‘Square One’ With Starmer Better Than ‘Recession’: LBC Host Flips Tory Chair’s Labour Swipe

Taking swipes in his Friday LBC interview, Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden slammed Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer as someone who would “take the country back to square one” only to have his jibe flipped back on him by host Nick Ferrari, who said “alot of people would vote” for “square one.”

“[Starmer has] no plan at all. Not interested in the future of the country,” Holden said. “And when you look at it, it’s fully back to square one. Not just with the country and their policies, but actually when it comes to even that anti-Semitism issue within the Labour Party. We’ve seen it rear its head again after Keir Starmer.”

Seeking clarity, Ferrari asked: “When you say square one, do you mean where we were 14 years ago? Is that what you mean by square one?”

“Exactly. When the country was borrowing…” the chairman began.

The host interrupted: “When hospital waiting lists were a third of what they are now? When we weren’t in recession? When we didn’t have the number of people crossing the channel? I just want to make sure that when you want to go back to ‘square one’, for my listeners…

Holden tried to interject.

“I’m sorry to talk over you,” Ferrari said, “you don’t want to go back to a third of where we were with hospital waiting lists, not the same number of people crossing, and we weren’t in recession? I think a lot of people would vote for that.”

Countering, Holden shifted the conversation away from these issues to focus on the government’s stance on immigration and financial responsibility.

“Let me pick you up on some of those points, Nick, actually. We saw those lorries crossing the channel back in the day, you remember that? Those awful situations where we had migrants dying in the back of trucks, just like we’ve got people dying in the channel today. Yes, of course we want to do more and tackle that. And all we’re seeing from the Labour Party is opposing us every time we try and tighten up those illegal migration rules,” the chairman said.