Zoë Grünewald
speaker
1,028 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard 9 Jul
Zoë Grünewald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
sort of Boris Johnson years and the sort of last five years of Tory governance, where net migration figures really went up because they relaxed rules on visas. And he was basically suggesting that the Tories let the market define policy and politics. And actually, it's more sort of left wing, it's more statist to have a government that wants to kind of control its borders.
I think what was good was that he made the case for asylum. You know, he said, if you want tighter laws on immigration, you have to accept that there are going to be people here who have legitimate claims to asylum and should have those accepted.
And I think that almost made me wonder if, you know, we could see something like safe and legal routes coming eventually, because it was actually a fairly assertive case for asylum where, you know, actually the party had been quite scared to even talk about that before.
But I think what would have been nice if he'd made a stronger case for the benefits of immigration that we've seen, you know, how it has enriched the country culturally, how it's enriched the country economically.
It's almost like he was trying to placate various sections.
And it undermines that sort of moment of actually making the case for asylum. That is hidden in all these other statements. And when you focus a lot of your speech on immigration on how it needs to come down... arguably you are giving credence to the argument that there is something wrong with immigration and therefore immigrants.
So I think some of this, again, is signalling to the right. So, you know, this argument that part of the thing with Keir Starmer is I feel like You can almost kind of understand why Labour might have felt that it needed to shift rightward slightly to get elected.
And I think a lot of people kind of gave the party maybe a little bit of lenience because they understand that there was a group of voters they wanted to grab who were disenchanted Tory voters. But the problem is they're now in government and they have five years. And, you know, you can look at approval ratings and all of that, but actually they have five years left.
this is time for some brave decisions. And it feels like Labour is still, for some reason, signalling to the right, even though it doesn't really need the support of the right anymore.
They can be braver here. And, you know, what is Labour for if it's not for standing up for the rights of not only working people, but people who need the support of the state? Labour is supposed to be the party of the state. So when you're talking, even in a passing comment about going after benefit fraud,
when there are so many other issues of corruption and wasted money, especially when you are running a government that has DWP, the Department for Work and Pensions, in there that we know is simply not fit for purpose. We know that the incompetencies of DWP and its inefficiencies have actually led to worsening people's sickness, to some deaths.
definitely to make life a lot harder for vulnerable people.
Also, who are, you know, young party members. I mean, not that age makes a difference, but those... you know, it's actually, it's difficult to engage young people in politics.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, it is the case that, That for a long time, politicians have been doing things like this. And it is above board in the sense that if you declare it in your register of interests, then that's within the rules. Now, should we be having a conversation about whether that should happen? Yes, we probably should. And arguably, Labour are the right party to do that.
They made restoring public service a whole chapter in their manifesto. They... saw how actually sleaze scandals can bring entire governments down under Boris Johnson. Keir Starmer, you know, he is the law and order guy. He is former director of public prosecutions. He absolutely could have made this his whole thing. I am going to restore your trust. We're going to be squeaky clean.
We're going to do everything with just public service in mind. What they should have done, I think, is they should have seen this, seen how the public were responding and say, you're right. And I think we're going to have a look at the rules and we're going to change them. They shouldn't be saying, it's fine. Everyone does it. We've been doing it for ages. The opposition have done it.
It's just how politics works. You know, a friend wanted to give me a dress. So I, you know, it was very nice because people don't trust politicians. They don't trust their motivations. And when there's those personal donations, I don't know how they can't see how that undermines their message.
Again, it feels like it's playing into that narrative of there's one rule for politicians and another rule for everyone else. And Labour should be particularly hot on that.
I mean, potentially. I mean, take Lord Ali. I mean, he is not only a big donor for the Labour Party, but he also works, you know, he's a peer. He does campaigning for Labour. I mean, he says he loves Labour and that's why he wanted to make these donations. If that's true, then the party's saying to him, we don't really want to take any more of your money in a personal capacity. Yeah.
He should be like, yeah, great. Whatever helps you guys stay in power, right? If there are donors who are like, well, that's going to make our relationship very difficult, then... That proves exactly why they shouldn't have a relationship with him.
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