Gaza Refugees
Let’s talk refugees because there’s a petition basically that asks that the UK should be housing refugees from Gaza, it reached 100,000 people so of course it was debated. What’s your answer to this question, do you think we should be taking in refugees from Gaza Matt?
No, I don’t, I actually wrote a piece this morning on my Substack about it saying that I think it would be crazy actually for the UK to accept refugees from Gaza. Firstly, I think there are neighbouring countries that should be doing a lot more, Egypt, Jordan. You got to ask questions as to why they’re not taking more refugees from Gaza? Secondly, we know the track record in this area is pretty dismal, when Denmark took a significant number of Palestinians a large number of them went on to commit crime.
They became dependent upon the welfare state and I think there’s a massive security risk here, surveys of Palestinians in particular show that large majorities support Hamas, they support very radical Islamist ideas, as unfortunately do a significant number of British Muslims as we’ve seen recently in the polling and surveys and I think to be frank after the Hong Kong scheme, after the Ukrainian scheme after the similar scheme for Afghan interpreters my view Britain is a tolerant Open Country but Britain actually has done enough in terms of helping people from elsewhere in the world.
It’s time for other countries to step up and do their part, so I’m against this move that’s being pushed by the Labour party, by the Greens, by others on the left.
Zoe, are you against it? I think we should take Palestinian refugees and the reason I think that is because I think anybody who is in a war-torn area, who is suffering trauma, intolerable trauma, intolerable levels of loss to life, destruction should be considered as a refugee and should be taken in by countries with the means to do so.
Global Refugee Crisis
My grandfather was a German Jewish Refugee when he tried to come to the UK he was met with all kinds of hostility, partly because he was German, partly because he was Jewish. The arguments about him being German were that he was the enemy and that he shouldn’t be taken on those grounds. There are 45% of the Palestinian population are children, they are incredibly vulnerable.
I think we should be doing our bit; we’d now look at all those German Jewish refugees we took during the second world war and we’d feel really proud that we did that and I think we’re at danger of demonizing a whole population of people. We should definitely think about the way we talk about refugees because I worry, we dehumanize them when actually it’s important we take them, it’s important we’re empathetic and many of them have made brilliant contributions to this country and I think we forget that when we talk in these terms.
I think you know I think that sounds really nice and it sounds really you know, it makes us feel good, the reality is we’ve got 80 million displaced people around the world, Britain cannot take people from every war-torn country around the globe.
I haven’t heard people on the left by the way falling over themselves to say let’s take people from Sudan or let’s take people from the refugee camps in China. I haven’t heard anybody actually saying that and secondly we know actually what happens when we accept Palestinians into this country, the two cases I wrote about this morning two young Palestinian women who went to one of them went to the University of Manchester to study law.
Another one, I can’t remember exactly where she went, but they both came out very quickly after October the 7th and they put on nice paraglider stickers onto their clothes and they ran into the streets saying how proud they were of the murder, rape and violence that was committed against Jews.
Different Cultures and Beliefs
I wonder what your grandfather or indeed Jews today in Britain would feel and think if we were to open the country to people who to be blunt celebrated the murder and rape of Jews on October the 7th, which many of us found utterly appalling and have struggled with the response to that on Britain streets ever since?
We have to draw a line somewhere, we cannot just keep taking people from war torn countries, least of all people who to be blunt don’t really share our way of life and the values, that make us who we are.
So, there are a few issues in there so the first I would say is that absolutely other countries should also be taking refugees as well of course it’s not simply up to the UK.
I think globally all countries should be talking about what they’re going to do about the increasing number of refugees who are going to want to pour over borders because we have increasing global unrest, we have climate change all these things are going to contribute to the amount of people who are moving across the world so yes, all countries should have a duty to take refugees.
On the point about those two Palestinian people you mentioned, refugees who had come into the UK and had expressed views that were sympathetic to Hamas, obviously that’s appalling and I don’t think we should be tolerant of those views at all.
I think they’re terrible what happened on October the 7th was a terror attack, it was an appalling loss of life, it should never happen again but we have to remember that refugees are all individual people some of them aren’t going to be perfect, some of them aren’t going to be nice people, they’re not all going to have great views but to demonize a whole group because of the actions of two people, I think you know that that’s wrong.
60% of Palestinians Support Hamas
I think you know that we cannot hold all Palestinian people responsible for the few that do terrible things just as you wouldn’t with Brits, just as you wouldn’t with any country. I mean you’re not saying that we should be representative of all Palestinian people?
Well, I use representative surveys and if you look at those surveys of Palestinians over 60% of them the Washington Institute, I wrote about it this morning, I hyperlink into the survey, people can go and look at it themselves over 60% of Palestinians express support for Hamas and also a large majority of Palestinians support this idea of Islamic Jihad they hold views that to be blunt are not the views that most British people want to see on their streets and it comes down to this basically.
I think it’s about time we prioritize the British people, that’s basically what I think we need to do, we’ve done a lot over the last 10 years we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians Hong Kongese people, from Afghanistan not to mention 2 million legal migrants from around the world and another 125,000 on the small boats, it’s about time now that we actually prioritize the British people above others from around the globe.
I’m curious to know in those surveys because if about 45% of the population of Palestine are children is that including children in those in those surveys? I mean if half the population is so young and so vulnerable again, I don’t think anybody in this debate is saying we shouldn’t be helping children in Gaza, we shouldn’t be helping children in Palestine but I’d love to see people on the left for example say well; why don’t we put more pressure on I don’t know Egypt or Jordan to perhaps take more refugees? Why is it that?
Importing Crime
I did say I think other countries, why is it down to us, but I think we need to have global conversations about migration, it’s going to be one of the biggest challenges of our time because there is going to be increasing wars, conflicts there’s going to be you know struggles for energy, climate change all these things are going to make some parts of the world.
Can I make a radical suggestion on the day in which a man has been sent to prison, an Islamist asylum seeker who entered the country illegally and went on to murder a 70-year-old who was simply walking on the street in in the morning, can I suggest that before we start a debate about who else we’re going to take in that we just fix our borders and our asylum system before we start considering who else we’re going to take into this country.
Let’s do things in a logical order, let’s strengthen the borders, let’s fix the home office which is clearly not fit for purpose and let’s actually regain control of the country, then let’s have a conversation about who else we can help around the world, but until we have a functioning immigration system with robust asylum laws, that are seen through and properly monitored, this whole debate is I’m sure many people at home are watching this thinking this is complete lunacy, Britain’s done enough.
Well, I disagree with that point, but I do agree with the fact that there are plenty of issues in this country and I think the constant use of migration as the biggest issue of the day by conservative and right leaning governments who want to detract from the fact that public services are in a dire State, detract from the fact that the NHS doesn’t have enough money.
I agree with that I think actually our country is very tolerant and there have been forces at work to make immigration seem like it is the biggest issue in this country, like immigrants are the source of so many of the problems in this country, they’re not. The conservative government have underfunded so many services in on towns and streets you can see the damage of Tory rule, it’s not if you demonize immigrants don’t be surprised when it becomes the main topic of conversation.
Mass Immigration = Managed Decline
Nobody here I would say, nobody’s demonizing immigrants, what I’m saying to be clear is mass immigration is managed decline okay, now what do we mean by that? We’ve entered a population trap, we have so many people coming into this country that the capacity of the state it can no longer provide basic Public Services like housing, like a functioning NHS, like GP appointments, like School places for kids, Canada’s talking about it, Germany’s talking about it, we seem incapable of having an honest frank conversation about the full effects of migration.
We have too many people coming into this country, we have another 6 and a half million forecast to come into Britain over the next decade. We can’t even fix our housing crisis right now, we can’t even fix our NHS crisis right now, we can’t fix our borders right now, this is lunacy.
The British people have had enough, we need to give them what they asked for in 2016, 2019 lower migration, keep some maybe net migration 100,000 keep it high skill support, the NHS support, parts of the social care system, but we need a revolution in this country that is in tune with where British people are on this issue because we’ve lost control. Everybody can see it, everybody can feel it, every time they go out, they use a train, they go to their GP, we no longer have a function state in this country.
I would just, I think we’re just going to disagree. I would say immigration is a convenient excuse used by a government that has deliberately underfunded its services and not built enough houses. I mean you’re completely right about housing, but the only people who are responsible are the blockers and the government who have refused to build things in this country so we just keep building and building without actually having a conversation about demand and supply.
Labour being Dishonest about Immigration Policy
I mean look for example I would have more time for the left and the Labour party and others if they were just honest about what’s happening in this country. We had 2 million people come into Britain over the last 3 or 4 years, 15% of those people, one in five came in on high-skilled working visas, what I’m saying is we are basically flooding the economy with low wage, low skill workers, that’s why GDP per head is so weak, that’s why we don’t have growth in this country, we’re just throwing people at this economy getting them to consume, but we’re not actually generating growth, so we can have a kind of fantasy conversation about it or we can have a realistic conversation about it.
I’d like to have a realistic one let me just ask you quickly, so would you put any limits or caps on this because obviously the displaced people right across the world, there’s conflicts right across the world, there’s people suffering and struggling and all the rest of it, would you apply any caps, restrictions?
Well, my problem with caps and restrictions is I don’t know how practical they are because say you have a cap of 100,000 but then you have a family with a pregnant woman and three children, do you just turn them away? I don’t think that’s necessarily a good way of deciding how much immigration you take in a country I mean I think I will go back to the point I’ve made several times which is this is not a domestic problem; this is a global problem and the only way we’re going to get to grips with the issue of mass migration is by working with other countries and I think unfortunately Britain has turned itself into an very isolationist country.
We haven’t I mean we’ve seen how small boat crossings have been impacted by us leaving the EU, I just think we can only tackle this issue if we work with other states and James Cleverly made actually what I thought was a fairly decent speech in the US a couple of months ago where he spoke about needing to cooperate on this on a global level.
What do you make to it all at home? I know you you’ll have some strong opinions on it for sure get in touch and let me know your thoughts.