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Coffee House Shots

Will Shabana stop the boats?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.42.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With the announcement yesterday that the government would be prepared to suspend visas for countries that don’t cooperate with the UK over deportations, has Shabana Mahmood shown she has what it takes to tackle immigration? Tim Shipman and James Heale join Patrick Gibbons to discuss whether the new home secretary can ‘stop the boats’.


But, as the government ‘reset’ continues, all eyes are on Labour’s deputy leadership race. The most high-profile MPs to throw their hats in the ring are education secretary Bridget Phillipson, former shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry – and Lucy Powell, fresh from her sacking as Leader of the House of Commons. Is the race shaping up to be a one-on-one between a government loyalist and an outsider?


Plus: as Kemi Badenoch is trying to talk about the economy we discuss whether she is more William Hague or Iain Duncan-Smith, and the Epstein scandal has pulled in our man–dy in Washington.


Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:05.8

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0:45.6

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast.

0:48.9

I'm Patrick Gibbons and today I'm joined by our political editor, Tim Shipman,

0:50.9

and our deputy political editor, James Heel.

0:55.2

James, both you and Tim spoke on the podcast over the weekend and yesterday about how the government reshuffle has centred around getting Shaman and Mahmood into the home

0:59.7

office. Yesterday, we had the announcement that the Home Secretary would be prepared to suspend

1:04.7

visas for countries that don't cooperate with the UK over deportations, over removals. Does this show that sort of

1:12.3

day one, this Home Secretary is prepared to take a harder line than her predecessors?

1:16.7

Absolutely. That's the message. Yeah, day one, we saw talk of drones being used to deal with

1:21.8

migrants arriving here. Day two, we've seen talk of learning lessons from Donald Trump.

1:26.7

And in terms of policy decisions, already they're saying that they're going to go further than the Conservatives in government and actually use the chance to block visas for those countries. So, they're not plain board deportations. Now, I think there's only a very few number of countries who don't actually have any kind of visa deal with us. So it's going to be mostly things like the Indians. are they going to be, for instance, taking people back from the country if they've come here illegally. Now, some people in government, of course, are a bit wired at what that means for the India trade deal, which is going to be so important to Rachel Reeves' pre-budget assessment by the OBR in terms of getting growth and demonstrating that actually they should allow a bit more fiscal headroom. But actually,

2:01.1

this is about trade-offs. And I really think that this reshuffle was about showing that stopping the boats is one of the two big priorities of this government. Shabana Mahmoud is coming with the messaging. There's reporting the Times today. She said on day one, you know, I'm going to bring my A-game to this department. And if you don't do the same, you know where the door is. Can or will Shabana stop the boats?

2:18.7

Stopping the boats is very difficult or will Shabana stop the boats?

2:18.8

Stopping the boats is very difficult. Clearing out the hotels looks like a more achievable goal. And I think that's where she'll start. I mean, as James was saying that, you know, immediately has a plan on day one, immediately has a plan on day two. It's almost like they plan this for months, isn't it? I mean, I, the Downing Street had a plan ready to go and said,

2:35.2

how about this plan?

...

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