Josh Babarinde MP
speaker
35 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Oct 2024
Josh Babarinde MP’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I mean, it's a crazy place. It's great to come here, having done some stuff before, you know, as you said, spent my career supporting kids out of crime, out of gangs and into employment. and in a slightly novel way through building a phone repair company. And it basically came from doing some work in the East End of London.
I'm from Eastbourne originally, born and bred, so quite different to the East End. But I found myself there working with young people who had had upbringings in some ways that were not dissimilar to mine. I had some quite tricky patches in my childhood, but I had an amazing town, amazing family, amazing school, community, et cetera, that lifted me. And I ended up working with a lot of folks
who'd had difficult home lives as well in the East End, who didn't have all that stuff around them in the same kind of way, or they didn't experience it in the same way. And so I wanted to do what I could to support them. And so I ended up training and employing them to repair broken smartphone screens, to make money, to feel valued, to belong.
And, you know, I was taking guys who had convictions for things like wielding axes into the US embassy under Trump to repair his diplomat's phones.
It was an awesome time. And yeah, great to bring that insight from the front line to the House of Commons.
Well, I'll tell you the silly story and then I'll tell you the serious story. The silly story is that I was at a uni open day when I was about 16 and it happened to be freshers week. They had all the freshers stalls out there and I knew I was interested in politics, but I wasn't massively into it. But I saw a Lib Dem stall and they had these really cool beer mats and they said...
can I have a beer, Matt? And they were like, no, not unless you join. So my mate Abby paid for me to join. I still haven't paid her back. And I ended up member of the party. And then this was back in 2009. So I was getting lots of emails through saying, you know, come to this event, come to that event. I ended up at an event where Nick Clegg was speaking.
There was a guy behind me asking loads of xenophobic questions. And I thought, I'm not having that. So I had it out with him at the end. And our debate was broken up by the then Lib Dem candidate who said, don't get mad, get even, come and help me win. And the rest is history.
But the reason I stayed is because, I guess, jumping back to childhood in a bunch of ways, you know, for me, it really angers me, to be honest, but also makes me sad that so many people's respective qualities of life are defined by not much more than brute luck and bad luck in a had some bad luck in my life, but the young people I've spent my career working with had even more.
And so I wanted to find a way to reduce or if I'm being really utopian about it, eliminate the role that luck plays in shaping people's courses and qualities of life. So they're not you know, punished by the market. They're not forced into particular places by the state, but they and their communities get to decide where they go, what fulfills them and what the future looks like.
And that's the essence of liberalism, really. And that's the essence of the Liberal Democrats. So I joined for the beer and I stayed for the freedom.
Yeah, well, I think there are a bunch of differences. Labour have kind of centralising instincts, instincts that, you know, say, look, the state often knows best. And my view is, well, the state should definitely be there as a safety net to make sure that no one is screwed. But I think that individuals and their communities know best. And I think that is a really fundamental distinction.
Also, Lib Dems have a really proud tradition fighting for people's civil liberties. It's important that people have their fundamental rights that allow them to be free. But it's important that government doesn't overstep that and actually compromise people's freedom.
Well, I think there's all sorts. So, you know, Lib Dems, we're the biggest Lib Dem party in Parliament in 100 years or something like that. 72 MPs. You've got the Tories having their internal fight. They've been having for quite a few years now in a complete mess. And so Liberal Democrats have stepped up and said, well, we'll be the real opposition then.
fighting for the things that matter to people. So one of the key things that we are opposing Labour on is support when it comes to pensioners. There are some of the most vulnerable pensioners in our society who are set to lose the winter fuel allowance that they need to heat their homes. Sure, there are folks who are pretty well off who don't need that winter fuel allowance.
I think there's a case for means testing that. But for taking it away from those who really need it, that's a real problem and something that Labour need to be held to account on. Another thing you've got is the two child benefit cap.
All of the evidence tells us that one of the key ways that we could help alleviate child poverty in our country is by removing that cap so that those children, those families get the cash that they need to grow and to thrive. The Tories haven't listened to us on that. And Labour really need to start listening as well.
So you can see some key dividing lines between the government and between Lib Dems as the real opposition, where we're fighting for the kind of progressive change that people don't just want, but they really need in the country as well.
It's like when you're hiring folks or you look at The Apprentice, some of the last two in The Apprentice are not the two who you want to end up with. And if you're in that position as Lord Sugar, you probably want to reopen applications and start all over again. That's what's happened here.
You look at Robert Jenrick, you look at Kemi Badenoch, they're both folks whose, I think, ideas belong way in the past, not in the future.
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