“There HAS To Be A General Election” | Mike Graham Declares Starmer Govt ‘Null And Void’

0:00 And we're about to talk to Katie Lamb now about it as well because she's written a big piece in the sun today. She's toy MP of course for uh for Wield of Kent. Um but yeah, no I I don't I think it's just one of those things, you know, that this story then came on top of that and it is quite remarkable. Um but basically Casey says for most people in this country, it goes without saying that state support should be for Brits who really need it. Uh what we now know is that over a 100,000 more foreign nationals are claiming uh universal benefit, universal credit um since uh the Labor government actually got in and the number now as I say is 1.3 million. And Katie says it's time for a system where migrants don't get benefits and only those who pay into it can stay. Casey, very good morning to you. Good morning. I mean, I imagine when you wrote this piece yesterday, you didn't

0:45 realize that this great big Afghanistan shocker was coming down the pike because, uh, obviously it's it's it kind of feeds into it in a way as well. So, the two stories are in some ways interconnected. But, but, you know, we used to be told for years, didn't we, by particularly people on the left, oh, you know, uh, people that come here from from from foreign countries can't claim benefits. Migrants don't get benefits. You know, they all come here to work. They're all coming here to contribute. Well, clearly that's not the case anymore. It's not the case at all. And the way that our system works is even if in theory when you qualified for a visa what you were going to do was contribute after 5 years you can get something called ILR indefinite leave to remain. And once you've got indefinite leave to remain obviously you can stay indefinitely as as the name suggests but

1:31 you're also entitled to claim benefits. And we can see from the numbers that were released yesterday which is the first time we've even been given this information. the first time the public's even been told uh what this breakdown looks like that one in six people who are claiming universal credit aren't British and and we are a very very generous country and people but it's not viable to do this. It's not it's not sustainable and it's not affordable for us to pay for everybody who comes here on the basis that they're going to contribute and then either stops working or falls on hard times or whatever it might be. Pe people like that unfortunately will will need to go home. Yeah. And when you say we're a very generous country, I agree with you. But I mean, you could you could substitute that word for gullible, couldn't you? Because I mean, we seem to be paying out money to any Tom, Dick, or Harry, or

2:18 Muhammad, frankly, that comes into the country. It is amazing that the political establishment basically has allowed this to happen because the normal British people haven't voted for this. They are. And as as uh as I was saying and as you say, they're generous people. We all are. But nobody has ever voted for this. Nobody's ever asked for a system like this. No. And is it the fault though of the system itself? Because, you know, I've always said when they when they had what they called, you know, tax credits, that seemed to me to be a mad idea because what we were doing effectively was subsidizing low wages for people, they got a job, but then if the wages weren't high enough, we topped it up with benefits, which surely is the wrong way around. I mean, you know, what you want to do surely is to raise the the wages

3:03 of people or to take them out of tax or something in order for them not to have to be relying on the state to top up their their their pay from from whatever work they do. And it seems to me that the system from what I know of it, and I'm not an expert, um sort of encourages you if you are on some form of benefit not to really work. And you know, you do 16 hours, that's fine, but don't do any more. You know, there's so many loopholes in it that kind of that that disincentivize you from actually getting a proper job. The most important thing and the fairest thing exactly as you say is to make sure that work pays. It's not fair that you could have a higher household income uh potentially a new car depending on the type of benefits that you're claiming and what you qualify for as somebody who doesn't work and potentially hasn't worked very long in this country at all

3:51 and in some cases not at all. So only 40% of people of that of that 1.3 million people uh foreign nationals on universal credit only 40% of them are working. So about 3/4 of a million people who have come to this country are claiming benefits without having paid into the system at all at the moment. And that's really really wrong. And you point out in the piece that uh if the numbers are right um you're really talking about6 billion pounds almost what we spend on the prison system enough to train and hire 60,000 new NHS nurses. I mean these billions of pounds get bandied around. Um you know Rachel Reeves said that they were trying to save 5 billion or six billion off the welfare budget which is now not going to happen uh as a result of their backbench rebellion. Um we just we can't keep going like this can we?

4:36 No. We're constantly being told that there is no money and it's true that the public finances are under a lot of pressure and yet we're still spending money on this sort of thing. As you say, six billion pounds a year is a huge amount of money, almost the whole prison system, more than the government were looking to to save off the welfare bill, uh to save off um off the welfare cost with the bill that they were bringing in recently, which as uh uh as we saw completely failed. But the idea that we can afford to do this when we're making all of these other cuts to British people who have paid into the system, I think it's just wildly unfair. And you you can't keep doing that in a democracy. You can't treat the people

5:21 with such contempt. No. Exactly. And let me just ask you about the Afghan story because obviously um you know it's a massive problem for the Tory government uh of of of the last few years with Rishi Sunnik in charge of it. Um, also massive problem for Labor as well. Um, but in terms of the people who have come in and it looks like there might be about 36 or 40,000 by the end of it. Um, are we supposed to support them for the rest of their lives? Is that supposed to be them coming in here to get a free house and free benefits and all the rest of it? Because if we're giving them a free house when they get here, what incentive is them for them to pay for anything? Well, again, under the current system and and what they would qualify for, uh the answer is basically yes. I mean, there's I'm sure a lot of them will

6:07 choose to work, but it we are making it a choice. Yeah. But if they choose to work, what's the point of them choosing to work to try and buy a house if they've already got a free one? Yeah. Or a car or or whatever it might be. I mean uh particularly for social housing um if you especially if if there are children in your household um then and most of them have kids as far as I know. Yeah. And the way that the housing list works uh you will go straight to the top of the housing list. So it's it's inevitable that there will be a lot of British people who are waiting on that social housing list who will go down many many many places. Yeah. And it's just it just again it just seems ridiculous. totally mad. I mean, are you worried about the Tory party's credibility now as a result of this?

6:53 Well, it seems that it was a sort of massive uh civil service error. Uh, amazingly, classically, nobody seems to have lost their job for it. Nobody in the civil service even seems to have sort of resigned uh for their own honor, let alone been fired. Uh, but, you know, we are only a year from the Conservative Party, as we all know. uh I think losing more seats than any government ever. So we are in a long process of rebuilding that trust with the public and of course stuff like this doesn't help even if it wasn't you know uh a ministerial mistake. Yeah. Yeah. I mean certainly Grant Shap asking for a super injunction which prevented the British public from finding out about it I think will be a big big problem for you guys in the

7:38 future. Uh yes, I think that I think it is really important when you are building trust to be transparent and of course things like that are not. No. Casey, good to talk to you. Thanks very much indeed. Great piece in the sun today. Uh Katy Lamb, Conservative MP for wheeled of Kent. But let's think about this for a minute. Okay, because what we've got is a government who are in power um but not really in a position to do anything. They can't actually get their backbench MPs to even vote for welfare reductions. They can't actually get any of their MPs to support them in anything that they do. We've now got a Labor government who it would seem were elected back in July of last year somewhat on false pretenses because what they haven't told us for the best part

8:24 of a year is that there have been thousands and thousands and thousands of Afghan men, women and children coming into this country secretly on planes which are unmarked flying into sometimes military airports, other times Stanstead airport. And at the moment, we don't know exactly how many of them there are, how many of them are going to end up staying here for life, how much money it's going to cost. Looks like around about 7 billion pounds, right? The Tory government, of course, previously organized a super injunction so that we would never find out what they were doing. Are literally as useless as you could get. Richishy Sunnak, Grant Shaps, Ben Wallace, Suela Braverman, possibly Robert Genrich, all knew about this situation and none of them thought it

9:12 was a good idea for the British public to know. So, I think there's only one answer for this, isn't there? There has to be a general election. The public needs to know that they still have the control over the powers that run this country. The government doesn't run the country. The government are given permission to run the country by the people. The people are the people who should know how this country is being run. And quite frankly, right now, I don't think there's anybody in Westminster of any of the two main parties that can do it. So, let's have a general election. Let's get it over with. And let's see what the public decide and let the public choose. If they choose reform, that's their choice. And if the tries and the Labor government try to stop that from happening, there will be hell to pay.

9:59 Let's take a call from Amy. Amy, hi Mike. Hi. Very good morning. What can you tell me? Hi. Yeah. Um, I actually live on an ex sort of military base in Axbridge. It's X RAF. So, the majority of it was sort of sold off uh 16 years ago, but the MOD held a couple of roads back. Um, and we've got sort of RAF, right, uh, members sort of staying. So, I was quite surprised yesterday to hear about the injunction because we actually have a few Afghanistani families living on the estate. Okay. And I've been kind of aware of it since February um 2024. Okay. Um and it wasn't a kind of secret. Um when they first moved over, I'd recently had a baby and one of them was pregnant. So I was approached by one of the sort

10:47 of mod wives and I'd been told that they were sort of fleeing because their names had been given out and there was sort of a great deal. So very much part of this movement then. Yeah. It just wasn't really a sort of shock. The children actually go to my son's school. Um, and I feel quite sorry for them because when they sort of arrived and even now they don't speak English, but the greater authorities not providing any additional sort of support or help within the classroom for them. There's so 28 children in the class and you know it must be quite difficult for the child, the teacher and the other children because they can't kind of communicate. Sure. But as you say it was no secret. I mean, like I'm saying, I mean, this Afghan resettlement scheme used to be talked about quite openly in parliament.

11:32 It wasn't as though, you know, nobody ever heard of it or that nobody knew that it was going on. The difference is that we didn't know, we just didn't know the numbers. Yeah. I mean, you know, nothing against the families that are here. They're they're sort of lovely, polite, and everything, but um we've actually got another sort of 20 houses that are vacant on the mod side. Um so, we're not kind of sure what's happening with them. sort of side of it run by a different maintenance company and they said they have applied to the mod to sort of find out what's happening with the vacant houses but the mod sort of won't come back to them with a concrete sort of answer right interesting really interesting piece of information Amy thank you very much indeed Amy from Oxbridge saying that that February 24 which exactly fits with uh with the sort of time frame

12:19 we're talking about because pictures on the front pages this morning and the mail certainly uh of an unmarked plane landing in Stansen in March of 2024. Uh so clearly that was around the time frame of people being flown into the country undercover of darkness quite often in unmarked planes. Um but going into communities and one there in Oxbridge which is of course very close um to an RAF base um which is still current. That's the point.