Blue Sky thinking turned into fast this week as the Financial Times revealed a number of

outlandish schemes commissioned by Home Secretary Pritteau to address asylum seekers crossing the English channel in boats.

Welcome to Payne's politics,

your essential insider guide to what's happening in British politics from the

FT with me Sebastian Payne.

First up, we'll be discussing some of the bizarre ideas of Pretty Patel

to tackle what she sees as illegal migration,

and why so much of government policy is being reflected from Australia.

Joining me to discuss this topic is political columnist Robert Shimsley and special guest John

McTernan, also a little commentator and a former aide of prime ministers in UK and Oz.

And later we'll be looking at the latest on coronavirus in the UK.

The serious warnings from Downing Street about a tough winter ahead and the introduction of yet more local restrictions.

Political editor George Parker and Health Editor Serenevo will guide us through.

So Robert, welcome back and John, welcome to your Payne's

politics debut. Thank you.

Hey, Seb. Well, this week the thing that struck me is when we were

writing these stories about these mad cap schemes from the home office was I couldn't believe it that when

this story came in our direction it felt this simply can't be true and then when you put the

call in and feel that actually this still people in a meeting very sensible smart people in

white or who actually came up with these serious ideas I felt like completely

baffling. Robert can you sort of recall any times when you've written or seen things in politics, you've thought that's so mad, it just can't be true.

I think I remember once upon I'm getting a leak member of all the blue sky thinking that Tories were doing about how they could make William Hague seem more normal to ordinary voters when he was conservative leaders and include things like you know visiting a cake shop in Yorkshire and all kinds of bizarre stuff like that.

...