Sir Keir Starmer flew to Italy to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to discuss the country’s asylum processing scheme.
We’re joined by arts and culture writer and commissioning editor Vicky Jessop to discuss the highlights, such as a three award win for Baby Reindeer.
Here’s a fully automated transcript of this episode:
From London, I’m Rachelle Abbott, and this is The Standard.
Coming up: our highlights from the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards.
But first, the UK’s Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said Britain is looking at an Italian-style asylum claims processing scheme.
She stressed that the focus of the government’s actions was currently on smashing the criminal gangs behind the human trafficking trade.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has hailed Italy’s work to reduce the numbers of migrants who risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean.
Over the weekend, 8 migrants died while trying to cross the English Channel, and French officials said 53 migrants were on board the boat, which got into difficulty off the coast of northern France.
Sir Keir Starmer has flown to Italy to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome.
On Monday morning, he visited the country’s National Coordination Centre for Immigration.
Joining us now is The Standard’s political editor Nicholas Cecil.
Nic, could you explain what Italy’s asylum processing scheme is?
Well, what Italy is looking at doing is having asylum claims processed in Albania.
And what this would mean that if these asylum claims were successful, these individuals would be able to go back and resettle in Italy.
And now this is very important because this is very different from the Rwanda scheme, which was pursued by the last Tory administration.
One has to say that the failed Rwanda scheme because the Conservatives failed to get a single plane to take off from Britain to take significant numbers of migrants to Rwanda.
But under the Conservatives scheme, it would be a one way ticket.
So, people would be sent to Rwanda, they had their asylum claim process there.
If they were successful, then they would be allowed to stay in Rwanda, but they would not be allowed to come to Britain.
So, that is a very significant difference between what Italy is looking to do and what the previous Tory government was looking to do.
What do you think Sir Keir Starmer is hoping to learn in Italy?
Well, there’s been lots of talk about this Albania scheme, but actually the focus of the British government is not really on this at the moment.
What they’re looking at is how Italy has managed to cut by around two thirds the number of migrants who are crossing the Mediterranean in boats, often risking their lives in very dangerous conditions.
And Italy has achieved this through a combination of work.
Part of that is work upstream to discourage people from coming to migrate, going to Northern Africa and then embarking on boats across the channel.
Another element of that is very much targeting the gangs behind this.
So this is trying to dismantle the criminal gangs driving this trade.
They’re also focused very much on return schemes.
So, if an asylum seeker comes to Italy and they are refused asylum, then to quickly return these people from the countries where they came.
And the fourth element is the Albanian scheme.
But the British government are very much looking to learn about how to speed up returns, how to combat the trade and human trafficking trade upstream, rather than dealing with it once people are already crossing the channel.
And again, at the weekend, we saw another extremely tragic incident where eight people lost their lives.
Can you explain how criminal gangs are causing problems with migration?
Well, the alarming situation we have at the moment, I think as pressure comes to bear on these criminal gangs, is they are putting more and more migrants, men, women and children, into these often unsee worthy boats, inflatable boats.
And they’re basically being pushed out into the channel in the hope of reaching Britain.
Some of these boats also had the bottom taken out of them, the hard bottom, so they’re just inflatable rings, essentially, to try and get even more people into these boats.
So, they’re making significant sums of money.
And that is part of the reason why it’s hard to break what Keir Starmer said today, is a vile trade, because it is a very lucrative business.
Do you think this meeting between Keir and the Italian PM shows post-Brexit tensions are easing a bit?
I think not particularly this meeting, but certainly Keir Starmer has very much seen it move on from Brexit.
And relations with a number of European countries are already improving.
The Conservatives were very much locked into a Brexit mentality for many years.
Rishi Sunak, to give him credit, did try to move on from that, did try to build better relations, including with a better trading system with Northern Ireland and the rest of the EU.
So yes, Rishi Sunak did make some limited progress, but I think we’ll probably see a step change in relationships between London and other European capitals.
How significant do you think these changes would be for the UK if Keir decides to adopt some of Italy’s practices?
What Keir Starmer has got an advantage in here is that it’s very much an area of work that he knows very well.
Well, having been a Director of Public Prosecutions, he knows the criminal justice system well.
So, he knows how to use that to deal with problems.
And we saw that very much in the response that the government made to the riots by the far right.
So, he can see how the criminal justice system can be used to target these gangs.
That’s not to say it’s going to be an easy problem to solve, but he can see how through better coordination between European and countries in Africa, that their criminal justice systems, their law enforcement networks, how you can bear down on these gangs and make it harder and harder for them to apply their evil trade.
Let’s take a quick break.
In part two, Vicky Jessop joins us to discuss her top Emmy Awards highlights.
I think the big winner of the night in terms of maybe news coverage is Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gadd picked up awards for acting and writing.
And his co-star Jessica Gunning, who plays Martha, his stalker picked up an award as well.
The 76th Primetime Emmy Awards took place on Sunday night in Los Angeles.
It included a history-making win for Shogun, as well as a handful of wins for UK drama Baby Reindeer.
Vicky Jessop, The Standard’s art and culture writer and commissioning editor has published all the highlights on our website and joins us now.
Let’s kick off with the highlights from this year’s Emmys.
I think the Emmys, as opposed to the Oscars, isn’t kind of the drama machine, I guess.
Maybe some of the other award shows are.
But yeah, there are some nice moments here.
We had John Oliver, his acceptance speech, the broadcaster and comedian, thanking his dog in his acceptance speech and thanking all dogs for being very, very good girls.
The dog, I think, was recently unfortunately put down. And calling his son husband rather than Hudson.
There was the comedian and script writer Will Smith.
He cracked a joke about the infamous slap, obviously, being like, yeah, don’t worry, I’m not that Will Smith.
And yeah, there were some fun moments in terms of the actual awards as well.
I mean, like Jodie Foster, incredibly picked up her first ever Emmy Award, which is kind of wild for Two Detective Night Country.
You know, she got a standing ovation for that.
We had some award upsets with kind of The Bear and Hacks, which I think we might go into a bit later.
I think the big winner of the night in terms of maybe news coverage is Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gad picked up awards for acting and writing and his co-star, Jessica Gunning, who plays Martha, his stalker picked up an award as well.
So yeah, kind of a feel good success story for those guys as well.
And as you mentioned there, Baby Reindeer won three awards and Richard Gad made quite an inspirational speech.
What did you make of Richard’s speech?
Yeah, I mean, clearly he was very emotional.
His voice was kind of vibrating.
It looked like he was holding back tears.
Clearly this means a lot to him.
The show is based on his own real life experiences of being stalked and of sexual abuse.
So I guess it must be like very, I suppose vindicating for him to see that vision that he’s worked so hard to create.
You know, he’s honed this over like years and years.
Finally, like his vision is recognized.
His work has been recognized on maybe the biggest stage for television in the world.
So yeah, I can understand why he was feeling emotional on the night.
Shogun was the other big winner.
Why do you think it’s done so well?
Yeah, Shogun was a big winner.
It broke awards for being the show to scoop the most awards in a single year.
I think especially for a non-English language drama.
So this show is almost completely Japanese, English subtitles.
It scooped 18 awards, which is ridiculous across pretty much all categories, acting, all the creative ones, like cinematography, production design, costume design, all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, why did it do so well? I mean, I guess there’s nostalgia value.
It’s based on this book from the 1970s, but it is just an amazing show.
down to the tiniest detail looks sublime.
The production is amazing.
The directing is amazing.
I think it’s also very intelligent.
I think as a show, it doesn’t really, it doesn’t indulge its audience, I suppose.
The plot is very complex.
It’s set in Japan with a British man who washes up on shore, basically at a time where foreigners are not allowed to be in Japan.
And basically, his journey to be becoming a samurai and becoming involved in all the political factions.
I think maybe the slightly controversial bit is that it won best drama series, even though it was originally pitched as a limited series.
It was supposed to be one season and done, but then at the last moment there was an about turn and the second season has been announced of Shogun.
What that’s going to look like?
I don’t know because the first season took so long to come into fruition and it’s based on a book and there is only one book.
So where season two goes, I don’t know.
And we saw the Bear lose out to Hacks, which caused some mild controversy.
Interestingly, the bear was up for a lot of awards and it’s casted with awards for various categories, best actor and actress.
But yeah, for the main awards, it was down as a comedy series, which if anyone’s seen the bear, they will know that it’s extremely stressful and not really comic.
So why it’s continued to be nominated as a comedy, I’m not entirely sure.
The hosts, Eugene and Dan Levy made some jokes at the expense of this decision, I suppose.
During that opening speech, basically saying, oh yeah, I like the Bear, we’re not going to make any jokes in our speech.
And yeah, interestingly, despite being up for an award, actually lost out to Hacks, which is, you know, Hacks is a great show, but just quite interesting as the bear really did, has cleaned up at previous awards shows this year, last year.
So yeah, that decision, I suppose, you know, I’m not on the Emmys Awards judging panel, but I’d be interested to know how they made that decision.
more news, interviews and analysis at standard.co.uk.
We’re back tomorrow afternoon at 4 o’clock.
