Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Oliver Leader de Saxe, joined by Labour's Cllr Maureen Cleator, from Maidstone Borough Council and Dr Sarah Lieberman, a Senior Lecturer in politics at Canterbury Christ Church University.
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00:00Hello and welcome to the camp politics show live.
00:30On KMTV, the show that gets Kent's politicians talking.
00:33I'm Oliver Leader of the Saks and I have a question for you this evening.
00:37What do you think you could achieve in 100 days?
00:40Could you learn a new language? Redecorate your house?
00:43How about fixing the economy and changing how the UK is run?
00:47Well, it's a question facing the new Labour government just two weeks before the budget.
00:52Back in July, Labour took control of nine former Conservative seats countywide.
00:56But ever since, it's been a bit of a bumpy ride and not everyone is happy.
01:01Well, to make sense of it all, I'm joined by Maureen Cleater, the Shepway
01:04the Shepway Ward and leader of the Labour group of Maystone Borough Council
01:09and Dr Sarah Leibman, a senior lecturer in politics
01:12at Canterbury Christchurch University.
01:15But before that, we get into the debate.
01:18Let's talk about that those first 100 days
01:23with our local TV reporter, Gabriel Morris, with this report from Folkestone
01:28talking some of the businesses there.
01:31The seasons are changing in Folkestone and the Labour Party's first autumn
01:36is just beginning.
01:38In its entire history, this constituency has always been Conservative.
01:42But in July this year, they voted in a Labour MP.
01:46100 days on, what do they make of the party?
01:50I would say it's diabolical.
01:53Non-existent.
01:54Definitely unpredictable.
01:56The same. Same.
01:58One word. Give them time.
02:00Failing.
02:04Labour took a clear lead earlier this year,
02:07turning many of the county's and country's seats red.
02:10Keir Starmer's government is still early in the game,
02:14but with the freebies scandal and winter fuel payments,
02:17some say they're not off to the strongest start.
02:20Andy's day job is a support worker,
02:23but volunteers his time as a coach for Folkestone and Victor.
02:27He's been keeping score of the government's performance.
02:30I didn't vote for the Labour Party and I didn't vote for the Prime Minister,
02:35but at the end of the day, he is there to represent us.
02:38There was a phrase,
02:40we've been working on this for two months so we can hit the ground running.
02:43I believe that's what the Labour leader said.
02:46You don't really get an honest answer.
02:50I'm not saying that's just the Labour Party or anything like that.
02:53But to actually honestly answer a question,
02:57I would invite the Prime Minister to come down.
03:01Come down and sit here.
03:03Let's have a conversation.
03:05And I've got about 10 questions in my book.
03:08Please answer them.
03:12For government today, it's most likely 5% into their parliamentary term.
03:17Much could change before the next general election.
03:20Look at the last government.
03:23In Folkestone, changes happen quick too.
03:26The town has a very different feel today
03:28to what many might remember from a few decades ago.
03:32Creativity oozing out of its cobbled historic streets.
03:36And just look at this, politics working its way into art.
03:41But the question is, will there be similar artwork for Starmer's government?
03:46Who knows?
03:50Frankly, it's a disgrace.
03:52Both sides.
03:53Unbelievable.
03:55I didn't see any vision.
03:57Where's the plan?
03:58Nothing.
04:00This is where we've got to go.
04:02These are the issues, this is how we tackle it.
04:07Tony Vaughan won the constituency by some 4,000 votes.
04:11So locally, Labour will want to repeat the same success
04:15when Kent County Council elections come around.
04:18But have the past 100 days scuppered that chance?
04:21Here definitely isn't anything like this, I'm sorry.
04:24You can't equate the two.
04:26He's being looked at through a microscope at the moment, we know this.
04:30So I'm hoping people will be able to see through that.
04:33But I think the crux will be the budget.
04:36As the Labour Party stands at the moment,
04:38do you think they've done enough to be able to see the same success
04:41going into Kent County Council next May?
04:43I think you've seen from the way we ran the campaign
04:47for the general election and the successes that we had from there,
04:51I think we just need to do more of the same.
04:53We need to be talking to people.
04:55We need to be seen in our communities.
04:58One of the biggest challenges the town faces
05:01is its sustainability of businesses.
05:04According to Andy, he's been in the trade for his whole working life.
05:08He now runs this successful chippy and has plans of retiring soon.
05:12But he did hope the current government would be different.
05:16They've done absolutely zero for small businesses in the town
05:19or across the country.
05:21They've addressed none of the issues which they promised they would do.
05:26When you look at the cost of the product, the cost of wages,
05:29the cost of utilities, it's ridiculous.
05:33I think the word is meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
05:37Nothing's changed.
05:42His message clear, echoed by other locals.
05:46But can you judge a government just 100 days into the job?
05:51Gabriel Morris in Folkestone.
05:56Well, thank you, Maureen and Sarah for joining me.
05:59And that is the question, isn't it?
06:00Can you judge a government just 100 days in?
06:04Sarah, what do you think?
06:07I think it's a very short space of time.
06:10I think it's a very short space of time to be trying to judge a whole government.
06:14They're going to be in power for the next four years,
06:17at least, possibly more than that, possibly into two terms.
06:21That's what the Labour Party are hoping for.
06:23So to begin to judge them on 100 days when they're at the parliamentary recess
06:27in the summer is really, really short term thinking.
06:32And in that time, they have begun to do some of the things
06:37that they promised they would do in their manifesto.
06:39We've seen them declare that they will re-nationalise the railways.
06:43They're looking at Great British Energy.
06:46They have set about trying to fill this big gap in the budget
06:51that they have apparently been left by the Conservative Party.
06:55And that's not been popular.
06:56They've had to make some difficult decisions.
06:58But that is the work of government.
07:00Not every decision is a friendly decision.
07:05Next week's budget will answer a lot of questions for people.
07:09Some people will be happy with some of that and some people are going to be
07:13very unhappy, I would imagine.
07:14I wouldn't like to speculate exactly what's going to be in that budget.
07:18But certainly, I think we need to wait for that before we start
07:21to consider those 100 days.
07:23But obviously, there was some concern from people, from voters
07:27in that piece from Gabriel there.
07:29And Maureen, you actually ran in the election back in July,
07:32just 2,000 votes short of being Conservative
07:35Maidstone MP Helen Grant.
07:38What do you think the public have gone a bit cold on Labour in recent weeks?
07:43I think Sarah is absolutely right.
07:45You need to manage expectations.
07:47If the world was run by waving a magic wand,
07:51every political party would do it.
07:53But life isn't like that.
07:56So I absolutely agree.
07:57We need to see what's in the budget.
07:59But changing the direction this country was going
08:03is like turning round a supertanker.
08:06There are massive problems, massive budget problems
08:09linked into that, as well as the recess.
08:12We had those awful, awful incident in Southport,
08:16where I believe most people will say the government have come down
08:19strong on dealing with that.
08:22So 100 days, put it this way,
08:25Jurgen Klopp would never have been manager of Liverpool
08:28with his first 100 days.
08:30And I'll leave it at that.
08:31You need to give the government time to bed in.
08:35We will take the tough decisions.
08:37But the one thing I would say on winter fuel allowance, I'm 67.
08:42I got it last year and I was taken home £3,000 a month.
08:46The issue is targeting resources where people need them.
08:51So nationalising the railways, bringing in GB energy.
08:56Inflation is starting to fall.
08:58Granted, not as quickly as we would like on food,
09:02but we are on a trajectory.
09:04I, like everyone else, don't know what's in the budget
09:07and I will wait to see it eagerly.
09:10But the one thing I think you're going to get with this government
09:13is we won't be flip-flopping on decisions.
09:16We'll make those tough decisions and we'll take the consequences of them.
09:21But the polls have Labour, in some cases, just a point ahead of the Conservatives,
09:26who were so unpopular just a year ago.
09:30It's got to have gone a little bit wrong.
09:32This probably wasn't the vision they had anticipated.
09:34Is this kind of unusual for government, Sarah, to lose this sort of popularity
09:38so quickly into their time in government?
09:43It's very difficult to compare government to government.
09:46Each government, when they come in, comes into a different set of circumstances,
09:50into a completely different arena.
09:53So comparing statistics on polls is it's a dangerous business.
09:58I'll leave that to John Curtis, who always gets that right.
10:03What happens, though, really is we have we've had 14 years of a Tory government.
10:07And I think a lot of people expected that the Labour Party would be able to come in
10:11or at least would come in and everything would change immediately.
10:14As Maureen was just saying, if we worked with magic wands,
10:19then politics would be much easier to direct.
10:22We'd have always have the perfect results.
10:25That's not the case, though.
10:27And so, yes, the Labour Party might have lost popularity
10:30in this first very short period.
10:33That's just over three months.
10:35What they will be hoping for, though, is that long term
10:38we will begin to see the results of this so that it looks like a very successful
10:43term of parliament.
10:45The first three months, in the end, isn't what the government will be judged on.
10:49It will be judged on its results over a much longer term,
10:52over the full five year term of government.
10:56But Maureen, I just want to go to you quickly for the break,
11:00because obviously there are concerns about this budget coming up.
11:04There's rumours that there could be benefits system reforms
11:08up to three billion pound savings.
11:10Is that not a bit concerning ahead of the budget?
11:13Well, I'll wait till the budget, to be quite honest, because there are always
11:18these, doesn't matter what government's in, there's always loads of concerns
11:21about the budgets that the press like to get out there.
11:24I like dealing with facts and dealing with what's actually happening.
11:28I understand why people are worried.
11:31We're all worried. I've got family.
11:33I've got kids and grandchildren.
11:36But let's be quite honest here.
11:39My parents wanted a better life for me.
11:43We want the same for our children.
11:45Unfortunately, we're going to the break now.
11:47After the break, an exclusive interview with an MP.
11:50We'll see you very soon.
12:15Thank you very much.
15:09Welcome back to The Kent Politics Show, live on KMTV,
15:12the show that gets Kent's politicians talking.
15:15And I'm still joined by Maureen Cleter, the Labour group leader
15:19at Maidstone Borough Council, and Dr Sarah Liberman, a senior lecturer
15:23in politics at Canterbury Christchurch University.
15:26But first, 100 days in, I won't be surprised if you weren't familiar
15:30with Kent's new political faces, especially somewhere like Ashford,
15:34which has seen Conservatives in power for nearly 100 years
15:39until former Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green was ousted by Labour in July.
15:43So who's the new MP that's taking control of the seat?
15:46And what are the issues that matter most to him?
15:49Well, I caught up with Soja and Joseph earlier this week to find out
15:53about one of Kent's newest MPs.
15:56You were a mental health nurse for 20 years or more than 20 years,
16:00in fact, before becoming an MP.
16:04I want to know why you decided to move into politics.
16:07Why did you decide to give up being a mental health nurse and pursue this
16:12in Westminster and Parliament?
16:14This is going back a little bit.
16:16When I was a ward manager in 2015
16:21and I could see the NHS was going down, especially mental health services.
16:27You know, we were struggling to recruit nurses.
16:32Finding beds was even harder in those days.
16:36I remember you probably heard about this.
16:39People from Kent were getting admitted into Manchester and Liverpool
16:43because we were looking for beds miles and miles away.
16:47And you hear those stories from the families.
16:51And it was a very, very difficult job.
16:54I remember finishing work at five o'clock as a ward manager
16:58and going back to do a night shift because there was no one to come and take over.
17:03So, I mean, it's got worse now.
17:06Even after the pandemic, I was working throughout the pandemic on the ward.
17:12So that's why I want to, again, I don't know if you have seen,
17:17I brought a Westminster Hall debate the other day.
17:19I didn't even think that debate was about calling on the government
17:23to put mental health on the same footing as physical health.
17:27Didn't the government are actually doing that?
17:28It's been 100 days now.
17:29We haven't seen any legislation going through
17:32that seems to indicate that is the case.
17:35Yes, that's the commitment the Labour has made.
17:40We went to the election promising
17:45putting mental health workers in every school.
17:49They'll recruit more nurses.
17:52We have heard about having parity of esteem
17:56with mental health and physical health during the last 14 years,
18:01but it never happened.
18:03But do you think it's moving fast enough?
18:05Do you think that we can wait for another couple of months,
18:09another year, another two years with legislation to get through
18:13for these changes to happen?
18:14Can Kent wait?
18:18I mean, you know, I think so, because you don't want to rush
18:22and make mistakes that we have seen and rushed decisions have gone wrong.
18:29We're talking about a huge reform in the NHS.
18:32A 10 year plan.
18:34So you have to get it right.
18:36Is this a personal issue for you?
18:37Do you feel a lot of attachment to this as something needs to be fixed?
18:42Something you've personally experienced?
18:45Absolutely.
18:46One in four people
18:49suffer from some sort of mental health issues in their lifetime.
18:54For example, like this is why, you know,
18:57the Labour has put the children in the school settings
19:01will have that first hand access to a mental health professional.
19:05It's make a huge difference.
19:07If there are issues, they can go and talk to someone.
19:11What is happening now in they don't have that facility at the moment.
19:15They're not able to talk to anyone.
19:18They're spending long, long time on social media.
19:21It's not it's not helpful.
19:24And of course, that point, incredibly relevant,
19:28because in just two months, there'll be new rules around Ofcom
19:31on tech firms as part of the Online Safety Act,
19:34which could see fines dished out to companies not doing their duty
19:38to protect children.
19:39Maureen, I know you worked in mental health.
19:42What do you make of these new rules?
19:43Do you think this will help protect Kent's children going forward?
19:46I really hope so.
19:48And I think that social media companies have totally abdicated
19:52their responsibility.
19:53And it's not just about children.
19:56The level of misogyny and abuse and.
20:02Actually, things that are posted on there
20:05that are really horrendous, and this isn't just aimed at
20:09women in the Labour Party.
20:11One only has to look at what Joey Barton posts about women, footballers,
20:16the abuse that women politicians of all parties take.
20:20Clearly, it's like the Wild West out there.
20:23And I have to say, since Elon Musk took over Twitter,
20:28it's got absolutely worse.
20:30In terms of Snapchat, that is where most
20:34I see the biggest risk for children,
20:37because old people like me still do Twitter and Facebook.
20:41But the young people are on Snapchat, WhatsApp.
20:44And to be quite honest, that is where they're being targeted.
20:49And obviously, that is part of what this legislation is designed to do.
20:52I was wondering, have you ever seen any abuse as a female politician
20:56here in Kent while on the campaign trail earlier this year?
20:59Did you receive any abuse online?
21:01And I had abusive emails
21:04told me to die, which, you know, I will eventually.
21:07But I'm not going to oblige them right away.
21:11And I think my training and being in working in mental health
21:14helped me to deal with that.
21:18But I know others have received the most horrific abuse.
21:22Diane Abbott, Rosie Duffield.
21:25Whether or not you agree with them politically,
21:29there are Tory MPs who have received female MPs
21:33who've received horrific abuse.
21:34Jess Phillips, because of her work on domestic violence.
21:38The reality is men do not receive as much abuse online as women do.
21:43We are targeted all the time now.
21:47That can take a toll on your mental well-being
21:50if it's continuous all the time.
21:53I just think that the companies need to be held more to account.
21:57Free speech comes with responsibilities.
22:01And we've seen that recently after Southport, where this can lead
22:06and look at where we have politically.
22:10We have gangs targeting children.
22:12We have outside areas of interest
22:16who are getting involved in destabilising.
22:19Yes, we have all this misinformation.
22:21I want to ask you about that, Sarah, because do you think social media
22:24has changed politics for the better?
22:26How has it kind of changed how politics operates?
22:28How we kind of our relationship with government in some ways?
22:34Social media has given us a much more direct line to politics
22:39and to politicians.
22:41Politicians are able to get their their views across,
22:45their opinions across directly to the electorate, to individuals.
22:49And for a long time, Twitter was an excellent resource for people
22:52who wanted to keep up to date with what was happening in politics.
22:56Exactly who was saying what up to the minute
23:01views from what was happening in Westminster, for instance.
23:04It was a really excellent place.
23:06However, it has become very negative
23:10since it's been taken over and become X.
23:13The amount of abuse that you see on Twitter has become absolutely huge.
23:17And it's not such a force of information anymore.
23:22It seems to be more of a negative force.
23:25Of course, we've also got the impact that social media has had on politics
23:29in terms of voting behaviour.
23:32And if you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal from the Brexit vote,
23:37from the election when Trump became president
23:41and other online scandals, then where algorithms were used
23:45to target adverts of people to encourage them to vote a certain way,
23:50to produce stories that match their own confirmation bias,
23:53to encourage certain political views that might have been somewhat
23:58more extreme than they would normally view online.
24:03And so it allows for a manipulation
24:07of people's views and opinions, which as adults, we
24:11you'd like to think we can deal with better.
24:13But a lot of people can't.
24:15And certainly for younger minds, for teenagers,
24:19it's much more difficult to distinguish when you don't have that life
24:22experience between what is real and what is disinformation.
24:26Especially with AI misinformation being such big issues.
24:30I can't forget your your gauge on it, because obviously this bill
24:33very much targets harmful content.
24:37Pornography, that sort of thing.
24:39But less around that misinformation, that AI, that sort of thing.
24:44Do you think this bill goes far enough then in protecting us from harmful content?
24:47Maureen, I'll go to you first on this one.
24:49I think we've got to make a start and this is a start
24:52and we've got to give it a chance to work.
24:56I'm a great believer.
24:57It doesn't matter whether you're in work or restructures or whatever.
25:00You put something out there, you see what works, you see what doesn't.
25:05And I hope it works.
25:08And I think because you've got to get that fine balance
25:11between being restrictive.
25:15But also keeping people safe.
25:17And that is a fine balance.
25:18And there are arguments on both sides.
25:21My opinion at the moment is we see how it goes through Parliament
25:26because there's always, you know, there's always two and a fourth in Parliament.
25:30But I think definitely there needs to be some sort of protection in there,
25:35especially for young people, because for me,
25:39it's clear that they are being targeted and groomed.
25:44And Sarah, what do you make of this?
25:46Do you think that this bill will do enough to tackle what we're seeing
25:50in our politics, this level of distrust, this level of disinformation?
25:55This bill is only the first step in Ofcom's review of social media.
26:01So this first step tackles the most important aspect,
26:04which is protecting young people, children from harm.
26:08And I don't think anybody would try and argue against that
26:12as being the most important aspect of problems that we have on social media.
26:17So Ofcom are starting with this.
26:20So that will come into play in two months time
26:22when the operators, the tech firms that operate these social media platforms
26:27will be able to be fined for not
26:30making sure that people who use their services are safe.
26:34If this works, then we'll move to phase two, which is likely to include
26:38more of the political aspects, the AI, et cetera.
26:43But as Maureen was saying, we have to be really careful.
26:45Well, something for us to keep an eye on going forward.
26:48Thank you so much for joining me both.
26:50Check out all our other content on Kento Online.
26:52Thanks so much for watching. Take care.