What Happened When Jacob Rees-Mogg and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Clashed Over Immigration on the BBC
Radio 4’s August 22nd 2025 edition of Any Questions came from Stogursey and District Victory Village Hall, near Bridgwater, Somerset. Among the guests were the former Conservative MP and now GB News presenter Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and well-known Left-wing pundit, the columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
The two were soon involved in a spat about the knotty issue of immigration to the UK. It was provoked by a question from an audience member that went: “Should Chevening be used as asylum seekers’ accommodation?” Chevening of course being the grace and favour residence used by the Foreign Secretary.
What followed in this transcribed extract from the middle of the discussion was a conspicuous illustration of the conflicting and apparently irreconcilable points of view on this issue:
Presenter Alex Forsyth: Yasmin Alibhai Brown, these hotels seem to have become a real focal point for some people, and we have seen protest, but also counter-protest, outside some of this accommodation.
YA-B: Yes, but I want to go to the question because I think it’s a really important question. We have reduced all kinds of human beings who we’ve labelled in this way into numbers, into criminals, into rapists, as if they are all, or they had one man and perhaps many more criminals amongst them [editor’s note – this is a correct transcription but her meaning is obscure]. But the very thought that a whole groups [sic] of people can be demonised and dehumanised also dehumanises us. Our country [gales of applause] and I am about to cry because I watch the language. I come from Uganda.
When people tell me, “Oh it’s, this is the worst it’s ever been, we were always so welcoming.” No you were NOT! When I came from Uganda there were people turning up at airports telling us to – I’m not going to use the word, the word that they used – go back where we came from. We had been expelled by Idi Amin.
Leicester and Ealing, where I live, put in adverts into local newspapers when Idi Amin was threatening us with concentration camps, they put in, they paid for adverts saying, “don’t come here, we don’t want you”. So, I come from a very personal position. Nobody willingly leaves their home, unless they have to. [Editor’s note: according to Wikipedia, YA-B left Uganda in 1972, before Amin’s expulsion order in August of that year, apparently to take up a place at Oxford.]
And I agree. Why don’t we let them, why don’t we open up Buckingham Palace? Nobody’s using it. Let’s put them there. But let us [gales of applause], you know, Nick [Thomas-Symonds MP and Paymaster General, another member of the panel] is right on one thing. The sad thing is under Starmer the Labour Party is stepping so Right I don’t know what it stands for any more, but he is right that the deliberate not-processing of applications under the Tories was a horrendous crime against those humans. So, we have to be more humane. Put them into Buckingham Palace. [gales of applause and whoops]
AF: Jacob Rees-Mogg, it is accurate to say, isn’t it, that the previous government took an active decision not to process these people’s claims and hotel use, people in these hotels peaks, it went right through the roof under the Conservatives?
JR-M: Well, processing their claims has meant granting them asylum, so that just means…
AF (interrupts): not always, not everybody’s, not everybody’s been granted.
JR-M: About 90%, about 90% are getting granted asylum and the ones who aren’t granted it don’t get removed ’cause they then claim human rights to stay here, so processing them merely means that they are here under a different guise. It doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean that they are removed from this country and actually what the last government did is made it illegal to come over on a small boat so that you couldn’t claim asylum. This Government’s changed that so that now you can, so this Government has removed the disincentives for coming here, and therefore the problem has got worse.
If we’re to solve this problem, if we’re serious about this problem, and it is a problem because the numbers are simply too large. We have had millions of people come into this country…
YA-B (interrupts): Millions are not coming into this country, don’t use numbers carelessly.
JR-M: Oh yes, millions have come in, legally and illegally. There are hundreds of thousands who have come in now on small boats…
AF (interrupts): So you’re, let’s just be clear about the numbers…
JR-M: The numbers are both legal and illegal.
AF (interrupts again): You’re talking about, you’re talking about both, people who’ve come here to live, work, study…
JR-M: We’ve had…
AF: …and you’re not just talking about in one year, you’re talking about in multiple years.
JR-M: That’s right, in multiple years…
AF (continuing to interrupt, resulting in an almost incomprehensible section): There haven’t been millions in a year coming across the Channel…
JR-M: I didn’t say that, I said there…
AF: I’m clarifying, clarifying…
JR-M: …have been millions who have come, there are millions who have come, and that is simply too many for this country to absorb and it has consequences. It has consequences for the infrastructure of this nation. It has consequences for the culture of this nation. It has consequences for housebuilding in this nation and the provision of housing for people who have been here anyway. And we simply cannot carry on with these numbers and Donald Trump has shown [howls of protest from the audience at the mention of Trump] that if you, yes, Donald Trump has shown that if you are serious, if you are serious, you can solve the problem. In April, illegal migration from Mexico to the US was down by 91…
YA-B (interrupts): We’re talking about this country.
JR-M: I know, down by, down by 91%. We need to take a leaf out of his book and deport people…
YA-B (horrified): Oh God!
JR-M: …and stop people coming.
AF: Okay.
YA-B: Oh God!
JR-M: We need to, we need to secure our borders.
AF: Okay. Yasmin, briefly, briefly.
YA-B: this is the kind of, er, absolute, erm, disinformation. His tribe, Jacob, I’m sorry I don’t use the word ‘Sir’, Jacob, Jacob Rees-Mogg and his tribe, of the privileged, born under absolute privilege, never told us the truth. They invited… [editor’s note: in 2003 YA-B returned her MBE claiming a spirit of republicanism and in protest at the Labour government’s involvement in the Iraq War]
JR-M (interrupts): Everything I’ve said is true.
YA-B: They’ve invited legal immigrants. Without them we would stop. Our care homes, our hospitals, our doctors, and I think you are so insulting to me and my people when you put us into that illegal category.
JR-M: I haven’t put you into any category.
YA-B: Absolutely not doing it [gales of applause].
JR-M: I haven’t put anybody into any category. I have, I have simply said that the numbers are too big, they are more than we can cope with, we need net zero immigration until we have absorbed the people who have come. And then we can think about doing it differently [gales of applause].
AF attempts to wind the discussion up.
YA-B: 0.6, let me tell the audience, percent of the population, that’s who these people are, 0.6! [not clear what YA-B is referring to here]
AF then moves to another member of the panel, Alice Thomson, a political journalist.
Alice Thomson [starts by condemning the inflammatory language and lumping all Muslim men together as a threat to women]: On the other hand, 110,000 asylum seekers have come here in the last year, and I think we have a prison population of 88,000 and we can’t cope with that, that we have to do something. What worries me about Nick saying that, you know, we’re going to get the hotels down, where do we put them if they’re not in the hotels? They’re not all going to be processed. If you take them out of the hotels, a lot of them will go into Houses of Multiple Occupation and, and they will disappear into towns and it’ll be quite hard to absorb them there [applause breaks out] so… and you’re right, who gets these people? Often towns and cities don’t know who they are, don’t know where they are, it’s all incredibly opaque, we have to make sure that we process these people very fast, you shouldn’t have too many appeals, I think that’s very difficult too, for everyone’s sake we need to make it faster, make it more transparent, and we do need to know the numbers. But we cannot victimise, as you say, and then one group and villainise an entire group of people who we’ve welcomed here for generations [gales of applause].
This all raised several questions, none of which are usually addressed, but which Alice Thomson’s comments did start to confront:
1. Regardless of one’s point of view, what is the Government’s plan for illegal migrants who are permitted to stay in the UK? Is there one?
2. Will they eventually be given British citizenship and be able to vote and hold UK passports?
3. If they are given British citizenship how will their accommodation be provided and funded before they’re able to pay for that themselves?
4. How will that accommodation, and presumably employment, be organised in a fair and equitable way compared to the obstacles facing existing British citizens when it comes to both accommodation and employment? To this one might add the provision of medical treatment, schooling and higher education.
5. To where will those not granted British citizenship be relocated and how will that be achieved?
If you want to hear more of the programme (possibly unlikely), it’s online at Any Questions August 22nd 2025. The transcribed extract above comes from the answers to the first question.
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On display one of of the many ways consent is manufactured.
Show the two sides of the debate but set it up in such a way that one side looks isolated and unreasonable. The handpicked crowd is essential. It signals to the population what they are supposed to think and adds the intimidation factor. You can think differently if you like, but you’ll be booed, you won’t be welcome in polite society, you’ll be out on a limb.
The BBC is probably one of the world’s most prolific propaganda machines.
Yes, they did it with Covid too on question time. They picked the worst possible, least articulate, nerdiest nobody to speak against the measures and then people with far more skill piled on and demolished him.
I remember Nick Griffin, when he was leader of the BNP, finally allowed onto Question Time because the BNP had won seats in the EU Parliament.
I didn’t support the BNP, but I DO support democracy and freedom on speech, so as the Leader of a Party which had won seats in the EU Parliament and had Councillors, he should have been allowed to participate PROPERLY in the so-called debate.
Instead, it was turned into a virtual lynching: with ALL the other panel members AND David Dimbleby attacking him non-stop. It was a disgraceful spectacle.
Never forget that Nick Griffin told the truth about the predominantly ethnic-Pakistani Rape Gangs. The BBC, and the parties the other panel members represented, didn’t. They covered it up and LIED for decades.
Amazing that the comment by Groundhog Day about Pre-Arranged Leftists “piling on” at BBC Question time made me think of what happened to Nick Griffin, just as you have! Well done for pointing out that it was Nick Griffin who first tried to warn the nation about Pakistani Muslim Rape Gangs, but he has been ruthlessly trodden down into obscurity by the Unholy Muslim-Marxist Alliance. I will neither forgive nor forget how Nigel Farage repeatedly boasted that he had “single-handedly destroyed Nick Griffin and the British National Party”, hinting that he expected to be rewarded with a knighthood by the Tories for that, especially after he handed them the election by betraying his own Brexit candidates and party members by forcing them to stand down. Now, after “destroying” Nick Griffin, calling Tommy Robinson “scum”, and kicking Rupert Lowe out of the Reform party for Defending British Children and exposing the Pakistani Muslim Rape Gangs, Nigel is jumping on that bandwagon himself, with the most egregious hypocrisy— anything to get into No. 10 and then do a “Bait & Switch”, stepping down to put his boss the Muslim Millionaire Mohammed Yusuf illegally into the post of UK Prime Minister. It’s as… Read more »
You are so right to indicate that the QT audience is a handpicked crowd. I applied to be in the audience once when the gig was held at my daughter’s school. It was obvious from the questions the BBC posed of potential audience members that de facto you were being asked if you were right or left wing. I just don’t watch the programme any longer. Did anyone ask Yasmin how many refugees she had welcomed into Brown Towers?
Why such a flattering photo of the Ethnic Indian Pakistani Muslim Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who came here from Uganda at age 23? Here’s a better one: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: I Don’t Like White Men, I Want Them to Be a Lost Species “Liddle also mentions another example of Alihai-Brown’s HATRED FOR THE WHITE WORKING CLASS. In a newspaper article in 2009, Alibhai-Brown used the words STUPID”, “VICIOUS” and “SCUM” to describe white working-class people.” “She has previously called for the media to be “controlled” to prevent the rise UKIP, and in a televised conversation on jobs in 2008 she said: “Don’t apply. It would be great if you went away. White, middle class men. We’d just walk in, wouldn’t we?” Of course, the Pakistani Muslim woman was never arrested like Lucy Connolly or hundreds of other British Patriots. And for all her hatred of White Men, she refused to marry a fellow Ethnic Indian Pakistani Muslim, but insisted on marrying a White Man: Colin Brown, from whom she cobbled together her fake double-barrelled name. Isn’t is strange how nearly every Third World Ethnic who gains fame or political power in the West while whingeing about “racism” has scorned to marry their own, but chosen… Read more »
She is part of the Elitist class, she is also in my opinion unhinged, she frequently resorts to histrionics, she has led a very priviliged life, she has zero exposure to our working class,and it really takes the biscuit in arrogance and frankly hatred, that she came to this country, has clearly done well for herself and yet has the temerity to openly voice her contempt and hatred for the native people of this country and its history.
If she hates us all so much why does she not return to Uganda, Amin has gone, and she could actually try and do some good in helping to rebuild her native country, but instead she chooses to run down and denigrate the country, and its people that have provided her with a home for decades.
Excellent comment—very well said, Hester!
She claims to be “part Pakistani”, part Ugandan, which means she is one of the Ethnic Indian mob who used Africa as a “Stepping Stone to the West”, as the Ethnic Africans say, who had to suffer under their domination for years.
It was the great Ethnic African “Father of the Kenyan Nation”, former President Jomo Kenyatta, who famously said,
“There are too many ticks on the lion’s belly!”
…just before he KICKED ALL THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENTALS out of Kenya, in order to save his own Ethnic African people from being trampled underfoot and treated like second-class citizens in their own ancestral homeland, by the Indian Subcontinentals taking over everything.
He also declared that Kenyans didn’t get rid of the British only to be taken over by Indians! He was right, and his courageous action was soon followed by Tanzania and Uganda.
The world press managed to smear it all by focusing on Idi Amin’s depravities, glossing over the fact that it was President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya whose great idea it was. Nobody ever called Kenyans, Tanzanians or Ugandans “RACIST” for trying to protect their own people.
Part paki – that explains a lot.
I generally don’t have a major problem with ethnic Africans but Pakistanis are the epicentre of most of the shit that is going down with mass immigration here.
She really is a horrendous item.
Thank god’s she didn’t bring up the dog’s muck through the letter box. I’m wondering if it’s true?
An argument that gets trotted out in favour of immigration is … “just look at history (implying that opponents are ignorant), the UK is a nation of immigrants”.
Indeed, let us look at history, especially at all the conflict and brutality that occurred with pretty much every wave of immigration.
Except the evidence shows its not.
But hey, evidence, that’s a bit racist or brexity or something.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a well-known anti-whitist and anglophobe. A racialist, in other words. So why is the BBC so in love with her?
She is also hideous and repulsive, and was so even when she was young, but somehow convinced Colin Brown, the former Chairman of the Consumers Panel of the Financial Services Authority to marry her, despite spewing bile against White Men. It is beyond bizarre.
The BBC Directorate is composed of the same? Lots of Muslims, Indians etc.
Who pays her. How does she make money.
The BBC is irredeemably racist, anti British.
Needs to be defunded, soonest.
“you are so insulting to me and my people” So she doesn’t see herself as British.
Well if you don’t like it, why not go back to your own country, or would you have to work for a living instead of sponging off some Far Left benefactor no doubt.
You are so right.
If it’s so awful stop sponging and f.off.
YAB should be sent back to sodding Uganda. For a start.
A very good illustration of why I haven’t listened to Question Time for 25 years
Well Yasmin, you could have returned to Uganda any time you liked over the last twenty years or more that Amun has gone.
people who hate this country so much really should not be here; let alone be feted on tv.
I’d rather drink my own piss than listen to the BBC’s Any Questions.
I hope the common sense majority vote in a Reform Government which will implement Project Restore Justice and deport the criminal migrants who have no right to be here.
And if that means Alihabi-Brown decides to leave “this dreadful country which she hates so much” then that will be a wonderful bonus.
If you are on the left of Politics it seems you must subscribe to the whole package no matter how damaging. You must think we have dangerous climate change, you must support open borders and mass immigration, you must want to be back in the dummy run for global government called the EU, you must want men in our daughters toilet , and on and on and on.
A-B has a huge chip on her shoulder and clearly has an issue with whites generally, and working class whites in particular. She expects to say just whatever comes into that little head of hers, but criticise her and disagree with her and all of the petty ‘ist’ tropes will flow from her mouth in an unstoppable deluge. Odious would be a good synonym for her.