Suella, The Home Office and the Holocaust survivor
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2023
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's quite a thing to pick a fight with a Holocaust survivor.
But this weekend, The Home Office asked for the removal of a social media clip that showed Joan Salter MBE confronting Home Secretary Suella Braverman over what she called 'dehumanising' rhetoric around refugees.
The Home Office said the clip did not show the full exchange and had been heavily edited. Was the clip unfair? In stepping in, did the Home Office act out of order? And what does it tell us more widely about the government's communications issues after a weekend where Rishi Sunak also came unstuck with questioning over Scottish independence. We talk to former Director of Comms at Downing Street Sir Craig Oliver about how you get this stuff right.
And, classified documents at three of Biden's residences. Is this any different to Trump's document hoarding at Mar-a-Lago? And does this reinvigorate Trump's 2024 presidential bid and stymie Biden's re-election tilt?
Socials: Georgia Foxwell
Video: Will Gibson-Smith
Planning: Alex Barnett
Production: Gabriel Radus
Editor: Tom Hughes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.1 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.0 | This weekend, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, found herself at the centre of a firestorm. |
| 0:18.1 | It followed the release of a tape on social media, which cast her in the |
| 0:24.8 | most appalling light speaking to a Holocaust survivor. In 1943, I was forced to free my birthplace |
| 0:33.5 | in Belgium, went across the war-torn Europe and dangerous seas, until I finally was able to |
| 0:40.3 | come to the UK in 1947. Now, when I hear you using words against refugees like swarms |
| 0:50.3 | and an invasion, I am reminded of the language used to dehumanize and justify the murder |
| 0:58.6 | of my family and millions of others. Why do you find the need to use that kind of language? |
| 1:05.0 | I won't apologize for the language that I've used to demonstrate the scale of the problem, |
| 1:11.9 | that we mustn't shy away from saying there is a problem. |
| 1:15.5 | I will not shy away from saying we have a problem of people exploiting that generosity, |
| 1:21.0 | breaking our rules and undermining our system. |
| 1:23.7 | That video was shared widely across social media platforms to the point where the Home Office stepped in to say this wasn't the whole video, it wasn't the whole story, it wasn't the whole speech. |
| 1:35.9 | And they then demanded that the charity, who had posted it, Freedom from Torture is their name, take it down. |
| 1:43.8 | So today we're going to argue not just about |
| 1:46.2 | the merits of this video, what was said, what wasn't said, but also about the wider issues |
| 1:52.6 | that this has raised over the government's communication skills right now. Welcome to the |
| 1:58.8 | newsagents. |
| 2:03.2 | The Newsagents. |
| 2:04.8 | It's John. |
| 2:05.4 | It's Emily. |
... |
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