to set out a timetable to reduce the number of small boats crossing the channel, despite admitting the figures are "far too high". she said slogans would not solve the problem and insisted international cooperation was the key to securing the uk's borders. over 13,000 migrants have been removed from the uk pope francis has made the first papal visit to the staunchly catholic french mediterranean island of corsica. he met the president and celebrated an outdoor mass. now on bbc news, newscast. this is the moment when we meet in person. it is. you are misleadingly shy for a moment. i didn't know it was me first, but i am next to henry on the sofa in his christmasjumper. it's christmassy, but it's quite but it's quite interesting i thought this was christmassy even though it has no trees or anything. it is a christmas

adjacent pattern. christmas adjacent. i am wearing a christmas jumper but it's not technically a christmas jumper either. you are sparkling. exactly. and you are wearing sparkling clothes. we are here to celebrate the last one of the year. hurrah. you had a scoop, so let's get under way with sunday's newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, paddy in the studio. laura in the studio. and henry in the studio. very nice to have you with us and good of you to give up your sunday morning in person for newscast. the big story was made by an interview that the home secretary gave to you from italy. the big story was made by an interview that the home secretary gave to you from italy. about how to cure the problem recognised across the political spectrum, the problem of the numbers of migration. let's start with two key numbers before we delve into the discussion. more than 20,000 people have arrived illegally on uk shores from small boats

since labour took power. that's up from 17,000 during the same period last year, but it is a lot less than during the record year in 2022. but what the home office is keen to hail, however, is they have returned 13,000 people who didn't have permission to be here in the last six months. they say that's the highest number in five years, so 13 and a half thousand people sent back to their home country since the election injuly. there are tonnes of stats in the whole debate, but those are two of the key ones in this moment this morning. and henry, the other way to look at the statistics is failure — the conservatives failed by their own targets and labour are not succeeding yet on smashing the gangs. that's right. look, you should never ascribe to politics what is better explained by policy. the numbers are high, and any government of any

stripe would want those numbers to come down. people die making those crossings. it's notjust a sign of government failure, it is perilous for those people who feel like they are driven to try to come to the uk across the english channel in an inflatable dinghy. that is why this government, like the last government, is trying to bring numbers down, albeit in a different way. but there is also politics here. there is a reason that yvette cooper, the home secretary, wanted to end the year talking to you, laura, from rome, a visual demonstration that she is dealing with her european counterparts in an attempt to sort this problem, and that is because labour know and the government know that a lot of their voters, just a few months ago injuly, voted for them, because they want to see the government dealing with it. it's interesting yvette cooper has spent a lot of her first few months as home secretary on a plane going round the world, trying to do deals

with countries to make sure they increase or can do returns, which sounds like technicaljargon but is essentially that you have to get other countries to take their people back if the uk government concludes they don't have any legal right to be here, so she's been to germany, italy, iraq, she's been all over the place. and the other part of the home office's strategy is trying to essentially fill in what she is going to say is the broken links of chains of law enforcement. so cracking down on the people smuggling gangs, notjust by the time they get to the channel but as far away as thousands of miles away in iraq and kurdistan where a lot of this trade has been developed from. let's have a listen to her saying what she says is evidence of progress. i think we're being very clear and straight with people - about the complexity of this, because the gimmicks- did not work. what we had previously was a load of gimmicksj and everybody promised it| would solve it immediately and what we're doing - is the very serious action.

we've already substantially increased, we've had overl 25% increase in terms - of the returns, we've had over 30% increase in enforcement raids so we've already- increased, step—by—step, - but of course, this is complex and of course this takes time. what she wouldn't do... is put a number on it. not even give a number, wouldn't give any shape or form of a timetable about when they hope to achieve. sunak completely got that wrong. yes, and she does not want to be another home secretary with what she described as bad history of making a promise on immigration and then spectacularly failing on it, but it does leave them open as a government to charges from their political opponents that they're not really making it a priority, because you get targets on kids�* education and targets on waiting lists. the government has made huge

claims in the last few weeks about here are the things you can measure us by, but when it comes to immigration, the home secretary, maybe she is more savvy than some of her colleagues, she won't put a number on it that she can then be held to account. and you made that point to yvette cooper effectively and i don't think she had much of an answer. it is quite hard for the government to say target —based, milestone—based on whatever the current word is, based government works, except in the area of immigration policy. i think that is a hard argument. and it is fairfor labour to say that on the tories�* watch, migration, both legal and illegal, soared. it's absolutely true and the voters who voted for brexit in park thought they could control the borders. and it went up after brexit. that is what they were told. that is what they were told that this is part of the distrust in politics, and some of the angriest people i meet, because i do a lot

of street interviews i've interviewed everyone in the country outside woolworths. it is people feel let down by a system where they thought they would get x and they got y. there is a fair argument to be made that every election dating back to who knows when, plus the eu referendum in 2016, a plurality of voters voted for a party or referendum proposition that they were told would result in fewer people coming to the uk, be it legally or illegally. and every term, it has not happened. it's interesting we had andy burnham, former government minister and now mayor of manchester on the programme, and he talked about when he was immigration minister back in the day, because it was one of the differentjobs he did when he was a westminster politician and he said, i remember it, what you had to do is get on your phone to the counterparts and say, can you take these people? and it was all about pressing the flesh with your contacts around the continent and he made the point you did, paddy, in a political way, and you weren't making it in a political way, but actually the difficulties

around brexit and how that made it harderfor the uk to cooperate with other countries these, in his view is at the root of the problem, and that meant people were sold something in his view that was not achieved. what you see in yvette cooper's approach to illegal immigration is a specific example of keir starmer's broader analysis of where the uk has gone wrong diplomatically since brexit. he thinks there are all sorts of issues that can be solved or at least come closer to being solved by the uk basically being a better member of the international community. that's the front page, keir�*s surrender squad. we want to hear a little bit more from andy burnham. going forward from here in 2025, they need to be held to account for the consequences of their own policies. the big lie of brexit, in my view, needs to be exposed because it promised they would control immigration.

it's done the opposite. it's weakened control of immigration because it's weakened those relationships with our neighbours that are absolutely critical to having an orderly system. but at the same time, it's changed the nature of migration. so they've been issuing more and more visas for people coming from further afield, staying permanently, whereas with free movement, it would have been somebody would come for a few years and then go back. andy burnham, at the beginning of that clip, was talking about the risk to labour from the reform party, but then more generally about the promises that were made to people by brexiteers. the fact, however, is that labour is trying this approach. they can't be sure that it's going to work significantly. going to be effective in the way that they want it to be. and the home office is very happy to highlight figures that they say show things going in the right direction today, but they do not have a guarantee that they're going to be able to show persuasive differences in the levels of illegal immigration and the small boat crossings. of course they want to, but they can't be sure that it's going to happen,

not least because it's dependent on lots of other bits of what's happening around the world, and also whether or not other countries are really ready to do the kind of cooperation that they want. and giorgia meloni, the italian prime minister, has said she wants more action from the other eu countries. so she's already making that point. there's a great profile of her, given that we sometimes try and sum up the sundayjournalism. there's some great profiles of her. the people who've been rushing to meet her — keir starmer�*s gone. donald trump likes sitting next to her in paris. she gets out her fags. she has an aperol. she takes her daughter to the things — bambina, she says. and she's a working class woman who grew up in a council house. you see a lot of the photographs of maybe more traditional, less exciting politicians appearing to be really quite dazzled by this unconventional, plain talking female italian leader. who's brought the figures down. absolutely. but her scheme to send people to albania. ..is shelved. ...has run into all sorts

of legal problems. but who would have thought a few years ago that, of all people, yvette cooper would have been making a speech at an italian political conference run by a party that has its roots in the far right. i mean, you just couldn't have made that up. but meloni is a really interesting character, not least because france and germany are in quite weakened positions, and she has very effectively moved into a leadership space, to use a terrible term. but, you know, she looks like the queen of europe at the moment. and if we're talking and i hope this isn't too clunky a segue, but if we're talking... it's newscast, it's fine. if we're talking about a party of the radical right. perhaps if you want to use that phrase in a european counterpart, i don't think we should talk about the domestic political debate on immigration, legal or illegal, in the uk, without me sharing how utterly spooked labour people, as well as tories i speak to, but you'd expect it of the tories, are by reform here in the uk.

i have been quite taken aback in the last few weeks, um, by the number of quite senior influential people in this government, which, let's remember, has been in office for, what, five months, already panicking about not the conservatives nipping at their heels at the general election in, what, four and a half years' time? probably. but at reform. i am really struck. i mean, it's almost at the point where i talk to contacts and i say, you know, you've only been in office five months? you know, the next general election is some time away — it's a reversal of what you would expect the usual conversational interaction to be. and that is why this is so politically important. i mean, it's great that we've got you here because i'm feeling the briefing of you, because ijust want to risk using a figure now myself, because it's easy to remember, reform came second in 98 seats, and 89 of them are labour's. and i can remember that number because it's nine and eight. turn it round the other way. is that a mnemonic? a sort of numerical

version of it. but we had lucy fraser on the program today who was the conservatives�* last culture secretary. yes. — don't be mean. and i said she was talking about elon musk may give money, which he's not allowed to do, but if he uses a british firm he could give money to reform. and i said are the conservatives worried about nigel farage? and she said, yes. then she said everyone should be, and i think she was meaning political class. so there's no doubt, as you were saying, henry, it's very fashionable to be terribly worried about reform in political circles. but what someone else in government was saying to me the other day, actually, we have to take a breath, wait and see if they're a real party beyond nigel farage on tiktok. now, i'm not suggesting that they're not at all. it is very clear they they made very significant gains in the general election. they're working very hard to professionalise and to expand the party. they clearly have huge potential as we come around to 2025. but sometimes in politics, as in everything, you get a sort of frenzy in fashion.

but there is a sense, though, isn't there, that it's like they don't want to be caught out again. they'll be caught out in the general election, and they don't want to be caught out another time. definitely. and they're just also very aware that they won this astonishing parliamentary landslide on what was not at all in vote share a landslide. that's labour, 33%. labour, that is. and there is this feeling, if you look at the opinion polling, that there is a much more sort of european multi—party system straining at the seams of our electoral system, which funnels votes generally to two parties. and it sort of feels to me a bit, actually, that politics in the last couple of months has been happening outside parliament, right? we've got a different parliament now with an absolutely enormous majority for the governing party. so therefore, how much action is there going to be in parliament? well, maybe not that much. perhaps the more important things that have been happening in the last few months are things like reform working hard in wales, where there are assembly elections, sorry, senedd elections coming down the track, maybe the more important things actually are the snp feeling they've got a little bit of confidence back because labour has struggled

over winter fuel allowance and things like that. so maybe for once people should pay a bit more attention to what's happening outside westminster as what's happening inside. but it's challenging though too, for the tories, isn't it? and last weekend we had ben houchen, the teesside mayor, who said he felt kemi badenoch had to say more about immigration, had to not leave a vacuum for nigel farage. this was what the shadow home secretary, chris philp, told us this morning about their plans for a low, hard cap on migration. so there's no way that can be circumvented, i and we would set that out in law. _ in terms of numbers, - we haven't set a number yet, but we're working on that at the moment. - broadly speaking, it will be . far, far lower than the figures that were published a couple of weeks ago _ and it will also be far, - far lower than the 0br forecast accompanying the budget. that was 350,000 per year. interestingly, keir starmer- and yvette cooper have refused to set out a cap at all. so there's a big difference | there between the parties. so, interesting. that's a sort of new thing there. it's not a specific target, but the tories will set a cap for migration of lower

than 300,000, which is what the government's official number crunchers were already forecasting for, i think, 2028. yeah, i mean, the argument is now if we are talking about reform, nigel farage has said we've got to leave the european convention on human rights, and once we've done that, we can deport people. so that's a very carnivorous piece of policy versus going round the doorstep saying we're going to have a cap, a hard cap. well, it could be 300... it could be 400,000. 0oh! i mean, this issue is running away from them. well, kemi badenoch attacked keir starmer at pmqs on wednesday on the subject of immigration. and not surprisingly, keir starmer hit the ball into the open goal in response, which was, "hang on a second, a few months ago you were in government and it was on your party's watch that these numbers ballooned", and that is the strategic challenge here for kemi badenoch. she was in the conservative governments on whose watch these numbers went up.

0k, she was a relatively small part, but she was a minister, as was chris philp. her shadow foreign secretary is priti patel, who was the home secretary when legal and illegal immigration went up in boris johnson's government. so it's tricky. and a lot of people i spoke to in both of the main two parties after that pmqs on wednesday said, "hang on, i think the real winner of that session for anyone watching was reform, because you had the two establishment parties knocking lumps out of each other over who was more culpable for numbers that many people aren't happy with. 0ne quick point i think we should make as well, just when we're talking about... make it slowly, because we want to hear. well, no, i... that's why you're here. which is when we talk about the political debate on immigration, i think we should also reflect because it often gets missed. there is a chunk of the british public, though not as big, who support immigration, who believe that it's good for the country, who believe that talking in the terms that even the labour party do about immigration is to demonise migrants.

they think that we should have safe routes so that people who are crossing the channel can come here in large numbers. they think that legal migration is good. and historically, i think those voters have generally found a place in the labour coalition. if they feel put off by the way in which yvette cooper is talking to giorgia meloni or whatever in italy, then you have this challenge for the governing party where they have their voters splitting off in all directions. and just as reform did extremely well at the general election getting five seats, the green party have four mps in parliament. jeremy corbyn and a group of independents are likely to set up a political party early next year. so we should just always be mindful, even though it's a smaller chunk of british public opinion, of that group of people. as we talked about yesterday, a bit about this is that labour has got the right saying, you're not radical enough on our way, and the left saying you're not radical enough the other way. so then you end up with a muddle in the middle. and that is one of the sort of central criticisms of starmer�*s government overall, is that in trying

to please everyone, they might end up pleasing no one at all. but i think we should have a listener question, because i think we've all wanged on quite a lot. and paddy, it is about starmer and maybe it is relating to this muddle in the middle. and i know you've got a really good point to make, because you've got that look in your eye. "i was about to say something wise, and you, strumpet, have cut me off in my prime." but i am going to ask this listener question. we've heard a lot about starmer�*s manifestos, missions, and milestones. so staying with the m theme, what are his minefields where he can't go? or to mix my metaphors, which areas should he avoid like the plague or not touch with a bargepole? so i think this is relevant now in our conversation. what is it that keir starmer has to avoid, paddy? i mean, let's talk about the streets of the united kingdom, which were full of rioters just a few months ago, who were throwing petrol bombs at hotels where people known in the press as migrants... but we can call them people.

families were firebombed, because that's what the state of this argument had been. and when he became the prime minister. he cannot be blamed politically for what happened at the moment he took office. what he then did, of course, was send them all to prison very quickly. and that, you know, to answer this point, what does he have to do? what does he have to avoid? he has to avoid looking like he's not the prime minister when something like that happens. so i would answer that this issue posed him a question straight away when he was in power. "what are you going to do?" so he addressed the riots. well, now he's got to address what's happening with the actual state of the problem itself. and it's worth saying there that keir starmer has said very, very little about the aspect which those riots highlighted of all of this, which is sort of social cohesion. integration. communities sticking together, integration, cohesion. and, you know, some people close to him would say, "look, we know there is a major problem with social cohesion when you have hotels in communities,

you put large numbers of migrants in places where there's no support, no infrastructure. they're not allowed to work. that doesn't work for the community and it doesn't work for them. there's an awareness of that inside government. but keir starmer himself hasn't really done much actually to talk about that. and you do get the sense that he just doesn't really want to touch it with a bargepole. the other thing that's difficult for him to touch with a short bargepole, or any pole at all, is this reset with the european union. so they talk a lot, as you were saying, henry, about this reset — whatever reset means. in other words, how do you get close to countries in europe again, in order so that you can do things that are effective and useful? however, how do you do that without creating an immediate sense from some parts of the press and some parts of the political spectrum that actually it's all a secret remainer plot, and he's about to surrender to brussels? well, i think one question which we almost need to answer before we find out that is how salient is the issue of brexit now? are there people who would be furious if keir starmer began

to unpick substantial elements of the brexit deal? i genuinely don't know that — that's not a rhetorical question. i don't know the answer to that. i don't think we really know the answer to that. and it it sort of gets to an earlier question, which i don't think was ever really resolved about the extent to which brexit and getting brexit done was about that, or was it a proxy for a feeling that the government wasn't listening to the will of the people and so on and so on? although i think we can say that we don't think it's unlikely there'd be people in the streets if the government does a phytosanitary arrangement or a veterinary... in other words, those niche agreements about animal welfare or about bits of chemical regulation or whatever. and that gets to the question of whether it's that sort of stuff that they want to do, in which case, sure, you might have some to—the—wire negotiations, but no one's going to notice or care, or whether it's something more profound like unpicking. .. and i don't think they're going to do this because keir starmer has said many times, and we know his word is his bond, unpicking the single market or the customs union membership. i mean, one thing that is,

i think, revealing though niche, is that the government has been hiring for a very senior civil servant to... i can't remember what the title is. it's something like second permanent secretary, future eu relationship — something like that. not quite that, but you know, the sort of whitehall blancmange title which conveys seriousness. whitehall blancmange! saw it on the menu in the bbc canteen! sounds christmassy and, um, uh, may your days be merry in whitehall. and, um, i think that shows actually is more thanjust a bit of phytosanitary... so back to the mail on sunday, which i was mentioning earlier, says that a new department with up to 100 civil servants, which would thus be bigger than the actual brexit department, because we didn't have any trade negotiators. that was another thing david cameron didn't reveal to the world about his in—out referendum. oh, you didn't need them. we didn't need them! so obviously, the reason why we're mentioning this is that faisal islam, who was in brussels

with the chancellor, was on newscast on friday saying that this reset the mood music is going to be far more going to be far more expansive than just a couple of tinkering over here with youth movement, and a couple of tinkering over there with the veterinary, whether you can take your poodle into france or not. thatjust really made me laugh! pet passports for poodles? it's notjust designed to set you off. it's the idea that the mood music that you're picking up as well. well, by the way, faisal was in brussels with the chancellor. the chancellor was in brussels. rachel reeves addressed the eu 27, as it now is since 2021. sorry, since 2020. and ijust sort of caught sight... as laura knows, the office where i work, you know, it has tvs everywhere. and i suddenly sort of caught

sight out of the corner of my eye of rachel reeves doing one of those clips where all the eu leaders do those sort of mini interviews as they head in and out of eu summits. and i thought, "hang on, hang on." 0h, a british politician is there. having spent many, many happy hours squashed in that press pen, waiting for the leaders to come along so that they can either ignore you or come over and give you exactly what they want to say and not answer any questions, british politicians were not meant to be walking that big long red carpet any more. and i think starmer himself is actually going to go to one of those political summits for the first time as a british pm early next year. and at some point there's going to be a uk—eu summit as well. and i think that will be the real moment of revelation of what this really amounts to. so very happiness to you. very happiness to you. and thanks very much for listening. thank you very much, newscasters, for all your messages and loveliness throughout the year. we love doing our weekend programme with you and i hope that everybody listens in 2025. hello there. much of the country today had a fine and largely dry

one, and it was milder than it was yesterday, despite the lack of sunshine. now this mild theme is here to stay, certainly for the first half of this upcoming week, but it will be dominated by low pressure, so it will be wet and windy at times, and then all areas will be turning colder from thursday onwards, with an increasing chance of wintry showers on hills in the north. at the moment, though, we're in this wedge of milder air, rather cloudy skies because of a lot of moisture there. and on this boundary between the mild and colder air across northern scotland, we've got a weather front which is going to bring persistent rain, which will drive into the western highlands, rainfall totals really mounting up even as we head into monday as well. elsewhere, apart from some drizzle across western hills, it will be mostly dry, variable cloud and a mild night to come. so it starts mild on monday for all areas. we've got that rain still piling into the north and west of scotland, particularly the north—west highlands. elsewhere, variable cloud, some sunshine, a bit of drizzle i think, across western hills, but mild again with temperatures into 10 to 13 celsius. but we've got some concerns

of the amount of rain just falling across the north—west highlands by the end of monday into early tuesday. some of the worst affected areas could be up to 150mm, so that could cause some localised flooding and some travel disruption. but as we move into tuesday, that weather front eventually starts to shift northwards as we start to pick up a southerly wind thanks to a renewed area of low pressure. and again it will be a mild start to tuesday. here it is, a new area of low pressure, more isobars on the charts. this one's a bit more powerful than we've had over the weekend, so it looks like it'll be windier with gales around irish sea coasts. outbreaks of rain for northern ireland and into western scotland again, areas that really don't need any more rain. but i think the midlands eastwards and large parts of eastern england should stay dry all day on tuesday, but rather cloudy with limited sunshine. mild double figure values for most. wet, windy weather with gales spreads across the country during tuesday night. another area of low pressure will arrive later on wednesday, but we're in between the weather systems for wednesday, so we should see quite a bit of dry weather across the northern half of

the country with some sunshine. a few showers across western scotland and then we'll start to see wet and windy weather pushing up from the south across england, wales into northern ireland. given some sunshine we could be up to 15 degrees across eastern england. it does turn colder for the end of the week. wintry showers across northern hills. a bit of sunshine in the south.

live from washington, this is bbc news. a warning that hundreds — potentially even thousands — could be dead after cyclone chido hits the french indian ocean territory of mayotte. we report from syria on the presence of israeli troops in the buffer zone between the two countries — against international law. and prosecutors in south korea say impeached president yoon hasn't responded to a summons for questioning over his martial law declaration.

hello, i'm helena humphrey. several hundred people — and possibly even thousands — are now feared to have died in a powerful cyclone that hit the island of mayotte, a french indian ocean territory. winds of more than 140 miles per hour and heavy rain battered the island — causing widespread devastation. authorities there say the final number of victims may never be known. mayotte is a french territory, and a member of the eu. many people there lived in makeshift homes, and the french government says they have all been destroyed. cyclone chido has now moved to mozambique and is also threatening other countries in the region. greg mckenzie reports. the french indian ocean territory of mayotte. cyclone chido made landfall here on saturday. the devastation and aftermath clear to see.