiny little

bit of me that would be thinking, what do you need help for? But we had Sure Start when our kids were small. We had Sure Start

So you'd be getting that advice, even, like, almost by osmosis. You wouldn't even

know. They wouldn't need to put a leaflet in the envelope telling you

what primary school you were going to. You would have already dealt with it at Sure Start

So you know what that is. That's Osborne's razor, isn't it? How many conversations do we have about problems in the country

that go back to George Osborne's decision to cut public spending in areas where it should never have been cut

in order to uphold the myth that the international banking crisis of 2008

was somehow caused by there being too many Sure Start centres in Ladbroke Grove

which is where ours was, or indeed too many libraries in Wolverhampton, which is the punchline to the joke

that the great Alexi Sale actually wrote on the subject. And you can hear my full disclosure

with Alexi Sale in all the usual places. Squeeze in one more call on this

Amy, take care. Kay's in Bexley. Kay, what do you reckon? Yeah, hi

So it's really interesting because I have two children. My daughter, Potty, trained perfectly

Not a problem whatsoever. Had my son very different. My son happened to have special needs

He had Down syndrome. So the way in which we supported my daughter didn't help with my son

And we were fortunate enough to get support from the local continent services

But it still took time. It still took effort. But he was still able to be fully potty trained before he started primary school

And I was really proud of that. But what I recognised was it took a lot more time and effort

And I do hear what other parents are saying. I worked as well. My husband worked

but it just meant that we had to just slow things down. And it doesn't mean, yeah, you know, every now and again

maybe you don't go out as often. Maybe you do say, actually, you come to my house

because we're potty training. And it's just putting that little bit of effort in

And I really felt that it helped my son particularly going to school to be as included as everybody else

Oh, how important. Because he doesn't go to the bathroom. Yes, of course. I didn't even know that continent services were a thing

but at least for babies and young people, I know that they can be for older people

But it is, I mean, every call really has highlighted the fact that it is an area in which help is valuable

Help is necessary. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the one thing I also recognise I didn't do with my son in potty training was teach him how to use a urinal

And that was a problem at school because he'd never seen a urinal. So obviously, you know, we had to get Dad involved to help him to do that

Just a bit of an oversight on that. Well, yes. I mean, of course, I don't even know if anyone's ever done that, but prepared them for that moment

But it's much, much easier to learn. I can speak from experience and with a degree of expertise on this

It's much, much easier to learn how to use a urinal than it is to potty train a child

Thank you. I did the results for the Bob. The producer is asking me. It was nine again. The eighth week in succession, Andy Burnham, the Burnham Optimism Barometer, has come in at nine

and we've only had three weeks, but it was less than nine, and that was eight. It's amazing

Alert Downing Street. I have a urinal observation. Good Lord. Yeah. I think the problem for adult men is unlearning how to use the urinal

when they use toilet. Yes, I think you might be right. I think we need that raised in Parliament

Say no more. It lowers the bar. If you missed any of today's show

you can listen back on our free Global Player app or the LBC app, where you can also stay up to date with all the latest news, videos, and opinion

You can listen to a range of podcasts, including James O'Brien Daily, the best bits from my LBC show every day

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Coming up at four on LBC, it's Tom Swarbrick. But now it's time for Sheila Fogarty

James O'Brien on LBC