Jen Williams

He said exactly what you were saying, you know, I were worried about keeping girls safe from what these gangs are doing, even if there aren't any local gangs necessarily, there is a salience to the issue, right?

So the gender issue also plays into that.

We saw it in the riots in Middlesbrough in 2024.

There was footage of men stopping cars in the street during those riots and asking, checking whether people were white or not.

Like it was a really, really dark thread that kind of runs through all of this.

What was quite interesting when I was talking to people here last week to see what they thought about Nigel Farage's intervention on the Henry Novak murder and whether or not they thought that that was appropriate and whether it had gone too far.

Yeah, and Nigel Farage had intervened and essentially made a speech immediately and was then accused of sort of stoking tensions and exploiting it when the family had not wanted that to happen and had been very explicit about it.

Even among people who didn't necessarily think that he had done the right thing, the idea of two-tier policing was one that really seems to be very kind of within the consciousness of people that I was talking to.

So I think that is a real view which is out there.

I think student loans have come up a couple of times as well.

What's he saying on student loans?

Well, he hasn't gone quite as far as the WASPI thing, but he's sort of indicated that, you know, people struggling in the current student loan system, which is the government is under pressure to reform, have been treated abominably unfairly by...

Westminster government and it's awful and you know he supports young people which then as you say Jim sort of starts to raise expectations and then that has to be walked back and it's kind of like all you're doing is like storing up storing up storing up for things that people even if you can come back at later and say like I never said I would be x

You are sending out signals which then people raise expectations and then you end up having to deal with all of that later.

I honestly don't think it's that thought through.

I mean, totally, but I just don't think it's that thought through.

I think he says things almost in the moment sometimes and then lives to regret it.

You also get into Starmer territory, don't you, where you end up actually pleasing nobody, you know.

I think, my guess is it's a little bit like the reverse of the emotional reaction after the May the 7th election, right?

Where everybody knew what was going to happen on May the 7th.