TNT Radio guest host Basil Valentine speaks with former candidate for mayor of Manchester and political commentator Nick Buckley MBE, to discuss the current civil unrest across the UK following the Southport attack and the polemic surrounding Keir Stamer’s new “violent disorder unit. They also discuss this incident through the lens of the people of Great Britain who seem to have had enough of the social and economic difficulties the country has faced over the years, entertaining the possibility that people’s reaction was a cry for help, not to justify their actions but in an attempt to understand and explain why they’ve taken matters into their own hands.
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The bringing the facts I can try today's news talk radio TNT and welcome back to today's news talk Patrick Henningson show with me as a Valentine today Thursday the 1st of August. And I'm delighted to say I'm joined on the line by former candidate for mayor of Manchester. And I believe you stood in the general election as well. Mr Nick Buckley MBE. Welcome to the program, Nick. Thank you for having me back. Did you indeed stand earlier last month in the general election? And how did you do? I did. I did. I stood in Oldham East and Sadler and I came up salutely nowhere. And it was a learning curve for me. If I never stood in a general election before, it six weeks was not enough for for an independent to launch any sort of campaign. I knew within 10 days of fortnight that I wasn't getting anywhere. Before UK had taken off because Nigel Farage had come back. And all the discussions in Oldham East was all about before before Nigel Farage. So it was humiliating a little bit. But like I say, you don't know unless you joined the game. Well, absolutely. And I take my hat off to you for trying. I've never stood for Parliament myself. I wouldn't completely rule it out. But I've just discovered I qualified for a senior rail cards today. So but having said that some exact contemporaries of mine at university were elected in July after years of slogging around the committee rooms of the major parties, which is what you often have to do. But going back to the election quickly, we'll move on to the current unrest. You're right. Six weeks was nothing like enough for the independence to get organised. It was a tremendously disappointing campaign after what for me personally, anywhere was the high watermark of George Galloway's triumph in the by election in Rockdale back in February, which, you know, whether you love him or load him was a huge slap in the eye for the two main parties, because the local garage owner came second. David Turner. I think he's Dave or something like that with the Labour and Conservative beaten out of sight. Now, you know, general elections are very different. We know people return to the usual political roots. But I can't help thinking that one of the reasons why racy soon that called the election as early as he did was to wrong foot minor parties and independence. David Fleming runs an organisation of independent candidates. It was really gathering momentum in the earlier months of this year. And then, you know, obviously for Raj going with reform, even though a lot of the independence also left wing, this whole sort of anti establishment block was broken. Having said that, the two main parties, Labour and Conservative got the lowest chair of the vote, and the lowest total number of votes in decades. People did turn their back on both Labour and the Conservatives. Labour's share of the vote went down from a poll number of 44 at the beginning of the campaign to 34 by the time of the election, you know, and Starmer got far fewer votes than Corbin did, but the low turnout and reform taking great bites out of the Conservative support meant that he ended up with this entirely false landslide. Anyway, your thoughts on the election quickly before we move on, Luke? I think soon acted it for two reasons. The first reason was he knew he was never going to get a flight off to the wonder. And that's what he'd been planning his whole campaign on. So once he knew that wasn't going to happen, he then decided I might as well go now sooner the better because we're going to lose. I'm only going to get worse than the polls. And if we call the short election, every campaign will be crap because totally campaigns are going to be crap anyway. Let's level the playing field by making everybody's bad as each other. And to a certain extent, it worked. Yes, to a certain extent, four people did actually go through a wonder at a total cost of 700 million pounds. So that's 175 million pounds each per deportation. I mean, a truly abysmal record off the charts abysmal. Britain's government has been off the charts abysmal for decades. Nick, and now we're seeing civil unrest, the like of which we haven't seen since well, the Brixton riots, or the, you know, there were some major riots about 20 years ago, weren't there? Do you think this is a flash in the pan or do you think that simmering religious and racial tensions, which overflowed in Southport, let's look set to explode, particularly in other parts of the North as well? I'm also this is going to do with religious and ethnic tensions at all. I think we've got years of this to come now of this violence. I think this is a certain part of the British community have finally had enough. And they've had enough of everything. They've had enough of their living standards dropping. They've had enough of watching mass immigration uncontrolled mass immigration. They've had enough of crime getting out of control, the cat afford to rent houses, buy houses, get doctors appointments, and all the way through this, every time they've complained they've been told you're the racist, you're far right. You're just complaining. I mean, we had decades of these people, their children being masturbates across the country, and they were told to be quiet. And I think they're finally had enough. And the Southport incident was just the straw that broke the camel's back. And I don't think that lead can go back on that giant. And I think we've got several years of this until whatever government and it won't be this government. But until a government starts dealing with this and dealing with the issues that the average English person has, I don't think this is going away, unfortunately. We've got to take a short break. Now, when we come back, I'll be asking Nick, what dealing with these very serious underlying social and economic problems in Britain actually might look like we'll be right back for a complete list of shows and our schedule offered on TNT. Simply visit our website at TNT dot news, keeping you in the loop. On today's news talk TNT. And welcome back to the Patrick Henderson show with me Basil Valentine today, Thursday, the 1st of August. Keir star met with police chiefs earlier today and then announced the creation of a new capability violent disorder units that he says will tackle the tiny, mindless minority in our society. And he's also warned large social media companies that violent disorder clearly whipped up online is also a crime and is happening on your premises. Adding the government will work with companies to help solve the problem. Do you think any of this is going to make any difference? Nick, or do you think he's simply papering over the cracks? He's papering over the cracks and just looking to some headlines as if he's actually tackling something and he's not. If he thinks he can control social media, well, he's a field because he can't. And this isn't a small amount of small amount of people caused the violence. But these demonstrations across the country ended up being violent and I condemn the violence. That's not the way we get change in this country. But the underlying issues here are extremely unhappy people who've been left behind, who can see other people doing well, who have been told all their lives that don't be patriotic. You're just a racist. You're just a Nazi stop complaining. They need addressing those issues. Even if these issues are not real, it doesn't matter. People think they're real. They need addressing clamping down is just what he's going to do. Earlier today, Sir Richard Diller told ABC's Nick Ferrari at breakfast that he would not be surprised if the riots in Southport, London, Hartlepool and Manchester were not in fact stoked by Kremlin bots. We're not entirely sure where this channel three now that first floated the story of somebody called Ali being responsible for the attack came from. That's linked to Russia because they originally 11 years ago that that site on YouTube posted videos of Russian rally drivers in the snow. Yeah, believe it or not, that name went away for a long time has now been revived as a news website. They published a full some apology for having misinformed people. But that misinformation was then picked up and retweeted by Tommy Robinson. And also by Andrew Tate, who told people to wake up. It's an absolute mind feel this. And particularly when it comes to blaming Kremlin bots. Well, I'm not buying that, to be honest. You know, this whole Russian interference narrative, it's a very old playbook, isn't it, Nick? It is. And this is a way of the elite establishment not having to address the real issues on the grounds. So let's blame the Kremlin. Let's blame the far right. They want someone to blame the compiler finger to because the alternative is actually addressing and looking at the real issues. And if they did that, they would find out that they've been complicit in this for 20, 30, 40 years. And this is just the reckoning coming down the line. People have been forecasting this for a long time I have, because I knew the last couple of years, the next atrocity that happens on our soil will change the game. You know, seven years ago, we had the Manchester Arena bombing, 22 kids dead. And all we did was sing Don't Look Back in Anger. Well, I knew that was never going to happen again. I knew next time there would be violence. And we've done nothing about this. The government can control this. Change is coming. So the government can either control and manage to change, or they can fight the change. But change is coming. People have had enough and so many fronts on so many levels. Well, personally, I think we need a sort of complete societal renaissance. But what Labor are offering is to build hundreds of thousands of new homes, probably most of them are poor quality and they removed the requirement for beauty from any future town planning. They're also planning on giving public sector work as a big pay rise, about £9 billion going there. Do you think either of those two measures will help out? People are pointing to lack of affordable housing as one of the main drivers of, well, sort of unrest, unhappiness, and division? No, housing is, especially in the big cities. People can't afford to rent in Manchester and they remind buyer property. But building more and just doing that isn't the answer. We need to end mass migration. We've had 10 million people move to the country in 10 to 15 years. That's why we have a housing problem. So building more houses will only attract more people to come here. It's the wrong answer. And then when you're looking on your set, just a bit, what was your second point? Housing and Oh, pay rise in the public sector. We know real wages have fallen consistently over the last 20 years of these years of Tory austerity. It became a self fulfilling prophecy. People don't want to be or steer. They want to be abundant and prosperous. They do. And a lot of this, again, you can point the finger to mass migration, keeping poor wages, no driving down wages, using resources. And you're right. I mean, how that's what we've got something like between seven and 10 million people on some sort of out of work benefits and disability benefits in this country, if not more, there's actually workforce. But for many decades now, what all our governments have done, this isn't labor can this for all of them. What they do is you have a problem. So we're going to stick you on benefits, keep your mouth shut. And that's how we deal with that problem. And what they should be doing is how can we create a better environment for British people to have a better life? How can we help you get a job? How can we get better paid jobs in this country? But because of our political cycle is only four years, not as long as we're planning for the long term, it's always about the political cycle. And that's killing the country. I would also suggest before we go get your comment on this, do you think the fact that people simply don't socialise as much as they're used to pubs are closing? There aren't the community places that they used to be. This is partly because of the internet. People don't even go to the cinemas, a city world with multiplex operators closing about a third of its cinemas because they can't afford the rents and heating these places. We seem to become an increasingly atomised doggy dog society as well. Nick, I think that's a great point. Something I've been talking about for many years. Not only we're breaking down into tribes, you know, you're gay, you're a different tribe, your Muslim, your Christian, you're from Bangladesh, you're from Wales, we're breaking down into these tribes and these communities as if that's our identity. But our real identity is living on this island, being British, living under the monarchy. That's what should be holding us together. And then with the internet, you're right. Most people now live their lives online. They don't have real friends, they have internet friends. They take pictures of their dinner, so they can post it to say, look what I'm having for dinner. And you're laughing, but we both know it's true. That's what they're doing. And we're social creatures at the end of the day. That's why depression rates and mental health issues are solving. One in every five women in the UK, even antidepressants, 20% of women, because their lives aren't worth living, because what we're doing to women in general and society, we've got men now who abandon their families, their children have been raised on benefits. All these problems are driving us apart and ruining us. I think absentee fathers is one of the biggest social problems that we've got. I mean, it's becoming almost a norm rather than the exception of these days. It is because we financially reward people to make those decisions. We reward single moms for making bad choices. And we reward fathers when they walk away, because we'll pick up the bill. When you incentivize poor behavior, don't be surprised when you get more poor behavior. Finally, before you go, Nick, it was unrest in Manchester. What's the atmosphere like where you are now? Hopefully, things will have calmed down. You know, prison sentences are being threatened on the riders in Southport. It's strange. It's really strange. I've not, I've not felt this before. I heard that I heard people comment like this before. People are actually praising the writers. People are actually praising, telling me personally via messages on social media. And but I've just put a go fund me out to raise money to support injured police officers. Even though I think our police force in the UK is not fit for purpose. I still don't want to see officers, frontline officers are injured anyway, because they're there to protect us. And the amount of pushback I've had on that, which is shameful. But people have frustrated people are now perceiving the police as the enemy, the establishment as the enemy. And if we don't manage this situation, it's only going to get worse. Yes, of course, Brexit was the political outpouring of that frustration, wasn't it? And it seems that the Metropolitan elites prefer to ignore that lesson, rather than take it on board, particularly in the Labour Party, which has long since been divorced from its working class route snick. That's all we've got time for right now. But we'll speak to you again on today's new talk very soon. I'm sure. Thank you Nick Buckley MBE. We don't rock. We talk. Today's news talk TNT radio.
