Belfast is burning — and the government's answer is to crack down on you for talking about it. A second night of disorder gripped the city after knife-attack suspect Hadi Alodid, a Sudanese national, was granted asylum via a Tory fast-track scheme requiring nothing more than a ten-page questionnaire. No face-to-face interview. No proper vetting. Just a tick-box exercise — and five years' leave to remain.
Julia Hartley-Brewer is joined by former senior military intelligence officer Philip Ingram, who warns that foreign powers — Russia, China, Iran — are actively stoking division on British streets, and that the rioting in Belfast is exactly the kind of domestic chaos they want to see.
Meanwhile, only one asylum seeker has been returned to Ireland since 2020, despite a formal agreement to do so, as people-smuggling gangs exploit the open Irish border with impunity.
Then, in a bombshell moment live on air, news breaks that Defence Secretary John Healey has resigned — unable to secure the funding Britain desperately needs to defend itself.
Sir Ian Duncan Smith calls it out bluntly: a Chancellor blocking the Defence Investment Plan, a Prime Minister too weak to overrule her, and a nation sleepwalking into the most dangerous geopolitical moment since the 1930s. Ships tied up in port. No Royal Navy presence in the Mediterranean. And a government more concerned with appeasing its own backbenchers than protecting the realm.
The message is clear — our borders are open, our defences are crumbling, and the real crime, according to this government, is noticing.
Julia Hartley-Brewer broadcasts on Talk from Monday to Thursday, 10AM to 1PM.
Available on YouTube and streaming platforms, along with DAB+ radio and your smart speaker.
","author_name":"Talk"}