David Hare: ‘I have been heartily kicked by the BBC'
I am sitting in a tiny podlike meeting room at BBC Broadcasting House with David Hare. Not that being perched on a sofa in the equivalent of a broom cupboard stops Britain's most famously opinionated playwright from expounding his views on everything from Keir Starmer and Israel to the National Theatre and the BBC itself. Just turned 78, he is clearly not running low on verbal gas, social critiques or thunderous denunciations.
So having set to rights the worlds of religion, the Labour Party, media, high finance and the justice system in such classic plays as Racing Demon, The Absence of War, Pravda, The Power of Yes and Murmuring Judges, has he thought about writing a drama about the dominating figure of our present age — Donald Trump?
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NBC News
21 minutes ago
- NBC News
Trump says the administration is working on a 'temporary pass' for immigrants in certain industries
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said in an interview on Fox News that the administration is working to develop a temporary pass for immigrants who work in certain industries, which would mark the latest shift in the administration's approach to immigration enforcement for farmworkers. 'We're working on it right now. We're going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away,' Trump said in an interview that taped Friday and aired Sunday on Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures.' The president referenced authorities going to farms and taking 'away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who are good, who possibly came in incorrectly.' 'What we're going to do is we're going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He's not going to hire a murderer,' Trump said. 'When you go into a farm and he's had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren't going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away. It's a problem.' Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security provided the same comment given by the department earlier this month after the White House reversed a plan to limit immigration enforcement activity at certain industry workplaces. "The President has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE's efforts," the statement read. "Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability. These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation," the statement continued. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for further details on Trump's plan and whether DHS' response conflicted with the temporary pass plan. The move marks the latest shift in the administration's handling of immigrant farmworkers. The White House has waffled in recent weeks on whether to exempt certain worksites from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Trump said in a post to Truth Social on June 12 that farmers and people in the hotel and leisure industries said that the administration's immigration policy 'is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.' The president said that 'we must protect our Farmers,' adding that 'changes are coming.' NBC News previously reported that at around the same time, ICE paused worksite arrests at agriculture, restaurant and hotel industries. But just days later, the administration reopened arrests of immigrant workers in these industries. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at DHS, provided the same statement then as the DHS statement on Sunday. 'The President has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE's efforts,' McLaughlin said after DHS reversed the pause earlier this month. A White House spokesperson said after the pause reversal that Trump 'remains committed to enforcing federal immigration law — anyone present in the United States illegally is at risk of deportation.' Trump in April previously floated the idea that undocumented people working at farms and hotels could be allowed to leave the country and return legally. NBC News previously reported that an administration official said Trump wanted to improve H-2A and H-2B programs, which allow employers to temporarily hire migrant workers.
Daily Mirror
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
'Keir Starmer is sowing the seeds of bigger political battles ahead'
Skyrocketing military spending is Keir Starmer's Achilles' heel when funding a dubious splurge will make the welfare crisis appear a picnic. Because thinking of a number, doubling it then adding some more without a clue where the cash comes from- fresh deep cuts, tax rises, higher borrowing? - is a £30billion ticking time bomb. Our under-fire Prime Minister could be forgiven should he go to bed cursing not Vladimir Putin but Donald Trump when the Kremlin's Oval Office bullies him and other European leaders into squandering precious extra resources on rearmament. Britain's near £60billion last year confirmed us in the world's half-dozen top spenders, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and there's little confidence a wasteful, profligate Ministry of Defence would deploy the windfall wisely. Starmer's sowing the seeds of bigger political battles ahead even as he utters mea culpas for a battered first 12 months. Stick to the panicky Nato 3.5% or 5% target, both figures would be damaging when the UK's below 2.5% and the raided aid budget is shrivelled, and a 2028 or 2029 General Election will be a minefield for whoever is Labour leader or, for that matter, heading the Tories, Reform and Lib Dems. Enhancing living standards and transforming key public services such as education and justice, health enjoying deservedly reviving injections, would be nigh on impossible to promise realistically in a second term manifesto alongside tanks, destroyers and nuclear bombers. Distracted Starmer blaming international summits and the Middle East for taking his eye off the benefits ball, failing to appreciate Labour rebels put their country first, party second to champion the disabled, is a potential reset, a restart, a relaunch, ahead of Friday's anniversary of a Westminster landslide from a different age. The optimism's vanished, vanquished by own goals over winter fuel, free spectacles and, Tuesday's Commons vote will attest, welfare, yet all is far from lost for him and Labour. Deeply unhappy Labour MPs are heard contemplating life after Sir Keir, ears of deputy Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting likely to be buring. Up in the polls, Nigel Farage and Reform could repeat the shooting star crash of Roy Jenkins and the SDP back in the early 1980s. David Cameron and George Osborne were pronounced for the hot pot during the 2012 pasty tax furore before winnin a Tory majority in 2015. Starmer may have up to four years to put it all right but the PM needs a plan to avoid plummeting into that defence black hole he dug to appease Trump. Obscenity not glamour was paraded in Venice with Forbes calculating the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez grotesque nuptials may have cost upwards of £20million. As the only Socialist Senator in the USA, Bernie Sanders, reminded us, kids go hungry and 60% of Americans live paycheque to paycheque while a super-wealthy oligarchic class party at the expense of the impoverished many. Britain has its filthy rich and dirt poor too with relatively lightly taxed tycoons now threatening to up sticks and flee abroad should a wavering Treasury require this entitled bunch to pay a slightly fairer share, Eggheads Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson's groundbreaking 2009 study, The Spirit Level, demonstrated how equality is better for everyone and fairer societies are happier countries. So to put a smile on our faces I'm offering to drive to Heathrow in my nine-year-old Sunderland-built Nissan Qashqai any bloodsucking parasites doing us a favour by leaving. I Don't Want to Talk About It when I'm a big fan of his music but rock legend Rod Stewart can be a leg end over politics. Long viewed as a Tartan Tory despite a 2024 Labour flirtation courtesy of influential wife Penny Lancaster, there are two reasons why It's a Heartache that Rod's suddenly giving, as he puts it, Nigel Farage a chance. The first is ignorance, Rod falling hook, line and sinker for the lie Starmer sold out Scottish fishing when the PM in fact netted a big catch for the industry by persuading the EU to cut export red tape while rolling over Boris Johnson's trawler deal. And the second is fishy Farage is essentially the same slippery Putin fan boy criticised by Rod in 2024 for parroting the Kremlin line that the West provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. Music and politics are never plain Sailing. It's no wonder some asylum seekers work on the side when they receive not untold riches but £1.42 a day in accommodation with meals provided or £7.03 if they must buy their own grub, clothing and toiletries. The only folk who earn a fortune from a multi-billion broken system bequeathed to Labour by incompetent Tories are spiv bosses exploiting willing hands barred from employment and Fat Cat landlords and hoteliers milking taxpayers. Ending the ban on newcomers legally taking jobs while awaiting decisions on whether they stay or go would allow them to pay their own rent and bills as well as tax and save us a small fortune. It's a no-brainer. The Reform, Tory and Labour politicians opposed are the ones costing up a packet. With foreshortened limbs the Commons' only visibly physically disabled member, talk of Marie Tisdall's fraught call with Rachel Reeves emphasised the value of the Penistone MP's insights and why the Chancellor was dangerously marooned on the wrong side of benefit cuts. Tory ex-Minister George Freeman reporting himself for investigation despite insisting he broke no rules leaves us wondering when these money-grabbing second-jobber will learn after emails showed the MP asked a company paying him £5,000 a month for eight hours work to help draft Parliamentary questions. 'ALL life is sacred. And I find it pretty revolting we've got to a state in this conflict where you're supposed to sort of cheer on one side or the other like it's a football team.' I'm with Wes Streeting after Glastonbury rapper Bob Vylan nauseatingly led crowds chanting 'death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]' yet the bigger outrage at the mo is the actual relentless, ongoing wholesale slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza and settler killings in the occupied since West Bank since that horrific Hamas pogrom.
Powys County Times
30 minutes ago
- Powys County Times
Starmer says ‘death to IDF' chants at Glastonbury were ‘appalling hate speech'
Sir Keir Starmer said chants of 'death' to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) at Glastonbury were 'appalling hate speech' and urged the BBC to explain how the scenes were broadcast. Rapper Bobby Vylan, of rap punk duo Bob Vylan, on Saturday led crowds on the festival's West Holts Stage in chants of 'Free, free Palestine' and 'Death, death to the IDF', before a member of Irish rap trio Kneecap suggested fans 'start a riot' at his bandmate's forthcoming court appearance. Responding to the chants from Bob Vylan, the Prime Minister said: 'There is no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech. 'I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence. 'The BBC needs to explain how these scenes came to be broadcast.' Avon and Somerset Police said video evidence would be assessed by officers 'to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation'. A joint Instagram post from Glastonbury and Emily Eavis said Bob Vylan's chants 'very much crossed a line' and added: 'We are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.' Wes Streeting told Sky News' Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: 'I thought it's appalling, to be honest, and I think the BBC and Glastonbury have got questions to answer about how we saw such a spectacle on our screens.' On social media, the Israeli Embassy said it was 'deeply disturbed by the inflammatory and hateful rhetoric expressed on stage at the Glastonbury Festival'. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the scenes 'grotesque', writing on X: 'Glorifying violence against Jews isn't edgy. The West is playing with fire if we allow this sort of behaviour to go unchecked.' Liberal Democrat culture, media and sport spokesman Max Wilkinson said: 'Bob Vylan's chants at Glastonbury yesterday were appalling. Cultural events are always a place for debate, but hate speech, antisemitism and incitements to violence have no place at Glastonbury or anywhere in our society.' The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said it would be formally complaining to the BBC over its 'outrageous decision' to broadcast Bob Vylan. A spokesperson said: 'Our national broadcaster must apologise for its dissemination of this extremist vitriol, and those responsible must be removed from their positions.' A BBC spokesperson said: 'Some of the comments made during Bob Vylan's set were deeply offensive. 'During this live stream on iPlayer, which reflected what was happening on stage, a warning was issued on screen about the very strong and discriminatory language. We have no plans to make the performance available on demand.' Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has spoken to the BBC director general about Bob Vylan's performance, a Government spokesperson said. Bob Vylan, who formed in Ipswich in 2017, have released four albums with their music addressing issues to do with racism, masculinity and class. Bobby Vylan's real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, 34, according to reports. Robinson-Foster is listed on Companies House as being the director of Ghost Theatre Records, which is operated by Bob Vylan. Kneecap, who hail from Belfast, have been in the headlines after member Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence. The group performed after Vylan's set on the West Holts Stage with O hAnnaidh exclaiming 'Glastonbury, I'm a free man' as they took to the stage. In reference to his bandmate's forthcoming court date, Naoise O Caireallain, who performs under the name Moglai Bap, said they would 'start a riot outside the courts', before clarifying: 'No riots just love and support, and support for Palestine'. In the run-up to the festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, several politicians called for the group to be removed from the line-up and Sir Keir said their performance would not be 'appropriate'. During the performance, Caireallain said: 'The Prime Minister of your country, not mine, said he didn't want us to play, so f*** Keir Starmer.' He also said a 'big thank you to the Eavis family' and said 'they stood strong' amid calls for the organisers to drop them from the line-up. A BBC spokesperson said: 'We have made an on-demand version of Kneecap's performance available on iPlayer, as part of our online collection of more than 90 other sets. 'We have edited it to ensure the content falls within the limits of artistic expression in line with our editorial guidelines and reflects the performance from Glastonbury's West Holts stage. As with all content which includes strong language, this is signposted with appropriate warnings.'
