Shadow Paymaster General Richard Holden has hit out at Labour's refusal to fly the flag of Middlesex over Downing Street, accusing them of "hating anything traditional about Britain".The Government has no plans to fly the flag of Middlesex County Council to mark Middlesex Day - the historic day that British troops fought against Napoleon at the Battle of Albuhera.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Welcome back. Your time is 4.28 with me, Martin Dordney, here on GB News.
00:08Now, the Labour Party has refused to fly an historic county flag over Downing Street.
00:14Look at it. Majestic. The flag of Middlesex, which apparently celebrates the British battle
00:19against Napoleon. The Middlesex flag won't fly over Downing Street this year to mark the
00:24celebration because, well, they just don't like the look of it. Let's get into the reasons why.
00:29And I'm joined in the studio by the shadow paymaster general, Richard Holden, MP.
00:34Richard, pleased to have your company. Before we get to the Middlesex flag and the killjoys,
00:40can I ask you about Sir Keir Starmer's trip to Albania, launching the tough new return hubs,
00:47the containment centres. But there has been a bit of a fly in the ointment. For starters,
00:52the Albanian Premier said he won't even take one in the country. And it's been slammed,
00:57as you'd expect, by political rights. Sue Ella Braverman, Lee Anderson, calling it a
01:01watered-down Rwanda. It's also not like, on the left, Diane Abbott hates it, and Amnesty
01:07International calling it a harmful distraction. Does it have any teeth?
01:11I mean, it's got no teeth at all. It's quite clear that what Starmer's trying to do is pivot.
01:15He's seen a disastrous local election results. He's seen his own poll ratings crash through the floor.
01:20You know, he's seen Rachel Reeves and the budget is an absolute disaster, costing jobs right across
01:24the country. And so he's trying to do anything to get away from all of that. So he's come up with
01:28this latest thing which, A, won't work, right? And B, he's scrapped the idea of doing this previously
01:34when he scrapped our Rwanda policy. And now he's got a civil war within his own party with his left
01:41who say, no, they don't want to go anywhere near this. They already hated his language from earlier
01:45this week. And so he can't even take his own party with him. And I think it's just symptomatic of
01:50a Labour leader who's flailing around, does no idea what he wants to do. And actually, that, you know,
01:56it's not often I praise Plaid Cymru, but that woman in the house had him nailed on earlier this week
02:00when she said, is there any belief that he actually has? And it's pretty clear that he doesn't.
02:06And that's what got under his skin at Prime Minister's question so much yesterday.
02:09It's fair to say, though, he would say, and he's been saying it all day, that he inherited a mess from
02:14the Conservative Party. The asylum system, he says, is broken and the hotels are full.
02:21He says he can make things better. Is there any evidence thus far that's happening?
02:25Well, let's see. Let's see what he, you know, actually, we've seen the numbers up 40% on Channel
02:29Crossings. Actually, the hotel numbers now are record highs. You know, I'm not saying the Conservatives
02:33got everything right in office. We certainly didn't. But I think with the Rwanda scheme,
02:36we started to head in the right direction. The fact that he cancelled it was one of the first
02:40things he came in to do. Actually, now, if we'd done that, you know, we saw what happened in
02:44Australia. They've been facing 40,000 people going a year through those illegal crossings.
02:48Within a few weeks, when a few thousand people have been moved to Nauru in their case,
02:52in our case, it would have been Rwanda, suddenly those crossings stopped. Now you're seeing,
02:56you know, tens of people, not tens of thousands, making illegal crossings into Australia every year
03:00and they get dealt with properly. I think he's actually probably thinking back and some of those
03:04Labour strategists will be regretting that decision to cancel that Rwanda scheme because it was a real
03:09start moving in the right direction. Okay, thank you. Let's move swiftly on to the flag of
03:14Middlesex. Won't be flying this year above Downing Street. Look at this on the screen behind me. It's a
03:20majestic, iconic, beautiful flag. Look at this. It's iconic. It's just gorgeous. Labour probably
03:27don't agree. Why not? Well, I think what, I don't understand why they hate counties and they hate
03:33anything traditional about Britain. Now, so Middlesex Day is actually tomorrow and that is a day
03:39and the reason it was chosen is because the Middlesex Regiment held back Napoleon's forces
03:43in the Peninsular War campaign, basically preventing another earlier version of Dunkirk and enabled
03:51the Duke of Wellington to basically regroup his forces and then take on Napoleon. And they've
03:58cancelled flying these county flags. Now, in the last Conservative government, one thing we did do was
04:03to really start to celebrate some of our counties. So we actually had the flag flying from Downing
04:08Street every year on County Flag Days. And I think it's a nice thing to do to celebrate
04:12our traditional counties. You know, the Essex flag is not dissimilar. We don't have the crown on ours
04:17because we've always known a capital city in the middle. But we've got the three Saxon
04:21knives there, which I think is, you know, there's a real symbol of this part of the country, a real
04:25symbol of our, actually, our Anglo-Saxon heritage. And that's a lot of these flags have nods to those
04:30heritage things. Think of the County Durham flag as well. It's got the St Cuthbert's Cross on it.
04:34A lot of these things have got real links into our traditions as a country. And it's just,
04:40it saddens me that Labour are happy to fly whatever woke flag comes down, comes off the
04:45production line. But when it comes to our traditional County flags, they're just not
04:48interesting.
04:49Yeah, the holy flag of pride seems to be ubiquitous across town halls, across governmental buildings.
04:56Is it also being taken down because it might offend the French?
04:59Or is it being taken down? And why not offend the French, by the way? We can't beat them
05:03anything anymore. And we can't stop the dinghy. So all the more reason to hoist it.
05:08Well, I'm almost surprised they've not tried to change the name of Waterloo Station under
05:12this Labour government at the moment, given Keir Starmer's desperate desire to please
05:16our European friends. I think there is, you know, this is, I think it says something about
05:21the way that Labour's instinct is. Its instinct isn't actually to defend our culture, to defend
05:26our traditions. It's actually to attack them. Yet David Lammy has been illegally flying
05:30some random bisexual flag over the Foreign Office, risking a £2,500 fine for the government
05:36from the local council. So they won't fly our traditional County flags, but they seem
05:41to literally take the knee to any woke cause going. And to me, that just seems ridiculous.
05:45Was it also an issue that the fact this was Boris Johnson's idea, I believe?
05:50Well, so Boris and a chap called Eric Pickles, who used to be our local government minister,
05:53they were very keen on this and have really been pushing, you know, we're really pushing this
05:58sort of historic English county heritage. And I think it's something that, you know,
06:02we should have, you know, it was great to really start to push and to continue, especially
06:06in a time when I think so much of our heritage has been under attack. And it was a nice thing
06:12that Boris, you know, really led the charge on actually, when he was in number 10, getting
06:16these county flags going again. And, you know, I think that, you know, they've still got
06:20till tomorrow. It would be nice to see number 10 do a sensible U-turn and get the Middlesex
06:24county flag flying over number 10. Well, it'd be a U-turn that many might welcome.
06:28Thank you very much for joining us in the studio. Richard Holden, always a pleasure to have
06:31you in the studio. Now then, there's lots more still to come. And look, I've got a crown
06:36again. It's beautiful. Lots more still to come between now and five o'clock, including.