In this episode of the remote studio, we're joined by Labour candidate Steve Swift, who's fighting for a seat in the upcoming election in England's Labour leadership race. We discuss immigration, the cost of living, housing, the housing crisis, and much more.
00:00:26.780Today, we're going to talk to a local candidate in England who's seeing this up close and what they're fighting for might sound very familiar to Canadians.
00:00:35.440Because this isn't just their story, it's ours too.
00:00:43.960And I am delighted to welcome to the remote studio, all the way across the pond, Steve Swift. Thanks so much for joining us.
00:00:51.820Thank you for inviting me. Love to talk a bit of politics.
00:00:54.940Well, this is the thing. I know you through a number of other podcasts in a completely different realm, but it becomes really apparent really quickly that your understanding of what's going on in politics in the UK makes you a perfect candidate to kind of align for this.
00:01:16.960I should mention, if you notice a bit of a delay, it's because we have connected our internet in England and our internet in Canada via potato wire for today.
00:01:33.600We'll just take our time with one another.
00:01:36.460Steve, I think that out of the gate, the one thing that I will say is that I noticed that Canadians and the British have a lot in common right now.
00:01:46.580We're suffering in the same ways in many ways.
00:01:49.000We have some of the same plights that are obvious and they've been fast arriving to both of our countries.
00:01:56.940and you know also we have the influence over us of fairly um liberal thinking governments that
00:02:05.640are looking out for everybody simultaneously and seemingly getting nowhere uh but if you don't
00:02:11.140mind i'll start with kind of just give us the the picture what i'm seeing in canada on television
00:02:17.800and through social media and youtube and things like that is a society that is reacting to way
00:02:25.600too much immigration without preparation uh way more asylum uh population than was expected
00:02:36.080am i off base here no but i need to i suppose add the caveat that this is you know what i'm
00:02:44.960particularly interested in is the narrative you know in today's social media world where you can
00:02:51.280announce a policy on x and you don't need to follow through you just announce it and it's done
00:02:56.880then the narrative is the most important thing and that part of the the migration issue that
00:03:04.640you mentioned is something that the Labour Party is struggling with um the Tory party before them
00:03:10.720struggled with that and there are other newer parties that are making a lot of headway because
00:03:18.720of that, some may say. Yeah, well, that's true. There are some pretty outlandish representatives
00:03:25.800of the far right anti-immigration group that, of course, is bubbling to the top because they
00:03:32.760tend to speak louder and fill the streets with their message. But overall, I think there has
00:03:40.360been a certain amount of pressure on the economy, on services. It's probably not unfounded. And so
00:03:47.620even though there is a narrative that is fairly negative toward asylum there are some realities
00:03:54.460I think also that come with it yeah I mean I wouldn't deny that and you know there are
00:04:00.040a lot of people who there's a big I'm not sure if it's the same for you but there's a big
00:04:05.220phrase in in Britain which is just by talking about that I shouldn't be seen as racist
00:04:11.780now it's about shutting down debate and we need to have that debate so yeah that's something which
00:04:19.020people feel it is something that's real for people I mean quite a lot of this happened in
00:04:25.300in Tony Blair's government but there's a lot more money around at that time it might be borrowed
00:04:30.420money but people but because there's a lot more money around it felt different now it feels like
00:04:36.120everything's really stretched and there is no money and we're being told that regularly what
00:04:42.680a fantastic perspective through the tony uh the tony blair lens because you're right um that is
00:04:49.520really when so much migration took place in in europe certainly to to britain uh and i can
00:04:57.700imagine at that time it seems sustainable that it seemed like the right thing to do and by the way
00:05:01.740I should point out, Steve, even in Canada, I mean, there is we have this feeling that immigration spun out of control, which it did.
00:05:12.920Now we understand how and what happened there. Not all of it was good. I promise you that there was a certain amount of corruption.
00:05:18.840And frankly, there was a lot of missteps that have really affected the the migrant themselves, the asylum seeker, the immigrant.
00:05:30.260we promise them more than we can deliver to them right now and i wonder if that's
00:05:35.000sort of the same feeling not putting the blame on a migrant themselves who made their way in
00:05:41.400to a country that was welcomed welcoming them in yeah i think that that during the the blair years
00:05:48.040globalization forced wages down all of that we're still you know we we we struggled through that
00:05:54.100too that was that was clearly something that happened but there was as i say a lot more money
00:05:58.900around now I think I don't think that we there isn't a feeling in this country that we promise
00:06:04.200people things that we promise people who come here things there is a feeling certainly in this
00:06:10.420country that we're not getting um people I suppose paperwork's and booked in paperwork's not a word
00:06:17.820is it but it is no but I I think we bring it into the vernacular yeah it's I mean there are a lot of
00:06:25.360private companies who are doing the booking of all of this and it's taking an awful long time
00:06:30.460um and people feel that now you know someone like me would say quite glibly just take it back in
00:06:37.560take border force back into government it's not that easy not after tony blair's government there
00:06:43.420is again and the public private partnership stuff but my feeling is it would run better
00:06:49.700if it was taken in but then i would say that wouldn't i because i'm quite i'm quite a big
00:06:54.540you know nationalization person um but there is a feeling that people aren't being processed
00:07:01.680quickly enough and I don't know if we have the narrative is that we don't really have
00:07:07.660enough of a clear view of what um of what we're going to do although we do have a new home
00:07:14.340secretary who is more hardline um and that is a bit of a sea change for us and is there's less
00:07:24.200kind of grumbling because um she makes strong phrases and says strong says quite strong things
00:07:32.400and so people are not there's not so much foment but you still have those parties who are talking
00:07:39.200about migration and it's a central plank of their work and they're doing very well one in particular
00:07:45.960in this country do you care to name the one in particular i don't uh i don't think it will
00:07:51.360surprise anybody it's reform you know they're a populist right-wing party they have all the
00:07:56.840policies sure they have a very charismatic leader um in nigel farage trump's great mate apparently
00:08:04.600um apparently you know he's a good bloke to have a pint with apparently at a game of skittles in
00:08:11.000the local pub you know he wears a lot of tweed all that kind of stuff in a flat cap so he's just
00:08:17.180like you and me all of that and I don't fall for that it may be that that's exactly what he's like
00:08:23.440but I don't fall for that um quite a businessman um and people at the top it seems of reform
00:08:31.020appear to be businessmen but in this country we quite like that why don't we get businessmen to
00:08:36.760run our economy surely they're the ones to do it so they've really had a good time as an insurgent
00:08:43.480party a bit like trump you know in his in his first run when he was i've come from nowhere
00:08:48.920folks well you know me from tv but i'm not political i'm a breath of fresh air now right
00:08:54.840in this second run he's kind of aware of what he's doing a bit more but reform did very well
00:09:01.640in local councils um the national mps members of parliament they have four with a fifth
00:09:09.400apparently coming back to reform right here today i didn't even know crossing the floor
00:09:13.800we have a bit of that going on in canada as well right now yeah yeah they're crossing the floor
00:09:19.320from party to party uh it's it's been a disturbance in the uh in the political air for sure and it's
00:09:26.440i mean for us that's the tories losing quite a lot of high profile mps to reform is that the
00:09:33.960the way it is for you? Uh, much the same. Uh, we're seeing, uh, conservatives crossing the
00:09:39.400floor over to the liberal party, uh, two very distinct posts. It feels like a lot of backroom
00:09:44.400dealing going on, uh, that it's very, uh, very much, uh, I guess, uh, a route toward majority
00:09:52.240government where we're very close here in the country. But yeah, over the last several months
00:19:23.100But, you know, he's he's done all, you know, he has he is doing work around business.
00:19:30.180So that kind of stuff just gets lost because the general consensus,
00:19:35.740maybe it's just my algorithms, the general consensus is that I see.
00:19:40.380Well, now it's just it's soon time to get him out.
00:19:45.060he's a weak prime minister that's all stopped over the past few weeks by the way but he's a
00:19:49.860weak prime minister there'll be a coup he'll be out before the end of his term and we'll either
00:19:54.940have the health minister or um the deposed uh deputy prime minister angelo rayner in so
00:20:02.340it's that he's it's that he's very weak and that he can't really run this country he's more of a
00:20:09.420he he's like when we came out of the war and we had clement atlee let me take you back i'm very
00:20:13.520I'm very old so when we came out of the war and we needed you know Winston Churchill helped us to
00:20:20.220win the war um as did many others but the British public said that's enough now Winston don't need
00:20:25.920you I need someone who's a caretaker to bring this country back and that's the way that Keir Starmer
00:20:31.680feels um and people don't think he's bold enough now people have said that so often I don't know
00:20:37.440if he can come back from that I don't know if his timing's good on that I don't know if it's a
00:20:41.700comeback time. I think that it's a come to Jesus moment. Globally, Trump has put us all in an
00:20:48.360economic situation. There's a war going on that nobody seems sure of what we're doing against a
00:20:54.360very major and right for opponent that appears to not have any desire to give up. This may not be a
00:21:04.840time for uh raising up the ranks as it were in either of our countries it's really a time to be
00:21:12.520making accommodation for what's happening yeah and and partially it's a terrible thing to say
00:21:20.640economically the war helps him because you're right when when he was elected people were just
00:21:25.900sick of the tories you know they'd had so many prime ministers so many prime ministers in a very
00:21:32.160short period of time and there was no money and I think they thought we need a we need someone just
00:21:38.180to steady the ship here but very early on Labour said there's no money there's what are we going
00:21:44.300to do there's no money and part of Rachel Reeves the Chancellor who's disliked from what I can see
00:21:51.380in general certainly for her business policies what she can now say is well well growth isn't
00:21:59.000to happen in the way i expected it to uh and that's because of the war and i'm not saying
00:22:03.960you blame the war but it it allows her some coverage a little bit of latitude yeah yeah
00:22:11.400yeah so you know that's good for her because she's been through the mill um and actually was
00:22:16.120getting a bit stronger before this happened but she has been through the mill i think the only
00:22:21.000person who's who's in in the government who's being given more latitude as you say is our health
00:22:28.760secretary Wes Streeting and that's because when he got there you know we love RHS in this country
00:22:35.880and it really is struggling and it's been underfunded but then you pour money into it as
00:22:41.800the Blair government again Blair government poured money into it it helped to a certain extent but
00:22:46.760people thought that West Streeting would sell everything off we would have an insurance kind
00:22:52.120of policy deal um and he didn't so he's quite well liked he's one of the only ones in that
00:22:58.840labor government who seems quite well liked by the by the voting public let's talk about
00:23:05.480your health care we uh we are um inundated we have wait times in our emergency rooms
00:23:13.880uh we have the innovate the unavailability of doctors the inability for people to reach out to
00:23:19.480to specialists in a timely fashion, and it's costing lives and taking a toll on our health
00:23:26.260as a nation. How are you guys doing over there? Not great. Not great. I mean, it's a similar
00:23:30.940picture. Plus, what we've also got is strikes as well. So, you know, the junior doctors are
00:23:36.840currently striking. And the issue for me is that, you know, as a longtime trade unionist,
00:23:46.400The issue for me is that those junior doctors, people have said, and I need to do the research on this, that they earn as much as a manager in a supermarket, not delegating managers in a supermarket, but these are junior doctors who can make life or death decisions and life-changing decisions.
00:24:05.300So I can understand why they're a little bit cheesed off that they're not getting the money that they need and want.
00:24:10.700Well, not to mention, they just came out of school, which has cost them bundles and bundles and bundles of money.
00:26:14.860And I know you make a hell of a breakfast in England.
00:26:18.220what else are you guys making right now you've got steel what else what are you exporting well
00:26:24.340I mean right now we should be exporting in Canada oil and energy and LNG and minerals we are the
00:26:31.000most mineral rich place on earth we do none of that how how about that uh in the UK we're in the
00:26:37.560same situation so you know I spoke to somebody the other day who said well we're opening up
00:26:40.840North Sea oil aren't we yeah but you know we need to see how that works you know we have an awful
00:26:46.780lot of oil and some may say that you know during the thatcher government in the 80s the profits of
00:26:52.220that oil some say conspiracy theorists say well that went to to to pay the the welfare bill you
00:26:59.200know all of that some say that um i don't know an enormous amount of what we of what we export
00:27:07.400steel would be something steel would be something that we've always been but but if we if either of
00:27:16.500us if either of our countries were doing anything significant both of us be saying ah we're doing
00:27:24.920wheat oh we've got soy we're doing this we're doing no but neither we're both sitting here
00:27:29.060going okay we have steel we have lng but we're doing nothing with it oh we have oil but we're
00:27:36.160late to the game overall globally apparently and that would be helpful right now to provide
00:27:41.160petrol as you guys love to call it it's okay to say gas uh we could all that's where i think we
00:27:49.860have a similar moment right now we both could use our oil domestically yeah yeah i can't say gas
00:27:57.200because gas sounds like i'm farting so we do say but um you know i'm feeling that way a bit now
00:28:06.280i have my own gas which keeps me nice warm certainly in one area but um that's not lng by
00:28:13.320the way that's no i can't sell it on i wish i could i'd be a millionaire but um yeah i mean
00:28:21.320you're right that um manufacturing is virtually non-existent is the narrative you know it's it's
00:28:29.800small businesses virtually non-existent you had an enormous amount of of coal and we have a problem
00:28:37.160in this government because we're looking to um to create some kind of capitalism through and
00:28:44.840the economy through green um green work and green manufacturing that's not really taken
00:28:51.000off yet but we have an energy minister who's desperate for all of that um look i'm gonna
00:28:56.440caution you to get rid of that energy minister right now you will be making nothing before the
00:29:01.020end of the month ever again that requires any sort of machinery to do it and if you hear that
00:29:07.220if you hear the phrase net zero run get the hell out of england well the the issue is that people
00:29:13.520say and i have said it myself we're in ireland why can't we have wind power well um it's not just
00:29:20.480about that it's not just about talking about that it's incredibly expensive um the and it will pay
00:29:27.560off but with such short political cycles no one is going to stand there and say this will pay off
00:29:33.580in in 20 years time because they won't be there so they used to say this in times gone by and
00:29:39.360as i say i'm very old but i remember this but no one's going to say that now it has to pay off
00:29:44.880next year. Okay, look, before we get out of here, there's one topic I want to get to,
00:29:50.540and you can bail out, you can pull the eject cable if you wish. I'm concerned about
00:29:58.100hate laws. I should start by saying, shouldn't hate one another. Let's start with love, okay?
00:30:05.580But some of the laws that I'm seeing in Britain and arrests being made, I saw a number where
00:30:10.640So one in, there's like 30,000 arrests or one arrest every 30 minutes that is based on speech law, hate law, and what people are saying online.
00:30:26.340That's a little disturbing to me, Steve.
00:30:29.040And you should be disturbed, but you should also understand that what, and I'm not denying this is happening because it clearly is happening.
00:30:39.620it's being reported quite a lot um but what I don't like is certain organizations and certain
00:30:47.360people who belong to organizations who use that to create hate so you know you do have woke versus
00:30:56.860supposedly I'll do this um ordinary people so you've got that kind of anti-woke stuff going on
00:31:04.120um that's something that lots of people use and they utilize it to um to make a lot of
00:31:12.040political commerce with it so oh my god i love that perspective yeah i love you know what sorry
00:31:18.440steve i love that perspective that's good fuel for hate i do understand right uh and but removing
00:31:26.860those laws and letting society understand each other in a discussion i think is there's got to
00:31:32.780a happy medium there isn't there yeah there's something it's something we need to find
00:31:37.980and you know social media has done all of that um but it's easy for me to sit here in my one
00:31:43.900upholstered chair to and say okay yeah it's social media yes there's been a knee-jerk reaction i
00:31:51.500believe to all of this um but there's some there's quite a lot of well the police don't arrest
00:31:57.500anybody anymore because they're all they're all looking at social media and trying to arrest
00:32:01.900people who make posts now i don't know if that's true but i get it yeah people say it and there
00:32:07.760is some of that but i don't i suppose i would say wouldn't i being a kind of left-leaning person
00:32:14.740that um there are a lot of people making comments out of it but it cannot be denied that you let
00:32:22.760that genie out the bottle and people start to worry and people start to say i can't say anything
00:32:27.060i i get an awful lot of comments of course you couldn't say that now and you know and i grew up
00:32:32.320in the 70s and of course you couldn't say that now no but we need a discussion about all of that
00:32:37.880and it's not um you shouldn't be slapped down either metaphorically or physically because
00:32:44.520you're having a discussion about that we need to talk about it so that and you know we used to meet
00:32:49.620in the in the bar or the pub and somebody would say something and somebody would come back with
00:32:54.060and it's immediate real-time stuff isn't it on social media you're crazy what are you talking
00:32:59.160about oh well am i crazy you have your side now oh i'll have my side and we'll have a pint and
00:33:05.260everybody will go home that's right and and you might not put the world to rights but somebody
00:33:10.360might say i've not thought about that that way before that's that's great but you won't get that
00:33:16.380kind of dissenting view and you know and i have gone on um twitter or x um and said in the past
00:33:23.820look it's i believe it's this but you can't have a conversation because everybody's being endorsed
00:33:29.660by their own followers and by their own algorithms and by their own people so you can't have that
00:33:35.580real-time discussion and people can say what they like because they're avatars so it's difficult but
00:33:42.540But we do need to have that discussion.
00:33:45.120And I know that political parties, being part of a political party in the past, and I know this happens, will not campaign and knock on doors in certain areas or on certain streets because I know what their politics are.
00:33:59.520Well, actually, I'd like to knock on that door and say, why are you a Tory?