The Daily Signal - Nile Gardiner: ‘Thank God for Elon Musk Taking on the Labor Government'

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Elon Musk is standing up for free speech in the U.K. following last month’s elections that resulted in huge wins for the far-left Labor Party.  Since its rise to power in July, Labor Party leaders have begun cracking down on social media, even arresting individuals for posts they claim incite violence. Now, Musk is using his X account to defend users and raise concerns over the crackdown in the U.K.  “It’s 2030 in the U.K., & you’re being executed for posting a meme,” Must wrote on X Saturday.  “The Brits gave up their guns, and now their government puts them in jail for Facebook posts,” a meme that Musk shared reads.   Musk is combating a “tyrannical-style policing of social media in the U.K.,” says Nile Gardiner, a former adviser to Lady Margaret Thatcher and the current director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation.  “Thank God for Elon Musk taking on the Labor Government,” Gardiner declared during an interview on The Daily Signal Podcast. Recent violent riots in the U.K. were spurred on after rumors spread online about the identity of a man who killed three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed event in July in the English town of Southport, 50 miles west of Manchester. The suspect was rumored to be an illegal immigrant and Islamic. Both claims were proved false. The man now charged with the murder of the girls was born in Britain to Rwandan immigrant parents. Two men have been arrested and sentenced to a combined nearly five years in prison for reportedly using social media to encourage rioters to target hotels housing migrants in the U.K.  During a recent interview with Sky News, London's Metropolitan Police commissioner warned that law enforcement will “throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.” Gardiner condemned the violent demonstrations while calling the crackdown on social media “very dangerous.”  “We need free speech champions fighting against Orwellian tactics and policies,” Gardiner said, adding that “Elon Musk is doing this, and full credit to him.”  Gardiner joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what we know about the violent riots in the U.K. and the Labor Party's social media speech policies. Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, August 13th. I'm Virginia Allen. There's a battle for free speech being waged in the UK. That's according to Nile Gardner, the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. Nile recently returned from the UK where they've just had major elections in which the far left Labor Party won in a landslide. Well, now that same party is cracking down on free speech within the UK amid rising protests, major concerns over illegal immigration into the UK, and other critical issues. Nile joins us on the show today to explain what exactly the situation is and how the election of the Labor Party could affect America's relationship with the UK in the days,

months, and years to come. Stay tuned for my conversation with Nile after this. This is Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. In today's media landscape, it's more important than ever to have a trusted source of news and conservative commentary. That's why we are asking for your support. Your donation helps us continue our mission of delivering accurate, factual reporting on the issues that matter most to you. Whether it's $5 or $500, every contribution makes a difference. Visit dailysignal.com slash donate to help us keep Americans informed and fight for conservative values. The Daily Signal is your voice for the truth. I'm so pleased to welcome back to the show today, our good friend from the Heritage Foundation, Nile Gardner. He formerly served as

an advisor to Lady Thatcher and currently serves as director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom here at the Heritage Foundation. Niall, thanks for being with us today. It's a real pleasure, Virginia. Thanks very much. There are two major things happening in the UK right now, recently happened in the UK. You have just returned from England, so I'm excited to dive into a little bit of news regarding to what's happening with our friends across the pond. Of course, there was a recent election, in the UK that bears great significance for the future of the UK. And then we've also seen some really violent protests that were spurred after a stabbing in the UK. So I want to start there and talk about those protests.

It was at the end of July. There was a stabbing at a Taylor Swift themed event. And tragically, three girls were killed and eight others were injured. And there were rumors following that stabbing that the individual who carried out the stabbing was an illegal alien. Later it was learned, no, he was in fact born in the UK, but what do we know about this individual and the events that led up to this horrific event? Yes, an absolutely horrific event in the town of Southport and three small girls were killed, brutally murdered by a 17-year-old who was the son of Rwandan immigrants to the UK.

This particular individual, the killer, was actually born in Britain, but was a child of immigrants. And in the aftermath of the killings, there was a... a certain amount of disinformation spreading on social media, claiming that the killer was an asylum seeker, which he was not. There were claims that he was a Muslim, which he was not. But within this very heated atmosphere, you saw the rise soon after of violent protest in Southport. then had protests spreading to many other British cities. So we saw some of the most extreme

violence in the form of rioting since certainly 2011 was the last time you had major riots in the UK. They were largely focus on London. But I think you'd have to go back even to 1981 when you had widespread rioting that started in in Brixton in London in terms of the scale of the or the violence that we have that we have seen. And about 15 to 20, I think British cities, towns were impacted by this violence and rioting.

And certainly there's been a very tough, immediate response to the riots. But the riots, I think, have certainly led to some larger questions about British society. And I think that, you know, beneath the surface, there are major, hugely important issues that need to be addressed by the British government, by British society as a whole. And I think you have to separate acts of criminality. There were a lot of attacks on the police, for example, as part of this violence, and of course rightly condemned across the political spectrum. But you have to separate that, I think, from broader concerns in British society about the impact of mass migration into the country. I do think the UK has been fundamentally transformed over the course of the last,

even 20 years or so as a result of mass migration, both legal and illegal. That's an issue of huge concern. You also have the issue of working class people in Britain who feel abandoned by the political system, abandoned by the political elites. And so there are many complex issues behind the scenes of violence that we have seen in recent weeks in the United Kingdom. And I do think these broader issues have to be addressed as well as the immediate violence. When you say mass migration, what kind of numbers are we talking about into the UK in maybe the last five or so years?

Yeah, I think that in the last five years, on average, each year you've seen several hundred thousand migrants coming into the UK every single year. And I think that we're talking here about, in total, perhaps two, three million people have come into the UK and in the course of certainly the last decade or so, actually. And this has put a huge strain on public services, on education, for example, on the health system. it has helped transform, I think, the demographics of some British cities. And for a United Kingdom of around 67 million people, when you have two or three million people coming into the UK in the course of a decade, that's a very large, that's a very large number. it's comparable to the 10 million or so illegal migrants that have flown, you know, that have surged into the United States, actually, that have crossed the southern border under the Biden presidency.

And so for a relatively, for a very small place like the UK, to have millions of new immigrants, illegal and legal flowing into the country. This is a huge change for British society and is a huge burden of course for British society and of course many of the migrants who've come into the UK are living on welfare. They are an immense burden of course to the welfare system in the UK which is already, in my view, far too big. And I think that this causes tremendous strains in society. And I think that unless you're going to secure Britain's borders and reduce the scale of mass migration,

you are going to see huge problems ahead for British society in the fracturing. in British society. And I think you are going to see more riots, more violence in the UK. And I don't think the present British government is really serious about the scale of the problem. And also the previous British Conservative government in power for 14 years didn't do enough about mass migration. And so we're seeing the consequences. of that now. But this has to be addressed. And I think that the issue of mass migration into the UK, with a current rate several hundred thousand people a year entering into Britain, many of them

from Africa, from the Middle East, from poorer parts of the world, this has huge consequences for the future of the country. And we're seeing this actually, in every single kind of country in Western Europe today. It's not just the UK, but it's all over Europe. It's France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy. Almost every Western European country is facing a similar kind of mass migration crisis. It's fundamentally transforming the nature of Europe. Wow. It's leading to soaring levels of crime in many European countries, social disorder, fracturing society. So this is the single biggest challenge that Europe faces today.

Well, and Europe is looking at dealing with this issue, specifically in the UK, at a time when they have just had an election and there's just been this shift in power as far as the controlling power. I mean, these protests started exactly about a month after there was a major election in the UK, where the Conservative Party lost and the Labor Party became the ruling party. What is the Labor Party's position on immigration in the UK? Well, I think that the Labor Party in the UK, they're very similar to the Democrats over here, really. There is a deep-seated open borders mindset that exists within some quarters of the Labour Party, as it does within the Democratic Party here

in the United States. They are already... weakening, I think, the approach taken by the previous Conservative government against illegal migration. For example, the Labour government ended what is known as the Rwanda program, which was a plan to deport illegal migrants from the UK to Rwanda. That was a centrepiece of the previous Conservative government's approach. Labour has scrapped that. They will not be deporting illegal migrants. Labor has also made it clear that they will provide public housing for illegal migrants. This is a government that's very soft on illegal migration.

And I think that we are going to see, as a result, more and more illegal migrants trying to cross the the English Channel to get into the UK from France. And this is an interesting thing that the small boat crossings across the channel, these are migrants who are crossing from France. They're not fleeing from some war zone in the Middle East. They're fleeing from France, actually. Okay. And they don't want to live in France.

They want to come into the UK where welfare benefits are more generous, where they would generally face perhaps less hostility from local people. And I think that the idea that they are somehow legitimate asylum seekers, seeking safe haven in the United Kingdom, is absolutely ridiculous because they're coming for France. They could stay in France. The French government, of course, doesn't want them in France. And in some cases, they're actively assisting sending.

sending these migrants across the English Channel. Well, they're doing absolutely nothing to stop them. Emmanuel Macron, of course, hates Brexit. He has no sympathy whatsoever for Brexit, Britain, and his government does absolutely nothing to stop the migrants of crossing. And so it reduces the number of illegals in France, which is good for the French government. But the idea that the UK should be welcoming

illegal migrants into the UK as somehow victims of oppression or fleeing, you know, fleeing some dictatorial government, they're actually escaping from France. And the last time I checked, the French government as useless and as bad as it is, it's not a dictatorship, it's a free country, and, you know, frankly, they should just stay in France. There's no reason why they should be going to the UK. And so the UK should be deporting every single illegal migrant that comes of the country. But the Labour Party, of course, is going to put them up in social housing, in public accommodation,

taking away housing from British citizens. And so you can see why a lot of British people are happy and angry about this situation. And where have they largely come from to get to France? Yeah, that's a good question. It's a combination of a number of places. So many are coming from North Africa. Many are coming from the Middle East. Some of them, of course, have fled places like Iraq, Syria.

Some are coming from Afghanistan, not least with the Taliban back in power, thanks to Joe Biden, putting the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan. And so you've had flows of millions upon millions of illegal migrants coming from illegal migrants coming from mainly from North Africa, from the Middle East, also from Afghanistan. They're largely Islamic. They're Muslim. And many are economic migrants seeking simply a better life in the West. But they come from a very different culture.

These are not Christian migrants. I mean, they are overwhelmingly Islamic. Some of them are Islamists, Islamic fundamentalists with a clear extremist ideology and pose a national security threat. But they've largely ended up in places like France, Italy, Germany, for example. large numbers want to get into the United Kingdom. Interesting. But they're already in Western Europe. They're in the European Union.

And it's not as though, you know, fleeing from France or Germany or Belgium or, you know, is fleeing from some war-ravaged dictatorship. They're in the European Union. They should stay in the EU. They've got into the EU. And the European governments, EU governments should take care of. them. It's not the response to the British government and the British people to regard them. Sure.

An issue that, obviously, not just America is facing this mass influx of illegal aliens. Let's talk Nile a little bit more about the results of this recent election in the UK. How exactly, after 14 years of conservative party control in the UK, did this really far-left party, the Labor Party, managed to gain so much control? Yeah, and I'm glad you used the term the far-left, because, that's what the Labour Party is. They're not some centrist, middle of the road, moderate party. This is a socialist party. And if you look at their agenda, their pro-mass migration, high-tax agenda, in my view, this is socialism writ large. It's very dangerous. And there are a lot of far-left extremists

within the Labour Party. And I would include the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who has in the past called Donald Trump a neo-Nazi sympathizer. And if you look at the statements, over half of the current Labour cabinet about Donald Trump, I mean, they're horrific. And so this is a labor government that will find itself in an incredibly difficult position if you have a change of administration in the United States. over half of them have viciously attacked Donald Trump.

And I think that it's going to be very difficult for them to have any kind of close working relationship with a Trump White House. And especially if you look at the comments made by David Lammy, the foreign secretary, who should not be in his position. They're absolutely outrageous and appalling. But what he said about Trump is echoed by over half of the labor government. This is a far-left British government, and they're very similar actually to the Democrats in the United States who have increasingly been hijacked by the far left.

So obviously, the U.S.-UK. relationship is very important. We're close partners. So then let's say come November from President Donald Trump is re-elected, what would that working relationship look like between a U.S. with a very conservative president and a U.K. with a very far-left government. Yeah, that's a good, that's a very good question. I think it's going to be a very tense relationship. Of course, the U.S.-UK. special relationship exists beyond whoever is in the White House or Downing Street.

And so I think you're going to continue to have close-knit defense cooperation, intelligence cooperation. But at a political level, it's going to be a very difficult relationship because you'll have, in the UK, a left-wing government that, of course, is very, very supportive of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris. They're very anti-Trump. They would disagree with a huge part of the Trump agenda. And on the U.S. side, I think you'll have an administration that is going to be very pro-Brexit. the Labour Party is going to be, I think, very confused over Brexit.

On the one hand, the Labour Party has pledged in its election manifesto that they will not reverse Brexit, that they will fully implement Brexit. But at the same time, nearly every single Labour MP voted against Brexit. So I don't trust the Labour government one bit on Brexit. And they will do all they can in the five years there in power. to bit by bit dismantle Brexit. And so you'll have a US government headed by, a US administration, potentially headed by Donald Trump, that we're very pro-Brexit,

and that will hold the Labour government's feet to the fire over Brexit. That will be a good thing. And a US administration is far more pro-Brexit than the British government. The British people voted for Brexit, 17.4 million Britain's vote for Brexit in the 2016 referendum. the Labor government needs to respect that. The Labor government was put in power by only around a third of the national vote. And they need to respect the 52% of British people who voted for Brexit.

And I hope they do. But I don't trust Kira Stama and his lefty, lefty cabinet. I just think this Labour government is already shaping up to be, a big disaster. What is the tone in the UK right now? You were just over there, you met with some officials. What are people saying? I think already there is a growing backlash against the Labour government.

They've only been in power for a few weeks, but already their popularity is plummeting in the polls. And I do think most Britain's view the labor government as problematic. And as I mentioned earlier, they got into office with a huge landslide victory on around maybe 34% of the vote. That's hardly a democratic mandate, but they're in power. And that's because of the way that the British first pass-upose electoral system works. And so you've got a minority, a party that has a huge majority in Parliament. And I think already there's a lot of disillusionment with Labor.

There are growing concerns as well over what Labour will do with freedom of speech. And already the Labour government is on a, you know, on a parade against Elon Musk. and Twitter X as it's currently known. Why? Because Elon Musk is a big critic of the Labour government. And so Labor is already talking about restricting freedom of speech on social media, what they term as disinformation. And there's a lot of Orwellian language that's coming out in the wake of the government's response to the riots.

And there is talk about cracking down on speech on social media. And that's a big difference between the United States and the UK. So the UK does not have a written constitution, but it has for centuries respected the principle of freedom of speech. But we have a Labour government power now that is already actively arresting people for what they're saying on Twitter. This is very dangerous. And this is why I repeat what I said earlier, that this is a far-left Orwellian-style government that is already arresting people because they disagree with what they're saying on social media. And Elon Musk is 100% right to be fighting against this.

Thank God for Elon Musk taking on the Labour government. because Musk's voice and the role of X in combating what is tyrannical style policing of social media in the UK, this is so important actually that you have figures like Elon Musk who are fighting to protect freedom of speech because in the UK you have a government that is undermining it actively right now. Elections have consequences. You put the far left in power. This is what they do. they don't like freedom of speech. And they're already starting to lock people up for comments made on social media,

which had not happened in the United States because of the US Constitution. But what we're seeing in Britain also is what is happening in several Western European countries. And Britain's always upheld the principles of freedom of speech, but you now have a government

that is trampling upon it. That is very, very dangerous. actually. And the British Prime Minister, Kira Stama, is known as two-tier Kira. Why? Because there's a double standard that is applied. He's taking strong action against, you know, violent writers on the streets. And I think there is very strong public support for taking firm action against people who use violence. But on the other hand, What he is doing is he's going after people on social media for expressing an opinion. And also he's turning a blind eye to horrendous Islamist anti-Semitism.

He's doing nothing about the huge protests on the streets of British cities by Islamic fundamentalists, openly supporting Hamas, chanting out. al-Aqbar on the streets supporting jihad and yet this this government does nothing at all about them and so you've got this double standard that is applied hence the nickname to tier kier for the prime minister and you've had horrendous scenes as well in british cities in the last couple of weeks whereby you've had gangs of islamists beating people up in the streets anyone they've accused are being involved in the riots. And we've not seen a wave of arrest of these Islamist hooligans.

The government has done practically nothing about this. And so you can see why a lot of British people are hugely upset with the approach to the British government. They see a double standard. This government does not apply the law equally. And it takes a very soft approach towards the rise of Islamist extremism. and you have people openly supporting Hamas, a terrorist movement, openly calling the jihad, chanting al-Aqabar on the streets of Britain, but there are no consequences.

And so a lot of British people are very upset about this double standard. And what the British government is doing, this crackdown on social media, it's very dangerous. And I hope that Elon Musk is going to continue his campaign against this. And thank you, Elon Musk for taking a stand. standing up to the British government. Because if he doesn't, no one will. And we need free speech champions fighting against Orwellian tactics and policies. And so Elon Musk is doing this and full credit to him.

Free speech champions, we do indeed need more of those. The Heritage Foundation's Nile Gardner, Nile, thank you for your time. Thank you for your analysis. us. We appreciate, as always, you joining and breaking down the situation of what's happening with our friends across the pond. My pleasure. Thank you very much, Virginia. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Make sure that you join us once again at 5 p.m. today for the Daily Signal's top news. These are the headlines of the day that you don't want to miss. And if you would, hit that subscribe

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