So I've been wanting to do a

video about immigration for ages.

There's two subjects

that I've wanted to do videos about,

for ages that I've not done, which is one immigration

and two inheritance.

And, I've avoided doing them

because they are such contentious issues

and they're so serious.

And I feel like if you do them, you better do them

f**king well, basically. And,

I really want to do a video on immigration

because I see it becoming like a

bigger and bigger and bigger issue.

But I feel like it's such an important video

that I don't f**k it up, basically.

And I feel like

because I'm tired,

I just feel like I don't have the energy to do it,

like the justice that it deserves.

But obviously we've got the election coming up now.

We're talking about, you know,

we did our election video, right?

We put it out, like, I guess maybe a week or two ago.

And, we didn't talk about the rise of Reform.

Another thing

we didn't really talk about is the fact that

the Conservatives

could possibly get pumped so hard in this election

that they drop down into third or fourth place.

They probably wont.

But it's definitely possible.

And,

you know, of course, we have this two party system

which makes it, like almost impossible

to, like, replace the top two parties.

And the top two parties have been the top tea parties

for like a hundred years,

where like Labour replace the Liberals or whatever.

And to be honest, I think it's a stupid system.

I think proportional representation is a better system.

I think when you have this two party system,

like what we've got now,

you can get this kind of stupid situation

where both the parties are basically complete

shit and like, you got no choice but to vote for them.

But also it's undemocratic really,

because all of the power is within the parties,

you know, like you only have two choices.

You know,

they’re kind of similar really like all of the...

The power is not really within the people.

You know, look at Rishi Sunak like,

you know, people voted in Boris Johnson.

They kicked him out.

The party members voted in Theresa May.

They kicked her.

So not Theresa May. Liz Truss, they kicked her out.

And then the MPs, in some ways,

here’s Rishi Sunak, he's the guy we want.

You know, it's really undemocratic, right? But,

so I guess there's something kind of sexy

and kind of something exciting about, well,

we can actually kick out

one of these two major parties.

And, you know, I get excited about that.

You know, I think that,

to be completely honest,

I think the conservatives are basically

totally bought by the very rich.

And I just think, like

our campaign

to reduce inequality,

I don't think we're gonna get anything under them.

Don't get me wrong, like,

we need to be willing to be flexible.

And if the conservative

became of

like a, like a meaningful vehicle for it,

you have to use what you can buy like

you can't see happening right.

So it's exciting to see them getting like, smashed,

but then like

when you see

the growing sense

that we see it in the YouTube comments,

which is the problem is immigration.

The problem is immigration, the problem is immigration.

You see Nigel Farage

coming back, the growth of the Reform Party.

It’s hard to even be excited

about the conservatives being smashed,

because if that happens,

they might get replaced by Reform.

Nigel Farage might take over the Conservative Party,

and it's just really hard to see

to see anything

happening other than

a new right wing alternative coming up that is more

anti immigration.

That is more xenophobic

that could over time

potentially become more racist, right.

So it's hard for me to even be excited

about something

that I would have liked to be excited about,

which is the demise of the Conservative Party.

So let's just

talk about this immigration thing.

I haven't got, like, a prepped video, right.

The reason I struggle to talk about it

is because I know

first things first, right,

The target audience for this channel,

nobody's excluded from this channel.

But this channel, for me,

is about connecting

with just ordinary people,

ordinary people who feel like they

are not being spoken to by economists on the news.

They don't understand what those guys are saying.

They're not being represented, that

nobody's on their side, nobody's.

That's all I want, you know.

So, you know, you're talking about, you know,

basically people who might not have like,

you know,

a degree in economics from Cambridge or whatever.

But of course, you know,

it's also a campaign

to raise tax on the very rich,

to reduce inequality, to improve living standards.

And for that reason, we've always had

lot of support

from the political left

and the people who like first sort of help, you know,

you know, one of the first people who ever, like,

helped me, like, grow my profile was,

you know, Grace Blakeley, you know,

who's an economist on the political left.

And of course, like

a lot of our early growth came from Novara,

which is like a big political left channel

So even though I don't see myself

as talking to the political left,

like we've had a lot of support

from the political left, right, and

a lot of the media

and people like Nigel Farage

and of course, people like,

increasingly people in the Conservative Party.

They use immigration as a wedge issue. Right.

So we should explain what a wedge issue is, right?

A wedge issue

is when a political group sees

an issue which divides their opponents

from the general public.

And the conservatives know

that a lot of the political left

hates anything that's anti-immigration.

But they know that a lot of ordinary people

think immigration is too high.

In particular,

a lot of ordinary

people think that the reason why they can't get a house

and the reason why they can't get a well-paid job

is because of immigration.

And you can understand why they think that, right?

There was a piece on the news, Sky news.

So like totally mainstream

news the other day, Sky news,

housing crisis and immigration.

And it's a really simple narrative to make.

Which is these guys are coming over,

they live in houses.

You need houses. They compete with you for houses.

They compete with you for jobs.

They're bringing your wages down.

They're pushing house prices up, right.

So ordinary people who are

struggling are being told these things.

You can understand why they become

anti-immigration, right?

Because life is getting hard for most,

you know, for most people,

the most obvious thing is getting a house

or getting a job.

These are like some of the most obvious problems.

And they're being told, the reason you can't do

that is because of immigration, right?

I don't personally think the primary reason

why life is getting harder

is because of immigration, right?

I think the primary reason that life is getting hired

is because of this growing inequality.

But this is what people are being told,

people are being told it's immigration and it's...

My voice is a lot less loud

than these other voices, right?

These are the voices, like pushing against immigration.

And, the truth of the matter is,

I don't know how to stop it.

I don't know how to stop

ordinary people who are being told the reason that they

can't afford the house,

the reason they can't get a good job

is because of foreigners.

I don't know how to stop them from believing that.

And I'm very, very confident that

the economic situation will get worse

because the inequality will get worse.

And, you know, we're going to get a Labour government

that is not going to deal with the inequality.

They're not going to successfully

stop the fall in living standards.

And people are gonna want something new, right?

Like,

you can see the Conservative Party has basically lost

almost completely economic

credibility at this point, right.

So we've got a Labour government, okay.

You're second in charge.

What are you going to do?

They’re not going to fix it, right.

They're not going to fix it.

So then people are going to be like, all right,

who's next? And it's really, really obvious who's next.

It's really obvious who is next in line,

it is Nigel Farage and is the...

it is reduce immigration, it is stop immigration.

And I don't think that

those guys will win.

But you can see them taking over,

you can see them taking over.

And I don't f**king know what to do it, basically.

I don't know what to do about it.

And you can see it divides, the sort of,

ordinary people from the political left, and you can...

you know, I can see that the political left is...

a lot of it is going to try and hang

to, like, no,

whatever they don't, they're going to

consider that they have a

like a moral need to protect the immigrants, right.

And then that's going to divide them more.

And then the left are going to die, right.

And then

the right is going to come in

and they're going to try to reduce immigration,

but that's not actually going

to fix the living standards problem,

because it's not the actual cause of the problem.

So they're going to say, well, we need to go further,

you know what I mean?

And it's really hard for me

not to be reminded of what happened

in the early 20th century.

And, you know,

people in the comments, you’re

not talking about immigrants,

you're not talking about immigrants...

I don't know what to say to them,

you know, what do I say to them?

You know, because I don't think that is the problem.

But then you see people on the political left,

and I think often

sometimes the political left

has a kind of a condescending,

sneering attitude towards these people.

And

these people

are struggling to pay the bills

and they're being told it's

because the immigrants, you know, I mean.

We need to offer them something.

You know, we need to offer them an alternative.

And I've been trying to build

like a political coalition on the left of like,

let's make inequality the big thing.

Let's make inequality the big thing.

And I've been failing.

It's f**king hard, basically.

But,

I think we’ll put this one out after the election one.

And, I just want to say, like,

to the people who think it's

because of the immigrants, like,

I understand why you’re saying that

and I understand that life is hard, but, you know,

I just...

I don't think that's the cause,

you know, I don't think that's the cause.

And that doesn't mean

I think we should have more immigration.

And it doesn't mean

I don't think that we should have less immigration.

I think this...

listen, I want to tax rich people, right.

The rich are getting richer

and richer and richer and richer.

Ordinary living standards are collapsing.

I want to tax rich people. The rich don't want that.

And you

can see

living standards collapsing and you want something.

They have to offer you something, right?

They're offering you, let's kick out the immigrants

and they're going to offer that more and more.

And it's,

this has happened again and again

throughout history, right?

It's happened again and again

throughout history that inequality rises,

living standards fall

and the rich,

the easiest thing for them to do

is to sell you a scapegoat.

They can sell you a scapegoat,

and then they can use that to divide the working class.

And you know, I'm talking to you here from Britain.

The working class is very multiracial.

My grandma was an immigrant.

You know what I mean? Like.

This

could be used to very effectively

divide the working class and make them hate each other.

And if that happens, we're f**ked.

We're totally f**ked. And

I don't know how to stop it.

Yeah, I don't know how to stop it.

All I can do is keep saying what the real cause is

and keep offering my alternative. And,

I think if you manage to reduce inequality,

if you redistribute away from the very rich towards

working people, cut working people's taxes,

we can have much higher levels of living standards.

Ordinary people can afford their own homes

like my dad did,

like my friends dads did,

who were themselves immigrants

and came over with nothing.

I think the problem is inequality.

And, I'm honestly, I'm really worried.

I'm really, really worried that,

the left's not going to get its act together.

It's not going to centralise inequality.

The right is going to drive a massive wedge

between the left and the general public,

and the left will not win an election.

And we end up with increasingly

xenophobic governments which veer towards eventually

racism and,

you know,

look at history, look at history, look at history and

that's not because I love immigrants.

That's not because I hate immigrants.

That is, you know, I hope

that people can see that

that is my clear eyed economic analysis.

And now, you know,

I've got no skin in the game on this,

you know what I mean?

You know, I'm obviously a white person here in Britain.

You know,

when the immigrants get kicked out,

they probably won't come for me,

you know what I'm saying?

This can really effectively divide the working class.

Really effectively divide the working class.

And I'm worried about it.

I'm worried about it.

So, I'll still be happy

if Jacob Rees-Mogg loses his seat though.

But

there's bigger battles to fight, and,

we need to be united.

And if we can't unite across things like

race and ethnic origin,

they’re trying to divide us in other lines as well.

Gender, age,

whether you're from London

or whether you're from the North.

If you own a house or not.

If we’re divided we’ll lose and,

we can't allow that to happen. And,

I wish I had easier ways, I wish I knew how to stop it.

But I'll just keep doing what I do and I hope it works.

And that's all we can do.

What's that one thing Labour could do when they win?

Labour are going to win.

Like what

can they do in power to stop a kind of rise of...

Labour need to fix the economic problem.

Labour need to fix the economic problem.

But I'll tell you one thing

I think we could do from a comms perspective.

I think we need to...

We need better class representation.

We need better class representation on TV.

We need better class representation because

I grew up in London,

I grew up in a very, very immigrant area.

You know, I mean, it's like it's a very Pakistani area.

I grew up, you know.

The kids I grew up with, come from Pakistani families.

Okay. Their religious background is different.

Their cultural background is different.

They've got the exact same economic problems

as my f**king sister,

you know what

I mean,

can't afford the rent, can't afford to buy a house,

can't get decent wage.

Economically we're facing the same problems, you know,

you know, the white working class

and the nonwhite working class face

exactly the same economic problems, you know, and...

If you...

We need to

put working class people...

And it's not just about race, it's about age.

It's about gender.

It's about whether you're from London,

whether you're from the North.

You know, we need to put these people together.

We need to

show, show, listen,

these people who might have different backgrounds

and different identities in other ways

have the same economic problems

because we need, you know,

the working class

is very multi-ethnic and it is, you know,

it's older people and younger people

and it's people from London and it’s

people from f**king Grimsby and people from Glasgow,

people from the countryside, you know, it's like.

We need to be,

I think there's a...

we need to be...

And, you know, I would like to do it

more on this channel if we, you know,

we struggle for time and we struggle for my energy.

But I would love to get working

class people from different backgrounds,

older people, younger people,

you know, together on this channel

and put them forward.

But

Labour, Labour need to fix the economic problem,

you know, and...

We need to make it more about class.

You know, we need to make it more about class.

Because if we allow ourselves

to be divided on things like race and,

it'll be other things as well,

I mean, age is a massive dividing factor

in British politics, and it's not just race.

But, you know, this is one thing

everybody watching can do that, can be like, listen,

can I try to bridge those divisions

rather than build those divisions

and it's not always easy.

But it's something that we have to do.