 We are now well over halfway through the 12 days of Tiskey. I'll look back at the big stories of the year and how we cover them at the time on Tiskey Sour. And what a year it has been. A global pandemic rising unemployment and the end of a 40 year trading relationship with our closest partners has presented enormous challenges to our government and a bunch of meaty issues for our media class to contend with. However, being Britain none of this meant that our establishment couldn't find time for that long-standing British tradition, migrant bashing. In August, after small numbers of migrants were spotted crossing the channel in dinghies, that conveyor belt of hate that runs from Nigel Farage through the billionaire-owned press right up to the Prime Minister was set in motion. And as Preeti Patel was promising to send gunboats to guard our shores, Aaron and I spent an evening debunking the xenophobic arguments propagated by our billionaire-backed ruling class. Is it beyond the ability of the government to stop this from happening? Clearly at the moment it is. Good morning to you. Look, this goes back, I think, the current problem to something that the Prime Minister said in August last year. He said, we will send you back. If you come illegally, you are an illegal migrant and I'm afraid the law will treat you as such. Well, how many have gone back? 155. We've had something like 6,000 already. We reckon that just this year alone there are 4,000 have already arrived and there will be anything up to 8,000 by Christmas. The machine at the moment is switched to suck rather than blow, frankly. Unless we really get a grip, the numbers are simply going to continue going on. So he's saying that 4,000 people already have crossed the channel and by Christmas it could go up to 8,000. We need to get a grip before the number of asylum seekers coming to this country via Calais and via the channel reaches such great numbers as 8,000. Come on, I think it is the director of Migration Watch who needs to get a grip. Let's do some comparisons. Keep that number in your mind. This is all of the scaremongering, all of these headlines, that segment on talk radio, the comments from Pretty Patel, the comments from Rishi Sunak. They're all about 8,000 migrants coming or projections for 8,000, 4,000 so far this year. Now, let's look at how Britain compares to other countries because the message we get, you know, Britain's a light touch. People come here because we give out asylum claims like their lollipops, right? That's not remotely true. We should be factual here, not like Julie Hartley Brewer and her guests tend to be. So France and the UK have the same population size, both 66 million. And we're going to get up some stats now of number of first-time asylum applicants in European countries. Now, what you can see there is that in France, we've got about 120,000 people seeking asylum between 2018 and 2019. In the United Kingdom, less than 50,000, 40,000, tiny, tiny numbers. Greece as well, population of 11 million, 75,000 applicants. Germany, their population is slightly bigger. But as you can see, the number of asylum applications made in that country are huge. So this idea that Britain is becoming too overwhelmed because 4,000 to 8,000 people are going to arrive on our shores from Calais, it's nonsense. And it's not just nonsense, it's pathetic. So these are exactly the same kind of people who want to say, ah, Britain is the best country in the world. We have the capacity and the strength to compete with other countries on all levels. And they're also exactly the kind of people who say that Britain is the least racist country in the world. Now, if we are both the country with the best economy, the most talented people, the biggest sort of economic capacity, and we're the least racist, then why the hell are we so worried about 8,000 people arriving on our shores? I should also say, I gave you European examples. The most, I suppose, important and striking contrast to make with Britain is that of Lebanon. So in Lebanon, there are 1.5 million Syrian refugees in a country with a population of 7 million. In Britain, 66 million people. And we're having headlines, government ministers, talk show hosts, railing against 8,000 people, 4,000 people arriving in Dingy's. I do want to show you Julia Hartley-Bruer, because obviously the representative for migration watched there. There was no pushback saying 8,000. Is that all you're talking about? There was no pushback because Julia Hartley-Bruer wholeheartedly agrees. Let's take a look at her monologue this morning. This is happening on a grand industrial scale every single day, and it has been four years on end. It's always worse in the summer months. Two years ago, we were told it's an emergency situation. So why hasn't the government, whoever's in charge at any one time as Home Secretary, acted already? Why does it wait for the Brexit party leader Nigel Farage to actually show video footage of this for everyone else to pay attention? I don't care what your views are on immigration or not. Whether you want mass immigration from the EU or not, well tough. You lost that vote in 2016, folks. But even if you want that, on what planet do you think that mass illegal immigration is a good thing? No one getting on a dingy in France is desperate. They might have been desperate on their way to France. Yes, I don't want to live in Libya or any other war-torn countries either. But you're in France. It's a safe country. Claim asylum there. You're not our problem. I mean, there's so many layers of stupidity in that smug one minute statement there from Julia Hartley Brewer. I mean, first of all, this idea that you might be for migration, you might be for legal migration, but not illegal migration. Now, the problem with that argument is you can only really claim asylum once you're on Britain's shores. So the way to become a legal migrant, to become a refugee, to get granted asylum is to first come illegally. If yes, if there was an office, a branch of the Home Office out in Yemen or out in Syria where you could apply for British citizenship and be treated incredibly fairly, then maybe that argument would work. But that's not the case. The way you get asylum to this country or to most countries, in fact, is you have to arrive there. So to say, I've got no problem with migration, but I hate illegal migration. Ultimately, you have a problem with migration, don't you? The other point she makes, unbelievable, this idea that people in France, even if they had a difficult time on the way, are having a great time. Now, I've been to Calais. I'm not a huge Calais activist. There are people who are doing way more work than me, but I've been there and I've spoken to people who are living in camps, in tents over there. There are people who are getting beat up constantly by racist riot police whose makeshift homes are being constantly crushed to the ground, who are having to live through all of the seasons without proper housing. It is not a nice place to be. These are not people who are having a nice time sipping wine and eating nice cheese and just because they want to, they're coming to this country. As to whether it's our problem, right? Now, when I went to Calais, it was about 10 years ago and the people who were there were from Afghanistan. So why were they there? Because our country had gone and bombed their country and the state had collapsed. Where are many of the migrants who are coming over this summer from? From Yemen. Their state has also collapsed because they've been bombed by Britain's ally, Saudi Arabia, who were armed to the teeth by our country, right? So this idea that, oh yes, it might be nice to let in migrants, but ultimately it's not our problem, is completely bullshit. So many people in the world, the reason they are moving, the reason they have to move is because of crimes this country has committed. And now Julia Hartley-Brew after, I don't know if she backed those wars in fact actually, but I mean, there are many people in this country who backed those wars, who have completely destroyed states. Now, 8,000 people arriving on our shores. Oh, terrible, everything's going to collapse. There are very strong arguments for saying that the governments in those respective countries, Gaddafi and Libya, Assad and Syria, aren't good people. I agree with that. But the point is, if you're going to engage in a military intervention, if you're going to back a certain faction, if you're going to potentially see state failure, which is what we now see in Libya, you also have to have a domestic political consensus which says, well, one of the downsides of that set of choices is we'll see a flood of people leaving those countries coming here. Many, many immigrants, not all, many undocumented migrants coming to Britain today are from Afghanistan, Iraq, some are from Iran, a country that's been subject to decades of sanctions, Libya, across North Africa. These are places which have been destabilized for decades as part of Western foreign policy. We've fundamentally sort of undermined democratic governments. Whenever they've appeared, however rarely it's been in these exact same places, Syria in the 1950s, Iran in the 1950s, would presently support a tyrant in Egypt in the form of Al-Sisi. It's such an irony that the very people who are so happy, joyful, ecstatic to intervene militarily in these countries don't want to have to deal with some of the adverse consequences, which is mass displacement of human beings. I mean, the thing I just find really maddening is like on the Julie Hartley Brewer show of these right-wing pundits, their main talking point at the moment is stop doing our country down. Our country is actually brilliant and we can do great things. Why are the left so miserable? It's the reason Boris Johnson won is because he told the British people, you actually aren't that bad. You can be great. This country does have potential. There are also the people who spend the other half of their time saying, why is everyone calling Britain racist? Britain is the least racist, most tolerant, progressive country in the world and not just in the world, in world history. So the ideas people like Tom Harwood are saying, Britain is exceptionally anti-racist welcoming. If those two things are the case, if we're both a country with enormous potential, with enormous capacity, and we're the least racist country in human history, then why can we not just accept 8,000 people in a desperate situation who are looking for a better life? And yeah, you can use the Julie Hartley Brewer, but that's a legal immigration. What about legal immigration? So I've shown you the numbers already. The United Kingdom accepts 40,000 migration applicants between 2018 and 2019, a country like Germany, up 160,000. And as I said before, Lebanon, a country with 7 million people, has 1.5 million refugees. Now, if we as a country are as great as Julie Hartley Brewer thinks, and as non-racist as Julie Hartley Brewer thinks, then I would suggest we can take that proportion of refugees. And if we can't, then you have to ask the question, why? What is wrong with this country that means that people think there's going to be civilizational collapse if 8,000 people arrive in Dinges? Julia, say it with your heart. I don't want these people here. That's what she wants to say. And that's what all of these people want to say. Sometimes they do explicitly say it, but the argument that we can't afford to look after these people is patently ridiculous. We've just socialized the wages of 10 million people. Like you say, these exact same voices in the media, Julie Hartley Brewer and Nigel Farage, the exact same people are calling on the Blitz and the Battle of Britain and how that same spirit and zeitgeist can push us through a no-deal Brexit, and yet we can't deal with several thousand people rocking up in Dinges on the South Coast. So it's clearly not a resource issue. It's clearly not a governance or competence issue. We can clearly bring these people into the labour market. Some will need help. Some won't. Some will be a net benefit to the majority of them. Young able-bodied people will be a significant benefit in terms of tax and spend. We don't want to go into a sort of economic calculus here, but that's just a fact. But that isn't the point to these people. It's because they don't want them here. Now, why don't they want them here? One argument was if they just don't like foreign people. Another argument isn't I think Trump did this very well to say, look, I love legal migration. As many people can come legally as they want. Obviously, he doesn't mean that. But illegal migration can't happen. You're absolutely right, Michael. The minute somebody's here, they're claiming asylum. That's not illegal. They're here entirely legally. There are multiple international treaties designed precisely for these events. It's covered by international law in a number of ways.