Keir Starmer Steals Freedom | Rachel Reeves Mocked On Economy | Labour NHS 'Lies' | Trump vs Putin

Tom, very good morning to you. Good morning. Shall we kick off straight away with Rachel Reeves, because Rachel Reeves, yesterday, this is obviously a mantra that Downing Street's putting out, you know, it's not as bad as you think. We're doing a lot better than you are telling us that we are. And don't listen to all of those horrible, nasty, ghastly right-wing bigots on places like talk, and just assume that we're actually doing all right. Here she is on the GDP. Today's numbers show that the economy beat expectations in the second quarter of this year. We are the fastest-growing economy in the G7 for the first half of this year, with a GDP growth of 0.3% this quarter, and that's after a GDP growth of 0.7% the quarter before that. Look, I recognise there's still more to do to make sure that people in all parts of the country benefit from that growth, but since the general election, when I became Chancellor, the economy has grown by 1.2%, and GDP per capita, so for every person in the country, GDP per capita is up by 0.7%. So encouraging numbers today, but of course we need to build on that to make sure people in all parts of the country are better off. I'm sorry, and I'm going to apologise again, it's early in the morning. Is she taking the piss? Seriously. Is she actually trying to tell us that the economy is going well? Because it bloody well isn't. Everyone is suffering, people are paying more for everything they need to buy to feed their families, to go on holiday, to park their cars, to drive around the country. Everything has gone up in price, and the economy is completely down the toilet. And it's an insult to people's intelligence. They know, looking out there across the country, that things are not as rosy as Rachel Reeves is trying to make out. Talking about, oh, we're the fastest growing economy in the G7, that's a bit of a tallest dwarf competition at the moment, to be perfectly frank. And also, we all recognise that so many of the promises that we were given, that there was going to be this laser-like focus on growth. These growth figures are paltry, we all know that. And then also, the fact that the message that Downing Street are continually putting out at the moment is, it's not as bad as we thought, in effect. Tells you everything you need to know. It's not exactly things can only get better, is it? As I say, I'm really, really wound up by this piece of the Financial Times this morning, which is a piece of propaganda like which I've never seen. I mean, the people that run the Financial Times should be ashamed of themselves, right? I used to tear up the Guardian. I'm going to tear up the Financial Times today. Because here's their story. Their headline, their page one main story, relief for Reeves is non-DOM tax returns, quell fears of mass exits. They're basically saying, well, the predictions were that about a quarter of non-DOMs would leave the country, right? Yeah. And that's apparently happened. And so they're saying the fact that that's happened is not really bad news for Reeves because she knew it would happen. And no more than a quarter of them have left. And it says here, HM Revenue and Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest that more non-DOMs left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves' budget than official predictions. Seriously? You know, these people. What a victory. This is not journalism. I mean, you know what I mean? I'm sorry to be a bit sort of dramatic about it, but that's not, that's not journalism. That is a pathetic front page story, which is presumably dictated by the wonks in Downing Street who were saying, oh, please try and join in with this ridiculous mantra of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, which is that actually things are a lot better than we thought they would be. It could be much, much worse, seems to be the message that we're getting. I mean, there's this quote in the story, with all the things going on in the world, Britain looks like a pretty safe and stable place. I don't think that would chime with many people's experience. I certainly don't think it reflects where the economy is at the moment. And also the state of the nation. You know, I said this, I was having a drink with a friend of mine last night. I was in Oxford Street yesterday, and as I was walking across the road, there was suddenly this sort of very loud noise came out of nowhere, and there was about 50 kids on bikes, riding down, and as they came down from Marble Arch through Bond Street, riding on these bikes, you know, back up on the, you know, doing wheelies, going right in front of cars, you know, going through red lights. It was quite menacing, and the tourists were all sort of watching it like it was some kind of show. A couple of them were sort of, you know, riding on the top of the bikes, you know, doing all these kind of amateur dramatics and all that. But it was clear, the thing that I took from it, this is anarchy now in this country. These people, these kids are not afraid of the police, they're not going to see anybody from the police, they're recklessly driving and cycling down a very, very busy main road, and sort of almost taunting people to crash into them. And it was really quite menacing, as I say, it was really quite... If I'd been with my kids, or if I'd been with, like, small children, I would have been quite frightened. And literally there was not one police officer to be found, and it was almost like, we are now living in lawless Britain. No, it certainly feels like that, and people, you see that sort of thing all the time in London now, and so for all the kind of quibbling about, well, actually, London's never been better, we all know that's not the case when you see things like this, because that's the whole new forms of anti-social behaviour. Have you noticed that there's this kind of lefty belief that we should, and John Wentall will be on with us later on today, and he's one of the people that perpetuate this argument, you know, basically everything's fine, you know, look at the figures, look at the statistics, they actually tell you that Britain is a much safer place than it was 20 years ago. Absolute cobblers. And also, to a certain extent, it's just arguing past each other, because of the fact that yes, you can break it up and you can say what homicides are down or whatever, but the things that people are talking about, shoplifting, anti-social behaviour, this general sense of things kind of fraying, people taking their trousers off on the tube, all of that stuff is obviously on the increase. In certain ways, a city like London is on the slide, you don't have to be a doomerist or anti-London to recognise that, it's just the evidence of your own eyes. No, it's not a right-wing view, it's just, you know, this is actually what we're seeing on a day-to-day basis, right? No, completely, and it's just embarrassing, it's become, they often say that people are kind of waging a cultural war against London, I think it's the opposite, they're just trying to, you know, make Londoners in particular ignore the evidence of their own eyes. Yeah, and also, you know, there is no question, as we see it every day here on this station, that people are leaving the country in large numbers, because if they can, they will, it's as simple as that. You know, if you've got a job where you have to be here, like I do, I'm not leaving the country, clearly, and in fact I don't think I would even contemplate doing it, it's not the sort of thing I would do, but I know plenty of my friends who have decided to move to Dubai, decided to move to Portugal, decided to move to Italy, New York, whatever, you know, if they can, they're going, because it doesn't look like a place that encourages entrepreneurs, or encourages business, or encourages anyone who wants to make a bit of money for themselves. No, absolutely, it's one of those things where, it's not just anecdotal evidence at this point, it's clear that there has been a shift towards the exit door among some people, high net worth individuals, as well as some kind of enterprising younger people who feel like if they did want to kind of set out and start a business or whatever, that this isn't the place for them. A lot of kids, I mean, a lot of my friends' children, who are now sort of, say, coming out of university, are disappearing, because they're going, we don't really see Britain as a place where we're going to have any opportunity at all to develop our skills, or to get a decent, halfway decent job, you know? It very much feels like this is a country which has embraced managed decline, and that trickles through to business, to young people, and that's just very much the mood now, so whether it's Rachel Reeves, the FT, or whatever, can continue to say everything is fine, we all know that it's not. Everything isn't fine. But don't worry, because we've got plenty of money to give away to Ukraine. Yesterday, we've got a head of the Big Sonic tonight in Anchorage, in Alaska, where Donald Trump's going to meet Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky decides to pay a visit to Downing Street, and Keir Starmer and his idiotic people that run his social media page decided to make a slow-motion video, right, of them hugging each other. Check this out. Back mountain, isn't it? No, all it's missing is a careless whisper. What's he doing? How does he think that that is in any way a good thing to put out there? It's not as if we haven't heard enough about Ukrainians in Downing Street, firebombs. Well, you can understand why he's relieved, because usually when a Ukrainian shows up on his front door, it's a much more serious encounter, so it's one of those things. They should have a burning car over there, you know. Oh, look, somebody set fire to the car. But this is the thing about Keir Starmer, he's weak domestically, so you try and kind of pose on the international stage, you try and kind of soak up some charisma by proxies and leadership by proxies. As a male of the species, and I know that I can be getting into some serious trouble here because I might assume that you're a heterosexual male, I mean, have you ever hugged anyone like that? I'm trying to think. I'm sure I have. I'm sorry, I mean, I have friends, I have male friends that, you know, we go out together, we have fun together, we get a little hug every now and again. He's sort of holding on to him like he's his long-lost brother or, you know, his lover that he's not going to see for 18 years because he's been sent to jail. It's very weird. I just think it's weird. I think the slightly more prosaic explanation is that this is kind of how he thinks he's doing diplomacy, like we are showing that we're putting our arms around Ukraine and that even though Trump might be about to go to this meeting and sell Ukraine down the river, et cetera, et cetera, I think it's probably more than that than anything else. Keir Starmer even trying to execute that looks weird. Him trying to look warm and friendly will always look odd because that's him. Because he's not warm and friendly. Not at all. And he's also, I mean, this is the only guy you can find in the world in terms of world leaders who's actually shorter than him. So it makes him look manly. But it's just, I just find it very strange that he has to do this hugging, this kind of outpouring of what looks like, you know, emotional love for a bloke who he doesn't really know very well. You know, he keeps saying things like, you know, we will stand by Ukraine forever. You know, Volodymyr Zelensky is my friend. How is he your friend? You've met him like maybe half a dozen times and you've spoken to him on the phone a bit. He's not your mate. You know, he's a guy who managed to get himself in charge of a country. Some people don't think he's a particularly good leader of that country. Some people think he's been, you know, he should be asked some difficult questions about what he's done with all the money he's been given. And also, people in this country are pretty sick to the back teeth of giving him, giving Zelensky billions and billions of pounds for which he doesn't appear to do anything. Well, I think it's one of those things now where even as Zelensky's facing a lot of pressure at home and even though there is a kind of weariness amongst the West, you know, anyone looks better stood next to Keir Starmer, don't they, at this point? Anyone looks more... Yeah. I mean, it's true. More of a leader. This is Betty who says, Mike, they probably spent an hour putting that hard hat on Rachel Reeves and her hair to make her look less daft 20 minutes behind the camera. Yeah, probably right. Morning, Mike. Just at East Croydon station, only to see two blokes walk into the Cafe Nero and clear half the stuff out. Nobody batting an eyelid. Suspect that theft isn't reported to the police anymore. As long as the rest of us obey the rules, nothing will change until we all stop paying for things, says Mark in Croydon. That's going on every day. I mean, you witness it, right? The idea that, you know, somehow Britain is not lawless is ridiculous, because it clearly is. And shoplifting is a great example. We can trade statistics all day, but that's clearly gone up. And also, it's kind of been almost kind of quietly decriminalised because nothing ever happens as a consequence. Those rules are never enforced. Police won't show up. And it's just created a situation in which people increasingly feel like mugs for playing by the rules. Yeah. And as soon as that starts to break down... This is exactly what I said yesterday. You know, I was very wound up yesterday. And I went, you know, you basically paid your taxes, you come into work every day, you know, you pay your fare on the tube, you pay your fare when you come in on public transport from wherever it is into London, and you feel like you're being taken for a ride. You feel stupid, because nobody else is doing it. You know, you feel like you're surrounded by people who are not paying for their tube fare, who are not paying taxes, who are in receipt of benefits, whether they're, you know, migrants or whether they're homegrown scumbags, right? And there's an awful lot of people who are taking us all for a very long ride. No, and it's started to really demoralise people in exactly the way that you say. And that's a really toxic mix, because it also becomes a recipe for more breaking the rules, more bending of the rules. People think, why should I bother? I'm getting people every day saying exactly those words, why should I bother? Why should I bother paying tax? Why should I bother paying, you know, my fare share? Why should I bother, you know, forking out money for a sandwich when I can just steal it? And that's where we are. Because they're witnessing this every day. They're witnessing people clean out the shelves, they're witnessing people barge through the tube turnstiles and nothing ever happens. There's not even someone shouting after them. It's just kind of accepted passively. But even by the authorities, or the people who are supposed to be guarding the turnstiles. This thing I witnessed yesterday with these kids, you know, cycling down the road as if they owned it. Because it was as if they owned it, because guess what? They do own it. And nothing's going to happen to them. And not one of them would have been questioned by the cops. And I thought to myself, you know what, if I tried to stand in the middle of the road and say, stop that, they'd probably just run me over and kill me. And they wouldn't care. It's that lawlessness, isn't it? Especially when you think, London is famously one of the most surveilled cities on earth. You know, per capita, so much CCTV. The Metropolitan Police, believe it or not, does exist, although you don't see a lot of them these days. Is it really impossible to get on top of some of these phone snatching gangs, this kind of lawlessness? It's like they've just given up. This cannot just be about funding and police numbers and so on. Something really fundamental should be done, it feels like. I know. Absolutely right. Here's one from Warwick in Devon. He says, morning Mike and Tom. Great start to your show once again. Is it just me, but whenever Stalin and crybaby thieves talk on camera, their noses become longer and longer as they speak, as they actually believe their own lies. Shall we have another look at old Rachel Reeves on the GDP? Because I think this is worth playing out quite a lot today. This is a woman who is obviously completely nutty deluded. It was only a few weeks ago, she was literally sobbing her heart out in tears in the House of Commons. And we still don't really know why. Today's numbers show that the economy beat expectations in the second quarter of this year. We are the fastest growing economy in the G7 for the first half of this year, with a GDP growth of 0.3% this quarter, and that's after GDP growth of 0.7% the quarter before that. I recognise there's still more to do to make sure that people in all parts of the country benefit from that growth, but since the general election when I became Chancellor, the economy has grown by 1.2%, and GDP per capita, so for every person in the country, GDP per capita is up by 0.7%. So encouraging numbers today, but of course we need to build on that to make sure people in all parts of the country are better off. So she's admitted basically GDP in the first quarter was 0.7% growth, it's now 0.3% growth, which is less than half of what it was, and she thinks that's a good thing. I don't think even she's convinced that things are going well. She can't possibly think that that's real, I mean there she is about to weep and cry into her socks, nobody knows why she was doing that. Keir Starmer of course, so Mr Sensitive, didn't even know that she was crying when that happened. Unbelievable stuff. Anyway listen, it's 21 minutes past six, we've got lots more to do, let's get a voice note from Paul. Morning mate, great show as usual. You said you weren't going to get angry, it took you nine minutes. Got a brand new record. I mean, he's not wrong. Nine minutes, alright, okay, well, what do you want me to do? I can't help it. These bozos are ruining everybody's life. It's time they were told to account for it. This one says Mick in Wellington, Lammy gets captured poaching, Starmer lies dirty through his teeth, cities in the Midlands celebrate Pakistan and India Day by flying their flags, but the Reunion Jack gets removed, England flags get taken away for VJ Day, it's VJ Day today by the way, migrants get five star treatment whilst homeless veterans sleep on the streets and you are liable for arrest if you speak out. They're having a laugh, says Mick in Wellington. Listen, we'll come back with loads more after this on talk. Welcome back to Morning Glory, 25 minutes past six. Jackie has tweeted, she says, Mike, we're in Britain, not Pakistan, yet Birmingham Council takes down our flags, but Pakistan's flag is lit up onto buildings. Enough is enough. Well, this is the thing, it's VJ Day today. A couple of the papers have got, you know, big, big front pages. The Daily Mirror, VJ Day, 80 years on, they faced untold horrors, thousands of miles from home, and they are the lucky ones. They came home, so many didn't. Today, we remember them all. Front page of the Daily Express, similarly, has got a picture of a man called Reg Draper, he was 100 years old, who saw the formal surrender of Japan, which ended the Second World War. A picture of him when he was in the Navy, aged 21. Our VJ Day heroes gave us more than freedom. They left us the example of how it can and must be protected. And whenever you talk to people, Tom Slater's with me here from Spikes, whenever you talk to people who were involved in those conflicts in the Second World War, and who fought all the way through to the Japanese surrender, you know, they are lost for words when you go, what are you making of what's going on in the country now? They can't believe it. You know, especially because it's not just the fact that the country is in a bad economic state, but that kind of socially, culturally, in terms of the freedoms that so many people gave up their lives to defend and just being encroached upon, not by some kind of invading art, but by this government. And they were fighting for a way of life, they were fighting for something that was, you know, that you could get your hands around, that you could actually grasp and say, this is Britain, this is what we believe in, this is how we are, right, this is, as a nation, what we stand for. Now, what in the hell do we stand for now? I don't know. No, exactly, so that kind of sense that everything's sort of unraveled, and everything that, exactly as you say, people felt that they were laying their lives down for, has sort of withered on the vine, and you've then got a government which is encroaching upon the very freedoms that we thought we were defending. I mean, it's just such a grim picture when you look at it from that kind of historical Well, I mean, I think this week, for me, and we're going to talk about all sorts of things in the course of the next hour, this week, for me, summed up really, really well by that incident on the Tube, where a guy gets on the Tube, we don't know if he's a migrant or not, takes his trousers down and starts shouting and screaming and moaning, and obviously there's something wrong with him, he's got mental problems and all the rest of it. Guys on the train get up and try and stop him and tell him to pull his trousers back up, there are children seeing it and all that. In the end, they get involved in a punch-up, they drag him off the train, and now the police want to prosecute the people who took him off the train. That's not Britain to me. You know, that is a foreign country. No, because what do you expect people to do? I mean, no-one would have preferred for that encounter to end in the way that it did, but if you've got people exposing themselves around women and children and so on, I mean, they've got those insipid signs up on the Tube saying that if someone's doing X, Y, Z, you should try and sexually harass a woman, you should distract them with a question. Sometimes you need to do more than that, and that's an example of that. Sometimes you need to distract them with a fist in the face, I'm afraid. Anyway, let's get a voice note from John on Rachel Reeves. John from West Yorkshire here. I mean, Rachel Reeves surely has signed her own death warrant, hasn't she, Chancellor? Because in that little clip you said, she said in the first quarter since she was in, the economy grew 0.7%. Then she said in the second quarter it grew by 0.3%. And then she said that overall the growth has been 1.2%. Now, I only did elementary maths and O-level maths, but 0.7% and 0.3% when I was at school came to 1, not 1.2. I'm afraid you're right, John. And not only that, if you actually go to advanced maths, what you'll find is that if it goes from 0.7 to 0.3, it actually has declined by more than 50%. So you're actually in the negative, you know, going down below the actual zero line. Let's have a gaff, though, because it's Friday and we're going to try and cheer everybody up. This is Kevin O'Sullivan. It is Friday, August the 8th. Here's what's coming up. As we... Hang on. This is the wrong... Sorry, I've got to start again there, folks. This is the wrong list here. Bear with me. It is still Friday. This is a good sign. This will be on Mike Graham's gaffs next week. Don't tell him, anyone. For God's sake, don't tell him. Yes, where were we? Yes, it's Friday. It's Friday. Come on, it's the weekend. Don't worry about it. Do you think he knows that it gets recorded? You know, all he's actually doing goes out live on air. I think he's starting to stage these for you. I wonder. I do wonder. That's sensational. It's so good. Very good. Excellent stuff. Let's play... What shall we do? Simon Zelensky again, I think, in slow motion, because I think people need to see this. He's only just joined us. He's coming up to half-past six in the morning. Vladimir Zelensky came to London yesterday. As far as I know, there's no stories in the paper this morning saying we've given him a load of money. But presumably Keir Starmer's written out a cheque to give him a couple of billion quid. But who in their right mind puts this out? Check this out. I mean, seriously, with everything that's going wrong in this country and all the people... We've got more protests coming up this weekend at various hotels, outside of those hotels where migrants are staying. We've got a story about the TikTok migrant on the front page of The Sun, which we'll get to in a minute. You would think, and I'm surprised at this, even as useless as he is, Keir Starmer has never addressed it. He's never actually written about it, he's never tweeted about it, he's never spoken about it. It's almost as though this government doesn't want there to be anybody in the country who has a negative view of asylum seekers and or, quote, illegal migrants. They just don't want to know about it. Yeah, and the fact that they just continue to ignore this issue, even though it's the number one issue roiling the country, is now, if you poll people, the issue of migration in general is the top issue facing the country, as far as they're concerned, with the economy second, which is pretty significant. And Keir Starmer, like Rishi Sunak used to do this, many previous kind of lame-duck politicians, prime ministers do this, they love the international stuff. It allows them to look authoritative and serious and whatever. He looks like an idiot. No, I agree. That's what's funny about it, it's not even working here, because all he's really doing is posing for kind of cuddly photo-ops, things that look like could be a trailer for a romantic comedy rather than anything actually particularly serious. The day the prime minister came out as gay and decided to welcome the Ukrainian prime minister into his lair after his wife left him, I mean, that's what it looks like to me. I know that that's obviously completely scurrilous and completely wrong and would never ever be believed by anybody and therefore I can never be done by Ofcom for it, but that's what it looks like to me. Exactly. Satire, Mike, you will absolutely say. But I mean, that would be a headline that would distract people for a couple of days. It would. So if they really wanted to, you know... But do you know what? Nobody would be surprised. And what, Keir Starmer's gay? What do you mean? I have no idea. I never thought that. You know, but he's got a wife, he's got some kids. You know, the whole thing is completely, like, manufactured, performative, PR spinner nonsense. He might as well come out with any kind of... You know, I wouldn't be surprised if, before the end of his tenure, you know, they spin something like that in order just to take the heat off the economy. Just make up out of whole cloth just to distract, you know. Just to go... That's the ultimate dead cat strategy, is, like, pretending that he's, you know... Exactly. There's all this scurrilous stuff about his personal life, really to throw people off the fence. Just to throw people off. I mean, just ask Lord Alley. He'll probably give us a rundown on it. 6.32, I'm Mike Graham. Tom Slater is here. We've got loads more to come, including the TikTok migrant, he's become known. He came here, of course, on Saturday, famously. He checked into the country. He did not get detained, he did not get arrested, he did not get returned, despite the fact that that's what Keir Starmer said he was going to do. And instead, he's actually now living at large in the Crowne Plaza in Heathrow. He also did a video a few weeks ago telling people how they could kill their wives and get away with it. What a nice man he is. He's from Afghanistan. I say we kick him out, right now, this minute, this absolute minute. Not wait, don't wait for tomorrow, get rid of him now. That's his talk. Welcome back to Morning Glory, 6.35. I've got this from Lady Gaza, who says, Rachel from Accounts is living on Fantasy Island, if she thinks we are so dumb as to fall for her propaganda about the state of the economy. The country is on its knees, we can see it with our own eyes. I mean, we can. People are not stupid, right? People can see what is going on around them. Tom Slater is here with me from Spikes. You know, it's very obvious when you walk into a shop, if you don't happen to see somebody shoplifting while you're there, you do notice that everything has gone up in price. You know, people said to me the other day, food inflation is supposed to be running at 4% to 6%. It's running at more like 35% to 40%. When you're going to buy anything from a can of tuna to a packet of spaghetti, you know, it costs about 50% more than it used to cost. And people are already kind of feeling it from all the years of much more rampant, runaway inflation we've experienced. To turn around and be like, everything is fine, everything is on the right track, don't you worry about it. It's the fastest growing economy in the G7. Exactly. You don't realise it, but actually things are pretty good. People have had enough of that now. They're not buying it, are they? No, exactly. It's also because they've had so much bitter medicine for so long. It's not just this government, as much of the shower they have been, but people are just fed up. And also they're fed up of being lied to, gaslit, told that they should ignore the evidence with their own eyes and their own bank balances. It's not good enough. I don't know how they can continue down this road. I really don't know. Let's get a voice note from Miles on Starmer. Good morning, Mike. Great show as usual. Just watching that video of Zelensky and Starmer. I was expecting Starmer to get down on one knee and pull a ring out. That's how bad it is. I mean, exactly right. It is. It's appalling, isn't it? It's like this little bad, hopeless, awful version of Love Actually, right? With a gay Prime Minister. It's just ridiculous. John in Rugby says, Good morning, Mike. You're so wrong when you say this country doesn't attract anyone. Britain attracts pedos, rapists, drug dealers, murderers, terrorists, scumbags, parasites, etc. God help us. Joanna from Salisbury says, Mike, so we are the best in the G7? Wow. How bad are the rest of them? I want some of what Rachel Reeves is on, from the tearful mess in Parliament to the smiley, happy person with a pipe dream. We are doing well. This is the thing. People are so cynical about the state of this nation. People can see with their own eyes what's going on. You walk down the street, you see homeless people. You see more homeless people than you've ever seen. You see the fact that the streets are dirty, the litter is not being picked up, bins are not being emptied, they're overflowing. You know, nothing works. It's as simple as that. And let's talk about the TikTok migrant who's been known. Apparently his son has now named him as Parviz Hanifiar. He's from Afghanistan. He basically comes into the country as Alexandra420, which is his TikTok account. He's got 70,000 followers. A couple of million people have seen his journey from France over to here, into Dover on Saturday. And it turns out he's also done a video in which he describes how you can kill your wife. And he's still... I mean, I said this yesterday to Robert Jenrick, who was talking to us. I said, can we not just go and arrest this guy? Surely that's what we should be doing. Let me read this to you, right? This is what he said on TikTok about how to kill your wife. I will let her sleep first. Before I kill her, I drink a bottle of alcohol. I've never drunk alcohol in my life, but I teach you the technique to get less punishment. Just drink a bottle of it. Don't get too much drunk. Kill her immediately. When the police come, they say he was drunk. How many years of prison you will get? That's seven years. He says then during the seven years, you will have academic courses in prison. And after seven years, you have learned something and you're only 30 years old and sexually very strong. You marry a new woman, you must do this technique. I mean, really? Jesus Christ. Really? As you say, the question is like, why is he still here? Why was he not sent packing already? But also, how was he able to enter the country in the first place? This isn't the first time that we've seen one of these kind of toxic influences kind of almost live streaming their illegal entry into the country, spouting either barbaric misogyny or support for Hamas or whatever it might be. And yet, it seems like it has to... The authorities have to wait for the Sun newspaper or for the media to catch on to these people before they're even noticed. That they're dealt with. I know. It's like, part of this as well, it's almost like they're laughing at us. Yeah. Oh, they are? And that's the thing that really, really rubs me in. Well, this is the thing that I think people noticed a couple of weeks ago when the first demonstrations happened outside the Canary Wharf Hotel in Britannia but also up in Epping as well. People, these migrants are like looking out the window, using the taxpayer-funded phones to film the demonstrations going on and laughing at them. And just kind of, you know, mocking them and making signs to them and sort of, you know, being rude and making gestures and basically saying, you can't touch us, we are here, we are protected by the police. And it's just become a kind of open secret, hasn't it, that Britain is a soft touch, that it's so easy to make this crossing. We've got those record number, you know, 50,000 in the course of Labour's first year in power. It's the quickest that any Prime Minister has reached that particularly grim milestone. So the idea that the gangs are being smashed is actually now, it's not just that they haven't done it. It's like a running joke to most people. It's laughable, isn't it? So, and at what point do you, you know, it's not even that people are almost angry at this government, although they are, they're kind of just deeply cynical and they've almost started to switch off from anything that it says. Yeah, absolutely right. This from Paul. The problem with crime figures is, as we were saying earlier, people are just not reporting them as they've just given a crime number if they're lucky. The country is a shambles. And Roger says, Mike, all this antisocial and fearful elements you describe in Oxford Street are partly the result of a useless mayor, Sadiq Khan. And I can't disagree with that. I mean, Sadiq Khan has lorded it over the, I would say, complete and utter destruction of London. You know, London before Sadiq Khan was a much safer place, a much better place, a much more kind of, you know, tolerant place and just a more pleasant place to walk around than it is now. I don't think anyone who's lived in London for all of his reign can say anything different, apart from people who just feel blinkered by ideology and desperation to defend whatever Labour politician is standing up there. It's obvious to anyone that the capital's been on the sly. It's insulting to the Londoners who are having to experience that, particularly in the working-class areas where you do have spiralling knife crime and all these problems. To go around and say, from the perch of Hampstead, or wherever it is these people happen to live, everything is fine, is particularly insulting. It really is. Absolutely right. Let's just remind ourselves about Rachel Briggs, because, of course, everybody knows. She's an economist, isn't she? Well, I'm an economist. I studied economics. I got a Master's in economics from the London School of Economics and I worked as an economist at the Bank of England. Yeah, OK, darling. 6.41. Welcome back to Morning Glory at 6.44. Tom Slater's here with me. Though not an admirer of Rachel Briggs, her maths are right, says Adrian in Buckhurst Hill. Quarter 2 GDP growth 2025 is 1.2% higher than GDP growth in 2024. Quarter 1 of 2025 growth is 0.7% and quarter 2 2025 growth is 0.3%. And despite what your caller said about adding those figures together, for the total six-month growth of January to July, you really should multiply figures together. Yeah, but the trouble is, Adrian, that's all very well. You have very well illustrated what wonks do. They basically talk about numbers as if they don't actually have any real relevance to what our daily lives are like. What everybody knows is that inflation is up, that wages are down, that we have less money to spend, that we, in the words of Keir Starmer, have less money in our pockets, right, despite what he says he's doing, and the nation is going down the gurgle. Inflation is higher than it should be. Interest rates have been lowered, which is good news if you've got a mortgage, but not good news if you've got savings. And basically, the economy has been completely and utterly ruined and destroyed by Rachel Reeves and her crap policies. So you might as well argue about the price of fish in Iceland as you are trying to make out that her numbers are correct. Her numbers are not correct. We may be the fastest-growing economy in the G7, but that doesn't actually mean anything because every other economy in the G7 is also in a terrible place. And, you know, why try to make a point that she's doing better than she is? I suppose if you're given to mathematics and numbers, accuracy is particularly galling to you, but at the same time, as you say, if we're having an argument between 1% and 1.2%, it's a bit of a reminder that things are not exactly rosy. And it's worth remembering that when this government came in, almost channelling Liz Truss, it was all about growth. We've got a laser light focus on growth. Growth, growth, growth, growth. We're going to build houses, we're going to encourage business, we're going to get investment into the country. None of that's happened. No, it's just more tinkering around the edges. It's more... Whilst also implementing all kinds of really damaging policies. I mean, the national insurance hike has really made itself felt now in the kind of vacancy figures we saw this week. Totally. It's one thing after another. And it's purely... The lack of any kind of longer-term vision is something that's so striking. Now, it's not obvious that you're getting that from all the other parties, to be perfectly frank, but it just feels like managing a already pretty powerless situation is all the Labour Party can offer us. Yeah, exactly right. And they're not even doing that particularly well. No, they're really not. And crime is up, you know, and all of these sort of measurements of whether or not we're a more or less civilised society are going in the wrong direction. Let's have a listen to what Russ has to say. Morning, Mike. Russ from art material. I share your frustrations with this dump of a country at the moment, run by these clowns. Have you seen the Facebook posts and the ex-posts? We're making our streets safer for you. Well, you're bloody right, because I tell you what, you've only got to walk down them to see what's going on. Cheers, mate. Have a good day. Great show. Bye. Russ, thank you very much indeed. It is Friday, so we're going to try and keep it upbeat. But he's right. Russ is absolutely right. You've only got to walk down the streets of this country anywhere you like, and you can see that it's deteriorated from what it was like even just a year ago when Labour got in. And listen, let's talk about another lie that comes out of Downing Street. They've been talking about how NHS waiting lists have been going down, that they've been fixing the foundations of the NHS, that they've been giving loads of money to doctors to make sure that they actually do their jobs. The NHS is struggling to get better under Labour, according to the new figures. And there are still unacceptable numbers of patients facing day-long delays in A&E. This is statistics coming in over the last 28 days from NHS England. So even when they say, oh, we're bringing down waiting lists, I had an economist on the other day from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation who said, oh, waiting lists are getting smaller. And I went, no, they're not, and here's the proof. I was right again. And it's one of those things as well, isn't it, where even if everything that they're proposing came off without a hitch, you're still dealing with sky-high waiting lists by historic standards. It's the same with the kinds of measures they're trying to bring in on the border to try and get a grip on illegal migration. Even if these things, like the one-in-one-out, the 17-in-one-out and all the rest of it, even if these things worked perfectly, it wouldn't touch the sides. So it's just, we have these really deep structural problems in society all over the place. But can they just stop lying to us? They haven't got anything to bring to the table, so they just have to say, that's either lie to you, gaslight you, or say, we've made this minor improvement, don't you feel grateful? It's not good luck. Yeah, like we're watching with the economy this morning, you know, oh, we're the fastest growing economy in G7. You're still crap, right? I'm sorry. This is when I questioned Wes Streeting when he came on my show, what, a couple of months ago? The Prime Minister keeps banging on about all these new appointments in the NHS that keep being made. He said it yesterday, in fact, in the House of Commons. You know, two million was the promise in the manifesto. And he said, first of all, it was three million. It's now apparently four million new appointments that you've made. I keep being told by people, they've made loads of appointments that get made, but then they get cancelled. Is there some kind of trick going on here? I've got a couple of notes here from people who've sent me messages. I've recently had my annual neurology review appointment cancelled and reappointed four weeks later. Is this one of the four million new appointments? That's from Jim in Lithuam St Anne's. Nicky in Kent says, I had a near nose and throat appointment on the 21st of July at Margate Hospital. I had a text the other day that said it had been cancelled. I then got a text the next day that said I had an alternative appointment. Made for the 22nd of July at the same time. So, I get this a lot. A lot of people having appointments made, cancelled, remade. That's a lot of appointments, but it doesn't mean people are being seen. And just to reassure people, they're not counted in that total. That is a reflection, though, of the state the NHS was in when we came in. And I'm fed up with people being treated like that and being mucked about with their appointments. And that is one of the things that people will start to feel changing over the course of this Parliament and certainly over the next decade, this sort of practice will go. I want patients to have more ease and more convenience, more choice and control over their care. And, you know, to be honest, that's not just the process, it's the culture of the NHS we need to change and that's what our 10-year plan will deliver. So, in 10 years, you might get an appointment. Is that what he's saying? Basically saying that, you know, so don't count the appointments that they make that they don't keep. Really? How does that work? So when you make an appointment with the NHS, it doesn't get counted until you've actually been seen. Really? I don't believe that. Well, one would hope that they weren't diddling the figures to that degree, but people were so sceptical of everything the government does now because if all of the claims don't stack up, you can't, you know, you can't begrudge people being increasingly cynical about what they've been told. A lot of people that I know who can't afford to go private are just going private because they have to. Because they're going, I can't get seen, I can't get my bad back that I've had for, you know, four years. I've waited four years for them to do something about it, they haven't done anything about it, so now I'm going to go private. And it's perfectly reasonable, perfectly acceptable. But, you know, they're spending their own money to do that. They're saving up their own money to do it. And, you know, the idea that the NHS, as they keep saying to us, is improving. It's not improving. You've got doctors going on strike again. You've got nurses about to go on strike. We've got billions and billions of pounds going into it and it's literally getting worse. No, exactly, and it's a service that people have already paid for. This is not, you know, it's free at the point of use. It's not free. It's not free. It's not like a giant NGO or a charity. 25% of your income tax and mine goes on the NHS. And people just feel like it's just been poured down a black hole at this point and everyone knows it's a complete mess. Everyone knows it needs proper structural reform. Everyone knows it needs a kind of overhaul and rethink. And, you know, it's funny that Wes Streeting, amongst the rest of the Cabinet, looks like one of the more assured kind of characters. Certainly a better media performer than Rachel Reeves, who struggles to look like she's even convincing herself of what she's saying. But even he's going to struggle, I think, especially as people realise that the NHS is not getting better. It's really not. And he's been there for a year now. This is the trouble. This is what's going to happen to them as time goes on, is that they haven't got the excuse anymore. They can't keep using the excuse that, well, we inherited a bad deal from the Tories. It's run out now. Because they've been in for a year. And it looks embarrassing. It was like Jackie Smith the other day saying, we take responsibility for the small boats crossings, but it isn't our fault. Yeah. It kind of is. It kind of is. It's 48% up. 48% up since last year. This from Gary. Mike, the thing that everybody's missing about the GDP numbers is that the government spending increases economic growth. Now I've just done a quick bit of maths. If the economy grew by 1.2% in the last 12 months, it means that it's about £30 billion bigger than it was 12 months ago. But here's the thing. Since becoming Chancellor, Rachel Rees has created a black hole in the public finances of around £50 billion, which means that she has spent £50 billion of public money that she doesn't have, to get £30 billion worth of economic growth. That's nothing short of calamitous. Very good point. Because again, this government thinks and believes that the only way to get economic growth is to spend more public money, to give people more benefits. The guy from the Joseph Bransfield Foundation the other day was actually saying, the best way to stimulate the economy is to actually increase the amount of benefits that we give people. I was going, sorry? What? So you should tax me more to give money to people who don't make any money in order for them to spend that money in the economy and that will be the answer. And that was actually his theory. And it's interesting how Labour have... Because they know that there's only so much that they can take. There's only so much taxation that you can levy against people to the point where it just doesn't really function anymore. It's not actually effective. But at the same time, this... Remember a few months ago it was all about, we're going to bring in all this private sector investment. They were constantly having these kind of events and breakfasts with various captains of industry. It's obviously gone nowhere. Because the general economic outlook is really bleak. People aren't in the mood. Also, nobody's going to put money into a financial black hole. It's like GB Energy and Jürgen, our good friend Jürgen Meyer, the guy who runs it, who basically goes around the country saying we're building this great big company. It's going to be great for British people. You're going to get your energy bills reduced, which isn't happening of course. And he says it's all about public sector investment. It's all about investment. And it's not actually about investment. What they're doing is they're taking taxpayers' money and putting it into various projects in private companies, which benefits the private companies. It doesn't benefit us at all. No, exactly. It's so clear that we need a much more fundamental discussion about what's gone wrong with the economy. And you're not getting that at all. It's a combination of gimmicks and more of the same. Totally. It's one of those things where it's so clear to anyone that Labour don't have the answers. I think the problem is when they look around they're still a little bit unclear about what the alternatives might be. So that's something that I hope over the next few years you'll really start to see the potential challenges to Labour sketch out a vision which is both radical, because we need it. Do you mean from other parties? Yeah, exactly, but at the same time something that actually people can buy into and feel like there's going to be something positive at the end of it. Yeah, well let's hope so. Something positive perhaps at the end of the day today because over in Alaska, in Anchorage, Donald Trump's meeting up with Vladimir Putin. Here's the President talking yesterday. We have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow. I think it's going to be a good meeting but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not. I don't know that it's going to be very important. We're going to see what happens. I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelensky will make peace. We'll see if they can get along. And if they can, it'll be great. I've solved six wars in the last six months, a little more than six months now, and I'm very proud of it. I thought the easiest one would be this one. It's actually the most difficult. I mean, you have to say Donald Trump is making changes. He is making a difference. Whether he gets anywhere with Vladimir Putin, of course, it doesn't matter. But the odds are that if anyone can do it, he can. He's certainly been able to shift the dial. Aside from what actually comes of these negotiations, it's not entirely clear that Putin is going into this with any real sincerity about peace. He's a dishonest broker. It's probably the mildest thing one could say about that dictatorial, imperialistic thing. But at the same time, it's clear that Trump coming in has changed the geopolitical weather. It's made it clear that, to be honest, this conflict, which has been going on for a very long time, was already reaching this grinding, attritional, the lines barely moving, if anything, moving more in Russia's favour. Something was going to give at some point. So whether or not this is actually the peace deal that people are talking about, whether or not this is actually the end of the road, it's quite clear that something has shifted and Trump heralded that. Let's have a listen to what Voice Note Lee has to say. Morning, Mike. Lee from Chelmsford. Big meeting today of the two alpha males of the political world. Starmer's not invited. He's talking about sending troops thousands of miles away to patrol somebody else's border. How about he sends them down to Kent and stops all these bozos coming in the country illegally? I think we'd all prefer to see that. Anyway, all the best, Mike. I think we absolutely would all prefer to see that, Lee. Thank you very much indeed. That is again where the British public are. They see that the country is being invaded. They see the country is being taken advantage of. And it's all very well when times are good to say let's stand up for our friends in Ukraine and let's look after what they are facing against Russia. But in the end, you know, fix your own back door before you actually start worrying about who's coming in the front door. No, absolutely. And it's one of those things where even that was a bunch of nonsense. You had Keir Starmer a few months ago talking about we're going to have this coalition of the willing. We're going to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. Which was nonsense, by the way. No, exactly, because that was only ever... The small print of that was that we have to have American support, probably American air defence, which Trump was never going to provide. And to be honest, I don't think even Joe Biden in his more dotty moments would have wanted to go there. No, Trump has played a blinder. Trump has basically convinced all of the European nations to spend money on American weapons to then give to Ukraine for free. So he's basically, you know, boot bolstered his own economy and at the same time not had to get involved. And that seems like if there are any sort of security guarantees so-called for Ukraine it's going to come in the form of not America continuing to supply things, but effectively exactly as you say, continuing to sell weapons to European powers to give to Ukraine. So again, it seems like that's roughly what the kind of shape of things might be. Yeah, exactly right. Tom, good to see you. Thank you very much indeed.