Based on a quick search it looks like it took place on Mon 4 Sep 2023. Happy to be corrected.

He wasn't talking about reducing migration to 25-30k, he was talking about asylum seekers and the people coming over the channel on boats. He was suggesting that we make a deal with France to accept 25-30k people per year and then have it agreed that any excess beyond that would be returned to France. France would be likely to accept such a deal because it relieves the burden on them while also reducing the problem for us. Migration is a separate issue.

Famous UK Historian and author. He does a sister podcast to Rory Stewart; called the Rest is History.

Tom Holland ... he's a Julius Caesar groupie

Tom Holland but not the Spiderman actor.

All changed, thanks for the heads up!

Asylum seekers are people who seek asylum. I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, but definitions matter. An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country. Whether they are running from a war-torn region where war crimes are committed, or escaping a totalitarian regime that violates their rights because of their nationality, political views, sexuality etc, this has nothing to do with helping in the economic development of the country they left. There is little that can be done by the international community (even if we disregard their unwillingness) to mitigate this, other than imposing sanctions or outright invading another sovereign nation and/or directly intervening in a war. What you're talking about is economic migrants, who are people who flee their country to escape poverty. And yes, helping those countries with their economic development would make a difference (although certainly it wouldn't altogether stop the migrations). However, nobody wants to pay for this. Rich countries would rather guard their borders to try and stop those immigrants than actually do something to help their situation improve locally. The fact that their countries of origin are often failed states, with no stable government and no economic policy to speak of, or high levels of corruption, doesn't help either. This is compounded by the fact that asylum seekers and economic migrants arrive together, and it's very difficult (and a very slow process) to tell who is who (and all of them will obviously claim they are asylum seekers). Regarding incoming boats to Europe, stopping them is impossible, at least without Europeans being moral monsters. As soon as the coast guards spot the incoming boats, the people on board puncture and sink them, risking their lives and hoping that they'd be rescued (a gamble that is too often lethal). Once rescued, the countries they came from refuse to take these people back, and there is no alternative than to bring them to shore. So, in most cases, not taking in those people (asylum seekers and economic migrants alike) would mean watching them drown. Once on shore, people are usually trapped in camps in the periphery of the EU, since the rule is "asylum seekers apply in the first EU country they land", a rule obviously pushed by the central European states who prefer giving money to the border states to deal with this than deal with it themselves. It's a shitty situation, and there are no easy solutions.

"Develop the African countries" is of course very easy to do as we in the west are, it must be said, very good at willing functioning, prosperous states into existence by sheer force of our thoughts. We have such a rich history of doing this successfully that it is hard to understand why none of our trusted leaders come to this simple conclusion.

We did that when we ran those countries. We left and they reverted to type. You can’t do it for them they have to do it for themselves