\n<\/p>\n
Q: [From the BBC] What do you think of the plan to put troops on the ground in Ukraine?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says:<\/p>\n Boots on the ground with kit. What boots? What kit? I mean, we might be able to go for 6 or 8 weeks. We could talk about a modern day reincarnation of the British Army of the Rhine. Forget it. We are in no position to do it.<\/p>\n Despite all the promises that will be made on defence spending, absolutely none of them have happened so far, and there\u2019s no particular indication that they will.<\/p>\n Farage also says that, at the press conference in Paris yesterday, he was struck by how Keir Starmer could not speak for long without looking at this note. He says Starmer is a man who is \u201cdrowning\u201d polticallly.<\/p>\n Share<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n <\/span>Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Starmer<\/strong> tells MPs about the Coalition of the Willing meeting yesterday, and says he will set the details out to MPs in a separate statement in due course.<\/p>\n If troops were to be committed on the ground, MPs would get a vote, he says.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Keir Starmer<\/strong> starts by saying he hopes all MPs had a happy Christmas. It probably feels like a long time ago, he says. But not for Reform UK \u2013 \u201cbecause today is the day they celebrate Christmas in Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n PMQs is about to start.<\/p>\n Here is the list of MPs with a question.<\/p>\n <\/span>PMQs<\/span> Photograph: HoCShare<\/p>\n The final question at the press conference was about Chris Parry, the Reform UK mayoral candidate who has posted on social media saying David Lammy should \u201cgo home to the Caribbean\u201d. He has said similar things about other black politicians.<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said that Parry was \u201cintensely patriotic\u201d, but he went on:<\/p>\n I do think his comments on Lammy were over the top and he should apologise for them.<\/p>\n Reform UK has not said that about Parry before.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: London is seen as one of the most diverse cities in the world. Do you think it is too diverse?<\/em><\/p>\n Cunningham<\/strong> says of course London is diverse. But she says migrants have to integrate. That is what her parents did when they came to London, she says. She says now people come to London expecting people to adapt to accommodate them. She says:<\/p>\n You don\u2019t come to London expecting London to change for you. And I find that some people come, expected it to change for them, and when it doesn\u2019t change for them, they say we\u2019re racist. There\u2019s absolutely nothing racist about that. It\u2019s called patriotism.<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says this is \u201cabsolutely right\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: [From the Guardian\u2019s Alexandra Topping] Reform UK\u2019s policy on the two-child benefit cap [which would just lift for families where both parents are working full-time] would only help 1% of the children affected. Will you for or against the Labour plan to life the cap in full?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says his comment about being opposed to the two-child cap was misinterpreted. He was trying to be pro-family. He says he wants to prioritise benefit spending on British-born people.<\/p>\n Reform UK will vote against lifting the cap, he says.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: [From Rob Hutton from the Critic] Over the past 18 months you have taken \u00a313,000 from X because your posts on the platform attract so many viewers. But now X is offering \u201cchild porn\u201d on demand. Are you going to carry on taking \u201cchild porn money\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n For about the first time in this press conference, Farage<\/strong> sounds flustered.<\/p>\n He suggests the outside interest earnings figure that he has to publish are misleading, because they are gross figures and they do not take into account costs.<\/p>\n On the sexualised deepfakes features, he says he is \u201cvery worried\u201d about this aspect. He says Sarah Pochin is leading for his party on this issue and urging the government to get X to remove it. He says he thinks X will listen to the criticism.<\/p>\n He does not commit to stop taking money from X.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: [From the Financial Times] How do you respond to claims that you are being misleading about the extent of crime in London. \u201cLondon\u2019s murder rate is the lowest in decades. It\u2019s much lower than Chicago, New York and LA. Knife crime has fallen sharply over the past ten years. The proportion of adults who have been victims of personal crimes fallen to the lowest level since 2002. Do both of you admit that across lots of really important metrics, London has actually become a much safer city?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says he does not accept this. He says the Crime Survey is used to provide crime figures. That involved people replying to a survey. But many people just throw that in the bin, he says. He says this method of collecting data is \u201cjust completely out of date and don\u2019t work\u201d.<\/p>\n And he says he can think of times when members of his family have been victims of crime, but have not reported it.<\/p>\n Cunningham<\/strong> says she agrees with Farage.<\/p>\n I was a senior crime prosecutor in London. I can assure you, crime is not down. Crime is up.<\/p>\n And she says, although the police recorded crime data is supposed to be accurate, the police do not record some offences.<\/p>\n She goes on:<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s a dangerous narrative to push that London, London is safe because it\u2019s very disrespectful to victims.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says Zack Polanski, the new Green party leader, is \u201cclearly a lunatic\u201d.<\/p>\n But he says, if you oppose drugs laws and support open borders, \u201cthen the Greens are clearly for you\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: [From the Telegraph] Will you support the Telegraph\u2019s Save our Pubs campaign, set up in response to the government\u2019s road safety strategy?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> jokes about saving many pubs over the years. He goes on to attack the government\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n This is the drink drive thing is absolutely ridiculous, wholly unnecessary.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been where we\u2019ve been since 1967. It\u2019s worked pretty effectively.<\/p>\n You actually look at road casualty figures, safety figures in this country, through whatever cause, we are now incredibly safe on our roads, incredibly safe, much safer than France, way safer than Germany.<\/p>\n And we\u2019ve actually reached a level on accidents beneath which it\u2019s almost impossible to go, because there will always be human error of some kind.<\/p>\n He also criticises the plan to make young people wait up to six months from taking their theory exam until they can sit the driving test. (See 9.32am.)<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Is Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to blame for the state of crime in London?<\/em><\/p>\n Cunningham<\/strong> says Rowley claimed there was not a problem with grooming gangs in London. He was wrong. They ended up reveiwing 9,000 cases, she says. She says on the basis of that Rowley has to go \u201c<\/strong>because on my watch you don\u2019t you don\u2019t get 9000 grooming cases wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says the chief constable of West Midlands police should go first. He says his performance at the Commons home affairs committee yesterday was \u201cabsolutely abject\u201d. And he pays tribute to Nick Timothy, the Conservative MP, for the way he was campaigned for the WMP chief constable, Craig Guildford, to go for supposedly misrepresenting the evidence used by the police to justify the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the Villa Park match last year.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Do you think it is a good thing if the rules-based international order no long exists?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says that, after the horrors of world war two and the Nazis, he understands why people wanted to put new arrangements in place, including the European convention on human rights.<\/p>\n But he says so many of these institutions are now \u201chopelessly out of date\u201d.<\/p>\n He goes on:<\/p>\n We are moving into a very new world of national self-interest, where countries will put their own national self-interest first. And that, by the way, will not be a bad thing, provided those countries are democratically run and have accountable leaderships.<\/p>\n The danger actually is not the existence of nation states. The danger is when nation states are not democratic or the leaders are not accountable.<\/p>\n Farage also says he cannot think of an example of two mature, functioning democracies going to war against each other.<\/p>\n He says the concept of international law may be \u201cfrightfully popular in Islington and Hampstead, and amongst many members of this government\u201d. But it it now no longer fit for purpose in the way originally envisaged.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: What would you do about the congestion charge and the Ulex charge?<\/em><\/p>\n Cunningham<\/strong> says she does not think a war on motorists helps anyone. She says she would scrap this because \u201cI want a war on criminals, not a war on motorists\u201d.<\/p>\n (It is not clear from her answer if she is saying she would get rid of both the congestion charge and Ulez, or just Ulez. She implied both, but she was not specific.)<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Farage dismisses Starmer’s plan for Ukraine, claiming UK not in position to put boots on ground there Q: [From the BBC] What do you think of the plan to put troops on the ground in Ukraine? Farage says: Boots on the ground with kit. What boots? What kit? I mean, we might be able to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3494,5546,2395,3132,132,1436,11527,20668,124,1347,3533,674],"class_list":{"0":"post-40655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-badenoch","9":"tag-dismisses","10":"tag-faces","11":"tag-farage","12":"tag-live","13":"tag-plan","14":"tag-pmqs","15":"tag-pms","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-starmer","18":"tag-troops","19":"tag-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Starmer says MPs would get vote on any decision to deploy troops to Ukraine<\/h2>\n
Starmer faces Badenoch at PMQs<\/h2>\n
Farage says Reform UK mayoral candidate should apologise for saying Lammy should ‘go home to Caribbean’<\/h2>\n
Cunningham complains too many migrants coming to London not willing to integrate<\/h2>\n
Farage says Reform UK will vote against lifting two-child benefit cap<\/h2>\n
Farage says he’s ‘very worried’ sexualised deepfake content on X – but won’t commit to stop taking money from it<\/h2>\n
Farage says he does not accept figures showing crime down in London, claiming crime survey data not reliable<\/h2>\n
Farage claims further restriction on drink-driving ‘wholly unnecessary’<\/h2>\n
Reform UK’s candidate for London mayor says Met commissioner should have to quit over grooming gangs record<\/h2>\n
Farage says era of rules-based international order ‘out of date’, and move to ‘world of national self-interest’ could be positive<\/h2>\n
Cunningham implies she would scrap congestion charge in London<\/h2>\n