Labour's Chairwoman Ellie Reeves has been grilled by GB News host Stephen Dixon on the party's local election defeat, as Nigel Farage's Reform UK secured victory with just six votes between them.Becoming Reform UK's first-ever female MP, Sarah Pochin claimed the Runcorn & Helsby seat from the Labour candidate - overturning a 14,696 majority.FULL STORY HERE.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm not sure there's any suggestion of that at all. Isn't it just a matter of tactical voting, which is something that's happened particularly between Labour and Liberal Democrat voters for a long time?
00:07That's just how the voting system works in First Past the Post, isn't it?
00:13Well, look, I just think that, you know, there needs to be a bit of honesty about it.
00:17You know, Robert Jenner made these comments that seem to be a lot more than just about tactical voting.
00:24It was talking about an electoral pact of coalition of some kind. That's very different just for tactical voting, for example.
00:33How do you explain away what's happened? I mean, you can't blame it all on the Conservatives or on Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP for Ron Collins-Helsby, can you?
00:42Because even where you've won mayoral elections, you've lost so much support and it's ended up being a pretty tight race.
00:54What that seems to indicate is, surely, that the government is not addressing a lot of the issues that ordinary people up and down the country have got concerns about.
01:04When we were elected to government last July, we were elected on a platform of change.
01:12And I recognise that people are impatient for change. I'm impatient for that change. The government's impatient for that change.
01:20Since coming into government, we have started to deliver on our plan for change.
01:25It takes time. You know, NHS waiting lists are down six months in a row, but there are still too many people on waiting lists.
01:33Take Runcorn, for example. Just last month, we delivered four new free breakfast clubs in primary schools.
01:42We want to go further and faster. We want every primary school in Runcorn to have a free breakfast club.
01:49Just last month, our increase in the national minimum wage means that 3.5 million low-paid workers are getting a pay rise.
01:56But, you know, it will take a while for people to feel the effects of those things.
01:59So, look, change takes time. We know we need to go further and faster.
02:03And we know that people are impatient for that change. But we're getting on. We're delivering on our plan for change.
02:08One of the key election issues at the last election and also in last night's vote seems to be immigration.
02:13People clearly gave up on the Conservatives in terms of sorting that problem out.
02:18Do you not think they've also now given up on Labour with the promises to smash the gangs, the removal of the Rwanda scheme,
02:23no intention at all to reform the ECHR?
02:26Well, the Conservatives' Rwanda gimmick cost £700 million of taxpayers' money and resulted in only four volunteers going to Rwanda.
02:40Instead, we are getting on with going after the criminal gangs, giving the police anti-terrorism powers to go after those gangs.
02:49So, smashing the gangs. But also, one of the things that happened under the Conservatives' government was a complete collapse in returns.
02:56You list all that. Sounds great. What impact is it having? We're having more illegal immigrants than ever before.
03:04Well, one of the things that we've done is sped up returns.
03:0724,000 people have been, with no right to stay here, have been removed since the general election, far more than happened under the previous Conservative government.
03:18We said in our manifesto that we would close the asylum hotels.
03:22We've already announced the closure of some hotels.
03:24But again, we know we need to go further and faster on this.
03:27But that's why we've set up our new border security command.
03:32It's why we've sped up asylum processing.
03:34It's why we've sped up returns.
03:36I think that's really important, rather than the Rwanda gimmick that the previous government introduced that saw only four volunteers go to Rwanda.
03:44I don't think that's much of a deterrent.