Hello, I'm Hugo Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day,

and the stuff that's even more important than politics, from everything from the immigration crisis,

to, well, everything else, to various columns, to the House of Laws, to Jeremy Clarkson, to Megan

Markle eventually, when Libby becomes our judge

and joining me to do all of that are two of the finest minds from the Times and the Sunday Times and they are James Marriott Hello James Good morning Good morning And Libby Pervis, hello Libby Good morning You've dained us with your physical presence I am actually here in the real studio It's so exciting I guess you're always somewhere In reality Yes, but you can interrupt more without them turning you off in the other.

Oh, I see. Well, you can have a go. We'll see how that works out. Physical aggression is easier in the studio. James, do you worry that having not been here physically for a few weeks, Libby has decided enough is enough and has come down here to keep us in line? I know, well, when you commented that Libby was always physically in reality, I thought we're heading down our philosophical byway yet earlier this time than on any previous show. Yes. It's getting very chint-strokey. She is like, guilt on the Lord, always with us. If Libby Purvis is not in the Times Radio studio, does she exist? But anyway, maybe that's for later. great pleasure to have both of you here. Let's crack on and cover some news. We've been talking this morning, of course, about how the small boats crisis is being handled. The reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has announced his Operation Restoring Justice, announcing plans for mass deportations. I repeatedly went out into the English Channel, filming what was going on, saying you may as well put a sign on the White Cliffs of Dover, saying everyone welcome.

And unless we start deporting people, I predicted this would turn into, and yes, I use the word invasion.

But 180,000 people later, what other word could possibly describe what has been going on? It is an invasion as these young men illegally break

into our country. That was Nigel Farage speaking now of a background harm that I'm assured was just air conditioning

and not demons. It comes as the government announced it will prepare to go ahead with

100 deportations of its own as part of a one-in-one-out deal. Here's the housing minister, Matthew

Pennycook, speaking to Times Radio Breakfast this morning. Don't forget the key elements of our strategy

are not yet in force. Our borders bill, which will give law enforcement new counter-terror style powers

to tackle the gangs who are running this vile trade. That's still going through Parliament.

French authorities are still reviewing their laws so that border enforcement teams on their

side of the channel can intervene in shallow waters. So taken as a whole, yes, the package we are confident will work. It won't be a quick overnight fix, but we're taking the unglamorous, hard-headed practical steps needed to clamp down on this crisis. In contrast, I have to say, to parties trying to hoodwink the British public with unworkable gimmicks. Libby, I don't know how much of Farage's speech you heard, but haven't heard most of it, and I'm sure people will disagree on this, it seemed to me that it was not Enoch Powell, it was not tub thumping, it was a man who sees an open goal and is kicking a ball in it. It is an open goal. It absolutely is an open goal at the moment. It's not entirely this government's fault. It's partly the fault of the 14 years before Conservative government and just doing very, very little. It's just creating this open goal. And I think we are moving towards something really quite big. It may not be as big as Nigel Farage's ideas, but certainly there's a pan-European sense that revising at least the interpretation of the

right to family life, you know, in the treaty. But I think we may end up just leaving the

treaty, even quite quickly, but it's very hard to see this government doing it because there seems

to be a sort of a clenched immobility there. The one-in-one out it looks like a nonsense really. I don't see, you know, the reports of people in the Times today reports of people hearing about it and yes, they fill in the form and then nothing happens and, you know, nobody thinks anything's really happening. So yeah, I think something, a big change is going to happen and I don't really want Nigel Farage in charge of it.

Well, I mean, I wonder, James, do you think, are we in a place where we're, we think we're in a sort of political place where sort of nice centrist, wibbilly technocracy, just cannot do it.

The challenges of politics today, and these are partly sort of, you know, politically fabricated challenges, but not always, because some of them are real challenges like this one, requires people who are going to do things that a lot of other people aren't going to like. I can imagine this truth in that. I think I'd be wary of saying that just because someone is a very effective campaign, it means they're a very effective governor. And I think that we, if Nigel Farage ever does become Prime Minister, I think we're probably all quite likely

to discover that there's a huge gap between very effective governor. And I think that we, if Nigel Farage ever does become prime minister,

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